We are very excited to have an exclusive excerpt from Nir Rosen's new book Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World
Aftermath offers Rosen's vivid, and often shocking, reporting from some of the places the US "war on terror" is being fought - Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Afghanistan. The following excerpt takes us to northern Lebanon during the May 2007 assault on the Nahr al-Barid Palestinian refugee camp, as the war in Iraq continues to spread across the region and its influence tears at the seams of Lebanese society.
A sense of foreboding united people in Lebanon and throughout the region in response to the destabilizing occupation of Iraq. It also made Sunnis feel vulnerable. North of Tripoli, by the village of Qubat Shamra, where a boy was selling watermelons off the side of the road the day I visited, there was a stretch of broken wall with two lines of graffiti. “We tell you, o rulers, of treachery and tyranny, the blood of the martyr Hariri is not to be forgotten,” said one. The other listed the successors of the Prophet Muhammad whom Sunnis revere and warned that “the blood of Sunnis is boiling.” It was signed by an unknown group called the Mujahideen Battalions of Tel Hayat, in reference to a nearby village. Further up the road toward the Syrian border, past tall pine and eucalyptus trees, one side of an apartment building was covered with a large painting of Rafiq al-Hariri. “They feared you so they killed you,” it said. “Truly they are pigs.” It quoted from the Koran as well, an example of the strange juxtaposition of Islamism and the Hariri cult. I stopped at Kusha and met a twenty-three-year-old third-year law student called Muhamad, who had learned English from listening to rap music. Muhamad had joined the Interior Ministry’s new Information Branch earlier that year as a volunteer “because of the Shiite campaign against this government,” he said. “You have to do something.” His responsibility was to “keep an eye open for anything strange in town.”
According to Muhamad, Lebanon’s Sunnis had finally come to believe that Lebanon was their country. “After they killed Hariri we woke up,” he said. “Shiites hate us. After Hariri’s death I started feeling hatred of Shiites. I hate Shiites after they thanked Syria in the demonstration.” He also hated Shiites for reacting positively to Saddam Hussein’s execution. “At the end Saddam was a Sunni,” he said. “I love Saddam. He subjugated Shiites. He was a leader in every sense of the word.” Muhamad believed he was helping to defend Lebanon from the “Shiite crescent.” “They’re trying to extend their principles through all of Lebanon. The biggest danger is coming from Shiites, not Israel. The priority is Shiites, to confront their project. I would take a gun and face Shiites, not only me but many people here.”
In the village of Masha I drove by the main mosque, which had a large picture of Hariri on one wall. Above the mosque a large blue sign said, “Palestine and Iraq are calling you, boycott American products.” Elsewhere in town a small shop had the obligatory picture of Saddam with his two sons at his side. A local sheikh had praised Fatah al-Islam as mujahideen.
Throughout Sunni towns in the north and Sunni neighborhoods in Tripoli and Beirut one finds images of Saddam and graffiti praising the executed former Iraqi leader. “The nation that gave birth to Saddam Hussein will not bow,” said one in the Beqaa. In Beirut’s Sunni stronghold of Tariq al-Jadida I found posters of “the martyred leader” Saddam with the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem behind him. On the road to Mishmish, a small mountain town in Akkar, I passed a wall where someone had written “Long live the hero Saddam Hussein.” Entering the town I drove under many banners honoring the army. “Only your pure blood draws the red line,” said one, in reference to Nasrallah’s recent speech. When I visited in late July 2007, the all-Sunni town had already lost three of its men to Fatah al-Islam; eight other soldiers from Mishmish were wounded. “People are very angry at the Palestinians,” mayor
Hanzar Amr Din told me. He did not believe the anger would subside after the fighting. “If they think of coming back to the camp, people will destroy it,” he said. “People here were very upset at Nasrallah’s words about red lines,” he said. “Last summer people were happy with Nasrallah for fighting Israel, but saying that the camp is a red line means he is backing Palestinians against the army.”
That summer I found similar sentiments in the Sunni town of Bibnine. A laborer in a sandwich shop compared the situation to the 1970 Black September fighting, when the Jordanians had gotten rid of Palestinians. “I swear on the Koran,” he told me, “if I see a Palestinian I would slaughter him and drink his blood.” I asked him what he thought of Hizballah. “I hope they get rid of them too,” he said. The walls of Bibnine were plastered with pictures of the ten soldiers killed in the fighting, and I was reminded of the similar pictures festooning Shiite towns a year before in honor of the Hizballah soldiers who had died. On a wall near children playing on a road, someone had written with chalk, “Saddam Hussein is the martyr of the nation.” Khuzaimi, a twelve-year-old boy, told me that “we all want to grow up to join the army to destroy this infidel al-Absi.” But since Fatah al-Islam would be destroyed by then, he said, “then we will all go fight Israel.”
Most of the townsmen had taken their weapons to Nahr al-Barid in the first days of the fighting to “help the army,” I was told by Qais, a member of the Internal Security Forces from the town. “Anybody above sixteen went down,” he said—122 soldiers in all. “There is no family in Bibnine without somebody down there,” he said, adding that his family had fifteen men there. “There is a big anger at the Palestinians,” he said. “We consider them responsible for this.” When I visited Bibnine on July 31 the shelling of Nahr al-Barid echoed up to the town. Many of the townsmen worked as fishermen off the coast of Tripoli, but since the fighting had begun they had been forced to stay at home.
“They should be put on the border in the south so they can smell Palestine soil and remember it,” said Abu Muhamad, whose son Osama, a twenty-six-year-old soldier, had died in Nahr al-Barid. He blamed Syria for sending Fatah al-Islam to Lebanon. “My son the martyr, from childhood he wanted to be in the army. He grew up in a military house. I am a retired soldier. I am proud of him. He was brave, not a coward.” Abu Muhamad had two other sons in the army, one of whom was wounded in the battle. “Our first martyr was Rafiq al-Hariri,” he told me. “He was a martyr to the nation, and we all want to be martyrs to the nation.”
