The Mughniyeh Enigma

Imad Mughniyeh is dead, killed in a Feb. 12 car bomb attack carried out by as yet unidentified assailants in a Damascus suburb. Mughniyeh, a Lebanese, had been the head of Hezbollah's Jihad Council, responsible for the external operations of that organization's military wing. He was 48 years old. Since coming into prominence during the bloody years of Lebanon's civil war (1976-79), Mughniyeh had built a résumé of operations that, depending on one's perspective, established him as either one of the world's foremost terrorists or freedom fighters.