22 October 2008

sort of like the boyscouts [hot commodities]

LAT: Mongols motorcycle gang infiltrated, indictments issued for racketeering, violent offenses
"The key to the investigation -- dubbed Operation Black Rain -- was the work of the undercover agents who spent several years gaining the Mongols' trust, officials said. Before being admitted to the gang, they were checked out by a private investigator who had been hired by the Mongols and they were given polygraph exams.

The Mongols were formed in the 1970s by a small group of Latinos who reportedly had been rejected by the Hells Angels. The gang now has between 500 and 600 members, the vast majority of them in Southern California, according to law enforcement officials.

The gang has a constitution and bylaws and some of the trappings of more conventional organizations -- its members are provided cellphones, for example. Decisions regarding membership, dues collection and club policy are made by leaders known in the gang as the "Mother Chapter." They have a headquarters in West Covina that is stocked with assault rifles, shotguns and bulletproof vests, according to the indictment.

As with many organizations, patches are awarded to signify the status or achievements of its members, though the behavior celebrated by the Mongols differs from most. For instance, a skull and crossbones patch or one proclaiming "Respect Few, Fear None" is given to members who commit murder or other acts of violence on behalf of the gang, according to the indictment...

There also are patches associated with the gang's alleged sexual rituals. Members are awarded wings of varying colors for engaging in sex acts with women at prearranged "wing parties," the indictment states. For example, members who have sex with a woman with venereal disease are given green wings, according to the indictment...

Much of the violence described in the indictment involved clashes between the Mongols and their longtime rivals, the Hells Angels...

But the violence was not limited to disputes between warring gangs; some were motivated by race, but others appeared to be random acts."

WP: Saudis held talks with the Afghan and Pakistani officials, Taliban
BBC: nearly 1,000 to go on trial in Riyadh for links to Al-Qaeda

WP: US-backed sheiks shaping local authority in Anbar
"A man from the Dulaimi tribe had killed a man from the Jenabi tribe. The elders of both tribes could have sought justice in a provincial court. They could have conferred with traditional sheiks versed in centuries-old ways of resolving disputes. But they didn't. They came to Sweidawi, a sunburned, American-backed chieftain who in less than two years had become the most powerful man in this patch of eastern Ramadi.

He asked the men if they trusted his authority. They nodded. Within minutes, he worked out a settlement. The men were not happy, but they also feared Sweidawi and needed his protection...

But the rise of these sheiks, collectively called the Awakening, is already touching off new conflicts that could deepen without U.S. military backing for the movement. They have stripped traditional tribal leaders of influence. They have carved up Sunni areas into fiefdoms, imposing their views on law and society and weakening the authority of the Shiite-led central government. Divisions are emerging among the new breed of tribal leaders, even as they are challenging established Sunni religious parties for political dominance...

Their ascent reflects how the struggle for local and regional centers of power is increasingly shaping Iraq's future. And their growing clout ensures that large segments of Iraq will remain influenced by tribal codes, rather than modern laws, posing an obstacle to the democratic foundations that many would like to see built here."
CSM: third-party brokering by US military between Kurds and Arabs in Diyala
"Few issues will affect Iraq's future more than the final relationship between the Kurds – whose autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has its own president, ministers, militia, and flag – and the Shiite-run central government in Baghdad.

But this town in Iraq's troubled eastern Diyala Province is 15 miles south of the KRG line, and but one flash point along a swath of "disputed areas" where Kurdish troops and authorities have expanded control beyond their borders.

Iraqi Arabs charge that Kurds are forcing them out of these areas, in the same way that Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" efforts in the 1970s and '80s brutally removed tens of thousands of Kurds...

Kurdish forces were sometimes invited in years past to help secure these areas before the new Iraqi Army could deploy. But now as Iraqi security forces are expanding and taking a more proactive role, towns like Khanaqin are torn...

Top of the list is clarifying the blend of federal and local government authority. Resolving the 12 "disputed areas" is so sensitive that the UN makes no map of them public."
BBC: status of US troops agreement hits road bumps
Slate: Ackerman and Hathaway say that Bush doesn't have the authority to make an agreement anyhow (SV says, 'not that that's stopped him before...')

Nature: social science and the Pentagon
Newsweek: one psychologist tries to get others out of interrogation business

Econ: military offensive in Sri Lanka

Econ: Bashir organizing talks on Darfur, but main rebel groups uninterested

BBC: in Zimbabwe, MDC calls for new elections

Slate: commodity prices and civil war: coffee and oil in Colombia
"Using newspaper reports of violent skirmishes in 950 Colombian municipalities between 1988 and 2005, Dube and Vargas find that when coffee prices went up, violence went down in locations where a large fraction of land area was under coffee cultivation. When coffee prices fell, however, as they did by almost 70 percent in the late 1990s, violence in coffee areas rose dramatically. The researchers estimate that an additional 500 deaths may have resulted from the increased conflict that came from lower coffee prices. The opposite was true for oil: It was higher prices that intensified conflict in areas with productive oil wells or pipelines. (Since both coffee and oil prices are traded in global markets, it is unlikely that price increases were caused by panicking commodities traders spooked by increased civil-war violence in Colombia.)"
LAT: and then there's the commodity that really counts: cocaine ring bust in Colombia, linked to Hezbollah
"The suspects allegedly worked with a Colombian cartel and a paramilitary group to smuggle cocaine to the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Harb traveled extensively to Lebanon, Syria and Egypt and was in phone contact with Hezbollah figures, according to Colombian officials."
LAT: Sinaloa cartel leader arrested
BBC: human heads sent to police in northern Mexico
"The heads, all of men believed aged between 25-35, arrived last week in an icebox marked as containing vaccines."

BBC: agreement reached between gov't and opposition in Bolivia
"The proposed new charter sets out greater central control of the economy, greater distribution of wealth to Bolivia's indigenous majority and land reform."

BBC: Albanian tradition of women living as 'honorary men' or 'sworn virgins' (depending on the circumstances)
"Tradition, particularly prevalent in the north of Albania, dictated that turning down a suitor could lead to the man's family exacting revenge on the girl's father or brother.
The only way to settle the dispute without bloodshed, according to the same tradition, was for the girl to declare herself a virgin for life and assume the role of a man - and thus never marry."

the Hill: police prepare for election-day violence, in the US.
"Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors...
“We’re prepared for the best-case scenario, we’re prepared for the worst-case scenario,” [Detroit second deputy chief Tate] said. “The worst-case scenario could be a situation that requires law enforcement.”
But Tate declined to describe what the worst-case scenario might look like, speaking gingerly like other police officials who are wary of implying that black voters are more likely than other voting groups to cause trouble."
the Root: maybe the exurbs are really where deployment should increase
ABCNews: SV, for one, can't promise a pacific response if this one gets elected
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a local interview that the vice president is "in charge of" the U.S. Senate and "can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes" – the second time she has claimed a more expansive role for the vice president than the U.S. Constitution outlines."
BBC: the Brits' helpful guide to the Joes of US politics

20 October 2008

alfa beto [change at an ass's pace]

Gdn: García Lorca's grave to be exhumed; Franco's repression ruled as crime against humanity
"Death squads, military courts and other tribunals sent 114,000 people to their deaths during and after a three-year civil war in the 1930s that traumatised Spain for generations, according to the judge.

Several thousand lie in unmarked mass graves, despite the attempts of volunteers over the past eight years to disinter corpses and hand them over to relatives for reburial. The judge ordered the digging up of 19 such graves, including one on a hillside overlooking the southern city of Granada where Lorca is thought to have been shot in 1936. Lorca's family do not want the poet exhumed, but recently promised not to oppose a petition from relatives of two men shot and buried alongside him for the grave to be dug up...

The judge explicitly said that his investigations included repression carried out until 1952, 17 years after Franco had won the civil war and established his dictatorship. Many Spaniards still find the period hard to talk about and some fear Garzón's investigation will reopen old wounds...
An unwritten "pact of forgetting" underpinned Spain's rapid transition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975.

Garzón's critics claim that all civil war and Francoist repression is covered by a 1977 amnesty law and by rules which mean that most crimes lapse after 20 years. Garzón declared yesterday, however, that where a victim's body had not been found a crime of kidnapping was still being committed and had not lapsed."

