Two Bombs in Beirut: An Iranian Target and an Echo of Syria
Posted by Rania Abouzeid
THE NEW YORKER
Photograph by Hussein Malla/AP.
The twin explosions in southern Beirut on Tuesday morning came in quick succession: first, a suicide bomber rammed his motorbike into the gate of the Iranian Embassy, before 10 A.M. Then another drove an explosives-laden car into the area, leaving at least twenty-three people dead, including the embassy’s cultural attaché, and more than a hundred and fifty wounded.
The images from the scene were numbingly familiar. Plumes of black smoke billowed above Beirut’s skyline; the façades of nearby residential buildings were sheared off by the blast. Angry orange flames leapt from crumpled parked cars. Pools of blood and shattered glass carpeted the ground. Mangled bodies—or bits of them—were strewn all over the street, some covered with bedsheets, others exposed and undignified, broadcast live on local television stations that have no squeamishness and even less tact.
There is no pixellation or sanitizing of violence here in Beirut, where I live and where large-scale bombings are becoming routine. Often, the only things that seem to change are the names of the dead and the wounded, and if it took place in a mainly Shiite or largely Sunni neighborhood. But, this time, there were other differences, too: the target (the Iranian Embassy in the mainly Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut) and the tactics (a multi-stage attack involving suicide bombers rather than the usual parked-car bomb) represent a significant escalation in an increasingly violent Lebanese dispute over events in neighboring Syria.
By early afternoon, a Lebanese Sunni Al Qaeda affiliate, Kataib Abdullah Azzam, had claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, saying it was in retaliation for the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah sending its men to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops, and for Iran’s support of both Assad and Hezbollah.
This particular Al Qaeda group may or may not have done it. The last time that there was an attack in Beirut’s mainly Shiite southern suburbs, on August 15th, I was in Syria with conservative Sunni Islamist fighters. They gleefully watched the news, debating whether their group should claim responsibility, even though they weren’t involved. They eventually decided against it, because the death toll was only ten at the time (it later rose to twenty-seven), not important enough, they thought, to attach their name to it.
On Tuesday, there was similar euphoria in some Syrian rebel quarters and among conservative Sunni groups. Still, regardless of which of Hezbollah and Iran’s many foes undertook Tuesday’s bombing, the message is clear: both will pay a price for their overt support of Assad and it will be extracted on their home territory. The physical fight for Syria will likely not be contained within Syria’s borders. Ideologically, it never was.
Syria has been a proxy battlefield for multiple players: Assad’s Russian backers and the United States; the Syrian opposition’s Saudi supporters and the regime’s Iranian friends; foreign fighters from across the sectarian divide—Shiites from Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere fighting for the regime, and Sunnis from across the Middle East, Europe, and the Caucasus fighting against it; and between rival Lebanese.
The Lebanese have long complained that their land was a proxy battlefield for meddling foreigners, to the degree that some even dubbed their fifteen-year civil conflict “the war of the others.” Now they are the foreign parties intervening in somebody else’s civil war, some sending men, money, and munitions to Assad’s opponents, and others—chiefly Hezbollah—sending the same to the Syrian President.
Apart from vaguely blaming Israel, which is the usual move after an unsolved attack, some local TV pundits and politicians have pointed out that the bombings may be an attempt not only to punish Hezbollah for fighting in Syria, but also to try to split it from its base. The idea is that Hezbollah’s supporters will blame the group for the car bombs in their neighborhoods, and put pressure on it to withdraw from the fight across the border.
That’s highly unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the pain threshold for Hezbollah’s followers is high. The party—which has formidable military, political, and social-services branches—has done much to elevate the status, power, and prospects of a once-downtrodden, destitute Shiite community. Hezbollah offers schools, hospitals, employment programs, agricultural initiatives, and other assistance to its supporters. After the monthlong war with Israel in 2006, which left the mainly Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut a mountain of rubble and ruins, Hezbollah rebuilt the area. It wasn’t unusual at the time to hear mothers who had lost their children in Israeli bombings to stoically and fervently proclaim that they accepted their painful sacrifice, and would pay it again with their remaining children. It wasn’t just made-for-TV hyperbole. Hezbollah has carefully and methodically laid the groundwork for its support over decades, and now its people are being asked to repay the debt.
Still, the effects of the bombings are not just restricted to their immediate surroundings. Tuesday’s attack is yet another stress on a country that is so polarized over the issue of Syria that it can’t even form a government; it has been without one for months. The massive influx of Syrians (more than a million into a country of some four million) doesn’t help.
But, for now, this managed state of chaos is holding, and remains below some invisible threshold that might tip the country over the brink, in part because all of the various sides need Lebanon to remain somewhat functional. They are using Lebanon—its territory and infrastructure, including banks, ports, and airport—as a “back office” for their activities in Syria. It’s another paradox in the byzantine politics of this conflict.
The Lebanese people, meanwhile, are left wondering when the next bombing might occur—and what the potential target might be. Some speculate that after the attack on the Iranian Embassy, it might be a good time to stay away from anything Saudi in Lebanon.
Photograph by Hussein Malla/AP.
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