The Rise of Fatah al-Islam

Global Politician ^ | 7/10/07 | Gary C. Gambill

[Valin]

The sudden outbreak of fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam in late May has touched off a flurry of conspiracy theories about the meteoric rise of this shadowy terrorist group. Supporters of Lebanon's ruling March 14 coalition typically allege that the militant fundamentalist organization is an "imitation al-Qaeda" secretly controlled by the secular Baathist regime of neighboring Syria,[1] while those on the other side of the political divide allege that Fatah al-Islam is a creation of Lebanon's ruling coalition.

While both narratives (like all good conspiracy theories) draw upon tantalizing grains of truth, the emergence of Fatah al-Islam is largely what it appears to be - the combined outgrowth of a Sunni Islamist revival sweeping Lebanon and the region, a politically fragile central government, and a perilous security vacuum.

Origins and Composition

In late November 2006, dozens of masked gunmen in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli stormed three compounds belonging to the secular pro-Syrian Fatah al-Intifada movement and proclaimed the establishment of Fatah al-Islam. Calling themselves "sons of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement" in a statement distributed throughout the camp, the militants denounced the "corruption and deviation" of the Damascus-based Fatah al-Intifada and the "intelligence agencies" it serves, vowing to "return to Almighty God" and wage a holy war to liberate Palestine.[2]

At first glance, this stunning turn of events appeared to be a revolt within Fatah al-Intifada. The leader of the putsch, Shaker al-Absi, was a member of Fatah al-Intifada, who had been dispatched into Lebanon by the organization's deputy chief, Abu Khaled al-Umla (presumably with permission from the Syrian government). However, while Absi presented Fatah al-Islam as an all-Palestinian movement,[3] it was soon evident (and later confirmed definitively by the identification of militants captured and killed in the recent violence) that the majority of Absi's operatives were Lebanese[4] and a substantial minority (15-20%) were Saudis,[5] with citizens of Syria and various other Arab and Islamic countries comprising most of the rest. Indeed, on the fourth day of Fatah al-Islam's May 2007 uprising, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said that there had not been any Palestinians found among the corpses of militants recovered by the Army.[6]

Fatah al-Intifada and the Syrian government immediately denounced Absi, while Umla was arrested by secret police in Damascus and subsequently expelled from the organization. However, Saudi and pro-government Lebanese media outlets quickly began reporting that both Absi's revolt and his denunciation of Syrian intelligence were clever ruses intended to disguise the fact that Fatah al-Islam was itself a tool of Syrian intelligence. Until recently, the Saudi media disputed the overwhelmingly Lebanese and Saudi composition of Fatah al-Islam. The daily Al-Hayat published a lengthy report claiming that most of Absi's men spoke Arabic with Syrian accents and that a handful of non-Syrian Arabs had been "pushed" into the group so as to maintain an illusion of multinational composition.[7]

Initially, Al-Hayat maintained that the group is really led by a Syrian intelligence officer known as "Abu Madyan." [8] Al-Hayat's "investigative reporter" did, in fact, encounter a Syrian named Abu Madyan in Nahr al-Bared, but his corpse turned up in one of the advance positions outside of the camp seized by Fatah al-Islam on May 20 (suggesting that he was at most an operational commander, not the brains behind the outfit).[9] The next day, Al-Hayat reported that a Syrian known as Abu Layth, "who recently married Absi's daughter," was among the key leaders of the group, [10] apparently unaware that Abu Layth (who was, in fact, Absi's son-in-law) had been reportedly killed by Syrian forces while trying to infiltrate Iraq in early May.[11]

The claim that Fatah al-Islam is a tool of Syrian intelligence has been revamped and updated to ensure a better "fit" with readily observable facts (e.g. the claim is now that there are indeed many Saudi and other foreign operatives in Fatah al-Islam, but they were diverted from Iraq to Lebanon by Syrian intelligence) and therefore cannot be definitively disproven. Even if the conspiracy theory is true, however, it does not account for the movement's meteoric "rags to militia" rise in the span of less than a year.

