Word: alis
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...Escalating tensions with the U.S. are sufficiently worrisome that former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is once again leading a drive to contain Ahmadinejad and his political ambitions. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who heads the executive branch in Iran's system, asked Rafsanjani - who was beaten by Ahmadinejad in the last presidential election - to spearhead a similar effort last year, after Ahmadinejad's remarks about Israel sparked an international outcry. That intervention was late and ineffective, but this time Rafsanjani is moving more quickly and aggressively to defuse tensions with the West. The former president has been meeting with...
...shrine. Again the mournful chanting, and the whipping begins, blades flashing in the sun. The air is thick with the metallic edge of fresh blood. It is as much a public spectacle as a demonstration of faith. "Everyone who watches is mourning for Hussein as well," says Ali Hosseini, an 18-year-old who has just pulled a black T-shirt over his lacerated back. Slowly the faded cotton darkens with blood. "Their presence gives us power." Indeed, the presence of an audience appears to egg on the penitents. The strikes are harder in the presence of video cameras...
...watch wings of blood sprout on the backs of men, I'm reminded of the French political philosopher who once said that nations are built on the shared spilling of blood. The Shias of Afghanistan may be mourning the death of Ali Hussein centuries ago, but what they are also doing is cementing an identity that is reinforced year after year. Blood brothers, indeed...
...Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Gedi, pleads eloquently for assistance. He also recognizes that no outside support will be sufficient if his government fails to rise above the clans. "It is a fully inclusive government," he declares. But few buy his rhetoric. "He is not consulting us," says Ugas Abdullah Ugas Farah, chairman of all Somalia's tribes. "That means clanism. And that means the man with the biggest gun is in charge." Mohamed Uluso, a clan leader from the Ayr tribe, adds: "There is no basic trust. The government is not reaching out to anyone. The people are charged...
...According to Iraqi soldiers involved in the battle and its aftermath, the group's leader, Ahmad al-Hassaani al-Yamani, planned to lead his followers into Najaf and kill the Shi'a religious leaders there. Chief among the targets would have been Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the most revered Shi'a cleric in Iraq. His rivals slain, al-Yamani planned to lead his followers into the Imam Ali shrine, the resting place of Mohammad's son-in-law and one of Shi'a Islam's holiest sites...