ballots and bullets [paper planes]

AJE: Sri Lanka rejects call for ceasefire
The military said it would not cease all combat operations, but would stop shooting to allow civilians to get out as it did for a UN convoy on Thursday that carried out 226 seriously wounded people...

Following months of heavy fighting, government troops have captured the Tiger's political capital of Kilinochchi and, later, the Tamil Tiger bastion of Mullaittivu on the northeast coast.

Government forces say they have confined the Tamil Tigers into a 300 square kilometres pocket of territory in Mullaittivu district.

Humanitarian relief organisations say that about 250,000 civilians are still trapped in the rebel-held area...

'The military are saying they're are not coming because the Tamil Tigers are refusing to allow them out, they are using them as a human shield. There are even stories of mines being put around their settlements to stop them from leaving,' [AJE correspondent Tony] Birtley reported.

'Of course, the Tigers say that people are scared to come because they may be abused by the army, they may be killed by the army and they'll almost certainly go into a camp to be interrogated by the army.

'It's very unclear why [civilians are not leaving], but these people have spent a long long time living under the Tamil Tigers ... and there's a lot of distrust.' "
Gdn: ...but the president urges civilians to move towards gov't forces, promising safety
Daily Beast: M.I.A. is upset about Sri Lanka's offensive
youtube: but then, one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist (via Sheely)

Iraq holds elections tomorrow
WP: elections in Iraq: 3 Sunni candidates killed
"Hazam Salim Ahmad, a candidate for the National Unity list, was killed as he left his house in the city of Mosul, where Sunni Arabs and Kurds are vying for control amid attacks by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq...

In Diyala province, gunmen kidnapped Abbas Farhan al-Jubouri, a candidate for the secular National Movement of Reform and Development, after a campaign rally in Mandali...[his body was found 3 hours later]...

In Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood, gunmen killed Omar Faruq al-Ani, a candidate with the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political bloc..

The spate of assaults raised to five the number of candidates killed in the run-up to Saturday's voting. Four were Sunnis. "
Gdn: reports of corruption widespread as well
"Voters across the country have reported receiving visitors bearing food baskets and toys which they dispensed in return for signed commitments to vote for them, sometimes alongside an Islamic oath.

The vote is being seen as a tussle between the incumbents – largely a group of returned exiles backed into office by the US and Britain, and rebellious regions that want to drain power from the central government and divide it among themselves...

This time 400 political blocs will stand, representing 14 of the 18 provinces. Only the disputed province of Kirkuk and the three Kurdish provinces will be exempt from the election, which will see all the Sunni interest groups take part. A total of 440 provincial council seats are up for grabs and up to 75% of Iraqis of voting age are expected to cast ballots...

'These people stay in the Green Zone protected by the tanks they came in on,' added the sheikh, a co-leader of the 7 million-strong Damini tribe, and a key figure in Anbar province, which comprises almost one-third of Iraq. 'This is nonsense. Democracy, American style, came from another world and is not part of our culture.

'As tribes, we don't trust the central government. We don't feel they have the ability to take the country forward. We are the most influential group in the country, yet all the decisions are made inside the green zone and we know nothing about them.

'We are not al-Qaida, but we, the tribes, say that if after eight months there is no change we will demolish everything. We cannot stand this situation anymore. We will withdraw from the political process and we will not stand in the way of any militia groups who send their armed fighters back to the streets.'...

Violence has steadily increased in the fortnight before the poll, with attacks on Iraqi police patrols, in particular, higher than they have been for months.

However Baghdad's police chief yesterday predicted the militias that ruled the capital for more than two bloody years could not rise again. The city will be in lockdown over the weekend with nearly all cars banned from streets and most residents effectively housebound."

NYT: the fight for control in Mosul
"This is the test of the provincial elections in Mosul, a last bastion of the Sunni and jihadi insurgency: whether a political system that more closely reflects local ethnic and sectarian splits will be a first step toward stability. The issue is the same in places around Iraq where calm is still fragile: whether democracy can trump violence.

There are some encouraging signs here in Mosul, even if many people fear the elections are simply another means for Arabs and Kurds to continue their bloody struggle over land, oil and sovereignty. Certainly there is no progress on the more threatening issue of Kirkuk, a city to the southeast so full of oil and ethnic tension that elections there were postponed.

But politics are changing here. In the last provincial elections, in 2005, most Arabs boycotted. As a result, Kurdish groups, who make up at most a third of the city, hold 31 out of 41 seats on the provincial council in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh Province. The provinces have broad local authority to spend and govern.

Now the council has 37 seats, and Arabs, represented by two main parties, are expected to win, and Kurds largely accept that — one reason, many here say, that the violence, while still much higher than in most of Iraq, has not flared more...

After the Kurds ruled the city for four years — a time of extreme violence, with the latest killings last fall forcing thousands of Christians to flee Mosul — Kurdish groups readily concede that Arabs should control the city itself...

But [Goran, deputy governor] is equally frank that their real goal is winning rural areas outside the city — places where Kurds say they have a majority and that, they argue, should ultimately belong to the nearby autonomous enclave of Kurdistan. The Kurds have long been frustrated by the failure of international promises for a census and referendum to settle Kurdish claims, particularly in Kirkuk.

So Mr. Goran said the elections would serve as their own census, he hoped, to further the Kurds’ agenda.

'We are looking not only to know our political size but our ethnic size,' he said. 'How can we know the truth? By democratic means. We don’t want to force any identity on anyone. Voters will choose what identity they want.'...

More and more, the roads out of Mosul feel like an international boundary, with checkpoints and virtual customs stops before the Kurdish cities of Dohuk and Erbil. While Mosul is battened down and tense, Kurdistan is safe and lively, full of construction, car dealerships and nice Turkish washing machines for sale. Arabs say that, despite their holding Iraqi passports, Kurdish pesh merga troops harass them and admit them only grudgingly."
BBC: ...and Najaf, where Shiite parties compete

BBC: Iraqi troops, prisoners, and hospitalized have started to vote
NYT: thousands of Shiite pilgrims may miss the polls

NYT: women are running for office
"Of the estimated 14,400 candidates, close to 4,000 are women. Some female candidates have had their posters splattered with mud, defaced with beards or torn up, but most have been spared the violence that has claimed the lives of two male candidates and a coalition leader since the start of the year. But on Wednesday, a woman working for the Iraqi Islamic Party was killed when gunmen burst into her house in Baghdad and shot her 10 times in the chest, according to an Interior Ministry official."
LAT: ...as are Communists
Gdn: and Black Iraqis
"In Iraq's deep south another American-led revolution is stirring. But this time it is being sparked by popular voice, not bombs.

The country's 1m-plus black citizens have tapped into Obama-mania like few other groups across the Arab world. For them Obama's inauguration was the dawn of a civil rights movement that they never had the impetus to strive for.

Black Iraqis will this week stand for the first time as an electoral bloc in provincial polls that will help shape Iraq in its slow transition to full sovereignty and possibly help shake off the stereotype that places them near the top of the heap in a nation of persecuted minorities.

Like the marsh Arabs to the north of their relative stronghold in Basra, black Iraqis are an underclass who find it near impossible to rise above their time-worn status of hard-labourers and peasants. Up to 50% of black Iraqis migrated to the Arabian Peninsula after the birth of Islam 1,500 years ago.

The rest have come steadily in the centuries since, some trafficked as slaves and others lured by broken promises of riches."

Ind: Blackwater brings Iraqis together: the firm is banned from operations
CSM: Iraqi courts to gradually assume jurisdiction over 15,100 detainees in Iraq

NYT: Obama administration likely to quiet down the democracy talk
NYT: and take harder line towards Karzai
"[Administration officials] said that the Obama administration would work with provincial leaders as an alternative to the central government, and that it would leave economic development and nation-building increasingly to European allies, so that American forces could focus on the fight against insurgents."
AJE: ...who also tampers democracy talk - postpones elections until August

Gdn: more reports of reprisal violence in Gaza
"Among the dead are Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Israeli military. Others include criminals who were among the 600 prisoners to escape from Gaza City's main jail when it was bombed as the war began. Their attackers are thought to be their victims' relatives...

