Word: villas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Shah says he has no ambitions to retake the throne. "My principle is that I am subject to the free will of the people," he told Time during a rare interview at his house in Rome. Sitting cross-legged on a living room couch in his contemporary-style concrete villa in the northern part of the city, Zahir Shah described his mixed emotions on the eve of his return: "It has been a great desire to be back among the Afghan people. But there will also be great sadness and nostalgia for all that has happened there...
When the Taliban abandoned Kabul, Khaksar stayed behind in his villa, giving himself up to the Northern Alliance. Since then, he says he has sent five letters to the U.S. embassy in Kabul, offering to meet the diplomats and pass on information about al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. Khaksar says the reason the U.S. hasn't been able to find Omar so far is that it is relying on "liars" and tribal chieftains who are using U.S. firepower to take revenge on their enemies. He claims to have information about al-Qaeda links to the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency...
...relishes the peace of his twilight years after a lifetime of fighting. A towering chap with a ramrod back and a vaguely wintery air, he retains a formidable presence even as he potters about the twisting rows of tea bushes swaddling the slopes below his Chinese-style villa. Further down, the mountain falls away in an undulating patchwork of tea, tobacco, fruit trees and stands of thick forest. Above, near the summit, the sun glints on the gilt-wrapped domes and spires of a Buddhist temple. "We are just ordinary Thai citizens now," Lue says. His passport records his name...
...uncle Lue seems to have found his second calling. Sipping tea on the sun-drenched balcony of his villa, I ask him about the cherry blossoms. I mean, they're lovely, but aren't they kind of, well, Japanese? "No," he replies. "These are special Chinese sakura trees from Yunnan. I planted some of them myself...
...seems far-fetched that a tribal chieftain secluded in a villa in northern Tehran, his phone lines cut and official visits banned could pose any threat to neighboring Afghanistan. Hekmatyar has been holed up in Iran since being driven out of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996, and has little support, even his one-time followers, and lacks the war chest to raise an army. Most Afghanis loathe him as the commander responsible for reducing Kabul to rubble in a fierce power struggle with rival commanders that killed tens of thousands of people in the early 1990s. But his virulent...