The worst threat ever faced by the Lebanese?

Fatah Al-Islam the worst threat ever faced by the Lebanese? I hardly think so. Why is he making them such a big deal? To justify the senseless killing of at least 42 civilians (probably more), misery of thousands of refugees and destruction of a camp perhaps? You know a crime has taken place when exaggerated claims like this are used to justify the attack.

Lebanese troops killed at least 222 Islamist militants in three months of fighting at a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, the defence minister says.

Elias Murr said 202 militants from the Fatah al-Islam group were captured since fighting erupted in May.

A number have been charged with murder and terrorist offences.

The Lebanese army finally took control of Nahr al-Bared camp on Sunday. At least 160 soldiers died in Lebanon’s worst internal violence since 1990.

At least 42 civilians were also killed in the fierce fighting, bringing the death toll to more than 400.

Mr Murr added that “an undetermined number” of Fatah al-Islam members were buried in mass graves in the camp by their comrades.

“This victory allowed us to put an end to the worst threat ever faced by the Lebanese,” he said.

“Fatah al-Islam could have spread throughout the country like cancerous cells.”

On Monday, there was a brief eruption of gunfire and explosions near the eastern edge of Nahr al-Bared as army units patrolled through the camp in search for remnants of Fatah al-Islam.

BBC News

“Army torturing Palestinian refugees”

Anand Gopal and Saseen Kawzally, Electronic Lebanon, Aug 14, 2007

BADDAWI REFUGEE CAMP, Northern Lebanon, 13 August (IPS) – Palestinians displaced by the fighting at the northern Lebanese refugee camp Nahr al-Bared have accused the Lebanese army of torturing and abusing civilians.

As the fighting between the Sunni Islamist group Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army enters its 12th week, thousands of Nahr al-Bared residents have sought refuge in the nearby Baddawi camp. Many give detailed descriptions of days spent in detention under harsh interrogation.

Fadi Wahbi, 36, told IPS that he was detained for questioning by the Lebanese army as he fled Nahr al-Bared with family members. He was held for two days at the nearby Kobbeh military base and then transported, along with other young and middle-aged men who fled the fighting, to what he believes was the Ministry of Defense in Beirut.

There Wahbi’s long ordeal began. Prison officials accused him of belonging to Fatah al-Islam, and kept him blindfolded in a crowded prison cell for eight days with scores of others similarly accused. When he insisted on his innocence, they began to beat him.

“Every time I said that I was not lying, they struck a blow,” he recalled. “I did not know where the blows were coming from. I spent most of the eight days blindfolded and without sleep.” Prison authorities also tortured Wahbi, twisting his extremities almost to the point where he lost consciousness. Later he said he was forced to stand in excruciating positions for days.

“I expected it to last an hour or two, but they kept me standing, handcuffed behind my back, blindfolded, for 36 hours,” he said. “Every two or three hours I would fall to the floor. As soon as I hit the floor, someone would beat me up against the wall. It happened five or six times. Then I started to like falling, because it meant I could rest my legs. It was so painful that I preferred to fall and rest for a few seconds, even if that meant being beaten.”

Dozens of Palestinians were kept in a single room, without space to sleep and unable to communicate with each other.

“We were never allowed to stretch our legs. We slept handcuffed, sitting with our backs to the wall and legs bent,” he said. “If you stretched your legs, someone was there to kick you on your legs.”

He was eventually sent back to Kobbeh in northern Lebanon, and managed to reach a nearby hospital after his release.

The psychological toll was extreme. Wahbi recalled that “at one point, I was seeing things. Unreal things. One time I imagined a door opening up in the wall that led me to my family. I stood up and ran into the wall. A guard came to me and shouted ‘What are you doing? Are you trying to hurt yourself? You are not allowed to hurt yourself, only we are allowed to hurt you.’ And he started beating me.”

Wahbi’s story mirrors the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians, most of whom are too terrified to speak on the record. Milad Salameh, a nurse at the Shifa’ Clinic in the Baddawi camp, says he has seen more than 30 cases of abuse at the army’s hands.

“Many of the injuries we received,” he told IPS, “were sustained under detention, inside the army detention centers. Many people came with signs of torture, abuse and beatings. We saw signs of electrical shocks as well, and some even reported sexual abuses, such as rape by bottle.”

The Shahed Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Beirut, has documented over 50 cases of torture of Nahr al-Bared residents. Its director, Mahmoud al-Hanafi, told IPS that the army has systematically ignored human rights in its battle with Fatah al-Islam, and called upon both the army and Fatah al-Islam to respect the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the treatment of civilians during wartime.

Lebanese army spokesperson Gen. Salah Hajj Suleiman told IPS that “the Lebanese army is a national institution and we abide by the laws of the government. We do not abuse civilians.” He added that “the Lebanese army doesn’t arrest anyone if they have no problems or criminal background.”

Fighting began in late May when Fatah al-Islam, which in the preceding months had established itself in Nahr al-Bared, opened fire on Lebanese security forces. The ensuing battle between the army and the militants has left hundreds dead, and many Palestinians accuse the army of attacking unarmed civilians.

In one incident recounted by displaced locals in Baddawi, and documented by the Shahed centre, Nahr al-Bared resident Nayef Salah Saleh attempted to drive a van with 25 civilians out of the camp. Witnesses claim that army snipers shot and killed Saleh, causing the van to lose control and come to a stop.

When Muntaha Abu Khalil, pregnant four months, opened the door she too fell in a storm of gunfire. The army then surrounded the van and detained many of its occupants, including three children. The children, including Amer Bahij Abdallah, 16, say they were then tortured.

Abdallah recalled that “my face was covered with a black cloth, and I was punched, beaten and given electrical shocks to force me to give information about Fatah al-Islam.” He said he had nothing to do with the group.

Since the fighting in the north began, hundreds of Palestinians claim to have been arrested and beaten at army checkpoints throughout the country. One Palestinian aid worker from Tripoli in Lebanon, who spoke anonymously to IPS, said that “about ten soldiers beat me up at a checkpoint because I was joking with a friend.”

Others, like Ahmad Hazbour, a former Nahr al-Bared resident, claimed that they were beaten and verbally abused at checkpoints and then detained.

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Many came to Lebanon, and have lived in the dense, claustrophobic camps there ever since. The refugees are legally considered foreigners and are therefore barred from many basic rights enjoyed by Lebanese citizens, including a right to work (over 70 professions are proscribed). Nor can Palestinians in Lebanon own property or enter into the political process.

