Word: militiaization
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...Congo Cooperation Amid Chaos Nearly 1,500 Rwandan troops have joined the Congolese army to hunt down Hutu militia leaders suspected of orchestrating the 1994 genocide against the nation's Tutsi tribes. The alliance further undermines the authority of Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, whose forces have split since fighting between Nkunda's militia and Congolese soldiers broke out in August. More than 250,000 villagers have been displaced by the fighting; Human Rights Watch reports that 650 people were killed in December alone. But some analysts say the region's violence has less to do with tribal conflict...
...Israeli troops are edging toward Gaza City, one of the most crowded places on earth, where most of Hamas' 15,000 fighters are holed up. As they do so, both Israel and Hamas are disputing claims over how much damage the assault has inflicted so far on the Islamist militia. (See pictures of chaos in the Middle East...
That mission may become a greater challenge within the parameters of the pact. Vermeesch and his battalion are based in a former Shi'ite militia hot spot, which promises only more sectarian tensions as Sunni families who fled the town begin to return to their old neighborhoods, which remain dominated by the Shi'a. Attacks are much fewer than last year but still average one a day, Vermeesch says. Now, under the security agreement, U.S. forces can no longer carry out a raid, search, cordon or even a patrol without their Iraqi counterparts. In the past two weeks, four minor...
...there was ever a true villain in Rwanda's genocide, Theoneste Bagosora was it. Bagosora, a senior Rwandan army official at the time of the 1994 slaughter, allegedly drew up lists of those marked for death two years before the killing began. He organized militia training and made sure recruits were armed, sometimes without his superiors' knowledge. Once the genocide started, Bagosora was just down the road - and fully aware of what was happening - as 10 Belgian peacekeepers were seized and killed...
...regime has a long-established willingness to use violence against its political opponents. In Matabeleland in the mid-1980s, his army killed thousands of civilians in a campaign to bloody the opposition Zapu Party. When his ruling Zanu-PF lost the March election, the security forces and allied militia were again unleashed to bludgeon Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into backing out of a presidential runoff vote. Yet when Zimbabweans protest, with backing by world leaders, at its government's refusal to be voted out - the normal channels of democratic process - that action has little or no effect...