Aftermath: following the bloodshed of America's wars in the muslim world Part 7

"In parallel with this trend is the narrower state-sponsored Sunni sectarian model, which is social and political in nature, is closely interwoven with ruling establishments and personalities, may or may not overlap with the Salafi trend in some cases, but is ultimately a reaction to what is perceived as a growing s.h.i.+te threat, as distilled from Arab rulers' discourse and the media. Unlike the Al Qaeda paradigm, though, it cannot compete ideologically with s.h.i.+te resistance, nor does it seek to. The Sunni revival is a product of insurgent/ jihadist/antiestablishment forces as well as proestablishment forces. In both cases, a revival is taking place insofar as Sunni Islam is seen as being the most effective tool for mobilizing support and achieving objectives."

Mohsen believed that what mainstream Sunni leaders were doing was taking the racist discourse of anti-s.h.i.+te extremists (like Zarqawi) and inflating it into a mainstream discourse among Sunni ma.s.ses. Saad Ghorayeb, on the other hand, insisted that Sunni Arab regimes had appropriated this discourse not so much from Salafis but from the United States, whose leaders and pundits spoke of those who are loyal to Iran and of a s.h.i.+te crescent.

Lebanon, in particular, had seen a spectacular revival of Sunni ident.i.ty and a reshaping of traditional Sunni att.i.tudes since 2005. Order in Lebanon had been maintained by Syrian political and military domination, now referred to as an occupation by opponents of Syria. The Syrians had first intervened in Lebanon in 1976 at the request of the Lebanese president to support right-wing militias against a coalition of leftists and Palestinians who threatened to overturn the Maronite Christian-dominated order. In 1987 they returned, this time in support of Sunnis who had grown tired of the militia wars being fought between the s.h.i.+te and the Druze minorities. Both times the Syrian intervention met with American, Israeli, and Saudi approval: first the Syrians marketed themselves as opponents of the coalition between the Palestinian resistance groups and leftists, and the second time they took advantage of American fear of Hizballah, going so far as to attack the s.h.i.+te militia.

The Syrian era ended in February 2005, when Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri was a.s.sa.s.sinated, and since then a major divide has emerged between Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes in Lebanon, with the Christians who had once dominated the country increasingly losing their political significance and becoming marginalized. Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943. Christians and Muslims divided powers and apportioned positions based on sectarian ident.i.ty, with Maronite Christians benefiting from a six-to-five ratio and Sunni Muslims dominating their s.h.i.+te coreligionists. In a sense Lebanon has never had a government but rather a power-sharing arrangement. At first the system of distributing political posts according to sect was merely based on custom. The 1991 Taif Accords, which ended the civil war, enshrined this system while granting a larger proportion to Muslims, allocating seats in Parliament on a one-to-one ratio. The president remained a Maronite Christian, with powers reduced in relation to the Sunni prime minister and the s.h.i.+te speaker of the Parliament. The Taif Accords were meant to establish a transitional period that would end with the abolition of political sectarianism, but this never happened. Instead the system became more entrenched, and the Lebanese became more connected to their sectarian inst.i.tutions. Saudi money and the Syrian military presence in Lebanon helped guarantee that the accords held. While other militias were disbanded, Hizballah was allowed to maintain its armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.

Taif also helped bring to premiers.h.i.+p Hariri, a Lebanese Sunni who made his billions working with the Saudi royal family and who used force and bribery to bring the rival factions together in the Saudi resort city after which the accords were named. He had a history of spreading his wealth, granting scholars.h.i.+ps to thousands of students, and corrupting the Syrian overlords in Lebanon, who often seemed like they worked for him. Before the rise of Hariri many of Lebanon's Sunni political and religious leaders had been murdered. Hariri was an ally of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, and was installed as prime minister in 1992 by Syrian dictator Hafez al-a.s.sad.

Though he is widely credited with reconstructing much of Lebanon, it was the Lebanese who shouldered much of the burden, and under his reign the national debt increased from one and a half billion dollars to eighteen billion dollars. Beginning in 2000, Hariri also contributed to the increase in sectarianism, campaigning more openly on a platform of Sunni power.

Hariri was killed by a ma.s.sive car bomb. His supporters as well as opponents of Syria established a loose coalition in the wake of his a.s.sa.s.sination that blamed the Syrians for the murder, demanded the formation of an international tribunal to investigate it, and called for the withdrawal of Syrian forces and influence in Lebanon. The coalition was named for the March 14 demonstration in which Hariri's supporters called for the Syrian withdrawal. The March 14 coalition also became the main vehicle for the Bush administration's agenda in Lebanon and was closely a.s.sociated with Saudi Arabia through the Future Movement, led by Hariri's son and heir, Saad, who even has a Saudi pa.s.sport. Most of the March 14 coalition was composed of politicians who had been former supporters and allies of the Syrian regime. One of the most famous chants of March 14 demonstrators was "We want revenge!" That revenge was often taken on poor Syrians who worked as laborers or sold bread on the street. Many of them were beaten or stabbed, and the tents they lived in were burned down in the name of March 14.

Saad al-Hariri was not prepared and had not wanted to inherit his father's mantle. Without his father's achievements to build a popular base he relied on Sunni communal solidarity. Lebanon's Sunnis allied with their historic enemies, the Christians, against the country they had historically identified with more than their own, Syria.

FADIL SHALLAQ was a close a.s.sociate of Rafiq al-Hariri from 1978 until 2002, heading construction and charitable projects for him, advising him, and finally serving as editor in chief of Hariri's Future newspaper. Following the 2006 war with Israel, Shallaq, a Sunni, publicly broke with his former allies, objecting to the sectarian and pro-American turn the movement was taking. He did not view the former Syrian presence in Lebanon as an occupation. "When the Syrians were here, I don't know who controlled who, the Lebanese or the Syrians," he said. "Hariri thought the Syrian presence helped Lebanon," he told me. "I worked with him for twenty-five years." Shallaq rejected the Future Movement's claims that Hariri had been anti-Syrian and argued that the Israelis were more likely to have killed Hariri than the Syrians. Shallaq also rejected the reincarnation of Hariri as a Sunni symbol. "Hariri was a Sunni believer," he admits. "He hated my atheism, but he was originally an Arab nationalist, he believed in building the state. He was a Lebanese nationalist, but he was never sectarian. Sunni sectarianism started after Hariri's death. Sectarianism is not given, it's manufactured. Sunnis were reshaped, reconst.i.tuted, reprogrammed after 2005, and became a despicable ent.i.ty. You needed a corpse. Without the corpse you could not have reprogrammed their ident.i.ty. Then you had a campaign of propaganda. It was well financed." Shallaq blamed a coalition of neocons and Lebanese allies such as Walid Fares, a former Lebanese Christian militiaman a.s.sociated with the American right. He says they funded the creation of the Future Movement and the sectarian and anti-Syrian direction it took.

"How could a whole community change like this?" he asked. "Before the Sunni community was traditional, Islamic, Arab nationalist, a little bit to the left, with very definite anti-Israeli att.i.tudes about the Palestinian cause. They had strong feelings about the Syrians, but this wave of hate of Hizballah was created. It's new."

