Word: rulers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Nigeria chooses a President this weekend, Olusegun Obasanjo will likely win a second term, despite a lackluster first. Of the 19 other candidates, only Muhammadu Buhari, like Obasanjo an ex-military ruler, poses a real threat. But who wins may matter less than how this vote happens. Neither candidate has done much on the campaign trail to bridge the religious and regional divides that split Nigeria's 120 million people...
...should have been no surprise that a regime noted for its cruelty would toss out the gentleman's guide to war by fielding irregulars like the Fedayeen Saddam. These estimated 20,000 young "men of sacrifice," commanded by the ruler's notorious older son Uday, are the regime's most politically reliable force, known for their readiness to carry out its dirty work. Beginning in 1995, Uday recruited local toughs from Sunni regions devoted to Baath rule to form a family security force under his personal control. Originally in charge of smuggling, the Fedayeen were schooled to become a ruthless...
...authorities had closed the road to the front-line village of Khazar, ostensibly for our safety but also perhaps because they had lost the village the night before. Reinforcements swept along the dusty road: we watched as noisy peshmerga, taciturn Special Forces, a top commander, the brother of the ruler of this part of Kurdistan, moved past in a convoy of Land Cruisers, waving regally. The next day we discovered that the Kurdish commander who waved courteously to us was badly injured by a U.S. air strike further along the front. Friendly fire...
...Iraqi exiles who "share the president's objectives for a free Iraq." The U.S. may not even wait for Saddam's ouster; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers said Thursday that rather than fight street-by-street for the capital, coalition forces may simply isolate Iraq's ruler and his loyalists and allow an interim authority to begin governing the country...
Iraq is Saddam, he likes to say, and Saddam is Iraq. He has been a ruler, says Coughlin, who "has always had one eye on history." He has longed for his name to go down in Arab history alongside those of the culture's great heroes, like Nebuchadnezzar, who drove the Jews into Babylonian captivity, and Saladin, who retook Jerusalem from the Christian Crusaders. He wanted to fulfill the modern-day promise of Egypt's great nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser, restoring Arab unity and the greater Arab nation to its rightful place in the world. In recent years the standard...