Lebanon, Syria, Fatah Al-Islam, Hariri & Iran Nuke Case - What's The Explosive Result?

*** Since The 1970s, Hafez Al-Assad Had Done What Others In The Muslim World Thought Was An Impossibility - Such As Creating Suicide Bombers Even From The Shi'ites Of Lebanon - Today His Son Bashar Is Doing The Same But With A Focus On The Sunnis; And One Of His Links To Al-Qaeda In Lebanon Is Fathi Yakan, A Prominent Sunni Militant In The Northern City Of Tripoli Who Goes To Damascus And Meets With Assad Frequently And Often Returns With Neo-Salafi Recruits In His Car, Such As Saddam Dib Whom He Brought From A Syrian Jail And Who Died In A Recent Battle With Lebanon's Army; Fatah Al- Islam Has Been Counting On Other Syria-Produced Neo-Salafi Groups

BEIRUT - There is a new puzzle in the Middle East, now centred in Lebanon, which is about to turn into a major explosion. It is a geo-political concoction with its ingredients being in the following order of importance: Iraq, invaded by the US in March 2003; an Alawite/Ba'thist dictatorship in Syria - which, as US troops marched towards Baghdad on March 27, 2003, vowed that the Americans will be defeated; the murder of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri in Central Beirut on Feb. 15, 2005; Iran's nuclear issue; and the current stand-off in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese Army.

No one knows when and how the big explosion will occur and who will be hurt. But all the parties involved in this concoction - including several states not mentioned above - know that the explosion will occur and will be big enough to affect other parts of the world.

Fatah al-Islam itself is one of the most bizarre concoctions ever produced in the history of the complex Middle East. It has nothing to do with the Palestinian Fatah movement, nor is it Palestinian in the real sense. It is a collection of Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis, Jordanians, Tunisians, Algerians and volunteers from various other parts of the Arab world. It includes some non-Arab volunteers from Europe who fought alongside Neo-Salafi jihadis in Iraq and were arrested in Syria while on their way back from Iraq (see below).

Nor is the dictatorship of Syria really sectarian, despite the fact that its President Bashar al-Assad - re-elected on May 27 in an odd referendum that gave him almost 98% of the votes - whose Alawite family converted into Sunni Islam in order to rule a country with an overwhelming Sunni majority. It is a secular regime and, judging by Assad's utterances, liberal enough to be a candidate to becoming as close to a democracy as the US may or may not tolerate.

Here are some pointers which may eventually help solve the new puzzle:

Sometime after the July/August 2006 war in Lebanon between Israel and Iran's Shi'ite Lebanese offshoot Hizbullah, the Supreme Leader of Iran's Shi'ite theocracy, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed that his regime will defeat the US in Lebanon. On May 17, before the US and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad had their May 28 meeting in the Iraqi capital (see sbme6IraqIranJun4-07), Khamenei said this:

Iran had only agreed to "face-to-face" talks with the US so it could "remind the US of its responsibilities...regarding security", and to "give them an ultimatum... The talks will only be about the responsibilities of the occupiers in Iraq... They think that the Islamic Republic has changed its firm, logical, and defendable policy in rejecting negotiation with the US. They are wrong... How is it possible to negotiate with the arrogant, bullying, expansionist, and colonialist government of the US?"

President Assad recently told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that if the UNSC approved an international tribunal to try the Hariri killers, there would be trouble from the Caspian to the Mediterranean. Just as talk of such tribunal became serious months after Syrian forces were compelled to leave Lebanon in late April 2005 - ending 29 years of occupation and control over Lebanese politics - top Syrian ministers began saying publicly that al-Qaeda was already installed in Labanon; some of them even offered the US to give the exact locations where al-Qaeda had a presence. But the UNSC on May 30 approved the tribunal.

