rational collapses [digging in]

LAT: Marines back in Afghanistan, indefinitely
"Based in part on the experiences of the Two-Seven and the grit of its individual members, Marine Corps officials are planning to greatly expand their numbers here -- an unexpected result of a deployment that wasn't even supposed to be.

A replacement task force will consist of about 2,300 troops, more than double the size of the Two-Seven's initial deployment...

Like the Army, the Marine Corps was already stretched thin on equipment and manpower. The Two-Seven's basic mission -- mentoring the Afghan national police in sprawling Helmand -- was not expected to involve continuous combat.

But the Marines were repeatedly attacked as they established forward bases in the region and began to make contact with local villagers. Before long, the fighting overshadowed the mentoring. Though they had expected to be tested by the Taliban in an area where much of the poppy crop that funds the insurgents is grown, they had not anticipated the intensity of the conflict.

For six months, the Two-Seven had more members killed and wounded -- about 150 -- than did the 20,000 Marines deployed in Iraq. It also did its share of killing...

Meanwhile, the efforts to recruit and train Afghan police officers were beset by corruption and narcotics. In one class of 100 recruits, 35 were dismissed because of drug use. Some recruits showed up for training with the red-rimmed eyes of chronic hashish users, Hall said...

The battalion also faced a manpower shortage in mid-deployment as 150 members neared the end of their active-duty stints. An urgent call went out corpswide for volunteers, and more than 300 Marines stateside stepped forward. About 140 were accepted...

Maj. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said Marines, in effect, were starting over in Afghanistan after being the lead U.S. conventional force in toppling the Taliban regime in 2001.

"This is where it all started," Waldhauser told the troops at Delaram. "We're just starting over again. We're going to be at this a long time."

After routing the Taliban, the Marines were largely redeployed to Iraq. A special operations unit arrived in early 2007 but was sent home amid controversy over civilian deaths."

WP: legislators 'dumbfounded' by Pentagon's policy banning masks of Iraqi interpreters

Slate: Obama's national security transition team
WP: General Jim Jones slated for national security advisor


Gdn: an interview with a Somali pirate / tax collector
"We give priority to ships from Europe because we get bigger ransoms. To get their attention we shoot near the ship. If it does not stop we use a rope ladder to get on board. We count the crew and find out their nationalities. After checking the cargo we ask the captain to phone the owner and say that have seized the ship and will keep it until the ransom is paid.

We make friends with the hostages, telling them that we only want money, not to kill them. Sometimes we even eat rice, fish, pasta with them. When the money is delivered to our ship we count the dollars and let the hostages go.

Then our friends come to welcome us back in Eyl and we go to Garowe in Land Cruisers. We split the money. For example, if we get $1.8m, we would send $380,000 to the investment man who gives us cash to fund the missions, and then divide the rest between us.

Our community thinks we are pirates getting illegal money. But we consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea. With foreign warships now on patrol we have difficulties.

But we are getting new boats and weapons. We will not stop until we have a central government that can control our sea."

BBC: Islamists pursuing pirates, either for a cut or to punish them for hijacking a Muslim ship

BBC: NATO warships escorting food aid in the region

WP: state tries to manage protests in China
"The meeting Thursday between the governor of the northwestern province of Gansu and more than a dozen people was billed in the official state media as an example of a high-level politician reaching out to hear the concerns of ordinary Chinese.

But two of the people who attended the meeting said Friday that they were the only ones present who had participated in the protest against a government resettlement plan and that the rest were local officials...

The discrepancy between the protesters' accounts of the meeting and the media account raised questions about whether the Chinese government was newly committed to addressing and solving local unrest or more concerned with projecting a positive image to the public at a time when officials fear that the economic downturn is fueling protests that are taxing China's security services.

"I didn't dare mention in that meeting that everyone in this town wants Wang Yi to be fired," Wang said Friday, referring to the local party secretary. "We heard he has a good relationship with the provincial party secretary. If I'd said that, I'd be arrested just like all those other people yesterday."

But the New China News Agency quoted her as saying, "Now I know better the government's policy, and I will tell the others."

NYT: Tibetans stick with the middle way


WP: inter-caste marriages still taboo in India
"Even though India legalized inter-caste marriage more than 50 years ago, newlyweds are still threatened by violence, most often from their families. As more young urban and small-town Indians start to rebel and choose mates outside of arranged marriages and caste commandments, killings of inter-caste couples have increased, according to a recent study by the All India Democratic Women's Association.

In the past month, seven so-called honor killings have targeted inter-caste couples. In the latest incident, a Hindu youth in Bihar was beaten by villagers this week and thrown under an oncoming train because he sent a love letter to a girl of a different caste. The attacks continue despite decades of government decrees intended to dismantle the bulwark of caste, which is widely seen as the glue of traditional Indian society but is considered among the most corrosive features of the emerging new India."

LAT: the Obama family in Kenya deals with conflicts, presents security challenges

LAT: making music and citizens in Venezuela
"In the poor hillside neighborhood of Chapellín and at nearly 250 other locales throughout this nation, tens of thousands of young Venezuelans are learning to play classical music and to make art a permanent cornerstone of their lives. They're the latest recruits of El Sistema, or the System, a 34-year-old program that many regard as a model not only for music instruction but for helping children develop into productive, responsible citizens."

Econ: the secret tunnels of MI-6 in London (made the short list for Dick Cheney's future lair)
"A lift takes us down 100 feet, deeper than the London Underground, which we can hear rumbling above us. A set of atom-bomb-proof doors are swung open and we step out into the secret of Furnival Street: the Kingsway tunnels, a miniature city beneath a city.

Dug in 1940 as London was blitzed by German bombers, the tunnels were designed as a air-raid shelter for up to 8,000 people, and as a possible last-ditch base for the government in the event of an invasion. They were never used as a shelter; instead, towards the end of the war they were taken over by the “Inter Services Research Bureau”, a shady outfit that was in fact a front for the research and development arm of MI6 (perhaps better known as Q branch in the James Bond novels).

After the war, the tunnels were passed to the Post Office and then to British Telecom, which hopes to sell the warren for £5m now that it is surplus to requirements. “I think it would make a great disco, personally,” says Ray Gapes, a former switch-maintenance engineer who came to work in the tunnels as an 18-year-old apprentice and is now showing us around."

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NYT: SV sees more uncertainty in your future
“My Web traffic is up and up and up,” said Aurora Tower, a New Yorker who constructs spidery star charts for her growing clientele. “People will entertain the irrational when what they consider rational collapses.”

experimenting with order [try a little tenderness]

WP: US changing tactics in Iraq
"With violence down sharply this year, the U.S. military is broadening its efforts to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites, reintegrate former insurgents into society and repair the rift between residents and their government...The U.S. reconciliation campaign includes some major projects, but much of the American effort is decentralized, consisting of reconstruction programs, peace marches and meetings with rival tribal leaders over platters of rice and lamb. In many cases, soldiers are making up the details as they go along...

Lt. Col. Monty Willoughby, 42, has had to figure out how to keep the peace in an area of northwestern Baghdad that was previously a hotbed of Sunni insurgents. He became worried last spring when U.S. commanders announced a plan to release thousands of Iraqis detained for alleged ties to insurgents.

"We're like, man, how are we going to keep these guys from falling back into it?" asked Willoughby, an earnest, freckled officer from Clever, Mo., who commands the 4th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, which is attached to the 101st Airborne.

Willoughby decided he needed someone to help the detainees reenter society. And that is how a squadron of macho U.S. infantrymen and gung-ho tankers came to hire their first professional nurturer...

