A pro-Lebanese army propaganda video denounces Fatah al-Islam as terrorists and defilers of Islam.
As the Lebanese Army’s battle with Fatah al-Islam militants in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp winds to a close, there is much chatter here about the long term ramifications of the over two-month long siege.
The initial take on the battle for Nahr Al Bared focused on the radicalization of the Palestinian liberation movement, pointing out that in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanese refugee camps there was clearly a more virulent strain of militancy taking root. But there may be far broader and more troubling ramifications of what we’ve seen at Nahr al Bared. There is a growing chorus of concern that this country will be a likely next target for global Jihadis now preoccupied in Iraq.
There are two reasons the Lebanese make a very attractive Act II for Islamic militants now battling the US in Iraq.
1) Though Syria has been the principal target of US accusations about stoking the insurgency, Lebanon’s role has not been insignificant. The largely autonomous Palestinian camps here are widely believed to have been a principal starting point for many Iraq-bound jihadis from all over the Muslim world. Aspiring mujahideen were directed to Palestinian camps in Lebanon, likely with some Syrian guidance, where they were tapped into networks and provided preliminary training. These camps then acted as the beginning of well-traveled rat routes through Lebanon, into Syria and then into Iraq. One need only visit camps like Ein al-Hilweh south of Beirut to find dozens of posters of martyrs from the camp who have blown themselves up in Iraq. What this means is that when these same mujahideen gear up to leave Iraq, the paths they will be most comfortable traveling will be the same human smuggling routes leading back to Lebanon that they came in on.
2) More importantly, the insurgency in Iraq has learned a valuable lesson: stoking sectarian tensions is a surefire way to sow chaos and discord, topple loathed regimes, and generally disrupt the order of things. Is there any riper target for repeating that formula for jihadi success than Lebanon? This country is a sectarian tinderbox ruled by a weak West-backed regime. If I were a Jihadi leader planning my next battle I would look no further.
20 responses so far ↓
1 Abu Muqawama // Aug 2, 2007 at 6:23 pm
One more thing, though, and that’s the precedent the LAF’s assault on Nahr al-Bared set within Lebanon. For over 40 years an angreement in place between the Arab regimes prohibited the LAF from entering the camps. But now, after Nahr al-Bared, a precedent has been established whereby the LAF could conceivably enter any one of the camps and conduct operations to disarm radical elements like Ansar al-Islam or whoever.
UNSCR 1559, passed in 2004, called for the disarmament of all militias and the withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence from Lebanon. Folks understandably focus on Hizbollah when reading that first section, but in truth it was always meant to include the Palestinian militias as well — not all of whom live in the camps.
Since 2004, there has been a political barrier — not a military one — to the LAF actually disarming the Palestinian groups. But who knows whether or not the ground rules have now changed?
What is certain is that the LAF needs a serious upgrade in small unit training and equipment. Somehow I think the U.S. will be willing to help on both counts.
2 Mahmud // Aug 2, 2007 at 11:45 pm
“What is certain is that the LAF needs a serious upgrade in small unit training and equipment. Somehow I think the U.S. will be willing to help on both counts.”
Seriously, I am far from a Jihadi, but it does show a remarkable amount of tenacity on the part of FAI that they have survived and are still able to be militaraily effective two months on. Heavily outnumbered, against a foe with artillery and some degree of air support, they`ve managed to hang on for over two months, and inflict more casualties on the LAF than they`ve taken. True they have presumably been preparing for this for a while and are fighting on familiar ground, but whatever happens, it is a loss in the media war.
Also, it is ironic, that the music in that propaganda video was also used for the 300 trailer
(300 soldiers fighting to the death against impossible odds and a much larger force? weird choice)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/300/trailer2/medium.html
3 Mahmud // Aug 2, 2007 at 11:50 pm
also! charles, check out the new International Crisis Group report, its been saying alot of the stuff that you have
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4975&rss=1
good read (not done it yet, but so far its pretty well done)
4 ns // Aug 3, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Charles,
Would love to see citations on this interesting analysis. Are the martyrs posters in Ein al-Hilweh of foreign fighters? That would seem odd.
Thanks
5 Ergo // Aug 3, 2007 at 11:07 pm
The Arabs should aid their Palestinian brethren, not kill them. It’s a sad day when the Arab nations have more in common with the zionists than they do with the people they are supposed to protect.
6 rina // Aug 4, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Ergo:
“It’s a sad day when the Arab nations have more in common with the zionists than they do with the people they are supposed to protect.”
Er, no.
