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ISLAMIST GROUPS IN LEBANON
Gary
C. Gambill*
The article examines the evolution of three
distinct poles of Islamism in Lebanon and how they have adapted to
changes in local political and security conditions over the past
three decades.
Although Lebanon's ethno-sectarian demography is
manifestly unsuitable for the establishment of an Islamic state, the
salience of militant Islamist movements in this tiny Mediterranean
country has few parallels. Above and beyond the regional conditions
fueling Islamic revivalism, Lebanon's weak state, acute
socioeconomic and political inequities, and experience of pervasive
external intervention converged to create an unusually permissive
environment for Islamists. Under these circumstances, radical
Islamism has become a powerful instrument of communitarian social
mobilization and an effective vehicle for drawing resources from the
outside world.
BACKGROUND
The modern state of Lebanon is a unique amalgam of
18 officially recognized religious sects, the product of over a
millennium of immigration by Christians and heterodox Muslims from
the surrounding Sunni Islamic world and deliberate colonial border
demarcation following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Political
offices in Lebanon have been distributed among its sectarian
communities by fixed quotas. Under the terms of the 1943 National
Pact, the presidency is reserved for Maronite Christians, the office
of prime minister for Sunni Muslims, and the office of parliament
speaker for Shi'a Muslims. Parliament seats were divided among
Christian and Muslim sects by a 6:5 ratio until 1989, then evenly
afterwards. In addition, the Lebanese constitution and subsequent
laws grant the religious establishment of each sectarian community
authority over matters pertaining to personal status (e.g. marriage,
divorce, child custody, and inheritance).
Lebanon's sectarian system (al-nizam
al-ta'ifiyya) proved to be an effective barrier against the
rise of an authoritarian state (which, in the Arab world, invariably
entails the monopolization of power by one ethno-sectarian group),
but it also reified patron-client relationships within the
country's confessional communities and inhibited the growth of a
common national identity. This paved the way for outside
intervention from multiple quarters, the breakdown of the state, a
long civil war, and an internationally sanctioned Syrian occupation.
These crisis conditions have heavily shaped the evolution of radical
Islamist groups.
While any explicit taxonomy of actors in the highly
idiosyncratic and fluid sociopolitical environment of modern Lebanon
is necessarily imprecise, three poles of Islamic fundamentalism are
readily discernable. Shi'a Islamism in Lebanon has evolved along one
broad institutionalized trajectory under the guidance of clerics, a
distinct hallmark reflecting the exalted spiritual status of the
ulama (religious scholars) in Shi'a Islam and the
communitarian solidarity of Lebanese Shi'as. Sunni Islamism in
Lebanon has been much more fluid and fragmented, with two distinct
ideological currents--political Islamism and Salafism.
SHI'A ISLAMISM IN LEBANON
The emergence of radical Islamism among Lebanese
Shi'as is rooted in the community's longstanding political and
socioeconomic deprivation.[1]
Despite constituting the country's largest single
sectarian group, Shi'as were awarded the third-largest share of
parliamentary seats in Lebanon's First Republic and barred from the
two highest government offices. Moreover, Shi'a political
representation was dominated by feudal landlords who had little
interest in the socioeconomic advancement of their constituents.
By the mid-1970s, Shi'a parochial allegiances were
steadily eroding as a result of rising education levels, the influx
of new wealth from Shi'a emigrants, and rapid urbanization owing to
state neglect of the agricultural sector and increasingly
destructive Israeli reprisals against the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) in south Lebanon.[2] Most politicized Shi'as gravitated
toward leftist or Arab nationalist parties that challenged the
legitimacy of Lebanon's confessional power-sharing system until the
late 1960s, when Sayyid Musa al-Sadr's Harakat al-Mahrumin (Movement
of the Deprived) emerged as a moderate force focused on advancing
Shi'a communal interests within the Lebanese system. Although Sadr
was committed to the peaceful pursuit of modest social, economic,
and political change, his movement's religious idiom resonated
deeply. Whereas Sunni theology is centered on the prerogatives of
rulers, Shi'ism is imbued with the ethos of resistance to tyranny
and oppression.
Revolutionary Shi'a Islamism emerged as a third
pole of identification after the outbreak of civil war in 1975,
espoused by a younger generation of clerics who were radicalized
during their studies in the Shi'a seminaries of Ba'thist Iraq. The
most prominent, Sayyid Husayn Fadlallah, called for the impoverished
and dispossessed Shi'as of Lebanon to take up arms not in defense of
their class or sect (as the Amal militia of Sadr's successor, Nabih
Berri, claimed to do), but in defense of the Islamic faith,[3] a seemingly quixotic vision that
suddenly gained credibility after the 1979 revolution in Shi'a Iran.
Following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, contingents of Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) entered the
Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley of eastern Lebanon with plentiful
cash, weapons, and a proven model for revolutionary action.
Although Fadlallah maintained his independence (and
later came to dismiss publicly the religious qualifications of
Iran's clerical leadership),[4] a host of younger and lesser-known
Lebanese clerics in the Beqaa readily accepted Iranian patronage,
most notably Subhi al-Tufayli and Abbas al-Musawi. Loosely organized
under the name Hizballah (Party of God), they embraced Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini's doctrine of wilayet al-faqih (the
theological basis for clerical rule enshrined in Iran's
constitution) and formally vowed to establish an Islamic Republic in
Lebanon (to this day, Hizballah's flag bears the inscription "the
Islamic Revolution in Lebanon") through peaceful means. In practice,
however, this aspiration has always been subordinate to the pursuit
of armed struggle against Israeli and Western "oppressors." While
few Lebanese Shi'as harbored the kind of deep historical grievances
against Israel and the West felt by most Sunni Arabs, they had born
the brunt of the Israeli invasion and feared that the entry of an
American and European multi-national force (MNF) into Beirut months
later would empower Lebanon's governing alliance of Christian
Phalangists and Sunni Beiruti notables at their expense.
From the spring of 1983 to the summer of 1985,
underground Lebanese Shi'a terrorist cells linked to Hizballah (or,
more precisely, spawned by the same Iranian patronage network)
carried out a spectacular wave of suicide bombings against Western
and Israeli military and diplomatic targets that resulted in the
withdrawal of the MNF and the redeployment of the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) to a thin "security zone" in the south. The June 1985
hijacking of TWA Flight 847 by Shi'a Islamists forced Israel to
release over 700 Lebanese and Palestinian detainees captured during
the war. These astonishing successes salved the Lebanese Shi'a
community's intense feelings of victimization and demonstrated that
religious devotion could compensate for its material weaknesses.[5] For a minority sect traditionally
viewed with disdain by religious Sunnis and distrust by Arab
nationalists, it also brought a powerful dose of collective
vindication.
For all of its relentless violence against the West
and Israel, Hizballah rarely engaged in the kind of indiscriminate
bloodletting characteristic of other wartime militias (a "purity of
arms" that remains integral to its public image in Lebanon today).
Shi'a suicide bombings against Western peacekeepers and diplomats,
while abhorrent, "achieved pinpoint precision--an unusual technique
for Beirut, where exploding cars usually killed indiscriminately,"
notes Martin Kramer.[6] Similarly, Hizballah's kidnapping
of dozens of Western nationals contrasted sharply with the thousands
of indiscriminate abductions and summary executions perpetrated by
other militias during the war. At any rate, Hizballah gradually
phased out such methods as it built its conventional military
strength and developed a formal leadership structure.[7]
As Hizballah racked up victories against foreign
"oppressors," Iranian funding enabled it to build a vast network of
schools, hospitals, and other social welfare institutions. By the
latter half of the decade, Shi'a living standards in areas of the
Beqaa and southern Beirut under its control were higher in most
respects than they were before the war. This combination of
"resistance" and relief has remained central to Hizballah's popular
appeal.
Notwithstanding the strategic alliance that emerged
between Tehran and Damascus in the 1980s, Hizballah bitterly fought
the Syrians[8] and their local proxies at times
(particularly the rival Shi'a Amal militia), in part because it
recognized that Syrian hegemony would constrain its freedom of
action in fighting Israel and restore Lebanon's antebellum
power-sharing system.[9] After Syrian forces completed their
conquest of Lebanon in October 1990, however, Hizballah accepted the
legitimacy of Lebanon's Second Republic in return for a virtually
exclusive right to organize "resistance" to the IDF in south Lebanon
(other Lebanese and Palestinian groups were allowed only subordinate
token participation).[10]
Massive Iranian arms shipments, airlifted to
Damascus and driven overland to the Beqaa, enabled the organization
to build one of the best-equipped paramilitary forces in the world.
