Syria

The Bush Administration's policy of "constructive instability" in the Middle East is facing a critical juncture in Lebanon. Taking advantage of a rare confluence of events and international interests, President George W. Bush has focused U.S. efforts on one plank of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1559 -- the withdrawal

When Bashar al-Asad assumed power in 2001, there was widespread optimism that he would, by virtue of his British education and Western outlook, modernize the Syrian government and expand individual and political rights. Yet, after a short period of preliminary change, dubbed the "Damascus Spring," Asad proved unwilling or unable

The following lecture was published as a chapter in Confronting Terrorism Financing, American Foreign Policy Council (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005). The age of “network terrorism” results from the loosely affiliated networks that, taken together, form the potent international terrorist threat that challenges Western civilization today. Such networks

The fall of the Omar Karami cabinet in Beirut on February 28 marked an important development in the brewing confrontation between an energized civil society in Lebanon and the country's Syrian-backed government. While Damascus will likely try to staunch the bleeding of its occupation of Lebanon by redeploying troops—and perhaps

The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in a massive bombing in Beirut a few days ago came at a time of growing Lebanese opposition to Syria’s fifteen-year "trusteeship" (occupation) of the country. Lebanese politics have become polarized by the September 2004 term extension of the pro-Syrian president

Matthew Levitt contributed this paper to the project "Terrorism Financing and State Responses in Comparative Perspective," sponsored by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. This paper and others were published in March 2007 in Terrorism Financing and State Responses: a Comparative Perspective

The death of Yasser Arafat and the approach of Palestinian elections on January 9 have rekindled hopes for the peace process. However, if history is a guide, Hizballah and Iran—which worked tirelessly to undermine the Oslo Process—will try to sabotage such efforts. (Indeed, Israeli intelligence reports cited in the Israeli

Seeking to prevent terror propaganda and incitement to terror in America, the U.S. government added al-Manar (Arabic for "the beacon"), the official television mouthpiece of Hizballah, or the Lebanese Party of God, to the Terrorism Exclusion List (TEL). By designating the network as a terrorist organization the government will effectively

Executive Summary Given the increasing popularity of satellite dishes in the Arab world, many analysts have suggested that television has become a force for Westernization in the region. Yet this technology can be used to propagate hate and conflict as readily as tolerance and understanding. Watch an al-Manar video clip