Word: localized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lynchpin of the government's effort to defuse the Taliban insurgency is Sufi Mohammed, a septuagenarian Islamist cleric whose Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law has returned to Swat with the backing of the authorities. "We will ask them to lay down their weapons," Mohammed says of the local Taliban. "We are hopeful that they won't turn us down." Mohammed's credibility with the militants is based on the fact that he waged his own violent campaign for Shari'a law in the area in the mid-1990s; he also fought alongside the Taliban when U.S. forces invaded...
...local Taliban, of course, have already effectively imposed their own version of Shari'a on the area. Until a few months ago, the Cheena market in Mingora thronged with women buying dresses and jewelery; now it is closed. Stores selling music and films have been attacked, and though barbers still offer haircuts, they will no longer shave a customer, after the Taliban forbade...
...later in Afghanistan, and married his daughter. Both men were imprisoned upon their return from Afghanistan, and it was after he was freed that Fazlullah returned to the Swat Valley village of Imam Dheri, operating the yellow-painted chairlift that ferries people across the Swat river. According to local lore, it was after his brother was killed in a U.S. missile strike on the village of Damadola in Bajaur in 2006 that Fazlullah seized control of a pirate radio transmitter and began delivering sulfurous sermons. "Mullah Radio," as it became known, quickly developed a following. Fazlullah's twice-daily addresses...
...locals grandees had reason to be worried. The Taliban won support from a section of the poor, residents say, by targeting the wealthy and the powerful, attacking families and driving them out, then looting their abandoned homes. As Swat's notables and lawmakers fled, young, unemployed men suddenly found status as local commanders with large salaries from Fazlullah's mysteriously deep pockets. (Conspiracy theories abound as to the source of his largesse.) But the key to his success, say local observers, was Fazlullah's ability to exploit local resentment at the failings of Pakistan's venal judicial system, in which...
...other former Yukos executives, such as Svetlana Bakhmina, Vasily Aleksanyan, Lebedev and, of course, Khodorkovsky, all of whom had placed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights," says Claire Davidson, a spokeswoman for Yukos. But there could be a much higher cost in Russia, where the local media are already speculating on how a $34 billion payout could cripple the economy. Others suggest that, with a judgment against it, Russia could sever its ties with the European Council and the ECHR altogether. "This is speculation, but if it happened, it would be more than a loss," says Karina Moskalenko...