Word: ragtag
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...month ago, Mobutu's well-equipped but poorly motivated soldiers were in disgraceful retreat, refusing to fight and often simply running away from a ragtag band of Angola-based Katangese rebels. Now the rebels were on the run. The secret ingredient in the turn-around was mostly psychological: the presence of 1,500 elite Moroccan troops who had been airlifted in at Mobutu's desperate request. The Moroccans shamed Zaïre's 4,000 troops in the fighting area into showing a little backbone. This persuaded the 2,000 or so rebels and, presumably, their Angolan and Cuban supporters...
...scene is the ragtag headquarters of a Boston underground paper. A staffer takes a kinky sex ad for the personal column over the phone, then politely asks the caller whether he wants to pay by BankAmericard or Master Charge. Question: With credit policies like that, how underground can the paper or its readers really...
...forces appeared at last to have won a round in a murky conflict that some Africans have dubbed "the Termite War." Neither side seemed able to do any more than nibble away at the other. But last week government troops not only halted the advance of the ragtag invasion army toward Kolwezi, the center of Zaïre's copper-mining district, but also took the initiative for the first time. By week's end, government spokesmen were claiming that "a general offensive against all enemy positions" was under way with the primary purpose of recapturing the towns...
...invaders were a ragtag army of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers; most of them, apparently, once fought in the forces of Katangese Leader Moise Tshombe and fled to neighboring Angola after Tshombe's secessionist movement was defeated in the mid-1960s. What made the invasion ominous, to Mobutu's allies, was that the Katangese invaders had obviously been trained and armed by the Angolans and their guests, the Cubans, with the support of the Soviet Union. At little cost or risk to themselves, the Cubans and the Soviets seemed to be using the Katangese rebels...
...point, France delivered an $880,000 ransom in cash and promised another $ 1.4 million in the form of nonmartial military goods, including a field hospital. Habre refused the bait, and the result was the astonishing spectacle of a nuclear power virtually helpless before a guerrilla leader with a ragtag army of fewer than...