Al-Qaida roots itself in Lebanon, Thanks to Hariri's sectarian politics

From Le Monde Diplomatique, February Edition.
Excerpts from the article.
In addition to this article there are two others we can read on the subject of Al-Qaida in Lebanon:
Seymour Hersh: The Redirection
Nir Rosen: Al-Qaida in Lebanon, the Iraq war spreads.
And
A digest on the subject of Al-Qaida and the future movement published on this blog, May 2007.

RADICAL ISLAMISTS EXPLOIT A FRAGMENTED COUNTRY

Last year the Lebanese army besieged the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared, where a previously unknown organisation, Fatah al-Islam, was dug in. These events, like attacks on the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, reflect the appearance of radical Sunni Islamist networks, some of them linked to al-Qaida, which is now treating Lebanon as a key base .
by Fidaa Itani

"We were forcibly thrust into a battle that does not concern us. I would rather not have had to fight the Lebanese army," said Shahin Shahin, a Fatah al-Islam military commander, to a negotiator during the siege of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared by the Lebanese army. It was not then yet known that he was a son of Osama bin Laden and a high-ranking al-Qaida official. His misgivings about the fighting reflected his organisation's ambivalence towards Lebanon -- whether to see the country as a battleground on which to confront the United States and its allies, or just as a rear base for the training and transit of al-Qaida operatives...
...In those days the Sunnis were middle class traders, shopkeepers and civil servants, or illiterate country people. They expressed their support for Arab nationalism and the Palestinian struggle by joining Nasserite or leftwing movements. However, several Sunni groups moved closer to radical Islamism after Syrian troops occupied Lebanon in 1976, bringing repression with them. At the same time the influence of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood started to increase, threatening the regime in Damascus with armed incursions by its military wing.
When the civil war in Lebanon ended in 1989, with the signature of the Taif accord, the Salafists, whose influence was still only limited, mainly targeted other Islamic organisations, al-Ahbash (1) or the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects (AICP). These attacks were an opportunity for the Salafist groups to perfect their intellectual and missionary skills, recruiting in many towns and villages.
They were particularly successful with middle-class graduates, as well as with students of theology who had been in Saudi Arabia and stayed in contact with radical ulema there. But the groups still lacked cohesion, the best known being al-Hidayah wal-Ihsan (Preaching and Charity), which was reorganised by the son of the movement's founder, Dai al-Islam al-Shahal.
On 31 August 1995 one of these groups assassinated Sheikh Nizar al-Halabi, the head of the AICP, and caused a stir. It was the first time that a Salafist group had eliminated an opponent. Members of the organisation confessed to committing the murder and persisted in taking exclusive responsibility to the end. However, the Lebanese authorities and Syrian intelligence (which controlled the country) chose to pin the crime on Abdul Karim al-Saadi (aka Abu Mahjen), the Palestinian leader of Asbat al-Ansar, which was based in the Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp, near Saida in southern Lebanon. In 1999 the same group, originally formed by veterans from the war in Afghanistan, was blamed for the assassination of four judges in Saida central court.
...In May 2000 Russian negotiators, who were supervising the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon with the Syrians, gave the Lebanese and Syrian authorities a recording of a conversation between Kanj and Chechen mujahideen, which led to a Lebanese army raid on Dinniyeh on New Year's Eve 2001. At the same time the Syrian authorities, operating on the other side of the border, arrested radical Islamists, confirming the network's trans- national nature.
Al-Qaida waited till the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 before openly calling for units to be set up in Lebanon. But al-Qaida also operates as a form of franchise, with a far from centralised organisation, leaving considerable freedom of movement to local units. It was well established by the end of 2005 when the Lebanese authorities first succeeded in catching the members of a network, subsequently referred to as the "Network of 13", led by Hassan Nabaa, a Lebanese national. The group, which also comprised Saudis, Syrians and Palestinians, supported al-Qaida and the Iraqi resistance movement, operating in Lebanon and Syria where it clashed on several occasions with the secret service, particularly in
border zones. It is said to have shot down a Syrian helicopter.

