The Great Bank Heist of Tripoli

The Complicity of the Siniora Government

By RANNIE AMIRI
CounterPunch

"......The most disturbing aspect of the fighting in Tripoli though, has been lost--or deliberately obfuscated--by discussion of the above.

Namely, the absolute complicity of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and allies like Saad Hariri, leader of the parliamentary majority in Lebanon, in bringing groups like Fatah al-Islam to Lebanon, where they knowingly allowed them to operate, all in a greater bid to stem the ascendancy of Hezbollah.

Fatah al-Islam and al-Qaeda more broadly, after all, have a visceral hatred for Shi'a Muslims, whom they regard as infidels. Who better to bring into the country via the squalid Palestinian camps of Lebanon than them?

It was Seymour Hersh, in the March 2007 New Yorker who recognized a shift in the policy of the United States and their cronies (Siniora government, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) in patronizing radical Sunni organizations to act as a bulwark against perceived widening Iranian influence.

How foreboding was Hersh's article?

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, "The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous." Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. "I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government's interests-presumably to take on Hezbollah," Crooke said.

During an interview with Hasan Nasrallah, when Hersh posited if it was Israeli assassination he most feared, Nasrallah replied that it was other Arabs ­ Jordanian intelligence, and Salafi/Wahabi jihadists--who were his greatest threats. Was it also Fatah al-Islam and affiliates' ultimate mission, at the behest of the Siniora government, to assassinate Hasan Nasrallah?......

Again, Hersh:

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. "We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here," he said.

Along with Fatah al-Islam, the Siniora government has the blood of dozens of Lebanese soldiers and Lebanese and Palestinian civilians on their hands.

And that is a fact which hits us straight between the eyes."