Violence in Lebanon
Bloodshed in Lebanon
May 22nd 2007 | CAIRO
From Economist.com
Behind the latest round of violence
HEAVY fighting that erupted on Sunday May 13th between the Lebanese army and radical Islamists entrenched in a Palestinian refugee camp continued on Tuesday. With some 80 people killed so far, it is the bloodiest internal strife Lebanon has seen since the end of its 1975-1990 civil war. As the army tightened its siege of the Nahr al Bared camp, with perhaps 30,000-40,000 residents trapped inside, some 200 militants declared a fight to the death before, somewhat contradictorily, calling for a ceasefire in the middle of the afternoon. The latter seemed to fail almost immediately and the casualty toll looked certain to rise.
The clashes began after the Lebanese army stormed an apartment in the nearby city of Tripoli at dawn on Sunday, following leads that tied a recent series of bank robberies to a radical jihadist faction known as Fatah al Islam. The group responded with an attack on army positions around the refugee camp, where it is based. Although considered small and marginal, Fatah al Islam had been linked to at least one of the sporadic bomb attacks that have shaken Christian areas of Lebanon in recent years. Bomb blasts that struck two commercial streets in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Sunday and Monday, killing one woman, were also claimed by the group, although one of its spokesmen later denied it.
The violence comes at a difficult time for Lebanon, which was battered by a damaging war with Israel last summer. Since December the pro-Western government has been mired in a stand-off against a pro-Syrian coalition, led by the Shia party Hizbullah, over the opposition's demand for a veto-wielding share of cabinet seats. Although the fighting in the north pits a Sunni Muslim group against the multi-confessional national army, many Lebanese view the clash through the prism of this wider political contest.
Government officials have pointed fingers at Syria—which only ended a 29-year military presence in Lebanon in 2005—accusing it of seeking to destabilise its smaller neighbour in order to reassert control. Another alleged Syrian aim is to thwart the Beirut government's hope of setting up an international tribunal to try suspects in a sequence of political murders beginning with the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a five-time Lebanese prime minister. With the pro-Syrian opposition blocking efforts to pass a law to create the court, the UN Security Council is debating a move to establish it under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, which would allow sanctions to be imposed on countries that refuse to co-operate.
Although Syria has denied any connection to the assassinations, or to the current violence, there is evidence to support the charges against it. At the time of Mr Hariri's killing, he was engaged in rallying political forces to challenge Syria's dominance. Mass protests after his death shamed Syria into a troop pullout, but left in place many forces that concur with Syria's view of Lebanon as a bulwark against Western influence. Hizbullah, a protégé of Syria's ally Iran, defies UN resolutions by refusing to lay down its Syrian-supplied arms. Despite the battering by Israel it provoked last year, the group maintains a large and loyal following among Shias.
During Syria's long occupation most of Lebanon's 12 Palestinian camps were directly controlled by Syrian military intelligence. Syrian intelligence also infiltrated several radical jihadist groups, using them for dirty work both in Lebanon and in Iraq (against American troops). The leader of Fatah al Islam, whose ideology is close to that of al-Qaeda, is known to have been held in Syrian custody before resurfacing in Lebanon in 2005. Since then the group has recruited not only among Lebanon's 400,000 Palestinian refugees, many of whom are destitute and disillusioned by the failure of secular groups to better their lot, but also among international jihadists.
As the violence began, Palestinian factions united with Lebanon's rival parties in rare unanimous support of the army's action. But as the army, stung by the loss, so far, of 32 soldiers, has prolonged shelling of the crowded camp, protests have grown over the endangerment of civilian life. Lebanese opposition parties charge the government with having turned a blind eye to the growth of radical Sunni groups, insinuating that they were meant as a foil against Shias. Yet it appears that most Lebanese solidly back the army, and the government, for its part, seems determined to eradicate Fatah al Islam for good.
Bloodshed in Lebanon (The Economist)
