Lebanon:Interview with Shaker el-Absi (head of Fatah Islam)

DucthwomaninBeirut: You’ve got to read this, very interesting; it is an interview with this Shaker el-Absi guy (head of Fatah Islam) in March of this year.

Don’t tell me the Lebanese did not see this one coming! I have no idea who this Pierre Tristam is (this link comes from his blog), but it seems everybody in Lebanon’s intellgigence knew Shaker el-Absi was in the camp. They know the camps are fertile grounds for breeding religious intolerance, and they knew he was in touch with al-Qaida.Now what more do you need to know in order to understand you had it coming your way?

Hat tip to Jeha’s Nail for the image and the link.

This Pierre Tristam had another interesting link, a New York Times newspaper article from 1973 about fighting between Palestinian factions and the Lebanese Army. It seems the circle is round.

The main problem I think is that whether they knew about this or not,the Lebanese Army and Security forces have not been allowed into the camps for 40 years (Part of a treaty drawn up between the Lebanese government and the PLO which gave these camps their autonomy). In this strange country, the Lebanese aren't allowed control over parts of their own land.

Every time someone commits an atrocity they run into the camp and are out of reach e.g. the militants who killed four judges in Saida and escaped into the camps. For some reason very few are handed over by the Palestinian security forces running the camps. It's a big mess, stemming from ever bigger messes with no clear way out. Lebanon has 2 states within a state. One is Hizballah and the other the Palestinians refugee camps. Is it any wonder that Lebanon has been destroyed and rebuilt several times over?