LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
March 31/08

Bible Reading of the day.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 20,19-31. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. (Jesus) said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe." Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

Free Opinions, Releases, letters & Special Reports
The Sunni-Shiite Terror Network-By AMIR TAHERI. Wall Street Journal 30.03.08

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for March 30/08
Blueprint of The Damascus Summit Statement on Lebanon-Syria Conflicts-Naharnet
Barak: Syria is a Threat because it Supports Hizbullah-Naharnet
Sfeir: Lebanon's Divide is Lethal-Naharnet
Lebanon's 'Victory in Absentia' at the Damascus Summit-Naharnet
Summer Time in Lebanon-Naharnet
Arabs urge Lebanon to elect consensus president-Khaleej Times
Arab League meets amid snubs, conflicted over host Syria-Los Angeles
US condemns Syria over deaths of Syrian Kurds-Kurdish Globe
Syrian Kurds: People Who Do Not Exist-The Media Line
Saudi Arabia Accuses Syria of Blocking Presidential Elections-Naharnet
Mubarak Calls on Syria to Exert Efforts to Contain Arab Rifts-Naharnet
Students Trample 'Assassin" Assad Pictures in Beirut Demo-Naharnet
Putin Denounces Foreign Interference in Lebanon-Naharnet
Fatfat Welcomes New Hariri Probe Report-Naharnet
Libya Slams U.S. for Pressuring Arab Countries to Reduce Summit Turnout-Naharnet
Saudi Arabia, Egypt Accuse Syria of Blocking Peace Efforts-FOXNews
Syria, Saudi Arabia conciliatory on Lebanon-Reuters
Syria's Assad denies meddling in Lebanon at boycotted summit-AFP
Damascus Summit Opens Saturday, Boycotted by Half of Arab World Leaders-Naharnet
Saniora Demands Urgent Arab Meeting to Tackle Lebanese-Syrian Crisis-Naharnet
Bellemare: Network of Criminals Killed Hariri and Anti-Syrian Figures-Naharnet
Syria welcomes Kuwait as some leaders shun summit-Arab Times
Libya Slams U.S. for Pressuring Arab Countries to Reduce Summit Turnout-Naharnet
British Official: 'Reach Out' to Taliban, Hizbullah-Naharnet
Fadlallah: No End to Lebanon Tragedy so Long as it's Linked to Regional Crisis-Naharnet
Student Clashes Wound Eight-Naharnet
Muallem Snaps Back at Sarkozy-Naharnet
Gemayel: Damascus Summit Would be Marginal-Naharnet
The Pan-Arab Cold War in Damascus-Naharnet
New Pakistan PM: Terrorism Top Priority-Naharnet

Blueprint of The Damascus Summit Statement on Lebanon-Syria Conflicts
The blueprint for a statement to be adopted Sunday by the Arab Summit in Damascus called for the election of a consensus Lebanese President "without delay" and for placing Lebanese-Syrian relations on the "proper track."The blueprint, copy of which has been obtained by Agence France Presse, also outlined "adherence to the Arab initiative to settle the Lebanese crisis." The document urged "Lebanon's leaders to accomplish the election of consensus candidate Gen. Michel Suleiman on the set schedule and agree on the basis for the formation of a national unity government as soon as possible."The text also stressed on "placing Lebanese-Syrian relations on the proper track in line with interests of both states and assigning the (Arab League) Secretary General to start working on achieving this "goal. The leaders, according to the blueprint of their final communiqué, also stressed on the "formation of the international tribunal to reveal the truth in the assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri and his comrades, aside from vengeance and politicization." (AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 30 Mar 08, 10:49

Lebanon's 'Victory in Absentia' at the Damascus Summit
The Arab Summit would adopt on Sunday, for the first time ever, a stand on an Arab League-member state that has boycotted its sessions, marking a rift among its leaders over Lebanon. The Damascus Declaration and the summits resolutions to be issued later Sunday would certainly include the Lebanese political crisis and would set the path that the Arabs would adopt to deal with it despite the boycott by the Beirut government of the summit due to differences with Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime. The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reported that the blueprint for the summit's final statement included 23 political clauses and 10 economic topics. The Damascus Declaration's blueprint, the daily added, would be amended to included two additional topics: Cartoons criticizing the Prophet Mohammed and the ongoing confrontation in Iraq between government troops and Shiite Militias of the Mehdi Army.
A Ranking Arab diplomat told Naharnet the Damascus declaration would "set the record straight regarding the collective Arab stand on the Lebanon crisis."
The topic of Lebanon, the source said, also would be included in the summit's final statement. The source, speaking on condition of further anonymity, said that would be a "victory in absentia for Lebanon," the state that has boycotted the summit and gained recognition by its members that its crisis is a "focal challenge to the Arab nation."
Lebanon has attributed its boycott to differences with Syria, that it has charged with meddling in its internal affairs and rejecting to normalize mutual relations.
Assad, in his opening speech, denied on Saturday meddling in Lebanon as he hosted the summit, boycotted by almost half of the Arab World's leaders.
"I would like to make a point with regards to Syrian interference in Lebanon. It is the contrary which is true because pressure has been exerted on Syria for over a year to interfere in Lebanon's affairs" but we have refused to do so, Assad said. Leaders of Algeria, the Comoros, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates attended the summit's opening ceremony. Nine Arab heads of state including the Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Yemeni, and Iraqi leaders refrained from participating, dispatching low-level delegates.
Lebanon's seat at the summit remained vacant, attracting the attention of all news photographers. "Lebanon's vacant seat harvested more photographs than Arab officials who took part in the meeting," the Arab diplomat said. The summit is expected to adopt a decision forming a joint committee to look into inter-Arab disputes, a move prompted by the Lebanon-Syria differences and Beirut's boycott of the summit. It would also re-endorse the 2002 Arab Peace Plan that was originally proposed by Saudi Arabia to end the traditional Arab-Israeli conflict. At the opening session, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of working against a Palestinian state. "The solution which Israel is designing consists of a group of cantons on a land separated by settlements, the separation wall and roadblocks," he said. "This type of solution only reinforces the occupation and colonization and is aimed at preventing the creation of an independent Palestinian state," Abbas added. Beirut, 30 Mar 08, 08:57

Sfeir: Lebanon's Divide is Lethal
Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir on Sunday labeled the persisting divide in Lebanon "lethal". Sfeir, in his weekly sermon at Bkirki, also described the split between the majority and opposition as "non-precedent" and called for "bolstering our ranks … to help our stumbling nation rise" again. "This can be achieved only by tackling our problems with a sense of wisdom," Sfeir added. Beirut, 30 Mar 08, 12:57

Barak: Syria is a Threat because it Supports Hizbullah
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Syria remains a threat due to its support for Hizbullah, noting that revival of peace talks with Damascus is a key foreign policy objective provided it departs from the cycle of extremism, according to a statement released on Sunday.
"Israel considers the launching of negotiations with Syria and its departure from the circle of extremists to be a central objective," Barak told a closed meeting of European ambassadors on Friday, the statement said. Barak warned, however, that Israel still considers Syria a threat to its security because of its support for the Lebanese Hizbullah militia, against which Israel fought a 34-day war in the summer of 2006. Israel is "following what is happening in the north, especially the reinforcements of Hizbullah with support from Syria," Barak said. But Barak declared that Israel is "strongest country in the region and that gives it the possibility to make certain arrangements with Syria." The two countries have technically been at war since 1948 and peace talks last broke down in 2000 over the fate of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981. Another senior minister hinted on Friday that Israel was seeking to revive negotiations with Damascus. "There are attempts (to revive the peace talks) and I welcome them... both in recent days and days before that," Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told public radio. The Labor cabinet minister also said that Israel knows it will have to give up the strategic Golan Heights in any peace deal.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had hinted on Wednesday that Israel and Syria might be holding secret peace talks. "I am prepared to make peace with Syria. I hope the Syrians are prepared to make peace with Israel. I hope the circumstances will allow us to sit together, but that doesn't mean that when we sit together you have to see us."(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 30 Mar 08, 11:31

Summer Time in Lebanon
Clocks were pushed 60 minutes ahead on Sunday putting Lebanon three hours ahead of GMT and declaring summer time in the Mediterranean nation.
The daylight saving measure aims, among other things, at decreasing power consumption at a nation that already lives on a power rationing program due to a persisting deficit in the state budget and hiking oil prices. Most of Lebanon's power is produced by stations operating on Diesel Oil.
The Power authority also suffers from not being able to collect fees for its services from the various Lebanese sectors.
Beirut, 30 Mar 08, 09:10

Mubarak Calls on Syria to Exert Efforts to Contain Arab Rifts
Naharnet/Egyptian President Husni Mubarak urged Syria on Saturday to contain Arab rifts in a statement distributed at a summit in Damascus, which the veteran leader boycotted in protest at Syria's perceived role in Lebanon's crisis. Syria must "open the way for a new phase (in Arab relations) and contain disputes and differences," Mubarak said in the statement distributed by the Egyptian embassy. "We had hoped that prior to the summit, a long-awaited settlement to the crisis threatening the stability and sovereignty of Lebanon would be reached," he said. "A settlement to the (Lebanese) crisis necessitates the full implementation of the Arab initiative that Egypt helped launch and that includes the election of the consensus candidate without further delay, as well as the formation of a national unity cabinet," he said. "We had sincerely hoped for progress in Arab relations which would enable us to overcome problems and obstacles and difficulties and open a new page to regain solidarity and unify our ranks in the face of challenges, but this did not happen. "Improving Arab-Arab relations needs intense efforts ... and it is natural for the presidency of the summit to lead these efforts and pave the way for the new phase." The Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders stayed away after Washington urged its allies to think twice before attending the summit of the 22-member Arab League, accusing Syria of blocking the election of a new president in Lebanon. Lebanon has been without a president since the end of November and mired in political crisis for more than a year because of feuding between the parliamentary majority and the Hizbullah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.(AFP) Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 19:41

Students Trample "Assassin" Assad Pictures in Beirut Demo
Naharnet/University students demonstrated in Beirut on Saturday, tearing up pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and branding him an "assassin" as he chaired an Arab summit boycotted by Lebanon. Hundreds of students joined the protest near the central Beirut tomb of slain former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was killed in a massive car bombing in 2005 blamed on Syria. Damascus denied any involvement. The demonstrators accused Assad of blocking the election of a new president in Lebanon, and trampled on two huge portraits of the Syrian leader before tearing them to shreds, an AFP photographer said.
The pictures bore captions in French, English and Arabic branding Assad an "assassin" and saying that a U.N.-backed special tribunal tasked with trying suspects in the Hariri "is coming." The protest was attended by supporters of Lebanon's Western-backed government and the anti-Syrian parliamentary ruling majority.
On Friday Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said his government had decided to boycott the Arab summit in Damascus, and blamed Syria for meddling in his country's affairs. But Assad denied interfering in Lebanon as he opened the annual gathering of Arab leaders on Saturday, saying he was eager to see "the stability, sovereignty and independence" of Lebanon. The summit is marked by the absence of half the leaders of the Arab world, notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan who blame Syria for the crisis gripping Lebanon, which has been without a head of state since November. On Friday a U.N. report said that a "criminal network" of individuals acted together to murder Hariri, insisting that suspects would be named only when there was sufficient evidence to do so.(AFP)
Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 17:22

Putin Denounces Foreign Interference in Lebanon
Naharnet/Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced any foreign interference in Lebanon Saturday, in a message addressed to delegates at the Arab League summit in the Syrian capital Damascus. "A particularly urgent task is to maintain the sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity of Lebanon, which must be protected from any foreign interference," he said, in a statement released by the Kremlin. Syria, with whom Russia has had close relations dating back to the Soviet era, has repeatedly been accused of interfering in Lebanon's affairs. Lebanon had been trying since November 24 to elect a new president but the differences between the pro- and anti-Syrian factions in the country has led to the worst political crisis there since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The ruling parliamentary majority in Lebanon, backed by the United States, western powers and most Arab countries, have accused Syria of trying to destabilize the country. In his message to the Arab League, Putin said: "We support the initiative of your influential organisation concerning the settlement of the Lebanese question."
The Arab League has put its weight behind efforts to end the deadlock over the election of a president there and backs the formation of a government of national unity. But the summit opened without half of the League's members attending in protest at what they saw as Syria's meddling in Lebanese politics.(AFP)

