High cost of militancy for Lebanon’s poor

High cost of militancy for Lebanon’s poor
By Andrew England

Published: June 8 2007 20:15 | Last updated: June 8 2007 20:15

Across narrow streets, scruffy apartment blocks face each other with clothes hanging over balconies and washing lines. Below, traders run market stalls and small shops, while young men idle away the hours around café tables.

The scene in Bab al-Tabbene speaks of poverty and neglect; and the neighbourhood is one of the poorest in the once prosperous northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

But it is not just the poverty that catches the eye. Fluttering from many apartments are Lebanese flags, representing the area’s strong support for the Sunni-dominated Future Movement, which is at the heart of the majority alliance in parliament. Alongside those are black Islamist flags with the message: “There is no God but God” and “Mohammed is the Prophet”.

In many ways the three elements – economic hardship, Sunni sentiment and the outward display of Islamism – help describe the climate in Tripoli, where the militant Fatah al-Islam group has been able to establish cells. Although the main fighting between the group and the Lebanese army has been in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, Fatah al-Islam’s base north of the city, the first clashes began after security forces disrupted a cell in Tripoli. Government officials say Fatah al-Islam was planning to expand in the city and other parts of northern Lebanon.

At least two of the militants killed in the early clashes were from Bab al-Tabbene, sons of poor, religious families, residents say.

How much actual support exists for Fatah al-Islam in Tripoli is impossible to gauge, but a number of Lebanese Salafists joined the group’s ranks.

“Some people sympathise with Fatah al-Islam, some are against Fatah al-Islam,” says Bassem, a shopkeeper. When the fighting started, some residents were seen cheering soldiers as they tackled the militants, and Bassem says the majority of people support the army.

But for some the clashes have raised mixed emotions.

“The bloody fighting is a further loss because those who fell from the Lebanese army are our sons and the majority of those who were killed are from the north,” says Sheikh Hassan al-Chahhal, a local imam. “And those who were killed from Fatah al-Islam are also Sunnis so they should not have died here. This is no place for jihad.”

The place for jihad is Palestine or Iraq, he says. They are areas where Fatah al-Islam has claimed it wanted to fight.

Bassem witnessed three funerals in a matter of days in Bab al-Tabbene – two for the Fatah al-Islam fighters, and one for a bearded man shot by security forces in the neighbourhood in unclear circumstances. Condolence notices for the latter are plastered on walls.

Bassem and others say there has been a growth in radicalism in the city, in part because the more extreme preachers and groups seem to have more cash, but also because of regional and domestic issues.

“The majority of those who follow those extremists are poor, but poverty itself is not the [reason],” Bassem says.

In the past, Muslims in Tripoli tended to look to clerics and scholars from Egypt’s al-Azhar University for religious guidance. But after Cairo agreed to peace with Israel, the influence of the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia grew, residents and officials say.

There has also been a tendency by Tripoli’s Sunnis to view themselves as part of the wider regional Sunni community, in part because of their geographical location. Older citizens remember when Tripoli was a trading centre for the Middle East, with traders arriving from Iraq, Turkey and Syria, even Iran.

The outbreak of civil war in 1975 and the subsequent Syrian occupation destroyed the city’s economic status, but the sense of being part of the regional Sunni community still exists.

When the war in Iraq erupted, many Sunnis from Lebanon’s north sympathised with the Sunnis of that country. A government official estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 Lebanese headed to fight in Iraq in 2003.

The feelings of affiliation appear not to have died, even if the numbers of Lebanese going to Iraq has re­duced. A billboard in Tripoli displays two pictures of Saddam Hussein – one with him firing a rocket-propelled grenade – describing him as a martyr. “You will remain in the consciousness of the noble and free,” it says.

Those factors, exacerbated by the political stand-off between the Sunni-led parliamentary majority and the opposition, led by Hizbollah, the Shia movement, have created a greater feeling of Sunni sentiment, residents say.

Still, officials play down the city’s Islamist reputation. “The issue of Fatah al-Islam and the presence of some of these cells in Tripoli is something really not related in any way to the culture or traditions of this city,” says Rachid Jamali, Tripoli’s mayor.

“There are quite a lot of Islamic groups in Tripoli but none of them are fanatics or extremists.”

Yet in Bab al-Tabbene the mood is gloomy.

“The problem here in this country is when a boy gets older there’s no work, he has no future in front of him,” says Mohammed Zahra. “When a boy grows he becomes very bad or he becomes very religious.”

He knew one of the Fatah al-Islam fighters killed. “I thought he was an ordinary guy but when I found out he was Fatah al-Islam I did not know what to say any more,” he says.

Two Lebanese soldiers killed also came from the area, he adds.

“People are sad about what is happening and want to live their lives,” he says. “There are always problems, there are always new things.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007