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Today’s clashes in Lebanon with “Fatah Al-Islam” [a split group from a Fatah Al-Intifada group which is also a split from Fatah, west­ern media mis­tak­ingly asso­ciate them with Al-qaeda, read: A new face of Al Qaeda emerges in Lebanon], one of many Mush­room spread­ing Islamic groups in the Middle-East, opens a question:

Who are these orga­ni­za­tions? And are they really asso­ci­ated with Al-Qaeda?

In an inter­view with Al-sharq Al-awsat news­pa­per, “Shakr Al-Absi” leader of the “Fatah Al-Islam” [for­mer Jordanian-Palestinian pilot, who stayed in Lebanon after the Israeli inva­sion, dis­ap­peared from the mem­ory of his­tory for years to appear again in Iraq about two years ago, fight­ing with the resis­tance, and later recruit­ing Mujahdeen to Iraq].

Al-absi denied that he fought in Iraq [as Jor­dan claims] but he said that he fought in Nicaragua, which con­firms his later remarks of the com­mu­nist nature and the back­ground of this orga­ni­za­tion [Fatah Al-Intifahda was the com­mu­nist split of the Pales­tin­ian Fatah].

What is more inter­est­ing is what Le Monde wrote in 30-3-2007 “L’apparition du Fatah Al-Islam sème le trou­ble dans le camp pales­tinien de Nahr Al-Bared”

Esti­mates the num­ber of their mem­bers from 50 to 200…They are all not Pales­tini­ans. There are among them Saudis, Libyans and the Lebanese ….

Last para­graph in the arti­cle reveals very con­fus­ing infor­ma­tion about the behav­ing of the group inside Nahr Al-bared [Ara­bic: cold river] refugee’s camp, which is con­trary to Al-qaeda behav­ior by enforc­ing strict Islamic rules on the citizens:

The mem­bers of Fatah Al-Islam are very nice; they help peo­ple and do not frighten them, they are not Pales­tini­ans. After all, they are Arabs who want to defend the Pales­tin­ian cause.

The ques­tion about: Who is financ­ing the group? was never answered.

Another shadow Pales­tin­ian orga­ni­za­tion called “Jaish Al-Islam” [a split group from Hamas] issued a state­ment yes­ter­day [Pic. Above] saying:

The going on bat­tle between Hamas and Fatah is a com­pe­ti­tion bat­tle for power, the vic­tims of this con­flict are the mis­guided youth and not the politi­cians…. We issue a direct mes­sage to those who seek the right path to leave this par­lia­ment and the gov­ern­ment (..) and refer to the side of Jihad.

Reminder: They are the same group who claimed the kid­nap­ping of BBC jour­nal­ist Alan John­ston [Inter­est­ing that Haaretz knew who kid­napped John­ston before “Jaish Al-islam” announced it].

Although west­ern media are try­ing to affil­i­ate the group with Al-qaeda but their speech shows non-Al-qaeda ide­ol­ogy, For exam­ple, in a tele­vi­sion inter­view with the leader of the group “Mum­taz Dagh­mash”, “Army of Islam,” used terms such as “The brother, late Pres­i­dent Yasser Arafat” This can not be a speech “Al Qaeda”, the group rejected the killing of Israeli pris­on­ers, Gilead Shalit, for legit­i­mate reasons.

It is obvi­ous that “Al-Qaeda” usu­ally announce that if any of the Islamic groups joins the orga­ni­za­tion, as has hap­pened with regard to the Salafi groups in Alge­ria, and some ele­ments of the Islamic groups in Egypt.

These groups have no link to Al-qaeda, but this does not mean that we must under­mine their dan­ger since they do not have spe­cific posi­tions or ide­ol­ogy, has changed direc­tion, accord­ing to the circumstances.

The real dan­ger with the emer­gence of these groups is that they are already recruited by extreme orga­ni­za­tions or any intel­li­gence ser­vices from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, derived by depres­sion, des­per­a­tion and eco­nom­i­cal reasons.