Discovering MENA and other thoughts

Talking about politics in Lebanon is always tantamount to wondering about the status of Hezbollah (meaning "Party of God"). Hezbollah is, at the same time, as The Economist likes to call it, a party-cum-militia, created within the Shia community and funded by Iran during the country's civil war - in 1982 - with the main aim of offer resistance (muqawama) to the state's self declared biggest enemy that had just (taking advantage of the ongoing chaos) invaded the country: Israel. Its paramilitary wing is still regarded as a resistance movement throughout much of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Several countries and organizations in the West and elsewhere (U.S., Netherlands, France, Gulf Cooperation Council, U.K., Australia, Canada, the European Union ) classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, be it in whole or in part.

I was about to write an article on April 20 Iraq´s local elections, the country´s first vote since US troops left for good in December 2011, when I read that small bombs had exploded and mortar shells had been fired at several polling stations. During the weeks, and even months, prior to what some considered a test before the Parliamentary Elections of 2014, the campaign was marked by an escalation of violence and fourteen candidates, most of them Sunnis, were killed. I already spoke about the resumption of tensions between the Shiite communities of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the Sunni minority and the Kurdish population. Apparently, this was just the start, as the country seems set for a new civil war. The last sectarian war took place in 2006 and 2007, and left tens of thousands of people dead.

Since 2003, Iraq has been regularly, though mildly, appearing in the news every other week. Stability has not taken hold in the country, sunk into sectarian violence, misery and civilian dissent over the last years and even decades, constantly on the brink of civil war. What is exactly happening nowadays, and how can it be linked to the country's recent history? Over the last weeks, thousands of protests, including strikes and sit-in, have taken place in Sunni-dominated areas, notably north and west of Baghdad, calling for the satisfaction of mainly two demands: the release of hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners charged with terrorism by virtue of Laws adopted under the umbrella of the "war on terror" but according to many, arrested out of sectarian animosities (most of them have been freed this week-end, the authorities having admitted that some of them were arrested "unlawfully" though blaming bureaucrats for this) and the resignation of the Shiite ...

I would never dare to think I have enough knowledge so as to freely talk about this issue and produce a meaningful article, but I will try to write down what I have understood so far (I already had to edit as I misunderstood some facts, thanks Louis!). Lebanon and Syria have always been deeply interconnected. Both countries were part of the Ottoman Empire, both countries were under the dominance of France's colonization, both countries share an extremely complicated ethnic/religious division, and both countries political scenes still depend on the other's. More recently, Syria was a key player in the brokering of the 1989 Taif Accords putting an end to Lebanon's civil war, and its troops (and many authorities) stayed in the country (allegedly guaranteeing the non resumption of violence) until 2005, when the country's population unanimously demanded their retreat. It all started in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, next to the country's northern borde...