Word: qaeda
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...Meanwhile, Israeli politicians and pundits are constantly on the air painting Hamas as an implacable, genocidal foe. Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Fox News, "For us to be asked to have a cease-fire with Hamas is like asking you to have a cease-fire with al-Qaeda" - despite the fact that Israel and Hamas had, in fact, agreed via Egypt to a six-month cease-fire just last June. And Israeli military spokeswoman Major Avital Leibovitch is constantly reassuring TV audiences worldwide that Israeli troops are going the extra mile to avoid collateral damage in Gaza. However, some Israeli...
...Ethiopians, with U.S. assistance, invaded to topple an Islamist movement that controlled Mogadishu, and had been sheltering a handful of al-Qaeda operatives. Osama bin Laden's movement killed more than 200 people when they attacked two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and several small groups of U.S. special operations soldiers accompanied the Ethiopians in the hope that the invasion would flush local operatives out into the open. The Ethiopians drove out the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), but quickly became the target of the Islamist Shabaab insurgency that has raged ever since. Having gone in to provide...
...Like the U.S. in Iraq, the Ethiopians won't admit defeat or miscalculation, but are seeking to withdraw as honorably as possible. But what will they leave behind? In Iraq, the U.S. has taken confidence from the emergence of the Sunni Awakening movement, former insurgents who drove al-Qaeda out of their communities (even if their relations with the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government remain tense). A similar movement has begun to emerge in Mogadishu, reflecting the moderate, tolerant Islam that has traditionally prevailed in Somalia. But Somalia hasn't had a government to speak of for 18 years. There...
...then there's the complication of the Shabaab's links to al-Qaeda, a fact that means occasional U.S. air strikes are likely to continue even after the Ethiopians have gone. That could complicate stabilization and reconstruction efforts, since anti-American hostility makes any Western presence - even aid organizations or journalists - a target for the Shabaab. (See pictures of al-Qaeda...
...tough with both Shi'ite and Sunni insurgents. "I'll vote for Maliki's party," says Rafaat Khalid Ahmed, a university lecturer in Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Mansour district. "He showed courage in dealing with the major issues in Iraq, and that helped him defeat the militias and al-Qaeda on both sides...