Word: strongman
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...Northern Alliance, the mainly Tajik Jamiat-i-Islami faction. Jamiat's ascension has prompted an unlikely alignment between Dostum and Hamid Karzai, the patrician Pashtun tribal leader who heads Kabul's interim government. In December Karzai appointed Dostum deputy to Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, Jamiat's military strongman, and in March he named Dostum his "special representative" in the north. Dostum has also conspicuously aligned himself with former King Mohammed Zahir Shah. The moves suggest not powergrabbing as much as defensiveness. "Dostum is feeling threatened," says Ahmed Rashid, author of a best-selling book on the Taliban. "He's looking...
...Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has long insisted his country had nothing to do with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, even after last year's conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for involvement in the attack. But according to a letter obtained by TIME, Gaddafi will make a "substantial formal offer" to compensate families of the 270 victims within a month. The April 23 letter to families was written by New York City attorney James P. Kreindler, who has been in Paris negotiating with senior Libyans behind closed doors. Kreindler's missive does not predict...
...second type of Arab despotism is the secular totalitarian state. Iraq and Syria are good examples of these. These states ensure their own survival by brutally oppressing their people and by encouraging a cult of personality around the local strongman, be it a Hussein or an Assad...
...doesn't help Spain's case that many Gibraltarians still remember the Franco era. In 1969, upset by a constitutional amendment that added the referendum requirement, the Spanish strongman closed the border. The move, unreversed until 1985, hurt both sides, splitting families with branches in Spain and Gibraltar and putting hundreds of Spaniards, who had worked on the Rock, on the dole. Franco's strategy "put back our cause by decades," says a senior Spanish diplomat. "All it did was create a siege mentality and bring them closer together instead of closer to Spain." An E.U. aid offer, worth...
...early series, Knight Rider, set to become a movie. Slight change: talking car Kitt will be amphibious and stuffed into a red thong TOM PETTY Heartbreaker inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whenever enshrinements of geriatric rockers are announced, we think: who cares? Losers TOMMY SUHARTO Former strongman's son goes on trial in Indonesia for murdering a judge. One can only pity the jurist who gets to hear this case PETER BUCK R.E.M. star charged for drunkenness on a plane. This will actually increase his likelihood of making the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame STEVEN SEAGAL...