The Syrian civil war has already spilled over into Lebanon, where it has mainly been confined to the northern part of the country. There, over the past few months, the al-Nusra Front—a local al-Qaeda affiliate—has made multiple attempts, supported by Lebanese Sunnis, to capture the crucial port city of Tripoli. Although the attacks have been repulsed thus far, Lebanon’s government is deadlocked and its military could easily fracture along sectarian lines. Jacques Neriah writes:
[O]ne cannot overestimate the importance of the fate of Tripoli to the Sunni jihadis. Its fall would mark the beginning of the disintegration of the Lebanese state as a nation-state and the awakening of the old sectarian fears that could provoke its implosion and partition into Christian-Maronite, Shiite, and Druze enclaves facing a Sunni entity related either to al-Qaeda (if conquered by al-Nusra) or to Islamic State. Such a situation would undoubtedly represent the beginning of a new civil war that could end with . . . a redrawing of the regional map already heavily transformed since August 2014 by the establishment of the Islamic State (IS) caliphate. The possible fall of . . . Kobani . . . in Syria would definitely fit the current scenario of establishing an IS nucleus from the Mediterranean to the very doors of Baghdad.
Read more on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: http://jcpa.org/lebanon-on-the-brink/