DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - LEBANON: WHERE ISN'T THERE A FRONTLINE OF JIHAD?!? COME ON, THE MOSLEM JIHAD RAGES EVERYWHERE AT ALL TIMES ! ! !

Lebanon now a frontline for radical Islamists
Published Date: June 26, 2007 By Michel Moutot

A call by Al-Qaeda number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri to flood Lebanon with foreign Islamic extremists appears to have been heard, according to analysts monitoring jihadist groups here. Last year during the 34-day war between Israel and the Shiite Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden's Egyptian deputy exhorted Muslims to "support the mujahedeen" and to "transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine with the aid of Allah." Since 2003 anti-American insurgents have been coming and going between Lebanon and Iraq, Lebanese and foreign analysts say. They use Lebanon as a base for rest and recuperation and to train.

Last year after the July-August war a previously unknown organization calling itself Fatah Al-Islam announced its presence in the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Grouping radical Lebanese Sunni Muslims, veterans of the Iraq insurgency and foreign extremists, it espoused views similar to those of Al-Qaeda. Since May 20 this year, Fatah al-Islam fighters have been under siege by the Lebanese army at the refugee camp in a continuing standoff that has so far killed at least 157 people, including 80 soldiers and more than 55 Islamists.

The Lebanese authorities and foreign analysts based in Beirut say the Nahr Al-Bared siege is just the tip of the iceberg. "Al-Qaeda is present in Lebanon," Defense Minister Elias Murr has said. "There are terrorist cells ready to strike and there are threats of new attacks." Overnight on Saturday, security forces raided the apartment of an Islamist in the northern port city of Tripoli, sparking a firefight with Fatah Al-Islam that resulted in the deaths of 10 people including six Islamists.

"Nahr Al-Bared could make things worse," said one Western diplomat in Beirut who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity. "Ninety percent of Lebanese support their army, but an active minority will be susceptible to radical propaganda. On the Internet they call the Christian head of state the 'crusader general', and the impact of pictures of US planes with cargoes of weapons at Beirut airport has been devastating."

Washington supplied military equipment to Lebanon to help the army in its battle against the Islamists holed up inside Nahr Al-Bared. A rumour is also circulating among jihadist Internet forums that ships from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon patrolling the coast after last year's war have fired on Nahr Al-Bared. "It's false, of course," said the diplomat. "But if enough people believe it that doesn't matter - the effect is the same."

In Tripoli a man so close to local Sunni radicals that he did not want to be identified told AFP that among the militants in Nahr Al-Bared are some who fought against the army in Denniyeh. In December 1999 Sunni fighters battled the army in that mountainous region east of Tripoli. Thirty people were killed, among them 11 soldiers and 15 militants. "I know that Fatah Al-Islam has cells in Tripoli. They are keeping a low profile so they are not discovered. They are being monitored, but they are still at liberty. What are they planning exactly?" he said.

Retired army general Whebe Katisha called the situation very worrying. "From now on the military will try to prevent the militants from basing themselves inside secure areas such as some Palestinian refugee camps. Drain the water to expose the fish. There may be isolated cells inside." By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army does not enter the 12 official Palestinian refugee camps in the country, leaving interior security to Palestinian factions.

Commentator Elias Hanna, another retired general, told AFP that "the army gave a deterrent example in Nahr Al-Bared for other groups" of extremists. "It was a good base, close to the Syrian border, easy to manipulate for Damascus intelligence. It's not going to be so easy in other camps, where Palestine Liberation Organization influence is stronger." According to the Western diplomat, "Lebanon is no longer a base in the rear - it is the front line. The seed has been planted. "Nahr Al-Bared will radicalize some groups and enable their plans to take root. And if the Fatah al-Islam leaders never come out they will become legends, new Zarqawis," he said, referring to Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the former head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed by a US air strike last year.


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