From his balcony Abu Muhamad could view the camp smoldering down on the coast. His face was lined and weathered. He looked tired but tried to smile. “The people won’t allow the camp to be rebuilt,” he said. “As soon as the fighting stops, people will go down to prevent it from being rebuilt.” Another guest, the father of a soldier still fighting in the camp, repeated an oft-heard slander that the Palestinians had sold Palestine to the Jews in 1948 and now had sold Nahr al-Barid to the jihadists. “That gang bought their camp,” the man said. He had been among the first armed men to descend on the camp, he told me. “All towns around the camp went down and took the arms of soldiers who were killed,” he said. “Now there is a blood feud between Lebanese and Palestinians,” said Abu Muhamad. “The big problem is not with the Palestinians.” The real problem was not the Nahr al-Barid camp but the one in downtown Beirut, he said, meaning the Shiite protesters. Like most Sunnis in the north, he had been angered by Nasrallah’s “red lines” speech in May. “Call it red lines or green lines or whatever you want,” he said. “Your lines won’t stop us.”
The forty thousand homeless Palestinians of Nahr al-Barid were housed in local schools in the nearby Bedawi camp and in Tripoli, watching from afar as their homes were obliterated. Nahr al-Barid was a thoroughly urban camp, with many low apartment buildings. It was located right off the Mediterranean beach, and the view would have afforded its residents some respite from their fate. At least forty-two Palestinian civilians had been killed by September 2, when the army and media declared a great victory—some even called it a victory over Nahr al-Barid rather than Fatah al-Islam. It was only on October 10 that the army finally began to allow a trickle of Palestinians back to their homes, and only in the so-called “new camp,” a small area that had housed two thousand families on the outskirts of the original camp. The army had been in control of the new camp, and fighting had not taken place there.
About one thousand families obtained the permits from the army and passed through the checkpoints, where soldiers and Lebanese demonstrators heckled them. They found only destruction. It was as if a giant plague of locusts had ravaged the camp. Every single home, building, apartment, and shop was destroyed. Most were also burned from the inside, and signs of the flammable liquids the soldiers had used abounded on the walls. The empty fuel canisters were left behind on the floors. Ceilings and walls were riddled with bullets shot from inside for sport. Lebanese soldiers had defecated in kitchens, on plates, bowls, and pots, as well as on mattresses. They had urinated into jars of olive oil. Most homes had been emptied of all their belongings. Furniture, appliances, sinks, toilets, televisions, refrigerators, gold jewelry, cash—all were stolen. Even the charred walls the Palestinians had been left with were not spared: insulting graffiti had been written on them, along with threats, signed by various army units. The media were not permitted in, and with few exceptions they were ignoring the plight of the Palestinians, if not reveling in it. The
army’s behavior confused observers. While it seemed to ignore Fatah al-Islam targets, it systematically destroyed other parts of the camp. Following the battle the army continued to treat the camp as a military zone and imposed an army engineer onto the committee planning the reconstruction, informing other members of what the army wanted done.
The army, which had never been used to defend Lebanon from external threats such as Israel, only to suppress internal dissent, and which had struggled to defeat a small band of extremists, had systematically gone through every bit of the camp and ravaged the infrastructure, destroying six decades of life to render it impossible for the Palestinians to return. All the windows were broken, electrical wiring was pulled out, copper wires stolen for resale or reuse, water pumps removed or destroyed, generators stolen or shot up. The columns typical in the camp, which supported homes, had been shot up so that the concrete was turned to rubble and the rebar exposed. Those few computers that were not stolen had been picked apart, and the RAM and hard drives were all missing. Photo albums had been torn to shreds. Every car in the camp was burned, shot up, or crushed by tanks or bulldozers. Much of the looting and destruction had taken place after the fighting ceased, or in areas where
fighting never occurred. The many businesses and shops that had served much of northern Lebanon had been looted of their wares, as had pharmacies and health clinics. Palestinians reported seeing their belongings on sale in the main outdoor market in Tripoli. The camp had once been imbricated into the local economy and culture. Now the Palestinians were unwanted and rejected. For some it was not just the second time they were refugees. Apart from 1948, in 1976 many arrived from Tel al-Zaatar, a camp near Beirut that had housed twenty thousand refugees until Lebanese Christian militias besieged it, massacred many of its inhabitants, and then leveled the camp to prevent the Palestinians’ return. “It is our destiny,” one man said without emotion in his blackened home in Nahr al-Barid, standing by excrement the Lebanese soldiers had left behind on the kitchen floor. The total loss of life from Nahr al-Barid was fifty civilians, 179 soldiers, and 226 suspected Fatah al-Islam militants. About six thousand families lost their homes.
Palestinian children’s art from this period depicts the Lebanese soldiers and Lebanese tanks destroying the camp as Israelis. Videos filmed by Lebanese soldiers circulated on the Internet, showing medical staff from the Civil Defense brigade abusing corpses and beating prisoners. Hundreds of Palestinians had been abused or tortured in Lebanese detention, and some had died from medical neglect of treatable wounds. Although still facing harassment and the occasional beating by Lebanese soldiers, hundreds of Palestinians were at work emptying their homes of rubble. One woman stood on her balcony throwing rubble from inside her home onto the broken street, where it was piled up on the sides. The majority of the Palestinians were still unable to access their homes, and could only wonder what was stolen, broken, and excreted upon. On the roof of a taller building in the new camp, I found Farhan Said Mansur, a sanitation officer standing with his wife and gazing silently across to their distant home, whose broken roof they could just make out—as if looking at Palestine, where he was born. “It is a calamity to all Palestinians,” he said.
Many Salafi jihadists had escaped to the Bedawi camp. Other cells had remained in Bedawi during the fighting. The camp’s security committee still had them under surveillance. Outside Bedawi I stopped with my photographer as he shot a bony horse grazing on a hill. Palestinian mechanics in the area surrounded him, holding his hand and warning him not to take pictures, because it was a Palestinian military position. We noticed concrete bunkers on the top of hills belonging to the pro-Syrian PFLP-GC. Just beyond was the army. In November the influential American-allied Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt threatened that the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut would be the next Nahr al-Barid, and the Palestinian community felt even more vulnerable. That month the Lebanese cabinet warned that Islamist militants were infiltrating other Palestinian camps. The phenomenon would be dealt with as it had in Nahr al-Barid, said the minister of information, Ghazi al-Aridi. Nobody thought to address the actual condition of Palestinians in the camps.