Following the 1992 ascension of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah,
Hizballah introduced a much more rigorous level of training,
sophisticated new tactics, and a sweeping reorientation from
religious to nationalist discourse more acceptable to the broader
Lebanese public (and the Syrians). Although the ebb and flow of its
operations were carefully regulated by Damascus in accordance with
the climate of Syrian relations with Israel, Hizballah was clearly
in charge of the campaign and reaped the political benefits of its
success.
In return for these prerogatives, Hizballah
accepted a postwar political order that perpetuated Shi'a
deprivation.[11] While the 1989 Taif Accord
transferred the lion's share of executive power from the Christian
presidency to the Sunni premiership, Shi'as received only a slight
strengthening of the parliamentary speakership and a marginal
increase in parliamentary representation. Moreover, the Syrians
prohibited Hizballah from freely competing for this meager allotment
of seats, forcing it to form electoral coalitions with Amal and
other favored (and therefore unpopular) Syrian clients.[12]
In addition, Hizballah was obliged to live with
socio-economic policies that privileged the postwar commercial
elite. The unregulated influx of unskilled Syrian workers into
Lebanon (critical both to Damascus and to the Lebanese construction
tycoons who made fortunes rebuilding the country) pushed the
predominantly Shi'a urban poor out of the workforce,[13] while Syrian produce smugglers
and government neglect of the countryside drove destitute Shi'a
farmers into bankruptcy.[14] Income inequality steadily
increased[15] as the late Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafiq Hariri cut income and corporate taxes to a flat ten
percent, while raising indirect taxes (e.g. gasoline) on the public
at large, slashing social expenditures, and freezing public sector
wages.
Ironically, these inequities strengthened
Hizballah by perpetuating the Shi'a community's dependence on its
social welfare institutions and discrediting rival political forces.
By excluding itself from government and delivering both resistance
and social services with amazing efficiency, Hizballah projected an
image of incorruptibility that contrasted starkly with the legendary
excesses of the governing elite. This was critical to its success in
raising funds from the Lebanese Shi'a diaspora, both through
donations and through a variety of illicit enterprises (e.g. the
blood diamond trade in West Africa, cigarette smuggling, and
audiovisual bootlegging in the Americas) that required its
supporters to take great risks.[16] By the end of the 1990s,
Hizballah's own financial resources substantially exceeded its
handouts from Iran.
As Hizballah recast itself as a national liberation
movement, it effectively abandoned the pursuit of an Islamic state
in Lebanon.[17] Although Hizballah leaders called
for ending the political system organized along the lines of
religious community (a step which arguably could pave the way for an
Islamic state down the road by first enshrining majority rule), they
displayed far less inclination to root out "un-Islamic" influences
in Lebanese society than even the most mainstream Sunni clerics (see
below).[18]
While Hizballah's "Lebanonization" (and Nasrallah's
Clintonesque public statements)[19] led many outside observers to
predict that it would promptly lay down its arms and become a
"normal" political party once Israeli troops withdrew from south
Lebanon,[20] such forecasts failed to
recognize that these choices revealed little about the underlying
intentions of Hizballah leaders--beyond a concern with attracting as
large a popular base of support as possible within the Shi'a
community and Lebanon as a whole. Since religiosity has not been a
primary determinant of Shi'a popular support for Hizballah (as shown
by Judith Palmer Harik's survey of Shi'a public opinion at the end
of the civil war),[21] secular discourse was favored to
win non-Shi'a support. Since the goal of "national liberation"
garnered broader appeal than other rationales for fighting Israel,
nationalist discourse was favored.
While the expectation that pursuit of Shi'a
political hegemony would lead Hizballah to "normalize" seemed
plausible to many, it presupposed a "normal" Lebanese public sphere
in which government policies derive from a competitive political
process (democratic or not). Nothing of the sort existed in
Syrian-occupied Lebanon, where the main parameters of foreign and
domestic policy were inviolable (especially with respect to Shi'a
empowerment).[22] Consequently, giving up the
enormous reputational benefits derived from projecting itself as the
vanguard of the Arab-Islamic struggle against Zionism would have
condemned Hizballah to political oblivion.
This is not to say that Nasrallah would have rushed
to convert swords into ploughshares after Israel's May 2000
withdrawal had the system been receptive to Shi'a empowerment, but
lack of opportunities to effect domestic change made it easier for
him to ignore normalization advocates within both Hizballah
(particularly its parliamentary bloc) and the Shi'a community at
large.[23] Most Shi'as see the "resistance"
as a form of compensation for their political and economic
deprivation and a critical instrument of communal leverage. They
will not be willing to fully discard it until Shi'as are given pride
of place alongside Sunnis and Christians in setting the political
and economic parameters of state policy.
The outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September
2000 provided a conducive strategic climate for continued
"resistance," as Israel was too preoccupied with Palestinian
violence on its doorstep to undertake a major military campaign in
Lebanon. After resuming sporadic cross-border attacks against
Israeli forces in the fall of 2000, Hizballah steadily expanded its
rocket arsenal (further deterring a major Israeli incursion) and
played a more direct role in financing, training, and equipping
Palestinian terrorists (ensuring that the violence in the West Bank
and Gaza didn't recede sufficiently for Israel to risk a war in
Lebanon). Hizballah's television station, al-Manar, began
broadcasting by satellite and introduced a tidal wave of new
programming intended to incite violence against Israel.[24] Although Nasrallah repeatedly
insisted that Hizballah would not stand in the way of a peace
settlement acceptable to the Palestinian people,[25] his slippery disclaimers implied
a virtually unreachable threshold of consensus.
Although the withdrawal of Israeli forces from
south Lebanon led to a spike in public admiration for Hizballah, the
recession of this external threat also gave others in the Shi'a
community more freedom to assert themselves. The outwardly amicable
relationship between Nasrallah and Fadlallah grew more contentious
and occasionally erupted into public acrimony,[26] while recurrent clashes between
members of Hizballah and Amal sent dozens to the hospital (and a few
to the morgue).
However, as mounting pressure on Syria to withdraw
from Lebanon merged seamlessly into pressure for the disarmament of
Hizballah, the Shi'a community rallied behind Nasrallah. Whatever
misgivings they may have had about Hizballah, the vast majority of
Lebanese Shi'as remained unwilling to entrust their security to the
state and fearful of being marginalized after disarmament. In light
of the Lebanese army's brutal slaying of five unarmed Shi'as who
were protesting fuel price increases in May 2004, it's not difficult
to understand why.
SUNNI ISLAMISM IN LEBANON
While Sunni Islamism in Lebanon evolved against the
same backdrop of "macro" crisis conditions (e.g. Maronite Christian
political hegemony, the collapse of the state, pervasive foreign
intervention), it derives from a different theological tradition and
has been heavily conditioned by the historical experience of Sunnis
in Lebanon.
In contrast to Shi'a ulama, Sunni clerics in
Lebanon (and elsewhere) have historically been little more than
"religious functionaries" of the state,[27] more often than not finding
themselves in opposition to Islamist movements. Consequently, Sunni
Islamism has been less institutionalized and highly diffuse.
In sharp contrast to Shi'as, Lebanese Sunnis have
been overwhelmingly urban since the establishment of Lebanon
(concentrated in the northern port of Tripoli, the southern port of
Sidon, and Beirut) and occupy no broad swathes of geographically
contiguous territory. They are also unique among Lebanon's major
sectarian communities in not having developed a minoritarian
outlook. Whereas Shi'as, Maronites and Druze have traditionally seen
themselves as islands in a vast Sunni Islamic sea, Lebanese Sunnis
were part of that sea until the fall of the Ottoman Empire and
deeply resented their absorption into a Greater Lebanon in the early
1920s (Shi'as were much more ambivalent). All of this makes them
highly receptive to a multiplicity of influences from the
surrounding Arab world.
While the Sunni elites who agreed to the 1943
National Pact had concrete interests in common with their Christian
counterparts that were best preserved in an independent Lebanon
(evident in the subsequent domination of Sunni politics by a very
small number of prominent families),[28] the formation of Lebanon hurt the
interests of most Sunnis. Tripoli, once equal in economic weight to
Beirut, was cut off from its traditional trade relations with the
Syrian interior and declined in relative prosperity (which is one
reason why all major currents of Lebanese Sunni Islamism have been
centered in the city), as did Sidon after its trade routes to
Palestine were cut in 1948. While socioeconomic deprivation has
served to unite the Shi'a community, it has been a source of
division among Sunnis.
