[An Nahar] When Ali Farhat was summoned to the immigration department in the United Arab Emirates, the 33-year-old Lebanese restaurant worker knew he would have to pack up his family and leave fast.Like many Shiite Moslems working in the oil-rich Gulf state, Farhat says he popped up on the country's deportation radar merely because of his sect, which its Sunni rulers associate with Hizbullah.
"I felt like a criminal, but I did not know what I did wrong," said Farhat, who had lived in the UAE for 15 years before his expulsion in May. "It seems that my only crime was that I am Shiite."
Long considered by authorities as a security threat, hundreds of Shiites have been quietly expelled from the UAE, Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
and other Gulf Arab states on suspicion of being supporters of Hizbullah. The deportations have surged in recent months after the group publicly joined the civil war in Syria on the side of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
, an archenemy of the Gulf's rulers.
It is the latest fallout for Hizbullah's high stakes and highly divisive
...politicians call things
divisivewhen when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never
divisive,they're
principled...
military involvement in the war in Syria, and a sign of the growing sectarian fissures in the Arab world over Syria.
Last month, Saudi Arabia announced plans to deport Lebanese who authorities accuse of supporting the Iranian-backed Hizbullah, and the other Gulf states say they too are reconsidering the status of their Shiite guest workers.
A Lebanese diplomat stationed in the Gulf confirmed to The News Agency that Dare Not be Named on Thursday that the stepped-up deportations from Saudi Arabia have begun, adding that he has documented an average of three cases a week in the past three weeks.
Farhat, like hundreds of other deportees, was never given an official reason for his family's expulsion, and was not able to challenge it in court or at a government agency.
Deportees like Farhat are not the only ones bearing the brunt of Hizbullah's military involvement in Syria, where the group's fighters helped Assad's forces recapture the strategic town of Qusair, near the border with Leb, last month.
The group's backing of the Syrian regime has angered the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad and raised sectarian tensions inside Leb. Several Syria-based Islamist groups have threatened to attack Hizbullah strongholds in Leb in retaliation.
Rockets from the Syrian side regularly crash into Shiite towns and villages near the border with Syria. Twice this month, rockets slammed into the Hizbullah stronghold known as Dahieh, Beirut's southern suburbs..
In the most ominous sign yet that the sectarian war in Syria has begun to consume Leb, a boom-mobile tore through a heavily guarded sector of Bir al-Abed area on Tuesday, wounding 53 people.