BEIRUT _ When Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced his resignation Tuesday, it was a victory for Lebanese anti-government protesters flooding the country's streets by the millions.
But in that victory, they now face a new challenge in Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political party and its associated armed faction. As the best-organized and most powerful force in the country, the group has emerged as the top protector of a political class most people _ including many from its own base _ find untenable.
Hariri's departure came after two weeks of relentless protests, considered remarkable for having managed to unite the normally fractious Lebanese in their absolute hatred of their leaders.
The protests spread far beyond the Lebanese capital of Beirut, including south Lebanon, which is dominated by the country's Shiite Muslims and where Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal have normally expected strong support.
Across the south, in cities such as Sour, Nabatieh and Kfar Roumman, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in public squares. Like their counterparts in Beirut and elsewhere, they repeated the signature slogan "All of them means all of them" as a repudiation of the political structure that had beggared the country for decades.
The protests continued, even after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave two speeches asking people to give the government a chance to enact its reforms. He insisted his fears weren't for the Resistance, the catch-all term referring to Hezbollah and its supporters, but for the whole country if the government fell.
But his arguments left many unconvinced.
"The Resistance cannot be victorious if people are starving," said Farah Qubaisi, a 32-year-old academic and feminist activist protesting in Nabatieh. "Hezbollah says it wants to help people, then it should stand with them."
Hezbollah's proponents argue the group is not corrupt or, at the very least, is less corrupt than its counterparts. It's a formidable fighting force: Its cadres are said to be better equipped than the Lebanese army and fought Israel to a standstill when it entered Lebanon's south in 2006. It also has a well-organized social component, often providing services that are better than those provided by the state for those living in Hezbollah's areas and presented as part of what the group portrays as benevolent, almost paternalistic control.
But Hezbollah's problem is its allies.
One of those is Amal, which is led by Nabih Berri, the octogenarian parliament speaker who is viewed as the most corrupt of Lebanon's venal political class.
Another prime target of protesters' ire is Gebran Bassil, Lebanese President Michel Aoun's son-in-law as well as the country's foreign minister. He heads a party that is Hezbollah's top partner in the coalition government. So visceral is the hatred of Bassil that demonstrators penned a chant repeatedly mentioning his mother's reproductive organs, albeit in far cruder fashion.
Yet those alliances have been expedient for Hezbollah, said Heiko Wimmen, a Lebanon expert with the International Crisis Group. They've allowed it to maintain a political order in which it keeps its weapons from being taken away while protecting the interests of its base. A change in the status quo, ailing as it is, could threaten all that.
"They're in the most comfortable domestic setup they've ever been," Wimmen said in a phone interview Wednesday. "They could have formed their own majority government, but they're in a government legitimized by having other parties, which shields them from the U.S. and its sanctions."
That perhaps is why Nasrallah in his Friday speech said the uprising was being co-opted and was now funded by "embassies," referring to foreign powers antagonistic to the Resistance.
He instructed his supporters to leave the streets. The others, he said, could remain and protest if they wanted to, but the roads would have to be reopened.
In the days after, grumblings began to percolate among pro-Hezbollah commentators, warning that road closures were bringing people to economic ruin. They signaled, they said, a security deterioration and that the Lebanese army, by not removing them, was failing to protect people. Protesters kept traffic paralyzed from Beirut all the way up to the northern city of Tripoli. But in the south, the highways were almost completely open.
Tuesday brought the harbinger of what a sectarian-tinged schism could bring. That afternoon, party thugs said to be supporters of Amal and Hezbollah descended on Beirut's downtown district. They skirmished with protesters to destroy the makeshift barriers they had placed on a main highway before going on a rampage through their encampments.
Video of the clashes released on social media showed hordes of the young men ripping signs, tearing down tents and setting fire to what equipment they could find. Protesters who stood in their way were beaten down or chased away by a hail of bottles and rocks. Security forces did little to stop the attack.
Protesters soon came back to clean up the damage. Hours later, people were again swarming the protest camp; many said the attack had actually shaken away the fatigue that had begun to set in after weeks of demonstrations.
But the violence undoubtedly had an effect. The next day, protesters acquiesced to roadblocks being removed and allowed traffic to resume in downtown Beirut and elsewhere. It was perhaps a win for Nasrallah but one that brought criticism even from his own base.
"The crushing majority of those who protested these past two weeks ... are from the sons of the Resistance," said Al-Akhbar, a pro-Hezbollah Lebanese daily, in its scathing editorial Wednesday.
The attack on them in Beirut, along with similar skirmishes in Nabatieh and Sour, the editorial said, were "thuggery," the act of "an oppressor" fueled by boundless "greed" and "savagery."
The fracas also elicited a rebuke from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who in a statement Tuesday night made no mention of Hezbollah but said "any violence or provocative actions must stop, and we call upon Lebanon's army and security services to continue to ensure the rights and safety of the protesters."
With Hariri out, President Aoun is tasked with replacing the government after consultations with parliament. The protesters have demanded it be staffed with independent technocrats and that it should hold power for a temporary period until early elections can be held.
Yet with the balance in parliament unchanged, not to mention decades of politicians integrating their interests into the state's workings, it's hard to envision a government that would mollify the protesters, or one that politicians would empower enough to properly dig up their malfeasance.
The backdrop of the political upheaval is the financial crisis stalking the country for the last year. Even before the uprisings, the value of the Lebanese pound, officially pegged to the U.S. dollar, was creeping down in the black market. With banks shuttered for almost two weeks, there are fears of the pound collapsing.