As the Lebanese Army celebrated its “victory” over Fatah al-Islam, its commander, Michel Suleiman, seemed poised to become the next president. He would not be the first president to have punished the Palestinians. Between 1958 and 1964, President Fouad Shehab created an elaborate, ruthless secret-service network to monitor the Palestinian camps. During his 1970–76 reign, President Suleiman Franjieh clashed with Palestinian factions, even using the air force to bomb a neighborhood thought to be pro-Palestinian. I’ve heard followers of assassinated president-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose Maronite Christian militia massacred Palestinians in 1976, brag that he was stopped at a checkpoint in the early years of the country’s 1975–90 civil war with a trunk full of the skulls of dead Palestinians. Even today, the Lebanese opposition’s preferred candidate for president is Michel Aoun, a Christian retired general who participated in the 1976 killings.
“Social confinement is leading the youth to religious radicalism,” says Bernard Rougier. “Youngsters are socialized by religious clerics who tell them how to understand the world and the “true reasons” of their social exclusion. To end that situation, refugees should be allowed to work in the Lebanese society, in order for them to live under new and different influences (with a restriction: nothing should be done to naturalize them, because it could upset the Lebanese balance of power, and Palestinian refugees would be, once again, caught in the Lebanese inner contradictions; in addition to that, such naturalization would dissolve the negotiations about the right of return). So what needs to be done is to distinguish between the issues, between what is social (the right to work), what is political (and should be discussed at the regional level), and what is linked to the legal situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. In order to do that, Lebanese parties would have to stop frightening the Lebanese society about the risk of tawtin (a condition almost impossible to meet in Lebanon).”
As Iraq became a less hospitable place for jihadists and foreign fighters, or as there were less American targets to go after, these veterans, experienced at fighting the most advanced army in the world, were looking for new battles. Andrew Exum is a former U.S. Army officer who led a platoon of light infantry in Afghanistan in 2002 and then led a platoon of Army Rangers in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004. He lived in Beirut from 2004 until 2006, and now researches insurgencies and militant Islamist groups at the Center for New American Security in Washington, D.C. “The fighting in Nahr al-Bared is, unfortunately, just the first round in what I fear will be a series of battles fought in the aftermath of the Iraq War,” he says. “On Internet chat rooms, we’re seeing militants turn away volunteers to go fight in Iraq and promising the next fight will be in Lebanon and the Gulf. Lebanon, especially, is a magnet for Sunni extremists. You not only have a haven for these groups in the Palestinian camps—with security services from rival Arab states competing for their loyalty and attention—you also have two tempting targets: both the pro-Western ruling coalition in Beirut as well as the opposition, led by a powerful bloc of Shiite parties. How can we not expect these Sunni militants, who have spent the past four years waging war on the Shiites of Iraq, to try and carry that fight onto the large, politically active Shiite population in Lebanon? Or onto the pro-Western regime that precariously hangs onto power?”
Following the civil war Iraq became a less prominent topic on the jihadi web forums. In part the novelty factor wore off. But Iraq was a loss for the jihadists, and as it grew bloodier, with more civilians being targeted, it was less inspiring for aspiring jihadists than merely fighting against the crusader and occupier. But there was very little soul-searching on the forums; jihadis seemed to have moved on without a lot of serious public discussion of what went wrong. This was partly because fighting picked up in other places after 2005, especially in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Somalia.
And while America’s militaristic ambitions will likely engender violent resistance movements regardless of the ideological environment, a major reason for the growth of Al Qaeda is now something beyond anti-Americanism. It is the internal war between Sunnis and Shiites in places like Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, and even Yemen. Al Qaeda can no longer be seen as just a force against U.S. encroachments; it is now part of these local phenomena. In this internal war in the Muslim world, Al Qaeda has become a major driving force of Sunni-Shiite hatred. Al Qaeda in this case means something more general than the actual organization. Even in moderate Lebanon, you get sectarian Sunnis who have been Salafized. They may not have been religious beforehand, but they view Al Qaeda as an effective way to combat perceived Shiite expansion and a potent symbol for them to reclaim their masculinity. One of the many ramifications of that is that the United States is yet again involving itself in forms of spiraling violence whose outcomes are unpredictable and whose unintended consequences will be keeping it busy for decades to come.
From the book Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, by Nir Rosen. Excerpted by arrangement with Nation Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2010.
I admire Nir Rosen’s work and I will buy this book as soon as possible.
This book is from Nation Books and available at Amazon. I have just purchased it. I’m happy to see such a book coming out from a source widely available.
I couldn’t finish this excerpt, it was emotionally exhausting.
Talking to people around me regarding Shiites is emotionally exhausting in itself. They tell me, jokingly, it must be the Iranian blood that’s gotten you so worked up in defense of Shiites. I can’t stand these rifts. They’re too draining, and really stupid. I don’t understand how these people can take as their heroes those who are nothing more than lying politicians pandering to some block or sect, really. In this region we have no morally responsible leaders who, rather than seek to intensify these divisions, actually attempt to create some semblance of harmony, of bridging these differences. To think that I would relish in the killing of someone because they belong to a different sect or religion….that’s what it’s come to?
Lest anyone think this is exclusive to Muslims, look at the genocidal attacks in Rwanda. There’s something wrong with the species.