Fatfat Welcomes New Hariri Probe Report
Naharnet/A U.N. report saying that a criminal network was behind the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri is an important development, a member of Beirut's government said on Saturday. "The report is very positive and it is clear that there has been an important advance in the probe," Youth and Sports Minister Ahmad Fatfat told AFP.A panel of U.N. investigators led by Canadian former prosecutor Daniel Bellemare released on Friday a new report into the 2005 assassination, saying that a "criminal network" was behind Hariri's murder in a car bombing. "On the basis of available evidence... a network of individuals acted in concert to carry out the assassination," the report said. The network or parts of it were also linked to other attacks against anti-Syrian Lebanese figures between October 2004 and December 2005, the panel said. It insisted, however, that suspects would only be named when there was sufficient evidence, adding that it was still gathering more evidence about the network, its scope and the identities of all its participants. "It appears from these new elements that... indictments will be issued soon," Fatfat said. Friday's report is the first by Bellemare since he was appointed last November to succeed Belgian Serge Brammertz at the helm of the U.N. panel probing Hariri's murder.In a July report last year Brammertz said that his investigators had identified several people who may have been involved in the assassination. His German predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, had implicated senior officials from Syria. Damascus has denied any involvement.
Suspects in the Hariri murder will be tried by a U.N.-backed special tribunal to be based in The Hague.(AFP) Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 17:34

Saudi Arabia Accuses Syria of Blocking Presidential Elections
Naharnet/Saudi Arabia slammed Syria as a deeply divided Arab summit opened here Saturday, accusing Damascus of blocking Lebanese peace efforts and calling on the Arab League to punish members that don't honor its consensus decisions. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are boycotting the two-day summit to protest Syria's stances on Lebanon -- a move that has deepened the rift between U.S. Arab allies and Damascus, a close ally of Iran and Palestinian militant groups. Further highlighting the rift, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was headed to the region over the weekend for talks on the peace process and was expected to meet with some of the boycotting leaders. The countries accuse Damascus of preventing the election of a new president in Lebanon, where they believe Syria is trying to re-establish its domination. Syrian President Bashar Assad denied interfering in Lebanon in his opening speech to the summit.
To add to their snub to Syria, the three countries sent only minor officials to represent them at the summit. Lebanon did not send any delegation at all, the first country to completely boycott since annual summits began in 2000.
In Riyadh, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said the kingdom's top leaders were boycotting the summit because of Syria, which he blamed for blocking an Arab League compromise aimed at resolving the Lebanon presidential crisis.
"The problem is that what had been agreed by consensus in the Arab League, including by Syria, wasn't implemented in reality," Saud said.
He called for the Arab League to punish member states that breach a common resolution. "Call it punishment or countermeasures," he said. "There must be a deterrent action." Saud also blamed Damascus for worsening Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts and the situation in Iraq.
"Attempts to hinder the (Arab) initiative in Lebanon are clearly the same attempts (as those) that deepened the Palestinian rift and hindered the political solution in Iraq and Arab issues in general," he said. Lebanon has been the scene of a long power struggle between the anti-Syrian government and the pro-Syrian opposition. The opposition has boycotted parliament to prevent it from electing a new president since November. The Arab League compromise called for Lebanese army Chief Michel Suleiman to be elected president, then for a national unity government to be formed. But the opposition has demanded that the makeup of the government first be determined.(AP) Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 17:07

Libya Slams U.S. for Pressuring Arab Countries to Reduce Summit Turnout
Naharnet/Libya lashed out at the West on Saturday over the low turnout at the Damascus summit, boycotted by half of the leaders who blame Syria for the crisis in Lebanon.  "There has been U.S. pressure on Arab countries to reduce their participation," Tripoli's Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told reporters in Damascus ahead of the two-day summit. "And the latest is that (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy is interfering in Arab affairs.""We as Arabs do not interfere in European summits. It has become a farce and this situation must be remedied by a joint Arab effort," he added. On Thursday, Sarkozy said he supported the decision by Saudi Arabian and Egyptian leaders to boycott the summit and send only low-level delegations. "I think they are right because Syria went too far," he said. Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, who considers himself a champion of Arab unity, arrived on Friday in Damascus and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a tent he pitched in the grounds of the guest residence. Syria is currently hosting its first Arab summit amid a boycott by U.S. allies who blame Syria for blocking the election of a president in Lebanon, which has been without a head of state since November.(AFP

Damascus Summit Opens Saturday, Boycotted by Half of Arab World Leaders
The Arab summit, boycotted this year by half of the Arab world's leaders who blame Syria for the political crisis in Lebanon, opens in Damascus on Saturday amid a sharp split among the 22-member Arab League's heads of state. The leaders of U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will not be attending, an absence touted by Syria as a triumph over American influence. "They (the United States) did their best to prevent the summit but they failed," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told reporters on the eve of the two-day gathering. "Their aim is to divide the Arab world."
"Tomorrow there will be a very successful summit," he added.
Washington last week urged its Arab allies in the region to think twice before attending the summit, accusing Syria of blocking the election of a new president in Lebanon. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is due to host the leaders of Algeria, the Comoros, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates -- only half of the league's presidents. Egypt is sending a junior minister while powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Jordan will be represented by their ambassadors to the Arab League. Lebanon has boycotted the summit altogether. "There will be no trace of the United States on the summit's work or agenda," Muallem told his counterparts ahead of the summit. Lebanon has been without a president since the end of November and has been mired in political crisis for more than a year because of feuding between the parliamentary majority and the Hizbullah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.
In a televised address on Friday ahead of the summit, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora said his government had decided to boycott the meeting because of Syrian meddling in his country's affairs. "Lebanon has had a presidential void for more than four months. Before and during that period Syria played a leading role to exacerbate the crisis... interfering in Lebanon's internal affairs and blocking the election of the consensus candidate to the presidency," he said.
The daily An Nahar on Saturday said Arab League chief Amr Moussa will hold talks with Arab foreign ministers on Lebanon, particularly after Saniora accused Syria of hampering the election of a President.
The Lebanese crisis, the worst since the end of the country's 1975-1990 civil war, is widely seen as an extension of the conflict pitting the United States and its regional allies against Syria and Iran. On Thursday, Muallem called on Riyadh to use its influence to help solve the problem.
"Saudi Arabia must use its influence over the majority in Lebanon to help find a solution," he said. "The Syrian efforts alone are not enough. The Arab parties that are friendly with and have influence in Lebanon must exert efforts," he said. Syria's permanent representative to the Arab League, Yussef al-Ahmad, said that because of Lebanon's boycott, the foreign ministers would adopt a previous agreement on the crisis but not discuss it in detail.
"The Syrian president had intended to discuss the situation in Lebanon in full detail had Lebanon been present," Ahmad told reporters on the sidelines of the foreign ministers' meeting. "Because of Lebanon's absence, the Arab foreign ministers have decided to adopt the same statement decided in Cairo three weeks ago which calls for supporting Lebanon as well as the Arab initiative on Lebanon," he said.
That initiative calls for the election of army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman as president, forming a national unity government in which no single party has veto power and a new electoral law. At Thursday's meeting, the Arab League foreign ministers also agreed to re-endorse the 2002 Arab initiative for Middle East peace but expressed their frustration at Israel's refusal to follow up on their plan, after Muallem hinted that it could be rethought. "What is being said about withdrawing the Arab initiative is untrue," Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told reporters. In Jordan, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas rejected any plans to "amend or change" the peace initiative, after talks with King Abdullah II.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 07:01

Saniora Demands Urgent Arab Meeting to Tackle Lebanese-Syrian Crisis
Premier Fouad Saniora on Friday called for an urgent meeting by Arab Foreign ministers to tackle the deteriorating Lebanese-Syrian relations.
Saniora made the remark in an address to Arab heads of state broadcast live on the eve of the Arab Summit that would convene in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
"I urge Arab Leaders to call for an urgent meeting by Arab Foreign Ministers to tackle the Lebanese-Syrian relations," he said.
Saniora said Lebanon boycotted the summit because Syria had hampered the election of a president, who is the only Christian head of state in the Arab world.
"Lebanon boycotted the Damascus summit only because it rejects to be represented by any person other than the elected president and in protest against Syria's policies and practices regarding Lebanon," he said. Saniora also called for releasing Lebanese detainees held in Syrian jails, demarcation of Lebanese-Syrian borders and normalizing relations between the two states, a reference to demands for setting up diplomatic ties between Damascus and Beirut.
As Saniora delivered his speech, staccato bursts of automatic rifle fire echoed across Beirut in an apparent show of support by al-Mustaqbal movement members.
"Lebanon's relations with Syria have not been sound relations in recent years as Syria played a major role in escalating the political crisis in Lebanon," Saniora said.
However, the Lebanese government "reaffirms its wish in having sisterly relations" with Damascus but "it is not acceptable for sisterly Syria or friendly Iran to treat Lebanon as an area of influence or an arena for fighting," the premier stressed. On relations between Syria and Lebanon, Saniora highlighted the fact that "a new chapter of relations with Syria should be based on mutual respect and relations should be between two governments so that neither the Lebanese nor the Syrians should have relations with political factions or military groups operating in the other state."
He pointed out the importance of border demarcation with Syria. He labeled this issue as "normal and necessary" and called for dealing with "demarcation in the Shebaa Farms sector as a top priority." "Lebanon wants to reactivate the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel," Saniora confirmed.
The Lebanese premier also raised in his address the issue of pro-Syrian armed Palestinian factions in refugee camps and bases and called on Damascus to cooperate to remove them. Saniora's office, prior to the speech, distributed the text of his address to the Arab League, the Damascus summit and Arab heads of state including Syrian President Bashar Assad. Beirut, 28 Mar 08, 21:18

Bellemare: Network of Criminals Killed Hariri and Anti-Syrian Figures
A "criminal network" of individuals acted together to carry out the 2005 murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik Hariri and other anti-Syrian figures, the new head of a U.N. enquiry panel said Friday, without naming any suspects. The commission headed by Canadian former prosecutor Daniel Bellemare said in the 10th interim report on the case that it could now confirm that "on the basis of available evidence... a network of individuals acted in concert to carry out the assassination."
The report added that this "criminal network" or parts of it were also linked to other attacks against anti-Syrian Lebanese figures perpetrated between October 2004 and December 2005. "The commission's priority is now to gather more evidence about the Hariri network, its scope, the identity of all its participants, their links with others outside the network and their role in other attacks that have been found to be linked," said the report, released simultaneously at the U.N. headquarters and Beirut. It made clear that for reasons of confidentiality, the panel would not disclose any names.
"Names of individuals will only appear in future indictments filed by the prosecutor, where there is sufficient evidence to do so," it added.
The report is the first by Bellemare since he was appointed last November to succeed Belgian Serge Brammertz at the helm of the U.N. panel tasked with uncovering who was behind Hariri's death in a Beirut car bombing. Sticking to the cautious stance adopted by his predecessor, Bellemare stressed that the investigation "must continue to be guided solely by the facts and by the evidence."
"Its conclusions cannot rely on rumors or assumption. They must be supported by reliable evidence that will be admissible before a tribunal," the report said.
Brammertz' German predecessor Detlev Mehlis had implicated senior officials from Syria, which for three decades was the power broker in its smaller neighbor.
But Damascus has strongly denied any connection with Hariri's murder. In his interim report released last July, Brammertz said his investigators had identified several people who may have been involved in the assassination. Turning to Syria's cooperation with the U.N. probe, the Bellemare-led panel said it "continues to be generally satisfactory."  "The commission will continue to request Syria's full cooperation in the discharge of its mandate," it said.
In addition to the Hariri case, the U.N. panel has been mandated to help Lebanese authorities probe 20 attacks against anti-Syrian targets in Lebanon.
These include one last January, which killed Lebanon's top anti-terrorism investigator and three other people in Beirut. Hariri, a popular five-time prime minister, was killed along with 22 others in a massive explosion on the Beirut seafront on February 14, 2005. The attack, which rocked Lebanon to the core, was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock the battered country since outbreak of the 15-year civil war in 1975.
A political crisis that has roiled the country is widely seen as an extension of the regional confrontation pitting the United States and its ally Saudi Arabia against Iran and Syria. Meanwhile U.N. officials said Thursday that the U.N.-backed special tribunal tasked with trying suspects in the Hariri case has enough funding to keep running for a year. U.N. member states have pledged more than 60 million dollars -- including 34 million already deposited -- for the tribunal, which is to be based in a former Dutch intelligence headquarters in the suburbs of The Hague. The court will include a trial chamber made up of three judges -- two foreigners and one Lebanese -- and an appeals chamber of five judges -- two Lebanese and three foreigners.
U.N. officials said the judges have been selected, but their identity could not be disclosed for security reasons.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 28 Mar 08, 18:34

