BEIRUT — Jesus. Another car bomb just went off a few min­utes ago in upscale Ver­dun, an upscale Mus­lim neigh­bor­hood full of tony shops. I can’t tell yet, but there appear to be much more dam­age and casu­al­ties than last night’s car bomb in Achrafiyeh. The cars are still burn­ing as I type. The neigh­bor­hood is in chaos as sol­diers and res­cue work­ers try to keep order and reach the wounded amid the flames. Updates as I can get them.
*UPDATE 1:* Future TV, affil­i­ated with the Hariri fam­ily, says four peo­ple have been injured in the bomb.
I’d also like to write a lit­tle his­tory on Fatah al-​Islam. As the Lebanese Army fights a pitched bat­tle with the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant group, the ques­tion for many in Beirut — espe­cially those who sup­port the cur­rent gov­ern­ment — is what role Syria may be play­ing in the cur­rent drama to the north.Â
The tim­ing, accord­ing to some polit­i­cal observers, is telling com­ing as it does on the heels of the intro­duc­tion of a draft res­o­lu­tion at the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil to set up an inter­na­tional tri­bunal that would try sus­pects in the mur­der of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri in 2005. Syria, which opposes the tri­bunal, could have pulled the strings on Fatah al-​Islam, a group that gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers say heeds its mas­ters in Dam­as­cus.
National police com­man­der Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi said yes­ter­day that Dam­as­cus was behind Fatah al-Islam’s recent surge, with only a bit of al Qaeda ide­ol­ogy thrown in.Â
“Per­haps there are some deluded peo­ple among them but they are not al Qaida,” Rifi said. “This is imi­ta­tion al Qaida, a ‘Made in Syria’ one.“
Muham­mad Shatah, a senior advi­sor to Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Sin­iora — whose gov­ern­ment is locked in a power strug­gle with oppo­si­tion groups that sup­port Syria — also said Syria was try­ing to derail the tri­bunal, which is widely expected in to impli­cate senior Syr­ian offi­cials in the Hariri killing, by sow­ing dis­cord in Lebanon. The widely held belief among gov­ern­ment mem­bers is that the leader of Fatah al-​Islam, Shaker al-​Abssi, is a mem­ber of the Syr­ian _​mukhabarrat_​and was sent here last year to stir up trou­ble after mak­ing a deal for an early release from a Syr­ian prison.Â
But one long­time observer of the Pales­tin­ian camps and Islamist move­ments doesn’t see Syria’s direct involve­ment. Kassem Kas­sir, a jour­nal­ist for the pro-​government news­pa­per al Mus­taqbal who is an expert on these groups and has inter­viewed mem­bers of the group in Nahr el-​Bared, said Fatah al-​Islam, and its leader Shaker al-​Abssi are sup­ported by Salafist groups in the Gulf, Iraq and Jor­dan that share al Qaida’s ide­ol­ogy more than they are by Syria. Al-Abssi’s link to Syria comes from the long his­tory of attempts by Syria to use the Pales­tini­ans for its own pur­poses against Israel.Â
Al Abssi used to be a mem­ber of the main Pales­tin­ian fac­tion, Fatah, founded by for­mer PLO chair­man Yas­sir Arafat. He later joined Fatah al-​Intifada, a fake group set up by Syria in an attempt to turn Pales­tini­ans’ national yearn­ings to Syria’s advan­tage. But with lit­tle sup­port among the Pales­tin­ian pop­u­la­tion, which by and large stayed loyal to home­grown groups such as Fatah and Hamas, Fatah al-​Intifada lan­guished. Last year, in a bid to strike out on his own, Kas­sir said, Al Abssi split and formed Fatah al-Islam.Â
It was pos­si­bly a nat­ural split, he said, because Al Abssi is a Jor­dan­ian of Pales­tin­ian descent with ties to Abu Musab al-​Zarqawi, the for­mer leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was killed last year. Today he gets money and men from Salafist groups in the Gulf, Iraq and Jor­dan who share his jihadist view of an Islamic caliphate stretch­ing from Morocco to Indonesia.Â
Kas­sir acknowl­edged that Fatah al-​Islam appears to be very well armed and those weapons had to have come through Syria at some point, indi­cat­ing some degree of coöper­a­tion, but Syria often allows groups other than its main ally Hezbol­lah to arm up.Â
Hezbol­lah has con­straints on what it can do, given its image as a Lebanese resis­tance with mem­bers of par­lia­ment, said Reva Bhalla, direc­tor of geopo­lit­i­cal analy­sis at Strat­for, a Houston-​based secu­rity firm. It is reluc­tant to turn its guns on the gov­ern­ment, given that it’s part of it and it still hope to be seen as a legit­i­mate part of the Lebanese polit­i­cal process. Groups such as Fatah al-​Islam have more flexibility.Â
“Syria is fun­nel­ing weapons and men to them, keep­ing them there (in Lebanon) and they’re a bar­gain­ing tac­tic against the United States,” which is cur­rently talk­ing with Syria’s main ally, Iran, over a pos­si­ble détente in the Mid­dle East, she said. Sig­nif­i­cantly, she added, Iran has sig­naled that it doesn’t oppose the Hariri tri­bunal, which is mak­ing Syria very ner­vous that its main ally might be hang­ing it out to dry.Â
“Syria is watch­ing very closely that it doesn’t get screwed in any deal,” and any sup­port it may be giv­ing to groups such as Fatah al-​Islam is to remind the United States that it has chips it can still play.  Â
Regard­less of how the bat­tle with Fatah al-​Islam plays out, there are other groups that Syria has more direct ties with, Kas­sir said, such as Jund al-​Sham (Army of the Sham) and Osbat al-​Ansar (the League of Par­ti­sans), which are based in other Pales­tin­ian camps in Lebanon. They all share a sim­i­lar ide­ol­ogy and all ben­e­fit from Syria’s look­ing the other way as matériel crosses the bor­der com­ing from and head­ing to Iraq.Â
“This is just the tip of the ice­berg,” he said.Â