Word: diplomat
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Money forms another basic root of Hamas' power. Having been sweet-talked into helping with finances, Iran now provides some $20 million to $30 million a year, according to a Western diplomat in Tehran. Cash also flows in from Islamic charities and wealthy private backers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Officials around the Arab world acknowledge that their citizens contribute to Hamas, but they tend to justify the group's operations as legitimate resistance to the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Says Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal: "Someone who is fighting for the liberation...
Xiaowei had mastered those tricky English irregular verbs, perfected a convincing American drawl and could rattle off the 10 biggest U.S. cities by heart. So when the wannabe diplomat applied to a top Beijing foreign languages university, she couldn't believe it when a rejection letter followed. The reason? At a petite 1.53 m, Xiaowei was told she wasn't tall enough to qualify for the English department. "They told me that Chinese diplomats have to be tall," says Xiaowei, "because foreigners are tall and we don't want to look too short next to them...
...later, Xiaowei found herself in a spartan Shanghai hospital room surveying her scarred but elongated legs. Four months in the dingy ward have left her stir-crazy, but Xiaowei shows off limbs already stretched 4 cm. "I can take the pain, if it means I can become a diplomat," she says, wincing as she shifts her metal-embraced legs. "But I never thought I would have to resort to surgery...
...bandit life and now abet Islamic radicals, and al-Qaeda sympathizers are in the army and bureaucracy. Al-Qaeda operatives arrested for bombing the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 received false documents from a former mujahedin fighter working for the Yemeni government. The country, says a senior Western diplomat in the capital of Sana'a, "is an important node for terrorist groups." Al-Qaeda agents ran free as facilitators to move people, supply documents and look after finances until the Cole attack proved they also had operational capabilities...
Despite the best efforts of the U.S., the Saudi government has so far offered little help in stanching the flow of funds to al-Qaeda, claiming that the U.S. has never presented evidence to merit a crackdown. That may change this week, when U.S. diplomat Bill Burns visits Saudi Arabia. He will bring with him, U.S. sources tell TIME, intelligence data linking some of the kingdom's leading money men and charities to Osama bin Laden. The data will include sensitive intercepts, human intelligence and wire transfers to back up American demands that the Saudis freeze assets of suspected...