Word: lebanon
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Nesher was a 23-year-old rookie in the Israeli secret service when he was captured May 1,1984 by Syrian forces, who occupied parts of Lebanon at the time. Israeli and Syrian forces were facing off over the Bekaa region - the area near Syria that Israel attacked earlier this week, including bombings on the town of Baalbek. There were fears that Nesher's capture would touch off a large-scale confrontation. He was brought to Damascus where he says he underwent two months of interrogation and torture. He was eventually released as a part of an exchange for more...
...warned earlier this year that his forces would retaliate if Iran came under attack from the U.S. or Israel. His Mehdi Army fought two pitched battles with U.S. forces in April and August of 2004, both of which ended inconclusively with political deals. And like Hizballah in Lebanon, Sadr's movement, even as it maintains a private army, is now a key element of the democratically elected government...
...disarming Sadr's army may prove, if anything, even more difficult than disarming Hizballah in Lebanon. That's because the three-year campaign of terror against Shi'ite civilians by Sunni insurgents has led the community to see its militias, rather than the central government, as its only protection. As that violence escalates, the likelihood diminishes that these communities will support any effort to forcefully dismantle the militias. Nor can an agreement to disarm be easily orchestrated by removing the insurgent threat, since the branch of the insurgency responsible for targeting the Shi'ites is led by al-Qaeda...
...Israel's campaign against Hizballah in Lebanon, moreover, has inflamed Shi'ite public opinion against the Coalition. Sadr has warned that his movement will not stand by passively in the face of attacks on Lebanon, and the popularity of that sentiment among Shi'ites was highlighted by the fact that more moderate voices such as Prime Minister Maliki and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani echoed Sadr's harsh criticism of the U.S.-British opposition to an immediate cease-fire...
...disarming those militias is more likely to lie in a new political agreement with their party bosses, in conjunction with a wider national-unity power-sharing agreement capable of shrinking the base of the Sunni insurgency. But the mounting sectarian violence and the passions stoked by Lebanon make the prospects for such a deal right now more remote than ever...