Word: shape
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...first week that didn't happen. What had once been the expected strategy for combat--U.S. forces assisting the Northern Alliance in a proxy war against the Taliban--seems to have been put on hold as potential leaders squabble over the shape of a postwar government. Indeed, last week, from Kalai Sharif, a village held by the opposition just 25 miles from Kabul, those watching the bombardment of the capital could witness a rather more prosaic light show: the beams of four-wheel-drive pickup trucks, each of them loaded with Taliban fighters. They were moving toward the Northern Alliance...
Iran and Pakistan are particularly interested in the future shape of Afghanistan's government. Pakistan despises the Northern Alliance because of its tilt against the Pashtun (also represented in Pakistan), its ties to archrival India and its disastrous rule of Kabul from 1992 to '96. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is blunt: "Their return would mean a return to anarchy and criminal killing." For its part, Iran, whose Muslims belong mainly to the Shi'ite branch of Islam, has backed members of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority. On the sidelines of last week's meeting...
...there are opportunities too. He has an unprecedented opening before him to remake a failing state into one where extremism might no longer flourish. And he seems determined to take it. For the first time in his short reign, he is directly confronting the religious radicals who shape so much of the country's domestic and foreign policy to a radical agenda. "This is a battle for the heart and soul of Pakistan," says Chris Smith, senior research fellow at King's College London Center for Defense Studies. "He has taken a decision to stem the tide of the forces...
...will find it will remain a fool's game. But the arrival of ground forces on the scene has at least returned some clarity of purpose to a campaign that was starting to get lost in the fog. For now, discussions on less immediate matters--like what shape a post-Taliban government should take or whether states such as Iraq and Syria should be targeted for their past complicity in international terrorism--will be held behind curtains. Domestic politics intruded on grand strategy last week. The more besieged the public feels about terrorist threats, the less willing it will...
...almost no connection. The only connection is that you become as absorbed in one as the other once you start working. But the whole process is totally different. With nonfiction, you start with a big block of research, both reported and from reading. You chip away at it, you shape it, but you’ve always got that in front, this objective reality that you’re going to shape. It’s a sculpting process. With a novel, you get up in the morning and there is nothing there. You have to convince yourself every single...