DAR AL HARB / ISLAM - LEBANON: FATAH AL ISLAM TO SET UP SHOP IN LEBANON?!? HIZ B'ALLAH NOT ENOUGH?!?

Fatah Al-Islam: the new terrorist threat hanging over Lebanon

Beirut fears that, on a background of political crisis, cells with links to Al-Qa'idah will set up shop.

Specialists in fighting terrorism are once again fixing their sights on Lebanon, where a growing number of alarm signals have gone off over the past year. In the spring of 2006, the United States accused two Lebanese and a Palestinian of wanting to blow up a train under the Hudson River in New York. Last summer, six persons of Lebanese origin were arrested in Germany as they were getting ready to place bombs on a rail line. The fear in Beirut now is that clandestine cells with links to Al-Qa'idah are going to set up shop and that the terrorist movement would try to exploit the worsening religious frictions between Shi'is and Sunnis and the weakness of the security services; two ingredients of the Iraqi chaos, whose spread to Lebanon is dreaded. Two years after the Syrian army's forced departure from Lebanon - on the heels of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri's assassination - the interests of the West, which supports the Siniora government against its pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian opponents, are now under threat. French General Alain Pellegrini, who left the command of the Blue Helmet force in Lebanon (UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon]) early this year, feels that "small Sunni groups affiliated with Al-Qa'idah" are now "the number one danger."

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Pertinent Links:

1) Fatah Al-Islam: the new terrorist threat hanging over Lebanon