WP: India terror attacks' domestic impact on Pakistan
NYT: Taliban militants destroy 100 NATO trucks in Pakistan
"About 80 percent of supplies for the war move from Karachi through Pakistan and onto Afghanistan. Peshawar is the last staging point before the border about 40 miles away, about an hour’s journey.
From Peshawar, the Pakistani trucks loaded with the military supplies travel through the Khyber section of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Khyber area is almost totally controlled by various factions of the Taliban, and many civilian government officials no longer dare to travel the road that the trucks use.
The Pakistani government said two weeks ago it had beefed up protection for the supply trucks along the route."NYT: US military to deploy around Kabul
"The new Army brigade, the Third Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y., is scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan in January and will consist of 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers. The “vast majority” of them will be sent to Logar and Wardak Provinces, adjacent to Kabul, said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the American units in eastern Afghanistan. A battalion of at least several hundred soldiers from that brigade will go to the border region in the east, where American forces have been locked in some of the fiercest fighting this year.
In all, the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan in response to a request from Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan. Those troops are expected to be sent to violent areas in the south. But they are expected to be deployed over 12 to 18 months. Nearly all would be diverted from Iraq, officials say.
The plan for the incoming brigade, then, means that for the time being fewer reinforcements — or none at all — will be immediately available for the parts of Afghanistan where the insurgency is most intense.
It also means that most of the newly arriving troops will not be deployed with the main goal of curbing the cross-border flow of insurgents from their rear bases in Pakistan, something American commanders would like and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has recommended."
WP: US to focus on irregular warfare, according to new guide
"[SecDef] Gates warned that, for the near future, the United States will face the greatest threats not from aggressor countries but from insurgents and extremist groups operating in weak or failing states. "We do not have the luxury of opting out because they do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war," he said."
NYT: ...hopefully institutional memory will improve
from the 1943 field guide: “You aren’t going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite.”
WP: Sadr's followers struggle to retain influence, define role
WP: five contractors indicted in Iraq shooting that left 17 dead
WP: guilt or innocence is irrelevant for prisoners in Iraq
"U.S. officials in Iraq have turned prisons once described as training camps for would-be insurgents into something more closely resembling American-style vocational schools. Religious and technical training are offered to detainees, who are allowed to visit with relatives through teleconferencing calls.
But the recently approved U.S.-Iraqi security agreement will soon require the American military to release the 16,000 Iraqi detainees -- the vast majority of them held in this southern desert prison -- or refer them to the nation's courts. As the U.S. military detention system here begins to come under Iraqi control, a complicated joint effort is underway to determine which of the men are safe to release and which may be insurgents...
The process has improved prisoner conditions since the abuses committed by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib but has not created a system to determine the guilt or innocence of thousands of Iraqi detainees...
On a scorching morning earlier this year, Talib Mohammed Farkhan, who had been imprisoned for 15 months, shuffled into Hearing Room 3 to hear his U.S. captors explain the allegations against him for the first time.
Farkhan, a Shiite Muslim, appeared to follow along as the American officers said he had been detained for membership in the Mahdi Army, the anti-American Shiite militia. But he looked totally baffled when they also accused him of working with al-Qaeda in Iraq, the extremist Sunni Muslim group that kills Americans and Shiites...
"Even if they turn the place into a paradise," he said, "it is still a prison full of innocent men."...
When Stone arrived in Iraq last year to command Task Force 134, which oversees detainee operations, he was shocked at what he found...Muslim extremists effectively controlled Camp Bucca, gouging out the eyes and cutting out the tongues of more moderate prisoners who disobeyed them, U.S. officials said...
[Stone] decided he would create a counterinsurgency strategy centered on the fundamental tenets of the Army's counterinsurgency strategy: protect the population and engage moderate voices...
Stone, despite the objections of his top lawyer, also created the review panels so detainees could hear why they were being held and what the charges were against them.
But Stone angrily rejected what he called impossible demands from detainee advocates to implement an American-style judicial system in the middle of a war zone.
"Now, Miss Human Rights, how does that happen?" Stone said. "I'm a pragmatic believer in human rights, but you can't just have it from the beginning."...