Nir Rosen missed the part about the Salafist terrorists having been Sunni of various nationalities allegedly recruited and financed by the Saudis with an initial mission to take out Hizbullah but they changed their mind and for this, their monthly paycheques were stopped at the bank and that’s when these guys held up that particular bank and the sky and the Lebanese army fell on them. Franklin Lamb described it in what maybe a little too much detail but he is much closer to what happened, Bush’s neocon connection to this battle and all.
link to informationclearinghouse.info
Rosen’s description of the looting was accurate. During the battle in which the Lebanese army was massively out-gunned, the only help the US provided was to check around third-world countries for munitions for Lebanon’s WW II artillery guns and tanks as these were no longer being produced. The army had to make its own bombs that it dropped manually on the camp from the US-supplied Hueys. The Emirates donated 5 Gazelle helicopters to even the odds for the Lebanese army but the US had them dismantle the missile firing systems from them and they ended up being used as air ambulance to ferry the wounded soldiers to the hospitals. After the fighting ended, the Salafist leader escaped from the camp and a couple of months later, his wife and children were given safe passage to Jordan by the Lebanese government. As to the riddle of why the army deliberately destroyed the camp after the battle had been won, the answer can be probably traced back to 25 years earlier and the failed deal between Sharon and the Christian militia leader for the opening an Israeli base in Lebanon and in later years at about the time of the battle of Nahr el Bared, the US wanting to establish a regional helicopter base there. Nahr el Bared is 2 miles from the unused airstrip where Israel and the US wanted to set up their bases and about 10 miles from the Syrian border:
link to counterpunch.org
The story of Nahr al-Bared is horrifying to say the least, and hasn’t been properly told yet. It lies right at the intersection of the maelstrom of Lebanese and regional politics and carries within it so many themes. Bottom line is that these 30,000 or 40,000 human beings, most of whom had been already once or twice or thrice dispossessed in their lives (from 1948, or from Tel al-Zaatar, or from Sabra and Shatila or some other sorry besieged Palestinian refugee zone), were once again utterly helpless as the whole of their existence was destroyed by parties who gave not one hoot about them. Another generation traumatized. Another direct inheritance of the Nakba. Which is an inheritance of the Holocaust. How many more renditions of this horror will recur until it is finally, finally contained and stopped forever?
Perhaps we can do more digging and shine a greater light on this story. Here are a few additional sources for starters to help us parse it:
The Road to Nahr al-Bared – Good background context that has this gem:
The US seems as devoted to this conflict as the Lebanese government, quickly coming to the aid of the Lebanese army with supplies. [Why? Cui bono?] The transfer of military aid was effected in record time and has continued throughout the fighting. US military hardware was first delivered on May 25, when several transport planes flew into the Beirut airport, carrying ammunition and equipment for the Lebanese army; the following day more planes arrived from US military bases as well as from US client states in the region. US military aid to Lebanon has increased dramatically, from $40 million in 2006 to a requested $280 million in 2007. Most of this military aid is not of the type that would help the army defend the country’s borders, such as anti-aircraft weapons to deter the constant Israeli overflights of Lebanese territory. Rather, it is the kind of hardware that will enhance the army’s ability to deal with internal “disturbances,” whose main victims are usually civilians.
“….Mystery US Base Causes Confusion Among Lebanese: Akkar, Lebanon – The people of the Akkar region, north Lebanon, were busy Sunday discussing the veracity of local news indicating that the United States may be planning to build a military base in their area.
Worries increased after former pro-Syrian Member of Parliament (MP) Nasser Kandil appeared on television Sunday revealing a document he claimed was issued by the Bureau of ‘Dangerous Zones’ which is affiliated with the US Department of Defense.
Kandil said the document announced the starting of ‘preparatory construction to set up a military base for NATO and US forces in the area of Qeliat’ in northern Lebanon.
‘Such a base if it is built … will bring problems to a region already fragile and full of Sunni fundamentalist movements,’ said local resident Nimr Alloush, referring to the summer conflict between Sunni fundamentalist movement Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
The fifteen-week long battles at Nahr al-Bared claimed the lives of 170 soldiers and more than 220 militants, as well as displaced the camp’s 40,000 Palestinian refugees.
According to military expert Amin Hoteit, the reported US plan aims to set up six military bases – three in Iraq, one in Jordan, one in Saudi Arabia and one in Lebanon.
It is believed that the Lebanese government is going to approve the base, allegedly to be named the US-Lebanese Centre for Rehabilitation of the Army….
And this: Naval base on the shores of Nahr al-Bared camp: The [Lebanese] defense ministry requested a naval base on the shores of the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
The Lebanese cabinet on Friday announced its approval of the request and authorized the Council for Development and Reconstruction to contract with consultants to carry out the necessary studies in coordination with the ministry.
The Truth Not Antiques, is Buried in Nahr al-Bared
More than forty interviews with major stakeholders this summer left me in no doubt that there had been no real investigative reporting by the media on Nahr al Bared, especially that the Lebanese army had denied access to journalists during the crisis.
People in Lebanon still wonder who is behind Fatah al Islam. How did Shaker al Abssi, the leader of this group, escape when the Lebanese army was besieging the camp for over 100 days? Why are the testimonies of Fatah al Islam detainees still withheld from the public? Why was military commander of Nahr al Bared operations assassinated? What happened to the army spy linked to Nahr al Bared? Who was responsible for the looting of Palestinian homes and the racist graffiti written on their walls? Are there antiques in Nahr al Bared or is it another excuse to delay reconstruction?
Documentary on Nahr al-Bared: Checkpoints and More
Can anyone else confirm or elaborate on this story?
we’re on the same page bijou. check this out
also Refugees to prime minister: End military siege of our camp
and, in case anyone forgot, it was seymore hersh who claimed the US was funding the sunni group in lebanon, the one the lebanese army was fighting in Nahr al-Bared. if my recollection is correct it was thru some ‘democracy’ group thru the world bank..wolfowitz’s girlfriend or something. my memory..the whole thing stinks to high heaven.
my first link up there leads to a different lamb article written a few days before walid’s, worth checking out. also i rec Who Sponsors Fights in Lebanon?
(bernhard of moom of alabama) links to hersh’s article also and from the comment section an interview from democracy now: Seymour Hersh: U.S. Indirectly Backed Islamist Militants Fighting Lebanese Army
That’s a very clever observation, annie.
