Word: zazie
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Dates: during 2009-2009
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...think Najibullah Zazi would stand out on the high, dry plains southeast of Denver, where the earth is as flat as a starched shirt and mere wrinkles count as topography. But if heartland suburbs were ever enclaves of uniformity, that day is long gone. Aurora, Colo., is a city of people from somewhere else, a low-slung municipality of 315,000 that includes extremes of both poverty and prosperity. Aurora is vast - nearly 154 sq. mi. (400 sq km) - and dense, with a high concentration of multifamily housing units, apartment buildings, townhouses and condominiums. Those homes contain a patchwork...
...Even while allegedly buying gallons of chemicals at beauty-supply shops and renting a cheap hotel suite to cook them in, Zazi might have remained anonymous long enough to strike and kill, except that U.S. Homeland Security is a sharper instrument than it was in the summer of 2001. The dysfunctional system that failed to connect the dots before 9/11 managed, eight years later, to spot and disrupt a plot in progress. Zazi has denied charges he conspired to bomb targets in the U.S., but government officials are confident they've got their man. Authorities took notice when Zazi traveled...
...good news. Perhaps the fact that he was caught in time - and the same week that two other alleged bombing attempts were foiled in Middle America - tells us that post-9/11 security measures, many of them highly controversial, are working. But there is bad news too. Zazi's alleged project, from the training camp in Pakistan to his bomb recipe and backpack delivery system, bears the marks not of some fluky local scheme of the kind that the feds have sniffed out in the past but of a plausible al-Qaeda operation. Nor does Zazi appear...
...Roots of Rebellion Zazi's story begins 24 years ago, in the midst of a war in Afghanistan's Paktia province, a violent region of jagged mountains, ominous caves and boulder-strewn ravines. The war pitted U.S.-backed Islamic fundamentalists against troops of the Soviet occupation. Little is known of Zazi's childhood, but around the time he was born, there was a newcomer in Paktia: a zealous Saudi millionaire named Osama bin Laden. He had come to see jihad in action, and he was thrilled and inspired by the experience of combat. Bin Laden built mosques and schools...
...Afghans - especially ethnic Pashtuns like Zazi who follow a strict code of conduct - the arrests have brought shame not just to his family but to the entire community. "The dishonor of getting accused is just as bad in our culture as being guilty," says Ahad Shahbaz, who runs English-language-teaching programs in Boulder. "Even if he is honest, now he has dishonored his family...