BEIRUT — The interface between politics, nationalism, identity, and religion in the Arab-Islamic world has undergone a series of significant evolutions in the past few generations. The Moslem Brotherhood has been a consistent and significant phenomenon in the region since its founding in Egypt in 1928, but in recent decades has been joined by more militant Islamist groups that have used force against their governments, or used terror tactics against domestic and foreign targets. Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group emerged in the 1990s as a global threat to an extent, and in recent years, especially since September 11, 2001, many smaller militant groups that emulate or share Al-Qaeda worldviews and tactics have sprung up throughout the Middle East and other parts of the world.
This recent proliferation of militant Islamist groups that use violence and terror as a basic tool is to my mind the most significant development of our age — because it reveals the existence of a very extensive foundation of fundamentalist youth who provide a steady stream of recruits for movements like Fateh el-Islam, which has been locked in battle with the Lebanese army in north Lebanon for the past 100 days.
These movements are most often called “Salafist Jihadists” these days, reflecting their commitment to two key things: fundamentalist interpretations of Islam according to the days of the Prophet Mohammad, and a militant, aggressive posture that includes attacking those who stand in the way of creating pure Islamic societies. A single movement like Al-Qaeda in theory could be contained, beaten or broken up to the point of being neutralized. But this is virtually impossible to do in the face of dozens or perhaps even hundreds of smaller movements, or even cell-like groupings of a half-dozen people, that are loosely linked by shared ideologies, transferable technologies and intermittent logistical assistance or coordination.
Lebanon has become the latest visible battleground between these Salafist Jihadists and their opponents — who comprise just about everybody else in the region. The danger of the continuing proliferation of such groups is real, and frightening, given their willingness and ability to fight against conventional forces and established governments. But this bad news is offset somewhat by the fact that we actually know quite a lot about where these groups and their mindset came from. They are less mysterious than they are menacing.
Arab and other scholars in the region have followed and written about them for years, and now there are some good quality foreign language works that help the rest of the world understand the origins and causal stimuli for groups like Fateh el-Islam, Jund el-Sham, Usbet el-Ansar, Jundallah, Jemaah Islamiyya, the Ahbash group, and Ansar Allah, to mention only the main ones that have operated in Lebanon in the past generation.
A fine new in-depth treatment of one aspect of this phenomenon — the Salafist Jihadists in Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon — is the book Everyday Jihad: the rise of militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon that appeared recently; it is an English translation of the pioneering work by French university professor and researcher Bernard Rougier.
He meticulously traces the rise of globalized Salafist movements in the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in the 1980s and 90s, as Palestinian history there was slowly “de-nationalized” and replaced by a global Islamist ethos. Rougier notes: “Fighters without a territory to defend, Palestinian Salafist militants have devoted themselves to defending the imaginary borders of identity, declaring themselves the protectors and guardians of the cause of Sunni Islam worldwide.”
Rougier shows how in the 1990s a small movement of hard core militants gradually expanded into the group now known as Usbet el-Ansar, some of whose members occasionally interchanged with other groups, including the now infamous Fateh el-Islam. The detailed story of Nahr el-Barid’s transformation into a crucible of Salafist Jihadism in Lebanon is chilling, but not surprising, given the many reasons for young men who despair of living a normal life to turn to militancy and join a global movement that promises them everything they dream of.
Two other shorter texts that appeared recently look at the wider canvas of all Lebanon, to trace how Salafist Jihadist movements developed in several places, including Tripoli, Sidon, Arqoub, and Majdal Anjar. They grew through “an intermingling of forces working at three levels: the local, the systemic and the individual”, according to Bilal Saab and Magnus Ranstorp in their journal article just published entitled “Securing Lebanon from the Threat of Salafist Jihadism” (in the journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism). Their earlier, shorter, article published a few months ago on the Brookings Institution website was entitled “Al-Qaeda’s Terrorist Threat to UNIFIL.”
Saab, a Lebanese national, is a Middle East security and terrorism analyst with the Brookings Institution, and Ranstorp is a terrorism expert with the Swedish National Defense College. Their latest article offers a timely overview of these movements’ history in Lebanon and some of their links with regional players. It also assesses the charge that Fateh el-Islam in particular is a Syrian creation and puppet, and debunks the idea that Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda cooperate locally or globally.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 01 September 2007
Word Count: 850
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