A two-square-mile grid of central Beirut offers a clue to Lebanon's troubles. Dominating the city's western quarter, the Sunni Mohammad al-Amin Mosque casts a glow over the concrete expanse of Martyrs' Square. About a mile south, through narrow streets, the Shia al-Hassanein Mosque rises up. Not far from here is the Druze temple, a glass and breeze-block building that looks like a public library, and on Mount Lebanon, the city's snow-capped backdrop, stone crucifixes dot the skyline.

The country's four main faith groups - Sunni, Shia, Druze and Maronite Christian - are imprinted on Beirut's landscape, just as their conflict is imprinted on Lebanon's history.

Over the past year, Lebanon has seen one government collapse while Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, has grown in influence.

Many fear a new civilwar as the country suffers its worst political crisis in a decade. The Arab spring that bloomed across the Middle East has yet directly to touch Lebanon, which has issues that are too entrenched and too complex to be resolved through the catharsis of a single revolutionary act.

Lebanon's problems are systemic and chronic, created by a political settlement born of empire. The country began as a French mandate, carved from a chunk of Ottoman Syria. With indepen­dence in 1943, its sectarian character was accommodated within a "confessional" political system that distributed office according to religion. The majority Maronite Christians were given the most important government positions (including the presidency), then the Sunnis, the Druze, and finally the Shias. In a country unable to function without consensus, it has