- Damascus has allowed some 150-200 Qaida operatives to
settle in the Palestinian refugee camp Ein Hilwe near Sidon in Lebanon.
The group, including senior commanders, arrived from Afghanistan through
Damascus, Iran and directly to Lebanon. These Qaida operatives are responsible,
among other things, for the latest outbreak of fighting inside the refugee
camp, as part of their effort to take over the camp.
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- These details and others have lately been gathered by
various intelligence services.
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- Among the new details now known: Mohammed Atta, the leader
of the Qaida group that conducted the Sept. 11 airplane suicide attacks
on the Twin Towers in New York, flying the first plane into the towers,
visited Syria twice or three times. The Syrians did not give that information
to the Americans on their own volition.
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- Osama bin Laden's son, Omar, left Syria together with
his mother Nagwa, three weeks before the attack on the Twin Towers, after
receiving anonymous instructions to do so. The son returned to Syria after
9-11, and has since visited twice more. Bin Laden's wife and son lived
in the Alawite stronghold in Latakiya in an arrangement that gave refuge
to bin Laden's close relatives. The two are not now in Syria.
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- Intelligence services have also managed to find detailed
information about contacts between one of the leading Hezbollah military
figures, Imad Mourghniyeh, and a Qaida operative in Sudan. There is no
evidence yet of that relationship developing into continuing ties, but
there is no doubt the meeting could not have taken place without Syrian
intelligence knowing of it.
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- Syrian prevarications
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- Much evidence now shows that before 9-11, Syria was a
stomping ground for Qaida operatives, considered a place where they could
move around in relative freedom. The country served as transit point for
them and Qaida had an infrastructure there. They were able to operate with
relatively few of the restrictions that other Arab countries, like Egypt,
put on them.
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- After 9-11, the Syrians initially believed there would
be no significant change in the geopolitical developments. Syrian President
Bashar Assad told a Lebanese newspaper that "there is no sign that
there has been any great change since September 11." He said that
"there are ways" to stand up to the military and technological
superiority of others. For example, the U.S. "has the most power,
the best technology, and the strongest mechanisms, but it has not been
able to provide security in its cities because force is not a necessary
condition for providing security and stability."
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- Therefore, said Assad, "the current developments
require serious judgment and sticking to basic principles. Following September
11, everything must be examined with better judgment especially when discussing
the ramifications of what happened to our region."
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- Shortly afterward, as American rage grew and the attack
on the Taliban in Afghanistan began, the Syrians changed position, and
said they were ready for intelligence cooperation with the U.S. on the
Qaida issue. But there are now clear indications that it was tactical and
only partial cooperation.
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- Readiness for cooperation mostly came via information
about Qaida cells in other countries and not what Qaida representatives
were doing in Syria. Important information came from Syria, for example,
on Qaida cells in Germany. That apparently is what kept Syria off President
George W. Bush's "axis of evil" list.
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- Most of the Syrian information about Qaida activities
in Germany came from the interrogation of a German citizen of Syrian descent,
Mohammed Haider Zemer. He was questioned by Syrian intelligence before
9-11, and the Syrians were ready to hand him over to the Germans, who were
not interested at the time.
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- But the Germans changed their minds after 9-11, after
the Americans gave them the information provided by the Syrians, which
led to information about Qaida operatives in Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany,
including information about Mohammed Atta. The Germans then asked the Syrians
to extradite Zemer so they could continue questioning him and put him on
trial, but the Syrians refused, and refuse to do so to this day. Meanwhile,
Zemer's passport was found in an apartment in Afghanistan that belonged
to a senior Qaida commander.
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- Another link between Qaida and Syria can be found in
the arrest in Spain of three Syrians. One says that Mohammed Atta met with
another of the three in Spain. The three were found with videotapes of
various possible targets in America, and they apparently served as an intelligence
gathering cell for Atta before 9-11. One of those arrested, Mohammed Hirel
Sak, is an Alawite. Another, Abarash Kaliyon, has been identified as a
former member of the Islamic Brotherhood in Syria. The third, Abdel Rahman
Arnot, has admitted he had links to the commander of the Qaida training
camps of western Afghanistan. It is also known that Atta's phone number
was found in the apartment of one of the Syrians arrested in Spain.
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- Meanwhile, the Syrians repeatedly changed their position
since 9-11. Nowadays, they appear to be deliberately turning a blind eye
to Qaida activity, particularly in Lebanon. A key question so far unanswered
is what Atta was doing on his visits to Syria, and whom he met. It's known
that he was in Aleppo in northern Syria, but it is not known whom he met.
He was in Syria at least twice and possibly three times.
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- The change in Syrian attitudes can be seen in the permission
they gave to Qaida men on the run from Afghanistan to find refuge in Lebanon,
which is under control of the Syrian army and intelligence. After the defeat
of the Taliban, Qaida began fleeing Afghanistan, heading home. Chechnyans,
for example, used Turkey as a way station on their way home. Palestinians,
Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian descent, as well as a few Lebanese,
headed back to Lebanon. The Syrians arrested some of them for interrogation
and it is known that mostly the Qaida have gone to Ein Hilwe.
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- The Ein Hilwe battles last month were initiated by the
Qaida men there, with three of them killed in the fighting. The fight for
control over the camp is not over. Meanwhile, the Qaida there, led by commanders
from Afghanistan, is establishing a local infrastructure. One bit of intelligence
says they are interested in getting material for chemical weapons.
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- The gun-battle in the refugee camp was angrily condemned
by Lebanese. A Nahar editor Jibran Tuwany wrote on August 15, that "what
is happening now in Ein Hilwe camp could become a turning point on the
way to the establishment of a state within a state, which would mean a
siege of Lebanon and Lebanese territory still in control of the state.
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- "There are fears that Lebanon will become an isolated
island because of all the enclaves created by the Palestinian camps from
south to north, through the Bekaa and Beirut. The danger is in all these
enclaves managing to connect to one another. What happened in Ein Hilwe
is a real war ... reminiscent of the war of 1975," Tuwany wrote.
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- Very little is known about the connection between Qaida
and the Hezbollah and there is no certainty those contacts were developed.
The first evidence came in testimony by Al Rahman Mohammed, who was arrested
after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He said he knows
a Hezbollah official met in 1996 in Sudan with someone later identified
as a Qaida representative. The mediator for the meeting was a Sudanese
sheikh named Ali Numeini. Bin Laden had extensive activity in the country
at the time, as did Iranian intelligence. The intelligence reports say
that the initiative for the meeting came from Qaida, whose leaders were
impressed by Hezbollah attacks on foreign embassies in Lebanon and Argentina.
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- http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=2
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