experiments in policing [secret's out]

Gdn: Sri Lanka rejects truce offer by LTTE
WP: behind recent military gains
[The two rice farmers] are among an estimated 45,000 largely Sinhalese villagers who have joined what is known here as the Civil Defense Forces, Sri Lanka's version of the National Guard, a paramilitary civilian group whose job is to defend villages, often in areas that have been attacked by ethnic Tamil separatist rebels in Asia's longest-running insurgency. After a few weeks of weapons training, the villagers are given uniforms, guns and a monthly salary of about $140.

"We know our roads. We know the jungle. And we are the most successful when it comes to saving our villages," said Kanthi, 36, wearing a uniform top over her skirt, a rifle slung across her chest. The mother of two is among 400 civilians in Periyaulukkulama, 15 miles west of Vavuniya, some of whom joined forces after their village was attacked on the Sinhalese New Year in April 2007, reportedly by rebels, who killed four female civilian officers...

The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who came to power in 2005 amid a wave of Sinhalese nationalism, has had a free hand to crush the separatists, diplomats here said. The majority of Sri Lankans were apparently fed up with the war that has killed at least 70,000 people and seemed willing to give the new president any powers necessary to bring about its end.

In just two years, the country enlarged its military by 40 percent, adding as many as 7,000 recruits a month. Officials sent text messages to youths and put patriotic pop hits on the radio. Sri Lanka's military now has about 300,000 troops, military officials said.

The country's defense minister, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a brother of the president who once lived in California, is seen as the main architect of the government's new strategy.

"We gave clear instructions: no cease-fires, no negotiations until we defeat the LTTE completely," he said in an interview. "The LTTE would use cease-fires and peace talks to reorganize and resupply weapons. There have been five presidents, eight governments, different political parties and different personalities, dozens of negotiations and more than 10 cease-fires. Everything failed. After every period of negotiation, they came back stronger. We decided enough was enough."...

Some say the Tamil Tigers, as the group is commonly known, has grown weaker and lost popularity among civilians for its practice of forcing every family to send at least one fighter, often a child, into battle.

...the Sri Lankan government forged new relationships with China and Pakistan after the United States cut off direct military aid last year, mainly because of alleged human rights abuses and the use of children by a breakaway rebel faction now under the control of the government in the east, according to a State Department human rights report.
LAT: recruitment another factor, despite high casualties
...it's the rice- and coconut-growing areas such as Kuliyapitiya district with its 150,000 population that have paid the highest toll. The government's all-volunteer army has found fertile ground for recruiting in rural areas where job prospects are limited and the army offers adventure, a uniform and a decent paycheck of about $200 a month. "Join the winning side," says a nationwide radio advertisement.

Recently, funerals in these parts have been running about two or three a week, said Chandana Bulathsinhala, an aide to the local opposition lawmaker, adding steadily, relentlessly, to the area's estimated 5,000 casualties since the war's inception -- a staggering one in 30 people.

Bulathsinhala estimates that 99% of the recruits sign up for economic reasons, with many schoolchildren now wanting to be soldiers rather than doctors or lawyers.

"War is always cruel, but the media has promoted good war news, so more people are encouraged to join," he said...

Nationwide, the missing number in the thousands, the result of desertions, front lines that have shifted repeatedly and dense jungle that can decompose a body in rapid order.

WP: Burma begins releasing thousands of prisoners, though few seem to be political
State media said that those who had been released were freed because of good conduct and so they could vote in elections due to be held next year.

New Yorker: secret talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir failed; were ongoing over 3 years

NYT: US Special Forces more involved in Pakistan than previously acknowledged
More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said...

They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command...

A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said...

Officials from both Pakistan and the United States agreed to disclose some details about the American military advisers and the enhanced intelligence sharing to help dispel impressions that the missile strikes were thwarting broader efforts to combat a common enemy.
Slate: (but SV wonders if it wasn't the drone base spotting by Google Earth that forced their hand)

SWJ: US issues new COIN guide

NPR: Kilcullen urges new approach in Afghanistan
Kilcullen says the militants are elusive, and don't have to hold and defend territory. He says that instead of hunting the extremists, the U.S. would do better to focus its efforts on providing the local population with better security as a way to gain their cooperation and trust...

Kilcullen says the U.S. needs to isolate the militants from the rest of the population — in large part by creating links with the local people by learning their ways, their relations with other tribes and trying to provide justice. He says that often it is the Taliban that has filled that vacuum. The best way to build those links, Kilcullen says, is to deploy in the communities.

Locals will begin to feel safe, he says, if there is a unit that lives in their village that they see every day, that they know will protect them and ensure that assistance programs work.
NPR: civilian advisers trying to cobble together an approach
NYT: Russia's interests in the outcome not quite favorable for US

LAT: Sunni parliamentarian linked to bombing, string of violence
Ind: clashes seem to be on uptick between Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga in the north
Khasro Goran, the Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh province, who operates from heavily-fortified headquarters in Mosul, said it was “not acceptable” for non-Kurdish military units to move into disputed areas. “If they try to do so we will stop them.” On the streets outside Mr Goran’s office, once a Baath party office and now the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, an array of competing military forces holds power.
WP: tracing a released Guantánamo detainee's path from Kuwait to suicide bombing in Mosul
...there is also a view in some quarters of the U.S. government that cases such as Ajmi's are the inevitable result of locking up 779 foreigners in an austere military prison, without access to courts or consular representation, and subjecting them to interrogation techniques that detainees say amount to torture. Some of them are bound to seek revenge, these officials believe. The challenge is figuring out which ones.
NYT: war widows need aid in Iraq
As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war, their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency.

Officials at social service agencies tell of widows coerced into “temporary marriages” — relationships sanctioned by Shiite tradition, often based on sex, which can last from an hour to years — to get financial help from government, religious or tribal leaders.

Other war widows have become prostitutes, and some have joined the insurgency in exchange for steady pay. The Iraqi military estimates that the number of widows who have become suicide bombers may be in the dozens.
BBC: National Museum reopens

BBC: investigating weapons use in Gaza

LAT: 11 peacekeepers killed in Mogadishu suicide bombing
Insurgents from the Shabab militia, which claims links to Al Qaeda, took responsibility and vowed to continue assaults against AU soldiers who have been helping shore up Somalia's shaky transitional government.

Newly appointed Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a former leader of the Islamist alliance that once included Shabab, has been calling upon his former partners to join the government, which was expanded in January to incorporate a major Islamist faction.

On Saturday, a clerics group in Somalia urged insurgents to halt their attacks against African Union soldiers and allow peace to return to the capital, Mogadishu.

AJE: Rwanda announces troop pullout from Congo

IHT: Belgium takes Senegal to court in the Hague, in attempt to extradite and try Habré, ex-leader of Chad on charges of war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity
A Chadian truth commission said in 1992 that his government had killed up to 40,000 opponents and tortured many others. Survivors of the prisons run by the political police have described atrocities, including the torture and killing of fellow prisoners.

Habré's government received extensive support from Western countries, including the United States and France, which saw Chad, a former French colony, as a bastion against neighboring Libya. The Reagan administration provided covert support to help Habré take power in 1982 and continued to provide him with military aid.

BBC: lingering tensions in Kenya

BBC: Colombian secret police, the DAS, embroiled in wiretap scandal
What started as allegations that some rogue agents of the Das (Department of Administrative Security) could have intercepted the phone calls and e-mails of judges, politicians, government officials and journalists, appear now to be accepted as fact.

The information garnered from their wire taps could have been passed on to criminal elements, drug-traffickers, paramilitaries and even Marxist rebels.

WP: MIT Poverty Action Lab conducting police training in Rajasthan, India
Researchers conducted a survey in 2005-2006 in the western state of Rajasthan and found that more than 70 percent of crime victims never reported incidents because many felt that the police would either do nothing or ask for a bribe to file a complaint. More than 80 percent said no constable had ever visited their neighborhood. The survey also found that an average of 64 percent of police officers were transferred every year.

The MIT economic researchers launched a two-year pilot project to try to fix the widespread distrust and hostility that Indians nurse about the police and to rev up the morale of the police in 162 stations in Rajasthan.

Under the program, they gave police officers one day off each week, froze transfers, invited a community volunteer every day to the station to observe the police work, rotated work among officers and trained the police in etiquette, stress management and scientific investigation skills...

The trials created such a buzz that local police officers refer to these police stations as "MIT-thana," or "MIT-station."...

"We are not experts in policing, but we in the economics department wanted to provide Indian officials with rigorous evaluation of policy interventions," said Daniel Keniston, a PhD candidate at MIT who coordinated field research for the project. "The project is not about a feel-good, public relations exercise. It impacts issues like national security. Terror plots are foiled by the police very often because of the cooperation of the community and its network of informers. Local people should feel comfortable working with the police, and the police's familiarity with the area is critical."
Ind: police anticipating labor demonstrations in China
BBC: policing and peackeeping in the Solomon Islands
Fifteen Pacific countries responded to a neighbour in need, and an intervention force of only about 500 foreigners has led to major changes in this nation of 500,000 people.

In the late 1990s, rival militias tried to take advantage of ethnic tensions in order to secure greater political power.

Scores of people were killed. The violence was fuelled in part by the problems created by the resettlement of ethnic Malaitans on the main island of Guadalcanal.

In July 2003, the Solomons government got the intervention force it had asked for...

The warlords have been captured, and brought to justice. But ethnic mistrust remains.

