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

Both these developments served to remind Washington that its power in the region had suffered immensely since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and this must impact on what will now take place in Lebanon.

As it happens, there have been signs for some time that Hizbullah's relations with Damascus were deteriorating as the interests of its mentor, Iran, and Syria were diverging in Lebanon.

Syria was using Hizbullah as its main proxy in post-Hariri Lebanon to maintain political pressure to topple Siniora's government and to restore Syria's power in its Mediterranean neighbour. Tehran's objectives are far more strategic: extending Shi'ite power westwards deep into the Sunni Arab world and pushing out the Americans. The Syrians had little interest in bolstering Hizbullah's political power (which could ultimately challenge Damascus), but Tehran did.

The 12 February assassination of Hizbullah's security supremo, Imad Mughniyeh, a close ally of Iran's intelligence services and branded a master terrorist by the Americans, in a car bombing deep in the heart of Damascus deepened Hizbullah's suspicions about Syrian intentions.

The Syrians blamed the Israelis as did just about everyone else in the region and vowed to announce the result of a top-level investigation into Mughniyeh's murder. But they still have not done so. This has fuelled suspicions that some figures in Syria's pervasive intelligence establishment wanted to distance Damascus from Iran's principal proxy.

That in turn has fostered speculation that the secular Syrians may be prepared to cut a deal with the Americans and end their alliance with fundamentalist Iran in exchange for power in Lebanon, as they did in 1990 when Saddam Hussein, Assad's longtime enemy, invaded Kuwait. Then, the late President Hafez Assad was rewarded for sending an armoured division to join the anti-Saddam coalition with Washington's tacit agreement that Syria could have control of Lebanon. Assad then sent his armed forces to end the civil war.

With Hizbullah triumphant, there are now fears that the Sunnis, particularly those in the north around Tripoli, will turn to Salafist groups, or even Al Qaeda, to defend them against Shi'ite dominance. The ease with which Hizbullah overwhelmed Beirut's Sunnis fuelled those concerns.

The United Nations has warned that pro-Syrian groups are smuggling weapons in across Lebanon's porous border with Syria. Armed Palestinian groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation Palestine-General Command, maintain camps along the frontier which facilitate the gunrunning and impede Lebanese efforts to tighten control.

Al Qaeda is reported to have been infiltrating activists into Lebanon, while the Saudis are alleged to have funded and armed other Sunni groups in its clandestine campaign against the Shi'ite's growing power, just as Riyadh has done in Iraq. Osama bin Laden's eminence grise, Ayman Al Zawahiri, recently declared that Lebanon would be pivotal in the war against "the Crusaders and the Jews".