Will Lebanon Become A Failed State?

There's been so much bad news in Lebanon in the short time I was away, I hardly know where to start.

Last Wednesday, a bomb killed Walid Eido, an anti-Syrian member of parliament, along with his son and four other people. This was no amateur job: the assassination took place along the one narrow alley that leads to the seaside club where Eido had been relaxing moments before his death. A perfect place for a hit. Suspicion falls naturally on Syria.

If that attack wasn't ugly enough, a presenter for a television station belonging to pro-Syrian speaker of parliament Nabih Berri was heard on air gloating over Eido's death while she thought her microphone was off. "Why did it take them so long to kill him?" she said. She then named another MP whom she predicted will be next to die. "I'm counting them off."

She isn't the only one counting MPs. Eido's death, and the assassination of another anti-Syrian MP in November, reduced the parliamentary majority of Prime Minster Fouad Siniora to just five seats. Anti-Syrian politicians are now practically living in hiding, worried that Syria and its allies are trying to take down the government one political assassination at a time.

So Siniora's government has called for by-elections to be held on August 5th to fill the empty seats (which are in safe, pro-government districts.) But in order to do that, they need the approval of President Emile Lahoud, Syrian's main man in Lebanon, and also approval by parliament. But Speaker Berri, also a key pro-Syrian opposition leader, has refused to allow parliament to meet for about the last seven months. If Siniora and his allies go ahead with the by-election, there's a good chance that Lahoud will call his own cabinet, and Lebanon will have two governments.

Meanwhile, even with one government, Lebanon is having trouble holding itself together. On Sunday, Palestinian guerillas fired two Katyusha rockets into Israel, provoking the inevitable response, in the form of a quick artillery barrage against southern Lebanon. Now UNFIL reports that on Tuesday, two Israel jets violated Lebanese airspace, and the terms of the cease-fire that ended last summers war. Israel accuses Hizballah of violating the cease-fire by rearming its rocket arsenal and rebuilding its bunker system in South Lebanon.

And to top it all off, the Lebanese army is still facing stiff resistance from Fatah Islam, the radical militant group holed up in the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp outside Tripoli. So far 141 people, including 74 soldiers, have been killed in the month-log battle.

As a result, the Lebanese tourism economy is floundering. Arrivals to Beirut's airport were down 33 percent in May from a year ago, and planes are arriving half empty now, the beginning of the all-important summer season. The country is already about $40 billion in debt from the cost of rebuilding itself after the end of the 15-year Civil War in 1990, and last summer's war with Israel.

How much more of this can Lebanon take?

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut