made in china

LAT: Marines move into Helmand, Taliban-dominated region in Afghanistan
"Several hundred Marines, many of them veterans of the Iraq war, pushed into the town of Garmser in an operation to drive out militants, stretching NATO's presence into an area littered with poppy fields."
Ind: those poppy fields fund the insurgency
"Russian gangsters who smuggle drugs into Britain are buying cheap heroin from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns. Smugglers told The Independent how Russian arms dealers meet Taliban drug lords at a bazaar near the old Afghan-Soviet border, deep in Tajikistan's desert. The bazaar exists solely to trade Afghan drugs for Russian guns – and sometimes a bit of sex on the side...The drugs come mostly from Helmand, where most of Britain's 7,800 troops are based. The opium grown there is turned into heroin at factories inside Afghanistan, sold into Tajikistan and smuggled to Europe. The guns are broken down into parts, smuggled back into Afghanistan and delivered to the Taliban. One kilogram of heroin can buy about 30 AK-47 assault rifles at the bazaar."
Econ: Taliban forces increasingly avoiding direct confrontations in favor of indirect assaults
"Overall Taliban violence is rising. The nature of confrontations is changing too. Casualties among Western forces are increasingly caused by 'asymmetric warfare', such as roadside bombs and suicide attacks, rather than by conventional battles."


NYT: non-violent protests, street battles, and a dust storm in Sadr City
The mix of peaceful protest and armed attacks is characteristic of the many levels on which the Sadr movement and the government are locked in an all-out fight for political advantage. At stake is the outcome of October provincial elections in which other Shiite parties in the government stand to lose seats to Mr. Sadr’s supporters...The residents of Sadr City 'are Iraqis,' [a parliament member from Anbar province] said, 'they are very poor people with very few services, and the military action has caused so much loss of life.'
Mr. Maliki has said that, before the government will stop its fight, Mr. Sadr must comply with four conditions: hand over heavy weapons; stop fighting the security forces; stop menacing government workers; and hand over outlaws sought by the government.
But on Sunday, an aide to Mr. Sadr in Najaf rejected those terms, accusing the government of trying to resolve political differences by force."
USAT: US drone attacks in Iraq rise in April
Newsweek: Libyan town exporter of jihadists

Gdn: Cheney's lawyer says Congress has no authority over him; rejects requests by Democrats to interview his chief of staff over involvement in approving interrogation/torture methods for Guantánamo

BBC: BBC alleges UN cover-up in investigation of its troops trading in arms, gold and ivory in the Congo
UN operation there largest in the world, with 18,000 troops

• "Pakistani peacekeepers in the eastern town of Mongbwalu were involved in the illegal trade in gold with the FNI militia, providing them with weapons to guard the perimeter of the mines
• Indian peacekeepers operating around the town of Goma had direct dealings with the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide, now living in eastern DR Congo.
• The Indians traded gold, bought drugs from the militias and flew a UN helicopter into the Virunga National Park, where they exchanged ammunition for ivory"
  

BBC: political leader of banned Mungiki gang shot dead in Kenya
BBC: central gov't tries to broker deal to end prison guards' strike

NYT: violence against opposition and suspected opposition voters in Zimbabwe
"Villagers from Manicaland said they were roused from sleep around midnight one night this month by young marauders who had come to punish them for voting against Mr. Mugabe. They said the gangs pelted them with stones fired from slingshots and dragged some from their homes.
The next day, rather than protecting them, police officers ordered them to empty their small huts of their meager possessions, witnesses said. Then the young thugs returned to the small settlement just north of the city of Mutare, bashing down people’s homes with iron bars or setting them ablaze."
LAT: two factions of the opposition have agreed to set aside differences to create parliamentary coalition; some ruling party members rumored to be defecting

BBC: an interview with a Somali al-Shabab militant
"...it has become clear there are deep divisions within the insurgency over which direction it should take, with many of the recent attacks attributed to one group - a radical Islamist organisation called al-Shabab, meaning 'The Youth.'
'We are killing the enemy of Allah, and until we get them out of the country we will continue doing so... those people who are telling you their people have been killed they are wrong.
They are working for the Ethiopians, we never kill ordinary people.'"

BBC: mosque of minority sect in Indonesia set ablaze

AP: Colombian congress at impasse over scandal linking lawmakers to paramilitaries
"Sen. Jorge Enrique Gomez replaced a jailed senator, who had replaced a senator who resigned under criminal investigation, who had replaced a jailed senator. But the evangelical preacher's lack of legislative experience hardly matters — Congress doesn't do much these days anyway...
The scandal broke in late 2006 after political analyst Claudia Lopez found what she called massive vote-rigging in areas controlled by the paramilitaries..."
Miami Herald: arrest of Uribe's cousin may link him to paramilitaries
"With his cousin in the presidential palace, Mario Uribe was a proponent within Congress of the original law regulating the 2003 demobilization of 30,000 paramilitary fighters that would have granted the leaders near-amnesty for their crimes, some of the most atrocious in Colombia's four-decade-old war. The Constitutional Court later imposed harsher sentences of up to eight years for the top leaders.
Mario Uribe also led the push in Congress for the constitutional reform that allowed President Uribe to seek a second term, which he won in 2006."

CSM: Uighurs in western China live under "colonial-like" system
"Since the Communist government took over Xinjiang in 1949 from a warlord allied with the Nationalist Army, the proportion of Han Chinese (China's dominant ethnic group) in the province has shot up from 6.7 percent to 40.6 percent, according to official figures. The Han population now almost matches the Uighur population, after a six decades-long campaign by Beijing to settle Han in the remote region...Uighurs are resentful at the way Han Chinese monopolize the best jobs and the top political posts, even though Xinjiang is theoretically an autonomous province. Han residents routinely complain that Uighurs are dirty, lazy, and dishonest."
BBC: globalization, conflict, and irony: "Free Tibet" flags made in China

dissemination and defamation

NYT: international law more like guidelines for CIA
"The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees."
NYT: US Army reviewing arms supply contract

WP: the food crisis linked to violence in 14 countries
WP: the politics and legacy of another food crisis, the 1932-33 famine in Soviet Ukraine
"'There is now a wealth of historical material detailing the specific features of Stalin's forced collectivization and terror famine policies against Ukraine,' [President] Yushchenko wrote in the Wall Street Journal late last year. 'Other parts of the Soviet Union suffered terribly as well. But in the minds of the Soviet leadership there was a dual purpose in persecuting and starving the Ukrainian peasantry. It was part of a campaign to crush Ukraine's national identity and its desire for self-determination.'"

