Islamists sought to turn Lebanon into Iraq: army chief

Arabs vow to confront Islamic State, cooperate with international efforts Sun, Sep 07 14:58 PM EDT image 1 of 6 By Lin Noueihed and Omar Fahmy CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab League foreign ministers agreed on Sunday to take all necessary measures to confront Islamic State and cooperate with international, regional and national efforts to combat militants who have overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria. The Arab League also endorsed in the closing statement of its meeting in Cairo a UN Security Council resolution passed last month calling on member states to "act to suppress the flow of foreign fighters, financing and other support to Islamist extremist groups in Iraq and Syria". Baghdad had earlier submitted a draft resolution endorsing its own efforts to confront militants who have seized large areas for a cross-border caliphate and to condemn Islamic State's actions as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Diplomatic sources said before the meeting that Arab foreign ministers were set to endorse a U.S. aerial campaign against the group and Egypt's official Mena news agency said the ministers would agree to coordinate with the United States. The final text did not directly endorse either the Iraqi or U.S. campaign against Islamic State, but diplomatic sources said the wording clearly offered Arab cooperation to U.S. and Iraqi efforts and could be read as a tacit agreement to back Washington's campaign against the group. At the opening session, several foreign ministers spoke of the gravity of the challenge posed by Islamic State in Iraq as well as the violence that has engulfed Libya and other regions. Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi told the session that the rise of the group in Iraq challenged not merely the authority of the state but "its very existence and the existence of other states" and called for a decisive resolution to confront terrorism militarily, politically, economically and culturally. Arabi suggested that military action could take place under the umbrella of an Arab League joint defense pact. It was not clear whether the Arab commitment to take all necessary action against Islamic State and other militant groups would include direct military involvement in Iraq or Syria. President Barack Obama declared last week that the United States was ready to "take out" leaders of Islamic State, and said NATO allies were prepared to join military action against a movement that he labeled a major threat to the West. U.S. warplanes carried out four strikes against Islamic State militants threatening western Iraq's Haditha Dam early on Sunday, witnesses and senior officials said, broadening Washington's campaign against the fighters. Obama would like Gulf Arab states to consider military action, but also to support Sunni Muslim moderates in Iraq and Syria who could undermine the appeal of Islamic State. He also wants Islamic State's sources of funding cut off, a point on which the closing statement touched. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is to travel to Saudi Arabia and Jordan in the coming week for talks with Gulf leaders to determine whether they are prepared to back up their anti-jihadist rhetoric with action. In a change of position, the Arab League statement also called for Syrian opposition groups to hold talks with the state aimed at creating a reconciliation government. As the Syrian conflict has dragged on and Islamic militants have taken the upper hand, early Arab League support for opponents of Bashar al-Assad has given way to a more cautious tone. (Editing by Rosalind Russell) ======================== Islamists sought to turn Lebanon into Iraq: army chief Tue, Aug 12 03:33 AM EDT image By Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State insurgents who seized a Lebanese border town this month planned to turn Lebanon into another Iraq by unleashing sectarian war between Sunnis and Shi'ites that would have endangered the nation's very existence, the army commander said. General Jean Kahwaji told Reuters that radical Islamists on the march in Iraq and Syria still posed a "great threat" to Lebanon, which was torn apart by a 1975-90 civil war and has been badly buffeted by the Syrian conflict. "The army hit them and continues to, smashing their plan," said Kahwaji, 37 of whose soldiers were either killed or captured in the battle for the border town of Arsal. "But this does not mean that the story is over," he said. "They might think of another plan and try another time to cause Sunni-Shi'ite strife," said Kahwaji, 60. The Aug. 2 attack marked the most serious spillover to date of Syria's three-year-old civil war into Lebanon and the first time a foreign invader has taken Lebanese territory since Israel entered the south during its 2006 war with Hezbollah. Battle-hardened in Syria, the insurgents were members of radical Sunni groups including the Islamic State, which has redrawn the borders of the Middle East by seizing territory in Syria and Iraq. The group's advance has accelerated since it seized the Iraqi city of Mosul in June. Dozens of the militants were killed in Arsal during a five-day battle with the Lebanese army, according to army estimates. The militants withdrew into the mountainous border zone last Thursday, taking with them 19 captive soldiers. Kahwaji, dressed in military fatigues, said the Islamists' aim had been to turn the Sunni Muslim town of Arsal into a bridgehead from which to advance on surrounding Shi'ite villages, igniting a sectarian fire storm he said would have destroyed Lebanon. "The strife in Iraq would have moved to Lebanon - 100 percent," said Kahwaji, a Maronite Christian. He said he was basing his assessment on the confessions of an Islamist commander whose detention on Aug. 2 was the immediate trigger