Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  On May 19 a bank belonging to the Hariri dynasty was robbed southeast of Tripoli, apparently by men from Fatah al-Islam. Credible sources from the Palestinian factions and Hizballah and its supporters maintain that Fatah al-Islam received monthly payments in this bank, which were suddenly halted. When the payments stopped they demanded their money and returned armed to rob the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars, their monthly stipend. Absi told Muhammad al-Haj, the Hamas negotiator, that they had come to receive their transfer, but problems had arisen and they did what they had to do to get the money.

  Early the next morning Lebanese security forces raided apartments in an affluent district of Tripoli belonging to Fatah al-Islam members, some of whom were foreigners. The conduit for renting the luxury apartments was said to have been the Mufti of Tripoli. One of the militants called Sheikh Dai al-Islam and asked him to tell the authorities not to arrest them. The response from the security forces was that they would not negotiate and were going to finish them off. The militant threatened to attack the army. Haj, who is also head of the council of Palestinian clerics, claimed to have been surprised by the clashes. Before the bank robbery, he said, “there had been an agreement between Fatah al-Islam and the authorities that Fatah al-Islam would not be involved in Lebanese politics or harm peace and stability, and would not expand its activities outside the camp, and that the thirty foreign Arabs with Fatah al-Islam would be deported.” Despite the close proximity between the Internal Security Force base and the Lebanese army base, and the fact that the army was surrounding the camp, the ISF did not notify the army that it was conducting the raids in Tripoli. The ISF did, however, notify two Lebanese television stations.

  The following day a group of fighters led by Abu Hureira, one of the most militant figures in Fatah al-Islam, attacked a Lebanese army location and slaughtered the soldiers. Shaker al-Absi was said to have been uninformed about this in advance and to have emerged from his home in his pajamas at the sound of fighting. Humiliated and angry, the army struck back. Abu Hureira and his followers refused to negotiate. It seems Absi was frustrated that things were getting out of control and felt that he had been forced into a battle. Rumors spread throughout the country that the soldiers had been brutally slaughtered and mutilated, provoking a wave of hatred that targeted Palestinians in general, despite the fact that Fatah al-Islam was composed mostly of non-Palestinians and all the Palestinian factions condemned it. On May 20-21 bombs exploded in a Christian and Sunni neighborhood in Beirut, igniting fears that the fighting might spread.

  Shaker al-Absi claimed that he never wanted to target the Lebanese army but was forced to do so by the raid in Tripoli. In the chaos of the first day, said Muhammad al-Haj, it was not possible to establish a dialogue. Once negotiations led to a cease-fire, armed Sunni civilians from the area descended upon the camp to support the army and attack the Palestinians. Haj blames these civilians for reigniting the battle. He was shot by Fatah in a failed assassination attempt after the group grew concerned over his success in mediating between the army and Fatah al-Islam and what it meant for their role in the camp. “They thought that what was being achieved through negotiations would prevent Fatah from forming its security committee to control the camps,” he told me.

  When Future Movement leader Saad al-Hariri called upon his forces to support the army and security forces, this was interpreted by his forces to mean that they should join the fight. Hundreds of armed Sunnis from the region descended upon the camp. When fighting began, it became very difficult for civilians to leave because they had to endure artillery fire as well as snipers from the army and Sunni militiamen from the north. Fatah al-Islam took advantage of the armaments of the PFLP-General Command—Ahmed Jabril’s Syrian-sponsored split from the PFLP—and the Fatah Revolutionary Council, commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization. Members of these ostensibly secular groups—with a reputation for once performing spectacular acts of violence—were helping Fatah al-Islam out of solidarity on the local level, but not on orders from their officers. Interestingly, the Salafi leaders in the camp who had initially welcomed Fatah al-Islam disavowed them now. Dai al-Islam al-Shahal maintained contact between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese authorities. When the fighting started Syria closed two border points in the north.