CSM: peace movement emerges in Afghanistan
"In a musty room near the edge of town, a group of bearded men sit on the floor and heatedly discuss strategy. The men are in the planning stages of an event that they hope will impact Afghan politics – a peace jirga, or assembly, that will agitate for the end of the war between the Taliban and Afghan government by asking the two sides to come to a settlement."

LAT: Sadr mobilizes for rejection of troop agreement
NYT: Shiite party coalition has backed away as well

LAT: sectarian mistrust persists in Baghdad
WP: people still resettling into polarized neighborhoods
"The sectarian violence that raged in Baghdad during the past three years has left the city polarized, with mixed neighborhoods undergoing what amounts to sectarian cleansing. The few Sunni families in Shiite neighborhoods were forced to move to areas where Sunnis predominate, while Shiites in largely Sunni neighborhoods took the opposite path.
Sectarianism has taken hold, despite the government's efforts to undo the process by allowing the displaced families to return to their homes. A psychological barrier has been established that looks set to remain in force, maybe for several generations, no matter what the authorities do."
BBC: around Mosul, Christians clustering

NYT: contemplating 'cockamamie' federalism in Iraq
BBC: and in Belgium
"Some commentators believe that the dynamic of Belgian politics lead the French and Dutch speakers away from each other.
Following devolution reforms over the past 45 years, all parties are now either Dutch-speaking or French-speaking."

WP: ethnicity in Abkhazia
"For the 50,000 or so Georgians living in Gali district, the recent war between Russia and Georgia has cast new uncertainty over an already shaky existence. In August, ethnic Abkhaz celebrated when Russia recognized their land, along with South Ossetia, as independent countries. Tougher frontier controls are one sign of the sometimes triumphant confidence the Abkhazian authorities now display."
BBC: Russian troops come under attack in Ingushetia

BBC: elections set for Kashmir, met with ambivalence

BBC: 86 people on trial for coup plot in Turkey

LAT: the impact of the violence on children in Baghdad
NYT: and in Mexico
"Nowhere is the trauma greater than along the border with the United States, where drug cartels are battling one another for a growing domestic market and the lucrative transit routes north. In Tijuana alone, a wave of gangland killings has left at least 99 people dead since Sept. 26, a death toll that rivals, if not exceeds, that in Baghdad, a war-torn city that is four times as large, over the same period.

Across Mexico, the carnage is impossible to hide, with severed heads and decapitated bodies turning up, sometimes nearly a dozen at a time. There have been more than 3,700 killings related to drugs and organized crime this year, up from about 2,700 last year, the Mexican attorney general’s office said early last week, with Chihuahua the most violent state and the killings continuing in the days since.

Exchanging gruesome stories is nothing new for schoolchildren, who have a way of overstating their brushes with danger. But the 12 tortured, tongueless bodies that were the talk of the playground recently were no exaggeration. In the early hours of Sept. 29, the bodies of 11 men and one woman, bound and partly dressed, were found in an abandoned lot opposite the school."

NYT: one-man traveling library in Colombia describes institutional development
“This began as a necessity; then it became an obligation; and after that a custom,” he explained, squinting at the hills undulating into the horizon. “Now,” he said, “it is an institution.”

Gdn: police fight police in Sao Paolo
"The detectives, who form a branch of the state police, were marching towards Palácio de los Bandeirantes, the headquarters of the city government, to demand to speak to the governor when they were blocked by barriers and lines of colleagues from the military police, who were decked out with riot shields and helmets. Shoving and tugging turned to punches and swiftly escalated into a battle."

NYT: Mugabe refuses to give Tsvangirai a passport; opposition not represented at talks in Swaziland
BBC: former president of Botswana wins good governance prize: $5 million and $200k/year for life
BBC: US imposes sanctions on Mauritania
Gdn: churches fill in for state in sub-Saharan Africa

BBC: Sri Lankan military closing in on Tamil stronghold
BBC: a doctor's account of the situation in the targeted town

LAT: on again: China outlines land reform plan

++
The Onion: Obama racially profiled

18 October 2008

learning about the past [doomed anyhow]

CSM: aware of dangers, NATO looks to ally with Afghan tribes
"As recently as the 1980s, America was arming and training local fighters in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet Army. The result was four years of civil war after the Soviets withdrew, as the new warlords fought each other, killing thousands. The chaos led to the rise of the Taliban.

Moreover, Afghanistan is an enormously complex web of intersecting tribal and ethnic allegiances that must be negotiated with great delicacy. Bolstering one Pashtun tribe in eastern Afghanistan, for example, could upset Tajiks and Hazaras in the north – who feel that their old foes are being strengthened – as well as rival Pashtun clans in the south.

For this reason, a consensus is emerging here and in Washington that whatever program emerges must be run by the Afghan government itself – perhaps by the police or Army."
CSM: Taliban's "shadow government"
"The [Taliban] militants' parallel government here in Logar Province – less than 40 miles from Kabul, the capital – tried and convicted the [local thieves], tarred their faces, paraded them around, and threatened to chop off their hands if they were caught stealing in the future. The thieves never bothered the locals again.

In several provinces close to Kabul, the government's presence is vanishing or already nonexistent, residents say. In its place, a more effective – and brutal – Taliban shadow government is spreading and winning local support.

"The police are just for show," one local says. "The Taliban are the real power here."

Widespread disillusionment with rampant crime, corrupt government, and lack of jobs has fueled the Taliban's rise to de facto power – though mainly in areas dominated by fellow ethnic Pashtuns. Still, the existence of Taliban power structures so close to Kabul shows the extent to which the Afghan government has lost control of the country."
WP: NATO commanders told to restrict air strikes in Afghanistan
"Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, NATO's chief spokesman in Afghanistan, said commanders are now under orders to consider a "tactical withdrawal" when faced with the choice of calling in air support during clashes in areas where civilians are believed to be present. The goal of the order is to minimize civilian casualties, encourage better coordination with Afghan troops and discourage overreliance on air power to repel insurgent attacks, Blanchette said."
NYT: more civilians apparently killed on Thursday nonetheless
NYT: foreign insurgent recruits redirecting to Afghanistan rather than Iraq
Slate: Petraeus to review overall strategy
"The strategic review, which involves more than 100 advisers working in six task forces, will focus on two issues in particular, the Post reports: reconciliation of moderate Taliban insurgents with the Afghan government (or at least with the fight against al-Qaida) and diplomatic initiatives with neighboring countries toward the ultimate goal of weakening jihadist forces in Pakistan."

NYT: prisoners describe Iran's training program for Iraqi insurgents
"Such is a typical day at a dusty military base outside Tehran, where for the past several years members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives have trained Iraqi Shiites to launch attacks against American forces in Iraq, according to accounts given to American interrogators by captured Iraqi fighters...The prisoners’ accounts cannot be independently verified. Yet the detainees gave strikingly similar details about training compounds in Iran, a clandestine network of safe houses in Iran and Iraq they used to reach the camps and intra-Shiite tensions at the camps between the Arab Iraqis and their Persian Iranian trainers."
LAT: Shiite groups in Iraq tries to hasten saint's return by spreading violence
"The Shiite faithful believe that in the world's darkest hour, Imam Mahdi will return and bring justice and calm. But where mainstream Shiite believers wait patiently for that day, groups such as the one that tried to enlist Iman are convinced that they can hasten his reappearance by spreading chaos...

Abu Jassem said the group preyed upon him when he was unemployed.

His recruiter was a good friend who knew of his religious fervor, and of his need for money. The friend sweetened the deal with the promise of a stipend for joining the cult. But then he told Abu Jassem of the one catch: He had to let his fellow believers sleep with his wife, daughter and sister."
CSM: upcoming elections might upset security gains

LAT: new evidence that the Nixon and Ford administrations undercut the Shah
"The report, after two years of research by scholar Andrew Scott Cooper, zeros in on the role of White House policymakers -- including Donald H. Rumsfeld, then a top aide to President Ford -- hoping to roll back oil prices and curb the shah's ambitions, despite warnings by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that such a move might precipitate the rise of a "radical regime" in Iran."

CSM: Colombia begins process of documenting war before it's over
"When La Violencia ended, Colombia turned the page and looked forward, leaving victims' families bitter and angry and demanding justice.