Tehran on May 29 accused detained Iranian-US citizens of espionage and endangering national security, prompting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to brand the move "a perversion of the rule of law". The charges against academic Haleh Esfandiari, social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh and journalist Parnaz Azima came just a day before the UNSC approved the international court to try the Hariri case and other murders that had occurred in Lebanon - implicating Assad's regime - which could also have serious implications for the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran and Hizbullah (see sbme6IraqIranJun4-07).

The background to Fatah al-Islam, a creation of the Syrian regime, and its Neo-Salafi colour were given on May 30 by MP Bahiya Hariri, the sister of the slain Lebanese PM, in a talk to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp's (LBC) TV network. She said that immediately after appearance of "the Abu Adas video-tape" on al-Jazeera TV minutes after the murder of her brother and 22 others on Feb. 14, 2005, "we realised the gravity of the danger Lebanon was facing". She said one of the immediate objectives of that murder was the following combination: a split in Lebanon's Sunni community and a Lebanese-Palestinian war, which was to amount to the destruction of Lebanon.

Abu Adas was the name of a Palestinian Neo-Salafi resident of West Beirut. On the tape, his face appeared talking of his group's responsibility for the Hariri murder and of the reasons behind that act. Months after the Hariri murder, that tape was found by a German laboratory to have been made in November 2004 - way before that massive Feb. 14, 2005, bomb blast in Central Beirut. It was revealed that the tape had been made in Syria by Assad's intelligence network under the supervision of Assef Shawkat, Assad's brother-in-law and head of Syria's military intelligence. It was also said that Abu Adas was liquidated immediately after that tape was made.

On May 30, 2007, as the UNSC passed the Hariri court, it was confirmed that another Syrian creation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), had joined Fatah al-Islam in its war against the Lebanese Army at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, north of Tripoli. PFLP-GC's heavy weapons were used against the Army. And moments after the UNSC approved the tribunal under Resolution 1757, a bomb was exploded at a Christian church in a Beirut suburb.

Syria and Hizbullah on May 31 denounced the UNSC move. Hizbullah called the UNSC move a violation of Lebanon's sovereignty and "an attack on its internal affairs", saying: "It amounts to a flagrant violation that makes the resolution illegal and illegitimate at the national and international level". Hizbullah said 1757 placed Lebanon under "international tutelage, without decision-making and sovereignty in an unprecedented development in the history of sovereign states". Hizbullah leads an Iranian/Syrian-sponsored opposition in Lebanon.

Lebanese PM Fou'ad Siniora had asked the UNSC to establish the tribunal, citing the refusal of the opposition-aligned Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, head of the Shi'ite Amal movement, to convene a session to ratify creation of the court. Berri on May 31 rejected those accusations, reflecting the opposition's bitterness over the government's move to take the issue to the UNSC. Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud, a puppet of Assad, expressed scepticism over the tribunal's ability to "lead us to the truth" and identify the assassins.

Syria, which the UNSC has implicated in Hariri's murder, was quick to criticise the establishment of the tribunal under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which deals with threats to international peace and allows military enforcement. Shortly after the vote late on May 30, Syria's official news agency, citing an unidentified official, said: "The formation of the international court under Chapter 7 is a degradation of Lebanon's sovereignty". The Syrian media on May 31 hit the move as a US-Israeli effort to exact revenge on Damascus. President Assad denied involvement in the murder and threatened not to co-operate with the court if it infringed on Syrian sovereignty.

Siniora and Sa'd Hariri - son of the slain PM and leader of the parliamentary majority known as "March 14 Forces" - praised the UNSC move and extended a hand to the opposition. Hariri said Resolution 1757 was a turning point in Lebanon that would protect it from further assassinations.

On June 1 the Lebanese Army began an offensive on Fatah al-Islam with the aim of finishing off that phenomenon, with the Fatah Movement and most other Palestinian factions backing the Army. Siniora's government received full support from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Sunni states as well as the US, EU and other states around the world, versus condemnations from Syria and Iran.