In recent years I and others have been warning that the growing number of conflicts in the Middle East is pushing the region toward new forms of radicalism and trouble. The clashes between the Lebanese Army and the Fatah Al-Islam extremist militants that have rocked parts of North Lebanon since Sunday are the latest face of that phenomenon. The fighting in and near Tripoli represents the local convergence of four separate conflicts that attest to the complex matrix of violence that plagues the Middle East today. The four are the uneasy legacy of tensions between various Lebanese forces and armed Palestinian refugee groups in the country, going back to the 1960s; the continued tensions between Syria and Lebanon since a popular uprising forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon two years ago; the regional spin-offs from the US-led war in Iraq; and, the expanding clashes as US President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror both battles and breeds assorted Islamist terror groups that pursue Al-Qaeda-like goals and tactics. The convergence of these four factors in the clashes in Tripoli this week is no surprise. Fatah Al-Islam has been slowly building up its band of several hundred heavily armed fighters in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp for nearly a year, while other militant Islamists have been expanding their small constituencies in north and south Lebanon. Lebanese, Palestinian and foreign officials alike have all expressed concerns about the potential for such extremists to gain a foothold in Lebanon. The fighting in Tripoli erupted after Lebanese security forces pursued a band of Fatah Al-Islam fighters who had robbed a bank, but the confrontation was inevitable in view of the steadily rising threat that such militants represented. Many Lebanese blame Syria for instigating the Fatah Al-Islam threat as one of the ways that Damascus allegedly seeks to keep Lebanon in a state of turmoil. Syria denies the charge. Lebanese accusers insist that Syria is trying to undermine the international tribunal being established to try the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and others in the past two years. Two bombs that exploded in Beirut Sunday and Monday night are also widely blamed on Syria as part of this alleged campaign of destabilization. An ongoing UN investigation of the Hariri and other murders has pointed the finger in the direction of Syria, but its final conclusions-and the all-important evidence it is expected to reveal-will not be made public until at least later this year. It is difficult to say precisely what Fatah Al-Islam represents. It is a small breakaway faction of the Syria-based and -backed Fatah Al-Intifada group that was created to oppose Yasser Arafat’s main Fatah guerrilla organization. Yet Fatah Al-Islam is less of a traditional Palestinian group and is very much in line with the bevy of small militant Islamist organizations that have sprung up around the Middle East since the advent of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. Though it is led by former Palestinian guerrillas, Fatah Al-Islam’s fighters come from half a dozen Arab countries, with a sprinkling of Asians as well. Mainstream Palestinian groups in Lebanon such as Fatah, Hamas and the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization all openly oppose it and see it as a threat to themselves and to Lebanon’s stability. The group’s several hundred fighters are concentrated in the Nahr Al-Bared camp but have also established small toeholds in adjacent Tripoli and also in a few other places in Lebanon, including refugee camps in the south. This latest eruption of urban violence should remind us of several basic facts that seem to get lost amidst the dramatic television pictures of yet another Arab country rocked by explosions and enveloped in smoke. The first is that any legitimate political grievance that is left to simmer for decades on end – like the Palestine refugee issue – will eventually boil over and cause new problems. The second is that using brute force to achieve unilateral political goals – as the United States has tried to do in Iraq – will inevitably spark a backlash. Some Fatah Al-Islam fighters boast of fighting the US in Iraq, suggesting that Iraq is breeding new and more virulent terrorists. A third reminder is that a Middle East bedeviled by multiple conflicts will inevitably see them link up with one another, as seems to be the case with the Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian-Lebanese conflicts converging into a single battle, at least this week. Where this convergent militarism rears its head next month is not clear – but you can bet your bottom dollar or dinar that it will, as long as tyrants run Arab countries, foreign armies invade other Arab countries, and Israel continues to refuse reasonable Arab offers to resolve the Palestine problem, in particular the refugee issue, peacefully.
Rami G. Khouriis published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.
