LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
JUNE 19/2006

Below News From miscellaneous sources for 19/06/06
The meanest Palestinian camp in Lebanon is a recruiting ground for jihadists.By Mitch Prothero
Saniora Says Forecasters of Government's Demise Are 'Dreamers'-Naharnet
Returning insurgents shape Lebanon's political climate-Houston Chronicle
SYRIA TO PROCURE IRANIAN MISSILES-Middle East Newsline
Aoun's Approach to Tiff with Syria: "Let's Have Coffee" in -Naharne
Lebanon Denies Approving Nudist Beaches, Gay Rights Group-Naharnet
Sects and Death in the Middle East-The Weekly Standard
Spoof enrages Hezbollah-Toronto Star
Mubark tries to ease tensions between Amman and Damascus-Al-Bawaba,
Despite Common Enemies, al-Zarqawi and Hizbullah Have Little in-Naharnet
Mubarak to meet Jordan King, Bashar-Peninsula On-line
Lebanon property market shines-Trade Arabia
Syria moves forward-ITP.net
Q&A on the News-Arizona Daily Star
Dividend distribution for SOLIDERE in the amount of US $0.60 per -AME Info
Lebanon blames Israel for assassinations-Alarab online

A Wellspring of Anger
The meanest Palestinian camp in Lebanon is a recruiting ground for jihadists
By Mitch Prothero- 6/26/06
BEIRUT--The name Ain al-Hilweh means "Sweet Spring" in Arabic, but to 70,000 Palestinians it describes a crowded, impoverished refugee camp ringed by Lebanese Army checkpoints and tanks. The four checkpoints, the only ways in and out of the square-mile slum, are deemed necessary because more than 20 armed factions compete for influence in what has always been the largest and toughest Palestinian camp in Lebanon.
It's a conflict zone now on the verge of spilling out into the neighboring Lebanese city of Sidon, as radical jihadists return from wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq imbued with an Islamist extremism that is drawing more recruits and changing the complexion of the once secular Palestinian movement. The camp, say Palestinian and Lebanese officials, has supplied scores of fighters to the Iraq insurgency, particularly the terrorist organization that was headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Islamist powerbase. Sitting in his office in Sidon, a senior Lebanese military intelligence official pores over an aerial map of the camp covered in small stickers that show the general location of militant groups. But the Lebanese Army can't enter the area, where well-armed Palestinian militias of mainstream Fatah, rival Hamas, and several Islamist groups rule the streets and frequently clash in gunfights. And the Army has had to concede an adjacent neighborhood to armed groups of radical Islamists considered aligned with al Qaeda: Jund al-Sham (Army of Greater Syria), a mostly Lebanese group originated by veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Asbat al-Ansar (League of Partisans), which is mostly Palestinian.
In any Palestinian camp or neighborhood, the walls are adorned with posters depicting "martyrs" of the fight against Israel. But in Asbat's neighborhood, the Iraq battlefield is evident: The main road has been renamed "Martyrs of Fallujah," and the signs glorify men killed fighting alongside Zarqawi or in suicide attacks against U.S. troops or Iraqi Shiite Muslims.
One Lebanese member of Jund al-Sham says that these groups are aligned with al Qaeda in the sense that they share a worldview of Salafism, or return to the most basic principles of Islam, and the need for jihad to free Muslim lands from infidel occupiers. The Iraq war, says Abed al-Jalil (who insisted his real name not be used), helped strengthen the jihadist group in Lebanon, which had been plagued by infighting and constrained by Lebanese and Syrian authorities. "Before, there were Salafists, Takfiris, Wahabbis who all disagreed on minor points and did not unify," he says. "But now, they are one."
By his account, Jalil spent part of the summer in 2004 living, training, and fighting with Zarqawi's fighters in Fallujah. He says he planned to conduct a suicide attack but was sent back to Lebanon because his education made him valuable as a recruiter. "I hope to have the heart to be a martyr," says Jalil, whose story can't be independently verified. "Right now, I am struggling with whether the dawa [preaching] is stronger than the bullet."
Sheik Maher Hammoud, a Salafist cleric in Sidon who preaches in a mosque just outside the camp, explains the need for good Muslims to fight what he regards as the American occupation of Arab lands. While not a member of Asbat, Hammoud has contacts in the group. "The question is not why they would go and fight in Iraq," he says. "It's why they would not go."
