The Associated Press reports: Sunni Muslim demonstrators used burning tires to close key roads across Lebanon Tuesday to protest a blockade of their brethren by Shiite gunmen, officials said, as the country struggles to keep a lid on simmering sectarian tensions enflamed by the civil war in neighboring Syria.

In one of the most ominous signs, an AP reporter saw protesters marching among cars stopped at a Beirut roadblock and warning drivers with Shiite emblems on their vehicles that Sunnis would not be cowed by the powerful Shiite militant Hezbollah group. There was no violence, and all of the cars eventually moved on unscathed.

Lebanon, which is still haunted by its own 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, has been deeply polarized by the current conflict in Syria. Lebanese Sunnis largely support the predominantly Sunni opposition in Syria, while Shiites have backed President Bashar Assad’s government.

That dynamic has sent sectarian hatreds soaring in Lebanon, particularly since the country’s most powerful political and military force, Hezbollah, dispatched its fighters last year to Syria to bolster Assad’s forces. Many Sunnis also resent Hezbollah’s unmatched political and military position in Lebanon. [Continue reading…]