Palestinians in human rights organisations are reluctant to speak publicly about what is a sensitive issue, but one respected human rights worker in Gaza said he believed between 40 and 50 people had been killed in reprisal attacks since the start of the war. But there was not yet enough evidence to suggest this was an organised campaign by Hamas, he said."
Gdn: Spanish judge launches investigation into alleged Israeli war crime in Gaza, in 2002

AJE: judge rejects motion to delay Guantanamo trial of alleged planner of USS Cole attack

Slate: ex-Marine advoctes end to torture training
"...a review of the experiences of American servicemen captured in Iraq and Somalia shows that our enemies don't water-board their captives. Nor do they have the resources to mount a program of systematic sensory deprivation and humiliation, as we did in Guantanamo and in the American prison at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base. In fact, our soldiers need training from SERE based on an entirely different premise, as illustrated by the experience of Michael Durant, the helicopter pilot who spent several weeks in captivity when he was captured by Somali fighters during the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" raid. Durant survived by befriending his captors and forcing them to see him as a fellow human being. SERE conditions servicemen to expect nothing but the worst from their captors; Durant's life depended on his ability to understand his captors and find ways to manipulate them psychologically.

At the same time, the problem with SERE extends far beyond its questionable relevance to the threats that the war on terrorism pose to American soldiers. The school, which all pilots and special-forces soldiers attend, unintentionally serves to legitimize the use of torture by U.S. personnel in the field."

CSM: Pakistan military launches offensive in Swat
"Within 100 miles of the capital Islamabad, Swat was until recent yearsa thriving tourist venue renowned for its lush forests, clear rivers, and ski resorts. But since their resurgence last September, militias led by Maulana Fazlullah have conducted brutal killings of political foes and those deemed "immoral." On Sunday, 43 people – including former and present ministers – were added to the hit list, which is read on the radio. Almost all of the politicians named have since fled.

Headless bodies are strung up daily in a public area residents now call Khooni Chowk ("bloody intersection"), for sins ranging from non-adherence to dress codes to defiance of the militants' regime, says Niaz Ali Khan, a student from Mingora who studies in Swat."
NYT: Taliban targeting police
"Last year, 70 police officers were beheaded, shot or otherwise slain in Swat, and 150 wounded, said Malik Naveed Khan, the police inspector general for the North-West Frontier Province.

The police have become so afraid that many officers have put advertisements in newspapers renouncing their jobs so the Taliban will not kill them."

LAT: opposition agrees to join another attempt at unity government in Zimbabwe
"Under severe pressure from Southern African leaders, Zimbabwe's opposition voted Friday to join a unity government under President Robert Mugabe, despite failing to win its key demand for control of the police."

AJE: Somalia's transitional (non-functional) gov't to elect new (powerless) president
"Parliament is meeting in neighbouring Djibouti because of the security situation in Somalia, where armed opposition groups are battling government forces and each other...

The election on Friday comes two days after 200 members of the opposition ARS were sworn into parliament as part of an agreement brokered by the UN.

Another 75 seats are still to be filled by other opposition and civil society groups, as part of an effort to bring former opponents into the government."

BBC: the effects of recent sectarian riots in Nigeria
"Jos is at a crossroads between the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria and the mainly Christian south.

The latest violence followed a disputed local election in which a Christian candidate defeated a Muslim.

Most of the clashes have been between members of the Hausa-Fulani community – the biggest ethnic group in northern Nigeria - and local ethnic groups, that are mainly Christian.

However, many feel that the conflict is not about religion but about who should be seen as the rightful owners of the city.

Members of the Hausa-Fulani community say they are discriminated against because the government of Plateau State sees them as 'settlers'...

Many local governments in Nigeria operate policies that give preferential rights to communities that are judged to be the original inhabitants of an area.

In Jos, there are three ethnic groups - all predominantly Christian - which are recognised as indigenous...

Tensions between indigenes and settlers occur across Nigeria and as the population has grown, competition between them for land, jobs and education has intensified.

However in Jos, the friction between settlers and indigenes coincides with religious and ethnic divisions."

BBC: Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, remains empty after violence

BBC: first trial at the ICC hits snag as witness recants testimony

NYT: North Korea abandons accord with South Korea on border

WP: grassroots online organizing in China

BBC: FARC to release high-profile captives Sunday
Bloomberg: ...may have detonated bomb in busy Bogota sector that killed 2

Plan Colombia and Beyond: jailed paramilitary leader explains the cocaine trade from Colombia
LAT: Mexican capos might have arrived at a truce
LAT: the DEA is out of Bolivia
Ind: maybe they can just use Google Earth, like the Swiss
"Swiss police said they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software."

Gdn: separtists, the mafia, and ecologists in Corsica
Fighting to defend the law is not easy on a Mediterranean island where clans, mafia godfathers and armed separatists crisscross in a nebulous atmosphere of omertà (code of silence), clientelism and protection rackets, and where property speculation is the fast money earner...

Corsica, 100 miles south of the French coast, is one of the last remaining unspoiled corner of the western Mediterranean. Due to France's stringent coastal protection measures and the spectre of violent separatism, the mountainous island still boasts large expanses of coastline that have been spared mass construction. Now the Corsican executive, headed by a member of Sarkozy's ruling centre-right party, has proposed a new 20-year development plan to boost the island's economy, which will declassify stretches of protected land to allow for more building. Environmental groups warn that Corsica risks repeating the concrete nightmare of Majorca or France's Côte d'Azur.

The plan, known by its acronym Padduc, has spawned a movement called the anti-Padduc front, made up of 80 different groups including trade unions and ecologists. The row has also boosted the island's nationalist and separatist cause. This weekend, Corsican hardline nationalists will launch their new political party, Corsica Libera. They oppose building developments which, they say, threatens the island's national identity.

This month, one of Corsica's main armed separatist groups, the FLNC-UC, issued its strongest statement in which it made death threats against the island's ruling political class, warned against the building plans and laid claim to 14 bomb attacks over the last six months.

In the low-level separatist violence that has simmered on the island for 30 years, empty holiday homes have been sporadically targeted with homemade bombs. While tourists are welcome, mainland French "foreigners" acquiring land are not."

Gdn: Iceland on fast-track to joining EU
Ind: with the world's first gay premier

Slate: reform US federal government archiving practices
Slate: end taxation without representation for DC

engagement [just listening]

BBC: first ICC trial begins, against militia leader for use of child soldiers in DR Congo conflict...
"[T]he case is the first in history to focus exclusively on the use of child soldiers as a war crime and the first time victims will have been allowed to participate fully in an international trial...

The prosecution says children were snatched as they walked to school and suffered beatings and other abuses. Many were plied with marijuana and told they were protected by witchcraft, according to human rights groups."
NYT: ...a trial that almost didn't happen
"Turf wars within the court, bitter legal squabbles and irritation among the trial judges had almost torpedoed the case. Last July, as the trial was about to start, judges put a halt to the proceedings, citing legal and strategic errors by the prosecution, and said Mr. Lubanga should be set free, though he was ultimately kept in custody. The judges said the prosecution’s handling of evidence amounted to “wholesale and serious abuse” of the process and ruled that a fair trial was not possible at that point...

One question now being asked in The Hague is whether the Obama administration will re-establish links with the court. The Clinton administration signed the 1998 treaty establishing the court on its last days in office, but President Bush ordered the signature withdrawn, leaving the United States as the only major Western power not to join.

In his opening statement on Monday, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the court, said Mr. Lubanga’s militia included children, some as young as 9 years old, who were used as cooks, cleaners, spies, scouts and sex slaves. They were ordered to kill, pillage and rape, he said, and they were often killed and raped themselves.

Congolese rights groups say that Mr. Lubanga is by no means the most senior commander responsible for the widespread killing in Congo’s ethnic conflicts, but that he became available to the court after he was arrested in 2005 during an investigation into the killing of United Nations peacekeepers in Congo... The case is making use of a new step in international law, namely allowing victims to play a direct role in the trial and to be represented by their own lawyers."
BBC: profile of Lubanga
Open Society Institute: daily coverage of Lubanga's trial

LAT: UNHCR says Congolese refugees fleeing to South Sudan to escape LRA; more than 600 civilians killed in last month

NYT: Gen. Laurent Nkunda captured by Rwandan army
"General Nkunda was one of Congo’s most powerful and unpredictable rebel leaders, a megalomaniac with proven military skill who, until his arrest along the Congo-Rwanda border, had single-handedly destabilized a large chunk of central Africa... Congo is now urging Rwanda to extradite him to stand trial for war crimes and treason charges.

A few weeks ago, top rebel commanders suddenly split off from General Nkunda, a charismatic figure who until then had appeared to engender fierce loyalty. Thousands of Rwandan troops then stormed across the border as part of a joint mission with the Congolese Army to flush out Hutu militants left over from Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.

The latest twist came Thursday, when instead of attacking the Hutu militants, the Rwandans marched straight into General Nkunda’s territory and bundled him away.

At least that is what the Rwandans say, though some of General Nkunda’s former fighters say he was lured into Rwanda for a meeting and then either captured or told to go underground."

