Tense
Siege Continues At Lebanon’s Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp
By Peter Symonds
29 May 2007
World
Socialist Web
The
Lebanese army siege of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp outside of the
northern city of Tripoli is now in its tenth day. Thousands of Palestinian
refugees have flooded out of the camp after a shaky ceasefire was negotiated
last Tuesday between the military and the Al Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam
fighters entrenched inside the camp. Many residents, however, have refused
to leave, despite the danger of a bloody showdown.
The US and several Arab states
have scrambled to bolster the Lebanese military with supplies of arms
and ammunition. Since last Friday, at least eight planeloads have arrived
at Beirut international airport—four American transports, two
from Jordan and two from the United Arab Emirates. No details have been
officially released, but the materiel reportedly includes ammunition,
body armour, helmets and night-vision equipment.
Both sides at the Nahr al-Bared
refugee camp are digging in. The Lebanese army has tightened its noose,
bringing in more troops and armoured vehicles. Fatah al-Islam, which
espouses a form of Sunni Islamic extremism and has links to Al Qaeda
in Iraq, is estimated to have 150 to 300 fighters there, including Syrians,
Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians and Pakistanis.
On May 20, 33 soldiers died
in the fighting that erupted, while the army claims to have killed 60
militants. Since the truce, sporadic exchanges of fire have erupted—the
latest yesterday evening when the military bombarded the northern end
of the camp. Aid workers report that the army’s indiscriminate
shelling of the densely populated camp has killed dozens of civilians
and wounded hundreds.
The UN Relief and Works Agency
reported on Sunday that about 25,000 of the camp’s officially
registered 31,000 residents had left. Conditions are appalling for those
remaining and also for those who have flooded into the nearby Beddawi
refugee camp, which was already overcrowded.
The British-based Sunday
Times described conditions in the Beddawi camp: “Some were taken
in by families who found themselves living 20 to a room; others slept
on the floors of mosques and schools, or in dirty courtyards under tin
shelters. Everyone seemed filthy and exhausted; few places had water
or sanitation.
“Even if they had no
injured or dead among their relatives, the Nahr al-Bared refugees were
in dire straits. The extended al-Jundi family were typical of about
1,500 refugees camped in a school on the floor or dirty pallets. They
had not bathed in days, and had just been delivered their first food,
a plastic bag of yoghurt, bread and rice. But they had no means to cook
it.”
As many as 10,000 people,
including elderly and disabled, may still be inside the Nahr al-Bared
camp, dependent on intermittent aid supplies. Sheikh Mohammed Hajj,
a member of a Palestinian committee seeking to negotiate an end to the
siege, told the Financial Times that the situation was disastrous. “There’s
no electricity, there’s no water, there’s a lack of medicine
and equipment. It’s stinking everywhere which means disease could
spread and there are bodies still under destroyed houses,” he
said.
Many of the Palestinians
bitterly criticised the military and the government of Prime Minister
Fuad Siniora. Radi Abu Radi told the Sunday Times: “No one [in
the camp] supports Fatah al-Islam. They are not Palestinians. But the
Lebanese army is killing us—innocent civilians. They are shelling
the camp.” Speaking to the Guardian, Abu Ali said: “We have
never experienced violence like this. Not even the Israelis behaved
like this.”
Prime Minister Siniora announced
on Saturday that negotiations would be allowed to proceed. “This
problem is being resolved through the Palestinian factions and we are
giving them time, as they have requested, but this does not mean that
we are backing off,” he warned. While negotiators have raised
the prospect of a deal, the government is adamant that the militants
must surrender. Defence Minister Elias Murr bluntly declared in the
Sunday Times: “The army will not negotiate with a group of terrorists
and criminals. Their fate is arrest, and if they resist the army, death.”
Having rushed planeloads
of supplies to Lebanon, the Bush administration is no doubt pressing
for decisive action against Fatah al-Islam. While no deadline has been
officially announced, several media reports indicate that the government
has given the Palestinian negotiators until the middle of this week
to end the standoff. The main purpose of the negotiations, apart from
allowing the military time to prepare, is to blunt criticism that any
confrontation will inevitably provoke.