Australia and its neighbouring island countries only want to leave the Solomons in the hands of a trusted, professional police service.

Solomon Islanders know that when the peacekeepers go, their own police will be their only protectors, once again.

Five years on, it's not clear whether the Solomon Islands police are ready.
BBC: policing pirates (or trying to) in the Gulf of Aden

Salon: the entrenchment of contractors in the US military
NYT: media blackout policy at coffin arrivals reviewed
NPR: back pay: Philippine veterans of WWII finally get their due from the US
NYT: contemplating democracy promotion post-Bush
CSM (op-ed): the US should learn from Latin America and create a truth commission
What Specter and the rest of the US can learn from Latin America is this: If we are to control our own destiny, we must reclaim our past. A truth commission, along the lines suggested by Leahy, would be a good means of beginning that process. The alternative – to turn the page without knowing what is on it – could doom us to a haphazard and unpredictable future in which individual consciences and other nations' courts control our destiny.

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LAT: save the chinguiros!

bad liars [caught on satellite]

WP: bombing reflects, deepens sectarian rift in northwest Pakistan, kills at least 30
The suicide bombing, which turned a solemn [Shia] mourning procession into a scene of strewed limbs and bloody clothing, provoked a frenzy of retaliatory violence against local Sunnis, police and witnesses said. Dozens of Sunni-owned houses and shops were burned, and security forces imposed a curfew on the area.
BBC: how the cleavage has changed over time
In Pakistan, the focus of the sectarian violence has arguably changed. In the 1980s and 1990s the problem was acute in Karachi and in the province of Sindh.

But tough policing - especially in Karachi - over this period meant that many militants were either killed or arrested.
Slate: more skepticism on the Swat Valley deal
...as respected journalist Ismail Khan notes in an article in today's Dawn, the country's most widely read English-language newspaper, the deal calls for Pakistan's secular criminal code to be observed, unless a council of sharia judges rules that some law or another is un-Islamic. The deal also calls for a halt in the fighting between the Pakistani army and the Taliban militias.

The key facts here are that, at the moment, there is no working judicial system of any sort in the Swat Valley—and that the Taliban militias have routed the numerically superior Pakistani army in their armed confrontations. So the deal imposes national secular authority even more than it legitimizes sharia justice. And given the balance of power, it's unclear why the Taliban would go along with that.

The deal was made not with "the Taliban" as a whole—the term implies a more cohesive entity than actually exists—but rather, specifically, with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, whom the Pakistanis arrested two years ago for leading jihadist raids across the border into Afghanistan. He was released from prison after agreeing to give up the struggle and to work for peace.

The hope is that he would strike a deal with his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, who is the deputy to a much more militant Taliban leader—or that, if he can't come to terms with his son-in-law, a wedge might be driven between various Islamist factions, peeling Sufi Muhammad and his followers away from the radicals and thus strengthening the hand of the central government.

This is why the deal is not only ill-fated but potentially disastrous: It reveals the severe weakness of the Pakistani state. The politicians pursued the deal only because the state cannot control its own territory. Unless Sufi Muhammad can convince his son-in-law to accept peace and obeisance to secular authority in exchange for a parcel of land where Islamic law carries some weight, the deal is more likely to convince the militant Taliban simply to press on for more favors still.
AP: ...but it appears that the Taliban have agreed to a cease-fire
Slate: technology and warfare: Google Earth pinpoints a US drone base in Pakistan
The picture, together with a second picture of the same site taken sometime this year and posted on Google Earth, destroys much of the political advantage of the U.S. drones. The drones aren't supposed to be a U.S. military presence in Pakistan. They're unmanned, and until now, they were thought to be flown exclusively from the Afghan border. The satellite images, backed by expert analysis, prove otherwise. The drones are on Pakistani soil. And if the drones are there, so are the U.S. personnel who physically manage them.

BBC: militias in Paktia, Afghanistan
The insurgency has raged and grown in this part of the country. Paktia borders Pakistan and is a route for insurgents coming into the country. The Taleban and al-Qaeda have a growing presence here and clashes between them and government and foreign forces have escalated.

But Ahmadabad district is an exception, thanks to the gunmen of the Arbakai, a tribal militia that has protected this area and its people for centuries, making it something of a safe-haven from the violence all around.

They are a volunteer force of men and boys, armed with old rifles and true grit. They are part of a traditional code of conduct and honour called Pashtunwali.

The tribal elder is Haji Gulam Khan. He tells us that the area is stable and that there is a good relationship between the people and the government.

He is in no doubt who to thank: "If it weren't for the Arbakai, this area would've been controlled by the Taleban or mafia groups."
AJE: US acknowledges 13 civilians killed in missile strike in Herat earlier this week

AP: US Army medic sentenced to life in prison for executing four detainees in Iraq
NYT: another US soldier found not guilty in killings of 2 New York National Guard soldiers
AJE: Abu Ghraib re-opens as "Baghdad Central Prison"
NPR: how many have died in Iraq since the start of the war?
"By orders of minister's office, we cannot talk about the real numbers of deaths," says a man who works at the Baghdad central morgue statistics office, where all the deaths that take place in Baghdad get recorded. He doesn't want his name used because he's been told by his superiors at the Ministry of Health that he is not allowed to talk to the media. "That's been the case since 2004. When press comes to the morgue, they are taken to our boss's office and we have never been allowed to meet with them."

The reason, he says, is because the number of deaths the morgue registers never corresponds with numbers from the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Interior.

"They do it on purpose," he says. "I would go home and look at the news. The ministry would say 10 people got killed all over Iraq, while I had received in that day more than 50 dead bodies just in Baghdad. It's always been like that — they would say one thingm but the reality was much worse."...

Dougherty [of Iraq Body Count] estimates at least 20,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during U.S. military operations.

The military and human rights groups often disagree over whether victims were civilians or insurgents.

Econ: Turks and (Iraqi) Kurds getting along better for the moment
Turkish officials, who used to dismiss Iraq’s Kurdish leaders as “tribal upstarts”, privately concede that part of the solution is to co-opt Iraq’s Kurds. In the past year Turkish intelligence men and diplomats have held secret talks with Nechirvan Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish region’s prime minister, to get the PKK to call off its fight, even as Turkish aircraft continue, with America’s blessing, to pound rebel strongholds near Iraq’s mountain border with Iran. One idea is that rebels untainted by violence might be coaxed home and their leaders offered cash inducements to move to any European country that would take them in.

NYT: Netanyahu invites Kadima and Labor parties to form moderate coalition
Mr. Netanyahu and Ms. Livni have agreed to meet Sunday, but the negotiations are likely to be tough. Ms. Livni, his chief rival for the premiership, has said she would rather go into opposition than serve as a fig leaf for a coalition of the right.

Mr. Barak, whose Labor Party fared badly in the elections, has already said he would head into the opposition.

To many here, it is increasingly likely that Mr. Netanyahu’s government will consist exclusively of parties from the right, which oppose a Palestinian state and favor expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, making it much harder for him to exercise his pragmatic penchant.

NPR: Saudi religious police facing more constraints

NPR: Lebanon no longer requiring sect identification

WP: Calderón will not relent, despite demonstrations against militarization
Calderón, who has sent more than 45,000 troops to fight the cartels, said the military would remain on patrol until the government had control of the most violent parts of the country and civil authorities were fully able "to confront this evil."

Only then, he said, "will the army have completed its mission." Turf battles involving the drug traffickers, who are fighting the army, police and one another in order to secure billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States, took the lives of more than 6,000 people in Mexico last year. The pace of killing has continued in 2009, with more than 650 dead, most in the violent border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. In the past few days, a running gun battle between soldiers and gunmen through the streets of the northern city of Reynosa, captured live on television, left five people dead.
LAT: Ciudad Juárez police chief opts out after threats, though
BBC: photos of the violence indicate why
SDT: lessons from Colombia's drug war (via Adam Isacson)
The drug-trafficking operation in Mexico is different than in Colombia. While there is some marijuana and opium grown in Mexico, as well as methamphetamine manufacturing, the cartels aren't fighting over production. They are battling to control the smuggling routes used to move drugs, including Colombian cocaine, into the United States...

The strategy of Mexico's leaders is to break the cartels into smaller pieces, as happened in Colombia, where local police in urban areas were better able to get a handle on street crime once the larger criminal organizations receded.

The assumption is that smaller drug operations would be better handled by state and local police, Shirk said. But it is not clear such a strategy will succeed, and institutional corruption presents a challenge...

But even if the Mexican government is successful in breaking up the big cartels, neither Mexican soldiers nor U.S. equipment and training are going to stop the demand for drugs, [former DEA regional director] Holifield said.

“The biggest lesson is for the U.S.,” he said. “And that is to stop using (drugs). Until that happens, nothing the U.S. does can prevent these people from doing this. There is absolutely no way to stop it.”
NPR: on top of that drug demand issue, US also arming Mexico, informally
The weapons and ammunition are being bought on the black market and at gun shows, but mostly from licensed dealers. Arizona and Texas make it especially easy to buy guns retail. Basically, any adult with a valid ID and no criminal record can buy as many as he or she wants...Authorities call the weapons smuggling trafico de la hormiga, or "ant traffic," because it's done in small steady shipments to avoid detection. And after all, the main mission of the customs service is not examining vehicles leaving the U.S....nearly 8,000 guns sold in America last year were traced to Mexico. That was more than double the number the year before.

