An Ill Wind from the East

A Hamsin wind blew into Lebanon from the east yesterday, filling the air with dust from the dry hinterlands and depositing a thin layer of grit on buildings and windows and parked cars across the capital.

Unfortunately, dust isn't the only stuff turning up on Beirut's streets these days. Police this week discovered a series of bombs hidden in plain view, including a box of dynamite sitting next to a dumpster, a box of detonators nearby, and a bomb stuffed in an abandoned tire near a sports stadium.

The Lebanese have become sadly adept at reading all the elements of a bombing -- the size, the target, the location -- as if they were tea leaves, for some hint of what future awaits them. Their recent education in explosives began with the spectacular assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, an event that led to mass protests by those Lebanese who accused their Syrian overlords of orchestrating the hit. But even after the Syrian army left Lebanon later that year, there has been a steady trickle of bombings. For the most part, the targets were prominent anti-Syrian politicians and journalists. Then last week, two bombs loaded with metal fillings exploded in passenger buses, a sign, everyone noted, that the terror campaign would now be aimed at ordinary civilians.

For those Lebanese who think Syria is the terror culprit, the unexploded bombs discovered this week are an attempt to scare Lebanese politicians away from setting up a UN tribunal that would investigate the Hariri assassination and the others that followed. They are a warning of worse to come.

But they could also be a portend of how Syria might sneak its way back into control of Lebanon. The bomb in a tire was was found near where Sunni and Shia gangs had waged street battles last month. By fanning Lebanon's sectarian flames -- a riot here, a bombing there, maybe a burnt church or mosque for good measure -- Syria could light a fire in Lebanon that only it could put out.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut