Subhi al-Tufayli

Subhi al-Tufayli (صبحي الطفيلي) (born 1948) was secretary-general of Hezbollah from 1989 until 1991. Al-Tufayli was a Shia Islamist and a close follower of the late Ruhollah Khomeini.

Early life and education

Al-Tufayli spent nine years studying theology in the city of Najaf, Iraq, where he met and was influenced by other Islamist clerics and by the teachings of Ruhollah Khomeini. Returning to Lebanon, he joined with Abbas al-Musawi to help found the Hezbollah movement/militia in the Beqaa Valley in 1982. Beqaa is one of Hezbollah's three main regions of support in Lebanon.^[1]

In Hezbollah

Al-Tufayli was spokesman for Hezbollah between 1985 and 1989, and then the first Secretary-General of Hezbollah from 1989 until 1991.

On 28 July 1989 elite Israeli military units abducted Abdel Karim Obeid, a senior Hezbollah cleric and regional military commander of the Islamic Resistance, who they hoped to use to negotiate an exchange for several IDF soldiers and Western civilian hostages held by Hezbollah.^[2] Under al-Tufayli's militant leadership however, Hezbollah "remained adamant" in its refusal to release either "any IDF soldiers [or] any Western hostages" it held.^[3]

Post-Hezbollah

In 1992 al-Tufayli was replaced by Abbas al-Musawi as head of Hezbollah. Hezbollah's hostage-taking campaign had wound down since the "Kuwait 17" bombers of the 1983 Kuwait bombings who were linked to leading Hezbollah members were now free, and the Taif Agreement had essentially ended the Civil War in Lebanon. Al-Musawi was both head of the military wing and former head of the movement's "internal security apparatus in Beirut," and was thus thought well-equipped to lead Hezbollah in its new primary mission of fighting Israel and ending Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon.^[4] Al-Tufayli also opposed Hezbollah's participation in Lebanese national elections^[5][6] and its "moderation" toward the Lebanese state.^[7]

Al-Tufayli is reportedly the leader of the splinter group Ansar Allah, which may have been responsible for attacks in Lebanon, Panama, and Argentina. According to START, he has been backed by Syria as leverage against the more pro-Iranian Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.^[8]

In July 1997 he organized protests, dubbed the "hunger revolution", against the Lebanese government.^[9] Al-Tufayli said it is "completely unacceptable that a human being could be humiliated because of poverty or because they were in need."^[10]

His breakaway group is known as the "Revolution of the Hungry" (Thawrat al-Jiya), although his support base is largely limited to the villages of Brital and Tarayya.^[11]

He is wanted by the Lebanese government for leading a revolution against the country, but has not been arrested.^[12]

In January 1998 his militia attempted to occupy a Hezbollah religious school and sparked a violent confrontation with the Lebanese Army. Lebanese authorities issued a warrant for al-Tufayli's arrest and Lebanese Army units conducted a massive sweep of the Beqaa. According to a Lebanese Army statement in 1998: "Following the decision of the military prosecutor to order the arrest of Subhi al-Tufayli and his supporters on charges of forming armed groups, endangering national security and killing soldiers and civilians, the army took control of al-Tufayli's house."^[6]

In February 1998 Lebanese troops surrounded a village looking for al-Tufayli after two days of clashes that left eight people dead.^[13] al-Tufayli and about 100 of his fighters were allowed to escape to his hometown of Britel when the head of Syrian military intelligence in Baalbek, Col. Ali Safi, stepped in and forced advancing Lebanese Army units to halt.^[7]

In April 1999, al-Tufayli's forces overran a Hezbollah arms depot in the village of Nabichit, near Baalbeck, seizing large numbers of machine-guns, rocket-launchers and other military equipment.^[7][14]

In February 2013, al-Tufayli berated Hezbollah for fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime in the Syrian civil war. He said "Hezbollah should not be defending the criminal regime that kills its own people and that has never fired a shot in defense of the Palestinians". al-Tufayli added: "those Hezbollah fighters who are killing children and terrorizing people and destroying houses in Syria will go to hell".^[15] He also berated the Lebanese Army for not stopping Lebanese citizens crossing the border to fight in Syria.^[16]

Views

al-Tufayli has been a stalwart in his opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, telling one funeral audience in 1992 that `we know that we will not triumph in one or even several years but have prepared for a battle of centuries,` to eliminate Israel.^[17]

More recently, al-Tufayli has stated that Hassan Nasrallah is implementing the agenda of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ali Khamenei,^[18] that the Islamic Republic's doctrine of "Rule of the Jurisprudent" (Wilayat al-Faqih) is un-Islamic and its government tyrannical.^[19]

See also

• Hezbollah
• Lebanon hostage crisis

References and notes

External links

• Hezbollah: Between Tehran and Damascus by Gary C. Gambill and Ziad K. Abdelnour
• Lebanese army hunts down radical cleric
• Tufaili Returns to Lebanese Political Scene, December 1999