"This is a country that was accustomed to ending its conflicts with wide-sweeping amnesties and pardons," says [historian Gonzalo] Sánchez. "The idea of victims barely existed, the dead were dead and that was it."

That's now changing. The Historic Memory Group has tallied 2,505 massacres in which 14,000 victims died between 1982 and 2007. The government has registered more then 145,000 deaths and disappearances, as well as more than 3 million internal refugees.

Under the so-called 2005 Justice and Peace Law, hundreds of demobilized paramilitary fighters and rebel deserters are confessing to thousands of those crimes in exchange for reduced sentences. This, observers say, is working as a catalyst for victims who are reporting their version of events for the first time...

But the way victims and victimizers remember history often differs greatly. Sometimes, because of the official setting of the confessions, the former fighters are given more credence than to those who survived their crimes."
WP: Human Rights Watch says Uribe obstructing justice in paramilitary demobilization process
HRW: here's the full report
CNN: indigenous protesters killed by police
"[The commander of the police riot squad] also said leftist guerrilla fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had infiltrated the demonstration and were motivating the protest. Indian organizations deny the accusation, which law enforcement officials frequently level at social protests across the country."

Chris Blattman: pirate wars on the horizon

WP: an estimated 100,000 displaced by ongoing violence in Eastern Congo
"The fighting has mainly been in the hilly, forested eastern province of North Kivu, where Laurent Nkunda has over the years established a kind of fiefdom, flying the flag of his party, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, taking over villages, levying taxes and broadcasting his own radio programs.

Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi who maintains close ties to neighboring Rwanda, has said he is protecting the region's Tutsi minority from ethnic Hutu militias led by a core group that fled to eastern Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

In recent weeks, Nkunda has expanded his ambitions, vowing to "liberate" the entire Central African nation of 65 million people as the government of President Joseph Kabila struggles to assert control.

Nkunda and Rwandan officials have accused the Congolese army of collaborating with the Hutu militias instead of disarming them, as Congolese and Rwandan diplomats agreed to do in an accord signed last year."
NYT: victim speaking out on sexual violence
"In Bunia, a town farther north, rape prosecutions are up 600 percent compared to five years ago. Congolese investigators have even been flown to Europe to learn “CSI”-style forensic techniques. The police have arrested some of the most violent offenders, often young militia men, most likely psychologically traumatized themselves, who have thrust sticks, rocks, knives and assault rifles inside women...

Poverty, chaos, disease and war. These are the constants of eastern Congo. Many people believe that the rape problem will not be solved until the area tastes peace. But that might not be anytime soon.

Laurent Nkunda, a well-armed Tutsi warlord, or a savior of his people, depending on whom you ask, recently threatened to wage war across the country. Clashes between his troops, many of them child soldiers, and government forces have driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in the past few months. His forces, along with those from the dozens of other rebel groups hiding out in the hills, are thought to be mainly responsible for the epidemic of brutal rapes."

AP: protesters beaten in Zimbabwe
"The Bulawayo demonstrators were carrying a statement from the civil rights group Women of Zimbabwe Arise, accusing politicians of offering empty promises in their Sept. 15 agreement."

Econ: delays in Khmer Rouge trials
"The tribunal, based in the outskirts of the capital, is an unwieldy compromise. The original proposal was for it to be entirely under the UN’s control, like the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. But China threatened to veto this, perhaps fearing that such an independent international body would unearth embarrassing evidence of its close support for the Khmer Rouge.

The Cambodian government, led by Hun Sen (a former Khmer Rouge officer, though not himself implicated in the regime’s enormities), was also keen to ensure the UN did not have too much control over the tribunal. So what was agreed in the end was an “Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia”, with a majority of local judges. The result has been constant tensions between the international and Cambodian staff."

LAT: China abandons land reform

NYT: debt bondage and cotton in Tajikistan

WSJ: intrigue surrounding murder of Tbilisi CIA station chief in 1993
"Those who don't buy the official explanation suspect that the answer lies in the spy games that played out on Russia's frontier following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Woodruff was an early actor in a dangerous drama. American spies were moving into newborn nations previously dominated by Soviet intelligence. Russia's security apparatus, resentful and demoralized, was in turmoil, its nominal loyalty to a pro-Western course set by President Boris Yeltsin shredded by hard-line spooks and generals who viewed the Americans as a menace."

NYT: the mob and politics in Bulgaria
"By almost any measure, Bulgaria is the most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union. Since it joined last year, it has emerged as a cautionary tale for Western nations confronting the stark reality and heavy costs of drawing fragile post-Communist nations into their orbit, away from Russia’s influence...

As in Russia and some other Balkan nations, corruption has seeped into the fabric of life. Sofia has a thriving black market for blood outside hospitals, where patients’ families haggle over purchases with dealers, according to Bulgarian news reports that track the prices.

The roots of this organized crime date to the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s. Thousands of secret agents and athletes, including wrestlers once supported and coddled by the state, were cast onto the street. During the United Nations embargo of warring Serbia in the 1990s, they seized smuggling opportunities and solidified their networks."

Slate: special series on immigration in Europe

WP: Canadian conservatives hold on to power

WP: Whitehouse gave the go-ahead to CIA torture

Slate: code language in American politics - from Wallace to Palin
Slate: the US patchwork system is inefficient at handling voter registration and voting; plus, why vote on Tuesdays?
"(Tuesday voting, for the record, is entirely vestigial. In 1845, Congress fixed upon Tuesday because getting to and from polling places used to be a two-day ordeal, and voting on the weekend or Monday would have meant traveling on the Sabbath.)"
Slate: how did Qpac become a polling machine?
Slate: speaking of the 19th century - mobilizing voters resembled civil war military tactics
LAT: Kenyans following the race
"Despite Sen. Barack Obama's strong lead in the polls and his huge popularity here in his father's homeland, some Kenyans can't shake a sense of doubt about whether Americans are ready to put a black man in the White House."

16 October 2008

not very neighborly [maybe it's just the milky way]

NYT: sectarian cleansing in Orissa, India: Hindus force Christians to convert or leave
"The forced conversions come amid widening attacks on Christians here and in at least five other states across the country, as India prepares for national elections next spring. The clash of faiths has cut a wide swath of panic and destruction through these once quiet hamlets fed by paddy fields and jackfruit trees. Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped...

India is no stranger to religious violence between Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, and India’s Hindu-majority of 1.1 billion people. But this most recent spasm is the most intense in years.

It was set off, people here say, by the killing on Aug. 23 of a charismatic Hindu preacher known as Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, who for 40 years had rallied the area’s people to choose Hinduism over Christianity.

The police have blamed Maoist guerrillas for the swami’s killing. But Hindu radicals continue to hold Christians responsible...

Hindu extremists have held ceremonies in the country’s indigenous belt for the past several years intended to purge tribal communities of Christian influence.

It is impossible to know how many have been reconverted here, in the wake of the latest violence, though a three-day journey through the villages of Kandhamal turned up plenty of anecdotal evidence."

WP: betrayal, mistrust, and new communities in Iraq

AP: Afghans intervene in a Taliban prison break plot
"Afghanistan's intelligence service said Saturday that it had broken up a Taliban plot to attack the country's most notorious prison with a wave of suicide bombers, while the government named a new interior minister to lead the country's fledgling police."
Gdn: about 60 Taliban fighters killed in attempted attack on Lakshar Gar, the capital of Helmand province
Reuters: apparently undaunted, they tried again
"Massed Taliban attacks on major towns are rare, but an attempted assault on a provincial capital only four days after some 65 militants tried to do the same thing is an indication the Islamist movement has no shortage of recruits."
Gdn: photos and audio from an attack on an Afghan outpost near the Pakistan border
BBC: Kuchis, Afghan nomads, struggling
"The Kuchis comprise approximately six million of Afghanistan's 25 million citizens, and they primarily consist of Pashtun and Baloch nomads. Kuchis are also estimated to make up half of Afghanistan's Pashtun population."

BBC: protests in Montenegro against recognizing Kosovo's independence

WP: immigrant camps dismantled in South Africa
"Five months have passed since more than 60 people were killed in anti-foreigner beatings and burnings that shocked a nation that touts diversity. Thousands of immigrants moved to about 10 refugee-style camps that seemed incongruous in Africa's most developed country. In recent weeks, the government has torn most down, saying the neighborhoods are safe again.