WPost: in Zimbabwe, unclear if power-sharing agreement dead or not
"Leaders of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community met Monday in Pretoria, South Africa, in what was depicted as a last-ditch effort to salvage a deal between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition. After 14 hours of negotiations that ended at dawn, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe told reporters that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would be sworn in as prime minister Feb. 11, after Zimbabwe's parliament passes a constitutional amendment creating the position.

But Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, swiftly issued a statement indicating that was not the case. While a communique issued by SADC addressed some of the opposition party's demands -- including, for example, a call for the parties to discuss the assignment of provincial governors -- the MDC said it had not gone far enough."

NYT: Islamist insurgents in Somalia take Baidoa...
"Islamist insurgents took over the city that houses Somalia’s Parliament on Monday, just hours after Ethiopian troops withdrew and formally ended a failed two-year effort to defeat Islamist militants in the country... Parliament is supposed to select a new president to replace Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who resigned in late December. Many Somalis, Western diplomats and aid officials have crossed their fingers in the hope that moderate Islamists and transitional government figures would work together to pick a new, unifying leader.

Mr. Yusuf, a former warlord, had been widely criticized for trying to thwart peace negotiations. One of the leading contenders to replace him is a moderate Islamic cleric."
NYT: ...and impose Sharia law
"The Shabab, one of the most militant Islamist militias fighting for control of the country, captured the town, Baidoa, on Monday, hours after the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops who had been protecting it... In addition to Baidoa, a market town that has served as the seat of Somalia’s transitional government, the Shabab controls most of Mogadishu, the main city and official capital, and much of the southern part of the country. The Shabab, listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, seeks to turn Somalia into an Islamic state under its particularly strict brand of Islamic law...

Several moderate factions have sent delegations to Djibouti, where they are working with the Parliament to establish a unity government based on a power-sharing deal made in October.

That process moved forward on Monday when the Parliament voted to expand its membership to add 200 legislators from the ranks of the moderate Islamists. The new members are to be sworn in on Wednesday, bringing the total number of seats to 550.

The Parliament also hopes to elect a new president within five days, according to local radio reports..."
LAT: Japan dispatches ships to Somalian seas

AJE: 25 dead in Madagascar riots

NYT: "rehabilitated" jihadists at it again
"Nine graduates of an influential Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups since the program started in 2004, Saudi officials said Monday...

If doubts are raised about the Saudi program, they could complicate President Obama’s plan to close the Guantánamo detention center within a year, as required by one of his first executive orders after taking office last week. Almost half of the remaining prisoners there are Yemeni, and their return home depends in part on Yemen’s creation of a rehabilitation program, paid for partly by the United States, that is modeled on the Saudi one.

Pentagon officials have said that 61 of the more than 525 Guantánamo detainees who have been released have returned to terrorism. That claim has generated some skepticism, and the Pentagon is expected to declassify portions of a report on the subject in the coming days."
LAT: violent protests against Bahrain government after coup charge
"The riots continued Tuesday after the prosecutor's office announced that the three had been charged with promoting a coup "through terrorism," according to a statement by the office.

The statement said they also were charged with joining an outlawed group, violating other citizens' liberties and inciting hatred against the ruling regime. One activist was released but banned from traveling, and the two others were in custody, the statement said."

NYT: politics of rebuilding in Gaza...
"Aid agencies expect several hundred million dollars to be pledged at a conference next week for items like food, medicine and spare parts for electrical grids. But that does not touch the broader question of rebuilding, which will require large quantities of cement, metal and glass, all of which Gaza lacks.

The task is enormous: An estimated 4,000 homes were destroyed and 17,000 damaged in the three-week war that began Dec. 27, Palestinian authorities said.

Israel said that letting such supplies in freely would be risky. Hamas militants have built rockets from pipes imported for a sanitation plant last year, Israeli officials said, and while Israel is attending to humanitarian aid — the number of trucks with food and other urgent supplies that now pass through Israeli crossings into Gaza has tripled — the Israeli authorities have yet to decide what else they will permit into Gaza."
AJE: ...complicated, as Hamas says it will give victims reconstruction money
"We are a government that is in charge of all of Gaza," [Ahmed al-Kurd, the Hamas-appointed minister of social affairs] said. "The ministries have budgets, they have funds, just like in the rest of the countries of the world."
Gdn: 1 Israeli soldier and 1 Palestinian killed today post-ceasefire
"Israel also closed its crossings into Gaza, through which all humanitarian aid and other supplies have to pass. "The crossings have been closed due to the attack," Peter Lerner, an Israeli defence official, said. "This is another example of terrorist activities against the crossings, the same crossings that serve the Palestinian people for humanitarian aid."
AJE: ...prompting Israel to bomb Gaza-Egypt tunnels, again
"Israel has confirmed that it carried out the raids. It says the strikes on the Rafah tunnels are aimed at stopping alleged weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip by Hamas fighters.

The tunnels are also used to smuggle food, fuel and consumer goods from Egypt and are considered a life-line for thousands of ordinary Gazans.

The latest attack came despite fragile ceasefires declared by Israel and Hamas last week, ending a 22-day Israeli military campaign on Gaza in which 1,300 people were killed.

Israeli warplanes had targetted scores of cross-border tunnels during the recent war, but many tunnels resumed work shortly after the ceasefire."
NYT: just as Obama's Middle East envoy is on tour
"Mr. Obama has moved swiftly to engage in the Middle East, phoning Arab and Israeli leaders on his first full day in office and announcing [George] Mitchell’s appointment the next day.

Mr. Mitchell, a seasoned negotiator, helped broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and led a commission investigating the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians."
NYT: closed crossings mean humanitarian aid sits, waiting
AJE: photos reveal Israeli white phosphorus use on UN compound
"White phosphorus - a high-incendiary substance that burns brightly and for long periods on contact with the air - is often used to produce smoke screens.

But it can also be used as a weapon producing extreme burns when it makes contact with human skin.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported a brigade of paratroop reservists fired about 20 white phosphorus shells into the built-up area of Beit Lahiya on January 17, which landed in the UN-run compound where the two Palestinian children were killed and severe burns were inflicted on 14 other people.

Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, has accused Israel of war crimes over its use of the munitions in heavily populated areas."
NYT: move to the right in Israel post-Gaza invasion
"That is not because Israelis have regrets or have become faint-hearted about the casualties and destruction in Gaza. To the contrary, there appears to have been a shift further to the right, reflecting a feeling among many voters that an even tougher approach may now be required.

Recent polls indicate that Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing opposition party, has retained and even increased its lead. The other party that appears to have gained the most ground is the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman."
LAT: postwar boom for Gazan businesses... selling posters of martyrs

Gdn: Britain's security and counter-terrorism minister says Gaza attacks will fuel extremism
"In an outspoken assessment of the terror risk facing Britain, Gordon Brown's security adviser was scathing about the assertion, made by Tony Blair when prime minister, that foreign policy did not alter the UK's risk of a terror attack. "We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism," he said. "Well, that was clearly bollocks."...

West, meanwhile, described the threat of international terrorism as a severe one... "Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices are now, today, the greatest threat to us. If you put one near an old building the whole thing will collapse."
Gdn: British gov minutes discussing legality of Iraq war invasion to be released
"Secret government discussions about the Iraq war are to be disclosed after an information tribunal today ordered the release of cabinet minutes from 2003... The meetings considered the highly controversial issue of whether the invasion was allowed under international law. Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general at the time, initially suggested that the legality of the invasion was legally questionable before subsequently issuing legal advice saying that it would be compatible with international law."

NYT: US helicopters down in Kirkuk; Iraqi budget also down as oil prices fall
"An Iraqi security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was forbidden to speak to the news media, said the helicopters had crashed in an open field in an area known as Chalak, about 10 miles south of Kirkuk... [A]fter the American military retrieved the wreckage, the Sunni Arab insurgent group known as the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, sometimes referred to as the Naqshbandi Army, distributed leaflets in the area claiming it had downed the two helicopters with makeshift rockets...

The group, named after a Muslim Sufi order, is linked to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was one of Saddam Hussein’s top aides, and members of his family, according to American military intelligence officers. Mr. Douri, who is ailing but whose whereabouts remain a mystery, is an ardent follower and patron of the Naqshbandi order in Iraq...

The squeeze in Iraq’s finances comes as the government seeks to solidify fragile security gains by improving basic services, spurring job creation and rehabilitating the country’s battered infrastructure. In the past week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been on a whirlwind campaign tour of impoverished southern Iraq, drumming up support for his slate of candidates in provincial elections this Saturday.

He promised rapt audiences everywhere to provide jobs and housing.

