The Mystery Militia In Lebanon

time
Fighting between Lebanese troops and militants from an Islamist Palestinian faction continued outside Tripoli, Lebanon’s second biggest city, for a second day Monday in the country’s worst internal violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Some 50 people were killed Sunday in a series of intense gun battles fought in the streets of Tripoli itself and nine miles north of the city in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, which is also headquarters of the Fatah al-Islam faction. The violence spread to Beirut late Sunday when a 22 pound bomb exploded in a car park in the Ashrafieh district of east Beirut, killing one woman and wounding 12 others.

By Monday morning, calm had returned to central Tripoli, but the Lebanese government vowed to continue its offensive against militants holed up in Nahr al-Bared. The Lebanese government believes that the sudden surge of violence is linked to moves by members of the United Nations Security Council to appoint an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Though Syria has denied any involvement, many believe it was behind the killing. "The pro-Syrian opposition has reached a complete political deadlock and the international tribunal is about to be passed by the United Nations. That's the reason why we are seeing this violence," Marwan Hamade, Lebanese minister of telecoms and a leading anti-Syrian politician told TIME.

Fatah al-Islam has dominated security news in Lebanon since it first declared its existence late last year. The Sunni extremist group said it had split from Fatah al-Intifada, a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction which is headquartered in Damascus, and that its goal is to fight for the Palestinian cause. But divining the real identity of Fatah al-Islam has become mired in Lebanon's political crisis and the answer to what the group’s real agenda is depends on whom you ask. The anti-Syrian March 14 coalition, which forms the backbone of the Lebanese government, believes that the group is linked to Al-Qaeda but was planted in Lebanon by Syrian military intelligence to cause instability.

Lebanese authorities have accused the group of a twin minibus bombing in the Christian town of Ain Alaq in February in which three people were killed. They also believe Fatah al-Islam members carried out at least three bank robberies, the latest on Saturday when $120,000 was stolen from a bank in the coastal town of Amioun south of Tripoli.

Some analysts in Lebanon say that Syrian intelligence has a long history of working with Palestinian Islamist groups in Lebanon, notably Esbat al-Ansar, based in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon. Esbat al-Ansar is included on the US list of international terrorist organizations. "Syrian intelligence has been working with groups like this for 20 years. It's an old practice," says Radwan al-Sayyed, a professor of Islamic studies at the Lebanese University and a speech writer for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

But others argue that blaming Syria for all Lebanon's problems is the default position of the March 14 coalition and the government, and that Fatah al-Islam is a genuine Islamist organization dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Tripoli resident Mohsen Mohammed, 35, an adherent of the strict Salafi school of Sunni Islam and a sympathizer of Fatah al-Islam, says that the group's popularity has been steadily increasing in the Nahr al-Bared camp. "They help people by giving them food and aid. They are very disciplined and polite and never carry arms in the camp except at times of trouble," he says.

Fatah al-Islam has recently begun establishing a presence in other refugee camps in Beirut and south Lebanon. Mohammed and other supporters of the group in Tripoli said that Fatah al-Islam's goal is to become the dominant Palestinian faction in Lebanon. Islamist sources in Tripoli said that Fatah al-Islam is being funded by Salafist supporters in the city, which allows them to win popularity in the refugee camps by providing social services. The crackdown on Fatah al-Islam, they say, is part of a broader attempt by the US-backed Lebanese government to quell any sign of anti-American Sunni extremism.

As many as 200 people in Tripoli and north Lebanon were rounded up by Lebanese authorities last month and accused of ties to Al-Qaeda, stockpiling weapons and planning attacks. "They were all innocent people," says Sheikh Ibrahim Salih, a prominent Salafist cleric in Tripoli. "They [the government] want to keep the Sunni street under control and to convince the Americans they are fighting terrorism."

Fatah al-Islam is headed by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Palestinian guerrilla fighter who originally trained in the Syrian Air Force. He is believed to have fought American forces in Iraq and was linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed a year ago. Al-Absi was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian court in 2004 for the murder of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. His fighters reportedly number 200 to 500 and are drawn from several Arab countries.

They have proved a tenacious foe. In Sunday's street battles, several of the well-armed militants holed up in residential buildings in the Zaharieh district of central Tripoli firing machine guns and hurling grenades at Lebanese soldiers who sought cover behind armored personnel carriers on the street below. Soldiers battered the cramped apartment buildings with rifle and heavy machine gun fire, ripping chunks of masonry from the walls and filling the air with dust and acrid gun smoke. It was not until early evening that the army managed to kill the last of the militants.

Although a crowd of onlookers cheered as Lebanese troops poured machine gun fire into the buildings, one soldier grumbled that when the troops first arrived on the scene some local residents has tried to hide the militants. "They have supporters here," he said. The government is vowing to finish Fatah al-Islam once and for all, but the struggle to contain rising Sunni extremist sentiment in Lebanon promises to be a long battle.