But aid workers and immigrants who fled to this spot north of Pretoria -- mostly Somalis, Ethiopians and Congolese -- disagree. They say the camps' endurance and continued reports of violence underscore how little the South African government has done to tackle a long-standing hostility toward immigrants that reached a tipping point in the spring."

WP: Israeli parties close to forging ruling coalition; Livni may become PM
BBC: tension ongoing in Acre

BBC: background on the returned GAM founder, and speculation on his future role in Aceh

WP: Guantanamo trials lost in translation; just when you thought they couldn't get any worse

AP: China and Russia settles territory dispute

BBC: president appoints leftist new prime minister in Peru

LAT: meth trade, violence moves to Argentina
Mexican traffickers have become the main suppliers of methamphetamine to the United States. But a crackdown in Mexico has squeezed supplies of ephedrine from Asia, leading the gangs to seek their raw material in Argentina, a nation with a robust pharmaceutical industry, relatively few controls and a reputation for corrupt cops and customs inspectors.

LAT: SV wonders what combination of order, conflict, and violence they have in other galaxies?

11 October 2008

all too common tragedies [can we talk?]

NYT: in defense of diplomacy: Martti Ahtisaari wins Nobel Peace Prize
Slate: Petraeus is pro
"In Iraq, the general recalled in his Heritage speech, "we sat down with some of those who were shooting at us"—a painful task but "an explicit part of our campaign." These talks formed the basis for the Anbar Awakening—in which Sunni insurgents allied themselves with U.S. forces to beat back the common foe of al-Qaida in Iraq—and for the tactical success of the "surge" itself."

new plans for Afghanistan include a little of this, a little of that:
BBC: talks with the Taliban and the other insurgencies: who will engage?
"And there's the question of who you speak to within the movement. Is it possible to speak to the senior leaders? In order to get an agreement that would stick, you would need to have these men on board.
And do the Taleban even want to hold peace talks?
From their point of view, it could be argued that things are going quite well.
The insurgency is spreading and the government is regarded as weak, corrupt and ineffective by many Afghans. Some of these people would prefer a Taleban alternative."
WP: NATO to begin interdiction in Afghanistan
"The vast majority of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan occurs in seven southern provinces, areas patrolled by U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch forces.
The compromise allows NATO troops to act after receiving a request from the Afghans and does not require any change in the alliance's operational plan in Afghanistan."
BBC: UK to launch anti-Taliban propaganda plan
LAT: US to train Afghan tribal militias
"Under that approach, U.S. forces would scale back combat operations to focus more on training Afghan government forces and tribal militias. The plan is controversial because it could extend the influence of warlords while undermining the government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, the capital.
The strategy also could set up a hair-trigger rivalry between national security units and the improved tribal forces, proponents acknowledge."

LAT: hopefully protection is part of the package - across the border, suicide bombers target anti-Taliban tribal elders in Pakistan
"Hundreds of people had gathered for the outdoor meeting in the remote village of Ghiljo, at which elders of the Alizai tribe were making plans to raise a fighting force and attack a base belonging to the militants.

Pakistani authorities have been providing tribal leaders in such villages with financial and logistical support to raise lashkars, or local militias, in a bid to counter the tightening grip of Islamic militant groups in the tribal areas along the Afghan border.

The tribe had already organized some smaller attacks against the Taliban in recent days, including the burning of two compounds occupied by insurgents...

It was the second attack in recent days on anti-Taliban tribal leaders. Authorities on Thursday recovered the decapitated bodies of four men from the Bajaur tribal agency who were believed to have been abducted by militants. The four were helping organize a tribal militia."

WP: expect Iraq coverage to continue to decrease as Western bureaus pull out journalists
"It remains important and it remains interesting," said Alissa J. Rubin, the New York Times' acting bureau chief in Baghdad. "But what's in front of us now is almost a static situation. There's not a clear narrative line. The stories are more complex."
NYT: ...and more personal: one journalist remembers the victim of a Sept 28 bomb
WP: "sticky" IEDs used more frequently, seen as shift in insurgent tactics
"These assassination attempts mark a shift from mass-casualty attacks that triggered a backlash against insurgent groups and militias, U.S. military officials said, and come as the Iraqi government is asserting more control over security matters in the country and as the United States starts to reduce troop levels.

The bombs have been used against Iraqi government officials, particularly those who work in the army and police. Local leaders, judges, journalists and members of U.S.-backed Sunni armed groups have also been attacked."
BBC: as troops draw down, challenges range from rebuilding to revenge
"There are scores to be settled. As American forces begin to draw down, not everyone will be restrained. Grief and anger cannot just be wiped away.

And there is a new danger now from the Awakening movement - the fighters who used to support al-Qaeda in Iraq but who switched sides.

They are uneasy about the plan to absorb only 20,000 of their men into the armed forces.

The rest - about 80,000 - will be paid until they have found other work, but they risk losing their status in the community and, as one of their leaders said to me, they could become "bad people again" and re-join al-Qaeda."

Econ: Khatami might challenge Ahmadinejad
"Mr Khatami, who served as president between 1997 and 2005, after winning successive landslide election victories, could emerge as the most potent challenger to the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has given every indication that he intends to seek a second term and who enjoys the support of both the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)...Mr Ahmadinejad has succeeded in redefining the role of the presidency, accumulating extensive powers in his office, but largely at the expense of the institutions that Mr Khatami had been trying to build up as autonomous bastions of civil society and economic management—notably parliament, the media and the Central Bank of Iran."

Econ: Saudi Arabia's role in the region
"In recent years, as an ailing Egyptian government has faded from its former role as the Arab world’s chief broker, the Saudis have tried interceding in regional troubles ranging from Lebanon to Israel-Palestine, Somalia and Iraq. Yet for all the pious ritual and lavish banqueting enjoyed by their guests, and for all the moral authority carried by King Abdullah, who styles himself the Servant of the Holy Places, the Saudis have an uneven record of success."

Slate: the lawlessness of Guantanamo
LAT: whistle-blower started out as true believer

LAT: North Korea shuts down a reactor, leaves 'axis of evil'

NYT: China might allow farmers to sell land-use rights
"The Chinese leadership has long insisted that the country must remain self-sufficient in the production of staple foods, and is highly unlikely to allow farmers to sell land-use rights for nonagricultural development. But if a market for trading farmland developed as expected, peasants could gain a new source of cash income that could help revitalize the stagnant rural economy."

CSM: intervention in Georgia exposes cracks in Russia's military, prompts proposed increase in spending

Econ: as Sri Lankan army closes in on LTTE stronghold, end of war seems near to some

Econ: sectarian, or settler/indigenous violence in Assam
"The Bodos, among the earliest settlers in the Assamese plains, resent any outsider who encroaches on their tribal homelands. They do not make subtle legal distinctions between them."

BBC: founder of the Free Aceh Movement returns after 30 years in exile
"Gam signed a peace-deal in 2005 to end a 29-year conflict that killed 15,000.
The peace deal with Indonesia's government - which resulted in Aceh's autonomy - followed the devastation of the 2004 Asian tsunami."

LAT: cabinet in Peru resigns over bribery charges
"Many Peruvians are fed up with what they view as endemic corruption and the failure of the country's rapid economic growth to stem poverty, surveys show. Strikes and marches by teachers, farmers and doctors, among others, regularly paralyze public services and roads."
BBC: military convoy ambushed by Shining Path rebels; 12 die
"It came amid reports that Peru's army had launched an operation to remove some 300 Shining Path rebels who work closely with cocaine traffickers in [Huancavelica province]."

