The US News & World Report describes how Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon such as Ain al-Hilweh are proving to be fertile recruiting grounds for global jihad:
But the Lebanese Army can’t enter the area, where well-armed Palestinian militias of mainstream Fatah, rival Hamas, and several Islamist groups rule the streets and frequently clash in gunfights. And the Army has had to concede an adjacent neighborhood to armed groups of radical Islamists considered aligned with al Qaeda: Jund al-Sham (Army of Greater Syria), a mostly Lebanese group originated by veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Asbat al-Ansar (League of Partisans), which is mostly Palestinian.
In any Palestinian camp or neighborhood, the walls are adorned with posters depicting “martyrs” of the fight against Israel. But in Asbat’s neighborhood, the Iraq battlefield is evident: The main road has been renamed “Martyrs of Fallujah,” and the signs glorify men killed fighting alongside Zarqawi or in suicide attacks against U.S. troops or Iraqi Shiite Muslims.
One Lebanese member of Jund al-Sham says that these groups are aligned with al Qaeda in the sense that they share a worldview of Salafism, or return to the most basic principles of Islam, and the need for jihad to free Muslim lands from infidel occupiers.
Isn’t Ain al-Hilweh administered by the UNRWA?
