Word: tribalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Institutionally, Harvard’s president is the person best able to direct overarching changes and interdisciplinary initiatives, such as the nascent Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Such projects can require the president to act as a mediator between often-tribal faculty departments, bringing together, for example, scientists and philosophers to tackle the academic riddles of the future. Past presidents, from Lawrence H. Summers to Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, have adopted a confrontational management style, attempting to force through initiatives with a blunt stick. If we, as observers of Harvard University, learned anything from the rapid downfall of former...
...Noorzai sent word via one of his relatives, a man named Khalid Pashtoon, to say he wanted to meet with the U.S. military. It is a testament to either craftiness or desperation that Noorzai turned to Pashtoon, who despite the family tie was a key aide to a rival tribal chief who often clashed with Noorzai. But that enemy was one of America's chief allies in the south of the country. The seeming alliance did the trick. In November 2001, instead of being targeted, Noorzai was meeting with the Americans...
...dramatic gesture. In January 2002, to convince the Americans that he wanted to work with them and demonstrate not only his worth but his influence over his tribe, he delivered 15 trucks loaded with weaponry, including about 400 antiaircraft missiles, that the Taliban had concealed in his tribal villages. The gesture apparently had the desired effect. Over the next few months, Noorzai said he met with U.S. military and intelligence officers five times. The purpose, he says: "To make the situation in Afghanistan stable and also to help the Americans negotiate with the moderate members of the Taliban to reconcile...
...Kandahar, U.S. attack helicopters swooped in and bombarded Birqet's home, killing him and two of his grandchildren. The U.S. claimed it had got wind of a plot by Noorzai and Birqet to attack American forces. Noorzai says that report was erroneous. "He was an innocent man, a tribal leader who had come back to help," Noorzai says...
...early 2004, however, Noorzai says, President Karzai's brother phoned to lobby him to talk to the Americans again. "'You are a tribal leader,'" Noorzai said Wali Karzai told him. "'You can help.'" Separately, Noorzai got a call from Saitullah Khan Babar, a friend and former officer in Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI. The Americans, Babar told Noorzai, had proposed a meeting in Dubai, neutral turf. Warily, Noorzai agreed...