Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Published Date: May 30, 2007

TRIPOLI: The specter of Al-Qaeda is looming large over Lebanon as the army battles a shadowy band of Islamist fighters inspired by the ideology of Osama bin Laden’s terror network. “If there is no quick political solution which brings an end to the siege of Nahr Al-Bared… the combatants of Al-Qaeda will be flowing into Lebanon,” warned Omar Bakri Mohammed, an Islamist preacher who was barred from Britain two years ago for his radical views. Lebanon’s embattled government has vowed to wipe out Fatah Al-Islam, a group of Sunni Muslim extremists entrenched in Nahr Al-Bared, a squalid Palestinian refugee camp battered by the bloodiest internal feuding since the civil war.

Close to 80 people have been killed since gunbattles erupted around the camp and in the nearby Mediterranean port city of Tripoli on May 20, rattling the security of a country riven by sectarian and political tensions. In Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city and the traditional bastion of Sunni Muslim fundamentalists, there are fears that a prolonged showdown would stir the sympathy of local Islamists and lure in foreign Al-Qaeda militants.

“Fatah Al-Islam has succeeded in creating ties with the city’s Salafist movements,” said the Syrian-born Bakri, who had praised the Al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States as the “magnificent 19.” However, backing for the government in its fight against what Prime Minister Fuad Saniora has called the “terrorist phenomenon” of Fatah Al-Islam is evident on every street corner in Tripoli.

“We all want the army to eradicate the terrorist octopus,” declared one banner. “Those who sympathize with Fatah Al-Islam want to give the city to Al-Qaeda,” read another banner at the foot of Abu Samra hill, a stronghold of fundamentalists who follow the hardline Salafist doctrine. Political analyst Mayez Adhami warned of the potential danger of Al-Qaeda setting up shop in Lebanon and said the army had no other choice but to crush Fatah Al-Islam. “The army has showed strength in order not to demoralize the people, but while clearing the air in northern Lebanon, we have to watch out it does not spread to other parts of Lebanon,” he said.

Fatah Al-Islam first emerged in Nahr Al-Bared in November after its Palestinian leader Shaker Abssi slipped into Lebanon after serving three years in jail in neighboring Syria. The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian majority, accuses the group of links to intelligence services in Damascus, allegations denied by Syria which says a number of Fatah Al-Islam militants are on its wanted list. “There are two currents within Fatah al-Islam, and the one that is linked to Al-Qaeda is taking over,” warned Bakri.

He said Al-Qaeda-linked fighters were behind several bomb attacks in Beirut and a mountain resort outside the capital. “It is the one that has carried out the attacks in Beirut and the region of Aley,” he said, referring to bombings in and around the capital since the clashes in the north began on May 20. Bakri said that when the gunbattles first erupted between Fatah Al-Islam and Lebanese troops, Shaker Abssi had called his deputy Bilal Dokmak to ask him to mediate to stop the bloodshed.

And in Tripoli at least, calm has been restored, with Nahr Al-Bared the epicenter of the fighting. Schools and universities which had been closed for a week reopened on Monday, and residents chatted with soldiers guarding the numerous checkpoints. “The city seems to be out of danger now. The fundamentalists have been neutralized,” Ossama, a lawyer, told AFP as youths sat in a coffee house near the port drinking beer-a rare sight in the Sunni conservative city.