Lebanon is a really impressive country, one of the smallest Arab states with her 10.400 square kilometers of territory (ranking 166th in the world), yet her diverse cultural composition, 20th century history and everyday events make Lebanon more interesting in herself than the rest of the Middle East. This country had been the Switzerland of the region, went through a 14-year bloody civil war which created specific political formations that could not have came into existence anywhere else in the world - like the (in)famous Hezbollah, the most effective guerrilla organisation in our days. Still if there is a fragile and endangered democracy in the Middle East, it is Lebanon.
This time we asked Dr George Emile Irani about the plans of Hezbollah, the Lebanese parlamentiary elections of 2009, the Lebanese parties and about the salafi extremists, who appeared in the country in the recent past. Mr. Irani is a Lebanese-American Middle-East expert, professor of political science and associate of the European Intitute of the Mediterranean (IEMed). He has published several books on this subject, and he has a blog on the Middle East hosted by the Spanish edition of Foreign Policy.
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