Mark Steyn makes interesting observations in this article in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. If you’re interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The “sovereign” state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.