Word: islamist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Most important for the U.S., Somalia has wider international ramifications for terrorism. It has been a home to al-Qaeda-funded Islamist radicals since the early 1990s. The Ethiopians invaded to topple the Union of Islamic Courts (U.I.C.), which had ruled Mogadishu for six months and whose leader declared a jihad on Ethiopian troops then operating inside Somalia. According to insurgents I spoke to this summer in Mogadishu, U.S. intervention alongside Ethiopian forces - U.S. warplanes carried out at least two strikes on suspected Islamists in the south of the country in January, and a warship unleashed an artillery barrage...
...nations have been NATO allies since 1952. But recently the relationship has come under strain. First the U.S. Congress threatened to pass a controversial resolution condemning Turkey for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Now Turkey's Islamist government is feuding with the pro-American Kurds of northern Iraq because it wants to smash anti-Turkish guerrillas the Kurds have failed to control. It's no surprise that old allies may disagree on individual issues or even go their separate ways, but as the U.S.'s up-and-down relations...
...forces must now devote time, energy and resources to stamping out opposition protests in the cities rather than fighting militants in their rural redoubts. With the majority of Pakistanis opposed to Musharraf, the government's struggle to establish control in places like the traditionally moderate Swat Valley, where an Islamist militia is waging a bloody campaign to establish Shari'a law, will become even harder. "Pakistan is very religious, but it is not extremist," says Ahsan Iqbal, information secretary for the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, the party led by Nawaz Sharif. By making this a battle between secular values...
...President Pervez Musharraf cited for his imposition of martial law over the weekend. A recent rash of suicide bombings, beheadings and kidnappings of military personnel in the onetime tourist enclave has brought Pakistan closer to the brink in its faltering war against terrorism. Military forces have been battling an Islamist militia led by a radical cleric determined to establish Sharia law in the region. Yet the truth is, Swat's militancy has been festering for well over a year, with Musharraf's government unable to rein in the charismatic Mullah Fazlullah, who has spread his message over the airways...
Pentagon officials say they have no idea whether Musharraf's imposition of what is essentially martial law will succeed or fail in stemming the radical Islamist tide. "Sure it works in the short term," one Army officer says. "But if the country is too brittle it could break." Pentagon officials added that the U.S. is reviewing some $300 million in foreign military sales financing for 2008, $32 million for law enforcement and anti-narcotics efforts, and $2 million for military training - the same kinds of program whose scrapping in the 1990s so upset Zinni...