NYT: Sri Lankan government says it will stop using heavy weapons, artillery and air strikes in order to protect civilians...
In what appeared to be a concession to the visiting United Nations humanitarian coordinator, John Holmes, and foreign governments critical of the continued military offensive, a statement from President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s office said “combat operations have reached their conclusion.” The statement said military forces would “confine their attempts to rescuing civilians who are held hostage.”
But there was no sign on Monday that the government was backing away from its demand for a full surrender, after dismissing a unilateral cease-fire declared Sunday by the rebels... With only several hundred Tiger fighters remaining in a four-square-mile strip of territory, the government says it is close to ending the 25-year-old conflict. But Sri Lanka is coming under enormous international pressure to stop the fighting for the sake of the estimated 50,000 trapped civilians.
Gdn: ...but doesn't follow through
LAT: Q + A: how are conditions for those still trapped?
Dangerous if not outright deadly. The Red Cross has said the situation is "nothing short of catastrophic" for those in the tiny enclave. Food, water and medical care are in short supply, the agency says. That is to say nothing of the fighting.
Reuters: Egyptian efforts target Gaza tunnels
"Tunnel business has dropped to 20 percent of what it was before the war on Gaza because of Israeli destruction and the stepped-up security campaign by Egypt," said Abu Abdallah. The Egyptian effort was "more effective" than Israeli bombs, he said. They not only blow up the tunnels but also stop contraband goods reaching Egyptian cities near Gaza.
Accused in the past of turning a blind eye to the smuggling operations, Egypt is cooperating along with United States help in a bid to stop the contraband, which Israel says includes rockets that Gaza militants use against Israel. Since the Islamists seized control of Gaza in 2007, ousting forces of the Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel has completely blocked the entry of cement and steel, which it says Hamas will use for military purposes.
LAT: Obama plan to allow aid for a unified Palestinian government which includes Hamas
But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.
The aid measures may never come into play. Power-sharing negotiations between Hamas and its rival, the U.S.-backed Fatah faction, appear deadlocked. The two have been bitterly divided since 2007, when Hamas drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Fatah controls only the West Bank...
U.S. officials insist that the new proposal doesn't amount to recognizing or aiding Hamas. Under law, any U.S. aid would require that the Palestinian government meet three long-standing criteria: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and agreeing to follow past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Hamas as an organization doesn't meet those criteria. However, if the rival Palestinian factions manage to reach a power-sharing deal, the Obama administration wants to be able to provide aid as long as the Hamas-backed members of the government -- if not Hamas itself -- meet the three criteria.
NYT: torture and accountability: lessons from Israel
Until the court’s decision, Israel, like the Bush administration, had insisted that its methods of torment permitted in interrogating detainees were not “torture,” and therefore were not in violation of international and national law prohibiting the use of torture. Those methods included violent shaking, shackling prisoners to a low and tilted stool, covering their heads with urine-drenched hoods, and sleep deprivation... Israel’s official euphemism, “a moderate measure of physical pressure,” was a touch more honest than the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.” But the intent was the same.
Israel’s other line of defense, equally familiar, was that the country was embroiled in a “war on terrorism” (that was years before President George W. Bush used the term) and therefore could not deal gently with a Palestinian who may know of a — literally — ticking bomb.
FP: timeline of US torture, since 9/11
EmptyWheel(via Andrew Sullivan): and docs released in the last few weeks
LAT: the birth and slow death of the Sons of Iraq
The divergent fates of these two former Sunni insurgents highlight the major unknown about the intentions of Iraq's Shiite-led government: Is it reaching out to former Sunni insurgents such as Abu Azzam in the true spirit of "national reconciliation," or in hopes of splintering the movement?
And will the government's campaign against men such as Abu Maarouf succeed in snuffing out potential rivals? Or is it planting seeds for a long-term Sunni revolt?
The crackdown also points to a significant change in the U.S. forces' onetime policy of nurturing and protecting the Sons of Iraq. As the Iraqi government has arrested some of the movement's leaders, forced others into exile and failed to deliver jobs for rank-and-file fighters, the Americans have regularly deferred to Baghdad's wishes as they hand over responsibility for the country's security.
LAT: Iraqi government claims raid violated security pact with US
CSM: British court acquits only suspects ever tried in connection with 7/7 London bombings
The investigation into the July 7 plot is the largest criminal investigation in British history. Over the course of tens of thousands of man-hours, officers have taken 18,450 statements and produced 37,000 exhibits and 19,400 documents.
But, Mr. Gohel says: "What we are seeing repeatedly now is that the threshold for quality and quantity of evidence acquired is set so high it is almost impossible to obtain successful prosecutions unless there is irrefutable evidence, including a smoking gun and dead bodies, and the perpetrators being filmed in the act."
Gdn: Pakistani air strikes, troops fight Taliban expansion near Swat Valley
Fighter jets and helicopter gunships launched attacks on Taliban positions in Buner today in a dramatic expansion of a military operation to halt the march of extremists out of the Taliban-controlled Swat valley... Buner, a small mountainous district tucked into north-western Pakistan, was the centre of world concerns last week when Taliban militants overran the district, ransacking foreign aid agency offices and occupying government buildings.
Although the offensive posed no direct danger to Islamabad, the proximity of the advance to the capital stoked American worries that, as Hillary Clinton put it, Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to world security. Under immense domestic and international pressure the military launched an operation in Lower Dir district on Sunday, attacking Taliban positions with gunships and artillery.
NYT: leading Taliban's main negotiator to break off talks with the government...
Under the February peace agreement, the government agreed to the imposition of Shariah courts and both sides agreed to stop fighting. The military has ceased operations in the Swat Valley, but Taliban militants have insisted they will remain armed until the Islamic courts are set up and functioning.
Government officials said they would continue to try to hold the Swat peace agreement together, but have demanded that militants cease their activities in several districts adjoining Swat and lay down their weapons. Several provincial officials have expressed growing frustration with Mr. Muhammad and his failure to make the militants abide by the agreement.
AJE: ...and flight of up to 50,000 civilians
LAT: Swat Valley conflict as demonstrative of Pakistan's identity crisis?
Although they have different reasons for leaving, those who have lived through the last few years in Swat say they have experienced firsthand what passes for peace, Taliban-style, and fear the worst as militants gain more influence across the region.
A former tourist destination, the Swat Valley is now ground zero in Pakistan's identity crisis... Many here and abroad fear the rising tide of extremism in Swat could foretell changes in an overwhelmingly Muslim society that has been largely secular and open.
CSM: new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan: "cash and jobs instead of guns"
Others say agencies such as the Peace and Reconciliation Commission are part of the problem. Since 2005, the commission claims to have reconciled with nearly 4,000 fighters. It has lost track of most of these, however. Some critics charge that many of the surrendered were never with the insurgency or lied about surrendering to get a payment...
In many cases, the commission is unable to provide the jobs it promised to those fighters who genuinely want to reconcile, analysts say. Mr. Muzdja believes the government and the Americans must revamp the reconciliation program by making it more transparent and accountable.
LAT: Karzai to amend Afghani law basically permitting rape
The law, which sparked an international outcry after it was signed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone...
Though the law would apply only to the country's Shiite Muslims, who make up about 20% of Afghanistan's 30 million people, many fear its passage marks a return to Taliban-style oppression of women.
LAT: 7 police officers dead in Tijuana drug violence
NYT: intrigue of assassination plot highlights tensions in Bolivia
But the episode, with its dash of Balkan intrigue, remains far from an open-and-shut case of right versus left. Instead, it falls somewhere in that gray area of Bolivian politics, in which Mr. Morales’s claims of destabilization plots, now a regular feature of his government, and his opponents’ counterclaims that such plots are shams contribute to growing tensions between the central government and the rebellious lowlands...
Indeed, the mystery of the case revolves largely around this enigmatic figure, believed to be the group’s leader... Mr. [Eduardo] Rozsa Flores went further in the interview, saying his goal was not toppling Mr. Morales, but achieving autonomy for Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s wealthiest department, or province. Envisioning a clash with La Paz over this issue, he nonchalantly described his goal as “declaring independence and creating a new country.”
NYT: thousands imprisoned and hundreds dead as China seeks to weed out Falun Gong
CSM: vigilantes fight back against pirates in Somalia
21 April 2009
coming to america [i was a teenage pirate]
NYT: 17 year-old Somali pirate, Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, in the US for trial proceedings
“We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” ...
New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters, but in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation...
NYT: where to from here? 7 recommendations from the experts
AP: 28 dead in clashes with Mungiki gang in Kenya
The Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule, and the gang has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence. The group is believed to have thousands of followers, drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and the dominant force in the country's politics and business...
IRIN: 100,000 civilians still trapped in northeastern war zone
Reuters: Q+A on the current fighting
On Tuesday, the military was advancing and expanding its control of the 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) no-fire zone, after troops on Monday breached an earth bund blocking the main route out of the area. It is all but certain this will be the final conventional battle of the 25-year-old war. It is a safe bet the military will replicate the tactics they have used around the edges of the no-fire zone. They will use snipers to pick off Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels trying to block people from fleeing. In any case, the military has vowed no more truces. So a conventional defeat looks on the cards very soon for what has long been regarded by many as one of the most resilient and ruthless guerrilla groups.
AP: Gaza an environmental mess post-conflict with Israel
BBC: while Hamas accused of extrajudicial killings of Fatah rivals
Eighteen men were were summarily executed, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, during the fighting, HRW said. In the three months since January, another 14 people were killed, including at least four in detention, the report released on Monday said... "The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern," the report said.
Reuters: Pakistani government increases police salaries in North West Frontier Province by 30% amidst violence
BBC: Cheney favors disclosure of torture memos (as long as they're positive)
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News. "There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."