Actually, when the Arab nations and Israel have more in common (peace agreements, trade agreements, water desalination projects, confronting ideology-based violence, etc.) it will be a very good day indeed for all concerned.
But you can’t even bring yourself to call Israel by its name, choosing instead the term which is widely used in the Arab world as a curse-word.
The idea that the Arabs should always stick together against the foreigners, no matter who’s right and who’s wrong, is sickeningly xenophobic. I hope your worldview is not representative.
7 Kebz // Aug 4, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Less sickeningly xenophobic than denying building permits to Arab Israelis and Palestinians whilst granting them to jews. Less sickeningly xenophobic than not allowing Israelis who marry Palestinians to live together in Israel. No more xenophobic than stoning arab kids on the way to school. Zionism is not the same as anti-semitism no matter how you try to spin it. Zionism at heart is a racist ideology that lays claim to somebody elses land and property. It will be a good day when Israel stops its territorial expansion and agrees to talks on substantial issues rather than dealing in red herrings. Israel engages in ideology based violence everyday. Stop the hypocrisy.
8 rina // Aug 5, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Kebz,
I guess if one believes that Israelis have the right to live and breathe and defend themselves, then one is a raving Zionist? That’s nonsense. History aside, there are now generations of people who were born in Israel. They didn’t lay claim to anyone’s land. They don’t have anywhere to go. And I don’t believe that the children are responsible for the sins of their fathers.
I’m not a fan of Israel’s policies and I firmly believe that it should dismantle all settlements, sit down and talk peace. OK? So stop hurtling accusations at me. Or, come to think of it, don’t stop, knock yourself out. I couldn’t care about you personally one way or another, it’s just so frustrating to see so many people indulge their self-righteousness at the expense of fairness, on both sides.
Israel is full of people with very different points of view; “stoning the Arab kids on the way to school” is not a national pastime as far as I know and the lads from the territories who do stuff like that are not very popular with the general public.
“Israel engages in ideology based violence everyday.”
Yeah, well, so does the other side. That’s the point.
I’m happy to join the chorus that condemn Israel’s policies towards the occupied territories and I’m very frustrated with some of the popular attitudes in that country, but I bulk at the wholesale demonization of its people and I find the argument that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state just obscene. Every people has a right to its cultural identity – that includes the Palestinians, of course. (Actually, I would much prefer if everyone intermarried and forgot about tribal affiliations altogether, erased national borders, shed religion completely, and got rid of every last vestige of bigotry of any kind. Until then, I think singling out Israel is hypocritical.)
9 Kebz // Aug 5, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I am not making this personal but you are insisting that occupation equals self-defence. I simply will not accept that. You would be less hypocritical if you also recognised the right of Palestinians to exist as a Palestinian state free from repression and occupation but you refuse to say this. Instead you choose to forget the fact that most Israelis (except orthodox and arab) serve in the IDF under a draft. Most are duty bound to murder and maim Palestinians in the course of their duty. That is not wholesale demonisation of a people but your interpretation of me stating a real fact. If the Israeli peace lobby were truly ascendant, there would be nobody happier than I. Nobody actually argues about Israels right to exist except those who like Israel to be treated like a victim when it is not. Recognition has to be two way street and it WILL happen if Israel follows the path of peace instead of stoking violence by maintaining its policies. Those policies seem to be invisible to you. Generalisations about good intentions, peace and intermarriage are all good in theory but they do not address what Israel is doing or what is should cease to do. As things stand, the government legislates and even acts against its OWN citizens that are Arabs because they are NOT Jewish. That is not the fault of the settlers nor the terrorists. That is actually government policy of an elected government. You claim the settlers are unpopular and fair enough a fair minority probably agree with you. However, look at the policies that get the settlers their land, their roads and their water supply. It comes from the government whichever party is elected. Take a look at the map of the West bank highlighting which areas are walled off, occupied and divided and you will see the practical effects of the government policies. Peaceful people like you should take a stand against those current policies of the government that in the long term are harmful to Israel. I accept that you condemn the activities of the settlers but the picture is a whole lot more complex than that. Past grievances from decades ago cannot all be addressed but the current policies can be changed if everybody is to live in peace. Study the work of people like Conflicts Forum and you will find out that even those who you demonise have a lot in common with you. Blithely bleating about Israel being the victim will not help Israel. What will help Israel is a willingness to stop persecution and stopping the racist legislation it is enacting even as we speak. Peace.
