Word: sectarian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...crisis besetting their country, the distant thud of heavy artillery sounded in the hills beyond, and reports circulated of mistreatment of Muslims by Christians and of Christians by Muslims. Before parting, the clerics called for a combined effort by Lebanon's religious leaders to seek an end to sectarian bloodletting. Within hours, preparations were under way for an extraordinary "spiritual summit" between Christians and Muslims...
Modern Lebanon is a strictly sectarian society: citizens must carry an identity card giving their religious affiliation. Although the two main currents of religion are Christian and Muslim, each is a mosaic of supporting and frequently feuding parts. As a result, there are 17 recognized religious groups: five are Muslim, one is Jewish and eleven are Christian (among them Maronite, Greek, Armenian and Syrian Catholics and their Orthodox counterparts...
...Muslims last week watched the Marines load equipment onto ships and made no attempt to interfere. "We know they are leaving and we'll let them go quietly," said Abu Khalid, a Druze commander. But in the swirl of Lebanon's sectarian violence, the Marines were dangerously exposed. Even though the Druze and Amal leadership granted them safe passage, there remained the risk that extremists of some stripe would try to interfere with the withdrawal, either out of revenge or for political purposes of their own. No matter how orderly the pullout, it now seemed all but impossible...
...well beyond what the U.S. was able or willing to commit. In the judgment of one Pentagon official, bringing enough order to Lebanon to enable formation of a true central government would have required not 1,600 Marines but 100,000 U.S. troops-and even then, the depth of sectarian hatreds, which Washington appears to have totally misjudged, might have made the task impossible...
...retrospect, it never worked particularly well as a nation-state. But during the late 1950s and 1960s, Lebanon was prosperous, relatively peaceful, more or less democratic, a relaxed oasis of tolerance for the Islamic world. Beneath its patina of tranquillity, however, stirred future troubles: a bewildering mixture of sectarian communities that had fought one another, on and off, for centuries. Two events brought the latent antagonisms to the surface: the decision by the Palestine Liberation Organization in the late 1960s to establish its principal base of operations in Lebanon, and Israel's disastrous invasion of the country...