20 May 2012 Last updated at 06:39 ET

Lebanon profile

• Overview
• Facts
• Leaders
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With its high literacy rate and traditional mercantile culture, Lebanon has traditionally been an important commercial hub for the Middle East.

It has also often been at the centre of Middle Eastern conflicts, despite its small size, because of its borders with Syria and Israel and its uniquely complex communal make-up.

Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze are the main population groups in a country that has been a refuge for the region's minorities for centuries.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations put Lebanon under a French mandate until it declared independence in the Second World War.

At a glance

Beirut has regained some of its reputation as a 'Paris of the East'

• Conflicts: Civil war ended in 1990 but Lebanon was again hit by war when Israel invaded in 2006

• Politics: Government collapsed in January 2011; new government was only formed after five months of wrangling
• International: An expanded multinational UN peacekeeping force is being deployed to police a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

A 1943 unwritten agreement divided parliamentary seats along communal lines as defined in the 1932 census, when the country had a Christian majority. This principle was later extended to other government institutions, so that the president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of parliament a Shia.

No census has been taken since 1932, and Muslim groups have demanded that representation should reflect their increased proportion in the population.

This communal tension has been at the heart of most internal conflict in Lebanon, and neighbouring states have used it as a pretext to intervene.

Lebanon has also seen several large influxes of Palestinian refugees. They and their descendants make up as much as a tenth of the country's population, and are almost all housed in shanty towns and enjoy few legal rights. Their presence, status and actions have also been major sources of discord.

From 1975 until the early 1990s Lebanon endured a civil war in which regional players - in particular Israel, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organisation - used the country as a battleground for their own conflicts.

Syrian troops moved in shortly after the war started. Israeli troops invaded in 1978 and again in 1982, before pulling back to a self-declared "security zone" in the south from which they withdrew in May 2000.

Syria exerts considerable political clout in Lebanon despite having withdrawn its troops in 2005, ending a 29-year military presence.

This followed the assassination in Beirut of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Lebanese groups opposition groups accused Syria over the killing, and huge pro- and anti-Syria rallies in Beirut triggering the fall of the government and the Syrian pullout.

The Hariri case moved onto a UN-backed tribunal in the Hague in 2009, which issued four indictments against the Syrian-backed Shia group Hezbollah in 2011. Hezbollah has refused to cooperate, and the question could yet risk reigniting communal conflict.

Political parties

• March 14 - Pro-western alliance led by Saad Hariri; named after mass demonstrations that followed killing of Saad Hariri's father, ex-premier Rafik Hariri; March 14-led coalition government was toppled by Hezbollah in January 2011
• Hezbollah - Pro-Syrian Shia political party with a large armed wing that resisted Israel in the war of July 2006. The United States consider it to be a terrorist organisation, and other countries list its military wing as such
• Amal - Pro-Syrian Shia political party led by parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri; allied with Hezbollah
• Free Patriotic Movement - Largely Christian party led by former army chief Michel Aoun; has ties with Hezbollah

The UN has demanded the dismantling of all armed groups in Lebanon, including Palestinian militias and the military wing of Hezbollah, which controls much of southern Lebanon.

When the Hezbollah militia seized two Israeli soldiers in a raid in July 2006, Israel responded with a 34-day military offensive and a blockade. Around 1,000 Lebanese, most of them civilians, were killed. The damage to civilian infrastructure was wide-ranging, and fragile post-civil-war stability was lost.

International peacekeepers were drafted in to help police a UN-brokered ceasefire. But Hezbollah's leader has rejected calls for the movement to disarm, and political divisions in Beirut cloud the issue of what should be done about the group's military presence in the south.