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But while he was gaining power in the capital, Berri was also acquiring radical challenges from within his own camp. His decision to join the government of President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite, infuriated the growing number of Khomeini- inspired zealots who want to turn Lebanon into an Islamic revolutionary state like Iran. One such group, called Islamic Amal, broke away in 1982 and set up headquarters in the eastern town of Baalbek under the leadership of Hussein Musawi, a former schoolteacher and pro-Iranian fanatic. Soon thereafter Iran sent hundreds of Revolutionary Guards into the Bekaa Valley to train an Islamic Amal militia and help Musawi consolidate his power.
A second pro-Iranian group, led by Shi'ite clerics and known as Hizballah (Party of God), sprang up around the same time. Its most magnetic leader, though he disclaims sole authority, is Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. Richard Helms, a former CIA director and Ambassador to Iran, describes Fadlallah as "Khomeini's spiritual man" in Lebanon. Fadlallah is widely believed to have played at least some role in the rash of bloody anti-Western car bombings, including the 1983 attacks on the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine barracks that claimed a total of 258 American lives. In a recent interview published by the bimonthly Middle East Insight, Fadlallah denied ordering these assaults but freely admitted that "suicide attacks are another form of struggle."
Some believe that the current hijacking was plotted by a faction in Amal calling itself the Sadr Brigade, purportedly composed of friends and relatives of the Shi'ite detainees in Israel. There are many such informal alliances within Lebanon's Shi'ite community, most of them extremist and many of them revolving around a single electrifying personality. "We're not talking about neat organizations," says Helms. "These are people who are inclined to pick a title that suits them after they act." Indeed, the most famous such group, Islamic Jihad (Holy War), apparently exists solely as a disembodied and anonymous telephone identification. It has no known central leadership or defined membership; it is essentially a label or tag used by various Shi'ite terrorists to claim responsibility for many of the bombings, kidnapings and acts of random violence over the past two years.