Word: northern
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...priest sex-abuse scandals didn't help. Criticism over the handling of the case of Father Brendan Smyth - a priest who sexually abused children for more than 40 years - even led to the collapse of the Irish government in 1994, when Prime Minister Albert Reynolds delayed extraditing Smyth to Northern Ireland to face child-abuse charges. (Read "For Ireland's Catholic Schools, a Catalog of Horrors...
Inevitably, the scandals have made it harder to attract new men. Father Brian D'Arcy, superior of the Passionist Monastery in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, says the only way to reverse the trend may be to relax long-standing rules. "Of course it would be a big help if priests were allowed to marry or if we could ordain married men," he says. "Good men are being driven out by foolish [rules]." [rules]," D'Arcy says. (Read a brief history of celibacy...
...Iranian government has in the past been able to put aside its anti-Americanism to cooperate with the U.S. on Afghanistan. After the 9/11 attacks, Washington and Tehran worked quietly together: Iran had helped train, arm and finance many of the fighters and commanders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which worked with the U.S. to overthrow the Taliban and drive out al-Qaeda. James Dobbins, the Bush Administration's first envoy to Afghanistan after 9/11, worked with Iranian officials to set up the post-Taliban government. But relations soured when President George W. Bush balked at a broader relationship...
...Still, some U.S. officials charge that the Iranians are hedging their bets and also building bridges to some elements of the Taliban despite their longtime enmity toward the movement. (Iran came close to war with the Taliban in 1998, when the movement murdered nine Iranian diplomats after capturing the northern city of Mazar e-Sharif...
...Iran can also use political levers against U.S. interests in Kabul. Dobbins points out that the Northern Alliance constituencies with which Tehran has strong connections - the Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks - are also key support bases of Abdullah Abdullah, whom Karzai beat in this year's fraud-ridden election. "The most damaging thing that Iran could do would be to encourage these elements ... to cease supporting the [Karzai] government and essentially open a third front in the current civil war," he says...