Most of the reports of his death treated Mughniyeh as a has-been. Coverage was devoted to his attacks against American, Israeli and Jewish targets in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet at the time of his death, Mughniyeh remained one of the most dangerous and prolific terror operatives in the world.
Mughniyeh's broad-based leadership role in the global terror nexus was made clear by the reaction of seemingly unrelated terror groups to his death. Representatives of the reputedly nationalist, secularist Fatah terror group expressed their pride in his life's work. "We're very proud to have had a Palestinian holding such a high position in Hizbullah," one Fatah official who worked with Mughniyeh in the 1970s and 1980s told The Jerusalem Post.
Every Palestinian terror group — from Fatah to Hamas to Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, the PFLP, and DFLP mourned the loss of Mughniyeh as a hero and martyr and called for revenge against Israel and the US.
In Iraq, Shiite and Sunni terrorists alike bemoaned his death and called for revenge. Shiite militia leader Muqtada el Sadr whose forces were trained and organized by Mughniyeh and Iran condemned Mughniyeh's killing. Sadr's supposedly arch-foe, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads Al Qaida in Iraq and whose operational commanders are in Iran, responded to his death by calling for attacks against Israel.
And of course, Hizbullah, and its state sponsors Iran and Syria all condemned Mughniyeh's death in the strongest terms and vowed to avenge his killing.
These condemnations were not nostalgic pinings for a has-been. These uniform reactions from across the terror spectrum were the cries of Mughniyeh's soldiers for their commander. Through Iran, Mughniyeh was in effect the commander or godfather or both of all of these forces. His life's work embodied the growth, development and modus operandi of the forces of global terror and jihad. And understanding his life's work is a key to understanding the nature of the jihadist forces arrayed against the Western world and Israel.
Mughniyeh began his terror career in the 1970s in Fatah leader Yassir Arafat's Force 17 in Lebanon. There, in addition to terrorizing Lebanese Christians, he and Arafat trained Iranian Shiite jihadists. These men arrived at PLO camps in Lebanon in the early 1970s to train to overthrow of the Shah of Iran and install their leader Ayatollah Khomeini as the head of a new Islamic state.
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Originally Posted by FakeViking
