Page 1 of
2 Lebanon douses a terrorist
fire By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Lebanon wants to be - and
should be - remembered for a variety of things:
its ancient Phoenician history, its glorious
battle for emancipation from the French, and its
liberation of the south from Israeli occupation in
2000; the love of life of its people, their
entrepreneurial spirit, their co-existence, along
with their great universities, breathtaking
tourism, beautiful women, inspiring symbols, and
eternal music.
All of that touched the
minds and hearts of Arabs and foreigners
for
the better part of the 20th century. It would be
difficult for any Arab to think of Lebanon and not
remember, for example, its diva Fairuz, or the
tricolor of the Lebanese flag, or its cedar trees.
A hotbed for tourism, investment, banking,
education and entertainment, Lebanon was known as
the "Switzerland of the East" in the 1960s.
But in Switzerland, there are no warlords
or confessional politics. There is no Israel.
Better yet, there is no Shaker al-Abssi. All of
these images flooded to mind this weekend as
footage beamed in from Nahr al-Bared, a refugee
camp in northern Lebanon, declaring that the
three-month battle between Fatah al-Islam and the
Lebanese Army was over. On Sunday night came more
breaking news from Tripoli: Abssi, the terrorist
leader of Fatah al-Islam, was dead, killed in a
shootout with the army.
Poor Lebanon. The
last thing it needed was Abssi. The country
already had enough problems on its hands. The
conflict between the March 14 Coalition (backed by
Saudi Arabia and the United States) and Hezbollah
(backed by Syria and Iran) is still at Square 1.
The Hezbollah-led opposition is still
demonstrating in the streets of Beirut, calling
for the downfall of Prime Minister Fouad
al-Siniora, accusing him of corruption and of
selling out to the West at the expense of
Hezbollah.
March 14 accuses Hezbollah of
wanting to transfer Lebanon into a satellite state
for Tehran and Damascus. Parliament remains closed
as its Speaker Nabih Berri refuses to call it into
session before consensus is reached among all
rivaling parties on who the new president of
Lebanon will be.
A divided political
system, an isolated president, a prime minister
refusing to step down, a Sunni-Shi'ite divide, a
Christian-Christian divide, and an armed group
within the state confronting an enemy like Israel:
that was the situation in Lebanon one night before
fighting suddenly broke out between the Lebanese
Army and Fatah al-Islam on May 22. So fragile was
the political scene that some even doubted whether
the state would pull through this latest - very
unexpected and untried - experience of combating
radical, military Islam groups affiliated with
al-Qaeda.
The story of Fatah al-Islam
dates to last November. The exact birthdate of the
terrorist group is not known, but all sources
confirm that it emerged out of a radical
Palestinian military group called Fatah
al-Intifada. That group, in turn, was inspired by
the original Fatah movement of the late
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The real Fatah
was born in Kuwait in the 1960s and is currently
in power in Palestine, where, supported by the US,
it is waging a war of its own against Hamas.
Abssi, who founded Fatah al-Islam, was a
member of Arafat's Fatah in the 1970s. Born in
Jericho in 1955, he wanted to become a medical
doctor, but soon abandoned his professional dream
for the life of a guerrilla warrior, a member of
the fedayeen (the much-remembered
resistance commandos of Fatah in the 1960s and
1970s). Abssi served as a MiG fighter pilot for
Libya in its war with Chad and fought Israel's
occupation of Lebanon in 1982 as a warrior with
Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Along with many members of his generation,
however, by the mid-1980s he had grown
disenchanted with secular nationalism. A variety
of reasons contributed to this. One was the
repeated failure of Arab nationalism since the
first Arab-Israeli War of 1948. They then faced
the terrible defeat of 1967, then the Camp David
Accords of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat in
1978, signaling that Arabism was dying. Finally
came the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 and
the ousting of the PLO from Lebanon, under the
watchful eye of Arab governments.
This
disenchanted millions of fighters in the Arab
world, who turned to the only remaining and
reliable source of inspiration that could unite
them: Islam. Arab nationalism was abandoned for
the sake of Islamic nationalism. It seemed the
logical thing to do by the 1980s. After all, Islam
had triumphed in combating the Soviets in
Afghanistan. Islam had also led to the toppling of
the pro-Western Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran (who was
very unpopular in the Arab world, because of his
relations with Israel), and the killing of Sadat
in 1981.
Political Islam seemed the right
- and logical - thing to turn to. This became all
the more compelling in recent years. Hezbollah was
winning in Lebanon and managed to get the Israelis
to retreat in 2000. Hamas was winning in
Palestine. The leaders of al-Qaeda scored an
unprecedented victory with the September 11, 2001,
attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Iran was
imposing itself on everyone and everything, and
developing its nuclear program despite all the
noise coming from the White House.
Political Islam was on the rise, and it
enchanted Abssi, who realized that he could be
another Islamic leader, a combination of Iranian
revolutionary leader ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmad Yassin,
co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas - all
molded into one.
Abssi became a radical
Islamist and fell out with all secular nationalist
movements, including that of Arafat. Abssi moved
to Syria with other disgruntled Palestinians
hostile to the PLO chairman. Contrary to what was
said by anti-Syrian news sources in Lebanon, the
Syrians did not tolerate or nurture Abssi. On the
contrary, they grew suspicious of his activities
and feared his radicalism. The Syrians thus had
him arrested on charges of terrorist activity and
he was jailed for three years.
Abssi was a
self-declared disciple of Abu Abdullah Mohammed
al-Bukhari, a 9th-century Islamic scholar who,
according to the US Defense Department's Combating
Terrorism Center, is one of the 20 Islamic figures
who are more influential than al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden.
After jail, Abssi became
close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda
mastermind in Jordan. Together they planned the
assassination of Laurence Foley, a US diplomat
based in Jordan, in 2004. Both were sentenced to
death in absentia by Jordanian courts in July of
that year. Abssi denied the charges, saying he was
in a Syrian jail when Foley was killed, but added:
"I don't know what Foley's role was but I can say
that any person that comes to our region with a
military, security or political aim, then he is a
legitimate target."
Abssi then went to
Lebanon, fleeing an arrest warrant in both Syria
and Jordan. His name resurfaced in Jordan this
January
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