Refugee camp militants pledge to fight on to the last man standing

[Snowden]

Refugee camp militants pledge to fight on to the last man standing

Nicholas Blanford in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp


Pumped up on drugs, hard to kill and refusing to surrender, the militants of the extremist Fatah al-Islam faction have presented the toughest challenge to the Lebanese Army in years. But the group, which emerged a year ago, looks set to fight a bloody last stand as a shaky ceasefire runs out.

By yesterday evening Lebanese troops were in a tense stand-off with Fatah al-Islam fighters inside the seaside Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp after blocking the southern exit with razor wire.

Thousands of refugees had taken the opportunity of the lull to flee the camp, but by mid-afternoon, with expectations of an imminent resumption of fighting, the flow had stopped.

At least half the camp’s 40,000 residents are thought to have remained inside. Palestinians escaping said that Fatah al-Islam was planning to stay and fight, and most of the militants were wearing explosive belts.

Inside the camp one militant leader, who introduced himself as Abu Hureira, said that the group would never surrender. “They will not enter except over our dead bodies,” he said as the Lebanese Army reinforced positions around the camp. A few hours later Lebanese military officials said that the body of Abu Madyan, described as another senior leader of Fatah al-Islam had been found just outside the camp.

Those fleeing said that shelling from army positions had been relentless. Children hurried behind weeping mothers as they fled the wrecked streets. Some farmers even drove their cattle out of the camp to the safety of nearby fields.

A Lebanese civil defence officer said that the militants were formidable combatants. They were continuing to fight even after being shot several times.

“They keep jumping up and down in front of the soldiers, yelling Allahu Akhbar (God is greatest),” he said. “The Army caught one of them. He was wearing an explosive belt. His leg was hanging on by a thread of meat only. But he didn’t give one cry of pain. He just lay there. These people must be on drugs.”

For a group that has dominated the security news in Lebanon for the past six months and looks destined to expire in bloody fashion, little is known about Fatah al-Islam’s origins, backing and true agenda.

To some the 200-300 fighters are adherents of Osama bin Laden, part of the new generation of groups with ties to al-Qaeda emerging in the Middle East and Muslim parts of the world. To others the faction is little more than a tool of Syrian intelligence planted in Lebanon to wreak havoc and further destabilise the Western-backed Government in Beirut.

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Centre in Beirut, said “Either way this group is al-Qaeda.” She said that Fatah al-Islam was an example of the new breed of al-Qaeda, similar to al-Qaeda in Iraq, concentrating on a more local agenda.

Syria has denied any involvement with the group, arguing that it faces threats of its own from home-grown jihadi militants. “Our forces have been after them, even through Interpol,” Walid Muallem, Syria’s Foreign Minister, said this week. “We reject this organisation. It does not serve the Palestinian cause and it is not after liberating Palestine.”

The violent politics and shifting alliances and interests of the Middle East can, however, produce strange bedfellows. Many analysts say there is little doubt that although the Syrian regime is secular, the intelligence services for years have exploited militant Islamic extremists for their own purposes.

“Syrian intelligence sent hundreds if not thousands of innocent-minded young men to Iraq to struggle against the Americans,” said Radwan al-Sayyed, a professor of Islamic studies at the Lebanese University and adviser to Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister. “They tried to make an Islamist International in Iraq like the Arabs and Americans did against the Soviets in Afghanistan.”

Fatah al-Islam first arrived in Lebanon a year ago, setting up positions in the Nahr al-Bared camp on the border with Syria. They claimed to have split from the pro-Syrian Palestinian faction Fatah al-Intifada, which has its headquarters in Damascus. Palestinians fleeing the fighting of the past three days say that the group is composed of Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis and Iraqis. Several Lebanese sympathisers are believed to have helped to swell their ranks as well as Palestinian Islamic militants from refugee camps in Beirut and the south.

The group is led by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Palestinian guerrilla fighter. He has said that Fatah al-Islam “wishes to fight no one but Israel” but has made veiled threats against the 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1832276.ece

[Caldric]

Give them their wish "no man left standing".

[Snowden]

You do get the feeling that if nobody is in any part of Arabia except Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, they will wipe out each other. The presence of other forces -- US, Israel or whatever -- only keeps them from annihilating each other. It certainly seems that way.