Adding to the diffuse nature of Sunni Islamism in
Lebanon is its development along two distinct doctrinal
axes--political Islamism, as embodied by the Muslim Brotherhood and
its offshoots, and Salafi Islamism--neither of which has found a
charismatic leader on par with Nasrallah or a state sponsor wholly
committed to its propagation.
The Political
Islamists
In spite of the Sunni notability's acceptance of
the 1943 National Pact, the first decade of Lebanon's independence
witnessed a number of Sunni religious movements publicly embracing
the idea of an Islamic state, most notably Ibad al-Rahman
(Worshipers of the Merciful). However, the 1964 establishment of the
Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, known as al-Jama'a
al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Association), marked a watershed in
several respects. Led by Tripoli natives Fathi Yakan and Faysal
Mawlawi, al-Jama'a saw the pursuit of an Islamic state as a viable
(if long-term and incremental) political project and a counter to
the burgeoning appeal of secular Arab nationalism as the ideology of
choice for disaffected young Sunnis.
Al-Jama'a was fiercely opposed to both Sunni
political elites and the Sunni religious establishment, known as Dar
al-Fatwa. Although Dar al-Fatwa administered a vast network of
mosques, schools, civil courts, and other social institutions,
politicians exerted enormous influence over it by manipulating the
(predominantly non-clerical) electoral college that selects the
Sunni grand mufti, who in turn controls subordinate appointments.
This was especially intolerable to Yakan and Mawlawi, because it
contrasted so sharply with the Maronite church (as they saw it)--a
religious establishment that not only doesn't answer to political
elites, but has the moral authority and social "imbeddedness" to
exert influence over them. Al-Jama'a began building its own network
of schools and charities to compete with those of Dar al-Fatwa (and
with the Maqasid Foundation, a charitable network then controlled by
the Salam family).
The outbreak of civil war and the breakdown of the
state effectively severed the political elite's hold over Dar
al-Fatwa, creating a free for all in which prominent Sunni clerics
fell under the influence of whichever armed forces were ascendant.[29] Although al-Jama'a fielded a
modest militia that fought alongside Palestinian and Lebanese
leftist groups against Christian forces early in the war, it became
fragmented as the fault lines of the war shifted. In 1976, Syrian
military forces entered Lebanon to stave off the defeat of the
Christians, an intervention seen by most radical Sunni Islamists in
both countries as a nefarious power play by Alawites (the heterodox
Islamic minority sect that dominates Syria's Ba'thist regime) to
subvert Sunni influence. However, while Sunni Islamists in Sidon
largely acquiesced to Syria's tightening grip over most of the
country, a host of radical splinters of al-Jama'a sprouted up in and
around Tripoli to combat Syrian-backed militia forces, most notably
Ismat Murad's Harakat Lubnan al-Arabi (Arab Lebanon Movement),
Kana'an Naji's Jundallah (Soldiers of God), and Khalil Akkawi's
al-Muqawama al-Sha'biyya (Popular Resistance). In 1982, these
factions formed Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami (the Islamic Unification
Movement, IUM) under the leadership of the charismatic preacher Said
Sha'ban (who famously lamented that Lebanese Christians would have
emigrated to Cyprus or Latin America had the Syrians not
intervened).[30]
Taking advantage of Syria's weakness in the
aftermath of Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Tawhid forces (swelled by
an influx of Syrian Islamists who escaped the Asad regime's
apocalyptic showdown with the Muslim Brotherhood) seized control
over much of Tripoli and forged an alliance with the PLO. For two
years, they imposed Islamic law at gunpoint in neighborhoods they
controlled (e.g. banning alcohol and forcing women to veil) and
executed dozens of political opponents (mostly Communists). The
shrinking of Tripoli's Christian minority from 20 percent of the
population before the war to five percent today was largely the
result of this brief interlude.[31]
In the autumn of 1985, Syrian forces swept into the
city and brought Tawhid's mini-state to an end. Sha'ban's close
relations with Iran and recognition of Syria's resolve ("Tripoli is
not dearer to us than Hama," Vice-President Abd al-Halim Khaddam
reportedly told him at the time, referring to the Syrian city razed
by his government a few years earlier)[32] led him to reach an accommodation
with Damascus, but other Tawhid "emirs" fought on until they were
physically eliminated (e.g. Akkawi) or captured (e.g. Minqara and
hundreds of others).
Although armed Sunni Islamist resistance to Syrian
forces in Lebanon disappeared after 1986, the Syrians took no
chances, brutally eliminating Sunni public figures who expressed
even the faintest hint of anti-Syrian dissent.[33] While a large majority of
Lebanese Sunnis opposed Lebanon's separation from Syria in the
1920s, at the end of the civil war just three percent favored
unification.[34]
In conjunction with its suppression of radical
Sunni Islamists, Syria supported the growth of a hitherto obscure
movement known as al-Ahbash. Founded by Shaykh Abdallah al-Hirari,
an Islamic scholar of East African origins (al-Ahbash literally
means "the Ethiopians") who immigrated to Lebanon in 1950, the
movement blended Sunni and Shi'a theology with Sufi spiritualism
into a doctrinal eclecticism that preached nonviolence and political
quietism.[35] However, the institutional arm of
the movement, Jam'iyyat al- Mashari al-Khayriyya al-Islamiyya
(Association of the Islamic Philanthropic Projects), underwent a
bizarre metamorphosis as Damascus expanded its grip on the country,
forcibly seizing control over prominent mosques and hiring
ex-members of the defunct Sunni Murabitun militia to defend them.
After Syria completed its conquest of Lebanon in 1990, al-Ahbash
grew into the country's largest Sunni religious organization. By the
middle of the decade, al-Ahbash leader Nizar al-Halabi was
reportedly being groomed by the Syrians to become grand mufti.
Sunni preachers had to contend with very
restrictive Syrian "red lines" if they wished to play any part in
Lebanese public life during the occupation. Religious mobilization
on political issues was permissible only if the target of opprobrium
was Israel, moderate Arab regimes, or Lebanese critics of the Syrian
occupation--particularly for those who held official positions in
Dar al-Fatwa. The Union of Akkar Ulama became a virtual mouthpiece
of Syrian intelligence, known for its inflammatory denunciations of
those who criticized the Syrian occupation.[36] Even Grand Mufti Muhammad Rashid
Qabbani routinely offered obsequious praise of the Syrians.[37]
Al-Jama'a and Tawhid courted the Syrians in hopes
of gaining influence in government, but the payoffs of their
cooperation were meager to begin with and steadily diminished as
Syria consolidated its control over Lebanon. Al-Jama'a participated
in the heavily Syrian-orchestrated electoral process and saw three
of its candidates elected in 1992 (Yakan and Asad Harmush in north
Lebanon, Zuhayr al-Ubaydi in Beirut), but this dropped to one in
1996 and none in 2000. After al-Tawhid experienced a resurgence in
the late 1990s, the Syrians released Minqara from prison in a
transparent (and successful) attempt to splinter the movement ahead
of the 2000 elections.
A critical element of Syria's campaign to defuse
Sunni militancy was its support for Hariri's ambitious drive to
break the political power of traditional Beirut Sunni families. The
prime minister's well-funded electoral machine replaced the scions
of these families with colorless businessmen interested only in
reaping as big a windfall as possible from the country's
reconstruction. After the 1996 elections, Hariri passed
controversial legislation removing most sitting ulama from the
electoral college that appoints the grand mufti, increasing the
subordination of Dar al-Fatwa to the governing elite even further.
By eliminating political pluralism within the Sunni community, the
Syrians ensured that political Islamists would find few receptive
allies within government.
Denied the freedom to criticize substantive aspects
of governance, mainstream Sunni clerics and Islamists alike crusaded
against un-Islamic cultural influences in Lebanon. In sharp contrast
to Hizballah, the political platform of al-Jama'a in the 1998
municipal elections (where the absence of fixed sectarian quotas
obviates the need to attract non-Muslim voters) called for banning
alcohol, horse racing, and other immoralities (an effective pitch
that netted one third of the seats in Sidon and Tripoli).[38] Dar al-Fatwa crusaded against
books, films, and music ostensibly offensive to Islam. Qabbani was
largely responsible for the 1999 indictment on blasphemy charges of
Lebanese Christian singer Marcel Khalife (who was publicly defended
by Fadlallah and most other top Shi'a clerics).[39]
By heavily curtailing the ability of political
Islamists to exert influence in national government and indirectly
encouraging clerical assaults on secularism and non-Islamic culture,
the Syrians unwittingly facilitated the expansion of a more deeply
puritanical strand of Sunni Islamism.
