Word: regions
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...moderate mullahs stay silent. Virtually unhindered, al-Qaeda has regrouped in the ungoverned tribal areas along Pakistan's long border with Afghanistan, and a newly unified militant group is hounding the military with devastating success. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the group and al-Qaeda's viceroy in the region, has been blamed for last December's suicide-bomb attack that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Twelve out of 14 suspects arrested in January for planning terrorist attacks in Spain are Pakistani; all are thought to have trained in the country's tribal areas. Sixty suicide bombings in Pakistan...
...American Factor More worrying still is the Pakistani conflation of extremism on their soil with the American war on terror. The suicide attacks against police, the military, government ministers and moderate leaders are not seen as attacks on Pakistan, but as a reaction to American adventurism in the region. There was a time in the 1950s and '60s when Pakistanis would proudly boast that they were America's 51st state. No longer. American support for Israel, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing tensions with Iran are taken as proof that the U.S. is following an anti-Islamic agenda...
Senator Joseph Biden, who observed the elections in Lahore as part of a U.S. delegation, said the results make it clear that U.S. policy in the region should "move from personality to the people." But behind the scenes, U.S. officials are encouraging the victorious parties to work with Musharraf, still their favorite personality. A coalition among Musharraf and Sharif (whom he ousted in a 1999 coup) and Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari is a nice idea, but it may be too late. Zardari and Sharif have publicly asked Musharraf to resign. They have the support of Pakistanis, still angry...
...South Texas bosses. But stances that might help Clinton elsewhere may be hurtful along the Rio Grande. For example, bashing international trade agreements is a vote winner among factory workers in Ohio, which also votes on March 4. But South Texas Democrats love free trade: the impoverished region pins its economic future on commerce with Mexico. Same with denouncing the oil industry, which employs a lot of Democratic voters in South Texas. Ditto for scorn heaped on the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind legislation. That plays well with teachers' unions, but many Texas Latinos have supported the program...
...Another reason for the town's wedding boom is that matchmaking is a serious business for a minority group trying to preserves its identity in an overwhelmingly Muslim region. Christians have lived in Iraq almost since the beginning of Christianity itself, and though they presumably fell in love and married just like everyone else for centuries, love became something of a cottage industry in Ankawa after the first Gulf war. When the Kurdistan broke away from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the town became a hub for single Christian men living abroad who could now return in search of a mate...