Word: northerner
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...this straight: Serbia and Montenegro were all that remained of Yugoslovia after Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded during the Balkan Wars of the '90s. Then Montenegro declared independence in 2006. Kosovo seceded from Serbia last Sunday, and now the northern region of Kosovo wants to secede and rejoin Serbia. I don't have a dog in this latest fight - or even understand it much - but if someone wants to quit the firm, it seems to me you ought to let him go. The tension arises, of course, because the ones eyeing the door usually want to take...
...measure, then, of just how eager the Turkish military is to confront the PKK that it got a jump on the spring thaw by sending a reported 10,000 Turkish troops into northern Iraq Thursday, despite the weather. Turkey's goal appears to be to pre-empt the spring build-up of PKK fighters moving from Iraq into Turkey. The Turks have advanced some six miles into Iraq and blown up a few bridges, and say they will return home to their warm bases as soon as possible...
February is not a great month to invade northern Iraq. The mountains of the Kurdish autonomous region are foreboding year around, which is precisely why they teem with guerilla bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, a militant group at war with neighboring Turkey. But in winter, the mountains become an easy place for a foreign army to get stuck in the snow and die in the cold...
...flag - the same as Albania. But mindful of multiculturalism and hoping to assuage the Serb minority, the West wouldn't allow it. Kosovo's new flag is thus a focus-group mishmash: a yellow Rorschach splot (the country's shape on the map, at least as long as the northern part sticks around) on a blue EU style flag with a few yellow stars. Want to guess which one the Kosovars will wave when their soccer team scores...
...same time, shares its longest land border with Iran. Afghanistan has long pleaded with the U.S. and Iran not to carry out their longstanding strategic rivalry on its soil. And for several years that request has been largely honored. Iran, a long-time supporter of the Northern Alliance, was instrumental in bringing about the fall of the Taliban. Iran has also helped more than any other neighbor with the reconstruction of the country. Since 2002, Tehran has pumped millions of dollars into Afghanistan's western provinces to build roads, electrical grids, schools and health clinics. On top of this, Iranian...