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Hizballah Plots Role for Post-Syria Era
(Chicago Tribune) Liz Sly - In the Shiite-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut, the streets are more crowded, the cars older and shabbier; many women are modestly veiled or cloaked in long black chadors and the stern portraits of turbaned Shiite clerics gaze down from huge billboards. Hizballah, a group funded by Iran and branded by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, claims the support of a majority of Lebanon's largest community, maintains the country's only private army, and cannot be ignored as Lebanon gropes its way toward a new political accommodation. "If Shiites are not part of the Lebanese formula, the situation will not work," said Nizar Hamzeh, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut.