SESTRIERE, Italy - Almost everyone who meets Chirine Njeim for the first time, looks into her blue-green eyes and says, "You're from Beirut?"Eventually, they see the skis and snow pants and boots and red winter jacket with the word Lebanon across the back, and say, "An Olympic skier from Lebanon?""A lot of people are confused," Njeim said. "I can understand that."

Lebanon, land of camels and sun and sand, also has mountains, snow, six ski resorts and light-eyed 21-year-old Njeim. She learned to ski at age 3, became good enough to compete internationally and developed anorexia in her zeal to be even better.Now recovered and up to 130 pounds - 46 more than her one-time dip to 84 preceding the Salt Lake City Olympics - Njeim (pronounced nJIM) is one of two Turin Olympians representing Beirut. The other, Patrick Antaki, is a 41-year-old skeleton slider who lives in Plano, Texas, and has U.S.-Lebanese citizenship.Njeim carried the Lebanese flag as the only Olympian from her country at the 2002 Winter Games, when she was starting to recover and barely weighed 100 pounds and was "terrified that I'd fall and trip with it," she said.

By Mayssa el khazen, Islamic radicalism first erupted in Lebanon following the 1979 Iranian revolution and 1982 Israeli invasion.  These two events marked the start of Hizbullah, a movement that would acquire the support of the Lebanese Shiaa and that would take on a crucial and defining post in Lebanese politics.  Hizbullah, meaning the Party of God and backed by Iran, emerged to become an important and pivotal force in Middle Eastern politics in general and particularly in Lebanese society.  Amal, a Shiaa movement which means