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Nahr El-Bared fighters: U.S. protégé?
munaeem | 28 May, 2007 15:10
Lebanese authorities allegedly accuse Fatah al-Islam of having links to al-Qaeda and the Syrian government.
Fatah al-Islam is far from being an ordinary armed Palestinian faction. Indeed, it seems hardly to be Palestinian at all. Whereas a minority of its members may be Palestinian, the others - judging from those who have been killed, wounded or captured -- come from half a dozen Arab and Asian countries, some of them jihadi veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its parent body - or at least its inspiration - seems to be Al-Qaida.
The Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, one of Syria's most virulent critics, has alleged that Fatah al-Islam is a 'Syria's proxy,' while the exiled Abd al-Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice-president who now heads an opposition movement dedicated to the overthrow of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, has stated categorically that 'Syria is responsible.'
Proof, however, is lacking. Interrogation of captured members of Fatah al-Islam might yield some evidence of a Syrian connection but, for the moment at least, the evidence seems to point in quite another direction.
According to the U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the U.S. and Saudi governments are covertly supporting Sunni groups like Fatah al-Islam as part of a policy against Iran and growing Shia influence in the Middle East.
In a recent interview with CNN International's “Your World Today”, Hersh also said groups like Fatah al-Islam are the result of Washington's underground policies.
Accusing the White House of “no longer acting rationally,” Hersh said: “We're in the business of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia… We're in the business of creating ... sectarian violence."
Some analysts believe that a group like Fatah al-Islam was initially tolerated, and perhaps even funded, by Lebanese Sunnis who may have seen in it the embryo of the militia they needed. They certainly longed to be able to demonstrate that they could stand up to the Shi 'is and to Syria.
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