Page 2 of
2 Lebanon douses a terrorist
fire By Sami Moubayed
when two militants engaged in a gun
battle with Jordanian police in the northern city
of Irbid. On arrest, they confessed that they had
been sent to Jordan by Abssi to carry out
terrorist operations.
Abssi chose the Nahr
al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, near
the city of Tripoli, to set up base and found his
Fatah al-Islam group last November. The new group,
he claimed, would be modeled after al-Qaeda and
inspired by bin Laden. Its stated goal
was to
establish Islamic law in Lebanon, and then destroy
the United States and Israel. Speaking to the New
York Times this year, he said: "The only way to
achieve our rights is by force. This is the way
America deals with us. So when the Americans feel
that their lives and their economy are threatened,
they will know that they will leave."
The
camp was filled with Palestinian refugees (many
women and children), who suffered tremendously
from his actions when fighting broke out in May.
Abssi once said: "One of the reasons for choosing
this camp is our belief that the people here are
close to God, as they feel the same suffering as
our brothers in Palestine."
Living up to
his words, Abssi was certainly not afraid to be
labeled a terrorist. He lived the last 106 days of
his life as one of the most notorious terrorists
the region has ever known, and died a terrorist's
death, similar to that of his comrade and idol,
Zarqawi, who was killed by a US air strike in Iraq
in June 2006.
Abssi's body, identified on
Monday by his wife at a Tripoli hospital, was
found near the eastern section of the camp. Few
people - if any - will mourn the slain leader of
Fatah al-Islam. The man came out of seemingly
nowhere and dragged his followers into a suicidal
confrontation with the Lebanese Army. It will take
a long time - decades, perhaps - before the truth
about him, his backers and his motivation are
revealed. There are several theories, though.
Theory 1: One story,
marketed by the March 14 Coalition in Lebanon,
says that Abssi and Fatah al-Islam are the
creations of Syria. That is difficult to believe,
since his prison record in Damascus - along with
Syria's history of combating Islamic
fundamentalism - would certainly prevent it from
engaging in such a risky scheme.
Syria
cannot afford the mushrooming of radical
al-Qaeda-linked groups, either on its territory or
in Lebanon, from where they can easily spill over
into Syria. When fighting started between the army
and Fatah al-Islam, a wide array of Syrian
officials said that the group was a terrorist one
that should be annihilated by the army.
On
the day that Abssi was killed, Syrian Foreign
Minister Walid al-Mouallem praised the victory of
the Lebanese Army, saying: "We congratulate the
Lebanese national army on winning this fight
against a terrorist group which distracted the
Lebanese Army from their enemy, Israel."
Mouallem was speaking to reporters from
Iran, where he is on an official visit. He
repeatedly denied Syrian links to the
organization, saying: "We were the first to
announce that Fatah al-Islam are terrorists and
its leaders are wanted by our security forces."
A few days earlier, Lebanese Army
commander Michel Suleiman made similar remarks,
saying that Fatah al-Islam was linked to al-Qaeda,
not Syria. Interestingly, on the day of Abssi's
death and the final assault on the camp, a
majority of Lebanon's mainstream media stopped
referring to the terrorist group as the brainchild
of Damascus. This could be because on August 20, a
Lebanese court accused 107 prisoners of belonging
to Fatah al-Islam. Sixty-two of them were
Lebanese, 36 were Palestinians, five were Saudis -
and there were only two Syrians.
Theory 2: The second theory
was originally given by veteran investigative
reporter Seymour Hersh in May. In a groundbreaking
interview with CNN International's Your World
Today, he said Fatah al-Islam was created by
Saudi Arabia, the US and the Siniora cabinet in
Lebanon. It had one purpose: to create a Sunni
military group that was able to combat Hezbollah,
in the event that Sunni-Shi'ite hostilities broke
out in Lebanon.
Fatah al-Islam apparently,
he concluded, grew out of hand and turned against
its original creators. The idea was: if Iran has
Hezbollah, then Saudi Arabia has Fatah al-Islam.
If the Shi'ites have an armed wing, they why
shouldn't the Sunnis as well?
In an
earlier article on the same subject in March,
Hersh pointed out that this was exactly what the
US did when backing al-Qaeda in the 1980s. Along
with the Saudis, the Americans promoted bin Laden
to combat the Soviets. With time, bin Laden turned
against them and became the United States' No 1
enemy.
The architects of this new policy,
which Hersh calls "the redirection", were US Vice
President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security
Adviser Elliott Abrams, and former ambassador and
current Saudi National Security Adviser Prince
Bandar bin Sultan. Hersh said, "The idea [is] that
the Saudis promised they could control the
jihadis, so we [US] spent a lot of money and time
... using and supporting the jihadis to help us
beat the Russians in Afghanistan, and they turned
on us. And we have the same pattern, not as if
there's any lessons learned. The same pattern,
using the Saudis again to support jihadis."
In his CNN interview, Hersh added, "The
enemy of our enemy is our friend, just as the
jihadi groups in Lebanon were also there to go
after Nasrallah. We're in the business of creating
in some places, Lebanon in particular, sectarian
violence."
Depending on which side one
stands, theories can be adopted when it comes to
Abssi. For now, the world is focusing on his
death, drawing him as part of a series of
fundamentalists like bin Laden, his deputy Ayman
al-Zawahiri, and Zarqawi.
Actually, that
was his dream - but not a reality - because Abssi
lived and died a small terrorist. He never had the
honor of being a bin Laden - nor even a Zawahiri.
Lebanon is rejoicing at his death. It's the
wonderful singer Fairuz whom the world should
remember about Lebanon, not Abssi. It's
"Switzerland of the East" that should remain
imprinted in the minds of the world - not Nahr
al-Bared.
Sami Moubayed is a
Syrian political analyst.
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2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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