Word: hizballah
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...power of those ties and the "splendour and desolation" of the land, Glass set out from Alexandretta, now in southern Turkey, to Aqaba in Jordan, following the invasion path used by Alexander the Great and the Crusaders. His odyssey ended abruptly when a peculiarly modern kind of tribe, the Hizballah, kidnaped and held him hostage in Beirut for two months until his escape. The trip is the framework for this book. He describes it as a "literary and spiritual ramble through the history of a troubled land." It is really a travelogue, letting us see through Glass's omnivorous...
...been pushing Syria to take a more active role in securing the hostages' freedom. It was no accident that President Bush sent Syrian President Hafez Assad a warm congratulatory message on the 44th anniversary of Syrian independence last week. Syria's influence over Hizballah has been partly limited by the fact that Damascus is a supporter of the Shi'ite Amal, a secular Muslim group that continues to fight fierce battles with the fundamentalist Hizballah. But Hussein Musawi, leader of a pro-Syrian faction within Hizballah, is now believed to have taken control of the American hostages held...
...faces opposition from militants led by former Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, who remains fiercely opposed to the release of the hostages because it might lead to improved relations with the U.S. and the return of Western influence in Iran. In the early 1980s, Mohtashemi helped organize the Lebanese Hizballah. After Rafsanjani became President following the death of Ayatullah Khomeini last year, he began seeking to lure Hizballah leaders away from their longtime allegiance to Mohtashemi...
...been working at full blast since late February, when the Tehran Times called for the unconditional release of the 18 Western hostages, eight of them Americans, held in Lebanon for as long as five years. The day after the editorial appeared, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hizballah, a Lebanese group that holds some of the victims, added to the hopeful speculation by saying, "We have to think of finding realistic and humanitarian means to free the foreign hostages." After Rafsanjani's statement last week, the Bush Administration cautiously allowed, "We're encouraged by the comments...