If you are disappointed that the rumpus in Nahr al Bared is settling into a monotonous rhythm, don’t be. We are still in the very early hours of this traggedia, as we like to call our misadventures in Franco-Araab. While information, good and bad, will keep seeping out of “anonymous” sources about Fath al Islam and the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism in our refugee camps, the real show is actually playing somewhere else—in the political arena. And since we all have a strong feeling that we are barely scratching the surface of this morass, it only makes sense to dip our heads a little deeper for a closer look at the evils breeding at the bottom of it.
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The 12 refugee camps in Lebanon teeming with 425,000 of the wretched of Palestinian earth have long been home to every rent-a-cause kiosk conjured by our Arab brethren. For decades, they have been destinations for regional bullies in search of mercurial mercenaries and hideouts for roughnecks looking to change their footprints after every bad act. And why wouldn’t they be? There, people with no claim to any happy dream live in permanent tension with open sewage, overflowing garbage, overcrowded housing, promises unfulfilled, life not lived; there, people live as if on islands of oblivion, not quite visible to our leaders, not quite mattering to theirs.
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Fath al Islam may be the criminal of the month but it is only one of many groups most of whose time is spent thinking up ever grislier interpretations of and commands by the Quran. With an al Qaeda-like obsessiveness with the sinfulness of others that is constantly itching for spilt blood, their willingness to unleash terror throughout Lebanon is as certain as the waywardness of their faith. Whether they have the capacity—the sleeper cells, the backup, the mobility underground—to do so is not quite as evident.
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Hence even if the Lebanese army kills Fath al Islam’s ring leader Shaker Abbsi and every single one of his foot soldiers, Pandora might still be standing there with her box about to crack open. These largely foreign fighters may have been alien to Nahr al Bared but their appearance in it says much about both the Lebanese government (and Syrian efforts) that helped ease their way in and the Hobbsian conditions that tolerated their presence there. The question of the Palestinians in Lebanon—the destitution in which they live, the Palestinian Authority’s deteriorating influence over them, the mountain of arms in the hands of a sea of “liberators” of every non-religious persuasion or Jihadist motivation--has raced to the fore and the answers to it have become ever more pressing. Fath al Islam, as urgent as its specific case is now, is symptomatic of a festering malignancy that will not respond to our state’s favorite remedy: bazzi w lazzi’, spit and stick (remember that one from a very early Thinking Fits post?).
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Moreover, just as this extremist group blew the lid off the indefensible autonomous status of the refugee camps, it made Hezbollah’s unilateral disarmament practically unachievable. For the Sunni fanaticism that breeds in these places is as grave a threat to the interests of Hezbollah and the safety of the Shiite community as it is to the authority and stability of the state—or so Hezbollah shall argue with much credibility. It makes absolutely no sense anymore to speak of Hezbollah’s arms when conditions inside these camps have grown from very inconvenient to out-and-out perilous.
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It has thus become startlingly clear that whatever fixes the Lebanese government has in its bag they cannot be short term, they cannot be cosmetic, they cannot only involve firepower and they necessarily have to string together some mighty intelligence fieldwork and bold political moves.
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And this is just the easy part.
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This Lebanese crisis, like all the previous ones, is as much about regional intrigues as it is about internal maladies. The Rafiq Hariri international tribunal that has just passed in the UN’s Security Council under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, as critical as it is for the Syrians, does not swim alone in this region’s pool of peace-threatening problems. Although this country’s immediate quandary has its roots in Syria’s furious and bloody reaction to the loss of the only jewel in its crown, the exit from it will not necessarily lead us to salvation. The files in the hands of the powers which collectively, but very often competitively, preside over us are many and the issues packing them are complicated and thorny.
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The short of it is that Lebanon is meeting this latest test at a time when those who hate it and those who could care less about it far outnumber and outmuscle those who feel sorry for it. Mind you, the players manning the first two fronts are the peripatetic type. Depending on the stakes, they switch sides without even a pause. They may hate each other but towards us—subhan al Allah (Goodness Lord!)--their feelings are disturbingly chummy.
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Not coincidently, of course, the unkindness of those on the outside is playing footsie yet again with the feebleness of those on the inside: The near-paralyzed Lebanese government (whether it admits it or not) is grappling with the ramifications of breathtakingly irresponsible tactics that are making the plots against it easier to realize; the people are utterly demoralized; our educated youth is jumping this sinking ship; the state’s intelligence apparatus is less amenable to its orders than it is to the Syrians’; and our political class—the opposition and March 14th combined—has shown itself scandalously blasé about this country’s daunting challenges.
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Are you depressed yet, or do you just hate me?
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I cannot deny that this pretty much reads like a you-might-as-well-shoot-me-in-the-head scenario, but all I have done is set up the atmosphere for you; it is up to you to adjust the lights to your liking. For a happy thought, you might want to start with a Syrian-American deal that delivers to the tribunal two or three Syrian intelligence hoods, all arranged courtesy of Saudi Arabia and Iran. This deal is both conceivable and possible now that the court has been approved. Beyond this generous gesture, for a brighter picture you had better bring in those neon lights.
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