Spillover: The Fighting in Lebanon

The fighting in Tripoli (the Lebanese one) that broke out over the weekend is pretty universally seen as a spillover from Syria: sectarian in its origins, involving Sunni Islamists and ‘Alawites. One of the best assessments I've seen to date is this one by Emile Hokayem at Foreign Policy. Lebanon's fate seems to be to echo the conflicts of its neighbors, but most inevitably Syria's. The potential of a protracted civil conflict in Syria to spill over into a regional conflict is real; in Tripoli, it's already happening.