Syria: the fear spreads to the boulevards of Beirut The figures are so huge that it becomes easy to forget that they concern fellow human beings, with emotions, ideals and ambitions much like the rest of us. Let me cite one young Syrian, Anas Ghaibeh, an articulate, English-speaking 28-year-old, who fled his homeland last year for the relative safety of Lebanon. "If I had stayed, I would have been 'disappeared" like my friends," he told me yesterday. The security forces were following me. Ghaibeh was suspected of supporting the rebels - or "terrorists," as the regime calls its enemies. By his account, he simply delivered food to Baba Amr, a district of the city of Homs laid waste by Assad's forces. After his home was raided and ransacked by security agents, Ghaibeh fled to Beirut. "It's safe here: I live in a Christian area," he says. But I don't have a job. There is no work. The Lebanese hate Syrians now. They say the Syrians take our jobs. As Ghaibeh knows, Lebanon's delicate sectarian balance was upset by the arrival of Sunni Palestinian refugees after 1948, ultimately helping to spark the civil war that began in 1975. "I think the same scenario will happen again," he says. And that is the biggest fear: that a conflict that began with peaceful protests on the streets of Damascus and escalated to become a national insurrection could now engulf the Mediterranean boulevards of Beirut, and perhaps other capitals too. That is no longer a hypothetical fear. In the shadows, Syria's conflict is already being fought out in Lebanon, where the country's political factions are lined up for or against Assad. In the pro camp is Hizbollah, the radical Shia party and militia which receives weapons from Iran using Syrian supply lines. Hizbollah has sent thousands of fighters to prop up Assad, helping to explain why the military balance has tipped in his favour. No outsider can tell whether it took the crucial decision to intervene at Iran's behest, or would have done so anyway. But by sending its men in, Hizbollah broke a crucial agreement signed by all of Lebanon's main factions to spare the country from "regional or international conflicts." The Baabda Declaration, named after the presidential palace in Beirut where it was signed last year, was the only recent occasion when Lebanon's rival power blocs managed to come together. Thanks to the Syrian crisis, it has been thrown overboard. A cycle of retaliation has already begun. Last month, a suicide bomber killed at least 18 people in Dahiyeh, a Hizbollah stronghold in south Beirut. The reaction came barely eight days later, when two car bombs exploded outside Sunni mosques in the city of Tripoli. Allies of Assad - or perhaps the Syrian regime itself - were probably responsible. The sense of foreboding is palpable. Flights out of Beirut are fully booked and the United Nations has evacuated the families of all staff. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has warned against "all but essential travel" to Lebanon and asked any Britons who live here to consider leaving. Yesterday, Samir Geagea, the leader of the second biggest Christian party, accused Hizbollah of "opening the gates of hell." Lebanese leaders are masters of brinkmanship and there is nothing inevitable about the country's slide to war. The wider point is that the West's current approach towards Syria has coincided with 100,000 deaths, about a third of the entire population being driven from their homes - and the conflict spilling into neighbouring states. Given that appalling litany, can anyone in London or Washington seriously argue that more of the same is the answer?