While reporters try to sort out exactly what happened leading to Thursday's deaths, fires and curfews, Robert Fisk offers his perspective on the complicated situation of the past few days which cannot simply be described as Hezbollah and/or Syria/or Iran v Siniora - a meme the western press prefers to use in an attempt to simplify the political situation in the country.
Opposition demonstrations turn Beirut into a violent sectarian battleground
So the worst nightmare years may have begun again. There were thousands of them - Christians fighting Christians north of Beirut, Sunni and Shia Muslims in the capital, a rain of stones, shrieks of hatred and occasionally even gunfire - that turned Lebanon into a sectarian battleground yesterday.
At the corner of a street off Corniche al-Mazraa, I watched what historians may one day claim was the first day of Lebanon's new civil war, huge mobs of young men, supporters and opponents of Fouad Siniora's government screaming abuse and throwing tens of thousands of rocks at each other as a wounded Lebanese soldier sat next to me and wept.
[...]
After 31 years in this country, I never truly believed I would see again what I witnessed on the streets of Beirut yesterday, thousands of Shia and Sunni Muslims, the first supporting the Hizbollah, the second the government once led by the murdered ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, hurling stones and hunks of metal at each other. They crashed down around us, smashing the road signs, the advertisement hoardings, the windows of the bank against which seven Lebanese soldiers and I were cowering. Again and again, the soldiers ran into the roadway to try with a desperation all of them understood, and they were brave men to drag the youths from each other. Some of the Shia men, Amal members, loyal (heaven spare us) to the Speaker of Parliament, wore hoods and black face masks, most wielding big wooden clubs.
Their predecessors perhaps their fathers were dressed like this 31 years ago when they fought in these same streets, executioners-to-be, all confident in the integrity of their cause. Perhaps they were even wearing the same hoods. Some of the troops fired into the air; they shouted at the stone throwers. "For God's love, stop," one young soldier screamed. "Please, please."
But the crowds would not listen. They shrieked "animals" at each other and obscenities and on one side of the street they produced pictures of the Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and of Michel Aoun, the Christian ex-general who wants to be president and is Nasrallah's ally, and on the other side of the street, the Sunnis produced a portrait of Saddam Hussein. Thus did the cancer of Iraq spread to Lebanon yesterday. It was a day of shame.
Hizbollah warn that Lebanon will see more violence
...there were other, far more disturbing elements to Tuesday's scandalous day of violence. Two of the old civil-war fault lines - on the road north of Beirut and in the suburbs of the city - were reopened. Siniora himself started warning of the dangers of civil war and the United States - as Hizbollah must have hoped - came out in support of the government, claiming, quite falsely, that the violence came from the Hizbollah-led opposition.
It certainly did come from their Amal militia ally but Sunni Muslim supporters of the government were in gun battles in Tripoli - they continued yesterday - and the "Lebanese Forces" youths of Samir Geagea, an ex-militia murderer who supports the government, were engaged in pitched stoning battles with other Christian Maronites.
Indeed, the inter-Christian war, in retrospect, was probably the most vicious of the day. Most of the wounded were hurt when Geagea's men tried to stop supporters of the Maronite ex-general Michel Aoun blocking roads outside the capital. Through some odd and tragic tradition of history, the Christian communities in Lebanon have often fought cruel battles with each other. Aoun and Geagea's forces killed each other at the end of the civil war. Even during the Crusades, the Christians of Tyre fought each other when Salahedin was at their gates.
Of the various foreign powers taking sides in this frightening battle for power in Lebanon - and they include Iran and Syria, of course, as well as the United States - one might well ask if the destruction of the Christian population of Lebanon was not part of their plan.
That, of course, is a startling claim but one must understand the history of Lebanon and the region in order to gauge what Lebanon is now facing. As with all of the conflicts in the Middle East, it cannot be summed up in 60 second soundbites prepared for the evening news and the biases of those who cover these types of chaos, as we've all learned by now, must be seriously considered as we follow such fragile situations.
It was by design that Bush's state of the union speech this week attempted to mislead Americans by conflating so-called US enemies in deliberately distorted groupings.
Bush asserted that Shia Hezbollah, which has won seats in the Lebanese government, is a terrorist group "second only to al-Qaeda in the American lives it has taken." Bush is referring to attacks nearly a quarter-century ago on a U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks when the United States intervened in Lebanon's civil war by shelling Hezbollah strongholds. Hezbollah has evolved into primarily an anti-Israeli militant organization -- it fought a war with Israel last summer -- but the European Union does not list it as a terrorist organization.
At one point, Bush catalogued what he described as advances in the quest for freedom in the Middle East during 2005 -- such as the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon and elections in Iraq. Then, Bush asserted, "a thinking enemy watched all of these scenes, adjusted their tactics and in 2006 they struck back." But his description of the actions of "the enemy" tried to tie together a series of diplomatic and military setbacks that had virtually no connection to one another, from an attack on a Sunni mosque in Iraq to the assassination of Maronite Lebanese political figure.
The Bush administration's motives are transparent: continue to demonize Iran and Syria while refusing to engage their governments diplomatically in order to garner support for an aggressive policy of militarism.
As Fisk reminds us, the situation in the Middle East belies such simple-minded thinking. Therefore, we must be cautious and educated. We learned that lesson (or did we?) watching the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq defy what the US and other governments stated would be fairly straightforward problems to deal with.
March 2003:
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.
MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct and we’re not treated as liberators but as conquerors and the Iraqis begin to resist particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s unlikely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.
If western governments are to provide aid beyond the dollars being donated to the Lebanese government, they owe it to their citizens and Lebanese citizens to present a factual account of the limitations they face while acknowledging the complexities. It's easy to justify aggressive, heated talking points while pointing fingers if the populace refuses to learn about or is not given the full story. The Israel/Lebanon war almost crushed Siniora's government and reminded everyone that the way to peace will not be found via missiles or bombs.
The most influential voices in Lebanon - including Hezbollah - are now calling for respecting the current curfews in order to stop the erupting violence. There is no simple solution to this situation but first, at least, they have to stop killing each other and western governments would do well to not add fuel to those literal fires by pushing their broader agendas for the region on a democratically-elected government that is on the brink of dealing with yet another civil war.
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