Shallaq was worried about new Sunni militias being created by the Future Movement. "There is a not-so-secret militia and security organization. People are being trained in Jordan; others are trained here by former military men." Still others were trained by Christian militiamen belonging to the Lebanese forces, he said. "They are being prepared for civil war. We are in the middle of a civil war now, or civil conflict. You have to distinguish what happened in 1975 and what is happening now. We won't have the paradigm of 1975 repeated. We have a civil war without generalized violence. Sectarian feelings are at a maximum point. Militias, arms, preparations, violence-all the elements of civil war. But will it erupt? And have a green line? I think we will have fighting house to house, building to building."

One of the people Shallaq blamed for the sectarian tension was his former colleague Ridwan al-Sayyid, a professor of Islamic Studies at the Lebanese University and speechwriter and adviser to Hariri and his successor for prime minister, Fouad Siniora. On May 3 I visited Sayyid in his apartment. Interestingly, he agreed with Shallaq on the basic narrative. "There was a repositioning in the Sunni community since 2005," he said. "They were shocked by the killing of Hariri." The Syrians had persecuted Sunnis because Sunnis were traditionally pro-Palestinian, pro-Egyptian, and anti-Baathist. "Hariri helped Sunnis come out of their material, educational, and political crisis, and he made peace with the Syrians so they would not persecute us. He was a symbol of flouris.h.i.+ng Sunnism." After Hariri's killing, the new Sunni feelings were at first only anti-Syrian, but after the July 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon it became anti-s.h.i.+te as well. He blamed Hizballah and specifically Sayyid Ha.s.san Nasrallah for calling Siniora an agent of the Americans and the Zionists. "Because of Hizballah, Sunnis feel in danger," he said. Sunni tension increased after the mostly s.h.i.+te demonstrators descended upon the government and tried to force Siniora to step down. "Sunnis felt it was against Sunnis and not a political act that s.h.i.+tes are trying to take the position of Sunnis, the position of the prime minister, which belongs to the Sunni confession, and that Hizballah was trying to destroy the Lebanese state and the Sunni role in the state," Sayyid told me. "Sunnis felt they need to protect the state because the Christians vanished. There is no Christian ent.i.ty anymore that can mediate between both or make a third party."

Sayyid believed that Hizballah did not act independently but as a tool for Iran to pressure the West. He blamed the July 2006 war on Syria and Iran. "They want to defeat America in Lebanon," he said. "It is a struggle with the U.S., and they waged war against Israel and found that the Lebanese state and Sunnis were on the other side. Sunnis felt that on their side there is Egypt and Saudi [Arabia], and on the other side the s.h.i.+tes, Syria and Iran." Unlike other Sunni partisans in his alliance, Sayyid did not believe that Hizballah actually wanted a civil war or even that its leaders wanted to impose a s.h.i.+te religious state on Lebanon. "But they want to continue the confrontation with Israel without considering the views of the other three million Lebanese," he said. "Hizballah is here with weapons, and acc.u.mulating weapons, and they made war with Israel. The country feels threatened, and they don't recognize state inst.i.tutions-they have their own telephone lines, their own army, their own social networks." Sayyid said he would support Hizballah in the event of another war with Israel. "If Israel wins a war with Hizballah, then Lebanon is destroyed and the Arabs are weakened. How can I, as an Arab, Lebanese, and Muslim, be against Hizballah? I can only say that your program is not good for the country and cannot bring success." Sayyid was not optimistic for the immediate future. "From both sides, Israel and Iran, Hizballah, there is a situation where one will decide to attack. Israel can't wait until Hizballah gets stronger. We cannot win a war against Israel. The Arab countries won't make war with us, so Hizballah will make war alone, and the country will be destroyed."

There were two groups of Salafis in Lebanon, he told me: peaceful ones and jihadists. But he feared that after the appearance of extreme Salafi jihadists the peaceful ones might side with the jihadists. Seyid admitted to me that Sunnis were being trained in Jordan but explained that it was only to work as security guards. Because of Sunni solidarity and the fear that all s.h.i.+tes have weapons, there were new armed Sunni groups, he said. "Sunnis feel insecure, but it's not a good idea," he told me. "It's not a good situation, but what can you do? The security forces can't protect all those inst.i.tutions, as the bombings show, so they have to have their own guards."

Facing the Sunni-dominated March 14 coalition was the March 8 coalition, led by Hizballah and aligned with Syria and Iran. Named for the date of the demonstration at which Hizballah thanked the Syrians for supporting the resistance to Israel, the coalition grew to include Michel Aoun, the Christian former Lebanese army general who had spearheaded the fight against Syrian domination. Though Aoun's anti-Syrian credentials were clear, even calling Hizballah pro-Syrian was misleading. The Syrians had fought Hizballah in the past and supported its rivals. It was only in the mid-1990s that they began to support Hizballah, while not allowing it to partic.i.p.ate in Lebanese politics, and it was only after the Syrians left that Hizballah entered Lebanese electoral politics. Privately, Hizballah officials disparaged the Syrian system and expressed resentment of the Syrian presence in Lebanon. But their priority was the resistance, and they were grateful to the Syrians for supporting it. Other members of March 8 included lesser Sunni figures such as the late former Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leader Fathi Yakan, who was sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The July War and After.

In July 2006 Hizballah soldiers captured two Israeli soldiers in a daring raid typical of the t.i.t-for-tat exchanges that were limited to the border region. Hizballah was surprised when the Israelis responded with a ma.s.sive onslaught, pounding Lebanon and destroying much of its infrastructure, killing about one thousand civilians while laying waste to southern Lebanon and the s.h.i.+te suburbs of Beirut. Standing up to the Israeli military might, less than 1,500 Hizballah soldiers lost about 150 of their men. It was the first time an Arab army had achieved a kill ratio on par with the Israelis. The war ended with the Israelis failing to achieve their stated goal of destroying Hizballah or pus.h.i.+ng it north of the Litani River. For Hizballah and its supporters, thwarting Israeli goals was a victory-a divine victory, they said. Hizballah shot to popularity with the people, if not the regimes, around the Arab world.

Although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the war and its devastation as the "birth pangs of the new Middle East," it deepened the chasm between the March 14 and March 8 camps, as well as that between Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes. Hizballah and its allies accused their opponents of collaborating with the Israelis and Americans. March 14 politicians blamed Hizballah for the destruction that had not only ruined the summer tourist season but the economy and infrastructure. If Hizballah accused them of serving Israel and America, they accused Hizballah of serving an Iranian agenda.

