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Regional violence threatens Lebanon's fragile stability

As suicide attacks and explosions increase in Beirut, Lebanon is being inexorably drawn deeper into the Syrian conflict.
People clean the streets as the Lebanese army deploys on the streets of the Sunni Muslim Bab al-Tebbaneh neighbourhood in Tripoli, northern Lebanon December 4, 2013. The Lebanese government has told the army to take over security in the restive coastal city of Tripoli for six months, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Monday. Ten people were killed in weekend clashes between Tripoli's Alawite minority, which supports Syria's Alawite President Bashar al-Assad, and majority Sunni Muslims who back h
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All indications point to Lebanon having become part of the Middle Eastern regional conflict, in its most abhorrent sense: a Sunni-Shiite war.

The issue is no longer whether shrapnel from that conflict is now pockmarking Lebanon’s interior, or whether the war raging in Syria has reached it. The great fear currently is whether Lebanon will become a main front — a priority, even — in this conflict that erupted in Syria following popular protests and soon became a military conflict in which all countries of the region are now directly or indirectly involved. One need not be a military expert to realize that the Lebanese scene, with its historical baggage and idiosyncrasies, is particularly prone to this type of conflict. The small nation is Hezbollah’s primary stronghold and base of operations — which might prove to be the party’s Achilles’ heel.

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