Libya Slams U.S. for Pressuring Arab Countries to Reduce Summit Turnout
Libya lashed out at the West on Saturday over the low turnout at the Damascus summit, boycotted by half of the leaders who blame Syria for the crisis in Lebanon.
"There has been U.S. pressure on Arab countries to reduce their participation," Tripoli's Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told reporters in Damascus ahead of the two-day summit. "And the latest is that (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy is interfering in Arab affairs."
"We as Arabs do not interfere in European summits. It has become a farce and this situation must be remedied by a joint Arab effort," he added.
On Thursday, Sarkozy said he supported the decision by Saudi Arabian and Egyptian leaders to boycott the summit and send only low-level delegations.
"I think they are right because Syria went too far," he said. Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, who considers himself a champion of Arab unity, arrived on Friday in Damascus and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a tent he pitched in the grounds of the guest residence. Syria is currently hosting its first Arab summit amid a boycott by U.S. allies who blame Syria for blocking the election of a president in Lebanon, which has been without a head of state since November.(AFP)
Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 12:00

British Official: 'Reach Out' to Taliban, Hizbullah
Britain should reach out to elements of the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and Hizbullah who can be won over to the side of democracy, Defense Secretary Des Browne said in a newspaper interview published Saturday. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Browne said conflict resolution was about persuading people who believe that violence is the way to achieve their aims to try to fulfill their ambitions through politics instead.
And that meant engaging with individuals or groups, even if their views were disagreeable. He applied the argument to Taliban insurgents -- whom British troops are fighting in southern Afghanistan -- as well as Lebanon's Hizbullah. Browne said there was currently "no basis of negotiation" with al-Qaida, but added: "The Taliban is a collective noun. There are some people who are driven by their own self interest rather than ideology.
"There's no question that we should try to reach them. People have been switched. We have to get people who have previously been on the side of the Taliban to come onto the side of the (Afghan) government." His comments come after Jonathan Powell, who was former Prime Minister Tony Blair's top adviser, said in a March 15 interview with The Guardian that Western nations should talk to the likes of the Taliban, Hamas and al-Qaida.
Powell argued that opening up channels of communication had proved to be successful in ending three decades of bloody sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics in the British province of Northern Ireland. But efforts to engage elements of the Taliban saw Kabul expel two senior United Nations and European Union diplomats -- one from Britain and the other from Ireland -- for contacting insurgents in southern Helmand province. According to a Financial Times report from the Afghan capital on February 4, President Hamid Karzai was furious at the proposal to set up a military training camp for 2,000 Taliban militants who wanted to switch sides.(AFP) Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 08:22

Fadlallah: No End to Lebanon Tragedy so Long as it's Linked to Regional Crisis
Naharnet/Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's senior-most Shiite cleric, said there is no end to the ongoing political stalemate in Lebanon so long as the country is linked to a regional crisis. "Lebanon would not find any solution to its current internal crisis because it is linked to a regional crisis," Fadlallah said in remarks published by Beirut newspapers on Saturday. Fadlallah warned that Lebanon would continue to live in debates, disputes and clashes.
"Lebanon will not stop from being an arena where regional and international intelligence services, as well as American conflicts over strategic interests, meet," Fadlallah said. "The Lebanese will remain captivated by the press as well as radio and television channels that spread the culture of sectarian animosity, political treachery and an uncertain future," he added. "This way, their attention will be diverted from fateful issues that will be manipulated by adventurers in Lebanon," Fadlallah said, asking: "Is this the Lebanon that we want?" On the Arab summit to be held in Damascus on Saturday, Fadlallah said the Arabs "are incapable of making strategic decisions that rescue the Arab world from its big crises." Fadlallah feared that the summit's strategic decision will be the "issuing of a death notice for Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq." Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 07:19

Student Clashes Wound Eight
Naharnet/At least eight people were wounded in clashes with sticks and rocks at the Lebanese University's school of law and political science in Beirut's northern suburb of Jal el-dib Friday, police reported. A police source said the March 14 majority alliance won student council elections at the college, which led to the clash with members of the Hizbullah-led opposition. Army units and police patrols sealed off the college after containing acts of violence, the source said without further elaboration. Beirut, 28 Mar 08, 19:43

Muallem Snaps Back at Sarkozy
Naharnet/Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Friday accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of interfering by speaking out in support of regional leaders boycotting the Arab summit. "It is regrettable that we see Sarkozy in the opposition camp to the Damascus summit, allowing himself to interfere in a direct way in Arab affairs," Muallem told reporters on the eve of the two-day summit. "We never ask which leader is going to attend European Union summits and we don't interfere in these meetings," Muallem said. On Thursday, Sarkozy said he supported the decision by Saudi Arabian and Egyptian leaders to boycott the summit and send low-level delegations. "I believe that the decision of the countries' leaders not to attend the Damascus summit is sound," Sarkozy said. "Lebanon is a free country, it's an independent country. Lebanon doesn't need another country to manage its affairs."Muallem also criticized Washington for interfering in the summit.
"The pressures are not on every summit, but only on the Damascus summit and that is because the United States has had no say in the summit's agenda," he said.(AFP-Naharnet) Beirut, 29 Mar 08, 04:02

Gemayel: Damascus Summit Would be Marginal
Naharnet/Ex-President Amin Gemayel said he does not expect the Arab Summit that would convene Saturday at the Syrian capital of Damascus to result in any positive development regarding Lebanon. Gemayel, in a television interview, said the summit would not be able to adopt major decisions due to the low-ranking representation of major Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. "What we are required to do is to achieve a domestic understanding, that is if such an understanding is still possible and if we can maintain contacts with the opposition through Speaker Berri that could lead to the election of a president," Gemayel said. He said Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa would be welcome in Lebanon any time, noting that "obstacles persist."
Gemayel expressed "regret because some Christians are sponsoring obstacles and obstructions without being aware of how serious is what they are doing and the suicidal outcome of their acts."He accused the Hizbullah-led opposition of "rejecting the consensus presidential candidate Gen. Michel Suleiman but they don't dare declare their stand."The March 14 majority alliance, according to Gemayel, wants "normalization of relations with Syria, that should start with a good will gesture, including release of detainees held in Syria, border demarcation, facilitating the creation of the international tribunal and non-interference in Lebanon's affairs."
He said Lebanon would not ask for an extraordinary Arab Summit to tackle its differences with Syria, noting: "More useful would be non-collective summits grouping states interested in the Lebanese crisis. Beirut, 28 Mar 08, 19:33

The Pan-Arab Cold War in Damascus
Naharnet/Syria is shrugging off the absence of regional heavyweights from Saturday's summit, which it says will have no impact on the outcome, even as analysts warn that it could deepen Arab rifts, with Lebanon becoming a flash point. Jordan on Friday became the latest U.S. ally to announce it would send a low-level delegation to the Damascus summit, following the example of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which blame Syria for the political crisis crippling Lebanon.
"Jordan's representative to the Arab League, Omar Rifai, will lead the Jordanian delegation that will participate in the work of the Arab summit in Damascus," the kingdom's Information Minister Nasser Jawdeh announced.  Yemeni President Ali Abddallah Saleh also made a last-minute decision to send his deputy Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi. At the close of a meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Thursday ahead of the two-day summit, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem brushed off the boycott by the leaders. "There will be no trace of the United States on the summit's work or agenda," Muallem told reporters.
The United States last week called on its Arab allies in the region to think twice before attending the summit, accusing Syria of blocking the election of a president in Lebanon. Elias Murad, editor-in-chief of the ruling party's mouthpiece Al-Baath, said the United States had pressured its regional allies into boycotting the event.
"The United States has exercised pressure and asked Arab countries not to attend because the Americans don't want a summit, and they don't want it in Damascus and they don't want any common Arab work," Murad wrote on Friday.  "The level of participation will not change the decisions of the summit. The summit is a success," he added.  "Despite the pressures, 18 foreign ministers turned up for the preparatory meeting," he said. "Damascus will not allow the U.S. administration to interfere in the summit's agenda or in its decisions." On Thursday, Syria's press said the summit was already a success due to the absence of the "U.S. virus".
"It is enough for the Arab summit in Damascus that the American ghost is banished... It is enough that for the first time all its decisions and agreements will be free of the American virus," state-owned Ath-Thawra wrote. Half of Arab leaders are boycotting Saturday's summit.  Syrian President Bashar Assad is now due to host the leaders of Algeria, the Comoros, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.
But some observers predicted the low turnout could deepen existing cracks in Arab relations and polarize the region.
"This summit is taking place under the shadow of a deep Arab split which started at previous summits, but has now reached its peak with leaders unable to hold a dialogue at the summit level," said Wahid Abdel Megid, director of the Cairo-based Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
"If there is no serious movement by the Arab League secretary general (Amr Moussa) to arrange a dialogue between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, I believe we are headed towards a situation similar to that between 1957 and 1967," known as the Arab Cold War, Megid told AFP.
The tensions then pitted the Arab nationalist camp led by late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser against the conservative monarchies led by Saudi Arabia.
On Thursday, Muallem called on Saudi Arabia to use its influence in Lebanon to end the months-long crisis.
"Syria is supported by certain Arab forces who want to change the face of the area into a more Iranian one against the United States," according to Abdel Megid.
Lebanon has been without a president since the end of November. It has been mired in a political crisis for over a year due to political feuding between the majority, backed by the West and most Arab states, and the Hizbullah-led opposition, backed by Syria and Iran. "Everyone expects the summit to fail," said Egypt's state-owned daily Al-Gomhouria. "Most Arab countries won't sign up to Syria's lost bet on Iran taking up the leadership of the region."(AFP) Beirut, 28 Mar 08, 18:22

