Lebanese declaration threatens civil war

The Observer
May 11, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/lebanon?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

By Hugh Macleod
Beirut

Lebanon’s crisis deepened yesterday as the Western-backed government, facing collapse after Shia opposition fighters loyal to the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah routed their Sunni counterparts and laid siege to Muslim areas of Beirut, vowed to confront the militant group over the issue of its arms.

“Hezbollah today has a problem with all of Lebanon, not just the government,” said Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. “We never suspected Hezbollah was capable of occupying Beirut militarily [..] Hezbollah must realise the force of arms cannot intimidate us.”

Calm had returned to west Beirut yesterday after two days of running firefights between Sunni and Shia militants, triggered by what Hezbollah said was a “declaration of war” by the government after it ordered the army to dismantle Hezbollah’s secure telephone network and accused the group of setting up spy cameras at Beirut airport.

By nightfall yesterday Hezbollah and allied Shia militants had largely withdrawn from positions captured in Sunni-majority west Beirut after the army re-instated General Wafiq Shoukair to his position as head of airport security, despite a government decree for his removal, and vowed to investigate but not harm Hezbollah’s communications.

However, the confrontation looked set to entrench after a senior member of the government told The Observer that following Hezbollah’s “military coup” the formation of a new cabinet would centre around a resolution to the group’s armed status in Lebanon, an issue Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed was a red line.

“By turning their guns in on the country Hezbollah has lost its status as a national resistance among the majority of Lebanese,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “We have an army and state institutions, and the ambiguity over Hezbollah’s arms must be addressed. These are very difficult issues, but unavoidable.”

In a speech Friday that triggered the worst violence since the ruinous civil war that tore the country apart between 1975 and 1990, Nasrallah pledged to “cut the hand” that touched his fighters’ weapons and rockets, accusing the ruling coalition of being “Israelis dressed in suits speaking Arabic.”

The takeover of Sunni Beirut by the Shia opposition has dramatically shifted the precarious balance of power in a country riven with sectarian tension.

Fighting between pro-government and opposition groups spread over the weekend to the Druze heartlands in the mountains south of the capital, while ten people were killed as rival Sunni groups battled around the northern port city of Tripoli.

A Shiite gunman from Amal, a Hezbollah ally, opened fire yesterday on the funeral of a Sunni civilian in Beirut’s fault-line neighbourhood of Tarik al-Jdeide, killing two. At least 29 people have died in the violence since Thursday, with dozens injured.

Hezbollah yesterday accused Druze leader Waleed Jumblatt of responsibility for the kidnapping and deaths of two Hezbollah members in Aley, a Druze-majority mountain town south-east of Beirut, with a third still missing.

The US and Israel have warned the Hezbollah take-over of Beirut could trigger regional conflict, while Britain, Italy and France have readied evacuation plans for their nationals.

Turkey and Kuwait have already begun evacuating their citizens through Lebanon’s northern border with Syria, the only open route out of the country. The road to Lebanon’s airport has been blocked since Wednesday by Hezbollah supporters. Other land routes are cut off, and the Beirut port is also shut.

As offices in west Beirut, the heart of Sunni power in Lebanon, belonging to parliamentary leader Saad Hariri lay torched and bullet riddled, Hezbollah fighters encircled the government building and Mr Hariri’s private residence, demanding the resignation of the prime minister.

“This is an Iranian take over of an Arab capital,” said a senior source inside Mr Hariri’s Qoreitem residence. “Any Beirut government now knows that it lives under the barrel of the gun if it takes a decision against Iran.”

Hezbollah, which is armed and financed by Iran and is a strategic partner of Syria, has been leading opposition to the Sunni-led government, backed by the US, France and Saudi Arabia, having resigned from cabinet three months after its “Divine Victory” in a month-long war with Israel in July 2006.

The 18-month political crisis that has left the country without a parliament or president was sparked in the immediate aftermath of the July War when Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called a cabinet meeting to discuss disarming Hezbollah.

In response, Nasrallah accused Siniora of being a “traitor” and working for Washington and Tel Aviv.
“Before the July war, Hezbollah had called for a national unity government,” said Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a Hezbollah expert.
“But after the war, they became much more vocal and hard-line because they saw that there was a clear US policy to use the government coalition to disarm Hezbollah and weaken Iran and Syria in the process.”
The decision this week by the government to tackle Hezbollah’s infrastructure head on shocked diplomats and analysts in Beirut.

“Tackling the airport and telephone system was the first time since the Syrian withdrawal that the government has taken practical measures to deal with the resistance,” said Patrick Haenni Beirut-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. “This was a paradigm shift by the government and it was met by a paradigm shift by Hezbollah, who said they would never turn their weapons inside.”

Under the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon, which ended in 2005 after widespread accusations of Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Hezbollah enjoyed a relatively free reign.

But since helping end the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in 2000, pressure has grown on the group, the only Lebanese militia formally allowed to retain its arms following the end of the civil war, to reach a new agreement on its status.

In 2004, UN Security Council resolution 1559 called for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon and though the government confirmed Hezbollah’s right to liberate the Israeli-occupied border area of Shebaa Farms, the Hezbollah cross border raid that triggered the July War precipitated the issue of its status.

This week the tensions, both political and sectarian, spiked to breaking point.

“I brought my two daughters out here earlier,” said 50-year-old Abu Ali, a commander in Amal, as rocket-propelled grenades slammed into apartment buildings Thursday night and masked gunmen fired deafening salvos across streets dividing Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. “I brought them out so they could see who their enemy was.”

As his young fighters dashed for the nearest wall, loading clips into machine guns and high caliber automatic rifles, older men removed rockets from plastic covers, loading them onto launchers to fire into Sunni neighborhood just a few yards away.

“God willing, we will control Beirut militarily and then we can catch all the traitors and then decide on a president and government,” pledged Abu Ali.

Within 12 hours his Shia fighters had made good on that pledge, spreading from their strongholds in southern areas of Beirut to control neighbourhoods divided between Sunni and Shia before sweeping across Sunni west Beirut.

“We were shocked. We didn’t expect such a ferocious attack,” said a member of the Internal Security Forces (ISF) who could do little to protect the office of Saad Hariri’s Future newspaper as Shia fighters fired at least ten RPGs into the building, setting it ablaze.

“No one can disarm Hezbollah. The only solution is to make them a division in the army.”

In a capital where visual culture permeates, all the vistas have changed. Pictures of Rafik Hariri, once hailed as a Lebanese national martyr, lie in tatters, slashed with knives or peppered with bullet holes.

On Hamra street, the historic centre of Beirut and of Sunni commerce, a street usually teeming with taxis, fashionable female shoppers and the blue ribbons of Future Movement, there now flies the imposing black and red flag of the Syrian Social National Party, an ally of Damascus and Hezbollah. Militants of the party last night continued to man checkpoints outside their offices in west Beirut.

Some analysts played down Hezbollah’s take-over.

“This is not yet Gaza,” said Rami Khouri, head of the Issam Fares think tank in Beirut, referring to the bloody ousting of Fatah by Hamas in the Palestinian last June.

“If Hezbollah wanted to take over they could, but they handed their positions to the army.”

But if the embattled government has pledged to take on Hezbollah’s armed status, the Shia fighters pressed up against the walls of apartment blocks this week were in no mood to lay down their weapons.

“When we fought the Israelis in July 2006, the government accused us of going on a foolish adventure,” said one fighter, speaking English through a black mask and brandishing an assault rifle. “Now they are trying to disarm us and we say this is their foolish adventure.”