A Fruitless Search For Al-Qaeda

Ein Al-Hilweh

By Mahan Abedin
January 7, 2010
Courtesy Of Asia Times Online

Sensationally branded as a "zone of unlaw" by the Lebanese and Western media and accused of harboring al-Qaeda and other jihadi elements, the Ein Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp south of the Lebanese city of Sidon often hits the headlines for the wrong reasons.

To investigate the possible al-Qaeda presence, I made a visit to Ein Al-Hilweh in late November. Accompanied by an experienced Palestinian guide I was able to speak to all the key stakeholders in the camp and conduct a thorough investigation. This article is a condensed version of that investigation.

The Most Crowded Place On Earth

Gaining entry to Ein Al-Hilweh is no easy task. It took me more than a week to secure a permit from the Ministry of Defense in Beirut. Situated on the southern outskirts of the port city of Sidon, there are two main entrance gates to Ein Al-Hilweh, both of which are heavily-manned by the Lebanese army.

Foreign journalists and other visitors are often obliged to enter from the upper-street section where they are subjected to more stringent checks. On the day of my visit, this checkpoint was being manned by about 25 Lebanese soldiers. As soon as I and my Palestinian guide approach the checkpoint which guards the entrance, we are surrounded by three Lebanese soldiers who demand my permit. The permit in question consists of a few unintelligible numbers scrawled on a rough piece of paper - hardly befitting the time and effort I put into securing it.

It took more than 30 minutes for the Lebanese army to check my permit and allow entry. During this time I was able to catch a glimpse of what ordinary Palestinians have to go through in order to enter and leave the camp. A long queue of traffic had built up on the other side where cars were waiting to leave the camp. I was told by my Palestinian guide that these restrictions on movement - which are reminiscent of Israeli tactics in the West Bank - contribute directly to the radicalization of disaffected elements in the camp.

On entering the camp, one is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of humanity condensed into such a tiny space. Walking through the market in Upper Street, the sights, sounds and smells are simply overpowering. According to the United Nations there are around 50,000 registered refugees in the camp, but the actual number of inhabitants stands at around 80,000. We take a right at the middle section of the market and walk down the tiniest alley imaginable until we arrive at the nondescript home of Abdul Rahim Ahmad Al-Makdah, the head of the local "popular committee". The popular committees in the Palestinian camps are the main vehicle for managing the camps at an administrative level.

A large and avuncular man in his mid 60s, Abdul Rahim Ahmad al-Makdah strikes a reassuring tone. He provides a fascinating insight into the complex factional politics of the camp. According to al-Makdah, there are three broad coalitions inside Ein Al-Hilweh; the so-called Tahalof (Cooperative), the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Islamic factions.

The Tahalof coalition is comprised of seven factions, including the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PLO faction is made up of five groups and is dominated by Fatah. While the Islamic faction is comprised of three groups, namely Asbat al-Ansar (League of the Partisans), Harakat Mujahideen Islamiyah (Islamic Mujahideen Movement) and Ansar Allah (Partisans of God).

Abdul Rahim Ahmad Al-Makdah claims he belongs to none of these factions and that his strength and influence is derived from his independence. Like numerous popular committee functionaries I had met in Palestinian camps before, he is careful to downplay factional rivalries and disputes and concentrate instead on the daily concerns of camp residents, which mostly revolve around housing, health and education.

Encounter With Islamists

Ein Al-Hilweh is effectively divided into two sections; Upper and Lower streets. These lead to a network of arterial alleyways which can only be described as the narrowest living spaces imaginable. The alleyways are dark and the houses which crowd them are darker still. Light deprivation is a common cause of depression and other mental illnesses in the Palestinian camps.

We cross into Lower Street which is regarded as the bastion of the radical Islamists in Ein Al-Hilweh. Lower Street is markedly different to Upper Street. Here there is less overcrowding and the street is noticeably cleaner. I meet Jamal Khatab in the Dar Al-Koran mosque in the middle of Lower Street.

Khatab is a business graduate of the prestigious American University of Beirut and has a perfect command of the English language. He is also the leader of the Islamic Mujahideen Movement, one of the largest Islamic groups in the camp. In Beirut, I had heard that Khatab was a key mediator with the radicals, so I was keen to meet him and take stock of his views and insights.

Dressed in clerical attire with a full beard, Khatab - who is in his early 40s - has pleasant facial features and strikes an understated charismatic tone. I grill him about Jund Al-Sham (Army of the Levant) - one of an assortment of radical groups that either emerged or took shelter in the camp in the 1980s and 1990s - and he nips my enthusiasm in the bud by claiming categorically that this organization was dissolved some time ago.

Khatab conceded that Asbat Al-Ansar is still going strong in the camp but he denies any suggestion that this organization has any ties to trans-national jihadi groups. According to Khatab, Asbat Al-Ansar is ideologically and politically close to Hamas. "The al-Qaeda style doesn't exist in the camp," Khatab claims, thus dismissing any notion that the notorious organization or its affiliates could find long-term refuge inside Ein Al-Hilweh.

On leaving the Dar Al-Koran mosque, we walk in a northerly direction towards the upper sections of Lower Street. Here the influence of Asbat Al-Ansar is everywhere. The group controls all the sandwich shops and even mans its own checkpoint - a mere stone's throw away from the Lebanese army checkpoint at the very top of Lower Street.