According to Hazim Amin, a reporter for the al-Hayat newspaper and an expert on al Qaeda ideology, Lebanon is regarded as a jihadist recruiting ground through groups such as Asbat and Jund. Some Lebanese authorities, citing several recently uncovered plots with al Qaeda-type characteristics, have grown concerned about the ramifications of this for Lebanese security. One military official who dealt with these groups regularly says that Jund al-Sham and Asbat al-Ansar are "mostly the same group and are very, very dangerous men." "[There are] less than 100 Jundis, 300 to 400 Asbat al-Ansar. ... They are tied directly to al Qaeda," he explains. "There is no hierarchy to al Qaeda, though; it's like a McDonald's. ... Everyone wants their own franchise. But they are the same, the same very dangerous mentality."
It would be difficult for Lebanese authorities to crack down, even if so inclined, because of the dense population of the camp and the lack of heavy weaponry in the Lebanese Army. "The Lebanese Army cannot go inside the camp to fight them; it would be a massacre," he concludes.
Camp powerbroker. The person the Lebanese would rely on to help contain these groups is the closest thing to a powerbroker in the camp, Munir al-Maqdah. He leads a breakaway faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization that rejected the 1990s peace agreements with Israel but maintains good relations with most of the different groups in the camp. A gunman at age 11 for Yasser Arafat's Fatah wing of the PLO, Maqdah later commanded Arafat's personal security detail during the Lebanese civil war, was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia for plotting attacks on Israelis in Jordan, and is allegedly implicated in a 2001 assassination plot against then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Now 46, he controls the strongest militia in Ain al-Hilweh.
But he has little problem with the idea of people from the camp going to fight in Iraq. In fact, he sent about 300 of his own men to fight in Iraq at the start of the war. "An Arab land is occupied," he says of Iraq, sitting in the garden of his home in the camp. "As Palestinians we understand this [idea of occupation], that it is the duty of every Arab who can to resist this or any occupation."
Today, he does not think it necessary to send more men to Iraq because the Iraqi insurgency doesn't need the help--and he wants to keep his men focused on the traditional foe, Israel. But many obstacles block the way to Israel, just a few dozen miles south of here--the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah militia, a high-tech fence, and, finally, the Israeli Army. Iraq, in contrast, can be reached by transiting Syria, perhaps with the help of a small bribe to border guards. "When crossing Syria, nobody but God knows what will happen. Some days it is easy; other days, everyone is arrested. You can never predict," says Jalil, who claims to have done it himself without incident and to know a dozen or so others who have as well. Most of them made it, he says, but one ended up in a Syrian jail for eight months.
So, American forces in Iraq become, almost by default, a proxy target for some Palestinian and Lebanese fighters. Suhail Natour, a human-rights lawyer and a former Palestinian militant, likens the conditions in the camps of Lebanon to a volcano: "If there's no way for the lava to go out, it will go where it can ... to Iraq."

Saniora Says Forecasters of Government's Demise Are 'Dreamers'
Prime Minister Fouad Saniora has labeled as 'dreams' all predictions of an imminent departure of his government, insisting his team would stay for as long as it enjoyed Parliament's confidence.
Speaking from Bkirki Saturday, Saniora also sought to allay mounting Christian fears of Shiite supremacy, kindled by street protests with sectarian connotations that occurred two weeks ago.
In Sunday's editions, An Nahar and other newspapers quoted the prime minister as saying that he reassured Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir that there would be no "deviation" from the power-sharing formula stipulated in the Taef Accord.
Speculations of an impending resignation of the government, he said, are dreams. "They exist only in the minds of dreamers."
As for a draft election law recently presented to the government by a specialized committee, Saniora insisted that it was not set in stone and intended only as a blueprint for the Lebanese, all Lebanese, to discuss.
Saniora's marathon days in Bkirki included a 50-minute tête-à-tête with the Maronite patriarch, followed by a luncheon attended by the prelate's most senior bishops.
He indirectly referred to the never-ending political tension with President Lahoud, the prime minister admitted that "certain issues keep delaying the work."
But he said he felt that recent weeks saw notable progress on the reform front, where the National Social Security Fund and the privatization process are concerned.
