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Sheikh Nasrallah
// A man of the people
Vlast analytical weekly and radio station Echo of Moscow have begun a joint project called Authorities, devoted to the world's most influential people. Our first hero is Sheikh Said Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah movement who became the idol of tens of millions of Muslims after Israel's recent war.
A Man of the People
“For Lebanese, Sheikh Nasrallah is the same as all of them,” says Vremya novostei newspaper correspondent Elena Suponina, who met the sheikh in 2000. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah does not come from a distinguished family like Osama Ben Laden. He was born in 1960 into a Shiite family. He spent his childhood in a poor quarter on the outskirts of Beirut that had neither water nor electricity. He was the oldest of nine children. That is probably why he grew up so fast. As often happened in poor families in the East, his parents saved their money to educate the eldest son, so that he could help his brothers and sisters.
Hassan stood out from other children because of his manners and interests. “When he was 12, he never said anything without thinking first. He had the eyes of a 35-year-old,” his classmate Khaled Mustafa recalled. He never played soccer and wore an overcoat like a Muslim religious scholar.
As a boy from a poor Shiite family, Hassan understood that he had to get a good religious education from a serious Islamic school to become respected in the community. When he turned 15, the local imam noticed his interest in theology and recommended him to study in the influential Shiite school in the Iraqi city of Najaf. Hassan was not able to complete his religious studies in Iraq, however. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution took place. Shaken by the show of Shiite might, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein closed the school at Najaf.
Hassan and his older classmate Abbas Musawi returned to Lebanon, which was in the midst of civil war. The armed branch of the Shiite Amal Party, led by Imam Musa Sadr, defended the interests of the Shiite community. Nasrallah, then 19, became a field commander for Amal. He always fought with his men on the battlefield, something they never forgot. “When I ask Hezbollah fighters about their leader, they speak of him with love. They simply adore him,” says journalist Nick Blandford, who is writing a book about Nasrallah.
Nasrallah was one of the initiators of the social programs for the Shiite population of Lebanon. In French Lebanon, the Shiites made up the poorest and least influential segment of society. While making up about 30 percent of the population of Lebanon, they received only 0.7 percent of the national budget. Nasrallah remembered how Sunni boys from richer neighborhoods terrorized Shiite boys. Therefore, money that the Amal, and later Hezbollah, fighters received from Iran and Syria was spent not only on weapons, but on the construction of homes and hospitals, mosques and schools, in Shiite neighborhoods. Even now, the poor in Shiite neighborhoods receive envelopes from Hezbollah, with the signature of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah on every one of them.
A Spiritual Leader
One other quality of Hassan Nasrallah is charisma. The energy that he exudes when he speaks is legendary. He was a powerful preacher even in his student years in Najaf. His lectures on Islamic revolution, Lebanese politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict enjoyed particular popularity.
Nasrallah's ability to stir up an audience has been noted by many journalists. “Arabs, especially religious leaders, love to talk a lot and use a lot of beautiful words, to pepper political speeches with verses from the Koran. He has mastered that to perfection. It gets to people. He goes into a rage and that energy is transferred to the crowd,” Suponina said. “But he is very simple. Before that, I met one of the spiritual leaders of Hezbollah, Sheikh Muhammad Fadlallah. He made a huge impression on me. He even had a callous on his forehead from praying. But Sheikh Nasrallah is simple and youthful.”
The Muslim street is also impressed by the fact that Nasrallah is ready to give his life and the lives of his loved ones for his ideals. In 1997, his 18-year-old oldest son Gadi was killed fighting the Israelis. He received the news of his son's death while appearing on television. Not one muscle twitched in his face. He took his youngest son with him to identify the body. There were several dozen coffins of Hezbollah fighters in the room. Gadi's coffin was the thirtieth. But Nasrallah stopped before every coffin and prayed. “We are proud of our shahids. They will meet the Prophet Muhammad,” he said.
