Word: shies
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...host of top leaders and party elders, as well as representatives of all key factions in the military, including those who had been considered loyal to party moderates. Present too were President Yang Shangkun, 82, a former army general and the reputed mastermind of the Tiananmen attack, and Qiao Shi, 64, the state security chief who may become General Secretary of the Communist Party. Conspicuously missing was the incumbent in that post, the moderate Zhao Ziyang, whose whereabouts have remained unknown since late last month, when he held sympathetic talks with student representatives in Tiananmen. The officials applauded as Deng...
...great revolutionary upheavals of this century? To begin with, the time was ripe. The Shah had pushed his feudal and devout country into the modern, secular world too far and too fast, using torture and execution to suppress dissent. In addition, Khomeini's place in the world of Shi'ite theology gave him a platform. Unlike Sunni Muslims, members of Islam's other, much larger branch, Shi'ites believe in an intermediary between God and man. In Shi'ism's first centuries, this role of mediator was played by the Twelve Imams, who were thought to be the rightful successors...
...Shah. Soon after his release a few months later, Khomeini was arrested again, this time for fomenting riots against a modernization program that included land reform. He was imprisoned for half a year, then exiled to Turkey. He soon moved to the Iraqi city of An Najaf, one of Shi'ism's holiest shrines. There for 14 years he taught, meditated and taped messages of hate against the Shah that were distributed on cassettes to mosques back in Iran...
While he was consolidating his revolution at home, Khomeini was seeking to extend it to other nations. Iraq attacked Iran across the Shatt al-Arab in September 1980 after Khomeini called for an uprising of Iraqi Shi'ites and fomented skirmishes along the border. Iranian forces blunted the Iraqi offensive, and two months after the war began, the conflict was largely stalemated. After years of fighting, Tehran lost all hope of victory when Iraq stopped an Iranian drive for the port city of Basra in early 1987; a year later, Iraq began the offensive that eventually brought Iran...
...original motivation was to avenge the mistreatment of Shi'ites in Lebanon and to vent his hatred of the U.S. and Israel. But U.S. sources say he has become obsessed with trying to secure the freedom of his brother-in-law Mustafa Badreddin and 16 other Shi'ites jailed in Kuwait after a 1983 bombing blitz. Mughniyah launched his subsequent kidnaping and hijacking spree to spring the 17 in a prisoners-for-hostages swap. Among his victims: William Buckley, the CIA station chief, who died in captivity...