The Salafists
Salafism is a puritanical Sunni current that seeks
to emulate the "righteous ancestors" (al-salaf al-salih) of
early Islamic history and to purge the faith of fallacious
innovations (bid'a). While most Salafists pursue this goal
non-violently through missionary and educational activity, others
(commonly dubbed Salafi-jihadists) embrace violence to achieve its
aims. "Both have the same objective… to convert society into an
Islamic society," explains Lebanese journalist Hazim al-Amin, but
"vary in the method of achieving it."[40] The Salafi current in Tripoli,
founded by Shaykh Salim al-Shahal in the mid-1970s, largely confined
itself to religious education and charity work for two decades.
In sharp contrast to the political Islamist
currents, Salafists and Salafi-jihadists are largely apolitical. The
former eschew involvement in local politics so as to maintain the
freedom to disseminate their message to the people with minimal
interference from the state, while the latter do so to maintain
freedom of action in fighting the enemies of Islam abroad. Both
abjure any national identity, claiming allegiance to the universal
community of Muslim believers (umma).
A second distinguishing feature of Salafi currents
is intolerance of heterodox Muslims. Although Tawhid's aggressive
imposition of Islamic law in Tripoli may have appealed to Salafists,
Shahal viewed Sha'ban's close relations with Iran (and, later on,
with Syria) as an abomination.
A third important characteristic of the Salafi
current in Lebanon is the prominent role of preachers who studied
theology in Saudi Arabia, where the ultra-orthodox Wahhabi sect
dominates. Salim al-Shahal had very close ties with the late head of
Saudi Arabia's Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (and future grand
mufti), Shaykh Abd al-Aziz ibn Abdallah ibn Baz, who arranged for
hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian students to enroll in Islamic
studies programs at Saudi universities during the civil war
(including Shahal's son, Dai al-Islam). Fueled by funding from
wealthy Saudi donors (and enjoying a measure of immunity from state
interference because of close Syrian-Saudi relations), the Salafi
current quietly established a strong social foundation in Tripoli
and in the nearby Baddawi and Nahr al-Barid Palestinian refugee
camps during the early 1990s.[41]
However, the emergence of the Salafi-jihadist
current in Lebanon began not in the north, but in the Palestinian
refugee camp of Ayn al-Hilwah, on the outskirts of the southern
Lebanese port of Sidon. Until the early 1990s, Islamist currents in
the camp were predominantly Iranian-backed and operated in
conjunction with Hizballah, prime among them an armed network known
as Ansarallah (Partisans of God), established by Hisham Shraydi.
After Shraydi was assassinated in 1991, his successor, Abd al-Karim
al-Saadi (aka Abu Muhjin), initiated a sweeping reorientation in the
group's religious identification and renamed it Asbat al-Ansar
(League of Partisans).
This transformation was partly due to the fact that
the Syrians severely curtailed Palestinian attacks against the
Israelis from Lebanese soil after 1990 (so as to portray the
violence in south Lebanon as strictly Lebanese national resistance)
and effectively banned operations by Sunni Islamists, whether
Palestinian or Lebanese (for fear that battle-hardened Sunni
jihadists might one day turn their guns on Damascus). The fact that
the Syrians pulled out all the stops in inflaming Sunni hatred
toward Israel, while allowing only Shi'as the privilege of actually
fighting the Jewish state, created enormous anti-Shi'a
resentment.
In order to mobilize Islamists in Ayn al-Hilwah,
Shraydi's successors were forced to find an alternative form of
identification that deemphasized the struggle to regain Palestine.
As Bernard Rougier explains, "they put an end to Iranian tutelage
for reasons of sectarian incompatibility and reoriented the group's
operations far from the Lebanese-Israeli border," while "stamping it
with a salafist character it did not originally have."[42] Toward this end, in 1994 Asbat
al-Ansar invited Shahal's charitable group, Jam'iyyat al-Hidaya
wal-Ihsan(Association for Guidance and Charity), to teach
religious classes in the camp, effectively imbuing the group with a
theological validation of its stances.
The following year, in a fairly self-evident bid to
attract broader Sunni support in Lebanon, Asbat al-Ansar
assassinated Ahbash leader Nizar al-Halabi. Although there is no
evidence that Salafi leaders in Tripoli were informed of the
audacious killing, this hardly mattered in view of their constant
denunciations of the Ahbash over the years. In the weeks that
followed, the Lebanese authorities arrested scores of Sunni
fundamentalists in north Lebanon on charges of plotting terrorist
attacks (most of them subsequently released after robust
interrogation), banned Shahal's charity, and charged eight Salafists
(including two members of the Shahal family) with publishing
seditious material.[43]
The heavy-handed Syrian response to the killing of
Halabi--culminating in the gruesome public execution of his
assassins in 1997--only served to further radicalize Lebanese
Salafists and inspire them to follow Asbat's example. In 1998, a
Lebanese veteran of the Afghan war, Basam Ahmad al-Kanj (aka Abu
Aisha), arrived in Tripoli and began recruiting disaffected Lebanese
(and some non-Lebanese Arab) Sunnis into a guerrilla force in the
mountainous Dinniyeh region east of the city. On New Year's Eve
1999, a group of the militants ambushed a Lebanese army patrol that
had been sent to investigate, touching off six days of fighting that
left 11 soldiers and 20 rebels dead. Around 15 of the Dinniyeh
militants managed to escape by boat and take refuge in Ayn
al-Hilwah.
Although officials in Beirut accused Asbat and the
Dinniyeh militants of seeking to establish an Islamic state, there
is little evidence that either entertained such ambitions. Asbat
al-Ansar focused its resources on consolidating its enclaves in Ayn
al-Hilwah against encroachments by Fatah and training militants to
fight abroad (mostly in Chechnya). Apart from its murder of four
Lebanese judges in 1999 (in retaliation for the execution of
Halabi's assassins), the closest it came to attacking the Lebanese
state was shooting a policeman who tried to obstruct its January
2000 rocket attack on the Russian embassy. Asbat militants also
carried out small-scale bombings of churches and bars, but most of
these attacks caused only material damage and did not pose a threat
to the state (if anything, they legitimized official claims about
the dangers of sectarian violence if Syrian troops were to depart).
Had it been otherwise, the Syrians would never have tolerated the
"island of insecurity" in Ayn al-Hilwah.
The Dinniyeh crackdown simply reflected Syria's
refusal to allow an armed Sunni Islamist presence to develop outside
of this tiny enclave (where the comings and goings of
Salafi-jihadists can be closely monitored), irrespective of its
intent. Those who crossed this line disappeared into a murky "state
within a state" of Syria's making, one in which Islamists were held
without trial for years on end or brought before military tribunals
that routinely dismiss allegations of routine torture by Lebanese
and Syrian security forces.[44] Dai al-Islam al-Shahal went into
hiding rather than take the risk of answering a summons.[45]
Inside Ayn al-Hilwah, the Salafi-jihadist current
continued to grow in strength, fueled by an influx of new external
funding after the September 11 attacks. Initially, Asbat al-Ansar
relied on donations funneled through Salafi charities in the camp
affiliated with the imam of the al-Nur mosque in Ayn al-Hilwah,
Jamal Khattab, or transported directly by al-Qa'ida couriers.[46] Increasingly, however, Asbat has
received money directly wired by supporters abroad--a simple process
in Lebanon, which has one of the world's most protective bank
secrecy laws and little record of investigating terrorist
financing.[47] In its eagerness to draw support
from the global jihadist movement, Asbat began targeting Americans
in Lebanon. In addition to several bombing attacks on American
commercial franchises, it is alleged to have been behind the killing
of an American missionary in 2002 and a failed plot to assassinate
American Ambassador Vincent Battle the following year.
