TRIPOLI, Lebanon: The impoverished Tripoli area of Mankoubeen was still recovering from shock Thursday, after the Nusra Front announced that the suicide attack over the weekend had been authored by two of its residents.
Residents of Mankoubeen still question why Taha Khayal, 21, and Bilal Mohammad al-Maryan, 28, decided to blow themselves up in the Nusra orchestrated attack Saturday outside a popular café in the Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, which killed nine. Jabal Mohsen lies a mere 100 meters from the mostly-Sunni Mankoubeen.
In the wake of the attack, a security plan was launched in the neighborhood and its residents are being monitored. Soldiers ask all residents for their IDs before entering the area’s premises. The security measures have exacerbated tensions and checkpoints only allow for one road in and out of the area.
Bassam Houssam Naboosh, 19, who hails from Mankoubeen, was arrested Tuesday in Beddawi over suspicions that he was preparing to launch a terrorist attack.
Despite the poverty and the radical inclinations of some of its youth, the majority of Mankoubeen’s citizens retain their sense of patriotism and belonging as Lebanese citizens.
“We disown them [Khayal and Mariyan] and the wounds of Jabal Mohsen are our wounds and we would like to offer our condolences. We believe that our sons fell victim to the black thoughts of takfirism,” a relative of Khayal said.
Security reports suggest that, despite the Saturday bombing, few of Mankoubeen’s youth are joining foreign extremist groups; rather young men are affiliating themselves with the Mohajeroon organization believed to have been established by Walid Boustani, an extremist who fled to Syria after serving his sentence in Roumieh Prison.
Originally from Bab al-Tabbaneh, Boustani was convicted of belonging to Fatah al-Islam.
Upon arriving in Syria, Boustani founded an extremist group based in Qaalat al-Hosn, which executed several Free Syria Army officers. His successor, Abu Sleiman Mahmoud, from Mashta Hasan in Wadi Khaled, was killed after the Syrian regime reclaimed Qaalat al-Hosn.
Mankoubeen residents say the area gained a reputation as an extremist hub after its youth willingly crossed the border to Syria to fight the regime alongside the FSA.
“Since the start we have expressed our support for the Syrian revolution and the fall of the criminal [Syrian President] Bashar Assad’s regime,” said a member of Mankoubeen’s community.
“But the atmosphere became different when the fires of the Syrian civil war arrived to Lebanon, and from then on we changed our perspective. We said we wouldn’t accept our coexistence and national unity being compromised,” the citizen added, explaining the difference between the readiness of Lebanese jihadis to fight in Syria and those who return to stage attacks.
The citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, stressed that although there are some extremists in the community, the majority “don’t accept suicide bombings targeting our Alawite or Christian neighbors. And despite the terrible poverty we live in, we stick to our Lebanese identity.”
Khayal’s home lies among a collection of humble houses made of tin. Many such structures in the area are illegal. Mankoubeen – which literally means “disaster-stricken” in Arabic – was developed by the Lebanese government to shelter residents affected by the flooding of the Abu Ali River in 1950, the land itself belonged to the Iraq Petrol Company. Over the years housing would expand in the area to host more than 10,000 people, most of them below the poverty line.
In the aftermath of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, Mankoubeen became a strong supporter of March 14. Similar to the Sunni neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh, most families in the area escaped the rough streets of Tripoli and either work as street vendors or in construction. Most do not have steady jobs.
Socioeconomic conditions in Tripoli have been dire since the Lebanese Civil War ended, and took a turn for the worst after the Syrian uprising in 2011. Tensions have soared between neighborhoods supporting Assad, namely Jabal Mohsen, and those supporting the rebels, which led to recurrent clashes between Bab al-Tabbaneh and the Alawite hub.
“We were all surprised with the news of the Jabal Mohsen bombing,” said Mohammad Sadeyah, a resident in the area. “It was also a surprise that some of ours would commit such a crime.”
Samir Khayal, Taha’s father, has close ties with members of the security forces.
When he found out his son was one of Saturday’s suicide bombers he turned himself in willingly.
“His [Samir’s] first reaction was to disown his son and he asked all his family members to not accept condolences for Taha’s death, no matter what,” Sadeyah explained.
“We are contacting Jabal Mohsen’s local community daily to ease tensions.”
Sadeyah explained that the arrest of Naboosh shocked the community because he was known to have had a close relationship with Taha Khayal. “He [Naboosh] had a full security file as he was right next to the fighters of Bab al-Tabbaneh and went to fight in Syria with the Nusra Front,” he said.
Sadeyah added that there was information that when Naboosh returned, he had played an important role in the operation Khayal and Mariyan had carried out. “He might have prepared himself to become a suicide bomber against Lebanese Army targets,” he said.
But although Sadeyah neither denied the fact that Naboosh might have had intentions of carrying out an attack nor the presence of terror cells in Mankoubeen, he ruled out the possibility that Naboosh was on a mission the night he was caught.
“Naboosh was on a regular visit to Beddawi when the Army Intelligence caught him, and he wasn’t carrying an explosives belt,” Sadeyah said, criticizing the media for distorting the facts.
He also said radicalization was not exclusive to Mankoubeen.
“Around six men from Mankoubeen have been arrested and investigations into their case are ongoing. At least two were fighting next to [fugitives] Shadi Mawlawi and Osama Mansour in Bab al-Tabbaneh,” Sadeyah said. “We have articulated a clear position that those who kill innocents are not one of us. We are patriotic and will adhere to the Army till the end.”
Samir Khayal is now back home after four days of being in police custody. Khayal’s father was in no condition to speak, when The Daily Star requested an interview.
“He [Taha Khayal] was an extremely shy kid,” his uncle, Kanaan, said. “Months ago he started going to the Al-Noor Mosque in Beddawi, and the signs of religious extremism began to show.”
The family, explained the uncle, tried to pressure Khayal, but they couldn’t. “There’s someone playing with the heads of those youth, and they brought us this great tragedy,” the uncle said, stressing that there was a need to reveal who influenced them.
Khayal apparently left the city in October 2014 following clashes between the Army and Islamists led by Mawlawi and Mansour.
Saturday’s explosion was the first serious breach of a security plan implemented in April 2014 which ended years of clashes in Tripoli between residents of Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh.
Sources in Mankoubeen say there are 15-25 Nusra Front members in Syria who hail from the community. But details of their whereabouts are unknown.
Security reports state that many are still in Syria, stoking fears that they might return home to stage attacks in Lebanon.
A security source said that a strict security plan was being implemented to ensure precautionary steps were taken to contain similar operations to the one in Jabal Mohsen this week. The raid of Roumieh Prison Monday was part of that security plan.
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