Word: westernizes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...known as the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, the Cages, Thatcher's Breakers Yard. Northern Ireland's notorious Maze prison drew more grim nicknames - and housed more paramilitary prisoners - than any other jail in Western Europe. Its last inmates were released under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which laid the foundation for an end to sectarian violence in the British province. And after bulldozers razed most of the former prison buildings last year, the site where Bobby Sands and nine other Republican militants died in a hunger strike in 1981 became little more than an abandoned relic...
...most of Western history, political issues, while central and fiercely debated and disputed even on the field of battle, ranked second in dignity and priority to higher concerns. To a pious Christian, politics cannot provide a final solution because it only is concerned with this world, which is always passing away. But to American youth, immersed in a self-consciously and radically secular culture, especially at a place like Harvard, the precepts and promises of religion have diminished appeal. Limiting their perspectives to this world, youth understandably can see politics—once shorn of the ostensible cynicism...
...elections of 1996. Although there was an opposition candidate, the main opposition - Hamas - stayed out of the race. So, too, would the Taliban, and the political contest would be between voting and boycotting an election associated with an increasingly unpopular foreign military presence. On the other hand, a renewed Western focus on creating a more viable Afghan government as the anchor for its counterinsurgency strategy may yet see other candidates step forward to challenge Karzai. But more important than the election will be the efforts, already underway, to negotiate a new political compact with more moderate elements of the Taliban...
...emphasized Afghanistan as "the right war"and vowed to divert resources from Iraq to better fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But that war effort has not been going well, and many analysts warn that one of its key weaknesses is that it is focused on propping up the Western-friendly government of President Hamid Karzai - a government many analysts see as a liability because of its corruption and ineffectiveness, which have alienated it from the local population in much of Afghanistan. The weakness of the Karzai government may be one of the most important political factors boosting the Taliban...
...sent researchers to the the provinces of North and South Kivu this summer and reported back that Hutu armed groups as well as members of the country's armed forces were profiting from the trade in cassiterite, or iron ore. The group wants to exert more pressure on Western governments and companies to prevent profits from ending up in the pockets of combatants. The most important mineral being extracted from the region is tin ore but gold and a substance known as coltan, which is a key mineral used in the making of cell phones, are also being exported from...