Word: assad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Whether or not it is true," he says, "most people you deal with assume that the secret police will find out they were talking to an American journalist, and will not cross certain conversa tional red lines. Speaking critically about President Assad can be dangerous, especially mentioning that he is a member of the power ful minority religious group, the Alawites." By drawing on the in formation of private and understandably wary sources, plus the views of diplomats in Damascus and Palestinian officials with close ties in Syria, Suro was able nonetheless to carpenter together a remarkably candid portrait...
...Navy planes that attacked Syrian positions in Lebanon early Fast week were meant to send a message to the government of President Hafez Assad: for every Syrian strike against American forces, such as the previous day's firing on U.S. reconnaissance planes, expect a strike in return. Unfortunately, delivering the message proved costly: two planes lost, one pilot killed, one captured, a Lebanese woman dead in the crash of one of the fighter-bombers. The air attack also sent a number of unintended messages. It told the Lebanese that the U.S. armed forces are neither invincible nor invulnerable. It told...
...Syrians, despite the widely reported but still unexplained illness of President Assad, were determinedly pursuing their objectives in Lebanon and openly boasting about their military prowess in the face of the U.S. air attack. The Egyptians, whose peace treaty with Israel, orchestrated by the U.S. at Camp David, ranks as the most significant diplomatic achievement in the Middle East during the past decade, were publicly expressing shock over Washington's newly proclaimed alignment with Israel. In France, Italy and Britain, critics of those countries' commitments to the MultiNational Force in Lebanon were urging a pullout, though all three U.S. allies...
Though aspirations and methods have been adjusted to the realities of the 1980s, the passion for hegemony lives on in Damascus. Under the shrewd, ruthless, brutally dictatorial guidance of President Hafez Assad, 53, Syria has been making a bid for the past decade to grasp the torch of Arab unity and emerge as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East. By keeping its 62,000 troops in Lebanon and by supporting factions opposed to the government of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, Syria has become the key player in that fractured country's future. By fueling the raging rebellion within...
...will the U.S.-Israeli cooperation help break the bloody impasse on the ground in Lebanon? Shultz and other U.S. policymakers have felt that Syria's intransigence stemmed from Assad's belief that Israel had lost its military will during its internal debate over the invasion of Lebanon. The transition from Begin to Shamir in October and the ongoing economic crisis have intensified this perception. U.S. planners see Shamir as moving forcefully as a leader now and believe that his stronger ties with Washington may impress Syria. "The idea that we plan to unleash the Israelis on Syria...