[I]n the long-established Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, out of the blue arose a new al Qaeda-related insurgent group, Fatah al-Islam. Within days and even hours, the recurring hell of the Middle East was loosed, and refugees poured out of the camp in terror.
There had been none of this kind of terror networking in these northern camps. Indeed, since this camp was established in 1949 to accommodate refugees from northern Palestine after the creation of Israel, it has housed one of the more formal and conservative of peoples.
But it was soon established that these new “insurgents” or “terrorists” – or whatever they really are – had arrived at the camp only recently, that they marched in one day with brand-new weapons, ready to fight.
Two points grip you:
•The first is found in the words of French scholar Bernard Rougier, author of Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam among Palestinians in Lebanon. “The main point is that these camps are no longer part of Palestinian society,” he told The Washington Post . “They are only spaces – now open to all of the influences running through the Muslim world.”
•The second is that Iraq, where we were supposed to be “containing terrorism,” is now clearly exporting insurgents to other regions – to Lebanon, to Syria, to Gaza, to Bangladesh, to Kurdistan.
And so, on the one hand, you have weakened societies vulnerable to the “new answers” of “new insurgencies,” and on the other hand, you have Iraq set up as a school for terrorists with American troops and policy providing the constant inspiration for their fight.
Read it and weep. The bottom line is that, as you may have heard, the administration claims that Iraq needs a long-term US presence like the Korean peninsula has enjoyed for the past 50 years. First, the largest embassy, now a permanent US deployment.