Civil War By Any Other Name

As early as the spring of 2003, Iraq's sectarian fault lines were becoming apparent enough that many commentators and journalists warned that the removal of Saddam Hussein might open the floodgates of civil war. One such article, "Beirut Redux" by Hassan Fattah for The New Republic, predicted that internal violence in Iraq might reach something like that seen in Lebanon's 1975 to 1990 Civil War.

America's spooks have finally caught on. The National Intelligence Estimate released yesterday stated the obvious, the that conflict in Iraq has many elements of a civil war. (Anti-American insurgency and Al Qaeda terrorism being some of the other notable features of the Iraq problem.)

Still, the conflict in Iraq doesn't exactly resemble other civil wars of recent memory such as those fought in Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia, where organized armies fought open battles. Although all of these conflicts have had their share of militia violence and revenge killings that pitted citizen against citizen, there's nothing in Iraq yet that quite matches the siege of Sarajevo, or the Green Line that divided Christian East Beirut from Muslim West Beirut.

That's because the presence of the American army in Iraq -- unbeatable when confronted directly by another military force -- has prevented warring parties from fighting in large-scale units and forced them to wage thier battles off of the battlefield.

If the US leaves Iraq, Baghdad could yet become a new Beirut or Sarajevo. But for those of us who live in Lebanon, where a Sunni-Shia fault line similar to the one in Iraq is starting to open up, the more immediate question is: will Beirut become a new Baghdad?

The fact that Hizballah -- the Shia militia supported by Iran and Syria -- is the only political party with heavy weapons and real military capability means that no other group in Lebanon wants to confront it directly, not even the Lebanese army. And so far, no other foreign countries seem willing or irresponsible enough to arm their proxies inside Lebanon. (Although it worth keeping an eye open for what Saudi Arabia does to supports its Sunni allies inside Lebanon.) The US isn't even giving heavy weapons to the Lebanese government.

So the concern here is not a return to the bad old days of open war, but of getting caught in a messier, slower-burning conflict, one that pits neighborhood against neighborhood, where one civil disturbance leads to another, where riots end in funerals and where funerals spark riots.

What do you call this kind of conflict? Asymmetrical warfare -- a term being bandied about these days by counter-insurgency theorists -- suggests one big combatant against one or more smaller antagonists. Post-modern civil war?

Let me know if you have any suggestions. It may be too late to stop them, but at least we'll know what they are.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut