Word: baalbek
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...Baalbek is the most schizoid of Lebanese towns, home to both ancient beauty and modern terror. Dominating the landscape are the magnificent, 2,000-year- old ruins of three Roman temples, their stone pillars rising high above the Bekaa Valley. Since 1983, Baalbek has also been under the control of the Shi'ite Muslim fundamentalist group known as Hizballah (Party of God), whose members claim allegiance to Iran. Operating under several different names, Hizballah is believed to have plotted the 1983 bombing of Marine headquarters in Beirut that killed 241 Americans. Since 1982, groups tied to Hizballah have kidnapped more...
...capture, when he ventured into Beirut's southern suburbs to quiz Hizballah spiritual leader Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. But Anderson's colleagues at the Associated Press believe he may have put himself on Hizballah's blacklist as far back as 1983, when he traveled to their stronghold in Baalbek to grill Shi'ite leaders about the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks...
...thought the MiGs were heading directly toward them. The Syrians immediately began to bring SA-2 missile batteries into positions along their border with Lebanon. Even more ominous, they transported SA-6 and SA-8 mobile missile batteries into Lebanon to positions along the Damascus-Beirut Highway and around Baalbek. The Israelis, concerned that the Syrian reinforcements would make Israeli reconnaissance flights exceedingly dangerous, asked the U.S. for help. Acknowledging to U.S. Envoy Richard Murphy that Israel had erred in firing at the Syrian planes, Peres persuaded the American, who was in Damascus at the time, to urge President Hafez...
...turned to indirect diplomacy. Late in the first day of the crisis Reagan secretly cabled Syrian President Hafez Assad and asked him to use his influence to free the hostages or at least keep them alive. Though the Damascus regime has harbored Shi'ite extremists in terrorist camps in Baalbek, a city in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Assad is known to want to contain Shi'ite terror, as he takes his turn at trying to pacify Lebanon. His response to the U.S. request, according to Administration aides, was "positive." Assad is believed to have encouraged Berri to take a public...
Lashing out at a target, almost any target, would serve at least one purpose. It would be cathartic. For a nation seemingly humiliated, for a people fed up with too much talk and too little action, dropping a bomb on Baalbek or shooting a few Shi'ite fanatics would be grimly satisfying. Yet for policymakers the ultimate goal must be not simply to avenge terrorism but to stop it. Doing nothing, it seems certain, invites more atrocities. Yet force often begets force. For Ronald Reagan, the hard question is whether retaliating against terrorists will deter terrorism -- or only provoke more...