The country's sheer complexity, with its mosaic of religions, sects and allegiances and links to competing foreign powers, can make it fiendishly difficult to understand. The violence in the northern city of Tripoli, the worst since the civil war ended in 1990, certainly has confusing and contradictory elements: Palestinian Sunni Islamists are said to be linked to al-Qaeda but there are accusations that Syria is behind the whole thing for its own reasons. Others suggest it is the other "usual suspects", the US and Israel, deviously stirring the pot.

But there is an unusually wide consensus that one answer may lie in the Syrian capital, Damascus, despite firm denials. Both the Lebanese government and the main Palestinian factions see the fighting as a crude attempt to prove that the Lebanese will have to pay the price if Syria is put under pressure. Sultan Abu al-Aynan, the Fatah leader in Lebanon, certainly had no hesitation in condemning Fatah al-Islam, the Palestinian splinter group behind the fighting, as a "gang of criminals" answering to an "external agenda". The clashes round the Nahr al-Bared camp were linked to the expected ratification in the UN Security Council of an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

"This criminal gang's plan and timing in attacking Lebanese army positions has a political aim," the Fatah chief said. Hamas, Fatah's Islamist rival in Gaza, which also has offices in Syria, agrees. General Ashraf Rifi of Lebanon's internal security forces put it bluntly: "This is a Syrian creation to sow chaos." Syria has said it will not cooperate with the Hariri tribunal, and its Lebanese allies such as Hizbollah have warned of trouble.

"The view is that this is not a Lebanese-Palestinian clash but the work of a group that has infiltrated from outside," said Nadim Shehadi of Britain's foreign affairs think-tank, Chatham House. Palestinian sources report seeing Syrian special forces and new weapons in the camp since the Syrian army was forced to withdraw from Lebanon after the Hariri killing and the "Cedar revolution" it triggered.

Fatah al-Islam's leader, Shaker al-Abssi, was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for the murder of a US diplomat and was arrested in Syria. He served only a short term in a Syrian prison before being freed and fleeing to Lebanon. The assumption is that he is still in cahoots with the Syrians. The 100-strong group includes Sunni Islamists of several nationalities, half of them Lebanese. It also has Palestinian, Syrian and Saudi members.

Walid al-Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, rebuffed the charge that Damascus was backing Fatah al-Islam. "We reject this organisation," he said. "It does not serve the Palestinian cause."

But he was defiant on the Hariri affair. "The Syrian people must realise this tribunal is one of the tools of the US to undermine Syria ... That is why ... we will not deal with it. Will the rush to establish the tribunal bring security and stability to Lebanon or threaten it?"

Ian Black

The Guardian