Word: factions
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Much remains a mystery about Fatah al-Islam, the Palestinian-led Sunni Muslim fundamentalist faction that sprang up six months ago and is at the center of Lebanon's latest fighting. What is known, however, indicates that the group, based near the northern coastal city of Tripoli, is a product of past Middle East conflict, a manifestation of present unrest in Lebanon and an ominous sign of future turmoil throughout the region...
...Lebanon and head off a U.N. tribunal that may prosecute Syrian officials for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But there is a longer-term worry that goes beyond any possible Syrian connections-that Fatah al-Islam is one of a group of armed, extremist factions that have been spawned in the triangle of political instability from Baghdad to Gaza to Tripoli. Those groups include Iraqi insurgents, the mysterious Palestinian faction holding BBC journalist Alan Johnston hostage in Gaza, and the radical Salafist cells that have multiplied in Saudi Arabia and across North Africa...
...breeding grounds for the Palestine Liberation Organization's guerrilla groups. After Israel's invasion in 1982, designed to evict the P.L.O. from Lebanon, the Syrian regime launched a campaign of its own against Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, sponsoring a splinter group that called itself Fatah al-Intifada. That faction, backed by Syrian artillery, drove Arafat out of Tripoli...
...late 2006, a fighter named Shaker al-Absi broke away from Fatah al-Intifada and called his new faction Fatah al-Islam. This time, the split appeared to be rooted in the growth of al-Qaeda and the terrorism unleashed after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, another indication of extremism's viral spread since Sept. 11, 2001. The original Fatah always espoused a secular Palestinian state, as did Fatah al-Intifada. But Fatah al-Islam not only preaches a Salafist brand of Islam, but appears to have at least logistical links with al-Qaeda. In 2004, a Jordanian court convicted...
...late 2006, a fighter named Shaker al-Absi broke away from Fatah Intifadeh and called his new faction Fatah al-Islam. This time the split appeared to be rooted in the growth of al-Qaeda and the terrorism unleashed after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, another indication of extremism's viral spread since Sept. 11. The original Fatah as well as the initial splinter group always espoused a secular Palestinian state, but Fatah al-Islam not only preaches an ultra, Salafist brand of Islam, but appears to have at least logistical links with al-Qaeda. In 2004, a Jordanian court...