fresh FISK: MONEY CAN'T CLOSE THE SECTARIAN DIVIDE IN LEBANON
MichaelP
The INDEPENDENT (London) 26 January 2007
If only money could buy peace - or was the $8bn handed out to
Lebanon's Prime Minister in Paris yesterday supposed to help him
defeat America's Hizbollah enemies in Beirut's increasingly savage
street battles?
For, even as President Jacques Chirac of France was taking the
applause for leading Lebanon's debt conference - the US itself pledged
$810m, Lebanese troops were fighting to control the worst sectarian
fighting so far in the capital. At least four students, one of them a
Sunni Muslim government supporter, were killed, apparently by gunfire.
At one point yesterday, thousands of Hizbollah and Amal Shia Muslims
were taken by truck from the southern suburbs to the campus of the
Lebanese Arab University in Tarek el-Jdeideh. There, students - the
Sunnis siding with the government, the Shias with the Hizbollah - were
fighting in the lecture theatres. Many local Sunnis feared that the
Shias were going to drive them from their homes, and Lebanese troops had
to evacuate Sunni students in their own army trucks.
From both the Hizbollah leadership and from Saad Hariri, whose future
party is in Fouad Siniora's elected government, came demands for an end to
the latest fighting - needless to say, they blamed each other - in which
another 36 young men were wounded. For several hours, the Lebanese army -
yet again - failed to restore order, reduced to firing into the air in a
vain attempt to force the crowds apart. Many of the Paris donors must have
been wondering how Lebanon, which has a crushing - indeed, astonishing -
$46bn (repeat: billion) debt, planned to spend their money when the
country is apparently falling apart by the day.
The Saudis promised to hand over $1000m - a Sunni Muslim kingdom trying to
support a Sunni-led government in Beirut from which the Shia have resigned
- to the gratitude of the US. Neither Washington nor its friends in the
Middle East want another catastrophe - the fall of a US-supported
administration in Beirut - to add to the bloodbath in Iraq and the growing
anarchy of Afghanistan. But more than this, President Bush does not want
his Iranian and Syrian enemies to win the battle for Lebanon via the
Hizbollah.
The World Bank and the Arab Monetary Fund stumped up $1200m for Mr
Siniora's government - the Lebanese Prime Minister is himself an
American-educated economist - but he must know how swiftly security is
decaying. At one point, it seemed unlikely he would even be able to reach
Paris to listen to M. Chirac's public expressions of joy. It is now almost
impossible to remember that the original purpose of the Paris conference
was to raise money to restore the infrastructure of Lebanon that America's
own Israeli ally destroyed after the Hizbollah captured two Israeli
soldiers on 12 July last year.
In Beirut, it's now clear that the army commanders simply cannot ask their
soldiers to shoot at their fellow citizens when they are seen using
weapons. "We are here to protect all of our people and these are all the
people of Lebanon," one junior officer said earlier this week as he was
watching rioting between Sunnis and Shias in Beirut. The real problem, of
course, is that the Lebanese army is largely drawn from the Shia, and the
moment troops are ordered to attack men of their own sect - although many
in the mobs wear hoods and carry wooden coshes - the army's unity cannot
be guaranteed. But yesterday suggested that the days when Lebanon's
troops can do little more than shoot into the air may be nearly over.
That the great and the good should have met in Paris to help "save"
Lebanon - a country which has fewer than 4 million people - shows how
desperate the situation in Beirut has now become. The stakes are high for
a Western world which sees "extremism" behind any threat within Middle
Eastern countries. The Saudis have already sought Syria's help - no doubt
oiling their appeal in the usual way - while Iranian diplomats have been
visiting Riyadh. So at least the largest Shia country is talking to the
richest Sunni nation.
The mere fact that these talks can be viewed in such a way shows how dark
are the shadows falling across the region. From the Pakistan border to the
Mediterranean, almost every land is in crisis. Suddenly, all the Western
talk of a Sunni-Shia war looks troublingly real. But, in an Arab world
weaned on conspiracies - not all of them imaginary as the Iranians can
fully attest after the CIA's overthrow of the Mossadeq regime in 1953 -
many believe it has been the West's intention all along to divide their
lands on religious lines.