Word: separatist
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Five years ago this week, separatist rebels attacked a small school in Beslan in North Ossetia. On the third day of the attack, at least 330 people were killed, more than half of them children. The attack was said to have altered the whole arc of not only the horrific conflict in nearby Chechnya but also the presidency of Vladimir Putin. Beslan was supposed to have given Moscow resolve. North Ossetia - indeed, the whole of the North Caucasus, between the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east - was supposed to be tranquil, harmonious, subdued...
...They failed. In 1999, three years after the end of the first Chechen war, they went back, at the prodding of then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a move reminiscent of Tolstoy's hundred-year-old Hadji Murad - which was also set in a strife-ridden Caucasus - the chief separatist, Akhmad Kadyrov, like the title character in the prescient short novel, switched sides at the beginning of the second Chechen war and crushed the rebellion. Assassinated in May 2004, Kadyrov was replaced by his son. (From TIME's archives, read about the massacre of the innocents in Beslan...
Doku Umarov, a separatist leader, declared in April that Riyad-us Salihin, or Guardians of the Righteous, a band of suicide bombers organized in the earlier part of the 2000s by now deceased radical separatist Shamil Basayev, had been revived after several years of lying dormant. In late June, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the President of Ingushetia, was severely wounded when his motorcade was bombed. In mid-August, Islamic extremists in Buynaksk, in Dagestan, attacked police at a sauna that also served as a brothel, killing four officers and seven prostitutes. Three days later, in Nazran, in Ingushetia, a suicide bomber...
...what was then known as Siam in 1902. Over the past five years, a steady stream of bombings, shootings, beheadings and other terror attacks in the country's deep south have claimed roughly 3,500 lives, both Muslim and Buddhist. Most of the killings have been blamed on separatist Muslim insurgents, while others are thought to be the work of Buddhist vigilantes. All in all, it's something that Thai tourist authorities would prefer to gloss over in their posters touting palm-fringed beaches [EM] even though those white-sand idylls aren't located that far away from the three...
...mountains. After his prayers, they asked him about Tibet's own relations with China. "We Tibetans are not seeking separation," he replied. The Dalai Lama has been pursuing "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet and the preservation of his people's culture and religion, but China sees him as a separatist, and is wary of his interaction on the global front, especially in Taiwan, which China also sees as part of its territory. A day after Taipei announced his visit, China denounced the decision and lashed out at the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, who invited him, for their "attempt to sabotage...