He left the organization in 1982 and affiliated with Hizballah, taking with him many of his followers. Following the death of Abbas Musawi, he was unanimously elected as his successor as commander of operations.
History.
In 1959 the arrival of a young cleric in Lebanon stirred what is now the modern Shi'ite activism in Lebanon. Sheikh Musa al-Sadr a disciple of the radical Najaf and Ghom religious centers (in Iraq and Iran respectively), Sadr developed military and political organs, heading Amal ("Hope") until mysteriously disappearing in 1978 in Libya. Amal then split into a secular faction, headed by Nabih Beri (now speaker of Lebanon's parliament), and an increasingly radical religious branch, led by Hussein al-Musawi and named Hizballah.
Hizballah emerged as a force in 1982 after Israel launched "Operation Peace for Galilee," (intended to end PLO incursions into Israel), and received early help from Iranian Revolutionary Guards sent to Lebanon as part of Iran's attempt to export the Islamic revolution . Hizballah in effect became a military outlet for activism among radicalized, war-torn Shi'ite elements in Lebanon.
Their most prominent clerics were indoctrinated in Najaf, the southern Iraq shrine city where the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini once spread his radical anti-Western and revolutionary doctrines before toppling the Shah and setting up the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Khomeini's radical Islamic worldview and inspiration lent Hizballah its own vision: establishing an Islamic republic in Lebanon, to be ruled by shari'a law. Also in concert with Iran, the organization's agenda reached beyond Lebanon to the defeat of any power standing in the way of Islam, especially the US and Israel. Its ideology combined a strong social message with a universal political goal, to be realized by revolutionary means -- jihad.
Like the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Hizballah maintains military, political and social welfare branches.
