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is a Beirut-based writer. In the dahiyeh, Beirut's Shia suburbs, Iraq is as close as the nearest mosque. Many families have someone who has made the pilgrimage to Shia shrines in the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Samarra; some have relatives studying in Najaf's religious seminaries. And, if you ask people which cleric's religious edicts they follow, a surprising number cite Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani. So the "war of the mosques," as one newspaper dubbed the conflict set off by the bombing of Samarra's Al Askariya shrine, is getting blockbuster ratings in dahiyeh living rooms. Umm Hussein, a Shia grandmother from the Hezbollah stronghold of Haret Hreik, sees Iraq's combustion as a warning for Lebanon: "Look at the Shia in Iraq," she laments, as the war plays live on Al Jazeera. "They allied with the Americans, and look at what's happening to them."Today, as Iraq teeters on the so-called "brink" of Sunni-Shia civil war, the Bush administration's notion that Iraq would become a model democracy, spreading freedom throughout the region like fairy dust, seems criminally naive. Iraq has spread something else throughout the region: fear. In Lebanon, roiled by even murkier sectarian crosscurrents than Iraq, the mosque bombings have rekindled old fears of civil war. With the Shia ascendant in Iraq, Lebanon's Sunni minority fears that the more numerous Shia here will overpower it. "Every time the Lebanese Shia put on a show of hundreds of thousands of people, being led by one guy, it scares the hell out of the Sunnis," says Timur Goksel, a former top U.N. official in Lebanon who now teaches conflict management at the American University of Beirut. The Shia, the only Lebanese sect with its own militia, fear that the United States will use other sects as proxies to disarm Hezbollah. A spectacularly ill- timed visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice inflamed that suspicion. But, if Lebanon's Shia have not turned on their fellow Lebanese, that's because they have someone better to blame: the United States. At a massive rally on February 23, ostensibly to protest the Samarra bombing, Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah blamed the United States for the conflagration in Iraq and dared it to come to take away the group's arms. "When Nasrallah accused the U.S. of being behind sectarianism in Iraq and the latest attacks in Iraq, that also means that he expects the U.S. to try and provoke similar warfare here," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a political science professor at Lebanese American University. And Umm Hussein, whose voice the United States should heed, agrees with Nasrallah. "This is what the Americans want to do in Lebanon," she says. "They will set Shia and Sunni against each other. They will create a civil war." On the streets of Beirut, you hear it again and again: Sectarian tensions are higher today than in 1975, when the country plunged into its 15-year nightmare of internecine carnage. "This polarization is much more threatening for me than a frank war where people are killing each other," says Lokman Slim, a founder of Hayyabina ("Let's Go"), a civil society group that promotes a secular Lebanon. "In fact, we are living in what some sociologists call the `priming period.' Mentally, they are ready to fight." Tensions have been growing between the Shia and other sects in Lebanon since February 14, 2005, when a massive car bomb killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a Sunni potentate with a large popular following. That most Lebanese Shia were aligned with the country's Syrian occupiers--and Hariri's probable killers--didn't help Sunni-Shia relations. They deteriorated further when Nasrallah held a huge pro-Syrian rally last March in downtown Beirut. A colossal anti-Syrian protest followed on March 14, and the battle lines were drawn. Over the next year, as more bombings and assassinations followed, communal relations just got worse. Resentment reached a boiling point on December 12, when anti-Syrian politician Gibran Tueni was killed hours before a crucial U.N. report on Hariri's assassination. That night, the Lebanese Cabinet formally asked the United Nations to expand its investigation into other political murders and to form an international tribunal to investigate Hariri's killing. Five Shia ministers stalked out of the Cabinet meeting and refused to return, paralyzing the government for weeks. During Tueni's funeral, as thousands of Lebanese marched behind his coffin, giant truck-mounted loudspeakers blasted out a pledge he had made during the March 14 anti-Syrian rally: "We swear by God Almighty," the dead man's voice intoned endlessly, "Muslims and Christians, to remain united forever in defense of our great Lebanon." But, for young Sunnis at the funeral, such as Ahmed Al Masri, Christians weren't the problem. The 23-year-old is a follower of Hariri's son, Saad, leader of the current parliamentary majority. "We have, in Lebanon, some people who share the dream of the terrorists. And we will not be able to do anything as long as they are here," said Masri, referring to the Shia. His solution? Sectarian cleansing. "We should send them all back to Iran," he shouted, without a hint of hyperbole, as Tueni's voice reverberated in the background. The Shia, Lebanon's poorest and most populous sect, have always felt like second-class citizens in their own country. Saad-Ghorayeb witnessed the hostility this breeds during a recent political science class. When she related an incident of discrimination--she's half Sunni, half Shia--a Sunni student spoke up, saying such things didn't happen in Lebanon. The Shia in the class turned on him angrily, each relating a personal experience of prejudice. One brought out a picture of his sister, who killed herself after her boyfriend's Sunni family forbade him from marrying her, and burst into tears. Other students offered to take the classroom's mini-civil war outside, narrowly avoiding a fistfight. "I left trembling," says Saad-Ghorayeb. "I thought, `I'm never going to broach a subject like this again.'" Her students, she points out, go to one of the most elite colleges in Beirut: "These are the richest people in Lebanon, and, if they feel this way, God knows how the Shia man on the street feels." Enter Condi, with a truly abysmal sense of timing. The very same day that Nasrallah gave his fiery speech blaming the United States for the Askariya shrine's destruction--rallying orderly rows of several hundred thousand Shia in the dahiyeh--Rice was sitting down for a photo op with Saad Hariri. When Prime Minister Fuad Siniora praised Rice for her "patience" in dealing with Lebanon, it was like an admission that Lebanon answers to the United States. To Lebanon's Shia, accustomed to seeing U.S. plots under every table, Rice's visit was evidence of foul plans afoot. "I want to ask: Why did Condi Rice come at this moment?" demanded Mohieddin Naamani, a civil servant from southern Lebanon, banging his fist on a coffee-shop table. "There's something dangerous going on." In fact, the only thing going on has been a series of slowmotion p.r. flops for Washington: a Hamas victory, the coup de grace of Iraq's destruction, and a victorious Arab world tour by renegade Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, who pointedly offered his services to "mediate" between Syria and Lebanon. What Lebanese like Naamani don't understand is that Rice's government needs Hariri-- in a year of foreign policy disasters in the Middle East, Lebanon is a rare victory. But what Rice clearly has failed to grasp is that visiting Hariri isn't just paying homage to the son of a slain leader; it's throwing America's lot in with Lebanese Sunnis (and Hariri's Saudi patrons, no friends to the Shia). In Lebanon, political parties don't just represent different points of view; they also represent religions. If the U.S. government is serious about promoting democracy in Lebanon, it should be very careful of wading into the riptides of Levantine politics. To align with one side against another--regardless of their respective political merits from an American standpoint--is to play favorites in religious rivalries that the United States has proved it barely understands. "Communities feel united by a common oppressor who transcends sect," points out Saad-Ghorayeb. "When they're united against a common oppressor, it does breed a sense of sectarian harmony. It's an ecumenical experience." For most of the past year, Lebanon's common enemy has been Syria. If we're not careful, the United States may end up replacing it.

By annia ciezadlo