Gdn: Obama, for first time, opens up possibility of prosecutions for waterboarding
AP: Russian military makes moves toward South Ossetia
At a military checkpoint between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the word "Russia" is hand-painted in pink on a concrete security barrier. "It will be Russia," said a Russian army lieutenant as the Ossetian soldiers under his command nodded...
By reinforcing its military presence at a time of potential political instability, Russia appears determined to maintain pressure on Saakashvili, whom Moscow has openly said must be replaced before relations can be repaired.
AFP: quick! blog about it!
“We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” ...
New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters, but in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation...
NYT: where to from here? 7 recommendations from the experts
AP: 28 dead in clashes with Mungiki gang in Kenya
The Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule, and the gang has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence. The group is believed to have thousands of followers, drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and the dominant force in the country's politics and business...
[One member of the Mungiki] said hundreds of young men and policemen had come into Gathaithi on Monday night looking for Mungiki members, and he expected a second wave of attacks. Two of his colleagues had been shot and were hiding elsewhere in the bushes trying to recover, he said. A mob of villagers, he said, had killed 13 of his fellow gang members in the last three weeks...
[An anonymous source] told the AP that the Mungiki had been extorting money from businesses in the area with the full knowledge of the police until last week, when police switched sides and backed residents who then lynched gang members.
AP: al-Bashir in Ethiopia despite ICC war crimes warrant
Since the International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant on March 4, al-Bashir has visited Eritrea, Egypt and Libya, attended an Arab League summit in Qatar and performed a pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city, Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. In March, the Arab League formally rejected the charges against al-Bashir.
Many African countries have said they will not arrest al-Bashir. The African Union, which is based in Ethiopia, has said al-Bashir's arrest would dangerously imperil the fragile peace process in Sudan and has asked the U.N. to defer the warrant for one year.
CSM: the challenges of reconciliation in Algeria
In 2005, the country passed a National Reconciliation Charter with the approval of a reported 97 percent of the electorate. The controversial document ended the fighting between the state and Islamist militants by granting amnesty to almost all fighters on both sides.
It also offered financial compensation to the families of those disappeared in the war, but also made it illegal to criticize government conduct during the conflict, effectively closing the door to any future investigations... Under Article 45 of the charter, individuals are forbidden from filing complaints against the government, police, or military for their conduct during the war. Those who do, face a five-year prison term and a fine as high as $33,000.
CSM: and of maintaining security gains in Iraq
While the Iraqi Army has become relatively adept at conventional operations and has improved its planning and logistics, much of the drop in attacks over the past year has been achieved through counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations increasingly partnered with Iraqi troops but still led by US forces.
IRIN: 100,000 civilians still trapped in northeastern war zone
Reuters: Q+A on the current fighting
On Tuesday, the military was advancing and expanding its control of the 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) no-fire zone, after troops on Monday breached an earth bund blocking the main route out of the area. It is all but certain this will be the final conventional battle of the 25-year-old war. It is a safe bet the military will replicate the tactics they have used around the edges of the no-fire zone. They will use snipers to pick off Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels trying to block people from fleeing. In any case, the military has vowed no more truces. So a conventional defeat looks on the cards very soon for what has long been regarded by many as one of the most resilient and ruthless guerrilla groups.
AP: Gaza an environmental mess post-conflict with Israel
BBC: while Hamas accused of extrajudicial killings of Fatah rivals
Eighteen men were were summarily executed, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, during the fighting, HRW said. In the three months since January, another 14 people were killed, including at least four in detention, the report released on Monday said... "The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern," the report said.
Reuters: Pakistani government increases police salaries in North West Frontier Province by 30% amidst violence
BBC: Cheney favors disclosure of torture memos (as long as they're positive)
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News. "There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."
Gdn: Obama, for first time, opens up possibility of prosecutions for waterboarding
AP: Russian military makes moves toward South Ossetia
At a military checkpoint between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the word "Russia" is hand-painted in pink on a concrete security barrier. "It will be Russia," said a Russian army lieutenant as the Ossetian soldiers under his command nodded...
By reinforcing its military presence at a time of potential political instability, Russia appears determined to maintain pressure on Saakashvili, whom Moscow has openly said must be replaced before relations can be repaired.
AFP: quick! blog about it!
19 April 2009
south asian srebrenica [contested]
BBC: Sri Lanka rejects UN truce, despite incomplete evacuation of civilians
Between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians are still thought to be trapped in the zone - about 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of coastal area in Mullaitivu district.
Gdn: trapped Tamil civilians killed, wounded as Sri Lankan army shells no-fire zone
The casualties' graphic accounts of a fierce onslaught on the no-fire zone, supported by the evidence of their severe wounds, have been reported by doctors who have treated them at a field hospital at Pulmoddai, inside the military area, where thousands of evacuees have been taken by ship. According to the senior doctor handling the casualties for the Sri Lankan government as they arrive at Pulmoddai, shells are falling among the tightly packed tents and shelters that are home to tens of thousands of civilians, killing and wounding dozens every day...
BBC: others arrested in Turkish coup conspiracy, now involving nearly 150
BBC: Togo also on the trail: police allegedly preempt coup attempt by president's brother
Our correspondent says relations between the two went cold when the president sacked his brother as defence minister during a cabinet reshuffle without explanation in 2007.
The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 fighters, has been blamed for numerous kidnappings, bombings and beheadings. It is believed to have received funds from Al Qaeda and is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
AJE: 60,000 displaced Somalis have returned to Mogadishu
AJE: Somali parliament unanimously approves adoption of Sharia law; unclear how it will be enforced
Analysts say that the move to implement sharia is an attempt by political leaders to re-assert government control over southern and central parts of the country. [ceding the north to the pirates, apparently]
Slate: how to get a grip on the pirates
BBC: ...which have incredible reach
Reuters: how about sending more Dutch sailors to the scene?
random: hey, at least there's a bright side if it doesn't happen
(NYT: this can't be coincidence)
AJE: 10 JEM rebels sentenced to death by hanging for launching attack on Khartoum
Under Sudanese law, any death sentence must be ratified by both an appeals' court and the country's highest court. Then all death warrants must be signed and approved by Omar al-Bashir, the president.
At least 50 other Jem fighters are already awaiting execution over the attack.
The recent abductions of dozens of opposition and human rights activists began in October. Many were held for weeks or months in hidden locations. Most were eventually produced in court and many have provided sworn accounts, corroborated by doctors, of being tortured to elicit confessions that they were recruiting militants to overthrow Mr. Mugabe or were involved in bombing plots.
BBC: rebel leader in Burundi demobilizes
Agathon Rwasa, of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), gave his arms to African Union troops overseeing the peace process.
Rendón Herrera's organization is responsible for 3,000 killings in the past 18 months alone, said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, who directs the national police. Police said Rendón Herrera had offered his assassins $1,000 for each officer they killed, in hopes of evading arrest...
The military's arrival in Tijuana two years ago was less than auspicious. Soldiers disarmed the city's 2,300-strong police force, long thought to be compromised by the cartels, and began rumbling down busy streets in public displays of force.
But the toll of killings and kidnappings only accelerated, as rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel clashed, leaving behind scrawled threats to each other beside decapitated bodies or barrels of lye with liquefied human remains...
In November, a captured cartel lieutenant began giving up names of police officers on the payroll of organized crime. Duarte's soldiers swept down on high-ranking commanders across the city...
The police departments in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach, as well as the state police, are now run by current or former army officers.
Gone are many of the police informants, or "antennas," that supplied organized crime with intelligence and cleared the streets before cartel kidnappings and raids, U.S. and Mexican authorities say.
LAT: mayors catching the brunt of the risk
Vergara, 34, a member of the once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is among at least 11 Mexican mayors and ex-mayors who have been killed or have disappeared during the last 15 months. Many more have received extortion demands. Others, such as Jose Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of beleaguered Ciudad Juarez, received public death threats.
Mexico's 2,400 mayors occupy a dicey spot on the front line of the country's war on drug traffickers. They are prime targets for bribe offers because they oversee local police. And well-meaning mayors are hard pressed: Most municipal governments have skimpy tax bases from which to equip and pay police well enough to break long-standing graft...
Analysts say the rise in violence at the municipal level reflects political changes in Mexico, where the former ruling party, the PRI, has ceded the top-to-bottom control it once wielded, including over the drug trade.
Under PRI mayors, governors and presidents, traffickers largely went about their business with little trouble as long as they kept killings down and maintained payoffs to the right politicians.
But the rise of a multiparty system in Mexico during the last 20 years has upended that tacit pact.
BBC: map of the cartels' strongholds
NYT: cocaine street price up, but indicator of drug war success doubtful
BBC: Afro-Bolivians create new kingdom
King Julio is one of the many poverty-stricken Afro-Bolivians. But a few years ago he discovered that he was a direct descendant of Bonifaz, a tribal king from central Africa.
BBC: memories of Solidarity and betrayal
Natalia's father is 67 years old now. He won a presidential award for his contribution to Polish democracy.
++
BBC: guernica
Army of Dude (via AM): game theory
the Onion: 'cost of living now outweighs benefits'
Between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians are still thought to be trapped in the zone - about 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of coastal area in Mullaitivu district.
Gdn: trapped Tamil civilians killed, wounded as Sri Lankan army shells no-fire zone
The casualties' graphic accounts of a fierce onslaught on the no-fire zone, supported by the evidence of their severe wounds, have been reported by doctors who have treated them at a field hospital at Pulmoddai, inside the military area, where thousands of evacuees have been taken by ship. According to the senior doctor handling the casualties for the Sri Lankan government as they arrive at Pulmoddai, shells are falling among the tightly packed tents and shelters that are home to tens of thousands of civilians, killing and wounding dozens every day...