Concerned that the Lebanese government, dominated by the March 14 coalition, was attempting to achieve diplomatically and politically what Israel had failed to do militarily (emasculate Hizballah and remove its weapons), the s.h.i.+te members of the government resigned. In November the March 8 coalition a.s.serted that the government was no longer legitimate, since without the s.h.i.+tes it was in violation of the sectarian division of power. Hizballah sought a national unity government in which it would have a greater share of power. But it was not asking for a larger share of the political pie for the s.h.i.+te community beyond the 21 percent of parliamentary and cabinet seats the s.h.i.+tes were allocated by the Const.i.tution. Instead it wanted a greater share for its non-s.h.i.+te allies in the opposition, which collectively represented at least half the Lebanese population. Hizballah wanted a veto-wielding one-third of the cabinet seats so that it and its allies could maintain their influence over "strategic" issues, protecting the resistance, maintaining Lebanon's "Arabism" and centrality in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and preventing Lebanon from falling under American and Israeli hegemony.

In December 2006 Hizballah and its allies in the March 8 coalition initiated demonstrations, and a "sit-in" turned into a tent city in downtown Beirut, an area that symbolized Hariri's costly reconstruction of Beirut and also the seat of the Lebanese government. For Sunnis, this infringement on their territory was perceived as a s.h.i.+te "occupation" that had broken the Sunni sense of owners.h.i.+p over this Sunni oasis. In January the opposition called for strikes and civil disobedience. In clashes between Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes in Beirut, seven were killed and at least 150 were injured. All sides were surprised by the explosion of violent hatred and pulled their forces back. Saudi Arabia and Iran quickly came to the negotiating table. Neither side wanted things to get out of control. Their power was based on the potential for war, not war itself, on playing brinksmans.h.i.+p without being drawn in. During the clashes the army refused to interfere and attack civilians. At the time the army was condemned by March 14 politicians for being insufficiently repressive.

All this was taking place in a region anxious over the civil war in Iraq, in which Sunnis felt threatened by s.h.i.+te militias that had profited from the American occupation. King Abdullah of Jordan had warned of a "s.h.i.+te crescent" stretching from Lebanon to the Gulf. President Mubarak of Egypt had accused s.h.i.+te Arabs of being fifth columnists for Iran. In an unprecedented move, America's Sunni Arab clients in the region, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, had gone so far as to issue formal statements condemning Hizballah, which suggested they were siding with Israel. While the Sunni regimes used the s.h.i.+te threat to galvanize their population, n.o.body wanted an actual conflict between Arab states and Iran. The tense quiet in Lebanon over the next few months was punctuated by bombs and a.s.sa.s.sinations. But everybody was waiting for what was to come. Saudi Arabia decided that Lebanon was its project, the place in the region where it would confront Iran. But Lebanon was also an Iranian project, and both countries invested large amounts of money and political capital in support of their allies. Unlike Iraq, where their proxies also competed for power, Lebanon was less costly and the consequences less severe. Much as it had in Iraq, Gaza, and Somalia, the United States appeared determined to provoke a civil war in Lebanon. In the conflict over the cabinet seats and over selecting a new president, the Americans were pressuring their proxies not to compromise with Hizballah and its allies, increasing the tension and seemingly denying s.h.i.+tes the right to partic.i.p.ate in the government.

Marooned in Lebanon.

Lebanon's twelve Palestinian camps form an archipelago that exists inside and outside the state. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees live suffocated and marginalized in them. Inside the camps the Palestinian ident.i.ty is maintained, and the main employers are the Palestinian resistance factions. When the Syrian military was in Lebanon it backed former Lebanese President Emile Lahoud-a Maronite Christian, as was custom, who served from 1998 to 2007. Throughout his presidency Lahoud invoked the threat of tawtin, warning that Muslims would grant citizens.h.i.+p to the Palestinians, in order to frighten Christians into backing him and the Syrian presence. Most Palestinians are Sunni Muslims. The Christian minority among them had been granted citizens.h.i.+p long before, since their numbers would bolster the ranks of Lebanon's Christian minority. Tawtin was an existential threat, Lahoud warned. It would boost the number of Muslims, and only the Syrians could prevent it.

With ma.s.sacres of Palestinians committed by Lebanese Christians and s.h.i.+tes in the past, and most recently with Lebanon's Sunnis having turned against them, sometimes it seems that the one thing that united Lebanese had been their hostility to Palestinians. But in truth the one thing that united them was furthering their sectarian interests. The Palestinians have always been instrumentalized by Lebanese factions. They were used by Sunnis as their militia during the civil war. s.h.i.+tes in the south joined Palestinian groups in the 1960s to force out their feudal landlords.

Syria sought to maintain the refugee camps as a political card, so Lahoud impeded any way of alleviating Palestinian suffering. In a very cynical policy, Lahoud continued to deny all social rights and representation were denied to them. In the camps, Palestinian clerics deduced that Christians hated Palestinians because they were Sunnis. In 2005, when Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora spoke of improving the conditions for the Palestinians, he was condemned for invoking tawtin. Had they been Christian, no such opposition would have occurred. As a result they had to react as Sunnis and defend themselves as Sunnis. For the clerics it was not the Syrians who were behind the move; it was the Christians. Some Palestinian clerics took advantage of this to mobilize support. If they were rejected in Lebanon as Sunnis, then they would fight as Sunnis.

Radical Sunni groups benefited from this weakened Palestinian ident.i.ty. Chief among them were Salafis. Salafism is a muscular discourse, and in its most extreme form it sounds like racism when applied to s.h.i.+te Muslims. Most Salafis engaged in theology and preaching, and refrained from political or military action. A small minority believed that violence was necessary to achieve an Islamic state. In Lebanon, there were two kinds of Salafis: the traditionalists, who were fully integrated into the political system, and the jihadists, who relied on networks that were not nation-based but had become deterritorialized.

Ayn al-Hilweh, situated in the town of Sidon, a forty-five-minute drive south of Beirut, is the largest of the camps in Lebanon; it houses up to seventy-five thousand people in one square kilometer of squalor. A balance of power in the camp between the two main factions-the broadly secular Fatah, founded by the late Ya.s.ser Arafat and the historic core of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and Usbat al-Ansar (The League of Supporters), a jihadist group particular to the Palestinian refugee camps that was formed in the mid-1980s-prevents fighting from breaking out. Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant) is another jihadist organization that split off from Usbat al-Ansar. It was named after a group established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan in 1999 for militants hailing from the Levant.

