Among the characteristics of al-Qaeda and its activities, regardless of the accurate definition of this terrorist group, is the fact that it is transnational and international, in the sense of considering the world, or at least its direct geographical and regional surrounding, an open arena for jihad. Though this worldview had its dramatic peak in the infamous “raid" on New York and Washington D.C. in September 2001, all the battles fought by al-Qaeda indicate to it in unmistakable clarity. Recently, for instance, the conflict in Mali deteriorated into an Algerian crisis, and may also spread to southern Libya and other countries in the African continent. Before that, the Afghan wars were quick to spread to Pakistan, and afflict the heart of the ruling regime there and its apparatuses, not to mention the Pakistani society and the prospects for political stability in the country. The same can be said about Yemen, Somalia and other “failed states," whose “failure" was easy to project and replicate into their surroundings. Likewise, we know how major developments witnessed in several countries in the past two decades became intricately linked to the phenomena of “the returnees from Afghanistan," and then the “returnees from Iraq" – that is, the jihadists who had fought in those two countries' conflicts. We say this, as self-evident as it may be to those familiar with the workings of al-Qaeda, in order to warn against what may soon afflict the Levant, including of course Lebanon. Here, it is worthwhile to recall that the Syrian regime, by relying on the “strategy" of regional cards and bargains, acted like a parallel engine for the activities of al-Qaeda. Indeed, both the regime and the terrorist group, from opposite positions, share the same strategy of operating beyond national borders. This is not to mention the direct investment the regime made in al-Qaeda and its ilk, in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria itself, with a view to allow the terrorist groups to swallow the Syrian revolution, or at the very lease distort it. To be sure, when we see the portrait of escalating violence in Syria, and remember the intransigent role played by the regime that prolonged and aggravated violence, we understand how al-Qaeda-style terror becomes more potent and more viral. But of course, we do not mean to exclusively pin the blame for this on the Syrian regime. For one thing, the sectarian overtone increasingly characterizing the conflict in the Levant, itself disregards national borders, and threatens to engender a broad front for the Sunni-Shia conflict stretching from Iraq to Lebanon. This is a tragic development for the peoples of the region, as much as it represents an oasis for Islamist terrorist activity and the Syrian regime at once. So perhaps the recent terrorist bombing in Damascus is one image of that deadly bleakness. Add to this the cross-border alliance which extends from Iran to Hezbollah, and includes the Syrian regime. In truth, the alliance in question is now a matter of life or death for this regime. Indeed, when an Iranian general whose identity and function is mysterious is killed somewhere between Lebanon and Syria, and when a number of Hezbollah fighters perish in the Syrian town of al-Qasir, and possibly in other towns and villages, we would not be facing only a political or ideological alliance, but also a simultaneous sectarian, military and “popular" bond. A bond as such, with the harm and provocation it causes, will be no more than yet another enabler of al-Qaeda-like destructive activities and ideologies. Thus if we add all of this to the “alliance of minorities" being sought as a treatment of the problem, then the Lebanese, who are sleeping on the skewed and shaky laurels of “self-dissociation" from the crisis in neighboring Syria, must expect the worse.
