keeping quiet and speaking up

Gdn: "forgotten" war in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia
"Deep in these desert wastes lie the Somali state zones (provinces) of Degehabur, Fik and Qorahay. It is here, largely unseen and unreported, that the Ethiopian army, backed by rival sub-clans, has waged a violent nine-month-long campaign against factions of the Ogadeni clan, the backbone of the ONLF."
LAT: horrific story of one woman accused of collaborating with the Ogaden National Liberation Front

BBC: talks in Somalia to end violence
interim PM met with elders of the Hawiye clan, though it's unclear if they can influence the most active armed group, al-Shabab (whose members are mostly Hawiye). Al-Shabab carrying out hit-and-run attacks on villages in central and southern Somalia:
"A pattern is emerging whereby the militia briefly occupy the town, often killing a number of people, then withdraw with arms, ammunition and military vehicles seized from Somali government and Ethiopian troops."

Gdn: Mugabe printing an extra 3 million ballots, just in case vote rigging plan A goes awry
Gdn: vote rigging necessary because former allies have become the opposition

LAT: US death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000
CSM: attack on green zone launched from Sadr City
WP: another dispatch from Fallujah, where "brute force" keeps the peace (profile of the former Sunni insurgent turned local police chief)

BBC: new Pakistan PM to reinstate judges
BBC: Musharraf says he'll cooperate with new government

WP: Bhutan monarch imposes voting, despite popular opposition

LAT: cocaine production on the rise in Peru; Shining Path group involved
"...this time, the traffickers may be more difficult to combat because the flashy kingpins from Colombia have been replaced by a piecemeal network, a sort of gold rush of international entrepreneurs...A wave of drug-related lawlessness -- assassinations, ambushes, threats against prosecutors -- has fanned fears of the kind of narco-instability that afflicts Colombia and Mexico... And renewed militancy among the peasants who grow the coca leaf has sparked road closures and violent clashes with law enforcement officers...
'The narcos and their sicarios [hired killers] act in these zones with complete impunity,' said Rospigliosi, the former interior minister. 'They've bought off local officials and have complete control.'
The flourishing narco trade, authorities say, is stimulating a fresh incarnation of the Maoist rebel group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, which terrorized the nation before being beaten down in the 1990s. Shining Path was never vanquished in coca country, where the rebels have long imposed "taxes" on traffickers, timber harvesters and others."

NYT: delay in response time by Chinese police during Tibetan violence
BBC: Tuareg rebels launch attacks in Mali
BBC: fighting in Afghanistan
BBC: and Kashmir;
BBC: imminent on island of Anjouan in the Comoros

Gdn: technology and justice: Argentines using DNA to identify disappeared

USAT: witnesses in US keeping quiet, fearing reprisals

NYT: nostalgia for Duvalier in Haiti
"Mr. Planess, 53, who complains that hunger has become so much a part of his life that his stomach does not even growl anymore, is not alone in his nostalgia for Haiti’s dictatorial past. Other Haitians speak longingly of the security that existed then as well as the lack of garbage in the streets, the lower food prices and the scholarships for overseas study." the article also mentions that the prime minister has appointed a commission to consider reconstituting the army.

WP: eradicating slavery in Mauritania
"The ancient tradition of slavery endures in Mauritania, although it was officially abolished in the 1980s. There are roughly half a million slaves among the country's population of 3.3 million, and at least 80 percent do not have access to a formal education, [former slave and activist] Messaoud said...Under the still-prevalent tradition, children inherit the status of their mothers and are passed on by masters as part of dowries or shared with other family members."

NYT: Suriname wrestles with language and identity

LAT: protest through poetry in Pakistan