Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  When Nabil and the men in his network were arrested (they were found with fifty kilograms of TNT and five kilograms of C4), they were tortured by members of the Interior Ministry’s Information Branch. During the interrogations Nabil was hit in the back of his head with a club; his legs were bruised for months after the beatings. Nabil was accused of being the number-two man in the group. Ismail was tortured to death, and his funeral in Majd al-Anjar was an occasion for massive demonstrations. With Ismail’s death, Nabil lost his connections to Iraq and no longer smuggled on behalf of the jihad. Nabil bragged about those days. “We are Al Qaeda,” he told me. “We had connections to Abu Shahid.” Nabil knew seven or eight men who had returned home to Majd al-Anjar from Iraq, and he knew there were others. In town I met a middle-aged Iraqi Baathist who, I was told, had been in the resistance, though he refused to discuss his past except to say he had served the state. “I’m wanted in Syria for terrorism,” he told me, adding that he was also wanted in Lebanon for opening fire in a fight. Sheikh Dai al-Islam al-Shahal from Tripoli visited Nabil after his release from prison. “Dai al-Islam is a friend of mine,” he told me. “He knows the truth, but he won’t speak all of it.” It was clear Nabil didn’t think highly of him, and he made a contemptuous face.

  Back at the roadblock Nabil and others set up in Masnaa, a convoy of expensive cars drove up, and Sheikh Muhamad Abdel Rahman, head of the Sunni religious endowment in the Beqaa, emerged. Hundreds of men surrounded him as he gave a speech with a loudspeaker. An establishment figure, he came, like others, to try to influence the men. The Sunni elite feared young men like Nabil, whom they could not control. Representatives from the Future Movement had asked them to open the roadblocks, Nabil said, as had the municipality. Although locals voted for the Future out of Sunni solidarity, they did not belong to the party—which had opposed the initiative taken by local youths to close the road.

  Sheikh Muhamad addressed them directly. “You represent Majd al-Anjar,” he said. “The decision to open the road is yours. It’s impossible to open the road without your agreement. The decision must protect the interest of the town and the people of the town and the shabab of the town.” He warned that there were some infiltrators among them. “You are not here for stealing. If there are people among you stopping and stealing, it’s harming your dignity.” The issue was protecting Sunnis’ dignity and autonomy, he said; they would open the road if it was in the interests of the sect. “The Islamic Sunni resistance begins today,” he said. “We work for Lebanon, and they work for Iran.” Young men shot into the air as he spoke.

  “The sheikh, the municipality, the Future Current, the world came to open the border,” one of the young men said triumphantly, “but the shabab of Majd al-Anjar who closed the border refused to open it.”

  The following Friday I visited the Abdel Rahman Auf Mosque in Majd al-Anjar, also known as the Wahhabi Mosque. Nabil met us at the entrance to town and guided us to the mosque, handing us over to a chubby bearded friend before going home. Expensive cars were squeezed in around the mosque, which was full of young men and boys. It had two floors, with a screen on the second floor so people could watch the imam give his sermon. Sheikh Adnan al-Umama, a local, spoke of Hizballah’s “barbaric raid” on Beirut and condemned Iran. In Iraq the mujahideen were called terrorists, he said, while Hizballah’s Shiite brothers in Iraq helped the Americans.

  The battle was one of creeds, he said, meaning between Sunnis and Shiites. “These people who came against us are secular and infidels. If they were honest about what they say, then we have to be ready to fight them. We saw them invading Beirut with hearts full of hate and accusing us of the murder of Hussein. If they have a problem with the government like they claim, why did they attack civilians and humiliate our women and our Muslim homes in Beirut?” Hizballah “terrorized us in our cities. Their friends in Iraq are friends with the Americans. We are the real people of the resistance. Sunnis are the real resistance.” The battle against Israel was a Sunni battle as well, he said. “I’m not agitating for a sectarian conflict. But, on the other hand, we won’t stand still if they try to humiliate or insult our homes and our women.” The Lebanese army would fall apart soon because of the sectarian division inside it, he said. It was time for Sunnis to stop being afraid of Shiites to start rising up. “Until the government is able to defend us, we insist on carrying our guns,” he said. “And we will resist [the Shiites] with our women and children and all the power we have. I praise our heroes who blocked the road. Yes, they did the right thing. We are the pure, noble Muslims, and we are merciful, and we won’t stay silent about the attack on the people and our women in our cities.”

