A Fortress Amid Ruins

Israel, for all its intelligence, might just have misread Hezbollah as simply 'a terrorist group' that occasionally fired rockets into northern Israel. Hezbollah, a Shia Lebanese group, was set up in 1982 to resist Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. Through a long and often successful campaign against Israeli troops, it forced Israel to retreat from Lebanese territory in 2000. Subsequently, it emerged as a political force, winning 18 per cent seats in Parliament. What's more, it commands almost total support of Shias in Lebanon, close to 60 per cent of the population.

Hezbollah is now almost a force independent of a weak and divided government built on a model devised just after French rule ended in 1943, and on the 1930s census. Under that model, Lebanon must have a Maronite Christian as president, a Sunni Muslim as PM and a Shia as speaker of Parliament. A Christian-Sunni alliance holds majority in Parliament, but the Shia population is now a far greater proportion of the population, without matching representation in government. The Hezbollah-backed Amal Party is far stronger than its present 18 per cent strength in Parliament.

Hezbollah has become too strong now for the official Lebanese army to control. It's widely known that over the years a rapidly growing section of the Lebanese army are Hezbollah men. Closely watching the developments is Shia Iran.

The Lebanese civil war, fought bitterly between Christian and Shia militias through the '80s, ended in 1990. The peace since then is suddenly looking fragile as the war with Israel drags in Hezbollah and the Shia population, not so much the Christians. Israel is fighting only one section of a country that is suddenly beginning to look divided again.

"It is time for a new Middle East," US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said on her visit to Beirut earlier this week. New it will be, but not necessarily in the way she wants.