As Asbat expanded, its transnational jihadist
ambitions necessitated a minimal level of accommodation with the
Lebanese authorities. This became evident in July 2002, when it
turned over to the authorities a Dinniyeh militant who fled into the
camp after killing three Lebanese soldiers who tried to apprehend
him. This controversial decision led a faction of Asbat, headed by
Abdallah Shraydi (the son of Hisham Shraydi), to break away and
operate independently as Asbat al-Nur(which eventually dissolved
after he was killed the following year). Another Salafi-jihadist
faction, calling itself Jama'at al-Nur, emerged under the leadership
of Ahmad al-Miqati and other Dinniyeh militants in the camp.
The Salafi-jihadists temporarily overcame their
differences following the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003,
as all agreed that recruiting and training operatives to fight in
Iraq was the highest priority. Moreover, since the Syrians were
anxious to undermine the American presence in Iraq, the Lebanese
authorities were now willing to turn a blind eye to terrorist
recruitment outside of Ayn al-Hilwah, and non-Salafi Islamists were
eager to offer support. Scores of local volunteers were sent to
Iraq,[48] a few playing important
leadership roles in the Arab jihadist wing of the insurgency.[49] If the tally displayed on banners
plastered throughout Tripoli is reasonably accurate, the Lebanese
Sunni community's per capita contribution of "martyrs" has been
rivaled only by that of the Saudis.[50] Lebanon became a critical conduit
for non-Lebanese Arab (particularly Saudi) jihadists traveling to
and from Iraq--and then very quickly became a port of call for
jihadists headed everywhere else under the sun.[51]
The participation of many Lebanese Sunni Islamists
in Iraq paved the way for the emergence in Lebanon of
Salafi-jihadist networks that adhere to the zealous
takfirism (declaring other Muslims to be unbelievers) of
Abu Mus'ab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qa'ida in Iraq.
In 2004, dissident Asbat members and Dinniyeh militants[52] formed a new movement calling
itself Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant),[53] a name previously used by
Zarqawi's followers before he arrived in Iraq. In a series of public
statements, Jund al-Sham declared Shi'as and Christians to be
"infidels."[54] By allowing jihadists to
infiltrate Iraq and kill both by the thousands, however, the Syrian
and Lebanese governments gained a measure of immunity for their own
"infidel" constituents.
In September 2004, the Lebanese authorities carried
out a wave of arrests in the predominantly Sunni town of Majdal
Anjar in the Beqaa (a critical logistical hub of jihadists going to
Iraq), claiming to have uncovered imminent terror attacks against
the embassy of Italy and other targets in Lebanon. However, most
Lebanese Sunnis were convinced that the plots were fabricated by the
Syrians to deflect American pressure after the UN Security Council
passed Resolution 1559 calling for a Syrian withdrawal weeks
earlier. When the 35-year-old Lebanese mastermind of the plot,
Isma'il Khatib, died of "heart failure" in custody, thousands of
Sunnis protested in the streets of Majdal Anjar.[55]
The last year of the Syrian occupation witnessed
the public reemergence of Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami(Islamic
Liberation Party), an international Islamist movement that defies
the political/Salafi dichotomy. Although Tahrir aspires to bring
about the unification of the Islamic world under a restored
caliphate, it is committed to achieving this goal nonviolently
through persuasion of elites in each country. While some chapters of
Tahrir in Europe and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia
have been linked to violence, the Lebanese chapter has been
nonviolent.[56]
LEBANESE ISLAMISM AFTER THE SYRIAN
WITHDRAWAL
The withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon gave
Shi'a and Sunni Islamists unmitigated freedom to participate in
public life for the first time in decades--at a time when public
disillusionment with the political establishment was at an all-time
high and parliamentary elections were just weeks away. Both took the
opportunity to renegotiate their relationships with other political
forces from a position of strength.
For Hizballah, the Syrian withdrawal removed the
glass ceiling blocking its pursuit of absolute Shi'a political
hegemony. Berri saw the writing on the wall and effectively
subordinated Amal to Nasrallah, who graciously granted it equal
billing on "steamroller slates" that easily swept majority Shi'a
districts in the May/June 2005 parliamentary elections. Moreover, it
so happened that the "March 14 coalition," led by the late Hariri's
son and political heir, Sa'd, and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt,
needed Hizballah to defeat Michel Aoun's secular nationalist Free
Patriotic Movement (FPM) in hotly-contested Christian-Druze
districts with Shi'a minorities.[57] Nasrallah's price for his
endorsement was continued government sanction of Hizballah's
"resistance" to Israel, effectively formalizing the quid pro quo
that evolved under the Syrian occupation. In order to ensure the
coalition did not renege on this commitment, Hizballah joined the
cabinet for the first time, with two ministers. Consequently, the
new government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora (a stand-in for Sa'd
Hariri) declined to interfere with its arms shipments from Iran[58] and refused to obstruct (or even
publicly criticize) its periodic cross-border raids.
The March 14 coalition also courted Sunni Islamists
in its bid to defeat the FPM in mixed Sunni-Christian districts of
north Lebanon, where victory hinged on mobilizing high turnout among
Sunnis (which had been very low in the first round of the elections
in Beirut). Having endured relentless harassment by Syrian-backed
governments for years, Salafi preachers in Tripoli and Akkar
suspended their traditional aversion to electoral politics and
mobilized their followers to go to the polls. Preachers on the
payroll of Dar al-Fatwa needed much less enticement (for obvious
reasons), many of them going beyond "get out the vote" campaigning
to explicitly endorse March 14. Although al-Jama'a joined most
traditional Sunni politicians in boycotting the elections, few
Sunnis in north Lebanon took notice, underscoring how much
credibility on the street it had lost to the Salafi current.
After the elections, the newly–elected parliament
rewarded the Salafists with an amnesty law that freed 26 Dinniyeh
militants and seven of the Majdal Anjar detainees still in custody
awaiting trial.[59] In addition, the government
established a quid pro quo with Salafi-jihadists, allowing them to
operate with minimal interference by the state so long as they did
not carry out attacks in Lebanon itself, an arrangement openly
acknowledged by pro-March 14 Lebanese and Saudi media.[60]
Although the ruling coalition came under
considerable outside pressure to abandon or revise these
understandings, its tenuous electoral mandate gave it little room
for maneuver. Any attempt to renege on the agreement with Hizballah
would have led Nasrallah to declare a boycott of the government that
few credible Shi'a public figures would be willing to defy.
Moreover, a substantial majority of Sunnis (and significant
minorities of Christians and Druze) remained supportive of
Hizballah's armed presence.[61] Confronting the Salafi-jihadist
current (absent a major provocation) was also untenable, as it would
alienate mainstream Salafists--the segment of the Sunni community
least sympathetic (indeed, outright hostile) to Hizballah.
In both cases, disunity within Hariri's core Sunni constituency
limited the coalition's leverage, with severe consequences.
Hariri's top priority has been to unify Sunni ranks
under his leadership and replicate the assabiyya (group
solidarity) of the Shi'a community, relying heavily on his massive
financial resources. The charitable arm of his Future Movement began
providing subsidies to poor Sunnis in many areas of the country. He
reportedly lavished money on al-Jama'a, leading many of its top
leaders to back the coalition publicly. The fact that the Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood came out strongly against Syrian President Bashar
Asad after 2005 facilitated this transition. The Siniora government
legalized al-Tahrir, making Lebanon the only Arab state to do
so.
During the uproar over a Danish newspaper's
publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad in February
2006, Hariri provided transportation for Sunnis in north Lebanon to
attend a demonstration in Beirut,[62] an initiative that backfired
horribly when the protesters went on a rampage, setting fire to a
building housing the Danish embassy and vandalizing two nearby
churches in full view of Internal Security Forces (ISF) riot
police.
The Israel-Hizballah
War
Hizballah's overriding goal after the withdrawal of
Syrian forces was to preserve and legitimate its paramilitary
forces. However, as international pressure for its disarmament
mounted steadily, Nasrallah faced a vexing Catch-22. While avoiding
major provocations against Israel would help counteract
international pressure, a conspicuous lull threatened to
fuel the growth of domestic pressure--not from Shi'as (who
assume most of the risks incurred by the attacks and don't strongly
identify with the Palestinian struggle), but from Sunnis (who assume
little risk, strongly identify with the Palestinian struggle, and
would otherwise have strong reservations about an armed Shi'a
presence).