And last night the Sri Lankan military sources said 2,857 civilians had broken through Tamil Tiger lines and made their way to safety during the day. They added that 5,000 people had tried to escape and had come under fire from the rebels. But it was not possible to verify the reports because the military has denied access to the area surrounding the no fire zone.
Until last month the government allowed civilians injured in the no-fire zone to be taken to the larger hospital in Trincomalee, but then decreed that they must be kept inside the military area...
Most of the Tamil Tiger fighters were on the front line, he said, but some were moving among the civilians, visiting family members or moving casualties. He said Tamil Tiger police were still operating, attempting to control the crowds.
NYT: can it be compared to Srebrenica?
BBC: others arrested in Turkish coup conspiracy, now involving nearly 150
BBC: Togo also on the trail: police allegedly preempt coup attempt by president's brother
Our correspondent says relations between the two went cold when the president sacked his brother as defence minister during a cabinet reshuffle without explanation in 2007.
He adds that the family feud risks introducing an ethnic dimension between the two half-brothers as the president's mother is from the Ewe group in southern Togo, while his sibling's mother is from the Kabye people in the north.
BBC: motley crew of mercenaries allegedly plot to assasinate Morales
Three died and two were arrested in the eastern city of Santa Cruz after police fought a gunbattle with the group.
Bolivian police officials said two of the five fought for Croatian independence. The three others are said to be Irish, Romanian and Hungarian.
CSM: violence between 'yellow' and 'red' shirts in Thailand
Econ: Fiji's fun with constitutions
Fleetingly, on April 10th, Fiji’s armed forces commander, Frank Bainimarama, seemed to lose his other job as prime minister. President Ratu Josefa Iloilo announced the abrogation of the country’s constitution, the sacking of the judiciary and the postponement of elections until 2014. Calling the president’s decision deeply regrettable, Mr Bainimarama resigned and said he was heading back to barracks. Yet the next day, he and his cabinet were back in their offices, as if nothing had happened. Belying the pretence of normalcy, however, soldiers were sent into the newsrooms of the country’s newspapers, and television and radio stations to prevent “negative” publicity; several foreign journalists were booted out of the country...
The trigger for the jettisoning of Fiji’s constitution was a ruling by the Court of Appeal declaring illegal Mr Bainimarama’s interim regime, which took power in a coup in 2006. The court demanded that a neutral caretaker be appointed prime minister, pending the dissolution of parliament and a general election.
WP: violence as India votes; Maoists kill 17
The staggered, five-phase national election, which ends May 13, will cost an estimated $2 billion, with about 714 million voters. Vote-counting is scheduled for May 16, with 543 lawmakers being chosen for the lower house of Parliament. More than 6 million security and civil officials are responsible for helping to oversee the elections, and 1.3 million voting machines will be used.
The government deployed hundreds of thousands of police and paramilitary forces to guard polling stations, especially along thickly forested areas that security officials call India's "red corridor" because of the Maoist presence...
The attacks targeted security forces and polling officials, not voters. Helicopters were flown into some areas to evacuate soldiers who had come under fire. Maoists also destroyed electronic voting machines. The Maoist rebels are active in 17 of India's 28 states, and for four decades, they have been waging a low-grade insurgency that they say is intended to promote the rights of landless farmers and tribal people...
The election features three primary political alliances: the ruling, left-of-center coalition led by the Congress party; the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led group; and a third bloc consisting of smaller, regional and communist parties.
BBC: Muslim parties also contesting elections
More than two dozen Muslim political parties, big and small, are contesting these elections - almost double the figure of the last election...
Since India's independence from British rule, Congress has been getting a sizeable chunk of Muslim votes at national level, largely because Muslims felt they had to prove their loyalty to India in early post-partition days, experts say.
AJE: $5 billion in aid pledged for Pakistan at summit in Japan
Gdn: as Islamabad is targeting by the Taliban
CSM: breakdown of the umbrella organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan
NYT: Pakistan branches exploit class cleavage
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.
To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
BBC: thousands have been displaced in the process
NYT: Afghan women protest harsh new law despite risks
About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.
With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.
BBC: Afghanistan to recruit thousands more police ahead of August elections
Gdn: special series on Baghdad
Gdn: and Basra
Gdn: evaluating Britain's performance there
NYT: cobbling together provincial councils
BBC: sexual violence in the US military
According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed.
The Department of Defense acknowledges the problem, estimating in its 2009 annual report on sexual assault (issued last month) that some 90% of military sexual assaults are never reported.
AP: captives of Islamist rebels in Phillippinnes freedThe Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 fighters, has been blamed for numerous kidnappings, bombings and beheadings. It is believed to have received funds from Al Qaeda and is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
AJE: 60,000 displaced Somalis have returned to Mogadishu
AJE: Somali parliament unanimously approves adoption of Sharia law; unclear how it will be enforced
Analysts say that the move to implement sharia is an attempt by political leaders to re-assert government control over southern and central parts of the country. [ceding the north to the pirates, apparently]
Slate: how to get a grip on the pirates
BBC: ...which have incredible reach
Reuters: how about sending more Dutch sailors to the scene?
random: hey, at least there's a bright side if it doesn't happen
(NYT: this can't be coincidence)
AJE: 10 JEM rebels sentenced to death by hanging for launching attack on Khartoum
Under Sudanese law, any death sentence must be ratified by both an appeals' court and the country's highest court. Then all death warrants must be signed and approved by Omar al-Bashir, the president.
"God is Great! Jem is strong! Revolution, revolution until victory!" the defendants shouted after hearing the verdict...
More than 220 people were killed when Jem fighters reached Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, more than 1,000km from the western Darfur region where it has been fighting government forces and allied Arab militias...At least 50 other Jem fighters are already awaiting execution over the attack.
BBC: Ethiopians mobilize for release of opposition leader
[Birtukan] was among more than 100 people jailed for political offences after Ethiopia's election in 2005, most of whom have since been pardoned...
Ms Birtukan is a former judge and was one of the younger and more charismatic leaders of the coalition which did well against the ruling party in the 2005 elections.
Gdn: Human Rights Watch calls Eritrea a "giant prison"
There is no freedom of speech, worship or movement in Eritrea, while many adults are forced into national service at token wages until up to 55 years of age.
AP: Mugabe calls for reconciliation on independence day
NYT: while his thugs appear to have other ideas
...Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants, part of an inner circle called the Joint Operations Command, know that their 85-year-old leader may not be around much longer to shield them, and they fear losing not just their power and ill-gotten wealth, but also their freedom, officials in the party said.
The recent abductions of dozens of opposition and human rights activists began in October. Many were held for weeks or months in hidden locations. Most were eventually produced in court and many have provided sworn accounts, corroborated by doctors, of being tortured to elicit confessions that they were recruiting militants to overthrow Mr. Mugabe or were involved in bombing plots.
BBC: rebel leader in Burundi demobilizes
Agathon Rwasa, of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), gave his arms to African Union troops overseeing the peace process.
Up to 20,000 FNL rebels are due to be disarmed next week and some will be integrated into the security forces.
Econ: the aid to the DRC is as messy as the country
Rendón Herrera's organization is responsible for 3,000 killings in the past 18 months alone, said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, who directs the national police. Police said Rendón Herrera had offered his assassins $1,000 for each officer they killed, in hopes of evading arrest...
Rendón Herrera and his brother Freddy Rendón controlled an area near the border with Panama known as a major corridor for drug and arms traffickers. Before the arrival of their far-right militia, the area was dominated by leftist rebels.
The brothers were among the last paramilitary leaders to demobilize in 2006, under a 2003 peace deal that promised fighters reduced sentences and protection from extradition to the United States in exchange for pledges to renounce violence. But while his brother and other paramilitaries agreed to await justice in jail, Don Mario fled back to the jungle and rearmed, police say.
LAT: the war on drugs in Tijuana
The military also appears to be targeting symbols of narco culture. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos said the military was behind the destruction late last month of five shrines in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach dedicated to folk saints such as La Santa Muerte (Saint Death), whose followers include drug traffickers.
The military's arrival in Tijuana two years ago was less than auspicious. Soldiers disarmed the city's 2,300-strong police force, long thought to be compromised by the cartels, and began rumbling down busy streets in public displays of force.
But the toll of killings and kidnappings only accelerated, as rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel clashed, leaving behind scrawled threats to each other beside decapitated bodies or barrels of lye with liquefied human remains...
In November, a captured cartel lieutenant began giving up names of police officers on the payroll of organized crime. Duarte's soldiers swept down on high-ranking commanders across the city...
The police departments in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach, as well as the state police, are now run by current or former army officers.
Gone are many of the police informants, or "antennas," that supplied organized crime with intelligence and cleared the streets before cartel kidnappings and raids, U.S. and Mexican authorities say.
LAT: mayors catching the brunt of the risk
Vergara, 34, a member of the once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is among at least 11 Mexican mayors and ex-mayors who have been killed or have disappeared during the last 15 months. Many more have received extortion demands. Others, such as Jose Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of beleaguered Ciudad Juarez, received public death threats.
Mexico's 2,400 mayors occupy a dicey spot on the front line of the country's war on drug traffickers. They are prime targets for bribe offers because they oversee local police. And well-meaning mayors are hard pressed: Most municipal governments have skimpy tax bases from which to equip and pay police well enough to break long-standing graft...
Analysts say the rise in violence at the municipal level reflects political changes in Mexico, where the former ruling party, the PRI, has ceded the top-to-bottom control it once wielded, including over the drug trade.
