3 Dead, Scores Injured as Opposition Paralyzes Lebanon
By Anthony Shadid
The Washington Post
BEIRUT, Lebanon--The Hezbollah-led opposition cut roads in Beirut and across Lebanon with burning tires, uprooted trees, incinerated cars and barricades to enforce a strike Tuesday aimed at toppling the government, paralyzing the country and embarrassing Lebanese officials ahead of an international aid conference. Clashes erupted along the country’s crisis fault lines, leaving at least three people dead and scores injured in the worst violence since the protests began in December.
Fires at dozens of barricades sent black smoke billowing against a pale blue sky, framing the capital in scenes redolent of war. Along the airport highway, the opposition sent trucks and bulldozers to pour more rubble on roadblocks set up by dawn, forcing some passengers to drag their luggage on foot to the airport, where airlines canceled flights.
An overextended army, hewing to a policy of neutrality, rarely intervened to break the blockades, effectively ensuring the success of the most dramatic escalation yet in the two-month campaign led by Hezbollah, the militant Shiite organization, to force the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Opposition leaders hailed the success of a one-day strike that, by choice or circumstance, closed shops, shut schools, emptied streets of traffic and blocked key roads to the airport and seaport on the Mediterranean. Government supporters spoke darkly of a coup d’etat, warning that the violence would only escalate, and some suggested elements within the military might be complicit.
“If it goes on like this, nobody will be able to do anything. The government will have to step down,” said Hezbollah supporter Mohammed Harb, 20, standing at a fiery barricade that blocked six armored personnel carriers from passing. “And what’s beautiful? It’s not just Beirut. We’ve shut down all of Lebanon.”
Siniora, who was scheduled to travel to Paris for the international conference, remained in Beirut and delivered an address on national television Tuesday evening. He promised to stand firm against what he called “intimidation” and said the military should permit “no flexibility or compromise” in keeping the peace.
More than a fight between a government and its opposition, the struggle here pits two camps that roughly divide the country in half, each sensing the other’s victory as an existential threat. The divisions are as diverse as Lebanon itself, with its 18 religious sects: whether the government’s patrons in the United States and France will have a greater say here, or Hezbollah’s allies in Iran and Syria; what posture the country will take toward Israel; which sect--Sunni or Shiite Muslim--will be decisive in politics.
There is a certain cynicism among many Lebanese that the deadlock will be broken only with more bloodshed, forcing a compromise short of civil war. Each camp has mobilized its supporters--for the government, Sunni, Druze and some Christians; for Hezbollah and Amal, its Shiite supporters, along with allied Christians led by Michel Aoun, a former general and prime minister. Each side has escalated, with a sense it can mount pressure on the other while still controlling passions in the streets.
But Tuesday’s clashes, from Sunni-Shiite and Christian fault lines in Beirut to outlying towns that have so far skirted the crisis, may prove most memorable for scenes of strife defying those assumptions: the army and security forces firing into the air and lobbing tear gas; at other times helpless in separating the feuding sides, who threw rocks, sticks and insults across barricades in fights that lasted hours. At least three people were killed in towns north of Beirut, and more than 100 were injured before the opposition declared an end to the strike and began removing barricades late at night.
At times in the confrontations, a dehumanizing language entered the discourse.
“This is not democracy,” said Roger Hayek, a government supporter and member of the Phalange Party, a Christian group. He pointed across lines of soldiers separating the sides, standing in a smoky haze. “This is an image of Iraq.”
A friend jumped in: “They’re animals.”
Hezbollah and its allies launched the campaign against Siniora’s government with a sprawling Dec. 1 protest in downtown Beirut. Another one, possibly the largest in Lebanese history, followed Dec. 10, along with a sit-in that continues in scores of tents pitched at the foot of the barricaded government headquarters.
The government has viewed it as a power grab through the street, vowing not to resign under pressure, and government-allied newspapers routinely refer to the opposition as coup plotters. But the opposition has its own collection of complaints, including what Hezbollah sees as Siniora’s subservience to the United States and complicity in Israel’s attack, as well as the populist economic grievances stressed by Aoun’s supporters.
By any standard, Tuesday’s campaign was a feat of logistics on parallel with December’s protests. In addition to shutting down the capital, the vital thoroughfare to the Syrian capital Damascus was cut, and allied groups blocked roads in predominantly Sunni Muslim areas such as Tripoli and Akkar.
Virtually the only cars on the road to the airport were the incinerated carcasses of vehicles used as barricades, some of them sitting next to a smashed sign that read, “Beirut International Airport.”
Hezbollah officials said privately that the strike was timed in part to embarrass the government ahead of Thursday’s conference in Paris to consider what Lebanese officials hope will be $5 billion in grants and loans for reconstruction. The government, its priority mainly survival at this point, has made the conference, along with an international court to try the killers of a former Lebanese prime minister, its primary goals.
As the day dragged on, some of the barricades were removed or abandoned, and a smattering of traffic returned to the streets. But this faint sense of a typical weekday followed the worst violence since the opposition began its campaign.
At a road along Death River, one of the city’s entrances, Christian foes and supporters of the government fought occasional melees with stones before the army intervened. With sticks, rocks and fists, crowds of government supporters attacked cars that carried orange banners, the color of Aoun, Hezbollah’s ally. His partisans, tending blazing barricades, refused to make way for soldiers trying to open the road.
“There is a saying in Lebanon that goes, ‘It doesn’t get smaller unless it gets bigger,’” said Nayla Abiaad, 25, an Aoun supporter standing at the barricade.
Her sister, Rana, dressed in orange, stood next to her. “This is bigger,” she said, smiling, as she pointed at burning tires, “and there’s going to be more.”
Across town, in the neighborhood of Mazraa, Sunni and Shiite residents fought a battle with rocks that lasted nearly two hours. By its end, they were separated by armored personnel carriers, a charred, rubble-strewn street, a dirt lot and the stones they threw.
In seemingly contradictory ways, the crisis has both politicized and disillusioned the country. Few people are without opinions on the righteousness of one side or the other, but tens of thousands have emigrated since the war ended last summer. Chantal Braidi, 31, a cafe owner in Beirut, called the country “dead.”
“I want to live in this country, and it hurts me to leave--I’m leaving all my family and friends behind--but I want to live my life,” she said. “Everything I have, I put in this country. What did I get in return? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“I’m leaving for my sanity,” she added. “We’re going crazy in this country.”
Special correspondents Alia Ibrahim and Lynn Maalouf contributed to this report.