[nuturer] Kashmoola and his fellow managers line up housing as well as jobs or training programs. Then the managers check up on the men to ensure they stay out of trouble.

On a recent sunny Thursday, Kashmoola and Willoughby attended a detainee release ceremony on the lawn of a blue-domed mosque. The U.S. military has made these into gala affairs, with flag-waving crowds and speeches from Muslim leaders and Iraqi army officers. The 48 newly freed men were handed gift-wrapped bags of chocolates by U.S. soldiers who a year ago might have flex-cuffed them...

The Army issued a field manual last month on "stability operations" to guide its troops in facilitating reconciliation and providing essential services. It was produced after the Department of Defense in 2005 elevated "stability operations" to the same level in its doctrine as offensive and defensive operations...

Building support for government institutions is a key part of the U.S. military's pacification effort in Iraq. In Willoughby's area of northwestern Baghdad, for example, American troops have cleaned out sewers, rebuilt schools and put in a swimming pool.

"As you, as a citizen, are looking on, you've got to say, 'It's nice to live here,' " Willoughby said. If insurgents return, the U.S. officers hope, Iraqis will consider what they have to lose.

It can be difficult to assess the effectiveness of some of the American programs. Hickman's soldiers, for example, have helped organize soccer games between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, providing the young players with T-shirts or uniforms.

The matches aren't billed as peace events, he said, but the parents mingle, re-creating an atmosphere that existed before the invasion. The games draw them from neighborhoods divided by giant blast walls and painful memories of sectarian warfare."

NYT: 10,000 Sadr supporters protest US-Iraqi troop agreement in Baghdad
"A spokesman for Mr. Sadr in Baghdad said his followers opposed the security agreement because they did not believe assurances that the Americans would leave."

NYT: historical headlines on troop agreements past
"In a treaty signed on Oct. 10, 1922, Britain agreed to prepare the country for independence. But the treaty postponed discussion of exactly how this would happen, and effectively prolonged Britain’s mandate under another form for at least 20 years (a period later reduced)."

NYT: photos from the Congo, Iraq, and Afghanistan

WP: UN security council approves immediate deployment of 3,100 peacekeepers to the Congo
"The 15-nation council urged the leadership of the U.N.'s largest peacekeeping mission -- which has faced criticism for failing to defend civilians -- to forcefully implement its mandate. But the council has ignored appeals by the U.N.'s special representative in Congo, Alan Doss, to send a heavily armed multinational force to help restore stability.

Doss cautioned this week that U.N. reinforcements, while welcome, would not be sufficient to restore peace in a region the size of France. He said any durable peace would have to be reached in political talks led by the U.N.'s special envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, between the rebels and the Congolese government."

NYT: Mai Mai militias complicate the conflict
"The Mai Mai are the third piece to eastern Congo’s violent puzzle, with the rebels on one side, the government forces on the other and the Mai Mai often terrorizing the uncontrolled areas in between. With their guns, leaf headdresses and special potions that many fighters believe make bullets bounce off them, they are a surreal — but still deadly — dimension to Congo’s civil wars.

The Mai Mai insist that they are Congo’s true patriots, but it is questionable how much influence they wield — most villagers call them crooks and they tend to lose their battles. In the past few weeks, they have emerged as spoilers, fighting on when the other armed groups have agreed to stop. The Mai Mai now seem to have a beef with just about everybody: the rebels (whom they clashed with on Thursday); United Nations peacekeepers (whom they clashed with on Wednesday); and Congolese government troops (whom they clashed with on Tuesday)...

There are thousands of Mai Mai fighters in dozens of loosely connected Mai Mai groups scattered across Congo. The movement started decades ago when Congolese communities formed militias to protect themselves and tapped into local customs as a way to inspire the fighters. The term “mai mai” refers to maji, the Kiswahili word for water, because many of the Mai Mai fighters grease themselves up with a mixture of palm oil and holy water before stepping on the battlefield. Often the emollient — and some homemade necklaces — is all they wear...

Many of the Mai Mai militias in other parts of Congo have agreed to disarm. But in eastern Congo, the Mai Mai seem increasingly restless."

LAT: brief respite in Goma in history of hard times
"In a sign of how bad things are, Goma's residents now say that life under brutal Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko is seen as the "good old days."

Then, this eastern Congolese border town [of 600,000] was looked at as the Switzerland of Africa, envied for its natural beauty, stability and prosperity. A vast agricultural industry of coffee, tea, potatoes, beans and cheese fed not only Congo, but the entire region. Gold and tin mines pumped the local economy. Tourism flourished thanks to lush parks and a nearby population of several hundred mountain gorillas.

The relative idyll began unraveling with the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, when bodies clogged Lake Kivu and millions of refugees fled here, trampling Congolese farmland, depleting resources and bringing cholera and other epidemics.

Then Goma became a launching pad for two civil wars, one of which escalated into a regional conflict known as Africa's First World War. The most recent estimates put the war's death toll at 5 million, mostly due to disease and malnutrition, with many of the fatalities in Goma.

Finally, when peace seemed around the corner, Mt. Nyiragongo exploded in 2002, engulfing half the town in ash and lava and killing as many as 100 people.

Today farms lie fallow and 1 in 10 people rely on international food aid. Mines still thrive, but three-fourths of the profits line the pockets of rival militias and illicit foreign-owned businesses. Tourism long ago disappeared.

Surviving in Goma, residents say, requires a combination of fatalism and pragmatism, accepting that their future is largely out of their hands but keeping a suitcase packed...

An explosion in rapes is another side effect, Butsitsi said. Thousands of women have been sexually attacked in eastern Congo over the last five years, one of the worst records worldwide."

Ind: carving out a parallel state
"Inside General Nkunda's territory the markets are starting to operate again, there are uniformed police and there are plans for an anthem and a flag. There are also – officials insist – no refugees or displaced people. Around the town of Rutshuru that recently sheltered nearly 15,000 refugees, there is little or no sign that they were ever there. Dumes camp which housed 4,000 people last month has been razed, its clinics dismantled."

Econ: options for negotiation
"The simplest way forward would appear to be the reintegration of Mr Nkunda and his National Congress for the Defence of the People into Congo’s security structures. But the price would almost certainly be too high. Mr Nkunda wants the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, to grant him a principality in eastern Congo, a sinecure in Kinshasa and the disarming of the Hutu militias he accuses of attacking Tutsis."

WP: ICC seeking warrants for 3 rebels in Darfur, accused of war crimes for killing AU peacekeepers in September


WP: NIC predicts rise of state-run capitalism in multipolar world
"It is not a prediction," [Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis] Fingar said. "Nothing that we have identified in this report is determinative. Nothing in it is inevitable or immutable. These are trends and developments and drivers that are subject to policy intervention and manipulation."

LAT: judge orders release of 5 Guantanamo prisoners
"A federal judge ruled here for the first time Thursday that the Bush administration had no basis for holding several of its long-term prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he ordered that five of the Algerian natives go free."


Gdn: tensions still high in Nicaragua over disputed election
"Sandinista supporters armed with machetes, rocks and home-made mortars snuffed out opposition protests earlier this week, leaving dozens injured. For much of the trouble police were notably absent.

A tense calm descended on the capital when the opposition withdrew from the fray and vowed to challenge the results in the national assembly, setting the scene for weeks of political wrangling and fears of renewed flare-ups."

LAT: drug violence flares in Sinaloa
"Sinaloa, a fertile state on the Pacific coast, has long been at the center of Mexico's drug trade. It has become a hub of violence since President Felipe Calderon dispatched an army of soldiers and federal police to take on some of the biggest drug lords.

