Word: shying
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Chemical weapons work fast, then disappear. . They were used during the Iran-Iraq war, sometimes with devastating consequences for combatants, but with almost none for the environment. Since the gulf war began, allied planes and missiles have pounded Iraqi chemical- weapons plants, situated about 25 miles northwest of the Shi'ite holy city of Samarra, that manufacture mustard gas and nerve agents. Because the plants are surrounded by a 25-sq.-km (9.6-sq.-mi.) "exclusion zone," the likelihood of a deadly plume invading populated areas is small. Explosives would also tend to break the gases down into less deadly...
...designs on Iraq. Syria's President Hafez Assad has long claimed to be the sole legitimate leader of the Pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, rival factions of which rule his country and Saddam's. Turkey has historical claims on Iraq's oil-rich Mosul province in the north. And Shi'ite-led Iran could easily justify a land snatch as a means of liberating the Shi'ite majority in Iraq, which is dominated by a Sunni minority. Should moves to sunder Iraq begin, the country's Kurdish minority might rise up to carve its own state out of the north...
...Lebanon north of the Chouf Mountains is expected to enjoy relative peace. Several of the dozen or so militias that sprang up during the country's 15 years of civil war have promised to disband their forces and transform themselves into political parties. The pro-Iranian Hizballah, a Shi'ite extremist group that is thought to hold most of the Western hostages in Lebanon, feels threatened by the recent Syrian deployment in its stronghold, Beirut's southern suburbs. But given the importance Damascus attaches to its relations with Iran, especially in the midst of the effort to isolate Iraq...
Clandestine Iraqi radio broadcasts have recently begun calling on the Shi'ites to rise up -- so far, to no avail. "The Iraqis have very good intelligence," says one U.S. official. "They've already focused on the discrimination at Saudi Aramco." Says another official: "The Shi'a have a grievance, and if they are ignored, it will probably grow...
Ostrovsky's most sensational claim is that in 1983 Mossad received specific intelligence, down to the make of a Mercedes truck outfitted to carry bombs, that Shi'ite extremists in Beirut were planning a major terrorist attack. Though the U.S. forces then stationed in Lebanon were an obvious target possibility, Mossad officials only warned the U.S. in the most general terms. The attack was carried out at Marine Corps headquarters and resulted in 241 American deaths. Writes Ostrovsky: "The problem was that if we had leaked information and it was traced back, our informant would have been killed. The next...