We enter a sandwich shop where a young man in his mid-20s takes our orders and starts cooking. We notice that he is wearing a pistol around his waist. My guide has a problem with his chicken sandwich but we decide not to argue with the armed cook.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has a strong but discreet presence in Ein Al-Hilweh. Hamas' main representative in the camp was unavailable for interview. Instead I meet with one of their representatives in the nearby Mieh Mieh camp, which from a political point of view can be considered as Ein Al-Hilweh's satellite.

Abu Mohammad is a mountain of a man; he stands at 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 meters), is extremely well built and has hands the size of shovels. But he is mild-mannered, speaks in soft and measured tones, and comes across as the classic gentle giant. He summarily dismisses the notion that al-Qaeda could be lurking inside the camps.

A few days earlier, I had received the same response when I posed a similar question to Mahmoud Taha, the Hamas representative in the Bourj Al-Shamali camp in southern Lebanon. Meeting Hamas representatives and activists in the camps one gets the impression that they are totally absorbed by the struggle against Israel and national Palestinian politics and have neither the desire nor the energy to get involved in religious and ideological disputes with rival Islamic groups.

Fatah: Divided But Still Going Strong

Understanding the security situation inside Ein Al-Hilweh is impossible without exploring the complex power struggles between key Fatah figures there and beyond. One of the main inter-Fatah conflicts in Ein Al-Hilweh centers on veteran Fatah leader Mounir Maqdah and his rival Mahmoud Abdul-Hameed Al-Issa (aka Lino).

I meet Mounir Maqdah in his spacious and relatively luxurious office. This middle-aged fighter has the look and feel of a maverick. Tall, lean and unconventionally handsome, he projects an effortless charm. It is difficult to establish Maqdah's precise role and position inside Ein Al-Hilweh and the wider camp network. He claims to still head the Kifayah Mosalaha, which purports to be the Palestinian police force inside the camps.

Maqdah is viewed as a renegade by key Fatah leaders in Ramallah, not least because of his close links to Palestinian Islamists. But a minority powerful faction in Fatah views his links to Islamists as a vital asset, especially during periods of stress, when Fatah needs all the leverage it can muster.

A natural showman, who likes to impress foreign journalists and other visitors, Maqdah shows me his photo albums form bygone years. Maqdah claims that Israeli agents have tried to assassinate him on no less than three occasions, in 1993, 1996 and 2006. The 1993 attempt (which involved a car bomb in Ein Al-Hilweh) was the most serious. He showed me pictures of the aftermath of the bombing.

Maqdah is adamant that strangers (in this case radical jihadis) cannot penetrate the camp since every square has its own security/social committee. Moreover, housing permits are issued by the Kifayah Mosalaha. As I am about to leave his office Maqdah makes a surprise prediction. He claims that the "resistance" in the West Bank and other Palestinian areas will soon resume, this time with added gusto and ferocity. As if this statement was not enough to infuriate his Fatah masters in Ramallah, Maqdah makes the startling claim that Israel will "disappear" altogether by 2015.

Not everything to do with Fatah in Ein Al-Hilweh is about division and conflict. Elsewhere in the camp I meet Moneim Awad, president of the Lebanese branch of the General Union of Palestinian Engineers and a key Fatah member. A small and frail man in his mid 50s, Awad is mild-mannered and unassuming. He comes across as the quintessential gentleman. Working from a modest office in the center of Ein Al-Hilweh, he works tirelessly to ensure that the camp infrastructure doesn't collapse altogether.

Meeting The United Nations

Almost everyone I have met in my journey through the Palestinian camps throughout 2009 tends to blame at least some of the daunting problems they face on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the specialized UN body that deals with Palestinian refugee issues.

In Beirut I met Hoda Samra Souaiby, UNRWA's public information officer. She admits that UNRWA was not aware of the penetration of the Nahr El-Bared camp (near Tripoli) by the jihadi group Fatah Al-Islam in 2007. The events of May-September 2007 (when Fatah Al-Islam fought pitched battles with the Lebanese army inside Nahr El-Bared) took UNRWA by complete surprise, Samra admits.

Contrary to what many Palestinian refugees claim, Samra denies that UNRWA is decreasing its services. She claims that re-allocation of services often appears to indicate resource depletion, but that this not the case. But she does add ominously that as a result of the demographic increase and the increase in the cost of services UNRWA can no longer provide the same quality of services. She says UNRWA needs more funds to provide better health, education and social services to its beneficiaries.

While Samra admits that the UN has no de-radicalization programs in the camps, she maintains that through its presence and the provision of services the agency is doing what it can to protect Palestinian refugees from dark and predatory forces.

Following the visit to Ein Al-Hilweh - and after a year of intense field research inside the entire camp network - my conclusion is that while al-Qaeda is nowhere to be found in the camps, Palestinian refugees are dangerously exposed to politically-motivated violence directed from various quarters. They are also at risk of potential exploitation by groups that have no organic presence inside the camps.

A solution to this pressing problem will remain elusive as long as UNRWA, the Lebanese Government, the Palestinian factions and a new generation of Palestinian non-governmental organizations cannot forge a consensus on how to tackle the prevailing security, social and humanitarian challenges.

Mahan Abedin is a senior researcher in terrorism studies and a consultant to independent media in Iran. He is currently based in northern Iraq, where he is helping to develop local media capacity.

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