Word: syrians
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...Beirut," in Middle East conversation, has long served as a synonym for civil chaos. But in recent weeks the mushrooming protest movement to eject Syrian troops from the country had begun to paint the Lebanese capital in a new light. Pundits wondered whether the protests presaged a wave of Eastern Europe-style pastel-shaded revolutions that would sweep aside Arab autocracy, and President Bush had warned the Syrians to leave in order that the "good democracy" of Lebanon could flourish unmolested. But a reality check came Tuesday in the form of a gigantic pro-Syria demonstration, which drew...
...solidarity with Syria, which faces overwhelming pressure from the international community to pull out its security forces. More importantly, perhaps, the event was a warning shot to anyone in the international community considering foreign intervention designed to remake Lebanon or to fill the vacuum that would result from a Syrian departure. Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah may be particularly concerned that the U.S. and France might try to send in an international stabilization force to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which mandates not only Syrian withdrawal, but also the disarming of all militias - an unmistakable reference to Hizballah...
...Hizballah on Tuesday made clear that it will have a major say in ordering a post-Syrian Lebanon, even though right now Syria's departure is far from a done deal. Under overwhelming international pressure, Syria on Monday announced that it would withdraw its troops into the eastern Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border, pending a full withdrawal at an unspecified later date. That's hardly sufficient to satisfy the demands of the Lebanese opposition groups, backed by the United States, for a complete withdrawal not only of Syria's 14,000 uniformed troops, but more importantly to remove...
...anti-Syrian opposition is pressing for full withdrawal ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for May, and is using Syria's international isolation - and its failure to install a new regime of its own making in Beirut - to press the case. And their prospects have never been brighter, given the wave of international and domestic outrage that followed the Valentine's Day assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri...
...Hizballah's efforts to apply the brakes to a Syrian withdrawal signal a failure of initial opposition efforts to forge an anti-Syria consensus with Nasrallah's movement. It may be touted as non-sectarian, but in reality it represents an amalgam of traditional political forces from the Christian, Sunni Muslim and Druze communities. Hizballah speaks for the majority of Shiites. And its response to the opposition campaign betrays a measure of suspicion that its rivals may be engaging in the longstanding tradition of Lebanese factions drawing in foreign allies to reinforce their own positions...