  As I listened to the sermon with a friend, a man turned to question us suspiciously, but Nabil’s friend explained that we were with him. Then suddenly a thick older man with a long gray beard took my friend’s notebook from his hands and demanded mine as well. After the prayer ended he interrogated us as others surrounded us. He tried to read the notes and ordered Nabil’s friend to make copies of our identity cards.

  I later went to meet Sheikh Adnan at his home. Landscape paintings and gaudy European art decorated his guest room. Given the tone of his sermon, he was younger, quicker to smile, and more jovial than I had expected. He began by apologizing for the men who had interrogated us at his mosque. He normally preferred not to give political sermons, he told me, focusing instead on religion, because politics was always changing.

  Majd al-Anjar, with its twenty thousand residents, was unique, he said, because it was close to the border, was populated only by Sunnis, had a large number of graduates in Islamic studies educated all over the Arab world, and had no secular political parties. Sheikh Adnan was not optimistic. “Outside powers determine events here,” he told me. Shiites were doing the same thing in Lebanon that they were doing in Iraq, but Iraqi Sunnis were stronger because they had weapons from the former regime at their disposal and a better geographical location. Bin Laden and Zawahiri were wrong when they called for Al Qaeda to operate in Lebanon, because they did not know the nature of the country, he said. It was too divided and mixed, and Al Qaeda could never establish a stronghold.

  He did not want fitna in the Muslim community, he said; he wanted to fix the problems of arms in Lebanon and the dangers they posed for Sunnis. After seeing what happened in Beirut, Sunnis understandably wanted to arm themselves too. The Future Movement had no creed, he said. Its people worked only for money, unlike Hizballah. Sunnis were looking for a leader to represent them, but the Mufti Qabbani was too close to the Saudis and the Future Movement, and he was weak, having done nothing in response to the events in Beirut. There was an opening now for Islamist movements, but the experience of Nahr al-Barid had made Islamists wary of organizing. He wondered why the Americans had abandoned the Siniora government and asked me if I had any insight.

  We drove to Nabil’s house. He lived with relatives on the second floor of a compound. Nabil’s guest room was a shrine to jihad. He had a large collection of ammunition shells and grenades on display in his cupboard. Upon entering his house, guests were greeted by framed pictures of the 9/11 attacks—the Twin Towers aflame and a smoldering Pentagon. “We are not in line with Sheikh Adnan,” Nabil told me. “He is moderate, as they say.” Instead Nabil and his friends took fatwas from scholars associated with Al Qaeda. Nabil asked his little boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A mujahid!” his son grinned. A tall man wearing jeans and a T-shirt that were too tight (in true Lebanese style) burst in the room. His name was Hossam, and he was one of the organizers of the roadblock. Seeing the pistol on his belt, I asked if he was a cop. “No, I’m a mujahid,” he said. He explained that closing the road was a spontaneous decision taken by the shabab. “Our conscience and our honor made us close it,” he said. “I smoke hashish, I’m not religious. It was something from the inside.”

  I visited often in the spring and summer of 2008. Nabil always had his 9-millimeter Glock pistol in his hand, on his lap, or o
n the table beside him. Like many Glocks I had seen in Lebanon, it had been smuggled in from Iraq, an American gift to mostly Shiite Iraqi Security Forces now in the hands of radical Sunnis in Lebanon. Once, as I sat in Nabil’s guest room, he received a phone call. He grabbed his pistol and ran out. Three unknown cars with tinted windows had entered the town. He called Hossam. “Three cars came in,” Nabil said. “They might be military. Park your car and I’ll send someone to pick you up. . . . They’re raiding your house. . . . Don’t worry about me. I’ll start shooting if they get close to my house.” Nabil took out a walkie-talkie and contacted other men in their network. Hossam, sweating and out of breath, walked in with a thuggish-looking friend. Hossam wielded a new AK-47 equipped with a scope and flashlight as well as a drum magazine to hold far more ammunition. He wore an ammunition vest laden with extra ammunition and several American hand grenades that he said cost fifty dollars apiece. His friend carried a PKM, a belt-fed machine gun. “If Saddam Hussein was alive he would help us with ammunition,” Hossam said. “That’s why they killed him.”

