This picture released on Wednesday, July 31, 2024 by Hezbollah Military Media shows Fouad Shukur a Hezbollah top commander who was killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit a building on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. (Hezbollah Military Media vía AP)
Beirut: Paula Astih
1 August 2024
Several questions have been raised about Israel's ability to assassinate top Hezbollah operatives. The latest was the assassination on Tuesday of top commander Fouad Shukur in the party’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Many people have wondered how Israel has managed to pinpoint Shukur’s exact location at a time when Hezbollah commanders should be exercising extreme caution after Israel vowed to avenge the killing of 12 youths in an attack on Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights over the weekend. Hezbollah has denied its involvement in the strike.
Wealth of information
Founder and CEO of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA) Riad Kahwaji told Asharq Al-Awsat that several advanced technologies are used in spy operations, such as monitoring mobile phones, face recognition cameras, drones and satellites.
However, this technology is useless to the Israelis without information about members of Hezbollah, such where they live, their telephone number and how they actually look like, he explained.
Informants and spies are on the ground to help in these assassinations, he stressed.
“Assuming that Hezbollah leaders are not using mobile phones, the only way to know that Shukur was in the targeted building was if someone had followed him and informed the Israelis of his location,” he went on to say.
There is no doubt that Israel has greatly infiltrated Hezbollah and knows its security measures, allowing it to have committed this number of assassinations of senior figures, as well as members who are not known to the public, but only to the party, Kahwaji said.
Network of agents
Retired general George Nader agrees with Kahwaji that Hezbollah has been infiltrated by a complex network of spies.
Without this network, how could Israeli drones have possibly targeted a Hezbollah member as soon as he crossed a certain location? he wondered in remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat.
No regular person could possibly know the movement of these commanders and their locations. These networks of agents are inside the party in Lebanon, as well as in Syria and Iran, he stated.
Lax measures
Head of the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies retired Brigadier General Dr. Hisham Jaber noted that there are a number of factors that have led to the success of Israeli assassinations.
Hezbollah has been breached and its agents have infiltrated the party, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
The Israelis also have data on all the Lebanese people, including members of the resistance [Hezbollah] and its leaders. It boasts advanced technology, satellites and the support of American and European intelligence.
Lax security measures by some members of Hezbollah are also another factor that have led to assassinations, he remarked.
Given the tensions in wake of the Majdal Shams attack, a senior member such as Shukur should not have been at his home or at a place he often frequents, he explained.
Notable assassinations
Israel has succeeded since November in carrying out a number of assassinations against Hezbollah.
In November, it assassinated the son of Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad and four others, who are members of the al-Radwan unit. They were killed in a drone strike that targeted a house they were in.
On January 2, Israel assassinated leading Hamas member Saleh al-Arouri in a strike in the heart of Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs. It fired rockets at an apartment where he was meeting with Qassam Brigades field commanders.
Days later, on January 8, Israel succeeded in killing Radwan unit commander Wissam Taweel while he was returning home to a southern Lebanon village. It killed prominent members Taleb Abdullah in June and Mohammed Nasser in July.
13. The Use Of Spies
1. Sun Tzu said: Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.
3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory.
4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
7. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.
8. When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called "divine manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's most precious faculty.
9. Having local spies means employing the services of the inhabitants of a district.
10. Having inward spies, making use of officials of the enemy.
11. Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes.
12. Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy.
13. Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy's camp.
14. Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies.
None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved.
15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.
16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.
17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.
18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.
19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.
20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.
21. The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.
22. It is through the information brought by the converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies.
23. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.
24. Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving spy can be used on appointed occasions.
25. The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.
Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.
26. Of old, the rise of the Yin dynasty was due to I Chih who had served under the Hsia. Likewise, the rise of the Chou dynasty was due to Lu Ya who had served under the Yin.
27. Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are a most important element in water, because on them depends an army's ability to move.
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