After Saad Hariri’s government fell, the March 14 coalition refused to participate in the new government, the new PM appointee had to choose ministers from the March 8 coalition, although he had shown his intention of forming a national unity government. Even so, it took almost five months for him to form a new government due to the differences between the March 8 factions over the ministerial posts. The final line-up of the cabinet included 18 March 8 ministers and 12 that were close to Mikati, president Michel Suleiman and Jumblatt’s PSP (NOW Lebanon, 2011). The ministers appointed for key portfolios such as Amal Movement Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour, Marada Movement Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn, FNB Justice Minister Shaskib Qortbawi were pro-Syrian politicians.
Mikati declared an official “disassociation” of Lebanon from the events in Syria (Daily
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A secular activist in Raqqa, the Syrian capital of Baghdadi’s proclaimed caliphate, said that “people are now more scared of [ISIS] than the Assad regime bombardments.” “Women are afraid to go out of the house for fear that they might be whipped in public squares for not wearing the right clothes. Men’s hands are cut off. Every day we wake up to the news that someone has been slaughtered by ISIS,” he said (Luca, 2014). Moreover, the idea that ISIS was, in fact, allowed by the Syrian government to impose its strict Islamic rules in Syria in order to scare the population off from supporting the uprising was widely spread among the inhabitants under the jihadists’ control (Cordall, 2014).
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Star, 2012). The March 14 opposition criticized this policy because they said it was beneficial for the Assad regime.
In the UN assembly Lebanon stood away from the international community
condemnation of the violence in Syria in August 2011 (Naharnet, 2011) and voted against the Arab League decision of suspending Syria’s membership in November 2011 (Batty & Shenker, 2011), and did not recognize the Syrian National Council (SNC) while most Arab and Western states did in February 2012 (Naharnet, 2012). Also, the government tolerated Syrian incursions into Lebanese territory that resulted not only in capturing and killing regime opponents, but also in damaging property and killing Lebanese citizens (Luca, 2011). The Mikati government did not deploy additional troops at the northern border with Syria until July 2012, when Interior Minister Marwan Charbel and other officials requested it in January 2012 (The Daily Star, 2012). In September, Mikati officially sent a memo to the Syrian ambassador to Beirut informing him of the Syrian army incursions into Lebanon and the shelling of Lebanese territory, but government and security agencies in Lebanon continued to deport Syrian opposition activists and ignore the calls of international human rights organizations to investigate the possible involvement of Lebanese security agency employees into the disappearance of Syrian political opposition activists (Houry, 2011).
The Mikati government’s policy towards the Syrian conflict was generally marked by accommodating measures towards the Syrian regime, mainly because of its members’ political orientation -the March 8 Coalition identified itself with Syria and shaped its policies in accordance (Osoegawa, 2013, pp. 177-178).
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opposition over the legitimacy of the Syrian opposition and the treatment of Syrian refugees and political activists as well as over the reactions towards the Syrian army operations on Lebanese territory, the political factions visibly made efforts to avoid direct confrontation at home (Hokayem, 2013, p. 133). But the actual implementation of this disassociation policy that seemed to have garnered consensus at the political level depended a lot on the control the Lebanese political factions had over their supporters14
On 22 March 2013, Mikati resigned from office over the refusal of the pro-Assad March 8 majority in his own government to prolong the term of the director general of the Internal Security Forces, General Ashraf Rifi, an official close to March 14, and the refusal to appoint members of the Supervisory Commission for Election Campaigns (Salem, 2013). The conflict between the two political factions had deepened after the assassination of Major General Wissam al-Hassan in October 2012, when March 14 accused Syria and its allies of murdering him (Chulov, 2012). The assassination came after the arrest of former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha, a close ally of the Assad family, on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in North Lebanon in order to cause sectarian strife. The ISF Information Branch headed by Al Hasan made the arrest. Rifi was seen by his supporters as the last man standing against attempts by March 8 to cripple or take over the internal security institution. Both al-Hassan and Rifi were Sunni Muslims and from Mikati’s home town, Tripoli (Salem, 2013).
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The Syrian uprising found enthusiasm among grass root activists and supporters of t he M arch 14 factions, but especially in the Sunni community, regardless of their political orientation. Sunnis across Lebanon, but especially in North Lebanon vocally supported the Syrian uprising (The Daily Star, 2011).It was quite clear that Lebanon could not stay away from the crisis next door for long. Syria and Lebanon share a porous border and communities on both sides share close tribal ties; the Syrian regime had a history of destabilizing Lebanese regions when it felt under siege and sometimes violently interfered in Lebanese domestic affairs; large segments of Lebanese population, especially the Sunnis in North Lebanon, still held deep resentments over the Syrian occupation and recent history violent clashes and felt solidarity with the Syrian uprising (Crisis Group, 2012).
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On 6 April 2013, Tammam Salam was tasked to form a new government (BBC, 2013). On 15 February 2014, Salam announced a national unity government of 24 ministers, including March 8 and March 14 alliances (Al Jazeera English, 2014). Salam began his mandate with a vow to "strengthen national security and stand against all kinds of terrorism" and deal with the challenge of a million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon (Irish Independent, 2014).