“The camp was attacked because we are Palestinian,” said Nahr al-Bared resident Muhammad Naddwi, 23, echoing a sense of discrimination felt by many Palestinians here. The camps have often come under fire from various armies — the Lebanese army destroyed the Nabatiyeh camp in 1973, and many Nahr al-Bared residents are displaced refugees from the Tel al-Zaatar camp, which was destroyed by Christian forces in 1976.

With their home destroyed and the memory of torture and abuse still fresh, many Palestinians from Nahr al-Bared are shaken and without hope.

“Some of them, when they came out of detention, came straight here to the clinic,” nurse Salameh said. “They did not want to talk to anyone or be treated. They just wanted a safe place where they could be on their own, and cry.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service (2007). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article8941.shtml

Electronic Lebanon: Shatila & Press Freedom

None of the people I spoke to in Shatila expressed any sympathy with Fateh al-Islam; they just showed concern and anger at the way the Lebanese Army is shelling the camp and destroying the houses of the people.

Nadia says that her cousin said seventy percent of his neighborhood in the camp is totally destroyed. “Maybe it is all leveled now.” Nadia, as everybody else in the camp, feels that the Palestinians are paying a price for a fight that has nothing to do with them. It is not a Palestinian group, not a group fighting for the Palestinian or refugee cause, they just were operating from the camp. As for why they had come there, most of the people have the same answer: they always referred to the unbearable conditions of the refugees in the camp, a fact that made them subject to all sorts of exploitation.

If Shatila residents are pretty sure of their disconnection with Fateh al-Islam, they are pretty sure too that something is awaiting them, something that does not look good.

Electronic Lebanon: Solidarity in Shatila

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that journalists have been prevented since Monday from entering a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon during clashes between Islamist militants and the Lebanese Army.

….

Journalists told CPJ that they suspected the army was also attempting to hinder coverage of the humanitarian crisis inside the camp where, according to news reports, more than a dozen civilians were killed and 12,000 refugees forced to flee the camp.

….

Attacks against journalists were also reported. Al-Akhbar photographer Wael al-Ladifi, Al-Balad photographer Asad Ahmad, Agence France-Presse photographer Ramzy Haidar, and Al-Alam cameraman Ali Tahimi said they were beaten by members of the Lebanese Army on Thursday.

….

In related news, television crews from three different stations came under attack from civilians while covering the aftermath of a bomb blast in the mountainous town of Aley, east of Beirut on Wednesday night.

Electronic Lebanon: Lebanese Army imposes restrictions on coverage of camp siege

Blacksmiths of Lebanon: Syria’s Media Insurgency in Lebanon

An article exploring the issues of Hariri and the government supporting militias, trying to discount it or play it down.  I find anyone that considers the attrocities commited in Nahr Al-Bared as a victory or as something worth uniting behind has already lost credibility as a source.  This is still worth reading for an alternative perspective.

Almost as soon as the Syrian-backed Fatah al-Islam group launched a series of suprise attacks on Lebanese Army outposts and patrols, Syria’s other allies in the country mounted a suprise attack of their own, attempting to transform a battle that should have rallied all Lebanese together in the defense of the state into a partisan conspiracy aimed at breaking any potential unity that could have arisen out of this week’s national tragedy and impending victory.

Blacksmiths of Lebanon: Syria’s Media Insurgency in Lebanon

Franklin Lamb: Inside Nahr el-Bared

“Another Waco in the Making”
Inside Nahr el-Bared
By FRANKLIN LAMB

Bedawi and Nahr el-Bared Palestinian Refugee Camps, Lebanon.

With very intermittent internet access and this ancient pc with one lone wire running from the spaghetti wiring system tied to the ceiling and taped to a single bare light bulb socket, plus 8 toddlers, two babies, crawling over and under this ‘foreigner’ in a 10 x 12 concrete room where 28 or more of us slept on the floor last night, this blurb may never be sent. But if it does get out and for what it’s worthan update on the situation in the Palestinian Nabr al-Bared and Bedawi Camps. Will try to send results shortly of my interviews with 11 Fatah al-Islam fighters regarding who paid them and got them travel documents and weapons and what was their mission. There was no bank robbery by them. That wasa fake story put out by the Welch Club. Sorry I misreported it. BBC was suckered. Also, no, repeat no heads cut off. Where are the medical reports from those who claim it? That was black propaganda to smear Fatah el-Islam. Must leave this building nowmay not be until tomorrow or so.

Bedawi is teeming with new arrivals from al-Bared where there is still no water, power or food. A few NGO’s still negotiating with army for permission to enter. (Still possible to sneak in from the east but getting more dangerous to try it). The problem is not being shot by Fatah al-Islam anymore. They are digging in. And the army is not as trigger happy as on Monday-Wednesday. The “security agents” on the slopes above the army looking down into al-Baled are the main sniper danger. People claim they are Hariri militia but I can not confirm that. The army told the PLO they would stop them but as of Saturday night they are still shooting. They are trying to shoot anyone they see inside or leaving al-Balad. Someone should stop them.

Several hours ago I met a woman arriving from al-Bared who had walked the whole 7 miles with an 18 month old baby and a daughter of 5 who just stares into the press cameras with her mouth open and eyes glazed over. The Palestinian mother told us neither she nor her children have eaten or taken water for four days. The children will be ok. The mother’s husband is in Syria she said and she has no relatives.

One NGO group of three from Beirut left a few hours ago in tears from frustration, sadness and anger from repeatedly being stopped by the army from taking supplies to al Barad. Their cargo of water and blankets abandoned. On Saturday the Palestinian Red Crescent, which for a quarter century has provide the medical service to both camps has been formally and completely banned from al-Bared and told they will be shot if they try to enter al-Bared. I met with the PRCS leadership and drivers.

There is some-near panic in Bedawi caused by many rumors. One rumor, widely believed, is that the Lebanese government plans to demolish al-Bared to make room for the huge US/NATO airbase which is to be built next to the camp. 5,000 of the Palestinians in al-Bared are from the 1975 ethnically cleansed east Beirut camp Telazatter. The PLO moved them to al-Bared at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) and they live close together in one al-Bared neighborhood. Saw women wailing that they may be another Telazatter massacre and destruction of their homes.

Many Palestinian young men are being arrested as they leave al-Bared. An old woman sleeping in the same room as me last night told us that her son was taken as he left al-Bared on Monday and she has not heard from him. There are now 6 check points between Tripoli and Beirut. Many (I was told all but have not confirmed it) Palestinian males traveling to Beirut are being arrested and taken for interrogation. Some from al-Bared are afraid to try to go to Beirut and stay with relatives.

