In the first week of March, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Asir called on his supporters to participate in “the battle of dignity” by organising a sit-in in front of the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah's offices located a few blocks away from his mosque at Belal Bin Rabah. Al-Asir threatened “an earthquake that will never calm down”, and Lebanon braced itself for an inevitable showdown between Al-Asir's supporters and those of Hizbullah. Al-Asir's incessant flow of provocations, not fearing to incite sectarian hatred, had turned the city into a time bomb that could be expected to explode for the tiniest reason. Last week, things came full circle when the Lebanese army put an end to “the earthquake” that had threatened to engulf the country in a sectarian confrontation between Sunnis and Shia, a confrontation that some Sunni political and religious figures in Sidon said was the endgame of those who had financed Al-Asir and secured political cover for his outlawed activities. But as the dust of the two-day battles settles, and as the hunt is still on for Al-Asir, who has turned from a superstar sheikh into a fugitive, his whereabouts being material for all sorts of speculation, more important questions are emerging about the regional implications and what the battle has meant for Lebanon's Sunnis as well as for Sunni-Shia relations in the country. Many analysts quickly tied the Sidon events to the larger regional context and particularly to events in Syria. Leading analyst Sami Kleib said that the Sidon events should not be read in isolation from what was going on regionally, believing that a settlement of sorts was behind the decision to put an end to the Al-Asir phenomenon and that it would be naive to think that his case was isolated from the context surrounding it. “There is an international decision to encircle the Jihadi Salafist movements and even reduce the level of political ambitions of the Islamist currents in general,” Kleib explained. The Lebanese defence minister also acknowledged in an interview this week that the incident suggested that the “crisis in Syria has its implications for Lebanon” and that “what we are trying to do is to limit the grave consequences of such a crisis”. The minister had also warned a year ago that Al-Qaeda was active in Lebanon. The link with the Syrian crisis could not be ignored, since Al-Asir had been citing the conflict in Syria in his sermons as one more reason for his sectarian-inspired discourse against Hizbullah and by association Lebanon's Shia. The confrontation nonetheless raised questions about the state of Lebanon's Sunnis, the majority of whom appear susceptible to embracing a narrative of victimisation and a belief in a plot to render them leaderless. Confrontations such as the one that took place in Sidon, or the clashes this week in Tripoli, or even the previous ones that the Lebanese military led against Fatah Al-Islam in 2008 or against a fundamentalist cell in Seir Al-Deniya near Tripoli in 1999, have only reinforced such feelings of victimhood. The statements made by a number of Sunni religious men following the clashes in Sidon harped on the “the injustices that have befallen the sect”. This week, calls were made on social media outlets to participate in “the dignity revolution” in solidarity with Al-Asir, which would be followed by a march to the mosque in Abra, the statements being signed by “the Sunni people of Sidon”. The rise and fall of Al-Asir should also be read within the more general context of the Salafist movement in Lebanon in particular and the state of Lebanon's Sunni Islamists in general. In his analysis of the reasons why Lebanon's Sunnis embraced Al-Asir's discourse, commentator Ibrahim Al-Amin pointed out that such an embrace was a manifestation of a leadership vacuum and frustration with the present leadership as personified in the Al-Hariri family. “The Sunni street is in solidarity with Al-Asir and might accept him as a spokesperson but not as a leader,” Al-Amin wrote last March. Nevertheless, there are three dimensions at work here, including inter-Sunni relations, the Sunni-Shia relationship and Hizbullah's role in increasing the sense of victimisation among Sunnis, and their relationship with state institutions, particularly the army, which has engaged in previous confrontations with Sunni fundamentalist groups. A troubled relationship between the military and the Sunnis emerged following a number of incidents. The Lebanese army's campaign against Al-Asir has triggered a fierce debate about the Sunni groups and their political and social agendas, particularly since Lebanon's Islamists have grown to be part of the country's political scene. The emergence of Sunni Islamists as significant political actors in Lebanon is closely linked to former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri's death in 2005 and the rising tide of sectarianism hitting the region following the US-led invasion of Iraq, which deepened a sense of sectarian persecution and solidarity among Lebanon's Sunnis. Politically, Al-Hariri's rise to power meant the exclusion of other Sunni leaders. His death left a huge leadership vacuum that his son and successor Saad failed to fill. But his death also “Lebanonised” the Sunnis, causing them to act, in other words, as a sect among other sects and also as a minority whose existence was threatened, whose leaders were targeted, and whose sense of victimisation was deep. At one time, it was Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad who was targeting the Sunnis, and it is within this context that phenomena such as the rise of Al-Asir in Sidon and his likes in Tripoli and in Tariq Jdeeda in Beirut should be understood. Two factors came to define the rise of such Sunni Islamist movements: the relationship with the Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal group and with the two political parties dominating Shia politics, the Amal Movement and Hizbullah. Al-Asir became an important tool in the face of Hizbullah, his anti-Shia and particularly anti-Hizbullah rhetoric finding a ready ear among not only Sunnis in Sidon but also in Akkar, the Beqaa Valley, and in Tripoli, though they fell short of bestowing leadership status upon him. Shia-Sunni tensions date back before Al-Asir's arrival on the scene. In January 2007, they reached an unprecedented peak when supporters of Hizbullah and the Amal Movement led by parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri clashed with Al-Mustaqbal supporters in violent scenes that reminded the Lebanese of the civil war days. Anti-Shia rhetoric came to permeate the discourse of ordinary Sunnis, and both the Sunni religious establishment, represented by mufti Rashid Qabbani, and the political leadership of Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal played an important role in fanning the flames of sectarian tension on the Sunni side. The result has been a “Sunni street” that is not only more sectarian and more radicalised in nature, but that also has been left vulnerable to more extremist religious leaders who have a stronger message of sectarian hatred and rejection of the other. The religious establishment has not only turned a blind eye to the politicisation of sectarian identities, but at times it has even been party to it. Some Salafist forces in alliance with Al-Mustaqbal also played a significant role in inciting sections of the Sunni street against the Shia and Hizbullah, under the banner of “defending the Ahl Al-Sunna”. Anti-Shia leaflets filled with vitriolic language have been found in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley. Prominent religious scholars have been given platforms to mobilise their followers using dangerously sectarian language. It is within this context that radical Islamists like Al-Asir began to come into their own. Al-Asir maintained an ambivalent relationship with both Al-Mustaqbal and Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, the two dominant political forces in Sidon. Al-Asir has been backed by Bahiya Al-Hariri, the MP for Sidon, but a statement by the secretary-general of Al-Mustaqbal in Sidon, Ahmed Al-Hariri, suggested that Al-Asir was no more than “a thorn in the side of opponents”. Al-Hariri said that what had happened to Al-Asir was “expected after he turned from a supporter of the Syrian revolution to setting up an armed wing”. Although Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal presents itself as a modern movement embracing a moderate view of Islam, it has had few qualms about undermining Islamist forces that don't tow its line, such as the Islamic Action Front, while making alliances with forces that hold an ambivalent vision of the state and embrace a radical and at times extremist and intolerant view of Islam. The lack of a clear political or ideological vision on the part of Al-Mustaqbal's leadership often forces it to resort to sectarian discourse in order to mobilise its social base. In this context, the Islamists, particularly the radical elements among them, are regarded as useful tools in securing popular support.
