Word: aoun
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...neutral) - that would give the opposition a stake in major decisions but not the veto power it had demanded during the crisis. But when the Cabinet was submitted to the President for approval, the opposition balked. Reports in Lebanon suggest the reason for the breakdown is that Michel Aoun, the leader of a Christian party allied with Hizballah, is unhappy that his son-in-law wasn't reappointed to the Telecommunications Ministry...
...nation with the largest concentration of Christians, roughly half of the country's Christians have broken away from their traditionally pro-Western leadership, forming a political alliance with Hizballah, the Shi'a Muslim anti-Israeli militant group. The leader of these breakaway Christians, a populist former general named Michel Aoun, is betting that the only way to secure a Christian future in Lebanon is to look east toward the rising power of Shi'a Islam. It may seem far-fetched now, but there may come a day when Christians hit the Arab streets to welcome not a Pope from Rome...
...Damascus acted as the dominant influence in Lebanese politics. Despite the withdrawal of its troops and the creation of the pro-Western government, Syria has continued to exert political influence through Hizballah, Lebanon's largest political party also backed by Iran, and its Christian allies under General Michel Aoun...
...court. Because Lebanon's Shi'ites generally prefer soccer (perhaps reflecting their status as a traditionally disenfranchised minority), the main hoops action tends to be Christian vs. Christian, and Christian vs. Sunni. In fact, basketball is an extension of politics to such a degree that when General Michel Aoun, a Christian leader, turned against the country's mainline pro-government Christians, one of the first things he did was start a new basketball team, the Blue Stars...
...course, neither Aoun nor Hizballah is a poster child for democratic civil society. Aoun, as head of the Lebanese army in the early 1990s, launched a series of disastrous civil conflicts, while Hizballah sparked a pointless war with Israel last summer that resulted in the deaths of almost 2,000 Lebanese, many of them children. Still, both popular movements tap into the general resentment of average people who have watched as a relatively small number of Lebanese - well represented in the anti-Syria ruling coalition - have cashed in on the post civil-war reconstruction of the country...