Michael j. Totten has, as usual, a fascinating post up about Al Qaeda (and Syria) in Lebanon:

Fatah al-Islam terrorists in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp (which is an urban ghetto in Tripoli, not a tent city) are, reportedly, mostly not Palestinian. No one has suffered more from Lebanon’s worst fighting since the civil war ended than the Palestinian civilians of Nahr al-Bared. After decades as second-class non-citizens living in dejection and squalor, they are now human shields in a battle between foreign terrorists and the host country.

Lebanon’s freshest and most vicious of enemies have, if reports are correct, arrived from battlefields in Iraq via Syria. Their relationship with the Syrian state and Al Qaeda is murky and hard to sort out, but they do seem to have connections of some kind to both.

An Nahar reports that mosques there now are dual-use. They are places in which to pray. They are also armed camps. They are also, possibly, terrorist targets. Suicide bombers reportedly detonated themselves at the Thawra mosque. Perhaps someone ignited himself a little too early. Maybe the keepers of that mosque were hostile to Fatah al-Islam. I do not know.

The Lebanese Army is clearing the “camp” of terrorists, booby-traps, car bombs, and even domestic animals rigged with explosives. The government says there will be no negotiated truce with the enemy, that their crimes will be punished with the death penalty either in combat or later in prison. It has been years, decades really, since the government and army of Lebanon have shown this kind of resolve…

The Lebanese Army foiled so-called Plan 755 which, reportedly, was a plot by Tripoli’s salafists to massacre local civilians, sever the city’s links to Beirut, and enslave the residents who couldn’t get out.

In other words: if the Lebanese army wouldn’t have gone in, a disaster would have happened. Great decision, therefore, by the Lebanese government. I do wonder how to deal with this problem: it seems that both Al Qaeda and Syria are involved. If that is the case,we can expect more problems to arise in this most liberal of the Arab countries.