Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iran experts say Tehran's broad interests in Afghanistan are the same as Washington's. The Islamic Republic doesn't want to see a return to chaos on its eastern flank, which would probably lead to a massive refugee influx. As a Shi'ite state, it would see the return to power of militant Sunni hard-liners as a setback. And Iran, which faces a drug-addiction problem of alarming proportions, shares the U.S. desire to curtail Afghanistan's opium trade. If anything, "Tehran stands to lose much more than Washington if Afghanistan reverts back to an al-Qaeda-infested...
...explosion at the scene of the bombing injured Russia's chief investigator in the Prosecutor General's office, Alexander Bastrykin, a close ally of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "This tactic is used by terrorists in the North Caucasus," Bastrykin said in an interview published on Wednesday in the state-owned daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta. That bomb, investigators said, was triggered by a mobile phone, a method favored in the Caucasus. Putin, meanwhile, has called for tough measures against those behind the bombing. He said on a TV phone-in on Thursday that the attack showed that the threat to Russia...
...Kremlin rule have failed to stamp out the Islamist resistance there, and suicide attacks and assassinations are not uncommon. Umarov, the self-appointed leader of the Caucasus emirate he proclaimed in 2007, is now waging a terrorist campaign to turn at least six regions into a new, independent state governed by radical Islamic law. Up to now, his methods have focused on localized guerrilla warfare, sending suicide bombers or gunmen to hit police targets or pick off officials from the Kremlin-backed regional governments...
...celebrate the graduation of 43 medical students from Benadir University, a school founded in 2002 to help replace the hundreds of Somali doctors who have died in or fled Somalia's 18-year-long civil war. Instead, Thursday's ceremony in Mogadishu, capital of the world's most failed state, became another bloody reminder of just how far the country has sunk. Midway through the event, a male suicide bomber disguised as a woman in a long black abaya, veil and shoes, blew himself up, killing three government ministers and 16 other people in a devastating blow to the country...
After months of delay, Arturo Valenzuela was finally confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs last month. But for a job with such a long title, he may find it's short on clout these days. Ostensibly, Valenzuela is President Obama's new point man on Latin America; in reality, that job looks to be under the control of Republicans in Congress and conservatives inside Obama's own diplomatic corps. In fact, when it comes to U.S. policy in Latin America - as events this week in Honduras suggest - it's often hard to tell if George...