Under PRI mayors, governors and presidents, traffickers largely went about their business with little trouble as long as they kept killings down and maintained payoffs to the right politicians.
But the rise of a multiparty system in Mexico during the last 20 years has upended that tacit pact.
BBC: map of the cartels' strongholds
NYT: cocaine street price up, but indicator of drug war success doubtful
BBC: Afro-Bolivians create new kingdom
King Julio is one of the many poverty-stricken Afro-Bolivians. But a few years ago he discovered that he was a direct descendant of Bonifaz, a tribal king from central Africa.
Almost two years ago he was crowned at a lavish ceremony as the first Afro-Bolivian king - a move intended to further the group's cause and gain recognition in the country's new constitution.
The original Bonifaz was brought to Bolivia as a slave in the 16th Century to work in the silver mines of Potosi.
WP: race an issue at the Summit of the Americas
AJE: Haitian senate elections upcoming; Aristide's party excluded
WP: as the country, reliant on remittances and aid, struggles to get by
Econ: Correa likely to win re-election
BBC: memories of Solidarity and betrayal
Natalia's father is 67 years old now. He won a presidential award for his contribution to Polish democracy.
"From time to time he puts on a suit and goes to meetings. He is very proud of his contribution. He jokes that he even wears his medal in bed."
But this recognition came with a bitter aftertaste. When his personal file was declassified, he discovered that close friends he had trusted had betrayed him.
Econ: political leadership (or lack of it) in post-communist statesCSM: Russia ends emergency rule in Chechnya, will withdraw half of troops
"Chechnya exists today as a kind of enclave, completely outside the framework of Russian or international law," says Tatiana Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Russia, who was reached by phone in Grozny. "This decision to lift the state of emergency has purely symbolic significance for the population of Chechnya. Today, the human rights abuses are committed by [pro-Moscow] Chechens rather than Russian security forces, but the atmosphere of impunity is the same," she says.
BBC: crime in Croatia
++
BBC: guernica
Army of Dude (via AM): game theory
the Onion: 'cost of living now outweighs benefits'
15 April 2009
Captain Phillips and the Somali pirates [the never-ending story]
NYT: the feat of the snipers who saved Captain Phillips from the Somali pirates
The hard part was not the distance, 75 feet, an easy range for an experienced sniper. Far more difficult were all the moving parts: the bobbing lifeboat, the rolling ship, hitting three targets simultaneously in darkness — and all without harming the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips...
Several dozen members of the Seals had secretly boarded the Bainbridge on Saturday, having flown to the area, parachuted into the ocean and then climbed aboard inflatable boats they had dropped into the sea. The Navy would not say where they were based or if they were part of even more elite, clandestine military units that have historically been used for hostage rescues.
CSM: but what to do with the one that survived?
[T]he rise of savvy Somali pirates also presents an oceanic legal problem: no clear, practical legal regime exists for the world to capture and try pirates. And there's no reliable place to evaluate the evidence or hold them accountable for their crimes... In fact, most captured pirates, who are usually not kingpins anyway, are simply turned loose on or close to shore.
"The real issue is to create an international legal framework," US Coast Guard chief Adm. Thad Allen said this week. "What you really have to have is a coordinating mechanism that brings these pirates to court where they can be held accountable."
Currently, some legal experts in the US and Europe hope that the Kenyan court system will take up the call – with Mombasa acting as a kind of Hague international tribunal for pirate crimes. Britain, the US, and the European Union have signed memorandums of understanding with Nairobi in recent months. Legal action is underway in Kenya for several Somali pirates already turned over by the US and Germany, in a pre-trial phase being closely watched for its legal acuity.
CSM: the time for more non-kinetic methods?
Mr. Gates calls for "enlightened counter-measures" to bolster vulnerable states that harbor violent networks. And this week, after the rescue of the kidnapped Capt. Richard Phillips, he went further to say there is "no purely military" solution to Somalia "unless you get something on land that begins to change the equation for these kids."
Yes, kids. The pirates were 17 to 19 years old. While they were greedy for a $6 million ransom, they came from poverty and a clannish community resentful of the way that foreign ships have overfished and polluted Somalia's coastal waters.
Xinhua: or just dolphins?
NYT: US congressman almost struck by mortars on visit to Somalia (against administration's advice)
The congressman, a Democrat from Newark, was unhurt and it was unclear if insurgents who routinely shell the airport were trying to hit his plane or were simply unleashing another assault on the city’s main lifeline.
The Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group vying for control of the country, later took responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.
WP: and another attempted attack, this one thwarted
NYT: in Afghanistan, from the welfare war to...?
Lieutenant Cheek, 25, is a platoon leader for Company C of the First Battalion, 26th Infantry. In nine months in one of Afghanistan’s more violent areas, the company has been a witness to a subtly changing war.
The company arrived after a ferocious battle and in a climate of political uncertainty about the degree of commitment to the war. But it has since been issued heavier fighting vehicles, seen another battalion reinforce its efforts in the region and fought what is essentially a holding mission to prepare for a large influx of American troops that President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan later this year.
This spring, as the pace of fighting has increased with warming weather, there have not been enough American soldiers here to clear Wanat of the insurgents openly living there. But there is a sense that soon the military could be able to break the stalemate of what some soldiers, sensing that Afghanistan had long been neglected in Washington, had taken to calling “the welfare war.”
NYT: creating local militias, Iraq-style
If the militias work in Wardak, the Americans say they want to replicate them throughout the country. So the experience in Wardak has been instructive, for what the Americans can accomplish and what they cannot...
The trouble came from the Pashtun enclave of Zayawalat, one of five large villages in Jalrez. The Americans setting up the guard force waited patiently, hoping to bring Zayawalat’s elders along. They agreed to a meeting with the elders, and then another and another. At a meeting last week, the fourth, the Pashtun elders said they would make a final decision and report back this week.
But when they showed up Monday morning, the elders said they still were not ready to give up their sons. “It’s not that the people in Zayawalat don’t support the government — they do,” said Hajii Janan, the leader of the Wardak provincial council, who presided over the meeting. “But, as you can see, people are under pressure.”
NYT: more claims of civilian deaths from NATO airstrikes
NYT: Pakistani president signs off on sharia law in Swat Valley
Mr. Zardari had delayed giving the agreement a national stamp of approval, saying that the militants should first demonstrate that they would abide by the cease-fire. He signed the measure under pressure from conservatives, even though little in the valley has changed...
The government now needs to press the militants by monitoring whether they hold up their end of the bargain to lay down their arms, Mr. Sherpao said... Critics of the deal worry that it could simply provide the militants with a new haven from which they can carry out attacks.
AJE: which has some Afghans worried about strengthening militants
NYT: attacks on Punjab signal a dangerous shift
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.
Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”...
The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.
Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
WSJ: Obama may keep secret some DoJ torture memos
Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos. Another approved tactic was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
People familiar with the matter said some senior intelligence advisers to the president raised fears that releasing the two most sensitive memos could cause the Obama administration to be alienated from the CIA's rank and file, as happened during the Bush administration when Porter Goss, who was unpopular among CIA officers, headed the agency...
The government faces a court deadline Thursday in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the release of three 2005 memos issued by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under former President George W. Bush.
LAT: Lebanese drug traffickers responsible for deaths of 4 soldiers
Lebanese officials said gunmen, using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, fired on an army truck in a residential area of Baalbek, a city in the Bekaa Valley. Panicked people hid in their homes and paramedics rushed to remove the wounded.
Officials say the attack was revenge for the March 27 killing at an army checkpoint of a patriarch of the Jaafar clan, which is allegedly heavily involved in the trafficking of hashish and heroin. They predict a harsh response. By early evening, soldiers had raided the homes of the clan's late patriarch, local media reported.
LAT: Hezbollah a united military-political front with growing legitmacy (and public relations)
NYT: how US guns laws affect the illegal traffic to Mexico
Noting there are about 1,500 licensed gun dealers in the Houston area, he added: “You can come to Houston and go to a different gun store every day for several months and never alert any one.”... As a result, in some states along the Southwest border where firearms are lightly regulated, gun smugglers can evade detection for months or years. In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, dealers can sell an unlimited number of rifles to anyone with a driver’s license and a clean criminal record without reporting the sales to the government. At gun shows in these states, there is even less regulation. Private sellers, unlike licensed dealers, are not obligated to record the buyer’s name, much less report the sale to the A.T.F...
But Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Rifle Association, said tightening gun laws in the United States would penalize only people who enjoy marksmanship and hunting, or who buy firearms for self-defense, without solving Mexico’s problem.
AP: Obama to appoint border czar
PCB: the drug war in (revealing) numbers
Bloomberg: Lehman Bros. has enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb
A supply of 500,000 pounds of yellowcake is just “slightly” less than the amount needed to make one bomb, or fuel one nuclear power reactor for a year, if the latest enrichment technologies are used, said Gennady Pshakin, an Obninsk, Russia-based nonproliferation expert.
NYT: Obama may allow Iran to continue nuclear program under early stages of international negotiations
A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded...
Administration officials declined to discuss details of their confidential deliberations, but said that any new American policy would ultimately require Iran to cease enrichment, as demanded by several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
LAT: North Korea pulls completely out of nuclear talks, says "never again"
LAT: Sri Lankan president orders halt to army offensive during New Year celebrations, giving civilians temporary relief
AJE: while rebels call for permanent, internationally-recognized ceasefire
NYT: conflict not over in Thailand, but "red shirts" protests are
The red shirts, as the protesters are known, draw their strength from the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand. Many are farmers and small-businessmen who portray themselves as battling an entrenched, unelected but influential elite, notably the judiciary, the military and the powerful advisers of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
A central grievance of the red shirts is that the will of the electorate has been repeatedly thwarted: three prime ministers since 2006 have been forced from office — one in a military coup in 2006 and two removed by the courts in highly politicized trials...
