Word: als
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...Afghanistan - the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win - has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a specific target. Afghanistan was where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lived, harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan, and for the past seven years, Afghanistan has been a slow bleed against an array of mostly indigenous narco-jihadi-tribal guerrilla forces that we continue to call the "Taliban." These ragtag bands are funded by opium profits and led by assorted religious extremists and druglords, many of whom have safe havens...
...Blackwater’s soldiers of fortune is problematic not only at those rare intervals when the contractors commit violent crimes against civilians, but always and inherently. As the architects of the war in Iraq maintained that they would respect the sovereignty of the elected Iraqi government under Nouri al-Maliki and insisted that economic motives could not be further from their minds, the massive army of legally immune private contractors that war effort came to require visibly undermined their every claim...
...situation in Darfur. Many observers have recounted stories of rape being used systematically as a weapon in Sudan for the purpose of ethnic cleansing, and the International Criminal Court is expected to decide in early 2009 whether to issue an arrest warrant, requested in July, for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. (See pictures of Darfur...
...terrorists recruit." But so far, the U.S. is failing to do that. With the possibility that Indian threats of retaliation over last month's terror attacks on Mumbai could force Pakistan to move its military to the east from the Afghan border, where it is currently fighting elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it is more important than ever that Afghanistan's central government be strengthened. The perception that warlords, protected by their influence and threats of violence, can commit crimes with impunity has rocked Afghan society, and threatens to undermine the very government that the United States...
...Monday's indictment in the U.S. of five Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 unarmed civilians at a busy intersection in the Iraqi capital last year. "It's about time they pay for their crimes," said Hosham Abdel Kader, a 53-year-old who was celebrating the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday with his family at a restaurant in the mainly-Shi'ite Karrada district. "I recoil, I freeze when I see those mercenaries on the street...