10 observer // Aug 5, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Abu Muqawama is quite right about the LAF needing significant improvement in small unit leadership and tactics, although I would extend this to medium-sized formations too. It is a bit odd that FI is (salvo?) firing rockets this late in the day from a camp with almost no open space…
By the way, its not quite true to say “For over 40 years an angreement in place between the Arab regimes prohibited the LAF from entering the camps. ” Not only did the 1969 Cairo Agreement NOT bar the LAF from the camps (although this is what happened in practice), it was also annulled by the Lebanese parliament in 1987.
11 rina // Aug 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Kebz,
You confuse me with an Israeli. I live in the US and my ability to personally influence the Israeli policy is zero.
You said:
“You would be less hypocritical if you also recognized the right of Palestinians to exist as a Palestinian state free from repression and occupation but you refuse to say this.”
Bollocks. I said several times that I believe that the Palestinians have the same rights as the Israelis and I absolutely believe that they should have their own state and the solution should be equitable on every account.
“Nobody actually argues about Israels right to exist…”
Bollocsk again. Have you read the Hamas charter? Heard Ahmadinejead? I wasn’t talking about you, anyway: I was reacting to someone else’s post here who referred to Israelis as “Zionists”: a common meme in the Arab world, where Israelis are referred to by their (supposed) ideology, not their nationality, presumably out of spite or because that nationality is not recognized as existent. You know, the same way as Americans in the good old days of Cold War referred to the citizens of the Soviet Union as “bolsheviks”, as if everybody there were brainwashed drones spouting ideology day and night. Same with the Israelis: most just people want to live, study, work, have children, go on vacation, what-have-you. “Oppressing Palestinians” in not a national sport, as far as I know.
12 Abu Muqawama // Aug 6, 2007 at 2:38 pm
“By the way, its not quite true to say “For over 40 years an angreement in place between the Arab regimes prohibited the LAF from entering the camps. ” Not only did the 1969 Cairo Agreement NOT bar the LAF from the camps (although this is what happened in practice), it was also annulled by the Lebanese parliament in 1987.”
Really? This was the civil war-era parliament, though, yeah? Can you point me in the direction of some references? Thanks — I obviously need to do some more reading on this.
13 Kebz // Aug 6, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Plenty of bollocks in your post again. I will make this the last post on this subject as it is getting out of hand. As usual you evade the specific point about ordinary Israelis serving in the forces. The Hamas charter is a piece of paper nothing more. They and their spokesmen have repeatedly said they would accept a Palestinian state based upon 1967 boundaries. The Israelis have far more pieces of paper ACTUALLY PUTTING INTO ACTION the policies of repression and apartheid. There are pieces of paper that call for the expulsion of all arabs, its funny how you choose not to focus on them. Funny, you should mention Ahmadine jad and what he didn’t say. I presume you too have been brainwashed by the media into thinking he said he wants to wipe Israel of the map. HE DIDNT FUCKING SAY IT. Read the real translations and the context. He was quoting Khomeini who predicted that the zionist RESHIME would vanish from the pages of time. That is he was making a fucking prediction. A crap one but still a prediction. Typically this was seized as evidence that he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. Bollocks. He and his spokesmen have confirmed that this is not what he was saying but the deliberately deaf obviously will not listen. Why the fuck hasn’t he wiped his own jews off the map? Yes, the same thousands of jews who live in Iran and whom Israel recently tried to buy for $60000 a piece to emigrate to Israel. Yes, I am sure he would like regime change in Israel and so would I. That is not the same thing as calling for fucking genocide which the lying bastards in the press are making it out to be. “Iran is not a threat to any country, and is not in any way a people of intimidation and aggression.” “Weapons research is in no way part of Iran’s program. Even with regard to the Zionist regime, our path to a solution is elections.” Juan Cole has this to say on Ahmadinejad:
I renew my call to readers to write protest letters to newspapers and other media every time they hear it alleged that Ahmadinejad (or “Iran”!) has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” There is no such idiom in Persian and it is not what he said, and the mistranslation gives entirely the wrong impression. Wars can start over bad translations.
It was apparently some Western wire service that mistranslated the phrase as ‘wipe Israel off the map’, which sounds rather more violent than calling for regime change. Since then, Iranian media working in English have themselves depended on that translation. One of the tricks of Right-Zionist propagandists is to substitute these English texts for Ahmadinejad’s own Persian text. (Ethan Bronner at the New York Times tried to pull this, and more recently Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute.) But good scholarship requires that you go to the original Persian text in search of the meaning of a phrase. Bronner and Rubin are guilty disregarding philological scholarship in favor of mere propagandizing.
