I sat in on a fascinating meeting yesterday with some independent Shia Muslims – that is to say, Shias who are trying to fight against Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon. They're an admirable group of people, really on the front lines of history in a pretty gripping way.
It's Friday morning here as I write, and we have more meetings today and tomorrow, returning home Sunday. So I don't have the time right now to write it up in a way that gives them the notice they deserve. But I will do so next week after I'm back. To make a long story short, the March 14 coalition pretty much screwed them, for reasons that are understandable politically but not really supportable morally. M14 is still very much preferred to the March 8 people, and even many independent Shia acknowledge.
I understand as I've said before that I'm a long, long way from being an expert on these things. For example, a knowledgeable British reader wrote in the other day to say I'd made an error and my hotel sounded to him like it was on the Muslim side of the city, which evidently it is (thank you, reader.)
However: you know how everyone says Lebanon is so complicated? Well, it is, but once you understand a few basic particulars on why things are structured as they are, it's really not so different from other places. In fact many things I've heard here from people our group has interviewed have reminded me of my days reporting on New York City politics. The crucial difference of course is that if you the make wrong choice here, instead of getting shunted off in some dusky hovel in the Department of Sanitation, you run the risk of getting shot.