In July 2006 Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second-ranking leader, warned that Al Qaeda would not stand by while Israel sh.e.l.led Lebanon. Unlike Al Qaeda in Iraq and its founder, Zarqawi, who had declared war against s.h.i.+tes, Zawahiri sought to establish a common front with the s.h.i.+tes of Hizballah, who were successfully standing up to the Israelis, but the s.h.i.+te resistance organization wanted nothing to do with the Sunni terrorist organization. He linked the struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan with those in Lebanon and Palestine, and blamed "the crusader alliance." Al Qaeda was concerned that the battle against Israel, and the glory, was being monopolized by Hizballah, and it hoped to establish itself in this crucial front. Zawahiri's words were taken seriously by some. Islamist websites and Internet forums carried demands to establish a Sunni jihadist front in Lebanon. Other jihadists fled Iraq, disgusted with the sectarian fighting or pressure from the growing power of the American-backed Sunni militias in the Anbar province. Hunted in Jordan and Syria, they found Lebanon-with its failed state, lawless refugee camps, and sectarian strife-was their only safe haven. Zawahiri's statement in July 2007 praised an attack against United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

ONE DAY THAT MONTH, I visited Ayn al-Hilweh for a funeral in the late afternoon. Soon after I arrived calls to prayer echoed from all the mosques in the camp. First built in 1949 to house Palestinians expelled from northern Palestine, the camp had grown into a ramshackle ghetto made of concrete and cinder blocks. Low-hanging electric cables were strung from one building to another, crisscrossing like old cobwebs. Faded political posters were plastered over with newer ones, some for Hamas, others for its rival Fatah, and still others for Saddam, declaring him a martyr for the Islamic nation and a warrior leader. The camp had two main streets and a labyrinth of tight alleys connecting to smaller streets, one of them named after Falluja. At the Shuhada Mosque stood a dozen men in paramilitary uniforms, with walkie-talkies, M4 carbines, AK-47s, scopes, pistols, combat boots, tennis shoes, long beards, and sungla.s.ses. The men had a professional and serious air to them, and they differed from the hundreds of other armed militiamen in the camp who lazily slung their older weapons and were unkempt.

The mosque's second floor connected to the building across the street, forming a bridge. The armed men standing under the mosque were members of Usbat al-Ansar-the leading jihadist group in the camp-and they joined about two hundred other men on the second floor for a special prayer. They were burying one of their comrades, Daghagh Rifai, who had been shot at 9:30 that morning by men belonging to the rival faction Fatah. The armed men lined up with the others in orderly rows, placing their weapons on the floor between their legs. Some of them wore the salwar kameez typical in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a jihadist fas.h.i.+on.

Following the prayer, men gathered to gaze briefly at Daghagh's corpse, which was wrapped in the green flag of Islam. A thick man with a large dark beard, he bore fresh wounds on his face. His former comrades carried him down the stairs on an olive-colored military gurney. A procession of hundreds followed them silently around the corner, off the main street, and up an incline. Residents of the camp watched from their doors or from windows and balconies above. As the silent marchers approached the camp's gate, the armed men stayed behind and let relatives take Daghagh's body past the Lebanese soldiers guarding the entrance and on to the cemetery.

One of those paying their respects that afternoon was a cheerful man called Abu Anas, who led me through a maze of dark alleys up to his unlit apartment. We were joined by his friends Abu Salih and Abu Gha.s.san, wiry, fit men with taut faces and long beards. The power came back on and with it the television, tuned to Al Manar, Hizballah's television station. Abu Anas's wife and children had left the camp to go to the nearby beach, and he was enjoying the quiet, he said, as he served us melons.

Daghagh had been shot outside his home in what they described as an "old story, a chain." A few months earlier Fatah men had attacked members of Jund al-Sham, a rival jihadist group to Usbat al-Ansar. Daghagh was part of a group of Jund al-Sham men who retaliated, killing two Fatah men. "Friends of Daghagh will take revenge on Fatah," they a.s.sured me. Two months earlier Fatah had also tried to kill the local Hamas leader but had only succeeded in wounding his youngest son. "Fatah has a bad reputation here," one of the men said. "Fatah was good in the 1970s. They had principles. Now they are dealing drugs, they are opening Internet places with p.o.r.nography, they just want money and power." The men told me that Fatah men had recently stabbed a member of Usbat al-Ansar as he guarded a school, but he had fought back and they fled. Fatah had also thrown grenades at a mosque, they told me. Fatah and Usbat al-Ansar were the two dominant factions in the camp, they said, but Usbat was stronger. Like many Palestinians, they worried that Fatah intended to abandon the Palestinian refugees who lived outside Israel and the occupied territories, and they insisted that Fatah supported tawtin in Lebanon, which they feared would abnegate their right to return to their homes.

Abu Anas and his comrades did not belong to any of the factions. "We have some differences with Jund al-Sham," one told me. "They are a little ignorant. They think with their hearts and not their minds. You need principles, not emotion. Usbat al-Ansar is more open, more educated. They have military expertise."

Abu Salih had tattoos, meaning he had not always been devout. He said he had fought in Falluja in the fall of 2004, staying for about fifty days and taking part in four successful operations against the Americans. "The Americans were cowards," he told me. There had been between 250 and 300 men in his group, he said. I asked why he had chosen Iraq and not tried to liberate Palestine. "It's impossible to go fight in Palestine," said Abu Anas. "The Arabs closed the borders-Jordan, Syria. Here if they open the way to fight Israel, many people would go fight." Hizballah, he said, prevented them from fighting Israel.

I asked the men what they thought of Hizballah, since they supported groups in Iraq that targeted s.h.i.+tes. "We differ in our beliefs, but we agree on fighting Israel," one said. "Israel is the enemy. We can settle our differences later." Many Lebanese Sunnis resented Hizballah for provoking the last war. "Sunnis who disapprove of Hizballah's war do so because they are allied with America," one of the men told me. They reminded me that a group of Palestinians from the camp who had fought with Zarqawi in Iraq had launched missiles at Israel and that in his final statement, Zarqawi had declared that "we fight in Iraq, but our eyes are on our home in Jerusalem."

Abu Salih met Zarqawi once. I asked him what he was like. "He was a lion," Abu Gha.s.san interjected. Zarqawi had been very nice to "the brothers" and had cooked for them, Abu Salih explained. It was night when they met in Falluja's Askari neighborhood, and it was very dark. "The earth was burned," he said. "Planes were bombing, but we had cold water, appetizers, grilled chicken." Up to fifty men from the camp had gone to fight in Iraq.

"Usbat al-Ansar is a travel agency and YMCA for jihad," explained Bernard Rougier, an expert on Lebanon's Salafis and author of the book Everyday Jihad, "but they are a jihadi group, they must act, so the way of solving the contradiction of being in Lebanon but not fighting Israel or anybody else is by sending jihadists to Iraq and secretly helping other jihadist groups."

I returned a few times to visit Abu Gha.s.san. Foreigners entering the camp must get permission from Sidon's local military intelligence commander. As I sat in his office I overheard his phone calls. One sheikh called him about releasing a Jund al-Sham suspect from prison. The commander opened the man's file and read the accusations. The man was an extremist: he had helped dispatch fighters to Iraq, was suspected of involvement in explosions, and was inciting against s.h.i.+tes. With the commander's permission slip I was able to get past the soldiers guarding the gate and drive past the Fatah checkpoint to meet Abu Gha.s.san. He wore camouflage pants and a knit cap. He led me through more alleys, down rough-hewn stairs, and past a metal door into his apartment. His infant daughter was sleeping in a baby seat.

Abu Gha.s.san was thirty-one years old and quick to smile, but, like Abu Salih, he always reverted to a hard suspicious gaze when I wasn't looking him in the eye. He had six children, the oldest of which was thirteen. He had a nine-millimeter Glock pistol on his belt. Its price in the camp was two thousand dollars, and it had made its way to Lebanon when some "brothers" returned from Iraq with large quant.i.ties of weapons. It was the same pistol the Americans had given to the Iraqi police; I had seen it used by s.h.i.+te militias and sold on the black market in Baghdad. An August 2007 report from the American Government Accountability Office stated that 190,000 weapons the Americans had given to Iraqis were unaccounted for. Here was one of them. On a desk was a new Tos.h.i.+ba laptop connected to the Internet. Abu Gha.s.san told me he worked in a cafe in the camp. "You must have sold a lot of coffee to pay for a two-thousand-dollar pistol and the laptop," I said. He grinned and agreed with me.

