Hajj Majed: One of the Resistance’s Early Pioneers

By Latifa Al-Husseini

He was among the pioneers of the generation that founded the resistance. Hajj Mohammad Jaafar Qasir – Hajj Majed – joined the path of the mujahideen and took up the struggle against the occupiers of the land at an early age. From his hometown of Deir Qanoun Al-Nahr, the foundations of his identity as a resistance fighter began to take shape when, together with his older brother Ahmad, the pioneer of martyrdom operations, he shared the “companionship of arms” and transported weapons south in 1982. This identity was further cemented when, during his detention as a boy of no more than 15, he refused to engage with “Israeli” soldiers or accept even a sip of cold “juice” they offered him to quench his thirst.

Delving into the life of the jihadi commander Hajj Mohammad Jaafar Qasir – Hajj Majed – brings to mind countless images and memories woven through a lifetime of struggle and resistance, alongside comrades and peers who, together with him, became stars in a more than 40-year journey of sacrifice, defense and confronting the occupiers.

Together with the martyred commander Rida Hariri, a fellow villager and companion on his path, and one of the veteran jihadis who prepared and coordinated the operation carried out by Ahmad Qasir, the pioneer of the resistance’s martyrdom operations, alongside jihadi commander Hajj Ali Karaki – Abu Al-Fadl – he experienced the period during which the first nucleus of resistance groups was established in the villages of Tyre and the surrounding area of Deir Qanoun Al-Nahr.

During the 1980s, commander Hajj Mohammad Jaafar Qasir accumulated military experience that qualified him for increasingly expanding responsibilities. In the 1990s, after returning from one of the courses aimed at developing the knowledge and capabilities that he had attended in the Islamic Republic of Iran, he rejoined the southern front after developments had compelled the resistance’s original and founding body to unite around a single objective: confronting the enemy with all the strength at our disposal. He worked alongside jihadi commander Sayyed Mohsen Shokor on security affairs, after which his responsibilities in the south continued to expand from the 1990s through 2005, contributing to support, development, and planning at the level of the central staff and the missile force, which was steadily growing within the resistance.

From 2005 until the day of his martyrdom, Hajj Majed took charge of numerous files across the Resistance Axis, encompassing military, logistical, economic and diplomatic affairs, until the American media described him as the “founder of the Axis’s economic resistance.” On this basis, he came to be described by the Sayyed of the Nation’s Martyrs, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah [may God have mercy on him], as “Hezbollah’s lung.”

Hajj Majed forged a life of jihad devoted purely to God, as he repeatedly emphasized throughout his life: “Our highest goal is to attain God’s pleasure, which is not easy to achieve. Attaining it requires taking the most difficult paths to reach the desired objective.”

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