Here’s the lat­est I filed from Lebanon. “A much shorter version”:http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-10/116556152129650.xml&coll=1 appeared in the _Newark Star-Ledger_, but here’s the full account:

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s cap­i­tal is once again a tin­der­box, ready to blow because of polit­i­cal rival­ries exac­er­bated by sec­tar­ian ten­sions. Increas­ingly, the polit­i­cal dis­putes — which are osten­si­bly over inter­na­tional tri­bunals, pres­i­den­tial terms and the legit­i­macy of a gov­ern­ment — have grown into reli­gious dis­putes, mir­ror­ing the sec­tar­ian ten­sions between Sun­nis and Shi’ites across the region.
Which leader one sup­port­ers is often deter­mined by one’s faith. Shi’ites sup­port the Syrian-backed Hezbol­lah and its leader, Has­san Nas­ral­lah, who has called for the over­throw of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment as being too close to the United States and cut­ting Shi’ites out of power for too long. Sun­nis, how­ever, sup­port the cur­rent gov­ern­ment because it is lead by Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Sin­iora, who is a mem­ber of the Future Move­ment, a polit­i­cal party headed Saad Hariri, the son of the mur­dered ex-premier Rafik, who was killed in 2005.
“The polit­i­cal issues are sec­tar­ian,” explained Tariq Tar­qawi, 20, who is, in order, a Pales­tin­ian, a Sunni and a car elec­tri­cian. He lives in Ard Jal­loul, a mainly Sunni neigh­bor­hood that abuts the mainly Shi’ite sub­urbs of Beirut. “They love Nas­ral­lah, we love Hariri.“
It’s a polit­i­cal cri­sis that has come to a head in the past week, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of pro-Syrian sup­port­ers fill­ing down­town Beirut and street clashes between Sunni and Shi’ite youths from rival neigh­bor­hoods. Nas­ral­lah says his peo­ple will con­tinue to demon­strate and par­a­lyze cen­tral Beirut until the gov­ern­ment resigns. Sin­iora says he’s stay­ing. Where this ends up is anyone’s guess, but it’s already turned deadly.
Ali Ahmad Mah­moud, a 20-year-old Shi’ite from the neigh­bor­hood, was killed Sun­day night in fight­ing between Shi’ites and Sun­nis in Ard Jal­loul. Details are murky, but res­i­dents say Shi’ite pro­test­ers appar­ently entered the neigh­bor­hood spoil­ing for a fight.
“If we hadn’t fought them, they would have come in here and bro­ken every­thing,” said Khalid Hashem, 20, a Sunni from the neigh­bor­hood. He was, he added, a friend of Mah­moud. “The Shi’ites are known for this.“
Accord­ing to oth­ers, the intrud­ers chanted slo­gans and insulted Sunni reli­gious fig­ures.
“We could not bear it any­more,” said one woman in a phar­macy whose hus­band would not allow her name to be used. “I did not like Hariri and I had noth­ing against the Shi’ites, but now things are chang­ing. This is not a polit­i­cal demon­stra­tion any­more.“
Both Shi’ite and Sunni par­ti­sans blame the other side for the shoot­ing, but the ques­tion remains: Who killed Ali Ahmad Mah­moud?
The sit­u­a­tion is so knife-edge bal­anced that the head of Lebanese army warned that his forces were being strained to the break­ing point as they tried to cope with the secu­rity down­town and main­tain calm through the tenser neigh­bor­hoods of the city. If the protests con­tin­ued, or worse, turned more vio­lent, the army would be unable to cope, he said.
On Mon­day, Mahmoud’s body was taken down to the demon­stra­tion sur­round­ing the Grand Serail, the old Ottoman fortress that serves as the prime minister’s office and now, the sleep­ing quar­ters for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Siniora’s cab­i­net.
The sight of Mahmoud’s cof­fin brought a fresh surge of fury at the gov­ern­ment and pro­tes­tors crowded around the ambu­lance car­ry­ing it. Many car­ried signs pro­claim­ing Mah­moud a mar­tyr. “Mar­tyred at the hands of the government’s mili­tias,” read one.
Almost gone were the ini­tial polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions that had brought the hun­dreds of thou­sands into down­town Beirut: the inter­na­tional tri­bunal, pres­i­den­tial terms and Shi’ite rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Mon­day was a day of mourn­ing and pas­sion.
“The blood of the Shi’ites is boil­ing,” chanted the pro­tes­tors. “Death to Sin­iora.“
Down­town Beirut is a tent city, with the can­vas con­struc­tions lined up below the Grand Serail, like many a besieg­ing army has done over the cen­turies in this part of the world. At any hour, chant­ing pro­tes­tors crowd up against coils of con­certina wire while Lebanese Army and Hezbol­lah dis­ci­pline men keep them rel­a­tively at bay.
For Iman Fakhiya, 29, from the Shi’ite town of Taibe in the south, this protest is sim­ply a mat­ter of fair­ness for the Shi’ites, who have tra­di­tion­ally been the under­dogs in Lebanon.
Hezbol­lah gained sup­port in the south because the gov­ern­ment in Beirut rarely pro­vided ser­vices to the rural and impov­er­ished South and Bekaa Val­ley, the home­lands for the country’s Shi’ites. And over 23 years, since its for­ma­tion in 1982, it has soft­ened its Islamic rhetoric, and now pro­vides for Shi’ites when the gov­ern­ment doesn’t, such as schools and hos­pi­tals, and defends them when the elite of Lebanon won’t. Even today, on online forums revolv­ing around events in Beirut, sup­port­ers of the gov­ern­ment often talk of the Shi’ites down­town as “scum” and dirty out­siders.
“I think my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion accepted this but we won’t,” she said. “They want to keep us down. We just want our rights. Why is the pres­i­dency for the Chris­tians and the prime min­is­ter­ship for the Sun­nis?“
For her, it is only a mat­ter of time, lit­er­ally. She would stay for as long as it takes, she said, no mat­ter how uncom­fort­able she was.
“It doesn’t mat­ter,” she said as she pulled the blan­ket tighter. “We’ve been hurt­ing for a long time. We are used to it.”

Also, I’ll be trav­el­ing for the next few weeks, so post­ings will be infre­quent. I hope things don’t get out of con­trol here.
IMPORTANT CHANGE: Com­ments have been changed to allow authen­ti­cated com­menters only. This means you will have to sign up for a “TypeKey”:https://www.typekey.com/t/typekey/register?lang=en-us account to com­ment. This will cut down on spam and drive-by com­menters. Sorry for the incon­ve­nience, but it’s a nec­es­sary evil these days.