Activating Hezbollah cells "to make no place safe for Israelis": The Implications for Southeast Asia

By Zachary Abuza

Yesterday, Hezbollah's representative in Iran, Hossein Safiadeen warned that that his Islamic militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel until "no place" is safe for Israelis. "We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe." While Daveed Gartenstein-Ross noted that there is still no evidence that Hezbollah has activated sleeper cells, it is important to take stock of where and how similar cells have been used in the past.

Hezbollah’s capabilities in Latin America are well known. On 17 March 1992, they bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires bombed killing 29 people; on 18 July 1994 they attacked a Jewish community center in downtown Buenos Aires, killing 86 people; and on 19 July 1994 a suicide bomber downed an aircraft in Panama, killing 21.

What is less known is Hezbollah’s activities in Southeast Asia. While predominantly Sunni, the region does have distinct Shia communities that Hezbollah has penetrated and actively solicits for funds. In some cases, Hezbollah operatives have taken over legitimate charities. Hezbollah operatives have been arrested in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Hezbollah operatives have long used Thailand as a center for arms procurement and document forging. Most importantly, and not coincidentally, Hezbollah’s activities in Southeast Asia have been in two countries with diplomatic relations and close commercial and or security ties with Israel, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

• On 17 March 1994, a Hezbollah operation to bomb the Israeli embassy in Bangkok went awry when the terrorists who were driving the truck bomb got into a traffic accident in Bangkok’s notoriously congested streets. The driver fled the scene and the truck was towed to a police station; the bomb was only discovered days later when the police inspected the car.

• Other Hezbollah operations in Thailand include the surveilling of the El-Al office in Bangkok and counter at Don Muang airport, the only airport in Southeast Asia where the Israeli airline flies.

• In Thailand, Hezbollah is believed to use an Islamic school run by an Iranian for fund raising.

• In 1995, Hezbollah dispatched operatives to Singapore, to plan attacks against US and Israeli targets. Operatives were found surveilling Singapore's coastline. It was later revealed to be the early stages of a plot to attack U.S. and Israeli ships in a USS-Cole style attack in the Singapore Straits. Operative had photographed the US and Israeli embassies and surveilled a Jewish synagogue. Singapore later arrested members of a Hezbollah cell in conjunction with this attack and for raising funds in the city-state. In June 2002, Singapore accused Hezbollah of recruiting five Muslims Singaporean nationals in their failed 1995 plot. Singapore claims to have expelled all the Hezbollah cell members.

• Hezbollah collected intelligence on a Jewish synagogue in Manila.

• Hezbollah has also used Southeast Asians to conduct surveillance for them. In one instance, they recruited a Malaysian national, Zinal Bin-Talib, and dispatched him to Israel to collect intelligence.

• In 1999, Philippine officials arrested Pandu Yudhawinata, an Indonesian Hezbollah operative at Ninoy Aquino Airport who revealed that Hezbollah had recruited a small number of Malaysians and Indonesians and sent them to Lebanon for training in order to carry out terrorist attacks in Australia, Southeast Asia and in Israel. An Iranian intelligence officer stationed in Malaysia in the early 1980s had originally recruited Pandu. To that end, the governments in the region must redouble their counter intelligence operations against Iran.

In short, Hezbollah was actively trying to develop a presence in Southeast Asia in the mid-1990s. Several counter-terror operations helped to dislodge some cells, but the organization has maintained a residual presence in the region. Whether it still has the capabilities to hit Israeli or American interests in the region is less clear, but the governments in the region should be aware of the threat. Hezbollah will follow through with its threats, and to that end, it will find the most vulnerable targets throughout the world.

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