where all the microcosms of inter-Arab animosity are vying for power in Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia seems reluctant to accept the implications of the May 7 clashes which broke out on the streets of Beirut when the main Sunni force in Lebanon, the Future movement led by Saad Hariri, suffered a swift blow from Hezbollah, the Syrian and Iranian backed Shiite group.

The Doha Agreement, rushed under the barrel of a gun, did not bring any unexpected variable or structural amendment, but merely an addendum to the Taif Agreement of 1989, pushing through recognition of Syrian influence in Lebanon.

Yet, both Saudi and Syrian regimes have one thing in common: a vague structure of security power not conducive to analyze the rationale behind their policies. Riyadh's political options are predictable and built on the premise of a Sunni-Shiite divide, while the Syrian leadership, existing in a more complex environment, muddled along in somewhat of a state of disarray since 2001, where a the political line followed by Damascus remains blurred.

Two blasts shocked Tripoli and Damascus last week, underlining a Salafist thin line stretching from the capital of north Lebanon all the way to the capital of Syria. Sunni extremism in Tripoli is a byproduct of the Syrian regime in some ways, since Damascus perceived the medieval city to be an extension of the Syrian heartland, as the late journalist Samir Kassir once observed. But it is hard also not to detect Saudi Arabia's hand in Tripoli.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said that Lebanon is becoming a haven for radicals and a threat to the security of Syria. Saad Hariri instantly replied by questioning his intentions, accusing Assad of "infiltrating extremists into Lebanon," and even expressing Saudi frustration over France's overture toward Damascus.

Assad asked Lebanese President Michel Suleiman to deploy the Lebanese army to the north of Lebanon to quell the violence. Damascus has reportedly stationed thousands of heavily armed Syrian troops along the Lebanese border, before a blast in Damascus near the "Palestinian branch" of the Syrian Intelligence, which could be seen as retaliation to Syria's shoring up its control over the border with Iraq.

The Salafist anarchy in Tripoli has been a work in progress since the 1970s, with refugee camps during the insurrection of the Palestinian national movement, joined in the 1980s by Muslim Brotherhood members who fled the crackdown of the Syrian regime in Hama and by militants who came from Afghanistan in the 1990s after the war ended with the Soviets. The power game of this radical movement over Tripoli has continued since, first with secular forces and later within the many trends of the Sunni movement.

The Lebanese army has also clashed with these militants for a while and a massive offensive was launched at the end of 1999 against a group called al-Takfir wal Hijra in the mountains of Dinnieh, where a unit of the Lebanese army was ambushed one day after Syrian authorities cracked down on militants from Hizb al-Tahriri al-Islami (the Islamic Liberation Party). The same group had also ambushed and killed Syrian intelligence agents.

The same year the Syrian army clashed with the Muslim Brotherhood in the Hama massacre, Sunni radical factions in Tripoli coalesced under one umbrella and took over the city in 1982, before Syrian troops intervened in 1985 to end this adventure. Sunni forces had to accept the Syrian status quo, and Damascus sought in return to consolidate its grip by empowering another group, the Ahbash.

But with the rise of Wahabism in the 1990s, the Salafist movement gained momentum and challenged Syria. The leader of al-Ahbash, Nizar al-Halabi, was killed in August 1995 reportedly by a Wahabi group, Osbat al-Ansar. This incident forced al-Ahbash to take a back seat and left the Wahabi groups as the main players in the radical Sunni movement.

But Syria and Saudi Arabia kept on gambling with this card. Syria released a dangerous person named Shaker Abssi before the end of his sentence. In October 2006 he made his way to the refugee camps north of Lebanon to form Fatah al-Islam, a group that clashed with the Lebanese army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared last year. The fate of Abssi remains obscure as no one can confirm if he is dead or was able to sneak out of the camp alive.

Islamist Omar Bakri, who was able to escape British authorities, was released by Lebanese authorities and found a new home in Tripoli in August 2005. In July 2005, the political establishment released the Dinniyeh detainees as part of a deal to release the leader of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea from prison. The Lebanese government turned its back and allowed the growth of this Salafist movement in its own backyard while Saudi money kept pouring into the city for electoral reasons and motives related to balance Hezbollah.

During the confrontations in Nahr el-Bared in May 2007, no other radical Sunni forces, including groups inspired by al-Qaida, intervened to help.

The scary scenario now is if and when militants in other refugee camps jump in. Jind al-Sham, an offshoot of Osbat al-Ansar, killed four judges in Sidon, in south Lebanon, in 1999 before hiding in Ain al-Helweh refugee camp.

To further complicate matters Saudi Arabia and Syria are not the only game players in town. In one of his audiotapes released in February 2007, al-Qaida's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, made reference to Lebanon only in so far as the U.N. peacekeepers in the south were concerned. Yet in another tape last April, Zawahiri said that Lebanon will have "a pivotal role in the battle against Crusaders and Jews," described the embattled country as "a gap" and argued that "the mujahedin in Lebanon are caught up between the fire of U.S. agents and allies, and the fire of those linked to regional powers."

The abatement of violence in Iraq has attracted many fighters to Lebanon. The decision to start negotiations with Israel while cooperating with the United States on Iraq made Syria vulnerable to retaliation by radical forces, which now turned their anger against Damascus.

Saudi Arabia seems now unable to manage these forces in Tripoli after embracing them, and Riyadh dispatched Hariri to shape a political reconciliation when clashes between Sunni and Alawis reached its peak and started to affect Saudi's image in Lebanon.

Recent violence - assassinations and explosions - not necessarily interrelated, reflect a battle between competing intelligence agencies and radical movements, all serving different masters and different motives from all friends and foes of Lebanon.

The lack of political will and a national security vision in Beirut opens the door for this anarchy, a state that no Lebanese faction values its sovereignty and a central government that continues a tradition of disregarding the north and south of the country.

What emerges from all this is a lethal chess game being played out on Lebanese soil.

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