Word: bekaa
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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...
...appealed the deportation orders, but they dropped their cases after their lawyers were not permitted to see evidence against them. The quartet was whisked out of the country within 24 hours, with no notification to their families, and was last reported to be in Syrian hands in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The other five, including three fundamentalist leaders, are continuing to appeal...
...Iran have been successful in exporting their revolution to Lebanon. Assad welcomed Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards when they arrived in Lebanon in 1982 to help fight off the Israeli invasion. Some 2,000 stayed on after the war to assist Hizballah in the Shi'ite strongholds in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. Assad was still delighted when Lebanon's militant Shi'ites unleashed their ferocious fighting power against the Israeli occupation forces in the south and against the U.S.-led multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut. By that time Shi'ite political power had effectively filled the vacuum created...
Hizballah's exploits are not confined to kidnaping. With the probable aid of 2,000 Revolutionary Guards stationed in the Bekaa Valley and 400 in southern Lebanon, the Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for six suicide attacks between 1982 and 1984 that took more than 500 lives and helped drive American, French and Israeli troops out of Lebanon. The campaign included the 1983 truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen billeted in Beirut...
...fighting continued, the big losers were clearly the Syrians. Damascushas 30,000 soldiers in northern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Initial pleas by the Damascus government for a cease-fire were ignored. At one point, Amal Leader Nabih Berri ordered his men to "stand fast. Fight until victory or martyrdom...