Land of Opportunity

Lebanon is the only country in the world where it would have been possible for Fatah al-Islam to establish a fixed base of operations, stockpile weapons, and recruit a steadily growing paramilitary force of several hundred men, while playing host to journalists from The New York Times. It is also the only country in the world where Absi, having been convicted in absentia for helping organize the 2002 assassination of US diplomat Lawrence Foley, could openly reside without risk of being extradited to the United States. Lebanon offers multiple layers of protection.

The first layer of protection is a decades-old agreement whereby the Lebanese government grants Palestinians the right to maintain security in the country's twelve refugee camps. This arrangement kept the peace following the end of the Lebanese civil war, as most of the camps were controlled by Palestinian factions subservient to occupying Syrian forces. However, during the 1990s, the largest camp - Ain al-Hilweh, on the outskirts of Sidon - fell into chaos after Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement lost control of it. Rather than helping its own Palestinian proxies seize control, the Syrians allowed it to remain an "island of insecurity." A number of radical Sunni Islamist groups, such as Usbat al-Ansar, stepped in to fill the void, their ranks swelled by Lebanese Islamists and other fugitives seeking refuge from the government.

After the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, radical Sunni Islamist groups steadily grew stronger in Ain al-Hilweh and began infiltrating previously peaceful camps, such as Baddawi and Nahr al-Bared, as Syrian-backed groups lost influence. The new government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has been unable to do anything about it. While the head of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF), Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, told The New York Times in March that he would need the approval of "other Arab countries" to enter Nahr al-Bared,[12] this statement was patently false, both legally (the Arab League has no authority to restrict Lebanon's sovereignty) and practically (had the Lebanese government been willing to stamp out Fatah al-Islam and arrest Absi, no other Arab states would have publicly objected).

As The New York Times noted (without elaboration) two months before the outbreak of Absi's revolt, it is "because of Lebanese politics" that he was "largely shielded from the government." [13] The Lebanese Sunni community is the primary base of political support for Lebanon's ruling March 14 coalition, led by Saad Hariri's Future Movement. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, Lebanese Christians and Shiites (two thirds of the population) voted overwhelmingly for Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hezbollah/Amal, respectively. Hariri and his allies managed to win a slim parliamentary majority by sweeping mixed Sunni/Christian districts in the fourth round of the elections, which they managed only by persuading traditional and radical Islamist clerics alike to call upon their followers to vote for Hariri's list.

In return for this support, Lebanon's new parliament passed an amnesty law freeing over two dozen suspected Sunni Islamist terrorists (seven had been detained for plotting to bomb the Ukrainian and Italian embassies in September 2004; twenty-six were captured in the winter of 1999/2000 during a brief, but bloody, Sunni Islamist uprising).[14] At least one of those amnestied (Bilal al-Mahmoud, aka Abu Jandal) was killed by the authorities during the recent violence.

Because its base of political support hinges on the Lebanese Sunni community (which sympathizes strongly with overwhelmingly Sunni Palestinians), the March 14 coalition was not only loathe to violate the extraterritoriality of Lebanon's refugee camps, but reluctant to enter into a confrontation with any predominantly Sunni group. Thus, while the Siniora government's "Sunnification" of the internal security forces (ISF)[15] may have bolstered its ability to contend with the Shiite Hezbollah movement, it has proven to be ineffective in combating Sunni Islamists. When a Sunni mob set fire to the building housing the Danish embassy in February 2006 (to protest the publication of offensive cartoons), hundreds of ISF riot police stood by and watched.

In the neighborhood of Taamir adjacent to Ain al-Hilweh, the Siniora government did nothing for over a year and a half to remove the radical Islamist Jund al-Sham militia or prevent it from terrorizing the inhabitants. When the army finally deployed there several months ago, Jund al-Sham militants promptly seized control of a preschool and demanded financial compensation. Bahiya Hariri (Saad's aunt) paid off the militants (many of whom promptly relocated to Nahr al-Bared and joined Fatah al-Islam). [16]

It is this reluctance to confront Sunni Islamist groups that accounts for the relative ease with which Absi infiltrated several hundred men into Nahr al-Bared from all corners of the Islamic world. There is little evidence that large numbers of foreign jihadis have infiltrated into Lebanon through Syria (though some undoubtedly did). Since citizens of Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states don't need visas to enter Lebanon, it's likely that most entered the country legally.

