Word: ites
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...with unkempt beards, ill-fitting pants and untucked white shirts - the trademark garb of the Basij paramilitary vigilantes - milled about in the sprawling parking lot, said to be able to fit 20,000 cars. Dozens of tour buses sat idle after bringing in crowds from nearby Shi'ite strongholds like Iraq, while the license plates of the mostly run-down, domestic-made Paykans in the lot indicated that many traveled from the far corners of this country: Kermanshah in the west, Shiraz in the south, Yazd in the southeast. (See pictures of the long legacy of Ayatullah Khomeini...
Business magnate Salah Ezzeddine was known as a pious, generous man. Hailing from a small Shi'ite Muslim town in southern Lebanon, he was a success story among the country's poorest, historically marginalized religious sect. With his reputation for generosity (he built a stadium and a mosque for his hometown of Maaroub, sponsored pilgrimages to Mecca and published children's books), few were suspicious when Ezzeddine promised investors a share of his business with the lure of outstanding returns - from 20% to 40% - and few details of how the plan worked or guarantees or paperwork. Still, what he seemed...
...went bankrupt, ostensibly from the effects of the global financial crisis. But rumors swirled in the press of a pyramid scheme of more than $1 billion, and the local media dubbed Ezzeddine the Lebanese Bernie Madoff. Last weekend the Lebanese government charged him with fraud. All across the Shi'ite-populated regions of Lebanon, thousands of small investors - many of whom bundled small sums of money with their neighbors to give to Ezzeddine - feel betrayed by both the man and the organization. "I inherited $100,000 from my father to continue my studies. I invested them with Ezzeddine...
...worst part of the scandal for Hizballah might come not in dollars and cents but in damage to its reputation for honesty, competence and integrity, which, given its status as the world's most formidable organization of guerrilla fighters, is what makes the Shi'ite political party popular not just in Lebanon but in the wider Arab world. Those traits were on display when Hizballah engineers and social-service workers fanned out immediately in the aftermath of the war with Israel in 2006 to assess damage and offer assistance to its supporters who had lost their homes and business. Months...
...enemies. Already struggling with a militant campaign that has ravaged the northwest and the tribal areas and terrorized major cities, Pakistan, analysts say, can ill-afford a revival of sectarian violence that plagued the country during the 1980s, when Saudi-backed Sunni militant groups clashed with Iranian-backed Shi'ite ones as part of a regional proxy war. Says Ayesha Siddiqa, an independent security analyst: "It isn't just Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan where Iran can create trouble if it wants...