Can Canada help a besieged town in Lebanon resist Daesh?
Written by Malek

Lebanese soldiers guard an army position in the mountains above the town of Arsal near the Lebanon-Syria border.

By

ARSAL, LEBANON—A frigid wind rips across the mountaintop as Col. Ahmed Assir, a commander in the Lebanese Army’s Ninth Infantry Brigade, peers into the valley below. The restive town of Arsal lies at the bottom, inside an army cordon set up two years ago after a brief Daesh takeover. I ask him where the Daesh fighters are now. He points to the snow-capped mountains on the other side of the town that form Lebanon’s border with Syria. It’s a few kilometres away. “It’s empty,” he replies. “They can have it. Like dogs.” He’s talking tough, but he’s also begrudgingly acknowledging the jihadists control Lebanese territory. I’m travelling with the Ninth Brigade around Arsal, on Lebanon’s mountainous northeastern border with Syria. In August 2014, fighters from Daesh — also known as ISIS and ISIL — and the formerly al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Fateh al-Sham stormed out of the mountains and overran the town, winning a stunning victory.

But it was short-lived. During five days of fierce fighting, the army wrested back control. In the end, 17 soldiers, dozens of militants and at least 42 civilians were dead. The defeated fighters were pushed out, but they didn’t go far. Thousands of them dug into the outskirts of town, taking refuge in the caves and natural defences of the mountains between here and the Syrian border. The battle came with another cost: the jihadists kidnapped 29 Lebanese police officers and soldiers on their way out. Four have since been executed; several are still being held. Last February, then-foreign affairs minister Stéphane Dion announced a Canadian mission to stabilize Lebanon. He warned it was at a “tipping point” and needed Canadian help to avoid collapse as it struggles with the pressures of the Syrian civil war next door. It is part of Canada’s revamped mission to counter Daesh, put in motion after Canada pulled out of airstrikes against the group when Justin Trudeau came to power.

So far Lebanon has weathered the storm, but containing Syria’s chaos is an ongoing struggle. There have been bombings, arrests of jihadist leaders and foiled terror plots, all linked to Daesh. As state infrastructure buckles under the enormous strain of the refugee influx, Lebanon’s warm welcome is cooling. One in four people in Lebanon are now Syrian refugees. Foreign aid has poured in to ease the burden. But against the towering needs of Syria’s displaced, the response falls short. In an interview, UNICEF’s chief of field operations for Lebanon said that as of November — almost year’s end — just 50 to 60 per cent of the group’s annual appeal had been funded.

Canada’s contribution is a $1.6-billion development and security package (spread over three years) for Lebanon and Jordan — another Mideast ally deemed at risk of collapse. Signs of the crisis are on full display in Arsal. Originally home to some 30,000 people, it now hosts an additional 60,000 to 90,000 Syrian refugees. Looking down from the army position in the mountains, clusters of white refugee tents dominate the town. One of Canada’s principal aims in Lebanon is to promote “social cohesion” between Syrian refugees and their Lebanese hosts. But with refugees vastly outnumbering locals in Arsal, and a widely held belief that refugees are sheltering jihadi fighters, the relationship has coarsened. Last summer the municipality imposed a curfew requiring refugees to stay inside between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Today, 5,000 Lebanese troops surround the town, imposing what one conflict monitoring group said amounts to a “virtual siege.” Driving through the narrow, barely passable mountain roads surrounding Arsal, army outposts are visible every kilometre or so. Sandbag barricades, tanks and artillery guns dot the barren, rocky landscape.

Hardly a day passes up here without exchanges of fire between militants and the Lebanese army. Col. Assir says enemy fighters regularly creep to within range of army positions and open fire with U.S.-made TOW missiles or rocket-propelled grenades.

“When it’s light out and we’re looking down from these positions and see groups in the mountains, we fire at any target we see,” Assir says.

Canada has been quietly busy here over the last year. Canada’s Department of National Defence recently confirmed a Canadian Forces team is on the ground in Lebanon, planning a training mission for Lebanese soldiers.

