Word: hafez
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bashar Assad, Syria's baby-faced, blunt-spoken President, probably never imagined he would be going head to head with the U.S. over the future of the Middle East. That was more the kind of mission relished by his late father Hafez Assad, the stern military commander who ruled Syria for 30 years until his death in 2000. Bashar's humble ambition was to leave politics to others in the clan and become a doctor. In the early '90s he went to London to study ophthalmology. There he courted his wife Asma, a young banker of Syrian origin...
These days Palestinians celebrate the suicides in newspaper announcements that read, perversely, like wedding invitations. "The Abdel Jawad and Assad families and their relatives inside the West Bank and in the Diaspora declare the martyrdom of their son, the martyr Ahmen Hafez Sa'adat," reads a March 30 notice for the 22-year-old killer of four Israelis in a shooting attack. Palestinian children play a game called "Being a Martyr," in which the "martyr" buries himself in a shallow grave. And the job of bomber comes with established cash bonuses and health benefits for the surviving family. How else...
...native of Helmand, Usmani's a pragmatist, not a die-hard jihadi, and if the tide turns seriously against the Taliban in the southern provinces, he might step forward and negotiate Kandahar's surrender. He's held in check, to some extent by the 25-year old police chief, Hafez Majid (Mullah Omar owes the kid his life for pulling him out the wreckage after a truck bomb destroyed his house in Kandahar several years back.) Majid is fanatically devoted to Mullah Omar. In Kandahar, the other key player is the governor, Mullah Hassan, who is also more...
...question of legitimacy is flagrant in Iran, where President Mohammed Khatami and his supporters won all the popular elections but could not win real power, which instead resides with Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. In Syria it seems there is no way out of Hafez Assad's authoritarian legacy. If Saddam Hussein finally falls from power in Iraq, heaven knows who might replace him, so ruthless has he been in suppressing rivals. Yasser Arafat's lack of a mandate has made him unable to make historic decisions in the peace process, so he instead alternates between directions...
...Hafez Assad 69 Syria's President held an iron grip on power for 30 years...