Sectarian tensions heat up in Lebanon

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By Simon Roughneen

BEIRUT | The banner draped across one of downtown Beirut's plush ice-cream parlors reads "taste the reconciliation."

The specialty of the house is a multiflavored melange that includes all the colors of the parties of Lebanon's political spectrum, now ostensibly united after three years of discord.

But sweet sloganeering aside, a political chill is in the air, as uncomfortable as Beirut's summer heat. Tensions between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims are rising, and Syria is reasserting its political clout three years after it was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in the aftermath of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Renewed fighting last week in the northern city of Tripoli, a Sunni-dominated region, underlined the precariousness of the peace agreement reached in Qatar in May between the Hezbollah-led opposition backed by Syria and Iran and the Western-supported March 14 movement, named for the start of the Cedar Revolution triggered by the Hariri assassination in February 2005.

"A lot of Saudi money has been put into the north to cultivate Wahhabi/Salafist ideology, to counter Hezbollah," reflecting wider Sunni-Shi'ite regional rivalries, said Ahmad Moussali, a professor of political science and Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut. "These radicals see the Lebanese army as weak, and March 14 Sunnis cannot stop them confronting Shi'ites or Alawites."

Alawites are members of a Shi'ite offshoot that is the sect of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Saudi Arabia follows the strict Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam. Salafism is a variant of Wahhabism practiced largely in northern Africa. Hezbollah is a Shi'ite Islamist militant group based in Lebanon.

One northern Lebanese Sunni jihadist group called Fatah-al-Islam is regarded as a Syrian creation, raising suspicions that Damascus is orchestrating both sides of the Tripoli fighting.

"The Syrians like to see this kind of instability," said David Schenker, a Lebanon specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "At the end of the day, it may be the only thing that saves them from the tribunal."

A U.N. tribunal investigating the Hariri assassination has implicated the Syrian intelligence agency, but Damascus has denied any involvement and has limited its cooperation.