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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>1 of 3 (May, 21): “<b><i><span
style='font-weight:bold;font-style:italic'>Scores dead as Lebanese army battles
Islamists in bloodiest day since civil war</span></i></b>”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>2 of 3 (May, 22): “<b><i><span
style='font-weight:bold;font-style:italic'>A front-row seat for this Lebanese
tragedy</span></i></b>”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#333399" face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#333399'>3 of 3 (May, 23): “<b><i><span
style='font-weight:bold;font-style:italic'>The road to <st1:City w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:City>
(via <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>)</span></i></b>”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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padding:0pt 0pt 1.0pt 0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0pt'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'><img
width=90 height=98 id="_x0000_i1028" src="cid:image001.gif@01C79CB2.3A107FA0"
class=sectionLogo>Robert Fisk: Scores dead as Lebanese army battles Islamists
in bloodiest day since civil war <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h4><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Published: 21
May 2007 <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h4>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Butchery
was the word that came to mind. Twenty-three Lebanese soldiers and police, 17
Sunni Muslim gunmen. How long can <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> endure this? Just before he
died, one of the armed men - Palestinians? Lebanese? - we still don't know -
shot a soldier right beside me. He fell down on his back, crying with pain, and
I thought he had slipped on the road until I saw the blood pumping out of his
leg and the Red Cross team dragging him desperately out of the line of fire.
Not since the war - yes, the Lebanese civil war that we are all still trying to
forget - have I heard this many bullets cracking across the streets of a
Lebanese city. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And the
dead. Five of the 17 gunmen were killed after paramilitary police stormed an
apartment block in 200 Street in the centre of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City>. One lay on his back like a child,
water from a broken hydrant streaming over his corpse. Another lay crumpled in
a doorway amid glass and the Kalashnikov rifle he was still firing when he
died. "How young they all were," a woman remarked with a kind of
weariness, and I noticed the dead were also bearded, the little stubble beards
al-Qaida's men like to wear.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
bloody events in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
yesterday passed so swiftly - and so dangerously for those of us on the streets
- that I am still unsure what happened. Clearly, an al-Qaida-type group tried
to ambush the Lebanese army - and succeeded all too appallingly; 23 dead
soldiers and police is a fearful figure for a tiny country such as <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>. But
was it really a Syrian plot, as Fouad Siniora's government suggested? Was this
the long hand of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region>
stretching out once more across <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
green and pleasant land?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>So here
are a few facts. A group of armed men tried to rob a Tripoli bank on Saturday
and got cornered in an apartment block. Others holed up in the Nahr el-Bared
Palestinian refugee camp north of the city. When I arrived yesterday, army tank
fire was bursting in the camp and black-hooded policemen were preparing to
storm, Iraqi-style, into the city-centre building. But the robbers were said to
have stolen only $1,500. Was that worth this massacre? And is "Fatah
al-Islaam" - which has existed in the shadows of the camp for months -
really a 300-strong armed group?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Certainly
the dead gunmen were real. I found two more heaped together in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City>, covered in spent ammunition clips,
the apartment building on fire - so hot I could not get up the stairs - but
families still struggling down. One woman carried a baby. "Only four days
old, he is only four," she wailed at me. One family I found huddling in
their bathroom, 12 terrified Lebanese who had spent 24 hours in this tiny room
as bullets swept the walls of their home. So what in God's name happened in <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
yesterday?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Well, Mr
Siniora claimed it was an attempt to destabilise Lebanon - a good guess, to put
it mildly - and Saad Hariri, son of the former prime minister murdered here
more than two years ago, called the armed men "evil-doers who had hijacked
Islam". This is the same Saad Hariri whom at least one American reporter -
I refer to Seymour Hersh - suggested was indirectly helping to funnel Saudi
money to these same gunmen in a recent article in The New Yorker. The Shia
Muslim Hizbollah are supposed to be the bad guys in this scenario, not a Sunni
group.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But <st1:City
w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:City> is the most powerful Sunni city in <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region> - so powerful that not a drop of alcohol
wets its restaurant tables - and the men and women running in terror across <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City>'s streets
yesterday were also Sunnis. So are the Syrians really concocting an
"al-Qaida" in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>?
