Resolved for now, recent strife in Tripoli may be an indication of widespread trouble to come, writes Raed Rafei in Beirut After several weeks of sporadic fighting in Tripoli, a high-profile memorandum for peace was signed Monday night to put an end to sectarian violence in the northern city between a Sunni majority, allied with Saad Al-Hariri's Future Movement, and an Alawite minority with ties to Hizbullah. Despite this apparent reconciliation, instability continues to loom large in Tripoli with political tensions persisting on the national level. The six-point agreement came following regional and international concern over escalation of the situation in north Lebanon. Sponsored by top Sunni politicians, Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora and the head of the parliamentary majority, Al-Hariri, the document stressed the role of legitimate armed forces as the only power to guarantee security in the city and ordered the withdrawal of all militiamen from the streets. "Tripoli with its people and political and spiritual elements is a united city and the state is the reference and the guarantor and protector for everybody," said Al-Siniora during the signing of the truce held at the residence of Tripoli's Sunni mufti, Sheikh Malek Al-Shaar. "Tripoli must be a city devoid of arms and armed men because weapons in the hands of individuals and groups do not protect anyone," Al-Siniora added. In recent weeks, heavy fighting between Sunnis in the poor neighbourhood of Bab Al-Tebbane and Alawites in the adjacent hill of Baal Mohsen has left at least 22 people dead. Although the conflict was fuelled by the recent political divide between the Western-backed parliamentary majority and the Hizbullah-led opposition culminating with the May strife in Beirut, old- time feuds between Sunnis and Alawites -- notably in 1986 when Syrian troops supported by Alawites crushed Sunni Islamists in Tripoli -- have also aggravated tensions. Tripoli's Future Movement MP, Mustafa Allouch, said the main reason behind the reconciliation was that all groups were worn out from the continuous fighting, which led to the deterioration to alarming levels of the economic situation in Tripoli. He added that pressure from Arab countries and international powers to curb tensions in the north before they spill over to the rest of the country played an important role as well. "Turning the written truce into a reality on the ground requires a serious implementation of all the points: providing long-due compensations and reviving the economic wheel," Allouch said. Monday's agreement tackled the return of hundreds of families displaced by force, promising compensation and shelter for residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the recent violence. It also attempts to solve root problems in Tripoli by promising "huge economic projects" to revitalise the local economy, especially in poor areas where most of the fighting was concentrated. According to Osama Safa, director of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, the Tripoli agreement was "too quick to be true". "One should be wary of ceremonial reconciliations that are not the result of a long process of dialogue," he said. MP Allouch agrees that the situation remains unstable. "The reconciliation cannot guarantee against any of the groups trying to shift the equation to its benefit by imposing a new security situation on the ground," he said. "What is hoped," he added, "is to prevent... small disputes from escalating." Tripoli's recent violence also raised fears that the influence of Sunni extremist groups might be growing in the north, paving the way for Al-Qaeda to adopt Lebanon as a base for its terrorist operations. In a press conference last week, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad warned from the danger of Salafist movements in the north that, he claimed, are supported by outside countries in the region. "Any positive step taking place in Lebanon does not have any value without a solution to the problem of fundamentalism and Salafist forces in the north," Al-Assad said. "Lebanon will not become stable with the existence of fundamentalism." Allouch accused Damascus of instigating strife in Tripoli. "The presence of Salafism is exaggerated in Tripoli," he said. "Syria wants to insinuate to the West that they have a common enemy which is fundamentalism, in order to justify the need for Syrian control over Lebanon." For Safa, the situation on the ground in Tripoli is complex. "The chessboard in the north is just beginning to emerge. Several factions appeared on the ground. Not all of these Sunni forces answer to one single political group. These forces are difficult to control," he said. Safa does not exclude that countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Syria, were providing arms to forces tied to them. But there was no "active policy by powers in the region to start a war in Lebanon." "What was happening in Tripoli was mostly a continuation of the May violence," he added. The Future Movement was accused by its political foes of arming its supporters in Tripoli to create a counterbalance force to Hizbullah. After the deadly clashes that opposed in Beirut supporters from the two main political groups in May, relations between the Future Movement and Hizbullah have remained strained, despite the Doha agreement that put an end to the large- scale crisis. Tripoli's truce was seen as a sign of hope for a larger-scale reconciliation at the national level between the Future Movement and Hizbullah. Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised speech Sunday that he supported the reconciliation process in Tripoli and was ready to meet with Al-Hariri. "We back all efforts to put the tensions in Tripoli behind us," Nasrallah said. "The important thing is not who sponsors reconciliation ... It is to halt the bloodshed." Still, major disagreements over the thorny issue of Hizbullah's arms signal that full- fledged reconciliation will not take place anytime soon. According to Allouch, civilians in the north have resorted to arms to protect themselves, especially after the army failed to prevent Hizbullah fighters from "invading" Beirut. Although it gives a boost to the army and internal security forces, Tripoli's reconciliation deal does not address the pressing issue of disarming newly formed militias. "In the short-term, if the state's security forces act forcefully to maintain stability, people will not turn to self- defence," Allouch said. "But as long as Hizbullah keeps its weapons, this will be a reason for all Lebanese groups to arm themselves. In the long-term, it will be impossible to put an end to non-state groups arming themselves without a radical solution to Hizbullah's existence as a state within a state," he added. Safa said that Tripoli's truce could launch a positive process. He said that reconciliation would have a direct favourable effect on pending political issues, such as the draft of a new electoral law and the start of a general dialogue process expected to group all political parties under the patronage of President Michel Suleiman. "The whole political process was halted... The truce will facilitate the holding of the national dialogue, although not as far as substance and true decision-making," Safa said. He added that the main focus for the next phase would be the 2009 parliamentary elections. The violence witnessed in Tripoli was a way of "drawing the election landscape", according to Safa. "The electoral battle will be dangerous in such a politically-polarised situation... We may see violence everywhere," he said.
