In downtown Beirut, resurrected from the rubble of the 1975-90 civil war, one is spoilt for choice of smart restaurants, trendy bars and lively clubs. Performances by sexy Lebanese divas and belly dancers contribute generously to Lebanon’s gross domestic product by attracting Gulf Arab tourists enchanted with Lebanese talent and beauty — not necessarily in that order.

There is isn’t a single international designer who has not found his or her way to Beirut’s elegant boutiques and jewellery shops. On the other hand, Lebanese designers such as Elie Saab are dressing Hollywood stars these days.

On the streets of Beirut one can see the latest Mercedes, Jaguars and BMWs jostling with Maseratis and Ferraris, even before they appear in Europe. Appearances aside, Lebanon has one of the best-educated peoples in the Middle East, with its young men and women having a global reach into the worlds of business, banking and academia.

It was comforting to see downtown Beirut teeming again with tourists enjoying the delights the city can offer. Beaches were packed with Beirutis in bikinis and hotels were overbooked with returning visitors who left during the crisis that erupted between the pro-Iranian opposition led by Lebanon’s influential Shi’ite Hezbollah and the U.S.-backed Sunni-led Lebanese government after the assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. This crisis has been put on hold following a Qatari-brokered agreement in May.

Yet underneath the glitzy facade is a country mirroring the real currents of militancy and Sunni-Shi’ite sectarianism unleashed by the Iraq war.

The conflict in Iraq has brought back to the surface the historical Sunni-Shi’ite feud throughout the Middle East. It overthrew a Sunni dictator, brought Iraq’s Shi’ites to power and tipped the balance of power in favour of Shi’ite Iran and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

This, in turn, has incensed Sunni Arab countries and left a bitter legacy across the Arab world, Lebanon in particular which is traditionally a proxy battleground where regional forces settle their disputes.

In Lebanon, the Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry is in danger of taking a vicious turn. Fundamentalist Sunni Salafi groups have established a foothold in the northern city of Tripoli, which admittedly had been a hotbed for Sunni Islamist groups in the 1980s before they were crushed by Syria, then the dominant power in Lebanon.

Now these forces have found their way to the southern city of Sidon and to eastern Lebanon and some Palestinian refugee camps.

Added to the Iraq war factor is the humiliation inflicted on Sunni prestige in May by Hezbollah when it overran West Beirut, traditionally a Sunni bastion, after a row with the government. That proved without a doubt that they called the shots in the country.

As a result, Sunni groups are seething, with some tilting towards radical Islamism.

The growing influence of these groups is no longer just in the poor neighbourhoods of Tripoli but it has reached the more affluent parts of the southern port city of Sidon — through mosques and preachers setting out to indoctrinate young Sunnis.

A friend recently recounted how her nephew and some of his friends, all American-educated and from affluent Sunni conservative families, were victims of this indoctrination and turned into zealots after attending prayers at a mosque near Sidon.

“Now he spends his days in his room reading the Koran and listening to militant chants. In his eyes we are non-Muslims and following the infidel way of life. Nobody is able to communicate with him or get through to him,” the friend told me.

Lebanon, it seems, is being used once again by its politicians and their regional patrons as a laboratory.

Anti-Syrian Sunni Lebanese politicians, backed by Sunni heavyweight Saudi Arabia, have not only ignored the growing influence of Salafi groups but have courted them in some instances in their attempt to roll back the rising tide of Shi’ite influence embodied by Hezbollah.

Syria, which after the 2003 U.S.-led war encouraged and facilitated the flow of jihadists to Iraq and into Lebanon, has warned of growing Islamist militancy in north Lebanon and said a vehicle used in a suicide attack in Damascus last week had crossed into Syria from a neighbouring country, implying it could have been Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq.

With these local and regional actors playing with fire, how long before their policies backfire

One of the problems with countries like Syria - secretive and authoritarian - is that whenever a bomb goes off or someone is assassinated, the list of possible suspects is extensive.

One can draw up a long list of enemies who could have plotted and carried out Saturday’s rare car bomb attack on a major road near a Syrian state security complex and an intersection leading to a famous Shi’ite Muslim shrine. The blast, which killed 17 people including a brigadier general and his son, poses another test to Syria’s reputation for keeping a tight grip on dissent and maintaining stability in a troubled area. 

High on any list of possible perpetrators are Sunni Salafi jihadis active in Syria now, and who for years were able to cross through the Syrian borders into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. This stopped recently when Damascus tightened its borders following pressure from Iraq and the United States and opted for a policy of detente and moderation starting with indirect peace talks with Israel through Turkish mediation and a diplomatic drive to end its international isolation.

The jihadis, angry at Syria cutting off their routes, relaunching peace talks with the Jewish state and detaining their militants, could have turned their guns against Damascus. And this could have involved a mix of personnel — foreign expertise helping local Islamists.