for the battle. The commander, Emad Gomaa, had been "fine tuning" the plan at the time of his arrest, Kahwaji said. Gomaa, 30, was a member of the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's affiliate in the conflict, but had recently switched allegiance to the Islamic State. He had previously worked as a purveyor of dairy products, Kahwaji said. His confessions had led to the arrest of a number of militant cells in different parts of Lebanon, he added. "Would there have remained a state? It is a battle for the survival of the Lebanese entity," Kahwaji said. Tensions between Lebanese Shi'ites and Sunnis are already running high, exacerbated by the role played by the powerful Shi'ite group Hezbollah fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria. Lebanese Sunnis have broadly been supportive of the uprising against Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Lebanon is also now home to an estimated 1.6 million Syrian refugees, most of them Sunnis. Though its arsenal is more powerful than the Lebanese army's, Hezbollah stayed out of the Arsal battle, wary of wider sectarian strife in a country already hit by suicide bombings, gun battles and rocket attacks linked to the Syrian war. The arrival of Islamic State fighters waving the group's black flag on the northeastern border triggered panic in a country that is home to many religious groups at risk from a movement that has beheaded and crucified its opponents. Kahwaji said: "If the world and the people give up, then the black flag will arrive in Lebanon. But the people are with the army and they won't let them arrive." DISMISSES SPECULATION ON PRESIDENCY The army has been crucial to holding the Lebanese state together since the civil war. It recruits from across the religious spectrum and is more widely trusted than other security agencies that have a more sectarian character. Outside Kahwaji's office at the Ministry of Defense in the hills outside Beirut, where he spoke to Reuters this week, a cartoon shows a soldier carrying a map of Lebanon on his back. The Arsal crisis rallied all of Lebanon's main leaders, including Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri, around the army. Kahwaji described Hariri's backing as crucial. He "sensed the degree of danger to Lebanon", he said. Hariri returned to Lebanon on Friday for the first time since 2011, ending his self-imposed exile following the downfall of his government in order to buttress the moderate Sunni camp against radicals who have gained ground during his absence. He brought with him a $1 billion grant from his regional patron Saudi Arabia - aid designed to help the Lebanese security forces fight Sunni extremists. "He was obliged to return to fill the (Sunni leadership) vacuum," Kahwaji said. The Saudi aid comes on top of a previous pledge of $3 billion in military aid from Riyadh. The Beirut government has asked France to accelerate the delivery of weapons due to be procured with that grant. Kahwaji said his priority was to secure warplanes - both fixed wing and helicopters - to support his land forces. Many Lebanese believe Kahwaji is now more likely than ever to fill the post of the presidency, vacant since Michel Suleiman's term expired in May. The presidency is reserved for a Maronite according to Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system. Suleiman and his predecessor, Emile Lahoud, were both former army commanders. Kahwaji declined to answer questions on Lebanon's political outlook, and dismissed speculation that his chances of becoming head of state had now increased. "What is happening is more important than the subject of the presidency," he said. "If they had succeeded in what they were planning ... the very foundations of Lebanon would have changed." (Writing and additional reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Will Waterman) Saudi jolts wife by taking 10 and 11-year-old boys to fight in Syria Tue, Aug 12 06:42 AM EDT DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi father gave his ex-wife the shock of her life when he informed her he was taking their 10 and 11 year-old-sons to join Islamist militants in Syria, telling her to count them as "birds in heaven", Saudi-owned media reported. The pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper said on Tuesday that the unsuspecting mother had been told that her sons, Abdullah and Ahmed, were going on holiday with their father, identified as Nasser al-Shayeq, in a neighboring Gulf Arab country when she saw an Instagram photo of them in Turkey. Al-Hayat said she telephoned her son to ask about the photo, only to receive a message from her ex-husband, a former Saudi civil servant, to say that he was taking the boys to Syria to join Islamic State, one of the most militant groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad. "Count your children as birds in heaven," Shayeq said in his message, according to al-Hayat, suggesting that they may be killed and become young "martyrs". Fellow Islamic State militants later posted a photo of the father and his two sons crouching in front of Islamic State's black flag, with each boy brandishing an AK-47 rifle in one hand. The father was smiling as one of the boys also held a grenade in his other hand. Many Saudis have joined foreign Islamist militant groups but another Saudi newspaper, al-Riyadh, said the involvement of children in this case had jolted the Saudi government into action, setting up a hotline with the Turkish government to try to bring the two boys home. Saudis are among the hundreds of foreign fighters who have joined Islamist militant groups such as Islamic State and al-Nusrah Front in Syria. Islamic State renamed itself last month after it captured swathes of territory in western Iraq and unified them with territories it holds in eastern Syria. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Susan Fenton)