The Sunni-Shiite Terror Network
By AMIR TAHERI
Wall Street Journal 30.03.08
March 29, 2008; Page A9
The American presidential election campaign took a bizarre theological turn recently when Barack Obama accused John McCain of not being able to distinguish Sunnis from Shiites. The exchange started when Sen. McCain suggested that the Islamic Republic in Iran, a Shiite power, may be helping al Qaeda, a Sunni outfit, in its murderous campaign in Iraq and elsewhere. Basing its position on received wisdom, the Obama camp implied that Sunnis and Shiites, divided as they are by deep doctrinal differences, could not come together to fight the United States and its allies.
The truth is that Sunni and Shiite extremists have always been united in their hatred of the U.S., and in their desire to "bring it to destruction," in the words of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar.
The majority of Muslims does not share that hatred and have no particular problem with the U.S. It is the country most visited by Muslim tourists and it attracts the largest number of Muslim students studying abroad.
But to understand the problem with extremists, it is important to set aside the Sunni-Shiite divide and focus on their common hatred of America. Theology is useless here. What we are dealing with is politics.
For Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, the slogan "Death to America" was as important as the traditional device of Islam "Allah Is The Greatest" – hence his insistence that it be chanted at all public meetings and repeated after each session of the daily prayers. And to that end, Khomeinists have worked with anyone, including brother-enemy Sunnis or even Marxist atheists.
The suicide attacks that claimed the lives of over 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, in Lebanon in 1983, were joint operations of the Khomeinist Hezbollah and the Marxist Arab Socialist Party, which was linked to the Syrian intelligence services. The Syrian regime is Iran's closest ally, despite the fact that Iranian mullahs regard the Alawite minority that dominates it as heretics or worse. Today in Lebanon, Tehran's surrogate, Hezbollah, is in league with a Maronite Christian faction, led by ex-Gen. Michel Aoun, in opposition to a majority bloc that favors close ties with the U.S.
For more than a quarter century, Tehran has been host to the offices of more than three dozen terrorists organizations, from the Colombian FARC to the Palestinian Hamas and passing by half a dozen Trotskyite and Leninist outfits. It also finances many anti-American groups and parties of both extreme right and extreme left in Europe and the Americas. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has bestowed the Muslim title of "brother" on Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Communist North Korea is the only country with which the Islamic Republic maintains close military-industrial ties and holds joint annual staff sessions.
George Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese maverick who led a campaign of terror in Paris in the 1980s on behalf of Tehran, was a Christian. So was Anis Naqqache, who led several hit-teams sent to kill Iranian exile opposition leaders. For years, and until a recent change of policy, Tehran financed and offered shelter to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Marxist movement fighting to overthrow the Turkish Republic. Why? Tehran's displeasure with Turkish membership of NATO and friendship with the U.S.
Yes, Mr. Obama might ask, but what about Sunni-Shiite cooperation?
The Islamic Republic has financed and armed the Afghan Sunni Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) since the 1990s. It's also financed the Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS), a Sunni political-terrorist outfit in Algeria between 1992 and 2005.
In 1993, a senior Iranian delegation, led by the then Islamic Parliament Speaker Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, attended the Arab-Muslim Popular Congress organized by Hassan al-Turabi, nicknamed "The Pope of Islamist Terror," in Khartoum. At the end of this anti-American jamboree a nine-man "Coordinating Committee" was announced. Karrubi was a member, along with such Sunni eminences as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Turabi and the Algerian Abdallah Jaballah. The fact that Karrubi was a Shiite mullah did not prevent him from sitting alongside Sunni sheikhs.
In 1996, a suicide attack claimed the lives of 19 American servicemen in Al Khobar, eastern Saudi Arabia. The operation was carried out by the Hezbollah in Hejaz, an Iranian-financed outfit, with the help of the Sunni militant group "Sword of the Peninsula."
In 2000, Sunni groups linked to al Qaeda killed 17 U.S. servicemen in a suicide attack on USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. This time, a Shiite militant group led by Sheikh al-Houti, Tehran's man in Yemen, played second fiddle in the operation.
In Central Asia's Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Tehran has for years supported two Sunni movements, the Rastakhiz Islami (Islamic Awakening) and Hizb Tahrir Islami (Islamic Liberation Party). In Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, Tehran supports the Sunni Taleshi groups against the Azeri Shiite majority. The reason? The Taleshi Sunnis are pro-Russian and anti-American, while the Shiite Azeris are pro-American and anti-Russian.
There are no Palestinian Shiites, yet Tehran has become the principal source of funding for radical Palestinian Sunni groups, notably Hamas, Islamic Jihad and half a dozen leftist-atheist minigroups. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh refuses to pray alongside his Iranian hosts during his visits to Tehran. But when it comes to joining Khomeinist crowds in shouting "Death to America" he is in the forefront.
With Arab oil kingdoms no longer as generous as before, Iran has emerged as the chief source of funding for Hamas. The new Iranian budget, coming into effect on March 21, allocates over $2 billion to the promotion of "revolutionary causes." Much of the money will go to Hamas and the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.
In Pakistan, the Iran-financed Shiite Tehrik Jaafari joined a coalition of Sunni parties to govern the Northwest Frontier Province, until they all suffered a crushing defeat at last month's parliamentary elections.
The fact that the Sunnis and Shiites in other provinces of Pakistan continued to kill each other did not prevent them from developing a joint, anti-U.S. strategy that included the revival of the Afghan Taliban and protection for the remnants of al Qaeda. Almost all self-styled "holy warriors" who go to Iraq on a mission of murder and mayhem are Sunnis. And, yet most pass through Syria, a country that, as already noted, is dominated by a sect with a militant anti-Sunni religious doctrine.
Next month, Tehran will host what is billed as "The Islamic Convergence Conference," bringing together hundreds of Shiite and Sunni militants from all over the world. The man in charge, Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Taskhiri, has described the goal of the gathering to be delivering "a punch in the face of the American Great Satan."
Still, Mr. Obama might ask: what about al Qaeda and Iran?
The 9/11 Commission report states that Tehran was in contact with al Qaeda at various levels before the 2001 attacks. Tehran has admitted the presence of al Qaeda figures in Iran on a number of occasions, and has arranged for the repatriation of at least 13 Saudi members in the past five years. The Bin Laden family tells us that at least one of Osama's sons, Sa'ad, has lived in Iran since 2002.
Reports from Iran claim that scores of Taliban leaders and several al Qaeda figures spend part of the year in a compound-style housing estate near the village of Dost Muhammad on the Iranian frontier with Afghanistan. One way to verify these claims is to allow the world media access to the area. But Tehran has declared large segments of eastern Iran a "no-go" area, even for its own state-owned media.
In short, the claim that al Qaeda and the Khomeinists, not to mention other terrorist groups operating in the name of Islam, would not work together simply because they have theological differences is both naive and dangerous.
Messrs. McCain and Obama do not need to know about doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The problem they face is not theological but political. All they need to know is that there are deadly and determined groups dedicated to destruction of the U.S. in the name of a perverted version of Islam, and that they need to be resisted, fought and ultimately defeated.
**Mr. Taheri's new book, "The Persian Night: Iran and the Khomeinist Revolution," will be published later this year by Encounter Books.