Another motive for the latest attack could be Sunni-Alawite tensions in Lebanon. Sunni militant groups based in northern Lebanon have been fighting a sectarian war with Lebanon’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam which has close links to Syria, whose ruling elite has been dominated by minority Alawites for over four decades.

Syria said an Islamist suicide bomber was responsible for the attack and that the vehicle had entered Syria from a neighbouring Arab country on Sept 26. It did not name the country but Syria’s Arab neighbours are Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad, whose country has dominated Lebanon for three decades and was forced to withdraw its troops after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, warned this month of a danger from what he called foreign-backed Sunni extremists in the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli. He called for a solution to “the rising threat” of Islamist militants in the city.

The bombing was reminiscent to attacks that were carried out in the past by Syria’s Islamist opposition led by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood which has been locked in a bloody feud with the secular government since the 1980s when late President Hafez al-Assad launched a major crackdown against their followers and supporters in the northern city of Hama.

That left thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists dead — some estimates are as high as 20,000 –  languishing in prisons or forced underground.

A riot by Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists at a military prison near Damascus in July suggests the bitter fight between the authorities and the Brotherhood is far from over. There were conflicting accounts of the incident but human rights groups said Syrian security forces killed dozens of prisoners during the riot at Sidnaya prison.

A Syrian official said the disturbances began when Islamist inmates took prison officers hostages and set conditions for their release. Special anti-riot units were brought in from Damascus to end the riot which was quashed violently, according to various accounts.

Syria, which has been ruled by the secular Baath Party since 1963, has sometimes used Islamist groups as proxies to pursue its interests in neighbouring countries, even though it showed no mercy domestically to the 1982 uprising at Hama by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It will likely pursue the hard line policy against militants but Saturday’s attack, which follows the assassination of the military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in Damascus and a senior military aide to President Assad in northern Syria earlier this year, has dented Syria’s watertight security image.

The killing of Imad Moughniyah, in particular, who was on Washington’s most wanted list for two decades for hijackings and suicide bombings against U.S. Western and Israeli targets worldwide, raised serious questions about whether the Assad regime was master in its own house. 

More generally, the recent attacks suggest that Syria itself may become victim to its government’s dabbling in jihadism, like so many other sorcerers’ apprentices across the region who tried to harness Islamist militancy for their own ends only for it to blow back on them.

The European-Mediterranean summit in Paris might have produced grand projects ranging from cleaning up the Mediterranean sea to using North Africa’s sunshine to generate power. But that is is not what it will be remembered for.

It will be remembered for the glorious welcome it bestowed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until yesterday was persona non-grata in the West, an autocrat leading a pariah regime, which many believe orchestrated the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.  

Assad was the star of the show, which sealed a new detente between Syria and Europe, with the Syrian and Israeli leaders sitting at the same table for the first time.

So what happened? And why are things finally looking up for Bashar? What lay behind this sudden turn in his fortunes? Are Bashar and his government really off the hook?       Is it all forgotten because Assad relaunched indirect peace talks with Israel and gave his blessing to a Qatari-mediated accord that ended Lebanon’s political crisis, allowing the election of a Lebanese president? After all, the new government was in Syria’s favour.

Or is it as some experts commented because Assad proved once again, like his father late President Hafez al-Assad before him, that there won’t be any stability or peace in the region without Syria, that Syria –  with its strong links with Iran, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah, the Islamist Hamas movement and a string of hired guns — still  calls the shots and could act as a spoiler if ostracised? 

Some observers even speculated that there was collusion in Damascus for the killing in February of Imad Moughniyah, the chief of Hezbollah’s security network and an agent of Iran who topped the U.S. most wanted list for 25 years.

Those familiar with Syrian techniques joked that Syria keeps resorting to the same old get-out-of-jail-free-cards and dodges to get out of crises with the West.

In the 1980’s,  for example, Syria was shunned by the West for its alleged links to an El Al bombing plot in London, its alliance with Iran against Arabs in the Iran-Iraq war, and because of its support for Shi’ite Islamist bombings of U.S. and French targets in Lebanon.

Yet it regained its place in the Arab fold –  and the good grace of Washington – by joining the U.S.-led alliance that ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Syria was well rewarded - the US gave it a free hand to operate in Lebanon and Arab states gave aid and investment.  
Syrian journalists accompanying Assad were delighted by their leader’s confident performance at the Elysee Palace. He shared a table with Sarkozy, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and the Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Yet most journalists directed their questions to Assad.

Heading out of the palace one Syrian journalist joked with a colleague: “Our Lebanese friends will be upset because the story is no longer the Hariri tribunal”.

Assad and his glamorous wife Asma savoured their moment of glory. Both were invited to stay on for Bastille Day.

“Bashar is here to stay…It is a very different situation. We saw lots of self-assurance and self-confidence. He was conducting himself with a statesman-like appearance,” one analyst said.  

Is Syria back in the fold or is full rehabilitation a long way off? Has Assad outsmarted Syria’s critics?