These propaganda efforts against Iran and Ahmadinejad also depend on declining to enter into evidence anything else he has ever said– like that it would be wrong to kill Jews! They also ignore that Ahmadinejad is not even the commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces.
Anyone who reads this column knows that I deeply disagree with Ahmadinejad’s policies and am not interested in defending him on most things. I profoundly disagree with his characterization of Israel, which is a legitimate United Nations member state, and find his Holocaust denial monstrous. But this quite false charge that he is genocidal is being promoted by Right-Zionists in and out of Congress as a preparatory step to getting up a US war against Iran on false pretences. I don’t want to see my country destroyed by being further embroiled in the Middle East for the wrong reasons. If the Israeli hardliners and their American amen corner want a war with Iran, let them fight it themselves and leave young 18 year old Americans alone.
Also read this article by Jonathan Cook to find out more and stop swallowing the MSM propaganda. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18116.htm
14 rina // Aug 6, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Sorry, Kebz,
I stopped reading after the third “fuck”. Have a nice life.
15 Kebz // Aug 6, 2007 at 3:55 pm
The truth hurts.
16 rina // Aug 6, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Here we go again…
I’ll repeat, this time slowly: I am not an Israeli, I never served in an Israeli army, I am not in any way responsible for any decisions made by an Israeli army, government, or any other institution. I do not think that Jews have an alienable right to live in the ancient land of Israel just because some bronze-age book says they do. Stop yelling at me. You’re rude and you’re deaf to any argument but yours. This way you will not convert anyone to your cause, just the opposite.
If I were an Israeli and you a Palestinian, I woul’ve probably continued talking to you, because those two parties do have to find a way to coexist. As I’m not (and neither are you I take it), I don’t see why I should listen to an angry young man yelling at me for transgressions I did not commit.
So go yell at someone else now.
17 Kebz // Aug 6, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Lol. Facts: I didnt yell at you or try to convert you. I didn’t say anywhere that you were Israeli, you are jumping to conclusions again. I was not rude first, it was you that started with the word ‘bollocks’. You are deaf to all arguments as you show by your refusal to actually read what I write. The only arguments you know are those you recycle from reading propaganda in the mainstream media. Goodbye.
18 rina // Aug 6, 2007 at 8:58 pm
OK, I should know better than to keep this up, since you have an exceptionally hostile manner and I’m not enjoying this at all, but here goes.
“I didn’t say anywhere that you were Israeli, you are jumping to conclusions again.”
The point is that you pointed a big accusatory finger at me, who has no influence whatsoever on the events that you rant and rave about, and demanded that I condemn this or denounce that.
Besides, I believe that the Israelis DO HAVE a good reason to think that there are plenty of people out there who want to dismantle their state. Just one example which you seized upon: Ahmadinejead said was that Israel (he probably used some derogatory term like “Zionist entity” or something to that effect, I don’t remember) will be erased from the book of time. I think that was Juan Cole’s translation. No, this was not a threat of physical violence (he’s not so stupid as to do that), but rather an expression of wishful thinking that Israel as a country WILL disappear one day. This supported my point that there are plenty of people who want the state of Israel gone – yet you twisted my argument around and started yelling about the western media misrepresenting his words, my being brainwashed by them, etc., etc.
After that I just stopped reading.
To which you replied with the smug comment that truth hurts, which is both silly and extremely arrogant because, first of all, this is not a “truth” that would hurt *me* one way or another, and second and more important, it’s only *your* version of truth and not some kind of absolute and final “Truth”. Pardon me if I don’t see you as the gatekeeper of the latter.
What is so sad about this spat is that mine and your political differences are actually miniscule compared to that of real ideological foes – and yet we keep talking past each other. Twisting or ignoring my words and then triumphantly proclaiming that I’ve been brainwashed by mass media is a tired old trick. Anybody who disagrees with anybody uses it (the rabid right-wingers who accuse NYTimes, CNN, and such of being the mouthpieces of the evil liberal ideology throw this accusation around, the hard-left anti-Israel crowd does it on the basic of an exactly opposite claim, and everyone in-between indulges in it, too), but it’s not a real argument.
Obviously, the Israelis and the Palestinians have to find better ways to communicate than the one we just exhibited. Just as well that we are both irrelevant bystanders.
19 Italian // Aug 7, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Rina,
I don’t think this discussion has gone out of hand. You said politely, simply, and therefore all the more forcefully what was needed to be said. And this is very important.
20 Jihad rising in Lebanon // Sep 4, 2007 at 10:02 am
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