In a recent commentary for NOW Lebanon, Jim Quilty discussed Hollywood’s disturbing tendency to portray Arabs and Muslims as un-nuanced, wholly unsympathetic characters, terrorists and evildoers without a hint of a legitimate cause – a state of affairs that many, within and outside Arab and Muslim communities, find offensive and counterproductive.
The same could be said for the Fatah al-Islam extremists: were they capable of such feelings, they ought to be ashamed of associating themselves with Islam, when virtually everything the group has done stands in direct opposition to the most sacred Islamic tenets and values. They should be ashamed of claiming to fight for the Palestinian cause, when they bear responsibility for putting Palestinian civilians in the crossfire and adding to their misery. For any “cause” other than sowing mayhem, death, terror and destruction, Fatah al-Islam is unequivocally offensive and counterproductive.
Indeed, the situation in Lebanon today could easily be taken from a B-movie, so rarely does life provide circumstances where the Good Guys and Bad Guys are this clearly differentiated. One can easily imagine movie goers rolling their eyes at such a simple representation of good versus evil: the under-equipped but terribly brave, multi-faith group of telegenic young soldiers battling evil, murderous terrorists to defend democracy and freedom.
The word terrorist has been devalued and possibly rendered useless by overuse, but there are still those for whom the title applies: groups and individuals whose only discernible ambition is, to put it quite simply, to terrorize. If ever there was an indisputable frontline in the international “war on terror,” it is at the entrance to Nahr el-Bared.
The list of dramatis personae in the terrorist versus freedom fighter debate is long and the argument on the worthiness of their causes endless, but causes there are.
The Iraqi insurgents, it could be argued, are fighting a puppet government propped up by an occupying army; ditto the Taliban. It can be also be argued that the IRA had legitimate grievances, likewise the ETA and so too the Tamil Tigers and Chechen separatists.
Fatah al-Islam, on the other hand, has no legitimate cause. They are just bad guys, plain and simple.
The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi (an infamous Palestinian militant, who was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for the murder of a US diplomat there in 2002), told Reuters that Fatah al-Islam’s primary aim is an Islamic reform of the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon according to Sharia law, then moving on to confront Israel.
But it is difficult to see how the group is furthering either component of this “cause” in practice: In addition to their murderous activities in the North over the past few days, Fatah al-Islam members are prime suspects in February’s twin bus bombings in Ain Alaq and several bank heists, including most recently the $120,000 BankMed job last weekend that sparked the present conflict, as well as other criminal activities. Abssi’s gang – a multinational collection of wanted criminals and terrorists, who have expressed strong support for Al Qaeda and the murder of “infidels” in general – has merely succeeded in breaking the law, committing murder and using innocent civilians as human shields to discourage the Lebanese army from storming the camp.
Even the most rabid apologists would find it hard to argue that the so-called Fatah al-Islam gunmen holed up in the Nahr el-Bared camp are anything more than criminal mercenaries, hired to destabilize a sovereign state. At best – and this is stretches the boundaries of ideological charity and bestows upon them an intellectualism that is clearly absent – they are fascists who have no place in modern society and whose benchmark for success is still the mass murder of innocent civilians in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in 2001.
One has to be thankful that mainstream Palestinian factions have come to their collective senses and seen the situation for what it is – a matter of Lebanese sovereignty – and have backed the government should the decision be taken to move into the camp, a previously hidebound taboo. Today, after talks with Siniora, the PLO deployed forces from its Palestinian Armed Struggle Command moved into Nahr al-Bared to separate the Palestinian civilians in the camp from Fatah al-Islam militants. This development came one day after Defense Minister Elias Murr delivered an ultimatum to the terrorists to surrender or face military assault: Speaking to Al Arabiya TV on Wednesday, Murr said,"Preparations are seriously under way to end the matter,” and that "the army will not negotiate with a group of terrorists and criminals. Their fate is arrest, and if they resist the army, death." A decision to enter the camp is looking increasingly likely and, despite the inevitable casualties, a decision which the government surely cannot avoid. To give in would be to besmirch the names of those young men who have already given their lives.
But one must also look at the broader picture and the long term repercussions for Lebanon. If the US is still sincere about defeating “terror” six years after 9/11, it should throw its full support behind the Siniora government and in the immediate term offer all the necessary support – satellite imagery, intelligence data, and military advisors, but also more basic, desperately-needed supplies such as protective gear and ammunitions – to ensure a successful outcome for the siege, and thereafter make good on its promise to improve Lebanon’s armed forces – and protect Lebanon’s fragile democracy.
In the long term, building up the Lebanese national army will not only render other armed groups – whatever their partisan or sectarian stripe – irrelevant, but also contribute to Lebanon’s still nascent ambitions to become an independent and self-reliant state that can realize its potential as a beacon of liberal democracy in the Middle East.
Isn’t helping the “good guys” defeat the “bad guys” – not to mention safeguarding what democracy does exist in the Middle East – what the war on terror is supposed to be all about, anyways?