LAT: Colombia alleges that the FARC launched mortar rounds from Ecuador
"Colombia's army commander, Gen. Mario Montoya, cited press reports quoting demobilized rebels who said that the FARC maintained 60 to 80 camps on the Ecuadorean side of the border. Ecuador said it was waiting to receive the protest note to formally respond. But Undersecretary of Defense Miguel Carvajal said in a telephone interview Saturday night that the claim was part of a 'defamation campaign' to divert attention from Colombia's internal problems."
LAT: Richardson holds meeting with Chávez to try to restart negotiations for release of 3 Americans held by the FARC since 2003
Adam Isacson: report on state of civil society, and military, paramilitary, and guerrilla presence in Guaviare, Colombia - part I; part II

LAT: homicides in Recife receive little attention
"Although Rio de Janeiro's bloody drug war makes international headlines, the homicide rate in this balmy city of 1.5 million is 90.9 per 100,000, more than twice that of Rio, according to the Latin American Technological Network's Map of Violence."

LAT: shootout in Tijuana between drug gangs leaves at least 13 dead
"The shootout is just the latest in a spasm of drug-related violence that has gripped the border town this year. In the first four months of 2008, Tijuana has seen dozens of kidnappings, assaults and homicides, including children gunned down in the mayhem...The motive for Saturday's bloodshed was unclear. Police said it could have been a falling-out between factions of the Arellano Felix narcotics cartel, which has long controlled the drug trade in the city. Or it could be another cartel trying to move in on its turf.
Some speculate that the killings may have been revenge by traffickers against suspected informants.
Still, experts said the recent surge in violence undoubtedly is linked to a major offensive by authorities against organized-crime drug traffickers, an operation that has strained delicate alliances between traffickers who had previously cooperated with one another in the lucrative narcotics trade."

NYT: a Times reporter's week in a Harare jail for "committing journalism"

LAT: the challenges of establishing a UN-AU peace keeping force in Darfur
"The mission, with an estimated annual budget of $2.5 billion, has arrived as the Darfur conflict has grown more complicated. Though frequently described as a genocide that pits an Arab-dominated government and its allied militias against non-Arab rebels and villagers, the conflict today defies easy labels. Arabs are killing Arabs. Africans are killing Africans. Some former rebels have joined the government and some Arab militias, known as janjaweed, now fight against it.
At the same time, general lawlessness and proliferation of arms have fueled widespread banditry, carjacking and rape. Most recently, Chad and Sudan have contributed to the violence through a proxy war in the Darfur region, where they are arming and funding insurgencies to attack one another.
For the moment, the mission's most pressing challenge is getting boots on the ground. Fewer than 300 additional U.N. troops, from nations such as Bangladesh and China, have arrived in Darfur. The rest of the nearly 9,000 peacekeepers here are African Union holdovers who just replaced their green AU berets with blue U.N. helmets."

BBC: report from Chechnya
"I did not feel that the north Caucasus was about to explode again. People are exhausted and the rebels are now thought to number only a few hundred.
But the missing and the dead have relatives and Chechnya has a long tradition of blood feuds.
There are countless unemployed young men.
Moscow must persuade them and their younger brothers that they have a future. If not, joining the militants may appeal more than joining the police."

WP: judges still not reinstated in Pakistan

NYT: Karzai survives assassination attempt at Sunday parade
Gdn: after recently strongly criticizing US and NATO tactics

Obs: Iraqi girl killed by her father, allegedly for falling in love with a British soldier in Basra

Obs: Hezbollah build up in Lebanon
"But what is becoming more obvious, even as Hizbollah tries to hide it, is that the group has embarked on an unprecedented build-up of men, equipment and bunker-building in preparation for the war that almost everyone - Lebanese and Israeli - considers inevitable. 'The villages in the south are empty of men,' said one international official. 'They are all gone, training in Bekaa, Syria and Iran.' A trip by The Observer through villages in the Hizbollah heartland confirmed a conspicuous lack of fighting-age men."

BBC: Algeria military raids Al-Qaeda hideouts, kills 10

BBC: LTTE launches air attacks in northeastern Sri Lanka

the nerve

NYT: Iran in Iraq: stunningly, it's more complicated than the US administration acknowledges
"The United States has identified an unspecified number of Quds camps, warehouses and safe houses near the border with Iraq, according to other officials. Those sites are dispersed in Iranian cities, making them difficult to strike without risking killing civilians, the officials said...'Iran has hedged its bets,' said Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, who has written extensively about Iran’s role in Iraq. 'It doesn’t know which Shiite faction is going to come out on top.'"
NYT: at Friday prayers, Sadr instructs militia not to attack Iraqis
Ind: UK troops still fighting the Mahdi Army in Basra
Ind: they will turn over three towns in Helmand to Afghan army within months
Although the ferocity of fighting has diminished, Brigadier Carleton-Smith admitted there was still a long way to go. 'When you are growing an army the currency is years,' he said. 'Think five to 10 years. We have only had a British battle group here since October 2006. Progress here is evolution, not revolution. People need to keep their nerve.'
Part of that progress will include giving more responsibility to local communities for their own security, instead of relying on soldiers or police, he said.
Ultimately, Brigadier Carleton-Smith said, the solution in Helmand hinges on negotiation and finding "Afghan solutions to Afghan problems".
'How do wars end?' he asked. 'It's not about military solutions, it is about political solutions. The solution here is about governance and rule of law and not the barrel of a gun.'"
Gdn: UK will also deploy to Kosovo soon
"Nato commanders expect increased ethnic tension in Kosovo over the coming months. Serb parliamentary and local elections are due to take place on May 11. On June 15, a new constitution establishing Kosovo independence - in defiance of Serb opposition - comes into effect."

Slate: long-term implications of the personnel changes at the top of the US army in Iraq and at the Pentagon
in brief: Odierno to continue what Petraeus started in Iraq, Petraeus moves on to Afghanistan from Central Command, and Chiarelli as Army vice chief of staff to implement systemic changes. "...Chiarelli is widely known as one of the Army's smartest, most creative senior officers. Many of Gates' boldest speeches and actions can be traced to Chiarelli. For instance, on several occasions, Gates has said that future wars are likely to be "asymmetrical" conflicts waged against insurgents or terrorists, not high-intensity, head-on set pieces against foes of comparable strength—more like Iraq or Afghanistan, not World War II or Korea. Therefore, Gates concludes, the military—especially the Army—must change its doctrine, training, promotion policies, and weapons-procurement plans to meet these new challenges."

Gdn: US attempting to tone down the 'war on terror' rhetoric
"And now from the people who brought you the phrase "axis of evil", a guide to non-inflammatory language for the Middle East."

BBC: Israel rejects truce offer from Hamas; girl killed in recent raid

LAT: Maoists have largest share of seats in Nepal parliament; pledge to end monarchy

AP: at least 24 killed in bus bomb outside Colombo, Sri Lanka

BBC: East Timor rebels to turn themselves in

BBC: world's smallest republic, Nauru, population 13,000, holds elections

Gdn: Cambodia for sale
"Shortly after Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister, came to power in 1985, frenzied landgrabbing began: influential political allies and wealthy business associates raced to claim land that the Khmer Rouge had seized, gobbling up such large chunks of the cities, forests and paddy fields that Cambodians used to say the rich were eating the country. By 2006, the World Bank estimated that 40,000 had been made homeless in Phnom Penh alone...Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) have, in effect, put the country up for sale. Crucially, they permit investors to form 100% foreign-owned companies in Cambodia that can buy land and real estate outright - or at least on 99-year plus 99-year leases. No other country in the world countenances such a deal. Even in Thailand and Vietnam, where similar land speculation and profiteering are under way, foreigners can be only minority shareholders."

