grew up.

Opposing it is the March 8 alliance. Broadly supported by Iran and Syria, the coalition includes Hezbollah and non-militant Shia and Druze parties, and takes its name from 8 March 2005, date of the first counter-demonstrations against the Cedar Revolution. March 14 and March 8 governed together until their coalition government fell in January last year.

The Hariri assassination created something else, too: the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Set up to indict and prosecute Hariri's killers, it has a mixed composition of Lebanese and international judges and an international prosecutor. Predictably, the tribunal divided Lebanon along party (and therefore sectarian) lines. March 14 supports the tribunal; March 8 denounces it as an Israeli-American tool designed to smear Syria and Hezbollah.

Throughout 2010, the country's already toxic politicaldebate was poisoned further by rumours as both sides waited for the indictments to be handed down. Leaks indicated that people in Hezbollah would be named as the killers of Hariri, a charge the party angrily denied. Hasan Nasrallah, who leads Hezbollah, repeatedly attacked the tribunal's integrity and threatened to "cut off the hands" of any "collaborators". In early January last year, indictments were submitted but they remained sealed; fearful of what was coming, Hezbollah demanded that the government end co-operation with the tribunal and reject any findings. Saad Hariri refused, and on 12 January Hezbollah and its allies resigned from the coalition government.

Shortly before the government's collapse, I went to see Fares Soueid, the general secretary of March 14, at his Beirut office to learn more about