The most wanted list
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=94317
Aljazeera.com,
29/03/2008
There are 3 categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without intent. Israeli & U.S. atrocities fall into the third category.
By Noam Chomsky
International terrorism
On February 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hezbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. "The world is a better place without this man in it," State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, "one way or the other he was brought to justice." Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been "responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden."
Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as "one of the U.S. and Israel's most wanted men" was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported. Under the heading, "A militant wanted the world over," an accompanying story reported that he was "superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden" after 9/11 and so ranked only second among "the most wanted militants in the world."
The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines "the world" as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters). It is common, for example, to read that "the world" fully supported George Bush when he ordered the bombing of Afghanistan. That may be true of "the world," but hardly of the world, as revealed in an international Gallup Poll after the bombing was announced.
Global support was slight. In Latin America, which has some experience with U.S. behavior, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama, and that support was conditional upon the culprits being identified (they still weren't eight months later, the FBI reported), and civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by "the world."
Following the terror trail
In the present case, if "the world" were extended to the world, we might find some other candidates for the honor of most hated arch-criminal. It is instructive to ask why this might be true.
The Financial Times reports that most of the charges against Moughniyeh are unsubstantiated, but "one of the very few times when his involvement can be ascertained with certainty [is in] the hijacking of a TWA plane in 1985 in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed." This was one of two terrorist atrocities the led a poll of newspaper editors to select terrorism in the Middle East as the top story of 1985; the other was the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro, in which a crippled American, Leon Klinghoffer, was brutally murdered. That reflects the judgment of "the world." It may be that the world saw matters somewhat differently.
The Achille Lauro hijacking was a retaliation for the bombing of Tunis ordered a week earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. His air force killed 75 Tunisians and Palestinians with smart bombs that tore them to shreds, among other atrocities, as vividly reported from the scene by the prominent Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk. Washington cooperated by failing to warn its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way, though the Sixth Fleet and U.S. intelligence could not have been unaware of the impending attack. Secretary of State George Shultz informed Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir that Washington "had considerable sympathy for the Israeli action," which he termed "a legitimate response" to "terrorist attacks," to general approbation. A few days later, the UN Security Council unanimously denounced the bombing as an "act of armed aggression" (with the U.S. abstaining). "Aggression" is, of course, a far more serious crime than international terrorism. But giving the United States and Israel the benefit of the doubt, let us keep to the lesser charge against their leadership.
A few days after, Peres went to Washington to consult with the leading international terrorist of the day, Ronald Reagan, who denounced "the evil scourge of terrorism," again with general acclaim by "the world."
The "terrorist attacks" that Shultz and Peres offered as the pretext for the bombing of Tunis were the killings of three Israelis in Larnaca, Cyprus. The killers, as Israel conceded, had nothing to do with Tunis, though they might have had Syrian connections. Tunis was a preferable target, however. It was defenseless, unlike Damascus. And there was an extra pleasure: more exiled Palestinians could be killed there.
The Larnaca killings, in turn, were regarded as retaliation by the perpetrators: They were a response to regular Israeli hijackings in international waters in which many victims were killed -- and many more kidnapped and sent to prisons in Israel, commonly to be held without charge for long periods. The most notorious of these has been the secret prison/torture chamber Facility 1391. A good deal can be learned about it from the Israeli and foreign press. Such regular Israeli crimes are, of course, known to editors of the national press in the U.S., and occasionally receive some casual mention.
Klinghoffer's murder was properly viewed with horror, and is very famous. It was the topic of an acclaimed opera and a made-for-TV movie, as well as much shocked commentary deploring the savagery of Palestinians -- "two-headed beasts" (Prime Minister Menachem Begin), "drugged roaches scurrying around in a bottle" (Chief of Staff Raful Eitan), "like grasshoppers compared to us," whose heads should be "smashed against the boulders and walls" (Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir). Or more commonly just "Araboushim," the slang counterpart of "kike" or "nigger."
Thus, after a particularly depraved display of settler-military terror and purposeful humiliation in the West Bank town of Halhul in December 1982, which disgusted even Israeli hawks, the well-known military/political analyst Yoram Peri wrote in dismay that one "task of the army today [is] to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim living in territories that God promised to us," a task that became far more urgent, and was carried out with far more brutality, when the Araboushim began to "raise their heads" a few years later.
We can easily assess the sincerity of the sentiments expressed about the Klinghoffer murder. It is only necessary to investigate the reaction to comparable U.S.-backed Israeli crimes. Take, for example, the murder in April 2002 of two crippled Palestinians, Kemal Zughayer and Jamal Rashid, by Israeli forces rampaging through the refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank. Zughayer's crushed body and the remains of his wheelchair were found by British reporters, along with the remains of the white flag he was holding when he was shot dead while seeking to flee the Israeli tanks which then drove over him, ripping his face in two and severing his arms and legs. Jamal Rashid was crushed in his wheelchair when one of Israel's huge U.S.-supplied Caterpillar bulldozers demolished his home in Jenin with his family inside. The differential reaction, or rather non-reaction, has become so routine and so easy to explain that no further commentary is necessary.
Car bomb
Plainly, the 1985 Tunis bombing was a vastly more severe terrorist crime than the Achille Lauro hijacking, or the crime for which Moughniyeh's "involvement can be ascertained with certainty" in the same year. But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize for worst terrorist atrocity in the Mideast in the peak year of 1985.
One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast "burned babies in their beds," "killed a bride buying her trousseau," and "blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque." It also "devastated the main street of the densely populated" West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years later in the Washington Post.
The intended target had been the Shia cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan's CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain's help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Little is known beyond the bare facts, thanks to rigorous adherence to the doctrine that we do not investigate our own crimes (unless they become too prominent to suppress, and the inquiry can be limited to some low-level "bad apples" who were naturally "out of control").
"Terrorist villagers"
A third competitor for the 1985 Mideast terrorism prize was Prime Minister Peres' "Iron Fist" operations in southern Lebanese territories then occupied by Israel in violation of Security Council orders. The targets were what the Israeli high command called "terrorist villagers." Peres's crimes in this case sank to new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder" in the words of a Western diplomat familiar with the area, an assessment amply supported by direct coverage. They are, however, of no interest to "the world" and therefore remain uninvestigated, in accordance with the usual conventions. We might well ask whether these crimes fall under international terrorism or the far more severe crime of aggression, but let us again give the benefit of the doubt to Israel and its backers in Washington and keep to the lesser charge.
These are a few of the thoughts that might cross the minds of people elsewhere in the world, even if not those of "the world," when considering "one of the very few times" Imad Moughniyeh was clearly implicated in a terrorist crime.
The U.S. also accuses him of responsibility for devastating double truck-bomb attacks on U.S. Marine and French paratrooper barracks in Lebanon in 1983, killing 241 Marines and 58 paratroopers, as well as a prior attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63, a particularly serious blow because of a meeting there of CIA officials at the time.
The Financial Times has, however, attributed the attack on the Marine barracks to Islamic Jihad, not Hezbollah. Fawaz Gerges, one of the leading scholars on Lebanon, has written that responsibility was taken by an "unknown group called Islamic Jihad." A voice speaking in classical Arabic called for all Americans to leave Lebanon or face death. It has been claimed that Moughniyeh was the head of Islamic Jihad at the time, but to my knowledge, evidence is sparse.
The opinion of the world has not been sampled on the subject, but it is possible that there might be some hesitancy about calling an attack on a military base in a foreign country a "terrorist attack," particularly when U.S. and French forces were carrying out heavy naval bombardments and air strikes in Lebanon, and shortly after the U.S. provided decisive support for the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which killed some 20,000 people and devastated the south, while leaving much of Beirut in ruins. It was finally called off by President Reagan when international protest became too intense to ignore after the Sabra-Shatila massacres.
In the United States, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is regularly described as a reaction to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) attacks on northern Israel from their Lebanese bases, making our crucial contribution to these major war crimes understandable. In the real world, the Lebanese border area had been quiet for a year, apart from repeated Israeli attacks, many of them murderous, in an effort to elicit some PLO response that could be used as a pretext for the already planned invasion. Its actual purpose was not concealed at the time by Israeli commentators and leaders: to safeguard the Israeli takeover of the occupied West Bank.
It is of some interest that the sole serious error in Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid is the repetition of this propaganda concoction about PLO attacks from Lebanon being the motive for the Israeli invasion. The book was bitterly attacked, and desperate efforts were made to find some phrase that could be misinterpreted, but this glaring error -- the only one -- was ignored. Reasonably, since it satisfies the criterion of adhering to useful doctrinal fabrications.
Killing without intent
Another allegation is that Moughniyeh "masterminded" the bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992, killing 29 people, in response, as the Financial Times put it, to Israel's "assassination of former Hezbollah leader Abbas Al-Mussawi in an air attack in southern Lebanon." About the assassination, there is no need for evidence: Israel proudly took credit for it. The world might have some interest in the rest of the story. Al-Mussawi was murdered with a U.S.-supplied helicopter, well north of Israel's illegal "security zone" in southern Lebanon. He was on his way to Sidon from the village of Jibshit, where he had spoken at the memorial for another Imam murdered by Israeli forces. The helicopter attack also killed his wife and five-year old child. Israel then employed U.S.-supplied helicopters to attack a car bringing survivors of the first attack to a hospital.
After the murder of the family, Hezbollah "changed the rules of the game," Prime Minister Rabin informed the Israeli Knesset. Previously, no rockets had been launched at Israel. Until then, the rules of the game had been that Israel could launch murderous attacks anywhere in Lebanon at will, and Hezbollah would respond only within Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory.
After the murder of its leader (and his family), Hezbollah began to respond to Israeli crimes in Lebanon by rocketing northern Israel. The latter is, of course, intolerable terror, so Rabin launched an invasion that drove some 500,000 people out of their homes and killed well over 100. The merciless Israeli attacks reached as far as northern Lebanon.
In the south, 80% of the city of Tyre fled and Nabatiye was left a "ghost town," Jibshit was about 70% destroyed according to an Israeli army spokesperson, who explained that the intent was "to destroy the village completely because of its importance to the Shia population of southern Lebanon." The goal was "to wipe the villages from the face of the earth and sow destruction around them," as a senior officer of the Israeli northern command described the operation.
Jibshit may have been a particular target because it was the home of Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid, kidnapped and brought to Israel several years earlier. Obeid's home "received a direct hit from a missile," British journalist Robert Fisk reported, "although the Israelis were presumably gunning for his wife and three children." Those who had not escaped hid in terror, wrote Mark Nicholson in the Financial Times, "because any visible movement inside or outside their houses is likely to attract the attention of Israeli artillery spotters, who… were pounding their shells repeatedly and devastatingly into selected targets." Artillery shells were hitting some villages at a rate of more than 10 rounds a minute at times.
All of this received the firm support of President Bill Clinton, who understood the need to instruct the Araboushim sternly on the "rules of the game." And Rabin emerged as another grand hero and man of peace, so different from the two-legged beasts, grasshoppers, and drugged roaches.
This is only a small sample of facts that the world might find of interest in connection with the alleged responsibility of Moughniyeh for the retaliatory terrorist act in Buenos Aires.
Other charges are that Moughniyeh helped prepare Hezbollah defenses against the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, evidently an intolerable terrorist crime by the standards of "the world," which understands that the United States and its clients must face no impediments in their just terror and aggression.
The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs 'purposely' kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of Israel's High Court when it recently authorized severe collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity (hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized life).
The same line of defense is common with regard to some of Washington's past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing -- so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at self-justification.
To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S. atrocities typically fall into the third category. Thus, when Israel destroys Gaza's power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot reach hospitals. And when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the al-Shifa plant, it was obvious that it would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch immediately informed him of this, providing details; nevertheless, he and his advisers did not intend to kill specific people among those who would inevitably die when half the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed in a poor African country that could not replenish them.
Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by Araboushim in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather differently.
If, for a moment, we can adopt the perspective of the world, we might ask which criminals are "wanted the world over."
***Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous best-selling political works. His latest books are Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and What We Say Goes, a conversation book with David Barsamian, both in the American Empire Project series at Metropolitan Books. The Essential Chomsky (edited by Anthony Arnove), a collection of his writings on politics and on language from the 1950s to the present, has just been published by the New Press.
Copyright 2008 Noam Chomsky

