Qaeda Thugs Promise Lebanon A Long, Hot Summer
By James Gordon Meek
The latest trouble in Lebanon began in a rundown refugee camp called "Cold River," where U.S. officials fear Al Qaeda is trying to ignite the war-ravaged country into an inferno once again. Lebanon is still recovering from last summer's border war pitting Israel against the Shiite Muslim terror group Hezbollah. This time, the fighting is north of Tripoli and between the fledgling Lebanese army and Sunni groups loyal to Osama Bin Laden who are holed up in the Nahr Al-Bared ("Cold River") Palestinian refugee camp.
"It's going to be a very hot summer in tiny Lebanon," predicts Fawaz Gerges, a Lebanese-born Sarah Lawrence College scholar, who is researching jihadis in the country. "You have Al Qaeda-inspired groups ready to die. These people fight until the end."
Jihadi leaders from as far away as Europe have publicly urged Sunni followers to join the fight in northern Lebanon. Foreign jihadis killed in recent firefights in northern Lebanon were from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and many of the guerrillas are veterans of the Iraq insurgency, Gerges says, and which U.S. officials confirm. Three more Lebanese soldiers were killed today in Nahr Al-Bared.
While one U.S. official downplayed the likelihood of a looming "apocalyptic" clash, another counterterrorism official told me last week, "It clearly is a worry and we're closely monitoring it."
Read more about Al Qaeda gaining a grip on Lebanon at the New York Daily News' Mouth of the Potomac blog.
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