Preparation for major confrontation
Under a 1969 accord between
Arab states, the Lebanese military is not allowed to enter the country’s
12 Palestinian refugee camps, which are administered by Palestinian
officials. But the main Palestinian factions—Hamas and Fatah—have
both distanced themselves from the Fatah al-Islam group, giving the
army a blank cheque to move against it if negotiations fail.
The Siniora government is
clearly concerned, however, that a bloodbath in Nahr al-Bared could
provoke an eruption of protest in other Palestinian camps and more broadly.
Islamist groups such as Jund al-Sham and Esbat al-Ansar in the southern
Palestinian camp of Ein el-Hilweh, which are far larger and better armed
than Fatah al-Islam, could be prompted to act.
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, from
the Carnegie Middle East Institute in Beirut, warned in the British-based
Sunday Herald: “If this situation continues and the army continue
to shell civilian areas in the [Nahr al-Bared] camp then we could see
a domino effect across all of the Lebanon’s refugee camps and
we could start a war between the Palestinians and the Lebanese.”
The high political stakes
in the Nahr al-Bared siege underscore the fact that more is involved
than the fate of a small, isolated group of Islamic extremists. The
speed with which the Siniora government and the Bush administration
responded to the initial relatively minor clashes indicates that preparations
were already well underway. The rapid dispatch of military hardware
clearly strengthens the Lebanese military and assists the Siniora government,
which has been in a state of crisis since Israel’s war last year
against the Hezbollah militia.
Siniora and his ministers
immediately blamed Syria for the activities of Fatah al-Islam, claiming
it was deliberately destabilising Lebanon to prevent the establishment
of a UN tribunal into the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik
al-Hariri. The accusations are in line with Washington’s efforts
to undermine Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon and throughout
the region. Damascus has vigorously denied any links to Fatah al-Islam,
whose leader was jailed in Syria for three years.
Moreover, US journalist Seymour
Hersh, among others, has pointed out that the US, Saudi Arabia and elements
of the ruling March 14 alliance in Lebanon all encouraged Sunni extremist
militias, including Fatah al-Islam, as a counterweight to the growing
influence of the opposition Shiite-based Hezbollah. The Brussels-based
International Crisis Group (ICG) in its report last December entitled
“Lebanon at the Tripwire” noted that the Sunni-based Future
Bloc headed by Saad al-Hariri, son of the murdered politician, deliberately
inflamed anti-Shiite communal sentiments in Tripoli and the predominantly
Sunni and Christian north of the country.
Now the Siniora government,
backed by Washington, is preparing to use the standoff with Fatah al-Islam
as the pretext for a military intervention into the Palestinian camps
for the first time in more than four decades, ending what has been a
de facto state within a state. The build up also strengthens the Lebanese
army in preparation for any confrontation with Hezbollah, which emerged
from last year’s war with enhanced political prestige in Lebanon
and throughout the region.
After remaining quiet for
nearly a week, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned the government
against allowing Lebanon to be drawn into the US war against Al Qaeda,
saying it would destabilise the country. He described the entry of Lebanese
troops into the Nahr al-Bared camp as “a red line”, declaring
that Hezbollah would “not accept or provide cover or be partners
in this”. Nasrallah also questioned the motives of the Bush administration,
which fully backed the Israeli war last year, in supplying arms. “I
wonder why all this care now for the Lebanese army,” he asked.
Six months ago the ICG report
warned: “The convergence of a seemingly intractable political
dispute, widening distrust, paralysed state institutions, increased
resort to street politics, rampant re-confessionalisation and a highly
polarised regional context has created the most volatile crisis since
the end of the country’s 15-year internal confrontation.”
Nothing has happened since
then to ease political tensions. Hezbollah pulled its five ministers
out of the Siniora government last December, demanding either a larger
cabinet representation or fresh elections. The political standoff is
continuing, with the Shiite party challenging the constitutionality
of the government’s decisions, including the planned establishment
of the Hariri tribunal. The military show of force at the Nahr al-Bared
camp could well be the government’s preparation for a confrontation
with its major political opponents, as well as serving Washington’s
broader agenda in the Middle East.
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