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