The Lebanese government recently accused the Syrian regime of backing the Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group Fatah al-Islam, which investigators have linked to the twin bus bombings in Beirut last month that killed three and significantly raised tensions in a country already on edge.  This takes place of course, amidst the controversial decision by the US State Department to partake in multilateral talks that included high level Syrian and Iranian representatives in Baghdad, ostensibly for the purposes of reaching a regional consensus by Iraq's neighbors on how to best tackle the twin problems of Al Qaeda backed Sunni insurgency and the Iranian supported Shiia militias.  
 
 And so, we have come full circle.
 
 The Lebanese security services tell us that Syrian Military Intelligence runs a Palestinian front group Fatah al Intifada which in turn spun off a supposedly independent wing nominally re-titled Fatah al-Islam, which hence became active in the Palestinian refugee camps located in the predominantly Sunni populated areas in northern Lebanon. Fatah al-Islam is nominally run by Shakir Absi, who in an interview with the Arab media last year claimed that he was a Jordanian of Palestinian decent. However, informed sources have indicated that Absi, while indeed of Palestinian decent, in fact grew up in the Yarmuk refugee camp in Syria and eventually enlisted in the Syrian Air Force. While Absi did spend three years in Syrian jail, he was suddenly released with a group of other Islamists, some of whom came to form the core of the national Jund al-Sham, a group that many in Syria deride as a convenient cut-out used by Syrian security to peddle the notion that the regime is really cracking down on extremists. Absi simply would not have been released so expeditiously if a deal had not been reached with Syrian security elements; the minority ruling elite does not fear the rise of Islamist extremism if they believe they have the ability to steer and channel those terrorists eager to wreck havoc towards external adversaries of the regime itself.
 
 Absi has made no qualms in announcing his agenda's affiliation with Al Qaeda and his proximity to the jihadist network in Iraq in interviews granted to Arabic media. Absi has filled the ranks of his terror group of hardened jihadi fighters returning from Iraq; many of whom had fought with the now deceased Abu Musab Zarqawi.  Absi also maintains close contact and a collaborative relationship with Asbat al-Ansar--another Al Qaeda affiliated group that trains and sends foreign fighters to Iraq via Syria. Asbat al Ansar happens to be active in the same refugee camps in northern Lebanon where Absi's group, Fatah al-Islam, just became operational.
 
 Knowledgeable sources in Lebanon, Jordan, and in the US defense community have been warning for some time that the burgeoning terror network in the Levant is becoming a very real and direct threat to both the US and European homeland. Many indicators exist that the terror network that has been fermenting for the past two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon overseen by Syrian Military Intelligence and the Al Qaeda in Iraq Abu-Ghadiyah network which operates from Damascus and northern Syria are in the advanced planning stages for spectacular external attacks against civilian targets in Europe and the U.S.  
 
 So, as the allegations and recriminations fly back and forth from the Lebanese and Syrian governments regarding the direct complicity of Assad's regime in actively promoting terror attacks on Lebanese soil, a much broader picture is emerging of how the Syrian regime intends to yield its significant buy-in for the use of a multitude of terror groups to achieve its strategic goals in the region. By allowing such Al Qaeda affiliated terror networks to mature to the level that they currently are, Assad and his top lieutenants are signaling that they have found a winning formula-- one that buys them some measure of plausible deniability because after all the Ba'athi regime in Damascus is ostensibly secular in nature-- one that could very well hit right back in the US homeland and Europe.
 
 Fighting Al Qaeda entails confronting Syrian regime's complicity with moving forward Al Qaeda's operations in the Levant. If it is indeed the fact that Syria cannot control this monster of its creation anymore, then can anyone really count on Syria to confront Al Qaeda sometime in the near future, as regime officials are so quick to claim to Western news outlets? Conditions for bi-lateral talks with the US and Europe are predicated upon this very basic idea; and if the Assad regime cannot deliver in rolling back the terror Frankenstein that all this recent activity indicate has burgeoned into not only a regional but international formidable terror threat, then we must come to a resolute conclusion of the innate illogic of perusing further talks that could only further embolden Assad and Syrian Military Intelligence commanders to up the ante of the terror threat.
 
 Further compounding the Syrian regime's complicity with the Al Qaeda in Iraq network,  high level meetings were held in late February between Muhammad Nasif Khayr-Bayk and former high ranking Ba'athist under Saddam, Mazhar Kharbit and other ranking Generals once loyal to Saddam Hussein. The meeting was held to coordinate insurgent activity in Iraq in conjunction with Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Islamist Association of Muslim Scholars and spiritual leader of the Sunni insurgency in Anbar province. The Ba'athi connection is not far removed from Al Qaeda activities in another manner: many of the rank and file as well as senior commanders of Al Qaeda cells in Anbar and Baghdad are former Ba'athi special operation officers intensely loyal to Saddam.
 
 This grim reality brings home the full scope of the folly of separating the task of confronting Al Qaeda's designs both in Iraq and globally and continued talks of rapprochement with Syria. Serious examination is required of the Syrian regime's complicity in facilitating Al Qaeda's growth and global reach, lest the US and European friends one day find themselves dealing with the terrible consequences of allowing the Syrians free reign to help unleash the Shakir Absi's of the world.