He said that even though its impact was not yet felt, the National Dialogue has achieved important consensus on key divisive issues: the investigation into Hariri's murder, the creation of an international tribunal to eventually try the suspects, the demarcation of the Syrian-Lebanese border and relations with Damascus.
He lamented, however, a lack of consensus on a comprehensive reform program, a prerequisite for the long-pending conference of the donor community.
Saniora refused to support or dismiss suggestions that a suspected pro-Israel spy ring was linked to the wave of bombings in Lebanon between Oct. 1, 2004, and Dec. 12, 2005.
If such a theory was deemed possible, he said, the government would seek the cooperation of the international commission investigating the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Saniora said that when he briefly met Syrian President Bashar Assad in Sudan on the fringes of the annual Arab summit, they agreed to formulate an agenda for his trip to Damascus. He has since worked with the Secretary-General of the Higher Lebanese-Syrian Council to set the agenda, but there has been no reaction from Damascus.(Photo courtesy of Al-Mustaqbal)
Beirut, 18 Jun 06, 09:28

Returning insurgents shape Lebanon's political climate
Fighters see war in Iraq as a model for future efforts
By ANTHONY SHADID-Washington Post
TRIPOLI, LEBANON - Abu Haritha still carries traces of the battles he fought in Iraq, 500 miles away.
On his hand is a black ring, a gift from a fellow insurgent after he was wounded in the torso in Fallujah by shrapnel. "For the memories," Abu Haritha said.
Under his black hair, peppered with gray, is a scar where, he recalled, a bullet had grazed his head. Every once in awhile, he watches videos lauding attacks carried out on his former battlefield and celebrates the exploits of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. At times, he regales colleagues with stories of American fear.
But for Abu Haritha, that battle is over. As he sits in this northern city, Lebanon's second-largest, he waits for what he believes will be a more expansive war beyond Iraq, a struggle he casts in the most cataclysmic of terms.
In the morning, he jogs; he lifts weights for hours at night. In between, with his cell phone ringing with the Muslim call to prayer, he proselytizes in streets that are growing ever more militant, sprinkled with the black banners that proclaim jihad and occasional slogans celebrating the resistance in Iraq.
"It's an open battle, in any place, at any time," he said calmly. "History has to record that there was resistance."
The war in Iraq has generated some of the most startling images in the Mideast today: a dictator's fall, elections in defiance of insurgents and carnage on a scale rarely witnessed.
Less visibly, though, the war is building a profound legacy across the Arab world: fear and suspicion over Iraq's repercussions, a generation that casts the Bush administration's policy as an unquestioned war on Islam, and a subterranean reserve of men who, like Abu Haritha, declare that the fight against the United States in Iraq is a model for the future.
Abu Haritha's home, Tripoli, is one of the war's most visible manifestations, a rough-and-tumble city being transformed by growing radicalism and religious fervor that may long outlast the death of Zarqawi and the U.S. presence in Iraq.
Militant currents grow
Here, and elsewhere, that militancy may be the inheritance of both the war and President Bush's aim of bringing democratic reform to the region. As those currents gather force, Abu Haritha waits with a certain ease, confident of what is to come.
"Iraq is a badge of honor for every Arab and Muslim to fight the American vampire," he said. "We have to face them so that history won't record they entered our land without confrontation."
Uncertain numbers
No one is quite sure of the number of fighters from Iraq who have returned to Tripoli. Abu Haritha said hundreds went to Iraq during the U.S. invasion in 2003, when the mobilization was so casual that organizers would openly recruit among jobless Lebanese Sunnis. He estimates that dozens more have gone since; 50 to 60 of them have died there, he said.
Abu Haritha, his nom de guerre, went by way of Saudi Arabia, after performing the Muslim pilgrimage. He traveled first to neighboring Jordan, then across the Iraqi border with an Islamic relief group that he declined to identify. He said he was in Baghdad, Mosul, then finally Fallujah.
The 40-year-old father of seven, who had honed his fighting skills in Lebanon's 15-year civil war, said other Lebanese, Syrians and Yemenis joined him in Fallujah. They were far outnumbered by Iraqis, but each group brought its own talents; the Yemenis, he said in admiration, were the toughest.
At a cafe in the old city of Tripoli recently, Bilal Shaaban, the leader of the Islamic Unity Movement, a Sunni group, reclined on a sofa and ticked off what he called the successes of Islamic activists like him in Egypt, the Palestinian territories and now Somalia.
