Word: arabized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Syria's relations with most other Arab s countries range from mutual dis| trust to outright hatred. Saudi y Arabia and the rest of the Persian I Gulf oil states give Damascus ğmore than $1 billion a year in cash, partly because they deem it essential to have at least one strong Arab state confronting Israel. But the payment also serves as a form of protection money to ensure that Assad does not try to overthrow those conservative regimes. Kuwait, with its large population of Syrian guest workers, feels especially vulnerable. "Assad is a very bright...
Syria's ties with renegade non-Arab Iran, on the other hand, have been highly profitable for Damascus. When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, Assad, who has long been bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, rushed to support the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Aside from giving Damascus an estimated $600 million in cheap oil, the Ayatullah has bestowed his blessing on Assad's minority Alawites, a sect that most Sunnis consider heretical. In return, Damascus has shut down the Iraqi oil pipeline that slices across Syria to the Mediterranean, thereby slowing the flow of petrodollars...
...rogue P.L.O. leader who ran the Black June terrorist group. After the Lebanese civil war, Assad supported Beirut's right to impose rules on the P.L.O. even though the group was far stronger than the government. While Assad saw the Palestinian cause as subordinate to his wider vision of Arab unity, Arafat believed the P.L.O. must remain Independent of any Arab nation. Differences hi the personal styles of the two men also played a part in their estrangement. A lifelong military man, Assad is used to giving orders, expecting them to be obeyed and staying out of public sight, while...
...independent monarchy under King Faisal I of the Hashernite royal family. But Britain and France were at work redrawing the region's boundaries. Faisal's sovereignty ended after only a few months when the French claimed Syria under a League of Nations mandate. To weaken the Arab nationalist movement, the French created contemporary Lebanon by carving from Syria the Christian region around Mount Lebanon, the predominantly Muslim Bekaa Valley and the coastal cities of Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon and Tyre. Even as they never forgave the Crusaders who overran their homeland, the Syrians have never absolved the French...
...with so many countries born in the past 40 years, Syria's modern history has been a saga of coups and countercoups. In 1958 Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser merged his country with Syria to form the United Arab Republic, but the union lasted only 3½ years. In 1963 the Arab Socialist Resurrection (or Baath) Party overthrew President Nazem Koudsi and seized power in Damascus...