"In a campaign to punish families with sons suspected of supporting the insurgency, at least a dozen homes have been set ablaze since midsummer, residents and a local human rights organization said.
The burnings have been accompanied by a program, embraced by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s president, that has forced visibly frightened parents of insurgents to appear on television and beg their sons to return home...
The burnings have occurred in several districts or towns — including Alleroi, Geldagan, Khidi-Khutor, Kurchaloi, Samashki, Shali, Shatoi, Nikikhita and Tsenteroi — suggesting that the arsonists have been operating with precise information and with a degree of impunity in a republic that is crowded with police and military units.
Residents and the human rights organization said that the impunity was unsurprising, because the arsonists appeared to be members of the police...
In a series of state-run news programs this summer in Chechnya, senior officials spoke openly of the collective responsibility of people whose relatives have joined the insurgency, and of collective punishment."
WP: Chechen refugees in Georgia fear Russians again"[Pankisi Gorge, with its] fruit orchards and towering mountains has not been stable for long. During the Chechen war, it became a base for fighters making excursions into Chechnya and attracted a stream of money and fighters from Muslim nations. For years, it was a lawless pocket where men strode through villages with automatic weapons strapped to their bodies and where street shootings were common. At one point, Russia dropped bombs here to wipe out the fighters.
Then, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States began a $64 million program to train and equip Georgian forces to help root out suspected al-Qaeda agents -- a program that eventually expanded into a general training program for the Georgian army. The valley is now under the Georgian police's control, and locals say the "Arabians" who had settled here have melted away.
The war last month did not reach the valley, and Georgian officials say the helicopters spotted by the locals were most likely Georgian, conducting routine border patrols. But for Chechens living here, seeing Russian tanks cross into Georgia reawakened old fears. It also brought surprise. Some recalled watching TV reports of Russian tanks near the capital and finding it strange to see no resistance from the Georgians, not even a rock thrown.
Chechens would never have let that happen, said Lia Margoshvili, a Georgian Chechen who works with refugees here. "Chechen kids, when they're in fifth or sixth grade, they learn that they have to kill Russians -- but the Georgian kids, they learn, I don't know, books or something."
BBC: opposition in Belarus does not win one parliamentary seat in "election"
BBC: Lukashenko's days on the farm prepared him to be dictator
"His experience at the farm is what keeps him in power today," Mr Gulyaev says.
"Under that system, the director of the collective farm was equal to God, the tsar and the commander-in-chief. His word is the law, and no-one can argue with him."
NYT: policewoman killed by Taliban in Afghanistan"Ms. Kakar, with the rank of captain, was head of Kandahar’s department of crimes against women. She joined the police in the city in 1982, following in the footsteps of her father and brothers, but was forced out after the Taliban captured Kandahar in the mid-1990s and barred all women from working.
She was the first female police officer in the country to return to work after the Taliban were ousted. Her commitment was particularly notable for the fact that it took place in Kandahar, which became the headquarters for the Taliban soon after the movement was formed in the early 1990s."
BBC: forming self-defense militias in Pakistani villages
"Tribal elders gather in a mammoth meeting place, or jirga hall, to tell us why they support the military offensive.
They accuse the Pakistani Taleban of setting up a parallel state in Bajaur, undermining the traditional tribal leadership. They say they've exhausted all attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution to the problem."
WP: several attacks in Baghdad leave 27 dead
Reuters: car bomb in Tripoli kills 5
LAT: code of honor survives in Albania
"Many still live at least in part by the Kanun, a code handed down through the centuries in which "besa" -- loosely translated as word of honor or sacred promise -- is paramount. The code was adhered to by Albania's Muslim majority and Catholic and Orthodox Christian minorities.
The code covers everything from inheritances and the rights of the church to the treatment of livestock. Disobeying the Kanun could lead to harsh penalties that might include banishment or the transgressor's household being burned. A slight could lead to a blood feud that lasted for generations.
In Theth, nobody will sell land to an outsider, or even to another villager. Brides must come from outside the valley, a tradition that follows along the lines of the Kanun's rule that marriage within the same clan is forbidden.
"The Kanun is the law. Just like the state law," explains Gjovalin Lokthi, 39, a gruff "kryeplak," or elected chief of the village...
The Kanun has survived despite four decades of communist rule after World War II, with hardships such as mass imprisonment in labor camps and attempts to stamp out tribal practices."
WP: 52 Somalis die at sea trying to reach YemenEcon: whites leaving South Africa's violent crime
NYT: hurricane recovery as opportunity in Cuba
WP: Ecuadorans approve new constitution
NYT: conflict lingers in Bolivia
"Increasingly, the question confronting Bolivia, a country of deep ethnic and geographical divisions, is how they will wield that power, and whether Mr. Morales can redress the historical grievances of Bolivia’s indigenous majority while keeping his country from descending into chaos...
As violent as his opponents have sometimes been, they charge that Mr. Morales is achieving much of this by running roughshod over them. They say he has ignored court rulings that challenge his policies and used some of the same intimidation tactics he honed as a leader of the powerful coca growers unions before he was elected president.
As such tactics spread on both sides, fears are growing throughout the region that Bolivia’s crisis could produce, if not civil war, then pockets of fierce conflict across its rebellious tropical lowlands, which are an important source of natural gas and food for neighboring countries."
Slate: the history (and future?) of humanitarian interventionLAT: decoding men's headbands in Iraq
"Like the people who wear the agal and for whom it is a crucial part of daily dress -- everyone from rural farmers to Arab kings -- the headband's history is intriguing for its mix of tragedy and toughness. Some say it evolved from the collapse of Islamic rule in Andalusia. One version says the caliph ordered men to wear black headbands in mourning. Another says that distraught women tore their hair out and hurled it at men to show their rage at the men's inability to protect Islam. The men then wrapped the locks of black hair around their heads in shame and sorrow.
In the most practical version, Bedouins carried the black bands on their heads in case ropes were needed to secure their camels."
BBC: Maoists cancel Ms. Nepal pageant
NYT: maybe McCain should use his own height logic to support universal health care in the US
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