The arrests prompted a controversy because the prisoners'confessions contained details of their involvement in the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, on 14 February 2005. But there is doubt about how the confessions were obtained, and the group's alleged link with the young Palestinian Ahmad Abu Adas, who claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on Hariri in an earlier video recording (2).
...The war of 2006
In July 2006 the 33-day war between Israel and Hizbullah erupted. The jihadist groups took advantage of the confusion to extend their influence. They also made use of the decision by the Islamic state in Iraq (instituted by al-Qaida) to expel any elements lacking specialist military skills or unable to blend in with the local population. Fatah al-Islam attracted many of these lost soldiers, prompting a hostile
response by Fatah and other groups belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, which wanted to "cleanse" the Ain al Hilweh camp. The Lebanese army, which had just deployed in force to the south of Litani following the end of the fighting between Hizbullah and Israel, was worried about leaving these jihadists only a short distance from the 12,000 strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil). Fatah al-Islam decided to take refuge in the north, an area with a Sunni majority, considered friendly.
Several meetings paved the way for this move, not only with the local Salafists but also with members of parliament belonging to Saad Hariri's Future Movement, concerned about Hizbullah's growing influence. Al-Absi held talks with a Sunni MP from Tripoli, a doctor who once had leftwing sympathies and who expressed his fear that the Shia Hizbullah might turn on the Sunni (3). Al-Absi replied that, without entering into conflict with a force fighting Israel, he would not allow anyone to harm the Sunni.
...At the end of 2006 Ahmad Tuwaijiri, a senior Saudi al-Qaida member, arrived in Lebanon. He met Fatah al-Islam leaders several times, as well as other Salafist groups. Funding flowed in, with public and private donations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait offered by prosperous businessmen who want to help the jihad.

The various Salafist organisations (4) were also keen to regroup, the better to resist the Shia threat. The political crisis in Lebanon and occasional clashes between Sunni and Shia, and between supporters of the parliamentary majority and opposition, created a favourable context (see "Why there is deadlock").
The local members of al-Qaida took advantage of the Future Movement's pressing need for militia to counterbalance Hizbullah. Although it appreciated the risks involved in dealing with fundamentalist factions, Hariri's party nevertheless adopted this short-term expedient in its struggle with Hizbullah, Syria and Iran. Al-Qaida acted pragmatically, seizing the opportunity to raise funds to recruit dozens of additional combatants, organise more training sessions at Ain al-Hilweh, prepare plans for attacking Unifil in the south, and spy on the embassies of western and Gulf countries in Beirut.

In June, a month after the fighting started, the Lebanese security forces discovered that Shahin was Saad bin Laden. He had managed to enter the camp a few days after the start of the battle and became popular with the combatants. The security forces had noticed his arrival in Lebanon a few months earlier. Saad, one of the most active leaders in the operations section of al-Qaida, had set up cells and support units all over Lebanon, in collaboration with al-Qaddur.

...Too high a price

However, as the political crisis in Lebanon grinds on, prompting all the factions to arm and train their combatants, al-Qaida may be able to lurk in the shadow of the largest Sunni group, the Future Movement, which is hiring combatants under the cover of private security companies. Hariri's organisation has so far assembled about 2,400 militia and plans to recruit 14,000 more in northern Lebanon alone. But the siege of Nahr al-Bared convinced part of Lebanon's Sunni elite that an alliance with al-Qaida came at too high a price.

...Will local groups claiming allegiance to al-Qaida agree to steer clear of Lebanese affairs? Whatever the answer, al-Qaida's future in Lebanon looks secure.
________________________________________________________ Fidaa Itani is a Beirut-based journalist
Translated by Harry Forster

Everything Quite On The Lebanese Front ?

According to Nir Rosen, it may well be the calm before the tempest. Read his article: "Al Qaeda in Lebanon, The Iraq War Spreads"
And every tempering with a solution to the present deadlock in Lebanon is a step toward chaos. The kind of chaos we saw and still see in Iraq.

An old story made new: Israel's role in the Entebbe hijacking and in 9/11

Reading Angry Arab today I found a link to this article.
It has been seen as a daring raid by crack Israeli troops to rescue dozens of their countrymen held at the mercy of hijackers.
But newly released documents contain a claim that the 1976 rescue of hostages, kidnapped on an Air France flight and held in Entebbe in Uganda, was not all it seemed.
A UK government file on the crisis, released from the National Archives, contains a claim that Israel itself was behind the hijacking.
An unnamed contact told a British diplomat in Paris that the Israeli Secret Service, the Shin Bet, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) collaborated to seize the plane.

Israel's role in 9/11 has also been questioned but I guess, as in the Entebbe case, we will never find out exactly what happened, only few forgotten documents revealed now and then with no will to connect them or to investigate.

