There can be no doubting the connection between the Beirut car bomb which killed eight people and Syria. The attack targeted the convoy of Brig. Gen. Wissam Al-Hassan, a top security official in Lebanon who was in charge of the branch investigating Lebanese politician Michel Samaha, a pro-Syrian Lebanese politician who is accused of planning attacks in Lebanon along with two Syrian officials. The bombing appears to have been a message from Damascus to stay away from Samaha and Syria's allies. Specifically, the attack, which also critically injured 20, unearths fears of a spillover from Syria's civil war. Tensions have been soaring in Lebanon over the conflict next door, and clashes have erupted between supporters of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and backers of the rebellion against his regime. Lebanon's rival political coalitions are divided over events in Syria with the March 14 coalition voicing its support for what it terms the Syrian revolution and the March 8 alliance backing Al-Assad and endorsing his claim that he is fighting terrorists and armed gangs. Al-Hassan was aligned with the March 14 movement which emerged after the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese blamed Damascus for the killing, though Syria denied responsibility. That movement was key in forcing the withdrawal of Syrian troops, which had long occupied neighboring Lebanon and pulled out months after Hariri was killed. These two movements, March 8 and March 14, have over the past decade been largely based on their support for or opposition to the government of Al-Assad. Since both sides rely on the outcome of the crisis in Syria, they are both in tune with the slogan of Lebanon's powerful Shiite Hezbollah movement “one walk, one destiny,” which ties Lebanon to Syria. The fragile situation in Lebanon, wracked by a 15-year civil war, followed by the assassination of a string of anti-Syrian figures, several in car bombings, is the result of conflict in the Arab world and the events in Syria. Instead of March 8 and March 14 preventing regional conflicts from affecting them, they are counting on what's happening regionally to define their destinies. Hezbollah is a key ally of Al-Assad while Lebanon's Sunnis have tended to back Syria's mainly Sunni rebels. Hezbollah, the strongest party in the country both militarily and politically, has no interest in changing either the Syrian or the Lebanese government precisely because this would diminish its own power domestically and regionally. Lebanon and Syria are historically enmeshed in a political and religious web impossible to untangle from sectarian ties and rivalries. Damascus is the stronger and often pulls the strings to which Beirut dances. The capture of former information minister Samaha early in August as part of a plot to assassinate key religious and political figures, followed by the assassination of Al-Hassan, only highlights Syria's power on Lebanese soil. Lebanon today is unstable and uncertain. Few want a return to the civil war and few agree what the end of Al-Assad in Syria will bring.
