Word: assad
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Squadrons of Syrian tanks rolled into position around the southern suburbs of Beirut last week, their cannon muzzles pointed menacingly at the 16-sq.-mi. enclave. Two Syrian armored brigades, supported by two battalions of President Hafez Assad's elite Special Forces commandos, crouched behind barricades ringing the Shi'ite Muslim slums. Since May 6, fierce battles between rival militias had raged through the streets and alleys, causing many of the area's 250,000 residents to flee. In bloody hand-to-hand combat, the fanatical, pro- Iranian Hizballah had driven the more moderate, Syrian-backed Amal...
...Assad had mobilized for a possible intervention after Hizballah began to get the upper hand in the fighting. Reason: a total victory by the Islamic militants would threaten Syria's long-standing goal of controlling Lebanon's territory and dominating its domestic politics. Considering Lebanon to be a kind of buffer zone safeguarding Syria's own security, Assad has some 25,000 Syrian troops deployed around the country, in part to prevent Hizballah and Iran from turning it into an Islamic republic...
...misunderstanding and contempt. "Traditionally, there has always been a rather bad image of Islam in the West," says Ninian Smart, religion professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "In recent years," he adds, "that has been accentuated by the revolution in Iran and terrorism." Insists Dawud Assad, president of the U.S. Council of Masajid (mosques): "People call us terrorists, while ours is a religion of peace...
...moved into West Beirut in early 1987. The hostilities left the surprisingly strong Hizballah fighters in control of 70% of the disputed territory, a 16-sq.-mi. district of crowded slums that is home to 250,000 Shi'ites. Fighting was suspended after telephone consultations between Syrian President Hafez Assad and Iranian President Ali Khamenei. But the next day, the fragile alliance between Damascus and Tehran was taxed as Hizballah fighters broke the truce, drawing Syrian troops into the conflict...
With his prestige damaged by the murder of al-Wazir, Arafat evidently thought that making peace with Syria -- a leading exponent of the rejectionist, smash-Israel position -- would help him reaffirm his authority over the P.L.O. Assad, for his part, spotted an opportunity to assert his own championship of the intifadeh by embracing his old enemy. Yet as the pair were declaring their commitment to the rebellion, its true leadership remained where it has been all along: in the hands of the disaffected youths, middle- class shopkeepers, villagers and refugees in the occupied territories...