Word: noms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Anti-Saddam hard-liners have lately seized on the extremist Ansar al-Islam as the organizational nexus that ties al-Qaeda to Baghdad. The group has existed in various forms since the 1990s, when its leader, an Islamic cleric named Najmadin Fatah who goes by the nom de guerre Mullah Krekar, took inspiration from Afghan mujahedin to launch a rebellion against the two feuding secular factions that divvy up Iraqi Kurdistan. Krekar, who carries a Norwegian passport, is a veteran of the mujahedin known for his ruthlessness. "He is not normal," says a Kurdish intelligence official. "He enjoys killing people...
Sabri al-Banna (Abu Nidal was his nom de guerre) was 11 when his affluent family was forced to flee the Arab city of Jaffa, now part of Israel, ahead of Jewish forces in the 1948 war. As a laborer in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s, he latched onto politics, joining Yasser Arafat's Fatah group, which would become the backbone of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Bouncing between Jordan, Sudan and Iraq, he rose through the ranks of the P.L.O...
...known for remorse. P. O'Neill exists only as a nom de guerre, but as the signature on every terse statement issued by the Irish Republican Army over decades of conflict, his name is recognized and feared across Ireland. Occasionally O'Neill has admitted "regret" over unintended deaths. Mainly he has justified attacks and threatened others. Until last week, when O'Neill suddenly said sorry. In a brief, unexpected declaration, the I.R.A. issued a blanket apology for the more than 600 civilians it killed and the thousands more it injured battling British rule since 1969. In a passage that sounded...
...countries. Sometimes you just have to wait. Sources tell TIME, for example, that after years of silence, one of the most mysterious figures in al-Qaeda's network has started talking to the FBI and a federal grand jury. Ihab Mohamed Ali, known within al-Qaeda by the nom de guerre Nawawi, is an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen who worked with bin Laden's organization in Sudan and Afghanistan after receiving flight training (as long ago as 1993) at the same Oklahoma school where Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged terrorist who was detained before the Sept. 11 attacks, studied last year...
...more general terms, however, many of the patterns deviate little from previous years. Ridley Scott received his apologetic Black Hawk Down director nom for not winning for Gladiator last year, the brilliant Mulholland Drive was saluted for David Lynch’s sake despite being shafted in other major categories, Russell Crowe will probably win again as another apology for not grabbing a statue for The Insider (his only really great performance to date) and most surprisingly Baz Luhrmann was ignored for Moulin Rouge, despite the fact that it contained the most rigorous, interesting direction of the year...