Word: islamics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...biggest concern now is that Fatah al-Islam is a tool created by the Syrian regime to stir up chaos in Lebanon as a way of heading off a U.N. tribunal that may prosecute Syrian officials for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. ?The Syrian regime is continuing its old policies of using Palestinians as fodder for all the battles the Syrians are waging in the region,? says Lebanese commentator Khayrallah Khayrallah. But a longer-term worry is that a triangle of continuing political instability from Baghdad to Gaza to Tripoli will spawn a even more armed...
...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. Squalid, overcrowded camps such as Nahr el-Bared, where the Lebanese army is now battling Fatah al-Islam fighters, became breeding grounds for the Palestine Liberation Organization's guerrilla groups. After Israel's 1982 invasion to evict the PLO 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 Intifadeh. That faction, backed by Syrian...
...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...
...Although Fatah al-Islam appears rooted in conflicts related to Palestine, Iraq and al-Qaeda's global jihad, the group's activities have added a dangerous new element of instability in Lebanon, a country already reeling from last summer's Israel-Hizballah war and Hizballah's subsequent attempts to topple the pro-American Lebanese government headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The Lebanese army launched its attacks following indications that Fatah al-Islam was setting up an al-Qaeda base in Lebanon like Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The group's provocations include alleged involvement in February bus bombings...
...Siniora's government believes that Fatah al-Islam is a Syrian proxy, stirring up trouble in order to sabotage efforts to set up a U.N. tribunal in the Hariri assassination and eventually reassert Syrian hegemony in Lebanon; a U.N. investigative report has cited senior officials close to Syrian President Bashar Assad for complicity in the 2005 killing. The government said suspects arrested in the February bus bombings confessed to being Fatah al-Islam members working for Syria, with apparent orders to attack U.N. forces in southern Lebanon and target 36 Lebanese for assassination. Syrian officials angrily rejected the accusations, saying...