The alarming level of violence -- shootouts and kidnappings almost every day -- has sown panic and fear among a normally resilient citizenry."

BBC: Syrian weapons dealer convicted of trafficking arms to the FARC

BBC: "Hindu terrorism" debate in India

WP: grenade kills protester in Bangkok; demonstrations continue
"The dispute between the predominantly urban, middle-class demonstrators and the government, which was voted into power last year with the backing of millions of Thailand's rural poor, has paralyzed the country's political process and gouged deep political divisions between the rural and urban populations.
The demonstrators have ruled out any compromise, vowing to maintain their protest until the government is forced out of office."


Econ: new UK law to punish johns attempts to tackle trafficking
"Most prostitution [in the UK], which is legal, is consensual. But worries about abuse are rising. Performed behind closed curtains and often by people who fear to seek help, prostitution has always been a job in which exploitation is possible. Now, like most unappealing, low-paid occupations, it is increasingly carried out by immigrants: eight out of ten London prostitutes are foreigners, police think. Isolated, lacking knowledge of English or the law and sometimes trafficked by criminal gangs, the new arrivals are especially vulnerable. In the past two years police have rescued 251 women whom they believe were trafficked to Britain for sexual slavery.

The situation is shameful, but the proposal the government unveiled this week—to make those buying sex liable to criminal charges if it subsequently emerges that the prostitute was controlled for another person’s gain—is no way to remedy it. This newspaper tends toward a liberal view of these matters, but even those who do not will find this amber light a waste of space. Better by far either to criminalise outright the purchase of sex or to legalise it and regulate what ensues."

BBC: testifying against the Camorra
"The Camorra kills someone on average every three days, so I only have to stop a random person on the street to find someone who has witnessed a murder first hand and ask if they gave their testimony to the police.

"No, no, no," one woman tells me, "I would be afraid, no-one talks about this."

She tells me the murder she saw took place at nine in the morning in a crowded square, and no-one talked to the police."

Econ: experimenting with disorder and behavior
"The tendency for people to behave in a particular way can be strengthened or weakened depending on what they observe others to be doing. This does not necessarily mean that people will copy bad behaviour exactly, reaching for a spray can when they see graffiti. Rather, says Dr Keizer, it can foster the “violation” of other norms of behaviour...The researchers’ conclusion is that one example of disorder, like graffiti or littering, can indeed encourage another, like stealing."

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Slate: a new translation of the Quran
"The new crop of Quran translators are brushing aside centuries of traditionalist, male-dominated, and often misogynistic clerical interpretations in favor of a more contemporary, more individualized, and often more gender-friendly approach to the Quran. In the process, they are not only reshaping the way Islam's holy book is read; they are reinterpreting the way Islam itself is being understood in the modern world."

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NYT (Brooks): Brooks tips off terrorists, Sarah Palin
"If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed." (ht: steve shewfelt)

the lives of others [dirty tricks and disenchantment]

LAT: Central Intelligence Organization officer in Zimbabwe speculates on Mugabe's support
"The CIO casts a long shadow. Small, everyday encounters become fraught with fear. Common coincidences are magnified into something sinister. Everyone knows how the CIO guys work: You never notice them until you spot a car behind you, then drive around the block a few times and find it's still there.

There are plenty of terrifying stories about what happens to the people who are arrested, ranging from lengthy interrogation to torture. So I'm a little taken aback by the man from the President's Office. He turns out to be thirtysomething, educated, articulate and urbane. Had he been born in any other country, he might have found a career at a bank, a think tank, a law firm. Instead, he learned about dirty tricks and disenchantment.

For years, the Mugabe regime has used the CIO to undermine and frighten the opposition, keep an eye on journalists and neutralize threats. But these days the name President's Office is a misnomer, says the senior officer, who, unsurprisingly, speaks on condition of anonymity. He estimates that 60% to 70% of CIO officers -- all but the hard-line ideologues -- no longer back Mugabe...

Slowly and cautiously, [the officer] is trying get a foot into the opposition camp as well, by leaking information to the MDC's security wing through an intermediary. But it's a nerve-racking business, given the ruling party's predilection for watching its own as avidly as it watches the enemy."

NYT: 'white collar' rebels try to establish order in Congo
"Inside his office, Mr. Banga sat at a desk behind a rising stack of paper, listing residents by neighborhood. Rutshuru and neighboring Kiwanja are home to about 150,000 people in all, the largest population area in eastern Congo under rebel control.

“Hoes and seeds,” he said. “That’s what we need. We want to get these people back to work.”

But Mr. Banga, a former power plant engineer who said he joined the rebel army “for revolution,” said his new administration was short of cash.

Not surprisingly, rebel soldiers have begun tax collection — at gunpoint, demanding $120 from each truck that passes through their checkpoints. Aid workers say that the rebels seem more serious about providing security than Congolese government troops, who are notorious for raping and plundering, but that the new taxes are hampering the emergency efforts.

There are new rebel stamps saying “Unity, Justice, Development.” And even a new rebel police force, distinct from the bush fighters, with officers wearing stolen government police uniforms.

“What’s the difference between us and soldiers?” said one young police officer, too young to shave. “We protect people.”

But many of their new subjects are not so sure.

“At night, they invade our homes, looking for money,” said Kavuo Anatasia, 17, a mother. “Kill us, no. But they beat us.”

BBC: in Rutshuru, a rebel seminar on the history of the Congo
"One of the participants at the meeting sought permission from his superiors to be interviewed by me. Nevertheless, I thought he was extremely brave to agree to speak.

"They are trying to teach us the history of our country," said the participant, choosing his words carefully.

I asked him if the reality was that he and his colleagues were being forced to accept the new ideology.

"No," he said. "We are not being forced. We accept their analysis of the situation," he added in a deliberate voice.

I asked him if he was scared.

"We are not scared," he insisted. "It is in the interests of us and of our people to accept these people. We live here; we cannot leave our town. We are going to see how we can try to live together and build the country."

While rebel soldiers stood nearby, the local administrator added:

"From what I have seen of them they are kind. They are more disciplined than the government army - they are not looting and there is security. Although people are still scared, security is coming here step-by-step."

BBC: EU pressuring Kenya to prosecute politicians linked to last year's violence

Econ: trial underway in France against alleged gun runners to Angola in the early 90s
"After a seven-year investigation, the trial of the 42 individuals accused of involvement in arms trafficking to Angola in the 1990s finally got underway. The so-called "Angolagate" scandal involved arms sales to Angola worth US$790m in 1993-2000, during that country’s civil war, by a French businessman, Pierre Falcone, and his Russian-born associate, Arcady Gaydamak, in which numerous French and Angolan officials allegedly received pay-offs and gifts worth US$56m. Both Mr Falcone and Mr Gaydamak deny any wrongdoing...
So far no Angolan officials have been indicted in the trial which will focus on whether French nationals broke French law relating to arms-trafficking and bribery. Demands by the Angolan government's lawyers for the case to be dismissed, arguing that the trial could reveal sensitive military and diplomatic secrets which would constitute an attack on Angola's sovereignty, have been ignored."

Gdn: EU fleet heading to Gulf of Aden
Gdn: but action against pirates hindered by lack of coherent legal framework
"The UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos) defines piracy as "all illegal acts of violence or detention ... committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship". But it says that piracy can take place only "on the high seas" or "outside the jurisdiction of any state", which excludes the territorial waters of states, including the coastal areas of Somalia.

