Beirut - The year 2008 saw Lebanon battling threats on two fronts: On one side the threat of civil war; on the other the rise of Sunni militancy destabilizing an already unsteady country.

Since the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri in early 2005 the Lebanese have been plunged into a new era of partisanship, marked by deep political divisions among the pro and anti-Syrian camps.

A long-running political stand-off, which first erupted in November 2006 when six pro-Syrian ministers quit the cabinet, left the country without a president for months, after pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud stepped down in November 2007.

By May 2008, a general strike called by the leading trade union to protest rising prices and demand an increase in the minimum wage led to armed conflict between the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and the pro-Syrian opposition led by the Shiite Islamist movement, Hezbollah.

The opposition then managed to close all major roads across the capital, prompting Beirut International Airport to shut down and bringing the country to a complete standstill.

Clashes between followers of the pro-Syrian opposition and the Western-backed ruling majority lasted a full week, engulfing the capital and areas all over Lebanon. The fighting killed 82 people and wounded more than 200. Hezbollah and their allies took control of most of the capital.

In scenes reminiscent of the dark days of the 1975-1990 civil war, armed militants were seen prowling about or hiding in buildings in the otherwise deserted streets of Beirut, as occasional gunfire rang out.

The fighting triggered urgent appeals for calm from the Arab and international community amid fears that the long-running political feud in Lebanon could descend into full-blown sectarian conflict.

On May 20, the ruling family of tiny Gulf-state Qatar emerged as a peacemaker, and managed to convince Lebanese rival leaders to travel to Doha for talks.

After four days of negotiations, Lebanese politicians signed the "Doha agreement," ending the fighting in Beirut and paving the way for Lebanese army chief Michel Suleiman to be elected as president.

On May 25, Suleiman was confirmed by parliament as president of Lebanon and negotiations which lasted more than two months resulted in the formation of a new national unity cabinet. Suleiman appeared as a reassuringly unifying figure.

The unity deal allowed government to be shared between a pro- Western majority and a veto-empowered Hezbollah-led minority.

The rival camps seem to have - for now - set their disputes aside, especially over issues such as Hezbollah's sizeable arsenal and redistribution of electoral constituencies.

But 24 hours after the Lebanese parliament gave its confidence to the new cabinet in August, and hours before president Suleiman went to Syria hoping to start a healing process after decades of aggravation between the neighbouring countries, Lebanon shifted into a new war - this time against Sunni militants directly targeting the Lebanese army.

In August and September bus explosions in and around the northern city of Tripoli killed at least 20 people, among them ten soldiers.

This prompted Lebanese leaders to shift their focus to northern Lebanon, believing that the Tripoli blasts were perpetrated by "terrorist groups" with an interest in prolonging the instability in Lebanon, in order to forestall Lebanon's rapprochement with Syria.

Lebanese security officials speculated that the militant group had been paid by a "third party" to destabilize the situation in Lebanon.

Tripoli in recent years has witnessed a rise in Sunni militant groups that have threatened the city's stability. In 2007 the Lebanese army was engaged in a three-month battle with the so-called Fatah al-Islam group, holed up inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, just north of the city.

Lebanese security officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that more than 300 militants who belong to Sunni fundamentalist groups and who are believed to be linked to various security incidents in Lebanon were arrested in 2008.

According to those officials the fight against those groups will continue because they have directly threatened the 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon since the Israel-Hezbollah conflict of 2006.

The battle against militancy in Lebanon has yet to be decisively concluded. And with a parliamentary election scheduled for next year promising to be divisive, Lebanon may once again find itself in internal turmoil. (dpa)