Word: sect
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...home, Assad has brought a stable government to a country that had rarely experienced that phenomenon before he came to power 13 years ago. His durability is especially noteworthy considering that Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that accounts for only 13% of his country's 9.6 million people (most of the rest are Sunni Muslims). Assad's long tenure has, however, been purchased at great cost. The regime cruelly silences opponents both at home and abroad, maintains a standing army of 275,000, and has five intelligence agencies to keep watch...
...broke out in 1980, Assad, who has long been bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, rushed to support the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Aside from giving Damascus an estimated $600 million in cheap oil, the Ayatullah has bestowed his blessing on Assad's minority Alawites, a sect that most Sunnis consider heretical. In return, Damascus has shut down the Iraqi oil pipeline that slices across Syria to the Mediterranean, thereby slowing the flow of petrodollars to the financially strapped Baghdad government...
Despite their radically different habits, Rifaat and Hafez Assad share the same political goals. As members of the Alawite branch of Shi'ite Islam, both are determined to preserve the sect's control. The Alawites have dominated Syria for 13 years, mostly because of the adamantine grip of Hafez
...fact that the Israelis did not remain in the mountains long enough to give the Lebanese Army a chance to fill the vacuum. As a result, members of the independent Lebanese forces moved in immediately, setting off the fighting between Christian militiamen and the Druze, a breakaway Islamic sect...
Besides sharing Iran's hatred of Iraq, Syrian President Assad has received something from Khomeini that is exceedingly precious to him: recognition of the religious legitimacy of the minority Alawite Muslim sect, to which the Syrian President and his loyalist adherents belong. It is altogether possible, Helms believes, that the Syrians are helping the pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon as a way of repaying the Ayatullah for giving the Alawites his seal of approval. Both Syria and Iran denied any role in the bombings, though newspapers in the two countries called the attack justified...