Econ: Ortega as Somoza

WP: LTTE bomb Colombo, kill three and injure 48
The attack shows the apparent air power of the Tamil Tigers far from the northern war zone, where they are said to be boxed into a 34-square-mile sliver of the jungle, with government troops closing in.

AJE: riots claim lives in Bauchi, Nigeria
Several churches and mosques were set on fire in the violence on Saturday and at least 28 people were injured, but it was not immediately clear what triggered the unrest.

NYT: Latvian PM steps down, gov't dissolves over recession
BBC: 100,000 march in Dublin
Many are angry at plans to impose a pension levy on public sector workers.

Trade union organisers of the march said workers did not cause the economic crisis but were having to pay for it.

BBC: Bosnian Serbs ordered to pay for mosques destroyed between 1992-1995

Ind: German MP appointed to head new museum of expellees from Eastern Europe after WWII; Poland takes umbrage
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland’s special envoy on German affairs and a former foreign minister, summed up Warsaw’s objections to Mrs Steinbach’s planned appointment. “It is as if the Vatican had decided to give the Holocaust-denying Bishop [Richard] Williamson the task of overseeing its relations with Israel,” he said.

NYT: Guantánamo complies with Geneva Conventions, according to Pentagon report
Slate: (other) prison growth in the US
The United States has a prison population like nowhere else. With one out of every 100 adults behind bars, our incarceration rate is the highest in the entire world. Our inmates—1.5 million in prison, with another 800,000 in jail—comprise one-third of the world's total. This is a surprisingly recent development. After barely budging for 50 years, our incarceration rate increased sevenfold (to 738 per 100,000 people) between 1978 and 2008.

BBC: Italy implements new rape law
The decree sets a mandatory life sentence for the rape of minors or attacks where the victim is killed.

It also establishes rules for citizen street patrols to be conducted by unarmed and unpaid volunteers.

The number of sexual assaults fell last year, but three high-profile rapes last weekend sparked national outrage.

Many recent rapes have been blamed on foreigners, especially Romanians. Violent attacks on immigrants have since been reported.

Police say a mob of around 20 masked men beat up four Romanians outside a kebab restaurant in Rome on Sunday in an apparent vigilante attack.

The government has pointed to official statistics saying immigrants committed as many as 35% of crimes in Italy in 2007.

But analysts and opposition parties say many of these are related to breaches in immigration rules, and that foreigners have often been unfairly targeted amid a xenophobic backlash from right-wing politicians and the media.

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Slate: Q: does decapitation have a special meaning in Islam?
A: Yes, but it's important in other cultures, too. [eg, Mexican drug gang violence above.]

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Salon: Murakami accepts award in Israel
In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies...

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories -- stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

NYT: resisting North Korean propaganda by parody

war(,) on drugs [uninvited]

Gdn: efforts in Afghanistan hampered by corruption, mismanagement
BBC: ...and drugs - that is, use of opium and marijuana by Afghan police
WP: McKiernan estimates 60,000 US troops will be deployed for 3-4 more years
McKiernan said violence is likely to escalate in Afghanistan as fresh troops expand into insurgent-held areas where the military has little or no presence. "When we do put additional security forces, I would expect to see a temporary time where the level of violence might go up," he said.
WP: 'Human Terrain' researcher killed
Loyd's mission this time, as a researcher on contract to the Pentagon, was to get to know the villagers and their problems, to help the military map out what it called the "human terrain" of Afghanistan and thus improve its ability to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. With two interpreters at her side, she began to ask shoppers about the cost of fuel. One Afghan man, carrying a jug of gasoline, lingered to chat and thanked her for the visit. It was a bright winter day, and the mood in the market seemed relaxed and cordial.

Suddenly, the calm was shattered: According to court documents and government accounts, the man holding the jug abruptly hurled the gasoline at Loyd's face and chest, set her on fire and bolted. She fell to the ground in a fetal position, groaning, in flames. One guard took off after the attacker while the other rolled Loyd into a stream to douse the flames. Police began firing their guns in confusion. One guard, Don Ayala, had cuffed the man and pinned him to the ground when an Afghan interpreter ran over, screaming hysterically that Loyd was burning to death. Ayala turned and shot his prisoner in the head.

That brief flurry of violence has left a lingering trail of tragedy. The attacker died instantly, unable to shed light on his motives or possible conspirators. Ayala, one of three people in Loyd's tight-knit field team, was charged with murder in U.S. federal court and could face 15 years in prison. And Loyd, who had become deeply attached to Afghanistan, died 10,000 miles away in a San Antonio Army hospital, finally succumbing to her burns Jan. 7..

Although the Human Terrain System was designed by an anthropologist, it was ardently opposed by groups of social scientists who believe the military should not use scholars as collaborators in combat. After the program started in 2005, it generated an avalanche of heated debate in academic circles and online, which has intensified since Loyd's death.

"In theory, it is a good idea. . . . In practice, however, it has been a disaster," the magazine Nature said a recent editorial, noting that Loyd was the third civilian casualty on a Human Terrain mission in the past year. While conceding that scientific insights "have much to offer strategies in a war zone," the editors added that unless the program can be revamped to lessen "deadly mistakes, it needs to be closed down."...

"Paula died, and others will die. It is very hard to accept, but we need more people like her," [Brig. Phil Jones, an officer at the British Embassy] said. "Otherwise we will just be out there, blundering around in our diving boots and stomping on eggshells."
abu muquwama: an interview with Craig Mullaney on his new book
I had not expected to find the common ground in my interactions with local Afghans to be Bollywood pop culture. The larger value of graduate school and travel for me was changing my perspective. Traditionally, lieutenants and NCOs were handed missions / problems and they were expected to solve them within given parameters. "Answer this question. Solve this problem." In today's operating environment, and particularly in a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the hard part is defining the question and problem in the first place. Studying and traveling abroad continually exposed me to ambiguous, uncertain, and unscripted environments. I couldn't have asked for better preparation for the unfamiliarity of rural Afghanistan.

CSM: adjusting to new dynamics in Iraq
Ind: real estate booming in Baghdad; segregation sticking
Until recently anybody wanting to sell a house in Baghdad avoided putting up “for sale” signs because they were closely watched by gangs who would wait for the purchase to go through and then kidnap the seller or one of his children so they could demand the selling price as ransom.

House prices have risen by 50 per cent in many parts of central Baghdad during the past year, and rents have almost doubled. Mr Hadithi says that this is explained primarily by the end of the war. “Refugees are returning, but not to the places where they once lived,” he says. “A Shia who owns a new and expensive house in a Sunni area will want to sell it and buy a cheaper one in a Shia-majority district for safety reasons.”

Baghdad has become wholly divided into sectarian enclaves since the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07. Long grey concrete walls snake through the city, cutting off neighbourhoods from each other. Exits and entrances are closely guarded. Checkpoints every few hundred yards create horrendous traffic jams. There is far less violence than two years ago, but there are still daily bombings and assassinations.

The property market reflects the outcome of the Sunni-Shia war, in which the Shia were by and large the winners. Baghdad is today probably about 75 per cent Shia. The Sunni – traditionally the richer community – have been pushed into smaller enclaves.
WP: shoe-thrower defends himself; trial postponed
"I did not mean to kill the leader of the occupation forces," Muntadar al-Zaidi said, speaking clearly and forcefully from a wooden cage before a packed courtroom. "I was expressing what's inside of me and what's inside the Iraqi people from north to south and from west to east."

Throwing his shoes, fastball style, at the leader of the free world was not, Zaidi argued, a crime.

Zaidi, 30, who is charged with assaulting a foreign head of state, posited that Bush's Dec. 14 trip to Baghdad was not an official visit by a foreign dignitary because he arrived in the country without prior notice and didn't leave the Green Zone, which at the time was still under U.S. control.

"I am charged now with attacking the prime minister's guest," he said stoically, making his first public remarks since the incident. "We Arabs are famous for being generous with guests. But Bush and his soldiers have been here for six years. Guests should knock on the door. Those who come sneaking in are not guests."

Roughly an hour into the hearing, Presiding Judge Abdul Amir al-Rubaie announced that he would postpone the proceeding until March 12 to seek an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush's swan song visit to Baghdad was, in fact, an "official" one.

AJE: leader that brokered deal to impose Sharia law in Swat organizes march
Mohammad, who served six years in prison for leading thousands of local men across the border into Afghanistan to fight US-backed foreign forces there, intends to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to lay down their arms for the long term.

"I ask you to remain peaceful. We have reached an agreement with the provincial government and Nizam-e-Adl (Islamic system of justice) will soon be enforced here," he told his supporters.

"People will soon start getting justice and there will be a durable peace."

However, news of Monday's ceasefire agreement between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban fighters has alarmed Nato, the US and other Western powers.
BBC: journalist covering the story abducted and killed

New Yorker: will the Obama administration advocate a form of 'preventive' detainment?; weighing how to play the case of the last enemy combatant held in the US
NYT: this case a piece of the broader anti-terrorism legal picture, which doesn't look so different from Bush admin policies so far
The administration has also put off taking a stand in several cases that present opportunities to embrace or renounce Bush-era policies, including the imprisonment without trial of an “enemy combatant” on domestic soil, Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking legal opinions about interrogation and surveillance, and an executive-privilege dispute over Congressional subpoenas of former White House aides to Mr. Bush over the firing of United States attorneys.
Ind: a former Guantánamo guard offers a look inside the prison (and how he found himself there)
Did you get any briefing on who the soon-to-arrive prisoners were?