BBC: armed groups in the Niger Delta continue attacks on oil companies
"The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta promised further violence.
'Our candid advice to the oil majors is that they should not waste their time repairing any lines, as we will continue to sabotage them', the militants said in a statement."

WP: plot to kill witness in the Colombian para-politics scandal, living in Canada
"As part of special judicial proceedings against former commanders, Colombian investigators have uncovered intimate details about the close links lawmakers had with paramilitary commanders. The attorney general's office and Supreme Court, which are carrying out the investigations, have found important witnesses, such as Castillo, from within the paramilitary movement." [plans discovered the week that President Uribe's cousin was arrested; Castillo has testified against him.]

Gdn: NYC detectives not guilty of crime after killing unarmed man with 50 bullets

what time is it?

Foreign Affairs: failing intervention in the Congo
"The international community must fundamentally revise its strategy. It must focus on local antagonisms, because they often cause or fuel broader tensions, and regional and national actors hijack local agendas to serve their own ends. Until the local grievances that are feeding the violence throughout eastern Congo are addressed, security in the entire country and the Great Lakes region overall will remain uncertain."
BBC: fighting broke out again in the east; aid stopped

NYT: US says opposition clear winner in Zimbabwe
"'This is a government rejecting the will of the people,' [the Asst Sec of State for African Affairs] said, referring to the Zimbabwe electoral commission’s refusal to announce who won the March 29 presidential election. 'If they had voted for Mugabe, the results would already have been announced. Everyone knows what time it is.'"
WP: meanwhile, the police raided opposition headquarters

BBC: Pakistan wants NATO to back off in the border
NYT: because it might jeopardize the deal the gov't has almost reached with militants in the region; US expresses skepticism that it will work.
BBC: others think it might

BBC: Sri Lanka military takes control of Roman Catholic shrine after heavy fighting Wed

BBC: malaria increases mortality rates of the displaced

Weekly Standard: crime drops within US prisons
NYT: the US, with 5% of the world's population, has 25% of world's inmates

Gdn: Turkmenistan turns the calendar back
"The late dictator renamed the months in 2002 - one of a series of bizarre decrees that earned Turkmenistan the reputation of being one of the world's most repressive states. Ordinary Turkmen stuck with the old names, but the new forms became mandatory for officials and state television."

strange parts of the world

BBC: Santa Cruz region of Bolivia seeks autonomy; referendum called for May 4 which Morales called illegal
"Four of Bolivia's nine provinces want greater autonomy. All are in the less indigenous and wealthy eastern lowlands, home to most of the country's oil and gas reserves.
Mr Morales says the push for autonomy is no more than an attempt by the rich minority to keep their long-held privileges, and to undermine his policies of helping the poor indigenous majority."

NYT: Petraeus to lead US Central Command; Odierno to take over in Baghdad...
CSM: in the new bunker (embassy) set to open next month
USAT: probably built (late, and way over budget) by one of the 60,000 US gov't contractors that owe $8 billion in taxes
one example: "The Defense Department paid more than $1 million to a company that owed nearly $10 million."
Slate: SecDef Gates and the bureaucracy
Slate: Iran in Iraq
"It is reasonable to ask what the hell is going on here. President Bush assisted Maliki's offensive as a campaign against Iranian-backed extremists. Now it turns out the Iranians are backing Maliki.
Much of the confusion is dispelled when you consider that the battle for Basra is not so much a military contest between the Iraqi government and outlaw rebels as a power struggle between rival Shiite mafias."

LAT: US intel reports that Al Qaeda alienating allies with tactics
"Analysts with U.S. and allied intelligence agencies differ over whether the backlash poses significant risks for Al Qaeda, or whether it is simply a public relations problem. The organization is expanding its pool of hard-core recruits, according to one U.S. counter- terrorism official. And Internet communications and other intelligence have shown that its anti-American message continues to resonate with extremists throughout much of the Islamic world.
But Al Qaeda also has sought to use regional groups to become more mainstream and expand its power base. It is in these groups that most of the conflict is occurring."

Gdn: US also less than tactically successful in Afghanistan and Somalia
"'The lack of strategic acumen present in the 'war on terror' in Somalia and Afghanistan is in fact enabling the spread of the insurgencies present throughout both countries,' said Norine MacDonald QC, [Senlis Council] president."
NYT: Afghan gov't trying to extend local governance
"Local governance is the buzzword on everyone’s lips, one Afghan development official said, shorthand for extending the government’s presence in the provinces, making it perform better and provide much needed public services."

BBC: Amnesty alleges that Ethiopian troops took 40 children in mosque massacre last week
"The Ethiopian forces said they would only release the children from their military base in north Mogadishu 'once they had been investigated' and 'if they were not terrorists,' witnesses told Amnesty."
BBC: meanwhile, pirates abound
"The BBC's Mohamed Olad Hassan in Somalia says many of the pirates are former fishermen, who began by attacking ships they argued were 'illegally threatening or destroying' their business.
'Businessmen and former fighters for the Somali warlords moved in when they saw how lucrative it could be. The pirates and their backers tend to split the ransom money 50-50,' he says."

BBC: after negotiations with new Pakistan gov't, local Taliban leader calls ceasefire

WP: Israel circulates video of North Koreans touring a Syrian plant, destroyed in Sept by Israel
unclear what explains the timing

WP: war fears prompt arms purchases in Lebanon
"One measure of...anxiety is the price of small arms: An AK-47 that went for $75 to $100 a year ago now costs $600 to $1,000."

NYT: arms shipment to Zimbabwe heads back to China
WP: more reports of terror in Zimbabwe
"Martin Mandava, 29, a farmer from Mutoko, one of many Mugabe rural strongholds that supported the opposition in the March 29 presidential election, told of how last week a gang of youths from the ruling ZANU-PF party stoned him, tied his arms and legs, then beat him with sticks. They gashed his head with an ax, he said, and threatened to stab his pregnant wife through the womb. Then the gang leader pulled down Mandava's pants, grabbed his genitals and held out a knife.
The leader asked the gang what should be done to an opposition supporter, Mandava recalled. The answer: His genitals should be cut off, to keep opposition party babies from being born there.
Mandava's wife screamed and covered the face of their 5-year-old child, he said. Then the leader offered to put his weapon away if Mandava could sing a song from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, the guerrilla war led in the 1970s by Mugabe. Mandava sang the song."
NYT: Zuma supports unity gov't idea

BBC: unity in Kenya: Kibaki and Odinga tour "trouble spots" together

BBC: Muluzi staking a comeback in Malawi

NYT: fighting continued yesterday in Sri Lanka

WP: criminal networks on the rise, says US Justice Dept
"Officials said they worry that suspects motivated by greed could team up with more ideologically minded terrorists. Last month, arms trafficker Viktor Bout, the 'merchant of death,' was arrested in Thailand for allegedly conspiring to sell weapons to Colombian rebels."

