Why al-Qaeda does not threaten Lebanon, yet

[Originally posted at NOW]

The alleged detection by U.S. intelligence agencies of what some officials say are the most serious al-Qaeda attack plots since September 11, 2001, has led to the closure until August 10th of nineteen American embassies across the Middle East.

The measure was described by the State Department as one taken “out of an abundance of caution.” Yet, despite a precedent for attacks on the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, as well as reports that the CIA warned Lebanese officials just last month of plans for impending attacks by al-Qaeda-linked groups in the country, the U.S. facility in Awkar, northeast of Beirut, was one of very few in the region to remain open this week.

In a statement sent to NOW via email, the U.S. embassy said it “does not discuss the specifics of our security operations. The Embassy has not changed its operating hours as a result of the travel advisory.” It declined to confirm whether reports that a team of senior U.S. specialists would travel to Lebanon to bolster embassy security were true.

According to analysts, one possible reason the embassy has stayed open is that it is already deemed sufficiently secure.

“Some of the U.S. facilities are more secure than others,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, author of Bin Laden’s Legacy and Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It could be that some posts are more vulnerable to specific methods of attack. For example, if the method of attack is believed to be, say, a car bomb, then certain facilities are better insulated against car bombs.”

Others argue the primary reason is that there simply isn’t a significant threat from al-Qaeda in Lebanon, despite brief episodes of al-Qaeda-linked violence such as the 2007 war between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army in Nahr al-Bared.

“All that we hear about al-Qaeda [in Lebanon] is a bunch of nonsense,” said Riad Kahwaji, founder and CEO of the Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA). “In Lebanon there was never, ever a record of al-Qaeda successfully establishing itself. We have a record of al-Qaeda attempting, sending teasers, to see whether they can have a base here, but they never did. So Lebanon is not regarded as a country where al-Qaeda has strong capabilities,” he told NOW.

This, Kahwaji believes, is for two key reasons.

“First, Lebanon has a lot of intelligence activities; a lot of foreign [intelligence] services are established. Second, the Sunni community doesn’t really share the ideologies of al-Qaeda. They know from the Fatah al-Islam experience [about] the links [they] have with Syrian intelligence. [Al-Qaeda] was never accepted as one of their own.”

Gartenstein-Ross concurs that the nature of the Sunni community in Lebanon has been resistant to al-Qaeda infiltration.

“Given Lebanon’s own awful experience with civil war, part of it could be that the Sunnis just aren’t too eager to let al-Qaeda in. They’ve seen what al-Qaeda’s done in other countries; they have terrible experiences of what could happen to their country, so perhaps given that history, al-Qaeda’s narrative just isn’t that appealing.”

Even so, in light of the war raging in neighboring Syria – in which al-Qaeda subsidiaries such as The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) are heavily involved – certain analysts fear al-Qaeda’s influence is on the rise in Lebanon. Such fears are compounded by the participation of an estimated few hundred Lebanese Sunnis in the war – including jihadists, as seen most recently in the suicide bombings in Homs province Friday carried out by two brothers from Tripoli – and the porousness of the Lebanese-Syrian border.

“I fully agree […] that right now given what’s going on in Syria I have concerns that you may at some point see a greater al-Qaeda presence within Lebanon,” Gartenstein-Ross told NOW.

“But they have a strong incentive not to carry out an attack [in Lebanon] in that if they do, the porousness of the border is going to decline, which makes Lebanon a less appealing place for them to utilize.”

Kahwaji, by contrast, feels the prospects for an increased al-Qaeda foothold in the country are highly limited.

“It’s not easy. Lebanon is a small country, it’s not Iraq with its vast geography, or Libya, or Yemen, where you can go and disappear in the remote desert […] The intelligence for the Lebanese army, for Lebanese security [authorities], for the other agencies, are all over the place and therefore [militants] get picked up easily, so it’s not a safe ground for them.”

“Also they need to find communities that will share their thoughts and agree to give them safe haven. You can find a village or two that could have this sentiment, but that’s it.”

“It’s not safe and it never will be safe for al-Qaeda to operate in Lebanon.”

Nahr al-Bared comes to Beirut

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

A camp resident explains entry restrictions into the camp (Author's photo)

I had already been intrigued for some time by reports of the new Nasawiya Café in Mar Mikhael (drink beer on a sofa surrounded by intelligent women? If you insist…). So when I then heard they were hosting a live talk with residents of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp last night, I saw no reason not to attend.

Somewhat shaken by the verbal abuse meted out at the entrance (a simulation, you see, of the camp’s notorious army checkpoints), and feeling vaguely as though I’d walked into a Hunter Thompson novel, I squeezed myself between the wall and the roughly 150 other attendees while a camp resident expounded on this or that aspect of camp life with the aid of a projected slideshow. As someone whose Arabic is, shall we say, sub-Qabbanian, I couldn’t follow more than the general gist of what he and his co-residents were saying. However, we were subsequently shown a screening of Sandra Madi’s documentary, ‘Nahr al-Bared: Mokhayyam I3tiqal’ (‘Detention camp’), with English sub-titles, and after two hours which also included a Skype Q&A with Madi and other refugees live from the camp, a central point had amply emerged.

Which is, in summary, that the overwhelming majority of the camp’s thousands of residents are non-violent non-Islamists who have, for the last five years, been subjected to highly unnecessary and unreasonable restrictions on movement, labour, commerce and the general ability to attain a basic standard of human dignity. Stories of absurd harassment recall the occupation of Palestinians in another territory: one resident told of a schoolbus being prevented from entering because one of the girls had the ‘wrong’ kind of ID (unique among Palestinians in Lebanon, those of Nahr al-Bared have to carry not one but three kinds of government-issued documents).

Quite apart from the humanitarian considerations, this does the Lebanese government no favours. As one resident put it: “I was against Fatah al-Islam, we all were. So if the Lebanese government won [in 2007], then I should have won too. But they treat me as if I was the loser.” The implication here applies to camps around the country: by alienating rather than partnering with peaceful Palestinians – who, as already noted, are the vast majority – the government only empowers the extremist fringes. The day will come when this is yet again a problem for the Lebanese as much as for the Palestinians.

Al Qaeda letter, dated 2007, refers to "brothers in Lebanon"

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

Among the 17 previously classified letters captured during the killing of Osama bin Laden and released yesterday by the US military is one addressed, according to the document guide, “to a legal scholar by the name of Hafiz Sultan” and authored by an unnamed al-Qaeda operative “of Egyptian origin”.

In most respects it’s a fairly typical one – the author inquires as to the possibility of using “chlorine gas” weaponry in Iraq, and attaches some upbeat correspondence from “the brothers in Algeria” (“Things are steadily improving: morale is rising […] Every week there is a bombing”).

What caught my eye, however, was the following aside: “We will try to make arrangements with the brothers in Lebanon to have one of their representatives visit us in the near future. God grant us success.”

Of particular interest is that the letter is dated 28 March, 2007 – less than two months before the start of the mini-war between the Lebanese army and members of the Salafist outfit, Fatah al-Islam. Of course, post hoc need not imply propter hoc, etc., but that the group had links to al-Qaeda now looks all but certain. Hopefully, further releases from the archive will shed more light on this still-murky history.