Word: foreign
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...West might regard him as backward, but Than Shwe, 76, sees himself as a bold reformer who took a bankrupt nation and threw it open to foreign investment, who built not just roads and bridges but a grand new capital called Naypyidaw - "Abode of Kings." The reality is a little different. Foreign trade has enriched the junta; the Yadana natural-gas project alone has earned the regime $4.83 billion since 2000, according to the Washington-based nonprofit EarthRights International in a recent report. But most Burmese still live in wretched poverty. The new capital is an expensive boondoggle...
...Even the junta's notorious xenophobia is rooted less in a desire for isolation than in an ingrained fear of invasion. Burma has been occupied by many foreign powers over the centuries and riven by ethnic insurgencies since its independence from Britain in 1948. The Burmese military's historical role is to safeguard the country from all foes, foreign and domestic. The generals regard a threat to their regime as a threat to the nation. This might seem "misguided, even deluded," observes Andrew Selth, a Burma analyst with Australia's Griffith University, but the generals' fear of invasion is real...
...argue that Saudi rulers could do more, but use religion as an excuse for the slow pace of reform. "The idea is to delay the reforms based on the idea that society wouldn't accept drastic changes," says Mohammad al-Qahtani, a reform advocate and professor at the Saudi Foreign Ministry's diplomatic training institute. Awadh al-Badi, a political scientist at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, says the reason that King Abdullah and the royal family are still cautious on women's rights is that they themselves are products of Saudi culture...
...suicide bomber disguised as a soldier walked into the fortified headquarters of the U.N. Food Program in Pakistan by asking to use the bathroom and set off an explosion that killed five people. The latest in a string of attacks against foreign aid workers in the region, the Oct. 5 bombing was particularly disquieting given the ease with which the perpetrator infiltrated the heavily protected compound, just steps from President Asif Ali Zardari's residence. A Taliban spokesman confirmed that the group was responsible for the incident, the deadliest in the Pakistani capital since April. In the aftermath...
...remote and largely ungoverned nature of South Waziristan made it the ideal hiding place for foreign militants, al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Over the years, unmolested by government intervention, various groups of militants fortified their bases and recruited local residents to their cause. From those groups, the Pakistani Taliban emerged in 2003, partly in response to then President General Pervez Musharraf's about-face on support for the Afghan Taliban after the Sept. 11 terror attacks...