Word: desert
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...Bryan Owens, the commander of U.S. forces in Salahuddin province, isn't hoping for the kind of tribal "awakening" seen in neighboring Anbar. In the desert reaches to the north of Owens' command, a number of tribal leaders have gathered themselves and their followers under the banner of Sunni chieftain Sheik Abdul Sittar, who has vowed to work with U.S. forces at crushing insurgents associated with al-Qaeda. The pact has brought some significant successes. The daily average of insurgent attacks in Anbar province has dropped by almost 50% in roughly a year, coming down to about...
...shipments that law enforcement authorities have been able to track down have been enormous. In May, a Cessna 441 twin-prop aircraft registered in the U.S. offloaded 630 kg of cocaine at an airport in Mauritania, and took off again. The crew then abandoned the aircraft in the desert about 125 km away and fled. Mauritanian police believe the scheme involves European dealers, and have questioned Belgian and French citizens. In early June, police in Belgium said they had cracked a cocaine network that had shipped about 350 kg in unchecked luggage through Brussels International Airport from Sierra Leone...
...village of Binat al Hasan was eerily empty when U.S. forces arrived, swooping out of the sky in four helicopters in a pre-dawn assault. Within moments of the helicopters touching down, roughly 75 U.S. paratroopers and a small contingent of Iraqi special forces fanned out through the desert hamlet about 15 miles southeast of Samarra. House after house turned up empty as the soldiers scoured the dozen or so buildings clustered together amid stretches of sandy flatlands covered with thorn brush. U.S. forces had hoped to surprise insurgents thought to be hiding on the outskirts of Samarra, where violence...
...India's most legendary business families. The Birlas and the Mittals, as well as countless other Marwari clans, share a common history. From the 19th century onwards, when the ancient Silk Road that crisscrossed Mandawa began to be eclipsed by the steamship and the railway, the Marwaris fled the desert for the flourishing tropical port of Calcutta. There, many amassed fortunes, initially as speculators in opium, sugar and jute in the choked northern bazaars of the city. After World War I, some began to invest in heavy industry. The late patriarch G.D. Birla built some of India's biggest jute...
...hand-carved teak doors and almost accidental details of the havelis rarely disappoint. Before paints were mass produced, for example, Marwaris fermented their dyes from cow urine and plastered them onto walls while the mud was still wet. This deep mustard brown color, leached under the cauldron of the desert sun, is stunning...