"In every place, why does the Islamic current reach its goals?" he asked. "Because it expresses the people's sentiments against the Americans. It's a reaction to American policy. They are planting the seed of hatred that is going to last generations."
Radicals raise concerns
Lebanon's government has expressed concern over the influence of the most radical strains of Sunni militancy, incubated in Iraq, that have gathered strength in cities and refugee camps across the nation.
"The targeting of Iraq can be considered the first step in targeting the entire Middle East to impose a new order in the region," said Fathi Yakan, a founder of the Islamic Association and head of an umbrella group known as the Islamic Action Forces.
Fighters like Abu Haritha and activists like Shaaban and Yakan speak in almost mythical tones about what they call the resistance in Iraq.
In nearly every conversation, they make the assertion that the United States has, at this point, lost the war.
"We already consider it a success. It has already led to the failure of the American project in Iraq," Yakan, 73, said with a shrug that suggested the obvious. "I think the Americans realize that, and they are looking for an exit to wash their hands of it."
Some supporters of the insurgency say they fear the conflict will unleash a civil war, the country's partition and the spillover of tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to the rest of the Arab world.
That fear is particularly pronounced in Lebanon, where Shiites make up the single largest community.
"The smoke from the fire in Iraq is drifting over Lebanon," Shaaban said darkly.

Lebanon Denies Approving Nudist Beaches, Gay Rights Group
Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat denied charges by conservative Muslim clerics that the government had approved a gay rights group as well as nudist beaches at two Christian resorts.
"Contrary to what has been alleged in sermons in the mosques, we have authorized neither the Helem (Dream) Association nor the opening of nudist beaches at Jounieh and Jbeil (Byblos)," the minister said Saturday.
"These reports manufactured by certain preachers and a section of the press are without foundation," he added.
Homosexuality remains outlawed in Lebanon as an offence "against nature" and carries a jail term of six months to a year.
But in the year since it began operation, the Helem Association said it had noticed an easing of the attitude of sections of the police, judiciary and press towards its campaign for decriminalization.
A petition seeking prosecution of the gay rights group filed by a Beirut city councilor earlier this year was rejected by the attorney general's office, which ruled that the group's operation of an office and a website did not constitute an offence.(AFP) Beirut, 18 Jun 06, 07:59

Aoun's Approach to Tiff with Syria: "Let's Have Coffee" in Damascus
Michel Aoun, Lebanon's maverick presidential aspirant and controversial politician, wants to solve the dispute with Syria the Lebanese way: "Let's knock on their door and say we're here for coffee."
The former army commander, who heads the Reform and Change bloc in Parliament, spoke Saturday in one of his almost daily rants against the government.
Aoun believes that the departure of the government and a shrinking of the 72-majority bloc in Parliament would assure him the presidential post, given his present alliance with the Shiites, notably Hizbullah and Amal.
In his latest statement, Aoun renewed calls for new parliamentary elections that would rectify the perceived imbalance created in spring 2005. He claimed the last polls, hard on the heels of the Feb. 14, 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, were held "in emotional circumstances" that secured victory for the slain ex-premier's political heirs over Syria's allies in Lebanon.
Beirut, 18 Jun 06, 09:53

Sects and Death in the Middle East
The culture that gave rise to Zarqawi.
by Lee Smith -06/26/2006, Volume 011, Issue 39
Beirut
It's unclear how damaging the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi will be to the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. But the admiration of sympathizers like Hamas, which called him a "brother-fighter," reminds us that he was not just a blood-drenched killer and lowlife. He was also the product of his region. The impact of his career on his extremist peers and the Middle East's Sunni mainstream will therefore bear close watching.
Even happier than the White House at his demise are Middle Eastern minorities, especially the Shiites, for they, rather than the Americans, were at the core of his exterminationist program. For Sunnis, the Shiites have always been barely tolerable heretics, but Zarqawi took this traditional loathing to new heights. Shortly before his death, he called Lebanon's fanatical Islamist militia Hezbollah a cover for Israel--because, after all, they were Shiites who stood between the Zionists and the wrath of the Sunni resistance.
Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah and supporters were most certainly appalled and quite possibly terrified. After all, one reason for waging the "resistance" against Israel is to prove that the minority Shiites are Arabs in good standing just as much as the majority Sunnis. Indeed, since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has been bragging that it was the first Arab group to make the Zionists taste defeat, and thus that the Shiites had managed to out-Sunni the Sunnis.
In effect, Zarqawi said he saw through the charade, and that Hezbollah should disarm--a demand that reminds us why it is
probably going to be impossible to convince Nasrallah to give up his weapons peacefully. Hezbollah may well believe its own rhetoric--that only its militia can protect Lebanon from Israel. But the Shiites also have to worry that, if they put down their guns, they are vulnerable to Sunni violence, a threat that Zarqawi's spectacular Iraq campaign made very real to Shiites across the region. Thus, in response to the insult that he was doing the work of the Zionists, Nasrallah described Zarqawi in similar terms: "The killers in Iraq, no matter what sect they belong to, are Americans and Zionists and CIA and Mossad agents."
This Arab habit of blaming everything on the United States, or Israel, or the West in general, strikes many observers as evidence of faulty logical processes, or an abdication of basic political responsibility. But it is also part of an unspoken ceasefire pact--a reminder among Arabs that they have agreed not to attack each other and will focus their energies on external enemies in order to keep the peace at home.
For over half a century, Arab leaders from Nasser to Nasrallah have all sounded the same note--we Arabs are in a battle to the death against Israel, the United States, the West, colonialism, etc. Zarqawi broke that pact. We Sunnis are Arabs, said Zarqawi, but you lot are Shia and we will kill you.
And so Ayman al-Zawahiri's letter last year urging Zarqawi to leave the Shiites alone and focus on the Americans indicates that, at least compared with the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, the al Qaeda home office is staffed by rather mainstream Arab demagogues. Many Arabs believe that Israel would be lost without U.S. support. The same holds true in the bin Laden-Zawahiri worldview, where Washington is the only thing protecting weak Arab regimes from jihadist takeovers. Zarqawi believed, for whatever combination of religious, political, criminal, and sociopathic rationales, that to truly set the region in flames and bring down the established order, you get the people to fight each other.
Zarqawi tapped into the id of the region, the violent subterranean intra-Arab hatreds that no one wants to look at very closely, neither locals nor foreigners, because the picture it paints is so dauntingly gruesome that it suggests the Middle East will be a basket case for decades to come.
A RECENT ZOGBY POLL on Arab TV-watching habits explained that Al Jazeera remains the most watched station in the region for foreign news. Curiously, the poll ignored Iraq, where 80 percent of the population, Shiites and Kurds, are not apt to patronize a media outlet that regards them as little more than fodder for the heroic Sunni struggle against the Americans and Zionists.
That other 20 percent of Iraq was Zarqawi's target constituency, his Sunni base, and it is a much, much larger number outside of Iraq. It includes not just takfiris like himself--extremists who believe in murdering infidels and heretics. It comprises a mournful Hamas government, elected by a majority of Palestinians, and "moderate" Islamists like the four parliamentarians from Jordan's Islamic Action Front now facing prosecution for openly lamenting the death of a man who had repeatedly targeted the Royal Hashemite Kingdom. Certainly not all Sunni Arabs approved of Zarqawi's tactics, but many agreed that someone had to put the Shiites back in their place lest they misunderstand what is in store for them once the Americans leave.
Last year, Jordan's King Abdullah famously warned of a Shiite crescent--a sphere of influence running from Iran to Lebanon--and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has accused
Shiites of being more loyal to Iran than the countries they live in. And these are the heads of the two major Arab states that are almost devoid of Shiites. Feelings run even higher elsewhere in the region.
In Saudi Arabia, the mere existence of Shiites in the Eastern Province threatens not only the kingdom's primary source of income, oil, but also the very legitimacy of Wahhabi rule. After all, as true Wahhabis, shouldn't they be converting or killing Shiites, as the founder of the country, Ibn Saud, once insisted? Further west in Syria, the Sunni majority has been grating for more than 40 years under the rule of a Shia sect, the Alawites, who have now cost the Sunni merchant class in both money and prestige. The Assad regime has so isolated Syria from the rest of the international community that its only ally is the Islamist Republic of Iran. And then there is Lebanon, where Hezbollah has effectively usurped the mantle of Arab militancy from the Sunnis.
