Lebanon marks anniversary of war

There's a lot of waiting and worrying in Lebanon these days. One year after Israel and the Shiite Hezbollah militia went to war, large swaths of Lebanon still lie in ruins and as rival factions struggle for control over the country.

Politicians continue to be assassinated and the Lebanese army is battling Islamic militants in the north.

In the south, U.N. troops trying to bring peace to the Lebanese-Israeli border are still reeling from the loss of six soldiers in a June car bombing. Sunni Muslim radical groups suspected in the attack are now also accused of firing two rockets at Israel, an incident that has raised fears of a flare-up on the volatile border.

Last year's war erupted on July 12, 2006, when Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two who have yet to be released.

Israel then invaded Lebanon, unleashing a massive bombing campaign that destroyed most of the country's infrastructure and shook its fragile political system.

The offensive killed more than 1,000 Lebanese, most of them civilians, according to tallies by the Lebanese government, human rights groups, and The Associated Press.

Hezbollah launched nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel during the 34-day war, which killed 119 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians.

While a majority of southern Lebanon Shiites, mainly Hezbollah supporters, hail the fighting as a victory over Israel, many worry a new round of violence is looming.

Youssef Fawaz, a grocer in the southern town of Tibnine, said the war changed people's lives for the worst. "The people are worried about the eruption of a new Hezbollah-Israel war," he said.

"The war's anniversary is a painful event because we have lost many loved ones," said Haidar Malouain, a farmer in the southern village of Ain Baal. "But this war has brought us dignity because Israel could not defeat us."

Hezbollah has used the clout gained by its fierce resistance against the Israeli invasion to wrest more political power from the militia's rivals in Beirut.

For months, billboards hailing Hezbollah's "Divine Victory" and showing an overturned Israeli tank lined highways around the Lebanese capital. "August 14: A day that changed history," the Hezbollah-sponsored billboards read, referring to the day when the fighting ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.

In the months that followed, Hezbollah ministers resigned from the Lebanese cabinet, triggering an opposition campaign against the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and bringing Parliament to a standstill. The anti-Syrian majority has vowed not to let the group and its allies take over, saying they are controlled by Iran and by Syria, Lebanon's longtime overseer.

The political deadlock has in turn pushed the United Nations to set up its own tribunal to investigate the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

For months, a wave of bombings has targeted mainly anti-Syrian politicians and destabilized the country. Many in the majority see a Syrian hand in Hariri's killing and the ongoing bombings, a charge that Damascus denies.

Zaid Ali Khiam, one of hundreds of Hezbollah supporters who have been camping near Saniora's office in downtown Beirut since Dec. 1 as part of the anti-government protests, acknowledged that last year's war has "deepened internal Lebanese divisions."

"But I'm optimistic that (rival) Lebanese leaders will eventually reach an agreement to solve the political crisis and restore national unity," said Khiam, a schoolteacher.

The deepening sectarian and political crisis, Lebanon's worst since the 1975-90 civil war, threatens to tear the country apart.

It could also create a power vacuum or even lead to two rival governments if Parliament fails to elect a new president before the November 23 deadline for pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud to step down.

Saniora, meanwhile, refuses to resign as prime minister, backed by anti-Syrian politicians, the West and much of the Arab world.

In a speech Wednesday on the eve of the war's anniversary, he called for "putting a final end" to the situation in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, where fighters from the Fatah Islam radical group have been battling the Lebanese army since May in one of the starkest examples of the country's ongoing turmoil.

Yet while the army braces for a showdown with the militants in the Palestinian refugee camp pounded by Lebanese tanks, the destruction caused to the rest of the country by last year's Israeli airstrikes is estimated at more than $5 billion.