The flames of war that struck Lebanon’s northern capital, Tripoli, last week are still smoldering. Despite the army deployment in the neighborhoods that witnessed military confrontations, nothing indicates that the fate of the latest ceasefire will be different from the many that preceded it.

The agreements reached between the official security services and the “leaders of the axes” fall squarely within militia-type logic and themselves constitute a challenge to state authority and its monopoly of arms and in maintaining security.

The Lebanese north is no longer in the state’s hands. It has become a swamp in which violent and oppressive radical forces sprout. Those forces use the sense of injustice and deprivation, and the double standard being used to resolve Arab issues, first and foremost the cause of the Syrian people, to rouse the hungry and mobilize the oppressed. What has become clear is that the conflict in Syria has moved to Lebanon. It is the same conflict, between the same conflicting parties, with the same sectarian dimension, taking place in two different countries.

The borders created by international agreements have practically disappeared and been replaced by borders of another kind: religious borders fueled by regional powers, which the latter use in their major conflicts.