Many of the red shirts are followers of Thaksin Shinawatra, the charismatic prime minister ousted in the 2006 coup who is seen by the poor as their champion and by the elite as a threat. Convicted last year of abuse of power and facing other charges in Thailand, he now lives in exile. Mr. Thaksin’s position now appears weakened by the collapse of the protests.
NYT: China releases a national human rights action plan, in part to ease dissatisfaction with public security officials
The two-year plan promises the right to a fair trial, the right to participate in government decisions and the right to learn about and question government policies. It calls for measures to discourage torture, such as requiring interrogation rooms to be designed to physically separate interrogators from the accused, and for measures to protect detainees from other abuse, from inadequate sanitation to the denial of medical care.
There are also specific protections for children, women, senior citizens, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
Human rights activists applauded Beijing officials for showing an interest in the issue. But they cautioned that any implementation would require years of work by local, provincial and national government agencies, many of which have shown little interest in initiatives that may limit their power...
Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor who specializes in China’s legal system, said that the action plan was the result of growing worries in the Chinese leadership about public dissatisfaction with security forces and even outright hostility to police officers.
The hard part was not the distance, 75 feet, an easy range for an experienced sniper. Far more difficult were all the moving parts: the bobbing lifeboat, the rolling ship, hitting three targets simultaneously in darkness — and all without harming the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips...
Several dozen members of the Seals had secretly boarded the Bainbridge on Saturday, having flown to the area, parachuted into the ocean and then climbed aboard inflatable boats they had dropped into the sea. The Navy would not say where they were based or if they were part of even more elite, clandestine military units that have historically been used for hostage rescues.
CSM: but what to do with the one that survived?
[T]he rise of savvy Somali pirates also presents an oceanic legal problem: no clear, practical legal regime exists for the world to capture and try pirates. And there's no reliable place to evaluate the evidence or hold them accountable for their crimes... In fact, most captured pirates, who are usually not kingpins anyway, are simply turned loose on or close to shore.
"The real issue is to create an international legal framework," US Coast Guard chief Adm. Thad Allen said this week. "What you really have to have is a coordinating mechanism that brings these pirates to court where they can be held accountable."
Currently, some legal experts in the US and Europe hope that the Kenyan court system will take up the call – with Mombasa acting as a kind of Hague international tribunal for pirate crimes. Britain, the US, and the European Union have signed memorandums of understanding with Nairobi in recent months. Legal action is underway in Kenya for several Somali pirates already turned over by the US and Germany, in a pre-trial phase being closely watched for its legal acuity.
CSM: the time for more non-kinetic methods?
Mr. Gates calls for "enlightened counter-measures" to bolster vulnerable states that harbor violent networks. And this week, after the rescue of the kidnapped Capt. Richard Phillips, he went further to say there is "no purely military" solution to Somalia "unless you get something on land that begins to change the equation for these kids."
Yes, kids. The pirates were 17 to 19 years old. While they were greedy for a $6 million ransom, they came from poverty and a clannish community resentful of the way that foreign ships have overfished and polluted Somalia's coastal waters.
Xinhua: or just dolphins?
NYT: US congressman almost struck by mortars on visit to Somalia (against administration's advice)
The congressman, a Democrat from Newark, was unhurt and it was unclear if insurgents who routinely shell the airport were trying to hit his plane or were simply unleashing another assault on the city’s main lifeline.
The Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group vying for control of the country, later took responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.
WP: and another attempted attack, this one thwarted
NYT: in Afghanistan, from the welfare war to...?
Lieutenant Cheek, 25, is a platoon leader for Company C of the First Battalion, 26th Infantry. In nine months in one of Afghanistan’s more violent areas, the company has been a witness to a subtly changing war.
The company arrived after a ferocious battle and in a climate of political uncertainty about the degree of commitment to the war. But it has since been issued heavier fighting vehicles, seen another battalion reinforce its efforts in the region and fought what is essentially a holding mission to prepare for a large influx of American troops that President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan later this year.
This spring, as the pace of fighting has increased with warming weather, there have not been enough American soldiers here to clear Wanat of the insurgents openly living there. But there is a sense that soon the military could be able to break the stalemate of what some soldiers, sensing that Afghanistan had long been neglected in Washington, had taken to calling “the welfare war.”
NYT: creating local militias, Iraq-style
If the militias work in Wardak, the Americans say they want to replicate them throughout the country. So the experience in Wardak has been instructive, for what the Americans can accomplish and what they cannot...
The trouble came from the Pashtun enclave of Zayawalat, one of five large villages in Jalrez. The Americans setting up the guard force waited patiently, hoping to bring Zayawalat’s elders along. They agreed to a meeting with the elders, and then another and another. At a meeting last week, the fourth, the Pashtun elders said they would make a final decision and report back this week.
But when they showed up Monday morning, the elders said they still were not ready to give up their sons. “It’s not that the people in Zayawalat don’t support the government — they do,” said Hajii Janan, the leader of the Wardak provincial council, who presided over the meeting. “But, as you can see, people are under pressure.”
NYT: more claims of civilian deaths from NATO airstrikes
NYT: Pakistani president signs off on sharia law in Swat Valley
Mr. Zardari had delayed giving the agreement a national stamp of approval, saying that the militants should first demonstrate that they would abide by the cease-fire. He signed the measure under pressure from conservatives, even though little in the valley has changed...
The government now needs to press the militants by monitoring whether they hold up their end of the bargain to lay down their arms, Mr. Sherpao said... Critics of the deal worry that it could simply provide the militants with a new haven from which they can carry out attacks.
AJE: which has some Afghans worried about strengthening militants
NYT: attacks on Punjab signal a dangerous shift
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.
Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”...
The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.
Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
WSJ: Obama may keep secret some DoJ torture memos
Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos. Another approved tactic was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
People familiar with the matter said some senior intelligence advisers to the president raised fears that releasing the two most sensitive memos could cause the Obama administration to be alienated from the CIA's rank and file, as happened during the Bush administration when Porter Goss, who was unpopular among CIA officers, headed the agency...
The government faces a court deadline Thursday in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the release of three 2005 memos issued by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under former President George W. Bush.
LAT: Lebanese drug traffickers responsible for deaths of 4 soldiers
Lebanese officials said gunmen, using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, fired on an army truck in a residential area of Baalbek, a city in the Bekaa Valley. Panicked people hid in their homes and paramedics rushed to remove the wounded.
Officials say the attack was revenge for the March 27 killing at an army checkpoint of a patriarch of the Jaafar clan, which is allegedly heavily involved in the trafficking of hashish and heroin. They predict a harsh response. By early evening, soldiers had raided the homes of the clan's late patriarch, local media reported.
LAT: Hezbollah a united military-political front with growing legitmacy (and public relations)
NYT: how US guns laws affect the illegal traffic to Mexico
Noting there are about 1,500 licensed gun dealers in the Houston area, he added: “You can come to Houston and go to a different gun store every day for several months and never alert any one.”... As a result, in some states along the Southwest border where firearms are lightly regulated, gun smugglers can evade detection for months or years. In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, dealers can sell an unlimited number of rifles to anyone with a driver’s license and a clean criminal record without reporting the sales to the government. At gun shows in these states, there is even less regulation. Private sellers, unlike licensed dealers, are not obligated to record the buyer’s name, much less report the sale to the A.T.F...
But Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Rifle Association, said tightening gun laws in the United States would penalize only people who enjoy marksmanship and hunting, or who buy firearms for self-defense, without solving Mexico’s problem.
AP: Obama to appoint border czar
PCB: the drug war in (revealing) numbers
Bloomberg: Lehman Bros. has enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb
A supply of 500,000 pounds of yellowcake is just “slightly” less than the amount needed to make one bomb, or fuel one nuclear power reactor for a year, if the latest enrichment technologies are used, said Gennady Pshakin, an Obninsk, Russia-based nonproliferation expert.
NYT: Obama may allow Iran to continue nuclear program under early stages of international negotiations
A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded...
Administration officials declined to discuss details of their confidential deliberations, but said that any new American policy would ultimately require Iran to cease enrichment, as demanded by several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
LAT: North Korea pulls completely out of nuclear talks, says "never again"
LAT: Sri Lankan president orders halt to army offensive during New Year celebrations, giving civilians temporary relief
AJE: while rebels call for permanent, internationally-recognized ceasefire
NYT: conflict not over in Thailand, but "red shirts" protests are
The red shirts, as the protesters are known, draw their strength from the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand. Many are farmers and small-businessmen who portray themselves as battling an entrenched, unelected but influential elite, notably the judiciary, the military and the powerful advisers of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
A central grievance of the red shirts is that the will of the electorate has been repeatedly thwarted: three prime ministers since 2006 have been forced from office — one in a military coup in 2006 and two removed by the courts in highly politicized trials...
Many of the red shirts are followers of Thaksin Shinawatra, the charismatic prime minister ousted in the 2006 coup who is seen by the poor as their champion and by the elite as a threat. Convicted last year of abuse of power and facing other charges in Thailand, he now lives in exile. Mr. Thaksin’s position now appears weakened by the collapse of the protests.
NYT: China releases a national human rights action plan, in part to ease dissatisfaction with public security officials
The two-year plan promises the right to a fair trial, the right to participate in government decisions and the right to learn about and question government policies. It calls for measures to discourage torture, such as requiring interrogation rooms to be designed to physically separate interrogators from the accused, and for measures to protect detainees from other abuse, from inadequate sanitation to the denial of medical care.
