'IS' provokes Lebanon

It was a sudden attack. At the beginning of August, an Islamic State militia from Syria infiltrated the Lebanese Bekaa Valley. There, they attacked the predominantly Shiite village of Arsal near the Syrian border.

There was intensive fighting between the terrorists and Lebanese forces before IS retreated into Syria with more than a dozen captured Lebanese soldiers.

At the end of August, they beheaded one of them, a Sunni, to increase pressure on the Lebanese government to agree to an exchange of prisoners. When the government refused, the terrorists killed another hostage, this time a Shiite.

This was likely a deliberate provocation of Shiite clans in Lebanon, some of which had threatened to enter refugee camps in Syria to take revenge if a Shiite were killed. Some IS militants are thought to have come from refugee camps, where they are also said to have planned attacks.

There have been no Shiite revenge attacks so far, but the situation in and around the camps is tense. There are around 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

Widening the combat zone

The attack and murder of two hostages by IS were both obvious attempts to spread the war to another country. For months, IS fighters have been shelling Shiite communities, winning the support of Sunni extremists in Lebanon.

That, in turn, has provoked the Shiite community in Lebanon, leading to repeated clashes between radicals on both sides. IS fighters are also trying to drag Lebanon's third largest religious group, the Christians, into the conflict through targeted attacks and provocation.

In many ways, Lebanon is still recovering from the civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. There has never been a real effort to deal with the crimes of that war and there have never been any truth commissions or inquiries. Instead, Lebanon tried to leave the past behind by remaining silent. The war was forgotten, but the tensions among different religious groups remained.

New generation of jihadists

The IS attacks have reignited those tensions, which, in the worst-case scenario, could yet explode. There are already several vigilante groups, and more and more young Lebanese people are getting radicalized.

"We are seeing the rise of a new jihadist youth with very little knowledge of Islam," Nabil Rahim, one of the leaders of Lebanon's Salafists, said in an interview with al-Monitor magazine, which specializes in political development in the Middle East. Nabil's supporters have, it seems, distanced themselves from IS.

Tensions have been exacerbated by the fact that the Shiite Hezbollah has been fighting for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad for three years now. Hezbollah is a product of the theocratic dictatorship in Iran, at whose behest it is taking part in the war in Syria. Many Sunnis, in Syria as well as Lebanon, are bitter about this involvement.

Religious tensions

On top of this, Lebanon has not had a president for five months. Elections can't take place as the representatives of the three religious groups cannot agree on a candidate. Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites are all afraid of ceding influence.

The Shiites are particularly sensitive. Lebanon has around 4.5 million citizens and has taken in 1.2 million Syrians, most of them Sunnis. If they end up staying, they, along with the newly-arrived 300,000 Palestinian refugees, could disrupt the balance of religious groups in Lebanon.

"That relation of the groups means Lebanon is going the same way as Iraq," Rahim said. "Just like Iraq, Lebanon is bound for a power vacuum."

Hezbollah has cottoned on to the situation and is therefore presenting itself as a national force, not a Shiite one. It is up to the armed forces to defend the country's borders, says legal expert Aly Fayyad, who represents Hezbollah in the Lebanese parliament. "But if the situation gets worse, Hezbollah is ready to defend Lebanon," he said.

To that end, Hezbollah is strengthening the Lebanese Resistance Brigades, its multi-faith arm founded in 1997 to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Now it will be used to defend against further IS attacks in Lebanon. IS has already declared it wants Syria's southern neighbor to become an Islamic "emirate," - and the vast majority in Lebanon is so outraged by these plans that they may well cross religious boundaries and get together to fight the jihadists' advance.