Word: maye
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However, Army sources say that the Taliban ringed Marja and its surrounding network of canals, fields and roads with thousands of hidden mines and booby-traps. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, Marine commander for southern Afghanistan told newsmen, "This may be the biggest improvised explosive device (IED) threat and largest minefield that NATO has ever faced." A British officer in Nad el-Ali reported that in one 50-m stretch of lane, his men found and disabled "dozens" of IEDs...
With such a huge juggernaut, it may be easy for coalition forces to conquer Marja, but winning over its inhabitants may be another matter. The areas's residents are Pashtuns, who share tribal links with the Taliban. Anywhere between 400 to 1,000 Taliban fighters are said to be holed up in Marja's dusty maze of lanes and high, mud-walled homes. Now the coalition forces face the difficult task of threading through minefields, and a dense warren of houses, to hunt down the Taliban fighters...
...Taliban, retreating from Marja gives them a chance to strike again, avoiding face-to-face combat with a larger and mightier enemy. Though some Marja refugees said that many Afghan Taliban may have fled, they also said a large contingent of more zealous Pakistani fighters stayed behind, bent on martyrdom. That is possible; after decades of war, Afghans have developed a keen instinct about when to fight, and when to slip away...
...while Jonathan's southern origin may please the rebels, it is likely to annoy the northern Muslim political elite, which has dominated Nigeria's politics for decades. In the strange way of Abuja, the capital, this presidency was meant to be for a northerner. But with Yar'Adua sick and a southern Christian back in power, Nigeria's sectarian divide - which frequently results in large scale Christian-Muslim pogroms - could worsen. "I have no confidence in his leadership," Dr. Baba Ahmed, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, told TIME. "Jonathan is a frontline member...
...then there's corruption. Jonathan may have got the Bayelsa governorship through his boss' alleged misdeeds, but he is hardly free of the biggest impediment to progress in Nigeria: corruption. The election that saw Yar'Adua and Jonathan win office was described by the E.U. Election Observation Mission to Nigeria as "not credible" due to "lack of transparency and evidence of fraud," adding it had "no confidence in the results." Jonathan's 2007 declaration of $2.4 million in assets during the campaign also raised questions about how an academic and public servant could earn so much. Jonathan's wife Patience...