"The talks in Egypt center on the question of how to keep Hamas from smuggling weapons across the Egypt-Gaza border. A senior Israeli official said Israel and Egypt are in basic agreement on a plan that would allow the European Union and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to share responsibility for monitoring the border and the crossing point at Rafah...
On Monday, Israel carried out more than 60 airstrikes, continuing to bomb tunnels along the border, as well as homes of Hamas leaders. There was intense fighting reported around Gaza City as Israel tightened its cordon on Gaza's largest population center, home to 400,000 of Gaza's 1.5 million residents...
Officials and analysts say Israel's top three political leaders disagree over how the remainder of the war should play out. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is said to favor an expansion, while Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are believed to be more hesitant. Barak has aggressively pushed the talks in Egypt; Livni has said that Israel can soon declare victory and withdraw. The three run the country together and must achieve consensus before Israel can act...
Hamas and its allies continued to fire rockets into southern Israel on Monday, launching more than 20. There were no reports of major injuries, and the number was significantly down from earlier in the war, when Hamas was launching 40 per day or more."
Slate: how rockets are aimed
NYT: ...and warfare waged in urban areas
Gdn: displacement continues
Salon: Waltz with Bashir won best foreign film at the globes
BBC: Obama to sign order to close Guántanamo; stop torture
WP: ...and will double troops in Afghanistan
LAT: but debate about how they should be deployed: to control the Pakistan border, or to protect civilians?
"Officers agree that any strategy will have to include a mix of population security and border control, in addition to training the Afghan police and army. But the question for the new administration will be: What should get top priority?
There are about 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with an additional 20,000 scheduled to deploy this year. Current plans call for sending some of the additional forces to the border, but to use the majority of the new troops to safeguard villages and cities.
"There is a primacy on securing the population," said Army Maj. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, director of operations for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. "The approach is to reach out to the population, get into the villages, and separate them from the insurgency."
But behind the scenes, not everyone agrees. Experts with opposing views spoke on condition of anonymity, citing their lack of authority to publicly address an internal debate. Obama advisors also spoke on condition of anonymity because he doesn't take office until Jan. 20.
Some of those skeptical of the focus on securing towns and villages note that even with the planned buildup, there will be far fewer U.S. and local forces in Afghanistan than there were in Iraq during the 2007 troop surge, covering a much larger territory. Afghanistan's population is more rural and dispersed, making local security improvements more challenging."
LAT: indeed, Taliban launches brazen attack against Pakistani military post
but: "While stepping up their campaign against government troops, the insurgents also employ methods of baroque cruelty to intimidate civilians in the tribal areas. Hospital authorities in Khar, the main town in the Bajaur region, said over the weekend that militants had chopped off the ears of five captured members of a local committee organized to keep the Taliban out of town."
LAT: embed with the Taliban on the Afghan side
"Some Taliban commanders considered The Times' request for safe passage into their territory, only to reject a visit as too risky. But the Ghazni Talibs, eager to show the extent of their control, finally agreed...
In Ghazni province, at least, the Taliban militants are not frightened fighters skulking in caves, sneaking out to ambush and then scurrying off to another mountain hide-out. They live comfortably in the farming villages where many of them were born, holding territory, recruiting and training new troops, reveling in what they see as God's gift of inevitable victory against heathen foreign occupiers.
"In the early days, there were many spies, so we had to move around in small groups," Ahmadi said. "But now we are in groups of 300 or 400. We have no problems."...
Some accuse the Taliban of press-ganging villagers into the fight. But the Ghazni Talibs claim that eager volunteers swell their ranks by 10% a month, and insist that they turn many away...
Despite efforts by the U.S.-led military coalition to disrupt Taliban commanders' ability to direct military operations from a distance, the guerrillas appeared to be in regular contact with their leaders, and acted on their orders...
One Talib showed a voter registration card with his photo on it. Another said he used to work as a laborer for the American military in Ghazni on a Provincial Reconstruction Team."
WP: new rules lead US troops to shift tactics, coordinate with 'unreliable' locals
LAT: Sunni block in Iraq parliament splits over selecting new speaker
LAT: new political candidates campaign
"As Iraq nears its provincial elections day, Jan. 31, residents are faced with ballots that could make even a seasoned voter's head spin. In total across the country, 14,400 candidates representing 407 political entities are vying for 440 seats.
Fourteen of Iraq's 18 provinces are holding elections, and the crowded field in some of them -- in Baghdad alone, there are more than 2,400 candidates -- is only one of the challenges facing those seeking office. They also must deal with security concerns and questionable campaign tactics of some contenders who are giving away cooking oil, blankets and cash."
