Tensions
Run High
After Sunni Killings
By Dahr Jamail
30 April, 2007
Inter Press Service
BEIRUT, Apr 27 (IPS)
- The killings of two pro-government Sunni Muslims has raised tensions
across Lebanon. Rival political leaders have called for calm amidst
fear that the killings could spark civil strife.
The Lebanese police found
the bodies Thursday of a pro-government supporter and a 12-year-old
boy abducted earlier this week. The abduction was believed to be in
retaliation for the killing earlier this year of a Shia Muslim opposition
activist.
The bodies of 25-year-old
Ziad Qabalan and 12-year-old Ziad Ghandour were found 40km south of
Beirut in a field north of the port city of Sidon. Ghandour's father
and Qabalan are members of the Progressive Socialist party of pro-government
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.
The two had been kidnapped
Monday, inflaming the already high sectarian tensions in this small
country of four million people with 18 religions. Tensions have been
running particularly high between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
Lebanese media reported that
the two were kidnapped by members of the Shia Shamas clan who had vowed
to avenge the killing of a member in clashes at the Beirut university
campus in January. The clan, however, condemned the kidnapping in a
statement Wednesday, and distanced itself from the abduction.
Lebanese President Emile
Lahoud said the killing was carried out after "conspirators and
outside powers" failed to drive his country into internal confrontation.
"The recent killing
is the same as what happened in 1975," Lahoud told IPS at the presidential
palace in Beirut. "They want civil war here, but we won't allow
it."
The 1975 incident the President
referred to occurred Apr. 13 of that year when unidentified gunmen fired
on a church in the Christian east Beirut suburb Ain el- Rummaneh, killing
four people, including two Maronite Phalangists. The Phalange is a large
Christian militia.
Hours later, Phalangists
killed 27 Palestinian civilians in a bus in the same suburb.
That was the trigger for
the infamous 15-year Lebanese civil war, which left an estimated 100,000
dead, as many seriously injured, and nearly a million displaced from
their homes.
When asked who "they"
were who want a Lebanese civil war, Lahoud told IPS, "It's always
foreign interventions trying to create strife in Lebanon, and it's always
the Lebanese who suffer. But I'm proud that the leaders of all groups
here are united in urging calm and condemning the killing."
Lahoud's office issued a
statement urging Lebanese people to be alert to conspiracies, and to
stop anyone trying to play dirty. Past experience has shown that all
confrontations followed provoking incidents, the statement said.
Lahoud requested that firm
security measures be taken to prevent "any repercussions of this
deplorable incident." As a result, all universities in Beirut were
closed Friday, and the Lebanese army deployed in mixed neighbourhoods.
Extra security checkpoints were set up throughout the city.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora
who described the incident as a terrorist act, also appealed for calm.
The powerful Shia group Hezbollah led by Hassan Nasrallah also condemned
the killings.
Many Lebanese people sounded
united in wanting the situation to be defused in order to avoid any
escalation.
"With Nasrallah and
Jumblatt calling for calm, this has defused the tension a good deal,"
Hamzah Tahan, a taxi driver in Beirut told IPS. "But before they
called for calm, we were all afraid."
Tahan said he believed these
were revenge killings, but "carried out by simple thieves."
Many blame the current U.S.-backed
government of Siniora and his allies like Saad Harriri and Walid Jumblatt
for creating a difficult situation.
"Outside forces helped
create the current political tensions which may have led to these killings,"
32-year-old English language teacher Raed el-Amine told IPS. "The
pro-government groups are more responsible for this because they've
focused more on disunity by playing the sectarian game."
Sporadic violence between
the mainly Sunni, Druze and Christian ruling coalition and the mainly
Shia and Christian opposition has killed at least eight people since
the opposition launched a peaceful street campaign last year to topple
the government. Each incident has raised the tensions higher, as did
the events that had led to Lebanon's civil war.
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