Word: syria
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...government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora believes that the sudden surge of violence is linked to moves by members of the United Nations Security Council to appoint an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Though Syria has denied any involvement in Hariri's death, many believe it was behind the killing. "The pro-Syrian opposition [in Lebanon] has reached a complete political deadlock and the international tribunal is about to be passed by the United Nations. That's the reason why we are seeing this violence," Marwan Hamade, Lebanese Minister...
...Lebanon's government would like us to believe Fatah Islam started the fighting there on Sunday on the orders of Damascus. I hope they know better. Whether Syria is providing tactical help or not, at the end of the day Fatah Islam is the Syrian regime's mortal enemy. If the fighting were to somehow lead to an all-out civil war, Syrian stability will be undermined. Lebanon has had a Sunni fundamentalist element in the north for more than 25 years. As I've written before in this column, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood used northern Lebanon as a rear...
...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 that the group was affiliated to al-Qaeda and that al-Absi spent three years in a Syrian prison on terrorism charges...
...Nonetheless, fingers remain pointed at Syria, in part because of the regime's history of working with groups of all manner of ideologies as part of its struggle for strategic control of Lebanon. Lebanese officials suspect that Syria has covert ties with Fatah al-Islam because Syria freed al-Absi from prison and because al-Absi maintained a long membership in the Syrian-backed Fatah Intifadeh group. The tie is difficult to prove, for the moment at least. But the Siniora government's suspicions, the heavy fighting in Tripoli and the looming showdown with Syria over the U.N. tribunal...
...others argue that blaming Syria for all Lebanon's problems is the default position of the March 14 coalition and the government, and that Fatah al-Islam is a genuine Islamist organization dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Tripoli resident Mohsen Mohammed, 35, an adherent of the strict Salafi school of Sunni Islam and a sympathizer of Fatah al-Islam, says that the group's popularity has been steadily increasing in the Nahr al-Bared camp. "They help people by giving them food and aid. They are very disciplined and polite and never carry arms in the camp except at times...