To your average Joe Sunni, then, it's good that Osama bin Laden kills Americans. And it's wonderful that the Palestinian groups kill Israelis. But Zarqawi was the man in the trenches who went after the heretics that Sunni Arabs all actually have to live with every day, and have successfully kept in their place for a millennium now, and don't ever want overturning the scales.
THE SECTARIANISM OF IRAQ has been topic A in Washington ever since the war began. And yet it is not merely a temporary eruption at a time of crisis, but rather a permanent and defining feature of every Arab society, and you don't have to scratch beneath the surface of things to find it. Sometimes, it's just gossip and banter, as in Lebanon, where I've heard Sunni women talk about the disgusting way that Shiites hang their laundry. A Christian friend married to a Shiite confided his concern that their daughter's fashion sense was becoming gaudily Shiite. The Sunnis say, eat with a Druze but sleep with a Christian--meaning the Christians are filthy but the Druze are untrustworthy and will slaughter you in your bed. Some exchange Jew for Druze.
Other times, the gossip turns to folk wisdom. Some Sunnis really believe that Shiites have little tails. And there are scores of volumes of age-old Shiite propaganda about the bizarre sexual practices of Sunnis. Much of the sectarian enmity, in fact, partakes of sexual loathing and envy. Sunni women, for instance, are famously believed by their detractors to relish anal sex. Recently, Hezbollah supporters surrounded a Sunni neighborhood in Beirut, where they insulted deputy Saad al-Hariri, chanting "the c--of his sister, the c--of his mother."
Many Arabs believe that Syria's Alawites engage in pagan orgies where men sleep with each other's wives, or with their daughters, or with each other. Osama bin Laden's mother, as it happens, is an Alawite, which is strange only in that the 14th-century jurist and father of modern jihad Ibn Taymiyya, one of bin Laden's role models, thought the Alawites were "more infidel than Jews or Christians, even more infidel than many pagans." He wrote, "War and punishment in accordance with Islamic law against them are among the greatest of pious deeds and the most important obligation."
Of course, most people don't speak about sectarian hatreds publicly. In Syria, the Alawite government has made it very dangerous to talk about sects. In Lebanon, people are too polite to ask you directly what you are, and so to find out, they will ask you your last name, your neighborhood, your school, your father's name, his hometown. The well-educated Arab classes are especially careful about speaking in sectarian terms in front of Westerners, because, as elites talking to elites, they believe that Westerners think religious faith is bizarre to begin with and sectarianism evidence of a primitive society. To hear many Iraqi officials and journalists describe their country, there is so much intermarriage between the sects and tribes that their Iraq, the non-Zarqawi Iraq, actually looks something like a page out of the New York Times wedding announcements. And to be fair, a case can be made that 20th-century Iraq was at times among the most cosmopolitan of Arab societies.
But to downplay sectarian issues is to risk misunderstanding the real problems in Iraq. There are already scores of books and articles detailing how the Bush team screwed up the war or the postwar occupation, some written by former administration employees, others the mea culpas of self-described onetime true believers. But the biggest problem in Iraq isn't really the stupidity or arrogance or incompetence of the Bush administration. The real stumbling block isn't getting Iraq's electricity or water on full blast. Police and army recruits aren't bound and tortured before they are decapitated or shot in the head because of premature or insufficient de-Baathification, or because the State Department and the Pentagon were fighting over the role of Ahmad Chalabi. Americans should have provided better security, and more overwhelming force. But the political and religious cover so amply offered to the assassins of ordinary Iraqis did not issue from the office of the Coalition Provisional Authority or the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. No American exhorted Sunni or Shiite gangs to butcher their neighbors. The American arguments over Iraq sometimes achieve truly astonishing levels of parochialism and self-obsession. The problem in Iraq is Iraq. More broadly speaking, it is the problem of Arab society. Intolerance of the other, fear of the other, is always there.
OSAMA BIN LADEN, some Middle Eastern wags like to joke, is the father of Arab democracy, for without September 11, the United States would have gone on ignoring the region. But Zarqawi is the real radical, for he exploited and illuminated the region's oldest and deepest hatreds. And he stayed on message until it was very difficult to argue that the root causes of violence in the Middle East are colonialism, imperialism, and Zionism.