Econ: Chavez faces challenges in local elections
"It remains to be seen whether the government’s attempt to paint the opposition as unpatriotic and undemocratic and present itself as the main defence against US “imperialism” will bring significant benefits on the electoral front. At the end of September the opposition agreed to support a single, unity candidate for governor in every state except for Bolívar, and most pollsters concur that most of the urban electorate is pro-opposition, while the reverse is true in rural areas.Given Venezuela’s highly urbanised population, the danger for the government is that it loses big and significant states like Carabobo and Miranda, retaining rural backwaters like Apure and Delta Amacuro."
BBC: unclear if shutting down McDonald's (for 48 hours) will help or hurt

BBC: US court sentences 2 former Colombian paramilitaries to 20 years in prison, on drug trafficking charges
"Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe said any international assets seized by US authorities from the paramilitary leaders would go to compensating their victims.
But some Colombians feared their extradition meant the militia leaders would not disclose alleged links to many government figures."
AP: Colombian defense ministry links FARC to Mexican cartels
AP: cartel violence claims 11 in Mexico

BBC: Videla imprisoned in Argentina
"Jorge Videla, 83, was convicted in 1985 of the murder of 66 people, the torture of 93 others, and the illegal detention of more than 300.
Videla, who ruled from 1976 to 1983, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He was pardoned by President Carlos Menem in 1990 but a court cancelled that order last year."

NYT: Mugabe disregarding the terms of power-sharing agreement
"An opposition spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, said Mr. Mugabe’s allocation of ministries was a strategy meant to pre-empt Mr. Mbeki’s mediation and called on African leaders and the international community to intervene. In a statement, he called Mr. Mugabe’s division of the ministries “a giant act of madness which puts the whole deal into jeopardy.”

BBC: new rebel group emerges in Congo's northeast
"The new rebel coalition, the Popular Front for Justice in Congo - known by its French acronym, FPJC, had earlier taken a village close to Bunia, killing soldiers and sending thousands fleeing for their lives into the bush.

Mayhem broke out in Bunia on Friday after government troops clashed with the rebels less than 10km (6 miles) south of the town...

The area around Bunia suffered almost a decade of war, which ended with a peace deal in 2006.

But the rebels say they represent a new coalition, formed to force the implementation of that deal, which included an amnesty for all those who participated in the previous fighting.

Tension in the region has been growing over the past two weeks, with fighting between Congolese troops and the rebels moving closer to Bunia."

BBC: DRC's president issues 'call to arms' to fight other rebel group, led by renegade General
"Over and above any political divide, we must mobilise as one behind our armed forces and our elected representatives to preserve peace and the unity and (territorial) integrity of the country," he said.

++
NYT: extending equal rights to gays in CT
"Striking at the heart of discriminatory traditions in America, the court — in language that often rose above the legal landscape into realms of social justice for a new century — recalled that laws in the not-so-distant past barred interracial marriages, excluded women from occupations and official duties, and relegated blacks to separate but supposedly equal public facilities."

++
the tragedy of the commons, on a global scale

BBC: yikes, forest crisis
"The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion."

Gdn: aligning incentives to protect rainforest in Ecuador
"The Ecuadorian government has said it is prepared to keep hundreds of millions of barrels of heavy crude oil in the ground, but in return it wants the international community to compensate it at the level of $350m (£202m) a year for a decade...

The Yasuni national park in Ecuador lies at the intersection of the Amazon, the Andes and the equator and spans almost a million hectares of primary rainforest. It is home to indigenous tribes, who wish to be left in isolation, and an extraordinary array of wildlife and plants, much of it endangered. Avoiding the oil extraction would also prevent the release of an estimated 100m tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere."

BBC: and Indonesia
"As well as protecting and restoring forest, the authorities have pledged to make development on Sumatra obey principles of "ecosystem-based planning", where any projects detrimental to the island's ecological health would be banned.

However, the vice-governor of the province of West Sumatra, Marlis Rahman, said help from the west would be needed to help meet the commitments. "We are calling on the international community to support us in implementing this commitment on the ground and help us to find extra livelihoods by protecting our forests," he said."

++
history lessons

Gdn: Brits honored for fighting Franco in Int'l Brigades; offered Spanish citizenship
"Seventy years have passed since they marched out of Barcelona amid crowds of weeping, cheering Spaniards, but it is only now that the last few British volunteers who fought in Spain against General Franco's fascist-backed rebels are finally to be rewarded by the Spanish state...

While Hitler and Mussolini sent arms and troops to help Franco, Britain and Europe's other democracies stood on the sidelines as tens of thousands of volunteers from around the world travelled to Spain to help the Republic."

New Yorker: evolution of voting through 18th and 19th century US
“'To vacate an election,' an election-law textbook subsequently advised, “it must clearly appear that there was such a display of force as ought to have intimidated men of ordinary firmness.'...Americans used to vote with their voices—viva voce—or with their hands or with their feet. Yea or nay. Raise your hand. All in favor of Jones, stand on this side of the town common; if you support Smith, line up over there. In the colonies, as in the mother country, casting a vote rarely required paper and pen. The word “ballot” comes from the Italian ballotta, or little ball, and a ballot often was a ball, or at least something ballish, like a pea or a pebble, or, not uncommonly, a bullet. Colonial Pennsylvanians commonly voted by tossing beans into a hat. Paper voting wasn’t meant to conceal anyone’s vote; it was just easier than counting beans. Our forebears considered casting a “secret ballot” cowardly, underhanded, and despicable; as one South Carolinian put it, voting secretly would 'destroy that noble generous openness that is characteristick of an Englishman.'”

++
conflict resolution
BBC: in some cases, partition could be the best option
"An estranged couple in Cambodia have sawn their house in half to avoid the country's convoluted divorce process."

09 October 2008

atonement [holy something]

WP: US finally, "urgently" reviews strategy in Afghanistan
"...seven months would pass before the administration, distracted by issues as serious as the Iraq war and as far afield as the Olympics, was seized with the urgency to put a new strategy in place. Although stopgap measures were taken during the spring and summer -- the temporary deployment of 3,500 more Marines, an appeal for more NATO troops and presidential authorization for U.S. commando raids into Pakistan -- the downward spiral continued...

Officials described the Pakistan-based extremist network, which the Pentagon calls "the syndicate," as a loose alliance of three elements. Kashmiri militants, constrained by recent agreements between Pakistan and India, have "leaned over" to assist a domestic terrorist campaign launched by homegrown extremists often referred to as the "Pakistani Taliban," one official said. The Afghan Taliban -- itself divided into several groups -- is based in Pakistan but focused on Afghanistan, as are the forces led by warlords Jalauddin Haqqani and his son Siraj, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, among others. Traditional tribal groups in Pakistan's western, Federally Administered Tribal Areas -- FATA -- are a third element. Those groups are said to be focused primarily on keeping the Pakistani military and government out of their areas, and assisting the Afghan-oriented parts of the network.

Al-Qaeda, composed largely of Arabs and, increasingly, Uzbeks, Chechens and other Central Asians, is described as sitting atop the structure, providing money and training to the others in exchange for sanctuary."
WP: Gates wants Europe to send more troops to the 'crisis'
NYT: US revises statement, acknowledges that raid killed more than 30 civilians
"The revised American estimate for civilian deaths in the operation remains far below the 90 that Afghan and United Nations officials have claimed, a figure that the Afghan government and the United Nations said was supported by cellphone photos, freshly dug grave sites and the accounts of witnesses who saw the dead bodies."

BBC: account from an administrator in Swat
"People think the army does not do enough. In a village called Kabal the Taleban checks vehicles and stops women who are not wearing the burqa. One man told me how just the other day he had been travelling with friends. The women in the car were asked to dismount. When she dismounted the Taleban slapped her in the face and asked why she didn't put on the veil. The thing is, the army was just 25-30 yards away. They did nothing. When they act like that, people start to think they are responsible for things."
BBC: Pakistan parliament briefed by security chief
"The parliamentarians are expected to seek information on a wide range of issues pertaining to the proliferation of militancy in the country despite the heavy military deployment in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) since 2002.
Questions are also expected on the sources of Taleban funds and arms."

NYT: legal status of US troops in Iraq near agreement
"The United States has argued for the same legal protections that apply in other countries where American troops are based. The Iraqi government has been adamant that any crime committed outside of a military operation should be subject to prosecution in Iraqi courts.

In negotiating the pact, the United States has already agreed to withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of Iraq by the end of 2011, assuming that conditions in the country remain stable."
CSM: some tribes seek reconciliation
"The tribal talks are the result of a nationwide call from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and senior religious leaders earlier this year to bridge differences between tribes to prevent future bloodshed.