There are also specific protections for children, women, senior citizens, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
Human rights activists applauded Beijing officials for showing an interest in the issue. But they cautioned that any implementation would require years of work by local, provincial and national government agencies, many of which have shown little interest in initiatives that may limit their power...
Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor who specializes in China’s legal system, said that the action plan was the result of growing worries in the Chinese leadership about public dissatisfaction with security forces and even outright hostility to police officers.
08 April 2009
unconventional priorities [tweet]
LAT: US Defense Sec Gates proposes shifting priorities in the Defense budget
Under his plan, 50% of the budget would be used to counter conventional threats, with about 10% going to go irregular warfare and 40% to weapons useful to both types of conflicts.
Slate: the key points
Foreign Affairs: Gates's rationale behind it
The strategy strives for balance in three areas: between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies, between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States' existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces, and between retaining those cultural traits that have made the U.S. armed forces successful and shedding those that hamper their ability to do what needs to be done.
Abu Muquwama: some people have strong opinions about it
Abu Muquwama: and some have wrong ones
James Inhofe should be ashamed of himself -- not for saying the new budget is "gutting" our military and "disarming America" but for traveling all the way to Afghanistan on the tax-payer's dime and failing to discover that the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets needed for Afghanistan are exactly the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets privileged in the budget. Don't use the war in Afghanistan a cheap prop, Senator, if you're not even going to study the nature of the war itself.
WP: Pentagon dedicating resources to studying the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war in Lebanon
A big reason that the 34-day war is drawing such fevered attention is that it highlights a rift among military leaders: Some want to change the U.S. military so that it is better prepared for wars like the ones it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while others worry that such a shift would leave the United States vulnerable to a more conventional foe.
irregular threats
WP: bombings kill 34 across Baghdad, in worst violence in months
"Nobody knows," said Hussan Fadhil Aziz, 29, as he watched American soldiers cordon the area in Um al-Maalif. "We don't know who controls the area anymore."
He still ventured an explanation for the violence: Last week's bitter clashes between members of the Awakening, a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary force, and the mostly Shiite security forces had triggered a new wave of animosity.
NPR: conflict emerges among Anbar province's Sunni tribes
Stars & Stripes: doctor rejoins US Army after 37 years (via Tom Ricks)
WP: shoe-thrower/icon's sentence reduced to 1 year
AJE: apparent revenge attack against village in West Bank by Israeli settlers wounds several
The settlers from Bat Ayin, where a Palestinian killed a young settler last week, attacked cars and homes in the village of Safa on Wednesday.
WP: Somali pirates seize Dutch ship; US crew regains control
Reuters: Zetas training camp raided in Guatemala (via Tom Ricks)
Security forces were tipped off about suspicious activity at a ranch in Quiche, in the central highlands, by residents who said men in ski masks were asking villagers to join their ranks, police chief Marlene Blanco said at a news conference.
NYT: Twitter, texting help mobilize post-election protests in Moldova
A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police...
The immediate cause of the protests were parliamentary elections held on Sunday, in which Communists won 50 percent of the vote, enough to allow them to select a new president and amend the Constitution. Though the Communists were expected to win, their showing was stronger than expected, and opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging...
Behind the confrontation is a split in Moldova’s population. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought benefits to much of Eastern Europe, but in Moldova it ushered in economic decline and instability. In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs...
The participants at that first gathering, on Monday, dispersed peacefully. But demonstrations on Tuesday spun out of control. News coverage showed protesters throwing stones at the windows of Parliament and the presidential palace, removing furniture and lighting it on fire. Riot police officers shielded their heads as demonstrators pelted them with stones. The police then used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Fires continued to burn late into the night.
Reuters: police take control of president's office
Ind: president: the Romanians are to blame
After riot police retook the smoking and wrecked buildings overnight and rounded up the protesters, Voronin said he was expelling Romania's ambassador and introducing visa regulations for Romanians wanting to enter Moldova.
Wearing the red shirts of Thaksin loyalists, the demonstrators streamed into Bangkok throughout the day from his political strongholds in the rural north and northeast and by early evening the police estimated the crowds at 100,000.
AJE: commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide
LAT: no such acknowledgment of (what some call) the Armenian genocide during Obama's trip to Turkey
By refraining from calling the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 a genocide, Obama for the moment avoided offending a country whose help U.S. officials need in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. At the same time, he avoided infuriating his Armenian American supporters.
But Obama also contributed to the suspense surrounding a likely presidential proclamation expected in time for April 24, the annual Armenian remembrance day.
U.S. presidents usually issue statements deploring the mass killings without calling them genocide. Armenian American organizations are urging Obama to make good on his campaign pledge...
Turkish President Abdullah Gul emphasized that Turkey was willing to open its archives to historians investigating the subject and allow a joint commission to draw conclusions.
"It is not a political but an historic issue," he said. "That's why we should let historians discuss the matter." Obama administration officials said delicate talks are continuing between Turkey and Armenia over normalizing relations.
BBC: Bangladesh to investigate war crimes during its war of independence
The government says those suspected of collaborating with the Pakistani army in the killing and rape of thousands of civilians will be put on trial.
Econ: 'election' campaigning in Algeria
Abdelaziz Bouteflika has conducted a vigorous campaign to be re-elected for a third term on April 9th. There is little doubt that he will emerge with a commanding majority in the first round, against largely token opposition from five rivals who have been widely derided as "rabbits" in the local press. However, the main focus of his campaign has been on emphasising the need for a respectable turnout to accord legitimacy to his new mandate....
Mr Bouteflika had also been constrained to lower his public profile owing to a resurgence of Islamist terrorist attacks during 2007 and 2008, including a suicide bombing in Batna, a town in the east of the country, which appeared to have been intended as an assassination attempt. His recent re-emergence at public meetings has come amid reports of setbacks suffered by the armed Islamist movement, which regrouped under the banner of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) at the end of 2006. Four former "emirs" (commanders) of the Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC; the precursor of AQIM) have issued a public appeal to Islamist fighters to lay down their arms and take advantage of Mr Bouteflika's reconciliation plan, which offers the chance of an amnesty from prosecution, and the security services reported at the end of March that they had killed several AQIM members in raids on the their hideouts in the mountainous region to the east of Algiers.
Gdn: Bouteflika promises referendum on amnesty for militants
LAT: South African tribe wins rights to natural resources revenue, provides public goods
New Haven Advocate: urban informants and police corruption
NYT: gangs of New York
It was mostly battles over turf. “They were like all these street gangs — ‘Don’t bother my territory, don’t get in my way’ — fighting for land or space,” he said. “In other words, ‘This is my territory, stay out of it,’ and so forth.”
“You have a transformation of gangs from social entities organized around turf or ethnicity or around projecting honor and learning what it is like to be a male to becoming, in the 1970s, more economic entities that are increasingly, over time, organized as means of entry into the underground economy,” Mr. Schneider said. “And kids then went from fighting with things like switchblades and car aerials to fighting with weapons that were supplied by returning veterans during the Vietnam era and eventually the surplus production of all our arms manufacturers.”
daily show: the turnover of power tastes like...
++
Slate: faith no more: the scientific explanation of Biblical miracles
LAT: hip-hop in the Arab world
Iranians rhyme about stifled lives and street-level viciousness born of economic hardship. Lebanese rap subtly about sectarian blood feuds. Palestinians sling verses about misery in refugee camps and humiliation at Israeli checkpoints. Egyptians lament the fragmentation of the Arab world.
Under his plan, 50% of the budget would be used to counter conventional threats, with about 10% going to go irregular warfare and 40% to weapons useful to both types of conflicts.
Slate: the key points
Foreign Affairs: Gates's rationale behind it
The strategy strives for balance in three areas: between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies, between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States' existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces, and between retaining those cultural traits that have made the U.S. armed forces successful and shedding those that hamper their ability to do what needs to be done.
Abu Muquwama: some people have strong opinions about it
Abu Muquwama: and some have wrong ones
James Inhofe should be ashamed of himself -- not for saying the new budget is "gutting" our military and "disarming America" but for traveling all the way to Afghanistan on the tax-payer's dime and failing to discover that the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets needed for Afghanistan are exactly the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets privileged in the budget. Don't use the war in Afghanistan a cheap prop, Senator, if you're not even going to study the nature of the war itself.
WP: Pentagon dedicating resources to studying the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war in Lebanon
A big reason that the 34-day war is drawing such fevered attention is that it highlights a rift among military leaders: Some want to change the U.S. military so that it is better prepared for wars like the ones it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while others worry that such a shift would leave the United States vulnerable to a more conventional foe.
irregular threats
WP: bombings kill 34 across Baghdad, in worst violence in months
"Nobody knows," said Hussan Fadhil Aziz, 29, as he watched American soldiers cordon the area in Um al-Maalif. "We don't know who controls the area anymore."
He still ventured an explanation for the violence: Last week's bitter clashes between members of the Awakening, a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary force, and the mostly Shiite security forces had triggered a new wave of animosity.
NPR: conflict emerges among Anbar province's Sunni tribes
Stars & Stripes: doctor rejoins US Army after 37 years (via Tom Ricks)
WP: shoe-thrower/icon's sentence reduced to 1 year
AJE: apparent revenge attack against village in West Bank by Israeli settlers wounds several
The settlers from Bat Ayin, where a Palestinian killed a young settler last week, attacked cars and homes in the village of Safa on Wednesday.
The Israeli account is that the settlers, who were armed, came under attack when they entered Safa to pray, Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the West Bank, said.
The Palestinians were injured when the Israeli troops fired tear gas and live ammunition to break up the disturbance, medics said.
