By Dr Craig Larkin
We recorded hours of conversations with several former Islamic State (IS) fighters from Lebanon who opened up about their motivations, justifications and experiences. The picture that emerges is complex and conflicting, a fusion of historic grievances and ongoing sectarian tensions.
Under the moonlight of a cool Ramadan evening, Ibrahim carefully packs and primes barrels with explosives, stacking them below a highway bridge. The target, a Syrian army convoy traversing Damascus and Homs, would require three days of patient waiting. The explosive act of revenge, however, has been forty years in the making.
”I was born into conflict, and it shaped and formed me,” he recalls. His haggard looks and terse tones attest to a war weariness that seeps through scarred hands and a damaged soul. A child of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), Ibrahim’s recollections of jihadi action in Syria with IS fuse past injustices and present Lebanese sectarian grievances.
His stories of fighting in the hills of Qalamoun alongside IS jihadis are interspersed with personal memories of his brothers’ imprisonment in Damascus in the 90’s, the Syrian occupation of Tripoli and recent street battles in Tripoli’s Alawi, Jabal Mohsen district.
“The torture of my brothers in Syria filled me with hate and violence,” he says. “These feelings have been my constant energy supply.” An all-consuming desire for retribution and “love of jihad and martyrdom” is Ibrahim’s justification for joining the uprising in Syria.
Ibrahim’s story is not unique, he was one of thirty ex-prisoners I and several colleagues interviewed in 2022 as part of the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme. They were all previous inmates at Lebanon’s notorious Roumieh prison, charged with terrorist crimes and affiliation with extremist groups such as IS, Jubhat al-Nusra and Fatah al-Islam. And they were mostly recruited or mobilised in Tripoli.
Lebanon’s northern ‘rebel city’ bears witness to a long history of extremism, poverty, and marginalisation. The Islamist fighters that emerge from Tripoli’s streets are often young men hardened by family traumas and communal violence. Why Tripoli provides the largest number of Lebanese Islamist fighters to the Syrian conflict is easily explained by its close proximity to the border, its cultural and historic ties to Syria and influx of Syrian refugees to the city. Its Sunni Salafist traditions, religious networks, youth unemployment and stark economic malaise are also contributory factors. Beyond these common drivers of extremist mobilisation, Tripoli also provides a unique environment for generational cycles of violence and trauma.
Since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, multiple rounds of urban conflict continue to demarcate and fragment Tripoli’s densely packed neighbourhoods, patrolled by competing Lebanese security forces (LAF and ISF) and politically funded militia gangs. The ex-prisoners we interviewed often began their stories with tales of entanglement in local clashes, periodic arrests and detainment, the manipulation and mobilisation of youth by religious clerics and corrupt political elites, and family members who fought and died in Iraq, Syria or within Lebanon. Their personal motivations and stories reveal a complex blend of Islamist zeal and Sunni grievance, overlying very real fear and economic despair which besets many Tripoli neighbourhoods.
For Yusuf, a diminutive, steely-eyed IS recruit in his early thirties, the Tripoli environment was the natural incubator for jihadi struggle in Syria. “Our upbringing consisted of shootings, sometimes in the Jabal or Tabbaneh,” he told us. “A problem upstairs, a problem downstairs and battles would occur and the [Lebanese] army would not get involved.”
Like Ibrahim, Yusuf recalls Syrian abuses, both familial and communal. The execution of his uncle by military forces, and the everyday intimidation, with his secondary school adjacent to a Syrian army barracks, leading to soldiers punishing and beating children when their ball went over the wall. His upbringing had not been particularly religious, but his mother’s death led to a spiritual awakening, guiding him “towards a path of religious repentance” and enrolment at a local Sharia college. Yusuf’s father warned him against religious extremism and getting involved in a “Syrian war that is not yours.” “He would always remind me,” Yusuf recalls, “of the importance of human dignity and pride, the sanctity of life – you cannot kill your human brother.”
Unlike Ibrahim, Yusuf’s journey to Syria did not begin on a bus of 30 Lebanese fighters. Instead, he flew alone to Turkey and crossed the border, joining an Islamic humanitarian NGO offering first aid to Syrian civilians in Idlib. He is adamant that his overwhelming desire was ‘humanitarian relief’, yet his actions were secretive and clandestine. Initially drawn to Syria through emotive media appeals and images of families buried beneath rubble, Yusuf was quickly attracted to IS’s emerging Caliphate, and “their power, control and strict application of sharia law.”
His early enchantment with IS soon dissipated, as an argument over an “unjust killing of a fellow Muslim” led to his imprisonment and torture by the group. Incredibly, Yusuf would spend more time imprisoned by IS than actually fighting alongside them in Syria. His liberation would come through a jail break led by the al-Qaeda affiliate group, Jubhat al-Nusra, who he then decided to fight alongside.