This push has been enabled by improved security and a dramatic fall in violent attacks over the past year due to several factors: the US military surge, the decision by Sunni militants to join the US in fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and a stand down of the Mahdi Army, the main anti-American Shiite militia.

"When we start this tribal reconciliation, it should be the seed of reconciliation for all of Iraq," says Taiee, who began his efforts five months ago. "The Shiite and the Sunni people, each one stole the rights of the others, and now must solve that in a peaceful way. They should return to their senses; they found that killing is not a good way."
LAT: in Baghdad, an actual theater of the absurd
"The two-act cabaret-style show, written by playwright Ali Hussein, portrays Iraqi politicians as petty, corrupt and detached from the people they govern. A scene in parliament shows legislators discussing the ozone layer, importing garlic seeds (there is no garlic in the play's Iraq) and increasing their salaries -- everything but how to end bloodshed and rebuild a broken state. So out of touch is one politician that he proposes (just like a real-life legislator) erecting a huge Ferris wheel "so people can cool off in the summer heat."

BBC: Yom Kippur riots in Acre, Israel
"The Arab man was reportedly attacked by youths who said he was making noise intentionally [by driving his car], Haaretz said."

Gdn: Dubai's exploited labor force

WP: ANC looks closer to split

WP: cabinet talks stalled in Zimbabwe

BBC: Nkunda forces take base in Eastern DRC; Rwandan troops apparently amassing at border "The UN peacekeeping force Monuc said rebels seized weapons and supplies after overrunning the strategically important camp of Rumangabo overnight.

The attack came as DR Congo accused Rwanda of sending troops across the border to threaten the city of Goma."

BBC: land conflict in Uganda
"The bill [introduced last year], the government says, will stop the evictions and regulate the relationship between land owners and tenants.

But the amendment has drawn criticism from land-owners, local leaders and rights groups around the country, and become a political issue that threatens to divide the country.

Some of the harshest criticism has come from the Buganda kingdom, which says that some of the proposals in the amendment are designed to grab its land.

The Buganda king, Kabaka Ronald Mutesa, is said to be one of the country's biggest land-owners.

The kingdom has been rallying the Baganda against what it says are attempts to put its lands in the hands of "outsiders" and hurt the kingdom's political influence...

Leaders from northern Uganda, where land is owned communally, have opposed a proposal to allow courts to arbitrate in disputes on communal land...

"Northern Uganda has been under a state of conflict. This has been interpreted as a fertile ground for the state to grab people's land, people who have been in the [IDP] camps," [a human rights advocate] says."

Econ: Mauritius comes out on top in governance report on African states
"The index ranks 48 sub-Saharan African countries by five criteria: safety and security, the rule of law, transparency and corruption, participation and human rights, sustainable economic opportunity and human development. Size matters: most of the ten best-run countries have small populations; big, often resource-rich countries fill the bottom of the table. One notable anomaly suggests that open democracy is given less weight in the index than might be expected. Gabon, which is placed eighth, has been governed for over four decades by its president Omar Bongo, who has faced allegations of serious corruption."

Gdn: violence in Latin America "epidemic"
"Some studies suggest Latin America"s income could be 25% higher if its crime rate, which began soaring in the 1980s, was similar to the rest of the world."
BBC: Peruvians protest corruption
"The demonstrations, organised by the biggest trade union, were called to demand a change in the government's free market policies, which opponents say have failed to improve living standards for many Peruvians.

But just days after a scandal allegedly involving kickbacks in return for oil contracts emerged, the protesters also took up the theme of corruption.

In the capital, Lima, thousands of workers, including teachers, builders and doctors marched on Congress on Tuesday, calling for the cabinet to step down."
BBC: Mexico extradites ex-Guatemalan president Portillo to face corruption charges

BBC: Belgium begins negotiations between Flemish and French factions
"Bloody ethnic strife is not about to break out in Brussels' leafy suburbs - but the war of words can get nasty.

Militant groups, such as the Taal Aktie Komitee (TAK), specialise in vandalising non-Dutch billboards and facilities."

NYT: snap elections called in Ukraine

BBC: Maldives' first election heads to run-off

LAT: treason charges dropped, Thai protest leaders to turn themselves in
WP: but the conflict is still unstable

NYT: US states illegally purging voter rolls - can we get some int'l monitors up in here?
looks like it's incompetence, not malfeasance:
"The six states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Some are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Some of the states are improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters."

BBC: the foo fighters are not McCain's friends

07 October 2008

self-defense [protect the chick peas]

BBC: village in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan weighs collaboration and resistance
"Less than two weeks ago, a couple of pro-Taleban activists from a nearby village made an appearance at night prayers in one of the village mosques. They appealed for donations and manpower for what they described as the "holy war" in Afghanistan.

The people in the mosque contributed some coins towards their cause. But no one volunteered for the war.

Since then, there has been a general unrest among the villagers about the Taleban's intentions. They want government help if they decide to resist a possible Taleban takeover...

Until last year, the people of this village were generally supportive of the Taleban's movement in the neighbouring Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) which border Afghanistan.

But that support has undergone a change since the Taleban's recent forays into Peshawar, the capital of NWFP where a number of educated young men of the village hold jobs...

Reports of tribal militia fighting to evict the Taleban from some areas in the Bajaur and Kurram tribal regions - as well as in the Buner district of NWFP - have also affected their earlier view of the Taleban as a godly force...

Nearly every village from one end of the province to the other has had someone working in Kabul - where wages have been several times higher than in Pakistan - for the past few years...

Likewise, before that, nearly every village had someone who worked for the Taleban in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

There are a dozen trained and semi-trained former Taleban foot soldiers in this village alone.

From 1996 to 2001, nearly all of them spent time in training camps and did sentry duty on check-posts or even participated in active combat for the Taleban.

Going to Afghanistan for the Taleban was almost a rite of passage for young men here. Some were recruited through the Pakistani madrassa (religious school) system and have now come back to run their own madrassas.

Until 2004, this village had no madrassas. Now it has four.

Villagers fear these ex-Taleban members might become harbourers of a larger Taleban force of outsiders.

If the Taleban take hold of the village, people fear they will persecute those who work in Afghanistan, or transport material to Kabul for Western troops or work for the Pakistani army and the police...

It appears the new NWFP government is encouraging local people to form their own self-defence militias and has even promised to issue them weapons, if available.

"But government weapons are in short supply, and we may get none, in which case we will have to use our own weapons," the lawyer tells the gathering of village men.

Almost every home in the village has a couple of Kalashnikov rifles kept for self-defence or because they are so fashionable. All are unlicensed as the weapon is prohibited...

This raises several questions in the minds of the villagers.

Will the police allow them to use these weapons? What if the wrong people get killed in the heat of the moment? Will villagers be put on trial and their weapons confiscated? What if people start settling personal scores under the guise of fighting the Taleban?

A major issue is the credibility of the government. What if someone high in the government orders the police to pull back and leave people at the mercy of the Taleban?

The situation is complicated, but the drift is obvious. The Taleban are getting closer to the village, and people's knee-jerk reaction has been one of resistance.

"If the government provides leadership and support, the people can easily deny the Taleban a foothold in the village. But if the government fails to offer them support, those 10 or 12 Taleban out there have the organisation and the will to overrun the place," says the lawyer.

If that happens, trigger-happy young men of the village - who could have fought alongside the village force - will instead be manning the Taleban check-posts.

That has already happened in some places, such as the regions of Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu and Tank. People opposed the Taleban but they had no government support. The Taleban moved in and the young men joined them. Their families sanctioned the move as it meant that they got protection."

BBC: Gates endorses negotiations with segments of the Taliban
AP: US airstrikes kill 47 in southern Afghanistan

BBC: Al-Qaeda assessment

NPR: Christian self-defense forces form in Iraq
"Qaraqosh is a peaceful town of 50,000 people. But because it's just a few miles east of the northern city of Mosul, one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, security is high.

Every vehicle is stopped, most drivers are questioned, and many cars are searched by members of the Qaraqosh Protection Committee, an all-Christian security force that is spreading to Christian villages across the north.

Father Daoud Suleiman says the once-Christian village [nearby Bartulla] is now evenly divided between Muslims and Christians, and that tensions are getting worse. He says if the church hadn't stepped in and helped create these protection committees, Bartulla would be just another formerly-Christian village...

