Word: fatah
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...fighting continued, it was common to link Fatah al-Islam to the Syrian regime, and to see the group as a tool in the hands of Damascus to foment chaos in 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...
...Fatah al-Islam's roots can loosely be traced to Israel's 1948 war of independence, when thousands of Palestinians fled their homes for a dozen refugee camps in Lebanon. The squalid, overcrowded camps became 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...
...military operation in Lebanon is intended to flush out the group's fighters, including Saudis, Syrians, Tunisians, Yemenis, Moroccans as well as Palestinians. Yet the bombardment of a Palestinian refugee camp risks broadening the conflict to include other mainstream Palestinian factions such as the original Fatah group, whose Lebanon representative Sultan Abul Ainain warned "there will be uprisings in all the camps in Lebanon" if the army's indiscriminate shelling of the camp at Nahr al-Bared did not cease. Such a confrontation risks pulling in Hizballah, which, although a Shi'ite group, is closely allied with Sunni Palestinian factions...
...Siniora's government believes that Fatah al-Islam is a Syrian proxy, though Syrian officials angrily reject the accusations. But whatever the truth about Fatah al-Islam, its sudden, violent birth amounts to a warning about dangers ahead for a Middle East where political conflicts have for too long remained unsolved. It is conventional wisdom that Lebanon is the stage where Middle East factions act out their disputes. In the eruption of killings in Tripoli, however, Lebanon is just another player in a larger, unfolding drama...