The most high profile assassination in recent years took place in Beirut on Friday and presents alarming consequences for stability in Lebanon
Yes, why Sassine? Why a car bomb in the mostly Christian neighbourhood of Beirut to kill at least eight, wound reportedly more than 80 people, and actually many more in reality? How many pictures did we see of rescuers and civilians carrying children out of the rubble? These pictures cannot but awaken the sad memories of sectarian violence in Lebanon. I venture to quote Rofiqul Islam in a brilliant article where he uses the term “corrosive divisions” to qualify the controversies darkening the city of light. Indeed, corrosive divisions can be used to describe the sectarian divisions in Lebanon and their enduring weight on the magic of the ‘Country of the Cedars’.
As reported by the AFP and Now Lebanon, it all started when a car “was blown off dozens of meters from where it was parked on a street off Sassine Square”. No less than 30 kilos of explosives were needed for such an explosion experts asserted. The car bomb in Ashrafieh (location of the offices of the anti-Damascus Christian Phalange Party) killed Internal Security Forces Information Branch Chief General Wissam al-Hassan. Late Wissam al-Hassan was a major figure of the March 14 Alliance and a prominent defender of Sunni interests in Lebanon. In the past, he used to be the chief of protocol and head of guard of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
This blast is about Lebanon’s stability – and the region’s stability, if I may add. However, it is not just about fear of surging instability from Syria, which is already hosting too many unresolved and mounting conflicts. Innocent civilians including children, some of Armenian descent, were wounded or killed; their houses have been shattered. What is the agency of the wounded and killed, and what is at stake for Syria or Hezbollah? Can we expect the friends and families of the killed and wounded to forgive and forget? The events of last week are unearthing past wounds which were not healed in the first place.
This incident was not the end of the story. The Reuters news agency reports, based on witnesses’ testimonies, that, “Sunni Muslims took to the streets and burned tyres across Lebanon in protest against the killing of senior intelligence official Wissam al-Hassan in a car bomb on Friday”. Fierce anger has been stirred and fed. Beirut is a city, I believe, which has still not healed from the wounds of the civil war. Even at the legal or constitutional level, the Lebanese society still conserves elements of this conflict, which digs further into the corrosive divides I have briefly mentioned above. Corrosive divides lie at the heart of many sectarian problems, which have survived the passage of time in Lebanon and elsewhere. There is no way peace and stability can be recovered without in-depth resolve of these divides. The comeback of violence is no answer to such issues; violence only feeds and perpetrates violence, insecurity and wounds. Pictures, which have reached us from Lebanon, truly depict “A Beirut horror Story”, as termed by Foreign Policy. In the words of the former Lebanese Interior Minister Ziad Baroud on the past wounds of Lebanese society: “We had our share – for years. And we know what civil war is about”. The Telegraph’s correspondent Ruth Sherlock reported, “Lebanon has already seen so many decades of warfare and people fear that this may be the start of another war. A lot of people are frightened that this is a warning that there will be more to come”.
Finally, Mr Rafik Khoury, editor of the independent Al-Anwar Daily wrote, “The side that carried out the assassination knows the reactions and dangerous repercussions and is betting that it will happen. Strife is wanted in Lebanon”. Taking all due distance from any conspirational approach or logic, can we say that no strife can be sustained in Lebanon if Lebanon does not want to let it be and propagate? Or is the proximity to Syria, the location being a “hot” region, the past wounds and “corrosive divides” going to win over the attachment to peace and stability, the ideals of unity in diversity, and the glorious pasts and histories of many of the societies of the region?
Personal paybacks should not be allowed to win because we fear another war. Yes – we fear another war – another one which could have been avoided. Floods of tears and blood, which can be avoided. Today civilians, innocent children, women, men and elderly pay the highest price – the suffering. Wars today should be too expensive to even consider. As the Lebanese government proclaims a national day of mourning for the victims, I express my most sincere condolences and compassion to the families and friends of the victims for their irrecoverable losses, grief and distress.
Article updated 26/10/2012, at 11.45
Image from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/lebanon/9623169/Lebanons-political-leaders-struggle-to-control-political-crisis-after-deadly-car-bomb.html