"You are not serving a sentence," [Navy Lt Cmdr] Le Moyne said. "You have been held because you have been determined to be a security threat. This committee will determine if you remain an imperative threat to the security of the multinational forces, the Iraqi people or the Iraqi government."
New Haven Advocate: ...and those targeted by Operation Front Line in the US"As the Bush administration prepares to make its disgraced exit from Washington, new information has come to light about a secret national security program launched in the waning days of the 2004 presidential election that targeted thousands of innocent Muslim immigrants as suspected terrorists.
Operation Front Line's stated goal was to disrupt terrorist cells that might be planning an attack during the campaign or on inauguration day.
But government documents recently obtained by a team of Yale Law School students and faculty expose Operation Front Line as a massive fishing expedition that hinged on racial profiling.
Of the 300 individual case files supplied to Yale, not a single immigrant was charged with a terror-related crime. Nearly all the immigrants questioned came from Muslim-majority countries."NYT: conflict over residence and infrastructure in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem
"Some believe that the Israeli authorities and Jewish nationalists, who are increasingly gaining footholds in the Arab neighborhoods, are intentionally exploiting the period of political transition in the United States, as well as the political vacuum in Israel before the February elections...
The infrastructure improvements, in ordinary circumstances, would be welcome news in a poor and neglected neighborhood like Silwan. But in the charged atmosphere of East Jerusalem, which Israel seized from the Jordanians in the 1967 war and later annexed, some perceive even municipal road works and new traffic arrangements as part of a larger plan."
NYT: settlers forcibly evicted by Israeli military in Hebron
"The operation, carried out by 600 soldiers and policemen with stealth and efficiency, took half an hour and resulted in two dozen relatively light injuries. But events did not end there. Young settlers then rampaged through Palestinian fields and neighborhoods, setting olive trees on fire and trashing houses...
As Palestinians watched from rooftops and windows, some settlers shouted at the troops, calling them Nazis. A few had sewn yellow stars on their shirts, as Jews were obliged to do under Hitler. On a wall near the confrontation, Hebrew graffiti declared, “There will be a war over the House of Peace.”
Much is at stake for both sides in this confrontation because the Israeli government says it wants to ease the construction of a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank, whereas the settlers and their backers say they will do all in their power to prevent such a state. They are focusing partly on increasing their numbers in Hebron, second only to Jerusalem in its historic and religious significance to them."WP: Thai protests calm, but nothing resolved yet
NYT: Mexico's hospitals offer no sanctuary from drug violence
WP: pyramid/money-laundering scheme in Colombia leads to unrest
WP: UN tries to coax rank-and-file Hutus out of Congo
"About 6,000 of the Hutu refugees make up the heavily armed militia group known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, which claims that its sole aim these days is the Rwandans' "dignified" return to their homes. That return is complicated, however, by the fear among Hutus here that comes with returning to a country now run by Tutsis, who took control of Rwanda in 1994 after Hutu militias and soldiers slaughtered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus...
Even if the Congolese government wanted to disarm the militia, the task remains complicated by post-genocide Rwandan politics, intimidation by militia commanders, and the difficulty of coaxing militiamen and their families from the protection of the bush. That painstaking work goes on here in this tiny, dirt-road village where militiamen traipse about freely with AK-47 assault rifles slung across their shoulders.
On the edge of town, a small team of U.N. demobilization workers and peacekeepers makes its presence known to the Hutu militiamen and their families via word-of-mouth networks and radio broadcasts that extend into the hills. Then they wait...
According to [demobilization expert] Buraka and others, the rank-and-file militiamen -- while guilty of various human rights violations in Congo -- are essentially being held hostage to serve the interests of a core leadership of about 50 aging genocide participants wanted by Rwandan authorities.The leaders use militiamen to guard and work in the lucrative gold, coltan ore, copper and cassiterite mines that are exploited by all parties to eastern Congo's conflict, including Nkunda, Rwanda and the Congolese army...
According to one U.N. official involved in the demobilization effort, the militia has a special force, known by the acronym CRAP, whose sole purpose is to intimidate the soldiers into staying in the bush.
"They make the combatants think this unit is everywhere, that there are spies," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. "Every month they make an example of someone -- they beat him, or execute him, accusing him of wanting to desert, even if it's not true. It works very well...
