Addressing a commemorative dinner at Camp Lejeune, NC, Gen. Al Gray, a former commandant of the Marine Corps stated that the Beirut attack which killed 241 US servicemen, mostly Marines, and 58 French parachutists in a separate attack two minutes later, was the start of the “War on Terror.”

That view was shared by other former senior Marines during a panel discussion held at the National Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, VA., last week, as well as by Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security advisor at the time of the attacks, who expressed his thoughts in an opinion piece published in the New York Times last week.

To set the record straight, there are major philosophical differences between the group who carried out the Beirut operation and those responsible for 9/11.

According to Western intelligence sources the Beirut bombing was believed to have been carried out by Hezbollah, a Lebanese paramilitary group acting on orders from Iran; whereas the 9/11 attacks and subsequent acts of terrorism by Al Qaeda, its affiliates, offshoots and supporters is the work of takfiri salafis. While in the eyes of the West it might be easy to confuse the two, there exists, nevertheless, fundamental differences between the two movements. It is important to understand those differences.

Perhaps the only common denominator shared by Hezbollah and Al Qaeda is that both were created as result of military actions, the first by Israel and the second by the United States. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, led to the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance movements from the country, brought about the deployment of the multinational peacekeeping force (comprised of US Marines, French, Italian and British forces) and saw the creation of Hezbollah, initially in south Lebanon as a resistance group to Israel’s continued occupation. But with the backing of Iran and at times Syria, Hezbollah grew to fill the political and military void left by Israel and which the Lebanese government failed to react fast enough and reassume its responsibilities over its national territory.

The Takfiri group of which Al Qaeda is made up is an offshoot of Sunni Islam. Their origin may be found in the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement first established in Egypt. The current Takfiri movement in its militarised form was first encouraged by the United States to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Tens of thousands of jihadis from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab countries as well as from Europe, Chechnya and the Balkans were encouraged to join the jihad against the Soviets. Thousands were trained, armed and financed by the CIA.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow ordered its forces to quit Afghanistan, the mistake of the West was to abandon these “Arab Afghans” as they came to be known. Great numbers trickled back to their home countries; Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Britain, Chechnya, etc. Osama bin Laden, who had been one of the prime organisers of the Afghan Arabs, through his Al Qaeda organisation (the Base in Arabic) maintained the old network alive, largely through the use of the Internet.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War had a direct impact on the dynamics and the face of terrorism as it was known until then.

The sudden disappearance of the USSR as a major player in the geo-political arena gave way to the transformation of political-based philosophies, mostly leftist oriented, to a far more potent, more fanatical and more dangerous blend of terrorism: religion-based terrorism.

The tipping point for Osama bin Laden is said to have come in 1990 when Saddam Hussein, almost bankrupt by an eight-year war fought against Iran -- and encouraged by his Arab Gulf neighbours and the United States to continue engaging Iran - tried to convince his fellow Opec members to raise the price of oil in order to help him refill his coffers.

Kuwait’s refusal led to Saddam’s invasion of the emirate and the subsequent deployment of US and other coalition forces in Saudi Arabia to evict Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

According to one eyewitness report, bin Laden asked the Saudi king not to allow the deployment of “non-believers” in the land of the two holy mosques.

Bin Laden told the king that he and his Afghan Arabs would take care of Saddam, just as they had defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan. Apparently the king laughed at the suggestion that bin Laden’s group could take on the Arab world’s most powerful army.

The lesson that may be drawn from this contemporary history of the Middle East is twofold: first, it is important to understand the fundamental differences between the two movements and that different approaches must be applied in dealing with them. Second, that military might alone will not solve the current dilemma in the region. What is needed is a clear, concise and continued policy on how to address the issues politically as well as militarily. One without the other is unlikely to succeed.

Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times and a political analyst in Washington, DC