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Hizbullah's Christian Soldiers?

[TIME] Andrew Lee Butters - Michel Aoun, a charismatic former general who heads the country's largest Christian political party, the Free Patriotic Movement, is openly allied with Hizbullah. What could Lebanese Christians possibly have in common with Hizbullah, the Islamist resistance movement? Perhaps it is the fact that Aoun's Christian supporters and Hizbullah's rank and file are motivated by a shared animus towards Lebanon's political elite, a handful of families such as the Gemayel, whose progeny resurface in government after government. In fact, many of the supporters of the current government are civil war-era militia leaders who accommodated themselves rather nicely to the years of Syrian occupation, but who have now emerged wearing business suits and talking U.S.-friendly language about democracy and independence. Neither Aoun nor Hizbullah is a poster child for democratic civil society. Still, both popular movements tap into the general resentment of average people who have watched as a relatively small number of Lebanese - well represented in the anti-Syria ruling coalition - have cashed in on the post civil-war reconstruction of the country.
2007-08-10 01:00:00
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