Tripoli Rocked by Internal Rifts and Mideast Proxy War
By Alia Ibrahim
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
TRIPOLI, Lebanon -- Despite two decades of lost battles, Samir Hassan sees no alternative to more fighting.
Hassan, a 39-year-old Sunni resident of this northern Lebanese port city, recently picked up his gun to lead a group of street fighters. "When you are torn between your wanting to live and your feeling that you are in real danger, you choose to defend yourself, even if you know you could die, and even when you know your death would be gratuitous," he said.
The on-again, off-again battle in Tripoli pits Sunnis against Alawites, a branch of Islam whose members include the leadership of Syria, Lebanon's often meddlesome neighbor. The conflict here is fueled by Lebanon's internal divisions and a slow-burning proxy war that involves Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
The situation has calmed since the signing of a reconciliation agreement in early September, but two bombings targeting the military have left at least 15 soldiers dead since that time. "I don't think they have solved the real problem; we're hiding the guns for now, but they will be out in a second when [the two sides] disagree again," said Hassan, a part-time soccer coach. More than 20 people died in street clashes in late spring and early summer.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said last month that any progress in Lebanon is meaningless before the "eradication of extremists and Salafis moving freely in northern Lebanon." Salafis are Muslims who espouse, sometimes violently, a strict interpretation of Islam that they say is rooted in the era of the prophet Muhammad.
The Syrian government has increased the number of troops it has deployed along its border with Lebanon, a step that some interpreted as a sign of Syrian concern that its Alawite supporters in Tripoli could face attacks by Sunni extremists. Hassan and other residents say the role of Islamist fighters in Tripoli is being exaggerated to justify further violence.
The strife in Tripoli is also an expression of the uncertainty that Lebanese feel about their future and the ascendancy of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Syria and Iran.
After a power play that involved sending fighters into predominantly Sunni West Beirut in May, Hezbollah and allied groups wrested political concessions from Lebanon's Western-backed government, including veto power in a new cabinet and the passage of an electoral law that could give Hezbollah a majority in elections next summer.
"What happened in Beirut scared us," Hassan said.
"Hezbollah is trying to control Lebanon in general and to marginalize the Sunnis in particular," said Daii al-Islam al-Shahal, the Tripoli-based founder of the Salafi Jihad movement in Lebanon.
The Alawites sound no less beleaguered. "We're a minority, we're surrounded by Sunnis from all sides; it is not in our best interest to fight, but we will until the last man if we have to," said Rifaat Eid, the military chief of the Alawite Arab Democratic Party .
Some Lebanese politicians worry that Syria may intervene again in Lebanese affairs, but Syrian officials say the extra troops are in place only to combat smuggling. Last week, Assad issued a decree authorizing the government to establish formal diplomatic relations with Lebanon for the first time since the two countries became independent 60 years ago.
Officials in Tripoli disagree over the size of militant Islamist groups here and their links to international organizations.
In 2007, the Lebanese army battled Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, for three months at a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. Last week, security authorities arrested a cell whose members are linked to the group.
But Islamist groups in Tripoli are as diversified in names and ideologies as they are in affiliations and sources of funding.
Most at some point have been suppressed by Lebanese authorities. Many are funded by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, and many others are said to have links with Syrian intelligence.
"I get my funding from many countries in the Gulf, but this money, I use to spread the ideology, not to buy weapons. We are not a militia," Shahal said. Many of Shahal's supporters were arrested in 2000 following clashes with the Lebanese army in the Dinnieh area, where the Salafis had set up a training camp tied to al-Qaeda, according to Lebanese security sources.
Shahal denies charges that his supporters were planning to impose strict Islamic rule in Lebanon and says that they "were wrong" to set up the camp. "They should have been more patient," he said, complaining about political and economic deprivation in the area.
Hassan's Bab al-Tebbaneh neighborhood and the surrounding communities are impoverished places, full of unemployed young men. The Abou Ali River, which separates Bab al-Tebbaneh from the wealthier parts of Tripoli, is filled with garbage and dead animals. Giant, glossy posters of rival politicians covering houses and small buildings seem to be the only new feature in a dusty region that is still in ruins from Lebanon's civil war, which ended in 1990.
The animosity between the residents of Bab al-Tebbaneh and their Alawite neighbors in the Jabal Mohsen area goes back to the beginning of the civil war, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat took refuge in Bab al-Tebbaneh and bombed the pro-Syrian Alawites.
When the Syrians took over the city following a battle, they killed local leaders; many in Bab al-Tebbaneh hold them responsible for a 1986 massacre that left more than 600 people dead. The Syrians deny any role in the killings.
Many residents in Bab al-Tebbaneh say they are convinced that reconciliation has been so elusive in Tripoli because leaders exploit the unstable security situation for political purposes. Some of the fighters here say they are determined to defend their neighborhoods against this manipulation.
One Wednesday in late June, the usually busy streets of Bab al-Tebbaneh were deserted -- except for the so-called Syria road, which has become the demarcation line between Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.
Big truck wheels closed the entrance to Abou Abdallah Aswad's coffee shop, where he sat sipping fresh coffee and holding his Kalashnikov. Guns rested on the table in front of him and in the arms of dozens of men tired from a night of fighting.
On the street, Hassan stood with his men. All of them, young and old, were armed. Their looks reflected different affiliations. Among them were Salafis, wearing beards, kaftans and short pants; others wore black headbands and army pants, and some of the younger men were in baggy jeans, with big chains around their necks.
Hassan said that he has seen his neighborhood move from one stage of destitution to another since his childhood and that he had taken up his gun in its defense several times: first as a leftist teenager in the 1970s, then as a radical Islamist in the 1980s. Most of his 20s, he said, were spent in Syrian prisons, but since his release in 2000, he has become more involved in social work and now coaches a soccer team.
"The only cause I fight for is to defend myself, my family and my neighborhood," he said.
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