Hawzah News Agency- The assassination of such a great commander like General Qāsem Soleimani must be read not as an isolated crime of American arrogance, but as a textbook example of how resistance movements are affected when internal vigilance is eroded and betrayal is allowed to nest quietly within their structures. The missile that struck near Baghdad airport was only the final act in a long drama of infiltration, surveillance, and compromised trust. Long before the drone hovered in the Iraqi sky, the enemy had already walked through open doors, listened to private conversations, mapped routines, and recruited human instruments of treachery. Empires do not hunt lions in the open; they poison the well from which the lion drinks.
Qāsem Soleimani was the strategic spine of the resistance axis, a commander whose strength lay not merely in battlefield coordination but in his ability to harmonize ideology, discipline, and transnational struggle. He was feared because he could not be reduced to a single front or a single battlefield. Yet precisely because he was so central, his environment became a prime target for penetration. The tragedy of his martyrdom lies in the fact that such a man could only be killed if the resistance ecosystem around him had already been compromised. No amount of satellite technology can replace the value of an insider who confirms identities, schedules, locations, and intentions. Soleimani and his comrades were not discovered; they were delivered.
What followed his assassination confirmed what many within the resistance world had long suspected but hesitated to confront openly: internal betrayal was not hypothetical, it was real, deep, and widespread. In Iran, the response was swift and ruthless. Hundreds of suspected collaborators, informants, and intelligence assets linked to foreign agencies were identified, tracked, and dismantled. The message was unmistakable, resistance that does not cleanse itself will be cleansed by its enemies. Iran’s counter-mole operations demonstrated an often-ignored truth: ideological alignment without institutional counterintelligence is not effective. Faith without discipline is not spirituality; it is vulnerability.
This lesson has long been internalized by Hezbollah, whose survival against one of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence machines did not come from slogans alone, but from a deeply entrenched security doctrine. Hezbollah learned early that the enemy’s most effective weapon is not the tank or the jet, but the spy disguised as a comrade. Its strict compartmentalization, culture of silence, verification protocols, and zero-tolerance approach to leaks transformed it from a hunted movement into a resilient force. Trust was never abandoned, but it was never blind. Loyalty was earned, monitored, and continuously tested. This is why Hezbollah has endured while many louder movements have collapsed.
The loophole exposed by Soleimani’s assassination is therefore not moral but structural. Too many resistance movements romanticize unity while neglecting systems. Too many leaders mistake emotional loyalty for operational security. Too many organizations confuse revolutionary rhetoric with strategic maturity. The result is predictable: movements infiltrated at their core, leaders exposed, and martyrs produced not only by enemy cruelty but by internal negligence. Islam does not sanctify disorder, nor does resistance glorify carelessness. The Qur’anic call to vigilance is not metaphorical, it is strategic.
Nowhere are these lessons more urgent than in Africa and Nigeria, where Islamic movements operate in environments saturated with foreign intelligence, local proxies, and state-sponsored surveillance. African resistance spaces are among the most penetrated in the world, precisely because they are often under-resourced, fragmented, and overly trusting. NGOs, security agencies, media platforms, religious institutions, and even charitable networks have become conduits for intelligence gathering. The mole in Africa rarely looks like an enemy; he looks like a brother, a donor, a mediator, or a sympathizer. Movements that fail to recognize this reality are about to be defeated, even if they still march and chant.
The Soleimani case should therefore serve as a strategic alarm for Nigerian and African Islamic movements. Resistance is not sustained by courage alone. It requires institutional memory, counterintelligence capacity, digital awareness, and strategic leadership models.
Most dangerously, failure to confront internl betrayal leads to a culture of denial. Movements mourn their martyrs, curse external enemies, and then return to the same unsafe practices that made the assassination possible. This is not loyalty to martyrs; it is betrayal of their sacrifice. Soleimani’s blood is not asking for tears, it is demanding transformation. It is asking resistance movements to look inward with the same intensity they direct outward, to wage jihad against infiltration with the same seriousness they wage it against occupation.
The ultimate lesson of Qāsem Soleimani’s martyrdom is stark and unforgiving: the empire succeeds not because it is omnipotent, but because resistance movements often refuse to discipline themselves. The drone is deadly, but the mole is decisive. Until Islamic resistance movements make internal security, counterintelligence, and structural discipline central pillars of their struggle, they will continue to lose their finest leaders not on the battlefield, but at the hands of betrayal.
If this lesson is ignored, Soleimani will be remembered only as another fallen giant. But if it is embraced, his martyrdom will mark a turning point, when resistance finally understood that defeating the external enemy begins with uprooting the enemy within. But we should remember that all affairs are in the hand of the Almighty and Master of strategy.
Source: Islamic Movement of Nigeria
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