And who are its enemies? The Nato army of the UN force in southern <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
perhaps? But surely not the Lebanese army, the very same army which bravely
prevented civil war last January? Yet in 2000, an al-Qaida-type group also
ambushed the Lebanese army in northern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Was this, too, supposed to
be a Syrian invention?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Showers
of bullets were still tracing their way over <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City> last night and the army was said to
be preparing to move into the camps. Fatah, Yasser Arafat's clapped-out
organisation, announced it was on the side of the army, a wise decision after
yesterday's bloodbath. "A dangerous attempt to undermine <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
security," was the response of a government whose Shia cabinet ministers
abandoned it last year in the hope of bringing the whole Siniora administration
down. But where do we go from here?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And who
were the dead men I saw yesterday, perforated by bullets, partly torn open by
grenades? Silent testimony is all we receive from the dead. One of them had big
eyes above his fluffy beard, eyes which stared at us and at the police who
jeered at his corpse. I wonder if they will not come to haunt us soon. And if
we will discover what lies behind this terrible day in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0pt 0pt 1.0pt 0pt'>
<p style='border:none;padding:0pt'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'>Robert
Fisk: A front-row seat for this Lebanese tragedy <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h4><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Published: 22
May 2007 <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h4>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>There is
something obscene about watching the siege of Nahr el-Bared. The old
Palestinian camp - home to 30,000 lost souls who will never go "home"
- basks in the Mediterranean sunlight beyond a cluster of orange orchards.
Soldiers of the Lebanese army, having retaken their positions on the main road
north, idle their time aboard their old personnel carriers. And we - we
representatives of the world's press - sit equally idly atop a half-built
apartment block, basking in the little garden or sipping cups of scalding tea
beside the satellite dishes where the titans of television stride by in their
blue space suits and helmets. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And then
comes the crackle-crackle of rifle fire and a shoal of bullets drifts out of
the camp. A Lebanese army tank fires a shell in return and we feel the faint
shock wave from the camp. How many are dead? We don't know. How many are
wounded? The Red Cross cannot yet enter to find out. We are back at another of
those tragic Lebanese stage shows: the siege of Palestinians.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Only this
time, of course, we have Sunni Muslim fighters in the camp, in many cases
shooting at Sunni Muslim soldiers who are standing in a Sunni Muslim village.
It was a Lebanese colleague who seemed to put his finger on it all. "<st1:country-region
w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region> is showing that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> doesn't have to be
Christians versus Muslims or Shia versus Sunnis," he said. "It can be
Sunnis versus Sunnis. And the Lebanese army can't storm into Nahr el-Bared.
That would be a step far greater than this government can take."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And there
is the rub. To get at the Sunni Fatah al-Islam, the army has to enter the camp.
So the group remains, as potent as it was on Sunday when it staged its
mini-revolution in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City>
and ended up with its dead fighters burning in blazing apartment blocks and 23
dead soldiers and policemen on the streets.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And yes,
it is difficult not to feel <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
hands these days. Fouad Siniora's government, surrounded in its little
"green zone" in central <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>,
is being drained of power. The army is more and more running <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region>, ever more tested because it, too, of
course, contains <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
Sunnis and Shia and Maronites and Druze. What fractures, what greater strains
can be put on this little country as Siniora still pleads for a UN tribunal to
try those who murdered ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>We read
through the list of army dead. Most of the names appear to be Sunni. And we
glance up to the fleecy clouds and across the mountain range to where the Syrian
border lies scarcely 10 miles away. Not difficult to reach Nahr el-Barad from
the frontier. Not difficult to resupply. The geography makes a kind of
political sense up here. And just up the road is the Syrian frontier post.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
soldiers are polite, courteous with journalists. This must be one of the few
countries in the world where soldiers treat journalists as old friends, where
they blithely allow them to broadcast from in front of their positions,
borrowing their newspapers, sharing cigarettes, chatting, believing that we
have our job to do. But more and more we are wondering if we are not
cataloguing the sad disintegration of this country. The Lebanese army is on the
streets of Beirut to defend Siniora, on the streets of Sidon to prevent sectarian
disturbances, on the roads of southern Lebanon watching the Israeli frontier
and now, up here in the far north, besieging the poor and the beaten
Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared and the dangerous little groupuscule which may -
or may not - be taking its orders from Damascus.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
journey back to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City>
is now littered with checkpoints and even the capital has become dangerous once
more. In Ashrafieh in the early hours, a bomb explosion - we could hear it all
over the city - killed a Christian woman. No suspects, of course. There never
are. Posters still demand the truth of Hariri's murder. Other posters demand
the truth of an earlier prime ministerial murder, that of Rashid Karami.