Recently we were watching 'The Last King of Scotland' a movie about Ugandan president Idi Amin Dada in which one gets to see a scene from the Entebbe hijacking and highly mediatised Israeli rescue operation. My husband remebered the coverage of the event at the time and reminded me that one of the main factors in the success of the operation was that it was Israel who helped build the airport at Entebbe, so they knew the configuration very well.

Well, no wonder why Israel is miserably failing when attacking Lebanon becuase this is the only military operation they haven't been able to rehearse and stage as they want. And no wonder why Israel is so miserably failing militarily except when it comes to attacking Palestinian and Lebanese civilians because their might rests on dirty operations performed by their secret service and not on their courage in the battlefield.

In years from now we will maybe get to know that 9/11 wasn't exactly as we were told but it will be too late. And who cares ? Because, after all, we already know that the current fighting in northern Lebanon isn't exactly what the Sanyura government is telling Lebanese and the world. We already know that the Sunni extremist militia the sanyura/Hariri government is fighting is a Hariri tool, and nobody cares. Not even the UN who is busy setting a special tribunal for the assassination of a rich and corrupt man who brought his country to the edge of civil war again and whose son is continuing the destructive mission with the help of the US/UK/France and the UN, and nobody cares...The other lesson one might extract from this story and from the actual news in the Occupied Palestinian territories is that the worst ennemies of the Palestinian people since the Naqba have been the Palestinian people themselves and that the worst tyranny is the tyranny exerted from the inside...Palestinians and Lebanese should meditate this...

Inside North Lebanon's Turmoil

A first hand account published on Angry Arab blog from a telephone conversation between him and Abu Jabir, one of the leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who is inside the Nahr El-Bared camp.
Abu Jabir has stayed inside. He told me that he will not do it again: that he will not leave the camp except to return to Palestine. He feels that there is a conspiracy against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon in accordance of UNSC 1559. The humanitarian situation is quite dire, he said: there is no water, no electricity, and no medicine. The Lebanese Army bombardment of the camp is unquestionably indiscriminate he said. He said that the market was bombed, as were 6 mosques inside the camp. A bomb landed on his desk, for example. It is not true that the Lebanese Army is only bombing the north of the camp where Fath-Al-Islam is concentrated. Hospitals (they are more like clinics) were bombed as well, including Mu'assassat Ash-Shifa' which is run by the PFLP. Two general physicians are now forced to perform all sorts of medical practice, including surgery. As for the claim by the lying Lebanese government that "a mere Palestinian civilian was killed and 19 injured" in the camp, it is utterly false, Abu Jabir told me. He has the names of: 18 Palestinian civilians killed, and 105 Palestinian civilian injured. He told me that there are still civilians all around, and women were around when I was talking to him. There are reports, he said, of Hariri goons shooting at the camp and at the refugees but he was careful to add that since he is inside he can't verify that. There are 200 houses that are fully or partially destroyed in the camp. And those who leave the camp are not allowed back in by the lousy Lebanese Army. He then told me about Fath-Al-Islam. He said that the number of Palestinians among them can be counted on the fingers of "one hand." He said that they are non-Palestinians, and he said that the people of the camp would like them to leave the camp, that they don't belong there. He said: let those who fund them and who brought them in, take them out. They don't belong here, he told me. He said that initially, by late 2006, there were no more than 40 members of Fath-Al-Islam inside the camp. He said that suddenly by early 2007, something very suspicious started to happen: that hundreds of fighters (from fanatical groups inside At-Ta'mir (which is run by Hariri Inc, and where a Hariri militia operate) and `Ayn Al-Hilwah and other places) were brought into the camp to join the ranks of Fath-Al-Islam. He said that the camp is watched and controlled by the Lebanese Army and security forces from all sides. He asked how those fighters were permitted to enter the camp under the watch of the Lebanese Army. He wondered why is it that the same governments that met with Condoleezza Rice during her visit were the ones that sent arms and ammunition to the Lebanese Army this week. It is clear that people in the camp feel unfairly caught in a battle between Fath-Al-Islam and the Lebanese Army. They have no say in this battle that is hurting the refugees.

