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Al-Qa'ida sends its warriors from Iraq to wage 'jihad' in
Lebanon
Bomb attack in Tripoli has exposed the brutal infighting in the
country's second city
By Robert Fisk
16/06/08 "The
Independent" -- -
Abdullah got it about right. Picking his fingernails in the
ticket office of the local bus station, he lowered his eyes. He
had seen everything; the severed arms and legs of Lebanese
soldiers, the still uniformed but headless infantryman slumped
out of the window of the minibus round the corner, and the
bodies of all the little people who die when bombs go off here:
the old man who sold sandwiches to the troops, the lemonade
salesman, the child who polished shoes. All dead, of course.
"Collateral damage" to the man who left the bomb in a bag on the
pavement at 7.45am on Wednesday. "We think it was either Fatah
al-Islam or some unknown forces," Abdullah said. "Why do you
ask?"
Why indeed. Fatah al-Islam is a Salafist version of Sunni Islam,
a weird al-Qa'ida satellite which held out against the Lebanese
army in the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared camp north of here last
year at the cost of 400 deaths and the flight of 40,000
civilians. Most Lebanese concluded that they were implanted in
Lebanon's soil by Syria.
But Wednesday's bomb in Lebanon's second city, the ancient
crusader port of the Chateau de Saint Gilles, disfigured by
massive unemployment and grotesque advertising hoardings, was of
Iraqi proportions: 15 dead, nine of them Lebanese soldiers, and
50 wounded.
Gunfire crackled like broken matchsticks across Tripoli
yesterday as the local "martyrs" were buried. Most had been
queuing for buses to the south, alongside the usual bus drivers
– six of them – sipping coffee on the pavement. One of their
number, Kasser Chebli, who had turned up as usual and begun to
drink his morning coffee, woke up in hospital, minus one leg. On
the streets, the printed funeral notes told their own story.
"The Martyr Mohamed Mustapha Mrai," it said in beautifully
printed Arabic script above an army identity photo of the young
man. "The martyr who died in the Tripoli bomb," the funerary
notice added.
But who were Abdullah's "other forces"? A walk down Syria Street
– and yes, that really is the name of this shattered, burnt-
out, bullet-spattered thoroughfare – provides a few terrifying
clues. It divides the large Sunni district of Tripoli from the
tiny Alawite community. The Sunnis are generally loyal to Saad
Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister whose Future
Movement now forms part of the government in Lebanon.
The Alawis are, as the saying goes, an "offshoot" of Shia Islam
and are close to Syria for a very obvious reason: President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria is an Alawi and so are most of the
powerful men in Syria.
The soldiers murdered in Wednesday's bomb were members of a
large military force deployed after Sunni-Alawi sectarian
gunbattles had killed 22 Lebanese and wounded another 68 in June
and July alone. The battles still continue.
Syria Street is a shameful place of ethnic cleansing, of
burnt-out apartments and smashed shops, of fear and
unemployment. "Don't stand here any longer because you can be
shot from the top of the side road," Rabih al-Badawi quietly
informed me as we inspected the wreckage.
Rabih's business card says he is in "General Trading" – he is a
Sunni and he sells lavatory fitings – but his "trading" took a
blow this summer when he refused to pay protection money to
local gangs. He takes me through his upper offices, carbonised,
trashed, looted, his remaining windows starred with bullet
holes. Outside, bullets crackle in the hot afternoon. It's like
a return to the old Beirut of the war.
"Look at these shops," Rabih tells me as we stroll down Syria
Street with a grotesque display of self-confidence. "This is
Alawi-owned. Bullet holes in the door. This is Alawi. The same.
These are Sunni shops: all burnt out."
Was all this, perhaps, the work of Abdullah's "unknown forces"?
"I think this is the work of weapons' dealers," Rabih replies at
once. "They want to sell guns. So here everyone needs a gun
because everyone is frightened. So the place has filled up with
guns. The army does nothing. Why not? Don't they know the names
of the gangs? Don't they know who is behind this?"
I take a drive round the corner to the slums of the little Alawi
community, and there is Ahmed Saadedin, sipping coffee opposite
another row of "martyrs" pictures, this time of Alawis, who
says, correctly, that at least 9,000 Alawi refugees have fled
their homes here.
"The violence started after Hariri's assassination," Ahmed says.
"When Syria's forces were here, all Lebanon enjoyed security."
Which – if you forget the presence of 40,000 Syrian troops, two
Israeli invasions and a 15-year civil war – is an absolutely
correct statement.
The truth is that Tripoli has slunk back into the civil war,
block after block of gaunt, workless homes in which the
Salafists and the "al-Islamists" and the haunted young men who
have returned from their "jihad" against the Americans in Iraq
now nestle and ponder a dangerous, frightening future amid these
disgraceful battles.
In Tripoli, the fears of every Lebanese are brought to
fulfillment; it's the cold fear of those "outside forces" that
roam throughout the Middle East.
Lebanon's bitter legacy
Independent from French rule since 1943, Lebanon has four
million people made up of numerous religious groups. The 15-year
civil war ended in 1990, but the country is still deeply
unstable. The worst violence since the civil war erupted in 2006
when a month-long war broke out with Israel. When President
Emile Lahoud's term finished in November 2007, the dispute over
his successor led to a six-month power vacuum. Finally, in May,
the former army chief Michel Suleiman was chosen as President,
and on Tuesday a new cabinet was approved by MPs. The country
has been shaken by political assassinations since the February
2005 killing of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The role
of Syria, which withdrew its troops in 2005 after 29 years, has
been a source of conflict. But this week Lebanon and Syria
agreed to establish diplomatic relations.
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