I like your use of maps as they provide yet another dimension to understanding of the topic at hand.
i can’t take credit for the maps avi, that’s bernhard for you.. hope you opened the link, the blockquote was the teaser. here’s a few more of his ‘map analysis’. the pink route, or watch how this simple map w/excellent timely news reports leads to the bailout (open very last vital link and check those dates).
annie,
This is embarrassing. I was using a computer that has a lousy display and I didn’t notice the difference between the white background of the page and the light gray background of the blockquote in your post, so it looked like it was part of what you wrote. I apologize.
no need to apologize avi, i just wanted to direct the credit where credit was due. ;)
You’re right, potsherd. This is still too close to home for me, though.
To me this piece of literature from Nir Rosen seems to be a collection of ugly lies and truth distorting zionist propaganda.
Walid got the record almost straight. As far as I know Fatah Al Islam was a Saudi operation encouraged by the US, Israel and the Lebanese Falange.
The Saudi guy with the paychecks was GWBs Saudi terror buddy Bandar Bin Sultan. He ran a tricky campaign telling poor and religious youngsters in mosques in various Sunni countries to come to Lebanon and train there for fighting against the US in Iraqi jihad. When they came into Lebanon, they were put into the Nahr al-Barid camp, trained militarily, fed with Wahhabi ideology and given the weapons needed to take over the camp.
After military training was finished, the newly trained jihadists were told, that they would not go to Iraq to fight the US, but go for fighting infidel Hisbollah. But the newly trained jihadists refused: Hisbollah were their heros from youth on and perceived as brothers in the same battle.
So Bandar Bin Sultan stopped the payment checks and the jihadists used their weapons and training to get the money from the bank anyway. As the Lebanese government saw, that these jihadis would go fight not against Hisbollah, but fight against traitors like themselves collaboratoring with the US and Israel, they send the Lebanese army into the camp and crashed the Fatah Al-Islam.
The basic story is well-known. Walid gave some helpful links. Seymour Hersh told the basic story of Fatah Al Islam already years ago:
link to globalresearch.ca
So, now a question: how can it be, that Nir Rosen seems to have not noticed the background of the story of Fatah Al Islam completely? No serious person writing a book about the topic could have missed the story. Maybe it has something to do with Nir Rosen c.v.? Wikipedia states: “In September 2007, he was the C.V. Starr Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.” The American Academy here in Berlin is a very neocon zionist organization. I don’t wonder when ugly zionist hasbara is coming from that direction.
But I wonder, that such flawed neocon zionist propaganda is greeted warmly at Mondo Weiss.
wrt the obvious flaws bandolero it could very well be mondoweiss was not following the news back then. for anyone keeping abreast of Nahr al-Bared back then couldn’t escape knowing Fatah Al Islam was an orchestrated endevour with the distinct abrams stench.
one more link… read badger @ arablinks 5/07. including supporting links. there are several good posts here. how anyone could miss US/saudi funding for Fatah Al Islam is beyond me. he also includes some commentary from steve clemons plus Ibrahim al-Amin in Al-Akhbar (translation/analysis) including this tidbit
ee gads…
Indeed. I don’t see how anyone who follows regional politics could think in 2007 that Fatah al-Islam was not backed by the Saudis.
Not to toot my own horn, but as the events were unfolding, I was quite aware of that connection. So, as Walid stated, I don’t understand how Nir Rosen glosses over that important detail.
Anyway, ever since the US and the Zionist NeoCon establishment had set their sights on Iran, the US moved in and convinced the Saudis (And to a lesser degree, the Egyptians) that Shi’a Islam was a threat to the region and to Sunni governments, in particular.
Saudi Arabia had financed and supported Fatah al-Islam (or Fat-hul Islam) against Hezbollah. But, as was already indicated, the group went into a refugee camp where a battle ensued after the Lebanese army attacked, resulting in the slaughter of countless Sunni Palestinian refugees.
As I recall the facts of this story, the camp residents themselves were mystified as to how Fatah al-Islam had penetrated and infiltrated their camp, which at the time was guarded by the Lebanese Army. And the whole conflagration began very suddenly one day, when 13 of those Lebanese Army soldiers had their throats slit by some of the infiltrators. So to me in all honesty it appears more like a deliberately externally orchestrated “regional conflict” than an actual one. Again I ask, cui bono? If it’s obvious that the US govt. had set its sights long before on those bases for broader strategic interests, and the camp was inconveniently in the way… and if there was some other larger political benefit perceived to be gained by the camp’s destruction (I can think of a number of them, including providing the Lebanese government a new model of “camp governance” by ensuring it would have military ingress at all times [rebuilding with larger roads that tanks could drive on]; giving the Lebanese Army & Air Force a gigantic boost and training exercise; changing the balance of internal Lebanese politics because everyone would feel so grateful to the heroic Army; etc etc), well then… why not?
The devil is in the details here. If you look at them closely certain things become quite clear. We need to fully face and grasp that our “government” is capable of unspeakable evil and doesn’t flinch at inflicting it when it wants to.
The US government, that is. Sorry for not being clear.
To clarify further, I am suggesting that while the Saudis were the financiers, they were not acting in isolation. I think there was a constellation of interests at play – US, Israeli, Saudi, and certain sectors of Lebanese (those friendly to the above parties).
Still bijou….
Saudi Arabia is one of the major destabalisers in the region, and keeps hurling that charge at Iran.
BANDOLERO- The excerpt from Nir Rosen’s book was brief and may be balanced by other passages, however, I agree completely that any description of Lebanese sectarian violence which does not adequately discuss US/Israel’s long history of promoting Lebanese sectarian violence is propaganda. Thanks for the heads up on the American Academy in Berlin. It is very helpful that there are knowledgeable commenters on Mondoweiss who can provide additional background for perspective.
Keith,
The battle of Nahr al-Barid was more of a regional conflict that manifested itself on a local level, namely in Lebanon.
You see, in the last decade or so, the US has been working on creating two blocks of warring factions/sects within the Middle East’s Muslim nations. Those two blocks are made up of predominantly Sunni Muslim countries and Shi’a Muslim countries. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, the Persian Gulf states, and most of Iraq are Sunni.
Iran, southern Iraq, and southern Lebanon remain predominately Shi’a.
Note also that Iran is a Muslim country, but a non-Arab country. So, it’s neither Sunni, nor Arab.
