"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."
"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 reformNYT: 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."
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