More puzzling is their infiltration into Nahr al-Bared, along with large supplies of mortars, rockets, and other heavy weaponry. Even after Lebanese troops imposed a tight blockade of the camp in March, eyewitnesses in the camp said that a large shipment of weapons arrived in early May.[17] Officials of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) expressed astonishment that such a large influx of men and material went undetected by either the Lebanese government's surveillance of the camp or the mainstream Palestinian militias inside that liaison with the authorities. "Somebody hasn't been doing their job," UNWRA Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayd told The Washington Times.[18]

For Hariri, political necessity dictates more than non-interference with Sunni radicals. With Shiites overwhelmingly backing Hezbollah's opposition to the government, he has little choice but to try and replicate Shiite assabiyya (group solidarity) among Sunnis. Thus, Hariri lavishly donated money to mainstream, nonviolent Sunni Islamist groups in Lebanon, such as Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya (the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), and turned a blind eye to the violent ones.

In February 2007, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report claiming that the ruling coalition has funded Fatah al-Islam and other armed Islamist groups as a counterweight to Hezbollah.[19] Although March 14 leaders vehemently denied this claim, Siniora's office raised suspicions by acknowledging "some organizations in the North and South have received aid from parties which have identified themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government or the Internal Security Forces."[20] Apart from the Hariri family's payoffs to Jund al-Sham, however, there is little direct evidence of explicit funding of armed Sunni Islamist groups (which appear to receive most of their funding from wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf States).[21]

Confrontation

On May 19, a band of Fatah al-Islam gunmen robbed a bank near Tripoli (their third) and were tracked to an apartment in a wealthy neighborhood in the city. For reasons that are not entirely clear (but probably owe much to the visit of US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch three days earlier), this time Siniora sent the ISF into action (with a camera crew from Hariri's Future TV station in tow to record the momentous event). The pre-dawn raid was a disaster - not only was it easily repulsed, but Siniora's failure to inform the Army beforehand left Lebanese soldiers stationed outside Nahr al-Bared vulnerable to a withering reprisal hours later while most were asleep in their barracks (nine were found with their throats slit). While the deaths of 22 soldiers that day (the ISF aborted its raid before anyone got killed) united the Lebanese people behind the Army's campaign to eliminate Fatah al-Islam, the political parameters that impede the government from addressing the threat posed by militant Sunni Islamists have not changed.

As fighting continued off and on for the next month, media outlets sympathetic to the Siniora government continued to advance the claim that Fatah al-Islam is a proxy of Syrian intelligence, frequently citing security sources on alleged "confessions" by captured militants. However, in an interview published June 21, Defense Minister Elias Murr put the speculation to rest: "Does the government so far have an official confession about the links of these [Fatah al-Islam militants] or some of them to Syria? So far, there is no answer."[22]

Allegations in the same media outlets that the Syrians have been caught red-handed smuggling weapons into Lebanon also turned out to be unsubstantiated. UN specialists who spent most of June investigating border security in Lebanon reported to the Security Council that "not a single on-border or near-border seizure of smuggled arms has been documented to the team."[23] While there are undoubtedly arms pouring across Lebanon's borders, corruption and incompetence within the Lebanese security services appear largely to blame.

___________________________________________

Gary C. Gambill is a country analyst for Freedom House and the editor of the Mideast Monitor. Formerly editor of Middle East Intelligence Bulletin from 1999 to 2004, Gambill publishes widely on Lebanese and Syrian politics, terrorism, and democratization in the Middle East. He can be reached by email at gambill@mideastmonitor.org, or by phone at 646-242-1101.

[Valin]

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[marvlus]

Islam is a religion of madness, anger and chaos!

[Patrick_k]

Gary Gambill, knowledgeable analyst in Middle East affairs and editor of http://www.mideastmonitor.org/