WP: not everyone gains political power through elections: the trajectory of one insurgent to local authority
"Khalil's ascent here is a legacy of the war that has all but ended and the struggle that has begun in Iraq, shaped by the expediency of American tactics to quell the insurgency and the combustible, shifting landscape those choices have left behind. War and occupation shattered old notions of power here, embedded in patronage and tradition. In places like Thuluyah, new leaders and forces are emerging, redrawing the maps of towns and regions that, in quick succession, have passed from the hands of Saddam Hussein, through the throes of the insurgency and into today's far murkier contest. Fierce in its customs, Thuluyah is a microcosm of Sunni Muslim regions of the country, residents like to say. If so, the town is a sober harbinger."
WP: ...included imposing brutal justice
"During the military operation, in which three Iraqis were killed, the soldiers relied on a Thuluyah resident as an informer, a young man named Sabah. In the aftermath, as tribal law filled an anarchic void, villagers declared that the informer's father had to kill his son, or they would kill the entire family. He and another son did."
LAT: Kurdish leader accuses Maliki of accumulating too much power
BBC: Ethiopian troops out of Mogadishu
BBC: ...while Islamists clash 500km north
HuffPo: interview with Nkunda
"Q. There have been terrible stories about how women are treated in Congo, especially how there have been mass rapes.
N. You are in the area under CNDP control. Ask the women who have been raped.
I cannot believe that they are raped here and then going to be treated in Goma or Bukavu. But if you go to Goma or Bukavu [under FARDC control] you are going to see hospitals full of women raped. Go to Rumangabo and they will tell you that the area under CNDP control is the most secure area in Congo.
They say that we massacre Hutu tribes. The executive secretary of CNDP is a Hutu."NYT: unclear what the state of the CNDP is
"Mr. Ntaganda declared himself the leader of the C.N.D.P. last Monday and claims to have taken a significant portion of the group’s fighters with him. General Nkunda insists that he remains in control and has tried to play down the disagreement. He told Reuters in an interview that Mr. Ntaganda had been “disrespectful” but remained a member of the rebel group, and that a commission of rebel leaders had been sent “to listen to him, to bring him back to his senses.”
The fracture seems to have been building for some time as the two men disagreed over how far the rebellion should go to achieve its aims — and in some ways over what those aims actually were, according to diplomats and analysts in the region. Mr. Ntaganda wanted to push harder and overrun Goma last year, and he told some of the rebellion’s backers that he was disappointed when General Nkunda heeded United Nations demands to hold back, according to human rights investigators.
General Nkunda, meanwhile, was dismayed by the barrage of international criticism that came after a massacre by his troops in November that was led by Mr. Ntaganda, according to a close ally of the general who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At least 150 people were killed in about 24 hours in the town of Kiwanja in early November. A report in The New York Times and an investigation by Human Rights Watch based on witnesses’ accounts found that fighters went door to door, killing mostly unarmed boys and young men, accusing them of being enemy fighters."
LAT: meanwhile, further north, LRA on killing spree"By the time the rampage ended, 254 people were dead in nine villages in a string of attacks that lasted several days, officials in Doruma estimate.
This troubled area of northeastern Congo, where regional conflicts have left 5 million people dead over 12 years, is now home base for one of Africa's longest-running and most insidious rebel movements: the Lord's Resistance Army, a fearsome group from neighboring Uganda that claims to demand strict adherence to the Ten Commandments.
A surprise joint offensive last month by the armies of Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo had sought to crush the rebel militia, notorious for preying on children, in its Congo hide-out.
But rather than kill the LRA's elusive leader, Joseph Kony, airstrikes against half a dozen rebel camps in the dense forests here appear to have only given new life to an old conflict, turning Uganda's civil war into a growing regional crisis.
After a lull in attacks over the last two years, the rebel army -- estimated at 600 fighters -- has split into small bands, scattering in different directions and terrorizing civilian populations with the most brutal massacres by the militia since 2004."
BBC: now the LRA has called for a ceasefire
"The LRA insists the International Criminal Court must drop warrants of arrest for Mr Kony and his top commanders before they can sign the peace deal."
Ind: ICC pre-trial of Bemba for atrocities in the CAR
"He is accused of leading his militia, the Congolese Liberation Movement, on a campaign of rape, murder and torture in neighbouring Central African Republic in 2002. Mr Bemba's forces went on the rampage after answering an appeal from then president of CAR Ange-Félix Patassé, who was threatened by a coup."
wronging rights: other ongoing investigations and upcoming trials
"Serbia would like everyone to know that the million euro reward it is offering for information leading to the arrest of Ratko Mladic (pictured above left) is tax free. So if you're holding onto information about the whereabouts of ICTY-indicted Mladic because of concerns about the tax implications, you can go right ahead and notify the authorities."
LAT: Colombian indigenous communities resist armed groups' presence
"After word spread across this Indian reservation that seven people had been kidnapped by leftist rebels, the community's unarmed "indigenous guard" sprang into action.
Within minutes, hundreds of men, women and children were out on roads and pathways searching for the hostages, communicating by radio, cellphone and shouts. Many held lanterns that, as the search continued after nightfall, made the rescue party seem an eerily glowing centipede snaking up and down hillsides.
