Al-Qaeda sets Lebanon record
straight By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Fatah al-Islam tried - and
failed - to affiliate itself with al-Qaeda. That
is the information from Beirut as interrogations
continue with the arrested members of the
terrorist organization that held the Nahr al-Bared
refugee camp in north Lebanon hostage for over 100
days. Fatah al-Islam might be finished in Nahr
al-Bared, but by no means has it been eradicated
elsewhere in Lebanon.
Apparently, Fatah
al-Islam requested theological assistance from
al-Qaeda, as a stepping stone to financial and
military support. In
turn,
al-Qaeda sent its "sharia expert" Abdullah
al-Binshi (a Saudi) to Lebanon to meet with
members of Fatah al-Islam. It is unclear if this
was before or after hostilities broke out with the
Lebanese Army in May.
Binshi studied the
structure of the Lebanon-based organization, its
leadership and objectives, concluding that
"Lebanon is not a land of jihad". Binshi was
latter arrested while trying to leave Lebanon via
Beirut International Airport. Before that, he had
quarreled with Abu Mudeen (his "sharia expert"
counterpart in Fatah al-Islam) over financing the
Lebanon-based group.
Abu Mudeen insisted
that smuggling and robbery were legitimate if they
provided a steady income flow for Fatah al-Islam.
The al-Qaeda expert said that they were not. A
Saudi national in Fatah al-Islam warned his
compatriot in al-Qaeda that he should leave
Lebanon before senior members of Fatah al-Islam
killed him, since they were not satisfied by his
evaluation of their conduct, or the validity of
their struggle in Nahr al-Bared.
This
Saudi national stayed behind in Lebanon, however,
while Binshi attempted to escape to recruit
foreign jihadis, train them and send them off to
Iraq. Other Saudis, however, with mixed
affiliations between Fatah al-Islam and al-Qaeda,
are operating from Lebanon.
One is Ahmad
Merii, who was arrested by Lebanese authorities on
charges of a terrorist bombing in Ain Alaq in
Lebanon in 2006. He too was a liaison officer
between the two terrorist organizations, and so
was Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Afghani, a senior member
of al-Qaeda who went to Tripoli to see what Fatah
al-Islam was doing. He was not convinced by their
tactics, and left.
Fahd Mughammas
al-Mughamed (Abu Jaafari al-Tayyar) is another
member of al-Qaeda who went to Lebanon to the town
of Bar Elias in the Bekka Valley. He was arrested
by the Lebanese, who found a letter addressed in
his name by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the "prince" of
al-Qaeda in Iraq. Abu Ayyub was warning him about
Abu Mudeen, the "sharia expert" in Fatah al-Islam,
saying that this man was not to be trusted.
The list of Lebanese jihadis is a
surprisingly long one. The first to rise to
international stardom was Ziad al-Jarrah, one of
the attackers of September 11, 2001. Jarrah was
born into a wealthy family in the residential
district of Mazraa in Beirut. He grew up secular
and studied at a Catholic school (La Sagesse) and
he later volunteered for work at a nearby church.
He then went to Germany to study German
and frequented discos and beach parties. He then
got involved in Osama bin Laden's network and took
part in the September 11 terrorist operation.
Another was named Bassam Kinj. He went to
study in the US, got recruited by bin Laden's
network and went to fight along al-Qaeda and the
Taliban in Afghanistan. He returned to Lebanon
after the fall of Kabul in 2001 and was killed in
clashes with Lebanese authorities in 2002.
A third Lebanese, Ahmad al-Rifai,
disappeared after going to engage in jihad in
Chechnya. A fourth, Abu Mohammad al-Lubnani, was
hiding with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when both of them
perished in a US attack in Iraq in June 2006. He
was a member of al-Qaeda. Another Lebanese, Saleh
al-Qiblawi, was killed with Zarqawi in Iraq. The
mosques of Ain al-Hilwe announce - almost on a
periodic basis - the martyrdom of young Lebanese
and Palestinian men who went to Iraq to fight the
Americans. Assem Hammud, yet another Lebanese, was
arrested in the US after planning a terrorist
attack in New York.
