In an instant, tons of broken concrete and twisted steel had buried more than 200 United States Marines. The truck and its driver were blown to pieces. Within a few weeks, the United States would remove its forces from the war-torn nation of Lebanon. In the name of Ayatollah Khomeini and Hizballah, one man's suicide had forced the world's most powerful nation into a humiliating retreat.

In the late 1970's, Khomeini, an Islamic clergyman from the Middle Eastern nation of Iran, lived in exile. The government of Iran, under the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, had forced Khomeini to leave his homeland. From Iraq to France, Khomeini used an inexpensive tape recorder to record his fiery, revolutionary sermons. His followers smuggled the tapes into Iran, where they were copied and sold by the thousands.

The situation in Lebanon had grown even more chaotic with the arrival of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In the 1970's, many PLO fighters moved into southern Lebanon. Refugee camps for Palestinian civilians were taken over by the PLO. From these camps, PLO guerillas staged raids on northern Israel. Israel retaliated with bombardments that destroyed Shiite villages and farms. With Amal unable to control this region, the Shiites were trapped in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

On June 15, the plane flew back to Beirut, Lebanon. The hijackers now sought the help of Amal, which controlled the neighborhoods near the Beirut airport. To prove their threats were serious, the hijackers marched Robert Stetham, a U.S. serviceman, to the front of the plane. There, they shot Stetham and threw his lifeless body onto the ground beneath the plan. Soon afterward, Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal, sent several of his military onto the plan to negotiate.

Another Hizballah action was the taking of single hostages. Hizballah used these hostages for publicity and diplomacy by kidnapping western Europeans and United States citizens who were living and working in Beirut. On March 16, 1984, Hizballah seized William Buckley, the chief of the CIA bureau in Beirut. Instead of demanding ransom, the kidnappers put Buckley on trial and executed him. This may have been an act of revenge for the CIA's attack on Sheikh Fadlallah, which had occurred only a few days before. Over the next few years, Hizballah took more than a dozen British, French, and American hostages. The group held most of them captive for many years.

On June 6, 1982, the Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon, overrunning PLO camps and driving north to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. At first, many Lebanese-including the Shiites-welcomed the chance to drive out the Palestinians, who were in control of much of southern Lebanon. Gradually, however, the Lebanese Shiites turned against the Israelis. In mosques and village squares throughout southern Lebanon, Shiite clerics began calling for a jihad (holy war) against the imperial Israeli forces. Within a few months of the Israeli invasion, the Iranian government sent Islamic clerics into Lebanon to organize Hizballah-the Party of God.

Despite its successes, Hizballah began to lose support among Shiites in southern Lebanon in the late 1980's. The clerics who led Hizballah refused to make any alliances with other Muslim factions in Lebanon. Hizballah found that, with fewer recruits and with many of its fighters still being held in foreign prisons, it could no longer operate outside of Lebanon. In the autumn of 1986, Hizballah made its greatest mistake. The groups kidnapped and tortured a large group of Syrian fighters in Beirut. After the organization released the soldiers, Syria formed an alliance with Amal to rid the capital of Hizballah fighters. In February 1987, Syria's army invaded a Hizballah controlled neighborhood and massacred dozens of guerrillas. A year later, Hizballah fought a long battle with Amal and the Syrians for control of southern Beirut. After several days of savage street-to-street fighting, Hizballah was forced to abandon the city.

Although Hizballah was growing, its activities were drawing the attention from police agencies in Europe. On September 13, 1987, the German police apprehended and arrested Mohammad Hammadi, a member of Hizballah. At the time, he was carrying several bottles of liquid explosives. While holding Hammadi, the police identified him as one of the hijackers of TWA Flight 847. Hammadi's fingerprints were found of the plane and a TWA hostage had positively identified Hammadi as one of the terrorists who was a part of the 1985 TWA hijacking. Shortly after his arrest, Hizballah kidnapped two West German citizens in Lebanon. The group then demanded Hammadi's release, and the West German government gave in to the terrorist demand by allo

Some common words found in the essay are:
Lebanon Hizballah, , Wahid Gordji, Sheikh Fadlallah, Kuwait Arab, Islamic Lebanon, American French, Revolutionary Guards, Khomeini Shiite, Amal Hizballah, southern lebanon, civil war, sheikh fadlallah, flight 847, middle east, islamic jihad, ayatollah khomeini, citizens lebanon, revolutionary guards, iranian government, iranian embassy paris, lebanese civil war, twa flight 847, throughout southern lebanon, southern lebanon shiite,
Approximate Word count = 3217
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)