Fear among PLO camp leaders that there could be a blood bath. “It’s the Bush complex,” one German NGO volunteer said. “The Lebanese government wants to be macho like the Israelis to gain some respect. This could be another Waco in the making, for no reason.” The PLO is trying to mediate with the army to avoid a slaughter that would occur if the army tries to enter al-Bared. “What is needed is leadership and for the warlords to keep quiet. The army has behaved very badly but it’s the politicians fault.”

Great fear that the army will try to enter al-Bared.

The army moved the press position to more than one mile from al Bared, “for security”. The army has orders to give no information to the press. Some journalists feel something terrible is going to happen here. Just heard the army has now completely sealed the camp. No access to the wounded still in basements and bombed houses needing help Palestinians activist in Bedawi say that if the army goes into al-Bared and makes a massacre that Palestinian from all over Lebanon will fight. This may be what some here or outside Lebanon are hoping for.

The Welch Club wants the army to “wipe out the terrorists”, and “protect our Palestinian brothers”. Not one Palestinian in either camp or observer I know believes that. Rather the Palestinian community here believes that the whole Fatah al-Islam “very strange case” was designed to assault their 420,000 population here.

School is cancelled in Bedawi because up to 20,000 from Bared are being housed in them. Food and water are arriving intermittently but distribution is not yet well organized. Much angst among the arrivals who come with only what they are wearing.

Joy to find al-Bared loved ones. Statements are heard on the crowded streets such as” why did the army fire on us? There were no fighters in our area?” “Where was their artillery during the July war? Why did they not fight Israel and now bomb us”?

The leader of Nahr al Bared Women’s association accused Lebanon’s envoy Abbas Zaki of not helping the refugees and with cooperating with the government and Israel. ‘He should come here’, one woman said. Abu Ammar or Abu Jihad (Arafat and his deputy Khalil al Wazir) would have come if they were alive”. Fatah is weak in Bedawi and even weaker in al-Bared.

Seven PLO factions operate in both camps. They jointly chased Fatah al-Islam out of Bedawi on September 21, 2006 not long after they split from Abu Musa’s Fateh Intifida which has been based in Badawi since 1983. Fatah Intifada still man’s the entrance to Bedawi but they seem to have only about 100 members left. When one interviews them they are almost apologetic about their step-brothers, Fatah al-Islam. “We expelled them because we did not like their friends (Hariri intelligence staff) they were too religious and acted strange but we did not think things would come to this”) but the al-Barad PLO factions do not have arms or power to confront FAI.

Amazing examples of humanity happening here. There are many family connections between the two camps. Kids distribute and water bread when it arrives in cars from Beirut and elsewhere. Young girls picking up and caring for babies of people they don’t know, helping old people find a place to sit and listen to them when they tell of what happened. I could be wrong but I have rarely witnessed the solidarity among people as I see here with the Palestinians. Clean, smart, patient, charming, funny, and caring toward one another-determined to return to Palestine

Many who have been in Badawi for nearly a week now just want to just go back and die in their al-Bared homes. On 5/25/07 the Palestinian group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine tried to organize a convoy of those who wanted to return to al-Bared. The plan is to go as far as they can and refuse to leave the army checkpoints until they are allowed back in. The convoy did not leave Bedawi yet and the idea may be abandoned.

Franklin Lamb: Inside Nahr el-Bared

Hezbollah urges political solution for north Lebanon

He talked about other means to deal with Fath-Al-Islam

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب

“The problem in the north can be solved politically and through the judiciary in a way that protects the Lebanese army, our Palestinian brothers, the state and peace and stability without transforming Lebanon into a battleground in which we fight al-Qaida on behalf of the Americans,” he said in a televised address.Naharnet News Desk Nasrallah Opposes Military Incursion Into Nahr al-BaredBut in a TV address Hezbollah’s leader said the conflict could be solved politically and should not escalate. And he outlined Hezbollah’s opposition to any militant incursion into the camp.“The Nahr el-Bared camp and Palestinian civilians are a red line,” Sheikh Nasrallah said.

“We will not accept or provide cover or be partners in this.”

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hezbollah head warns against raid

As a Shia group, Hezbollah views Sunni fighters like Fatah al-Islam as enemies and surely will welcome finishing them off by the Lebanese army.Nasrallah said the Fatah al- Islam fighters who attacked the military should be brought to justice.

But he said Hezbollah opposed any military incursion into the camp to crush the fighters.

He said: “The Nahr el-Bared camp and Palestinian civilians are a red line. We will not accept or provide cover or be partners in this.”

Hezbollah urges political solution for north Lebanon problem | Ya Libnan | Lebanon News Live from Beirut

When the Israelis do this, we scream at the injustice, but when the Lebanese army does it we applaud them.

 “In the first three days of the recent events involving the Lebanese army and Fateh el-Islam in the Nahr el-Bared camp, the Lebanese army committed what would amount to war crimes in a similar fashion to that of the Israeli army in Gaza and in Lebanon last summer, firing on a civilian population indiscriminately. When the Israelis do this, we scream at the injustice, but when the Lebanese army does it we applaud them. These are double standards.” Electronic Lebanon: Cheering to the beat of the Palestinians’ misery

Displaced children from Nahr al-Bared camp staying at an UNRWA school in Badawi camp. (Image courtesy of Marcy Newman)

What can I say? The fighting wasn’t against Fateh al-Islam. The fighting was against our homes. Our homes were destroyed. If you were to go inside the camp, and see the camp for yourself, you would say the same. No homes [are] left.

Electronic Lebanon: “They may accept us for a day or two but for how long?”

Nahr al-Bared « The Fanonite

Brief introduction to todays links from the Fanonite – 

Later, he adds [Lebanese Soldier], it was like being in a movie. “A drunk state in which you don’t care whether you’re shooting at children, the elderly or militants.”

Thats What War is Like « The Fanonite

EI: What triggered the violence in Nahr al-Bared?

ABUKHALIL: That’s where it gets really bizarre and raises a lot of questions. After the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, the Hariri family did not trust the existing state security and intelligence forces, so with supervision and funding from the United States as well as Saudi, Jordanian and UAE support, they established their own quasi-militia called the Lebanese Internal Security Forces. They also established something called Jihaz al-Ma’alumat, the Intelligence Apparatus, which does not have a mandate to exist under Lebanese law. Be that as it may, they are now the most important security and intelligence forces in Lebanon and they are marginalizing all the others.

Nahr al-Bared: The Context « The Fanonite

“The army have been killing us, they were hitting anything that moved,” said 27-year-old Maher, who had left the camp the previous night for the relative sanctity of the nearby camp of Badawi. “Nobody can step out of their house without being shot at. Even inside the houses it isn’t safe from the bullets.”