Several, just the down the road from our little roof proudly carry the portrait
of Saddam Hussein. "Martyr of 'Al-Adha'," they proclaim, marking the
date of his execution. So even <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>'s
collapse now touches us all here in our Sunni village where the Sunni dictator
of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is honoured rather than loathed.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A flurry
of rockets rumbled over the camp before dusk. The soldiers scarcely bothered to
look. And across the orange orchards and the deserted tenement streets of Nahr
el-Bared, the sea froths and sparkles as if we were all on holiday, as this
nation trembles beneath our feet.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0pt 0pt 1.0pt 0pt'>
<p style='border:none;padding:0pt'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:24.0pt'>Robert
Fisk: The road to <st1:City w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:City> (via <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>) <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h2><b><i><font size=4 face=Arial><span style='font-size:14.0pt'>Inspired by
al-Qa'ida, a hitherto little-known militant group is behind the outbreak of
bloody violence which has left scores dead <o:p></o:p></span></font></i></b></h2>
<h4><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Published: 23
May 2007 <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h4>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>They came
into <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region> last summer
when the world was watching <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
smash this small nation in a vain attempt to destroy the Hizbollah. But the men
who set up their grubby little office in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, some
of them fighters from the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>
war, others from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Yemen</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region> or <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region>
itself, were far more dangerous than <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
believed the Hizbollah to be. They had come, they told the few journalists who
bothered to seek them out "to liberate" <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:City> because "to free our territory
is a sacred duty inscribed in the Koran". <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>That the
men of Fatah al-Islam should believe that the road to Jerusalem lay through the
Lebanese city of Tripoli and might be gained by killing almost 30 Lebanese
soldiers - many of them Sunni Muslims like themselves, four of whom it now
emerges had their heads cut off - was one of the weirder manifestations of an
organisation which, while it denies being part of al-Qa'ida, is clearly
sympathetic to the "brothers" who serve the ideas of Osama bin Laden.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Last night
their gunmen in Nahr el-Bared offered a ceasefire to the Lebanese troops
surrounding them after doctors had pleaded for a truce in which the dead and
wounded could be cleared from the streets. It was an equally odd idea from a
group which only 24 hours earlier had promised to open the "gates of
hell" all over Lebanon and "shoot to the last bullet" if the
army did not halt its fire. The nature of their politics, however, is less
sinister than their savagery. At least two, it now transpires, blew themselves
up with explosive belts in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City>
on Sunday after taking civilians hostage.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>One
survivor recalled that a dying member of Fatah-al-Islam spent his last moments
reading to him from the Koran.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
organisation - we still do not know if they have 300 armed men at their
disposal - clearly took some inspiration from the famous declaration of
al-Qa'ida's Ayman al-Zawahiri that <st1:City w:st="on">Palestine</st1:City> was
close to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and that thus
"warriors should take their holy war to the frontiers of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:City>". One of those frontiers, of
course, is the Lebanese-Israeli border. Chaker al-Absi told Lebanese
journalists last year that his movement "was founded on the Koran and holy
law" and that it was a "reformist movement created to bring an end to
corruption and to brandish in the sky over <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Jerusalem</st1:place></st1:City> the banner which says 'There is
only one God but God'."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And he
added that "we are neither allied to a regime or any group existing on
this earth." Absi, it should be added, is wanted in <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Jordan</st1:place></st1:country-region> for the
murder of an American diplomat. No less a figure than Omar al-Bakri - deported
from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region> more than a
year ago - has described Fatah al-Islam as "well and truly <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s winning
card".<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>If it is,
then <st1:country-region w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region> will have some
work explaining how the group also announced its responsibility for two bombings
in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City> at
the weekend, one of which killed a middle-aged Christian woman. The Lebanese
army suspect that it also placed bombs on buses in the Christian district of
Ain Alak earlier this year.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But why <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City>? And why now?
Well, of course there's the imminent United Nations tribunal into who killed
ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Was it <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>? But
reports in Lebanon become more dramatic the more they are repeated; that Fatah
al-Islam is funded by Bin Laden's two sons, Saad and Mohamed; that two of the
gunmen killed in Tripoli were brothers of a Lebanese man from Akkar - also in
the north of Lebanon - who was arrested in Germany last year for allegedly
plotting to put bombs on railway trains; that the Tripoli dead also included a
Bangladeshi and a Yemeni.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Certainly,
we know that one of the dead - possibly two - are sons of a 60-year-old
Lebanese man from <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sidon</st1:place></st1:City>,
Darwish Haity. He is aware that his son Ahmad is dead and fears that Mahmoud
Haity was also among those who fought to the death in the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Tripoli</st1:place></st1:City> apartment blocks. "My children
are not like that," the father was quoted as saying. "Fatah al-Islam
fooled them and turned them into criminals." Ahmad Haity was a married
father of three.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Sidon</span></font></st1:City> itself is home to the
largest camp in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region>, Ein
el-Helweh, from where at least 20 Palestinians set off to be suicide bombers
against US troops in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
One Tripoli Sunni Muslim movement boasts that it sent "at least" 300.