Ind: Korean 'comfort women' keep fighting for recognition in Japan
"'The women's greatest fear is that when they die, the crimes against them will be forgotten,' said Ahn Sin Kweon, director of the Sharing House ["a museum and communal refuge" outside Seoul].
Thousands of Asian women – some as young as 12 – were 'enslaved ... and repeatedly raped, tortured and brutalised for months and years,' according to Amnesty International. Sexual abuse, beatings and forced abortions left many unable to bear children...Japan officially acknowledged wartime military slavery in a landmark 1993 statement, followed by the offer of compensation from a small private fund, which expired last year. But the so-called Kono statement has long baited Japanese revisionists, who deny the military was directly involved. 'The women were legal prostitutes, earning money for their families,' claims the revisionist academic Nobukatsu Fujioka.'"

New Yorker: (book review) Herodutus and history
"Herodotus’ Histories—a chatty, dizzily digressive nine-volume account of the Persian Wars of 490 to 479 B.C., in which a wobbly coalition of squabbling Greek city-states twice repulsed the greatest expeditionary force the world had ever seen—represented the first extended prose narrative about a major historical event. (Or, indeed, about virtually anything.) And yet to us graduate students in the mid-nineteen-eighties the word “father” seemed to reflect something hopelessly parental and passé about Herodotus, and about the sepia-toned “good war” that was his subject. These were, after all, the last years of the Cold War, and the terse, skeptical manner of another Greek historian—Thucydides, who chronicled the Peloponnesian War, between Athens and Sparta, two generations later—seemed far more congenial. To be an admirer of Thucydides’ History, with its deep cynicism about political, rhetorical, and ideological hypocrisy, with its all too recognizable protagonists—a liberal yet imperialistic democracy and an authoritarian oligarchy, engaged in a war of attrition fought by proxy at the remote fringes of empire—was to advertise yourself as a hardheaded connoisseur of global Realpolitik.

Herodotus, by contrast, always seemed a bit of a sucker. Whatever his desire, stated in his Preface, to pinpoint the “root cause” of the Persian Wars (the rather abstract word he uses, aitiē, savors of contemporary science and philosophy), what you take away from an initial encounter with the Histories is not, to put it mildly, a strong sense of methodical rigor. With his garrulous first-person intrusions (“I have now reached a point at which I am compelled to declare an opinion that will cause offense to many people”), his notorious tendency to digress for the sake of the most abstruse detail (“And so the Athenians were the first of the Hellenes to make statues of Hermes with an erect phallus”), his apparently infinite susceptibility to the imaginative flights of tour guides in locales as distant as Egypt (“Women urinate standing up, men sitting down”), reading him was like—well, like having an embarrassing parent along on a family vacation. All you wanted to do was put some distance between yourself and him, loaded down as he was with his guidebooks, the old Brownie camera, the gimcrack souvenirs—and, of course, that flowered polyester shirt."

Slate: only nine more months of (unironic) statements like this
"Oftentimes people ask me, 'Why is it that you're so focused on helping the hungry and diseased in strange parts of the world?' "—[Bush], Washington, D.C., April 18, 2008

a terrible thing to say

LAT: Sunni militants launch coordinated attacks in Iraq, while fighting in Sadr City continues
WP: Iraqi Christians targeted
"[A reverend in Baghdad] said every Christian business executive he knows has been threatened, kidnapped or attacked. 'The Christian is weak. He has no tribe,' he said."
BBC: doubts over Iraqi security forces' capacity, willingness to fight
"There were also many desertions from the Iraqi security forces. About 1,000 personnel - including a full infantry battalion - refused to fight or joined the militias during last month's offensive.
More than 900 police and soldiers have been sacked in Basra, including nearly 40 senior police officers, where the fiercest clashes took place. A further 400 police officers were dismissed in Kut."

LAT: Afghan insurgents targeting cell phone towers, angering civilians
"For the last two months, Taliban fighters have been blowing up telecommunications towers, with the aim of preventing NATO-led forces from hunting them down via cellphone signals. It could hardly have been a worse public-relations move for the insurgency."

BBC: history of a village destroyed (nearly 60 years ago) in Israel

WP: Uribe's cousin and confidante arrested on charges of collusion with paramilitaries
Also, "With the legitimacy of Congress at rock bottom, lawmakers have been locked in a series of heated debates over how to reform the 268-member body and punish those parties whose members have been linked to paramilitary groups." [32 members have been arrested, 30 others are being investigated, and dozens more implicated, with investigations to begin soon.]

Ind: Cuban authorities break up 'Women in White' protest, calling for release of their imprisoned husbands

NYT: Zimbabwe state newspaper calls for unity gov't
BBC: which may change, now that Mugabe's party is announced winner of first recount
Econ: while repression, violence continue
"Human Rights Watch, an international group, says that ZANU-PF, the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe, has set up torture camps across the country as part of a systematic campaign to intimidate the opposition, which won the parliamentary elections and, it claims, the presidential vote too. Victims are taken to the camps at night and beaten for hours with thick sticks, bars and army batons. Huts and houses have been torched. An unofficial curfew is in force in the poor suburbs of Harare, the capital. The MDC says that ten of its supporters have been killed, some shot dead. The opposition also says that some 3,000 families have had to flee their homes, 500 people have been put in hospital and over 400 opposition activists have been arrested."
Ind: Church leaders call for intervention to "avert genocide"
arms shipment refused in South Africa, then in Mozambique, now in Angola

Gdn: estimate of dead in Darfur reaches 300,000

BBC: Bosnian Serbs convicted of war crimes for massacre in 1992

BBC: unmanned Georgian drone shot down; Russia claims it was work of Abkhaz rebels

BBC: nearly 100 die in Sri Lanka, in battles between the LTTE and gov't forces

LAT: rice prices straining families in the Philippines, largest rice importer in world
"'Rice is something you need every day,' [a resident of Manila] said. 'When it gets to the point that families can't afford to buy 2 kilos a day, that's when people will get really mad.'"

Gdn: Clinton issues threat to Iran
"In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, she was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. She said: 'In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.'"

CSM: new organization of former Jihadis to work for tolerance in UK
"The Quilliam Foundation – named for a 19th-century British convert to Islam – aims to propagate a tolerant and pluralistic view of Islam among young Muslims who are the most vulnerable to radicalism."

BBC: the noble donkey, Facebook unite Cypriots

carried away

NYT: civilians caught between bullets in Sadr City...
NYT: and amidst heaps of trash
"On Saturday, three Sadr City residents gingerly approached an American Army position to deliver a warning: Unless the Iraqi government or its American partner did something to restore essential services and remove the piles of garbage, the militias would gain more support."

the strained US military employs short-term measures:
USAT: involuntary extensions for soldiers
Gdn: and "moral waivers" for recruits

CSM: meanwhile, Congress haggles over latest Iraq funding bill

WP: negotiations between secular and Islamist groups in Pakistan

Gdn: Lebanon still in "presidential limbo"
"A power struggle between the pro-western ruling coalition, supported by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, has paralysed the government.
Politicians have been unable to reach consensus since the term of the pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, expired. Both sides have agreed that army chief General Michel Suleiman should fill the post, but his confirmation by parliament has been repeatedly derailed by a dispute over how to share power in a future cabinet.
Today's attempt was the 18th time parliament has called a presidential election. The vote was abandoned because not enough members were present to make up the necessary quorum. Members of the Syrian-backed opposition have been staying away from the parliamentary chamber, leaving it unable to convene a vote."