A fighter arrives, hands in his AK-47, gets a cold shower, some food and often the first mattress he's seen in years. There is an interview, a helicopter ride to the provincial capital and finally a truck to Rwanda, where ex-combatants go through training intended to transform them into civilians.
At the end, they get a certificate and $306, courtesy of the World Bank.
Since March, about 90 militiamen have defected, along with 60 family members. Congolese villagers say they often see the defectors back in Nyabiondo soon afterward, however...
Other refugees...question whether the Rwandan government really wants them back. "They take us all as genocidaires," said Juvenal Mapendo..."
NYT: Somalia can apparently get worse - Ethiopia about to pull out
"Most informed predictions go something like this: if the several thousand Ethiopian troops withdraw by January, as they recently said they would, the 3,000 or so African Union peacekeepers in Somalia could soon follow, leaving Somalia wide open to the Islamist insurgents who have been massing on the outskirts of Mogadishu, the capital.
The transitional government, which in reality controls only a few city blocks of the entire country, will collapse, just as the 13 previous transitional governments did. The only reason it has not happened yet is the Ethiopians."
NYT: local governor in Niger Delta makes deal with militias
"For years the Niger Delta has been plagued by instability caused by armed militants who kidnap foreign oil workers or wealthy Nigerians for ransom, clash with the military and sabotage oil pipelines. Billions of dollars’ worth of oil is pumped out of Nigeria every year, and yet the average Nigerian earns less than $2 a day. The militants have claimed to be fighting on behalf of local people who get no share of the oil riches, but their actions often boiled down to profit-driven criminality.
And while other states in the region continue to be hampered by violence between militant gangs and the military, Delta State, under its governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, has found a rare measure of peace. It has accomplished this not by fighting the militants but by drawing them into the government and making sure they are awarded valuable contracts from the oil companies, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, that dominate the oil business here...
Governor Uduaghan’s most significant and controversial decision was to hand out government positions to militant leaders. One newly created office in particular, the Delta State Waterways Security Committee, is led by and staffed with many former militants, or “youth activists,” as they are often referred to locally.
Militants still active in the creeks quickly recognized the benefits of this approach and made concessions to the state government in return for financial assistance or contracts from oil and construction companies."
LAT: hundreds died last week in Plateau state, election-associated rioting"Mobs burned homes, churches and mosques Saturday in a second day of riots, as the death toll rose to more than 300 in the worst sectarian violence in Africa's most populous nation in years.
Sheik Khalid Abubakar, the imam at the city's main mosque, said more than 300 bodies were brought there Saturday and 183 more were outside the building, waiting for burial.
Jos, the capital of Plateau state, has a long history of community violence. The city is situated in Nigeria's "middle belt," where members of hundreds of ethnic groups commingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south...
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NYT: the man who taught us about memory
"Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. This system depends on the function of medial temporal areas, particularly an organ called the hippocampus, now the object of intense study.
Another system, commonly known as motor learning, is subconscious and depends on other brain systems. This explains why people can jump on a bike after years away from one and take the thing for a ride, or why they can pick up a guitar that they have not played in years and still remember how to strum it."
NYT: Mexico's muxes
"...in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán [Oaxaca], the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes” (pronounced MOO-shays) — men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.
“Muxe” is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish “mujer,” or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.
Anthropologists trace the acceptance of people of mixed gender to pre-Colombian Mexico, pointing to accounts of cross-dressing Aztec priests and Mayan gods who were male and female at the same time. Spanish colonizers wiped out most of those attitudes in the 1500s by forcing conversion to Catholicism. But mixed-gender identities managed to survive in the area around Juchitán, a place so traditional that many people speak ancient Zapotec instead of Spanish.
Not all muxes express their identities the same way. Some dress as women and take hormones to change their bodies. Others favor male clothes. What they share is that the community accepts them; many in it believe that muxes have special intellectual and artistic gifts.
Every November, muxes inundate the town for a grand ball that attracts local men, women and children as well as outsiders. A queen is selected; the mayor crowns her."The Onion: W. signs off
"Seems like it was only yesterday that I started my first term despite having actually lost to Al Gore by more than a half million votes. Hmm. We were all so young and peaceful then."
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