Word: syrians
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...Beirut in the early '80s, I watched as the Reagan administration threw its weight behind two other Gemayels, Pierre's uncle, Bashir, and father, Amin, in a radical project to re-make Lebanon as a bastion of pro-Western liberalism, aligned with Israel and free from Syrian domination and Iranian influence. That effort failed: Bashir wound up dead; Amin went into temporary exile; U.S. credibility evaporated and Americans remaining in Beirut became kidnap targets; and Israel got mired in an 18-year military occupation. By contrast, Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon swelled...
...September 2004, Ahdab broke a taboo by publicly announcing that he had received anonymous death threats intended to pressure him into voting for a controversial three-year extension of the presidency of the pro-Syrian incumbent, Emile Lahoud. Ahdab ignored the threats and voted against the extension. He was not the only politician under pressure. Then-Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was allegedly directly threatened by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to support Lahoud's extension, despite his deep opposition to the move...
...Syria and its opponents that led to Hariri's murder in a massive bomb blast five months later. And two years on, that confrontation appears to still be taking a deadly toll. Gemayel's murder has brought Lebanon's Western-backed government dangerously close to collapse. Six pro-Syrian Shi'ite ministers quit the 24-member coalition cabinet a week ago after their bid for extra seats that would give them a veto-wielding one-third stake in the government was rebuffed. Now, following Gemayel's murder, it will take the resignation - or death - of two more ministers to bring...
...another resignation or assassination," says Ahdab. The ministerial resignations came on the eve of a cabinet discussion to endorse draft United Nations statutes for the creation of an international tribunal to judge Hariri's assassins. With Damascus widely blamed for the killing, Ahdab says the resignations of the pro-Syrian ministers were carefully timed. "They [quit] so they didn't have to ratify what came from the U.N.," he says...
...Still, Ahdab, a multi-lingual businessman from a prominent Tripoli family, believes the root of Lebanon's political crisis lies in a fundamental disagreement over the future identity of Lebanon. Does Lebanon want to remain a pluralistic, open society or join the Syrian-Iranian alliance of anti-Western states? he asks. "An agreement is needed on what kind of Lebanon we want for the future," he says. Until that happens, Ahdab and his political colleagues will continue to remain vigilant and wary of the threat that lurks in Lebanon's darker corners...