Word: hizballah
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...While the U.S. brands Hizballah a terrorist organization, Tuesday's turnout signaled the depth of its roots in the Lebanese mainstream. The Iran-backed Islamist organization, which maintains a militia that would likely be more than a match for the Lebanese national army in the event of a showdown, currently holds more seats than any other single party in Lebanon's parliament. The party is the major voice in the Shiite community, which today may be around 40 percent of Lebanon's population...
...Hizballah ostensibly rallied in solidarity with Syria, which faces overwhelming pressure from the international community to pull out its security forces. More importantly, perhaps, the event was a warning shot to anyone in the international community considering foreign intervention designed to remake Lebanon or to fill the vacuum that would result from a Syrian departure. Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah may be particularly concerned that the U.S. and France might try to send in an international stabilization force to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which mandates not only Syrian withdrawal, but also the disarming of all militias - an unmistakable...
...Hizballah stakes its claim...
...Hizballah on Tuesday made clear that it will have a major say in ordering a post-Syrian Lebanon, even though right now Syria's departure is far from a done deal. Under overwhelming international pressure, Syria on Monday announced that it would withdraw its troops into the eastern Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border, pending a full withdrawal at an unspecified later date. That's hardly sufficient to satisfy the demands of the Lebanese opposition groups, backed by the United States, for a complete withdrawal not only of Syria's 14,000 uniformed troops, but more importantly to remove...
...most recent edition of the State Department's annual "Global Patterns of Terrorism" report, which notes that "Iran provided Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian rejectionist groups - notably HAMAS, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine?General Command - with funding, safehaven, training, and weapons" and adds "The Syrian Government in 2003 continued to provide political and material support to Palestinian rejectionist groups [operating] from Syria, although they have lowered their public profiles since May, when Damascus announced that the groups had voluntarily closed their offices...