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With Syria’s uprising raging next door – and politics in Beirut divided along pro and anti-Syrian lines – many assumed it would be a matter of time before the country was wracked by a spillover and Shia and Sunni began tearing each other apart.

Yet against all odds Lebanon has muddled through, with bouts of anxiety quickly subdued by politicians who have, rather unusually, recognised the potentially devastating impact of importing the Syrian crisis.