Iraq/Lebanon: Parallels

A year ago this Thursday, a UK computer expert and his four security guards were seized in Baghdad.  They have not yet been released.  Exactly nine months later, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was abducted after gunmen attacked his car.  His body was found in a shallow grave two weeks later.  Last week, the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad sentenced to death an al-Qaida leader who was found guilty of his murder. 

These high-profile cases make the news, but every day ordinary Iraqis are being kidnapped for ransom or are the victims of sectarian killings. 

Not long ago, Iraq was a society where there was plenty of inter-marriage between Shia and Sunnis, as is Lebanon to this day. Yet many of the same latent sectarian problems that have afflicted Iraq are present in Lebanon.  After last week's skirmishes in West Beirut, when Hizbollah militants turned their guns on inadequately armed and trained Sunni militiamen, many Lebanese Sunnis are voicing the same sectarian anger and desire for revenge that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war, and may yet do so despite the political agreement reached this week.  The last Lebanese civil war essentially pitted Christians against Muslims.  We could be on the verge of a new one, this time run along Iraqi lines.