In an effort to isolate Iran and Hizbollah, the United States had sought to cozy up to its allies, its Sunni allies in the region. Divide and Control reared its ugly head again and resulted in the Saudi and Persian Gulf monarchs, princes and emirs financing and politically backing initiatives, both political and military, meant to destabilize Shi’a power in the region.
Convinced that their regional hegemony was under threat, the Saudis started intervening in other countries’ affairs. There was intervention in the past, but at this stage, the Saudis were led to believe that their position at the helm — as corrupt, radical and hypocritical US puppets — was under thread.
Thus, Nahr al-Barid was a manifestation of these power games. And for that very reason, Israel and Saudi Arabia have been cooperating in recent years in an effort to isolate Iran. Recall, for example, rumors claiming that Saudi Arabia had cleared Israeli aircraft to traverse its airspace in the event Israel needed/wanted to bomb Iran.
avi,
most of iraq is not sunni. certainly not now after all the ethnic cleansing but even before the war. there were at least twice as many shia in iraq as sunni before the war.
annie,
In terms of population totals you are right. Most of Iraq is comprised of Shi’a Muslims.
But, in terms of territory (i.e. geographic distribution) the Sunnis have a larger portion of the pie, so to speak. Or, if you prefer, they spread out over a larger area.
i thought that was once the case wrt baghdad, i’m not so sure anymore. anyway that is the first time i’ve heard this, if you have any links i could read about this geographical distribution i’d like to read them. thanks.
annie,
1. The darker green color is Sunni territory:
Iraq map
2. Iraq map
3. Iraq map from 2006.
Also, please bear in mind that the majority of the Kurdish population in Iraq is Sunni, too.
thank you for the maps avi. yes, i knew kurds (most) are sunni. however wrt the politics, they seem so different i make a distinction. especially wrt the peshmerga.
@Keith
Yes, you are true. I just read the misleading excerpt, not the book. Maybe inside the book on other places the facts are put correctly forth. However, hard to imagine. If I would write a book and spread an excerpt, I certainly would not spread a part, which is completely misleading without the rest.
Also, the introduction of Adam Horowitz is completely misleading. I mean this part:
“the war in Iraq continues to spread across the region and its influence tears at the seams of Lebanese society”
This is painting the picture as if the struggle in Lebanon was a backlash from war in Iraq. But this is not true. The Iraq war doesnot spread into Lebanon. Both regions suffered from the same problem and that is that the zionist neocon Bushists trying to do “regime change” to the favor of the zionist regime as outlined in Netanyahu’s 1996 foreign policy document “A clean break” (Securing the Northern border).
Both conflicts – Iraq and Lebanon – were seperately planned in the US already in the 90s. Front organisation for regime change in Iraq was the “Iraqi National Accord” headed by Allawi, front organisation for regime change in Lebanon was the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon headed by Ziad Abdelnour.
While the regime change aim in Iraq was fufilled in 2003 with the US invasion, the regime change aim in Lebanon was fulfilled with the murder of Rafiq Hariri and the following colored revolution.
It’s not true, that the war in Iraq spread to Lebanon. Both wars were carefully and seperately planned by the axis of the regime of Tel Aviv, US-Bushists and their Saudi lackey Bandar bin Sultan. The narrative that the Lebanon in these years was ignited by the war in Iraq is an urban legend created to cover up the deliberately planned regime change crimes of the zionist-neocon-Saudi-axis.
And the Zionists will tell us that all the Arab states need to do is offer citizenship to the exiled Palestinians and they will make nice homes among the other nice Arabs and stay there and prosper and not ever try to come back home to bother the Jews.
Zionists will not face the enormity of the consequences of their worst crime. 1947 rolls through history on a tide of blood, rising, not receeding.
Keith, a small correction to what you wrote: Iran while not Arab, it is almost 100% Shia Muslim. Keep in mind that Sunni fundamentalists, such as the Salafists or the al-Qayda terrorists, consider the Shia heretics and apostates. Official Saudi fatwas have designated the Shia as such and thus an open season on killing them. The Saudis are considered the guardians of Sunni Islam and the Iranians the guardians of Shia Islam and this explains the ongoing whatever between both countries and the alliances you see forming between Sunni with other groups in the conflict with Iran. In a nutshell, there is more than Israel lighting a candle to have Iran bombed. This is reflected by which groups are with or against Hizbullah or Hamas, which by the way is Sunni but by exception is anti-American which is keeping it in the doghouse.
The ultimate goal discussed by the Zionists from the early 30s, which was way before Israel existed, was to have Lebanon’s area south of the Litani River completely emptied of Shia Muslims and to have it occupied by the Israel-friendly Lebanese Christians. Emptying the area meant relocating the Shia population, (today close to 2 million) to Iraq. This is no longer possible because for one thing, there are fewer Christians still left in Lebanon and for another, Hizbullah’s arms are keeping Israel on its side of the fence. This explains the US and Israel as well as Sunni obsession with doing away with Hizbullah’s arms. Bush tried it using Olmert in 2006 and failed and now it’s being tried again by way of the UN tribunal that is about to indict Hizbullah members in the Hariri assassination which would trigger a civil war between Sunni wanting to venge the Sunni Harriri death and Hizbullah’s Shia that refuse the accusation that it deems purely political. Israel is probably starting to stock up on champagne.
Sorry Keith, it was Avi that wrote about the Iranians, not you. In the discussion on the ongoing Sunni-Shia conflict, it’s worth noting that the Iranians are not any kinder to their Sunni minority than the Saudis are to their Shia one; the Alawite (Shia) Syrian regime was not less harsh on its Sunni fundamentalists than Saddam’s Sunni regime was on its Kurds.
Rosen’s sources to gave him a wrong picture of what happened as he is unaware of American involvement in this story contrary to the title of his book. It has more to do with the ongoing Sunni-Shia conflict that Kissinger predicted 40 years ago and which is being fanned by the US and the excerpt’s release may have been timed with the UN Tribunal‘s indictment of Hizbullah expected in a couple of weeks that everyone is saying will provoke a Sunni-Shia civil war in Lebanon that could spread to the rest of the Middle East.