The only thing I can recall being told about the detainees that would arrive was that they were captured fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. And that they were known terrorists. And that many of them helped in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. We would be coming face-to-face with the worst people the world had to offer. Our mission would be to guard these terrorists so the United States could get more info on attacks and, possibly, stop more terrorist attacks.

As to us, we talked a lot about the detainees before they arrived. About them and what they had probably been involved in. A lot of us, including myself, were pissed off, and many people were out to get revenge for the havoc the United States had been through in recent months by these people.

But, as the months went on, one or two of us would question what was going on here, the way the detainees were being treated, and if they were actually terrorists or not, but being no ones, and young, and dumb, we never questioned anything further; just did our time until we went home.

NYT: political dissident released in Egypt

AJE: France sends police force to Guadaloupe after death of a union leader, injury of police

LAT: Colombian ex-paramilitary leader confesses to killing, money laundering
Fierro spent his first days on the stand last year meticulously reviewing hundreds of killings, a litany that included university professors, union leaders, peasants accused of giving aid and comfort to leftist guerrillas. Family members of victims, many of them in tears, watched via closed-circuit video.

Now the former Colombian army captain is just as scrupulously detailing how paramilitaries bled dry not just businesses and landowners, large and small, but public officials who either turned over chunks of their government budgets and revenue or were killed...

Foreign multinational companies apparently weren't exempt from paying the "war tax." Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo, a leader of a neighboring paramilitary group, testified last year that both Chiquita Brands International Inc. and Dole Food Co. paid a 3-cents-per-50-pound tax on bananas shipped through Caribbean ports.

BBC: thousands protest deployment of military against drug violence along US-Mexico border
Many of the protesters said border towns had become more dangerous since President Felipe Calderon sent the army in.

But the governor of one state - Nuevo Leon - said he believed the Gulf drugs cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, were behind the border protests.
BBC: militarization in Cancun

NYT: militias form to defend villages from the LRA in the Congo
A terrible mismatch may be shaping up in this lush, isolated patch of northeastern Congo. Thousands of teenage boys and their farmer fathers are grabbing machetes, slingshots, axes and ragtag shotguns, wading into the bush to confront a band of experienced killers.

They bang on drums to signal to one another. They patrol at night in shifts. Already, several members of these so-called self-defense forces have been killed. And in Congo’s recent past, the advent of local militias has only led to more bloodshed and abuses.

But here, the people feel they have no choice...

“They took me on Christmas,” Mrs. Yebiye said. Several dozen villagers squeezed around. Her story was one of the first inside accounts of the rebel army Faradje had ever heard.

She said the rebels had dreadlocks and wild eyes. They believed in witchcraft and dabbed themselves with palm oil. They marched in seemingly endless circles, often through elephant grass as high as their heads, but never seemed to get lost. Sometimes, they liked to dance.

“The rebels would eat their marijuana and turn up their radios in the middle of the jungle,” she said. “If you didn’t dance with them, you got killed.”

It is stories like these that have sent the farmers and the other civilians out on loosely organized search-and-destroy missions. But in mid-January, in a village not far from here, it did not work out so well. Some farmers crossed paths with a band of rebel fighters, Mr. Dalafada said. The rebels killed four farmers and fled.
BBC: meanwhile, FDLR 'on rampage' further south

BBC: arrests made in Equatorial Guinea of alleged gunmen who fired on presidential palace last week; officials claim they have ties to Nigerian rebels

Gdn: Zimbabwe to pay soldiers and bureaucrats in dollars

BBC: India offers haven to Tamil civilians

WP: Obama administration considers new approach to Burma
"Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," [Sec of State Clinton] said, adding that the route taken by Burma's neighbors of "reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either."

WP: protests in China over Tibet prompt crackdown
Zhou Xiujun, owner of a grocery store, said that she witnessed a small protest near the county's main vegetable market Sunday that escalated into a much larger one about lunchtime Monday. On the second day, she said saw several hundred Tibetans gathered downtown, shouting "Long Live the Dalai Lama," the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists who lives in exile in India. In just a few minutes, she said, squads of police arrived and melee ensued.

NYT: Kosovo celebrates its one-year anniversary: a photo essay

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Econ: the Bloody White Baron (book review)
A PSYCHOPATHIC Buddhist warrior-king hardly sounds plausible in fiction, let alone in modern history. But the story of Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, an Estonian-raised, ethnically German, tsarist officer, who became the last khan of Mongolia amid the chaos of the Russian civil war, has so many bizarre elements that the reader will soon believe almost anything.

Econ: animals! decisions! how we social ones make them
But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues made a computer model of the decision-making process. By tinkering around with it they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees’ interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their independence in confirming this information.

This is something members of the European Parliament should think about.

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LAT: a new kind of nationalism? some African-Americans tracing DNA trail to contemporary African states

Ind: hip hop and political participation in Kenya
At a time where a political power struggle was inflaming tribal and ethnic divisions some of the finest voices in Nairobi's ghettos decided to see whether MCs could do a better job for their communities than MPs and the parliament was born.

overwhelming fire [from your friends in Pine Bluff, Arkansas]

BBC: LRA focuses brutal attacks on civilians in Congo and Sudan, in response to coordinated government offensive...
This pattern of attacks, all along a 300km (186-mile) stretch of the Sudan-Congo border, follows a co-ordinated offensive against the LRA late in 2008. On 14 December the forces of three countries ­- Uganda, Sudan and Congo -­ attacked LRA bases in Congo. It was an attempt to kill as many of the LRA as possible and shatter the movement's command structure.

But the operation was hampered by poor co-ordination and the dense forests in this region -­ ideal cover for guerrilla forces... The LRA responded as it had done in March 2002, when the Ugandan army launched a massive military offensive, named Operation Iron Fist, against the LRA bases in South Sudan, with the agreement of the government in Khartoum. In 2002 LRA leader Joseph Kony split up his forces, before bringing them together again and crossing back into Uganda to carry out attacks on civilians on a scale and a brutality not seen since 1995 to 1996.

In December 2008 the LRA repeated this tactic, dividing into small units,­ some as few as five or six men. These units launched a series of attacks on an unprecedented scale in towns and villages across northern Congo and South Sudan. The UN and humanitarian agencies estimate the rebels have slaughtered some 900 civilians since Christmas. Villages along the border are now empty as people have fled before the LRA atrocities, which have included tying groups of women together before smashing their skulls and killing babies with heated machetes.
BBC: ...and despite "catastrophic" effects for civilians, Uganda troops to continue offensive
The mandate of the Ugandan army in the DRC had been due to expire this week, but a Ugandan army spokesman said this had now been extended. A Congolese minister said the extension would last until the end of this month.

Last week a top UN official said the offensive against the Ugandan rebel LRA had been "catastrophic" for civilians. But he said the operation against the LRA should continue.
BBC: still, more UN troops needed; Security Council to meet today to discuss
"We're seeing very little protection of civilians there. We have less than 300 UN peacekeepers in a humungous area, this is something like 15,000 sq km," Anneke van Woudenberg, a senior HRW researcher, told the BBC.

"Almost no UN peacekeepers are there. And of course the Ugandans and the Congolese who are involved in an operation against the LRA are not doing nearly enough to protect the civilians," she said. She said an additional 3,000 troops authorised for DR Congo by the Security Council had not yet materialised.

BBC: Sudanese government signs declaration of good intentions with Justice and Equality Movement rebels, in move toward peace deal
The accord was struck in Qatar, which has been mediating a week of talks. It includes an end to attacks on more than two million people in refugee camps and an exchange of prisoners.

But hanging over the agreement is a proposed indictment from the International Criminal Court of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for alleged crimes. And other rebel groups are refusing to talk to the government.

AJE: fresh protests in Madagascar as police fire warning shots

BBC: judge in trial of Niger Delta rebel steps down amidst discussions over the trial's location
Mr Okah's legal team had accused the judge of bias against their client, because of his insistence the trial continued behind closed doors miles away from where the offences occurred.

They have demanded the trial is relocated to the southern state of Bayelsa, where the alleged offences were committed... A militant group says two British hostages will only be handed over when Mr Okah is released.

LAT: Mugabe jails MDC opposition leader, previously named deputy agriculture minister, for treason; violates power-sharing agreement
[O]n Friday, Mugabe tried to swear in more than 20 ministers from his own party, not the 15 agreed upon by the two sides. He ended up with 18 -- and even senior members of the MDC were confused about whether Mugabe's last-minute maneuvering had stripped them of a majority in the Cabinet.

"We are absolutely angry. We are furious. You can't talk about power sharing when people are being arrested," a senior MDC member said, speaking by phone from State House, the presidential residence, shortly before the swearing-in ceremony... Another senior MDC figure said that in addition to the 18 ZANU-PF ministers, 15 with the MDC and three with a smaller MDC faction were sworn in. It was not clear Friday whether some of these would be excluded from the Cabinet.

