Fears Rise That Assad Is Trying to Stoke Sectarian War in Lebanon
Source: NYT
By DAMIEN CAVE
RAMA, Lebanon — As Syria’s civil war drags on, the recent arrest of a former Lebanese government minister allied with the Syrian leadership on charges that he planned a campaign of bombings and assassinations has led many in Lebanon to conclude that President Bashar al-Assad is trying to push this fragile country into a sectarian war.
The kidnapping of nearly 50 Syrians last week by Shiite tribes seeking to avenge abductions by rebels in Syria has also added to the sense that Lebanon’s tenuous stability is waning. Here among the rolling hills of the border, Sunnis say they are gathering weapons for a sectarian battle.
“The Shiites think these people should stay in Syria, even if they are dying,” said Amer Mohammed, a Sunni leader here angered by what he sees as provocations by Lebanese Shiites. “We have the means to fight them, and we will if we have to.”
Lebanon has volatility at its core, and world and regional powers have frequently made it a proxy battlefield because its location is as strategic as its state is weak. The levers of government are divided among sects, and the two largest groups — the Sunnis and the Shiites — are aligned with competing foreign forces. The Shiites, led primarily by Hezbollah, are allies of Iran and Syria, while the Sunnis are aligned with the West and Saudi Arabia.
That divide put Lebanon in play as soon as the uprising in Syria began last year. But fears that Mr. Assad would use his influence to make Lebanon a new front line have been increasing since the spring, when the Syrian Foreign Ministry described the border here as “an incubator for terrorist elements.”
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