The battle at Nahr el-Bared war was ignited when the Salafists robbed a Tripoli branch of a Hariri bank where they had been picking up their monthly cheques. According to the terrorists, they demanded and got a specific dollar amount of about $150,000 that represented the unpaid back pay due to them when their services were terminated because they refused to take on Hizbullah because while hating Hizbullah for being “apostates”, they still felt a brotherly tie to them because of their common hate for Israel; so they claimed. It was the first time in bank holdup history that holduprobbers had asked for a specific amount to be handed over. Absurdly, the terrorists didn’t mind being branded assassins but didn’t want to be branded thieves. Following the holdup that the bank said was for much more than limited amount than was claimed to have been taken by the Salafists, the police force with the news crew of Hariri’s TV station (for the exclusive scoop) in tow raided the Tripoli apartment building of Salafist leaders in Tripoli without having advised the army of the operation, which was irregular as no raids are conducted without coordination between the police and the army, and they made a mess of the operation. The Salafist terrorists in revenge then infiltrated an army encampment on the outskirts of the nearby Nahr el-Bared refugee camp and slaughtered 11 soldiers in their sleep savagely decapitating some of them. That’s when and why the army hit the camp with the very little it had because of the arms restrictions imposed on it by the US and Israel and it resulted in many deaths and injuries for the poorly-equipped army. The bad guys had among their sophisticated weapons, remote-firing computer-guided guns as well as night vision glasses that the army didn’t have. The army had to drop bombs on the camp by hand from the Vietnam-vintage graciously Hueys donated by the US a few years back.
In this excerpt, Nir Rosen wrongly overstressed who were the bad guys in the story; he ridiculously made President Suleiman into a killer of Palestinians, and said other wrong things about Walid Junblatt and Michel Aoun. With all the multiple bombings and church assassinations going on in Iraq, I would have thought an excerpt from the book about what America left behind, the current and past events in Iraq would have been a more likely subject than events of the battle at Nahr-el-Bared from 3 years ago.
WALID- Thanks for the posts!
Wait, what? {{double take}} What did I write about the Iranians? I think my comments got misunderstood in the deluge.
What I wrote was that Iranians are Shi’a and that the Persian Gulf states are Sunni; Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain are mostly Sunni.
Here’s exactly what I wrote:
walid, avi wrote the persian gulf states were sunni. iran being a persian gulf state is shia (and as you wrote 100% shia muslim) but your statement (‘Iran while not Arab, it is almost 100% Shia Muslim’) could be interpreted as implying shia muslims are not arab which sometimes they are, like sadr in iraq whose both arab and shia. my understanding is most iraqi shia are arab shia as opposed to persian shia in iran. but i’m not sure ( (like hakim and the badr brigades?) and it makes me curious if there are any persian sunnis and if so where.
thanks for the info on the hariri bank robbery. very interesting.
i am also curious if the spy scandal/arrests in lebanon have drawn hezbollah and the lebanese army into a closer alliance. if you have any insight on that i’d be interested in hearing it. when der spiegel broke the fantastical story of hezbollah being responsible for hariri’s death days before lebanon’s election the credibility (i thought) was widely denounced as a set up. the ‘evidence’ is beyond sketchy with lots of dead witnesses including the detective that ‘uncovered’ this miraculous discovery. do you really think enough of lebanon’s sunni population believes this tale, enough to start a civil war?
Great discussion – and it all underlines a couple of basic but key points:
1. Identifying “the occupation” as the main problem to be solved in Israel/Palestine is woefully incorrect. The problem is much larger. Overlooking and dismissing the historic culpability of Zionism in creating the problem of the Palestinian refugees (and its many wider regional repercussions) is a recipe for permanent ongoing instability and violence.
2. As major as it is, Zionism and the problem of Israel/Palestine is not the only underlying cause of regional tensions either. The developments in Israel/Palestine should not be seen in a microcosm but rather as part and parcel of a larger regional and global power struggle. The interface between all the various conflicts is complex but important to understand, as often what’s happening in one area is a direct cause or consequence of strategic objectives sought by one or more players in another. Seeing the bigger picture can at times shed light on the more local trends and vice versa.
3. Divide and Conquer is tried and true and apparently just so easy to achieve these days, but the long-term effects can be hard to predict.
These are my takeaways for today anyway…
Annie, the Lebanese in general follow a clan leader wherever he takes them even if it’s down a wrong path; it’s something to do with some misguided concept of loyalty and the expectation that they would be rewarded for it down the road. This means that the the majority of Sunni would go along with whatever the clan leader (Hariri) would want. There are minor Sunni clans opposed to Hariri but the number of their followers are low.
You asked about the army. It’s made up of half Christians and half Muslims and if it doesn’t get fractured by a civil war, most of the Muslims and Christians would side with Hizbullah .
As to the Shia and Sunni, both are Muslim sects like with the Catholics and the Protestants. You have Sunni and Shia in Pakistan which is also not Arab and you have a mostly Sunni population in Turkey which is also not Arab as you have the Sunni in Afghanistan that’s also not Arab. There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world of which only 400 millions are Arab. Of all the Muslims, about 20% only are Shia and the rest are Sunni. To make it easy to understand, think back how the Christians were all one when they started and they split into Catholic and Protestant camps along the way. Same thing happened with the Shia that split away from the Sunni early in Islam’s history. That’s why some Sunni, mostly saudis, consider the Shia apostates and heretics.
Hizbulla is being set up by the UN tribunal since its indictment will be based on testimony from what the UN declared as false witnesses and recordings of cell phone calls from a system that Israel has already admitted to having tampered with.
For some reason. the UN court refuses to look into the possibility that Israel may have had something to do with the Hariri assassination. And this takes us back to Rosen’s story; it’s all about the Sunni-Shia conflict that the US and Israel have been trying to light up.
“the Lebanese in general follow a clan leader wherever he takes them even if it’s down a wrong path; it’s something to do with some misguided concept of loyalty and the expectation that they would be rewarded for it down the road”
reminds me of a great many other people and members of institutions, including AIPAC, members of Congress and political parties, as well as voters loyal to a specific political party
thanks walid!