“To be honest, what is survivable about Jabhat al-Nusra is that you can co-exist with them…the ideas of al-Qaeda, you can live with,” he says. While fighting around Homs and Idlib, Yusuf’s father’s persistent phone calls finally convinced him to return home, but he was arrested by Turkish authorities on the border and immediately extradited to Roumieh prison.
Overcrowded and understaffed, Roumieh prison holds the highest density of extremist prisoners in the Middle East, with rival Islamist groups vying for control of different blocks and floors, often administering their own ‘brutal justice’. Despite an IS criminal conviction, Yusuf’s desertion of the group in Syria made him a constant target of knife attacks by fellow IS prisoners. As Yusuf explains: “I was basically a dead man walking.”
The adversaries of IS (Jubhat al-Nusra and Fatah al-Islam) “could protect me in a way” but such protection was costly and “they would destroy my life through it”. Ironically Yusuf’s safety and security within prison was to be found within his own community. “Young men who knew me from al-Mankobeen in Tripoli would protect me,” he says.
The last year of Yusuf’s sentence, however, would be served in solitary confinement, to avoid any possibility of violent confrontation. He recounts: “I was on my own and alone, no-one would come close, and I would scare them. Whoever comes close to me, either I die, or they would die, so they got scared and they stopped trying to get close to me.”
Yusuf and Ibrahim’s stories may have common origins but like most Lebanese ex-IS fighters we interviewed, they have very diverging endings. Ibrahim’s story cannot hide deep emotional scars and cynicism that the Syrian regime corrupted “the real Islamic State” project, creating Da’ish, which was “full of moles and collaborators.”
During the interview Ibrahim remains numb and impassive to his own jihadi violence, yet tearful and emotional when reflecting on the historic suffering of his brothers in a Syrian prison. Yusuf, on the other hand, is bitter, regretful, and scathing of his experience with IS – they “ruined my life” and caused my “family deep distress due to kidnapping and constant demands for ransom”. His time in Roumieh prison, while psychologically and physically damaging, provided time for critical self-reflection: “I wasted part of my life. I could have sorted out my situation…now my friends are all merchants in Tripoli, they continued their education.”
While both men remain religiously pious, they are cautious of Tripoli clerics “selling us illusions”. Like the majority of interviewees, both confessed to a withdrawal from public prayer in Tripoli and association with mosques or sheikhs, perhaps as an act of self-protection but also as a reality of social stigmatisation. For Yusuf and Ibrahim, Tripoli remains a dangerous and volatile city – containing a precarious Sunni community easily mobilised to fight new battles and seek to avenge past crimes. Historic grievances are not easily forgotten in Lebanon, they remain embedded in family feuds and communal stories and sites of brutal violence. As one interviewee told us, “walls of blood were left by Syria in Tripoli in the 1980’s”. The shame and pain still persist.
For Ibrahim the sense of betrayal is matched by the contemporary political failure and corruption within the city. He says: “Hariri destroyed the Sunnis, Rifi supported them with weapons but then betrayed them by putting them in prison when he became Minister of Justice. The Sunni in Tripoli and all over Lebanon have no real religious or political leadership. They have no protection, no funding, and are very vulnerable to Hizbullah and Syrian interference.”
While Lebanese Sunni communities increasingly feel bereft of strong leadership and external protection, new forms of violent Islamist leadership will emerge to fill the gaps and hold out the promise of restoring honour and fighting injustice. Our interviews with ex-prisoners in Tripoli attest to a deepening sense of victimisation and communal grievances which can only fuel future conflict in Lebanon.
That sense of injustice burned brightly with Ibrahim and it was one of his main motivations for joining IS. “As I lay on a dirt track overlooking that bridge, I thought about the evil the Syrian regime had caused my family,” he told us. “When the bombs exploded killing Syrian soldiers, my need for revenge was finally extinguished.”
Dr Craig Larkin is a Reader in Middle East Politics and Peace and Conflict Studies, and Director, Centre for the Study of Divided Societies (CSDS) at King’s College London. He is Research Lead for the Violent and Peaceful Behaviour Strand of XCEPT research programme.
This publication is issued by the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, funded by UK International Development. XCEPT brings together world-leading experts and local researchers to examine conflict-affected borderlands, how conflicts connect across borders, the intersection of climate stresses and conflict, and the drivers of violent and peaceful behaviour, to inform policies and programmes that support peace.
The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the UK government.
This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s) should be credited, with the date of the publication and reference to XCEPT. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the material in this document, the author(s) will not be liable for any loss or damages incurred through the use of this document.