He was first trained as a teenager outside the camp by Fatah, before the civil war ended in 1991. In 1995 he came under the sway of Islamic movements, influenced by religious leaders and the recently formed Usbat al-Ansar, listening to mosque sermons and attending lessons held after prayer. Some of the mosques, such as the Shuhada Mosque, also had their own clubs for physical training. The Oslo accords had been signed, and Palestinian refugees felt abandoned-they worried that the PLO was surrendering. Wars were being fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. The first generation of mujahideen-those who had fought in Afghanistan-sought new battlegrounds, and a new generation was galvanized. "I saw Muslims around the world oppressed by secularists," he told me. Now the Lebanese army wanted him on charges of terrorism, "in broad terms for killing and explosions," he said, claiming the charges were false.

He had attempted to sneak into Iraq through Syria to fight six times, but each time the Syrians were patrolling the border. In May the Syrians had killed several jihadists attempting to cross. Crossing the border from Syria had become much more difficult since the second battle of Falluja, he said. "I wanted to go to Iraq to liberate Muslim lands, to fight with the Sunnis. The road was open to Iraq. Palestine was closed." He resented Hizballah for controlling the border with Israel and preventing other groups from conducting attacks. "After Hizballah liberated the south, they became a buffer," he said. "They say they want to liberate Palestine, but on the ground they do nothing, they just wait for orders from Syria or Iran." Unlike many Lebanese Sunnis, he did not feel threatened by Hizballah. "As Palestinians we feel threatened by America and Israel," he said.

"Brothers" in the camp had established a network leading to Iraq. "Young Muslims, enthusiastic, with their own organization, they communicated through the Internet. One guy went and opened the way for others." A guide would lead the volunteers across the border. Some guides did it for money and others because they believed in the cause.

Abu Gha.s.san first decided to go to Iraq when Zarqawi renamed his organization Al Qaeda, in December 2004. "Before Abu Musab [Zarqawi] appeared, n.o.body knew how to get people to Iraq," he said. "I want to go fight with Al Qaeda, with the Islamic State of Iraq. The priority for me is to fight America and its allies, and if the Iraqi government opposes me I will fight them too. The Iraqi government is an apostate government." Abu Gha.s.san had requested to go as a suicide bomber. "Practically speaking," he said, "suicide operations are the best method to kill the enemy. In principle you try as hard as you can to avoid civilians, but sometimes you cannot." He did not believe that Sunnis were targeting civilians, and instead blamed Iran, the Mahdi Army, and Israel. "Zarqawi asked Muqtada to fight the occupier, and Muqtada refused," he said. "We target the s.h.i.+tes in the government and the militias. The Mahdi Army kills mujahideen and lets the Americans arrest them. Christians have been neutral, not with the occupier, so they have been spared. s.h.i.+tes are not apostates; their leaders are. Clerics have agreed that the s.h.i.+te clerics are infidels, the people are deviants. Hizballah is a s.h.i.+te apostate party. The s.h.i.+tes hate Sunnis."

Another time when I visited Abu Gha.s.san in his home, Abu Anas was there. They were looking at Google Earth on the laptop while listening to a CD of Salafi chanting called Commanders of the Jihad. They showed me another CD, a tribute to Salih Ablawi, known as Abu Jaafar, who had died with Zarqawi in Iraq. He was from Ayn al-Hilweh too, and Abu Gha.s.san had a collection of his speeches and pictures from Iraq on his laptop. A large picture of Abu Jaafar was on a banner above one of the main streets in the camp.

Abu Anas was originally from the Bedawi camp in northern Lebanon and had grown up in a conservative family. He had fled from the north to Ayn al-Hilweh in 2000 because of his involvement in clashes with the Lebanese army. On December 31, 1999, Islamist radicals battled the Lebanese army in northeastern Lebanon's Sir al-Dinniyeh, led by a Lebanese veteran of the Afghan and Bosnian wars called Basim al-Kanj. Kanj had returned to Lebanon and established his own network, recruiting in the slums of Tripoli and Ayn al-Hilweh and establis.h.i.+ng ties with Usbat al-Ansar. With Usbat's help he established training camps in Dinniyeh. Kanj ordered his men to take over a radio station near the camps that had belonged to Lebanon's leading Salafi cleric, Sheikh Dai al-Islam al-Shahal. (His father had first brought Salafism to Lebanon in 1940, but it was Dai al-Islam and his brother who really brought Salafism to northern Lebanon.) Only months before, churches in Tripoli had been attacked, and some of the suspects had fled to Dinniyeh. Shahal and other Sunni clerics as well as local officials tried to mediate between the army and the militants. When an army patrol pa.s.sed by, negotiations were suspended. Fighting broke out, and fifteen of the Islamists died along with eleven soldiers and five civilians, although Kanj had not sought such a confrontation. The Dinniyeh group was small, but dozens of Salafis were arrested in Tripoli and radicalized in prison.

The Dinniyeh incident, along with an attack on the Russian emba.s.sy and similar incidents, were the first signs that Salafi jihadism was establis.h.i.+ng a presence in Lebanon. One lesson of the incident was that the poverty and neglect in northern Lebanon could affect the rest of the country, but this was forgotten until February 5, 2006, when rioters came down from the north in buses provided by the Sunni Endowment and rampaged through Christian neighborhoods in Beirut, seeking vengeance for the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Christians were shocked, as security forces were nowhere to be found despite having advance notice of the demonstration. Those rioters who were arrested were quickly released. Ahmad Fatfat, who was interior minister in 2005, had struggled to release the Dinniyeh prisoners in order to gain the support of northern Sunnis and Salafis. As a concession to Christians the government then released Samir Geagea, the notorious war criminal who had killed Palestinians as well as Christian rivals during the 1980s. Much fanfare met the release of the Dinniyeh prisoners; the episode was televised and used to demonstrate that the government was pro-Sunni. Some of them had belonged to Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami (The Islamic Unity Movement), the main Islamist militia that fought the Syrian presence in northern Lebanon in the 1980s. In the s.h.i.+fting alliances of Lebanese militias, Tawhid is now considered pro-Syrian.

Abu Anas blamed the Lebanese army for the clashes. "They wanted Hizballah to control the conflict with Israel," he said. "The Lebanese army ambushed them, and during the negotiations they surrounded them and attacked them." Abu Anas had previously belonged to Tawhid. More than fifty Palestinians had belonged to Tawhid, he told me. Many had gone on to other Islamist movements.

