Lebanon: From 'cold civil war' to 'low intensity' conflict

It has been a year since I last wrote about Lebanon’s ‘cold civil war’, as I called it back then (May 2012), and a lot has happened since that only made a tense situation even worse. The situation in Lebanon today can be called a ‘low intensity’ conflict. To recap: we have Alawite and Sunni communities in Tripoli sniping at and rocketing one another every now and again with the intensity of clashes escalating gradually, we have seen rockets land in the Bekaa and Baalbek fired from the Syrian side of the Anti Lebanon mountain range, an area controlled by rebels, and we still have no government. To top it all off, the level of discourse between political parties in the country has reached an all time low from the low level reached a year ago, as accusations and counter accusations are exchanged on political talk shows.

Hezbollah’s victory in El Qusayr has placed the Lebanese Government (Mikati's caretaker administration), in which Hezbollah is represented, in the difficult position of seeming to go against the consensus of the international community (barring Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) and of the Arab League by doing nothing to stop Hezbollah from openly intervening militarily in Syria, which in my mind constitutes tacit approval. It is one thing to be noncommittal with regards to the Syrian crisis; in fact it was diplomatically the smart thing to do. Not taking sides was in fact the only sane choice open to us. I say was because that ship has long since sailed. Like it or not Hezbollah, through its open involvement in Syria, has committed us all to the fight in Syria. Similarly, the promised reprisals and threats of retaliation from the FSA and Syrian National Council to strike at Hezbollah inside Lebanon paint a huge target on us all.

Far from what has been said about Hezbollah by its allies, that the Hizb’s involvement in the fighting in Syria helped prevent the war in Syria from spilling over into Lebanon, the victory in Qusayr actually made more intense sectarian clashes in Lebanon more likely. It is now far more probable that the side which views itself as the aggrieved party, the Sunnis, will become more radicalized and more willing to take up arms against those they see as their enemies at home. By distributing sweets in the streets of the Southern Suburb of Beirut and shooting off rounds in to the air in celebration of the victory in Qusayr, Hezbollah was rubbing salt in the wounds of their one time allies. Its hard to imagine those who fought side by side in 1982 against the invading Israelis are today such bitter enemies. This is not what I expected from a party and a resistance movement that has always stood up for what was right and fought against the powerful and the unjust. Hezbollah’s behavior and that of its supporters shows how wide the gulf has become between Hezbollah and its Sunni political opponents in Lebanon. Many today see the gulf so wide that they wonder how these two bitter enemies could continue to live in one country together.

There is no doubt that Lebanon’s troubles have multiplied: We still have no government three months after Tamam Salam was asked to form a government, and no inkling that any agreement over the formation of a government could be reached soon. Our MPs unilaterally extended their mandate thereby disregarding the will of the people and the principle of democratic transfer of power. What the future holds no one knows, but if we continue down this ill fated path the situation will not get better, it will only get worse.