Lebanon street battles reopen sectarian wounds
Long-simmering Sunni-Shi'ite tensions worsen
MENIEH, Lebanon - For 2 1/2 days, Hussein al-Haj Obaid lay on the floor of a darkened warehouse in west Beirut, blindfolded and terrified. Militiamen loyal to Hezbollah had kidnapped him at a checkpoint after killing his nephew right in front of him.
Throughout those awful days, as his kidnappers kicked and punched him, applied electrical shocks to his genitals, and insulted him with sectarian taunts, he could hear the chatter of gunfire and the crash of rocket-propelled grenades outside, where Hezbollah and its allies were taking control of the capital.
He returned to this northern village only after family members won his release just over a week ago by threatening the kidnappers with retaliation. By that time Obaid, a Sunni Muslim, had gained a whole new way of seeing his Shi'ite countrymen, and of his native land.
"We cannot go back to how we lived with them before," he said as he sat with a group of cousins and friends at home in Menieh. "The blood is boiling here. Every boy here, his blood is boiling. They push us, they push us, they push us."
Those feelings are being echoed throughout Lebanon. After almost a week of street battles that left scores dead and threatened to push the country into open war, long-simmering Sunni-Shi'ite tensions have sharply worsened, in an ominous echo of the civil conflict in Iraq.
Hezbollah's brief takeover of Beirut led to brutal counterattacks in north Lebanon, where Sunni Muslims resented the Shi'ite militant group's display of power. The violence energized radical Sunni factions, including some affiliated with Al Qaeda, and extremist Sunni websites across the Arab world have been buzzing with calls for a jihad to avenge the wounded pride of Lebanese Sunnis.
Although the crisis eased Thursday after Arab diplomats brokered a deal to restart political talks among the factions, the questions that have crippled the government for 18 months remain unresolved. It is not yet clear that enough international consensus exists among the key powers involved in Lebanon - Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United States - for a durable power-sharing agreement.
Meanwhile, many Lebanese agree that the hardening of Sunni-Shi'ite animosities - reminiscent of the Muslim-Christian fault line during the country's 15-year civil war - is likely to make any future conflict more violent.
"The Sunni-Shi'ite conflict is in the open now, it's been triggered and operationalized," said Paul Salem, director of Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "This is a deep wound, and it's going to have serious repercussions if it's not immediately and seriously addressed." 