Word: regionality
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When describing Xinjiang, silk road clichés never grow old. China's westernmost region is a vast territory of deserts and mountains, where peaks of black sand descend toward ancient oasis towns. In many of its cities, men still haggle over livestock in dusty markets and purchase blades from blacksmiths whose families have stayed in the craft for centuries. The faces of its Uighur inhabitants, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group, tell of Xinjiang's history as a crossroads for caravans and civilizations: an astonishing array of gray, hazel and blue eyes, fringed by brown or black or even blond...
...ground operation, code-named Rah-i-Nijat (Urdu for "Path to Deliverance"), was launched early Saturday morning after weeks of heavy aerial bombardments that were designed to weaken militant fortifications. By Sunday, some 28,000 soldiers had moved into a remote corner of the mountainous region, in a three-pronged attack intended to trap the estimated 7,000 to 10,000 militants in South Waziristan, including some 1,000 Uzbek and foreign fighters who may be affiliated with al-Qaeda...
...historically been closed to outsiders. Even in Swat, which political leaders have declared a victory, insurgents are still ambushing military convoys and launching suicide bombings against civilian and security targets, proving, as many local residents have long attested, that Taliban leaders are still present in many of the region's villages...
...delegation concurring that Zelaya's return should not be a condition for approving the election. What's more, says the diplomat, the missive suggests that insisting on Zelaya's restoration has handed a victory to Chávez and other anti-U.S. leaders in the region...
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal Washington think tank, says backing away from restoring Zelaya "sends an ugly signal that the U.S. doesn't really consider the era of using military coups in the region to be over." He adds it would fuel charges that Obama has been cowed by a small group of conservative Republican Cold Warriors in Congress. Led by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, they recently journeyed to Honduras to show their support for Micheletti and are holding up diplomatic appointments to protest Obama's opposition to the coup...