Beirut Kidnapings Are Shias’ Way of Taking Revenge Against America

Why are foreigners, especially Westerners, and more especially U.S. citizens, still being kidnaped in Beirut?

For years, kidnaping as a recognized mode of operation has been part of the ambiance of Beirut. In the early years of the Lebanese Civil War, both sides would scoop up scores of victims in organized sweeps, in revenge or to hold them hostage as a precaution. But the kidnaped were local people and many of them disappeared for good. When the Anglican emissary Terry Waite turned up in Beirut on his latest expedition, relatives of disappeared Lebanese demonstrated against him for making a fuss over a handful of foreigners while ignoring the 2,400 kidnaped Lebanese. The kidnaping of locals still goes on, on a modest scale, and has become so much a part of the scene that it passes virtually unreported. Kidnaping foreigners was a simple extention of a well-established practice.

While just about every party or militia perpetrates local kidnapings, the Shias have been taking foreigners. The poor and deprived Shias, truly the wretched of the earth in Lebanon, have a grudge against the whole world, but especially against the United States. Their actions reflect policies of the so-called Iranian “Islamic Revolution.” From the beginning of their rule in Iran, the mullahs have stressed that they spoke for haves-nots against haves, worldwide. The Lebanese Shias know this gap, because of the extremes of wealth and poverty within Lebanon’s appallingly consumerist society.

Consumerism is exemplified by the rich Western countries, with the United States at their head, so the plight of Westerners locked up in basement rooms for weeks or months evokes no great pity or much sympathy from the Shias: They see the kidnaped being taught a salutary lesson, which they are indoctrinated to pass on to other Westerners after their release--and some have done so. Thus much of the motivation for the kidnapings is the envy and spite of the Shia poor.

Another strand in the Iranian revolution is rejection of the values and mores of Western society. The narrow-minded, blinkered mullahs are waging a Kulturkampf against the liberal, democratic ideals at the heart of Western culture which, they say with some accuracy, have become debased and vulgarized. The Iranian mullahs have repeatedly declared that for them the battle against the West on the religious and cultural plane is more important than the political or military struggle. (Which is why President Reagan’s gift of an autographed copy of the Bible was a pathetic error--he was offering a poisoned chalice).

West Beirut, the Shia stamping ground, used to be the home of a flagrantly Westernized society, a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah for the Shia migrants to Beirut from their backward villages. The root source of this Westernization was foreign educational institutions which, from Lebanon, spread their influence all through the Middle East. Foremost among these were the American University of Beirut, with its prestigious hospital, the sister Beirut University College and International College, two French lycees and the College Protestant.

Teachers at these institutions have been prime targets for the kidnapers, who calculate that if foreign staff members can be frightened away then the schools and colleges would have to close down and West Beirut would become an authentically Arab and Muslim society, dominated by the Shia brand of Islam--which has only tenuous connections with the teachings of Mohammed in the Koran. Fortunately for the cause of Western culture, the younger generation of Shias, who see education as the only escape route from poverty, have in the past few years flocked into the foreign schools and colleges, where they now form a majority of the students. If these institutions survive it will be because the more pragmatic, open-minded Shias have withstood the pressure of the mullah-dominated Shia militants.

But it is the Shias’ political antagonism toward the United States that is the main motivation for Beirut kidnapers. If the citizens of other Western countries--Britain, France, West Germany--are seized it is mainly because their countries are seen as allies, or “running dogs,” of the “Great Satan.” The Lebanese Shias partake, in particularly strident form, of the generalized Arab anger against America as the protector, financier and arms-supplier of Israel.

It may be argued that if the Lebanese Shias are under the influence of Tehran, then their anti-American feeling should have lessened because of U.S. attempts to be more friendly toward Iran--even to supply it with needed arms. But that effort was handled so clumsily that it further angered Lebanese Shias. Why, for instance, did the United States have to use Israel as its go-between? To the Shias, battling Israeli surrogates in southern Lebanon, this choice made Mother Iran look duplicitous and hypocritical. And then no sooner was the news of the arms deal released than Washington promptly promised to halt the arms supply, as if Iran were a moral and political leper.

To compound American error, the United States this past week has been shifting naval units in the gulf and the eastern Mediterranean, as if to intimidate Iran and the Lebanese Shias. Their response has been, predictably, even more defiant. The Lebanese Shias have threatened to execute the latest American hostages if there is any U.S. military intervention.

The Shia kidnapers in Beirut are also motivated by an ancient and deep-rooted feeling that is almost non-existent nowadays in American society--family and clan loyalty. As was the case with the murderous family feud between the Hatfields and McCoys in West Virginia and Kentucky, among the Lebanese, and especially in the Maronite and Shia communities, a family member--however distant a relative--who is in trouble has to be helped. No matter if he is a criminal, even a murderer, and any harm done to him must be avenged.

The family members of 17 militants imprisoned or under sentence of death in Kuwait are keeping up the pressure on that government; Kuwait will neither execute nor release them. The same is true for the family of the mysterious revolutionary, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, held by France. West Germany has discovered how strong is the family feeling of the Hamadi clan, and so will the United States if it succeeds in extraditing Mohammed Ali Hamadi. There are few American targets, material or human, left in Lebanon, but still enough to punish the United States if it ever brings Hamadi to trial.

In sociological terms, talk about the strength of clan feeling may sound quaintly anachronistic. Tell that to the West German hostages in Beirut. And how do you fight it with fighter-bombers off aircraft carriers?