In May 2007 members of a new and somewhat mysterious jihadist group, Fatah al-Islam, robbed a bank in Tripoli, provoking clashes with the army. Salafi militants also robbed banks in Sidon and other parts of the country. "Al Qaeda uses credit cards to fund themselves, and they rob banks and companies that are infidel to fund themselves," Abu Gha.s.san explained. "They don't rob in a criminal way. They don't want to hurt anybody. There is a difference between killing people and taking money that belongs to Muslim people." Although most of the soldiers battling Fatah al-Islam in the north were Sunnis, Abu Gha.s.san did not blame Sunnis. "The Lebanese army answers to the government, and even though the head of government is a Sunni, the orders come from America. They are not fighting as Sunnis but as soldiers, getting orders, and they think Fatah al-Islam are terrorists." I asked him what he thought. "I think Fatah al-Islam are good people," he said.

The Mystery of Fatah al-Islam.

The origins of Fatah al-Islam are nebulous, but based on meetings with Palestinian faction leaders and security officials, as well as doc.u.ments obtained from their interrogation of the group's members, I pieced together its history. In the summer of 2006 new faces appeared in Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh, the Palestinian camps of Beirut, and in Bedawi and Nahr al-Barid, the camps near the northern city of Tripoli. The men were clearly religious, and they were a.s.sumed to be Salafis. They had long beards, and some even wore the Afghan salwar kameez. Some were clearly foreign. When camp security inquired about the newcomers, they were told, curiously, that the men belonged to Fatah al-Intifada's "Western Section," a traditionally leftist, broadly secular Syrian-allied Palestinian group that split from the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1983, which was preparing fighters to go to Palestine. Others claimed they were "from the inside," meaning from Palestine itself. During Israel's July 2006 war on Lebanon, more Salafi fighters arrived in these camps, in part because a Fatah al-Intifada camp near the Syrian border in eastern Lebanon was evacuated during the war. Suspicions were aroused because the left-leaning Fatah al-Intifada was known to pay low salaries but some of the newcomers had laptops and went around on motorcycles. The newcomers were led by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Fatah al-Intifada officer who had been trained as a pilot in Libya and served as one in North Yemen, in addition to fighting in Nicaragua. Absi was in his fifties. A Palestinian born in Jordan, he had spent most of his life in Syrian and Lebanese camps. He was likely disillusioned with the aging and moribund Arab left-which groups like Fatah al-Intifada epitomized-and he was said to have been very religious. In 2002 he was arrested with fifteen others for trying to infiltrate the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. He spent two and a half years in jail, and was said to have gone to Iraq after his release, eventually making his way to the Helweh camp in the Beqaa Valley, by the Syrian border. There he and his followers trained volunteers, including young men from the slums of Tripoli, to fight in Iraq. Gulf Arabs who flew to Beirut to go to Iraq also gathered there. They were segregated from the rest of the camp and better financed, eating better food like lamb.

When Zarqawi died, some of his men came to Lebanon. Some Salafis were diverted to the Burj al-Barajneh camp to serve as a bulwark against the s.h.i.+te suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh. Many Syrians and Palestinian Syrians who had fought in Iraq and become radicalized there made their way to Lebanon. More than two hundred such men had left Damascus's Yarmuk refugee camp to fight in Iraq with Zarqawi, even though that camp was dominated by the far more moderate Hamas movement. Abu Midyan was one of the foreign fighters who left Iraq because of concerns about the state of the jihad there. He led other comrades in arms from Iraq to Yarmuk, but the Syrians pressured them to leave, so they moved to Lebanon's camps, where they began to recruit from the poor.

Abu Ya.s.ser, the Fatah al-Intifada leader for northern Lebanon, was surprised because the newcomers were bearded, prayed five times a day, and abstained from smoking. He asked his superior, the Syrian-based Abu Khalid al-Amli, deputy commander of Fatah al-Intifada, who the newcomers were. "We have new fighters," he said. "We must learn from Hizballah's military and discipline. They are destined for Gaza." Abu Khalid was also sending jihadists to Ayn al-Hilweh. Abu Ya.s.ser was surprised and unsettled by the presence of foreigners among them. "Their commanders were Palestinians, and they were independent of us," he said. When other factions asked Fatah al-Intifada who the new men were, they were told cryptically that it was an "internal matter." Shaker al-Absi was the third-ranking official in Fatah al-Intifada, and his authority exceeded that of Abu Ya.s.ser's. "I accepted Shaker but didn't control him," said Abu Ya.s.ser. Abu Musa, the commander of Fatah al-Intifada in Syria, began to complain that he did not know what was happening in his own organization.

The popular committee for security in Bedawi was tasked with investigating all outsiders who rented apartments in that camp, especially single men. Committee members monitored how much food was being brought into the apartments daily to estimate how many people might be inside. In November a new group of outsiders came to Bedawi and Nahr al-Barid, whom camp residents felt were not part of any Palestinian faction. The committee grew suspicious of newcomers who brought in many bags but had no families. Residents spoke of strange men carrying bags who entered twelve apartments in the camp. One night five strangers came into the camp, and armed members of the resistance asked them what was in their bags, which caused the men to run away. Some of the men were foreigners, including Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Iraqis, Lebanese, and an Omani. Fourteen of them lived together in one apartment. When the security committee members first tried to gain access, the Omani, named Ahmad, shut the door in their faces and refused to open it.

On November 23, 2006, an armed patrol of different faction members from the camp security committee was sent to the apartment. They found two Kalashnikovs along with ammunition and grenades and asked the fourteen men to come with them. When the men walked by a Fatah al-Intifada office where Salafi comrades were staying, they erupted in shouts of "G.o.d is great! Come to jihad!" and ran inside, throwing a grenade at the security men. An exchange of fire followed, and one of the security men was killed. The security committee raided the other apartments, but the suspects were communicating by radio and some escaped. One Saudi was shot in the leg while trying to escape. When an armed Syrian comrade on a motorcycle attempted to rescue him, he too was shot, and both were taken to a camp hospital. The Syrian had doc.u.ments signed by Shaker al-Absi. During his interrogation by the Palestinian security officials, the two admitted that they were members of Al Qaeda in Iraq and had come to Lebanon during the July war for training, recruitment, and jihad. Up to eighty men like them entered Lebanon via Fatah al-Intifada, using the organization as a conduit. They claimed to have come to a.s.sa.s.sinate seventeen Lebanese officials, including members of Parliament, sheikhs, and members of the security forces.

The two men were handed to the Lebanese army. Camp officials found cameras, four computers, and scanners used to make fake identification doc.u.ments. They also found CDs with footage of training and members swearing oaths of loyalty to Osama bin Laden. "Wherever Muslims are oppressed, we will help them," said one of the men in a film. Other material included maps of the region. Books with instructions on bomb-making were covered by copies of the Koran. They also found a collection of Al Qaeda statements. Abu Ya.s.ser told me that he had received a call warning him to leave the computers alone because they were very important.

One young Syrian had left behind a final statement, handwritten with messages to his family; another young jihadist stressed that "this time, I will not go back. I repeat, I will not go back." The young man, who had previously engaged in armed struggle, said, "With all that I have seen the last time, I'm in a serious danger of apostasy-G.o.d forbid-if I don't go back there. If the scents of musk and the light in the martyrs' faces and all the other graces we saw and were told of mean anything, they must mean only one thing, that this route is the path of heaven. Moreover, there is no heaven except by this path."

