Who Is Naim Qassem, the New Hezbollah Secretary-General ?

 Naim Qassem has assumed charge as the new secretary-general of the Lebanese military-political group, Hezbollah. He is another Hezbollah hardliner, referred to as the “Hezbollah intellectual” in the outside circles.

The New Chief of Hezbollah

Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut by Israel on September 27, 2024. Naim Qassem, the new Secretary-General, was the founding member of Hezbollah, a cleric, and has been the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah since 1991. After Nasrallah’s assassination, he has served as the acting Secretary-General. 

Naim Qassem has also been the general coordinator of Hezbollah's parliamentary election-related campaigns since 1992, when the organisation debuted in electoral politics. He lacks the charisma of Hasan Nasrallah. Qassem has been Hezbollah's face before international media, giving interviews and functioning as its spokesperson.

Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and the potential successor of Nasrallah, was also assassinated by Israel on October 3, 2024. He was Nasarallah’s cousin and a popular figure among the Hezbollah cadre. Naim Qassem was chosen to lead the organisation after Safieddine’s killing.  

After assuming office, in a televised speech, Naim Qassem said that the command and control structure of Hezbollah was not affected by the Israeli attacks. Hezbollah has been continuing to fire rockets and missiles into Israel even after the killing of Nasrallah.

Naim Qassim: Life and Views  

Naim Qassem was born in the Basta district of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1953. He holds degrees in chemistry and religious studies and taught chemistry at the college level. 

In 1975, he joined the Amal Movement, a half-reformist and half-militant political movement in Lebanon. Hezbollah was formed with a more extremist agenda, emerging from within the Amal Movement. Like many other Hezbollah leaders and operatives who shed the reformist line and stepped into militancy, Qassem joined it as a founding member. 

He authored the book, ‘Hizbullah: The Story From Within’. Niam Qassem has written many articles about Hezbollah and the Middle East situation.  

It is interesting to ponder what Naim Qassem wrote in his book about the below-listed 13 principles of war that Hezbollah followed:

Naim Qassem wrote that these principles helped to 

1. Confuse the enemy, making their commanders ask the soldiers to be on constant alert, eventually leading to their exhaustion.

2. Spread panic and fear of death among enemy soldiers, shaking their morale and diminishing their effectiveness in war.     

He once said, “Elections are numbers and alliances, and we try to attract any votes and ally with whoever benefits us” (as cited in Al-Aloosy, 2020, 70).

Naim has been an ardent advocate of Hezbollah resistance groups. He does not distinguish between the political and military activities of the organisation. He believes that to separate the two would be detrimental to the cause. He has always condemned, in strong words, the Israeli threat and the American interference in the region. 

His vision has been to unite all Islamic schools of thought and Islam's political, cultural, and holy struggles. He has a clear conviction when it comes to the political role of the Islamic clergy. He has explained the ideology of Hezbollah based on three pillars:

• The belief in Islam, which is a conviction and a code of law

• Commitment to Jihad, where Jihad is about life, not death, and involves freeing the land, taking control of oneself, and uprightness

• Recognising the religious authority of Iran’s Khomeini-Khamenei leadership 

From the above glimpses of Naim Qassem, it is obvious that he is a Hezbollah leader who will lead the group almost in the same path as Hasan Nasrallah had led. 

International relations expert Fred Halliday, in his book, ‘Political Journeys: The OpenDemocracy Essays’, writes about his meeting with Naim Qassem at Hezbollah headquarters in southern Beirut. Qassem sat under the portraits hung on the wall of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei. Halliday remembers him as a man of great articulation and “calm and succinct” throughout their conversation. Qassem did not drift away from the topic into long recollections of history as Halliday had seen other leaders do. He was to the point and candid about his convictions. 

Naim Qassem has good relations with the Maronite Christian community leaders of Lebanon. But he has talked about Israel as an illegitimate state and voiced his belief that it should be dismantled and abolished. 

In his book, he has generously quoted words from the Holy Quran against the Jews, words calling to fight against them. Halliday writes that he tried to remind Qassem of the inherent racism in viewing all Jews as enemies, but Qassem did not accept the criticism as valid. 

Hasan Nasrallah had proclaimed that no one in the “Zionist entity” could be considered a citizen and that all of them were “aggressors and participants” in the invasion and attacks against the Palestinian people. Naim Qassem’s views are not going to be any different.  

Yet, from the 1990s onwards, Hezbollah had transformed itself into a military force fighting against occupation rather than focusing on terrorist activities against Israel or Israelis. Its assimilation into the Lebanese political process also catalysed and helped this transition.

The internal debate about whether to participate in the political process in Lebanon or not caused a split in Hezbollah in the late 1980s. Its electoral organisational network is one of the most effective in the country. 

It is a fact that Hezbollah rose from the poor and economically deprived social circumstances in Lebanon. Its social work caters to thousands of deprived people in Lebanon. For many Shia Muslims of Lebanon, apart from faith, ideology, and politics, joining Hezbollah was a path to escape poverty, obtain education, and find a place in society.  

The world waits to see where Naim Qassem leads Hezbollah in these troubled times.  

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