A first person account by blogger EDB from Anecdotes From A Banana Republic

Frank Lamb is reporting for Counterpunch from inside palestinian refugee camps in north Lebanon. Here are two of his recent articles:
Who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon?
Nahr el-Bared is 7 miles north of Tripoli near the stunning Mediterranean coast and is home to more than 32,000 refuges many of whom were expelled from the Lake Huleh area of Palestine, including Safed. Like all the official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, plus several 'unofficial' ones, Nahr el-Bared suffers from serious problems including no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment.
Tabulated at more than 25%, Nahr el-Bared has the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees anywhere who are living in abject poverty and who are officially registered with the UN as "special hardship" cases.
Its residents, like all Palestinians in Lebanon are blatantly discriminated against and not even officially counted. They are denied citizenship and banned from working in the top 70 trades and professions (that includes McDonald's and KFC in downtown Beirut) and cannot own real estate. Palestinians in Lebanon have essentially no social or civil rights and only limited access to government educational facilities. They have no access to public social services. Consequently most rely entirely on the UNRWA as the sole provider for their families needs.
It is not surprising that al-Qaeda sympathies, if not formal affiliations, are found in the 12 official camps as well as 7 unofficial ones...
"Another Waco in the Making"
The Welch Club wants the army to "wipe out the terrorists", and "protect our Palestinian brothers". Not one Palestinian in either camp or observer I know believes that. Rather the Palestinian community here believes that the whole Fatah al-Islam "very strange case" was designed to assault their 420,000 population here...
Seven PLO factions operate in both camps. They jointly chased Fatah al-Islam out of Bedawi on September 21, 2006 not long after they split from Abu Musa's Fateh Intifida which has been based in Badawi since 1983. Fatah Intifada still man's the entrance to Bedawi but they seem to have only about 100 members left. When one interviews them they are almost apologetic about their step-brothers, Fatah al-Islam. "We expelled them because we did not like their friends (Hariri intelligence staff) they were too religious and acted strange but we did not think things would come to this") but the al-Barad PLO factions do not have arms or power to confront FAI...

Hassan Nasrallah on the confrontations between the Lebanese army and Fatah El-Islam

The analysis of Nasrallah's speech by Angry Arab

La situation au Liban nord: Entrevue avec Angry Arab

Cliquer sur le titre pour atteindre le site qui a traduit l'entrevue de l'anglais.

Is the Hariri family financing Al Qaida and are the neocons profiting from the operation?

Enough of the Hariris, their Saudi mentors, and their neocon 'friends'. Since Rafiq Hariri died, Lebanon is on the brink of civil war again. The political heir, Saad Hariri, has been, like his father, pressuring the international community into accomplishing his political goals in Lebanon, at the expenses of the stability of the country. With his wealth, his closeness to the Saudi reigning family and, by extension, with the world class neocons including the newly elected French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign affairs minister Bernard Kouchner (a doctor who supported the Iraq war), and his friendship with Chirac, former French president, Hariri has been pulling all the strings in order to establish a permanent vassalization of Lebanon to the west with himself as the self appointed viceroy. My husband calls him Harmani. When we visited Lebanon in 2005 it was after a victorious parliamentary election for Hariri won in the wave of indignation about his father's assassination. He was on all posters, sometimes under his father's picture (Lebanon is the only country where dead people can campaign in elections), sometimes standing with a smile, a well trimmed beard, a hand in his pocket (which we all know is anything but empty) and a cellphone in another hand. My husband asked who was on the poster and I told him. We laughed when he confided that he thought that this might have been an ad for Armani. Since then we call him Harmani. But now is not the time to laugh. Now is the time to cry. Lebanon is on the brink of civil war again, thanks, among other things, to this little corrupt rich brat and his overambitious father.
Now is also the time for some less narrower perspective from what we read in the press on what is going on in lebanon now. And as always these perspectives cannot be found easily in the mainstream press, especially when it comes to matters related to the middle east.

Alain Gresh writes on his blog:

More than one party can be interested in taking profit from the actual instability in Lebanon. Syria, without doubt. But also the actual Lebanese government trying to force the international community into adopting an authoritarian UN security council resolution imposing on Lebanon an international tribunal on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, despite a clear hostility to this kind of tribunal from the Lebanese opposition. The actual Israeli government as well as the US also have interest in destabilising Lebanon. However, contrary to what is generally written in the press, what is hapenning in lebanon now is not a confrontation between the Lebanese people with the backing of the international community, and Syria and its « agents ». There is a multilayered confrontation in Lebanon. One of these layers is the division of the country between two distinct political camps with equal importance. On one side we have the Sanyura government backed by Hariri and the Sunnis, the Lebanese forces and half the Christian community, and the Druzes. On the other side we have the Shias with the Amal and Hezbollah movements, as well as the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun with half the Christian community. Is France making a good choice by taking sides in this conflict ? Bernard Kouchner, Sarkozy's foreign minister, and notable French neocon, is today in Beyrouth to support the Lebanese people and the Sanyura government while it is the Palestinian people who are being bombed. For what ? For a bank robbery that turned ugly ? Or for what to come in Lebanon ?