Analysts said the treason charges against Bennett and the wrangling over Cabinet positions were ominous signs. Bennett was charged just days after a judge threw out treason charges against another top MDC member, Tendai Biti.
BBC: opposition politician charged with various crimes; defense claims the government is "shooting in the dark"

BBC: UN special rapporteur in Kenya investigating 2007 post-election killings...
[Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings,] will talk to human rights groups and eyewitnesses to the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential election. Mr Alston will also look into allegations of increased arbitrary killings by security officers. They include operations against rebel militias in Mt Elgon in western Kenya, and violent encounters against the Mungiki sect in the capital, Nairobi. His visit comes just days after the government's failure in parliament to establish a local tribunal to charge the perpetrators of the post-election violence which killed 1,500 people.
BBC: ...while Kofi Annan suggests an ICC investigation
[A Kenyan commission of inquiry into the 2007 violence] delivered a sealed list of suspects to Mr Annan and said it should be sent to the ICC if a local tribunal was not set up by 1 March...

Parliament on Thursday rejected a bill to establish the special court... Under parliamentary rules, the bill cannot be re-introduced to parliament until six months have elapsed... The opposition to the bill came from MPs who support both Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga.

BBC: Rwanda genocide expert Alison Des Forges one of the dead in Buffalo plane crash

LAT: Karadzic to face two genocide counts in UN tribunal for Bosnia war crimes
The new indictment covers the same allegations as the existing charge sheet but reduces the number of crime scenes from 41 to 27 in an attempt to speed up what is expected to be a lengthy trial... According to Monday's decision, the first genocide count covers ethnic cleansing campaigns throughout Bosnia and the second refers only to the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb troops and paramilitaries rounded up and murdered some 8,000 Muslim men...

Karadzic will be asked to enter pleas to the new indictment at a Feb. 20 hearing. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.

He refused to enter pleas when he was brought before the tribunal's judges last year after his arrest on a Belgrade bus in July ended 13 years on the run from international justice. The court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. No date has yet been set for his trial to begin.
LAT: France's top judicial body recognizes history of deporting Jews to death camps during the Holocaust; rules out any further reparations
LAT: Khmer Rouge torturer on trial
Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh — is charged with crimes against humanity, and is this first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the U.N.-assisted tribunal...

Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison — formerly a school — where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death.

He has made no formal confession. However, unlike the other four defendants, Duch "admitted or acknowledged" that many of the crimes occurred at his prison, according to the indictment from court judges. Duch, who converted to Christianity, has also asked for forgiveness from his victims.
NYT: ...amid criticism over politicized indictments and lengthy trials
Four senior Khmer Rouge officials who were in a position to give those orders are also in custody, but court officials say their trials may not start until next year. They are Nuon Chea, 82, the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, 76, who was head of state; Ieng Sary, 82, the former foreign minister; and his wife, Ieng Thirith, 75, a fellow member of the Khmer Rouge Central Committee...

The trials are being held by a hybrid tribunal supported by the United Nations that includes Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in an awkward legal compromise that has drawn criticism from human rights advocates and legal scholars.

The chief concern is that the Cambodian members of the tribunal will not be independent of their government’s political agenda. Questions have already been raised about the Cambodian co-prosecutor’s reluctance to recommend further indictments.

Foreign and Cambodian analysts say the government, fearing that a widening circle of defendants could reach into its own ranks, wishes to limit the number of those being tried, harming the tribunal’s credibility.

AJE: UN claims Tamil Tigers abusing civilians, preventing thousands from leaving the war zone
"There are two critical things here - one, that women and children be allowed to leave the conflict zone and go to safe areas where they can be reached with support; the other one is that both sides to this fight - the government troops and the LTTE - need to ensure absolute protection for those [trapped] civilians, and that has not been happening," [James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef] said Unicef has "reliable reports" that children as young as 14 are being forced to fight for the LTTE, Elder said.
BBC: pro-Tigers humanitarian organization claims UN not fulfilling its mandate
A statement by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) published on the pro-rebel website TamilNet said: "The UN's inability to fulfil its obligations to civilians is explicit. Yet they don't say who is preventing them from their responsibilities."

TRO president Velupillai Sivanadiyar was quoted as saying by the website that the UN was "openly" talking about "withdrawing even the remaining few local staff from the conflict zone, completely shedding its responsibility of caring for the civilians trapped here... If they really care for the civilians, this is not the time for useless talk and accusations," Mr Sivanadiyar said.

LAT: South Koreans make money as vigilantes by selling information on crime to the government
The former gas station attendant isn't choosy. Even small crime pays big time -- more than $3,000 last month alone, he says. "It's good money. I'll never go back to pumping gas. I feel free now."

The skinny 34-year-old is among a new breed of candid-camera bugs across South Korea -- referred to as paparazzi, though their subjects are not the rich and famous, but low-grade lawbreakers, whose actions are caught on film that is peddled as evidence to government officials.

In recent years, officials here have enacted more than 60 civilian "reporting" programs that offer rewards ranging from as little as 50,000 won, or about $36, for the smallest infractions to 2 billion won, or $1.4 million, for reporting a large-scale corruption case involving government officials. (That one has yet to be made.)

The paparazzi trend has even inspired its own lexicon. There are "seonparazzi," who specialize in pursuing election law violators; "ssuparazzi," who target illegal acts of dumping garbage; and "seongparazzi," who target prostitution, which is illegal in South Korea.

PCB: FARC massacres 17 members of indigenous tribe in Colombia's Nariño state...
IHT: ...but the guerrilla group claims just 8 "executions" of "combatants"
There are about 20,000 Awa, and like many indigenous groups, they have often become enmeshed in Colombia's conflict, where warring parties including far-right militias and drug traffickers frequently exact violence on civilians they accuse of collaborating with their foes.

"Given the pressure of the operation, their responsibility in the death of numerous guerrillas and their irrefutable active participation in the conflict, they were executed," the statement on the ANNCOL site said.

The country's armed forces chief called the guerrilla claim false... In a separate communique, the army division that operates in the area accused the FARC of forcing the Awa off their reserve so it can plant coca, the basis for cocaine. Fighting over coca crops is a key reason behind the forced displacement of more than 2.8 million Colombians — an internal refugee problem second only to that of Sudan.

LAT: Tabasco state police officer killed along with 10 of his family members in Mexico
A team of gunmen in southeastern Mexico opened fire on the homes of a state police officer and his extended family, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children, authorities said Sunday.

The shootings Saturday night in the state of Tabasco stunned an oil-rich part of Mexico that has not experienced the same level of drug-related warfare common elsewhere in the country, despite its position of strategic importance to traffickers.

The killing of police officer Carlos Reyes Lopez came days after police in Tabasco captured four gunmen and left one suspect dead. Although some speculate that the motive was retaliation, the state prosecutor's office also suggested that a personal dispute involving the Reyes Lopez family might have been behind the attack.
NYT: Hispanic day laborers easy targets for criminals in New Orleans
It is an under-the-radar crime epidemic: unarmed Hispanic workers are regularly mugged, beaten, chased, stabbed or shot, the police and the workers themselves say. The ruined homes they sometimes squat in, doubling- or quadrupling-up at night, are broken into, and they have been made to lie face down while being robbed.

They are shot when, not understanding a mugger’s command, they fail to hand over their cash quickly enough, shot while they are working on houses, and shot when they go home for the day. Some have been killed, their bodies flown home to families who had been dependent on their remittances.

NYT: Chávez wins battle over term limits

LAT: strikes against living costs and elite privilege turn violent in Martinique and Guadeloupe
Police detained about 50 people after coming under a barrage of stones as they tried to take down barricades on the island of Guadeloupe, said Nicolas Desforges, the island's top government official.

On the sister island of Martinique, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Guadeloupe, police said that as many as 10,000 demonstrators marched through the narrow streets of the capital to protest spiraling food prices and denounce the business elite.

Government offices, schools, banks and stores have been shuttered for most of the past 12 days as islanders demand lower prices and higher wages...

Living costs are high on the French islands, which depend heavily on imports and use the euro. The strike also is exposing racial and class tensions on islands where a largely white elite that makes up 1 percent of the population controls most businesses.

AJE: Pakistan to restore sharia law in Pakistan's Swat Valley, in peace move toward pro-Taliban rebels there...
The agreement was reached after talks in Peshawar between members of Tahrik-e-Nafiz Shariat Muhammadi and officials of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government on Monday... Officials gave few details of the kind of sharia they were planning to implement in the Malakand region, which includes Swat Valley, but said that laws that fail to comply with Islamic texts would be suspended... The Pakistani government has also agreed its troops will refrain from launching military operations in Swat as part of the deal.

The US, which is battling Taliban and al-Qaeda groups in the area, has previously said that such deals only serve to allow fighters to regroup. A senior US defence department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the deal a "negative development"...

[C]ritics expressed doubt that the deal would stop the violence in the region, pointing out that similar agreements in the past had broken down, the latest one in August, and only allowed fighters to regroup and rearm.

Shuja Nawaz, a strategic analyst with the South Asia Centre, told Al Jazeera that the agreement could prove problematic for Pakistan in future. "It will mean that the government is ceding territory to the Taliban, which will be a repeat of what happened when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was in power in 1994 and a number of districts in Swat and Malakand were handed over to essentially the same group so they could impose their rather convoluted view of sharia on those districts."
WP: ...despite past failures, hope for new, more fair justice system
In announcing the agreement, Pakistani officials asserted that the adoption of sharia law would bring swift and fair justice to the Swat Valley, where people have long complained of legal corruption and delays. They said the new system would have "nothing in common" with the draconian rule of the Taliban militia that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, during which thieves' hands were amputated and adulterers were stoned to death.

