Word: islanders
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...weak. If we push it more, maybe we can finally eliminate it." Abu Sayyaf members are now said to be so cash-strapped they have turned again to kidnapping civilians for ransom. In January, suspected Abu Sayyaf gunmen killed a priest during a botched kidnapping on Tawi Tawi Island, not far from Jolo. On June 8 Ces Drilon, a well-known local TV-news anchor, vanished with her cameraman and an assistant near Jolo in what appears to be another Abu Sayyaf abduction...
...based commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force, which provides military assistance, training and intelligence assistance to Philippine forces. Coultrup's 500 men, who include Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, are spread throughout the Philippines. Inside a nondescript, windowless building at the task force's Jolo Island base, a half-dozen soldiers are studying laptops. A large screen on the wall shows the video feed from an unmanned drone cruising over potential Abu Sayyaf hideouts in the jungle. The U.S. troops give vital advice about operations but are barred from taking part in combat missions and must...
...dramatically, thanks in large part to the aid program, and local government is getting stronger. Sulu province "used to be the Wild West," he says. "Now the governor has banned all weapons and private militias and is instituting an islandwide ID-card system." Coultrup says four-fifths of Basilan Island, another hub of Islamist agitation, is also much safer. "The secret to counterinsurgency is if the people can answer yes to two questions,'' says U.S. Special Forces Major Eric Walker: "One, do people believe the government is going to win? Two, if they turn over information to us, are they...
...first wasn't visible to other U.S. troops on Iwo Jima--were black. (Eastwood's other film, Letters from Iwo Jima, is told largely from the perspective of Japanese soldiers.) Eastwood is also correct that black soldiers represented only a small fraction of the total force deployed on the island...
...simplicity choke points too. On any given day, about a million cars stream into and out of Manhattan. At any given moment, however, only about 8,000 of them are in operation in the heavily traveled midtown area. Keep those cars moving, and traffic flows smoothly all over the island. Jam them up, and gridlock can spread like ice freezing. "In fact," says urban-planning consultant Sam Schwartz, a former New York traffic commissioner who helped the city prepare for the 1980 transit strike, "in the case of true gridlock, the streets are actually 60% empty. All of the crowding...