Salafi-jihadism in Lebanon
Gary C. Gambill - 3/30/2008
Global Politician
As Lebanon looks back on a summer of vicious fighting between the army and Fatah al-Islam that left 168 soldiers dead, armed Salafi-jihadist networks continue to operate beyond the ruins of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp with relative impunity. Contrary to the conventional wisdom among many terrorism analysts, they have never plotted (let alone attempted) to establish an Islamic state in Lebanon. Rather, these Sunni Islamist militants have used "islands of insecurity" in the country as conduits for training and dispatching terrorists to conflict zones around the world (particularly Iraq). Under an informal quid pro quo dating back to the Syrian occupation, most have abstained from destabilizing operations within Lebanon itself in exchange for being left alone. When Fatah al-Islam violated this understanding, it was "excommunicated" by international and local Al-Qaeda affiliates eager to preserve their privileges in Lebanon.
The ruling March 14 coalition's tolerance of Salafi-jihadist networks isn't quite the nefarious conspiracy decried by the Lebanese opposition. The more prosaic reality is that the ultraconservative strand of Islamic fundamentalism they espouse has become deeply ingrained in peripheral Sunni areas of Lebanon that were egregiously neglected and harshly governed during the Syrian occupation. Any governing coalition that relies primarily on Sunni political support will find it virtually impossible (absent a major provocation) to confront Salafi jihadist networks, particularly in an atmosphere of confessional polarization and economic stagnation.
The Fall and Rise of Tripoli
The trajectory of Salafi-jihadism in Lebanon has been strongly conditioned by the environmental opportunity structure of Lebanon, - understood here to mean the sum totality of distinct social, economic, and cultural resources available to local actors. The demography and historical experience of the Lebanese Sunni Muslim community are central to its success.Estimated to range from 25%-30% of the population, Lebanese Sunnis are unique among the country's leading sects in being overwhelmingly urban (with little geographically contiguous hinterland) and in lacking a minoritarian outlook. Whereas Shiites, Maronites and Druze see themselves as islands in a vast regional Sunni Arab sea, most Lebanese Sunnis see themselves as a part of that sea (either through a religious or nationalist prism).
While the Sunni elites who agreed to the 1943 National Pact (which divided executive and legislative power along sectarian lines) had concrete interests in the establishment of an independent Lebanon and virtually monopolized their community's "allotment" of political power in the First Republic,[1] the formation of Lebanon hurt the economic interests of many Sunnis. The predominantly Sunni northern port of Tripoli, once the economic equal of Beirut, declined in relative prosperity as its traditional trade routes to the Syrian interior lapsed, which is one reason why all major currents of Lebanese Sunni Islamism have been centered in the city. Rural pockets of the Sunni community, such as Akkar in north Lebanon, slipped through the cracks of an extreme laissez faire, services-oriented economy.
Decline of the Political Islamists
Although a number of Islamic revivalist movements surfaced after Lebanon's independence, they represented little more than fading nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire. Pan-Arabism soon became the ideology of choice for disaffected Sunnis who longed for integration with the rest of the Middle East. The 1964 establishment of the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, known as Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Association), marked a watershed. Al-Jama'a saw the pursuit of an Islamic state as a viable (if long-term and incremental) political project and an antidote to the burgeoning appeal of secular Arab nationalism. Al-Jama'a was fiercely opposed to both Sunni political elites and the Sunni religious establishment they largely controlled, known as Dar al-Fatwa. [2]
After the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war and the intervention of Syrian military forces, Al-Jama'a began to splinter. Although most Sunni Islamists in Lebanon saw the intervention as a nefarious power play by the Alawite-dominated (and therefore heretical) Syrian regime to subvert Sunni influence, in most areas of the country they acquiesced to Syria's grip. In and around Tripoli, however, a host of radical Al-Jama'a offshoots inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran sprouted up. [3] In 1982, these factions formed Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami (the Islamic Unification Movement).
Under the leadership of charismatic preacher Said Shaaban, Tawhid seized control of Tripoli from Syrian-backed militia forces. Strengthened by arms from the PLO and the influx of highly trained Syrian Brotherhood operatives after the Hama massacre, Tawhid forces imposed Islamic law at gunpoint in neighborhoods they controlled for two years (e.g. banning alcohol, forcing women to veil) and executed dozens of secular political opponents (mostly Communists), sparking an exodus of Christians from the city. [4]
In the autumn of 1985, Syrian forces swept into the city and brought Tawhid's mini-state to an end. Although Shabaan wisely acquiesced ("Tripoli is not dearer to us than Hama," Syrian Vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam reportedly told him at the time),[5] other Tawhid "emirs" and hundreds of their followers fought on until they were physically eliminated or captured. Armed Sunni Islamist resistance to Syrian forces in Lebanon disappeared after 1986, while Sunni public figures who expressed even the faintest hint of anti-Syrian dissent were simply eliminated.[6]
Along with mainstream Sunni clerics, Al-Jama'a and Al-Tawhid came to accept and endorse the Syrian occupation. Instead, they crusaded against un-Islamic cultural influences in Lebanon (in sharp contrast to Shiite Islamists)[7] and repeated bellicose slogans condemning Israel and the West. They were not allowed to actually go fight Israelis (let alone Westerners), however, as the Syrians feared that battle-hardened Sunni Islamist fighters might one day turn their guns on Damascus and "resistance" to Israel was the exclusive preserve of Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shiite community.
Adding insult to injury, Syria supported the growth of a hitherto obscure Shiite-influenced Sunni revivalist movement known as Al-Ahbash, granting it control over prominent mosques and access to the airwaves to broadcast its conspicuously Alawite-friendly brand of "tolerant" Islamism. Under Syrian patronage, the once pacific movement morphed into a bizarre monstrosity, demonstrating with sticks and knives to intimidate anti-Syrian protestors in the waning years of the occupation (and later being linked to the killing of the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri).
As the Syrians were brutally suppressing Islamist groups and promoting idiosyncratic Sunni religious doctrines, economic conditions in Tripoli improved little as streams of poor Sunnis from Akkar and the northern Beqaa settled in its crowded eastern suburbs. In this cauldron of poverty and resentment, a different ideological pole of Sunni fundamentalism was gaining steam.
The Salafis
Salafism is a puritanical Sunni current that seeks to emulate the "righteous ancestors" (al-salaf al-salih) of early Islamic history and purge the faith of fallacious innovations (bida'a). While mainstream Salafis pursue this goal non-violently through missionary and educational activity, others (commonly dubbed Salafi jihadists) have embraced violence to achieve its aims. "Both have the same objective . . . to convert society into an Islamic society," explains Lebanese journalist Hazim al-Amin, but "vary in the method of achieving it."[8]
In sharp contrast to Al-Jama'a and its offshoots, Salafis and Salafi-jihadists are largely apolitical. The former usually eschew involvement in local politics so as to maintain the freedom to disseminate their message to the people with minimal interference from the state, while the latter do so to maintain freedom of action in fighting the enemies of Islam abroad. Both are intolerant of heterodox Muslims and abjure any national identity, claiming allegiance to the universal community of Muslim believers (umma).
Salafi missionaries first gained prominence in Tripoli after the start of the civil war, under the leadership of Sheikh Salem al-Shahal. Although Shahal's followers maintained a modest armed force known as the Nucleus of the Islamic Army, they remained aloof from the fighting that waged on around them. "In 1985, when Tripoli was destroyed, we never carried out a single military operation," his son, Dai al-Islam, recently recalled.[9] Tawhid's aspiration to impose Islamic law in Tripoli may have appealed to Salafis, but Shahal viewed Shaaban's close relations with Iran (and, later on, with Syria) as an abomination.
The Salafis were allowed to proselytize freely as Syria tightened its grip on Lebanon because they stayed out of politics and - more importantly - because their close ties to Saudi Arabia gave them a measure of immunity during a period of warming Syrian-Saudi relations. Most leading Lebanese Salafi preachers studied theology in the kingdom, under the guidance of ultra-orthodox Wahhabi clerics, and received subsidies from private Saudi donors. Shahal had very close ties with the late head of Saudi Arabia's Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (and future grand mufti), Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Abdallah ibn Baz, who arranged for hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian students to enroll in Islamic studies programs at Saudi universities during the civil war (including Dai al-Islam al-Shahal).
By the early 1990s, the Salafi current had quietly established a strong social foundation in Tripoli and surrounding areas (including the nearby Baddawi and Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camps), and to a lesser (or less conspicuous) extent in Sidon and smaller Sunni communities in south Lebanon and the Beqaa.[10] Although this raised some eyebrows within Syrian military intelligence, the movement's militantly apolitical dogma was hardly unwelcome to Damascus. Salafi denunciations of Al-Jama'a for participating in national elections helped deprive the latter of substantial electoral power. Salafi denunciations of Western cultural influences in Lebanon also served Syrian interests by increasing pressure on Dar al-Fatwa to spend its time chasing windmills at a time of great popular disaffection. Grand Mufti Rashid Qabbani was responsible for the controversial 1994 banning of a book by the late Libyan writer (and fierce critic of Islamic orthodoxy) Sadiq al-Nayhum[11] and the 1999 indictment on blasphemy charges of Lebanese Christian singer Marcel Khalife (who was publicly defended by most senior Shiite clerics).[12] For many Salafis, these were battles far more important than the political game in Lebanon - or, for that matter, the economic game (as Tripoli grew more and more outwardly militant, it was largely bypassed by tourists).
The biggest source of tension between Lebanese Salafis and Damascus was the latter's promotion of the Ahbash. True or not, widely rumored Syrian plans to make Al-Ahbash leader Nizar al-Halabi the next grand mufti were seen by Salafis as an existential threat. By 1994, Shahal and other Salafi preachers in Tripoli were unleashing a constant stream of invectives about the "heretical" Ahbash (and vice versa). These denunciations caught the ear of a hitherto obscure Palestinian Islamist militia looking for religious guidance.
The Salafi-Jihadists
Sunni Islamism was already on the upswing in Ain al-Hilweh, a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of the predominantly Sunni port of Sidon in south Lebanon, but it was only beginning to feel the impact of Salafi proselytizing in the early 1990s. Radical Sunni Islamist currents in the camp were predominantly Iranian-backed, prime among them an armed network known as Ansarallah (Partisans of God), established by Hisham Shreidi. After Shreidi was assassinated in 1991, his successor, Abdel-Karim al-Saadi (aka Abu Muhjen), initiated a sweeping reorientation in the group's religious identification and renamed it Asbat al-Ansar (League of Partisans).
This transformation was fueled by increasing resentment of "Shiite-only resistance" against Israeli forces in south Lebanon and the growing realization that the "anti-Zionist struggle" sponsored by Iran and Syria would never be allowed to proceed beyond the pursuit of these two governments' own limited national interests. Rather than play a backseat supporting role in this charade, Shreidi's successors looked for an alternative cause and mode of identification that deemphasized the struggle to regain Palestine.
Salafi-jihadism fit the bill. As Bernard Rougier explains, "they put an end to Iranian tutelage for reasons of sectarian incompatibility and reoriented the group's operations far from the Lebanese-Israeli border," while "stamping it with a salafist character it did not originally have." [13] Toward this end, in 1994 Asbat al-Ansar invited Dai al-Islam al-Shahal's charitable group, Jam'iyyat al-Hidaya wal-Ihsan (Association for Guidance and Charity), to teach theology in the camp.
The following year, in an apparent bid to attract broader Sunni support in Lebanon, Asbat al-Ansar assassinated Ahbash leader Nizar al-Halabi. Although there is no evidence that Salafi leaders in Tripoli were involved , this hardly mattered in view of their constant denunciations of the Ahbash and visible association with Asbat. In the weeks that followed, the Lebanese authorities arrested scores of Sunni fundamentalists in north Lebanon on charges of plotting terrorist attacks (most of them subsequently released after robust interrogation), banned Shahal's charity, and charged eight Salafis (including two members of the Shahal family) with publishing seditious material.[14]
This heavy-handed response culminated in the gruesome public execution of Halabi's assassins in 1997. It did not, however, result in any attempt by the authorities to apprehend Abu Muhjen or other indicted Asbat members residing in Ain al-Hilweh. Although the terms of the 1969 Cairo Agreement grant Palestinians in Lebanon the right to maintain security in their camps, the main reason why no incursion took place after this and subsequent Asbat terror attacks was that Damascus would not allow it. These "islands of insecurity" served as part of the justification for Syria's occupation of Lebanon (for much the same reason, the Lebanese authorities were not allowed to arrest former Hezbollah Secretary-General Subhi Tufaili when his militia killed Lebanese soldiers in a 1998 gun battle).
Although officials in Beirut accused Asbat of seeking to establish an Islamic state, it clearly never entertained such ambitions. Asbat focused its resources on consolidating its enclaves in Ain al-Hilweh against encroachments by Fatah and training militants to fight abroad (mostly in Chechnya). Apart from its murder of four Lebanese judges in 1999 (presumably in retaliation for the execution of Halabi's assassins), the closest it came to attacking the Lebanese state was shooting a policeman who tried to obstruct its January 2000 rocket attack on the Russian embassy. Asbat militants also carried out small-scale bombings of churches and bars, but most of these attacks caused only material damage and did not pose a threat to the state (if anything, they legitimized official claims about the dangers of sectarian violence if Syrian troops depart). Had it been otherwise, the Syrians would never have tolerated their existence.