Ind: Islamists seize two towns in Somalia

Ind: Kenyan troubles disrupt Masai community program
"Since the non-profit Mara Conservancy was founded in 2001, and the compensation scheme established, the number of lions in the reserve has doubled to 40. But now that the fund has been suspended [because of lack of tourists], many Masai are threatening to resume hunting the lions and leopards which eat their cows, goats and sheep.
'We know we shouldn't kill it, but we might have to,' said Konchellah Ololmaneie, who has lost six of his 80 goats to the leopard.
So far rangers in the Mara have managed to dissuade him from hunting down the leopard. But without the £10 per goat compensation he has been accustomed to, Mr Ololmaneie has nonetheless had to resort to desperate measures. He has decided to sell a cow before the leopard can get to it – a decision not taken lightly.
'If you don't have a cow, you are counting down the days until you die," he says. "Your cow is your bank.'"

BBC: diary from Harare

AP: 20 Haitians drown off coast of Bahamas, presumably trying to reach US

BBC: Catholic priest missing after flying away with 1,000 helium balloons off southern coast of Brazil

exit, voice and loyalty

NYT: "Mugabe's Tsunami": an estimated 1,000 are fleeing Zimbabwe for South Africa each day
the article does not include much information on the violence that is prompting the displacement, other than from one woman: "She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters."
Gdn: more details in this report
"...party militias and the army established torture camps in several provinces, where MDC members were taken to extract the names of opposition activists and deter the opposition from campaigning before what is expected to be a run-off between Mugabe and the MDC's candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai...The targeted areas include Murewa in Mashonaland East, where two of the city's three constituencies are held by Zanu-PF, one of them by Parirenyatwa. The MDC won the third constituency, Murewa West."
Gdn: meanwhile, the recount is slow
"The counting is paint-dryingly slow. The presiding officer holds each vote up for scrutiny by party agents. There are protracted arguments about individual papers – does a cross made with red ink mean that a ballot is spoiled? And once the presidential votes have been counted, the process is repeated for the senate, parliamentary and local council elections. Then the presiding officer, who looks like he wants to vomit up his fear, painstakingly goes through the electoral roll, checking that the number of names ticked off equals the number of votes cast. It's 1pm before the first box is finished. We've been at it for five hours...But despite the flaws in this weary process, there's no sign yet that anybody has stuffed any of the boxes."

Gdn: fleeing Somalia to Yemen fraught with danger
"From January to early April about 14,500 migrants - mainly Somalis - crossed the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. That represents more than half the number of people that made the journey in 2007, and the main crossing season later in the year still lies ahead.The high death toll is little deterrent. UN figures show that about 1,500 people died or disappeared trying to reach Yemen from Somalia last year, one for every 20 that attempted the journey." Yemen offers automatic asylum.
BBC: 70 reported killed in Mogadishu over the weekend, including massacre of clerics in a mosque
Gdn: Somali pirates strike again, hijack Spanish fishing crew

BBC: attempting election reform in Nigeria
"[Video] footage [from gubernatorial elections last year] shot in the northern state of Katsina, the president's home state, shows youths from a village who have not been able to vote, stopping an Inec minibus transporting ballot boxes and tearing them open, because they believe they have been stuffed with votes for the ruling People's Democratic Party."

BBC: protesting proposed reforms in Cameroon

BBC: first-hand accounts of the food shortage in Sierra Leone

WP: clashes in Sadr city between militia, apparently Mahdi Army, and US troops

USAT: NATO troop commitments for Afghanistan remain unrealized

BBC: the British in Waziristan, 90 years ago
book by British officer stationed there in 1919, "Walk Warily in Waziristan," depicts similar challenges facing foreign forces today

Ind: Human Rights Watch reports on Saudi women, who still "legally belong to" men
"The House of Saud, in alliance with an extremist religious establishment which enforces the most restrictive interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, has created a legal system that treats women as minors unable to exercise authority over even trivial daily matters...Too often, sex segregation results in an "apartheid" system in which facilities for women are either grossly inferior or non-existent. Women were denied the right to vote in the kingdom's first municipal elections because there were no separate voting booths for them."

Gdn: Carter says Hamas will recognize Israel
(didn't spot this story in any US paper)

Gdn: Guantánamo records "mysteriously lost"

BBC: Jemaah Islamiah militants jailed in Indonesia

WP: drug violence along the US-Mexico border
"Puerto Palomas [near the New Mexico border] became strategically important because Ciudad Juarez, the traditional drug-trafficking hub, has been inundated with Mexican army troops sent to contain a war between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels blamed for more than 200 deaths this year. The cartels probably knew that the Mexican military was coming months before its arrival in late March and saw Puerto Palomas as an acceptable alternative...On March 17, several Puerto Palomas police officers quit after being threatened by drug traffickers. García said the officers believed that they were targeted because of an inaccurate Mexican newspaper article that implied they would confront drug gangs. Within several hours, the entire police force had resigned, rendering the town lawless. Even Pérez Ortega, the stern police chief, left to seek asylum [in the US]."

LAT: Ex-bishop wins election, ends one-party rule in Paraguay

three cheers for cricket

NYT: US military commanders want more attacks in the tribal region of Pakistan
"Pakistan’s government has given the Central Intelligence Agency limited authority to kill Arab and other foreign operatives in the tribal areas, using remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But administration officials say the Pakistani government has put far greater restrictions on American operations against indigenous Pakistani militant groups...Administration officials say the risk of angering the new government in Pakistan and stirring increased anti-American sentiment in the tribal areas outweighs the benefits of dismantling militant networks in the region."
WP: across the border, Afghan forces trained by US Special Forces seem to be improving

NYT: Iraqi Army reclaims last Mahdi Army stronghold in Basra
LAT: in Najaf, residents fear coming intra-Shiite clash
Ind: in Anbar, the intra-Sunni split seems to deepen

WP: Israeli soldier documented the 2006 war in Lebanon
Gdn: it's almost the 60th anniversary of Israel
WP: Carter meets with Hamas leaders

BBC: Druze in Syria remember uprising against the French

BBC: instability in Yemen

BBC: fighting again in Somalia

BBC: one Moroccan dissident's story

AP: recount begins in Zimbabwe
Ind: opposition leader Tsvangirai waits it out in exile
NYT: Chinese arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe waylaid in Durban
"Dock workers at the port, backed by South Africa’s powerful unions, refused to unload the ammunition and weapons on Friday, vowing protests and threatening violence if the government tried to do it without them."

