Amal Movement

AMAL

12/12/2006

The Shi'ite Islamic Imam Musa Sadr formed the terrorist association known as AMAL in 1975. Despite the founder's Iranian heritage, AMAL was conceived to increase the influence of Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim population through the application of terror. In addition, the group was interested in establishing a theocratic Islamic state in place of Moamar Qadhafi's Sunni-leaning Marxist Muslim government.

The group's name had a double meaning. While amal means "hope" in Arabic, AMAL is an acronym for: "Afwaj al Muqawama Al Lubnaniya," or "Lebanese Resistance Detachments.".

Musa Sadr (Sayyed Moussa as-Sadr), AMAL's founder, was born in Qum, Iran. He moved to Lebanon in 1960 when he took over a religious position in the town of Tyre. In 1974, as part of his clerical duties, Imam Musa Sadr formed the "Movement of the Deprived" to advance the political interests of the Shi'ites in Lebanon. Then, contemporaneous with the outbreak of Lebanon's civil war in 1975, Musa Sadr founded AMAL as the terrorist wing of his Movement of the Deprived.

AMAL would go on murder scores of religious rivals using the tactic of terrorism. The more they killed, the more popular Amal grew, with an ever increasing number of Lebanese Shi'ites joining in to attack Sunnis. Amal's popularity soared following Israel's entry into Lebanon in 1978, when the Jewish nation had come to destroy the PLO's Lebanese base of operations. Amal jihadists set their sectarian differences aside long enough to accompany Palestinians in southern Lebanon as they attacked Jews.

With the death of Musa Sadr in 1978, control of AMAL passed to Nabih Berri. While Musa Sadr was an Islamic clergyman, Nabih Berri was a secular politician. Consequently, Berri became more interested in the political goals of the Lebanese Shi'tites, and a little less interested in the creation of a theocratic Islamic state.

Nabih Berri was born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where his parents had moved for economic opportunity like many Lebanese Shi'ites at the time. After returning to Lebanon, he studied law and quickly became a political activist. He served as an attorney for General Motors in Detroit between 1976 and 1978. Berri returned to Lebanon in 1978 when the opportunity arose to command Musa Sadr's Amal terrorist organization. Under Berri's leadership, AMAL fought against the PLO, against Druze forces, and eventually against Hizballah when they claimed his source of funding.

In 1992, Berri became Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, the highest political post for a Lebanese Shi'ite. Syrian-funded AMAL gave Berri deep political connections with Damascus, causing Berri to be seen in Lebanon as a tool of the Syrians, implementing Syrian demands while extorting both the Syrian government and the Shi'ite community for financial gain.

Despite Berri's secularism, AMAL initially benefited from the 1978-1979 Iranian revolution. With an Islamic clerical regime empowered in Iran, from 1979 to 1982, the Shi'a terrorist group received substantial financial assistance from the OPECing mullahs. But AMAL's time of basking in the crude would be short lived because in 1982, the Iranian theocracy founded their own terrorist club, Hizballah (Hezbollah) - Allah's Party. With Hizballah's founding, Amal lost Iran's OPEC financial backing and withered away. By the time Syria picked up the slack in 1985, there was very little left of AMAL. Most of AMAL's members abandoned the somewhat secular association to join the fundamentalist Hizballah.

The al-Sadr Brigades was formed after the mysterious disappearance of the Iranian/Lebanese Shiite spiritual leader Imam Musa al-Sadr during his visit to Libya in August of 1978. The al-Sadr Brigades was a companion terrorist group to AMAL. Lebanese Shiites suspected that Libyan warlord and Sunni Muslim, Muammar al-Qaddafi had ordered al-Sadr's abduction and murder. Libya insists that the Islamic Imam boarded a plane to Rome following his arrival in Libya. However, Italian authorities found no evidence that he visited Rome.

Al-Sadr had gone to Libya to advance his desire to replace Qadhafi's Marxist Muslim dictatorship with a Shia clerical dictatorship. So while the OPEC warlord would have been correct in viewing the Islamic cleric as a foe, it is clear that Qaddafi underestimated the religious implications of abducting al-Sadr. The feud continued to boil for some time because Qadhafi heads an overwhelmingly Sunni fiefdom, while al-Sadr led a Shiite militia.

The al-Sadr Brigades' expressed aim was to secure Imam Musa al-Sadr's freedom. Using its contacts with affiliated and rival Shiite groups, such as AMAL and Hizballah, al-Sadr Brigades sought to pressure Libya into at least disclosing the terrorist cleric's whereabouts.

To advance these goals, the al-Sadr Brigades threatened to assault Libyan diplomatic personnel in Lebanon and promised to attack the Libyan embassy in Beirut were it to reopen. Stewing for some time, in 1984, the al-Sadr Brigades finally orchestrated the kidnapping of a Libyan diplomat. With their victim in tow, they demanded the removal of all Libyan diplomatic personnel from Lebanon. After Libya complied, the diplomat was released. A similar attack occurred in 1988, when the Brigades kidnapped a Libyan intelligence agent.

Continued Shi'a anger over al-Sadr's fate caused Libya to cease diplomatic relations with Lebanon and Iran in 2000. In 2002, the al-Sadr Brigades confirmed its long suspected suspicions of Libyan involvement in the clerical assassination, when Iran confirmed that Imam Musa al-Sadr's death had come at the hands of Libyan agents.