Word: clampdowns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...local informants and guides (not one fighter in his ranks possessed a radio). In response, the British imposed fines on Pashtuns who refused to cooperate with their search, bombed troublesome villages, burned the fields of unhelpful tribesmen and destroyed the houses of his ringleaders-a violent clampdown that only alienated the local population further. A London newspaper heralded Khan in a couplet as the Scarlet Pimpernel of the East: "They sought him here, they sought him there, those columns sought him everywhere." After independence and the partitioning of India, Khan became a thorn in the side of the new Pakistan...
Margaret and Pauline's early years in Iraq are a time of relative comfort, of trading tips with other expats on where to find potatoes and Western clothes. War with Iran brings increased state propaganda and a clampdown on dissent that makes Iraqis distrustful of neighbors. Then, in 1990, international sanctions bring food shortages and ration lines. Operation Iraqi Freedom seems a godsend, but optimism fizzles when there's no new order to fill the post-Saddam vacuum. By 2005, the women are all but trapped in their own homes, depressed, often without electricity, scared of random violence...
...jazz culture, Shanghai's architects turned their backs on the pompous colonial edifices of yesteryear and embraced the modern sophistication of Art Deco. It was a prolific but short-lived phenomenon. When Mao Zedong's communists seized control of the country in 1949, the clampdown on Shanghai's foreign influences was total, and a period of isolationism began...
...Even Pyongyang's friends have proved fickle. Last week, South Korean newspapers reported that China, the North's closest ally, largest trading partner and aid donor, had frozen North Korean assets held in the Macau branch of the Bank of China. Beijing's clampdown, which took place last year, followed a similar freeze on about $24 million of Pyongyang's cash in another Macau bank-Banco Delta Asia-which the U.S. claimed was funneling money the North earns from drug smuggling and counterfeiting...
...China's clampdown a sign that Beijing has tired of running interference for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and will back U.S. efforts to force Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear weapons? Unlikely, says Alexandre Mansourov, a North Korea expert at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. China and North Korea have been at odds lately-Beijing warned against the missile tests-and there are "hurt feelings," he says. But "fundamentally it is a very tight relationship...