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June 25, 2007

Lebanon Links Islamists To Attack On UN Forces: The Real War Is Only Begining

Information Minister Ghazi Aridi points to Islamists being behind the bomb attack on Monday that killed six UN peacekeepers in the south of the country, based on confessions extracted from Fatah al-Islam gunmen captured during ighting at a Palestinian refugee camp which is now in its sixth week:

"There is a link between the attack which targeted the Spanish contingent of UNIFIL and the combat between the Lebanese army and the terrorists of Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

"Lebanon is the victim of a terrorist wave striking from the north to the south in which the latest target was the Spanish contingent. This attack was preceded by confessions from arrested terrorists about preparations against UNIFIL."

It was the first fatal attack on peacekeepers since the UN Interim Force in Lebanon's mandate was expanded last year in the wake of a devastating 34-day war between Israeli troops and the Hezbollah Shiite militia.

Lebanese legal sources, quoting confessions from detained fighters, said earlier this month that Fatah al-Islam -- which emerged in the Nahr al-Bared camp late last year -- was planning to attack UN peacekeepers.

... Abu Salim Taha, a spokesman for the extremist group, had accused UNIFIL forces of siding with the army and threatened to attack the Blue Helmets.

... No one has claimed the attack, which a Lebanese security source said was carried out by car bomb detonated by remote control. It struck as the peacekeepers' armoured vehicle passed by in the Marjayoun-Khiam valley, an area about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Israeli border.

As Benny Avni points out in his piece at the NY Sun, in order to address the currents in the Middle East faced by America and other Western countries, we first need to understand what they are: Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Arab territories, to name a few, are not local skirmishes, but part of a larger phenomenon - the Mideast Conflict is part of World War IV...

These crises pit weak, pro-Western leaders -- who espouse democratic principles, more or less, and profess to want to end menacing their neighbors -- against much more disciplined, well-armed, and well-financed forces that preach Islamic rule above all else and call for religious wars until victory is achieved over all the infidels.

Posted by Abdul at June 25, 2007 2:08 PM