"There was a vacuum . . . in the legal system. The people demanded this and they deserve it," said Amir Haider Khan Hoti, chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province. The new system will include an appeals process, something the Afghan Taliban justice system did not allow for.
LAT: meanwhile, Predator strike in South Waziristan targets leader of Taliban in Pakistan...
NYT: ...and the Taliban extends its own reach to Swati immigrants in the US
Pakistani immigrants from the Swat Valley, where the Taliban have been battling Pakistani security forces since 2007, say some of their families are being singled out for threats, kidnapping and even murder by Taliban forces, who view them as potential American collaborators and lucrative sources of ransom. Some immigrants also say they, too, have been threatened in the United States by the Taliban or its sympathizers, and some immigrants say they have been attacked or kidnapped when they have returned home...

Before the start of the Taliban’s incursion into the region in 2007, Swat was treasured as a vacation spot, particularly among Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates the region. Known as “the Switzerland of Pakistan,” it has snowy peaks, fruit orchards, lakes and flower-covered meadows.

But the tourism industry has evaporated amid the Taliban’s uprising, and by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of residents have abandoned their homes, fleeing for Mingora or other regions of Pakistan. Immigrants have been coming from the Swat Valley for years, well before it became a front in the war between the Taliban and Pakistani government troops. There are an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people from the Swat Valley in the United States, about half of whom live in the New York metropolitan region...
WP: US played important role in bringing together Indian and Pakistani intelligence in investigation of Mumbai attacks...
In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters, according to U.S. and foreign government sources familiar with the arrangement.

The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad's announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil, the sources said.

The intelligence went well beyond the public revelations about the 10 Mumbai terrorists, and included sophisticated communications intercepts and an array of physical evidence detailing how the gunmen and their supporters planned and executed their three-day killing spree in the Indian port city. Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies separately shared their findings with the CIA, which relayed the details while also vetting the intelligence and filling in blanks with gleanings from its networks, the sources said. The U.S. role was described in interviews with Pakistani officials and confirmed by U.S. sources with detailed knowledge of the arrangement. The arrangement is ongoing, and it is unknown whether it will continue after the Mumbai case is settled.
WP: ...which were indeed planned in Pakistan, admits the government

NYT: Taliban commander killed in Afghanistan
[Five months ago], Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, had intervened to release Mr. [Maulavi Ghulam] Dastagir from jail, where he was being held on charges of conspiring with the Taliban.

To many Afghans, the ambush seemed to vividly confirm one of the most biting complaints here: that the corrupt and the criminal often find a way to get out of jail. And it did it in a way that seemed to implicate the highest authority in the land...

But in the wilds of Afghanistan, fortunes can change in an instant. On Sunday night, five bombs fell on a compound in Badghis Province near the Turkmenistan border, where Mr. Dastagir and a half-dozen fellow Taliban commanders were meeting...

Mr. Karzai’s biggest mistake may have been failing to discover that some of the tribal elders who sought Mr. Dastagir’s release had been threatened and forced by the Taliban to seek the pardon, as some later admitted.
LAT: and new US troops deployed in conflictive region
The new unit — the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division — moved into Logar and Wardak provinces last month, and the soldiers from Fort Drum, N.Y., are now stationed in combat outposts throughout the provinces... Militants have attacked several patrols with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, including one ambush by 30 insurgents, Lt. Col. Steve Osterholzer, the brigade spokesman, said.

"In every case our vehicles returned with overwhelming fire," Osterholzer said. "We have not suffered anything more than a few bruises, while several insurgents have been killed."...

[Col. David B. Haight, commander of the 3rd Brigade] said he believes the increase of militant activity in the two provinces is not ideologically based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Quoting the governor of Logar, the colonel called it an "economic war." Afghan officials "don't believe it's hardcore al-Qaida operatives that you're never going to convert anyway," Haight said. "They believe that it's the guys who say, 'Hey you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a Humvee when it goes by,' and the guy says, 'Yeah I'll do that, because I've got to feed my family.'"

Still, Haight said there are hardcore fighters in the region, some of them allied with Jalaludin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a fighting family with a long history in Afghanistan. The two militant leaders are believed to be in Pakistan.
NYT: UN says Afghan civilian casualties increased by 40% in 2008
More than half of the 2,118 casualties were caused by militants’ roadside bombs and suicide attacks, but many were from airstrikes and other actions by NATO and American forces battling the resurgent Taliban, the report said... The insurgents were blamed for 1,160, or 55 percent, of the deaths — an increase of 65 percent over similar attacks in 2007, the report said. The report said 828 deaths, or 39 percent, were caused by pro-government forces, an increase of almost a third over the 2007 level.
AJE: as Holbrooke, in Afghanistan, signs an agreement with Karzai to include an Afghan delegation in review process of US policy
LAT: ...and the GAO reviews (negatively) US control of weapons in Afghanistan
LAT: on Russia's role in Afghanistan
In recent days, Russian officials have rushed forward to offer logistical help to NATO troops in Afghanistan -- at the same time dipping into a dwindling budget to offer impoverished Kyrgyzstan more than $2 billion in an apparent payoff for ejecting a U.S. military base crucial to the war against the Taliban.

In fact, Russia is tugged between two strong, conflicting impulses. It distrusts U.S. motives, especially when it comes to America's penetration of former Soviet states. But Moscow's sense of invulnerability appears shaken by falling oil prices and the precarious economy. Many analysts believe the Kremlin is looking for an opening to make nice with the West. Nearby Afghanistan, where instability also spells danger for Russia, presents a handy opening.

And so Russian officials offer help with one hand, lash out with the other.

NYT: Israel-Gaza cease-fire talks slow but steady
The new prospective accord, again being mediated by Egypt, is aimed at rebuilding Gaza after the war and involves both reconstruction and reconciliation between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, according to Ismael Ridwan, a Hamas spokesman, who spoke by telephone after extensive talks between Egyptian and Hamas officials.

He said among the materials that would be allowed to flow into Gaza in the new arrangement were cement and steel, which Egypt would monitor. Those materials are desperately needed for rebuilding, but the agreement would not allow pipes, cables and chemicals that Israel fears could be used for bombs.

Israel wanted to include the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, seized and held by Hamas since the summer of 2006, but Hamas said that would happen only in a separate, if linked, deal that frees hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
LAT: war crimes investigations may focus on events in Khozaa...
Weeks after Israel declared a unilateral end to its offensive in the Gaza Strip, the aftermath still burns in Khozaa, a farm town of 11,000 in the south of the territory. Chunks of white phosphorus still lie scattered throughout neighborhoods, buried in dirt and sand; when excavated, they immediately ignite and spew noxious smoke that smells vaguely of garlic.

As the International Criminal Court weighs a war crimes investigation of the Gaza offensive, the experience of Khozaa could be a key part in the evidence. It was here that Israeli troops staged a series of incursions from Jan. 11 to 13, facing off against local militant fighters and leaving a trail of accusations and recriminations in their wake.
LAT: ...as HRW examines evidence of white phosphorus use
On Jan. 24, a research team from Human Rights Watch visited Khozaa. Researcher Marc Garlasco, a weapons expert, examined the markings on the artillery shell that killed Hannan Najar. "This is clearly white phosphorus," said Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official. "See those markings? PB. This was made in Pine Bluff, Arkansas."

In the streets and yards around Najar's home, Garlasco found remnants of several more phosphorus shells. Khozaa, he concluded, had seen the heaviest use of the controversial munitions in the three-week Israeli offensive. Garlasco reconstructed the X-shaped tray that holds 160 phosphorus wafers per shell. When the tray ejects, the wafers disperse over a 150- to 250-yard radius, depending on the height of the airburst.

The burning phosphorus puts out a dense white fog and causes intense chemical burns if it comes in contact with human skin. Its use as an offensive weapon in residential areas is internationally banned. Israel isn't a signatory to the phosphorus treaty, but in response to questions from The Times, the Israeli military released a statement saying that it "only uses weapons permitted by law."

NYT: support for UN tribunal investigating 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister
A huge rally on Saturday marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri turned into a show of support for a United Nations court that will pursue the case. Anti-Syrian politicians also urged supporters who engulfed central Beirut to vote for them in force in a parliamentary election in June that will decide whether their coalition will retain its slim majority, or lose to an alliance led by the militant group Hezbollah...

The United Nations tribunal is due to open in The Hague on March 1... After more than three years of inquiries in Lebanon, a United Nations investigative team has yet to identify any suspects. The team leader, Daniel Bellemare, has said the opening of the tribunal does not mean that legal proceedings will start immediately.

Since Rafik Hariri’s killing, Lebanon has suffered a wave of political assassinations, mostly of anti-Syrian figures.

Mr. Hariri’s killing intensified anti-Syrian sentiment, helping Saad Hariri’s alliance win the last legislative election in 2005.

LAT: Hezbollah defends right to (anti-Israeli) air defense system
LAT: Iran reorganizes military to build up air defense too

NYT: moderation in new Saudi appointments weakens hard-liners
King Abdullah removed the chief of the feared religious police and a conservative cleric who declared last fall that it was permissible to kill the owners of television stations that broadcast immoral content, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Also, for the first time in the kingdom, he appointed a woman to serve as a deputy cabinet minister, choosing a respected technocrat who will preside over girls’ education.

The changes are seen as an effort to moderate the power of hard-line clerics in Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment, which wields tremendous power but has come under strong criticism in recent years. The intolerance of the cane-wielding religious police, known as the mutawa, has become a special source of popular anger...

