Word: militia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...result, the officer corps stopped seeing itself as the defender of a national entity known as Iraq and began to see its mission as the preservation of the party and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By 1980, a fifth of Iraq's work force was in the army, police or militia. The effect of Saddam's policies was to turn the country into an ideologically motivated military machine. Rumors of coups and plots within the military had no significant result on the conduct of the eight-year conflict with Iran, says Anthony Cordesman, author of The Lessons of Modern...
...capital. On the way, the driver stopped to pick up a second passenger, a heavyset, balding man whom Pascal-Trouillot could not identify in the dark. Only after arriving at the palace did the President learn that her companion was Dr. Roger Lafontant, former head of the Tontons Macoutes militia, and that she was his hostage in a coup attempt...
...Saddam returned to Baghdad in 1963 and started organizing a militia for the Baath Party, which finally succeeded in grabbing power permanently in 1968. Under the nominal leadership of General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the man who held the real control was his relative Saddam Hussein. Keeping things in the family, Saddam married another relative, Sajida Talfah, the daughter of the officer who had raised...
...provoked when Khomeini began calling for the overthrow of Saddam's "blasphemous" regime. He is a Sunni Muslim, though most Iraqis belong to the rival Shi'ite branch, as did Khomeini. Saddam responded by invading, confident that his powerful, Soviet-equipped army could easily smash the Ayatullah's ragtag militia, but the Iranians fought back. When the going got especially rough, Saddam turned to poison gas, a horror weapon outlawed after World...
...Khiam prison in southern Lebanon, 304 men and women are held in such cells by the South Lebanon Army, the Israeli-sponsored 2,500-man militia that rules Israel's self-proclaimed security zone. Most of the prisoners are Lebanese Shi'ites. Many are members of Hizballah, caught while attempting to attack SLA positions and patrols or Israeli border settlements. Some were arrested by the SLA security apparatus for interrogation. None have ever been charged or tried. Some will be released if their interrogators decide they are innocent. But for most, the only chance to get out will come when...