Middle Eastern Wars: Jihad & Resistance

Abd-al-Ghani Jawhar, also known as Abu-Bakr Jawhar, Abu Hajer, and Abu Ali was a Lebanese Salafi-Jihadist who became a prominent member of Fatah-al-Islam, a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. He was implicated in numerous terrorist attacks in Lebanon and participated in battles and plots against the Lebanese state and international forces. He later crossed into Syria following the start of the Syrian civil war to fight against the Assad regime. A renowned explosives expert, Jawhar died in late April 2012 in Qsair, Syria, after a device he was constructing erupted prematurely.

Jawhar was born in Bibnine, Lebanon, in 1982 to Ali and Nairman and was one of twelve children. Bibnine overlooks the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, an area largely ignored by the Lebanese government and lacking basic services and effectively out of bounds to the Lebanese Army, with internal security provided by Palestinian factions.1Jawhar not only spent his childhood in this troubled environment, but his early years were marked by the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) in which 120,000 people are estimated to have died. The social, political, and economic hardship that Jawhar encountered in his childhood, coupled with his proximity to the disenfranchised Palestinian community, would be highly influential in defining his worldview; a childhood acquaintance proposed that "in the absence of the state and its control and the lack of social, economic, and political protection, it was only natural that (…) he would commit such acts." Lacking direction and unable to find stable employment, Jawhar instead spent his time at the local mosque where he found the support that was unavailable elsewhere. It should be noted that there is no indication that he was recruited by fundamentalist organizations during this period. His childhood teacher described him at the time as a “peaceful student who had no political background or affiliation, similar to other poor students”. He earned a place at a technical school in Qobbeh, Tripoli, graduating at 21 with a diploma in laboratory studies and biochemistry. He acquired skills in the institution that would eventually make him a valued asset to jihadi movements as a renowned explosives expert.

Ideological development Jawhar was initially a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is unclear why he progressively moved towards stricter and more militant interpretations of Islam, but he eventually “left over doctrinal disputes — he felt that the group was not strict enough in its interpretation of Sharia”. What is known is that after graduating, Jawhar began to teach a strict Salafi form of Islam in the Wadi al-Jamous area, close to his birthplace of Bibnine.9 His classes were said to have not been popular. Few students attended his sessions, and those who did often commented upon his “uncompromising style of teaching and his extremist views on Shi`a Muslims in particular and non-Muslims in general”. This espousal and focus upon takfiri ideology, denoting the practice of excommunication by one Muslim of another based on a perceived non-adherence to doctrine, marked a further development in his views. It would serve as the doctrinal justification for his subsequent attacks on Lebanese Shi’ia and the Lebanese Army, seen as representing an apostate government. He stopped teaching months afterwards and abandoned his form of Salafism for stricter interpretations of Islam. He attempted to join militant Salafi-Jihadi movements in Iraq but was unable to travel for security reasons. Undeterred, he headed instead to the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon where he met like-minded Salafi-Jihadis and underwent intensive military training. During his time in the camp he would come under the influence of Jund al-Sham, a group of “freelance Salafi-jihadi fighters with a presence in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.” The militant group had ties to Al-Qaida and was financially supported by Osama Bin Laden. Using the technical knowledge gained during his university years, he learnt how to assemble and plant explosives, as well as general combat skills. In 2008, after completing his military training, he was asked to join Fatah al-Islam by representatives of the group in Ain al-Hilweh.16Membership of Fatah al-Islam and rise through ranks After joining Fatah al-Islam he was chosen to be the “the group’s point man in the north”. He returned to his hometown of Bibnine and began recruiting members to form his own cell in the area.

Operating from the ‘Islah’ mosque in the town, he indoctrinated “young, poor, and alienated recruits”, and within months he had formed a terrorist unit composed of 11 fighters from the area including his brother, Mohamad Ali Jawhar. Given his background, he was in tune with the struggles faced by disaffected youth in the region. He became so adept at indoctrinating fighters to his cause that a Lebanese intelligence officer described him as a “master recruiter” who even managed to convince members of the Lebanese army to abandon their positions and join Fatah al-Islam. The leaders of the organisation, impressed with Jawhar’s successes, decided to provide him with additional responsibilities and help. Mohamad Mahmoud Azzam, an old confidante of the deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was sent to meet Jawhar in Bibnine to give him financial support and teach him how to build and place “sophisticated plastic explosives and roadside bombs for the purpose of attacking UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) and Lebanese army bases.”

Throughout the next years he was involved in numerous plots, battles, and terrorist attacks. His successes, continued dedication to the cause, and indoctrination efforts earned him increasingly important roles within Fatah al-Islam, and by some accounts he was promoted to leader of the group in 2010 after the previous leader was killed in a battle with Lebanese security forces. Whether or not he was the absolute head of the organization is uncertain, however he was unquestionably one of the overall leaders of Fatah al-Islam by this time. Jahwar was thought to have been killed by government security forces on numerous occasions but all reports were subsequently retracted. He managed to evade capture so many times that he was nicknamed ‘mercury’ by Lebanese intelligence officers; one senior official estimated that he had escaped arrest at least 34 times. His activities between 2007 and 2011, the period between his first confirmed involvement with jihadi organizations and his promotion to the Fatah al-Islam’s upper echelons, eventually earned him the dubious honor of Lebanon’s most wanted terrorist. While his skill in recruiting members, organizing terrorist cells, and regularly evading capture were obvious factors in this designation by Lebanon’s security forces, it was the sheer body count and number of successful terrorist attacks Jahwar was involved in that made him a target of highest priority.

