Druze allegations and Hizbullah actions have shattered the tenuous calm "Lebanon in the dragon's mouth", reads the headline of pro- opposition Al-Akhbar, the morning after west Beirut fell to Hizbullah and its allies. A week after a dramatic escalation between the government and Hizbullah plunged the country into its worst violence since the civil war, the landscape had been transformed, reports Lucy Fielder. Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora's government, forced to back down on the attempted clampdown on Hizbullah's weapons, which prompted the crisis, looked weak and besieged in its Serail on the hill, with the usual chorus of Western support ringing hollow. Hizbullah was in indisputable control of Lebanon, having swept western Beirut with Shia ally Amal, subduing districts loyal to Sunni parliamentary majority leader Saad Al-Hariri and seizing strategic locations in Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt's Shouf mountain stronghold. But the Shia military and political group had also crossed a red line by turning weapons meant to resist Israel against fellow Lebanese, arguing that the government was under US-Israeli orders. Overnight, a guarantee that had governed the uneasy balance between the resistance and its domestic opponents vanished into thin air amid the stutter of machineguns and the boom of rocket-propelled grenades. A stultifying deadlock has broken after 18 months of a power- struggle that left Lebanon without a president for five months. About 80 people lie dead, and Lebanese on both sides face an uncertain future. A day after the cabinet issued two decisions banning Hizbullah's parallel telephone network and sacking an airport security chief who had Hizbullah's confidence, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah called them "tantamount to a declaration of war on the resistance and its weapons". Within an hour of his press conference, clashes broke out for a second night running in flashpoint areas of Beirut that witness sporadic fighting between pro-government Sunnis and pro- opposition Shia. But this time was different. Gun-battles engulfed the whole districts of Ras Al-Nabaa and Corniche Al-Mazraa and spread to neighbouring areas. In Ras Al-Nabaa, a stronghold of Al-Hariri's Future Movement with pockets of Shia loyal mainly to Amal, men in civilian clothes with rifles slung across their shoulders took up positions in garages of plush new flats and hiding behind cars. For six or seven hours, the air was a deafening cacophony of machinegun and Kalashinkov fire, punctuated by the thump of RPGs and the crack of sniper shots, the night lit by flaming cars. By morning, the Future Movement's three centres in the area had fallen and gunmen, some Amal, others wearing yellow Hizbullah armbands, stood on street corners. Future's arms caches -- testimony to two years of denials that the movement was building a militia -- were turned over to the army. Groups of men from the northern Sunni areas in Tripoli and Akkar, visible on the streets over the past few weeks to the irritation of some residents, had vanished. Shell-shocked locals stocked up at the few open grocers' shops and hurried home, crunching over broken glass with their heads down. Friday saw sporadic fighting, with parts of the western Hariri heartlands of Hamra and Raouche flaring up. But western Beirut fell quickly and the army moved in to secure the areas taken. Amal and Hizbullah gunmen forced Future TV off air, drawing condemnation by journalists on both sides of the political divide. Tanks blocked Beirut's legendary Hamra Street, once the haunt of the region's top intellectuals, for the first time since the civil war ended in 1990. Mainly Christian eastern quarters remained tense, but open for business. The contrast recalled that dark era, when there was not one capital, but East and West Beirut. Amal militia-manned barricades blocking roads to central Beirut and the airport, which remained closed seven days later at the time of writing. At first, tyres burned and a pall of acrid smoke hung above the city. At the weekend, trucks brought earth and rubble reinforcements. The army, apparently coordinating with Hizbullah, set up checkpoints. On Saturday, the army overturned the two decisions, after Al-Siniora invited its arbitration, and called on the gunmen, who by then were mainly Amal, to leave the streets. The guns immediately vanished, though the men and roadblocks remained, and armoured personnel carriers rolled in. An army communiqué promised to impose security in the tinderbox areas from the early hours of Tuesday, by force if necessary. Stunned by the drastic change to their country, some government supporters have started to question the decision to challenge Hizbullah after a year and a half of US pressure. One Sunni Ras Al-Nabeh grocer cursed Hizbullah, but also Al-Siniora and Al-Hariri. "This situation needs a man who is strong," he said. But anger at the Shia "invasion" of "their" city -- to borrow the sectarian logic of many inhabitants of this fragmented city -- is boiling among Sunni Beirutis. Saad Al-Hariri's position is potentially precarious, but analysts say Sunnis are likely to rally behind him as a sectarian zaaim (traditional leader), at least at first. "Western Beirut is traditionally Sunni turf and the sense of humiliation is deep," said Timur Goksel, a security expert and former spokesman for the UNIFIL southern border force, as well as a resident of the area. "This Sunni-Shia rift, inflated by the regional rift between the two, is going to get deeper." Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt, a key US ally, for the first time in his nearly three-decade political-military career, appears to be struggling to fulfil his role as the protector of his mountain people who provides services and arms in exchange for loyalty. It was Jumblatt who launched the allegations of Hizbullah spying on the airport and extending its parallel telephone network beyond the south that prompted the government clampdown. Nasrallah singled him out in his speech as the main agent of the US plan in Lebanon, referring to the "government of Walid Jumblatt". Druze supporters of Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party remain devoted to the aristocratic warlord, a feudal leader and main player during the civil war and now. The Druze constitute roughly 10 per cent of Lebanese, but they have traditionally held considerable power and still have clout beyond their numbers, partly thanks to Jumblatt's canny ability to forecast the political weather and ensure he is on the winning side. On Sunday, in the heat of a losing battle, Jumblatt called on his rival, Druze figure Talal Arslan, to call off the local opposition and their Hizbullah allies and let the army take over. "Given the choice between radical local players such as [opposition figure] Wiam Wahhab and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Jumblatt would rather come to a deal with Arslan, who is another traditional leader with whom he has in a way shared power in the mountain," said a Druze former minister who knows the area well. Pulling back before a rout in order to rearm and reorganise was another possible motive for his appeal, said the source who preferred not to be named. "We're in a defensive position at the moment, because we cannot go against the orders of Walid Beik," said Sami Ghannam in the Shouf village of Dmit, using a term of respect used by Jumblatt's followers. He looked at the floor, smoking a cigarette. "But we're ready to fight to defend our land. He just has to give the word and we'll go on the attack." Fierce battles had raged in the hills nearby all night, and local men could be seen loading guns, wearing khaki shirts instead of the usual black with their traditional, sherwal trousers and white caps. But the atmosphere in Dmit appeared confident, despite the turn of events, partly in defiance but also perhaps because HIzbullah fighters were staying away from the villages. "If they don't attack us, everyone will be fine, but if they enter here, they will be chewed up," said local mukhtar (village headman) Samir Abu Dargham, sitting in the entrance of the old stone village hall, which overlooks a vine-covered trellis and a green valley beyond bathed in sunlight. The "Party of God" was really the party of the devil, he said, as bread and zaatar, wild thyme and sesame seeds, and a bowl of local olives were brought out from the kitchens. "Lebanon is a flower, but there's a thorn in its centre."