[The groups are bankrolled by] Sarkis Aghajan Mamendu, and while his supporters may portray him as a wealthy independent benefactor, he does have a day job that suggests to some where the money may be coming from. He is the finance minister for the Kurdish regional government, and he is a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party believed to be close to Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani...

This is where the stories of the tiny Assyrian minority and the much larger Kurdish minority begin to converge — perhaps a bit too closely for some Assyrian nationalists...

Many Christians, as well as Turkmen, Yazidis and other minorities recall bitterly how the Kurdish Peshmerga forces prevented thousands of non-Kurds from voting in 2005, and Christians have no desire to see Assyrian autonomy reduced to a footnote in a Kurdish drive for independence."

BBC: Kenya apparently co-signed for the tanks on board the Ukrainian ship held for ransom by Somali pirates - destined for Southern Sudan
AP: gun-runners on trial for organizing over $700 million in weapons shipments to Angola

AP: suicide bomber kills 27 in Sri Lanka

BBC: deadly rioting continues in Assam
Gdn (op-ed): India apparently unwilling to target Hindu fundamentalists

WP: Thai army and police move in on protesters
"The trouble started Monday night when some 8,000 protesters gathered outside parliament, vowing to prevent the lawmakers' from convening Tuesday morning. Police moved in shortly after dawn with a volley of tear gas canisters and stun grenades, sending the crowd running."

BBC: 20 die in Mogadishu market shelling

BBC: Yemen arrest suspected militants, links them to Israeli intelligence forces

WP: Venezuelan government criticized for failing to provide health care to Amazonian indigenous tribe
"Some leaders of the Yanomami, one of South America’s largest forest-dwelling tribes, say that 50 people in their communities in the southern rain forest have died since the expulsion of the missionaries in 2005 because of recurring shortages of medicine and fuel, and unreliable transportation out of the jungle to medical facilities...There are about 26,000 Yanomami in the Amazon rain forest, in Venezuela and Brazil, where they subsist as seminomadic hunters and cultivators of crops like manioc and bananas...They remain susceptible to ailments for which they have weak defenses, including respiratory diseases and drug-resistant strains of malaria."

++
Gdn: let's litigate: Lebanon to sue Israel for claiming hummus as its own

06 October 2008

better late than never? [nation-building on flimsy credit]

Gdn: British Army commander says victory isn't goal in Afghanistan
"While paying tribute to his troops in Helmand province, and describing successes against insurgents, the brigadier told today's Sunday Times: ""We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."
NYT (op-ed): local intelligence, better targeting is necessary to prevent Afghan civilian defection
NYT (op-ed): improving governance
NYT (op-ed): rather than engaging in a manhunt
NYT: Karzai's brother, government officials suspected of involvement in the heroin trade
NYT: in Bamian province, women integrating the police and workforce
LAT: Interpol to train Afghan police
"The international police organization wants to boost police capabilities here with equipment and training and help connect police around the country with the Interior Ministry headquarters in Kabul.

Currently, no Afghan police offices in the country's 34 provinces can take fingerprints and send them to Kabul, the capital, to be entered into international databases, said B.S. Sardar Awa, the head of Afghanistan's Interpol office."

WP: US Army to release new strategy document today favoring nation-building to conventional warfare
"The doctrine, which has generated intense debate in the U.S. military establishment and government, holds that in coming years, American troops are not likely to engage in major ground combat against hostile states as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead will frequently be called upon to operate in lawless areas to safeguard populations and rebuild countries.

Such "stability operations" will last longer and ultimately contribute more to the military's success than "traditional combat operations," according to the Army's new Stability Operations Field Manual, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post."

NYT: new US regional command established in Africa
"If deployment of fighting forces is an indicator, that historic focus north of the equator endures. But since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a new view has gained acceptance among senior Pentagon officials and military commanders: that ungoverned spaces and ill-governed states, whose impoverished citizens are vulnerable to the ideology of violent extremism, pose a growing risk to American security.

“Bases? Garrisons? It’s not about that,” [top commander] General Ward said in an interview. “We are trying to prevent conflict, as opposed to having to react to a conflict.'"

BBC: Mogadishu half empty

BBC: there was a coup in Mauritania in August, protesters arrested over the weekend
"The demonstration came ahead of the African Union's Monday deadline for Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi to be freed and restored to power."

NYT: anxiety in South Africa
"The past year has been especially unnerving, with one bleak event after another, and it is more than acidic politics that have soured the national mood. Economic growth slowed; prices shot up. Xenophobic riots broke out in several cities, with mobs killing dozens of impoverished foreigners and chasing thousands more from their tumbledown homes.

The country’s power company unfathomably ran out of electricity and rationed supply. Gone was the conceit that South Africa was the one place on the continent immune to such incompetence. The rich purchased generators; the poor muddled through with kerosene and paraffin.

Other grievances were ruefully familiar. South Africa has one of the worst crime rates. But more alarming than the quantity of lawbreaking is the cruelty. Robberies are often accompanied by appalling violence, and people here one-up each other with tales of scalding and shooting and slicing and garroting...

Rich and poor, black, white and mixed race: their complaints may differ, but the discontent is shared. Polls show a pervasive distrust of government, political parties and the police."

WP: but World Cup 2010 still on track

LAT: more killings in Mexico drug war - Arellano Felix cartel might be in collapse
"In all, at least 57 suspected organized crime members, a majority of them believed to be part of the Arellano Felix organization, were killed in the last week, including 12 dumped in front of an elementary school Sept. 29 and eight tossed in an industrial yard Thursday.

The carnage may be a sign that the cartel named for the Arellano Felix brothers is fractured and vulnerable to contenders, inside and outside the organization, who are looking to get control of lucrative trafficking routes into the United States, according to law enforcement sources...

The cartel came to power in the 1980s when Colombian cocaine barons, shut out of traditional trafficking routes across the Caribbean Sea into Florida, began partnering with Mexican crime groups.

The Arellano Felix brothers -- Benjamin, Ramon, Javier -- moved in from Sinaloa and provided the perfect springboard. From their Tijuana stronghold, they controlled trafficking routes into California, the biggest drug market in a country that is the biggest consumer of cocaine in the world."
Gdn: one faction of the Arellano Felix cartel appears to have aligned with Sinaloa
NYT: Colombian designer finds market for bulletproof fashion
"There are bulletproof leather jackets and bulletproof polo shirts. Armored guayabera shirts hang next to protective windbreakers, parkas and even white ruffled tuxedo shirts. Every member of the sales staff has had to take a turn being shot while wearing one of the products, which range from a few hundred dollars to as much as $7,000, so they can attest to the efficacy of the secret fabric."

NYT: Russia withdrawing from Georgia checkpoints

CSM: activist judges in Thailand?

BBC: riots in Assam between settlers and locals
"More than 100 people have been injured in the riots that have now spread to five districts of the state.

The clashes broke out on Friday between Bodo tribespeople and Muslim settlers from Bangladesh in Udalguri district, and have spread to nearby areas.

The groups have been fighting with bows and arrows, machetes and guns, and several villages have been set on fire.

Police have imposed a curfew and have orders to shoot rioters on sight."

BBC: curfew in Indian Kashmir to prevent separatist rally

WP: court to decide fate of Uighur detainees in Guantanamo
"The men, a small band of Chinese Muslims who have been held for nearly seven years, are no longer considered enemy combatants by the U.S. government, but they are caught in a well-documented diplomatic bind. Unlike other captives, they cannot be sent to their home country because Beijing considers them terrorists, and they might be tortured. The government released five of the detainees, known as Uighurs (pronounced "WEE-gurz"), to Albania in 2006, but no other country wants to risk offending China by accepting the others."

WP: details on McCain's military career

WP (op-ed): Bush asked us to buy on credit, now it's time to pay up

BBC: the Weathermen (aka Barack Obama's domestic terrorist friends)
"...on 8 October 1969 a newly-formed group of left-wing extremists, dubbed the Weathermen, went on the rampage in a well-planned protest in Chicago - the so-called Days of Rage riots.

A police station in the city was bombed and protesters engaged police in combat on the streets. More than 250 of the rioters were arrested, and the FBI began to follow the movements of the Weathermen very closely.