Violent activities 2007 - 2011

Abd-al-Ghani Jawhar was involved in numerous violent attacks after he first came into contact with Salafi-jihadi organizations during his stay in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp. After establishing his terrorist cell in Bibnine, on May 31, 2008 he planted a bomb at a military intelligence base, killing one soldier and injuring two others. A second attack was attempted a month later but the bomb failed to detonate. Two terrorist cells tied to Jawhar assaulted an army base and planted explosives on a public bus in Tripoli in August of the same year, killing 13. In September, another bombing in Tripoli masterminded by Jawhar25 killed five. This flurry of attacks was made possible as Jawhar had brought 50 kilograms of explosives from Ain al-Hilweh and transported them to the Beddawi camp near Tripoli earlier that year.26 The attacks were believed to be in retaliation for the 2007 events at the Nahr al-Bared camp, when the Lebanese army crushed an uprising led by Fatah al-Islam which resulted in the death of 400 people on both sides.

In January 2009 Jawhar personally shot a Lebanese Christian drugstore owner for selling alcohol. During the next months, captured militants testified that he planned to “assassinate Lebanese Internal Security Forces Director Ashraf Rifi and to conduct high-profile operations against UNIFIL”, and was charged with plotting to kill the peacekeepers. In 2010, a military prosecutor demanded the death penalty for Jawhar in absentia for his role in monitoring and plotting attacks against UN and local security forces. In 2011, two bombings against UNFIL targets in May and July left 1121soldiers wounded, and Jawhar was named as the top suspect by intelligence reports. He was also implicated “in the murders of a Lebanese general, a major in Intelligence, and a Member of Parliament.” He was also active outside the Lebanese border and was wanted “in connection with a bombing operation which targeted the Syrian military intelligence service headquarters in Damascus on 27 September 2008.” His activities spanned Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, where he is thought to be responsible for several of the devastating explosions that killed international troops.

“He was a network by himself,” said a Lebanese official, “he had relations all over the region.” By late 2011, he had masterminded plots that had killed scores and injured hundreds of soldiers and civilians and was “a person of interest in some 200 unsolved cases of murder, assassinations, attempted assassinations and explosive attacks.” In early 2012, Jawhar crossed into Syrian territory. The civil war in the country had been raging for a year at that point, and he travelled to Homs to fight against Assad’s regime.

Activities in Syria and death

Jawhar had planned to cross into Syria for some time before 2012. In 2010, in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, he and fellow Fatah al-Islam commander Walid al-Boustani had already agreed to “travel into Syria and establish a new jihadist movement” which would create an ‘Islamic Emirate of Homs’ in the city. The chaos precipitated by the Syrian Civil War created vacuums of power that were ready to be exploited by Jihadi movements. On 12 February 2012, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued his first statement on Syria since the outbreak of the revolution, calling upon ‘every Muslim and every honorable and free person in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon to go aid his brothers in Syria’. Jawhar, as a leading member of a Jihadi group with contacts across the region, with a pre-existing intention to enter the country and create an Islamic state in Homs, and now with a direct call to arms, crossed the border shortly after al-Zawahiri’s statement was issued. He traveled not as a member of Fatah al-Islam but as a mujahid called upon “to help fellow Muslims under attack by the Syrian regime”. By early April he was in Homs with al-Boustani, though the latter was executed soon after by a Free Syrian army unit following “a series of apparent assassinations of people who had publicly expressed their opposition to Boustani’s emirate and widespread allegations that Boustani and Jawhar were looting FSA supplies and money”.

Jawhar died soon after, quite literally hoisted by his own petard, as a bomb he was fashioning to help Syrian rebels fight government forces exploded unexpectedly. There would be no retraction to the news this time and his death was confirmed by the founder of Fatah al-Islam, cleric Sheikh Osama al Shihabi: “‘We are for God and to him we return.’ We as Mujahideen are used to being killed and if God wants to give those killed dignity he gives them martyrdom. This is the path of righteousness.” Aftermath Reports that emerged after his death detailing his activities in Syria came as an embarrassment to rebel forces, who had been seeking international assistance in fighting against the Assad regime. Professor and Fatah al-Islam expert Talal Atrissi asserted that “the death of Jawhar on Syrian soil emphasizes the fears of the international community that if they gave weapons to the Syrian rebels they will end up in the hands of radical groups (…) The Syrian opposition will be embarrassed from the fact that such a man is fighting alongside the rebels.” His activities in Syria are an early example of the forces and movements that would lead to the birth of ISIL/ISIS/Daesh.