It is no accident that Hizballah's initial failure
to respond to the massive upswing of Israeli-Palestinian violence in
June 2006 led Zarqawi to issue a rambling tirade against the group
for "raising false banners regarding the liberation of Palestine"
and "stand[ing] guard against Sunnis who want to cross the
border."[63] Nasrallah may have been chomping
at the bit to join the fray, but the intensification of Salafi
hostility toward Hizballah (in April 2006, Â the authorities
arrested nine Lebanese and Palestinian Salafi-jihadists who were
allegedly plotting to assassinate Nasrallah)[64] made it virtually imperative to
act. Hizballah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in a bloody
cross-border raid on July 12, 2006 was perhaps less an act of
solidarity than an attempt to upstage Palestinian Islamists and
relegitimate itself in Sunni eyes.[65]
The 33-day American-backed Israeli military
campaign that followed was largely designed to prevent this from
happening. While the Israelis presumably recognized the futility of
trying to change Lebanese Shi'a public opinion by force of arms
(they had been down that road before), there was clearly an
expectation that targeting Lebanon's economic infrastructure would
turn Sunnis (and Christians) against Hizballah. However, despite the
immense destruction visited upon Lebanon, the war failed to diminish
significantly support for Hizballah among Lebanese Sunnis[66] and greatly increased
support for Hizballah among Arab Sunnis outside of Lebanon.[67]
Nevertheless, the scale of destruction rendered
Hizballah provocations against Israel politically unthinkable for
the foreseeable future and the subsequent deployment of an expanded
UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) force sealed off
its access to the border. Deprived of an outlet for confronting
Israel, Hizballah turned its attention to domestic affairs after the
war, forging a united opposition front with the FPM and leading a
Shi'a boycott of the government. This reorientation alienated many
Sunni political Islamists who had been staunch supporters of the
"resistance" during the war,[68] for Hizballah was now committing
the double sin of mobilizing Shi'as against a Sunni prime minister
in league with secular Christians. Al-Jama'a quickly splintered, as
Mawlawi and most of its senior leadership lined up behind the
government, while Yakan and a substantial minority of its rank and
file joined the opposition, under the umbrella group Jabhat al-Amal
al-Islami (Islamic Action Front). Although the two rival factions of
Tawhid (led by Minqara and Bilal Sha'ban) both reaffirmed their
support for Hizballah and joined the IAF, a few former Tawhid
"emirs" (e.g. Kana'an Naji) came out in support of March 14. On the
other hand, Shahal and the vast majority of Salafi preachers now
backed the government more firmly than ever.
The Rise of Fatah
al-Islam
The March 14 coalition's struggle to preserve Sunni
unity amid Lebanon's escalating postwar political crisis widened the
latitude enjoyed by Salafi-jihadists, as Hariri was understandably
reluctant to enter into a confrontation with fellow Sunnis. The
Siniora government therefore did nothing to reverse Jund al-Sham's
pre-war seizure of the neighborhood of Ta'mir adjacent to Ayn
al-Hilwah or to prevent it from terrorizing the inhabitants. The
militants finally allowed the army to deploy in Ta'mir only after
Bahiya Hariri (Sa'd's aunt) paid them off in early 2007.[69]
The Syrians exploited this weakness by allowing
Arab jihadists to cross into Lebanon, most notably Shakir al-Absi, a
Jordanian-Palestinian associate of Zarqawi best known for organizing
the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman.
During the summer and fall of 2006, Absi quietly recruited a small
force of several dozen militant Sunni Islamists and trained them at
facilities made available by pro-Syrian Palestinian organizations.
After operating underground for several months, however, his men
apparently "went native" in late November 2006, seizing control of
three Fatah al-Intifada compounds in the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp
near Tripoli and issuing a statement denouncing the "corruption and
deviation" of the sclerotic Syrian proxy and the "intelligence
agencies" it serves. Calling themselves a "Palestinian national
liberation movement" and adopting the moniker Fatah al-Islam, they
declared a holy war to liberate Palestine.[70]
While Absi presented Fatah al-Islam as an
all-Palestinian movement,[71] most of the hundreds of
volunteers who answered his call over the next six months were
Lebanese[72] and a substantial minorityÂ
were Saudis,[73] Syrians, and nationals of various
other Arab and Islamic countries. Astonishingly, this massive
expansion took place with little interference from the government.[74] Despite having been convicted in
absentia for the Foley murder, Absi operated in the open, even
playing host to journalists from the New York Times (which
noted obliquely that "because of Lebanese politics" he was "largely
shielded from the government").[75]
While there is little evidence to support claims by
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and others that March 14
leaders encouraged the growth of Fatah al-Islam and other
armed Islamist groups as counterweights to Hizballah,[76] the coalition was clearly
reluctant to pay the hefty political premium of confronting a
well-financed and provisioned Sunni jihadist group operating within
the protection of a Palestinian refugee camp. It was not until Fatah
al-Islam robbed its third bank in the Tripoli area and U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State David Welch visited Beirut to press the
issue in May 2007 that Siniora finally sent the ISF into action with
a pre-dawn raid on a Fatah al-Islam safehouse.
Siniora's failure to inform the army beforehand
left Lebanese soldiers stationed outside Nahr al-Barid vulnerable to
a withering reprisal hours later while most were asleep in their
barracks (nine were found with their throats slit). Ironically,
however, the deaths of 22 soldiers that day diminished the political
expense of taking the group down by collectively horrifying the vast
majority of Lebanese. Although a number of terror attacks outside
the camp were carried out by sleeper cells established by Fatah
al-Islam or under the direction of outsiders (culminating in the
June 24 bomb attack in South Lebanon that killed six UNIFIL
peacekeepers) as the army methodically isolated and destroyed Fatah
al-Islam over the next three months, few Lebanese voiced objections.
Even Asbat al-Ansar distanced itself from Fatah al-Islam and
extinguished an abortive attempt to join the revolt by Jund al-Sham
(which appears to have since disbanded and returned to the fold).
Al-Qa'ida leaders abroad wisely chose not to endorse the ill-fated
rebellion.
The Lebanese army's victory over Fatah al-Islam
undoubtedly strengthened the coalition's leverage vis-Ã -vis
other Salafi-jihadist groups. However, so long as the coalition
relies primarily on support from the Sunni community, there will be
political impediments to constraining their growth. It is telling
that Dai al-Islam al-Shahal can beam with praise for Hariri[77] even as he acknowledges having
met twice with Absi prior to his apocalyptic confrontation with the
state.[78] There is a code of understanding
among Salafists in Lebanon that accepts the formation of underground
armed networks so long as they do not antagonize the authorities.
Persuading them otherwise will be virtually impossible so long as
Hizballah remains armed, which clearly will be the case for the
foreseeable future.
* Gary C. Gambill, the editor
of Mideast Monitor, has written extensively on Lebanese and
Syrian politics.
NOTES
[1] For a good overview of Lebanese Shi'a history,
see Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of
Lebanon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).
[2] An estimated 60 percent of the rural population
of southern Lebanon had migrated into the slums of Beirut by 1975.
Salim Nasr, "Roots of the Shi'i Movement," Middle East Research
and Information Project (MERIP) Reports, No. 133 (June 1985),
p. 11.
[3] Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, al-Islam wa
Mantiq al-Quwwa, 2nd ed. (Beirut: al-Mu'assasa al-jam'iyya
lil-dirasa wal-nashr, 1981).
[4] "The Iranians believe that all decisions
regarding Shi'a Islam must come from Iran," Fadlallah said in 2003.
L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut), January 25, 2003. See Roschanack
Shaery-Eisenlohr, "Iran, the Vatican of Shi'ism?" Middle East
Report, No. 233 (Winter 2004).
[5] See Martin Kramer, "The Moral Logic of
Hizballah," in Walter Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism:
Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 131-57.
[6] Martin Kramer, "Hizbullah: The Calculus of
Jihad," in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.),
Fundamentalisms and the State (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 539-56.
[7] While Fadlallah acknowledged the efficacy of
suicide bombings under some circumstances, he declined to issue
religious edicts explicitly sanctioning (or forbidding) them and,
from the mid-1980s onward, argued that these circumstances no longer
applied. He ruled that hijackings and kidnappings of innocents are
always "inhumane and irreligious." Kramer, "The Moral Logic of
Hizballah."
[8] Hezbollah bitterly contested Syria's 1987
occupation of west Beirut, prompting the Syrians to execute 23 of
its fighters in retaliation, upon which it organized one of the
largest anti-Syrian demonstrations of the war. See "7,000 Shia
Mourners Call for Revenge," The Times (London), February
26, 1987. It also allowed "large amounts of vital materials" to pass
through its stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut to Gen.
