Word: border
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...worst of times for Pakistan to try to revive fundamentalist laws. Everything seems to be going wrong for Nawaz Sharif. His support of the Taliban militia in neighboring Afghanistan has drawn enmity from Iran and the Central Asian republics (see following story). India and Pakistan have intensified their cross-border artillery fire in disputed Kashmir. Nearly bankrupt, Pakistan may run out of foreign exchange by the end of the month, and the Karachi stock exchange imploded after the May 28 underground nuclear tests, wiping out half its share value...
...some cases, previous attempts to impose fundamentalist law have taken bizarre forms. When a mullah named Maulana Sufi Mohammed decided to enforce strict Shari'a law in his mountain valley near the Afghan border, he prohibited driving on the left side of the road because the left hand is deemed unclean. Numerous car crashes failed to deter him. Inspired by the Taliban's medieval puritanism, mullahs in northwest Pakistan are destroying TVs and setting up roadblocks to stop cars and rip out music cassettes...
...journalist holed up in the Iranian consulate were massacred by the invaders. Iranian officials were equally upset by the defeat and reported slaughter of the city's Shi'ites. Tehran vowed revenge and announced last week that it was dispatching 200,000 troops for "maneuvers" on the Afghan border...
...chief of the armed forces. Soon after, the Taliban's leader, a charismatic, one-eyed village clergyman named Mullah Mohammed Omar, retorted that the Shi'ites were ranked somewhere "between infidels and true Muslims." Khamenei had already sent thousands of Revolutionary 4Guards to stage showy war games along the border. Now, he warned, "I have so far prevented the lighting of a fire in this region which would be hard to extinguish. But all should know that a very great and wide danger is quite near...
Afghan experts in the region say Iran has three military options: launching a punitive air strike; giving solid backup to 4,000 anti-Taliban rebels who have regrouped near the border; or going for an all-out offensive against the Taliban forces in a drive to besieged Shi'ite areas 400 miles away. History has never been kind to those who invade Afghanistan, however. U.S. intelligence officials strongly doubt that Iran can mobilize 200,000 troops for the promised maneuvers, and few in the country have the heart for another...