World
Ignores Signs Of
Civil War In Lebanon
By Robert Fisk
31 January, 2007
The
Independent
This
is how the 1975-90 conflict began in Lebanon. Outbreaks of sectarian
hatred, appeals for restraint, promises of aid from Western and Arab
nations and a total refusal to understand that this is how civil wars
begin.
The Lebanese army lifted
its overnight curfew on Beirut yesterday morning but the smouldering
cars and trucks of a gun battle was matched only by the incendiary language
of the country's bitterest antagonists. Beirut's morning newspapers
carried graphic pictures of gunmen - Sunni Muslims loyal to the government
and Shia supporters of Hizbollah - which proved beyond any doubt that
organised, armed men are on the capital's streets. The Lebanese army
- which constantly seeks the help of leaders on all sides - had great
difficulty in suppressing the latest battles.
One widely-used picture showed
a businessman firing a pistol at Shia during the fighting around the
Lebanese Arab university, another a hooded man with a sniper's rifle
on a rooftop.
All three dead men were Hizbollah
supporters whose funerals in south Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley yesterday
were accompanied by calls for revenge and - in one case - by a colour
guard of militiamen and farewell shots over his grave. After 29-year
old Adnan Shamas's widow and young children were brought to his funeral
in Ouzai, there were cries of "blood for blood".
It was all very far from
the self-congratulations of the western and Arab leaders in Paris yesterday,
where European and American diplomats - after drumming up £4bn
in aid for Lebanon (strings attached, of course) - seemed to believe
they had just saved Fouad Siniora's government from the forces of Islamic
"extremists".
Samir Geagea, the ex-civil
war militia killer turned ardent government supporter - and host to
the US ambassador this week - angrily turned on Hizbollah's leader,
Sayad Hassan Nasrallah yesterday, chiding him over Hizbollah's war with
Israel last summer, when Shia fighters fired thousands of rockets into
Israel. "Don't think, Sayad Hassan, that Beirut is Haifa or Mount
Carmel," he warned. "Let's sit together and we will discuss
things together ... Otherwise the country is heading for the worst."
Talal Arslan, a pro-Syrian
Druze leader, ferociously referred to government groups as an "organised
crime syndicate" that wanted to turn Lebanon into another Iraq.
Which is exactly the language
of 1975. It all seemed so far away in Paris where Siniora, talking to
Lebanese residents and journalists, mystifyingly found himself fielding
questions on Lebanon's agricultural industry and future tourism prospects.
There is certainly plenty of history for any tourists in Lebanon but
right now a new and terrible page appears to be opening while the rest
of the world blithely looks on.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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