Word: northern
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Felix was promoted to active duty last month, when tensions reached fever pitch between Burma's ruling junta and various armed ethnic groups in the country's northern borderlands. In late August, the military regime unexpectedly overran the army of the nearby Kokang minority, sending some 30,000 refugees spilling into neighboring China. Now other ethnic militias who control various jigsaw-puzzle pieces of northeastern Burma - the Kachin, the Wa, the Eastern Shan - are reinforcing their ragged armies and playing a terrifying guessing game: Who's next on the junta's hit list? (Read "A Closer Look at Burma...
...Clash of Titans It's perhaps no surprise that the junta is wary of Chinese influence, notwithstanding the two nations' growing economic ties. For decades, Beijing financially supported communist rebels in northern Burma, even at one point sending People's Liberation Army troops to reinforce their Burmese brothers in arms. For the fervently anticommunist junta, memories of this Chinese patronage are still fresh. It also doesn't help Burmese nationalism that large parts of Mandalay, the country's second largest city and historic royal capital, have turned into a giant Chinatown. "The SPDC wants to remake its image...
...years old and I thought that Burma would end in the flames of civil war," he told me. "Today, if you ask me the same question, I will give you the same answer: Burma will end up in civil war." If he's right, the hills of northern Burma will crackle with gunfire once again, and Felix will be heading off to battle...
...Berlin A Deadly Air Strike Hits Home German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing growing criticism at home and abroad after a bombing in northern Afghanistan ordered by German troops killed dozens of people, including civilians. In an address to parliament, Merkel expressed regret but insisted she would not "accept premature judgments" about the incident, the deadliest involving the nation's military since World War II. The Sept. 4 strike on two fuel trucks hijacked by the Taliban, which was carried out by U.S. fighter jets, has heightened the Afghan war's unpopularity in Germany and erodes confidence in Merkel...
...Afghanistan Journalist Freed in Deadly Raid New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, a dual British-Irish national who had been taken hostage in northern Afghanistan by Taliban kidnappers Sept. 5, was freed in a daring early-morning strike by British commandos four days later. The gambit resulted in the death of Farrell's Afghan translator, Sultan Munadi. At least 16 journalists have been kidnapped in Afghanistan since January 2002. Farrell was also held hostage in Iraq...