  On May 25, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave an even-handed speech commemorating the liberation of southern Lebanon from the Israeli occupation in 2000. In that speech he discussed the clashes in the north and spoke of two “red lines.” The army and the security agencies in Lebanon were a red line that should not be crossed by attacking them. Likewise, the Palestinian civilians and their camps were a red line, and the security forces should not kill civilians in the name of a war on terror. The Future Movement seized on these statements to accuse the Shiite leader of supporting Palestinian terrorists against the army. Anger swept throughout the north and other Sunni areas in the country. At the same time Lebanese security forces cracked down on local Salafis in Tripoli, and rumors circulated that some were being tortured.

  Clerics in Tripoli had to calm many of their followers who sympathized with Fatah al-Islam. Some began to feel betrayed and persecuted by the government. The Future Movement began to lose ground among Salafis. Its leaders had campaigned as protectors of Lebanon’s Sunnis but instead were perceived by some as having launched fitna (strife) in the north. In the slums of Tripoli, resentment was growing against Lebanese security forces, who were picking people off the streets even if they were innocent, beating them, and releasing them as an example to others. Some people in Tripoli felt that Fatah al-Islam members were well-intentioned mujahideen who had been forced to fight in Lebanon when they should have been fighting in Iraq. The majority of the soldiers fighting with the army against Fatah al-Islam were Sunni Muslims from northern Lebanon. Many in the north were not sure how to react. When the first few dead soldiers arrived in their hometowns for burial, some of them were not buried as martyrs because they had died fighting fellow believers. The majority of Sunnis embraced the army, however, and a propaganda campaign in support of the army began in earnest, with one bank issuing credit cards with a military camouflage motif, advertisements on television showing the nation saluting a soldier, and bumper stickers stating allegiance to the army. It was a cathartic experience after the previous year’s war and the divisions it had reinforced in the nation.

  Members of the Abu Nidal Organization also provided assistance, including weapons, to Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Barid, and some of the Abu Nidal men who were wanted by Lebanese security forces even stayed behind and fought alongside Fatah al-Islam. Over the next three months the Lebanese army regularly announced that it had vanquished Fatah al-Islam, but despite destroying the camp and making forty thousand Palestinians homeless, the fighting continued, and Lebanese soldiers continued to die. Absi had not been seeking a confrontation with the Lebanese army, but once the fighting started he might have hoped that other supporters and Salafis would rise up throughout Lebanon and its camps. Negotiations faltered over the demand to hand over wanted Lebanese men among his ranks. Abu Salim Taha, the Fatah al-Islam spokesperson, blamed the Future Movement for inciting hatred against them. He admitted that there were many foreign Muslims among them. Even though they had no organizational ties to Al Qaeda, they considered them their brethren.

  In early June it was Jund al-Sham’s turn to clash with the army, in Ayn al-Hilweh. There had been fears that the fighting in Nahr al-Barid would spread south, and now it was happening. Usbat al-Ansar, which was already part of the camp’s executive committee, played a key role in securing the camp. The Lebanese government gave Usbat al-Ansar a new status by recognizing it as a power broker and partner it could deal with. This negotiated solution allowed the Palestinians to continue policing themselves. It was a stark contrast to the military solution offered in Nahr al-Barid.

  In June Lebanese security forces arrested four people in the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. They also found a large amount of
explosives and money. One of the suspects was a Saudi carrying fake Iraqi identity papers. Two Syrians and a Palestinian were found with him. By then another thirty-two Fatah al-Islam prisoners had been captured, most of whom were Lebanese. The Saudi authorities asked for their citizens to be repatriated so that they could learn more about similar groups in the Kingdom, and Lebanon consented. South of Tripoli Lebanese security forces killed five Islamist fighters, at least two of whom were Saudis. In July, after Fatah al-Islam began firing missiles outside the camp, Abu Salim Taha, the Fatah al-Islam spokesman, explained that the group was targeting the army and some missiles had reached Lebanese towns because of miscalculations. He asked the Sunnis to accept his apology. Lebanon’s many Salafist jihadist groups refused to back Fatah al-Islam, as did Al Qaeda. Their focus was fighting Israel, and none of them wanted to jeopardize their position in Lebanon by provoking the authorities.