“We have set our sight on rebuilding Iraq, providing an honorable life for its citizens, supporting agriculture, resuscitating our factories and plants, and building our armed forces,” Mr. Maliki told crowds during a rally on Monday in Babil Province.

But given the country’s immense investment needs, fulfilling some of these promises, at least in the short term, hinges on stable oil prices and higher production."
AJE: Abu Ghraib to be reopened under different name
LAT: hmm, any other signs of "normalcy" in Iraq?
NYT: Shiites on pilgrimage during provincial elections could bring unexpected surprises

LAT: Secretary of Defense Gates advises limited mission in Afghanistan
"Rather than the pursuit of democracy, Gates said the primary U.S. mission should be ensuring that Afghanistan did not again become a haven for Al Qaeda...

One new unit, the Ft. Drum, N.Y.-based 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, has arrived in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of U.S. troops to 36,000. The unit was originally scheduled to go to Iraq.

By spring, two additional brigades will be sent to Afghanistan, to be joined by a third in midsummer, Gates said.

Gates said it would be difficult to send troops to Afghanistan much faster than is currently planned because of a lack of infrastructure -- dining halls, bases, hospitals and logistics hubs -- there."
NYT: ...and wants to decrease delays for treatment of wounded soldiers there...
LAT: ...while Biden expects higher casualties and the Army pays for civilian casualties
"U.S. commanders on Tuesday traveled to a poor Afghan village and distributed $40,000 to relatives of 15 people killed in a U.S. raid, including a known militant commander. The Americans also apologized for any civilians killed in the operation... [Karzai] told the villagers he has given the U.S. and NATO one month to respond to a draft agreement calling for increased Afghan participation in military operations.

Karzai said if he does not receive a response within that time, he would ask Afghans what he should do about international military operations. The statement from the presidential palace describing the meeting did not elaborate...

Lt. Col. Steven Weir, a military lawyer who helped oversee the payments, said the payments were not an admission by the U.S. that innocents were killed. "It's a condolence payment," he said. "The villagers said none of them were in the Taliban, just peaceful individuals from the village. So by this payment they will understand it's not our goal to kill innocent people. This may help them understand we're here to build a safer and more secure Afghanistan."

NYT: Iranian terrorist group (says Iran) not a terrorist group (according to EU)
"The European Union removed a prominent Iranian opposition group from its list of banned terrorist organizations on Monday, a step that could worsen its relations with Tehran, which strongly opposed the move.

The decision, by the foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc, ended a long battle by the group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, to be removed from Europe’s list of proscribed organizations. It was placed on the list in 2002... The group advocates the overthrow of Iran’s religious leaders and the creation of a democratic, secular government. After the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against the group, executing many of its members. The group has claimed responsibility for bombings that killed hundreds of officials and civilians in the 1980s...

Several thousand of the group’s members live in a camp north of Baghdad, where they have had American military protection since 2003. Iraq has been under pressure from Iran to expel the group, but if its members are sent back to Iran they will probably be accused of treason and almost certainly be executed."

NYT: Sri Lankan army takes Mullaittivu, last major rebel-held town
"The army’s taking of the rebel garrison town of Mullaittivu on Sunday may signal the end of conventional battles but not of suicide attacks and other deadly tactics that the guerrillas have used for decades in their campaign for an independent state in the northeast...

The army said it took the de facto rebel capital, Kilinochchi, three weeks ago, and Elephant Pass, a key corridor, a week later.

It is impossible to verify the government’s accounts because the authorities deny journalists access to anywhere near the front lines and because those who question the official version of events in the war are rebuked as traitors.

A journalist, a publisher and his wife have been held under antiterrorism laws for 10 months. A leading newspaper editor was killed this month, another was beaten on his way to work and a television station was attacked. Several journalists have fled the country recently."
AJE: looking for Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
"Officials said they were using spy planes that monitored satellite phone transmissions and took photographs of the jungle region to try to pin-point Prabhakaran's location... MR Narayan Swamy, an Indian journalist who wrote a biography of the LTTE leader, said the loss of Prabhakaran would be devastating to the group. "He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul, and the whole organisation runs around him," he said."
NYT: no safe zone for civilians or UN staff
"First, the team of mostly Sri Lankan aid workers and their families were prevented by the guerrillas, also known by the initials L.T.T.E., from leaving the war zone. Then, on Saturday, they took shelter in what the government described as a no-fire zone, erecting a temporary compound, around which many civilians had also gathered.

A shell landed near the compound on Saturday evening, and then another early Sunday morning, killing 9 civilians and wounding more than 20, according to a memo sent by United Nations officials in Sri Lanka to their headquarters in New York."

AJE: Philippine rebel group to rejoin peace talks, on one condition: a separate Muslim state in the south
"The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippine government are trying to revive peace negotiations after a proposed deal broke down last year when the supreme court stopped the government from signing the deal... Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Talayan in Mindanao, says thousands of people, mostly farmers, have been living in evacuation centres since last August, surviving on handouts under harsh conditions.

The MILF formed as a breakaway group in 1977 after splitting from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

The MNLF subsequently entered into negotiations with the government in Manila and signed an agreement a decade later relinquishing its stated goal of independence.

The 12,000-strong MILF has, however, continued the struggle for political autonomy, becoming one of four groups that are fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines."

LAT: Mexico a failed state? No way, says Mexican government
WPost: "Stew Maker" is captured, admits to burning bodies of 300 narco-rivals in acid

LAT: two former members of Peruvian military freed after courts fail to convict them for Barrios Altos massacre--after 6 years
"The former military officers are on trial on charges of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy in the 1991 massacre of 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, at Lima's Barrios Altos tenement, court clerk Daniel Luna told The Associated Press.

Barrios Altos is one of two massacres that ex-President Alberto Fujimori is charged with authorizing."

LAT: Obama has "constructive and cordial" conversation with Colombian president; they discuss security and Plan Colombia, among other issues

NYT: Iceland's government collapses
"Last week, [Prime Minister Geir] Haarde called elections for May, bringing forward a vote originally scheduled for 2011, after weeks of protests by Icelanders angered by soaring unemployment and rising prices. But Mr. Haarde said he would not lead his Independence Party into the new elections because he needed treatment for cancer.

Iceland has been in crisis since the collapse of its banks because of large debt in September and October, with its currency, the krona, plummeting. The government has negotiated $10 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries, but the standard of living for the average person has sunk along with the currency, and the economy is expected to contract by nearly 10 percent this year."

LAT: Medvedev to alter Russian treason bill (in a challenge to Putin?)

AJE: former Serb general, Vlastimir Djordjevic, on trial at The Hague for ethnic cleansing in Kosovo

+++
NYT blog/Errol Morris: the Bush years in pictures

Gdn: on "responsible sovereignty"
"A new phrase has rolled off the production line of foreign policy analysts: responsible sovereignty. In a world where the threats are transnational - climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the banking crisis - states not only have a responsibility to their own citizens, but to their neighbours and to the international community as well. States need to take responsibility for the international implications of their domestic actions. Responsible sovereignty underpins current attempts by a distinguished group of US experts to create a new world order based on revitalised international institutions, diplomacy and negotiation. They call it a project to manage global insecurity."

creating monsters [cynicism recovered]

WP: Hamas retains control of Gaza
"If there is any significant disenchantment with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is largely hidden behind the fear that many feel in speaking out against the group.

In dozens of interviews across Gaza on Friday, less than a week after the start of a tenuous cease-fire, Palestinians generally expressed either unbridled support for Hamas or resignation to the idea that the group's reign in Gaza will continue for the foreseeable future. No one suggested that the group is vulnerable, despite the hopes of some Israeli officials who have theorized that their military campaign could ultimately spur Palestinians to rise up against Hamas rule."

WSJ: and then there's counter-productive in the long-term
"Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric...

When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank...

After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the [Muslim] Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.

At the time, Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The country's then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood. In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war. Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank...

In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers...

The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly...

In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines."
NYT: the cleavage endures: Hamas targeting suspected Fatah supporters
"Many Fatah members and supporters said in interviews that Hamas might feel somewhat weakened by the Israeli offensive and was concerned that its political rivals not take advantage of the disorder created by the war.

The Palestinian human rights worker shared that view. “The internal security department is sending a very clear and strong message to Fatah to be quiet,” he said.

The shoemaker’s cousin, who actively supports Fatah, said that he had been moving from house to house after Hamas members searched his home on Sunday while he was out.

“They’re afraid that Fatah will take advantage of the chaos to come back to power,” the cousin said. “The message is: Stay at home. Be afraid. We didn’t lose power.”