  Hossam’s father had killed a man, and the two families were feuding, which was why he always carried a pistol. But in the battle against Shiites the two families were together, he said. “I never carried a rifle before,” he said, “but since the Shiites attacked I started carrying one.” Hossam had taken part in sectarian clashes between Sunnis from the nearby town of Saad Nayel and the Shiites of Talabaya. A few days earlier Sunnis and Shiites had fought each other in the nearby town of Sawiri as well. Hossam claimed he had forced Shiite officials at the Masnaa border crossing to stop working there. This was why security officers were paying a visit to the town. “We and the state are opposed,” said the thuggish man.

  “Before May 8 I used to love life,” said Hossam. “I would never sleep. I was into women, drugs, alcohol—I was living life to the fullest. Something happened in my heart I can’t explain to anybody. Since May 8 I am a different person. I started praying five times a day, feeling more confident when I’m fighting.” Now he fantasized about becoming a suicide bomber. “I should be doing martyrdom operations too,” he told me, his eyes darting to Nabil, looking for approval. “I would like to blow myself up during Nasrallah’s speech when there is a large group of people.” He got so much pleasure from shooting, he said, and he surmised that if he went on a martyrdom operation his soul would feel even better. Nabil expected suicide operations like those in Iraq to occur in Lebanon, targeting Shiites. “I won’t be surprised if it happened,” he said.

  Nabil didn’t seem to have a job, but I soon realized he had a lucrative underground business selling weapons. I asked him why he always carried a pistol with him. He quoted a hadith about how one must always be armed. I asked if he was not worried about the authorities. “The army is not allowed in here,” Nabil said. I asked who didn’t allow them. “We don’t allow them,” he said. “None of them will survive. Do they want another Nahr al-Barid?” Likewise the police were not allowed to come into town, he said: “If they do, the whole town will fight.” I was reminded of the accusations that Hizballah was a state within a state. Outside Beirut there was little sign of any state willing or able to assert itself, and unlike Shiites, the Sunnis of Lebanon had no comparable social movement to fill the vacuum.

  As we drove through the narrow alley leading to Nabil’s house, a man asked him to sell him two thousand rounds of ammunition. “Come to my house,” Nabil said. One day when I visited Nabil I found his living room converted into an armory. He had an RPG launcher, many boxes of ammunition, and eight rifles, including AK-47s, a PKM, and a Degtyaryov machine gun. In a box that originally contained a Syrian dress, Nabil had stuffed an assortment of grenades. He took some out to play with, to my displeasure, and showed me how to take them apart.

  Nabil introduced me to Marwan Yassin, or Abu Hudheifa, a gentle, friendly man he called his sheikh and emir. Abu Hudheifa was not formally educated in Islam, but he studied Sharia at home and memorized the Koran at the late age of twenty-five. He had six children. He had just been released from prison after serving ten months. I asked him if he had been tortured. “Not this time,” he said with a smile. In 2004 the Syrians arrested him trying to enter Iraq. He spent eight months in a Syrian prison before he was transferred to a Lebanese prison, where he served three more months. He was tortured in both countries.

  Majd al-Anjar was special, he said, because it had a lot of religious people of the same color, meaning Sunni. “We have a lot of people who went to Iraq and were killed there, so we have people who love jihad,” he said. “Iraq is under direct American occupation. Here, it’s an indirect Iranian occupation.” Sunnis in Lebanon were in a weak position, he said.

  One night in June Nabil called around midnight to tell me he had just received word that two local boys, Abdallah Abdel Khalaq and Firas Yamin, had blown themselves up in Iraq on two consecutive days. Twenty-year-old Abdallah, whose nickname was Abu Obeida, called his family the night before to say goodbye and explain that the next day he would either park the car and detonate it or, if there was too much security, detonate it while driving. At noon the next day he blew himself up while driving in a crowded Baghdad street. Two hours later his companions called his parents to let them know the happy news about their son’s martyrdom. The family was religious and proud of him, and distributed candy. Firas, who was called Abu Omar, had gone to Iraq with Abdallah without telling anybody in town. Nabil had a film of them both with a Kuwaiti fighter who had been to Afghanistan. “If I had a chance I would go,” Nabil said.

  Nabil took me to meet a group of friends in an office. They were drinking tea. Several had long hair and long beards. One had the physique of a bodybuilder. I asked them what they expected to happen. “Very bad things,” said one. Nabil spoke of prophecies in the Koran about a final battle occurring in Sham, or Greater Syria. The American invasion of Iraq was one sign of it. I had heard many jihadi Salafis in the region predict this imminent final battle, one that would be fought with swords. An older man in traditional Arab dress was the father of a young man who had been martyred in Rawa. As I chatted with the men, Nabil played absentmindedly with the pistol on his lap.

