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