Word: iraq
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...miniature Stalingrad on the Mediterranean. An uprising in the summer of 2007 by an insurgent jihadist group, Fatah al-Islam, reduced Nahr al-Bared to rubble and made its 31,000 residents homeless. Though most Fatah al-Islam members were not Palestinians but foreign Arabs from places such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the lawlessness of the camps - which lie outside the authority of the Lebanese state - make them excellent incubators for extremist groups. And the concrete jungle of Nahr al-Bared was the perfect urban-warfare environment. Just 300 jihadis held their own against more than 11,000 Lebanese...
Chehadeh Jawhar, the Palestinian military commander of Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Greater Syria), trained al-Qaeda militants in Iraq before moving to Ein el Hilweh. When Jawhar spoke with TIME in March last year, he said that the jihadist factions in the camp were supported by intelligence agencies from the countries that have turned Lebanon into a battlefield. "Anyone who has a project in Lebanon can use the Palestinians to create chaos," he said. Four months later, Jawhar died in a street fight...
...response of the Bush Administration to the attacks of 9/11 was to invade Iraq. Another was to order up a new fleet of hyper-secure helicopters to transport the Commander in Chief - out of concern that a President borne by the current generation of choppers could be cut off from the rest of the world. But like the war in Iraq, the new helicopters are taking much longer, and costing far more, than originally anticipated. As President Barack Obama winds down the war, it's looking increasingly likely that he'll also end the Pentagon's four-year effort...
...President Barack Obama prepares to green-light a plan to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 18 months, he'll face skepticism from some military commanders who fear the withdrawal may be too hasty to maintain the country's recent security gains. But the President ought to be reassured by the assessment of Marine Major General John Kelly, who just completed a 13-month tour as the top U.S. commander in Anbar province...
...Late in the summer of 2006, the top Marine intelligence officer in Iraq cabled his superiors at the Pentagon that the war was essentially lost in Anbar; his dire assessment soon surfaced on the front page of the Washington Post. "The prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim," the newspaper said, summarizing the report. "There is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there." One anonymous official who read the report flatly told the paper "the United States has lost in Anbar." (See pictures of the Anbar Awakening movement...