After a ruinous war, a troublesome peace

The elected government stands in danger of collapse. Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vows to lead his masses into the streets and force early elections. The United States warns that Syria and Iran, through Hezbollah, are plotting to seize control of this fractious country.

If this summer’s war between Hezbollah militants and Israel drew Lebanese together in crisis, the fragile peace that came after has forced them to confront the depths of their divisions and dysfunctions, and has pitched the country back into severe turmoil.

The government is bogging down just as Lebanon faces tough choices on war reconstruction, the prosecution of suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and calls to disarm Hezbollah.

Many Lebanese fear that the militant group’s growing power will provoke another war with Israel, or that increasingly bitter political disputes could slowly steer their nation back toward the communal bloodshed that racked the country during the 15 years of civil war that ended in 1990.

Two Lebanons have long fought to exist within the same, compact borders. They are instinctively opposed, mutually distrustful and struggling for supremacy. And their divisions are on constant display.

The Lebanese economy has been shattered by war, but you’d never guess it from spending a few hours in the trendy heart of the Achrafieh neighborhood of East Beirut. Lebanese sit in bistros sipping Bordeaux, trading bons mots in French and cutting into $30 steaks. Dance music and half-dressed women spill out of smoky bars. Hummers and Porsches idle bumper to bumper in standstill traffic.

You don’t have to drive far to find another Lebanon: It’s rural and mostly Shiite Muslim, poverty-soaked, anxious and ardently supportive of Hezbollah. Southern Lebanon is rife with grim faces, cluster bomblets and shops abandoned to rubble by people still hoping that somebody will come along and compensate them. Little boys at the sides of roads pocked with bomb craters wave plastic guns at passing cars. Women in veils shuffle past, their formless robes brushing over the dust.

Lionized throughout the Arab world for a perceived victory against Israel, Hezbollah has seized the moment to demand a greater stake in the government, setting off alarms in other factions.

“They attack us and say we are Iranian and Syrian,” Nawar Sahili, a Hezbollah lawmaker from the Bekaa Valley, said of his group’s domestic critics. “Maybe 20% of our speech is similar to Iran or Syria, but 100% of their speech is similar to the Americans.”

It’s not just a question of appearances. The stark differences in dress, wealth and neighborhoods overlie a fierce political battle. On one side a coalition of Sunni Muslims, Druze and some Christians controls a majority stake in the government after pitching themselves to voters as the “anti-Syria” bloc.

On the other side are Hezbollah, representing the bulk of the majority Shiite population, and Christian followers of popular Gen. Michele Aoun, who has struck a political alliance with the Islamist group.

“These two groups are parallel,” Sahili said. “They will never meet.”

The war seems to have made each side more intransigent than ever. Fresh from what it has dubbed a “divine victory,” Hezbollah is more certain that Lebanon should continue to be a front in an Arab struggle with the Jewish state.

But Lebanon’s more secular, Europeanized citizenry is keen to see Lebanon extricate itself from regional politics and focus on business.

Perhaps more than any other issue, the recent war hardened the two prevailing attitudes toward Hezbollah’s weaponry. The heavy civilian death toll and major economic damage stand either as proof that the group’s guns dragged Lebanon into carnage, or that Lebanon needs Hezbollah’s fighters to defend the country against Israel.

“For many, the war showed that having an independent military force -- a separate army -- did not protect the country,” said Mohammed Shattah, an advisor to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

This is the often silent question driving all current political maneuvering, as both Hezbollah’s backers and its enemies fortify themselves for an inevitable crisis over disarmament.

“People are more at odds than previously. I don’t see clearly how this is going to work out,” said Judith Palmer Harik, a scholar from the U.S. who has spent decades in Lebanon, studying and writing about Hezbollah. “It looks to me that this is a replay of the hardening up of sides that we saw during the civil war.”

Lebanon, she argued, is a country that has been repeatedly dragged into political and military clashes by a long-standing identity crisis, stemming from independence six decades ago, when Lebanese fought over whether the country should be a part of neighboring Syria.

“I’m not sure that original problem has ever been settled,” Harik said. “It just keeps coming up. It’s amazing to look at it.”

These days, each side claims to represent the Lebanese majority. Each also accuses the other of fronting for foreign interests. And each seems determined to get and keep the lion’s share of political power.

“We remain the only front open in the war against Israel. Why should it be Lebanon, a country so fragile, a country so potentially open?” said Marwan Hamadeh, the telecommunications minister and the survivor of an assassination attempt that many ascribe to Syria. “Should we be put in the front because of Syria and Iran? ... We don’t believe the majority of Lebanese want the army to be a satellite of Syria and Iran.”

Hezbollah and its Shiite followers accuse the anti-Syria bloc of discreetly rooting for Israel to crush the troublesome militia. The group that controls the government, they say, has sold Lebanon out to U.S. interests.

Meanwhile, this fractious government is grappling with the creation of an international tribunal to try suspects in Hariri’s assassination in February 2005. Such a tribunal is widely expected to blame Syria, which has consistently denied any role in the car bombing. At every turn, Hezbollah has remained loyal to Syria, its longtime patron, dutifully obstructing the creation of such a court.

The halls of government have been fraught with anxiety and suspicion ever since the war ended in August.

“We shake hands and discuss, but politically there is a big tension now because there are two ways of seeing the future of Lebanon,” Sahili said. “And they are totally antagonistic.”

Faced with the hardened views of compatriots, Hezbollah has mounted a fresh political push. The Shiite party linked with the militant group is maneuvering to reshape the Cabinet to include more of its allies; its demand for a “national unity government” is a bid to secure veto power and stake out a greater say in government decisions.

The play for a greater role in government marks a departure for Hezbollah, which has long thrived as an opposition group. Presenting itself as immune to the corruption of government, Hezbollah shunned parliament until 1992 and didn’t join the Cabinet until last year.

It’s no mystery why Hezbollah is seeking to beef up its political stake. Having controlled southern Lebanon for years, its leaders were noticeably nervous about the arrival of new international peacekeeping forces, warning the United Nations against interfering with the “resistance.” And it is staking out a strong position ahead of political negotiations over its disarmament as part of the U.N. cease-fire accord.

“They are trying to topple the government or at least get control of it so that when the time comes to give up their weapons, they give them up to themselves,” Telecommunications Minister Hamadeh said.

megan.stack@latimes.com