Al-Qaida roots itself in Lebanon: Radical islamists exploit a fragmented country

By Fidaa Itani, in Le Monde Diplo, here

"... On 31 August 1995 one of these groups assassinated Sheikh Nizar al-Halabi, the head of the AICP, and caused a stir. It was the first time that a Salafist group had eliminated an opponent. Members of the organisation confessed to committing the murder and persisted in taking exclusive responsibility to the end. However, the Lebanese authorities and Syrian intelligence (which controlled the country) chose to pin the crime on Abdul Karim al-Saadi (aka Abu Mahjen), the Palestinian leader of Asbat al-Ansar, which was based in the Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp, near Saida in southern Lebanon. In 1999 the same group, originally formed by veterans from the war in Afghanistan, was blamed for the assassination of four judges in Saida central court...

At this point links between the Salafists and al-Qaida started to develop. An organisation that was probably Chechen, and certainly connected to Bin Laden, asked Bassam Kanj (aka Abu Aisha) to help infiltrate Muslim combatants into Israel. In 1988 Kanj had given up his studies in the US and taken a crash course in global jihad in Afghanistan. Following the request from al-Qaida he set up the Dinniyeh organisation, but asked for two years’ grace to establish it as an anti-Israeli resistance force, alongside Hizbullah...

Al-Qaida waited till the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 before openly calling for units to be set up in Lebanon. But al-Qaida also operates as a form of franchise, with a far from centralised organisation, leaving considerable freedom of movement to local units. It was well established by the end of 2005 when the Lebanese authorities first succeeded in catching the members of a network, subsequently referred to as the “Network of 13”, led by Hassan Nabaa, a Lebanese national. The group, which also comprised Saudis, Syrians and Palestinians, supported al-Qaida and the Iraqi resistance movement, operating in Lebanon and Syria where it clashed on several occasions with the secret service, particularly in border zones. It is said to have shot down a Syrian helicopter...

In spring 2006 there was a split in Fatah al-Intifada, an organisation with close links to the Syrian regime that broke away from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah in 1983. About 70 of its members joined a Palestinian officer of Jordanian origin, Shaker al-Absi (Abu Ali), setting up Fatah al-Islam. The dissidents dispersed to Palestinian camps: Burj al-Barajneh (southern suburbs of Beirut), Ain al-Hilweh (Saida), Shatila (Beirut) and the two camps at Badawi and Nahr al-Bared, in the north. They were joined by some 50 militants led by Shehab al-Qaddur (Abu Hurayra), a Lebanese who spent most of his life undercover, after being arrested by the Syrians in Tripoli in 1986 when he was 14.

From the outset Fatah al-Islam was supported by the jihadist representative at Ain al-Hilweh, with the assurance of al-Qaida funding. Meanwhile some of its members received training from the military leader of the Jund al-Sham group, also located at the camp. This organisation was started in Afghanistan in 1999 by jihadists from the countries of al-sham (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan) and adopted a radical stance...

In July 2006 the 33-day war between Israel and Hizbullah erupted. The jihadist groups took advantage of the confusion to extend their influence...At the end of 2006 Ahmad Tuwaijiri, a senior Saudi al-Qaida member, arrived in Lebanon...Funding flowed in, with public and private donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait offered by prosperous businessmen who want to help the jihad....

However, as the political crisis in Lebanon grinds on, prompting all the factions to arm and train their combatants, al-Qaida may be able to lurk in the shadow of the largest Sunni group, the Future Movement, which is hiring combatants under the cover of private security companies. Hariri’s organisation has so far assembled about 2,400 militia and plans to recruit 14,000 more in northern Lebanon alone. But the siege of Nahr al-Bared convinced part of Lebanon’s Sunni elite that an alliance with al-Qaida came at too high a price..."