Why Lebanon is Erupting Again

By Scott Macleod/Cairo

Much remains a mystery about Fatah al-Islam, the Palestinian-led Sunni Muslim 
fundamentalist faction that sprang up six months ago and is at the center of 
Lebanon's latest fighting. What is known, however, indicates that the group 
based near the northern coastal city of Tripoli is a product of past Middle 
East conflict, a manifestation of present unrest in Lebanon and an ominous sign 
of future turmoil throughout the region. 


The biggest concern now is that Fatah al-Islam is a tool created by the Syrian 
regime to stir up chaos in Lebanon as a way of heading off a U.N. tribunal that 
may prosecute Syrian officials for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime 
Minister Rafik Hariri. �The Syrian regime is continuing its old policies of 
using Palestinians as fodder for all the battles the Syrians are waging in the 
region,� says Lebanese commentator Khayrallah Khayrallah. But a longer-term 
worry is that a triangle of continuing political instability from Baghdad to 
Gaza to Tripoli will spawn a even more armed extremist factions — perhaps even 
al-Qaeda bases — threatening the entire region. 


Fatah al-Islam's roots can loosely be traced to Israel's 1948 war of 
independence, when thousands of Palestinians fled their homes for a dozen 
refugee camps in Lebanon. Squalid, overcrowded camps such as Nahr el-Bared, 
where the Lebanese army is now battling Fatah al-Islam fighters, became 
breeding grounds for the Palestine Liberation Organization's guerrilla groups. 
After Israel's 1982 invasion to evict the PLO from Lebanon, the Syrian regime 
launched a campaign of its own against Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, 
sponsoring a splinter group that called itself Fatah Intifadeh. That faction, 
backed by Syrian artillery, drove Arafat out of Tripoli in 1983. 


In late 2006, a fighter named Shaker al-Absi broke away from Fatah Intifadeh 
and called his new faction Fatah al-Islam. This time the split appeared to be 
rooted in the growth of al-Qaeda and the terrorism unleashed after the U.S. 
invasion of Iraq, another indication of extremism's viral spread since Sept. 
11. The original Fatah as well as the initial splinter group always espoused a 
secular Palestinian state, but Fatah al-Islam not only preaches an ultra, 
Salafist brand of Islam, but appears to have at least logistical links with 
al-Qaeda. In 2004, a Jordanian court convicted al-Absi and nine others for an 
al-Qaeda plot that included the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence 
Foley. Al-Absi was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia, as was the 
late Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was a Jordanian 
like al-Absi. 


Although Fatah al-Islam appears rooted in conflicts related to Palestine, Iraq 
and al-Qaeda's global jihad, the group's activities have added a dangerous new 
element of instability in Lebanon, a country already reeling from last summer's 
Israel-Hizballah war and Hizballah's subsequent attempts to topple the 
pro-American Lebanese government headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The 
Lebanese army launched its attacks following indications that Fatah al-Islam 
was setting up an al-Qaeda base in Lebanon like Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in 
Mesopotamia. The group's provocations include alleged involvement in February 
bus bombings in a Christian enclave, recent bank robberies and attacks on 
Lebanese soldiers. Government security forces are waging a military operation 
intended to flush out the group's 200 or more fighters, which include Saudis, 
Syrians, Yemenis, Moroccans as well as Palestinians. Yet the bombardment of a 
Palestinian refugee camp risks broadening the conflict to include other 
mainstream Palestinian factions as well as Hizballah — which, though a Shi'ite 
group at odds with al-Qaeda, is nonetheless closely allied with Sunni 
Palestinian factions like Hamas. With Lebanon balanced on a knife-edge since 
Hariri's killing two years ago, many fear that unrest could cause the country 
to stumble backwards into the civil war that ravaged the country between 
1975-90, itself ignited amid friction involving armed Palestinian groups. 


Siniora's government believes that Fatah al-Islam is a Syrian proxy, stirring 
up trouble in order to sabotage efforts to set up a U.N. tribunal in the Hariri 
assassination and eventually reassert Syrian hegemony in Lebanon; a U.N. 
investigative report has cited senior officials close to Syrian President 
Bashar Assad for complicity in the 2005 killing. The government said suspects 
arrested in the February bus bombings confessed to being Fatah al-Islam members 
working for Syria, with apparent orders to attack U.N. forces in southern 
Lebanon and target 36 Lebanese for assassination. Syrian officials angrily 
rejected the accusations, saying that the group was affiliated to al-Qaeda and 
that al-Absi spent three years in a Syrian prison on terrorism charges. 


Nonetheless, fingers remain pointed at Syria, in part because of the regime's 
history of working with groups of all manner of ideologies as part of its 
struggle for strategic control of Lebanon. Lebanese officials suspect that 
Syria has covert ties with Fatah al-Islam because Syria freed al-Absi from 
prison and because al-Absi maintained a long membership in the Syrian-backed 
Fatah Intifadeh group. The tie is difficult to prove, for the moment at least. 
But the Siniora government's suspicions, the heavy fighting in Tripoli and the 
looming showdown with Syria over the U.N. tribunal may combine for another 
season of turmoil in Lebanon. 


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