Word: assad
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
Syria's hand is more visible in the continuing campaign to destroy Arafat. Though Assad and the P.L.O. chieftain have worked together in the past, the strains were always there. As early as 1969, when Assad was Defense Minister, he tried to regulate the activities of P.L.O. guerrillas in Syria. As President, he supported Arafat's avowed enemy Abu Nidal, a 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...
...Assad had long been looking for ways to clip Arafat, and the opportunity arrived last May: the P.L.O. chief unwisely elevated several unpopular commanders within Fatah, the paramilitary group that he established and that still accounts for about 80% of the P.L.O.'s military strength. Palestinian fighters, outraged by Arafat's appointments and by his growing preference for negotiation over combat, rose up in revolt. Encouraged by Syria, and in some cases backed by Syrian troops and artillery, the rebels gained strength through the summer and eventually forced the loyalists out of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and into Tripoli. When...
...numbers in the city's suburban refugee camps, it became clear that the wily chairman could hold out longer than expected. The Saudis and the Soviets, reluctant to see Arafat destroyed, began putting considerable pressure on Syria to accept a ceasefire. The pleas at first were ignored, but then Assad was hospitalized. Though it is impossible to say what role the President's illness played, Syria approved the halt in fighting. "His sickness prevented Assad from engaging in the extensive diplomacy necessary to resist the demands for a cease-fire," speculates a Western ambassador in Damascus. "Perhaps the decision...
...siege seriously weakened the P.L.O. and should permit Assad even more control over its affairs. The conflict, however, will switch from open warfare...