@bijou
“Identifying “the occupation” as the main problem to be solved in Israel/Palestine is woefully incorrect. ”
It’s just the opposite. Politica issues are the core these conflicts. These political conflict defines the camps for than difference of religious sects or communist world views. And the core poitical conflict is Isreal/Palestine.
Some examples in the current power game:
The Iranian Palestinian camp: While Iran is largely Persian Shia (Baochistan province is Sunni), they are aligned with Palestinian Islamic Resistance (Hamas), which is Arab Sunni and an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslem Brotherhood. Aligned with them is Arab Syria, which population is largely Sunni by religion, but whose leadership is Alevi (some see it as branch of Shia) by religion and Baath (close to communist) by political ideology. They all are aligned with Lebanese Shia (Hezbollah & Amal) Southern Iraqi Arab Shia and – since recently – christian FPM nationalists and more recently Druze socialists in Lebanon. And now it seems to be that the camp was also joined by Erdogan led Sunni Turks. Also the secular PLFP (close to communist) seems to be more in this camp recently.
The US Israeli camp: Israeli jews, christian US, Dahlan-Abbas Palestinian sunni muslims, Saudi and Jordan sunni arab kings, Egypt sunni Mubarak supporters, Alevi and communist kurds and some more llike UAE arab sunni.
So, what we see, is that the real political camps are made up of various sects and world views. The build-up of the main political camps on the international stage in that region does in practice not follow ethnical or religious lines like Persian or Arab or Shia or Sunni.
The outlining of such divisions is often vastly exaggerated in media. There is a goal behind this media agenda of exaggerating such religious and ethnical divisions: it’s to create tension, to weaken a country and make it more likely to be dominated by US and Israel. For example the US carefully looked into Syria and try to exaggerate such divisions to use the Sunni popuation majority to revolt against Alevi Assad and to get a regime change they desired this way.
As long as leaders play the sectarian card to rule and populations allow themselves to be used in this way, the US may achieve desired imperialist aims with that strategy. But recently such plots against the Iran/Syria/Palestine camp largely failed, and that not just in Nahr al-Barid, but for example also in Lebanon as a whole. Other parts of the “Isreal axis” may also break away. For example, Trukish president Abdullah Gül has excellent relations to Saudi Arabia and it may well be, that Saudi Arabia will distance itself more from Israeli camp in future. Also, Jordan may come back to the good friendship with Syria again.
annie,
When people use the term “Persian Gulf Sates” they are referring to the states that litter the eastern coast of the Arabian peninsula (UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait). That has long been the convention in the regional politics of the Middle East. Iran is not included in this case.
everyday i learn something knew. thank you avi.
That “neocon Zionist” Nir Rosen annoyed Joe Biden a few years ago by referring quite frankly to the US as an imperialist power in the Mideast in Congressional testimony. Anyone who annoys Joe Biden in that fashion has my gratitude.
As for the Saudi connection, Rosen mentions that Saudis were involved, but on the theory that the US and Saudi Arabia were behind Fatah al-Islam he says on page 207–
“Accusations were exchanged throughout 2007 between the two opposing coalitions about who was responsible for Fatah al-Islam, with some even speculating that Saudi Arabia and the United States were collaborating with the Future Movement to sponsor jihadists who would confront Shiites.”
Perhaps he doesn’t feel there’s enough evidence to say this for sure.
Anyway, it’s paranoid to claim that anyone who might be wrong about some particular event in the Middle East must be a dastardly neocon. People are much too quick to assume such things around here. Rosen has spent years writing articles about the harm US policy has brought to the region and he’s risked his life doing it, one time nearly being shot by US soldiers at checkpoints in Iraq, because he looked like the “biggest f***ing
Iraqi” some American soldier had ever seen. If he’s wrong about any given issue, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of a doubt regarding his motives.
i too was offended by the language as i thought it sought to portray this sentiment as representing part of a general lebanese consciousness. i thought it was unfair. i have engaged in dialogue w/numerous lebanese and i didn’t find them to be this close minded. we can find people in all societies who are this myopically full of resentment. it just sounded to extreme for me without being qualified. i’m choosing to believe it was a poor representation of any kind of average mentality.
Donald, maybe you’re right that we’re being unfair to Rosen by sticking some not so nice motives to his story but it doesn’t change his having built most of his Nahe el-Bared story around what was told of it by some “Mohamed” fromj one of the villages near the the battle. Those 2 or 3 villages mentioned by Rosen are in Akkar, just about the most economically, socially and culturally depressed area of Lebanon where the level of literacy affords people jobs only the small family farm or in the army. It’s also the area that gets flooded with cash at elections time and this describes the blind loyalty of the people for Hariri which by extension provokes their hate for anything to do with the Shia. It’s sad that Akkar gets so much attention and pocket money only at election time and the rest of the time, no one wants to hear anything about it and I have a feeling that Rosen was not made aware of this as he would have talked to a few more people. Most of the soldiers killed and wounded in the battle were from Akkar. It’s wrong to judge a whole book by only an excerpt from it but my criticisms were not of the author or his book but of the shoddy piece he presented; hopefully the rest of the book is OK as some of you that are familiar with his writing are saying.
Thanks Walid for your insightful critique of this book and also for all the posts above. They are really informative.
Walid ~ a piece by Nir Rosen written during the Gaza Massacre:
‘Gaza: the logic of colonial power’
link to guardian.co.uk
@Donald
Thank you for your hint. I’ve looked up this senate session 2008, but as far as I understood, it was not annoying Biden. But in context it looks like Mir Rosen was the democratic choice to appear in front of the panel. Have a look yourself:
link to tinyrevolution.com
But with the main point you are absolutely right. Mir Rosen’s testimony really doesn’t look like he’s a zionist neocon, he looks more like a honest sunni militia man.
Maybe that is an explanation for his “strange” view on Nahr al-Barid in his book, which maybe hardly able to imagine Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States were and are collaborating.