Word: tripoli
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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...
...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 all the way to Morocco. Taken together, these groups threaten the entire Middle East. Exploiting the Internet, using cell...
...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...
...activities now risk destabilizing Lebanon. The nation is still reeling from last summer's war between Israel and Hizballah and Hizballah's attempts to topple the pro-American Lebanese government headed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Now it faces a new threat; the Lebanese army launched its attacks in Tripoli following indications that Fatah al-Islam was setting up an al-Qaeda base in Lebanon similar to the one founded by Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia...
...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...