Michel Aoun's besieged Lebanese army units during his 1989-1990
rebellion against Syrian forces. See "Syria Summons Druze Leader
over Disputes in Pro-Syrian Camp," United Press International (UPI),
October 9, 1990.
[9] It is important to bear in mind that few Shi'as
held favorable views of Syria during this period. A 1987 survey of
Shi'a college students found that more blamed Syria for Lebanon's
civil war than Israel or the United States. See Hilal Khashan, "Do
Lebanese Shi'is Hate the West?" Orbis, Vol. 33, No. 4
(1989), pp. 583-90.
[10] See Nizar Hamzeh, "Lebanon's Hizballah: From
Revolution to Parliamentary Accommodation," Third World
Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1993), pp.321-37.
[11] While Hezbollah was free to criticize such
inequities, it was not allowed to mobilize the Shi'a community in
ways that might undermine political stability of occupied Lebanon
(e.g. by organizing mass protests or openly coordinating with the
Christian opposition). When Tufayli split from the movement to lead
a "revolution of the hungry" in the late 1990s, his followers were
hunted down by Lebanese army troops.
[12] During the 2000 elections, one Hezbollah
candidate estimated that the party would have won 20 seats (twice
its allotment) had it been allowed to run head to head against Amal.
See "Victorious Hezbollah Faces Compulsory Alliances," UPI,
September 2, 2000.
[17] "We believe the requirement for an Islamic
state is to have an overwhelming popular desire, and we're not
talking about fifty percent plus one, but a large majority. And this
is not available in Lebanon and probably never will be," Nasrallah
said in 2004. See Adam Shatz, "In Search of Hezbollah," New York
Review of Books, April 29, 2004.
[18] See May Chartouni-Dubarry, "Hizballah: From
Militia to Political Party," in R. Hollis and N. Shebadi (eds.),
Lebanon on Hold: Implications for Middle East Peace
(London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1996),
pp.59-62.
[19] In 1993, for example, Robert Fisk published an
article entitled "Hizbollah Vows Peace When the Troops Pull Out" on
the basis of Nasrallah having told him the group would "close the
file concerning the occupation of Lebanese land" after an Israeli
withdrawal (he did not say whether there were other files and Fisk
did not ask). See Robert Fisk, "Hizbollah Vows Peace When the Troops
Pull Out: 'Party of God' Will Concentrate on Lebanese Politics and
Leave Palestinians to Fight Own Battles, Leader Tells Robert Fisk in
Beirut," The Independent (London), November 10,
1993.
[20] See, for example, Augustus Richard Norton,
"Hizbullah: from Radicalism to Pragmatism," Middle East
Policy, Vol. 5, No. 4 (January 1998).
[21] Judith Palmer Harik, "Between Islam and the
System: Sources and Implications of Popular Support for Lebanon's
Hizballah," The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 40,
No. 1 (March 1996), pp. 41-67.
[22] The Syrians underscored this shortly after the
Israeli withdrawal by calling a halt to President Emile Lahoud's
anti-corruption campaign, facilitating Hariri's return to office
after a two-year hiatus, and manipulating Shi'a electoral lists in
the Fall 2000 elections.
[23] According to Emile al-Hokayem, there has been a
rift within Hezbollah "between a powerful core committed to
permanent resistance and the mid-level political cadre willing to
focus exclusively on political participation." See Emile al-Hokayem,
"Hizaballah and Syria: Outgrowing the Proxy Relationship," The
Washington Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring 2007).
[24] See Avi Jorisch, Beacon of Hatred: Inside
Hizballah's Al-Manar Television, (Washington, DC: Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, 2004).
[25] Seymour Hersh, "The Syrian Bet," New
Yorker, July 28, 2003; Adam Shatz, "In Search of Hezbollah,"
New York Review of Books, April 29, 2004.
[26] After being fired as director of al-Manar TV in
2003, Nayef Krayem wrote in a public reply that he had been unjustly
accused of "being with Fadlallah." In August 2004, Hezbollah
activists broke into a mosque controlled by followers of Fadlallah
and plastered posters of Khamene'i inside. Al-Nahar
(Beirut), May 12, 2003; al-Balad (Beirut), August 23,
2004.
[27] Vali Nasr, The Shiite Revival: How
Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W.W.
Norton, 2006), p. 68.
[28] Members of four prominent Sunni families (Sulh,
Karameh, Yafi, and Salam) held the premiership in 40 of the 53
Lebanese cabinets that served from 1943 to 1982. See Samir Khalaf,
Lebanon's Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press,
1987), p. 106.
[29] For example, Grand Mufti Hasan Khalid,
considered a Nasserist before the war, could be found supporting the
American-backed government of Amine Gemayel in 1983, only to express
support for an Islamic state after west Beirut fell out of
government control in early 1984. See "Beirut Christians Fearful of
Shift To Moslem Rule," Washington Post, March 12,
1984.
[30] Al-Diyar (Beirut), August 31,
1989.
[31] "Fighting at Nahr al-Bared Splits Tripoli into
Two Camps," The Daily Star, July 3, 2007.
[32] Kurt Mendenhall, "Syria's Ongoing Lebanese
Adventure," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,
August 1988, p. 9.
[33] Key Sunni figures believed to have been
assassinated on orders from Syria include Shaykh Subhi Salih, deputy
chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council (1986); Muhammad Shukayr,
political adviser to then President Amine Gemayel (1987); Grand
Mufti Hasan Khalid (1989); and MP Nazim Qadri (1989).
[34] Hilal Khashan, "The Lebanese State: Lebanese
Unity and the Sunni Muslim Position," International
Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1992), p. 93.
[35] A. Nizar Hamzeh and R. Hrair Dekmejian, "A Sufi
Response to Political Islamism: Al-Ahbash of Lebanon,"
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 28, No.
2 (May 1996), pp. 217-29.
[36] When Lebanon's Council of Maronite Bishops
openly called for the withdrawal of Syrian forces in the fall of
2000, the Akkar Ulama accused it of "instigating fanaticism and
strife." See "Orthodox Patriarch Defends Bkirki," The Daily
Star (Beirut), October 4, 2000.
[37] When the Council of Maronite Archbishops issued
a historic statement calling for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in
September 2000, Qabbani issued a statement expressing "astonishment"
and praising "sisterly Syria" for its "big sacrifices to safeguard
Lebanon's unity and maintain its security and stability.
Al-Safir (Beirut), September 21, 2000.
[38] A. Nizar Hamzeh, "Lebanon's Islamists and Local
Politics: A New Reality," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 21,
No. 5 (2000), pp. 739-59. Hizballah's platform contained not a hint
of Islamic influence.
[39] "Lyrical Liberties?" al-Ahram Weekly,
No. 14-20 (October 1999); "Khalife Song Not an Insult to Islam:
Fadlallah," Agence France Presse (AFP), October 4, 1999. In 1994,
Dar al-Fatwa banned the compilation of articles by the recently
deceased Libyan writer (and fierce critic of Islamic orthodoxy)
Sadiq al-Nayhum. See Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori,
Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996), p. 156.
[40] Al-Arabiya TV, April 13, 2007. Translation by
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Worldwide
Monitoring.
[41] For more on Salafists outside of north Lebanon,
see Bilal Y. Saab and Magnus Ranstorp, "Securing Lebanon from the
Threat of Salafist Jihadism," Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism, Vol. 30, No. 10 (2007), pp. 825-55.
[42] Bernard Rougier, Everyday Jihad: The Rise
of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon, translated by
Pascale Ghazaleh (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007),
pp. 49, 85.
[43] "Two Moslem Fundamentalist Charity Groups
Banned," AFP, January 4, 1996.
[45] Al-Safir (Beirut), February 8,
2003.
[46] A key figure in this regard (until his
assassination in 2003, apparently by Israel) was Abd al-Sattar
al-Jad (widely known as Abu Muhammad al-Masri), an Egyptian
al-Qa'ida operative who arrived at the camp in the
mid-1990s.
[47] For example, a foiled plot to assassinate U.S.
Ambassador Vincent Battle was allegedly financed by the
Lebanese-born head of Australia's Islamic Youth Movement, Bilal
Ghazal. See "The Baggage of Bilal Khazal," Sydney Morning
Herald (Australia), June 4, 2004. For their alleged links to
Asbat al-Ansar, see "Clashes Leave Fatah in Poor Position," The
Daily Star, May 22, 2003.
