BEIRUT — This is a never-ending story.
The siege of Nahr el-Bared by thou­sands of Lebanese army troops has entered its third week now, and it may be metas­ta­siz­ing. “Clashes broke out at the Ein el-Helweh camp south of Sidon”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/lebanonunrest;_ylt=AsuRIirk3._W3HQk8Liy4WDagGIB yes­ter­day between the Lebanese army and Jund al-Sham overnight and two sol­diers were killed. Two mil­i­tants were also killed.
The fight­ing erupted just hours after Abu Riyadh, who had pre­vi­ously belonged to Jund al-Sham, was killed in Nahr al-Bared.
“Jund al-Sham”:http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369949 is yet another Salafist/Islamist group that has found a haven in the squalid and mis­er­able Pales­tin­ian camps in Lebanon, thanks in no small part because the Lebanese have let the Pales­tini­ans stew rather than inte­grate them into the greater soci­ety. This pol­icy has cre­ated fetid breed­ing grounds for extrem­ist ide­olo­gies in tune with al Qaeda’s, ide­olo­gies which are in marked con­trast to the more laid back and sophis­ti­cated Mediter­ranean out­look of most of Lebanon.
How­ever, there is likely lit­tle coor­di­na­tion between the group respon­si­ble for yesterday’s and this morning’s clashes in the south and Fatah al-Islam up north in Nahr el-Bared. More likely, mem­bers of Jund al-Sham decided it was time to help their broth­ers in Islam and raised a ruckus. Shaker al-Absssi, the leader of Fatah al-Islam up north, even told a col­league of mine when she spoke with him this morn­ing that there were no oper­a­tional links between Fatah al-Islam and Jund al-Sham.
Another the­ory, pop­u­lar in the gov­ern­ment cir­cles, is that yesterday’s out­burst in the south was yet another Syr­ian plot to sow chaos in Lebanon, although I have my doubts about that. While Syria is active here and Fatah al-Islam is with­out a doubt (in my mind) a Syr­ian asset, Jund al-Sham looks to be more inde­pen­dent. Not every­thing in Lebanon is made in Syria.
I don’t think the inci­dent in Ein el-Helweh will grow larger than it has. Already, other Pales­tin­ian groups have stepped in and, in effect, told the Jund al-Sham boys to sit down and shut up. The fight­ers report­edly turned over some of their posi­tions to other Islamist groups in the camp.
Sorry for the lack of post­ings over the last three days. Yahoo!‘s servers are crap, and I’m often hav­ing trou­ble get­ting into them. I hope to have this resolved soon. I’m also going to be mak­ing a major announce­ment regard­ing syn­di­ca­tion in the com­ing days, hope­fully.
Also, dona­tions are work­ing again, and cov­er­ing this place ain’t cheap. Fix­ers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and free­lanc­ing for news­pa­pers only cov­ers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blog­ging the devel­op­ments in Lebanon’s lat­est cri­sis, please con­sider drop­ping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.