Word: suleimane
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Expectations were low when the former head of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman, became president in May 2008 after a nearly two-year political crisis that ended in pitched battles between rival militias in the streets of Beirut. The country was torn apart by squabbles between the Iran-backed opposition led by Hizballah, the anti-Israeli militia group and political party, and the American- backed government that Hizballah suspected of trying to disarm it. Though Suleiman was respected by all sides, the political compromise that put him in office did nothing to solve the underlying issue dividing...
...Susan R. Suleiman, chair of the literature and comparative literature department, said that the retirement of the literature concentration’s administrator, Barbara J. Akiba, will make up a “decent chunk” of the 15 percent budget cut that the FAS administration has requested of all departments...
...identity and motive of the killer, there is no shortage of speculation in Syria. Nicknamed "the imported general" by his friends because of his fair complexion and foreign looks, Suleiman had been a key aide to Assad since the mid-1990s, when Bashar was being groomed to succeed his father, Hafez al-Assad, as president. Suleiman, who comes from the same Alawite religious sect as the Assad family, supervised several portfolios, and oversaw Syria's weapons research and development program. After Assad became president in 2000, Suleiman handled his intelligence affairs and was reportedly also in charge of arms transfers...
...Suleiman's murder comes at a critical time for Syria, which is presently engaged in a delicate balancing act of pursuing indirect peace talks with Israel and improved ties to the West, at the same time as maintaining its relations with Hizballah and Iran. In exchange for the return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, the Israeli government demands that Syria curtails its strategic alliance with Iran and its backing for Hizballah and for Palestinian militant groups. Still, since Syria and Israel revealed in May that they are negotiating via Turkish mediation, Damascus has paradoxically strengthened...
...well-informed Syrian source told TIME that Suleiman's death could be connected to the fallout surrounding the assassination in Damascus last February of Hizballah's top military commander, Imad Mughniyah, who was killed by a car bomb. Regime insiders indicate that the Mughniyah killing, which caused the Syrian leader serious embarrassment with his Iranian and Hizballah allies, touched off a purge in the senior ranks of Syria's intelligence services. Some speculate that these purges may have created a revenge motive for Suleiman's killing...