about three issues, he told me. “First, protecting the Lebanese army, because it is the guarantee that prevents civil war from happening. If it is weakened, the pro-American faction in Lebanon will ask for the deployment of multinational forces. Second, preventing a new ‘War of the Camps’ in Lebanon and preventing Palestinians from being targets of new massacres and tragedies. This would destroy Lebanon and deepen the suffering of Palestinians, and would disperse the Palestinians and negate their right of return. Third, preventing Lebanon from becoming a place of war for Al Qaeda. This would transform Lebanon into an oven, and the coals of this oven would be the bodies and property of Lebanese and Palestinians. The Bush administration transformed Iraq into a place of war with Al Qaeda, and now it is a place of massacres, and we don’t want our country to become a place of massacres. So let the Bush administration solve their problems away from Lebanon.”
He rejected the notion that Sunni ideology had changed. “The new thing that happened with Hariri was the increase of Saudi influence in the Sunni environment,” he said, “And this happened with Syrian approval and cognizance, because without Hafiz al-Assad’s approval, Hariri would never have been prime minister. The Lebanese Sunni position reflects the Saudi position. The sectarian tension in Lebanon is enhancing Saudi influence in Lebanon. And the other way around as well: Saudi influence is enhancing sectarian tensions in Lebanon.”
Musawi insisted that the Future Movement, which dominated the Interior Ministry, was supporting jihadist Salafis in Lebanon. “These were the Sunni reserves to fight the Shiites,” he said. “Until Nahr al-Barid, the Ministry of Interior characterized the Palestinians as part of the Sunni reserves that would fight with them against Shiites. This idea of building a Sunni militia to fight Shiites began after the killing of Hariri. Since 2005 I was warning European officials on a constant basis and let them know that we see what the house of Hariri is doing with Sunni extremists and Salafis, and this is a very dangerous game and it will be against he who plays with it, as it happened in Afghanistan. As for us, we are not looking for any war with anybody, internally or externally. Our only objective is to defend and protect our country and preserve its stability.” He blamed Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington, for the creation of groups like Fatah al-Islam. “It is Bandar’s project to take Saudi Salafis and bring them here to fight Hizballah.”
Musawi dismissed the notion that Hizballah wanted to impose a Shiite state. “We understand the political reality of Lebanon very well,” he said. “No single group can rule by itself. The Lebanese can’t be governed except by consensus, and we want a democratic and consensual country.”
In recent months a military alliance backed by the United States had been established in the region, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had even explained that American arms shipments to Saudi Arabia were meant “to counter the negative influences of Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran.” “It’s an illusion,” Musawi said. “Even the countries allied with the U.S. know Bush will not stay long. So these allies are not serious. The Saudis have their own concerns, Egypt and Jordan have their own concerns. If Rice says this, it doesn’t mean the Saudis will do this. They will do what’s in their best interest.” But like other Hizballah leaders, Musawi was concerned about the role of Jordan. Its intelligence agents were said to be in Lebanon, and Sunni militiamen were being trained in Jordan.
He rejected accusations that the demonstrations in downtown Beirut were an “occupation.” “Beirut is a cosmopolitan city in the international sense,” he said, “and a city for all Lebanese and its demographic fabric is proof of this. It’s not true that Beirut has one sectarian identity. It has Orthodox, Maronites, Shiites, etc., and Beirut is our capital. The Shiite presence in Lebanon is an old one. We are not refugees or guests. If they don’t like it, they can go find another place.”
Nothing was unique about Hizballah possessing an armed wing. “All the sectarian militias have weapons,” he said. “The only thing we have that they don’t have is missiles, and these cannot be used in a civil war.” But Musawi conceded that Hizballah might not have succeeded in explaining its position on Syria to the people of the north, who had suffered under the Syrian occupation, but he reminded me that until the mid-1990s the Syrians had supported Hizballah’s rivals. “I won’t defend the military, political, or security performance of the Syrians. We were the first victims of the Syrians.” He also reminded me that most of the so-called anti-Syrian politicians had collaborated closely with the Syrians politically and financially until the Hariri assassination. They had thanked Syria in 2005 for one reason, he said: their support for the resistance. “We are friends or enemies based on the position on Israel, not a struggle for power or sectarian differences.”
