BEIRUT: The Lebanese government’s deep internal rifts and its dithering in addressing the hostage crisis are worsening Sunni-Shiite tensions in the Bekaa Valley, and experts and officials say there is a risk of open conflict breaking out.
But local officials are working hard to contain the sectarian fallout from the crisis, and neither Sunnis nor Shiites want to see tensions escalating to the point of outright fighting.
“The government’s actions are what will determine if we go toward tension or calm,” a source familiar with the negotiations to release the hostages said. “There is no doubt that the government’s performance in the negotiations is awful, which increases fears that the situation could get out of control.”
Militants from the Nusra Front and ISIS briefly overran the northeastern town of Arsal last month.
They are currently holding at least 21 Lebanese policemen and soldiers hostage, and have killed three. The gunmen are demanding the release of Islamist detainees.
The killings of the soldiers have inspired short-lived sectarian retaliations, with tit-for-tat kidnappings in the Bekaa Valley between Sunnis and Shiites raising fears of renewed civil strife.
The source said that the leaders of both Hezbollah and the Sunni community in the Bekaa Valley appeared to want to contain tensions.
The Sunni leaders have urged level-headedness in response to kidnappings and alleged abuses by security and military personnel toward Sunnis.
Hezbollah allows expressions of anger and street protests and then retakes control of the situation in the Bekaa Valley villages, the source said.
“It is clear the kidnappers must exchange prisoners for the soldiers,” the source said. “It is not appropriate at all for the situation to remain as it is with the soldiers being killed, dying a slow death.
“The government’s rigid position from a military and political perspective is causing loss of control on the street.”
He added that further beheadings as a result of governmental inaction could lead tensions to spiral.
The source also said that there was a risk of attacks by the militants on Shiite villages in response to any “provocations” by Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army, and that such ground assaults could push the Bekaa region over the edge.
“That would mean entering into a sectarian war and nobody will be able to control the street,” the source said.
“If the leadership of Hezbollah and the Shiites is bolder and truly ends its involvement in Syria, which has exhausted it and all of Lebanon, I think the issue will not simply be about saving the soldiers, but about saving Lebanon,” the source added.
Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, agreed that government action was necessary to resolve Sunni-Shiite tensions in the area in the short term, through reviving national dialogue and launching a political rapprochement.
“Today, what is the point of convergence between the moderate Sunnis and those who represent the Shiites? Practically nil,” Nader said.
“They formed a government upon one single point of agreement, which is the rejection of the threat of radical Islam, but besides that nothing unites them, whether defense policy, electoral law, economic programs or how to solve the economic crisis.”
Nader said that the lack of a broad regional rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, tensions in Iraq and the scenes of the beheading of Lebanese soldiers had all served to fan the flames of sectarian tensions.
Nader said this had been exacerbated by how the Nusra Front and ISIS were increasingly defining themselves by their opposition to Shiite dominance, in a manner similar to how Arab nationalists have long defined themselves in opposition to Israel.
This resonates with some Sunnis in Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley who do not experience Israeli oppression, but who resent the dominance of Hezbollah, the detention of Sunni Islamists and what they perceive as bias in the Lebanese Army’s behavior, all of which can cause a sense of victimization among Sunnis.
Nader said the solution was to put Sunnis front and center in the battle against ISIS and the Nusra Front, and empower them through a broad national reconciliation.
In the long term, what is needed is a “cultural revolution or resistance” from within the Sunni community to confront radicalism.
Ramez Amhaz, the mayor of Labweh, the closest Shiite town to Arsal, said the Shiite community would not, for its part, succumb to sectarian provocations.
“If we lose a thousand dead we will not engage in sectarianism because it would mean the erasure of the country,” he said. “We understand this and will not take part in the project of those who carry out the beheadings.”
Amhaz said Shiite and Sunni leaders in the area must continue to cooperate to prevent tensions from spiraling out of control.
He also praised the “national sense” of the families of the soldiers killed by ISIS and the Nusra Front, who have stressed national unity and coexistence.
Amhaz said sectarianism would be fatal to the fabric of the Bekaa Valley, where historical relations have long existed between the various Shiite villages and the Sunni town of Arsal, and division within the country and the rest of the region would benefit Israel. Many of the Shiite villages in the Bekaa Valley back Hezbollah in the struggle against Israel.
“We all know where it will lead – sectarianism is death to us all,” Amhaz said.
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