BBC: villages "discovered" in the Congo, mapped with GPS

BBC: heavy fighting in the capital of Burundi, apparently between army and rebel group FNL
AP: ...it continued through the weekend

Gdn: Bhutan expelling ethnic Nepalese, again
"Now a combination of divisions among the refugees, renewed tension inside Bhutan and the surprise election victory by Maoists in Nepal, is threatening a plan that finally gives hope to 107,000 refugees who have been languishing in camps in eastern Nepal for the last 17 years. Tens of thousands of unregistered refugees are living stateless and in abject poverty in Nepal and India."

BBC: president of Nauru, "tiny" South Pacific Republic, calls snap elections

BBC: martial law in Thailand to be relaxed

Gdn: gangs fighting turf battle on outskirts of Paris

BBC: vigilante justice reportedly on the rise in Bolivia

NYT: food shortages causing crises
Chris Blattman: but the story's analysis less than stellar

WP: Mozambican singer recognized for addressing taboo subjects

WP: um, cultural exchange: the Redskins cheerleaders and cricket

building states [with glue and bailing wire]

WP: "securocrats" making the calls in Zimbabwe, including in the electoral commission
"National decision-making increasingly has been consolidated within the Joint Operations Command, a shadowy group consisting of the leaders of the army, air force, police, intelligence agency and prison service -- a group Zimbabweans call the 'securocrats.'"
Ind: militia taking revenge on behalf of Mugabe
Chris Blattman: calling the embassy

WP: building bureaucracies in the Congo
"'The report must be in order,' said [a mid-level administrator], 62, a meticulous man in a khaki suit who explained how different things were when he worked for Mobutu's government. 'In the old system, I would just take the public money and go drinking with women. When I moved to a different job, I would take the typing machine, the lamps, even the curtains -- I would put them in my house. Now there is no way. Now there is shame.'"

AP: Odinga sworn in as Kenya's prime minister
"Within hours, a feared gang [the Mungiki] promised to heed new Prime Minister Raila Odinga's call to stop its campaign of terror in the capital -- one small sign that resolving Kenya's political crisis could help return peace and stability to the fragile nation...
The apparent olive branch offered to the Mungiki, a gang dedicated to spreading Kikuyu culture, by Odinga, a Luo, is another strange strand in Kenya's web of politics, ethnicity and violence.
Many Mungiki say they were approached during the violence by Kikuyu politicians to act as an ethnic militia but refused to get heavily involved because the gang was angered by the extrajudicial killings of more than 450 Kikuyu youths last year.
The gang blamed police in Kibaki's administration in the deaths."

WSJ: US commanders begin releasing detainees in Iraq
"U.S. officials also believe freeing the primarily Sunni detainees will help persuade the embattled minority to participate more in Iraq's Shiite-heavy political process."
NYT: US building wall in Sadr City
WP: Congressional report strongly criticizes US efforts to rebuild communities in Afghanistan and Iraq
"'Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.), the subcommittee's ranking Republican, [said], 'The organizational structure is a little goofy,' he said, adding that it had been 'put together with glue and baling wire.'
...lawmakers praised the theory behind the PRTs, which focus on community and local governmental capacity-building in urban neighborhoods and in areas outside the capitals of Iraq and Afghanistan. They also recognized the dedication of individuals working on the teams, often under dangerous conditions. But the report notes that the success of the teams depends heavily on the "personalities" of staff individuals. It says that training is insufficient and that many staffers are unsuited for the jobs they are expected to perform."
Gdn: it would be helpful if NATO didn't supply the Taliban, for starters
WP: on a related note, GAO reports that US unprepared to operate in Pakistan "tribal region"
LAT: suicide bomber kills 50 at a funeral
"It was the latest strike in an internal war among Sunni Arabs, some of whom have aligned themselves with the Americans and others with the group Al Qaeda in Iraq."
WP: suicide bombing in general on the rise since 2001
WP: militias offer aid to the displaced
LAT: nearly 20% of US veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from depression or stress disorders
WP: stop-loss for diplomats too

Slate: dispatches from Saudi Arabia

WP: fighting the drug cartels in Mexico with the army, violating citizens' rights along the way; the US is considering sending a huge aid package to the military
LAT: the violence has led the US to issue a travel alert for US citizens
LAT: cocaine use highest among adults in Spain, once just a transit point
LAT: drug trafficking contributing to destruction of livelihoods, culture on Colombia's Pacific coast

Gdn: Paraguay presidential elections set to change one-party rule

LAT: Southern California man convicted of "conspiring to kill in a foreign country" (read: trying to overthrow the Cambodian government)
"'Obviously, we can't have private U.S. citizens waging war against foreign countries,' [Asst US Attny] Lee said."

CSM: Maoists won big in Nepal elections

BBC: the Simpsons are back in Venezuela
WP: but it's not just controversial there - they've angered the Argentines too
"During the episode, Homer and his friends gathered at Moe's Tavern and grumbled about their choices of political candidates. The conversation seemed innocent enough, until Homer's buddy Carl Carlson opened his mouth.
'I'd really go for some kind of military dictator, like Juan Perón," Carl said, mentioning the general who was elected president by Argentines three times. "When he 'disappeared' you, you stayed disappeared.'
Carl's friend Lenny then delivered a coup de grâce: 'Plus, his wife was Madonna.'
Most Argentines don't consider Perón a dictator, and they certainly don't blame him for the fact that up to 30,000 dissidents went missing during the country's "dirty war." Those disappearances are attributed to a military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983, after Perón's death."

New Yorker: book recommendation: Panther Soup
"This is a book about the appetites of war and peace—for food, sex, and human comfort—unbridled, sordid, and, somehow, in their ability to lead a civilization back to itself, redeeming."

The Onion: Nation agrees not to talk about politics (with so many other important things going on)

BBC: good luck on this news round-up quiz - sorry SV didn't help you out this week

perceptions

NYT: Sadr City fighting continues
NYT: (op-ed) the conflict in Basra foretold
"As has been widely reported of late [in 2005], Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Recruited from the same population of undereducated, underemployed men who swell these organizations' ranks, many of Basra's rank-and-file police officers maintain dual loyalties to mosque and state."
WP: report released Sunday on state of Iraqi police confirms not much progress has been made
WP: Shiites splitting
"The hostilities highlighted how intra-sect struggles, after five years of war, are increasingly defining the nature of conflict in Iraq, as violence lessens between Sunnis and Shiites."
CSM: Sunni groups, Islamic Army of Iraq, still fighting, though
"Chasing out Al Qaeda has benefited us a lot," he says, explaining that AQI militants have largely been driven out of Anbar and Baghdad and are now concentrated in parts of Diyala, Nineveh, and Salaheddin provinces to the north. He says AQI used indiscriminate violence to subdue other Sunni insurgent groups....
He says the situation pushed Sunnis to the brink of a protracted internal battle, so siding with the US military to root out AQI and preserve Sunni unity made sense.
'Some people joined ... while others are still in the resistance.… We wanted to prevent fitna [discord] among Sunnis, and to unite our front,' he says.
Members of these US-backed militias now number almost 91,000 and are paid a total of $16 million a month in salaries by the US. They are often lauded by President Bush in his speeches on Iraq.
The US military now calls these Sunni militias 'Sons of Iraq.' Iraqis simply refer to all these groups as sahwas. But the Shiite-led government is resisting US pressure to fold these groups, especially the ones in Baghdad and Diyala provinces, into the Army and police. 'Trust me, the sahwas are ultimately with the resistance, heart and mind,' says Abu Abdullah. He says IAI continues to have a loose affiliation with other factions that share its outlook, such as Muhammad's Army, the Rashideen Army, and Mujahedeen Army."
CSM: the Marines still fighting in Anbar
Slate: Petraeus and Crocker were predictable

