The purpose for undertaking this case study of the Shi'a in Lebanon is threefold. First, as a hypothesis-generating case study, its objective is to formulate relevant hypotheses about religious resurgence and religious terrorism. This study achieves this objective by formulating 14 general and nine special hypotheses, and testing and confirming the latter. Second, the purpose of this study is also to explore the trajectory of the Lebanese Shi'a's sectarian mobilization. This exploration permits the conceptualization of geocultural immobility and its effect upon a religious minority. It deduces that the Lebanese Shiga's geo-cultural immobility is directly related to their active religious resurgence. The third purpose is to study the changes in the objectives and tactics of a religious minority, that of the Muslim Shi'a in Lebanon. This research is able, via its primary and secondary data, to show a relationship between the Lebanese Shiga's religious resurgence and their use of religious terrorism. This study introduces the concept of geo-cultural immobility. A minority's geo-cultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a's geo-cultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in …

Journal published by the Texas State Historical Association containing articles written by members of the Junior Historians about various aspects of Texas history.

This booklet is the fifth unit of a training course developed for Air Reserve personnel about the armed forces of non-communist countries. This unit discusses the Middle East and North Africa. It includes background information, review questions, and a list of readings for further study.

Peacekeeping is a means by which international or regional organizations control conflict situations that are likely to endanger international peace and security. Most scholars have viewed the contributions of peacekeeping forces only in terms of failures, and they have not investigated fully the political-military circumstances" under which conflict control measures succeed. This dissertation is an attempt to bridge this gap and to show how the OAU compares with the UN in carrying out peacekeeping missions. The method of research was the case study method in which primary and secondary data was used to describe the situations in which six peacekeeping forces operated. The content of resolutions, official reports and secondary data were examined for non-trivial evidences of impediments to implementation of mandates. Findings from the research indicate that peacekeeping missions not properly backed by political efforts at settlement of disputes, cooperation of the superpowers, and financial and logistic support were ineffective and usually unsuccessful. Lack of consensus and pursuit of national interests have resulted in ambiguous or unrealistic mandates and have reduced the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. Moreover, parties to a conflict were interested only in solutions that favored their interests and were often skeptical about the role and credibility …

This comparative study assesses the state of democracy and examines the process of democratization in the Arab World between the years 1980-1993. It addresses shortcomings in the mainstream democracy literature that excluded the Arab World from the global democratic revolution on political cultural grounds. To fulfil the objectives of this study, I employ both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches to test a number of hypothesized relationships. I hypothesize that transition to democracy is negatively associated with economic development, militarism, U.S. foreign policy, the political economy of oil, and dependency. I contend that emerging civil society institutions so far have had no significant effect on democratization in the Arab World. Finally, I hypothesize that the level of democracy in the Arab World is influenced greatly by the issue of civil rights. In order to investigate the hypothesized relationships, the following data sets have been used: Gastil's Freedom House Data set, "Repression and Freedom in the 1980s" data set, and Vanhanen's 1990 data set. The findings of this study support the aforementioned hypothesized relationships. I find that Arab countries, in general have made modest progress toward democracy, making the Arab World part of the global revolution.

This report provides an overview of Lebanese politics, recent events in Lebanon, and current issues in U.S.-Lebanon relations and will be updated to reflect major developments.

Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a Palestinian Islamist military and sociopolitical movement that grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni religious and political organization founded in Egypt in 1928 that has branches throughout the world. The United States, Israel, the European Union, and Canada consider Hamas a terrorist organization. The overarching U.S. goal regarding Hamas is to deter, transform, marginalize, or neutralize it so that it no longer presents a threat to Israel's security, to a peaceful and lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or to other U.S. interests. This report discusses U.S. efforts and policy debates on these issues.

This report analyzes the conflict between Israel and two U.S State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO's), the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and the radical Palestinian Hamas organization.

This report provides an overview of Lebanese politics, recent events in Lebanon, and current issues in U.S.-Lebanon relations and will be updated to reflect major developments.

This report provides an overview of Lebanese politics, recent events in Lebanon, and current issues in U.S.-Lebanon relations.

This report provides an overview of Lebanese politics, recent events in Lebanon, and current issues in U.S.-Lebanon relations and will be updated to reflect major developments.

This report discusses issues related to peace in the Middle East, including post-Gulf War negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon; U.S. interest in these and continuing negotiations and peacetalks between Middle Eastern countries; and the role of the U.S., the U.N., the European Union, and Russia in Middle Eastern relations.