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With the deep scars left by the Israeli attack on Lebanon last year still fresh, the country has lurched into yet another crisis. On May 20, a relatively unknown Palestinian militia called Fatah al-Islam shot into the limelight after a bloody confrontation with Lebanese security forces in the city of Tripoli. The Lebanese Army as well as the Palestinian militants suffered heavy casualties as they engaged in a three-day battle. Twenty-nine soldiers and 20 militants were killed on the first day alone.
The militants, self-professed Islamists subscribing to the Al Qaeda school of thought, then withdrew to the thickly populated Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, on the outskirts of Tripoli. The Lebanese Army, no doubt incensed by the heavy casualties, used heavy weaponry on the camp for a couple of days. In the process, many civilians lost their lives and much of the camp was reduced to rubble. The Palestinian refugee population, which lives in slum-like conditions, has been drawn into the confrontation between the Lebanese Army and the tiny extremist group whose existence was known to the world only last year.
Though a fragile truce is in place, the militants have refused to surrender. In the last week of May, they released a statement on videotape, which ruled out surrendering to the Lebanese Army. The statement said the group was fighting against the American-supported Lebanese government and Israel. Even as the fighting was on, the United States government rushed in planeloads of weapons for the Lebanese government. The Fatah al-Islam statement also said its goal was to protect Sunnis against the Lebanese Shias - referring to the dominant party of Lebanon, Hizbollah. At the same time, the group denied any formal links to Al Qaeda.
The circumstances surrounding the flare-up are still shrouded in mystery. Most of the stories in the media said the confrontation took place after a botched "bank robbery" attempt by Fatah al-Islam activists. The amount stolen from the bank is till a matter of conjecture. But the amount of firepower used by the militants came as an unpleasant surprise. None of the Fatah al-Islam activists surrendered to the Lebanese military during the intense exchange of fire. Most of the militants died fighting and the others preferred suicide to surrender.
A commander of the group, holed up in the refugee camp, told Al Jazeera TV that he had enough weapons to fight for nine months. He said the Lebanese government was forced to take a tough stance at the insistence of a "third party - the US". Earlier, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Lebanese Army was fighting a "very tough extremist foe".
As usual, there were many conspiracy theories about the timing of the latest violence, the deadliest incident of civil strife since the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990. The 29 soldiers killed on the first day was the biggest loss for the Lebanese Army since the days of the civil war. The US-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and its supporters were quick to blame Syria. They said it was Syria's reaction to the imminent setting up of a United Nations-backed international tribunal to look into the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister. Siniora and Saad Hariri, who has taken his father's place as the leader of the pro-government bloc, have held Syria guilty of masterminding the assassination. Damascus has strongly denied any involvement in the assassination.
The anti-government parties led by Hizbollah, are against the setting up of an international tribunal and want the Lebanese government to conduct its own investigations and trial. They have used their influence in Parliament to stall the passage of a Bill authorising the setting up of the tribunal. Under the terms of the agreement between the UN Security Council and the Lebanese government, the international tribunal can start work only after formal approval by the Lebanese Parliament.
In recent months the government has become increasingly unpopular as it has not contributed significantly to the rebuilding efforts in the Shia-dominated areas devastated by Israeli bombings. Israeli cluster bombs still litter the Lebanese countryside, killing or maiming civilians almost on a daily basis. The Lebanese economy, which was booming until last year, is now in tatters.
It was, therefore, no surprise when supporters of the government, such as Saad Hariri and the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, were quick to blame Syria for the events in Tripoli. According to them, Syria has not been able to reconcile with the fact that its troops are no longer in Lebanon. Under intense pressure from a section of Lebanese politicians as well as the West, Syria was forced to withdraw its peacekeepers from the country soon after the Hariri assassination. Syrian troops had successfully kept the peace after the long-running Lebanese civil war ended in 1990.
Syria was quick to distance itself from these accusations and its officials pointed out that the Fatah al-Islam subscribed to sectarian politics. Many of its leaders had served prison terms in Syria for trying to foment terrorism, they said. The fact that the Sunni militant group characterised Shias as one of its main foes made the charge against Syria unsustainable, they added. Hizbollah and Amal, both predominantly Shia parties, are known to be close to Damascus. Besides, Syria's main ally on the regional and international arenas is Shia-dominated Iran.
AMERICAN HAND
According to Seymour Hersh, the noted American journalist, the US and its ally Saudi Arabia are the ones that have been encouraging radical Sunni outfits in the region. This is in response to the so-called Shia resurgence, exemplified by the spread of Iranian influence and the rise of Shia militias in the region. Hersh reported in March this year that US policy in West Asia had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing Sunni jehadi groups. Hersh wrote that a key element of this policy was that Saudi Arabia, with US approval, would covertly fund groups such as the Fatah al-Islam and build up as counter-weights to Hizbollah in Lebanon. In Syria, the Bush administration is backing the banned Muslim Brotherhood in its efforts to destabilise the secular Baáth Party-led government. Ahmad Moussalli, an expert on Islamist movements at the American University of Beirut in the Lebanese capital told Al-Ahram, the reputed Egyptian paper, that the group led by Hariri "has been channelling funds and allowing weaponry to enter, in order to create a Sunni militia".
After the crushing defeat that Hizbollah inflicted on Israel last year, the US and Israel seem to be prepared to go to any extent to curtail Hizbollah's growing clout in Lebanese politics. Hersh told Cable News Network (CNN) that Washington's support for the Fatah al-Islam was "a covert programme we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger, broader programme of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shia world, and it just simply... bit us in the rear".
There are fears that unrest in Palestinian camps, sparked by the overwhelming use of force by the Lebanese Army in Tripoli, could spread. There are an estimated 2,10,000 Palestinian refugees spread out in 11 other camps throughout Lebanon. In all, there are around 4,10,000 Palestinians living in the country. It was Palestinian anger and firepower that played a big role in prolonging the last Lebanese civil war. After the incident at Tripoli, bombs have already started going off at regular intervals in up-market shopping malls and other prominent landmarks in Beirut.
The Lebanese government has no jurisdiction over the refugee camps under the terms of an agreement signed in 1969. This is one reason why the all-out assault on the refugee camp in Tripoli has angered Palestinians in Lebanon. However, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) told the Lebanese government that it would have no objections if the Lebanese Army sent in troops to the Nahr el-Bared camp where the militants were holed up. Many prominent Palestinians objected to this. Sultan Abul Aynayn, head of the mainstream faction of the Fatah, said that if the Lebanese Army continued with its shelling, there would "be uprisings in all the refugee camps in Lebanon".
Under Lebanese law, Palestinians are not allowed to expand their camps and are banned from seeking regular employment. Doing menial jobs is the only option most Palestinians in Lebanon are left with. They have no citizenship or voting rights. The Lebanese government argues that granting them citizenship will alter the delicate demographic make-up of the country.
The widespread poverty in the camps is said to be the primary reason why fundamentalist groups have managed to establish roots in many of them. Two other fundamentalist groups that have a scattered following are the Esbat al-Ansar and the Jund ash-Sham, in the refugee camp based on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon.
Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in his first reaction to the recent events, advised the Lebanese government against storming the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp. He also criticised the recent delivery of US arms to the Lebanese Army, saying that the country could be dragged into America's war against Al Qaeda. "The problem can be solved politically and through the judiciary in a way that protects the Lebanese Army, our Palestinian brothers, the state and peace and stability without transforming Lebanon into a battleground in which we fight Al Qaeda on behalf of the Americans," the Hizbollah leader said in a televised speech in the last week of May. He said the Fatah al-Islam fighters who fought the Lebanese Army should be brought to justice.
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