  By late June most of the Palestinian refugees from Nahr al-Barid had fled to the nearby Bedawi refugee camp. In a schoolyard there I was stopped by Abu Hadi, born in Haifa in 1946. “I am a person without an address,” he told me. “I wish I was a donkey or a horse so I would have doctors and lawyers for my rights.” He pulled out a notebook. “My office is my pocket,” he said. He showed me a plastic bag with a sponge and a towel. “My bathroom is in my hand.” A peaceful demonstration of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, marched from Bedawi toward their former homes, asking for the right to return there. Lebanese soldiers opened fire at close range, killing two demonstrators and wounding at least twenty. As the demonstrators fled they were attacked by Sunni civilians from the region, beaten and stabbed. Palestinian families seeking to recover the corpses of their relatives killed by the army’s indiscriminate shelling were told to sign statements affirming that the men had been with Fatah al-Islam or were killed by the group. At the Interior Ministry’s Qibba base near Nahr al-Barid, where many Palestinians were interrogated, at least one of the officers had graduated from an American military program in interrogation described as “debriefing, interviewing, and elicitation.” Numerous Palestinian men reported being detained and tortured for many days. Palestinians throughout Lebanon were beaten at checkpoints.

  A SENSE OF FOREBODING united people in Lebanon and throughout the region in response to the destabilizing occupation of Iraq. It also made Sunnis feel vulnerable. North of Tripoli, by the village of Qubat Shamra, where a boy was selling watermelons off the side of the road the day I visited, there was a stretch of broken wall with two lines of graffiti. “We tell you, oh rulers, of treachery and tyranny, the blood of the martyr Hariri is not to be forgotten,” said one. The other listed the successors of the Prophet Muhammad whom Sunnis revere and warned that “the blood of Sunnis is boiling.” It was signed by an unknown group called the Mujahideen Battalions of Tel Hayat, in reference to a nearby village. Further up the road toward the Syrian border, past tall pine and eucalyptus trees, one side of an apartment building was covered with a large painting of Rafiq al-Hariri. “They feared you so they killed you,” it said. “Truly they are pigs.” It quoted from the Koran as well, an example of the strange juxtaposition of Islamism and the Hariri cult. I stopped at Kusha and met a twenty-three-year-old third-year law student called Muhamad, who had learned English from listening to rap music. Muhamad had joined the Interior Ministry’s new Information Branch earlier that year as a volunteer “because of the Shiite campaign against this government,” he said. “You have to do something.” His responsibility was to “keep an eye open for anything strange in town.”

  According to Muhamad, Lebanon’s Sunnis had finally come to believe that Lebanon was their country. “After they killed Hariri we woke up,” he said. “Shiites hate us. After Hariri’s death I started feeling hatred of Shiites. I hate Shiites after they thanked Syria in the demonstration.” He also hated Shiites for reacting positively to Saddam Hussein’s execution. “At the end Saddam was a Sunni,” he said. “I love Saddam. He subjugated Shiites. He was a leader in every sense of the word.” Muhamad believed he was helping to defend Lebanon from the “Shiite crescent.” “They’re trying to extend their principles through all of Lebanon. The biggest danger is coming from Shiites, not Israel. The priority is Shiites, to confront their project. I would take a gun and face Shiites, not only me but many people here.”

  In the village of Masha I drove by the main mosque, which had a large picture of Hariri on one wall. Above the mosque a large blue sign said, “Palestine and Iraq are calling you, boycott American products.” Elsewhere in town a small shop had the obligatory picture of Saddam with his two sons at his side. A local sheikh had praised Fatah al-Islam as mujahideen.

  Throughout Sunni towns in the north and Sunni neighborhoods in Tripoli and Beirut one finds images of Saddam and graffiti praising the executed former Iraqi leader. “The nation that gave birth to Saddam Hussein will not bow,” said one in the Beqaa. In Beirut’s Sunni stronghold of Tariq al-Jadida I found posters of “the martyred leader” Saddam with the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem behind him. On the road to Mishmish, a small mountain town in Akkar, I passed a wall where someone had written “Long live the hero Saddam Hussein.” Entering the town I drove under many banners honoring the army. “Only your pure blood draws the red line,” said one, in reference to Nasrallah’s recent speech. When I visited in late July 2007, the all-Sunni town had already lost three of its men to Fatah al-Islam; eight other soldiers from Mishmish were wounded. “People are very angry at the Palestinians,” mayor Hanzar Amr Din told me. He did not believe the anger would subside after the fighting. “If they think of coming back to the camp, people will destroy it,” he said. “People here were very upset at Nasrallah’s words about red lines,” he said. “Last summer people were happy with Nasrallah for fighting Israel, but saying that the camp is a red line means he is backing Palestinians against the army.”

