Word: militia
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...violence is flaring up again. And suddenly it's not just Chechnya. Neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia are hotbeds of instability, as are North Ossetia and, to the immediate northwest, Kabardino-Balkaria, with seemingly random shootings, bombings, kidnappings and armed conflicts among rebels, Islamic separatists, local militia and Russian troops...
...Kokang, under a commander named Peng Jiasheng, recently rejected the regime's border-force offer. Soon afterward, gun battles erupted between the Burmese military and elements of Peng's Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, as the Kokang militia is known. Throughout August, the Burmese army made incursions into the Kokang enclave, a region it had largely kept out of since the 1989 cease-fire was signed. The initial reason given by the junta for its forays into Kokang territory was that a weapons factory there was being used to churn out illegal narcotics. Several of the ethnic militias in that...
...anachronism, most Swiss still highly regard (nearly) universal conscription. For many who have served, the militia is a school of life, and teaches invaluable lessons. One former soldier noted that Swiss middle-class men cannot rise in the corporate world without a good show in the army...
...will have to try and win over some of the tribes who were too afraid to challenge the militants." Over the weekend, elders from the Mehsud tribe announced they were prepared to fight the Taliban if they received government backing. That challenge, in the form of a local tribal militia, is already paying off against other Taliban militants to the north of the Swat valley. In Waziristan, it may succeed where previous military operations have failed...
...certainly not in Baghdad. But others appear to be picking up the slack. The Sunni Ahdamiya neighborhood used to see Shi'ite reprisal attacks for al-Qaeda killings. Nowadays, violence is constant though relatively lulled - and most of it, say locals, is perpetrated by political parties that have militia forces and are not shy about using arms against their rivals. The parties, of course, mostly form along sectarian lines. On July 31, five Shi'ite mosques in Baghdad were attacked. The next day it was a Sunni mosque. (See a photographer's diary of the Iraq...