Word: gul
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Sunni parliamentarian Salim al-Jubouri took Muqtada al-Sadr's recent appearance in Turkey as a good sign. Sadr surfaced in Ankara ostensibly to discuss the situation in Iraq with top Turkish leaders, including President President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a predominantly Sunni country, many observers noted, and maybe the militant Shi'ite warlord was making a show of nascent sectarian reconciliation. "The attitude is good," says al-Jubouri, a member of the Sunni political bloc known in Arabic as Tawafiq. "But so far it's all talk, we need to see actions...
...Taliban. His administration is notoriously corrupt, dependent on the support of unsavory warlords - some of whom are no more inclined to allow girls to go to school than is the Taliban - and may possibly even be in league with drug traffickers. And yet, this week's news that Gul Agha Sherzai, seen by many Western diplomats as a favored challenger to Karzai, had chosen not to stand in the August election seems to confirm that Washington has little alternative but to live with Karzai. (See a multimedia view of U.S. operations in Afghanistan...
...seemed ludicrous at first, the idea of Gul Agha Sherzai running for President of Afghanistan. The journalists who knew him, first as governor of Kandahar, then of Nangahar province, nicknamed him Jabba the Hutt, after the villainous behemoth of the Star Wars movies. It wasn't just his size (he readily admits he is considerably overweight), or his deep, throaty chuckle, that evoked such a comparison. It was more his reputation for ruthlessness as a warlord during the country's civil war in the 1990s. Sherzai's ability to get things done, however, has earned him another nickname from...
...emblematic of potential solutions elsewhere in the country. "The Obama visit is what started it all," says Nasir Ahmad, one of Sherzai's advisers and a childhood friend. "Early in his presidential campaign Obama said that the Karzai administration was weak. Then he came to Jalalabad, and discussed with Gul Agha the smooth running of the province and his many successes, so [Sherzai] thought maybe he could do the same for the whole country, not just his province...
...rings out; a long, deep, echoing sound that billows through the streets of Johannesburg's Mayfair district. Here in the heart of the city's Muslim enclave, the Afghan cricket team - the sporting world's favorite underdogs - are eating curry and naan. "It tastes just like home," says Hasti Gul Abid, a 25-year-old middle-order batsman...