“He is a walking target,” Suponina said. “The Israelis want to eliminate him. And no matter how the negotiations and prisoner exchanges go, the Israelis will still have that goal. I think Sheikh Nasrallah understands that. He became the leader of the organization after his friend and predecessor Abbas Musawi was killed, killed cruelly along with his wife and children. I think Nasrallah has been ready for death since that moment.”
A Cunning Politician
Nasrallah also understands that the passion of a spiritual leader may scare off the journalists and politicians he comes into contact with. Heidar Jemal, chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia, described meeting Nasrallah at a theological conference in Beirut in 2002. “At the first moment,” Jemal says, “I thought he was more a spiritual figure, a person oriented toward the spiritual-theological vertical. But then I began to understand that he has a much more balanced approach to things. He is a person to whom nothing in practical life is alien. He is not a spiritual figure in the classical understanding, who is separated from everything and understands the world as filthy. This is a person who is involved in the situation.”
Nasrallah's political pragmatism has been seen throughout his career. His classmates in Najaf noted that he was not so strong in theology, but no one had a better understanding of the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. As he was undergoing training in Iraq, Nasrallah attracted the attention of the most influential spiritual leaders of the Shiite world – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadik Sadr (father-in-law of Shiite activist in Iraq Muqtada Sadr) and future leader of Hezbollah Abbas Musawi.
In 1987, Nasrallah continued his religious training in the Iranian city of Qum, where he strengthened his ties to Iranian leaders even more. Returning to Lebanon in 1989, Nasrallah had a difference of opinion with Musawi. Unlike Musawi, who wanted Syria's influence in Lebanon to increase, Nasrallah wanted the Lebanese resistance movement to be independent. Finding himself in the minority, Nasrallah was forced to leave the country to be the Hezbollah representative in Tehran.
In 1991, when Musawi became leader of Hezbollah, Nasrallah returned to Lebanon and significantly softened his stance on Syria. A year later, the Israelis killed Musawi and the 32- year-old Nasrallah became head of Hezbollah. He was Tehran's pick and many members were not happy with it. He was 22 years younger than the other candidate for the post, Nabih Berri, who is now speaker of the Lebanese parliament. He had little political experience and his theological knowledge was incomparable to Musawi's, who studied at Najaf for ten years. But Nasrallah's close acquaintance with Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei allowed him to bypass his more experienced competitors.
While maintaining close ties with Iran and Syria, which provide Hezbollah with significant moral and financial support, Nasrallah constantly emphasizes the organization's independence from outside influence. Under Nasrallah's leadership, financial support for Hezbollah from the Lebanese diaspora (reaching $10 million per month) has exceeded Iranian financial aid ($100 million per year).
A World Political Figure
When he took over Hezbollah, Nasrallah made the Party of God popular not only Shiites, but all Lebanese. Under Nasrallah, Maronite families began to educate their children in Shiite schools. Every time Israeli forces entered Lebanon, Nasrallah portrayed Hezbollah's responsive actions as a defense of the Lebanese people. Hezbollah's activities were given high praise by Lebanese President Emil Lahoud, a Christian. “For us Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. Without it, we would not have been able to free our land,” he said recently.
Nasrallah turned Hezbollah from a marginal group into an official political party. He insisted that Hezbollah participate in the 1992 parliamentary elections. After the 2005 elections, the Party of God received two ministerial portfolios in the Lebanese government.
Nasrallah's ambitions reach beyond Lebanon. “He lives in one of the small Arab Muslim states, but his thinking shows that he could participate in the solution of the problems of the whole Arab Islamic world through diplomatic agreements that cannot be made today in Palestine, Lebanon or Iraq,” cochairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia Nafigulla Ashirov said. Ashirov considers Nasrallah's biggest achievement the fact that he has united Sunni and Shiite Muslims. “The clumsy attempts of some Saudi scholars to urge Sunni Muslims not to support Hezbollah in the conflict with Israel were practically squashed by a storm of criticism from all Muslim organizations from all corners of the Muslim world. Today, in the eyes of the Muslim street and in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, Nasrallah is the main figure in the entire Muslim world,” Ashirov said.
Nargiz Asadova
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 11, 2006
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