Word: separatist
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...landslide victory on Jan. 27 in the country's first election since the end of its 26-year civil war. Upending predictions that the contest would be a close fight, Rajapaksa easily beat his challenger, General Sarath Fonseka - a former ally in Sri Lanka's military victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers - with 57.9% of the vote. Though he was hailed by many members of Sri Lanka's ethnic Sinhalese majority for emerging victorious from the decades-long conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Rajapaksa's reputation was dented by international criticism of his headlong rush into...
...tally, Rajapaksa did not fare well in the north and the east, home to most of the island's Tamil population. Their votes went to Fonseka, a sign of Rajapaksa's most serious task: winning the confidence of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. During the height of the Tamil separatist insurgency, the LTTE controlled much of that territory, and Tamils there are still anxious and fearful about how they will be treated by the man who crushed the dream of a Tamil homeland. Rajapaksa sounded a conciliatory tone after results were announced: "I am the president of the those...
...race between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his challenger, the former army commander Sarath Fonseka, is unexpectedly close. Rajapaksa won the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a brutal ethnic separatist group that once controlled much of northern and eastern Sri Lanka. But Fonseka, a hero in his own right in the same war, is a formidable opponent. He represents a patchwork coalition of opposition parties united in their antipathy to Rajapaksa, whom they say has disregarded the rights of the Tamil minority and indulged in blatant crony capitalism.(Watch a video about the final days...
...militants mistakenly opened fire on a bus carrying Togo's national team, killing three people. The squad was traveling in the restive Cabinda region of Angola to play in the African Cup of Nations tournament, a tune-up for this summer's World Cup in South Africa. Separatist rebels apologized for the attack, explaining that an Angolan convoy had been their intended target...
Pity poor Yemen. Three armed conflicts are being fought in the nation that hugs the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula: there is a separatist insurgency in the south and a fight between the mostly Sunni government forces and Shi'ite rebels in the north, while in the east, home of Osama bin Laden's ancestors, the local affiliate of his network is plotting to undermine the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh...