UN/LAS Special Envoy Brahimi met Russian Foreign Minister today: "the [Syrian] government says they are fighting terrorists and only terrorists, and that it is their duty to do so -- to protect their people. And the other side [the rebels] says they're fighting a very cruel government that is persecuting them, and they are just defending themselves", he said after the meeting. He also recalled talking to a Syrian woman who has one son in the Syrian regular military and another son in the Free Syrian Army, and that's when he stated the poignant truth: "if that's not a civil war, I don't know what is". Neither do we. Neither do they.
I would never dare to think I have enough knowledge so as to freely talk about this issue and produce a meaningful article, but I will try to write down what I have understood so far (I already had to edit as I misunderstood some facts, thanks Louis!). Lebanon and Syria have always been deeply interconnected. Both countries were part of the Ottoman Empire, both countries were under the dominance of France's colonization, both countries share an extremely complicated ethnic/religious division, and both countries political scenes still depend on the other's. More recently, Syria was a key player in the brokering of the 1989 Taif Accords putting an end to Lebanon's civil war, and its troops (and many authorities) stayed in the country (allegedly guaranteeing the non resumption of violence) until 2005, when the country's population unanimously demanded their retreat. It all started in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, next to the country's northern borde...
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