Superglue and Sectarianism
As the Americans tried to galvanize Sunnis in the region to view Iran and its allies as a threat, they showed more signs of succeeding in Lebanon than anywhere outside Iraq. Events in Beirut in early 2008 reminded me of Baghdad in 2004, when the civil war was just beginning and every morning we would hear of small sectarian incidents. New militias were being formed, such as the all-Sunni Tripoli Brigades in the north. In Beirut, street fights regularly occurred between members of the Future Movement and the Shiite Amal Movement. Amal’s young men were more thuggish, and the movement was less ideological and disciplined than Hizballah, which normally avoided being drawn into internal conflict.
In December 2007 Brig. Gen. Francois al-Hajj was killed by a car bomb. It was the twelfth political assassination in the past three years but the first targeting an army officer. Hajj was expected to be the next commander of Lebanon’s army, but he had also been in charge of the army’s operations in Nahr al-Barid. He had been the army’s liaison with Hizballah and was not at all close to the March 14 camp, so it seemed unlikely that opposition forces were behind it. On the other hand, it may have been the hand of Fatah al-Islam reaching out for revenge. At an opposition demonstration, the army shot and killed seven Shiites who were protesting extended power cuts, complaining that the pro-opposition area of Dahiyeh had more cuts than progovernment Christian and Sunni areas. Neglect of Shiites was the whole reason Hizballah had created its so-called “state within a state.”
In the first few months of 2008 small clashes between Sunni and Shiite militias occurred regularly. A January roadside bomb targeted an American diplomatic convoy, but it was less newsworthy than the increasing sectarian polarization—which grew worse following the assassination that month of the Sunni Internal Security Forces official who was himself investigating Lebanon’s numerous political assassinations. At his funeral crowds chanted, “The blood of Sunnis is boiling!” The next month Saad al-Hariri seemed to move the country closer to a civil war. “If they are after a confrontation, we are up for the job,” the Future Movement leader announced. Sunni thugs then took to the streets and shot into the air in celebration. One Friday the sheikh of the Dhunurein Mosque, in Beirut’s Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood (formerly a front line between Christians and Muslims, now a front line between Sunnis and Shiites), declared that Beirut was occupied and Sunnis had to defend it. The implication was that Shiites were occupying Beirut and that they were the threat. The following day young men from the Shiite Amal militia vandalized the mosque. Graffiti warned Shiites to beware of Sunni rage and invoked the names of early Islamic leaders whom Shiites revile, such as Omar and Muawiya.
In Tariq al-Jadida’s main shopping street, Afif al-Tibi, there was a huge commotion one Monday morning following weekend clashes. The streets were lined with about two dozen retail and wholesale clothing stores owned by Shiites, who are a minority in this largely Sunni enclave just north of Shiite southern Beirut. At least five of these shops had their locks clogged with superglue by Future members. Earlier anti-Shiite slogans had been spray-painted on the Shiite-owned shops. After the superglue incident some Shiite shop owners felt threatened and left their shops closed, choosing to stay home. That weekend there had been intense clashes in the Ras al-Nabaa district. Members of the Future Movement had attacked an Amal Movement office. Following the fighting Future supporters stood guard at every street corner in the surrounding area. Many carried chains, metal clubs, or M-16 automatic rifles. They included Lebanese Kurds. After one young man concealed his M-16 from a passerby, another shouted at him, “Why are you hiding it? Show it, we don’t care! Let them know that we have guns too!” Shooting could be heard all night, and in Tariq al-Jadida supporters of the Future Movement destroyed the locally famous Ramadan Juice shop, which was owned by a Shiite man from Dahiyeh and had been open in the neighborhood for twenty years. Future members claimed he was a spy for Hizballah. One Future member explained why they were harassing local Shiites. “We don’t want them in Beirut,” he said. “Beirut is only for Sunnis.”
At the time of the superglue incident, the head of the local Future militia on Afif al-Tibi Street was Abu Ahmad. He had prevented hotheaded militiamen from burning down the Shiite-owned shops. He had also previously refused to arm his men or allow them to maintain a weapons depot because he sought to avoid problems with Shiites. He explained that Sunnis had been living side by side with their Shiite neighbors for many years and that