Zarqawi made it clear, if it wasn't already, that a more "even-handed approach" toward the Israeli-Palestinian crisis will not really defuse tensions in the Middle East. That particular problem, at least in its political dimensions, goes back at most only to 1860; the Sunni-Shiite split begins with the death of the prophet Muhammad. Zarqawi also made it clear, if it wasn't already, that getting U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia will not really calm jihadi fervor, because the American military is just one among the many valuable targets the jihadists see in the greater Middle East.
The world looks like a different place thanks to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, for without him the obtuse, the partisan, and the dishonest would still have room to talk about root causes and such stuff and reason away mass murder and sectarian fear and loathing. Zarqawi clarified things. If his death turns out to be a turning point in the war or the political development of Iraq, we will not know for many years, maybe decades. But it will only be a turning point if, having held up a mirror to the people who quietly cheered him on, they recoil from what he showed them.
***Lee Smith, a Hudson Institute visiting fellow based in Beirut, is writing a book on Arab culture.

Mubark tries to ease tensions between Amman and Damascus
Posted: 18-06-2006 , 15:51 GMT
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak met Jordanian King Abdullah II to discuss "certain Arab differences" and efforts to resolve them - a reference to recent tensions between Amman and Damascus.
The two leaders met at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where Mubarak is slated to meet his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, official sources told AFP.
In comments to the Egyptian weekly Akhbar al-Youm Saturday, Mubarak said the summits were aimed at "sorting out differences" between Syria and Jordan.
A few months ago, the Jordanian government announced the arrest of an undisclosed number of members of Hamas, who it said received orders from a leader based in Syria to carry out attacks on officials in the kingdom. Damascus dismissed the accusations.At the Red Sea resort, Mubarak and Abdullah also discussed the Palestinian question and how to push forward the inter-Palestinian dialogue.© 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

Spoof enrages Hezbollah Leader mocked on Christian TV show
Shiites take to streets of Beirut bastion
Jun. 2, 2006. 01:00 AM
SAM F. GHATTAS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT, Lebanon—Thousands of Shiite Muslims enraged by a TV comedy that mocked the leader of Hezbollah took to the streets of southern Beirut last night, burning car tires and blocking roads, police and witnesses said.
The trouble began after an actor spoofed Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, wearing the Hezbollah leader's trademark black turban and sporting a similar beard and spectacles on a show on Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., a privately owned Christian channel. Thousands of Hezbollah supporters went on the streets of southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. They carried pictures of Nasrallah and shouted their support. They blocked the road to the airport, but officials said the country's only air facility remained open. The unrest spread to other Shiite neighbourhoods of Beirut, where rioters blocked roads and burned car tires, the officials said. Troops blocked roads in the commercial centre in downtown Beirut to stop Hezbollah supporters riding on motorcycles from reaching the area.
Pro-Nasrallah protests also erupted in southern and eastern Lebanon, predominantly Shiite parts of the country where Hezbollah enjoys wide support, TV stations said.
The protests reflected the tension between pro- and anti-Syrian camps. Pro-Syrian factions accuse the parliamentary majority of working for the U.S.
A Hezbollah broadcast said the show had "insulted the symbol of the resistance and its leader.''
Hezbollah enjoys wide support among Lebanon's Shiite community of 1.2 million people, believed to be the largest sect in this nation of 3.5 million people.
Guerrillas of Hezbollah, which the United States lists as terrorist organization, frequently clash with Israeli forces along the south Lebanese border.
The group has rejected international and domestic calls to disarm, saying weapons are needed to defend Lebanon against possible Israeli attack.

Despite Common Enemies, al-Zarqawi and Hizbullah Have Little in Common
By Donna Abu-Nasr-The Associated Press
To the outside world, the two groups appear to have a lot in common. They're both Muslim militants with strong anti-Israel and anti-U.S. ideologies. Washington considers both terrorist organizations.
But this is one case where the saying 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' does not apply, because the enmity between al-Qaida in Iraq and Lebanon's Hizbullah rivals their animosity toward Israel.
That hatred has so far been restricted to words: a fiery diatribe in which al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, just a week before he was killed in a June 7 U.S. airstrike, accused the Lebanese Shiite group of being a protective buffer against attacks from south Lebanon on Israel.
Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the man al-Qaida says is al-Zarqawi's successor and who may also be known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has reportedly vowed to complete what his predecessor has begun -- a plan that includes a brutal campaign against Shiites aimed at sparking a Sunni-Shiite civil war.
