Blowback in Lebanon

As Seymour Hersh first reported, in an article penned back in March, the U.S. has begun to fund various Sunni extremist groups as part of what Condoleezza Rice refers to as “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East” – essentially an effort to prop up Sunni Islam against the “Shia crescent” emerging in the region as a consequence of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

This policy appears to have backfired in Lebanon, where a militant Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, has drawn the Lebanese army into the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. Rather than acting as a counter to local Shia bogeyman, Hezbollah, the current backlash has Hezbollah and the U.S.-backed Lebanese army colluding in order to crush the intransigent Salafists. As is often the case, it is the innocent civilians of the refugee camps who are being made to suffer.

Click here for an interview with Seymour Hersh on the subject.

The violence that has engulfed the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon over the past few days, started after a night raid by internal security forces to arrest alleged bank robbers in Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli. That turned into armed clashes between police and a small radical Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam. Within hours, the Lebanese army was pulled into the conflict when more than a dozen soldiers were ambushed and killed. The army surrounded and began shelling the camp where Fatah al-Islam militants are based – home to more than 30,000 refugees – with mounting casualties on all sides, including civilians.

The story of Lebanon’s US-backed Siniora government and army battling an isolated al-Qaida-type terrorist group allegedly backed by Syria obscures a complex picture that has been years in the making, and which involves a peculiar social environment, Lebanese political manoeuvring, and the wider dynamics of an increasingly volatile region.

Posted by Heatscore
A jaded Raskolnikov waiting in disgust for this sick society's imminent paradigm shift.

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