Word: frontier
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...onto the desert plain surrounding Spin Boldak, a chaotic Afghan town that borders Pakistan. Followed by four of his Kalashnikov-toting men, he walks briskly toward a graveyard where scores of bodies lie buried beneath mounds of dirt and clay. Mamabaidullah, who is responsible for guarding this stretch of frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, stops at the row closest to the border. With evident pride, he explains that they contain the corpses of Taliban militiamen killed by Afghan soldiers during a battle last month. These Taliban, Mamabaidullah says, had been hiding in Pakistan and returned to attack a government office...
...stumbled upon was an end-of-the-road hideaway in an area now controlled by Bosnian Muslims. Perhaps this small Catholic cell had been here during the ethnic cleansing, or maybe they were shuffled here thereafter—either way, this was the Church’s frontier crew, antisocial monstrosities of the kind created by a millenium-plus of facing repression with dogged determination...
Ever the great imagemaker, he cast himself to the French public as a symbol both of the virtuous frontier freedom romanticized by Rousseau and of the Enlightenment's reasoned wisdom championed by Voltaire. In a clever and deliberate manner, leavened by the wit and joie de vivre the French so adored, he portrayed the American cause, through his own personification of it, as that of the natural state fighting the corrupted one. He made a point of eschewing powdered wigs and formal dress, instead wearing a fur cap he had picked up years earlier on a trip to Canada...
Franklin could have begun with those about himself. America's original back-room operator was welcomed in France as a "noble savage," in sense and sensibility a joint production of Voltaire and Rousseau. The French embraced him as a frontier philosopher, which Franklin was not on either count. When consulted for information on farming, he confessed to thorough ignorance, having lived in cities all his life. His pages of political philosophy make for a skimpy offering. He was dismissive when his sister inquired after these: "I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings...
...bombing were also less than impressed by such techniques, according to a Western diplomat. A police officer admits that at first his men were also afraid of the extremists, who had informers inside the police force. They were also well equipped, he says, with guns smuggled across the lawless frontier with Afghanistan and money from Arab donors. "We have over 800 madrasahs in Karachi, and many of them are nurseries for terrorism," the officer claims...