961NEWS – أخبار لبنان

Die Deutsche Botschaft in Beirut veröffentlicht heute (21. Mai 2012) einen aktuellen Sicherheitshinweis für im Libanon lebende Deutsche. Das aktuelle Schreiben finden Sie hier ->

Street battles between pro- and anti-Syrian groups in Beirut overnight left two people dead, a security official said Monday, sparking fears the conflict in Syria is spilling across the border into Lebanon.

“During the night, groups of young men cut off the road in the Tariq al-Jedideh district and street battles followed,” the official said, requesting anonymity.

“Two people were killed and 18 were wounded,” he said, adding that machineguns had been fired and that the fighting had raged until about 3 a.m.

An office housing a small pro-Syrian party was torched during the clashes and the facade of the building was riddled with bullets, said an AFP correspondent.

Several motorcycles and cars parked on the street below were burned.

The situation in the mainly Sunni district of West Beirut had returned to calm Monday morning and students could be seen heading on foot to the nearby Arab University.

The fighting erupted after reports emerged that army troops had shot dead an anti-Syria Sunni cleric when his convoy failed to stop at a checkpoint in North Lebanon on Sunday.

The cleric’s killing followed a week of intermittent clashes that left 10 people dead in the northern port city of Tripoli between Sunnis hostile to the Syrian regime and Alawites who support Assad.

The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam to which Assad belongs and which has controlled Syrian politics for decades.

The violence in Lebanon has raised fears of a repeat of sectarian unrest in 2008 that pitted Sunnis against Shias and brought the country close to civil war.

The revolt in Syria has exacerbated a deep split between Lebanon’s political parties where the opposition backs those leading the uprising against Assad while a ruling coalition led by the powerful Shia Hezbollah supports the regime.

The opposition has accused Assad of seeking to sow chaos in Lebanon in order to relieve the pressure on his embattled regime.

Lebanese newspapers on Monday carried ominous headlines warning of civil strife.

“Lebanon boils after sheikh killing” said the front-page headline in The Daily Star.

The English language paper warned in an editorial that the killing of the Muslim cleric on Sunday and other recent incidents had further inflamed tensions linked to the Syria unrest.

“These ingredients create a recipe for the possibility in Lebanon of civil or sectarian strife, the likelihood of which some have been warning about for a while now,” it said.

The French language L’Orient-Le-Jour stated in its headline: “Lebanon forcibly dragged into the Syrian storm.”

“The destabilization of Lebanon, with the Syrian crisis as a background, is ongoing,” added the daily.

More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died in Syria since an anti-regime revolt broke out in March last year, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria long held sway in Lebanon politics and had troops stationed in the country for 29 years until it was forced to withdraw them in 2005 following the assassination of ex-premier Rafik Hariri.

It has denied accusations that it was involved in his killing.

A “bus for peace” began touring Lebanon on Friday to promote reconciliation as the country commemorates the 37th anniversary of the start of the 15-year civil war which ended in 1990, organizers said.

The bus carrying archives and films documenting the conflict in which more than 150,000 people were killed was a replica of a bus transporting Palestinians on April 13, 1975 that was attacked, sparking the civil war.

Militiamen machine-gunned the bus in the Beirut Christian suburb of Ain al-Remmaneh, killing 27 passengers, hours after assailants opened fire outside a nearby church killing a Christian.

The original bus, rusty and with bullet holes in its bodywork and windows, is on display in the South of the capital.

“Reconciliation among Lebanese can only fully happen by addressing the issue of collective memory,” said Joanna Nassar, who is in charge of a United Nations Development Program project aimed at enhancing peace in Lebanon.

The UNDP donated the bus to the research center, which supplied the civil war materials for the tour starting in the center of Beirut, which marked the dividing line between Christian and Muslim parts of the city.

Mohammed Moqdad, badly wounded in the hand when he was nine during the conflict, sees the bus as a “good way to get over the memory of the war.”

Sonia Nakad said the bus could help “young people realize that war could break out at any time if the ground is ready.”

BEIRUT (-ilo) – “Bashar al-Assad is a liar,” says Abu Seif. “There won’t be a ceasefire. Bashar won’t keep his promise.”

The 29-year-old Free Syrian Army fighter, who, like everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his name be changed for security reasons, sits in the living room of a small apartment in the center of Antakya. The Turkish city, which is close to the Syrian border, has become a hub for the Syrian opposition. Half a dozen men sit next to Abu Seif on the couch, talking about the situation in their home country. Piles of open suitcases and pillows lie behind the couch. Nobody here believes in the ceasefire agreement.

“The Annan plan gives the Syrian regime just more time to kill us,” says Abu Seif’s comrade Abu Ahmed Marajani of peace envoy Kofi Annan’s plan to end the violence in Syria. Both Abu Seif and Marajani have for months fought the Assad regime’s troops in their home city of Edleb.

Under the Annan plan, the Syrian regime is supposed to stop all attacks and pull back all its heavy weapons from population centers by April 10. The FSA has to follow suit 48 hours later.

“The actions of the international community are just a game, just a theatre,” says Marajani, while watching video of recent fights on his laptop. No emotion crosses his face. “They are just doing this so they can say: ‘Look! We’re doing something for Syria!’”

Despite the general sense of cynicism about the ceasefire, the FSA wants to abide by it. It has no alternative, says Marajani. “When two brothers fight with each other, and the big brother suddenly stops, do you think the smaller one continues?”

Since the beginning of the year, the Syrian army has been making military gains, while the FSA is fighting hard but lacks weapons and ammunition. Since Annan put forth his plan over one week ago, the government has stepped up the violence and has surrounded rebel-held cities and begun shelling them. “We can’t even attack the regime’s troops anymore. We can only act defensive,” says Abu Seif, who was hit in the stomach by an anti-aircraft missile a couple of months ago. A series of five operations saved his life, and he still has a scar as large as a plate on his belly.

He took the money he had saved for his wedding and bought a Kalashnikov from a Syrian army officer. “We need weapons from the international community. You need feet to walk,” he says. “The only thing we can do at the moment is to slow down the advance of the troops, to give the people time to flee.”

“Bashar used the cover of the Annan plan for the biggest military offensive since the beginning of the revolution,” says Ahmed Beidar, a liaison officer between the FSA and the civilian revolutionary council in the restive city of Jisr al-Shughur. He and a group of other activists and fighters meet for a day in Antakya to confer and plan ahead. Afterward they cross back into Syria.

Assad’s recent offensive is proof enough for Beidar that the president is not going to keep the truce. “Douma, Homs, Hama, Edleb, Taftanaz, Aleppo,” he says, listing the cities that were attacked over the past few days. “The situation is so bad that we have to bury our dead in mass graves. We can’t keep up anymore.”

Next to Beidar sits Ala ad-Deen, the highest-ranking rebel commander in the Jisr al-Shughur region. “The conflict can only be solved militarily,” he says. “Nonetheless have we accepted the Annan plan and pulled back our troops. We are going to wait until April 10.”

What happens after is, he says, is unknown. “Even without the support of the international community, we can survive and sustain the fight indefinitely.”

Abu Seif and Marajani don’t see any alternative either. “Even if there isn’t going to be no ceasefire agreement and no support from the international community, we can’t stop fighting now,” says Abu Seif. “Bashar’s security forces would hunt us down and kill us.”

Marajani looks up from his computer. “I’m afraid,” he says in a low voice. “If the international community doesn’t supply us with weapons, we’re going to make them ourselves. It is easy to take fertilizer and a cooking pot to build a bomb. We’re going to wage a guerilla war.”