Efforts to tackle Somali piracy have relied instead on UN security council resolutions. In June a resolution was passed allowing states that had the consent of Somalia's transitional federal government to "enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea" and to "use ... in a manner consistent with the action permitted on the high seas with respect to piracy under relevant international law, all necessary means to repress acts of piracy and armed robbery".

However, "action permitted on the high seas" does not permit pursuing and boarding a pirate vessel or arresting those on board. To do so needs the further authorisation of the transitional government.

There have also been suggestions that Somali hijackers could escape the Unclos definition of "pirates" by claiming they are motivated by "political" rather than "private" gain, although it appears that the funds are being used for private enrichment in Somali communities."

Econ: lack of clarity also an issue dealing with these pirates

Slate: revisiting the Russian and Georgian invasions
"Georgia started it and killed civilians in the process. My conclusion? We knew that already. We also knew, and indeed have known for some time, that the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is susceptible to extreme bouts of criminal foolhardiness. A year ago this month, he attacked demonstrators in Tbilisi with riot police, arrested opposition leaders, and even smashed up a Rupert Murdoch-owned television station—possibly not, I wrote at the time, the best way to attract positive international media coverage. I'm told Saakashvili—who did indeed overthrow the corrupt Soviet nomenklatura that ran his country—has many virtues. But caution, cool-headedness, and respect for civilian lives and democratic norms are not among them.

We knew that about him—and so did the Russians. That was why they spent much of the previous year taunting and teasing the Georgians, shooting down their planes, firing on their policemen, and attacking their villages, all in an attempt to create a casus belli, either in South Ossetia or in Abkhazia, another Russian-dominated, semi-autonomous enclave inside the Georgian border. And when Saakashvili did what they'd been hoping he'd do, they were ready. As one Russian analyst pointed out, the Russian response was not an improvised reaction to an unexpected Georgian offensive: "The swiftness with which large Russian contingents were moved into Georgia, the rapid deployment of a Black Sea naval task force, the fact that large contingents of troops were sent to Abkhazia where there was no Georgian attack all seem to indicate a rigidly prepared battle plan." There was, it seems, one minor miscalculation. As a very senior Russian official recently told a very senior European official, "We expected the Georgians to invade on Aug. 8, not Aug. 7."
BBC: AI reports 20,000 Georgians still unable to return
"A new twilight zone has been created along the de facto border between South Ossetia and the rest of Georgia, into which people stray at their peril," Amnesty's Nicola Duckworth said."

Econ: in Moldova, a different approach to separatist demands
"Unlike the belligerent Georgia, Moldova has taken a gentle approach to its Russian-backed separatists, and it is not trying to join NATO. Yet it is barely nearer than Georgia to a deal over lost territory...
Russia does not recognise Transdniestria’s independence, but it wants to keep troops there, a condition all other parties reject...

Yet the dispute has none of the deep hostilities of the Caucasus. Trade across the Dniester is flourishing. The Transdniestrian football team, Sheriff, tops the Moldovan league. Tiraspol is something of a museum of Soviet nostalgia, with its Lenin statue and Karl Marx street. But Sergei Cheban, head of the foreign-affairs committee in the Transdniestrian parliament, tries to be reasonable. Of Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he says “we do not need that kind of recognition,” holding out the chance of a sovereignty deal with Moldova."

BBC: Albanian children trapped by blood feuds
"The non-governmental National Reconciliation Committee (NRC), a group that tries to mediate between warring families, estimates that several thousand Albanian families are currently embroiled in feuds nationwide, leaving some 800 children confined to their homes.

Blood feuds were officially banned during the 40-year rule of Albania's communist-era hardliner Enver Hoxha, but in the chaos that accompanied the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the practice resurfaced, often sparked by disputes over rural property, or slurs on family honour."

BBC: International Court of Justice to hear Croat claims of Serbian genocide
"Croatia first filed the complaint in 1999, accusing Serbia of "a form of genocide which resulted in large numbers of Croatian citizens being displaced, killed, tortured, or illegally detained as well as extensive property destruction".

It referred to crimes committed "in the Knin region, and in eastern and western Slavonia and Dalmatia".

In February 2007, the ICJ cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the Bosnian war.

However, it said Serbia had broken international law by failing to stop the killings."

WP: Ortega consolidates power in Nicaragua
"The U.S. Embassy has been accused of counterrevolutionary subversion. A nervous Catholic Church is appealing for calm. The opposition party is crying electoral fraud, while roaming gangs armed with clubs are attacking marchers. The mayor here has called it anarchy. And everyone is asking: What is President Daniel Ortega after?

This sounds more like the Central America of the 1980s. But Ortega, the former Marxist revolutionary comandante who returned to the president's office in 2006, is at the center of a chaotic new struggle. Critics charge that he and Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America, are marching backward, away from relatively peaceful, transparent, democratic elections to ones that are violent, shady and stolen."

Gdn: teachers targeted by gangs in Ciudad Juarez

BBC: Brazil to deploy heat sensing plane to monitor uncontacted tribes
"Officials say the plane will help them to protect remote communities without interrupting their way of life.
Some 39 isolated groups are believed to be living in the Amazon region."

BBC: Iraqi gov't paying Sons of Iraq
"...the plan is for all the estimated 100,000 Sahwa militiamen to be on the Iraqi payroll by early next year.

Leaders in several Baghdad districts are unhappy though - including some in especially violence-prone areas - because salaries have been reduced to the same level as their men...

US commanders acknowledged several years ago that a lack of jobs was a key factor in driving the insurgency - the biggest single cause of that being the early US decision to disband the old Iraqi army, providing thousands of potential recruits overnight.

While the Sahwa began as a tribal rebellion against al-Qaeda in Iraq in late 2006, the US military has in effect turned it into a massive programme to buy out large chunks of the insurgency - in many cases re-employing former Saddam Hussein-era soldiers they sacked five years ago."

AP: Pakistan bristles at US missile attack beyond the FATA

BBC: Sri Lanka army captures LTTE stronghold
"The Tigers are believed to have three more defensive lines on the narrow isthmus of land that divides rebel territory from the government-controlled Jaffna in the far north, he said."
BBC: AI warns of humanitarian crisis; estimates that two-thirds of residents now displaced, living in camps run by the Tigers

WP: cab drivers latest to protest in China

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strange maps: democratic votes, 2008 and cotton production, 1860

off-shore accounts [a matter of magnitude]

Once a famous pirate prisoner was brought in front of Alexander the Great. Alexander asked him:’Why do you infest the seas with so much audacity and freedom?’ The pirate answered: For the same reason because you infest the earth; but because I do it with a little ship, I’m called pirate; because you do it with a great fleet you’re called emperor.’
-St Augustine, referring to Cicero's anecdote in City of God (4.4)

LAT: Indian warship destroys alleged pirate ship
"The U.S. military said it could take only limited steps to intervene and thwart pirates. Maritime experts say international law on jurisdiction regarding pirates is murky, with naval forces clearly permitted to attack pirates only when a commercial ship is under assault.

But New Delhi has apparently taken a different approach. Last week, Indian marine commandos on a helicopter swooped in on the scene of a hijacking to fend off pirates assailing an Indian commercial ship. Two suspected pirates were killed in a shootout with British commandos defending a Danish vessel this month.

In the latest incident, New Delhi said the Tabar tried to stop a suspected pirate vessel about 300 miles southwest of the Omani city of Salalah on Tuesday evening. Instead of allowing the sailors to inspect the ship, the alleged pirates threatened to "blow up the naval warship if it closed on her," the statement said."

