Seven members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) have been arrested in Northern Lebanon after authorities seized explosives from their homes.
Lebanese authorities raided the homes of SSNP members on December 20, 2006, and confiscated large amounts of bomb making materials and weapons, including 200 kilograms of TNT, detonators, timers, mortars and anti-tank missiles.
The raids reportedly were part of an ongoing investigation into a series of assassination attempts in the country. Since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, there have been more than a dozen assassinations and assassination attempts in Lebanon against public figures that appose Syrian influence in the county, including the killing of cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel in November.
The SSNP is a nationalist group that in recent years has allied itself politically with the Syrian regime and its Lebanese supporters, including Hezbollah. It is active as a political party in Lebanon and Syria, where it is the largest legal political party outside the ruling Baath party with about 90,000 members.
The head of the SSNP in Lebanon, Ali Qansou, said during a press conference following the raids that the material seized was leftover stocks from the civil war. He warned that “the National Socialists’ patience has limits.”
SSNP, also known by its French name, Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS), was founded in 1932 by Antoun Saadeh. Its stated goal is to unite all lands of what is known as the Fertile Crescent into a single political entity, including territories in today’s Syria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, southeastern Turkey, Iraq and Cyprus. Its ideology, structure and symbols are influenced by the European fascist movements and regimes of the 1930s. While it has adopted some communist elements over the years, Saadeh’s ultra-nationalist ideas remain the ideological focus of the movement.
According to SSNP ideology, the Syrian nation is founded on an “organic unity” formed by different ethnic strands residing in the area it sees as the Syrian homeland in the Fertile Crescent. However, according to SSNP, “this principal cannot be said to imply that Jews are a part of the Syrian nation…. Such elements cannot fit into any homogeneous nation.”
During its long history of activity, the SSNP has conducted several high impact assassinations and has staged several attempted coups d’états in Syria and Lebanon, including the assassination of the Lebanese elected president Bashir Gemayel (uncle of Pier Gemayel who was assassinated last month) in 1982 in an explosion that killed additional 25 people.
The SSNP affiliation with terror attacks outside Lebanon and Syria is unclear, however, its members were held as suspects in an explosion aboard a TWA flight in 1986, which killed four American passengers. Some observers have speculated that SSNP was behind several of explosions in Paris in 1987.
The SSNP pioneered the use of women as suicide bombers. Six female bombers, some teenagers, targeted Israeli forces in southern Lebanon in the mid 1980s.
SSNP sympathizers openly operate in several countries, including Australia, Canada and several European countries. In October 1987 three SSNP members were caught trying to smuggle a homemade bomb across the border from Canada into Vermont. All three— George Younan, Walid Kabbani and Walid Mourad—are Canadian citizens of Lebanese descent. They were later sentenced by a Federal District Court to eight to sixteen years in jail.
