As early as 2006, Ahmed Fatfat, then Lebanese interior minister, revealed details about al-Qaida's presence in Lebanon.

Fatfat noted: "For the past 45 months, al-Qaeda has been trying to settle in Lebanon. The organization infiltrates combatants and recruits on the ground. We recently dismantled two groups suspected of belonging to this network. One month ago we stopped 13 individuals coming from various countries of the Middle East, who were preparing attacks inside the country. We also have just stopped five people implied in attacks against military positions."

At that time Fatfat confirmed that some rocket attacks against Israel from the south were indeed the work of al-Qaida. He added that they were carried out by the Palestinian group PFLP-GC of Ahmed Jibril based out of Damascus but financed directly by al-Qaida. Finally Fatfat affirmed that PFLP-GC answers directly to Damascus and that a branch of al-Qaida could be manipulated by Syrian security services.

Also since 2006, al-Qaida has been leading a large infiltration operation inside Lebanon where it already had sleeper cells. Al-Qaida in Iraq seems to be intent on transforming Lebanon into a strengthened base, and to make in particular the area of Tripoli a new Afghanistan since several of its bases are in this city.

In 2006 some 700 experienced militants of the terrorist network allegedly left Iraq for Lebanon, and just last week London's Independent newspaper reported that al-Qaida is sending its warriors from Iraq to wage jihad in Lebanon.

The main al-Qaida linked organization, interestingly allegedly supported by Damascus, is Fatah al-Islam (FAI). The group emerged around the time Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's No. 2, was calling for the mujahedin "to carry the jihad at the borders of Palestine."

Nevertheless FAI denies any link to al-Qaida: "This message does not concern us. Al-Qaida has its strategy. We have ours."

But what remains sure is that al-Qaida, which uses the Palestinian camps in Lebanon as a transit point, definitely influenced FAI, whose ideology expanded from the liberation of Palestine to a worldwide jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews.

Further proof of al-Qaida's presence in Lebanon came to light when Lebanese security forces announced that they dismantled over the summer 2007 an al-Qaida terrorist cell that was active in southern Lebanon.

A Libyan citizen allegedly confessed to many attacks, including firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel and attack attempts against UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon -- conforming to Zawahiri's orders to create tension between UNIFIL and Hezbollah. Supposedly, the al-Qaida cell was also planning to kill Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Investigators also allegedly found 70 kilograms of very dangerous chemical products.

And recently in Tripoli, al-Qaida-inspired groups are making headway and gaining ground over the moderate camp in the Sunni community.

Omar Bakri, the extremist preacher and alleged al-Qaida mouthpiece who was kicked out of England after the July 7, 2005 bombings, now residing in Tripoli, confirms this trend: "Today, angry Lebanese Sunnis ask me to organize their jihad against the Shiites. I did not believe in the emergence of al-Qaida in Lebanon, but they are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah. After the Afghans, after the Europeans converted to radical Islam by al-Zawahiri, the next al-Qaida generation will be Lebanese."

These groups along with FAI want nothing more at first than to get back at Hezbollah to repay the humiliation felt when Hezbollah carried out its coup undisturbed.

This does not bode well for peace in Lebanon, and a civil war between Sunni and Shiite extremists could be in the offing. Lebanon is already one of the most complicated and dangerous places in the world. And with the addition of al-Qaida to the equation things might even get more out of control. This all fits into al-Qaida's master plan (as described in Part 1 of this article), like al-Qaida's expansion in Gaza (in Part 2).

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Olivier Guitta, an Adjunct Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).