A few patterns did seem to be emerging. Those who had Fatah and Hamas political affiliations within a single family tended not to be targets. And the cousin said it was not the central Hamas leadership that was looking for him, but only people from the party’s neighborhood branch, confirming, in part, what Mr. Nunu of the Gaza government said.

Several people said Hamas had given children cellphone credits to keep tabs on them. They are called “drones,” and when they pass, everyone knows to stop talking, said a man in Bureij, a town south of Gaza City, who said he had been told by local Hamas supporters to stay inside his house."
LAT: Hamas leadership still in hiding
LAT: debating what happened - and legal and moral implications

WP: tough terrain in Afghanistan hinders counterinsurgency
"Bessey, a tall, athletic-looking West Point graduate from Michigan, glanced over at the stalled convoy while he settled in on a pile of rocks and waited for help to arrive. He vigorously worked a plug of tobacco in the corner of his mouth while he listened to Malik Dalawar, the Khuga Kheyl tribal elder, plead his case.

Thick-fisted and balding, with a stubbly white beard, Dalawar took Bessey's measure with a long, hard look. We need guns, he said. At night, there are few NATO forces or Afghan police or troops around to safeguard local villagers. Dalawar said he and his people needed some way to defend themselves against the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who regularly sweep into the area from Pakistan. But Bessey was not entirely convinced.

Dalawar, a member of the Mohmand tribe, said he is no fan of the Taliban. But in places such as Khuga Kheyl, the pressure on tribal elders to join the Taliban is intense. Electricity is scarce. Paved roads are nonexistent. And insurgent hideouts are abundant on both sides of the border. Dalawar said insurgent commanders regularly try to entice him to join the fight against coalition forces...

"I am an elder, so if someone has a gun and I don't, I can't do anything," Dalawar said.

"If the area is secure, then you don't need a weapon," Bessey replied.

Dalawar tried again: "If something happens and I do not have an AK-47, it could be a problem."

"If you have a weapon, it could be a problem for someone else," Bessey said.

In other parts of Afghanistan, the debate over whether to arm local tribal leaders has been largely settled. In southern Afghanistan and in provinces near the capital, Kabul, where the Taliban is strongest, the training and arming of local tribal militias will soon be underway.

Nevertheless, some Afghans have said they fear that arming local militias will lead to abuses and could reignite the same intertribal frictions that sparked a protracted and brutal civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s."
LAT: the debate about 'public guard' forces
"For many Afghans, the notion of private militias also evokes nightmarish memories of urban battles between warlords in the early 1990s. Entire districts of the capital, still rocket-pocked and battered, serve as a testament to that spasm of factional fighting that helped set the stage for the rise of the Taliban.

Critics also point to a disastrous 2006 effort by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to create an auxiliary force to supplement the regular police. With little or no screening of recruits, large numbers promptly deserted to join the insurgency, taking their government-issued weapons with them.

"We need to protect our country with our police and army, not a bunch of uneducated guys running around with guns," said Khan Mohammed, a businessman in the southern city of Kandahar. "One trained soldier or policeman is better than 10 or even 50 militiamen, because they won't follow any rules."

But to authorities in places like Wardak, where long stretches of the main national highway are littered with the remains of bombed-out convoys and government control is tenuous everywhere except district centers, the idea seems worth trying.

"We need something to fill the gap; there aren't enough police and there aren't enough troops," said Mohammed Halim Fidai, Wardak's governor. "Who is more motivated than someone guarding his home and family?"...

Many of the plan's Afghan backers say, however, that they expect the public guards to be modeled on traditional tribal groups called arbakais -- in no small measure because in rural Afghanistan almost everything breaks down along tribal lines.

Some Afghan officials worry tribal leaders' main goal in supporting the initiative is to expand influence, particularly because money to pay guards will be funneled through tribal councils, which are also supposed to vouch for those picked to serve as "paid volunteers."

Another sensitive point is weaponry. If the public guards are given guns, as expected, it would fly in the face of years of efforts by the Afghan government to disarm private militias. But few believe village-based groups would dare confront the Taliban, even indirectly, unless they have ready access to weapons.

U.S. and NATO officials said they did not envision arming the public guards. But one American military official acknowledged that nearly every village home has weapons, and use of them might be tacitly allowed.

Critics consider that hypocritical."

WP: US continues air strikes in Pakistan
"The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency."
AJE: ...as Zardari meets with tribal leaders in Islamabad

Slate: how many prisoners are still in Guantanamo, who are they, who has been released, and how many have returned to (or joined) terrorist groups?
Slate: ...and how many have gone to rehab?
"Detainees selected to enter Saudi Arabia's counseling program—usually Saudis who committed terror-related crimes and don't repent of their extremist beliefs in one-on-one interviews—are sent to a former desert resort outside Riyadh. There they swim in a pool, play soccer and volleyball, use Playstation, do art therapy, and learn to practice a more moderate form of Islam. They also take classes taught by clerics and social scientists. Coursework covers 10 subjects, from religious concepts like jihad (religious struggle) and takfir (calling someone an unbeliever) and walaah (loyalty) to psychological courses in self-esteem. The clerics impart the laws of Wahhabism—the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia—which prohibit jihad unless there is an official fatwa. At the end of six weeks, students take an exam. If they pass, they may be approved for release. (That is, if they have already served out their original jail sentence.) If not, they have to take the class again.

The goal of the rehab program is to give the "students" a stable social network that doesn't rely on terrorist organizations. Detainees eat and cook communally and live in rooms with fellow prisoners. Family members visit regularly, and detainees can phone them whenever they want. They can even request furlough for weddings and funerals. Families also receive generous stipends, since prisoners can't earn money...

Saudi Arabia isn't the only country to offer rehab to terrorists. Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Sinagpore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and now Iraq have similar programs. But none of these are as elaborate or well-funded as Saudi Arabia's. They have different approaches, too. In Indonesia, they bring in reformed extremists to talk to detainees. (The highest profile convert was Nasir Abas, who split from the group Jemaah Islamiya after the Bali bombing in 2005 and has since become the poster child for rehabilitation.)

So, does rehab work? Recidivism figures come from the local governments, so they aren't particularly reliable. The Saudis claim that, since 2003, they have converted and released 1,400 participants; as of 2008, only 35 of them—or 2 percent—had been rearrested. Of the 121 or so prisoners repatriated from Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia, six have been rearrested. These are, of course, cases of known recidivism. The real numbers may be much higher."

Slate: speaking of social networks - how they influenced soldiers' decisions and survival in the US Civil War
"Costa and Kahn look at the larger stakes decision of whether Union soldiers [in the US Civil War] chose to risk death by remaining to fight or desert and save their own skins. The authors reason that social bonds are stronger among soldiers from similar backgrounds. New England-born soldiers, for example, will feel greater kinship with other New Englanders, the Irish with other Irish, blacksmiths with other blacksmiths. In companies where men had shared backgrounds, fewer soldiers would be expected to abandon their comrades, both because of the greater kinship among men with a sense of social connection and because their shared network would make it easier to punish and censure cheaters back home...

The military service records of every Union soldier—including birthplace, occupation, age; whether he deserted, got captured, won a Medal of Honor—were sent to the National Archives after the war. To test their theory, Costa and Kahn analyzed the records of soldiers in 354 Union companies, a total of 41,000 men. They found that on average, nine out of 100 men deserted. However, in companies populated by a relatively homogeneous group of men—of similar ages, born in the same place, who worked similar jobs before the war—the desertion rate was closer to two in 100. Belief in the cause mattered—enlistees from pro-Lincoln counties were less likely to desert. And the likelihood of catching a bullet by staying and fighting naturally figured into soldiers' decisions to go AWOL as well—desertion rates went down when the war tilted in the Union's favor. But neither belief in the war nor hopes for survival mattered nearly as much as the strength of social bonds in predicting who would stay and fight.

This wasn't because soldiers felt safer surrounded by friends whom they could count on for life-saving favors—a soldier's best chance at survival was to desert, regardless of the strength of his fighting unit. Rather, it was the shame and embarrassment of abandoning one's comrades. A community quickly got word of cowardice as well as heroics through soldiers' letters home, and deserters were nearly 50 percent more likely to pick up and move to a different state after the fighting ended."

BBC: remembering Roma victimization in the Holocaust
"Historians often call it "the forgotten Holocaust". Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers."

NYT: Nkunda caught
wronging rights: why did Rwanda turn on him?
BBC: Congo seeking extradition
Econ: a brief synopsis of the convoluted war

Gdn: Thai gov't turning away migrants from Burma and Bangladesh without enough provisions to survive at sea; more than 400 have died
AJE: immigrants and asylum-seekers break out of holding center on Italian island, march to city hall
"Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention.

