Word: flashpoints
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more recent flashpoint is at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where agency director General Michael Hayden has launched an investigation of his agency's own IG office, headed by John Helgerson. The move is unprecedented and provoked criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for jeopardizing the independence of the IG - by intimidating any staff that might want to report misgivings - and interfering with its oversight function. In a letter urging Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, to order Hayden to cease his inquiry, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Select Intelligence Committee, said that...
Even without these new sectarian elements, clashes between Shi'a factions have made Diwaniyah a recent flashpoint in Iraq even as other areas, most notably cities in Anbar Province, have calmed down. The local government and security forces of Diwaniyah are largely controlled by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its armed wing, the Badr Corps, who are challenged almost daily in the streets by members of the rival Jaish al Mahdi, the militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al Sadr. (The SIIC was formerly known as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, with the initials SCIRI.) While...
...billion in Russian companies last year. But some, of course, has been decidedly noticed. The country's investments in Sudan, which increased in early July when China National Petroleum Corp. said it would spend an additional $25 million developing an offshore field there, have become a global flashpoint given the carnage the Khartoum government has allowed to continue in Darfur...
...Samarra, a flashpoint of sectarian and insurgent violence in years past, is dangerously close to erupting again. Insurgent violence driven by Sunni extremists is on the rise in the city. In the past two months, insurgent attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces in Samarra have nearly doubled, U.S. commanders say, rising to an average of roughly two per day. And U.S. troops who patrol the city say insurgents are operating in greater numbers than in months past...
...themselves from it, by carving out more political and economic autonomy. Even if they stop short of outright secession, the Kurds could still unleash new conflicts in Iraq if their impatience with the fecklessness of the Baghdad government prompts them to take action on their own. The most explosive flashpoint is Kirkuk, the disputed oil-rich city that the Kurds lay claim to. As Iraq's Kurdish President, Massoud Barzani, said on March 22 during the farewell visit of departing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, "Our patience is not unlimited." So what happens to Iraq when it runs...