NYT: secret military trials in Afghanistan
NYT: defense lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners try to delay trials, because don't want to confer legitimacy on tribunal system
LAT: a Saudi prisoner refuses to participate

LAT: policing in LA: public perceptions of racial violence (especially Latino-Black) vs how homicides have been recorded
"[Police Chief] Bratton now concedes that his 'just the facts' approach hasn't worked. Black commentators have accused him of downplaying a rising menace. Reporters have pressed him at every turn."
Ind: police in South Africa given shoot-to-kill orders from minister
"'You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations,' said Deputy Safety and Security Minister Susan Shabangu."

LAT: gangs in Zimbabwe target opposition
"Intimidation of opposition activists is occurring -- outside the limelight -- in rural areas of Zimbabwe that have traditionally been ruling party strongholds but where the MDC scored upset parliamentary victories. One activist has been killed. The fear tactics are viewed both as political retribution and as an attempt to scare opposition supporters from backing the MDC in a possible presidential runoff, allowing the 84-year-old Mugabe to hold on to power. Thus far, many believe the heavy-handed tactics are working."
Gdn: regional summit called to try to broker election outcome

Ind: unrest in Kenyan slum as power-sharing agreement still not implemented
NYT: displacement still leaves some without adequate resources; threatens to reshape politics
"Hundreds of thousands have already resettled in areas where their ethnic group dominates, because that is seen as the only way to guarantee safety."

NYT magazine: memories of Liberia

LAT: Sudan census - first in 25 years - won't include religion or ethnicity

Ind: captured yacht reveals sophisticated pirate network
UNOSAT: a map of Somali pirate attacks (HT: Chris Blattman)

WP: Nepalis voting despite violence
Gdn: good Q&A on background of the elections

Gdn: riots continue in Haiti

BBC: Kosovo adopts new constitution
BBC: Burma puts its up for sale
BBC: Senegal amends its to charge Habre

Gdn: 1971 Bangladesh war of independence in photos

BBC: four army death squad members convicted of 1992 university massacre in Peru

NYT: (op-ed) more on MLK Jr and his legacy

NYT: Zakaria's take on Bhutto's take on Islam and politics

the Onion: Mead releases new grad-school-ruled notebook
BBC (really, not the Onion): for the good of the children, Venezuela drops the Simpsons for Baywatch

commemorating

MLK Jr's last speech
NYT: RFK's speech in Indianapolis upon learning of MLK Jr's assassination; two months before he himself was killed
(listen to the speech here)
"You know, Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn't bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice." -Barack Obama speaking in Ft Wayne yesterday
the Root: how the assassination changed music
BBC: lingering questions about James Earl Ray
WP: the state of pioneering civil rights groups today

LAT: conflict in Mosul between Sunnis and Kurds
"The Iraqi government and U.S. military spokesmen blame the chaos on Al Qaeda in Iraq, a loosely organized Sunni Arab insurgent group, which desires to create a new base in the north. But the problems date to 2003, when the Kurds first sent fighters into Mosul, and the status of the city's Arab elite was diminished...
The Kurds want a referendum, called for under Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, to formally annex the disputed areas to Kurdistan. The referendum, postponed last year after the Iraqi government failed to conduct a census in the contested north, would also determine the status of the city of Kirkuk and other areas along the border of Kurdistan. A vote could prove to be the trigger for greater Arab-Kurdish bloodshed or a bridge to conciliation and prosperity...
U.S. officials recognize that their dependence on the Kurds may have tipped the balance of power in favor of their longtime ally. The Americans relied on Kurdish forces to stop Sunni fighters from seizing Mosul in November 2004, and the influx of Kurdish fighters allowed Kurdistan to cement its grip on Mosul's northern and eastern outer rings"...
an American official compared "Kurdish fighters favorably to Shiite security forces in Baghdad who have been accused of indiscriminately killing and arresting Sunni Arabs [said] 'When Kurds get killed in Mosul, Kurdish special operations/intelligence units surgically go after that person' who did the killing, the former official said. "It's not collective punishment, but they will go and kill that individual. . . . The Kurds are very responsible about it.'"
BBC: Maliki calls off attacks on militias, any "people who carry weapons"

Ind: US renews contract with Blackwater
AP: a contractor is charged under military law for the first time since Vietnam

LAT: Bush pledges more troops for Afghanistan

Gdn: veterans from the 1965 war - the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform - want Mugabe to go
WP: the opposition rejects calls for a run-off; police prevent them from filing lawsuit to release poll results

BBC: Nigerian rebel leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) charged with treason and gun running

BBC: the Maoists' transition from bullets to ballots in Nepal; elections to be held Thurs for a constitutional assembly

BBC: new Tibetan riots in Sichuan
BBC: riots in Kashmir over treatment of political prisoners
LAT: 3 die in Haiti riots over food distribution

Gdn: German military officers accused of selling training services to Libyans

NYT: Sderot, town near Gaza, becomes symbol for Israel's survival, mostly for foreign donors

Ind: pirates are at it again

the Basra bungle

NYT: confusion reigns over what happened in Basra, starting with Maliki's orders to launch assault...
"But the Iraqi operation was not what the United States expected. Instead of methodically building up their combat power and gradually stepping up operations against renegade militias, Mr. Maliki’s forces lunged into the city, attacking before all of the Iraqi reinforcements had even arrived. By the following Tuesday, a major fight was on.
'The sense we had was that this would be a long-term effort: increased pressure gradually squeezing the Special Groups,' Mr. Crocker said in an interview, using the American term for Iranian-backed militias. 'That is not what kind of emerged.'
'Nothing was in place from our side,' he added. 'It all had to be put together.' "
NYT: ...and continuing with how many Iraqis deserted during the fight. NYT combines police and army, cites an estimate at 4%
"The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs."
WP: meanwhile, the Post cites an Iraqi source who says 30% left. the estimate for total fighters involved was about half of NYT's. maybe they didn't include the police?
LAT: then there's this evaluation of the police from yesterday's LAT
"'Police work where they live and are inherently influenced by the politics of their community,' said a Western security official, who estimated police desertions at more than 50% in Mahdi Army strongholds such as Baghdad's Sadr City and parts of Basra...
Like many soldiers in this area, Hussein has friends and relatives in Shula who faced repercussions if the military confronted the militias there.
'People were calling me on my cellphone, threatening to kill my kids,' said Hussein, a husky man with a gray-flecked mustache and a red beret perched on his head. He commands the 4th Battalion of the 22nd Brigade in the Iraqi army's 6th Division."
USAT: Ambassador Cocker says "Thousands of tribesmen in the southern city of Basra have volunteered to join Iraqi security forces since al-Sadr agreed to a cease-fire on Sunday."
NYT: (op-ed) the US should train more military advisers for Iraq and Afghanistan
NYT: rumor has it that the NIE's report is rosy, but critics of the classified doc say it reads like a summary of press reports. this installment has no public version, which some Dems are criticizing.
IHT: no wonder the humor is black

