Several Varieties of Terrorist Groups supported by Iran and Syria have infested and infected Lebanon!
May 25, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
One needs a scorecard to keep up with the numerous varieties of terror organizations that have formed, then split and re-split, over the last 50 years in the Middle East, and Syria and Lebanon are hotbeds that draw them like magnets inside their borders.
The widespread instability in Lebanon is largely a product of their creation, and eventually will lead to Lebanon being one of the kings subdued by Islamic cunning to be one of the horns on Daniel’s fourth beast.
The Maronite Catholics, linked with other minor Christian groups, once comprised the majority of the population of Lebanon. The Constitution of Lebanon required that the President be a Maronite and the Prime Minister had to be a Muslim. Outside influence caused internal strife to produce a civil war that wrecked the country militarily, politically, and economically. Syria literally took over Lebanon and she became “little Syria.” Syrian troops were finally pushed out by UN, US, UK, and EU pressure, but only after Syria had assassinated several high government Lebanese officials.
Now numerous splinter terrorist groups of ultra extremists are forming within the refugee camps of
the Palestinians in Lebanon. Other terror groups are coming in from the terrorist organizations with home offices in Damascus. The Republican Guards have slithered in out of Iran, and many of the Syrian Intelligence Organization Officers are still sprinkled across Lebanon. And in the south of Lebanon Hizbullah Shiites, infested with military trainers from Iran, are ruling the roost.
The United States and Europe, in the maize of this confused state of chaos, are trying to rush modern weaponry
to the Lebanese military, who are trying to establish some sense of stability.
Several articles which follow from various sources describe the current instability in Lebanon,
Begin DEBKAfile Article (Number 1)
DEBKAfile Reports: US to airlift ammunition and advanced weapons to Lebanese army in response to Beirut’s plea for aid against Islamic radicals
May 25, 2007, 9:37 AM (GMT+02:00)
US military sources report the first of six cargo planes arrived Friday. For five days, Lebanese tanks and artillery have been pounding Fatah al-Islam gunmen barricaded in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp without achieving a breakthrough. The fighting has escalated dangerously following the infiltration of pro-Syrian reinforcements to the camp.
They are led by members of the pro-Syrian Palestinian extremist Ahmed Jibril’s group, armed by Damascus and directed by Syrian military intelligence officers, who maintain a presence in North Lebanon.
The Bush administration decided to rearm the Lebanese troops with better weapons because if they fail to suppress the Islamist uprising in the northern camp, the unrest will spread. The south Lebanese
Palestinian refugee camp of Ein Hilwa in the south is already getting restive, stirred up by the hundreds of extremists linked to al Qaeda who have settled in the camp.
The IDF’s northern command has placed Israeli units along the Lebanese and Syrians on the alert in case of a flare-up. Washington, Jerusalem and Beirut all believe Bashar Assad is pumping up war tensions to intimidate the UN Security Council which is due to vote Tuesday, May 29, on an international tribunal for suspects in the Hariri assassination.
Assad has announced he will not recognize the tribunal. UN investigator Serge Brammertz plans to issue international arrest warrants for putting some of his close family members and high intelligence officers, stalwarts of his regime, on trial for murder.
The upsurge of violence in the Nahr al Bared camp and two bombing attacks in Beirut this week are seen as the opening shots of the Damascus-instigated campaign of terror.
There are some indications that it could also ignite Israel’s northern borders.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report Syria is known to have trained terrorist teams to infiltrate Israel from Syria and Lebanon. The northern command is on the ready for artillery fire and the Israeli Air Force prepared for Syrian aircraft intrusions.
The navy is braced for missile attacks on its vessels by Hizballah, which has just received a supply of C-802 shore-to-ship missiles from Syria, or even a ground incursion.
Jerusalem took careful note of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to Israel from Isfahan Thursday: The Zionist state will be uprooted, he said, if it attacks Lebanon again this summer.
Articles 2, 3, and 4, which follow, were extracted from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert, May 25, 2007.
Article 2
Splinter Groups Rise in Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon
Scott Wilson
Washington Post
The decline of traditional political institutions within Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon has allowed the rise of militant splinter groups such as Fatah al-Islam. The popularity of political Islam has risen in the camps over the past decade as the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has fallen apart, experts said Monday. “These camps are no longer part of Palestinian society,” said Bernard Rougier, author of Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam Among Palestinians in Lebanon and a professor at the University of Auvergne in France. “They are only spaces – now open to all of the influences running through the Muslim world.” “Many consider Palestine a useless fight….By changing their own identities to one of a Sunni warrior, they also get money from Saudi Arabia and other private sources throughout the [Palestinian] diaspora. You are inventing a new figure of the fighter, and it is very exciting to young people,” Rougier said.
Article 3
The Real Battle for Lebanon Will Take Place at the UN
David Schenker
USA Today
The movement of emissaries between Fatah Islam and Damascus is well-documented; the Arab world’s newspaper of record, Al Hayat, even reports that much of Fatah Islam’s leadership is made up of Syrian officers.
The real battle for Lebanon will not take place in Beirut but in New York at the UN Security Council. Syria’s strategy appears to be to kill the tribunal resolution via a Russian veto.
The key to constraining counterproductive Syrian behavior and ensuring Lebanese sovereignty is seeing through the international tribunal, letting the chips fall where they may.
Justice for Hariri is really justice for the Lebanese people and should not be traded as a card either to jump-start still hypothetical Israeli-Syrian peace talks or to rent Syrian assistance on Iraq.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 2002-06, he was the Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestinian affairs adviser in the office of the Secretary of Defence.
Article 4
Convene the Court
Editorial
Washington Post
The regime of Bashar al-Assad is desperate to stop the creation of the UN tribunal and has made that objective the overriding goal of its foreign policy. Advocates of “engagement” with Syria tend to overlook this reality. The right response to this week’s violence is for the Bush administration, France and Britain to step up their lobbying of the Security Council and schedule an early vote on the tribunal resolution.
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