A story I filed for the _Singapore Strait Times_:

BEIRUT — Lebanon found itself hurtling fur­ther toward polit­i­cal cri­sis today, brought on by a head-on col­li­sion between pro– and anti-Syrian blocs over what appeared to be dis­putes con­cern­ing power-sharing in the gov­ern­ment and the approval of an inter­na­tional tri­bunal to try sus­pects in the mur­der of for­mer prime min­is­ter Rafik Hariri.
The ten­sions boiled over when five Shi’ite and one Chris­t­ian cab­i­net min­is­ters resigned from Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Siniora’s gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day and today after a new round of national rec­on­cil­i­a­tion talks broke down last week. The Shi’ites, rep­re­sented mainly by the mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah, are demand­ing a “national unity” gov­ern­ment with one-third of the seats in Siniora’s cab­i­net for them­selves and their pro-Syrian polit­i­cal allies, a dis­tri­b­u­tion of power that would give them veto power over any deci­sions the gov­ern­ment makes.
And one of the deci­sions con­cerns the approval of an inter­na­tional tri­bunal to try sus­pects in the mur­der of Hariri, who was killed along with 22 other peo­ple on Feb. 14, 2005, in a mas­sive car bomb in cen­tral Beirut. Siniora’s cab­i­net approved the tri­bunal Mon­day after a three-hour meet­ing down­town, despite the absence of the six pro-Syrian min­is­ters.
“Our aim is to achieve jus­tice and only jus­tice,” Sin­iora said after the meet­ing. The draft doc­u­ment now goes to the Secu­rity Coun­cil for endorse­ment.
But whether Lebanon’s prime min­is­ter can achieve any­thing with Hezbol­lah and its allies arrayed against him is ques­tion­able. Were Hezbol­lah and its allies to gain the veto power they want, the could scut­tle the inter­na­tional tri­bunal.
“We have been wait­ing for the court to take shape and to reach this day,” said Tourism Min­is­ter and Sin­iora ally Joe Sarkis. “If the inten­tions of all were pure, every­one should have par­tic­i­pated in uncov­er­ing the truth about who killed Rafik Hariri. … We should have all been united over this and they could have resigned tomor­row.“
Under Lebanon’s com­pli­cated rules of gov­er­nance, if one-third of the cab­i­net resigns, the gov­ern­ment col­lapses and a new must be formed. The remain­ing 18 min­is­ters seem loyal to Sin­iora, how­ever, and seem unlikely to resign.
That hasn’t stopped some oppo­si­tion fig­ures from from ques­tion­ing Siniora’s legit­i­macy. Pres­i­dent Emile Lahoud, a Maronite Chris­t­ian and Syr­ian ally, said Sun­day that Siniora’s gov­ern­ment was no longer legit­i­mate because the Lebanese con­sti­tu­tion requires that “all sects should be justly rep­re­sented in the Cab­i­net.” He fur­ther claimed that with the Shi’ite walk­out, all deci­sions of the cab­i­net were “null and void.“
Sin­iora says his gov­ern­ment has all the legit­i­macy it needs but with­out Hezbollah’s back­ing in Par­lia­ment, he will find it dif­fi­cult to get any leg­is­la­tion passed, espe­cially the inter­na­tional tri­bunal. After its endorse­ment by the Secu­rity Coun­cil, it is handed back to the cab­i­net for final approval, signed by the pres­i­dent and passed by par­lia­ment.
The Shi’ite mili­tia has threat­ened mas­sive street protests unless the cab­i­net is reshuf­fled more to its lik­ing, a polit­i­cal switch-up that the group says reflects its real sup­port among the Lebanese in the wake of this summer’s 34-day between Hezbol­lah and Israel, brought on by the group’s cap­ture of two Israeli sol­diers on July 12. It was a war that ended in what could best be called a stale­mate, but which Hezbol­lah sup­port­ers hailed as a “divine vic­tory.” Hezbollah’s ene­mies in the gov­ern­ment, how­ever, saw the war as a reck­less adven­ture into which the group dragged Lebanon against its will.
