BEIRUT — It was a scene that unfolded with agonizing regularity all weekend long in Tariq al-Jadeeda, a Sunni Muslim neighbourhood in the southern suburbs of this tense city. A crowd of mourners marched angrily through the streets, carrying a casket holding another dead young man – another “martyr,” everyone insists – over their heads. They cried out to an invisible God. And they cried out to Saad Hariri, the leader many here feel abandoned them last week when the hated Shiites struck.
“There is no God but God, and [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah is the enemy of God!” the crowd yelled as 23-year-old Ali al-Masri was buried Sunday. He was shot dead by a Hezbollah supporter on Saturday as he attended the funeral of another of Tariq al-Jadeeda's dead.
As the mourners filed out of the Martyrs' Cemetery in Tariq al-Jadeeda, another funeral procession passed by a block away. Then another drove by, this one under military escort as the Sunni mourners crossed a Shia neighbourhood.
Lebanon's Sunni Muslims were furious and lashing back Sunday after a weekend that saw their leaders revealed as impotent in the face of the military might of the Shia Hezbollah. After days of absorbing humiliation as Hezbollah and its allies ransacked Sunni neighbourhoods and businesses in West Beirut, Sunni militiamen attacked outnumbered members of the Allawite Shia sect in the predominantly Sunni northern cities of Tripoli and Akkar, leaving 14 people dead.
Sunni fighters destroyed the offices of the Hezbollah-linked Baath party in Tripoli, and burned pictures of Mr. Nasrallah.
But while most of the hatred was directed against Hezbollah and its allies Sunday, there was also widespread discontent with Mr. Hariri, the leader of the country's estimated 900,000 Sunni Muslims. Throughout the five-day-old conflict, the 38-year-old businessman – who assumed leadership of the community after his popular father, Rafik Hariri, was assassinated three years ago – has called for dialogue and a negotiated end to the fighting.
Many of his frustrated followers feel the time for that has long passed. They feel Mr. Hariri's naiveté left his people unprotected during the 18-month political standoff that preceded last week's violence – a time during which the Shiites were evidently readying for war.
“I blame Saad Hariri for what has happened. He practises politics in the Middle East. You need to make a militia to protect your people here, or you will be demolished,” said Talal, a 51-year-old lawyer who asked that his last name not be used. A day before, he said, Shia militiamen from the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement broke into his apartment, stealing jewellery and asking about members of Mr. Hariri's Future Movement.
While most Lebanese have kept weapons in their homes since the country's 1975-1990 civil war, the Sunnis found themselves outnumbered and underequipped on Friday as Hezbollah and its allies carried out their lightning occupation of West Beirut. “We are fighting with sticks and stones and they have Iranian weapons,” complained Abu Tariq, a Future Movement leader in Tariq al-Jadeeda. Hezbollah is backed by both Iran and Syria.
The Future Movement, so hopefully named by Mr. Hariri's peacemaker father, formed the backbone of the peaceful uprising after his assassination in 2005 that became known as the Cedar Revolution. Those protests, which drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, forced Syria to withdraw its soldiers from Lebanon after a 29-year stay.
That revolution lay in shambles Sunday. Even after Hezbollah and its allies withdrew their fighters from areas of West Beirut they had seized on Friday, the Shia militant group's yellow banner hung over numerous Sunni neighbourhoods, leaving no question as to who was now the power on the ground.
Despite its popularity, the Future Movement had no fighting wing that could stand up to Hezbollah or Amal. Even as the government became more deeply embroiled in the escalating political standoff with the heavily armed Hezbollah, it directed its efforts – and the funding it received from the United States and its allies in the Sunni Arab world – into building up the national army as a military counterweight.
That strategy failed last week, as the army, afraid of splitting along sectarian lines, stood aside as Hezbollah captured West Beirut and briefly made Mr. Hariri a prisoner in his own home.
With Sunni rage rising and Mr. Hariri discredited in the eyes of many, some now worry that al-Qaeda-style radical Islamists could fill the void and give deadly direction to the anti-Shia sentiment, as in Iraq. Last year, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group seized control of a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, prompting a 14-week battle with the Lebanese army that left 385 dead, nearly half of them soldiers.
Back at Mr. al-Masri's funeral, the dead man's older brother said that he was sure last week's fighting marked the beginning rather than the end of the conflict.
“These are the deeds of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” 28-year-old Fouad al-Masri said, referring to his brother's death. His eyes were red with tears and anger. “The killers should be killed. If they want a civil war, we are ready for it.”
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