Word: rafik
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...second anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination, his son and political heir bluntly warns that a failure to establish an international tribunal to try his father's killers will grant the Syrian regime a "license to kill" in Lebanon and dash any hopes of democracy spreading in the Middle East. "There is a country and a regime that has been pounding at Lebanon with assassinations and explosions after explosions and killings after killings, which have been going on for over 30 years," Saad Hariri told TIME in an exclusive interview in his heavily guarded home in Beirut...
...exploded minutes apart in two buses near the Christian town of Bikfaya in the Lebanese mountains 20 miles north of Beirut. The blasts killed three people and wounded over 20, heightening tensions a day before hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are expected to converge on downtown Beirut to commemorate Rafik Hariri's murder two years ago. Hariri condemned the explosions as an "act of terrorism" that aimed to "fill the hearts of people with fear." "I can't tell you that they [the perpetrators] haven't succeeded. People are worried," he said...
...grim political situation in Lebanon today stands in marked contrast to the heady optimism, two years ago, of the so-called Cedar Revolution, the month-long series of street demonstrations triggered by the killing of Rafik Hariri and 22 other people in a massive Valentine's Day truck bomb explosion, which tore through Beirut's plush seafront hotel district. Hariri had been on the verge of leading an electoral campaign aimed at ending the dominance of Lebanese politics by neighboring Syria, a goal that many Lebanese believe cost him his life. "The Syrian regime killed my father," said Saad Hariri...
...which forms the backbone of the government and includes the Sunnis, has seized upon the support of the West and its Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia to break Syria's grip on Lebanon. Damascus was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebnaon following the February 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, a former premier, whose death many Lebanese blame on the Syrian regime...
...Lebanon's political fault lines today tend to follow sectarian boundaries, with the Shi'ites overwhelmingly following the Hizballah-led opposition, while the majority of Sunnis back the government and the Future Tide movement of Saad Hariri, Rafik's son and political heir. The tension between the two camps also mirrors the broader Shi'ite-Sunni political rift throughout the Arab world that has been rekindled by the Iraq conflict. The chief protagonists in this new "cold war," as some analysts describe it, are Shi'ite Iran and Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni Arab world...