Word: townes
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...left an impression. As I'd discovered firsthand, it can be hard to escape the damaging clichés about Africa - about the perennial curses of bribery, corruption and lawlessness. These negative associations with Africa were much on the minds of people at the summit in Cape Town. "We are fighting an image problem," said Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born cell-phone magnate who has created a multi-million-dollar prize to reward good political governance in Africa. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, an ex-Finance Minister in Nigeria known for fighting corruption, likewise lamented that the private sector "still sees Africa...
...perhaps my experience wasn't so random, after all. Sure enough, a few days after the forum, I received an e-mail from a friend saying his home in Cape Town had just been burgled on his birthday and two laptops, four passports and $5,000 in cash had been stolen. He dubbed it "that extra-special South African birthday surprise." A new dawn may be coming, but it isn't here quite...
...Baqubah was strangely quiet as we flashed into town, an otherworldly convoy of dust-colored Stryker vehicles, bristling with gunners. Only a few small explosions could be heard in the distance; there was no small-arms fire. We stopped at a bombed-out medical clinic for a briefing, with operation maps leaned against a white ceramic tile wall, Odierno and his commanders sitting on boxes and camouflage-fabric campaign chairs in a tight semicircle. The news was good. The enemy was said to be caught in a tightening cordon. Local Sunni insurgents - they claimed to be members...
...midafternoon on a blistering June Saturday in Yusufia, just south of Baghdad. The abandoned school was stifling, though more tolerable than the dusty, sun-addled main street of town, which we'd just walked along - the general on an arid grip-and-grin tour, offering Salaam aleikum, habibi! greetings to the few Iraqis willing to brave the midday heat. Now Petraeus moved from classroom to classroom, cloaked in heavy body armor, sweat trickling down the side of his face. Each room was packed with nonsmiling Iraqi men in deep squat - 500 in all. Petraeus was exhilarated. They were different from...
...joint U.S.-Iraqi command post in the middle of Baqubah, was less optimistic. An Iraqi general said that he was pretty certain that the al-Qaeda leadership had slipped away, north to Tikrit and Samarra, and that many of the fighters were burying their equipment before they left town, hoping to return - as always - when the Americans left. In the days that followed, it became clear that almost all of al-Qaeda's fighters had gotten out. In a guerrilla war, only the stupidest guerrillas allow themselves to be lured into set-piece battles against a superior force...