AP: Saudis in talks with pirates about ransom
Gdn: how ransoms are transferred
"Jason Alderwick, a maritime security expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "There is usually a coordinator onshore who deals with the dynamics. Money is brought to a prearranged location, which could be in Somalia or Yemen. There is basically a transfer of money bags. The money goes down the line through a series of intermediaries, with the local government, the mayor or chiefs having a direct hand...

Often the intermediaries have been Somalis nationals living in Europe, the Middle East or Africa, and the money disappears into the traditional banking system, hawala, which operates through trust and personal relationships, and is very hard to monitor...

But in recent months security experts say there is a trend towards direct deliveries, to Somalia or to the captured ship, as intermediaries in third countries with functioning legal systems have become wary of handling the transaction...

A certain amount of trust involved. The shipowners have to be sure that once they have paid they will get their crew and ship back. The pirates have to trust the shipowners to guarantee them safe passage after they have left the hijacked ship."

Gdn: Eyl, pirate capital
"The entire village now depends on the criminal economy. Hastily built hotels provide basic lodging for the pirates, new restaurants serve meals and send food to the ships, while traders provide fuel for the skiffs flitting between the captured vessels...

In the region's bigger towns, such as Garowe and Bosasso on the Gulf of Aden coast, a successful hijack is often celebrated with a meal and qat [narcotic leaf]-chewing session at an expensive hotel.

One successful pirate based in Garowe, Abshir Salad, said: "First we look to buy a nice house and car. Then we buy guns and other weapons. The rest of the money we use to relax."

The pirates appear to have little fear of arrest by the weak administration, who many suspect of involvement in the trade. By spreading the money to local officials, chiefs, relatives and friends, the pirates have created strong logistical and intelligence networks, and avoided the clan-based fighting that affects so much of the rest of the country."

Gdn: amazing photos of the modern buccaneers
one group photographed calls itself the Central Regional Coast Guard

Gdn: Q&A on modern piracy
Ind: and a bullet-point general background
"Roman emperor Julius Caesar is said to have been an early victim of pirates - captured on a voyage across the Aegean Sea. It is said that he demanded they double his ransom from 20 talents of gold to reflect his worth."

Gdn: the evolution of Somali piracy
"In the past most piracy was centred on the coastal towns of Harardheere and Hobyo in central Somalia and targeted the Mogadishu port area to the south. But in the past 10 years the focus has moved to the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in the north-east, abutting the Gulf of Aden. The reason for the shift is the richer pickings to be found in one of the world's busiest sea lanes, said author Roger Middleton. About 16,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year...

It is widely believed that Somalia's warring faction leaders and Islamist groups such as the hardline al-Shabaab take a cut of the ransom money in return for allowing the pirate gangs to operate."

WP: Mexico deals with its own corruption networks: Interpol liaison arrested
"That the cartels may have penetrated Interpol is an indication of how hard the fight against the traffickers will be -- and of the level of corruption within Mexican law enforcement. The United States recently committed $400 million to aid in that battle, but many U.S. law enforcement officials remain wary of their Mexican counterparts, fearing that shared information flows quickly to cartel leaders."
LAT: 500 officers replaced in Tijuana
"Despite past purges, the 2,200-member police department is still viewed by many as an arm of the drug cartels.

Officers have been accused of working as lookouts, informants, hit men or bodyguards for drug smugglers, and scores of them have been killed over the years.

The 500 officers who were replaced will be sent to a police academy for training and background checks and could return in a few months, authorities said.

Their removal appears to be aimed at weakening Teodoro Garcia Simental, known as El Teo, a suspected crime boss who is believed to control the police in the city's east."

Ind: additional negative externalities of cocaine
"The United Nations says that 150kg of solid chemicals and 250 litres of liquid chemicals are used to develop just one hectare of coca plant. Coca leaves must also be soaked in solvents, such as acetone, to release their psychotropic qualities and each year 20 million litres of acetone, 13 million litres of gasoline and 81,000 litres of sulphuric acid are disposed of untreated in Colombia's rainforest, which produces 15 per cent of the world's oxygen."

WP: soaring crime rates in Venezuela could hurt Chávez
"Those slayings have exposed the government's inability to formulate a response to the sharply rising crime rate, a central theme of opposition politicians vying for governorships and mayoral posts in Sunday's regional elections...
As Chávez completes a tumultuous decade in power, polls show that Venezuelans are most concerned about rampant crime in this oil-rich country. Homicides have soared from fewer than 6,000 in Chávez's first year in office to 13,156 last year, according to official government statistics collected and released by private research organizations. That amounts to a homicide rate of 48 killings per 100,000 people, among the highest in the world and more than in neighboring Colombia, which suffers from a slow-burning internal conflict."
Gdn: he's airing wiretaps of rivals
"President Hugo Chávez has filled the airwaves with tapped conversations of his political foes to embarrass and apparently intimidate them in the run-up to regional elections. State TV has broadcast the recordings, enhanced with comic sound effects, in a barrage of attack adverts that would make even Karl Rove blush...Much of the information is believed to be intercepted by the Cuban-backed intelligence services. The government passes selected excerpts to state networks."

AP: Congo rebels claim that they'll pull back for talks with army
Reuters: if they happen, it'll be with a new army chief
NYT: front lines blurred and confusing
"A group of rebel soldiers lounged nearby, most with assault rifles, one incongruously carrying a spear. Just up the road, a captain from the Congolese Army, with whom the rebels have declared a tenuous cease-fire, sat atop a mound of biscuit wrappers and cigarette butts, studiously reading a paperback titled “The Way to Happiness.”

A certain sense of desperation — and weirdness — seems to be creeping across eastern Congo as more territory slips into a jumbled world between government and rebel control.

Most of the fighting has stopped, and on Tuesday the rebels agreed to vacate certain areas to allow aid workers unfettered access to the thousands of needy Congolese. But it seems that the longer the instability continues — it has been about three weeks since the rebels began a major offensive, casting this whole region into crisis mode — the more dysfunctional and confusing life here gets.

The front line, as people here call it, is basically a blurry edge, where the government and rebel zones peter out. There are no checkpoints or fortified positions. No troops eyeballing each other through carefully calibrated rifle scopes. Definitely no formal demilitarized zone."

LAT: reprisals on the horizon in Zimbabwe as Mugabe's power slips
"Samson Bopoto also spent months hiding in the countryside. Every night, he and other MDC activists expected to be killed.

"Now the tables have turned. It's now ZANU-PF are panicking," said Bopoto, 34, an MDC youth organizer who lives in a Harare township. He and his comrades have taken back the local bar. They sit for hours singing MDC songs, and the former ZANU-PF thugs are nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes the ex-thugs come to his house secretly at night, trying to buy forgiveness or at least protection.

Bopoto says it isn't easy to stop the MDC members from taking revenge. Many are waiting until Cabinet posts are settled and the MDC takes its share of power.

"Still, our wounds are open. . . . Just imagine seeing somebody who's the guy who beat up your mom. They say, 'Sorry guys, I was forced to do that.' But we still have a lot of pain."

The power-sharing deal leaves the way open for prosecutions. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says Mugabe should not be held responsible for past crimes, but the question of immunity or prosecution for others hangs unanswered, poisoning the talks.

But without justice, Bopoto said, there could be violence.

"Those people should be brought to book, rather than a relative taking revenge. If that person killed my brother, you should allow justice to take its course. If that doesn't happen, then a person will take it into their own hands. It will cause a sort of uprising because I can't be happy if I see you, who killed my brother, still at the beer hall, living your daily life whilst I'm missing my loved relative."

