Lebanon Abductions Escalate Conflict in Syria

This is pretty amazing.

At the New York Times, "In Lebanon, Sunnis Threaten Shiites as Kidnappings of Syrians Rise":

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Sectarian tensions escalated across Lebanon on Thursday as Sunnis in border towns threatened Shiites after several Shiite families who had already abducted more than 30 Syrians added several more to their hostage total.

The expanded kidnapping wave occurred as the war in Syria staggered on — with battles in Aleppo and dozens of bodies found in a landfill outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, according to activists — and it suggested that the threat of regional chaos was increasing.

Lebanon has long been a country where international rivalries play out, and Lebanese security officials said Thursday that Syria’s 17-month-old conflict had pushed Beirut and the border regions closer to civil strife.

“It’s a very critical moment,” said one senior security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the heightened tensions. “We are open to the fact that there are going to be surprises.”

Those surprises included more kidnappings. A group of Shiites from the Zeeiter tribe told reporters on Thursday that they had kidnapped four members of the Free Syrian Army from hospitals in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, which borders Syria. Another tribe in the area, according to local news reports, kidnapped four other rebel fighters just across the border inside Syria.

The abductions on Thursday came a day after members of the powerful Mikdad family abducted nearly 40 Syrians to avenge the kidnapping of a relative, Hassan Salim al-Mikdad, by Syrian rebels on Monday.

The families of 11 other Lebanese hostages held inside Syria have also kidnapped several Syrians, after conflicting news reports suggested that some or all the Lebanese hostages had been killed by a Syrian airstrike. By Friday their fate had become clear: four had been killed, the Syrian rebel commander said in an interview on Lebanese television.

And while the Mikdads told reporters on Thursday that they had stopped taking hostages, the cycle of tit-for-tat abductions seemed to be spreading. Residents of some Lebanese border communities said Sunnis had also threatened to start kidnapping Shiites.

More at the link.

Hmm, it's hard to dismiss the idea that a U.S.-led protection force in Syria could long ago have prevented this kind of escalation. Of course, it would have never been approved before the U.N. But the U.S. bombed Kosovo in the 1990s without U.N approval, so it happens. Would that have risked war with Russia? Perhaps, although we're practically back in the Cold War with Moscow as it is. And Mosow's a smidgeon of its former self under Soviet rule. I doubt we'd make it anywhere near DEFCON 3 alert, as we were in the 1973 Middle East crisis. But I think that's getting ahead of things. Russia would probably huff and puff these days, as U.S. forces proceeded to toppled the regime in Damascus and install a friendly regime committed to secular politics and democratization.

More from Max Boot, at Commentary, "Extremists Filling Power Vacuum in Syria."