It wasn’t as if Lebanon didn’t have troubles enough, with a shaky government finally formed last month. But the Syrian refugee crisis is taking a huge toll on a country which desperately needs international support.
The civil war in Syria and unrest in Lebanon may have deeper roots than meets the eye. In fact, they may very well be the tragic result of centuries of colonisation and secularisation, as recently emphasised by Walid Jumblatt.
Recently, an unofficial security paradigm has emerged in Lebanon between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Hezbollah. Cooperation or competition between them is likely to be a part of the security equation in the Near East.
Hassan Nasrallah meets with Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Damascus. A suicide attack kills seventeen in Kabul. A previously banned judgement on MI5’s use of torture is published. All this and more, in today’s security update.