  That summer I found similar sentiments in the Sunni town of Bibnine. A laborer in a sandwich shop compared the situation to the 1970 Black September fighting, when the Jordanians had gotten rid of Palestinians. “I swear on the Koran,” he told me, “if I see a Palestinian I would slaughter him and drink his blood.” I asked him what he thought of Hizballah. “I hope they get rid of them too,” he said. The walls of Bibnine were plastered with pictures of the ten soldiers killed in the fighting, and I was reminded of the similar pictures festooning Shiite towns a year before in honor of the Hizballah soldiers who had died. On a wall near children playing on a road, someone had written with chalk, “Saddam Hussein is the martyr of the nation.” Khuzaimi, a twelve-year-old boy, told me that “we all want to grow up to join the army to destroy this infidel al-Absi.” But since Fatah al-Islam would be destroyed by then, he said, “then we will all go fight Israel.”

  Most of the townsmen had taken their weapons to Nahr al-Barid in the first days of the fighting to “help the army,” I was told by Qais, a member of the Internal Security Forces from the town. “Anybody above sixteen went down,” he said—122 soldiers in all. “There is no family in Bibnine without somebody down there,” he said, adding that his family had fifteen men there. “There is a big anger at the Palestinians,” he said. “We consider them responsible for this.” When I visited Bibnine on July 31 the shelling of Nahr al-Barid echoed up to the town. Many of the townsmen worked as fishermen off the coast of Tripoli, but since the fighting had begun they had been forced to stay at home.

  “They should be put on the border in the south so they can smell Palestine soil and remember it,” said Abu Muhamad, whose son Osama, a twenty-six-year-old soldier, had died in Nahr al-Barid. He blamed Syria for sending Fatah al-Islam to Lebanon. “My son the martyr, from childhood he wanted to be in the army. He grew up in a military house. I am a retired soldier. I am proud of him. He was brave, not a coward.” Abu Muhamad had two other sons in the army, one of whom was wounded in the battle. “Our first martyr was Rafiq al-Hariri,” he told me. “He was a martyr to the nation, and we all want to be martyrs to t
he nation.”

  From his balcony Abu Muhamad could view the camp smoldering down on the coast. His face was lined and weathered. He looked tired but tried to smile. “The people won’t allow the camp to be rebuilt,” he said. “As soon as the fighting stops, people will go down to prevent it from being rebuilt.” Another guest, the father of a soldier still fighting in the camp, repeated an oft-heard slander that the Palestinians had sold Palestine to the Jews in 1948 and now had sold Nahr al-Barid to the jihadists. “That gang bought their camp,” the man said. He had been among the first armed men to descend on the camp, he told me. “All towns around the camp went down and took the arms of soldiers who were killed,” he said. “Now there is a blood feud between Lebanese and Palestinians,” said Abu Muhamad. “The big problem is not with the Palestinians.” The real problem was not the Nahr al-Barid camp but the one in downtown Beirut, he said, meaning the Shiite protesters. Like most Sunnis in the north, he had been angered by Nasrallah’s “red lines” speech in May. “Call it red lines or green lines or whatever you want,” he said. “Your lines won’t stop us.”

  The forty thousand homeless Palestinians of Nahr al-Barid were housed in local schools in the nearby Bedawi camp and in Tripoli, watching from afar as their homes were obliterated. Nahr al-Barid was a thoroughly urban camp, with many low apartment buildings. It was located right off the Mediterranean beach, and the view would have afforded its residents some respite from their fate. At least forty-two Palestinian civilians had been killed by September 2, when the army and media declared a great victory—some even called it a victory over Nahr al-Barid rather than Fatah al-Islam. It was only on October 10 that the army finally began to allow a trickle of Palestinians back to their homes, and only in the so-called “new camp,” a small area that had housed two thousand families on the outskirts of the original camp. The army had been in control of the new camp, and fighting had not taken place there.