Lebanon at the crossroads: the Doha Accord halts political feuding, but it remains to be seen whether it's a new beginning or just the calm before the storm. Ed Blanche reports from Beirut

Middle East, The, July, 2008 by Ed Blanche

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THE QATAR-BROKERED AGREEMENT of 21 May appeared to resolve Lebanon's 18-month-old political crisis, but the country remains in a precarious position as the Middle East lurches towards great change fuelled by skyrocketing oil prices, waning American power and Iran's expansionist ambitions.

Political divisions, and deeply-rooted sectarian rivalries, remain beneath the thin veneer of cooperation engendered by the Doha Accord and parliamentary elections, scheduled for summer 2009, and could ignite a new flare-up in the confrontation triggered by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut on 15 February 2005.

The agreement hammered out in five days of talks in Doha came about after Hizbullah and its allies invaded Sunni-dominated West Beirut on 9 May in a blatant show of military power that humbled the western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his chief ally, Hariri's son and political heir Saad. Fighting spread to the Chouf Mountains above Beirut and to north Lebanon. All told, some 70 people were killed.

Hizbullah struck after Siniora's beleaguered government, for reasons that have still not been explained, challenged it by threatening the private communications network, separate from the state system, it had set up as part of its military arsenal against Israel. He also dismissed the army general in charge of security at Beirut Airport because he had allowed Hizbullah to spy on aircraft movements.

The government knew full well it did not have the muscle to make these provocative decisions stick, but seems to have sought to bring its long-running rivalry with Hizbullah to a head. This was either a monumental miscalculation, or the government was pushed into a potentially dangerous confrontation with Hizbullah, backed by Iran and Syria, possibly by outside powers with promises of military support. If that was the case, the government grievously failed to take US weakness in the region into account.

Whatever the reason, Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah called the government's move a "declaration of war" and ordered his fighters into the Sunni bastion of West Beirut. Within hours they had overwhelmed Sunni groups, although there were strong counterattacks in Sunni bastions in north Lebanon.

The Lebanese army command, supposedly fearing that the military would disintegrate along sectarian lines as it did during the 1975-90 civil war, made no effort to stop the fighting. Its failure to act weakened its reputation as the only national institution still standing. An estimated one-third of the 60,000-strong army is Shi'ite.

Eventually, calm was restored, but Siniora was forced to rescind the moves against Hizbullah, a crippling setback. But it also had to agree to virtually all of the demands made by the pro-Syrian, Hizbullah-led opposition that it had been refusing for so long. The most notable of these was a national unity government in which the opposition had the power of veto, an arrangement that carries the seeds of potential conflict in the months ahead.

Qatar's mediation also produced an all-party agreement in Doha under which the commander of Lebanon's armed forces, General Michel Suleiman, was elected president by parliament, ending a six-month constitutional vacuum. That may turn out to be another gain for the opposition. Suleiman was appointed military commander while Lebanon was under Syrian control and he could still lean towards Damascus.

Once he was sworn in, Suleiman abjured Lebanon's fractious politicians to give up "the language of treachery", declaring "it is essential to fortify the nation and to coexist through the discourse of dialogue, not by making Lebanon a battleground". But there was no talk of Hizbullah surrendering its arms.

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Hizbullah's victory was a major setback, too, for Saudi Arabia, the champion of the region's Sunnis, and for the Americans whose helplessness simply underlined the extent to which their longtime power in the Middle East is fading by the day in the face of Iran's expansionist ambitions.

The Doha deal has cemented Hizbullah's power, which will be difficult to undo. But it averted a return to mass violence if not all-out sectarian war since if Hizbullah had not got what it wanted it would undoubtedly have had to resort to military action on a wider scale that would have engulfed the country.

However, the Doha Accord did not address the fundamental problems that plague the Lebanese. These problems include the constant sectarian rivalry that stands in the way of a united nation, and the need for a more equitable distribution of political power than the French-engineered independence constitution that was heavily weighted in favour of the Maronite Catholics and the Sunnis.

The Shi'ites, long repressed and shackled in poverty by the more powerful sects are now the single largest sect and are demanding, with some justification, a greater representation in parliament. The 2009 elections will highlight this yet again.