Word: feudal
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Both Afghan police and Western observers describe a kind of pyramid scheme of corruption that goes to the top of the Afghan government. "It's like a feudal system," says Captain David Panian, a U.S. reservist now training Afghan Police in Western Afghanistan. "The baron pays the count, the count pays the duke, the duke pays the king. So if you are Joe Chief of Bala Beluk, in order to maintain your job you have to give X amount to the provincial guy, and he has got to give it to the regional...
Lula's biggest challenge, though, has been bridging the huge chasm between Brazil's rich and poor--a gap that makes the country look more like the feudal monarchy it was in the 19th century than the modern democracy it wants to be in the 21st. Lula, who as an impoverished kid shined shoes on the streets of São Paulo, has pumped more than $100 billion into social projects ranging from microfinance to grants for families who keep their kids in school. As a result, 52% of Brazil's 190 million people are now designated as middle class...
Nepal has undergone seismic change in the past half year. In April, Dahal and his Maoists won a majority of seats in an assembly charged with the task of reshaping a country that had existed for over two centuries under a rigid, feudal monarchy. Nepal's last king vacated the royal palace soon after, in June, and Dahal, who only a few years back was a fugitive in his own country, was sworn in as Prime Minister on Aug. 18. From the ashes of a civil war that claimed over 13,000 lives, his Maoist-led government now intends...
Zardari's rise to Pakistan's Presidency reads like a Cinderella tale turned Mafia thriller. The son of a feudal landlord and cinema-house owner, Zardari married Bhutto, Pakistan's political princess, in 1987, when she was about to launch her political career. In time, Zardari became Bhutto's political partner, taking posts in her Cabinet and smoothing the ruffled egos the sometimes haughty Prime Minister left in her wake. "He was the fence mender," says Aftab Khan Sherpao, a veteran politician. "If someone [in parliament] had grievances, she sent Zardari in. He was the back channel. He knew...
...West that saw Musharraf as preferable to the chaos and venality of the political system he overturned to seize power in 1999. He carried the support of the urban middle class, which was desperately looking for the stability and modernity that had eluded a political system dominated by competing feudal baronies...