The scene was sickeningly familiar: an ambush on a twisting mountain road, gunfire and death. This time, however, the victim was not a hapless villager caught in the middle of sectarian strife. He was Kamal Jumblatt, 59, leader of Lebanon's Muslim left and feudal landlord whose power base was rooted among the 150,000 members of the Druze sect. His assassination last week threatened to reopen the bloody civil war in Lebanon, which since November has been living under a "peace" enforced by three divisions of Syrian troops.
Confronted by the prospect of renewed fighting, Syrian troops refrained from going on...
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