The changes announced by the official news agency included a reconfiguration of the Grand Ulema Commission, an influential body of religious scholars from all branches of Sunni Islam. In the past, the commission had been dominated by clerics from the austere Hanbali school, but now moderates will be represented. There were also changes to the Saudi military establishment.

LAT: high unemployment of young men threatens stability in Iraq
Overall, the country's unemployment rate is 18%, but an additional 10% of the labor force is employed part time and wanting to work more, said the first Iraq Labor Force Analysis, which cited falling oil prices and a weak public sector as major problems facing the nation. Among its findings: 28% of males ages 15 to 29 are unemployed, 17% of women have jobs, and most of the 450,000 Iraqis entering the job market this year won't find work "without a concerted effort to boost the private sector."....

The findings also bode ill for government vows to find civilian employment for nearly 100,000 Sons of Iraq, the mainly Sunni Arab paramilitary force, many of whom once supported the insurgency but who have been paid about $300 a month to bolster security alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.
LAT: Shiite pilgrims face female suicide bomber in Iraq; 35 dead
NYT: Iraqi tourism and culture ministries debate reopening of the National Museum
The museum has undergone extensive renovations since the violence in 2003, with assistance from other countries, including Italy and the United States. Meanwhile, the repatriation of its looted treasures has continued, most recently with three objects that ended up in Peru, including a letter written on a tablet. The returning holdings, though, appear to have overwhelmed the museum and its staff. The Culture Ministry’s statement said the museum had effectively become “a large warehouse” for unregistered items, adding that allowing the public to visit could jeopardize “priceless relics.”...

The discord underscores the conflicting aims of the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. It has called the reopening of the museum, along with the preservation of archaeological sites, a high priority. But hopes of reviving a cultural institution and tourism have been tempered by declining resources and the danger that is still palpable in Baghdad, despite a significant drop in violence in the past year.

NYT: hunger-striking British Guantánamo detainee, whose lawyer begged for his release due to health reasons last week, to be released
WP: cases of four Guantánamo detainees reveal problems for Obama
As officials try to decide who can be released and who can be charged, they face a series of murky questions: what to do when the evidence is contradictory or tainted by allegations of torture; whether to press charges in military or federal court; what to do if prisoners are deemed dangerous but there is little or no evidence against them that would stand up in court; and where to send prisoners who might be killed or tortured if they are returned home.

Answering those questions, said current and former officials, is a massive undertaking that has been hampered by a lack of cooperation among agencies and by records that are physically scattered and lacking key details.

It is "a tough, unenviable task with imperfect solutions," said Sarah E. Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a report on closing Guantanamo Bay. "But they need to get fully underway now," she said, reviewing files, marshaling evidence and finding countries willing to take those detainees who can be released.

Approximately 60 detainees who have been cleared for release by the Bush administration remain at the camp. An additional 21 detainees are facing charges before military commissions and are almost certain to face trial in federal court, courts-martial or some new version of the current system of military commissions. Nearly 60 others could be prosecuted, the Pentagon has said, although many legal experts say that is unrealistic because of a lack of evidence and other problems. That leaves the fate of roughly 100 prisoners unclear.

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photographs of 2006 Congo election, from a current exhibit at the SF MOMA

mortars were fired [those pesky local citizens]

NYT: Taliban in southern Pakistani city of Quetta a special concern for the US
The Taliban operations in Quetta are different from operations in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan that have until now been the main setting for American unease. But as the United States prepares to pour as many as 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, military and intelligence officials say the effort could be futile unless there is a concerted effort to kill or capture Taliban leaders in Quetta and cut the group’s supply lines into Afghanistan.

From Quetta, Taliban leaders including Mullah Muhammad Omar, a reclusive, one-eyed cleric, guide commanders in southern Afghanistan, raise money from wealthy Persian Gulf donors and deliver guns and fresh fighters to the battlefield, according to Obama administration and military officials...

The Taliban leaders have operated from Quetta for several years, but the increasing violence in southern Afghanistan suggests that the flow of arms, fighters and money there from the Pakistani sanctuary may be increasing.
NYT: US missile strikes in Pakistan, which have continued under Obama, major cause of resentment
BBC: 14 killed in mortar attack in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province
Militants effectively control large swathes of the region and the army is engaged in an operation to try to remove them... Local citizens were adamant that the mortar had been fired by the military. However, a military spokesman denied this.

"At least 13 civilians were killed when militants fired a mortar shell from Mirwali," the spokesman said. "It hit a house at Abbas Chowk near Darra Adam Khel... One soldier was also martyred, after which security forces responded and engaged the militants' positions."
LAT: Polish hostage killed by Pakistani militants, in video given to media

WP: Britain and the US both have Afghanistan-Pakistan envoys now
Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was once quoted as saying the military effort there was doomed to failure, was given a new job Monday _ tackling those problems that afflict both Afghanistan and its troubled neighbor, Pakistan... The spokesman, Michael Ellam, said Cowper-Coles would work in tandem with Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan appointed by President Barack Obama last month.

An Oxford-educated diplomat, Cowper-Coles has a reputation for frank talk that has occasionally embarrassed his bosses... More recently, a French newspaper quoted the then-ambassador to Kabul as saying the country might best be "governed by an acceptable dictator"...

NYT: revenge killing of Taliban members in eastern Afghanistan
On Saturday, something typical happened in eastern Afghanistan: Two Taliban guerrillas assassinated a top local politician. But on Sunday, something very unusual occurred, according to witnesses and Afghan intelligence officials.

Hundreds of people from around the district of Dara-e-Noor joined with the local police to corner the Taliban assassins. A firefight broke out. Eventually the wounded Taliban were captured. But instead of turning them over to the authorities, the villagers trussed the men to a tree and punched and kicked them to death.

Revenge killings are not unusual in Afghanistan; when the Taliban executed murder suspects in Kabul before the American invasion, they would shout, “In revenge, there is life!”

But such killings against the feared Taliban are relatively rare. The episode in Dara-e-Noor represented an uncommon response from local villagers, one motivated at least in part by an angry fear that Afghanistan’s deeply corrupt judicial system would turn the killers loose.
NYT: 2 NATO soldiers killed in suicide attack
BBC: poll shows Afghans increasingly pessimistic about their country
The approval rating for the central government in Kabul is still high - but is steadily falling... When people were asked what poses the biggest danger to the country, most said the Taleban. That has not changed in recent years - although the focus on the Taleban is slowly increasing and fewer people now see drug traffickers as the biggest threat.

There are some positives. Many people said everyday life had improved. Sixty-five per cent said the availability of clean water was somewhat good or very good, compared with 58% in 2005. Access to a supply of electricity has also increased slightly.

LAT: female suicide bomber kills 28 in Sri Lanka at processing center for the displaced
Beate Arnestad, a Norwegian filmmaker who made a 2007 documentary on two female Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, said those she met had been part of the Tigers for most of their lives, having been kidnapped, handed over to the group or run away to the join the group at a young age.

The young women had known little but conflict for most of their lives, Arnestad said, and were highly obedient to their commanders, who strictly controlled the information they received. She said she found them extremely fit, dedicated, intelligent and very proud of being part of the elite Black Tigers suicide squad. Arnestad said they would have been overachievers in a more conventional environment.
Gdn: the Red Cross evacuates 240 sick and wounded displaced
The patients had fled the last functioning hospital in the war zone in Puthukkudiyiruppu last week after it came under repeated artillery barrages that killed several patients. The Red Cross and government doctors set up a makeshift medical facility in an abandoned community centre and a school, Wijesinghe said. However, the area was shelled on Monday, she added...

In recent days, the military has reported an increasing flow of civilians out of the war zone. More than 1,000 civilians fled today , and 6,599 reportedly crossed yesterday, even as a female bomber killed 19 soldiers and 10 civilians at an army checkpoint. The government earlier said the blast had killed 20 soldiers and eight civilians.
NYT: but an estimated 250,000 civilians still trapped
On Monday, some 800 civilians had crossed the front lines and were being searched by soldiers before being sent to camps farther afield. The bomber detonated her explosives as she was being searched, said Gen. Udaya Nanayakkara, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan military. Sri Lankan television showed images of bodies, including that of a child, being carried away from the site of the attack.

The military would now change its procedures for processing civilians fleeing the fighting, General Nanayakkara said. “We’ll have to check civilians one by one,” he said. “It’s going to take more time.”

NYT: Palestine stops paying for Gaza wounded in Israeli hospitals
“We already pay $7 million a month to Israeli hospitals,” [Palestinian health minister, Fathi Abu Moghli] said in a telephone interview. “Since the first day of the Gaza aggression, I said that I will not send to my occupier my injured people in order for him to make propaganda at my expense, and then pay him for it.”

An Israeli clinic set up with great fanfare on the Israeli-Gaza border the day the war ended, Jan. 18, has already closed, since both Hamas, which governs Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority essentially boycotted it. The Palestinian Authority pays for much of its citizens’ care in Israel from its budget.

Israel has long pointed to its medical care of Palestinians as an example of its advanced skills and humanitarianism. Palestinians generally are eager to gain the benefit, but are also resentful. As relations have chilled, each side has accused the other of political manipulation.
Gdn: some Rafah tunnels back in business
But while the sandy border is marked with many large craters, the damage caused to the tunnels was, in many cases, repaired within days. Already some are operating again and new tunnels are being dug under the close eye of Hamas officials, who walk from one tent to the next clutching their walkie-talkies.