[48] By November 2004, according to the London-based
Arabic daily al-Hayat, "dozens" of Lebanese Sunnis and
"tens" of Palestinians from Lebanese refugee camps were fighting in
Iraq. Lebanese killed in Iraq included two residents of al-Qara'un
(Fadi Ghaith and Omar Darwish), two from Majdal Anjar (Ali al-Khatib
and Hasan Sawwan), and "several" from the predominantly Sunni cities
of Sidon and Tripoli. The report also mentioned the deaths of
Palestinians Muhammad Farran and the son of Ansarallah leader Jamal
Sulayman. See al-Hayat (London), November 8,
2004.
[49] One of earliest Lebanese arrivals, Mustapha
Darwish Ramadan (aka Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani), was said to have been
the "right-hand man of Zarqawi" until his death in a September 2004
American air strike. See al-Rai al-Aam (Kuwait), September
20, 2004; "Smoke of Iraq War 'Drifting Over Lebanon,'"
Washington Post, June 12, 2006.
[50] The number reached 50 during the summer of
2006. See "Lebanese Salute Their 'Martyrs' in Iraq War," The
Independent (London), July 7, 2006.
[51] Two members of the Algerian terrorist group
Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) arrested by French police
in 2005 were found to have received explosives training at a camp
near Tripoli. See Emily Hunt, "Can al-Qaeda's Lebanese Expansion Be
Stopped?" PolicyWatch, No.1076 (Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, February 6, 2006).
[52] Although nominally founded by prominent
preacher Muhammad Sharqiya (aka Abu Yusuf), the main decision-makers
were Abu Ramiz al-Sahmarani (aka Abu-Ramiz al-Tarabulsi), a
prominent Dinniyeh militant, and Imad Yasin, a former Asbat
commander who had gained notoriety for instigating a shootout with
Hamas in 2002.
[53] The Arabic word al-Sham literally
means "the north." In early Islamic history, it was used to refer to
lands north of the Arabian Peninsula, including present-day Syria,
Lebanon, and Israel. Jund al-Sham is sometimes translated
as "soldiers of Greater Syria."
[54] Al-Nahar (Beirut), June 26, 2004;
al-Safir (Beirut), July 14, 2004.
[56] The only notable exception was its 1985
kidnapping of four Soviet diplomats (one of whom was executed while
in custody), an act of desperation intended to halt the Syrian siege
of Tripoli. Current Tahrir leaders disavow involvement.
[57] As the New York Times noted, "the
endorsement of the Shi'a Hezbollah party was critical" in
Ba'abda-Aley, where the number of Shi'a voters was substantially
larger than the March 14 coalition's margin of victory. See
"Returning Lebanese General Stuns Anti-Syria Alliance," New York
Times, June 14, 2005. Hizballah's endorsement was also a factor
in north Lebanon, as it eroded the ability of rival Sunni
politicians to mobilize the Arab nationalist current against the
Hariri family.
[60] Hariri's newspaper, al-Mustaqbal,
acknowledged that al-Qa'ida "has benefited from Lebanon as a transit
point for individuals and logistics headed to Iraq or other Arab
countries" and therefore "has not used Lebanon as an arena for
confrontation." See al-Mustaqbal (Beirut), January
8, 2006. Translation by BBC Worldwide Monitoring; Hazim al-Amin
writes in al-Hayat: "Al-Qaeda benefits from Lebanon as a
human and financial transit point that does not tighten its
surveillance and search measures at its airports and facilities. If
Lebanon is turned into a target because of a decision by al-Qaeda,
it will become an area of difficulty…. There are some aspects of
al-Qaeda's presence in Lebanon to which a blind eye is turned in a
sense…. While most of the region's countries have doubled the
financial and commercial supervision of activities linked to
suspected Islamic organizations, Lebanon has not adopted any such
measures. Unlike many other countries, it has not imposed special
procedures for the transfer of funds through it. See
al-Hayat (London), August 27, 2006.
[61] Graham E. Fuller, "The Hizballah-Iran
Connection: Model for Sunni Resistance," The Washington
Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2006-2007), p. 147.
[62] "The Hariri group bussed many groups in from
Akkar," according to American University of Beirut professor Hilal
Khashan. Quoted in "Lebanon's New War," al-Ahram Weekly,
No. 24-30 (May 2007).
[63] "Hezbollah, al-Qaida Mirror Islamic Split," The
Associated Press, June 24, 2006.
[64] Al-Diyar (Beirut), April 13, 2006;
"Shia of Lebanon Emerge from Poverty to Face Charges of Overstepping
Their Powers," Financial Times, May 5, 2006.
[65] In fact, there has long been an undercurrent of
tension between Hamas and Hizballah for this very reason.
Hizballah's resumption of hostilities with Israel after the start of
the 2000-2005 intifada led to a public rift between the two groups
that lasted throughout much of 2001 (though this was partly due to
Hizballah's attempts to recruit Palestinian terror cells directly).
See "The Terror Twins," Time, April 30, 2001.
[66] According to an Ipsos survey conducted at the
end of the war, 84 percent of Shi'as and 46 percent of Sunnis
believed that Hizballah "should keep its weapons," while only 21
percent of Druze and 23 percent of Christians believed it should.
See L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut), August 28, 2006.
[67] A November 2006 survey of six Arab countries by
Shibley Telhami and Zogby International found that Nasrallah was the
most popular choice among respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and
the United Arab Emirates when asked to name the world leader outside
their own countries they admired most (Lebanese respondents had to
choose a non-Lebanese figure; he finished second among Saudi
respondents. See "U.S., Israel ‘Biggest Threat' to Arabs, Poll
Finds," Inter Press Service, February 8, 2007; Amal Saad-Ghorayeb,
"What the Moderate Arab World is," al-Ahram Weekly, No. 26
(April- May 2007). Data for the poll is available at: http://brookings.edu/views/speeches/telhami20070208.pdf.
[68] "Hezbollah is waging a struggle against its own
self-interests. Its real cause is and should remain the resistance,"
said al-Jama'a Deputy Secretary-General Ibrahim al-Masri after
Hizballah and the FPM organized two massive demonstrations against
the government in early December 2006. See "Lebanon at a Tripwire,"
International Crisis Group Middle East Briefing, No. 20
(December 21, 2006), http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4586
[69] Michael Young, "Destruction and Deceit in North
Lebanon," The Daily Star (Beirut), May 24, 2007.
[70] Al-Safir (Beirut), November 28,
2006.
[71] Al-Diyar (Beirut), February 20,
2007.
[72] This was confirmed definitively by the
identification of militants captured and killed in the recent
violence. Of 20 Fatah al-Islam members who appeared before a
military court on May 30, 2007, 19 were Lebanese. See National News
Agency, May 30, 2007.
[73] Of 25 militants whose bodies had been recovered
by the Lebanese authorities as of May 26, 2007, four were identified
as Saudis, according to the Saudi ambassador in Lebanon. See
al-Hayat (London), May 27, 2007.
[74] Although Lebanese troops imposed a tight
blockade of the camp in March 2007, eyewitnesses in the camp said
that a large shipment of weapons arrived in early May. See
al-Hayat (London), May 27, 2007. Officials of the UN Relief
and Works Agency (UNWRA) later expressed astonishment that such a
large influx of men and material went undetected by either the
Lebanese government's surveillance of the camp or the mainstream
Palestinian militias inside that liaison with the authorities.
"Somebody hasn't been doing their job," UNWRA Commissioner-General
Karen Koning Abu Zayd told the Washington Times. See. "UN
Agency Knew of Armed Foreigners in Lebanon Camp," Washington
Times, May 24, 2007.
[75] "A New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks on U.S.,"
New York Times, March 16, 2007.
[76] Seymour M. Hersh, "The Redirection: Does the
New Policy Benefit the Real Enemy?" New Yorker, March 5,
2007.
[77] "There's a relationship between ourselves and
Sheikh Saad [Hariri] when it's needed," Dai al-Islam al-Shahal told
the Washington Post in June 2007. "The biggest Sunni
political power is Hariri. The biggest Sunni religious power are the
Salafis. So it's natural." See "Radical Group Pulls in Sunnis As
Lebanon's Muslims Polarize," Washington Post, June 17,
2007, p. A16.
[78] Al-Hayat (London), May 22,
2007.
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