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.

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