NPR: Four Separate Conflicts Converge in Tripoli Fighting

Four Separate Conflicts Converge in Tripoli Fighting

"We are ready to die."

That's the message a spokesman for the Fatah al-Islam militant group gave to a reporter for The Daily Star in Lebanon. The Islamist group is holding out against the Lebanese army in a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli. "We only have two options now, to die as martyrs or win," Abu Salim Taha said.

The reasons for this conflict are complex, but a piece by Daily Star columnist (and frequent NPR guest) Rami Khouri explains it better than anything else I've seen. He says the fighting represents the convergence of four separate regional conflicts.

The four are the uneasy legacy of tensions between various Lebanese forces and armed Palestinian refugee groups in the country, going back to the 1960s; the continued tensions between Syria and Lebanon since a popular uprising forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon two years ago; the regional spin-offs from the US-led war in Iraq; and, the expanding clashes as US President George W. Bush's "global war on terror" both battles and breeds assorted Islamist terror groups that pursue Al-Qaeda-like goals and tactics.

On an ironic note, today is a holiday in Lebanon. It's Liberation Day, which commemorates the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. But the holiday has quickly become little more than a day off work, the paper notes in an editorial. Seven years later, much of the unity felt after that first Liberation Day has vanished in the resurgence of Lebanon's sectarian divisions.

1:57 PM ET | 05-25-2007 | permalink

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