They were a splinter group from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) - a product of the student radicalism endemic on college campuses in the late 1960s...

By the end of 1969 they decided to go underground and resort to bombing strategic targets - later changing their name to the Weather Underground Organization.

From 1970 to 1975 the group bombed police stations and patrol vehicles and court and government buildings...

The group's most audacious attacks came in 1971, when they bombed the US Capitol, and a year later when they attacked the Pentagon...

During the late 1990s, Mr Obama served on the same charity board as Mr Ayers."

04 October 2008

the all-of-the-above approach [past is prologue]

NYT: British diplomat predicts NATO defeat and recommends dictatorship for Afghanistan
NYT: three fronts in recently ramped-up war against the Taliban in Pakistan
"In early August, goaded by the American complaints and faced with a nexus of the Taliban and Al Qaeda that had become too powerful to ignore, the chief of the Pakistan military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, opened the front in Bajaur, a Taliban and Qaeda stronghold along the Afghan border.

Earlier this summer, the military became locked in an uphill fight against the militants in Swat, a more settled area of North-West Frontier Province that was once a middle-class ski resort. Today it is a maelstrom of killing...

At a third front, south of Peshawar, around the town of Dera Adam Khel, the army recently recaptured from Taliban control the strategic Kohat tunnel, a road more than a mile long that carries NATO supplies from the port of Karachi to the American and coalition forces in Afghanistan."

NYT: rebuilding Samarra
LAT: US cops advising Iraqis
"Acree is one of about 800 civilian police officers working under a military contract with DynCorp International. Unlike the thousands of civilian contractors who have come to Iraq to supplement the military, Acree and his colleagues don't provide security services. They're here to impart their experience in urban police work to a young and inadequately trained and equipped force.

The consultants, whose pay starts at $134,000 a year, are assigned to U.S. military police units and travel in convoys of Humvees."

LAT: more clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces
"The fighting, which represented Turkey's largest loss of troops this year in a single incident, was considered likely to spur Turkish military strikes at rebel hideouts across the border in northern Iraq. Within hours of the rebel attack, the Turkish military was already aiming artillery strikes across the frontier...The fighting came days before Turkish lawmakers are to take up a measure that would give the army continued authority in the coming year to stage strikes across the border in Iraq."

NYT: who will pay the pirate ransom?
"As if things were not complicated enough, one of the few people with experience in prickly pirate problems has been jailed by the Kenyan government on suspicion that he is a pirate himself...Many seamen in Kenya insist that Mr. Mwangura is a good man, and that his only fault may have been being outspoken. He was the first maritime official to say that the hijacked ship was part of a secret arms deal between Kenya and southern Sudan. Kenyan officials have denied this, saying the heavy weaponry, including battle tanks, is for their use. But Western diplomats have privately said this is a lie."

LAT: ANC factions may prove too difficult to keep together
LAT: bloggers expose dissent within the opposition in Egypt
"This Internet revolution strikes at the Muslim Brotherhood's identity. The organization, founded in 1928, has renounced violence and supports democratic change in Egypt, but it is allied with the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of the banned party's members are arrested each year; human rights groups say Mubarak is portraying the brotherhood followers as terrorists in an effort to silence his most potent detractors.

The brotherhood is praised for its community outreach services, but often viewed as out of touch, too rooted in religious dogma and its quest for an Islamic state. This ideology and constant pressure from government security forces have left the organization unable to create a credible coalition with leftists, nationalists and others to seriously challenge the ruling National Democratic Party.

In one of his posts, Naggar urged the brotherhood to "question ourselves and admit our mistakes. It is not shameful to revise our ideas and change our positions. It is not shameful to be brave enough and say that we were mistaken. What is really shameful is not to speak about our mistakes and claim that our ideas are sacred."

Such soul-searching represents an unprecedented public criticism of the bureaucracy and thinking in a major Islamic movement and has shattered the secrecy prized by the brotherhood, said Khalil Anani, an expert on the group. He suggested that the brotherhood's leadership is threatened by the brashness of its young reformers, yet it needs these Web-savvy critics to reach new generations of Muslims."

LAT: Mexicans march on 40th anniversary of student massacre
"The killings -- official reports put the toll at 25 to 43 but human rights groups have long maintained that the number was closer to 350 -- started when government forces opened fire on a massive but peaceful student demonstration just days before the Olympic Games were to open in Mexico City. It was a time of political effervescence in the country and across the globe, and the Mexican government of the day was eager to conceal what had happened.

The incident in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, in the Tlatelolco zone of Mexico City, remained shrouded in secrecy for decades."

LAT: reassessing how many died in Dresden
"While estimates for the numbers killed in the attacks on the city have fluctuated wildly between 35,000 and half a million over the past six decades, the historians commissioned by the city say the figure was considerably lower.

"The results of the commission conclude that 18,000 to 25,000 people died in Dresden from the air raids," an official said yesterday. The figure has long been a matter of dispute, heightened by the entry into the regional parliament of Saxony in Dresden of the NPD, a far-right political party, who called the February 1945 raids a "bombing holocaust", and claimed they had killed half a million.

The bombing, which took place just 12 weeks before the surrender of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial actions of the second world war. While the operation was defended by the allies as a justified attack on a vital transport hub, most of those who died were civilians and refugees. Many were said to have perished in the resulting firestorm.

The former mayor of Dresden, Ingold Rossberg, commissioned the 11-strong team of historians four years ago to try to establish a clear figure. The results were presented at Dresden's annual Conference of Historians.

While the figure is well below previous estimates, members of the conference were keen to stress that the report did not belittle the immensity of the act. Thousands of lives were claimed in just four US and UK raids, lasting 63 minutes. Almost 4,000 tonnes of high explosives and incendiary devices were dropped."

LAT: the women of San Luca and behind the 'Ndrangheta mafia
"The women here have always had a complex role in the dynamics of an insular society that seems to exist at the margins of mainstream Italy. They are the mothers of the mobsters, their wives and, prosecutors say, often their accomplices. Fiercely protective of their brood, they can be as ruthless as their men. In the last year, it also appears that some San Luca women have served as a counterforce to the violence spiraling from internal feuds...San Luca is a town of interconnected clans, and there is no one who cannot claim a mobster among his or her relatives. In virtually every family, someone has been imprisoned or killed...

Calabria, the toe-of-the-boot region of Italy where San Luca is located, is the nation's poorest, on paper at least; the women complained that the only time they see an arm of the government it's in the form of police rounding up suspected gangsters...

San Luca sits on the edge of the densely forested Aspromonte mountain range, a favorite spot of the 'Ndrangheta for hiding its kidnapping victims in the 1970s and '80s. The organization has existed in some form for more than a century, evolving as a protection racket after World War II and then graduating to drug trafficking a decade or so ago. The 'Ndrangheta developed a multibillion-dollar enterprise in the last few years when it took over cocaine routes from Latin America to Europe, the fastest-growing market for illicit narcotics.

This region is like few others. The minute a stranger enters San Luca, a kind of silent alarm is sounded. Outsiders will be followed, their movements tracked. The people have their own body language, not to mention their own actual language: All speak a Calabrian dialect. An Italian speaker unfamiliar with the dialect will grasp only parts of a conversation.

San Luca gained international notoriety last year when six Italians were gunned down outside a pizzeria in Duisburg, Germany. Authorities called it a revenge hit in an escalating 'Ndrangheta feud. Three of the dead, including a 16-year-old boy, were from San Luca, and the others from nearby Calabrian towns.

The killings -- the most public evidence to date of the international reach of the 'Ndrangheta -- shocked Italians and unleashed fears of further violence. But more than a year later, no one else has been killed, and the credit, at least partially, goes to a woman...

At a tense funeral for the Duisburg dead in San Luca in August 2007, instead of demanding revenge, as many mothers and wives had, Strangio insisted on forgiveness...

Diego Trotta, a senior police investigator in Calabria who has led many operations against the 'Ndrangheta, thinks reprisals have only been delayed, not canceled. Any relative peace, he said, is thanks to scores of arrests in the last year...

The women of San Luca are for the most part locked into a certain fate. They are married off to other families within the clans to seal the impervious unity of the 'Ndrangheta. Only in the last decade or so did San Luca families allow their daughters to go to high school."