Soon, the guards had found the hostages. The rebels were holding them in a school, which was quickly surrounded by hundreds of Indians, who, lanterns held high, kept a silent vigil. A guerrilla leader threatened violence and fired his weapon into the air, but no one budged.
After a brief standoff, the unarmed Indians secured the hostages' release.
The incident in November was a dramatic example of how many of Colombia's 92 indigenous communities use a common front and an almost Gandhian stance of nonviolence to coexist with, and sometimes prevail over, the rebels, drug traffickers, paramilitary fighters and government soldiers who for decades have battled one another in the country...
After the hostages were released, the guerrillas were allowed to flee. All except for one: a member of the Jambalo community who was a FARC collaborator. In a subsequent trial, he was banished from the reservation for 15 years as punishment, said Dagua, the tribe's leader."
BBC: Sri Lankan journalist assassinated
The Sunday Leader: he wrote his own obituary (via Paul Staniland)
"In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last."
LAT: mafia competition in Italy
The killings in September, recounted in interviews by senior antimafia officials, were gory evidence of conflict between the Neapolitan mafia, known as the Camorra, and Nigerian gangsters who play a growing role in Italy's drug and prostitution rackets.
This landscape of change and fear has been shaped by a singular juxtaposition: One of Europe's biggest concentrations of African immigrants has risen in the heart of Camorra turf.
Nigerian gangsters have made Castel Volturno a European headquarters. In the 1990s, demand boomed here for African prostitutes -- prosecutors call it "the Naomi Campbell phenomenon." Camorra clans "rented" turf to Nigerian pimps, a line of work that Neapolitan gangsters disdain.
And as cocaine flows increasingly to Europe through West Africa, Nigerians have graduated from their previous role as smuggling "mules" and pay the Camorra for a cut of street trafficking action.
'The Camorra worked well with the Nigerians at first,' said Antonio Laudati, a top Justice Ministry official who led a major prosecution of the Nigerian mafia last year. 'They were low-cost labor. They were well-received because they were cheap and very loyal. But then the Nigerians started to rise to a new level.'
That coincided with the disarray of the region's dominant clan from the nearby town of Casal di Principe. As older Casalesi bosses went to prison, a new generation of swaggering, hard-partying gunslingers stepped up. During the last year, they embarked on a punitive campaign against Italian turncoats and foreign rivals, killing nine people..."
LAT: Vatican floats excommunication as possible punishment for drug traffickers
"But the Roman Catholic Church's severest form of rebuke would probably have little effect on traffickers and killers who lack a religious conscience, the Vatican's No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, acknowledged."
NYT (dated): homicides by black teens has increased since 2000
NYT (freakonomics blog): but, beware the graphics
"1) Compared to the early 1990’s, what is happening now is much smaller in scale.
2) When put side-by-side with no trend in the homicide rates of blacks aged 18 to 24 (the gray circles in the graph), the blip by 14- to 17-year-olds doesn’t seem so frightening.
And the most important (and I would say devious) difference between the two figures:
3) The numbers in The New York Times graphic and most of the James Alan Fox report fail to control for the change in the population of young black males over this time period."NYT: sex work near the US military base in South Korea
"Now, a group of former prostitutes in South Korea have accused some of their country’s former leaders of a different kind of abuse: encouraging them to have sex with the American soldiers who protected South Korea from North Korea. They also accuse past South Korean governments, and the United States military, of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s through the 1980s, working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free for American troops."
Gdn: mass grave of Red Army victims uncovered in Poland
"A mass grave dating from the second world war and containing the bodies of at least 1,800 German men, women and children has been unearthed by construction workers in northern Poland.
The discovery was made in the town of Malbork, which was called Marienburg and was part of Germany during the second world war, by workers building a luxury hotel at the foot of the town's 13th-century fortress.
The bodies are believed to be German civilians who disappeared after the Soviet army captured the town as it marched on Berlin in 1945. Many skulls were found with bullet holes in them, suggesting executions had taken place, a local official said."
Econ: insurgent art"The poster collection in “Off the Wall”, comes from the 20-odd factions of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and shows that the shifting alliance of leftists and other radicals had artistic flair from the outset. Hizbullah, the Communists, the Syrian nationalists and the PLO, among others, harnessed contemporary graphic design and made it their own: Jerusalem in glowing colours features alongside clenched fists and AK-47s; the four-sided Syrian symbol rises like a sun; car bombs go bang like Roy Lichtenstein paintings."
++
preparing for transition:
Slate: looking back at the top 25 Bushisms
WP: from his final press conference, in which he acknowledges 'disappointments,' here's a late entry:
"In attempting to wish successor Barack Obama well, he found himself saying: 'I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best.' "
Slate: how does Obama's moving day work, anyhow?
No comments:
Post a Comment