Ind: Israeli mob boss killed; others brace for revenge
"It was after leaving the Tel Aviv District Court where his son Dror was being indicted on extortion and other charges on Monday that Yaakov Alperon, probably Israel's most famous crime boss, was killed. His rented car was blown up by a remote-control explosive device which also injured two bystanders, including a 13-year-old boy.

Police are bracing themselves for vengeance after the dead man's sister said at his grave: "These are murderers, bad people. The ones who did this will have the same done to their kids."...

But much of the clan's money-making activities were in deadly earnest. They reportedly included a protection racket in Netanya, in which restaurateurs paid in bottles which the Alperons sent for recycling and then pocketed the profits: no paper trail, no tell-tale cash handovers, and reputedly a $5m (£3.3m) business. There have also been struggles for control of betting rings; gambling is illegal in Israel.

Although Alperon was said to be in a turf war with another clan, the Abergils, over the recycling business, it is not clear that police are pursuing that line of inquiry. Reports suggest Alp-eron had other enemies, including the drug baron Zeev Rosenstein, who survived seven assassination attempts before being put away. And Alperon was widely blamed,fairly or not, for the stabbing of another gangster, Amir Mulner, after both men attended an interfamily arbitration summit in 2006 which went badly wrong."

WP / CFR: background on security agreements between the US and Iraq

Salon (Juan Cole): should Obama target bin Laden?

BBC: riot violence in Czech town directed towards Roma community

WP: UN official says economic downturn could lead to "social strife" in Asia
LAT: 2,000 riot in Gansu province, China
"The violence 700 miles southwest of Beijing was one of the most marked instances of social unrest to grip China in recent months. It was sparked by government plans to relocate the city of Longnan's administrative center after May's devastating earthquake, according to the New China News Agency."

NYT: Islamic justice in Britain
"Despite a raucous national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law, the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, are increasingly being applied to everyday life in cities across the country."
BBC: overturning it in France
"A French court of appeal has overruled the decision to annul the marriage of two Muslims because the bride had lied about being a virgin.

They are now effectively married again - even though both partners said they accepted the original judgement."

NYT: Garzón drops inquiry into Spanish Civil War crimes

speak easy [but keep the mask on]

AP: heavy fighting in Congo, despite Nkunda's ceasefire pledge
"The two sides battled Sunday night in Rwindi, about 75 miles (125 kilometers) north of the eastern provincial capital of Goma. About 150 people took refuge outside a U.N. peacekeeping base here, huddling beside a white shipping container as mortar shells and artillery fire rained down.

"These blue helmets would not let us inside, but it's better than nothing," said Clement Elias, 20, referring to the U.N. peacekeepers. He said he heard 100 explosions Sunday night."

BBC: Swazi opposition leader arrested on terrorism charges

WP: US bans masks for Iraqi interpreters
"Many Iraqis, however, fear the relative calm won't last long. To them, ordering interpreters to work without masks suggests that some top U.S. officials are taking an unrealistically rosy view of the security situation in Baghdad, which remains a dangerous city.

Many interpreters lead double lives. Even among close friends at work, many don't disclose their identities or neighborhoods. The Mahdi Army, the armed group led by anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, collects and distributes photos of interpreters working with U.S. troops, A.J. and a colleague, Maximus, said.

"If anyone has a picture of your face, they pass it on to another area," said Maximus, 28, who has worked with the military on and off since 2003. "We can't work for the U.S. Army if we don't wear a mask. If they recognize our face, they're going to kill our families."

WP: Baghdad's singing parties
"Hidden away in the basement of a Sheraton hotel, this "singing party" brings to mind a 1920s speakeasy. It is a party no one talks about but everyone knows about. Such affairs were common in the days of Saddam Hussein and resumed in Baghdad about four months ago, with certain adjustments for the war that intervened. For one thing, partygoers at the Sheraton can't leave the hotel compound until 5 a.m., when curfew ends."

LAT: Salafists form unlikely alliance in Lebanon
"Lebanon's Salafists, often equated with terrorists in much of the Arab world, have teamed with Saad Hariri and his mainstream Future Movement to become part of the country's political order...

Like most of Lebanon's Sunnis, Salafists are largely staunch supporters of parliamentary leader Hariri, whose Future Movement is part of the U.S.-backed March 14 coalition of Sunni, Christian and Druze political organizations opposed to a mostly Shiite Muslim and Christian alliance backed by Syria and Iran.

Hariri has tapped the Salafists' grass-roots social and religious network and strong community ties as a means to build up his base for parliamentary elections in May.

But Hariri, son of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, makes for an awkward fit for Lebanon's increasingly pious Sunni public. Although Salafists dream of reviving a medieval caliphate, the 38-year-old Hariri appears to be a liberal democrat."

Ind: animated documentary revisits 1982 massacre in Lebanon by Israeli troops
"The killings by Phalangist militiamen dispatched into the camps by Israel came after their leader, Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated in a bombing wrongly blamed on Palestinians. An Israeli state commission of inquiry set up as a result of a tide of public protest in the massacre's wake found that Mr Sharon, today comatose from a stroke nearly three years ago, bore "personal responsibility" for not having foreseen the danger that the Phalangists would commit the slaughter...Lebanon, for its part, has never seriously investigated the massacre.

The film has been widely acclaimed in Israel. One reviewer, Eitan Weitz, writing for the website Parshan (Commentator), termed it "required viewing" for those aged 16 and 17 nearing their mandatory military service, for army reservists in their thirties and for mothers of soldiers."

NYT: ETA leader arrested in France
"[Mr. Aspiazu] is also believed to have ordered the December, 2006, bombing of a parking lot at Madrid’s Barajas International Airport that killed two people and ended peace talks between the Spanish government and ETA, the spokeswoman said. Mr. Aspiazu was born in 1973, according to Spanish press reports, and came up through the ranks of ETA from the militant Basque youth movement that is behind street violence and vandalism that plague many Basque towns. His age and apparent standing in ETA would be consistent with what Spanish security officials describe as a military command structure that is increasingly composed of young militants."

Econ: Estonia's past and present

Econ: bloodiest day-long battles in (western) history

BBC: drug violence in Mexico continues, claims more lives in Tijuana
"The murders happened just hours after at least 1,000 people marched through Tijuana to demand an end to violence.

The city, on the US-Mexico border, has seen more than 600 murders this year.

Across Mexico, more than 4,000 people have died in drug-related violence in 2008, as gangs fight each other and the security forces.

Correspondents say the surge in violence is related in part to the successes the Mexican authorities have had in recent months in arresting key members of the powerful drug cartels."
NYT: wealthy Mexicans purchase private security (or leave the country)

BBC: voters flock to polls in Indian-administered Kashmir, despite boycott called by separatists
"Security is tight across the state with armed soldiers and policemen deployed on every road and at almost every junction in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley.

Half a million troops are providing a massive security blanket.

Over the summer hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims staged some of the biggest protests in a generation against Indian-rule.

The row began after the state government allotted a plot of land to a Hindu religious shrine trust.

Following violent protests, the government revoked the land transfer order.

This led to violent protests in the [mostly Hindu] Jammu region too.

Police broke up the demonstrations in the valley and the Jammu region and dozens of people were killed, many of them unarmed protesters.

The authorities have jailed or put under house arrest up to 100 separatist leaders who have called for a boycott of the vote."

++
McSweeney's: dance dance revolution

taking out the garbage [minding mafias]

NYT: neighborhood in Japan sues to oust mafia
"[Dojinkai leaders] said they had lived peacefully with their neighbors since moving to their current location in 1986. They believed that outsiders were exploiting their running factional conflict — which has led to seven killings in the past two years — to try to expel them.

