"The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage...Today's Taliban also has a much greater degree of formal organization. The old Taliban was disastrous at governing, and ministries were run by barefoot mullahs who scribbled orders on scraps of paper. The new Taliban structure has councils for each area of governance, appoints officials in controlled areas and confers swift justice for crimes and disputes."
Slate: but a 'surge' won't work there
"...any tactical advantage reaped from killing jihadists across the border is far outweighed by the strategic disaster unleashed as a result of intensifying anti-American sentiment, radicalizing the Pakistani population, and further alienating—possibly destabilizing—its new civilian government...Pakistan is not a sideshow to Afghanistan. It is the main show, dwarfing every other problem in the region. To deal with it, we can do one of two things. We can declare war on Pakistan—an option for which we lack the will, the allies, the resources, the troops, and (let's hope) the sheer suicidal idiocy. Or we can coordinate a region-wide campaign of pressures and incentives—political, economic, diplomatic, and military—with as many concerned powers as possible, including, yes, the Shiite leaders of Iran, who must have less interest than even we do in seeing radical Sunni jihadists take over huge chunks, if not all, of Pakistan...
The ultimate military goal [in Afghanistan]—one lesson from Petraeus' strategy in Iraq that is worth learning and might be applicable—is to protect the Afghan population, and that requires putting a lot of troops in the neighborhoods of towns and villages, to provide security and build trust. It might be possible to do this in Afghanistan, just as it was done in many Iraqi neighborhoods with one important difference—it has to be done by the Afghan National Army, not by us."
Econ: and expanding the front into Pakistan's FATA won't help
"Yet it is true that Afghanistan will never know peace while the tribal areas provide a haven for insurgents. Force will be part of the solution. But, as Mr Zardari knows, there also needs to be a comprehensive plan to develop the region—building roads and providing buses, schools and hospitals, but also dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and, eventually, integrating the FATA fully into Pakistan proper. America’s cross-border pressure may have been intended in part to impress upon Pakistan’s leaders the urgency of the military aspect."
NYT: fallout from deadly bombing in Islamabad
BBC: playing both sides: Pakistan says it will continue push into the FATA
BBC: and against US troops near border
WP: Karzai to meet Palin
"Palin, governor of Alaska for two years, has had limited experience abroad. She took one trip to Germany, Kuwait and Iraq in 2007, but barely crossed the Iraq border. She has also traveled to Canada. Democrats have mocked Palin for citing knowledge of Russia because she can see the nation from her home state."
NYT: delicate equilibrium in Iraq
"But if this is not peace, it is not war, either — at least not the war I knew. When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.
And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?"
LAT: regional paramilitary groups cropping up in Bolivia"Bolivia's polarization has reached the point where "defense" bands -- some call them militias -- are popping up here in the defiant lowlands and in the pro-government high plains to the west.
...Mob violence has been the inevitable outcome of the jump in the number of Bolivians aligned with one faction or another.
Both sides in the conflict insist that they are defending their regions, and their very identities, in a nation split by social, geographic and ethnic rifts.
In Santa Cruz, a semitropical city of 1.2 million that is the epicenter of the opposition to Morales, Ruiz has become the posthumous inspiration for the youthful militants of the right. His slaying is seen as a call to the barricades against the collas (pronounced COY-yas), as Indians from the mountainous west are disparagingly called by Santa Cruz natives, known as cambas."
WP: settling Tibetan nomads in China
"Settlement policies vary, and their effect on the social fabric of nomadic communities is complex. In many places, nomads have been encouraged to give up their animals, leading to reduced incomes, a rise in alcoholism and other social costs. A lack of planning has resulted in some settlements lacking water or power, officials admit. In many cases, nomads are ill-equipped to compete with Chinese migrant workers for jobs in nearby cities, and there has been insufficient retraining, experts said. The government has relocated hundreds of thousands of nomads in towns and cities in recent years, drawing them with government-subsidized housing and other incentives...[One settled nomad said,] 'It's also good for managing people. In the past, if government officials wanted to hold a meeting, it would take a long time to inform nomads who are scattered all over. And of course, if the government senses a bad thing is going to happen, it's quite easy to mobilize forces to surround a settlement. Then nothing will happen.'"
BBC: Sri Lanka begins census of displaced Tamils in Colombo
"The government says the rebel Tamil Tigers are using the influx of people to infiltrate the city and plant bombs."
Gdn: ETA bombing claims life of Spanish soldier
Gdn: Spain to open graves from the civil war
CSM: monks taking the long view: preparing children for dissent in Burma
WP: Mbeki resigns
"Mbeki, a top government leader since the end of apartheid in 1994, had faced increasing pressure to resign after a judge's ruling suggested his administration had schemed to charge his rival, Jacob Zuma, with corruption. Mbeki was due to step down after next year's national elections, and Zuma is expected to win his job."
LAT: Olmert resigns
WP: modern art in Tehran
"'Many people think I'm insane. Why would one man spend his money on students? Why is the entrance free of charge? But when they come here and see the museum, they tell me there should be much more of these places in Iran,' Motamedi said."
NYT: work, play, and religion in Dubai
Slate: attention witches: go underground until Wall St. sorts it all out
AP: Dick can't destroy the documents
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