Word: wars
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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However, the city's designation by Herb Caen--whether based on alliteration or resemblance--as some twin of Baghdad made me think what a contrast the real Baghdad would make: war-torn, military in the streets, the sounds of commerce subdued and conviviality scarce. Occasionally an American warplane must skirt by, but the pervading reality must be silence, for what else could be the sound of a people abandoned...
Nine years ago, the United States led a broad UN coalition in a war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. It successfully repelled the Iraqis from Kuwait and its petroleum riches. However, the war ended in a stalemate, with Saddam still (ruthlessly) ruling Iraq and no way but sanctions and air strikes to keep his regime in check. With children dying from untreated diseases and malnutrition and the Kurds existing day-to-day by the humor of Saddam's Republican Guard, the Americans expressed concern about the situation. They bolstered the program of weapons inspections, the condition for lifting sanctions...
Today, Saddam remains in power in Iraq and Americans, often reservists, stand guard over more than half of its war-torn landscape, policing no-fly zones. Water treatment plants are not rebuilt. The economy is nonexistent, at least in measurable terms. Convoys of the few supplies that actually are ordered by the Iraqi government from the West's watchguards are often diverted, squandered or sold to those who can barely survive let alone pay for what was meant of be distributed for free...
...Timor is a nation of some 800,000 inhabitants located on a small island on the southeastern tip of the Indonesian archipelago, 400 miles north of Australia. The western half of the island had been a Dutch colony, and was therefore part of what became independent Indonesia after World War II. But the eastern half, which had been ruled for three centuries by Portugal, was given its independence with the collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1975. Indonesia invaded the country in December of that year and annexed East Timor...
...What is U.S. policy on East Timor? The U.S. had tacitly supported Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor because Indonesia was its key southeast Asian ally during the Cold War. Over the next decade, Washington routinely voted against U.N. resolutions recognizing East Timor's independence and urging Indonesia's withdrawal. With Cold War concerns a thing of the past, however, the U.S. now wants Indonesia to respect the will of East Timor's people as expressed democratically through August's referendum. But Indonesia's economic and political centrality to the region, and its potential instability, make Washington cautious about...