Is Lebanon facing a 'new breed' of Al Qaeda?
Little is known about Fatah al-Islam, but experts say it is similar to other militant groups inspired by Osama bin Laden.
from the May 24, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Many analysts say there is little doubt that although the Syrian regime is nominally secular, its intelligence services for years have exploited militant Islamic extremists to serve their own purposes.
"Syrian intelligence sent hundreds if not thousands of innocent-minded young men to Iraq to struggle against the Americans," says Radwan al-Sayyed, a professor of Islamic studies at the Lebanese University and adviser to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. "They tried to make an Islamist International in Iraq, like the Arabs and Americans did against the Soviets in Afghanistan."
Fatah al-Islam first arrived in Lebanon a year ago, setting up positions in the Nahr al-Bared camp, home to more than 30,000 refugees and located on the coast 10 miles south of the border with Syria.
They claimed to have split from the pro-Syrian Palestinian faction Fatah al-Intifada, which is headquartered in Damascus. Palestinians fleeing the fighting of the past three days, which has killed at least 69 people, say the group is composed of several nationalities, including Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis, and Iraqis. Lebanese sympathizers as well as Palestinians Islamic militants from refugee camps in Beirut and the south are believed to have helped swell their ranks.
The group is led by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Palestinian guerrilla fighter who originally trained in the Syrian Air Force and allegedly fought with Mr. Zarqawi in Iraq. The Jordanian authorities sentenced Mr. Absi to death in absentia in 2004 for the killing of an American diplomat in Amman. At the time, he was serving a three year jail sentence in Syria, but Damascus refused to extradite Absi to Jordan. He was released last year and his arrival in Lebanon coincided with the issuance of another arrest warrant for him by the Syrian authorities.
Absi has said that Fatah al-Islam "wishes to fight no one but Israel" but has made veiled threats against the 13,000 UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon.
The Lebanese government has blamed deadly twin bus bombings and a string of bank robberies on the group.
Ghazi Aridi, the Lebanese information minister, described Fatah al-Islam as a "terrorist phenomenon that is alien to the values and nature of the Palestinian people."
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