Word: saids
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...apparent this weekend. Following warnings by Okah that the peace process was faltering, MEND rebels launched a "warning strike" on Saturday, with 35 militants attacking a pipeline jointly owned by Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. "While wishing the President a speedy recovery," said rebel spokesman Jomo Gbomo, "a situation where the future of the Niger Delta is tied to the health and well-being of one man is unacceptable." He added that the government has been telling foreign investors that the situation in the Niger Delta was under control - an assertion "far from...
...within hours, Mack Anthony, commander of a MEND faction now opposed to Okah, condemned the attack. "We want to state categorically that the attack was carried out by enemies of the Niger Delta," said Anthony. "We are aware that the negotiation process is slow. [But] we are in an era of peace and MEND's top leaders shall not ... do anything that will derail the existing peace...
Such divisions can only harm the prospects for peace. Even more depressingly, the one thing on which Anthony and Okah seem to agree is that the future looks grim. In an interview with TIME this month, Anthony said he was "quite pessimistic" about the chances of forging a lasting peace because of the deteriorating health of the President - "I am categorically saying that [his] death may mean the death of Nigeria" - and because until the government tackles corruption, a peaceful and prosperous Nigeria will have to wait. "Unless the entire system is overhauled," he said, "we are going nowhere...
...Montazeri's transformation is a microcosm of Iran's revolutionary experience, and the evolving split among the clerics. "Montazeri began as a radical and a principle architect of the system of government that placed so much power in the hands of the Supreme Leader," said Shaul Bakhash, author of The Reign of the Ayatollahs. In the 1980s, he was also patron of the World Islamic Movement, a group committed to exporting Iran's revolution. His son Mohammad trained with the PLO in Lebanon...
...Given his clerical superiority and his outspoken views, it's hardly surprising that Montazeri became the nemesis of Iran's current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. "Khamenei doesn't really have a reply when Montazeri proclaims that the Islamic Republic of Iran is neither Islamic nor a Republic," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His immense standing was reflected in the fact that news of his death sent thousands of Iranians streaming to Qom. Grand Ayatollahs walked to his home in a show of respect, while opposition websites reported new protests against the regime at several universities...