EIN EL-HILWEH REFUGEE CAMP, Lebanon - Three months after battle erupted between Lebanese soldiers and an unknown group of radicals in a Palestinian refugee camp, army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman says he now knows whom he is fighting.
Fatah Islam, he says, "is a branch of the al Qaida organization that was planning to make Lebanon and Palestinian camps a safe haven," he told a gathering of his officers recently. Al Qaida wants to launch operations in Lebanon and outside through Fatah Islam, he asserted.
But his opinion is only one of many.
Police officials and some experts say the group that fought in the Nahr el-Bared camp has no direct tie to Osama bin Laden's movement.
The U.S. State Department says it's an offshoot of a Syrian-backed militia, Fatah al-Intifada. Some Lebanese officials also say Syria backs the group to try to destabilize Lebanon's Western-backed government.
But pro-Syrian opposition groups say the Lebanese government's own allies initially funded the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim group to counter the influence of the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah. There have also been reports of Saudi money financing Fatah Islam and other Sunni jihad groups.
Whichever theory is true, they all converge on one central point: Fatah Islam and others operate here because, despite having a Western-leaning government, Lebanon remains a marketplace for extremism. It is a trading post for radical ideas, guerrilla fighters and armaments that has fostered chaos elsewhere in the Middle East.
The Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh on the edge of the southern city of Sidon is where most of the Palestinian radical groups are based and where plots against Israel and Western influence in Lebanon -- and against Lebanese foes -- are believed to be hatched. It's the largest of the 12 camps in Lebanon, housing about 45,000 of the 400,000 Palestinians whose exile dates from Israel's creation in 1948.
Bearded men in battle fatigues and carrying Kalashnikovs or pistols freely roam around the densely populated camp or guard the offices of the various groups.
Radical Islamic militias in the camp include Asbat al-Ansar ("Band of Partisans"), Jund al-Sham ("Soldiers of the Levant") and the Islamic Struggle Movement. Washington has accused Asbat al-Ansar of being linked to al-Qaida, and it and the Jund al-Sham are said to have close ties to Fatah Islam in the Nahr el-Bared camp.
Membership in each group probably numbers dozens.
While the relationship between the Sunni fundamentalist groups and al Qaida is unclear, at the very least they are inspired by the movement's global appeal and share its philosophy of "jihad" against what it regards as American and Western attempts to dominate the Muslim world.
Timur Goksel, who has observed Lebanon for decades as a UN peacekeeping officer and later as a professor, believes the radical groups are wooing al Qaida, rather than the other way around.
"I don't think there is this big drive by al Qaida to establish as a base (for) themselves in Lebanon, but there are so many willing parties trying to do their bidding here and trying to get into the good grace of al Qaida," Goksel said.
Retired Lebanese army Gen. Elias Hanna also said the aim of Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi was to be "adopted" by al Qaida leaders. Hanna said the disparate radical groups in the refugee camps amount to a "new breed of al Qaida ... maybe third generation al Qaida."
These groups publicly deny any ties or allegiance to al Qaida, but voice support for its main cause -- fighting America. Washington has long been criticized by Arabs for supporting Israel, and its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by many Muslims as a war against their faith.
"We converge with al Qaida and approve its role in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Sheik Walid Sharif, spokesman for Asbat al-Ansar. "Sheik Osama is our sheik, may God protect him."
Sharif says he has sent more than 300 Palestinian and Lebanese recruits to fight in Iraq alongside Ansar al-Sunnah, an Iraqi group with close links to al Qaida, and that he has been in contact with al Qaida in Mesopotamia, which is believed affiliated with bin Laden.
About 25 of his men have died in operations in Iraq, including suicide bombings, Sharif said.
Another Palestinian radical leader, Sheik Jamal Khattab of the Islamic Struggle Group, pointed out that not every Muslim fighting American occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan is with al Qaida. He also sought to distance his group from the loss of innocent lives in Iraq.
"We support anyone who fights America or Israel, but we are against ... killing of innocent civilians," he said.
In Lebanon, intelligence officials blame radical Palestinians in Ein el-Hilweh for at least two recent attacks, a rocket fired into Israel in mid-June that caused damage but no casualties and a car bombing a week later that killed six Spanish members of UNIFIL, the peacekeeping unit monitoring the shaky truce between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
The attack on the peacekeepers came nine months after al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, called in a videotape for attacks on the "crusader forces" in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the 13,000 U.N. peacekeepers.
More recently, a Web site used by al Qaida urged militants in Lebanon to defend Fatah Islam, the group facing the army in Nahr el-Bared. "Islamists, rise up and aid your brothers in Nahr al-Bared. This is your religious duty," the statement said.
Authorities say members of Fatah Islam have confessed to bombing two buses near Beirut in February in which three people died and 20 were wounded, and the government has accused the group of planning other attacks. But the Lebanese army did not move against the group until after its fighters ambushed more than 30 army soldiers.
The group's strength had grown to hundreds of fighters -- Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs -- and the battle with the army was the worst violence Lebanon has suffered since its 1975-90 civil war, killing some 150 soldiers, an unknown number of militants and more than 20 civilians.
In Nahr el-Bared and the other refugee camps, the rise of the radical Islamic groups has further cut the influence of the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, which once controlled the camps but saw its power wane after its fighters were driven out by Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Goksel, the former UNIFIL officer, fears the real danger is that the radical Islamic movements will keep recruiting fighters in the poor, overcrowded camps and carry out more attacks until they finally get the backing of their would-be patron, al-Qaida, while authorities miss a chance to squelch the jihadists.
He said the government is not taking the danger seriously because rival political camps and the country's diverse security agencies can't work together to make a realistic judgment of the radical groups.
"Information comes in bits and pieces from different agencies which don't share their intelligence," he said. "That's why they're not getting a coherent picture, the real picture of the danger."
