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."