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Why is Lebanon so unstable?

Ian Black

LEBANON HAS always been a complicated country, with 18 different Muslim and Christian religious sects, labyrinthine politics and powerful and ruthless neighbours. But the current fighting near Tripoli is unusual. Trouble began with a bank robbery by a small extremist Sunni group called Fatah al-Islam, a Palestinian outfit with an Islamist hue that some say is linked to al-Qaida.

Most of Lebanon's 350,000 Palestinians have condemned it. Lebanon, carved out of the Ottoman empire after the first world war, is now 60 per cent Muslim and 40 per cent Christian, with complex constitutional arrangements to match. But its biggest curse is that it has always been the theatre of other people's wars. Syria and Israel both played roles in the 1975-90 civil war in which 150,000 died. Israel occupied the south in 1978 and launched a fully fledged invasion aimed at the PLO's biggest stronghold in 1982. But its withdrawal in 2000 did not stop last summer's war, triggered by Hizbollah but backed by Syria and Iran in their own proxy conflict with George W. Bush. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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