Syria violence fuels Lebanon kidnap drama

For many years Beirut has been a vantage point from which journalists and analysts watched and reported the news from the wider Middle East.

Now, suddenly, it is in the news again for the first time in a long time.

Television bulletins here are dominated by reports of a hostage-taking drama which is providing a sharp reminder of Lebanon's deep and inextricable links to the crisis in Syria.

It began when rebels in Syria detained a Lebanese Shia, Hassan al-Meqdad, and accused him of being a member of the Shia militant group Hezbollah who had entered the country to fight for the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr Meqdad, though, is a member of a heavily-armed Shia clan with smuggling interests in the east of Lebanon and they are angrily determined to get their man back.

They have rounded up dozens of Sunni Muslims in Lebanon, including a number they accuse of membership of the Free

Syrian Army.

One of the captives says he is a captain responsible for running supplies across the border into Syria.

Sectarian logic

The Meqdads - like many people in Lebanon - view the Syrian conflict through a straightforwardly sectarian lens.

They recognise that Syria is - or was - a secular republic, but in their view this is about Sunni Muslim rebels trying to unseat a man whose Alawite faith makes him part of the spectrum of Shia Islam.

BBC