The Shi’ite group was embold­ened how­ever, and with what the United States says is back­ing from Iran and Syria, has made a polit­i­cal putsch against the cur­rent, pro-Western Sin­iora gov­ern­ment. There are many in Lebanon who feel that the inter­na­tional tri­bunal will impli­cate senior mem­bers of the Syr­ian regime, which relies on Hezbol­lah to guard its inter­ests in Lebanon and to serve as a van­guard against Israel.
How­ever, the fright­ful Israeli mil­i­tary response likely left Hezbol­lah more dam­aged than it’s will­ing to let on, and its ene­mies smelled blood in the water. This wasn’t some­thing Hezbol­lah could allow.
“Hezbol­lah is more con­cerned, more weak­ened,” said Reinoud Leen­ders, a for­mer ana­lyst for the Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group in Beirut. The walk­out, the threats and the demands, he said, are intended to tie up the polit­i­cal process in Beirut and buy them time to rearm. “This ‘unity gov­ern­ment’ is clearly designed to par­a­lyze any decision-making process.“
Not so, coun­ters Nawar Sahili, a Hezbol­lah mem­ber of par­lia­ment but not a cab­i­net mem­ber. By walk­ing out, he says, they are fol­low­ing in the tra­di­tion of democ­racy in which oppo­si­tion par­ties don’t take part in gov­ern­ment.
“I don’t think this is very dan­ger­ous,” he said, but added that elec­tions aren’t sched­uled until 2009 and that’s too long to wait for the pro-Syrian bloc. “Why should we wait when we don’t have any power in the gov­ern­ment?” he asked.
He played down the pos­si­bil­i­ties of street protests, which have been effec­tive weapons for Hezbol­lah in the past. “Maybe it will come later,” he said.
But with these lat­est devel­op­ments, Lebanon has found itself back in an unwel­come role: as a bat­tle­field for regional and global pow­ers to play out their con­flicts. With Iran and Syria back­ing Hezbol­lah and its allies, and the U.S. and the West back­ing the Sin­iora gov­ern­ment, Lebanon’s polit­i­cal cri­sis is a another bat­tle in the new cold war shap­ing up between Iran and the United States for dom­i­nance in South­west Asia and its oil.

*Per­sonal obser­va­tions:*
The feel­ing here is one of ner­vous ten­sion among the Sun­nis and the anti-Syrian Chris­tians (mainly Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces) and con­fi­dence among the Shi’ites and their allies, includ­ing the Chris­t­ian Michel Aoun. (He really wants to be pres­i­dent and sees an alliance with Hezbol­lah as the way to get there.)
Ulti­mately, how­ever, this is a proxy bat­tle in the cur­rent tus­sle between the U.S.-Western alliance, which includes Europe, Israel and the United States, and an Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis. This is an idea I’ve been pro­mot­ing for most of 2006. The idea was sparked by the May _contretemps_ between Hezbol­lah and Israel fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of two Islamic Jihad mem­bers in Saida and a cou­ple of Katyushas got tossed at Israel in retal­i­a­tion. The Jew­ish state responded harshly, with air raids across the south, caus­ing Hezbol­lah to counter-strike.
I said at the time, “Iran’s activ­i­ties in Lebanon are part of its larger plans for the region. By work­ing through and with local Shi­ite com­mu­ni­ties, which are found in Bahrain, Iraq, east­ern Saudi Ara­bia and stretch­ing through Syria to Lebanon and Israel’s north­ern fron­tier, Tehran is well on its way to cre­at­ing a ‘Shi­ite Crescent’ — a regional axis that allows it to hold most of the cards in any con­fronta­tion with the United States or Israel. And nowhere else, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Iraq, is Iran so well posi­tioned as in Lebanon.“
The May con­fronta­tion set­tled down after a day. But obvi­ously ten­sions remained — until they finally boiled over July 12, when the Shi’ite mil­i­tant group cap­tured two Israeli sol­diers and sparked a 34-day war that killed more than 1,200 peo­ple and left up to 4,000 wounded. Lebanon was dev­as­tated by the Israeli air force, but Hezbol­lah emerged polit­i­cally stronger.
Since then, they’ve been flex­ing their mus­cles and try­ing to force their way into posi­tion in the cab­i­net that would give them the veto over any deci­sions — a recipe for gov­ern­men­tal grid­lock that would main­tain their free­dom to do what they please in the south with­out inter­fer­ence from the U.S.-backed Sin­iora government.