Lebanon's Druze, unhappily, are being dragged into Syria's war

(The Christian Science Monitor) Deadly clashes pitting Syrian Sunni jihadis against Druze militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have exposed divisions within this small community that spans the Syria-Lebanon border.

The bloody wars roiling the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq’s border with Iran are essentially political struggles for power and control. But the two main protagonists are adherents of the Sunni and Shi‘ite branches of Islam. That leaves the region’s religious minorities, like the Druze who only number around 1 million in the Middle East, facing the agonizing—and potentially existential—decision of who to support in order to ensure communal survival. But siding with one risks turning the other into an enemy.

“We want to be left alone, but what do we do if neither side wants to leave us alone?” asks Kamal Naji, the mukhtar, or mayor, of Rashaya, a picturesque Druze town of old red-tiled stone houses nestled at the foot of the western slopes of Mount Hermon. The Lebanon-Syria border bisects Mount Hermon's summit, which at 9,200 feet is already dusted with the first of the winter snows.