Word: standoff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...method in Moqtada Sadr's madness can best be seen in the list of people lining up to mediate an end to the standoff in Najaf. At last count, they included not only a delegation from the national conference in Baghdad convened to appoint an interim legislature, but also UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and even Pope John Paul II. Sadr may be vowing to fight to the finish against a combined U.S.-Iraqi force that vastly outnumbers and outguns his own, but in the process he's taken center-stage in the battle to shape post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed...
...delay has been good for Sadr, too, because the perception of the standoff among large sections of Iraqi society has been shaped by the fact that it involves thousands of troops from an unpopular foreign army attacking Muslim fighters around one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. The Najaf standoff has seen the U.S. and Allawi widely condemned among both Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis, and thousands of Shiites have flocked to Najaf to act as "human shields" to protect Sadr in the event of a new offensive. Elsewhere in Iraq, Sadr's militiamen continue daily to demonstrate their capacity...
...forces had found themselves confronted by an insurgent force backed by the overwhelming majority of the civilian population, whereas Sadr's fighters are mostly outsiders to Najaf, whose presence has irritated the city's clerical leadership and much of the civilian population. But prospects for resolving the standoff within the Shiite community have receded, not only because the clashes that began last week saw both sides accuse the other of violating the June cease-fire that brought the previous battle in the city to an end, but also because the supreme Shiite clerical authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who played...
...Courting Kim Jong Il So what if the U.S. is not amused as the two Koreas try to resolve their decades-long standoff with minimum military tension? TIME's story [June 21] seemed to be focused more on U.S. concerns in the region than on the ultimate benefits that North and South Korea can bring about. Apparently part of the U.S.'s strategy is to create clouds of fear that any country it brands a rogue nation, such as North Korea, could strike at any time. Lowell Allan Estepa Puerto Princesa, the Philippines...
While the standoff underscores America's continuing struggle to come to terms with the legacy of slavery, the controversy is as nuanced as the many shades of "black" that the present-day Hemings family embodies. In the end, the divisive reunions of the association actually helped create new family bonds among the very people it excluded--and motivated a few Jeffersons to cross the racial divide and embrace their once distant cousins...