Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Such views have little traction in the Shi'ite villages of the eastern Bekaa Valley where Toufeili lives. Local residents openly mock the stubborn cleric, accusing him of being on the payroll of Hizballah's opponents. Small wonder, then, that he rarely leaves his home, and that his bodyguard rarely leaves his side...
...Toufeili wears the Shi'ite clerical garb of white turban and black full-length robe, and sports a thick white beard. His tiny black eyes, glinting like chips of anthracite, are almost hidden in the fleshy folds of his chubby, tanned face. A man of cast-iron principles, Toufeili is a product of the eastern Bekaa, an area notorious for its lawlessness, its feuding Shi'ite clans, smuggling and narcotics production. When Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, Toufeili was in Tehran and helped organize the deployment in Lebanon of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who recruited and trained hundreds...
...operation. "If I had had anything to do with it I would say so because my relations with the Americans are not so good," he says with a soft chuckle. Toufeili is classified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Specially Designated Terrorist, one of six Lebanese Shi'ites included on the list...
...While willing to fess up to the bombings, Toufeili insists that the kidnappings of Westerners "had nothing to with Hizballah. Nothing at all." Indeed, as he puts it, Iran's policy of using Lebanese Shi'ites to kidnap Westerners was a "mistake" which he tried to redress...
...core Baathists, local Islamists and foreign jihadists - and their allies have encouraged the political isolation of their community from the political process, and they reap its benefits. Operating on the assumption proven in Sunni minds by events of recent years that they will be oppressed, or worse, in a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq, many Sunnis are willing to tacitly or actively support violence by Sunni militants and terrorists. So, the militants have the popular support that is the lifeblood of any insurgency because it allows fighters to camouflage themselves in the civilian population. Political sentiment in the Sunni communities leaves...