A decade after 9/11, Western leaders – US President Barack Obama, joined by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan - are adjusting with astonishing facility to men hunted in the past as Al Qaeda operatives as well as radical Salafi and Wahhabi Islamists moving into the newly vacant presidential palaces.

Yet in some cases (suggested by me underneath here; The Arab ‘Spring’, but where is it going?) the newcomers are a far cry from the liberal, transformational pro-democracy forces who spoke so eloquently to the Western media while sweeping the autocratic rulers out of power.

The NATO governments involved in Libya were not bowled over by the emergence of the new Islamic ruling class. They left the door open. When the Western powers jumped in with military support for the revolt against Muammar Qaddafi's rule in March 2011, they ignored the presence of the radical core-element fighting in the Libyan rebel Transitional National Council, namely, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group-LIFG closely allied with al Qaeda.

After leading the conquest of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on Aug. 21, British, French, Qatari and Jordanian special forces handed the city directly over to Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, 45, head of the LIFG and a former Al Qaeda operative.

On Sept. 1, NTC head Mahmoud Jibril appeared before Friends of Libya meeting in Paris as the respectable façade of the Libyan rebel movement. Meanwhile, back in Tripoli, high-ranking Western intelligence officers were busy repackaging Belhaj for world consumption as the overall leader of the revolt which ousted Qaddafi.

Then, on Sept. 5, intelligence documents "found" at the Libyan security agency building in Tripoli provided details of the close cooperation in the war on al Qaeda the countries facing terror threat maintained with Qaddafi's intelligence.

The CIA and MI6 won Qaddafi's cooperation in apprehending and jailing suspected terrorists, among them members of the Libyan rebel movement helped by the United States and NATO to force that same ruler from power. Yet even Wikileaks, much less media reporters or Human Rights activists, rarely stumble upon this sort of information by chance.

Two documents from March 2004 in particular single out the case of Tripoli's new commander.

After Washington and London wrangled for a while about the relative culpability of their undercover agencies, one key document from 2004 revealed that after British intelligence officers provided information on his movements, Abdel Hakim Belhaj was put on a CIA “rendition” flight to Tripoli, where he said he was repeatedly tortured.

Recorded too is American correspondence with Libyan officials for arranging Belhaj's rendition.

Today, the ex-Al Qaeda fighter argues he has grounds for demanding apologies from the US and Britain for handing him over to Qaddafi. And our Washington and London sources say he is likely to get what he wants – although not immediately. The "incriminating" documents were allowed to see the light of day to create this very situation, but Washington and London will hold this gesture back depending on how well Belhaj cooperates with Western interests.

Therefore, the release of the incriminating "rendition" evidence can be said to have following six objects:

1. To help build a solid power base for the "reformed" Belhaj to rule under the auspices of the US, Britain, France and Qatar.

2. To pave the way for additional radical Islamic leaders to join Belhaj’s “pro-Western” camp. When he is seen to be in control of power and the weapons and funds flowing into post-Qaddafi Libya, they will prefer to join rather than fight him – at least in the first precarious stages of government-building.

3. To vindicate President Obama's stubborn six-year campaign against the controversial rendition policy pursued by President George W. Bush, his Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA.

It will also be useful fodder in his campaign for reelection against the Republicans and give him a chance to defend his fundamental belief that Islamic terror must not be fought by force of arms, as did his predecessors, but by continuous dialogue. In the end, he believes, even the most radical Muslims will be won over to the path of moderation and accept some form of cooperation and coexistence with the West.

4. The “rendition” document also serves Cameron on similar grounds.

On the one hand, he is using it as a stick for beating his political foe, the opposition Labor party, and showing the last two Labor prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to have been overly “credulous” in putting Qaddafi's enemies in his power, knowing they would be tortured.

Top Labor ex-ministers, such as Jack Straw who was then foreign secretary, made haste to deny

knowledge of the Belhaj episode and pointed an accusing figure at the MI6 spy agency. “No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing," he said.

No sooner had he spoken when MI6 came back with a leaked claim of ministerial authorization for its action in rendering a Libyan dissident into the hands of Muammar Qaddafi.

The prime minister is brandishing the Tripoli intelligence archive to demonstrate the contrast between his predecessors, who groveled to the Libyan ruler and himself, who toppled him and is building a bridge to moderate Islam that will strengthen Britain’s hand on Libyan oil.

Libya as the model for transition to moderate Muslim rule in Arab capitals?

5. If this bridge-building strategy works in Libya, the US and Britain will use it as a model for promoting "moderate" Islamic regimes in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and other Arab Spring or Arab Revolt arenas in the coming months. American and British intelligence updates predict several Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, falling prey to such uprisings, as well as Algeria, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan.

6. As the Saudis and the Persian Gulf emirates strive to build a pro-Sunni Muslim alignment to combat Shiite Iran and its nuclear program, the US is leading Western powers into shaping a far more inclusive Middle East formation as a bridge between the rival Muslim denominations and an attraction for the Shiite powers too.

Syria’s conflict to affect Lebanon

Whereas Syria’s current conflict can be described broadly as a struggle between the country’s majority Sunni population and a group of minorities, the sectarian landscape in Lebanon is far more complex. On one side of the political divide, there is the Shiite group Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran and allied politically with select Shiite, Christian and Druze forces. Collectively, this group is known as the March 8 coalition. On the other side is the Sunni-majority March 14 coalition, which is backed by the West and the key Sunni states in the region (most notably Saudi Arabia) and is also allied with select Christian and Druze forces. Hezbollah forcibly collapsed the Lebanese government in January, and since June the Iran- and Syria-backed Hezbollah-led coalition has maintained a high degree of influence in the Lebanese Cabinet led by Prime Minister Nijab Miqati (a Sunni who is known to have deep business links with the al Assad regime). However, Lebanese politics is anything but static. The Saudi-backed Lebanese Sunni community sees an opportunity to tilt the power balance now that Hezbollah’s Syrian patrons are absorbed with a domestic crisis. In the middle of the broader Shiite-Sunni divide in Lebanon, the country’s Maronite Christian and minority Druze factions can be expected to shift between these two poles as they try to assess which direction the political winds are blowing.