Abu Ali, 45, added: “We have never experienced violence like this. Not even the Israelis behaved like this.”

Nahr al-Bared: The Blowback « The Fanonite

Nahr al-Bared: The Emerging Picture « The Fanonite

Thanks to the Fanonite for this great post.  Two other places to watch Democracy Now are Democracy TV and Chomsky Torrents 

Democracy Now! has extensive coverage of the developments in Lebanon today, with interviews with Seymour Hersh, Rania Masri and Alistair Crooke. Their analysis is somewhat similar to my own earlier impressions, however Hersh, Masri and Crooke do a much better job of dispatching some of the common misperceptions. I would recommend watching the whole program, but here are some highlights:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Lebanon’s defense minister has said Islamist militants entrenched in a Palestinian refugee camp must surrender or face further military action…The army has laid siege to the Nahr al-Bared camp since the fighting erupted on Sunday, bombarding it with tank fire and artillery shells. At least eighty people have died, with dozens more wounded.

On Wednesday, an informal ceasefire enabled thousands of residents to flee the camp. Some headed for another Palestinian refugee camp nearby, while others traveled to the neighboring city of Tripoli. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates between 13,000 and 15,000 refugees have left Nahr al-Bared.

AMY GOODMAN: The Lebanese government accuses Fatah al-Islam of having ties with al-Qaeda and the Syrian government. But there’s another theory of who’s backing the militant group: the Lebanese government itself, along with the United States. Last March, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker magazine that the US and Saudi governments are covertly backing militant Sunni groups like Fatah al-Islam as part of an overarching foreign policy against Iran and growing Shia influence…

SEYMOUR HERSH:There was a major change of policy by the United States government…[which] would join with the Brits and other Western allies and with what we call the moderate Sunni governments — that is, the governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — and with Israel to fight the Shia.

One of the major goals for America, of course, was the obsession the Bush White House has with Iran, and the other obsession they have is, of course…of Hezbollah, the Party of God…that’s so dominant in southern Lebanon…and whose leader Hassan Nasrallah wants to play a bigger political role and is doing quite a bit to get there and is in direct confrontation with Siniora.

[The obsession is not ‘American’ of course. It is a neocon obsession and the President, through the VP, are willing accomplices in the program]

And so, you have a situation where…the American-supported Sunni government headed by Fouad Siniora, who was a deputy or an aide to Rafik Hariri, the slain leader of Lebanon, that government has — we know, the International Crisis Group reported a couple years ago that the son Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik Hariri, who’s now a major player in the parliament of Lebanon…put up $40,000 bail to free four Sunni fundamentalists, Jihadist-Salafists — you know, this word “al-Qaeda” is sort of ridiculous — they were tied to jihadist groups. And God knows, al-Qaeda, in terms of Osama bin Laden, doesn’t have much to do with what we’re talking about. These are independently, more or less, you can call them, fanatical jihadists.

And so, the goal — part of the goal in Lebanon, part of the way this policy played out, was, with Saudi help [Prince Bandar mainly]…we began supporting some of these jihadist groups, and particularly — in the article, I did name Fatah al-Islam.

The idea was to provide them with some arms and some money and some basic equipment so — these are small units, a couple hundred people. There were three or four around the country given the same help covertly, the goal being they would be potential enemies of Hezbollah in case of warfare; in case Nasrallah decided to do something physical, get kinetic, in Lebanon, the Sunni Siniora government would have some very tough guys on its side, period. That’s the policy.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Sy Hersh, if that is true, then what has led to the current fighting now? If the Lebanese government had been backing the group, why is it now attacking it?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, first of all, the Lebanese army is very distinct…But based on common sense and what I’m reading, the Lebanese army has maintained an amazing sort of neutrality, which is surprising. The army has not been a pawn of the Siniora government…

There’s a stand-off politically right now, a very serious one, in Lebanon…it’s not a constitutional government, because Hezbollah, which had…five members of the cabinet and a dozen or so members in the parliament…pulled out months ago. And there were street protests…against Siniora. And right now, you have Hezbollah in league with a Christian leader named Aoun, a former chief of staff for the army…in an amazing partnership against the Siniora government…America clearly supports Siniora. But there’s a big brutal fight going….

So I think the story that we have is that there was a crime, and they were chasing people into one of the Palestinian camps, which are always hotbeds. God knows the Palestinians are the end of the stick, not only for the West, but also for the Arab world. Nobody pays much attention to them and those places. I’ve been to Tripoli and been into the camps, and they are seething, as they should be. You know, rational people don’t like being mistreated. And in any case, so what you have is, what seems to me, just a series — the word you could use is “unintended consequences.” …

Blaming Syria

And what is the laugh riot and the reason I’m actually talking to you guys…is because the American government keeps on putting out this story that Syria is behind the Fatah group, which is just beyond belief. There’s no way — it may be possible, but the chances of it are very slight, simply because Syria is a very big supporter, obviously, of Nasrallah, and Bashar al-Assad has told me that he’s in awe of Nasrallah, that he worships at his feet and has great respect for him. The idea that the Syrians would be sponsoring Sunni jihadist groups whose sole mission are to kill [Shia ‘apostates’ of Hizbullah]…Nothing can be ruled out, but that doesn’t make much case, and I noticed that in the papers today there’s fewer and fewer references to this. The newspapers in America are beginning to wise up, that this can’t be — this isn’t very logical. The White House is putting it out hot and heavy as part of the anti-Syria campaign, but it’s not flying, because it doesn’t make sense….

You might think that…one of the things that the Saudi Bandar had promised us was that we can control the jihadists. We can control them, he assured us…the same kind of assurances were given to us in the late 1980s, when we supported, as I said, bin Laden and others in the war against Russia, the Mujahideen war, and that, of course, bit us on the ass…

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, what about the role of Vice President Dick Cheney, the Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, you always — any time you have violent anti-Iran policy and anti-Shia policy, you have to start looking there. Look, clearly this president is deeply involved in this, too, but what I hear from my people, of course, the players — it’s always Cheney, Cheney. Cheney meets with Bush at least once a week. They have a lunch. They usually have a scheduled lunch. And out of that comes a lot of big decisions. We don’t know what’s ever said at that meeting. And this is — talk about being opaque, this is a government that is so hidden from us.

