The dark shadow of a bloody history is covering Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods. While external power plays may be a factor, the driving force behind the violence in recent days appears to be deep-rooted grievance.

“It’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” said Arabi Akkawi, a resident of the predominantly Sunni district of Bab al-Tabbaneh. The residents of the neighborhood have both actually and figuratively had their guns aimed at the adjacent Alawi community in Jabal Mohsen since 1976 – and much the same situation exists on the other side.

In the early 1970s, Rifaat al-Assad, brother of then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, traveled to Lebanon and established the Arab Democratic Party in Jabal Mohsen. The party’s leadership was entrusted to Ali Eid, and it soon spawned the Red Knights militia.

The Arab Democratic Party maintained strong ties to the Alawi regime in Damascus. Shortly after Syrian troops moved their army into Lebanon in 1976, the Red Knights began clashing with pro-Palestinian Sunnis in Bab al-Tabbaneh. The population of Jabal Mohsen benefited from Syrian backing during the war years, and there are numerous reports from the 1970s and 1980s of Syrian Alawis settling in North Lebanon.

Across the road in Bab al-Tabbaneh, Islamism was, and remains, a strong force. Sheikh Said Shabaan started the Islamic Unification Movement (Harakat al-Tawheed al-Islami) in Bab al-Tabbaneh in 1982, after breaking off from the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaa Islamiya. He fought on the side of the Palestinians against Syria in 1983, when the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sought refuge in Tripoli. At the time, the Syrians and Arafat were, and not for the first time, at each other’s throats, and northern Lebanon was their battleground. The Syrians sought to expel Arafat from Lebanon, to where he had returned after being forced out of Beirut in 1982 by the Israelis. Syrian troops were stationed in Jabal Mohsen.

For the next three years, the Sunni Islamists in Tripoli and the Syrian army and its proxies battled intermittently for dominance in the city. In November 1986, the Syrians arrested hundreds of people from Bab al-Tabbaneh, some of whom were found dead in the streets shortly thereafter, by all accounts shot by the Syrians. Nine days later, the Syrians executed 34 more.

Akkawi’s father, a member of the Islamic Unification Movement, was among those killed at the time. That’s why Akkawi insists the conflict today is “tied to the massacre,” even if the Islamic Unification Movement was later forced, under Syrian threats, to patch up its relations with Damascus.

However, when violence flared in Beirut in late January of this year, residents of Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh turned against each other. And after Hezbollah and its allies stormed the streets of Beirut last May, gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds again rained down on Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen as both sides went back to their old habits.

The most recent fighting has only hardened the chronic instability afflicting Lebanon, which has continued despite President Michel Sleiman’s election in May. Some see a nefarious intention. “These conflicts now emerging [are] a coordinated effort to weaken Sunnis,” said Imad Salamey, a professor of political science and international affairs at Lebanese American University.

However, the conflict between Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh may also be something simpler: A long-term enmity playing itself out in the absence of law and order. But it’s also true that even a localized fight has the potential to ignite other tensions simmering throughout Lebanon.

While the Lebanese army declared last Monday that all fighters should leave the streets to allow military units to take control, battles continued for 90 minutes after the deadline. Worse yet, they resumed on Wednesday. Badr Wannous, an Alawi MP from Tripoli, said the recent clashes were caused by individuals with an axe to grind. “Unfortunately, the bullet is louder than the mouth,” he said. The very fragile calm in the areas confirms his doubts.

“Lebanon lives on the brink of a volcano,” said Sheikh Bilal Shabaan, the head of the Islamic Unification Movement and son of Said Shaaban. Arabi Akkawi would agree. The fighting, he insisted, “will just keep repeating.”