Bien des gens ont intérêt à l’instabilité au Liban. Le gouvernement syrien sans doute, mais aussi la majorité libanaise actuelle (qui cherche à pousser la communauté internationale à une résolution autoritaire pour créer un tribunal international sur l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri), le gouvernement israélien, les Etats-Unis, etc. Mais, contrairement à ce qui s’écrit généralement, ce qui se passe dans ce pays n’est pas un affrontement entre, d’un côté, le peuple libanais allié à la communauté internationale et de l’autre la Syrie avec ses « agents ». Se superposent plusieurs affrontements, dont le premier divise le Liban lui-même en deux camps d’à peu près égale importance. En privilégiant l’un des deux, la France fait-elle le bon choix ?

Nidal, at Loubnan Ya Loubnan, has an interesting perspective. Nidal's perspective shows the ideological and practical links between the different parties interested in Lebanon's descent into chaos. One can fairly say that these parties are organised in a loose network of interests in which the main puppeteers of the unfolding tragedy are the Hariri family closely linked to the Saudis, and by extension to the neocons. Nidal shows also how the Hariri family is financing Muslim Sunni extremists in Lebanon and worse, their migrations into Lebanon. One can fairly assume that we have here a paradigm for both the mobility and the survival of global sunni jihad relying entirely on local respectable sources of money totally immune to scrutiny and close to the neocons.

Nidal starts with an article written today by the Lebanese and Hariri paid journalist Michael Young in which Young tries to refute Seymour Hersh's assertions of March 2007 about the financing and the support provided by Hariri and the Lebanese government to Sunni extremist groups in Lebanon in order to counter the influence of Hezbollah. In his article, Young explains that if the Hariri family did in fact paid for a bail out of prison for members of Jund-Al-Sham, who later joined Fatah El-Islam already implemented in Nahr El-Bared in Northern Lebanon, it was to buy peace in the south. However, this assertion, claims Nidal, which Lebanese consider as normal political dealings, has the potential to open to us a window on how the Hariri family does Politics in Lebanon.

What is interesting about Jund Al-Sham is that this organisation, who is on the Russian list of terrorist organisations but not on the US list, has claimed responsibility for the Hariri assassination but this was discarded by the Mehlis commission who operated entirely under the mentorship of Hariri. Jund Al-Sham has nonetheless claimed responsibility for three of the fourteen carbombs investigated by the Mehlis commission. Jund Al-Sham has also claimed responsibility for the 2006 bombing fo the US embassy in Damascus and for the killing of a Hezbollah member in 2004. Moreover, two of its members who infiltrated the Ain El Hilweh camp in south Lebanon, were arrested by the Lebanese army in June 2006 for the murder of two members of the Islamic Jihad in south Lebanon. One of them confessed working for the Mossad. The army seized at his house documents proving that some members of this extremist organisation have actually trained in Israel. Hussein Khattab, brother to prominent sheikh Jamal Khattab suspected of organising recruitement fro Al Qaida Iraq, was also arrested in June 2006 by the Lebanese army on the charge of directing a spy netwrok for Irsael in palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon. There was very little information in the news about this incident.

Knowing all this, how the Hariri family, as Michael Young claims, could have given money to members of Jund El-Sham ? Michael Young seems to considerthis as a gaffe. I think we should consider this as a serious financing for extremists groups with the goal of destabilising Lebanon opening wide the doors for foreign intervention as in Iraq. It is more than time to hold this family, who claims to have reconstructed Lebanon and who is now pushing the whole country into civil war and destruction, accountable.

One of the many links between Fatah El-Islam, Fatah organisation in Palestinian camps, and the Hariri family, the last two being the actual and semi-official allies of the US administration in its 'war on terror'.

And between assassinations, denials and justifications the march 14th movement and the Hariri clan are confirming in a way their ties to Sunni extremist groups related to Al Qaida. Here is two more:
Ahmad Fatfat, minister of sports and interior minister by interim during the Israeli agression on Lebanon.
Bahiyya Hariri, sister of Rafiq and aunt of Saad (the chief of the actual parliamentary majority in Lebanon and major fund provider) deputy member of the Lebanese parliament.
Assassination of Abu Jandal by Lebanese Security Forces (special army of Sanyura and Hariri.

