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• Related Materials

  • What’s next in Lebanon? It’s a question no one can answer
    By Mohamad Bazzi, Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow
    Op-Ed
    May 10, 2008

  • Bazzi on Lebanon Violence
    Podcast
    May 9, 2008

  • Bazzi: Who Killed Imad Mugniyah?
    Interview
    February 14, 2008

  • Militant's Death Mirrored Life
    By Mohamad Bazzi, Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow
    Article
    February 14, 2008

  • Lebanon In Crisis [Rush Transcript; Federal News Service]
    Transcript
    February 12, 2008

  See Also

  Lebanon

  The Heart of Lebanon’s Strife

  Author:	Mohamad Bazzi, Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow

  May 20, 2008
  Christian Science Monitor

  Beirut, Lebanon—Huddled at home in front of their TVs during last week’s fighting, the Lebanese relived one of their worst memories: masked gunmen setting up makeshift checkpoints and demanding people’s identity cards. The image of gunmen stopping civilians at checkpoints to sort and often murder them on the basis of religion is perhaps the most enduring symbol of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.

  During that war, the sectarian divide was between Muslims and Christians. This time, the conflict is mainly between Sunnis and Shiites. It is also an extension of the ongoing proxy war in Iraq—pitting Iran and Syria (which support the Shiite militia Hezbollah) against the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Arab regimes (which back Lebanon’s Sunni- and Christian-dominated government).

  Each Lebanese faction accuses the other of serving external masters. Hezbollah claims the US put the ruling coalition up to issuing two recent orders: one outlawing the militia’s private communications network and another dismissing the security chief at the Beirut airport. In turn, the government accuses Hezbollah of carrying out a “coup” at the behest of Iran and Syria.

  But while external players have a hand in the latest bloody confrontations, they don’t deserve all the blame. For the most part, the Lebanese did this to themselves—and they need to find a political settlement of their own by modernizing an antiquated power-sharing system. Otherwise, the Sunni-Shiite rift in Lebanon will explode, especially since it has been fueled by years of sectarian bloodletting in Iraq .

  View full text of article

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New Independent Task Force Reports

  Confronting Climate Change

  This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

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