Tensions grow between Lebanon's Shia and Sunnis

From Newsday

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI

September 30, 2007

BEIRUT, Lebanon - One morning in January, about 100 Sunni men stood outside a Beirut pharmacy, clutching wooden clubs and metal chains. Many of them were wearing blue headbands, the color of the U.S.- -- and Saudi-backed Future Movement. They were stopping the few cars coming into the area, looking for "strangers" -- a code word for Shias.That day, Jan. 23, Hezbollah and its allies had organized a nationwide strike as part of their campaign to topple the U.S.-backed Lebanese government. Before dawn, the Shia group dispatched young men, some wearing ski masks, to close roads by burning tires and cars. Hezbollah's Christian allies, especially the Free Patriotic Movement led by Maronite politician and former army commander Michel Aoun, also took to the streets in Christian areas. Three people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes throughout the country before the strike was called off that night.As soon as Hezbollah bused its supporters into Sunni areas of Beirut to close roads and force people to stay home, local Sunnis took to the streets. They saw it as an invasion by Hezbollah. "The Shias are occupying our area," said Bahi Amneh, 19, a finance student among those standing outside the pharmacy. "It's our duty to free it. They came here from the southern suburbs to force everyone into a strike. It's our duty to make them leave. If they don't, we will attack them."

Near the intersection where some of Amneh's friends had set up a makeshift checkpoint, two men from the Future Movement sat in a black SUV with tinted windows, talking into walkie-talkies and directing their men. About 500 yards away, a group of Hezbollah supporters had closed Beirut's main seaside boulevard and milled around a burnt car in the middle of the street. They, too, had men with walkie-talkies directing them."You know, it's just unfair. We want to live in peace. But every time we try, Hezbollah makes trouble," Amneh said bitterly. "Hezbollah has its own country within Lebanon. They have weapons. They don't respect the laws." A few minutes later, shots rang out, and the two groups began throwing chunks of cinder blocks at each other as Lebanese soldiers rushed to separate them.New sectarian fracturesAside from Iraq, Lebanon is the other Middle Eastern country where the most severe Sunni-Shia tensions are playing out. With the war in the summer of 2006 and the continuing sit-in against the Lebanese government, Lebanon's Shia -- through Hezbollah -- are flexing their political muscle in a way they haven't done since the country's 15-year civil war ended in 1990.The Shia ascendance in Lebanon has created a new set of sectarian fractures in the country's delicate balance. Unlike the civil war, when the main conflict was between Muslims and Christians, the recent violence has been fueled by Sunni-Shia divisions. The Lebanese predicament is also an extension of the continuing proxy war in the region -- pitting Iran and Syria (which support Hezbollah) against the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab regimes (which support the Lebanese government).Fearing the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq and Iran's growing regional influence, Lebanese Sunnis feel besieged, and they're lashing out at Shias. As they confronted Hezbollah supporters during the January strike, some groups of Sunnis waved posters of Saddam Hussein. It was a contradiction that embodied the current state of the Middle East: U.S.-allied Sunnis carrying posters of Hussein, a dictator the United States spent billions of dollars and lost hundreds of lives to unseat."Why are Shias the only ones allowed to have weapons?" asked Ahmed Nasouli, 21, an engineering student and one of Amneh's friends. "Why aren't Sunnis allowed?"Hezbollah's leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, has repeatedly vowed that his group would never use its weapons against fellow Lebanese. But Sunnis are worried that, left unchecked, the militia will be tempted to take power by force.On the day of the strike, average Sunnis who were not affiliated with any political party went out into the streets to challenge Hezbollah supporters."This area is 100 percent Sunni," said Maher Amneh, 32, Bahi's cousin and a clothing store owner, who wore a wool cap and carried a metal pipe. "We all know each other. So if we see anyone strange, it means he doesn't belong here.""So there are no Shias in this area?" he was asked."No. And everyone knows that," he replied. (Amneh and his friends were standing opposite a restaurant owned by a Shia family from southern Lebanon.)"So what you would do if you saw a stranger?""We would ask him, 'What are you doing here, now, at this time?'" he said. "And if he doesn't give us an answer, it means he's coming from them , and he wants to take a look -- to count us."How did things deteriorate to this point, where Lebanese Sunnis and Shias are increasingly afraid of each other?Hezbollah wasn't disarmedAt the end of the civil war, all militias were disarmed and Syrian troops were tasked with keeping security in Lebanon under the Saudi-brokered Taif Accord. But Hezbollah was allowed to keep its weapons as a "national resistance" against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000. After the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri -- Lebanon's most prominent Sunni leader -- international pressure and mass demonstrations forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The Bush administration then began pressuring the government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, which took office after elections in June 2005, to disarm Hezbollah.The latest crisis erupted in July 2006, when Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. That set off a 34-day war with Israel. After the war, Hezbollah began accusing Saniora's government of being a U.S. puppet and demanded more seats in the 24-member cabinet. When talks to form a national unity government failed in November, six ministers representing Hezbollah and its allies resigned. Saniora's ruling coalition -- of Sunni, Christian and Druze parties -- accused Hezbollah of walking out of the cabinet to block a United Nations investigation into Hariri's murder, which has been widely blamed on Syria.When Hezbollah and its allies began an open-ended protest in downtown Beirut on Dec. 1, setting up hundreds of tents outside the main government palace, relations between Sunnis and Shias deteriorated quickly. Then came Saddam Hussein's execution on Dec. 30. Sunnis view the United States and the Shia-dominated Iraqi government as killing off the last vestiges of Arab nationalism by executing Hussein. In the Sunni view, America and its allies eradicated the idea of a glorious Arab past without offering any replacement for it, other than sectarianism."The Saddam execution and Hezbollah's drive for political power are making Sunnis very nervous about Shia actions," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an expert on the Shia and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "Sunnis support Hezbollah wholeheartedly when it comes to resistance against Israel. But when it comes to political power, that changes the equation, and Hezbollah is seen as a threat when it directs its power inside Lebanon."Biggest sectarian groupBecause Shias are a plurality in Lebanon -- making up about 40 percent of a total population of 4 million -- and because they are more powerful militarily and politically than in many other countries, Sunni-Shia tensions are more pronounced in Lebanon. On Jan. 25, two days after the nationwide strike, rioting erupted around a university, killing four people, injuring dozens and forcing the army to impose a curfew in Beirut for the first time in 10 years. Lebanon teetered on the edge of another civil war.Since then, sectarian tensions had eased slightly -- until the assassination of Walid Eido, a Sunni member of parliament from the Future Movement. Eido's killing further inflamed the hatred between Sunnis and Shias. During Eido's funeral procession on June 14, hundreds of supporters carried the blue flags of the Future Movement."The blood of Sunnis is boiling," a crowd of young men shouted as they marched behind Eido's coffin. "Terrorist, terrorist, Hezbollah is a terrorist group." Quranic verses warbled from the minarets of every mosque along the route, mixing with loudspeakers that blared out: "Today is the funeral for a new martyr killed at the hands of Bashar Assad" -- the Syrian president. Other mourners insulted Hezbollah's revered leader, chanting, "Nasrallah is the enemy of God."After last summer's war, members of Saniora's coalition quickly demanded that Hezbollah disarm, as required by the UN cease-fire resolution. Many Shias, who viewed Hezbollah as their protector during the war, felt threatened by these demands, which drove them even closer to the militia."Some government leaders started demanding that Hezbollah give up its weapons, without leaving any time for the wounds to heal," said Wassef Awada, an editor at As-Safir, a Beirut newspaper. "Many Shias felt like their identity was under attack after the war. They became more attached to Hezbollah because they view this as a battle for their existence."