Word: secessionists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reputation that she is more interested in cutting ribbons than crafting policy, the daughter of the man who founded Indonesia could badly use a bit of Dad's populist charm in dealing with Indonesia's myriad woes: economic stagnation, religious violence, allegations of terrorist networks, not to mention several secessionist movements. The high profile trials of Tommy Suharto, House Speaker Akbar Tandjung, 18 military officers accused of human rights abuses during East Timor's transition to independence, as well as a handful of ordinary corruption cases have served as symbolic reminders that she stands for-or used to, anyway-reform...
...spotlight as the Army Special Operations Commander for Joint Task Force 510. That translates as the officer in charge of U.S. forces in the Philippines, deployed to help that country's army fight terrorism. The immediate enemy is Abu Sayyaf, a splinter faction of the wider Muslim secessionist movement in the southern Philippines. Years of fighting the Philippine military has reduced it to a group of around 80 fighters, mostly engaged in kidnapping and other forms of banditry. They currently hold three foreign hostages, two of them American. The hot, thick jungles have made it hard to eliminate Abu Sayyaf...
...whose inclination is to seek autonomy or even full independence from Baghdad. Simply put, the concern is that destroying Saddam's regime could presage the breakup of Iraq itself, dramatically expanding Iranian influence while a breakaway Kurdish region in the north proves unacceptable to Turkey as an encouragement to secessionist activity among its own Kurdish minority...
...known as Abu Sayyaf are stepping onto sometimes treacherous turf. That much was made clear Wednesday in neighboring Jolo province, where three Marines of the Philippine army were killed in a firefight - by Philippine police. (The guilty policemen were former guerrillas of the Moro National Liberation Front, a Muslim secessionist group that had been granted autonomous control of four provinces under a 1996 peace agreement.) The incident followed a clash Tuesday in which 18 people were killed during a rally in support of former governor Nur Misauri, recently jailed for launching an ill-fated rebellion in the area last November...
...Sayyaf itself is a tiny radical offshoot of a larger secessionist guerrilla movement. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) launched its insurgency in the 1970s, pressing for independence for the Muslim population of the southern regions of Mindanao and Palwan, who make up some 5 percent of the population of the predominantly Catholic Philippines. It is not the separatist insurgency that has put the Philippines on the U.S. anti-terrorism radar, but rather the links between Abu Sayyaf and Osama bin Laden's organization...