Communicating Arts - Main Web Site" . . . held up by fierce resistance from the fighters who had laid down sophisticated mines and booby traps around their last positions at the devastated camp . . . ." [1]
The sentence fragment tells the story.
Well equipped and trained, Fatah al-Islam has made every inch of progress by the Lebanese army expensive. Yesterday claimed one soldier by sniper fire and two in combat, and the same methodical advance punctuated by booby traps and counter-attacks may be going on today.
As painful an ordeal as Nahr al-Bared has been for the Lebanese people and its army, it seems to have also had the pleasantly unintended effect of bringing Lebanon together and establishing its army, which was supported in this event by the United States [2], as a laudable and reassuring force in a country that otherwise has had to tolerate in Hezbollah an unauthorized army with its own independent political agenda. As suggested by Adla Massoud's article in Al Jazeera English, strengthening the Lebanese army for its work at Nahr al-Bared will heighten the focus on factional issues in both the country's government and military, but whatever character that next story takes, it will start out in the light of a successful and popular military campaign and the establishment of a much reinvigorated state military.
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1. "Militants kill 3 Lebanese soldiers at battle camp." Reuters, August 1, 2007, 10:55 a.m.
2. Massoud, Adla. "US backing behind Lebanon's army." Al Jazeera English, July 12, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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