And Ein el-Helweh boasts a set of tiny Islamic groups like Issbat al-Anssar
which broke apart when its leadership founded Issbat al-Noor - "The
Community of Illumination" - whose chief was assassinated, supposedly by a
PLO faction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>If these
internecine Palestinian disputes appear tiresome, it should be remembered that
many have their origins in the Lebanese civil war, when Arafat's PLO fought on
the Muslim side against Christian Maronite militia.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>When
Lebanese troops arrested Moamar Abdullah al-Awami, a Yemeni, in Sidon in 2003
and accused him of plotting to blow up a McDonald's restaurant, Awami - who
used the nom de guerre "Ibn al-Shaheed" (son of the martyr) - claimed
to have met three al-Qa'ida operatives in Ein el-Helweh. Several Lebanese
fundamentalists involved in a battle against the Lebanese army in 2000 at Sir
el-Dinniye, joined a Palestinian group known as Jund al-Shams (Soldier of
Damascus) whose leader, Mohamed Sharqiye, arrived in Sidon 10 years ago - and
here the story comes full circle - from the same Nahr el-Bared camp where Fatah
el-Islam was established in the summer of last year.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is too
simple to claim that this is <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
work. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>
may have an interest is watching this destabilisation, even - through its
security networks - assisting these groups with logistics. But other
organisations might have found common interest; the Iraqi insurgents, for
example, even the Taliban, perhaps equally small groups in the Palestinian
occupied territories. That's how these things work in the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle
East</st1:place>, where there is no such thing as responsibility - only a
commonality of interests. Perhaps the Americans might have learnt something
about this if they had not two years ago insulted the Syrians for allowing
fighters into <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> - at
which point, the Syrians halted all military and intelligence co-operation with
the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Interviewed
earlier this year, another of Fatah al-Islam's leaders who called himself
"Abu Mouayed", insisted that "we are not in contact with other
Islamists... we are not at the point of recruiting fighters, but those who want
to work with us and struggle against the Jews are welcome". He also
threatened to attack the enlarged UN force in southern <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> which
is run by four Nato generals. At the time, the PLO's officials in Nahr el-Bared
claimed that they were "keeping their eye" on Fatah al-Islam. But
sometime in the last two months, their gaze clearly wandered.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The army
and the Internal Security Force - a mild version of a paramilitary police unit
- appear to have caught 11 of the gunmen before they could kill themselves and
they are now under interrogation (a process that is definitely not going to be
mild, although one of the men was seriously wounded). Photographers managed to
catch pictures of one of the captured men as he was grabbed by soldiers after
one of their comrades had been killed. But is it likely that these fierce -
vicious - warriors are going to talk when they were all prepared to die?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The army,
too, has its feelings. About half of their dead appear to be Sunni Muslims, and
many of them come from northern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This is a
part of the country where revenge killings have often been a feature of social
anger and once the battles at Nahr al-Bared are over, there will be families
desperate to make up for the loss of husbands and sons, especially those who
were done to death so cruelly. Back at Sir el-Dinniye in 2000, there were no
revenge deaths after 11 soldiers were killed. But some of the gunmen who killed
them seven years ago are now themselves - and here we go full circle again - in
the Ein el-Helweh camp in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sidon</st1:place></st1:City>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The PLO's
Fatah movement has called its namesake "a gang of criminals" - a wise
precaution given the suppressed fury of the Lebanese that the Palestinians
allowed the group to be created in the northern refugee camp. In Ein el-Helweh,
the PLO are on the streets, ensuring that there is no recurrence, although one
Palestinian Islamist did open fire into the air on Monday in anger at the death
of his "brothers" who are fighting the army.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>If the
siege of Nahr el-Bared continues, however, it may not be so easy to control the
Palestinian groups in <st1:City w:st="on">Beirut</st1:City> and in the south of
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
And then the Lebanese army - which is all that stands between peace and anarchy
here - will be even further stretched.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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