NYT: Sri Lankan military, Tamil Tigers ignore calls for a ceasefire, step up the fighting
The government said on its Defense Ministry Web site that it had killed more than 250 Tamil Tigers during weekend fighting and 420 more in foiling an ambush Monday morning. A pro-rebel site said that Sri Lankan shelling of the no-fire zone had killed at least 71 civilians and wounded 143 over the weekend...
The government said its troops had taken control of the Puthukkudiyiruppu area, the rebels’ last remaining stronghold at the edge of the safety zone. A general said Sunday that the rebels had been driven into the safety zone, a small strip of beachfront jungle in the country’s northeast.
BBC: interviews with civilians escaping the area
Gdn: Tamil supporters arrested in London protest
AJE: 2 bombings in Assam kill several
Police said they suspected both attacks to have been carried out by the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).
Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister from the ruling Congress party, was set to campaign in Assam on Tuesday...
The latest incidents occurred a day before the 30th anniversary of ULFA, which has previously carried out attacks around their anniversary and has been blamed for violence in Assam before.
ULFA is fighting for secession for the Assamese people in the northeast and is one of dozens of armed groups operating in the region.WP: Somali pirates seize Dutch ship; US crew regains control
Reuters: Zetas training camp raided in Guatemala (via Tom Ricks)
Security forces were tipped off about suspicious activity at a ranch in Quiche, in the central highlands, by residents who said men in ski masks were asking villagers to join their ranks, police chief Marlene Blanco said at a news conference.
Two commanders of the Zetas, the armed wing of Mexico's Gulf cartel, and 37 recruits fled the camp before the police and army arrived, leaving behind 500 grenades, six rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Blanco said.
protestsNYT: Twitter, texting help mobilize post-election protests in Moldova
A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police...
There was no sign that the authorities would cede to any of the protesters’ demands, and President Vladimir Voronin denounced the organizers as “fascists intoxicated with hatred.”
But Mihai Fusu, 48, a theater director who spent much of the day on the edges of the crowd, said he believed that a reservoir of political energy had found its way into public life.
“Moldova is like a sealed jar, and youth want more access to Europe,” he said. “Everyone knows that Moldova is the smallest, poorest and the most disgraceful country. And youth are talking about how they want freedom, Europe and a different life.”...The immediate cause of the protests were parliamentary elections held on Sunday, in which Communists won 50 percent of the vote, enough to allow them to select a new president and amend the Constitution. Though the Communists were expected to win, their showing was stronger than expected, and opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging...
Behind the confrontation is a split in Moldova’s population. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought benefits to much of Eastern Europe, but in Moldova it ushered in economic decline and instability. In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs...
The participants at that first gathering, on Monday, dispersed peacefully. But demonstrations on Tuesday spun out of control. News coverage showed protesters throwing stones at the windows of Parliament and the presidential palace, removing furniture and lighting it on fire. Riot police officers shielded their heads as demonstrators pelted them with stones. The police then used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Fires continued to burn late into the night.
Reuters: police take control of president's office
Ind: president: the Romanians are to blame
After riot police retook the smoking and wrecked buildings overnight and rounded up the protesters, Voronin said he was expelling Romania's ambassador and introducing visa regulations for Romanians wanting to enter Moldova.
"When the flag of Romania was raised on state buildings, the attempts of the opposition to carry out a coup became clear," the 67-year-old Communist leader said. He vowed "strict punishment" for the ringleaders.
Most of Moldova, an ex-Soviet republic, was part of Romania until World War Two and retains close cultural ties with its larger neighbour. Moldovans are split between those wanting reunification with Romania and those keen to stay independent.
The Romanian Foreign Ministry said it was unacceptable that "the Communist power in Chisinau transfers responsibility for the Moldovan Republic's domestic problems on to Romania".
Voronin won strong backing from Russia which said the riots were aimed at undermining Moldova's sovereignty.
NYT: former prime minister's supporters protest in BangkokWearing the red shirts of Thaksin loyalists, the demonstrators streamed into Bangkok throughout the day from his political strongholds in the rural north and northeast and by early evening the police estimated the crowds at 100,000.
The demonstrations were the biggest challenge to the four-month-old government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who took office after a pro-Thaksin government was dissolved when a court ruled that the governing party had engaged in electoral fraud.
BBC: police prevent protest in Egypt
trials
WP: Fujimori convicted of crimes against humanity; sentenced to 25 years
The verdict, delivered by a three-judge panel on a police base outside Lima where Fujimori has been held throughout the trial, marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited back to his home country, tried and convicted of human rights violations...
Many people in Peru admire Fujimori for largely defeating the Shining Path insurgency and ending a two-decade war that left about 70,000 people dead. But the tribunal found that Fujimori was guilty of creating and authorizing a military intelligence death squad that killed innocent people...
Fujimori's trial focused on two episodes of killings: a 1991 raid in which 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, were killed at a barbecue in Lima where the military intelligence unit was looking for Shining Path suspects. This raid, which became known as the Barrios Altos massacre, was followed by the 1992 abduction and killing of nine students and a teacher from La Cantuta University, also by the Colina Group...
One of the arguments Fujimori partisans sometimes offered was that the dead had been terrorists and that their deaths were, therefore, justified. But the tribunal wrote in the summary of the 711-page sentencing document that none of the 25 people killed in the two massacres had been members of the Shining Path.
AJE: former RUF leaders sentenced by Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal Sesay was sentenced to a total of 693 years, but the judges ordered the 16 sentences be served consecutively, meaning he will spend a maximum of 52 years in prison. Alongside Sesay, Morris Kallon, a former RUF commander, received a total of 340 years in prison, but will spend a maximum of 39 years in jail under the judges' ruling. Augustine Gbao, whom the court said was the RUF's ideology trainer, will spend 25 years in prison.
The Freetown-based court handed down its highest ever sentence to Issa Sesay, the leader of the RUF, on Wednesday.
New Yorker: the British law professor who helped launch the investigation of Bush's 'torture team'
NPR: ICRC report found that CIA medics were involved in torture
The ICRC report was based on statements from 14 prisoners who were held in CIA prisons overseas before being sent to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. The prisoners said that medical personnel were on hand when they were stripped naked, beaten, shackled for days in "stress positions" and subjected to the practice of controlled drowning, commonly known as waterboarding.
wronging rights: international justice round-up
AJE: commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide
LAT: no such acknowledgment of (what some call) the Armenian genocide during Obama's trip to Turkey
By refraining from calling the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 a genocide, Obama for the moment avoided offending a country whose help U.S. officials need in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. At the same time, he avoided infuriating his Armenian American supporters.
But Obama also contributed to the suspense surrounding a likely presidential proclamation expected in time for April 24, the annual Armenian remembrance day.
U.S. presidents usually issue statements deploring the mass killings without calling them genocide. Armenian American organizations are urging Obama to make good on his campaign pledge...
Turkish President Abdullah Gul emphasized that Turkey was willing to open its archives to historians investigating the subject and allow a joint commission to draw conclusions.
"It is not a political but an historic issue," he said. "That's why we should let historians discuss the matter." Obama administration officials said delicate talks are continuing between Turkey and Armenia over normalizing relations.
BBC: Bangladesh to investigate war crimes during its war of independence
The government says those suspected of collaborating with the Pakistani army in the killing and rape of thousands of civilians will be put on trial.
The party which fought for independence in 1971, the Awami League, has recently been returned to power.
The plan is opposed by one of the main opposition parties, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Its leaders are among those accused of alleged war crimes.
electionsEcon: 'election' campaigning in Algeria
Abdelaziz Bouteflika has conducted a vigorous campaign to be re-elected for a third term on April 9th. There is little doubt that he will emerge with a commanding majority in the first round, against largely token opposition from five rivals who have been widely derided as "rabbits" in the local press. However, the main focus of his campaign has been on emphasising the need for a respectable turnout to accord legitimacy to his new mandate....
Mr Bouteflika had also been constrained to lower his public profile owing to a resurgence of Islamist terrorist attacks during 2007 and 2008, including a suicide bombing in Batna, a town in the east of the country, which appeared to have been intended as an assassination attempt. His recent re-emergence at public meetings has come amid reports of setbacks suffered by the armed Islamist movement, which regrouped under the banner of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) at the end of 2006. Four former "emirs" (commanders) of the Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC; the precursor of AQIM) have issued a public appeal to Islamist fighters to lay down their arms and take advantage of Mr Bouteflika's reconciliation plan, which offers the chance of an amnesty from prosecution, and the security services reported at the end of March that they had killed several AQIM members in raids on the their hideouts in the mountainous region to the east of Algiers.
Gdn: Bouteflika promises referendum on amnesty for militants
WP: opposition presidential candidate in Iran calls for more freedoms
New Yorker: in-depth coverage of the campaign
LAT: South African tribe wins rights to natural resources revenue, provides public goods
New Haven Advocate: urban informants and police corruption
NYT: gangs of New York
It was mostly battles over turf. “They were like all these street gangs — ‘Don’t bother my territory, don’t get in my way’ — fighting for land or space,” he said. “In other words, ‘This is my territory, stay out of it,’ and so forth.”
From a law enforcement perspective, the motivation for joining a gang was apparent.
“They formed the gangs because they had close-knit living quarters in the tenements, and they formed gangs going to school, to protect themselves,” said Eric C. Schneider, who wrote “Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York.”...“You have a transformation of gangs from social entities organized around turf or ethnicity or around projecting honor and learning what it is like to be a male to becoming, in the 1970s, more economic entities that are increasingly, over time, organized as means of entry into the underground economy,” Mr. Schneider said. “And kids then went from fighting with things like switchblades and car aerials to fighting with weapons that were supplied by returning veterans during the Vietnam era and eventually the surplus production of all our arms manufacturers.”
daily show: the turnover of power tastes like...
