Still A Country-In-Waiting
What a truly unfortunate mix of competing interests, each with seemingly more interest in their own traditions and backgrounds than that of the health of the country they reside in, are an integral part of. So the Christians among them, and the Druze, the Sunni and the Shias, along with the great numbers of Palestinians granted refugee status, seen as an irritating canker all pull against the grain of national cohesion.Like other parts of the Arab world the Christian population, once the dominating influence in Lebanon, is under great pressure to remain, their insecurity growing as each confrontation between the disparate elements occurs and their frequency accelerates leading to a different political configuration. This is truly a country divided, but post-civil-war the division is between the more amenable Christian, Druze and Sunnis making up the collective on the one hand, and the militantly Shia Hezbollah on the other.
This is a country whose leadership has been assailed time and again, first with puppets whose loyalty lies elsewhere, then with patriots who face assassination by Lebanon's hegemony-seeking neighbour Syria, complicit with another neighbour intent on exporting its fascist brand of Islam in one of its neighbouring states after the other. Iran's Ayatollahs are nothing if not determined, for they do the work of Allah in bringing recalcitrant and watered-down Islam elsewhere back into the fold of the one true worship.
In the wake of the Israel-Hezbollah war of last summer, with Israel's agreement to withdraw and desist in favour of a UN peacekeeping installation and the Lebanese army in place to ensure Hezbollah would no longer raid over the border into Israel and lob Qassam rockets into Israeli territory, the leadership of Hezbollah made much of their determination to rebuild the largely Shia areas of Lebanon that had been destroyed by Israel's Defence Forces. Their much-touted 'decisive victory' over a conventional army of great repute has given them even greater popular status within the Shia population.
However, despite all the boasts, there appears to be a decided lack of progress in reconstruction. Hassan Nasrallah still enjoys the fierce loyalty of the Palestinian refugee population living in their camps, as well as those resident in Beirut. Not a word of criticism against the militant Islamists whose lack of care caused such upheaval in their lives. Who, as a guerrilla army of God, saw nothing amiss in baiting the IDF to bomb villages Hezbollah hit out from. They await reconstruction which, although funded by Iran, is proceeding at a agonizingly slow rate. No sacrifice, evidently, is too great for Allah's work.
The country is assailed by sectarian violence, huge factional tensions, never knowing what will occur next. And government forces are waging their months-long battle to overcome the Fatah al Islam Sunni terrorists ensconced in the Palestinian refugee camps, losing far more soldiers to the conflict than, it would appear, are the terrorists they are desperately trying to uproot. The country is falling apart at the seams. Ironic that the Lebanese armed forces are echoing a situation in battling Islamic insurgents themselves using terrified civilians as shields, in emulation of the success realized by Hezbollah in facing off with the IDF.
Promised reconstruction aid from other Arab states has been trickling in, to assist in rebuilding, but nothing like the amount that had been so generously offered initially. Progress is low in re-building vital infrastructure. The government is concerned about the incidence of suicide-happy car bombers champing at the opportunity to slip by checkpoints in their bids to blast innocent Lebanese into oblivion and thereby amply demonstrate the seriousness of the intent of their Islamist mission.
The government of Faoud Siniora is pulled one way by its ostensible Arab allies, another by the radical Islamist states, and yet another by Europe and the U.S. It hardly knows where and how to respond first. Hezbollah has managed to bring parliament to a paralytic halt, while triumphing in its presence as a governing body within the larger body upon which it has decided to pre-empt its presence in a challenge to their authority.
Hezbollah's roving military squads answer to their leader, not to any official government entity. The parliament of Lebanon has no authority in the Shia areas, in the Palestinian refugee camps. Government security forces are absent from those areas, both by agreement from within the Arab League, and from practical necessity - other than their current absorption in battling the Sunni insurgents.
Little wonder that decent and moderate live-and-let-live Lebanese, Christians, Druze and Sunnis fear for the future of their country.
Labels: Middle East, Terrorism, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, July 18, 2007
<< Home