They were joined by a few hundred locals who also want the inmates transferred to bigger camps elsewhere in Italy...

The UNHCR said it is only built for 850 people but now has up to 2,000 crammed in, many sleeping under plastic sheets.

Originally a temporary stop for people waiting for transfer to other centres in Italy, the camp's role has changed this year with tough new immigration rules meaning all those rescued are kept in Lampedusa until being granted asylum or expelled...

Italy's interior ministry estimates that 31,700 immigrants landed on Lampedusa in 2008, a 75 per cent increase on the previous year."

AJE: Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will return to peace talks if Philippine gov't puts secession back on the agenda
"The 12,000-strong MILF has...continued the struggle for political autonomy, becoming one of four groups that are fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines."

WP: reviews of 'Slumdog Millionaire' in Mumbai
"Some of Mumbai's poor also are taking offense. On Thursday, a small band of slum residents, organized by a social activist, held up banners reading "Poverty for Sale" and "I am not a dog" outside the home of Anil Kapoor, one of the film's stars.

But many more slum residents -- the people who keep this teeming metropolis running by working as drivers, tea wallahs (or vendors), cobblers, laundry men and tailors -- say it's about time they received some attention in a country that tries to present itself as a success story, better known for its booming economy and its growing roster of millionaires than for the mayhem of its slums, among the world's largest. They say slumdogs are underdogs who deserve a film about their lives."

WP: slums receiving short shrift in Colombia as well
"Yodiris Parra, 32, one of 55,000 people who arrived in Cartagena during the past decade after being displaced by war , says her life has changed very little in recent years.

Her home is a wood-plank shack in the teeming Villa Hermosa slum. There is no running water, and raw sewage flows in the streets outside. Though Parra's husband works in construction, ostensibly benefiting from a building boom, she said that the typical meal she serves her three children is soup filled out with a bone...

As Uribe lobbies Washington for a free trade agreement, held up so far because of Democratic concerns over human rights abuses, he makes the case that his twin policies of fostering a healthy business climate and fighting armed groups have improved the lives of ordinary Colombians...

Here, inside Cartagena's ramparts and along an adjacent stretch of luxury seaside high-rises, it is easy to see signs of that investment and feel the optimism that has come with it...

But to Jesús Mercado, who takes tourists on romantic carriage rides, the city that tourists see is far from being the real Cartagena. "They show the tourists and the foreigners the good face of Cartagena," he said. "But the dark side, the southeast side, they do not show that. They hide it."

Indeed, in this city of 1 million people, 600,000 are poor, and tens of thousands are destitute. The percentage of residents lacking basic necessities -- a yardstick used by demographers to measure poverty in Colombia -- is 26 percent, nearly three times the rate in Bogota, the capital."

BBC: the state of the landless movement in Brazil
Gdn: referendum on new constitution to be held in Bolivia on Sunday

Ind: Castro starting to fade
"On Thursday night, he instructed Cuban officials to start making decisions without taking him into account. In a column titled "Reflections of Comrade Fidel", he suggested his days are numbered, saying Cuban officials "shouldn't feel bound by my occasional 'Reflections', my state of health or my death. I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long time. I receive information and meditate calmly on those events. I expect I won't enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama's first presidential term has ended." The lines had the ring of a farewell."

BBC: with spiraling crime, Mexico considering reinstatement of the death penalty

NYT: hip hop in China
" 'Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll — we can talk about our lives, what we’re thinking about, what we feel,' said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy. 'The Chinese education system doesn’t encourage you to express your own character. They feed you stale rules developed from books passed down over thousands of years. There’s not much opportunity for personal expression or thought; difference is discouraged.' "

NYT: the gag rule is gone!

border crossing [brief encounters of the worst kind]

WP: by way of explanation for lack of posts this week, SV temporarily overwhelmed by hope
Slate: - at least she wasn't alone -
Slate: and is still breaking out in occasional goosebumps
"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

WP: Obama issues orders to close Gitmo and secret prisons, speed withdrawal of troops from Iraq
WP: outgoing ambassador to Iraq warns against pulling out too quickly
WP: ...as the country, and Basra, prepares for provincial elections this month
"Though the Supreme Council has matured, it still exudes the air of the clandestine organization it was in exile. While Sadr's men are often confident in a street-savvy way, and Dawa's are sometimes cerebral, even aloof, the Supreme Council's officials tend to look at any question with squinting suspicion. They still push an unabashedly Shiite message, even as Iraq haltingly recovers from sectarian war."

WP: atrocities coming to light, now that Israel out of Gaza (but article very short on details)
"Early Wednesday, Israel completed its pullout from the Gaza Strip after a military offensive that began Dec. 27. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed and the operation caused an estimated $2 billion in property damage to the already impoverished territory. Thirteen Israelis died during the offensive.

'We don't have any illusion. We know they will come back. But thank God they are finally gone,' said Adel Hamed, 34, of Gaza City. 'If they were trying to destroy us, they failed.' "
LAT: one family's horrific experience of being gunned down trying to escape, and left to die
" 'It was so terrifying,' Shurrab said the next day from his hospital bed in Khan Yunis. 'I shouted at the soldiers to help us, but no answer.'

With the body of [his son] Kassab lying in the street, Shurrab said, he and [his other son] Ibrahim sat bleeding in their car for 20 hours.

Shurrab called the local ambulance service and was told that they were waiting for coordination with the Israeli army so they could come safely to the scene. He phoned his relatives, who called the Red Cross and gave his number to local journalists.

As night approached and his bleeding son grew weaker, he spoke with Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic and several local radio stations, pleading to be rescued.

Ibrahim complained to his father that he felt cold.

"I could not do anything for my son," Shurrab said.

Around midnight, the cellphone battery died. Soon afterward, Ibrahim stopped responding.

"I waited for my fate," Shurrab said, crying.

Israeli troops allowed an ambulance through at 11 a.m. Saturday. Ambulance driver Mahmoud Heikal said he saw Israeli troops watching from a nearby house as he approached the red Land Rover. Kassab Shurrab lay dead in the street. Ibrahim had bled to death in the car."
Gdn: and this family lost 48 members
AJE: Amnesty Int'l joins other groups in denouncing Israeli gov't for white phosphorous weapon use in Gaza

NYT: Taliban rules everywhere NATO doesn't
"The commanders here call the current situation “stalemate,” meaning they can hold what they have but cannot do much else. Of the 20,000 British, American and other troops here, only roughly 300 — a group of British Royal Marines — can be moved around the region to strike the Taliban. All the other units must stay where they are, lest the area they hold slip from their grasp."
Gdn: US accused of killing 25 civilians after bombing called in

AJE: civilians trapped between LTTE and gov't forces in Sri Lanka
AJE: gov't trying to get 250,000 into a "safety zone"
"The Sri Lankan air force on Wednesday dropped leaflets in the region telling civilians to move to the 35sq km zone until the army can transport them to safer locations."

WP: Rwanda deploys troops into Congo
"On Tuesday morning, U.N. soldiers reported that 1,500 to 2,000 Rwandan troops entered eastern Congo around the village of Kibati, which is just north of the main eastern city of Goma, Dietrich said. They were headed north toward the town of Rutshuru, a stronghold of Nkunda's rebels."
wronging rights: there is cause for pessimism

WP: with Ethiopians out of Somalia, Islamists are in but fractured
"After the deaths of at least 10,000 people and the displacement of 1 million, Ethiopia and the United States are now supporting a political compromise that stands to return to power some of the same moderate Islamist leaders they originally ousted.

Those leaders...face an even worse version of the same problem they had when they first tried to govern: how to control the Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist group. After fighting a two-year-long insurgency, the Shabab has split off from the core movement and become more radical and battle-hardened, with various factions controlling much of southern Somalia.

Militarily, the Shabab is now the biggest threat to the fragile transitional government and the moderate Islamists seeking to become part of it.

At the same time, the Shabab is showing signs of internal divisions. And with the Ethiopians' exit, it is facing an array of new challengers, including local militias and warlords with such nicknames as White-Eyed and Greasy who are restyling themselves as Islamists...

In the south, for instance, a group known as the Juba Valley Resistance Movement is marketing itself as an anti-Shabab militia allied with moderate Islamists. "The international community needs to support us," said Mohamed Amin Abdullahi Osman, its leader. "We are against Shabab and want to defeat it."

In the same region, a warlord named Barre Hiiraale who was ousted by the Shabab in October is attempting to revamp his image by associating himself with an old and widely respected moderate Muslim group, al-Sunna wal Gama'a. Hiiraale's militia has successfully fought the Shabab in several towns in southern Somalia in recent weeks...

