Lebanon's Shiites Grapple With New Feeling of Power - washingtonpost.com

Lebanon's Shiites Grapple With New Feeling of Power - washingtonpost.com: "Lebanon's Shiites Grapple With New Feeling of Power
Despite Gains, Sense of Vulnerability Persists

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 10, 2006; A01

BEIRUT, Dec. 9 -- As morning clouds hovered overhead Saturday, Fadil Ayyash wiped eyes that were bleary from just two hours of sleep over two days in the city-within-a-city that Hezbollah's protests in downtown Beirut have become.

The mood in his tent, set alongside a site for luxury apartments, was playful. The first order of business was stoking a water pipe. Under two yellow Hezbollah flags, with a hint of mischief, he and his friends unveiled their makeshift fireplace, charred cinderblocks stacked on a sidewalk still warm from a campfire the night before. But they spoke bluntly -- of frustration and protest, of politics and power -- the vocabulary of a moment the young Shiite Muslim men feel they are defining.

'How is this democracy?' Ayyash asked, pointing to the colonnaded government headquarters known as the Serail, standing like a citadel atop a hill. 'The majority is here,' he said, waving his hand across rows of protesters' tents.

His friends nodded, sprawled in brown plastic chairs.

'These days,' he said, 'we have to seize our opportunity.'

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