Saturday, March 12, 2011

Hezbollah

Hezbollah is currently a Shia Muslim military/political group that supports Islamic socialism in Lebanon. Hezbollah's military branch is known as "The Islamic Resistance". Hezbollah has been named a terrorist organization by the US government since the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. People are taking the streets against the Hezbollah party because they have remained a military power despite the demand that they disarm by multiple western and Middle Eastern powers. The Hezbollah party began as a military resistance against an invading Israeli force in 1980. Since then it has gained political and economic backing from Iran and Syria and have been funded from other countries. The problem the Lebanese people have been having is that Hezbollah has not disarmed despite the fact that they have named themselves a political group and not a military resistance anymore. The Lebanese army has been increased in power since the 1980s and view Hezbollah as a potential threat to a political overthrow of the government. The Lebanese fear that the Hezbollah group could potentially attempt to commit terrorist attacks that would endanger the Lebanese people and not just Hezbollah. In 2009 a Hezbollah terrorist plan was discovered in Egypt, since then Egypt has classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and has strained the political relationships that Lebanon has been trying to regain. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan was involved with a political scandal that revealed the Reagan administration had been secretly facilitating the sale of arms to Iran. Hezbollah's part was that, if the US sold arms to Iran, they would do everything they could to release 6 US hostages that were held by Hezbollah.

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