Asbat's "success" inspired Lebanese Salafis to follow its example. In 1998, a Lebanese veteran of the Afghan war Bassam Ahmad al-Kanj (aka Abu Aisha), arrived in Tripoli and began recruiting disaffected Lebanese (and some non-Lebanese Arab) Sunnis into a guerrilla force in the mountainous Dinniyeh region east of the city. This the Syrians could not allow. On New Year's Eve 1999, the militants ambushed a Lebanese army patrol that had been sent to make arrests, touching off six days of fighting that left 11 soldiers and 20 rebels dead. Around 15 of the besieged militants managed to escape by boat and take refuge in Ain al-Hilweh.
Although Lebanese officials accused the Dinniyeh militants of trying to establish an Islamic state, the militants were clearly training to go abroad and fight for Islam. The crackdown simply reflected Syria's refusal to allow an armed Sunni Islamist presence to develop outside of the refugee camps (where the comings and goings of Salafi-jihadists can be closely monitored), irrespective of its intent. Those who crossed this line disappeared into a murky extra-judicial underworld of Syria's making, one in which Islamists were held without trial for years on end or brought before military tribunals that routinely dismiss allegations of routine torture by Lebanese security forces.[15] Dai al-Islam al-Shahal went into hiding after coming under indictment.[16]
Inside Ain al-Hilweh, the Salafi-jihadist current continued to grow in strength, fueled by an influx of new external funding after the 9/11 attacks. Initially, Asbat relied on donations funneled through Salafi charities in the camp affiliated with the imam of Al-Nour mosque in Ain al-Hilweh, Jamal Khattab, or transported directly by Al-Qaeda couriers.[17] Later, it began receiving money wired by supporters abroad (a simple process due to Lebanon bank secrecy laws and poor record of investigating terrorist financing).[18] In its eagerness to draw support from the global jihadist movement, Asbat began targeting Americans in Lebanon. In addition to several bombing attacks on American commercial franchises, it is alleged to have been behind the killing of an American missionary in 2002 and a failed plot to assassinate US ambassador Vincent Battle the following year.
For all of its audacious terror attacks, Asbat recognized the need for a minimal accommodation with the Lebanese authorities. In July 2002, amid mounting Lebanese public pressure for a military incursion into the camp, Asbat apprehended and turned over a Dinniyeh militant who fled into the camp after killing three plainclothes Lebanese military intelligence officers who tried to arrest him. This controversial decision led a faction of Asbat, headed by Abdullah Shreidi (the son of Hisham Shreidi), to break away and operate independently as Asbat al-Nour (which eventually dissolved after he was killed the following year). Another Salafi-jihadist faction, calling itself Jama'at al-Nour, emerged under the leadership of Ahmad al-Miqati and other Dinniyeh militants in the camp.
The Salafi-jihadists set aside their differences following the US-led ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and focused on sending operatives to fight in Iraq. Since the Syrians were anxious to undermine the American presence in Iraq, the Lebanese authorities turned a blind eye to Islamist recruitment outside of Ain al-Hilweh. Many scores of Lebanese Sunnis went to Iraq,[19] a few playing important leadership roles in the Arab jihadist wing of the insurgency.[20] If the tally displayed on banners plastered throughout Tripoli is reasonably accurate, the Lebanese Sunni community's per capita contribution of "martyrs" rivals that of the Saudis.[21] Lebanon also became a critical conduit for non-Lebanese Arab (particularly Saudi) jihadists traveling to Iraq and everywhere else under the sun. Two members of the Algerian terrorist group Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) arrested by French police in 2005 were found to have received explosives training at a camp near Tripoli.[22]
The participation of many Lebanese Sunni Islamists in Iraq paved the way for the emergence in Lebanon of Salafi-jihadist networks that adhere to the zealous takfirism (branding other Muslims as unbelievers) espoused by the late Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2004, dissident Asbat members and Dinniyeh militants[23] formed a new movement calling itself Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of the Levant),[24] a name previously used by Zarqawi's followers before he arrived in Iraq. In a series of public statements, Jund al-Sham declared Shiites and Christians to be "infidels."[25] So long as takfiris could infiltrate Iraq and kill both by the thousands, however, Lebanese "infidels" faced little threat.
In September 2004, the Lebanese authorities carried out a wave of arrests in the predominantly Sunni town of Majdal Anjar in the Beqaa (a logistical hub of jihadists going to Iraq through Syria), claiming to have uncovered imminent terror attacks against the embassy of Italy and other Western targets in Lebanon. However, most Lebanese Sunnis suspected that the alleged plots were fabricated by Damascus to deflect American pressure (the UN Security Council had just passed Resolution 1559 calling for a Syrian withdrawal). When the 35-year-old alleged mastermind of the plot died of "heart failure" in custody, thousands of Sunnis protested in the streets of Majdal Anjar.[26]
As Lebanese Salafis fumed over the detentions, the assassination of Hariri in February 2005 set in motion a chain of events that granted them their heart's desire. The departure of Syrian forces from Lebanon in April gave Islamists unmitigated freedom to participate in public life for the first time in decades and to renegotiate their relationships with the governing elite from a position of strength - at a time when popular disillusionment with secular politicians was at a peak.
After the Syrian Withdrawal
As Lebanon adjusted to its newfound freedom, the late Hariri's son and political successor, Saad, faced a problem in the four-round May/June 2005 parliamentary elections. The March 14 coalition, led by Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, could only hope to win a majority of the seats against Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) if it swept mixed Sunni-Christian districts of north Lebanon in the final round, where victory hinged on mobilizing high Sunni turnout (which had been very low in the first round of the elections in Beirut). With Al-Jama'a and many traditional Sunni politicians boycotting the elections, Hariri reached out to Salafi preachers for help.
Having endured relentless harassment by Syrian-backed governments years, Salafi leaders in north Lebanon suspended their traditional aversion to electoral politics and mobilized their followers to go to the polls. Sunni turnout was very high by Lebanese standards, underscoring how much credibility Al-Jama'a had lost on the street to the Salafi current. After the March 14 coalition claimed its majority, the newly-elected parliament released 26 Dinniyeh militants and seven of the Majdal Anjar detainees still awaiting trial.[27]
The amnesty was more than a reward for Salafi mobilization during the elections - it was a signal of the ruling coalition's commitment to averting conflict with militant Salafi currents. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora reaffirmed and expanded the fragile quid pro quo that had taken shape since the US invasion of Iraq - Salafi-jihadists could operate with minimal interference by the state so long as they did not carry out attacks in Lebanon or otherwise destabilize the country.
The understanding was tacit and ad hoc, but pro-March 14 media outlets alluded to it with surprising frequency (as if to remind terrorists of the terms). For example, Hariri's newspaper, Al-Mustaqbal, noted that al-Qaeda "has benefited from Lebanon as a transit point for individuals and logistics headed to Iraq or other Arab countries" and therefore "has not used Lebanon as an arena for confrontation."[28] A prominent Islamism expert sympathetic to Hariri, Al-Hayat journalist Hazim al-Amin, elaborated,
Al-Qaeda benefits from Lebanon as a human and financial transit point that does not tighten its surveillance and search measures at its airports and facilities. If Lebanon is turned into a target because of a decision by al-Qaeda, it will become an area of difficulty . . . There are some aspects of al-Qaeda's presence in Lebanon to which a blind eye is turned in a sense . . . While most of the region's countries have doubled the financial and commercial supervision of activities linked to suspected Islamic organizations, Lebanon has not adopted any such measures. Unlike many other countries, it has not imposed special procedures for the transfer of funds through it.[29]
The arrangement has proven to be quite durable, despite some violations. When a jihadist cell linked to Zarqawi launched a volley of Katyusha rockets into Israel in December 2005, the perpetrators were promptly hunted down and arrested. A few months later, another cell was arrested (on the initiative of military intelligence, which is not controlled by the coalition) for plotting to kill Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. So long as armed Salafi-jihadists avoided such major security provocations, however, the Siniora government shied away from confrontation. It did nothing to reverse Jund al-Sham's seizure of the neighborhood of Taamir adjacent to Ain al-Hilweh in 2005. The militants finally allowed the army to deploy in Taamir only after Bahiya Hariri (Saad's aunt) paid them off in early 2007.[30]
Although the quid pro quo has a security rationale (neither the police nor the military were up to the task of confronting Salafi-jihadists), it also reflects a political logic. The stability of the ruling coalition hinges on Sunni solidarity, which in turn hinges on Salafi support for (or at least tolerance of) the Hariri family. Both have a strong interest in staving off a decline in Sunni communal power, particularly if it is to the benefit of Shiites. Moreover, in a Sunni community generally sympathetic to anti-Zionist "resistance,"[31] Salafis have the merit of being by far the least sympathetic to Hezbollah.
Of course, Hariri has done what he can to shore up Sunni solidarity through other means. He has used his formidable financial resources to build direct grassroots support in areas where Salafism is strong - largesse that may be of some concern to Salafis. The charitable arm of his Future Movement has provided subsidies and social services to poor Sunnis in many areas of the country. In addition, he has reportedly lavished money on Al-Jama'a (and, it is rumored, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood), leading many of its top leaders to publicly back the coalition. With Washington pushing the government to rein in Hezbollah, however, Salafis were the only credible Sunni Islamists who could be fully trusted not to switch sides. Not surprisingly, Hariri initially went to considerable lengths to solidify their support. The high water mark came during the uproar over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad in February 2006, when Hariri provided transportation for Sunnis in north Lebanon to attend a government-licensed demonstration (led by Shahal and others with megaphones) in Beirut.[32] The initiative backfired when the protesters went on a rampage, setting fire to a building housing the Danish embassy and vandalizing two nearby churches in full view of Internal Security Forces (ISF) riot police.
Although Hariri subsequently avoided such close public association with the Salafis, the fundamental convergence of interests underlying the partnership grew even stronger after the outbreak of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Hezbollah's initiation of hostilities with Israel was designed to bolster its appeal not so much among Shiites (who assume most of the risks incurred by the attacks) as among Sunnis (who assume far less risk, identify much more strongly with the Palestinian struggle, and would otherwise have strong reservations about an armed Shiite presence in Lebanon). So long as a majority or very large minority of the Sunni community opposes Hezbollah's disarmament, near unanimity among Shiites is sufficient to blunt international pressure for it.
It is no accident that Hezbollah's initial failure to respond to the massive upswing of Israeli-Palestinian violence in June 2006 led Zarqawi to issue a rambling tirade against group for "raising false banners regarding the liberation of Palestine" and "stand[ing] guard against Sunnis who want to cross the border."[33] Nasrallah may have been chomping at the bit to join the fray, but the intensification of Salafi hostility toward Hezbollah in preceding months[34] made it virtually imperative that he find a way to upstage Palestinian Islamists and re-legitimate the movement in Sunni eyes.[35]
The Rise of Fatah al-Islam
The March 14 coalition struggled to bolster Sunni unity after the Israel-Hezbollah war. The political Islamists effectively splintered, with a majority of Al-Jama'a leaders (led by Mawlawi) backing the coalition and a minority Al-Jama'a faction (led by Fathi Yakan) and Tawhid backing the Hezbollah/FPM opposition axis. Salafi support for the government became more critical than ever, widening the latitude enjoyed by Salafi-jihadist groups.
The Syrians exploited this weakness by allowing Arab jihadis to cross into Lebanon, most notably Shaker al-Absi, a Jordanian-Palestinian associate of Zarqawi best known for organizing the 2002 assassination of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman. During the summer and fall of 2006, Absi quietly recruited a small force of several dozen militant Sunni Islamists and trained them at facilities made available by pro-Syrian Palestinian organizations. After operating underground for several months, however, his men apparently "went native" in late November, seizing control of three Fatah al-Intifada compounds in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli and issuing a statement denouncing the "corruption and deviation" of the sclerotic Syrian proxy and the "intelligence agencies" it serves. Calling themselves a "Palestinian national liberation movement" and adopting the moniker Fatah al-Islam, they declared a holy war to liberate Palestine.[36]
While Absi presented Fatah al-Islam as an all-Palestinian movement,[37] most of the hundreds of volunteers who answered his call over the next six months were Lebanese[38] and a substantial minority were Saudis[39] and citizens of various other Arab and Islamic countries. Astonishingly, this massive expansion took place with little interference from the government.[40] Despite having been convicted in absentia for the Foley murder, Absi operated in the open, even playing host to journalists from The New York Times (which noted obliquely that "because of Lebanese politics" he was "largely shielded from the government").[41]
Although investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and others have argued that March 14 leaders encouraged the growth of Fatah al-Islam as a counterweight to Hezbollah,[42] the reality is probably more nuanced. The coalition was clearly reluctant to pay the hefty political premium of confronting a well financed and provisioned Sunni jihadist group operating within the protection of a Palestinian refugee camp. It was not until Fatah al-Islam robbed its third bank in the Tripoli area and US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch visited Beirut to press the issue in May 2007 that Siniora finally sent the ISF into action with a pre-dawn raid on a Fatah al-Islam safe house.
