Fatah al-Islam () is a Sunni Islamist militant group established in November 2006 in a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Lebanon. It has been described as a militant jihadistLe Figaro (16 April 2007). "Fatah Al-Islam: the new terrorist threat hanging over Lebanon" . Retrieved 20 May 2007. movement that draws inspiration from al-Qaeda.Reuters (19 May 2007). "Lebanese army battles militants at Palestinian camp". Retrieved 20 May 2007. It became well known in 2007 after engaging in combat against the Lebanese Army in the Nahr al-Bared UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp. Following its defeat at Nahr el-Bared, the group relocated to the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in 2008. As of 2014, after the death or capture of many members, most of the surviving members of Fatah al-Islam are thought to have joined other groups in Lebanon and Syria including the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The United States Department of State classified the group as a terrorist organization on 9 August 2007 but it was not classified as such anymore on 24 November 2010.
Origins Fatah al-Islam was led by a fugitive militant named Shaker al-Abssi,International Herald Tribune (15 March 2007). "A new face of Al Qaeda emerges in Lebanon". Retrieved 20 May 2007. a Palestinian refugee who was born in Jericho in 1955. Al-Abssi was once a pilot with the rank of colonel.
Al-Abssi's first militant activities can be traced to connections he established with a secular Palestinian militant group named Fatah al-Intifada in Libya, after it defected from the umbrella Fatah movement in 1983. From Libya, al-Abssi reportedly moved to Damascus, Syria, where he established close ties with Fatah al-Intifada's number two in command, Abu Khaled al-Omla.
Syrian authorities arrested al-Abssi in 2000 and sentenced him to three years in prison on charges of smuggling weapons and ammunition between Jordan and Syria. The government later released him. He went to Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and fought alongside groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. He is said to have become friends with a number of al-Qaeda leaders there.
In 2004, al-Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian military court for involvement in the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley, after Syrian authorities refused to extradite him for trial.Komotv (0 May 2007). "Dozens killed in Lebanon gunbattle between Islamic militants, security forces". Retrieved 20 May 2007 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was also sentenced to death for the killing of Foley and was thought to have been an associate of al-Abssi.
He briefly returned to Syria, where he met again with al-Omla, who helped him relocate to Lebanon. Al-Abssi and a group of youth he met in Iraq set themselves up in the headquarters of Fatah al-Intifada in the village of Helwa in the Western Beqaa District in 2005. In May 2006, al-Abssi and this small group engaged in armed clashes with Lebanese soldiers that led to the killing of one young Syrian wanted by Damascus for fighting in Iraq.
Syrian intelligence services then summoned al-Omla to ask him about al-Abssi and his group. The investigation unmasked the close coordination between al-Omla and al-Abssi that had been kept from the pro-Damascus Secretary General of Fatah al-Intifada, Abu Musa, and by extension, from the Syrian authorities. Al-Omla then reportedly ordered al-Abssi to leave the Western Beqaa, which is close to the borders with Syria, and head for refugee camps in northern Lebanon.
In November 2006, the Palestinian security committee in the Beddawi refugee camp in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, handed over two members of al-Abssi's group to Lebanese military intelligence. Al-Abssi was reportedly infuriated and decided to break with Fatah al-Intifada and establish his own group, Fatah al-Islam.
In November 2006, Fatah al-Islam set up a headquarters in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The group seized three compounds in the camp that belonged to Fatah al-Intifada. Al-Abssi then issued a declaration stating he was returning religion to the Palestinian cause.
In March 2007, Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for the magazine The New Yorker, suggested that the Lebanese government was giving support to Fatah al-Islam, in order to defeat Hezbollah. Hersh stated that David Welch, Assistant to Secretary of State, negotiated with Saudi Arabia and Saad Hariri of the American-backed government of Fouad Siniora to funnel aid to Fatah al-Islam, so that it could eventually attack Shia Hezbollah.
However, Michael Young, a writer for Reason magazine, cast doubts on Seymour Hersh's claims. Additionally, Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, alleged that al-Abssi was in fact a Syrian operative engaged in destabilizing the government of Lebanon. In November 2008, Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a Washington journalist, questioned Hersh's credibility and links to known Syrian proteges in Lebanon, such as former information minister Michel Samaha.
Other indications that Fatah al-Islam, and al-Abssi specifically, may have had Syrian support come from Samir Geagea, executive body chairman of the Lebanese Forces, who asked why: if anyone is found out to be a Muslim Brotherhood activist, he receives a death sentence, and if he is very lucky, he gets hard labor. So how come Shaker Al-'Absi—who is no ordinary militant but a leader ... and who committed a crime in Jordan and was sentenced to death there, and was arrested in Syria—has been released [from prison]?Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar), 23 May 2007; Al-Mustaqbal (Lebanon), 24 May 2007.
Membership The official spokesman for Fatah al-Islam is Abu Salim Taha. Fatah al-Islam supposedly has more than 150 armed fighters in the Nahr el-Bared camp. The group allegedly has about more than half a dozen Palestinian members. The bulk of its membership is said to be made up of Syrians, Saudis, and other Arab jihadists who had fought in Iraq, as well as approximately 50 Lebanese extremist Sunnis.
