Word: regions
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...Mehsud had been party to an agreement with the Pakistani government to cease his protection of al-Qaeda in his region. The Pakistani government has since then considered the agreement to have been broken. Says Frederic Grare, a former French diplomat in Pakistan and a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Mehsud is a very convenient [person to blame]. He?s the bad guy in the trouble areas." He asks, "Why would Mehsud be willing to kill Benazir? Beyond the stated fact that she?s against extremism. How do [Mehsud's people] benefit from Benazir?s assassination...
...show-trial, and accuse Paris of failing to provide sufficient assistance and protection to what they say are blameless humanitarian officials. They contend the staffers were trapped in the shifting political sands surrounding the Darfur crisis - particularly the deployment of French-led peacekeeping forces to the Chad-Sudan border region, a move that Chadian authorities resent. Public opinion in Chad, on the other hand, has broadly accused the court of letting a cabal of child traffickers working under humanitarian cover off lightly. Some local commentators fear the transfer of Zoé's Ark staffers back to France could...
...Turkish army invaded northern Iraq, sending some 35,000 soldiers across the border to destroy the guerilla infrastructure of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) a militant group made up of Turkish Kurds that had found refuge in the lawless mountain region. Operation Steel, as it was called, killed over 500 militants, but still the PKK survived to fight another day. In early 1997, the Turks sent in another 30,000 soldiers - this time as part of Operation Hammer - to finish the job. They didn't. The Turks had to go in again later that year with Operation Dawn...
This time however there are some important differences. Turkey isn't invading the lawless hinterland of a pariah nation (Saddam's Iraq) but a region that not too long ago was considered the one relative success of the American project in Iraq. The United States - which controls Iraqi airspace - tried to forestall a Turkish invasion, but eventually caved into Turkish demands and agreed to a limited incursion. The fact that Turkey was ready to risk alienating its American ally for an operation with little chance of strategic success is a testament to the uproar by the Turkish public for action...
Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday should put a bitter end to the Bush Administration's misguided policy of shoving democracy down the throat of the Middle East and Muslim world. Since 9/11 there has not been a single country in that region that has had peaceful and successful elections. Hamas's victory in Gaza, the stalemate in Lebanon, elections in Iraq and now Pakistan - none of them have led to the stability, modernity and civil society this Administration promised...