Slate: a photo-journalist's view of war in Chechnya and Iraq

NYT: rising star of Al-Qaeda

WP: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan complicates US operations
Ind: warlords funneling cash from heroin sales into weapons acquisition

WP: former KLA commander, former prime minister of Kosovo, acquitted of war crimes

WP: still unclear what Mugabe will do; "inner circle" appears to be fracturing
Gdn: he may step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution for past crimes

Gdn: Kenyan officials reach deal, will announce 40-member cabinet Sunday

Gdn: Sarkozy will travel to Colombia to receive Betancourt if released; France will take in freed FARC prisoners

WP: Uighurs protested during Tibet crackdown
"Like the Tibetans, Xinjiang's approximately 16 million Uighur Muslims speak their own language, have their own customs and, at one point in history, set up their own government. They have long chafed under the Han Chinese-dominated government in Beijing and in the 1990s mounted a series of attacks against Chinese officials and institutions during which Beijing says more than 150 people died."

Ind: (Raul) Castro increasing Cubans' freedoms: now they can watch Seinfeld re-runs

Gdn: Cyprus removes barriers between Greek and Turkish sides, compares coffee

Slate: accountability for the lawyers who gave the green light? nah.
"Lawfare was described by Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Dunlap as 'the strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.' Ordinary acts of foreign policy become bogged down in a maze of after-the-fact legal consequences. Donald Rumsfeld saw this form of warfare as a limit on American military authority. He was determined to find a solution to what he called 'the judicialization of international politics.'...As we are beginning to learn, the growing tendency to conduct wars in the courtroom hasn't actually constrained anyone at all over the past seven years. The expanded role of all these laws and lawyers in the war on terror has had the opposite effect: The Bush administration has proven time and again that the Rule of Law is only as definitive as its most inventive lawyers.
In short, the Bush solution to the paralysis of lawfare seems to be to hire lawyers who don't believe in the law. "

LAT: arithmetic of Aztec land surveys finally understood

the Root: daily drug war dose: 5 things to know about crack

above the law

WP: the infamous memo has been released: it's as bad as everyone said
Slate: how to undo the damage, to rule of law in wartime, and to the presidency
WP: some domestic laws need attention too

LAT: tracking Al-Qaeda's "chief of external operations"

Gdn: Iraqi military moves in to Shia stronghold in Basra; the British will stick around
Econ: regulated fighting good for getting along

Gdn: Mugabe on the fence, but pressure builds against him
Ind: state-run media suggests there will be a run-off
Econ: some ideas for how to intervene if Mugabe goes in the end

BBC: Betancourt needs urgent medical attention; Colombia suspends military activity in area, France sends medical mission with Red Cross
Adam Isacson: Chávez needs to intervene

global protest hopping
WP: China says the Dalai Lama incited riots

BBC: Nike factory workers strike in Vietnam

BBC: rare protest in Uzbekistan over relocation of market

BBC: riots in the Ivory Coast over cost of food

BBC: riot police tear gas protest in Kenya over Kibaki's move to increase the number of cabinet members

Econ: protests continue in Armenia over election

hodgepodge
BBC: Kashmir police refuse request to identify 1,000 bodies found in unmarked graves

LAT: peace talks in Darfur "going nowhere"

LAT: Bernie Ahern to resign as Ireland's PM, financial inquiry turning into scandal

BBC: Turkey continues its assault on the PKK, killing 16

BBC: Russia to send aid to Kosovo Serbs

Gdn: drug tourism, day 2: stupid backpackers in Colombia
NYT: intervening on the demand side of the drug trade

Econ: can't think? eat something!

happy bush's day

NYT: Mugabe might go
Ind: maybe the opposition leaders can come out of hiding

WSJ: Sadr comes out on top after Basra, Baghdad battles
CSM: caught in the middle,
WP: civilians lose

WP: the fight for Helmand province between British forces and the Taliban
WP: allying with, arming Afghan tribes to defend communities
" 'You can call them night watchmen or home guards. They are not a formed militia, and there is no net increase in weapons. . . . It is simply creating an antibody to the Taliban in these communities,' a senior Western official said."

WP: meanwhile, finding allies in Pakistan's border region proving difficult
BBC: and the newly sworn-in government is signaling an end to coziness with the US

NYT: there's a black budget at the Pentagon - which funds action-figure-like badges for the military. oh, and war-related activites. (the badges reveal more about the secret programs than the budget.)
"Those billions [$32 billion] have expanded a secret world of advanced science and technology in which military units and federal contractors push back the frontiers of warfare. In the past, such handiwork has produced some of the most advanced jets, weapons and spy satellites, as well as notorious boondoggles."
(includes this gem from Dick: " 'We’ve got to spend time in the shadows,' Mr. Cheney said." By which he apparently meant that he'd bring more people into his network of underground lairs.)
Slate: how to reform the military (hopefully the badges can stay)

NYT: recovered computer files from assassinated FARC leader suggests Chávez supported the armed group; files' authenticity now being assessed by Interpol
" 'The main weapon they have now is the computer, the supposed computer of Raúl Reyes,' Mr. Chávez said. 'This computer is like à la carte service, giving you whatever you want. You want steak? Or fried fish? How would you like it prepared? You’ll get it however the empire decides.' " One file dated January 2007 "described efforts by the FARC’s secretariat to secure Mr. Chávez’s assistance for buying arms and obtaining a $250 million loan, 'to be paid when we take power.' "
WP: accusations that the Colombian military is racking up "false positives": killing civilians and claiming that they are guerrillas
National Security Archive: (pdf) the "body count mentality" has plagued the Colombian military for decades
BBC: French plane on stand-by to airlift Betancourt if released

Gdn: violence in Jamaican slums
"Armed gangs and corrupt police units have turned inner cities into arenas of mayhem and impunity, with killings taking place in daylight, Amnesty International says in a report published today...The Caribbean island's high crime rate has long been recognised. An annual murder rate of around 1,500 in a population of 2.7 million puts Jamaica on a par with South Africa and Colombia as among the world's most violent countries."

LAT: burriers: Euros carting cocaine from Peru

NYT: Turkey high court will hear case against ruling party

LAT: can't blame 'em: Sudanese island doesn't want bridge to the mainland

BBC: Ethiopian troops backing Somali government shell Mogadishu market

NYT magazine: a different take on the Asch and Milgram experiments - maybe conformity isn't so bad after all

the Onion: meet Dick's closest friends