Then in December, Dion stopped in Lebanon to announce plans to fund a forward operating base near the Syrian border. That’s on top of an earlier joint commitment with the United Kingdom to pay for surveillance towers to monitor the border and help bring it fully under Lebanese control.

Canada is also supplying the poorly equipped army with winter gear.

France, the United Kingdom and the United States are also big donors. With Iraq and Syria’s future as viable states increasingly in question, there’s an international effort underway to prove a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy can still exist in this corner of the Middle East.

It appears to be working. In Arsal, the army has clawed back territory from the jihadists, arrested Daesh leaders and overall levels of violence are down. For now, the threat appears mostly contained.

But challenges persist. In addition to the fighters lodged in the outskirts of town, the army says more are still hiding among the local population.

In October, militants on motorcycles shot and killed a Lebanese soldier outside his home in Arsal. For Assir and his men, it was a reminder of the army’s limited control. “We can go in sometimes, but if we go in too often they will remember us and plant a bomb under our car.”

Most of the soldiers in our escort wear balaclavas to hide their identities, and I’m forbidden from photographing their faces.

Despite the militant presence inside Arsal, the army is hesitant to enter in force to flush them out, fearing another round of open fighting and condemnation from the international community.

“We obey international law, so we can’t just go in and kill them all, because we can’t afford the legal consequences.”

Instead, the army maintains a perimeter around Arsal, mining intelligence networks until they receive word a Daesh leader is inside the town. Then they conduct raids and make arrests. One such raid in late November netted a Daesh commander and 10 other militants.

They use similar tactics against weapons smugglers and money mules trying to move large amounts of cash for the militants. Before the attacks, Arsal was a major crossing for refugees, jihadist fighters and gunrunners, but Assir says the army has mostly put an end to that.

As we drive through a checkpoint on the edge of town, Assir clarifies the army’s approach.

“It’s like a border now,” Assir says, gesturing toward the empty street crossing. “A buffer zone. Anyone who wants to leave should be checked. If you’re an illegal refugee you can stay here, but you can’t cross further into Lebanon.”

It’s a frank acknowledgement that the town’s limits — which are not a border — have become a corral for refugees and potential terrorists.

Critics say the army has essentially ceded Arsal to jihadists, allowing them to stay put as long as they keep a low profile. But with the town surrounded and access strictly limited, Arsal’s townspeople are stuck inside with them.

“Whenever there’s a security problem, they let it fester to the extent that the solution is to turn it into an enclave and close it off,” says Sahar Atrache, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“What they don’t understand is that by inflicting this exclusion on Arsal, it’s creating lots of resentment in the population. It will sooner or later backfire.”

She says Canada should promote a more humanitarian, community-based approach by the army.

Asked about the army’s relationship with the townspeople, Col. Assir responds confidently. “It is excellent. They love that the army is here.”

Not everyone seems to think so. Human Rights Watch researcher Lama Fakih told me her organization documented allegations of torture by the army against Syrian and Lebanese terror suspects detained in Arsal. They say the torture extracted false confessions, which were then used to win convictions in military trials.

Fakih says Canada should be auditing assistance to the army to ensure it’s not supporting violations of international law.

A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said Canada does audit programming provided to Lebanon, but refused to confirm whether the department is aware of the allegations or answer direct questions about them.

“We engage on an ongoing basis with Lebanese authorities on a variety of issues, including those that relate to human rights,” Michael O’Shaughnessy said.

Heading out of Arsal in the late afternoon, we lurch back and forth inside the army jeep as our convoy bounces down an impossibly bumpy military access road. Passing a deep quarry, a large cave opening comes into view on our right. It’s about six metres across.

“They’re all over the mountains,” Assir says. “These natural shelters are what make it so hard to root them out.”

I ask him what he thinks it’s going to take to get rid of them for good.

He thinks for a moment.

“Politics,” he says. “When we have a good government in Syria we can communicate with, you can get them out very easily.”

It’s an optimistic thought. But with major obstacles to a peace agreement, stable governance there isn’t exactly on the horizon.

Col. Assir and his men may yet be out here a very long time.

Corbett Hancey is a Gordon Sinclair Foundation Reporting Fellow.