Fatah El-Islam's alleged bank robbery: nothing more than a scheduled visit gone awry at the cashier to collect the regular amount send by Hariri. They discovered that the payments were stopped and helped themselves.


A very important and remaining question is how the lebanese army, which is under the authority of the president (who is opposed to the Hariri family), was drawn into this fight ? The answer is here. This answer also explains why the Hezbollah is supporting the army. Hassan Nasrallah will be speaking to Lebanese on Friday evening to explain his party's position. Stay tuned.

Now, the US in all that ? As Always in the Frontline when it comes to fighting Al Qaida.

Please read these short notes from prominent blogger Angry Arab, with links:

Lebanese government asks the US for 280 millions in military aid to fight 200 members of Fatah El-Islam.

Six US cargo flights with ammunitions are scheduled to land in Lebanon over the next two days.

US assistant secretary of state David Welsh met with Lebanese army chief last week.

Interview

There is a wealth of information in this interview on Nahr El-Bared's conflict of Angry Arab blogger As'ad Abu Khalil by Ali Abunimah from Electronic Intifada.

Unpopular and failed governments in Israel and Lebanon and the sacrifice of Palestinian civilians

The last Israeli agression on Lebanon that was supposed to crush Hezbollah was a disaster to both countries, a disaster to peace in the region, and a bigger disaster for Palestinians. Palestinians are so let down by the Arab and international community that killing them isn't a big deal anymore. And that is exactly what is happening in Lebanon under the cover of fighting Muslim extremists.

The defeat of Israel in its last agression on Lebanon has produced, on top of the civilian casualties, and the cluster bombs that continue to kill in Lebanon, and the 800000 refugees, and the destruction of the country and the land and the harvest for a long time to come, two unpopular and rotten governments hanging on power against the odds and against democratic common sense. Olmert for example enjoys a popularity rate under the margin of error. As for Lebanon's PM Sanyura (Siniora in the western press), there was no investigation committee on his role during the war and no opinion polls to test his popularity. But you know that things have gone wrong when this PM, who is hanging on an amputated government contested since November by more than half the population, orders his army, who never lifted a finger against any agression on Lebanon, not even during the Israeli agression, to attack Palestinian refugee camps inside Lebanon.

The Muslim extremists whom Sanyura is fighting were able to infiltrate the camps thanks to Sanyura's all time ally Hariri and his Saudi mentors. One can recognize here the neocon doctrine at work; maintaining muslim extremists at hand in order to justify wars and civilian casualties. These confrontations, which Sanyura and his allies seem to attribute to Syrian interference in Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon, are tailored to pressure an increasingly hesitant national security council towards establishing a special tribunal for Lebanon, officializing the vassalization of Lebanon to US and French interests and consequently tipping the balance of power toward an increasingly unpopular US sponsored Sanyura government and its March 14th ally, against the will of more than half the population, the Shias led by Amal and Hezbollah, and half the Christians led by general Michel Aoun, in addition to support form a sizeable part of other communities (sunnis and druzes).

But thanks to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the Lebanese government move should not be considered otherwise than a survival manoeuvre. Like Olmert, whose army is continuing to kill palestinians in order to distract his political detractors inside Israel, the political survival manoeuvres launched by the Sanyura government in northern Lebanon are made on the dead bodies of civilians to distract from his government unpopularity and lack of support. More than cluster bombs and more than nuclear weapons, failed politicians in the ME are the most dangerous weapons againt civilian populations and against regional and international peace. Failed Politicians in the ME are Weapons of Mass Destruction. Yet, the US foreign policy has been doing just that, implementing Weapons of Mass destruction in the ME by supporting failed politicians (and sometimes removing them when they become disobediant and replacing them by other failed ones more obediant), feeding wars and conflicts, in total disregard for human life.

Here are some excerpts from Hersh's article 'The redirection' shwowing clearly the link between the US supported Sanyura and Hariri government and the sunni extremists they are pretending to fight now in norhtern Lebanon. I let you draw the conclusions...

''In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan''.''
''In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”''
''Martin Indyk, of the Saban Center, said, however, that the United States “does not have enough pull to stop the moderates* in Lebanon from dealing with the extremists.” He added, “The President sees the region as divided between moderates and extremists, but our regional friends see it as divided between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis that we view as extremists are regarded by our Sunni allies simply as Sunnis.”''
''Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.''

*Please note that what the US (and neocon Indyk) call 'moderates' in Lebanon refers only to US allies without regard to their local political or religious allegiances.