Siniora's failure to inform the army beforehand left Lebanese soldiers stationed outside Nahr al-Bared vulnerable to a withering reprisal hours later while most were asleep in their barracks (nine were found with their throats slit). Ironically, by horrifying the vast majority of Lebanese, the massacre not only greatly bolstered public support for the army's besiegement of camp, but also helped persuade other Salafi-jihadist networks inside and outside Lebanon to withhold their support. As Fatah al-Islam fought a grueling battle to the death, no endorsement from Al-Qaeda ever came. Even Asbat al-Ansar distanced itself (and extinguished an abortive attempt by Jund al-Sham to join the revolt).
As the army pounded Nahr al-Bared for three months, a number of terror attacks outside the camp were carried out by sleeper cells established by Fatah al-Islam or isolated jihadist networks sympathetic to its cause (most notably the June 24 bomb attack in South Lebanon that killed six UNIFIL peacekeepers). These attacks demonstrated that Fatah al-Islam had been very well connected in the militant Salafi community (even Shahal later acknowledged having met twice with Absi).[43] As the authorities began periodic raids of addresses gleaned from captured Fatah al-Islam militants, it became clearer how few were the degrees of separation.
In June, the army raided a building in the Tripoli suburb of Abu Samra, killed six militants in an intense gun battle and captured eleven. Local residents had been well aware of the armed force, which they had curiously dubbed "Al-Shahal." Shahal denied involvement, but acknowledged knowing the leader of the budding militia, Sheikh Nabil Rahim, very well. "Rahim has naturally disappeared from sight, but he never wanted this to happen," Shahal assured reporters afterwards, adding that the youths had been radicalized by arbitrary detention and torture at the hands of the security forces. "Every practicing Muslim in the North is portrayed as a violent, suicidal extremist."[44]
Shahal's remarks reveal a code of understanding among mainstream Salafis in Lebanon that embraces the formation of underground armed networks so long as they do not antagonize the authorities. The fact that several Salafi mosques in an around Tripoli offer free or heavily subsidized martial arts classes is a fairly strong hint of where the preachers stand. When interpersonal relationships so frequently blur the divide between violent terrorist networks and mainstream Salafi preachers, "missionary work" is not as innocuous as it sounds. Many of the military commanders in the Salafi-jihadist movement are former Tawhid fighters who "converted" to Salafism under their influence.[45]
Shahal's intimate association with Rahim assumed darker connotations several weeks after the raid in Abu Samra. Absi's principal lieutenant, a Lebanese by the name of Shihab al-Qudur (Abu Hurayra), snuck out of Nahr al-Bared and was killed entering Abu Samra when his motorcycle failed to stop at a roadblock. When asked by interrogators why Qudur had undertaken such a highly risky trip, his assistant (who survived) said he was going to meet with Rahim. The latter's ties to the international Al-Qaeda network also came to light.[46]
Conclusion
Even as they tacitly condone and rationalize the formation of underground Sunni militias, Shahal and other Salafi preachers continue to beam with expressions of solidarity with Hariri.[47] The alternative, according to Salafi Sheikh Omar Bakri, is "to be silent and let the Shiites overtake the Sunnis."[48] While this unswerving loyalty is an asset in building solidarity within the Sunni community, it is a liability in bridging differences with other confessions. The proliferation of armed Sunni networks and the government's tolerance of them makes Shiites less willing to contemplate disarmament.
Hariri's peculiar relationship with the Salafi current has also alienated many Lebanese Christians, who have traditionally seen Sunni Islamism as a more menacing threat than Shiite Islamism (this is why the FPM remains the country's most popular Christian political party in spite of its political alliance with Hezbollah). The widespread perception that Hariri is beholden to Salafi preachers is therefore a major liability for the government. In July 2007, after the Siniora government signed the "Children's Rights in Islam" accord (a largely symbolic "treaty" that most Muslim countries have accepted with little debate) and removed Good Friday from the list of officially recognized holidays, even Archbishop Bishara Raii flew off the handle, warning that the government is "taking Lebanon toward Islamization" and "working on dividing rather than uniting the country."[49] The fact that Absi managed to escape the siege of Nahr al-Bared is viewed with suspicion by many Christians.
Christian unease with the Hariri-Salafi partnership is further heightened by the fact that Lebanese Salafi preachers (who are ideologically averse to national distinctions among Muslims) support the naturalization of Lebanon's 350,000-400,000 Palestinian refugees. Although March 14 politicians dismiss such talk, granting citizenship to this mostly Sunni population would dramatically shift the demographic and political balance in favor of Hariri, while providing the Salafi current with easier access to a pool of prospective converts. It also so happens that American officials see naturalization of some or all of the Palestinians as critical to a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Notes
[1] Members of four prominent Sunni families (Solh, Karameh, Yafi, and Salam) held the premiership in forty of the fifty-three Lebanese cabinets that served from 1943 to 1982. Samir Khalaf, Lebanon's Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 106.
[2] Although Dar al-Fatwa administered a vast network of social institutions, politicians exerted enormous influence over it by manipulating the predominantly non-clerical electoral college that selects the Sunni grand mufti.
[3] Most notably Ismat Murad's Harakat Lubnan al-Arabi (Arab Lebanon Movement), Kanaan Naji's Jundullah (Soldiers of God), and Khalil Akkawi's Al-Muqawama al-Shaabiyya (Popular Resistance).
[4] The shrinking of Tripoli's Christian minority from 20% of the population before the war to 5% today was largely the result of this brief interlude. "Fighting at Nahr al-Bared splits Tripoli into two camps," The Daily Star (Beirut), 3 July 2007.
[5]Kurt Mendenhall, "Syria's Ongoing Lebanese Adventure," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 1988, p. 9.
[6] Key Sunni figures believed to have been assassinated on orders from Syria include Sheikh Subhi Saleh, deputy chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council (1986); Muhammad Shokair, political adviser to then President Amine Gemayel (1987); Grand Mufti Mufti Hassan Khalid (1989); and MP Nazim Qadri (1989).
[7] In sharp contrast to Hezbollah, the political platform of Al-Jama'a in the 1998 municipal elections (where the absence of fixed sectarian quotas obviates the need to attract non-Muslim voters) called for banning alcohol, horse racing, and other immoralities (an effective pitch that netted one third of the seats in Sidon and Tripoli). A. Nizar Hamzeh, "Lebanon's Islamists and local politics: a new reality," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 5 (2000), pp. 739-759. Hezbollah's platform contained not a hint of Islamic influence.
[8] Al-Arabiya TV, 13 April 2007. Translation by BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
[9] "Fighting at Nahr al-Bared splits Tripoli into two camps," The Daily Star (Beirut), 3 July 2007.
[10] For more on Salafis outside of north Lebanon, see Bilal Y Saab and Magnus Ranstorp, "Securing Lebanon from the Threat of Salafist Jihadism," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 30, No. 10, pp. 825-855, 2007.
[11] See Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 156.
[12] "Lyrical liberties?," Al-Ahram Weekly, 14 - 20 October 1999; "Khalife song not an insult to Islam: Fadlallah," Agence France Presse, 4 October 1999.
[13] Bernard Rougier, Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon, translated by Pascale Ghazaleh (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 49, 85.
[14] "Two Moslem fundamentalist charity groups banned," Agence France Presse, 4 January 1996.
[15] Human Rights Watch, Lebanon:_Torture and unfair trial of the Dhinniyyah detainees, 7 May 2003.
[16] Al-Safir (Beirut), 8 February 2003.
[17] A key figure in this regard (until his assassination in 2003, apparently by Israel) was Abdel-Sattar al-Jad (widely known as Abu Muhammad al-Masri), an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative who arrived in the camp in the mid-1990s.
[18] For example, a foiled plot to assassinate US ambassador Vincent Battle was allegedly financed by the Lebanese-born head of Australia's Islamic Youth Movement, Bilal Khazzal. See "The baggage of Bilal Khazal," Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 4 June 2004. For their alleged links to Asbat al-Ansar, see "Clashes leave Fatah in poor position," The Daily Star (Beirut), 22 May 2003.
[19] By November 2004, according to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, "dozens" of Lebanese Sunnis and "tens" of Palestinians from Lebanese refugee camps were already fighting in Iraq. Lebanese killed in Iraq included two residents of Al-Qara'un (Fadi Ghaith and Omar Darwish), two from Majdal Anjar (Ali al-Khatib and Hassan Sawwan), and "several" from the predominantly Sunni cities of Sidon and Tripoli. The report also mentioned the deaths of Palestinians Muhammad Farran and the son of Ansarallah leader Jamal Suleiman. Al-Hayat(London), 8 November 2004.
[20] One of earliest Lebanese arrivals, Mustapha Darwish Ramadan (aka Abu Muhammad al-Lubnani), was said to have been the "right-hand man of Zarqawi" until his death in a September 2004 American air strike. Al-Rai al-Aam (Kuwait), 20 September 2004. "Smoke of Iraq War 'Drifting Over Lebanon,'" The Washington Post, 12 June 2006.
[21] The number reached 50 during the summer of 2006. "Lebanese salute their 'martyrs' in Iraq war," The Independent (London), 7 July 2006.
[22] See Emily Hunt, "Can al-Qaeda's Lebanese Expansion Be Stopped?" PolicyWatch #1076, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 6 February 2006.
[23] Although nominally founded by prominent preacher Muhammad Sharqiyah (aka Abu Yousef), the main decision-makers were Abu Ramiz al-Sahmarani (aka Abu-Ramiz al-Tarabulsi), a prominent Dinniyeh militant, and Imad Yassin, a former Asbat commander who had gained notoriety for instigating a shootout with Hamas in 2002.
[24] The Arabic word al-Sham literally means "the north." In early Islamic history, it was used to refer to lands north of the Arabian peninsula, including present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Jund al-Sham is sometimes translated as "soldiers of Greater Syria."
[25] Al-Nahar (Beirut), 26 June 2004; Al-Safir (Beirut), 14 July 2004.
[26] Uproar over Lebanon custody death, BBC, 28 September 2004.
[27] Beirut clashes follow Geagea amnesty, Aljazeera.net, 20 July 2005.
[28] Al-Mustaqbal (Beirut), 8 January 2006. Translation by BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
[29] Al-Hayat (London), 27 August 2006. Translation by BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
[30] Michael Young, "Destruction and deceit in North Lebanon," The Daily Star (Beirut), 24 May 2007.
[31] Graham E. Fuller, "The Hizballah-Iran Connection: Model for Sunni Resistance," The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2006-2007), p. 147.
[32] "The Hariri group bussed many groups in from Akkar," according to American University of Beirut professor Hilal Khashan. Quoted in "Lebanon's New War," Al-Ahram Weekly, 24-30 May 2007.
[33] "Hezbollah, al-Qaida Mirror Islamic Split," The Associated Press, 24 June 2006.
[34] Al-Diyar (Beirut), 13 April 2006; "Shia of Lebanon emerge from poverty to face charges of overstepping their powers," The Financial Times, 5 May 2006.
[35] In fact, there has long been an undercurrent of tension between Hamas and Hezbollah for this very reason. Hezbollah's resumption of hostilities with Israel after the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada led to a public rift between the two groups that lasted throughout much of 2001 (though this was partly due to Hezbollah's attempts to directly recruit Palestinian terror cells). See "The Terror Twins," Time, 30 April 2001.
[36] Al-Safir (Beirut), 28 November 2006.
[37] Al-Diyar (Beirut), 20 February 2007.
[38] This was confirmed definitively by the identification of militants captured and killed in the recent violence. Of 20 Fatah al-Islam members who appeared before a military court on May 30, 2007, 19 were Lebanese. National News Agency, 30 May 2007.
[39] Of 25 militants whose bodies had been recovered by the Lebanese authorities as of May 26, four were identified as Saudis, according to the Saudi ambassador in Lebanon. Al-Hayat (London), 27 May 2007.
[40] Although Lebanese troops imposed a tight blockade of the camp in March, eyewitnesses in the camp said that a large shipment of weapons arrived in early May. [Al-Hayat (London), 27 May 2007.] Officials of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) later expressed astonishment that such a large influx of men and material went undetected by either the Lebanese government's surveillance of the camp or the mainstream Palestinian militias inside that liaison with the authorities. "Somebody hasn't been doing their job," UNWRA Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayd told The Washington Times. [UN Agency Knew of Armed Foreigners in Lebanon Camp," The Washington Times, 24 May 2007.]
[41] "A New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks on U.S.," The New York Times, 16 March 2007.
[42] Seymour M. Hersh, "The Redirection: Does the new policy benefit the real enemy?" The New Yorker, 5 March 2007.
[43] Al-Hayat (London), 22 May 2007.
[44] "Fatah al-Islam snipers claim two Lebanese soldiers as fighting rages on," The Daily Star (Beirut), 26 June 2007.
[45] Absi's lieutenant, Shihab al-Qadur, was a member of Tawhid who spent many years in a Syrian prison. Rahim's main lieutenant until his arrest in 2006, Bassam Hammoud, was also member of Tawhid. "He was merely a committed Muslim in those days," Salafi Sheikh Bilal Daqmaq said of Hammoud's past affiliation. Al-Hayat (London), 6 September 2007.
[46] Hazim al-Amin, Al-Hayat (London), 6 September 2007.
[47] "There's a relationship between ourselves and Sheikh Saad [Hariri] when it's needed," Dai al-Islam al-Shahal told The Washington Post in June 2007. "The biggest Sunni political power is Hariri. The biggest Sunni religious power are the Salafis. So it's natural." "Radical Group Pulls In Sunnis As Lebanon's Muslims Polarize," The Washington Post, 17 June 2007, p. A16.
[48] "Fighting in Nahr al-Bared Splits Tripoli into Two Camps," The Daily Star, 3 July 2007.
[49] Quoted in "Maronite archbishop accuses Cabinet of 'Islamizing' Lebanon," The Daily Star (Beirut), 7 July 2007.
**Gary C. Gambill is a country analyst for Freedom House and the editor of the Mideast Monitor. Formerly editor of Middle East Intelligence Bulletin from 1999 to 2004, Gambill publishes widely on Lebanese and Syrian politics, terrorism, and democratization in the Middle East. He can be reached by email at gambill@mideastmonitor.org, or by phone at 646-242-1101.