CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 17

LILIT HARUTUNYAN
The focus group interviews with members of two of the Islamist
movements, Usbat al-Ansar 49 and the Islamic Jihadist Movement 50 ,
demonstrated that these groups are playing a major role in curtailing camp-
based violence and not, as the Lebanese media would have it, simply
generating it. Moreover, there is no evidence that camp-based Islamist
groups are connected to al-Qaida, as stated by many Lebanese politicians
and the media. Some of the Islamist groups inside the camps, while
unaffiliated with al-Qaida, may nevertheless espouse rhetoric of “global
jihad” similar to that of al-Qaida, and some groups have even sent men to
Iraq to fight against the coalition forces. Let as argue that in 2000’s
tremendous change has been observed in the organization and outlook of
these lslamist groups: the dissolution of Jund al-Sham 51 , the near-elimination
of Fatah al-Islam and the political transformation of Usbat al-Ansar into a
more mainstream Islamist group with a local social agenda rather than a
global jihadist one. 52 Thus, this paper is trying to debunk the sweeping
image of Ayn al-Hilweh as a stronghold of al-Qaida 53 , and the claim that
there is a significant shift in the identity of camp residents from national
identity towards a broader Islamic identity. 54 Even if there is an unresolved
problem of “fugitive” Palestinians inside the camp, their purported
contribution to a “global jihad” is no different from that of any Sunni locality
in the region. Recently, the PLO, Hamas and other political groups sought to
consolidate the camp’s many factions and organized a follow-up security
committee composed of all the secular and Islamist parties. In December
2011, the PLO established a new police force in the camp that included
most, but not all factions, yet the internal divisions within Fatah remain the
main impediment to this effort. The case of Ayn al-Hilweh is therefore
different from that of Nahr al-Bared, where the presence of Fatah al-Islam
was primarily a phenomenon in the camp and not of the camp, that is, the
militants used the camps for “strategic localization” 55 in order to wage
guerrilla warfare. Thus, Fatah al-Islam’s presence in Nahr al-Bared was an
exception rather than a typical case. There is no global al-Qaida
phenomenon among the Palestinians in Lebanon.
49
The League of Partisans (Usbat al-Ansar) was founded in 1986 and boasts a strong
presence in the Ayn al-Hilweh camp.
50
The Islamic Jihadist Movement (al-Harakatal Islamiyya al-Mujahida) was very popular in
the 1980s, but lost influence after being banned in Lebanon in 1991.
51
Jund al-Sham is an Usbat al-Ansar splinter group. Its members were originally located in
the Taamir neighborhood adjoining Ayn al-Hilweh camp before moving to the Tawareh area
in the camp.
52
A PLO official claimed that there were plans to transform the camp into a stronghold of al-
Qaida
53
Hazem Al-Amin, The Lonely Salafist: A Palestinian Face of the Global jihad and al-Qaida
(in Arabic), Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 2009.
54
Bernard Rougier, Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in
Lebanon, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
55
Knudsen, “Islamism in the Diaspora: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon”, 216-234.
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