Cloud of Syria's war hangs over Lebanese cleric's death

The fatal shooting of Sheikh Abdul-Wahid by a soldier raised fears about the influence of the Assad regime over the border

By Robert Fisk

".....The problem is that Syria now dominates Lebanon as surely as it did in the days when tens of thousands of its troops occupied much of the country. You only have to count how many times the phrases "pro-Syrian" and "anti-Syrian" appear in reports about Lebanon to grasp that the division between the government – electorally pro-Syrian and very much supported by Hezbollah and pro-Syrian Christian parties and the Shia Muslims – and the anti-Syrian Sunnis and Druze and Phalangist Christians is presently incurable.

But every time the Lebanese have been offered another civil war, they have turned it down. The young men and women educated outside Lebanon during the 1975-90 war do not want another conflict and are contemptuous of the sectarian politics, introduced by the French almost 100 years ago. And no one can forget who won the civil war: the one neighbouring power whose soldiers were stabled across the land, that rock-solid, secure dictatorship which would never suffer internal dissent, a nation called Syria."