Lebanon cannot escape either the volatility of sectarian politics or the shadow of its Syrian neighbor. So long as the government in Syria is secure enough to devote attention beyond its borders, Lebanon will be saturated with Syrian influence in everything from its banking sector to its militant factions to the highest echelons of the government. This also means that whenever Lebanon reverts to its arguably more natural state of factional infighting, Syria is the best positioned to intervene and restore order, relying on Lebanese fissures to consolidate its own authority in the country.

The picture changes dramatically, however, if Syria becomes embroiled in its own sectarian struggle and is thus unable to play a dominant role in Lebanon. In that case, Lebanon’s factions would be left to defend their interests on their own, and this is exactly the scenario that Hezbollah appears to be preparing for.

Because of what is at stake for Iran should the al Assad regime collapse, Hezbollah has been instructed by its patrons in Tehran to do what it can to assist the Syrian regime. Hence Hezbollah has deployed hundreds of fighters in the past several months to assist Syrian security forces — who are also being aided by Iran’s growing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) presence in the country — in cracking down on anti-government protesters. As signs of Hezbollah’s assistance to an increasingly repressive Syrian regime grew more visible in the region, Hezbollah suffered considerable damage to its political image.

The Syria-Hezbollah-Iran reality of this region dictates that any consolidated regime in Syria will also be the preeminent power in Lebanon. Should Syria’s majority Sunni community succeed in splitting the Alawite-Baathist regime, it is highly unlikely that a re-emerging Sunni elite would be friendly to Iranian and Hezbollah interests. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and others would have an opportunity to severely undercut Iran’s foothold in the Levant and dial back Hezbollah’s political and military influence in Lebanon.

While waiting for the situation in Syria to crystallize, the Hezbollah leadership has chosen to make a short-term tactical change in its operations. The group’s greatest concern at this point is that Lebanon’s Sunni, Maronite Christian and Druze communities, with Saudi and possibly Western and Turkish backing, could work together in trying to confront Hezbollah militarily should they feel confident that Syria and its proxies will be too distracted to intervene decisively. Weapons flows in Lebanon are already abundant, but as the situation in Syria has worsened, there have been increasing signs of Lebanese Sunnis, Maronite Christians and Druze bolstering their arsenals in preparation for a possible military confrontation. Hezbollah appears to be most closely watching the actions of Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, as Hezbollah believes his Christian militia is most likely to lead an armed conflict in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

It is impossible to tell at this point which side would be more interested in provoking such a confrontation. Just as forces looking to weaken Hezbollah could attempt to trigger a conflict, Syria is also interested in instigating sectarian clashes in Lebanon to distract from its domestic crisis (the urgency for Syria to do so will increase the more Syria feels that NATO countries will have more resources to expend as the military campaign in Libya winds down). Toward this end, Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamluk recently summoned Jamil al-Sayyid, former Lebanese director of public security (and a Shiite) to Damascus, and instructed him to revive his intelligence apparatus and prepare himself for action against Syria’s adversaries in Lebanon. According to a source, al-Sayyid has been given the task of targeting leaders in the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition and instigating Sunni-Shiite armed conflict. The source claims Mamluk issued similar instructions to Mustafa Ham dan (a Sunni), another former officer who was jailed with al-Sayyid. Hamdan currently commands the al Murabitun movement, which has a small presence in Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon, and allegedly has orders to challenge Saad al-Hariri’s Future Movement in Sunni areas.

The rising threat of armed civil conflict in Lebanon has led Hezbollah to turn its focus inward. According to a source close to Hezbollah, the group has shifted the bulk of its operations from the South Litani conflict area with Israel northward to the Shiite-concentrated Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah is busy developing an extensive communications network in the northern and central parts of the area. Hezbollah appears to be setting up its defense line in the Upper Matn and Kisirwan mountain peaks to protect the central and northern Bekaa against a ground attack from the Christian heartland to the west. Hezbollah is hoping to complete much of this construction by the end of October.

Hezbollah and its Lebanese pro-Syrian allies are also attempting to build up their defense in the predominantly Sunni Akkar area in northern Lebanon, where Sunni-Shiite tensions are on the rise following a deadly shootout at a Ramadan iftar dinner Aug. 17. The dinner, organized by the pro-Syrian head of the Muslim Clerics Association in Akkar Sheikh Abduslam al Harrash, was interrupted when unknown assailants opened fire and killed an attending member of the Alawite Islamic Council. Lebanese army forces then killed Sunni lawmaker Khalid al Daher’s driver. Al Daher responded by condemning the Lebanese military and accusing soldiers of operating as armed gangsters under the influence of Syria and Hezbollah. It is highly possible that the episode in al Ayyat was part of a Syrian covert strategy to instigate sectarian conflict.

The growing stress on the Syrian regime is, for a number of reasons, raising the threat of civil war in Lebanon. The range of political, religious, ideological and business interests that intersect in Lebanon make for an explosive mix when an exogenous factor — like the weakening of the Syrian regime — is introduced. Outside stakeholders like Iran will be doing everything they can to sustain a foothold in the region while Saudi Arabia and Turkey will be looking for a strategic opportunity to bring the Levant back under Sunni authority. Caught in this broader struggle are the Lebanese themselves, whose preparations for a worst-case scenario are ironically driving the country closer to a crisis.

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