Word: syria
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Body of Lies is itself a maze movie, a subgenre that has both its seductions and its brambles. A maze movie flatters viewers' intelligence, their ability to sort out the jigsaw pieces of an elaborate puzzle. So the film hopscotches the globe, Syriana-style, from Qatar to Syria, Amman to Baghdad, with an incendiary side trip to Manchester, England, and back to Hoffman's office and breakfast nook in Virginia. The film introduces so many swarthy faces--foremost among them Hani Salaam (Mark Strong), the Jordanian intelligence chief--and in such a hurry, you may feel you need the equivalent...
...What we tend to ignore is why Syria has had an uninterrupted record of attaching itself to radical causes and countries like Iran. For starters, Syria is ruled by a besieged and insecure minority, the Alawites, a heterodox-Shi'ite ethnic minority. About 12% of Syria's population, the Alawites are looked at by extremist Sunni Muslims as heretics, fallen-away Muslims, usurpers who should be put to the sword. In the late '70s and early '80s, the Sunni extremists came close to getting their way. During a February 1982 Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Hama, Syria's third largest city...
...wasn't until the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that Syria finally beat the Muslim Brothers. By joining Iran in the so-called "Islamic resistance" against Israel, Assad associated the Alawites with a cause larger than themselves. It was not unlike the '60s and '70s when Syria backed radical Palestinian groups - and fought Israel head-on in 1967 and 1973. The 18-year war in Lebanon (1982-2000) decisively undercut the Muslim Brothers' charge that the Alawites were apostate traitors and dupes of Israel and the United States. Had the Muslim Brothers continued to kill Alawites, they would have been...
...Given a choice, the Alawites would be happy to skirt the 21st century, satisfied with ruling a Third World backwater. But geography won't allow it. Syria is at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in which Syria has no choice but take sides. Since the Alawites cannot settle with Tel Aviv and survive the wrath of the Muslim Brothers, it remains reliant on its alliance with Tehran. And this is not to mention that with the division between Shi'ites and Sunnis widening, the Alawites will feel they need Iran and its message of belligerence to Israel more...
...provide in the event of a possible Iranian attack. But with the Russians already peeved at Israel for having had military advisers inside Georgia when war broke out over South Ossetia, the radar's deployment in Israel, say officials, might make Moscow even more likely to supply Iran and Syria with its highly-accurate SA300 anti-aircraft missile batteries...