When Shihab Qaddur
(Abu Hurayra) one of the few senior Lebanese
members of Fatah al-Islam, was killed one month
ago, it was believed that he was en route to meet
the head of the al-Qaeda cell in Tripoli, Nabil
Rahim. The latter, also Lebanese, is a young
fundamentalist, born in 1974 who became affiliated
with radical political and military Islam at the
age of 15 in 1989. He then became supportive of
bin Laden and operated the al-Qaeda branch in
northern Lebanon. He has been in hiding for some
time, being on the wanted list of Lebanese
authorities for buying arms.
Abu Hurayra's
companions admitted that he wanted to meet Rahim
in a district called Abi Samra, east of Tripoli,
in a final attempt at coordinating between Fatah
al-Islam and al-Qaeda. That was the only hope
Fatah al-Islam had at winning its war with the
Lebanese Army. Only such a convincing and pressing
reason would let Abu Hurayra, who knew he was
being monitored around the clock, to leave his
hiding zone in Nahr al-Bared and go to a district
that is swarming with Lebanese security.
No track of Nabil Rahim has yet been
found, although authorities arrested 11 Lebanese
youth who were trained by him to go to Iraq and
engage in war against the Americans. Another
liaison officer is Bassam Hammoud, a young
Lebanese who was recently arrested in Saudi Arabia
while going to the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Unconfirmed reports said that he was
planning terrorist attacks in the Saudi kingdom.
He had harbored radical Islamic tendencies for
years, and had spent the better part of the 1990s
in hiding, where an arrest warrant was issued in
his name by Syrian authorities in Lebanon. He only
resurfaced, with a store selling Islamic
audiocassettes, after the Syrians left Lebanon in
2005.
A fourth person is Bilal Dikmak, who
worked for Omar Bakri (one of the prime spiritual
leaders of al-Qaeda), and currently lives in the
Ras al-Nabei neighborhood in Beirut, with a summer
home in the town of Sofar. He personally buried
Abu Hurayra after the latter was killed during the
hostilities of Nahr al-Bared. Dikmak is a close
friend of Nabil Rahim, and both studied with the
same theological mentor.
In addition to
all of the names mentioned above, there is a large
number of Lebanese who have disappeared recently,
all believed to be part of the global jihad
network. A prominent one is Sheikh Usama Qasas,
who has been in hiding for the past six months,
along with Tarek al-Meer, Hussam al-Sabbagh and
Uthman al-Takriti. They went into hiding shortly
after the assassination of Lebanon's former prime
minister Rafik al-Hariri in February 2005. Others
include Bilal al-Sayyed, Adnan Mohammad, and Ahmad
Araj, who are believed to be close to al-Qaeda
since 1997. They perform Islamic anthems at
Islamic oriented restaurants, especially during
the month of Ramadan.
In addition to Fatah
al-Islam and al-Qaeda, there is a third
fundamentalist organization called Usbet al-Ansar.
Established in the 1960s and rooted in the Ain
al-Hilwe refugee camp for Palestinians, it is the
most organized, popular and overtly active Sunni
fundamentalist group in Lebanon. Usbet al-Ansar
has been accused of being a terrorist group by the
United States.
In the late 1990s, it
carried out a series of attacks in the Lebanese
city of Sidon and was accused (although it denied)
of murdering four judges at the Palace of Justice
in 1999. The accusations were trumpeted by the
media, however, not official judicial authorities.
It is believed to be affiliated, either directly
or indirectly, with Fatah al-Islam.
The
leaders of Usbet al-Ansar deny this, claiming that
Fatah al-Islam's war with the Lebanese Army was
wrong. Its leaders say that "jihad is not in
Lebanon. It is in Palestine, Iraq and
Afghanistan."
Although it has tried to
appeal to bin Laden, declaring him to be a
21st-century hero, Usbet al-Ansar has also failed
to affiliate itself directly with al-Qaeda. Bin
Laden, apparently, is not impressed with their
"jihadi" agenda. He wants jihadis in Lebanon not
to fight the Lebanese government - there is no
sense in doing that - nor to concentrate on Iraq
and Palestine.
Apparently he wants them to
target the multinational forces stationed in South
Lebanon since the end of the summer war of 2006
between Hezbollah and Israel. That is a target
that Lebanese groups, seemingly, cannot meet. They
tried to win his favor by accepting public
condolences for the death of Zarqawi in 2006 but
that was too little for bin Laden.
All of
this raises red sirens in Lebanon. The Lebanese
have been celebrating the downfall of Fatah
al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared. The Islamists believe
that they lost a battle - not a war - with their
numerous enemies, both in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
(Copyright 2007
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