The Dojinkai is one of the country’s 22 crime syndicates, employing some 85,000 members and recognized by the government.

Traditionally, the yakuza have run protection rackets, as well as gambling, sex and other businesses that the authorities believed were a necessary part of any society. By letting the yakuza operate relatively freely, the authorities were able to keep an extremely close watch on them...

Here in Kurume, people on the blocks surrounding the Dojinkai’s headquarters said they had had few complaints until two years ago. Schoolchildren used to walk past the headquarters without fear, they said. Dojinkai members used up all the street parking during their monthly syndicate-wide meeting, but that was about it.

But two years ago, a fight over succession led one faction to break off and form its own syndicate, called the Seidokai.

The ensuing and continuing war led to the killings of members on both sides, as well as the murder inside a hospital of a man mistaken for a rival by a Dojinkai member. (The Dojinkai leaders visited the victim’s widow, burned incense at the family’s home and later gave financial compensation.)

Many residents now say they fear getting caught in the cross-fire.

According to city hall, 603 plaintiffs living or working within 547 yards of the headquarters joined the lawsuit against the Dojinkai. Some 5,508 people signed a petition endorsing the lawsuit. Private donations to assist the suit totaled $90,000, on top of a $300,000 contribution from the city...

At that branch office, the Dojinkai’s next-door neighbor was an equally fearsome fixture of neighborhood life in Japan: the residential association leader who knows everybody’s business and makes sure that all residents abide by Japan’s Byzantine garbage disposal and sorting rules. The association leader, Akemi Shigematsu, 66, requested that the Dojinkai sign a memorandum of understanding when it opened the branch office 11 years ago.

The Dojinkai’s chairman at the time, Yoshihisa Matsuo, quickly complied, promising in the memorandum that members would not threaten passers-by, park illegally, mill around, throw away cigarette butts, litter or be a bad influence on schoolchildren.

In the beginning, there were problems, which Ms. Shigematsu jotted down in a notepad she has kept to this day. Entries for Oct. 10, 1998, included: (1) “no greeting”; (2) “speaking loudly on the phone on the street late a night;” (9) “messy disposal of garbage.”

Not surprisingly, Ms. Shigematsu said the yakuza now respected the neighborhood’s rules.

“They don’t bother the neighborhood,” she said, adding: “If I go speak to them about something — for example, about throwing away the trash — they’ll say, ‘Sorry!’ ”

Mrs. Shigematsu, however, still checked the contents of the Dojinkai’s garbage bins just to make sure.

The Dojinkai leaders said they and their subordinates, almost all locals, were also members of the community and simply followed neighborhood rules. They said they wanted to coexist with their neighbors, though they acknowledged that their activities sometimes “disturbed” society.

“If a friend is killed, an ordinary person will become emotional and probably dream of revenge,” Mr. Shinozuka said.

“But we go through with it,” he added. “That’s how we’ve been taught. And because of that difference, we disturb society.”

BBC: Nkunda, Congo rebel leader, agrees to respect a ceasefire
"BBC world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle, in Goma, says Gen Nkunda reaffirmed his support for a ceasefire he had declared unilaterally a week ago, and repeated his demand for talks with the government on political, economic and security issues.

None of this is new, our correspondent says, and some observers were surprised at how Mr Obasanjo appears to have been seduced by Mr Nkunda, who Congolese officials and human rights groups refer to as a "war criminal"."

NYT: tin mine funds renegade army group; extraction keeps Congo in vicious cycle
"Despite a costly effort to unite the nation’s many militias into a single national army, plus billions of dollars spent on international peacekeepers and an election in 2006 that brought democracy to Congo for the first time in four decades, the government is unable or unwilling to force these fighters — who wear government army uniforms and collect government paychecks — to leave the mountain.

The ore these fighters control is central to the chaos that plagues Congo, helping to perpetuate a conflict in which as many as five million people have died since the mid-1990s, mostly from hunger and disease...

In 2004, a group of Mai Mai fighters allied with the government took control.

Under the terms of the peace agreement that ended the war, the militia was absorbed into the national army and became the 85th Brigade. The fighters were supposed to be sent for military training and then deployed around the country to dilute the influence of regional militias.

But the 85th refused to disband. Its commander, Colonel Matumo, is known as a ruthless warrior with a keen eye for business who believes, as most Mai Mai do, that he has special powers connected to water that make him all but invincible. During the war these fighters would wear drain plugs dangling from their bulging biceps as amulets of their potency. These days the brigade’s members have mostly abandoned this practice in favor of the more practical army greens.

They violently enforce a system of illegal taxation of every worker, merchant and mineral trader who comes to the mine...

Bisie may be the middle of nowhere, but the ore it produces is tightly linked to the global market. After porters bear the loads, often heavier than the men themselves, the ore reaches middlemen along the main road. One such middleman, Bakwe Selomba, said he did not mind paying the militiamen because the payment guaranteed his investment.

“To be honest, it is better for us that they are there,” he said. “I can send my buyers walking through the jungle with lots of money, but nobody will touch them as long as we pay the tax. It protects us.”...

“A blanket ban on tin from Congo is nonsense because it penalizes the millions dependent on the sector the most,” said Nicholas Garrett, a mining expert who has written reports on Congo for the World Bank and other institutions. Putting those people out of work would simply invite another rebellion, Mr. Garrett said."

BBC: Somali president says rebels control most of country, are closing in on Mogadishu
Speaking to Somali parliamentarians in Kenya, President Yusuf said, "Islamists have taken over everywhere else, so if I ask you parliamentarians: do you know the situation we face? Who causes all these problems? We are to blame."

President Yusuf lamented that at this vital time when unity is needed, talks on forming a new transitional government had ended in failure.

He and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein have been unable to agree on the make-up of a new cabinet, missing a deadline issued by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) last month.

In the meantime members of al-Shabab, which the US believes to be linked to al-Qaeda, have consolidated their hold on southern Somalia, meting out punishments on the population based on their interpretation of Islamic law.

They whipped 25 women and seven men for holding a traditional dance, which they said was forbidden.

In October, a girl was stoned to death in a crowded stadium in the port city of Kismayo. Aged just 13, she had been convicted of adultery after complaining she had been raped."

Gdn: war ongoing in Yemen
"Fatima and up to 130,000 fellow Yemenis are the invisible victims of a war in the country's northernmost governorate of Sa'da that the Yemeni authorities would prefer you not to hear about. In its four-year conflict with armed rebels from an Islamist revivalist movement called "The Believing Youth," or Huthis, after their founder Husain al-Huthi, the government has banned journalists from the conflict zone. It has arbitrarily arrested those who report on civilian casualties and has cut off most mobile phone services in the region."

AP: Karzai offers protection for Taliban leader if he agrees to talks

Gdn: fighting militants along the Pakistani border
"The battle of Bajaur has huge local and international implications. Locally, it is a critical test for the new Pakistani civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari, the controversial widower of Benazir Bhutto. The recent bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad is thought to be a response to the Bajaur offensive. Regionally, the battle is a chance for the Pakistani Army to rebut allegations that it is dragging its feet in the fight against international extremism. Internationally, the fight is crucial for the 40-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Not only will its result determine who controls the supply route that crosses the Khyber Pass just to its south - where militants hijacked a 60-vehicle Nato convoy last week - but it will also show if the semi-autonomous 'tribal agencies' that line the mountainous zones on the Pakistan side of the frontier can be stabilised. It is there that al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban leadership are hiding. Peace in Afghanistan will remain a distant prospect until the frontier is calmed...

