Hezbollah re-elects Nasrallah as leader for fifth term

Lebanon's Hezbollah organisation has reelected its charismatic leader, Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah, to a fifth consecutive three-year term as secretary-general, signalling no change in the militant Shiite group's violently anti-Israel stance.

Shaikh Nasrallah's reelection at the end of Hezbollah's internal conclave, a series of meetings held amid great secrecy every three years, comes as no surprise.

The 44-year-old black-turbaned cleric has steered Hezbollah toward mainstream political respectability in Lebanon while sharpening tactics that leave it second only to Al Qaida on the US list of terrorist organisations.

Shaikh Nasrallah's pragmatic shift has garnered Hezbollah a strong local base and an ability to strike at Israel, and provided a model to other Islamist groups.

"For some party members, Nasrallah is Hezbullah and Hezbollah is Nasrallah," says Nizar Hamzeh, professor of politics at the American University of Beirut and author of the forthcoming book, In the Path of Hezbollah.

"He has proven himself a political player, as a pragmatist, as an ideologist, and regarded by some in Hezbollah as having an aura of holiness."

In Lebanon, Shaikh Nasrallah helped soften Hezbollah's violently anti-Western image of the 1980s and burnished its local popularity by providing social services.

But he has also transformed the group's military wing into a highly adept guerrilla force and extended its reach through ties with other groups in the region.

Influence on West Bank cells Israel estimates that Hezbollah controls – in the form of funding and guidance – between 70 and 80 per cent of all militant Palestinian cells in the West Bank.

The recently released congressional report into the September 11, 2001, attacks cited instances of Hezbollah's alleged co-operation with Al Qaida, including training militants in explosives in 1993 at the group's Bekaa Valley stronghold in eastern Lebanon.

Hezbollah dismissed the report as lacking credibility, claiming that Washington's insistence on connecting the group with the September 11 attacks confirmed its "anti-Islamic policy."

The Shiite Hezbollah has always denied having any contacts with the Sunni Al Qaida movement.

© The Christian Science Monitor