Word: leaders
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...What does radical opposition Islamist leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys offer Somalia and the world? Sheik Hassan and I once worked together, guided by principle, and I believe I am still on the same road. What he believed to be impossible became possible. Sheik Hassan believed Ethiopia [which invaded in 2006 to topple a previous Islamist government that included Sharif and Aweys] would not withdraw and change was not feasible. [But] Ethiopia pulled its troops out of Somalia in 2008 and change came. He had a role to play and could have helped us to reinstate our nationhood...
Halfway through my interview with Khaled Mashaal, about an hour after Barack Obama's Cairo speech, I realized that the leader of Hamas was calling the Israeli people, and their leaders, Israelis. That seemed new. The usual term of art used by Islamic militants is "Zionists" or worse. A few days later in Iran, for example, I watched Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say in a debate, "I don't like to call them Israelis. Their leaders are so unclean that they could wash themselves in the cleanest waters and still be dirty...
...opposition has been quick to point out the government's failings in dealing with the crisis. Former chief minister and leader of opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP), Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, says the official "mishandling" of the Shopian incident caused its escalation. Some Kashmir watchers also say that the chief minister's early response to the Shopian incident - that there was no evidence of foul play and that the women had likely drowned - got him into trouble. That statement was apparently based on early police information that the autopsy revealed no marks of violence on the dead bodies...
...Gabon begins a month of mourning and condolences pour in for President Omar Bongo, the world's longest serving President, who died on Monday at 73 in his 42nd year in power, it's worth remembering that Bongo was precisely the kind of leader Gabon, and Africa, could have done without. Gabon has a tiny population (1.4 million) and vast oil reserves, and after four decades of exporting hundreds of billions of dollars of crude, the biggest testament to the corruption and ineptitude of Bongo's rule is that he somehow contrived not to turn his country into an African...
...bankrupt the country. And in politics, Bongo fixed elections for himself and bought off political opposition with money or power - despite its small size, Gabon has more than 40 Cabinet Ministers - or worse. Several opposition members were killed in the 1970s. In 1990, the mysterious death of opposition leader Joseph Redjambe sparked riots. And late last year, two journalists and three civil-society leaders investigating Bongo's finances were arrested. In February, the U.S. State Department classified the human-rights record of Bongo's Gabon as "poor" and listed such problems as "limited ability of citizens to change their government...