So I can’t — I can tell you that — you know, the thing that’s amazing about this government, the thing that’s really spectacular, is even now how they can get their way mostly with a lot of the American press. For example, I do know — and, you know, you have to take it on face value. If you’ve been reading me for a long time, you know a lot of the things I write are true or come out to be more or less true. I do know that within the last month, maybe four, four-and-a-half weeks ago, they made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, we go back to the al-Qaeda card, and we start talking about al-Qaeda. And the next thing you know, right after that, Bush went to the Southern Command — this was a month ago — and talked, mentioned al-Qaeda twenty-seven times in his speech. He did so just the other day this week — al-Qaeda this, al-Qaeda that. All of a sudden, the poor Iraqi Sunnis, I mean, they can’t do anything without al-Qaeda. It’s only al-Qaeda that’s dropping the bombs and causing mayhem. It’s not the Sunni and Shia insurgents or militias. And this policy just gets picked up, although there’s absolutely no empirical basis. Most of the pros will tell you the foreign fighters are a couple percent, and then they’re sort of leaderless in the sense that there’s no overall direction of the various foreign fighters. You could call them al-Qaeda. You can also call them jihadists and Salafists that want to die fighting the Americans or the occupiers in Iraq and they come across the border. Whether this is — there’s no attempt to suggest there’s any significant coordination of these groups by bin Laden or anybody else, and the press just goes gaga. And so, they went gaga a little bit over the Syrian connection to the activities in Tripoli. It’s just amazing to me, you guys.

The View From Lebanon

AMY GOODMAN:Rania Masri, you’re in the camp where thousands of refugees from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp have fled. What do you see there?

RANIA MASRI: I’ve been hearing this a lot in the Western press, that the violence that we are seeing right now in Lebanon is called the worst since the civil war. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. The worst violence we had since the civil war was the Israeli war last year in July. So, if you can just remember this country has not healed from the July war last summer.

With that, …the Beddawi camp has approximately 15,000 refugees in it already. The number of refugees now in the Beddawi camp has almost doubled, because we have approximately 12,000 refugees from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp…That alone could give you an idea of the amount of lack of goods that is now available in the camp. I mean, there is a lack of extraordinarily basic goods, be it medicine, be it foods, be it mattresses, be it anything. Every individual that we talk to, every agency that we talk to said the same thing, which is that the international agencies have not operated quickly enough to be able to respond to the presence of 12,000 refugees almost overnight in this already extraordinarily impoverished camp of the Beddawi camp. Approximately 25% of these refugees are going to schools. Another 75% are going to homes. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the aid, approximately 80% of the aid, is going to those individuals in the schools. 20% of aid is going to the 75% of the refugees in the homes, which means we are having an extraordinary lack of goods that are being given to the people most in need. When we look at the situation and when we keep in mind the ultimatum that’s been given by the minister of defense, which is this threat of actually invading the Nahr al-Bared camp, then we can envision at the very least that the number of refugees we now have in the Beddawi camp from the refugee camp, Nahr al-Bared, is probably going to increase. So as bad and as horrific as the situation is currently in the Beddawi camp, we are expecting it to actually get worse tomorrow.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of how the fighting is progressing in the Nahr al-Bared camp, what is the situation right now, as far as you can tell?

RANIA MASRI: Well, there has been a quote/unquote “truce” for almost a day and a half. But one thing I do want to emphasize with regard to the violence — and, again, this is based upon numerous amounts of eyewitness reports — that the violence isn’t simply extraordinarily indiscriminate heavy artillery coming from the Lebanese army into this — let me stress again — one of the most impoverished Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, which is the Nahr al-Bared camp; in addition to getting this heavy artillery from the Lebanese army, in addition to that, there is a third factor: there probably is an armed civilian camp, you know, group militia, that is operating outside of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, that is attacking both the refugees that are leaving, as well as lobbing sniper attacks into the camp itself. So not only do we have the Palestinians in the camp stuck between Fatah al-Islam, which is a non-Palestinian radical organization and the Lebanese army; they are also stuck between this third armed civilian militia group.

Hizbullah’s Stance

RANIA MASRI: The position of almost — almost — every single Lebanese political party…including Hezbollah, has been support for the Lebanese army. The Hezbollah leadership has made gentle requests that the civilians on both sides of the conflict, Lebanese and Palestinian, not be harmed, that there be attempts to try to minimize the loss of civilian life. But the response from almost all Lebanese politicians and all the Lebanese political parties is support behind the Lebanese army.

And here, and I want to add something to the comments that Seymour Hersh made. This is being presented — this conflict is being presented by, I would say, a strong segment of both the Lebanese population and almost all the Palestinians within the refugee camps as a conspiracy against both the Lebanese and the Palestinians and as a conspiracy that includes within it a conspiracy against the Lebanese army.

Alistair Crooke on Fatah al-Islam

ALASTAIR CROOKE: I think it’s probably worth, for your listeners, just to understand a little bit more about the nature of this group. Although it came from Syria into Lebanon and it came from a group that was associated with Palestinians — its name was Fatah also — and was an old mainly Palestinian group that existed in Syria from the days of the Oslo Accord, what we have in Lebanon is something quite unrelated to the Palestinian issue. This is an extreme Sunni group. It’s a Salafi group, as Seymour described it, which means that their main characteristic is not concern about Palestine or a Palestinian state, but their main concern is their antagonism and their hatred for the Shia. And I think the reason that we saw them in Lebanon probably had something to do also with the conflict this summer, that took place last summer with Israel, and the aftermath of that, which seemed to presage an internal conflict within Lebanon, possibly between the Shia and the Sunnis and with Christians involved, as well. In other words, there was a real fear at some stages that Lebanon could be tipping back toward civil war. And I think in this context, therefore, this group, which is virulently anti-Shia, came across with the idea of defending the Sunnis.

Of those that have been killed in this group so far, not one of them has been Palestinian. It’s true that the leader is Palestinian, but the other members of it that have been taken so far have turned out to be Saudi, Tunisian, Yemeni and Lebanese, but not Palestinians. So they ended up in this refugee camp — they forced their way in; there’s not much refugees can do when 200 determined and armed men enter your camp — and eventually set up a little satellite area of their own, adjacent to the camp. So I think that’s the context that you have to see this. And I think some Sunnis in Lebanon welcomed their arrival, if you like, as potential reinforcement. If you wanted someone to take on the ranks of Hezbollah, which is a Shia movement, then here was a determined group who hated them that could be co-opted on the basis of your enemy’s enemy is your friend. So I think this is very much the way in which to see what happened. And I think it’s quite true what Seymour said: in a sense, it’s a reflection of a wider policy…I think the rhetoric and the language that is being used by the United States and by Europe, in some cases, of trying to encourage, if you like, Sunni fears about a Shia threat and a Shia menace, the axis of or the crescent of Shia, a threat that faces the region, gives the opportunity and gives a space to these sort of groups to emerge and quite often ends with them getting the support and the financial resources that they require.

