Lebanon: Syria’s Next Battle Ground

       Lebanon boarders Syria to the East, Israel to the North and its location is in a volatile area.  It is ranked 46th in the failed state index with a score of 86.3 and has become a haven for refuges, with 584,000 from Syria and 436,000 from Palestine, according to the CIA World Fact Book.  This has put a huge amount of pressure on the internal system to care for these displaced people.  Lebanon experienced a fifteen-year civil war between 1975 and 1990 with around 120,000 casualties.  Syrian military occupied the country come 1976 until 2005 when it final withdrew armed forces.  After Syrian occupation a short war between Israel and Lebanon occurred in 2006.  Hezbollah, a military/political organization deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel, calls Lebanon home.  They are responsible for rocket attacks on Israel and sending fighters into neighboring Syria to fight for the government. 

            Although the last few years have been relatively peaceful for Lebanon, the conflict in Syria is begging to spill over and violence is increasing.  Shootings between rival neighborhoods of Sunnis and Shiites is not uncommon.  On July 9^th the New York Times reported a car bomb that exploded in a parking lot outside of a grocery store in side Hezbollah territory.  The rebels fighting in Syria are most likely responsible for the attack since Hezbollah is an ally of president Bashar al-Assad, but there is a chance Sunni militant groups could have also been responsible. 

            Although most people think of Turkey as being the country that is most effected from the Syrian conflict, Lebanon’s central       government is too weak to respond to factions fighting within its boarders.  There is a long standing joke that Lebanon's military is the weakest armed group in a country full of them.  There is a very real chance that Lebanon is going to return to civil war if the Syrian conflict continues.  Syrian rebel commanders have said they would attack Hezbollah within Lebanon if Hezbollah continues to interfere in the Syrian conflict.  With so many refugees coming in from Syria, there is some suspicion that some among them might be responsible for the bombing on Tuesday.

            For now, Hezbollah has taken the safe policy of ‘blame Israel’, rather than blame other actors such as Syrian Rebels, that could result in more carnage.  As the situation in Syria continues, it is going to destabilize the region even more.  Even once the civil war has ended, it will be a long time before peace returns.  There will be revenge attacks for years to come in retribution for the blood spilled, and it appears Lebanon will get drag into this perpetual cycle of violence.