IN THE VILLAGE of Deir al- Nahr in the foothills above the southern Lebanese city of Tyre is a little shrine that all those advocating the deployment of a new “robust” multi-national force in Lebanon should visit before so willingly offering up the blood of their soldiers.
Pride of place among the fluttering yellow Kalashnikov-symbolled Hezbollah flags, captured Israeli guns and gallery of suicide bombers is a painting of Ahmed Qassir. Qassir, known locally as the “prince of martyrs”, has been largely forgotten by the outside world but not by the Lebanese.
And as a new generation of our leaders, and fools, gathers in Rome to chart out on what terms another outside force can be sent to intervene in the Lebanon, it’s worth remembering Qassir’s contribution to the history of the Middle East, indeed the history of the world.
But it is not Qassir Ahmed’s life but the manner of his death that is so notable. Qassir was the world’s first suicide car bomber. On a wet November morning in 1982 Qassir drove a car, packed with 500kg of explosives, into the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre. He brought the building down, killing 76 Israeli troops.
His suicide bombing was the first successful counterblow by the Lebanese against the 1982 Israeli invasion unleashed by Ariel Sharon and a portent for the chaos now visited daily on the streets of Baghdad. The Israelis had provoked a new, far deadlier enemy to come into being — the Shia of the Lebanon — who would not be so easily vanquished as Nasser and his blustering Egyptians.
Hezbollah, aided by a contingent of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards, had in Qassir invented a new weapon — the tactical human bomb.
If delegates from Rome took a stroll up the street from his billboard picture they could drop in on Qassir’s mother. Amid the traditional warm Arabic hospitality, the family will gladly point out pictures of the martyr Qassir and fondly recall his earnest vow to “rock the Israelis”. Where we see and fear a suicide bomber, Qassir’s family only see a patriot and martyr — a simple hero.
The Qassirs are Shia, who revere the Prophet’s grandson, Imam Hussein, for his martyrdom at the battle of Kerbala against the overwhelming army of the evil Caliph Yazid in AD680. Martyrdom thus lies at the core of the Shia faith and for this simple rural family, Ahmed, in blowing up the Israeli headquarters, was thus re-enacting Imam Hussein’s martyrdom. His death was both a justifiable act of war and a sacred religious duty. “Just as you love life, we love death”, is a common Shia mantra. Ahmed, they were convinced, is in Paradise.
In 1983 Hezbollah followed up Qassir’s work with the the most powerful acts of terrorism before 9/11 — the April 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut and the October 1983 bombing of the US Marines barracks. Again, two of Hezbollah’s “martyrs” simply drove to the targets with trucks packed with explosives and brought the buildings down, killing everyone inside. Both attacks were devastating strikes. In the embassy bombing the entire CIA station, meeting in a first-floor room to discuss the threat of terrorism, was wiped out. In the Marine barracks attack, 241 Marines were killed in the biggest single loss to the US forces since the Second World War. And just to spread the message around, another Hezbollah bomber attacked French paratroopers, killing 60 at the same time as the Marines.
A few months later the US President, Ronald Reagan, pulled the Marines out from their supposed peace-keeping mission in the Lebanon. The withdrawal was an ignominious end to another flawed peace keeping mission where the US superpower, aided by its European allies, naively believed it could assert its will in the Lebanon and suffer no consequences.
In Rome today we hear similar misguided rhetoric. The notion that a multinational peacekeeping force could hold Hezbollah at bay, or restore order, might be easy to imagine in the air-conditioned conference suites of Rome but would be a lot harder to carry out in villages such as Deir al-Nahr.
This is not a proposed ceasefire but a recipe for madness. Ever since that fateful November 1982 the Israeli Defence Forces have been waging a hot war against Hezbollah, using missile strikes, assassinations and bombings. The IDF has tried almost every weapon in its vast arsenal. It is demonstrably waging that same battle today.
Self-evidently the Israelis, with all their might, have failed to disarm Hezbollah. The notion that some well-meaning Norwegians, backed by a few Turkish soldiers, could dismember the most formidable terrorist organisation the world has known is ridiculous. Worse than ridiculous, every Western leader who contributes to such a force will be sending their own men to their death.
Hezbollah may have been created by Iran but it is Lebanese to its core. It has resisted the Israelis and it will also violently resist its destruction by what its sees as a US-Israeli sponsored plan. And the weapon Hezbollah will choose will be more Ahmed Qassirs.
I doubt if the planners in Rome will visit Ahmed Qassir’s mother or remember the glaring history lessons of past interventions. In the nature of these things we will be told that everything is different this time round and that our troops will be welcomed and the world has changed. The television cameras will cover the initial deployment as the troops patrol the streets of Deir al-Nahr with soft berets on their heads and hand out sweets to local kids.
But the world will not have changed and this coming story of folly, hubris and blindness will end the same way with another Ahmed, a car packed with explosives, a blown-up barracks and a pile of dead foreign troops. And then, amid the needless, futile loss, we will remember that old lesson from 1983 that you cannot enter a battlefield armed only with the best of intentions.
Kevin Toolis is a terrorism expert. His documentary series Cult of the Suicide Bomber II will be shown on Channel 4 in September