The smugglers believe their tunnels were simply too deep to be badly damaged, even by the heavy 500lb or one-tonne bombs dropped by Israeli F-16s. In most cases, the serious damage was only to the entrances to the tunnels, which were soon uncovered again by the Palestinians using bulldozers and then rebuilt. It may be that the focus of the Israeli attacks was on the weapons tunnels, which are closely guarded by Hamas and other armed groups and not open to public view.
NYT: Egyptians detain Gaza protester
For two days the authorities denied that he was being held. Then on Sunday, at 10 p.m., a security official at the American University in Cairo, where Mr. Rizk studies, was able to confirm his arrest to his family...

Now, according to the accounts of five eyewitnesses to Mr. Rizk’s arrest, and interviews with his parents, his sisters, human rights lawyers and some of his professors, it appears that the Egyptian authorities have turned to the country’s emergency law to silence criticism of its Gaza policy. The law, adopted to combat terrorism after President Anwar el-Sadat was gunned down in 1981, allows the government to detain people without charge and effectively eliminates any right to due process.

The government acknowledges holding about 1,800 prisoners without charge under the emergency law, but human rights groups say the number could be closer to 10,000. The law is routinely used against members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated social and political movement. Dozens of Brotherhood followers have been arrested since the start of the Gaza conflict...

The group [that Phillip was with, Popular Committee in Solidarity With the Palestinian People] met Friday morning and took a bus north from Cairo to the Qalyubiya governate, an hour away. The demonstrators walked for about two hours, waving Palestinian flags and talking with local residents.
NYT: Israel strikes Gaza targets, bans Palestinians from entering Israel ahead of parliamentary election
CSM: cease-fire discussions a domestic political issue for Israel
Less than 48 hours before parliamentary elections here, the drive to reach a lasting cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel following their 22-day war is taking on new urgency.

If a deal isn't in place when Israelis go to the polls Tuesday, the ruling Kadima Party could take a significant hit. The centrist party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is already in second place in polls behind the hawkish Likud party, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing politician who was prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Ms. Livni and Mr. Netanyahu are the two main contenders for the country's new premiership.

But the left-leaning Labor Party, headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, could lose the most political ground as a result of the war – which came to an inconclusive halt Jan. 18 after both sides declared unilateral cease-fires – as many Israelis blame the "peaceniks" for not dealing with Hamas rockets on southern Israel much sooner.
BBC: Israeli elections Q and A

BBC: al-Qaeda Tunisia bombers in French court (minus Khalid Sheikh Mohammed)
A French court has sentenced a German convert to Islam to 18 years over an attack on a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people in 2002. Christian Ganczarski, who prosecutors believed had links with al-Qaeda, was arrested in France in 2003.

The court also sentenced Walid Nouar, the brother of the suicide bomber, to 12 years for his part in the attack on the synagogue in Djerba. Both men denied the charges and are expected to appeal against the verdict... French prosecutors believe it was organised by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US - who is being held at the Guantanamo detention centre.

LAT: Obama invokes "state secrets" in case against Boeing subsidiary for rendition flights
Douglas Letter, representing the Department of Justice, told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the Obama administration's position was "exactly" the same as that of the Bush White House, which argued the lawsuit would reveal government secrets and threaten national security.

The case was "thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials of the new administration," said Letter, who was also involved in the case under President Bush. He said the judges would understand the government's stance once they read a classified affidavit explaining its claim of so-called state secrets privilege.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed against a transportation services company that helped the CIA move the men to places of interrogation as part of the "extraordinary rendition" program. The government intervened on behalf of Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Co., which the lawsuit said filed flight plans, devised itineraries and obtained landing permits for the jets that carried the men to places where they could be interrogated under torture.

A federal trial judge ruled last year that the government had properly invoked its state secrets privilege and dismissed the suit. The American Civil Liberties Union appealed that dismissal to the 9th Circuit, arguing that the men should be given the opportunity to prove their case without classified material...
Salon: more on state secrets, from Glenn Greenwald
Nobody -- not the ACLU or anyone else -- argues that the State Secrets privilege is inherently invalid... What was abusive and dangerous about the Bush administration's version of the States Secret privilege -- just as the Obama/Biden campaign pointed out -- was that it was used not (as originally intended) to argue that specific pieces of evidence or documents were secret and therefore shouldn't be allowed in a court case, but instead, to compel dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance based on the claim that any judicial adjudication of even the most illegal secret government programs would harm national security. That is the theory that caused the bulk of the controversy when used by the Bush DOJ -- because it shields entire government programs from any judicial scrutiny -- and it is that exact version of the privilege that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated (and, by implication, sought to preserve for all Presidents, including Obama).
Gdn: the lawyer of one of the parties to the case, the last British citizen still held at Guantánamo, says his release is urgent

NYT: federal court orders California to reduce prison overcrowding
Relying on expert testimony, the court ruled that the California prison system, the nation’s largest with more than 150,000 inmates, could reduce its population by shortening sentences, diverting nonviolent felons to county programs, giving inmates good behavior credits toward early release, and reforming parole, which they said would have no adverse impact on public safety. The panel said that without such a plan, conditions would continue to deteriorate and inmates might regularly die of suicide or lack of proper care...

Federal judges have already ruled that the state’s failure to provide medical and mental health care is killing at least one inmate every month and has subjected inmates to cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Constitution.

In their ruling on Monday, the judges ruled that reducing overcrowding was the only way to reform the prison health care system and encouraged plaintiffs’ and state lawyers to negotiate a way to cut the prison population. The judges also indicated that they would mandate a prison population cap of about 120 percent to 145 percent of the state’s designed capacity.

Gdn: Mugabe fails to release imprisoned opposition activists as promised
Doctors' affidavits seen by the Guardian reveal a pattern of torture of many of the 30 political and human rights activists held by the state for months. Nine of the prisoners seen by doctors were subjected to simulated drowning, being hung by their wrists in handcuffs and beaten, and high-voltage electric shocks...

Some were to be taken to hospital last Friday and then quietly freed by a judge in order for the regime to save face. Eight were to appear in court yesterday on the understanding they would be freed. But none of the detainees were produced after the prisons commissioner, Major-General Paradzai Zimondi, refused to hand them over...

The MDC is interpreting [Major-General Paradzai] Zimondi's intervention as evidence that the JOC [Joint Operations Command] intends to subvert the power-sharing administration by continuing the violence and intimidation against Tsvangirai's officials and supporters.

OSI: child soldier who recanted testimony in Lubunga ICC trial testifies again
In an unusual move, presiding Judge Adrian Fulford allowed the boy to tell his story without any prompting or interruptions by the prosecution or defense. All unnecessary court officers were removed from the room and the witness was shielded from defendant Lubanga’s direct view...

The beatings the children received the day they were kidnapped, Dieumerci said, only worsened once they arrived at the camp. The recruits were flogged with pieces of wood for even the most minor of offenses, including sickness or exhaustion, he said. They were also flogged if they could not complete a training exercise, misplaced their weapon, or tried to escape...

He was kept as a prisoner in yet another training camp until his father was able to pay for his freedom. After that, he went through a demobilization process with a humanitarian aid group.

Xinhua: a focus on reconciliation amidst mortar fire for new Somali president
President Ahmed, who arrived in Mogadishu on Saturday for the first time since his election on Jan. 31, held "consultative talks" with ministers in the caretaker government, security chiefs and local religious and clan leaders...

"We asked the president to keep on talking with those opposed to his government and accommodate everyone into the peace and he accepted it," Ahmed Diriye, spokesman for Hawiye clan elders who led the delegation of religious and clan elders in Mogadishu, told Xinhua.

Diriye said the president also accepted their offer of mediation between the government and the opposition, adding that the elders would try to get the consent of the opposition leaders for their mediation role...

On Saturday, a number of mortar shells were fired at the Presidential Palace in Mogadishu as the president was holding talks with officials at his residence, but no one was reportedly hurt .

Unlike previously, the Somali security forces and the African Union peacekeeping forces guarding the palace did not respond to the attacks after the president ordered them not to, the presidential spokesman said.

NYT: 4 US soldiers killed by car bomb in Mosul
Mosul, capital of Ninevah Province, remains one of the most violent places in Iraq. American soldiers are waging a counterinsurgency campaign there against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia , a homegrown Sunni extremist group which American intelligence officials say is foreign-led. Mosul is the last urban strong hold of the group; in other provinces they are hiding in rural or mountainous areas. Mosul also has been riven by tensions between Sunni Arabs and Kurds, with the two groups competing for power.
NYT: dealing with guns in the now-calm city of Karbala
The gun laws in Iraq have evolved over the last few years. During the height of the sectarian killing, both American and Iraqi soldiers allowed families one Kalashnikov or other weapon for their protection. In reality, families often kept many more weapons, tucked away in closets, buried in their yards or hidden under floorboards.

Over the last year, as the security in the country has stabilized, there has been an attempt to enforce stricter gun laws. Technically, every Iraqi citizen carrying a weapon is supposed to have a permit, although, of course, many Iraqis have held onto their weapons without permission.

NYT: ETA suspected of Madrid bombing
A car bomb that authorities believe was planted by Basque militant group ETA exploded early Monday near a trade fair complex in northeast Madrid. The blast blew out windows of nearby office buildings and sent up a plume of dark smoke, but there were no injuries.

If ETA was behind the bombing, it would be the first attack by the group in Madrid since a huge car bomb killed two people at Barajas International Airport in Madrid in December 2006.