Though Somalia's fundamental social structure is based on clan, Islamic scholars and charities representing a spectrum of beliefs have long played a respected and, until recently, apolitical role in society.

A more political version of Islam began to take hold after Somalia's last central government collapsed in 1991 and peaked with the Islamic Courts' brief takeover of Mogadishu.

The movement's leaders never settled on what version of Islam they represented -- some militiamen shut cinemas and frowned on music, for instance -- but the group still managed to open ports and get business going and to establish a measure of security in the capital for the first time in 15 years.

It also accomplished the minor miracle of uniting clans under a shared religious order, an idea that endures.

But the Ethiopian invasion fragmented the movement, scattering its leaders to Djibouti and Eritrea. The Shabab remained, gaining a kind of popularity by default among Somalis who did not necessarily care for its radical ideology but were glad someone was fighting Ethiopia."
LAT: militias may be recruiting as far away as Minnesota
"The youths, who have U.S. passports, followed a well-trod trail from Minneapolis to Mogadishu. Another group took off in August. The FBI believes that over the last two years, 12 to 20 Minnesotans have gone to Somalia.

As a result, a joint terrorism task force led by the FBI is scrambling to determine if extremist Islamic groups are seeking recruits here in the nation's largest Somali community -- as well as in San Diego, Seattle, Boston and other cities."

Gdn: talks fail in Zimbabwe
Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, described the failure of 12 hours of talks brokered by regional leaders as "probably the darkest day of our lives" for his Movement for Democratic Change and for the nation, which is hit by mass hunger, cholera and hyperinflation.

LAT: desertions up from the FARC
"Added patrols and checkpoints also created supply problems for the rebels, who depended on sympathetic farmers or rebel family members to bring food and clothing to drop points in the zone.

At the same time, the army stepped up its campaign to urge rebels to lay down their arms and join the demobilization program, promising cash for intelligence. The message was written on thousands of leaflets thrown from helicopters over the rugged mountains ringing this town, and read out regularly over the 6th Army Brigade's radio station in Ibague. The army says it even knows the decimated 25th Front's remaining soldiers and unit commanders: Accumulated intelligence has enabled it to re-create an organizational chart...

Ernesto was reluctant to dial the phone number given out over the radio, fearing that he could end up being killed in the process, a fear heightened by the recent scandal of "false positives," in which the Colombian army killed civilians and later claimed them as battle casualties.

But he called and agreed to meet an army patrol at a predetermined location. He later surrendered his machine gun and was promised a $500 reward. For providing intelligence that led to the capture of an extortion specialist known as Chucho, he was promised a second sum of $25,000. He said, smiling, that he was still "patiently waiting" for the government to pay up.

'The FARC treated its people well. They taught me how to read,' Ernesto said. 'But it was time to start a new life. I want to be an engineer.' "
LAT: but they seem to be doing well just over the Venezuelan borde
"Although the border area has long absorbed Colombian refugees fleeing decades of war, members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have become visible as never before in the last two or three years, buying supplies, looking for medical assistance and forging relationships with indigenous women, said Venezuelan Congressman Arcadio Montiel, a Wayuu Indian.

Leaders of several Indian communities clustered around this town in a wild rain forest area that forms the border with Colombia told The Times over the weekend that the FARC's presence is harming their culture and youth.

"They have replaced the caciques, or chiefs, as authority figures and so who do the youths now want to emulate? The rebels," said Javier Armato, a Yupa Indian who is a former Zulia state deputy and onetime Chavez supporter...

Montiel and several community leaders say the FARC operates camps in the Perija Mountains to the west, where they say the rebels rest and recruit and train Venezuelan Indian youths...

But Indian leaders here say the rebels are slowly corrupting their cultures with arms, drugs and values that are anathema to their ways. They are also slowly taking control of Indian lands by squatting and by marrying indigenous women

On many Saturdays, rebel mule trains descend from the rugged Perija Mountains through the two dozen Indian communities that surround this town, indigenous leaders said.

After parking their mules in foothill pastures, the rebels continue on by bus into Machiques, the nearest big city, to make telephone calls, run business errands and go to a market, they said. The supplies are taken back up into the mountains.

At other times, they suddenly appear at doorways, seeking food, clothing or medicines.

"They don't pay for anything, it's always for 'solidarity.' But you can't say no to them. Nor can you complain about them to others, because someone might inform on you," said one indigenous leader, who requested anonymity because of security concerns."

LAT: violence, tension surround approaching referendum for Chavez
"The fiery Chavez has at times used violent rhetoric, including the threat of "civil war," to warn of chaos if he loses the vote next month. In a speech Saturday in Carabobo state, he vowed to break up student protests with tear gas."

Gdn: protests in Iceland rattle coalition

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Gdn: travel recommendation - next time you're in Mexico, don't miss the narco bling museum

The Onion: SV has an extra ticket for this show if you're interested

freeloading [up to here]

Gdn: Israel and the US agree on monitoring scheme for Egypt-Gaza border...
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, and Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, signed the agreement for Washington to provide technical and intelligence co-operation, as well as logistical support, for monitors on the Egypt-Gaza border – a move designed to address one of the principal Israeli demands: that any truce with Hamas include measures to stop it from rearming by smuggling weapons.

Israel said the agreement would commit the US and Nato to track and intercept weapons shipments to Gaza from Iran or anywhere else... The deal could lead to the reopening of Gaza's border with Egypt, a key Hamas demand. The Islamist group also wants Gaza's crossings into Israel reopened after three years of economic blockade. This is crucial to reviving the territory's economy but Israel is reluctant to allow it.
NYT: ...but details still to be worked out, while competing meetings are held by Hamas in Qatar and the Palestinian Authority in Kuwait
The agreement will provide American technical assistance, as well as monitors, to crack down on the tunnels. The composition of the monitoring force was not yet clear, as Israeli and American diplomats were still working out, a senior American official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ms. Rice said ending the smuggling of weapons from countries like Iran was one of the conditions for a cease-fire and that European allies including Britain, Germany and France were likely to join in the monitoring effort...

At a meeting organized by Qatar, a top exiled Hamas leader rejected Israeli terms for a cease-fire and called for increased resistance. “Israel will not be able to destroy our resistance, and the United States will not be able to dictate us their rules,” the leader, Khaled Meshal, said in defiant remarks broadcast worldwide. “Arab countries should help Hamas to fight against the death of civilian Palestinians.”...

The once dominant regional leadership of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Jordan, tried to undermine this meeting, refused to attend, and pressed Arab states to stay away, too. They insist that the lines of communication remain open with Israel and they have each struggled to deny Hamas the kind of legitimacy the conference appeared to confer on Mr. Meshal.
Slate: how to really close the Gaza tunnels; options from buffer zones to drone-operated gradiometry
CSM: Israeli strikes on UN compound, hospitals may be part of last-minute frenzy, reveal points of tension within leadership pre-election
The Israeli strikes on what political officials said were unintended targets in the Gaza campaign underscore what some analysts see as a furious drive by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to achieve as many last-minute blows to Hamas as possible before a cease-fire is reached. And at this stage of the war, fissures are emerging within the Israeli civilian and military leadership.

"It's the final push to make Hamas understand, either they make a decision for a cease-fire, or it will be difficult to survive," says Shmuel Rosner, a leading opinion maker and journalist. "They need to show seriousness so Hamas doesn't interpret Israel's waiting of the last few days as reluctance to continue the operation."

While Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, apologized to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon for Israel's strike on their Gaza headquarters, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took a different approach. He said the building had been used by Palestinian militants to strike Israeli forces... Those two points provide a window into the differences that have developed at the top of the Israel political structure, run by an unlikely troika of Olmert, Mr. Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – none of whom are allied.

With an election set for Feb. 10, the political rivals have become even more assertive in claiming their share of the credit for the war.
Gdn: Israeli use of white phosphorus harder to deny in the YouTube era
CSM: A look at Gaza through Egyptian hospitals...
NYT: ...versus a (guided) tour of Gaza outskirts
Israelis face harsh censure abroad for their tactics, but a visit by 10 foreign reporters to this position arranged by the Israeli military showed an army that feels serenely confident that it is doing the right thing. The army, which has banned foreign journalists from entering Gaza on their own, has begun taking small groups to outer positions for briefings with commanders in the field...

The war has been successful, but not necessarily decisive, from Israel’s perspective, Colonel Herzi said, especially as talk of a cease-fire has grown.

“I know that in the end Hamas will say they won,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what will be the end of this war. We know they know today that they have a problem. Will they put down their weapons forever? For sure, no, but I think they have learned a lesson from this war.”

