Political Forum - View Single Post - Lebanese Army Refuses to Take on Hizbollah

superdude17* · #1 (**permalink**) 05-10-2008, 07:46 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...Hizbollah.html

Quote:

The Lebanese army has defied the country's government and bowed to demands by pro-Iranian Hizbollah militants who brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Senior officers refused to implement a decree from the prime minister, Fouad Siniora, who had ordered the dismantling of Hizbollah's telephone network and sacked an airport security chief sympathetic to the Shia militia.

The government's plan provoked Hizbollah into sending its gunmen on to the streets of Beirut, sparking three days of intensive fighting that left half the capital in the militia's control. Hizbollah's move was denounced yesterday by Mr Siniora as a "coup", and the prime minister went on television to declare that he refused to back down.

But, faced with the prospect of fighting a bloody civil war against a militia whose Shia Muslim faith is shared by many of its soldiers, the army announced it would restore the sacked security chief and merely look at Hizbollah's telecommunications system.

The army is drawn from all strands of Lebanon's fractured society and did not intervene when pro-government militia groups confronted Hizbollah.

Although it has also urged all gunmen to leave the streets, its decision to back down is a serious embarrassment to the prime minister. In his passionate speech yesterday, Mr Siniora said: "The dream of democracy has been dealt a poisonous sting.

"Your country will not succumb to those behind this coup and the Lebanese people will not allow the return of hegemony and terrorism."

Mr Siniora said there was room for movement on earlier decisions, but said that Hizbollah's weapons could not be tolerated.

Immediately following Mr Siniora's speech, 10 gunmen from both sides were killed in exchanges in the northern village of Halba. Earlier, in Beirut, six people were shot dead when attending a funeral in a Sunni area.

The foreign ministers of the Arab League meet in emergency session today at the request of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who are worried that Iran is using Hizbollah to try to dominate Lebanon. Syria, which is allied to Iran, said the violence was a purely internal matter.

A Lebanese Shiite gunman patrols a barricated street in the West Beirut neighbourhood of Mar Elias. The White House on Saturday welcomed steps to defuse the deadly unrest in Lebanon but cautioned that any long-term resolution required a change in the role Hezbollah plays there.

People react as an ambulance arrives at the site of shooting in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, May 10, 2008. Unknown gunmen opened fire on a funeral procession Saturday in a Sunni neighborhood of Beirut killing two and wounding six, a day after Shiite gunmen swept through the Lebanese capital's Muslim sector, police said.

Lebanese news journalists chant slogans during a protest against the forced closure of media institutions on Friday by Hezbollah gunmen and its allies in Beirut May 10, 2008. The Shi'ite movement Hezbollah tightened its control of the Lebanese capital on Saturday in a show of force after it routed gunmen loyal to the western-backed government.

This is why I have faith in Iraq.

The mostly Shi’ite Iraqi government and army are willing to take on the Shi’ite militias.

Sectarian loyalties are gradually giving way to the rule of law.

Strange that the same isn’t happening in Lebanon, which was a much more cosmopolitan and nominally secular state than Iraq.