Nahr al-Bared: The Emerging Picture « The Fanonite

Ordinary Racism in Lebanon

Below is a translation of an article which appeared in the Arabic language lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar by Khalid Saghiyyeh. The original title is ‘Deep Rooted Racism in Lebanon’. I decided to translate this article after hearing this evening ordinary Lebanese on most world news channels giving to the press racist remarks about Palestinians. There was even a doctor who volunteered to help the army who answered Radio Canada’s journalist question about what is happening in the camp Nahr El-Bared with this sentence: ”You know they are not Lebanese”, meaning ‘we can kill them because they are lower casts, inferior’. This doctor forgot however that Lebanese kill other Lebanese.

Prelude
We fought a 15 year civil war but it wasn’t our fault. Our country is in crisis but again it is the Palestinians fault. And while we are always prompt and ready to proclaim ourselves as life lovers and civilised, we are not afraid to appear in front of the international community as savages and racists disrepsectful of human lives when they are Palestinians. The international community who rarely lift a finger at the killing of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians by Israel is jumping on this occasion, Arabs killing other Arabs, to point fingers at Lebanese, clearing its conscience from the burden of not doing so and turning its back to condemnation and truth every other time an Arab was killed by Israelis zionists. Western journalists are even evoking Sabra and Chatila. This time Israel would also point fingers and tell the world ‘See, they did it without us’. On the other side, Lebanese are undergoing a massive denial about the state of their country and their crumbling economy and their crumbling government, with their failed army and their failed leaders, glorifying their unity while killing Palestinians.

There was a time when I was a child when we had to paint our light bulbs in blue in order not to be seen by Israeli planes circling norhtern Lebanon’s sky and dropping tons of bombs on Palestinian refugee camps.
There was a time, when I was a college student studying in the norhtern city of Tripoli, when we used to call Palestinians our brothers. There was a time when after the Friday prayer in Tripoli’s mosques, at a time I usually leave college for a week-end in the northern countryside, when I used to encounter spontaneous demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people, which I joined heartily with other friends for a short walk while shouting slogans like ‘Filasteen biladi’ (Palestine is my country). I remember those years when we did two major fundraising at our college: one was to help starvation victims in Ethiopia and the other was to help Arab countries war effort in the 1973 war against Israel. But that was just before the Lebanese civil war, before Christian militia decided to partition Lebanon and live rich in a Monaco like state free of Palestinian camps and poor Lebanese, before Sabra and Chatila and the ‘Peace in Galilée War’ (a zionist oxymore), before the Christian militia in Lebanon invited Sharon to Beyrouth for a lunch and then a dinner and then a stay, before Sharon, the Sabra and Chatila butcher, became prime minister, before the resuming of Israeli occupation of Paletsinian land and Israeli killing of Palestinians, before the Israeli-Palestinian peace process died before its birth, before Hariri infected the Lebanese political scene and reconstructed Lebanon with his construction companies billing the bankrupt Lebanese state and then borrowing to fill in the accounts and pay his Syrian mentors, before the postwar massive amnesia and lack of accountability in Lebanon, before Bush, before Iraq, before the US sponsored Lebanese political elite and the March 14th movement adopted the culture of martyrdom and then the ‘culture of life’ in a matter of months, before freeing Lebanon’s war criminals from prison and giving them a seat in parliament while killing others in a mafia cleansening operation style, before the nonsensical international UN tribunal for the assassination of Lebanon’s prime minister, before the Iraqi nightmare, before the US realised that there are sunnis and shias in Islam, before the US resumed its friendly relations with the Sunni country whose citizens are responsible for 9/11, before the US decided to fight Shias because they were friendly with Iran, before the ‘second lebanese war’ and last summer’s deadly and criminal Israeli agression on Lebanon and Hezbollah’s ‘divine victory’, before the winograd report and the falling of Olmert’s support to rates under the margin of error, before Palestinian civil war in Gaza, before the US decided that maybe the ‘fragile democracy’ in Lebanon wasn’t after all worth Iran’s oilfields and USrael’s neoconish obsession with Iran’s mullahs and that for this matter the US needed to calm things down with Syria, before the election of Sarkozy, the vanishing of the UN tribunal for Hariri, Sanyura’s political weapon against Hezbollah, and the reincarnation of US’s declining neoconism, exactly like ‘Alien Resurrection’, in another time and another place with Sarkozy’s election in France.

The people of Palestine, Lebanon, and the ME, have been fed only despair by their western sponsored corrupted Politicians. I am from this generation who saw only despair whenever I thought of the future of my country, my region and my own future within. Not one ray of hope.

The fact that the Muslim Sunni extremists the Sanyura government is battling were actually armed by Sanyura’s allies in order to create a force capable of facing the Shia Hezbollah, and the present massacre of palestinian civilians under the cover of fighting those same Muslim Sunni extremists, might mean two things: i) the Sanyura government and Lebanon as it is, one small 10000 km2 piece with a mosaic of communities, are both on the brink of collapse and this is their last reaction, their one last stand to drag in the international community to witness their downfall and eventually help them defeat their opponents and finish off Lebanon ‘victorious’, and there are already calls for help from the Lebanese government, and/or ii) the actual showdown is meant to exacerbate sectarian tensions and drag along the international community, and/or Hezbollah into the fight against Sunnis (which amounts also to dragging in the international community who will jump at this chance to tackle by proxy the ‘Iranian’ problem).

One day I was explaining Lebanon and its politics to my European husband and he said:’this is very ugly Politics, how come Lebanese accept it?’ And I replied: ‘ Lebanese live in self denial, they venere conventions and despise truth, nothing bothers them more than a simple truth, the truth about themselves, so they buy into any narrative that embellishes this truth. But the narrative is always the same. It is that other people are repsonsible for their misery and that every time they go down they must call other people for help and blame some others. This is the simple Lebanese truth. Another one is that ordinary racism is accpetable in Lebanon. These people see themselves as superior and therefore despise the poor, other Arabs, the dark skinned, the homosexuals, the leftists, the atheists, the Sri-Lankan maids, they despise everything that is not Lebanese kitsh nurtured for the sake of self denial and self agrandising. This is not a society of individuals, this is a society of sheeps herded by anyone who can flatter their inflated egos and ugly sleves.”