LAT: as security improves in Baghdad, "new cars are the latest must-have accessory for the well-to-do"

WP: CIA Director says Obama has no intentions to investigate waterboarding

NYT: military planners preparing troop shifts for Obama administration
The broad outlines of the military plan for Iraq presented to Mr. Obama in December envisioned withdrawing two brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, over the next six months, officials said.

[American military officials] have made clear that the plan does not set forth as fast a withdrawal as Mr. Obama pledged during the presidential campaign, when he repeatedly promised to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his taking office, or by May 2010...

The current military plan for Iraq was drawn up to meet the recent status-of-forces agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government that calls for both shorter and longer timetables than Mr. Obama’s campaign promise. Under that agreement, all United States combat troops are to be out of Iraqi cities by June and all American forces are to be out of Iraq entirely by the end of 2011. That agreement, however, can be renegotiated.

Even as Mr. Obama prepares for the drawdown in Iraq, some influential Democrats and national security experts have begun voicing concern about his willingness to send up to 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, where the United States has been at war for more than seven years. They say that Mr. Obama has yet to make clear his overall goals beyond calling for more forces, money and diplomacy in an increasingly violent, ungovernable country that the military says presents even more problems than Iraq.
WP: concerns that troop surge in Afghanistan not enough, as obstacles are high
Officials are also worried about other issues: the upcoming Afghan presidential election and the revived hostility between Pakistan and India caused by a deadly terrorist rampage in Mumbai in November, could inject unpredictable tensions and competing priorities into the region just as a new administration in Washington tries to focus afresh on the anti-terrorist struggle here.
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Unlike the troop "surge" in Iraq, the doubling of the U.S. military presence on the ground in Afghanistan is not temporary, military officials said. Rather, troops will maintain a protracted presence focused on securing and holding villages currently dominated by the Taliban.

One conundrum, U.S. military officials say, is that the expanded forces will have to come in with heavy firepower and aggressive military tactics -- likely to create more civilian casualties and public animosity -- in order to secure rural districts so they can bring in services, aid and governance aimed at winning over the local populace.
LAT: another obstacle: the weather
A helicopter carrying one of Afghanistan's most senior army generals and 12 soldiers crashed in bad weather Thursday, killing all aboard, the Afghan military said.

Taliban insurgents claimed to have downed the Russian-made chopper in western Afghanistan, but the military said in a statement that poor visibility caused the craft to slam into a jagged mountainside. Much of Afghanistan is enveloped in rain and snow, which has been hampering military transport as well as civilian flights. The nation's military relies largely on a poorly maintained fleet of aging Russian aircraft.

It was one of the largest losses of life in a single incident that the Afghan army has suffered in recent years. The general who died, Fazl Ahmad Sayar, was one of four regional commanders. He was in charge of army operations in the west of the country.
WP: Britain's Secretary of Defense criticizes NATO members for "freeloading" on the US
The Obama team hopes to complete work on the new strategy [for Afghanistan] by the NATO summit in early April. European and Pentagon officials suggested yesterday that alliance members may be waiting to consider new commitments until they hear what he has to say.

The NATO force in Afghanistan has long been divided between those who conduct the bulk of combat operations -- including Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, in addition to the United States -- and those such as Germany whose operations are restricted and whose zones of operations are centered in more peaceful areas...

Even as Hutton was delivering his speech, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband wrote in a Guardian newspaper column yesterday that the notion of a "war on terror" was "misleading and mistaken." Defining it as "a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil" played into the hands of extremists by unifying groups such as al-Qaeda and Hezbollah with little in common, Miliband said.

NYT: Pakistan arrests 124 people possibly linked to Mumbai attacks, forms high-level investigation committee to examine information provided by India
CSM: India demands extradition
Pakistan announced that it has arrested 71 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba and detained 124 more in an effort to crack down on the Islamic militant group believed to be responsible for November's attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai.

India's foreign minister insisted that Pakistan must extradite the suspects for trial in India, backing down from his earlier statement that India might accept a trial in Pakistan.

NYT: US freezes assets for Burmese businessmen and their companies aiding the military junta

BBC: Massive, repeated displacement in rebel-controlled Sri Lanka, says Red Cross

NYT: three Red Cross workers kidnapped in southern Philippines
The Red Cross in Manila said its three workers were in Sulu to inspect a jailhouse as part of its efforts to improve prisons in the Philippines. Richard Gordon, chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross and a member of the Senate, attributed the kidnappings to Abu Sayyaf, Reuters reported.

El Paso Times: Vigilante group threatens to confront lawlessness in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
AP: Mexico's liaisons to Interpol charged with selling confidential information
Time: Narcos attack TV station in Mexico

NYT: Zimbabwean opposition members and human rights activists allege torture
Chris Dhlamini, an aide to Zimbabwe’s opposition leader and prime minister in waiting, Morgan Tsvangirai, said in an affidavit that his head was pushed down into a sink full of water until he believed that he would drown.

They are among more than a dozen activists who say they were tortured to obtain false confessions after they were abducted and detained for weeks in secret locations by agents of President Robert Mugabe’s government. They are now imprisoned in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, accused of crimes related to acts of sabotage and terrorism against the government.
WP: nevertheless, Tsvangirai remains committed to power-sharing deal, as the "best means of preventing Zimbabwe from becoming a failed state"

BBC: LRA rebels in new attacks
[S]ince Christmas Day, suspected LRA rebels have been attacking villages across hundreds of kilometres in an area stretching from the Central African Republic (CAR) though Sudan and into DR Congo... The government of the CAR has sent troops to its border with DR Congo in an effort to push back the rebels, the country's defence minister said on Wednesday.

NYT: Sudanese opposition leader arrested, air strikes on Darfur admitted

AP (via Wronging Rights): Congolese rebel leader flips, wants to join government against Rwandan militias
Bosco Ntaganda [leader of a splinter rebel faction in eastern Congo] held landmark talks with Interior Minister Celestin Mboyo in the eastern town of Goma and said in a statement afterward that his forces are now "at the disposal of the Congolese armed forces high command."

It was unclear, however, what effect — if any — the move will have on the deeply entrenched and complex crisis in eastern Congo. Though Ntaganda's statement was signed by 10 other rebel officials who identified themselves as colonels and lieutenant colonels, nobody knows how powerful Ntaganda really is or how many forces he control.

BBC: in Somalia, Islamist militia targets its first politician, for "apostasy"
BBC: and UN agrees to Somalia peacekeeping force "in principle," as Ethiopia pulls out and power-sharing talks appear to be going well
Only about 3,600 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, from an intended 8,000-strong AU force, are deployed in Mogadishu.

Last month UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said few countries were willing to send troops to Somalia, as there was no peace to keep.

Analysts had feared the withdrawal of the Ethiopians would lead to a power vacuum and fighting between rival Islamist factions.

But at the moment all factions - whether they back the peace process with the government or not - seem to be working together.

NYT: tensions in Chechnya after early release of Russian Army colonel for killing a Chechen woman
The former commander, Yuri D. Budanov, a decorated Russian Army colonel before he was stripped of his rank, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003, but a court in the Ulyanovsk region agreed last month to grant him early parole for good behavior. A last-minute appeal by the victim’s lawyer failed to keep him in custody...

He has admitted to abducting Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen woman, and strangling her in a fit of rage in his quarters in March 2000, thinking her to be an enemy sniper. In proceedings that highlighted the capriciousness of Russian justice, he was initially acquitted on grounds that he was temporarily insane at the time of the killing, and convicted in a second trial.

in a region where loyalties to clan can supersede national pride and murderous blood feuds can rage for decades, some say Mr. Budanov’s release — just under a year and a half before the end of his prison term — now threatens to disrupt Chechnya’s tenuous stability.

“This will only benefit the militants, because for them there is no clearer demonstration of the futility of appealing to the Russian authorities,” said Stanislav Y. Markelov, a lawyer for Ms. Kungayeva’s family.

NYT: Police using tear gas against Lithuanian rioters

SF Gate: Killing of unarmed man by public transit officer in Oakland brings back memories of Rodney King, riots... and a murder charge against the officer
The unarmed man killed by former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform early New Year's Day put up a brief struggle with officers but had been restrained and had both arms behind him when he was shot in the back, police investigators said.

The conclusion by Oakland police, contained in a legal filing made public Wednesday, contributed to Alameda County prosecutors' decision to charge Mehserle, 27, with murdering 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward.

It was an extraordinary decision. Several legal experts said they could recall no instance of a police officer in California being charged with murder for an on-duty incident, and Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said he had never brought such a case in his 14 years on the job.