International Crisis Group
-
Syria Violence Shakes Lebanon’s Fragile Stability | Reuters
By Dominic Evans
Fragile Lebanon’s sectarian tensions, which festered for two decades since the end of its ruinous civil war, have been re-ignited by the turmoil in powerful neighbor Syria and threaten to plunge the country into a sustained period of unrest.
In the northern city of Tripoli, where Sunni Muslims strongly support the 14-month uprising against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, nine people were killed in clashes last week triggered by the arrest of an anti-Assad activist.
The violence spread to the capital on Monday when Sunni gunmen fought street battles in a Beirut neighborhood following the killing of a Sunni cleric, also opposed to Assad, by Lebanese soldiers at an army checkpoint in the northern Akkar province.
On Tuesday, angry Shi'ites blocked roads in southern Beirut in protest against the abduction in northern Syria of a dozen Lebanese Shi'ites by rebels from the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim insurgency against Assad.
“We are entering a phase of protracted instability in Lebanon. There is no direct way in which these events will be fully contained,” said Eurasia Group analyst Ayham Kamel.
The Syrian uprising forced Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati into a near-impossible balancing act between diehard supporters and opponents of Assad in a country which was long dominated by Syrian military power.
Photo: Xansas/Flickr