Khalid Saghiyyeh’s article
One day, after a long civil war, Lebanese decided that they were brothers. They saluted each other and pointed their fingers at the Palestinians as the ones who were behind their divisions. They imprisoned them within few Square feets in a camp, they closed the doors and prevented the air from entering. One other day, after a bitter and long political struggle with no end, voices from the government and its opponents converged to put the responsibility again on those small Palestinian camps accused of pushing the country one more time into the abyss. Both parties accusing Palestinians today of putting Lebanon on the brink of civil war don’t lack in racist leaders and ideologies in their dealings with the ‘foreigner’ in general and the Palestinians in particular.
Nothing can lower their enthusiasm in accusing the Palestinians, not even the civilian casualties lying on Nahr El Bared refugee camp’s soil. And the fact that Fatah el-Islam is one extremist organisation among many others, that can be found in Lebanon disseminated outside as inside Palestinian camps, did not even help to calm down some who called for the ‘cleansening of the Palestinian house’. It did not even occur to these callers, whose racist calls are routine for Palestinians, that many reports point to the responsibility of high level Lebanese Politicians in arming and financially supporting the Sunni extremists in and outside Palestinian camps. And none of those who are standing today, united in the discovery of their racial purity, accusing the Palestinians of all ills, can or would expose at lenght the notorious disengagement and the retreat of the state from whole regions in Lebanon which are maintained in a state of total dependancy and subjugation to some Politicians who would use them to their advantage during election time, monitoring them from some far luxurious hotels. In divided societies who cannot agree on anything and who are on the brink of collapse like Lebanese society, chronic and acute political struggles have a high human and social cost. And in countries like Lebanon where social assistance is non existent, savage economic reforms have even a higher if not an exorbitant human and social cost. Those are some indications as to the real causes of the present situation in Lebanon. Fatah El-Islam is not a cause, it is merely a dust on the surface of the volcano.

Lire l’article de Loubnan Ya Loubnan ‘Au Liban le chaos constructif est en marche’. C’est un article qui met au grand jour les multiples ramifications de l’actuelle crise libanaise, ce que vous ne lirez jamais par les canaux d’information ordinaire.

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Rannie Amiri: The Great Bank Heist of Tripoli

The Great Bank Heist of Tripoli

By RANNIE AMIRI

If you think you understand Lebanese politics, it obviously has not been explained to you properly.

– Anonymous

It started out simple enough. A group of men robbed a bank in the northern Lebanese town of Amyoun and then fled into the teeming Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli after being pursued by police. The Lebanese Army quickly became involved, and before you knew it, a raging battle with a Sunni militant group calling itself Fatah al-Islam within the camp ensued. A score of Lebanese soldiers were killed just as swiftly.

What happened?

As with all things that transpire in Lebanon, the exact details remain murky. What it conflagrated into has not: the bloodiest days of fighting amongst Lebanese, Palestinians, et al since the days of the civil war.

The leader of Fatah al-Islam, a Salafi/jihadi outfit, is Shaker al-Absi, a colleague of the erstwhile Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Having served a number of years in a Syrian jail, he was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan in 2004 for the 2002 murder of US diplomat Laurence Foley. The agenda of his organization, apparently comprised of only a few hundred men with scant support from other resident Palestinian factions, is quite typical of al-Qaeda. Narrowly it is to establish Islamic law within the camp; more broadly to attack American interests in the region and expel all troops (specifically UNAFIL) from Lebanon. Not surprisingly, their membership includes many foreign fighters recently completing tours of duty in Iraq.

There are many interesting windows this story has opened.

One is how, almost reflexively, many Lebanese blamed Syria for the events in Tripoli. Nevermind that a secular Ba’athist regime like that in Syria loathes nothing more than Salafi radicals, whom they regard as a threat to their own existence first and foremost (witness the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s 1982 crackdown in the town Hama, killing10,000 ­ 25,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood). Indeed, Syria closed their border with Lebanon soon after fighting began in Tripoli.

The second is the absolute miserable conditions of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, completely isolated from the rest of the country, mired in abject poverty and whose neighborhood are run by one gang or other. Desperation is always fertile soil for groups like al-Qaeda to plant their roots.

The most disturbing aspect of the fighting in Tripoli though, has been lost–or deliberately obfuscated–by discussion of the above.

Namely, the absolute complicity of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and allies like Saad Hariri, leader of the parliamentary majority in Lebanon, in bringing groups like Fatah al-Islam to Lebanon, where they knowingly allowed them to operate, all in a greater bid to stem the ascendancy of Hezbollah.

Fatah al-Islam and al-Qaeda more broadly, after all, have a visceral hatred for Shi’a Muslims, whom they regard as infidels. Who better to bring into the country via the squalid Palestinian camps of Lebanon than them?

It was Seymour Hersh, in the March 2007 New Yorker who recognized a shift in the policy of the United States and their cronies (Siniora government, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) in patronizing radical Sunni organizations to act as a bulwark against perceived widening Iranian influence.

How foreboding was Hersh’s article?

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests-presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.

During an interview with Hasan Nasrallah, when Hersh posited if it was Israeli assassination he most feared, Nasrallah replied that it was other Arabs ­ Jordanian intelligence, and Salafi/Wahabi jihadists–who were his greatest threats. Was it also Fatah al-Islam and affiliates’ ultimate mission, at the behest of the Siniora government, to assassinate Hasan Nasrallah?

It is a bit puzzling why the Lebanese Army is now waging a battle against Fatah al-Islam, something which even perplexed the intrepid veteran reporter of Lebanon, Robert Fisk. The workings of Lebanon politics can be quite mysterious and no doubt there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Regardless, Fouad Siniora and Saad Hariri learned a hard lesson: hired guns often shoot the hand which pays them. As a consequence of their reckless venture, the innocent continue to pay with their lives.

Again, Hersh:

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said.

Along with Fatah al-Islam, the Siniora government has the blood of dozens of Lebanese soldiers and Lebanese and Palestinian civilians on their hands.

And that is a fact which hits us straight between the eyes.

Rannie Amiri is an independent observer and commentator on issues dealing with the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at rbamiri@yahoo.com

Rannie Amiri: The Great Bank Heist of Tripoli

The Nahr al-Bared Tragedy « The Fanonite

Thanks to the Fanonite for another great post!  It is illuminating how little regard there is for the suffering of the camps residents among the big players…

The Lebanese Army distinguished itself last year when during Israel’s brutal invasion one of its General’s confronted the invaders with — tea! None of this ‘courtesty’ is in evidence today as it indiscriminately bombs the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli in its confrontation with Fatah al-Islam. But first, a little on Fatah al-Islam.

