Region | Lebanon
Fatah Al Islam members 'have fought in Iraq'
Fatah Al Islam, the group that has been fighting the national army in Lebanon near the Nahr Al Bared Palestinian refugee camp close to the northern city of Tripoli, is one of the youngest Palestinian armed groups in the country.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 May 28, 2007
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Dubai: Fatah Al Islam, the group that has been fighting the national army in Lebanon near the Nahr Al Bared Palestinian refugee camp close to the northern city of Tripoli, is one of the youngest Palestinian armed groups in the country.
Primarily made of Sunni Arabs, the resistance group announced its formation last November, shortly after two of its members were arrested by the Lebanese authorities.
Young Palestinians among the camp's 22,000 refugees are thought to be receiving military training from Fatah Al Islam.
The Lebanese authorities say the organisation is inspired by Al Qaida and works for the Syrian intelligence services. Syria denies such a link.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's Middle East analyst, says the group is trans-national and that many of the fighters have fought in Iraq and have trained in camps in places such as Jordan.
However, he says that it is telling that a third of those who have been killed in the fighting at Nahr Al Bared have been Lebanese, who are the biggest component in the group.
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"Fatah Al Islam is home for those who do not have a home not only physically but ideologically," Bishara says. "It has found a home paradoxically in a refugee camp."
Links to Al Zarqawi
Fatah Al Islam is led by Shaker Abssi, a Palestinian wanted by both Syria and Jordan.
He is suspected of having links to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the late Jordanian leader of Al Qaida in Iraq.
Abssi was jailed for three years by Syria in 2003. Damascus has issued a new arrest warrant against him.
Although Syria denies backing groups such as Fatah Al Islam Bishara says Damascus has a history of backing similar jihadist Sunni groups in Iraq.
Sentenced to death
In 2004, a Jordanian military court sentenced Abssi to death in absentia for his alleged involvement in the murder of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat, in Amman in 2002.
At the time, the charge sheet identified Abssi as a Palestinian nicknamed Abu Yousuf, saying he lived in Syria.
Bishara says it is likely that Fatah Al Islam has an ideological affiliation with Al Qaida in that it is "polycentric" but is "autonomous within their own territories and have their own leadership."
Bishara says that Fatah Al Islam is paradoxical.
"It is not a resistance group and it is not an insurgency, it is not attempting to overthrow the Lebanese government, and it is certainly not close to being a guerrilla group that is expanding its territory," he says.
"It is what we call an assymetrical group, it is like the groups found in the favelas in Brazil, on the fringes of the Colombian capital, in the outskirts of Casablanca, in Afghanistan, in Somalia ... in all the grey areas of these countries where law and order is not spread."
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