Word: ite
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...assassination attempt comes amid rising tensions in the poverty-stricken country. On Monday, Sunni Muslim extremists killed 14 people in an attack on a Shi'ite mosque. And with Nawaz the target of fierce criticims from groups as diverse as supporters of Osama Bin Laden and the country's Christian minority alarmed at the government's adoption of Islamic law, Pakistan is starting to look like a time bomb--attached to the side of a nuclear device...
More than 70 anti-Saddam grouplets sit around plotting in coffee shops from London to Amman. They cover every shade of opinion and ethnic coloration, including Islamists with Shi'ite and Sunni subdivisions, Kurd separatists, Arab nationalists, communists and liberal democrats. Their only common goal is to depose Saddam, but after that come conflicting agendas. The most robust of the groups, at least in p.r. terms, is Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The I.N.C. once united nearly two-dozen factions and earned support from Washington, but it has fallen on hard times. Internal feuds and well-publicized failures have melted...
...immediate provocation is nine dead Iranians, killed last month when Taliban warriors conquered Mazar-i-Sharif, a stronghold of Afghanistan's Shi'ite community. Only last week did Taliban leaders admit that eight diplomats and a journalist holed up in the Iranian consulate were massacred by the invaders. Iranian officials were equally upset by the defeat and reported slaughter of the city's Shi'ites. Tehran vowed revenge and announced last week that it was dispatching 200,000 troops for "maneuvers" on the Afghan border...
Tehran is taking its political jeopardy seriously. Most Iranians are Shi'ite, and they watched with growing disquiet as the puritanical Sunnis of the Taliban swept across Afghanistan like a fierce windstorm. The Taliban's faithful regard all Shi'ites as heretics who face possible persecution for their minority beliefs. Tehran officials charge that the Taliban gives Islam a bad name, but they mainly resent its challenge to Iran's claim to Muslim supremacy. "Iran is looked on as the godfather of Shi'ites everywhere," says Olivier Roy, a French expert on the region. "If the Iranians do nothing, they...
Afghan experts in the region say Iran has three military options: launching a punitive air strike; giving solid backup to 4,000 anti-Taliban rebels who have regrouped near the border; or going for an all-out offensive against the Taliban forces in a drive to besieged Shi'ite areas 400 miles away. History has never been kind to those who invade Afghanistan, however. U.S. intelligence officials strongly doubt that Iran can mobilize 200,000 troops for the promised maneuvers, and few in the country have the heart for another...