By Afro-Middle East Centre The election of General Michel Aoun as president of Lebanon earlier this month ends a two-and-half year stalemate when the country could not agree on who the president should be, and parliament extended its own term twice. It also points to a reconfiguration of the bipolar coalition politics which have severely gridlocked the country’s formal political processes. Aoun’s election was spurred mainly by domestic political manoeuvrings, but it will mean little in terms of service delivery and improvements in governance for the Lebanese citizenry. Nor will it result in any immediate change in the country’s stance…

By Afro-Middle East Centre Beginnings Hizbullah was established in 1982, at the height of Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, to protect Lebanon’s Shi'a community which, at the time, was one of the country’s most disadvantaged communities. Its main objective was opposition to Israeli aggression against Palestinians and Lebanon, and it hoped to engender a more favourable view of Iran. The party’s most concrete advances occurred after the 1990 Saudi-brokered Taif Accord which ended the civil war. Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon allowed Hizbullah to retain its weapons, unlike other militia groupings which were largely disarmed and incorporated into the country’s formal…