The Syrian ambassador said the leaders of the group were mostly Palestinians, Jordanians, or Saudis, and that perhaps a "couple of them" were Syrians.
The pro-Saudi Al Hayat newspaper reported that Fatah al-Islam has close ties to Syria, and that much of the leadership of Fatah al-Islam is made up of Syrian officers.
Ideology According to Reuters, Fatah al-Islam's primary goals are to institute Islamic law in Palestinian refugee camps and to target Israel.
Several news organizations have suggested that Fatah al-Islam has connections to al-Qaeda. Some reports even claim Fatah al-Islam is part of the al-Qaeda network. Al-Abssi has stated that the group has no organizational ties to al-Qaeda, "but agrees with its aim of fighting infidels." Fatah al-Islam statements have appeared on Islamist Web sites known to publish al-Qaeda statements.
Bashar Jaafari, Syria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, responding to Lebanese claims that Syria is a sponsor of Fatah al-Islam, told Reuters that several of the organization's members had been jailed for three or four years in Syria for connections to al-Qaeda, and that upon their release they had left the country. Jaafari also said that, "if they come to Syria, they will be jailed," and that, "they are not fighting on behalf of the Palestinian cause ... [but] on behalf of al Qaeda."
On 23 May 2007, the Arab League issued a statement "strongly condemn[ing] the criminal and terrorist acts carried out by the terrorist group known as Fatah al-Islam," adding that the group has "no relation to the Palestinian question or Islam."
In an interview on CNN International's "Your World Today," Seymour Hersh said that according to an agreement between the United States Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan, covert funding for the Sunni Fatah al-Islam would be provided by the Saudi regime to counterweight the influence of the Shia Hezbollah. Hersh said, "This was a covert operation that [Prince] Bandar ran with us." He also said that when he was in Beirut, he "talked to officials who acknowledged the reason they were tolerating the radical jihadist groups was because they were seen as a protection against Hezbollah."
Hezbollah released a statement saying, "We feel that there is someone out there who wants to drag the [Lebanese] army to this confrontation and bloody struggle ... to serve well-known projects and aims," and it called for a political solution to the crisis.
Activities
German train bombing plot
The fourth-highest-ranking member of Fatah al-Islam, Saddam el-Hajdib, and his brother Khaled Khair-Eddin el-Hajdib, were among the suspects behind failed bombings on German commuter trains on 31 July 2006. The bombs did not explode due to faulty mechanisms. Saddam el-Hajdib was killed by the Lebanese army in the 2007 conflict between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army.
Plot to assassinate anti-Syrian Lebanese officials On 7 December 2006, Le Monde reported that a top UN official had been informed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, of a plot by Fatah al-Islam to assassinate 36 anti-Syrian figures in Lebanon.Reuters (7 December 2006). "Annan urges Lebanon talks in hope of ending crisis" . Retrieved 7 December 2006.Le Monde (7 December 2006). "Des djihadistes viseraient 36 personnalités antisyriennes au Liban" . Retrieved 7 December 2006. PLO security agents later confronted the group, arresting six of them. Four were later released while a Syrian and a Saudi Arabian were handed over to the Lebanese military.
Conflict with the Lebanese army
On 19 May 2007, a police search was mounted for suspects in a bank robbery a day earlier in Amyoun, a town southeast of Tripoli. Gunmen made off with $125,000 in cash in the robbery.
According to Ashraf Rifi, the Lebanese Internal Security Forces chief, the bank robbers were traced to an apartment in Tripoli which turned out to be an office for Fatah al-Islam. The armed militants at the office resisted arrest and a gunbattle ensued. A three-day standoff between security forces and militants at the apartment ended on 23 May, after the last Fatah al-Islam militant at that location blew himself up.
Robert Fisk reported that while some of the group that had robbed the bank were cornered in the apartment block, others had holed up in the Nahr el-Bared camp north of the city. Under a 1969 Arab accord, the Lebanese army may not enter the Palestinian refugee camps.ABC/Reuters (May 01 2007.). "Lebanese Army shells refugee camp". Retrieved 21 May 2007.
The militants seized Lebanese army positions at the entrance to the Nahr al-Bared camp, capturing two armored personnel carriers. Security officials also reported that the gunmen had opened fire on roads leading out of the camp to Tripoli, and ambushed a military unit, killing two soldiers.
The attacks by Fatah al-Islam killed at least 27 Lebanese soldiers, 15 Fatah al-Islam militants and 15 civilians, injuring another 27 Lebanese soldiers and over 40 civilians.BBC News (May 01 2007.). "Scores killed in Lebanon fighting" . Retrieved 21 May 2007. Lebanese forces fired artillery barrages against militants in the camp.
In response, the Lebanese army brought in reinforcements and on 20 May began a steady barrage of artillery and heavy machine gun fire in an attempt to hit militant positions that Fatah al-Islam had occupied inside the Nahr al-Bared camp.