Deadly Rivalries of Shiites Are Magnified by Alliances

When the Israelis decided to kidnap Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, it seems likely that they saw it as just another tactic in their longstanding attempt to police southern Lebanon and to obtain the return of their own three soldiers held hostage by Hezbollah.

But as sometimes happens, events in Lebanon set off a chain reaction that included the announcement of the murder of U.S. Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins and then a rapidly growing crisis agitating Washington and Moscow, Damascus and Tehran. If Lebanon often seems like a nest of angry hornets, it is also a spider’s web of interests and passions that exaggerates small incidents by linking them with large numbers of other powerful political actors and influences.

One of the fuses that connects southern Lebanon to Beirut and beyond is the rivalry between the two main Shiite groups, Amal and Hezbollah. Amal, the older of the two, has driven the Hezbollah fighters out of most of the villages along the border with Israel and, on the whole, tries to keep things quiet there. For its part, Hezbollah, which in turn controls most of the Muslim suburbs of Beirut, has every interest by demonstrating that it is much more active than its rival in fighting what it sees as the enemies of Islam and promoting the defense of the south against prolonged Israeli occupation.

Each group also receives varying degrees of support from Syria and Iran. On the whole, the Syrians try to use their strong leverage with Amal to limit and control Hezbollah’s influence. But they have never pushed this too far, knowing that it would be resisted by powerful men among their Iranian allies. However, following the recent visit of the leaders of the various Lebanese Shiite groups to Tehran, the Syrians now have reason to hope that Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani will manage to swing the bulk of his regime over to supporting Amal more strongly as well. It follows that anyone eager to make life difficult for either Rafsanjani or the Syrians has an obvious interest in encouraging further Hezbollah extremism.

Caught in the middle of all this are the unfortunate men who are being held hostage in West Beirut or nearby. Both Rafsanjani and President Hafez Assad of Syria would like the prestige of being able to secure their release--at a suitable price. But neither has been able to bring enough influence to bear on their kidnapers, ruthless men with strong nerves who have managed to keep the captives hidden away from Western intelligence or from local competitors for up to four years in some cases. They trust no one and by kidnaping Terry Waite 2 1/2 years ago, they removed one of the few acceptable go-betweens who might have been able to negotiate further releases. We can only hope that they continue to place a very high value on those of their captives who are lucky enough to be still alive.

Meanwhile, almost unnoticed in the West, the Lebanese civil war has passed into a still more violent and dangerous phase, with regular artillery bombardments of the different halves of Beirut between Michel Aoun’s mostly Christian followers and the Syrians and the Druze forces of Walid Jumblatt. As always, there is also outside involvement--Iraq arming Aoun’s forces against its Syrian rival, sometimes with the tacit support of the Israelis who also have been known to assist ships trying to break the Syrian naval blockade of the Christian ports.

Here, as elsewhere, news about Lebanon is bad. The day after Higgins was reported hanged, the Arab League team of foreign ministers from Algeria, Morocco and Saudi Arabia announced that it had come to a complete dead-end in its efforts to end the fighting. In these circumstances, the United States and other governments eager to make points in Lebanon or to secure the release of their hostages have no alternative but to do so by way of Damascus or Tehran. It is up to America whether to do this by threat of force or by persuasion. So far, Washington has generally tried quiet diplomacy. It will probably try this again provided another hostage is not killed and there are no further acts of anti-American violence.

As for the future, there is little doubt that there will be more crises in Lebanon, perhaps triggered off accidentally by the Israeli activity in the south, perhaps by violent men who will not be able to resist the chance of making things more difficult for President Rafsanjani or President Assad, not to speak of President Bush. Washington’s best hope is to be better prepared next time. As crisis has followed crisis in Lebanon, there always has been the same air of sudden emergency, of having been caught by surprise, of making hasty policy decisions at very short notice. Now, once again, there is an opportunity to make plans in advance, to devise a policy that is aimed not only at deterring more violence but also at getting the hostages home. Given the present degree of anger in the United States, it would help greatly if parts at least of any new policy can be publicly announced.