Some of the apartments had been rented by Kanan Naji, a former member of Tawhid who was a liaison between the Future Movement and Fatah al-Islam. Naji was also part of the Independent Islamic Gathering, a group that included prominent clerics in Tripoli such as Dai al-Islam al-Shahal and Bilal Barudi. The Gathering tried to influence Fatah al-Islam, and several of its members were in touch with the group.

In the 1980s Naji's Jund Allah militia of about one hundred had been based in Tripoli's Abu Samra neighborhood. They were known for wearing all-black military fatigues and received some of their arms from Fatah. Once the Syrians took over Tripoli in 1986, Naji fled to areas controlled by a Christian militia. He was underground in the 1990s, but following the Syrian withdrawal in 2005 he became very active, establis.h.i.+ng a close relations.h.i.+p with Hariri's Future Movement and the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, and providing arms to Fatah al-Islam. Four Palestinians affiliated with Naji's militia rented some of the apartments in Tripoli. They brought in sniper rifles, M-16s, and other weapons more advanced than what was usually found in the camp. Naji was one of the officials who hoped to use jihadist Salafis to serve the purposes of the anti-s.h.i.+te Future Movement.

The camp's leading factions prepared to rid themselves of the Salafis, but the Salafis-who until then were identified as the Salafist wing of Fatah al-Intifada-absconded to the nearby Nahr al-Barid camp. On November 26, 2006, they declared themselves under the new moniker Fatah al-Islam, calling for their supporters from other camps to join them and calling for the death of Abu Ya.s.ser, the leader of Fatah al-Intifada in northern Lebanon, for his role in turning over two of their men to the Lebanese army. Abu Ya.s.ser sent a message to his boss, Abu Khalid al-Amli, in Damascus, accusing him of putting camp security in danger by sponsoring the Salafis initially. Abu Ya.s.ser was incensed to learn that about thirty Salafis posing as Fatah al-Intifada also came up to Nahr al-Barid from Beirut's refugee camps. Abu Fadi, the commander of Fatah al-Intifada for all of Lebanon, had even used Salafis as bodyguards. He was expelled from the group and fled to the United Arab Emirates.

Abu Ya.s.ser claims that he had been deceived by Abu Khalid. "He tricked the organization," he says. "Abu Khalid was a dictator, and he is a secular man in every meaning of the word. He was preparing groups to fight the Americans in Lebanon, and maybe he was making a connection with Al Qaeda. The Syrians didn't know the details of Abu Khalid's plan, but they knew in general about the ideology of the fighters and that they were coming to Lebanon to fight America, and the Syrians did not know of the connection between Abu Khalid and Al Qaeda. Abu Khalid was expelled from the organization." Abu Khalid was jailed by the Syrians, but because he was seventy-five years old and had a heart condition, he was placed under house arrest.

The camp's security committee began to investigate Fatah al-Islam and its a.s.sociates. One Syrian suspect, born in 1980, had entered Lebanon in March 2007. He had come up to Bedawi from Ayn al-Hilweh, where he joined Fatah al-Islam. Despite his ties to the jihadists, he was released because some of the camp officials worried about upsetting the Islamists in the camp. Another suspect confessed that he too belonged to Fatah al-Islam. When the raid took place, he had been in touch with a man from Jund Allah via his walkie-talkie. He was spirited away to Tripoli, where he stayed in an apartment belonging to Kanan Naji. When he returned to Bedawi he was arrested by the security committee and was found to be carrying an American-made pistol. Another prisoner, born in 1986 in Syria, had been in touch with Fatah al-Islam via the Internet. He was given an address near a mosque in Bedawi and told to go there. He took money from his father, telling him it was to cover the cost of his university tuition, but instead he went to Lebanon, hoping Fatah al-Islam would help him get to Iraq "to resist the Americans, because the Americans are the enemies of Islam." The young man's cover in the camp was that he was studying Islam.

In November 2006 things got worse in Taamir, an area between Sidon and Ayn al-Hilweh. Jihadist Salafis took control of the neighborhood and imposed Islamic law. At the entrance to Taamir a banner signed by Zarqawi called for the defeat of America in Iraq. Many Lebanese families left, fearing for their lives. That month a statement signed by the "Al Qaeda Organization in Lebanon," allegedly based in Nahr al-Barid, threatened the Lebanese government, announcing that Al Qaeda had arrived in Lebanon and would work to destroy the government, which was commanded by the Americans. They would fight the enemies of G.o.d until victory or martyrdom, the statement said.

In Nahr al-Barid, however, Fatah al-Islam found a welcoming environment. Pictures of Saddam Hussein were on the camp's walls and in its homes and shops. Graffiti in support of the jihad in Iraq was also evident. When the Syrians pulled their troops out of Lebanon and lost direct control of the camps, the vacuum they left was filled by mosques, which gained in influence as the leftist resistance groups weakened and money from the Gulf came in. Islamists were seen driving expensive cars. Nahr al-Barid was more conservative and religious than other camps, with the most clerics (about fifteen) and the most mosques (about ten). Even before the July war inhabitants began to notice religious men moving into the camp who spoke in foreign dialects and whose wives were veiled. Up to seventy of them arrived during the war, a phenomenon similar to what occurred in other camps. Following the flight of Fatah al-Islam to Nahr al-Barid, these various groups joined their leader, Shaker al-Absi, openly taking their weapons with them. Up to fifty-six people came to Nahr al-Barid from the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut.

Fatah al-Islam had been planning to establish itself anyway, but in more than one camp at once, at a time of its choosing. In Nahr al-Barid group members took over the offices and weapons depots that had belonged to Fatah al-Intifada. They replaced Palestinian flags with Islamic flags. "When they took down Palestinian flags we knew they had no Palestinian agenda," said Abu Ya.s.ser. New weapons arrived-American M-16s, M4s, and even missiles, unlike the Kalashnikovs that the Palestinian factions were accustomed to. In a meeting with all the camp factions Fatah al-Intifada insisted that whereas before they had been suspicious of the newcomers, now they knew the men were dangerous. Fatah agreed that they should be expelled. Other groups, nervous about potential strife, refused to have any bloodshed in the camp. Fatah al-Intifada warned that Nahr al-Barid had been hijacked by Fatah al-Islam and all would bear responsibility for what would happen. Estimates for the initial size of Fatah al-Islam varied from forty-five to seventy. Some of the men had brought their families; others married local women. Only a minority of them were Palestinians. Most were Lebanese, Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians, and even Iraqis. Many came openly, in vans. Wanted Palestinian and Lebanese men from Ayn al-Hilweh and Taamir made their way to Nahr al-Barid as well, despite the many checkpoints along the way, leading camp officials to suspect senior Lebanese official involvement in the move, since the Interior Ministry was in the hands of pro-Hariri Sunnis. Although Usbat al-Ansar never publicly endorsed Fatah al-Islam, it did dispatch fighters to join the group in the north.

Jihadists with a more violent and nihilistic agenda took over Fatah al-Islam's leaders.h.i.+p council and influenced its leaders, s.h.i.+fting their focus away from Palestine and toward global jihad. Abu Laith, the son-in-law of Shaker al-Absi and one of the founders of Fatah al-Islam, grew frustrated with the group's change; he left for Iraq but was killed by Syrian security forces at the border. Other members also disagreed with the more extreme elements. Abu Midyan, who was said to have orchestrated the February 2007 bus bombings north of Beirut, refused to fight the Lebanese army because his enemy was Israel. In Nahr al-Barid, Shaker al-Absi linked up with a powerful arms dealer called Na.s.ser Ismail in order to improve his power base in the camp. Ismail helped recruit members, including the more radical Abu Hureira, a Lebanese member of Jund al-Sham. Abu Hureira helped push Fatah al-Islam toward a more extremist position, and he brought many other Lebanese Salafi jihadists with him. These radicals began to alienate the residents of Nahr al-Barid. Abu Midyan and Abu Hureira disagreed about the new direction the group was taking. While Absi did not share the views of these radicals, he needed the military support they brought, and so he could not afford a rift with them. A Saudi cleric linked to Al Qaeda called Abu al-Hareth took over the leaders.h.i.+p council. He helped bring more foreign fighters and create cells outside the camp. Some of the newcomers spoke of creating an Islamic state in northern Lebanon. Others didn't even know they were in Lebanon; they thought they were in Iraq.

In December in Nahr al-Barid a committee from Palestinian factions told Absi that his new faction was not acceptable and that he had to return the Fatah al-Intifada offices, disband his organization, and stop making announcements to the media. Absi did not respond to their demands. At the same time, Abu Khalid, the deputy commander of Fatah al-Intifada based in Syria, was arrested by the Syrians. His boss Abu Musa gave a press conference stating that he was very upset at Abu Khalid, but the notion that the Syrians were completely ignorant of the actions of a faction they controlled strains credulity. For Abu Khalid to take such steps independently of the Syrians would have been foolhardy.

Bernard Rougier speculated that the Hariri strategy was to "control and enlarge the Islamist coalition, which could be used to fight Hizballah on the communal level. The Syrians wanted to impede the Hariri strategy by creating division in the Hariri ranks, so they inserted a Salafi jihadist group that wants to fight Israel because it would take Sunni support from Hariri. Then it took on its own life and the Syrians don't have to do a thing. And it had a magnetic effect on Islamists in the country. It began to have influence in Tripoli." Rougier distinguishes the communal agenda, which "views the real enemy as s.h.i.+tes," from the jihadist agenda, which "views the real enemy as the West, and s.h.i.+tes are third or lower on the list of priorities." But the Syrian regime, dominated by the Alawite sect-which is related to s.h.i.+sm and which rules a Sunni majority and has crushed Islamist movements in the past-would not encourage an ideology that despises its own Baathist government. While the Syrians had allowed Arab volunteers to pour into Iraq to fight the Americans for the first two or three years of the occupation, the main opposition to the Syrian Baathist regime is a Sunni Islamist one. So it would not likely support the growth of Salafi jihadists so close to its own border. Moreover, Syria would not introduce anti-s.h.i.+te and anti-Hizballah elements into Lebanon. A Salafi attack on Israel would be Hizballah's worst nightmare because it would drag the powerful guerilla army into a war with Israel at a time and place not of its own choosing.

"When Fatah al-Islam took down the Palestinian flag and vandalized posters of Ha.s.san Nasrallah, they started getting a lot of money," said Abu Ya.s.ser. "Their main goal was to be the Sunni military force in Lebanon. The north has a rich history of Salafis, and they wanted to declare their emirate. Those who empowered them were not Palestinians. We let them enter as a baby chicken and they became an elephant. How did they get these advanced weapons? When they were part of Fatah al-Intifada, they were only seventy. They became five hundred. With us they were very poor. We gave them spare clothes. How did they get so much money? And how did they buy all the grilled chicken in Nahr al-Barid?" According to Abu Jaber of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), once a leading resistance movement within the PLO but now completely marginalized, the financial situation of the Fatah al-Islam members suddenly improved as more foreign faces appeared. "They were probably there, but people didn't see them," he said. "How did they live for six or seven months?" he asked. "They used to buy three hundred loaves of bread a day. They bought apartments, rented land, buying very advanced weapons, spending a lot of money." People in the camp grew worried, and some refused to rent them homes. Some said that they were Muslims who were not bothering anybody, while others said that they did not belong in Palestinian society. As Fatah al-Islam began to spread throughout the camp, it seemed to many that the group was preparing for something. It was also clear that its members could get in and out of the camp without hara.s.sment by Lebanese security officials.

"The Fatah al-Islam picture got more and more clear," said Abu Jaber. "In their first announcement their goal was to liberate Palestine and correct the errors of Fatah al-Intifada. And they called men in the camp to join them in liberating Palestine in an Islamist way. After a while their speech changed. They said they came to fight Israel in the name of Sunnis. They said, 'We won't fight those who fought Israel [meaning Hizballah], but we have differences with them.' They did not have their own mosque. They were moving around in all the mosques." The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq sent Saudis and other fighters from Iraq to Nahr al-Barid but warned them not to provoke Lebanese s.h.i.+tes.

Ensconced in Nahr al-Barid, the Fatah al-Islam militants grew in number. Their headquarters had a yard for military training. Above it flew a black flag with an Islamic slogan. Some walked around camp with scarves concealing their faces. Shaker al-Absi insisted that they were independent of Al Qaeda even though they had a similar ideology, and that they had no ties to Lebanese or Syrian officials. He explained that "Muslims" were funding his organization. The secular approach to the struggle had failed to achieve its goals, he argued, and they now rallied under the flag of Islam. He explained that his organization's main goals were to liberate Jerusalem and oppose the U.S. project in the Middle East. He refused to be involved in internal Lebanese affairs. Fatah al-Islam's main criticism of Hizballah was not that it was a s.h.i.+te party but that it denied other groups the same right to resist Israel. Importantly, Absi denied being a takfiri. (Takfiris typically single out s.h.i.+tes, as did Zarqawi in Iraq, and sometimes call for their deaths.) Members of Fatah al-Islam claimed to have "brothers" in all the camps in Lebanon, as well as in Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. But according to an informant with Lebanese army intelligence, the group clashed with mainstream factions in the camp three times and achieved dominance. Fatah al-Islam's ranks were bolstered by Lebanese Sunnis reacting to the increasingly aggressive steps being taken by Hizballah supporters, whose actions were viewed by many Sunnis as an attack on Sunni power, an occupation of Beirut, and an attempt to seize control of Lebanon. Clerics in Tripoli reported being asked by followers if they were permitted to join Fatah al-Islam. Dai al-Islam al-Shahal, the founder of Lebanese Salafism, explained that Lebanese Sunnis felt targeted, alienated, and punished, and as a result some were joining Fatah al-Islam and others were sympathizing with it. Shahal had maintained direct dialogue