Bajaur's recent history is repeated all along the frontier. In the aftermath of 2001, militants fleeing from Nato operations in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan's own intermittent crackdowns on internal extremist groups, were able to exploit the social upheaval caused by conflict and economic change to establish themselves.

In Bajaur, local men formed bands around those with guns and access to cash, elbowing aside traditional tribal leaders. Militant leaders include a former teashop owner, a gunman, a known criminal and a minor cleric. One is from the violence-racked Kunar valley in Afghanistan. 'They are men from economically and socially marginalised elements in tribal society,' said a Peshawar-based expert and former senior bureaucrat, Khalid Aziz.

The disparate groups based themselves in the village of its chief and, with money and a little military training from al-Qaeda, soon established a miniature version of a hardline Islamist state, preaching jihad, closing girls' schools and DVD shops, and killing tribal leaders who stood in their way. According to Mohammed Shah, a former chief of security in the region, 'they are a loose federation rather than a unified movement'."

WP: Iraqi cabinet supports agreement for US troops to stay through 2011

AP: Tibetan exiles meet in northern India

LAT: drug trafficking networks targeted in US
"The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities."

mixing it up [don't call it a comeback]

WP: young men fleeing to avoid forced recruitment by rebels in East Congo
"I ran away with about 20 others my age," said Christophe Maombi, 27, who fled his rebel-held village of Rugari when he said rebels tried to march him into the bush. "There are so many weapons there. If they see a young boy, they just give him a weapon and tell him to fight."
AP: UN reports that army troops are raping women
WP: displaced also dispossessed
"As panicked thousands have abandoned villages across eastern Congo in recent months, the scale of looting that has followed has been massive, a crime reflecting the predatory culture pervading Congo since the Belgian colonizers perfected it decades ago.
The millions of minor thefts may pale in comparison to the more professional looting of eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth, which is helping to finance the conflict. Collectively, though, the thieving soldiers have set back an already economically marginal population by years, if not decades, making it even harder to reverse the effects of a conflict that threatens to destabilize the entire Central African region."
CSM: Nkunda's goals
BBC: Rwanda agrees to send troops to fight Hutu militias
BBC: Obasanjo to mediate on UN behalf

AP: Islamist rebels seize port city in Somalia
"On Wednesday, al-Shabab added the town of Merka, 56 miles (90 kilometers) from the capital, to its list of conquests after poorly paid government fighters simply ran away.
The group now controls most of the country's south, with the crucial exceptions of Mogadishu and Baidoa, where the parliament sits...
Al-Shabab was part of the Islamic militia that controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six months in 2006 before Ethiopian troops arrived to drive them out with the tacit support of the United States.
The group quickly fractured into hardline and more moderate factions. Al-Shabab's hard-liners are at the heart of the insurgency, which has killed thousands of civilians caught up in roadside bombs, grenade attacks and mortar fire."

WP: Shining Path reemerges, reformed, in Peru
"After years in relative obscurity, the Shining Path, one of Latin America's most notorious guerrilla groups, is fighting the Peruvian military with renewed vigor, feeding on the profits of the cocaine trade and trying to win support from the Andean villagers it once terrorized, according to residents and Peruvian officials....
Experts said the guerrillas have renounced the brutal tactics espoused by their original leader, Abimael Guzmán, who was captured in 1992. Unlike Guzmán, who said 10 percent of the Peruvian population had to be assassinated for the Shining Path to take power, the new leaders tell their followers they must protect the villagers and instead target the military and anti-drug authorities.
In numbers, the guerrillas' ranks remain a fraction of their former size: 400 to 700 full-time fighters in the branch that insists on armed struggle, according to various estimates; in the low thousands if offshoots that call for more-peaceful political revolution are included. In ideology, they appear to have abandoned the strict Maoism that Guzmán preached and to have adopted a muddled form of communism that welcomes foreign investment and large international mining companies, among others, provided they treat their workers well."
WP: interesting side-report by the journalist looking for them
"The purpose of this excursion was to explore the territory of the Shining Path, the communist rebel group whose guerrillas have resumed fighting the Peruvian military. We would not find them. Neither, it seems, does anyone else who goes looking. Perhaps the most basic reason the Shining Path has been able to survive for 28 years and counting is that they are so hard to get to. Forget the mines and booby traps and tunnels, or the dense jungle or constant cloud-cover, there seems no better defense than these roads.
Road is not the right word. A few minutes outside of the Andean cities of central Peru, tires roll onto something closer to goat trails, shoulderless single-lane ruts of dirt and rock fragments hacked and blasted out of the near vertical mountain slopes...
Our ultimate destination was a place called Pukatoro, a copper mining camp of unknown size somewhere in the mountains. The maps we could find did not care to mark this settlement. But the Shining Path had found it, why couldn't we? At each cross-rut, or as close to it as we could find a shepherd or avocado farmer, we would stop and Willy would ask if we were on the right path. Most of them hadn't heard of Pukatoro."

LAT: fighting amnesty for those who killed priests in El Salvador in 1989

CSM: Brazil's anti-poverty program a success
"The world's first conditional cash transfer programs were introduced in Brazil in 1995 at the municipal level, and were implemented at a national level in Mexico the following year."

WP: tribal militias in Pakistan "between the devil and the deep sea"
"But, so far at least, the tribal militias have been no panacea. Instead, the use of the militias, known as lashkars, has set off a debate over whether such a strategy will contribute to a civil war in the northwest that could engulf all of Pakistan. Yet some tribal leaders say they have little choice but to fight their brothers, cousins and neighbors: The Pakistani military, they say, has threatened to bomb their villages if they do not battle the Taliban."

WP: more US troops requested for Afghanistan

CSM: changes in a Diyala town that switched sides from Al-Qaeda in Iraq to the US/Iraqi coalition
"In 2006 and 2007, no US or Iraqi troops made it along roads laced with bombs to this remote village of 300 Sunnis. AQI operated with impunity, publicly killing one man who opposed them, imposing strict new social rules, and forcing villagers into a pact to reject any US or Iraqi military presence.
When Sheikh Thamir returned with US and Iraqi forces in January, his neighbors at first rejected them, saying that AQI had warned days before that "collaborators" would die. After days of pushing – sometimes with tears in his eyes from fear – Sheikh Thamir prevailed, joyfully declaring that the "power [of the people] is bigger than what Al Qaeda was expecting."

When the men of Dulaim finally agreed to don fluorescent green reflective belts and man checkpoints, much of AQI's weapons and money traffic from the unruly east side of the Diyala River dried up.

It also turned Al Qaeda fully against the village.

"If we quit, Al Qaeda will kill us," says Talib Ali Hussein, an SOI guard with a rifle and sun-bleached sash at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Dulaim. The recent AQI ambush was "a message from Al Qaeda that 'We are still here.' The key thing is they want to kill us."
WP: draft terms of troop agreement between Iraq and US unacceptable to Sadr; he threatens to defect if approved

BBC: ceasefire hangs in the balance in Gaza

BBC: Burma imprisons more protesters from last year, total rises to 60

BBC: village remains contested in Georgia; after Russians pull out, South Ossetian militia enters

BBC: inmate in German jail mails himself to freedom; manhunt underway

retrospective
The Onion: 'Nation finally shitty enough to make social progress'
"Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American."

The Onion (2001): Bush's visionary leadership paved the way [comedy becomes tragedy]
"Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."...

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further."