People of Beirut are justifiably frustrated that Friday’s attacks in Paris overshadowed the bombings that killed 43 people in their city the day before. But equal respect for human life isn’t the only reason western media should be more focused on Beirut than they have been.

The Paris attack succeeded in frightening the West, but the attack on Beirut represents a more important strategic avenue for Daesh. The group isn’t going to destabilize France. Yet destabilizing Lebanon is an achievable goal. If Lebanon were to devolve into civil war, it would become an obvious zone for Daesh to expand its reach. And who, exactly, would go to war to defend Lebanon?

To understand the strategic objectives of the Beirut bombings, begin by putting yourself in the shoes of the planners. Almost all of Daesh’s successes have come under identical circumstances.

In essence, the group’s trademark is to exploit the vacuum in weak or crumbling states. This includes Syria, where civil war rages, and the Sunni area of Iraq, where the Baghdad government’s writ barely ran even before Daesh took over. It also includes those far-flung places where self-declared affiliates have sprung up to exploit power vacuums, particularly Libya and Afghanistan.

Libya has a far greater advantage as a Daesh target: Its proximity to the Syrian battlefield. Right now, the group has no direction in which it can plausibly expand its territory except Lebanon.

So if you were a Daesh planner, how would you go about precipitating that civil war? A pretty good start would be bombings in Shiite-majority neighborhoods in or near Beirut — like Bourj El-Barajneh, the southern suburb where Thursday’s attack took place. Like most of Lebanon, the suburb isn’t composed of only one denomination. There are also Sunnis and Christians there, as well as refugees.

The most dangerous fault line in contemporary Lebanon is between Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni groups. The paradigm of Lebanon’s past civil war wasn’t Sunni-Shiite, but the regional dynamic of that tension casts a long shadow over the country today.

There are fewer Lebanese Christians than there once were, because of immigration and relative population growth. And Druze remains a significant force in the country. So there are potential stabilizers with a common interest in avoiding Sunni-Shiite confrontation. But as we know from Iraq, all it takes for violence to emerge is for it to become clear that state can’t do anything about it.

Lebanon’s leaders have held a delicate balance for more than a quarter-century, notwithstanding periods of Syrian domination and the gradual rise of Iranian-backed Hezbollah. But circumstances can change, the way that the influx of Palestinians and PLO leaders from Jordan after the Black September conflict of 1970-71 disrupted Lebanon’s balance and helped precipitate civil war.

There are more than 1 million Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon and the actual number may well be half a million higher. Seen through this lens, it’s pretty remarkable that Lebanon hasn’t already fallen into civil war. That may be attributed partly to ordinary Lebanese knowing just how costly conflict would be, and partly to the fact that the Syrian refugees mostly just wanted to avoid conflict. A cynic might say that Hezbollah maintains enough control in its areas of the country to dissuade other militias from standing up against it. It’s possible that Sunni militias in the cities of Tripoli and Sidon have calculated that they would lose in any direct conflict, considering the tremendous support Hezbollah gets from Iran.

If Lebanon went hot, there would be no regional ally to step in and protect it. Iran could be expected to increase its support for Hezbollah, but without committing its ground forces. The Syrian military, such as it is, has its hands full. Russian planes are in the zone, and could conceivably intervene on behalf of Hezbollah, but it’s unclear how much they could do.nThe real winner in a Lebanese civil war would almost certainly be Daesh, which would have a new vacuum to exploit. Which is why the world should be paying more attention to the death and destruction in Beirut.

• THE ASSOCIATED PRESS