  One morning one of Nabil’s friends drove me around town. He spoke on his cellphone to a woman. “We are ready,” he told her. “We didn’t sleep since last night.” The night before, Nabil said, the Lebanese army had arrested the father of one of the guys in their group in Masnaa. There were regular clashes with local Shiites, whom the men called Hizballah, probably inaccurately. “Last night we went down to Marj,” Nabil’s friend said, “patrolling with our cars with tinted windows, driving back and forth in the main streets of Majd al-Anjar and Marj. We had guns, we were ready.”

  Nabil introduced me to a friend they called Dr. Saadi because he had a PhD in history from the University of Damascus. Only in his thirties, Saadi had a guest room well stocked with books on Islam. He’d been imprisoned for alleged involvement in the 2000 “millennium plot” to blow up the American Embassy in Jordan. After his release, he traveled to Falluja at the height of the jihad in 2004 and met Omar Hadid, a famed fighter in that town.

  There was no Sunni party in Lebanon with a creed, Saadi complained, only those who fought for money. The Future Movement had become mercenaries without belief, he said. They controlled Lebanon’s Sunnis but obeyed the Americans, and Salafis were marginalized. But one day soon only the Salafi ideology would survive, and they would raise the Sunni flag in Lebanon. The May event had given a fillip to extreme movements in Lebanon such as Al Qaeda. The country’s unique diversity had moderated Saadi’s extremism, like it had for all of the Salafis I met in Lebanon. The variety of sects living in Lebanon meant that no single group could dominate the others, he said.

  As we spoke, AK-47 shots suddenly erupted not far away. All the men burst out laughing, especially when they saw me flinch. A friend had just been released from prison and he was shooting into the air. “Army intelligence captured him,” Nabil explai
ned, “and we threatened to block the roads. Now he is shooting into the air in celebration for himself.”

  Like many Salafis I had met, Saadi was envious of Hizballah for confronting Israel but at the same time dismissive because Hizballah limited its activity to liberating Lebanese territory. “Hizballah protects the Jewish border with orders from the Syrian regime,” he said. Moreover, by respecting UN resolutions, Hizballah proved that it had no genuine commitment to liberating Palestine. Hizballah had proved it had no principles, he said, by forming an alliance with a Christian party, the Free Patriotic Movement. The goal of Hizballah’s “takeover” of Beirut was to weaken Sunnis in the Arab world, he said. The group was acting like the Mahdi Army in Iraq, proving it was only a Shiite militia. “Sunnis around the world are mad after what happened in Beirut,” he said. “The result will be a thousand Zarqawis coming after Hizballah.” Nabil was a great admirer of Zarqawi. “Behind the sword was a merciful heart,” he said, “an eye that cried for the whole Islamic nation. There will be thousands of Zarqawis now.”

  I went with my friend to see Khaled Dhaher at his mountain redoubt in Bibnine. When we arrived in town we called Dhaher, who told us to give a few thousand liras to any taxi driver and ask him to lead us to his house. “Everybody knows where it is,” he said. A taxi driver agreed, and suddenly a man in civilian clothes approached the driver’s window, asking who we were and why we had weapons. We said we didn’t have any. He called Dhaher to see if we were authorized. Then he flashed his wallet open and told us he was an undercover officer for the Interior Ministry, but there was no government ID card in it.

  Four fit young men slinging AK-47s stood outside Dhaher’s house, which was also a school. Inside there were three older men in a courtyard who were also armed. Dhaher was making and receiving phone calls when he arrived. “Tell them to stay away, and let’s wait until the dialogue is over because we might have to do to them what we did in Halba,” he told somebody, referring to the negotiations in Doha, Qatar, to resolve the crisis and threatening another massacre. “Let’s tell the brothers to gather and we can visit Mufti Rifai. At this point there is no turning back,” he said in another phone call. Then he called a lieutenant named Arabi and thanked him for his cooperation. Finally he spoke to an associate. “Stay in your position even if there is shooting at you,” he said. “Keep your eyes wide open. Never retreat, never surrender. An attack might happen tonight.” Dhaher’s brother was also there; he had come to ask about obtaining a gun license for somebody. “Who needs a license?” Dhaher asked. “Send some bodyguards to my center. There is no need to carry a license these days.”