Such violence has the potential to spread throughout the largely Sunni Arab world to areas where Shiites live.
In his last audiotape, al-Zarqawi accused Hizbullah, which spearheaded the guerrilla warfare against Israel's 18-year occupation of a buffer zone in south Lebanon, of having "serious ties" with the Jewish state.
"The party (Hizbullah) has raised false banners regarding the liberation of Palestine while in fact it stands guard against Sunnis who want to cross the border" into Israel, al-Zarqawi said.
Nawaf al-Mussawi, the Hizbullah politburo member in charge of international relations, said al-Zarqawi was a U.S.-Israeli tool used against Arab resistance groups. al-Zarqawi's call for Hizbullah to give up its weapons -- in line with the agreement that ended Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution -- is proof, he said.
"His criminal acts aimed at igniting civil wars and inciting sectarian fighting," al-Mussawi told The Associated Press.
"We will not permit the United States, Israel or its tools to kindle any kind of conflict in Lebanon -- between Christians and Muslims or between Shiites and Sunnis," he added.
Analysts link the accusations in al-Zarqawi's audiotape to a December attack from south Lebanon in which a barrage of rockets was fired into northern Israel. The Jewish state retaliated with airstrikes on a Palestinian base in central Lebanon. Al-Zarqawi claimed the attacks, saying they were "the beginning of the blessed work of striking deep into the Zionist enemy, according to instructions of Osama bin Laden."
Al-Zarqawi's claim of responsibility for the attack on Israel likely displeased Hizbullah, which would have seen it as an encroachment on its turf in south Lebanon.
The strike was seen as part of al-Qaida in Iraq's efforts to spread its brand of violence to other parts of the Arab world. Last year, it claimed responsibility for a Nov. 9 triple suicide bombing in the Jordanian capital, Amman, that killed 60 people, and an Aug. 19 rocket attack in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba that killed a Jordanian soldier.
"The impression among al-Qaida activists is that Hizbullah is guarding Israel's northern border instead of protecting Lebanon's southern frontier," said Faris bin Hizam, a Saudi journalist who closely follows al-Qaida.
"This could be the immediate source of the dispute between the two groups besides al-Zarqawi's distaste for Shiites," he added. "Al-Zarqawi's dream was to fight the Shiites everywhere -- even if they were in Sweden."
Other analysts saw in al-Zarqawi's accusation an attempt to discredit the Lebanese group that is popular among Arab Sunnis for its fight against Israel.
"His personal hatred of the Shiite faith would've precluded him from even being seen to be supporting Hizbullah's activities even though they are both organizations which call for the destruction of Israel," said Richard Evans, terrorism editor at Jane's Information Group in London.
Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on radical groups, noted that it was the first time an Islamist group criticized Hizbullah.
Indeed, bin Laden, whose fundamentalist Wahabi strain of Islam considers Shiites heretics, has refrained from attacking the sect and has always presented himself as trying to eliminate strife among Muslims, Evans noted.
"He may, as an austere Salafist, have no particular love for Shiites or Hizbullah, but I'm not aware that he's ever singled them out for specific criticism," Evans said.
Al-Zarqawi's policy in Iraq reflected "his personal hatred of Iraq's Shiite population and his belief that if any form of a Sunni Islamist state were to be established in Iraq that could only be achieved with the defeat of any Shiite-led Iraqi government," he added.
Ibrahim Bayram, a Lebanese journalist who follows Hizbullah, said he did not expect the group to get into a dispute with al-Zarqawi's group.
"Hizbullah is very sensitive about getting involved in a sectarian quarrel," said Bayram, who writes for the Lebanese An-Nahar daily. "It's very keen on keeping its image pure where the Sunnis are concerned because of its relations with Sunni groups, like the Palestinian ones."
Hizbullah has maintained close ties to several Arab Sunni militant groups, including the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which it has provided with financial support and, allegedly, military training. Both groups have been able to bridge the centuries-old Sunni-Shiite ideological divide with Hizbullah because they focus more on political interests than on religious zealotry.
A 10-day Hizbullah fundraising campaign for Hamas recently ended. The group did not say how much money it raised, but its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, said individuals each donated from "1,000 Lebanese pounds (US$0.67) to US$10,000."
Beirut, 18 Jun 06, 08:07