Ever since the fighting broke out, the US-backed Lebanese government has received widespread support from around the world. Depending on the geographical provenance of the support, the militants are being described as al-Qaida-linked, or Syrian-backed. But an important detail of the group’s background is being consistently overlooked. In March Seymour Hersh reported:

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.

The Humanitarian Crisis

Of the nearly 50,000 refugees in the Nahr al-Bared camp, nearly 10,000 have sought refuge in the nearby Beddawi camp. The four days of fighting have killed nearly a 100, including 32 soldiers and 22 militants. According to Reuters, 

The Lebanese army – which, under a 1969 Arab agreement, does not enter any of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps – has been bombarding positions in the camp suspected to be held by Fatah al-Islam fighters…many camp residents say tank and artillery fire has been indiscriminate…Camp residents and doctors say there are dozens of dead civilians.  

Earlier on Wednesday, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) estimated that about 2,000 families, which average at least five members per family, had fled Nahr al-Bared since Tuesday evening.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday distributed food parcels to last five days for 3,000 people in Kawkab School, where displaced people – the majority women, children and infants – are living in filthy conditions…

Civilians and Aid Workers in the Crosshairs

On Tuesday, a UNRWA convoy reportedly came under fire from positions held by the Lebanese army, after moving only a few hundred metres into the camp…[Nadim] Houry [a Human Rights Watch researcher] said the Lebanese army had failed to observe international humanitarian law in its bombardment of civilian areas in the camp.

“We do not believe the army directly targeted civilians, but in its use of indiscriminate shelling, which has a disproportionate affect on civilians to combatants…We are also concerned that the army failed to provide safe corridors for the evacuation of civilians and the delivery of aid. It has taken three days for this to happen.”

A total of 130 civilians were evacuated to Safad Hospital. They suffered severe injuries as well as shock with 12 undergoing emergency surgery, said Dr Assad…

“We didn’t bring Fatah al-Islam into the camp. Of course we support the Lebanese army’s fight against them but they have destroyed houses and killed civilians,” said Bassam al-Saadi, who said he knew of 13 bodies which had been buried in the camp cemetery since Sunday.

“Even the Israelis have never done to us what the Lebanese army have done,” shouted another evacuee.

Al Jazeera’s Exclusive Footage from Inside the Camp

The conditions in the refugee camps are far from tolerable to begin with. The indiscriminate nature of the attack is only compounding the tragedy. For example, Jeffrey Blankfort writes:

The situation in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon is something that most outsiders, including supporters of the Palestinian struggle, can not imagine. In 2004, I returned to Shatilla camp on the outskirts of Beirut for the first time since 1983 and found it to be far and away the most depressing place I have ever visited, much more so than anything I had seen in Gaza or the West Bank the previous year. It was an opinion that was shared by a friend from Deheisheh camp in the West Bank who also been to all three places and so one can imagine the frustrations of the residents of those camps in the north of Lebanon, like the others, betrayed by the world as well as the PA, with no hope of any changed future on the horizon. Combined with the ongoing crisis in Gaza, these are indeed the worst days for the Palestinians since, at least, 1967. Cui bono?

According to reports, the Lebanese Army is now planning an assault on the camp, ”after receiving a green light to go into the camp from Sultan Abul Aynain, Fatah’s chief in Lebanon…if Lebanese forces do enter Nahr al-Bared, it will break a decades-old precedent and raise the possibility of the army exerting security control inside Lebanon’s 11 other refugee camps.”

War Pays

Considering it was a bank robbery worth $1,500 that triggered the conflict, one can’t help but question the reasons behind the ferocity of the Lebanese Army’s response. AP reports:

Lebanon has asked the United States for $280 million in military assistance to help put down an uprising by Al Qaeda-inspired militants operating from a Palestinian refugee camp, the State Department said yesterday.

About $220 million would go to the Lebanese Armed Forces and $60 million to security forces, spokesman Sean McCormack said. The United States is weighing the request, he added…

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Finn, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the Defense Department has been working to deliver a broad range of equipment and other materials to Lebanon.

“We hope to provide a robust package of security assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces in 2007 with more equipment and training,” Finn said.

She said the Pentagon is “concerned about mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hezbollah, and their Lebanese allies are attempting to topple Lebanon’s legitimate and democratically elected government.”

Under the cover of assistance in Lebanon’s own ‘war on terror’, the US can now legitimately and openly start bolstering the Siniora government.

Sectarian Militia?

What of Hizbullah’s reaction? AP reports:

The Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah has so far backed Lebanon’s army in its confrontation with a Sunni radical group — despite the fact that Hezbollah has been pushing to topple the Lebanese government.

In a statement from the group that shows its complex stance, Hezbollah denounced the attacks against the Lebanese army — stressing the role of the army in safeguarding peace, but also tacitly criticised Lebanon’s current government.

“We feel that there is someone out there who wants to drag the army to this confrontation and bloody struggle … to serve well-known projects and aims. We are hearing calls for more escalation and fighting, which will ultimately lead to more chaos and confrontation in Lebanon,” the Hezbollah statement said. It called for a political solution to the crisis…

Political analysts have said Hezbollah, while supporting the army, does not want to back the government publicly and give it credit for fighting the Sunni radical group. Also, any whole-hearted backing by Hezbollah for Lebanese authorities could inflame animosity by Sunni militants against the Shi’ite group.

No condemnation of course of the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian refugees stranded in the Camp. Sadly, in this instance, Hizbullah has behaved more like the sectarian militias of Iraq than the respected national resistance organizations many believe it to be.

Tinderbox

In order to make political captial out of this incident, some players — local, as well as foreign — are behaving in a highly irresponsible manner, and it could easily throw the whole region into a wider conflict. So far no one has spoken about the tragic circumstances of the refugees in the camp. Some Palestinians naturally are less than pleased.

Talking to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite TV station on Monday, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) general command leader, Anwar Rajab, accused gunmen from the Al-Mustaqbal (’Future’) movement [Hariri’s militia] of violating a ceasefire, which was agreed on Monday morning.

A spokesperson from the Al-Mustaqbal movement denied the accusation.

Anwar Rajab warned of tensions spilling over into other areas. He said, “Nahr Al-Bared is not an orphan,” meaning there are similar refugee camps in Lebanon that will join forces to retaliate to the attacks.

Lebanon is home to more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees, according to UNRWA statistics. Many of them fled or were forced from their homes when Israel was created in 1948…

The head of the Damascus-based Hamas politburo, Khalid Mash’al, also telephoned the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, on Monday and demanded that he take the necessary measures to protect the Palestinians in Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp…Mash’al also made similar telephone calls to the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, and the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Al-Faysal.

The Nahr al-Bared Tragedy « The Fanonite