++
Slate: faith no more: the scientific explanation of Biblical miracles
LAT: hip-hop in the Arab world
Iranians rhyme about stifled lives and street-level viciousness born of economic hardship. Lebanese rap subtly about sectarian blood feuds. Palestinians sling verses about misery in refugee camps and humiliation at Israeli checkpoints. Egyptians lament the fragmentation of the Arab world.
05 April 2009
peaceful satellite launch preparations [into the sea]
NYT: North Korea threatens to shoot down US planes "spying" on its rocket launch...
“If the brigandish U.S. imperialists dare to infiltrate spy planes into our airspace to interfere with our peaceful satellite launch preparations, our revolutionary armed forces will mercilessly shoot them down,” the North’s state-run Korea Central Radio said...
The United States, South Korea and Japan say that North Korea is using the launching to test its long-range missile technology, a violation of a 2006 United Nations resolution banning the country from all ballistic missile tests.
They warned that if North Korea presses ahead with it, they will seek punishment for the North at the Security Council.
LAT: ...which is considered a failure outside North Korea
NYT: Filipino militants kidnap, threaten to behead Red Cross workers
Abu Sayyaf head demanded that the military pull its soldiers out of an island province in the south, warning that it would behead one of the three Red Cross workers if the demand were not met by 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Abu Sayyaf, responsible for many of the deadliest terror attacks in the Philippines, has a grim record of following through on threats to behead its captives. Guillermo Sobero, an American from Corona, California, was decapitated by the group in 2001. Abu Sayyaf guerrillas also beheaded two Filipino teachers in 2000 as a “birthday gift” to President Joseph Estrada.
LAT: #2 in the Juárez drug cartel, son of the "Lord of the Skies," captured in Mexico City
Mexico is seeing a crop of younger, university-educated narcojuniors emerging as leaders of drug-trafficking organizations that are bound primarily by family ties. Carrillo Leyva was paraded before news cameras in a white Abercrombie & Fitch sweatsuit and stylish glasses -- a far cry from the narco archetype decked out in cowboy boots and oversized jewel-studded belt buckles...
The Juarez gang has been locked in a vicious turf war with a band of traffickers based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and led by Joaquin Guzman, the country's most wanted fugitive.
The bloodletting left about 1,600 people dead in Ciudad Juarez last year. Violence continued in the border city during the first two months of 2009 but has dipped since Calderon sent 5,000 more troops and hundreds of additional federal police there in recent weeks.
CSM: just as Holder and Napolitano arrive in Mexico to discuss the southward gun flow
WP: and complaints rise about delays on Mérida Initiative aid
NYT: peace semi-secured, Haiti now needs jobs
The [UN] has spent some $5 billion on peacekeeping operations here since 2004, when the government of the still popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled — many say with a shove from the Bush administration.
The peacekeeping force declared war against the gangs that plague Haiti, with some success. Kidnappings dropped to 258 victims last year from 722 in 2006, according to United Nations figures...
It required five months to seat a new government after the April 2008 food riots, and United Nations officials say development is stymied by a corrupt judicial system, weak land tenure laws and wildly inefficient ports. The roads are such moonscapes that some 40 percent of the mango crop gets too bruised to be sold abroad, said Jean M. Buteau, a leading exporter.
CSM: Binghamton shootings put into question role of the economic downturn
That event, as well as three policemen wounded in a Pittsburgh shooting after responding to a domestic disturbance call – friends said that gunman was also upset about his recent firing – fit a larger pattern of mass killings which have seemed to proliferate since America's economic downturn, experts say. Forty-four people have died in a string of five such incidents in the past month, from Oakland, California to Alabama to North Carolina.
LAT: database on killings by long-haul truckers in US reveals patterns
But the pattern in roadside body dumps and other evidence has prompted many investigators to speculate that the mobility, lack of supervision and access to potential victims that come with the job make it a good cover for someone inclined to kill...
Michael Harrigan, who oversees the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, said the program helps local police "connect the dots" to slayings outside their jurisdictions. He said most of the victims led high-risk lifestyles that left them particularly vulnerable.
NYT: new Israeli foreign minister: “those who wish for peace should prepare for war”
The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved.
Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “has no validity.”...
As the new prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone, promising to hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority toward a permanent accord. But he has also stopped short of endorsing the two-state solution, putting the new government at odds with the United States and the European Union.
NYT: Israeli advocate general closes investigation into military abuses in Gaza
NYT: new face/phase of insurgency in Iraq
Most of the latest attacks, at a time when overall violence is at its lowest level since the beginning of the war in 2003, have singled out Iraqis, but one development affects the Americans. A new weapon has appeared in Iraq: Russian-made RKG-3 grenades, which weigh just five pounds and, attached to parachutes, can be lobbed by a teenager but can penetrate the American military’s latest heavily armored vehicle, the MRAP. The grenades cost as little as $10, according to American military officials, who would not say how often they have killed soldiers...
Military officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the news media, say they have reduced the number of jihadi militants to under 2,000, from about 3,800. “In most places there isn’t an insurgency in Iraq anymore,” said an American military intelligence officer in Washington, who was not authorized to be quoted by name. “What we have now is a terrorism problem, and there is going to be a terrorism problem in Iraq for a long time.”
Other officials, Iraqi and American, are more worried. They observe jihadi and other insurgent groups activating networks of sleeper cells, which are already striking government and civilian targets. Insurgent groups linked to the rule of Mr. Hussein are also reviving.
NYT: along with the end of blackwater?
CSM: all under a new US commander
NYT: Taliban militants attack government office in Kandahar, during democracy seminar
The assault by multiple gunmen followed a pattern of militant attacks across the region recently, from Kabul, the Afghan capital, to Lahore in Pakistan and Mumbai in India...
The attack, in daylight in the center of the city, was the second in the past year in which Taliban fighters infiltrated Kandahar, an important city in the south, in such a brazen manner.
Hajji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member who attended the institute’s seminar, said the attackers were dressed in Afghan National Army uniforms.
NYT: European role in Afghanistan conflict uncertain, but probably a "civilian surge"
[Obama's] increasing American troops in Afghanistan to some 68,000 by the end of the year, from 38,000 today, is also likely to significantly Americanize an operation that in recent years had been divided equally between American troops and allied forces. By year’s end, American troops will outnumber allied forces by at least two to one.
His NATO allies are giving the president considerable vocal support for the newly integrated strategy. But they are giving him very few new troops on the ground, underlining the fundamental strains in the alliance.
The war in Afghanistan was the first time that NATO had ever invoked its Article 5, which requires collective defense of a member under attack... What Afghanistan needs, a senior German official said, is not more foreign soldiers but more Afghan troops and police officers. Germany is sending in new police mentoring teams, and several hundred more police officers and gendarmes will come from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain, according to the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. France is trying to coordinate a second pillar of the European police force in Afghanistan to do training in the countryside for periods of up to 11 months. That project, which European officials say is more efficient than trying to bring local police officers to Kabul for mass training, can have a European label.
Europeans will also concentrate on the “civilian surge” to help create functioning Afghan political, judicial and security structures in the countryside.
LAT: ...comes down to 5,000 combat troops and trainers
NYT: DoD officials testify before Senate: Pakistani intelligence agency a "problem"; benchmarks for success are coming
...Ms. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, acknowledged the administration’s concerns about a wing of the ISI, which American intelligence officials say is providing money and military assistance to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan...
Senators on the panel expressed some impatience with the Obama administration’s failure so far to articulate benchmarks for judging progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although Ms. Flournoy promised that they would be ready soon...
Ms. Flournoy responded that “a key point of defining success is when both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have both the capability and the will to deal with the remaining threat themselves.”
NYT: US drone aims for Taliban leader in Pakistani tribal region, kills at least 12
The attack was the first of its kind in the Orakzai region, which lies southwest of Peshawar and close to the border with Afghanistan, residents said. The region is strategically important because it borders other areas in Pakistan known for widespread Taliban activity.
Mr. [Hakimullah] Mehsud is a prominent lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who claimed responsibility for an assault this week on police cadets in Lahore, Pakistan.
NYT: militants attack police training center in Punjab, resulting in 8 hour siege...
The attackers issued no demands but went on a rampage, killing at least eight recruits and instructors. One attacker was killed in the siege that followed and, in a gory finale, three detonated suicide belts, killing themselves. More than 100 people were wounded.
“They were barbaric,” a senior trainer at the center said. “They had no demands. We didn’t understand what they wanted. They just kept killing.”...
Some at the police academy believed that the attackers had come from Afghanistan, or at least were Pashtun, an ethnicity indigenous to tribal areas in western Pakistan...
The attackers had more sophisticated weaponry than in past attacks, said Mr. Sukhera, the police official. A factory-made antipersonnel explosive that bore the markings Claymore Mark 5 was found near one of the dead attackers in a plastic box, said Zulifkar Hameed, an elite force member who was among the first inside.
Gdn: ...and a few days later, 22 killed in suicide attack on mosque
LAT: video released on public flogging of a 17-year old girl by the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley causes outrage
Jahangir said the girl was believed to have been punished after refusing to marry a Taliban commander in the Swat Valley, where the government in February struck a truce with Islamic militants to stem violence. The militants then accused her of immoral behavior and ordered 34 lashes, Pakistani news reports said...
The Swat accord was reached between the North-West Frontier Province government and a cleric named Sufi Muhammad, whose son-in-law Maulana Qazi Fazlullah leads a Taliban army that for nearly two years held off army and paramilitary troops seeking to regain control of Swat.
The alpine valley was once a tourist haven, with stunning mountain scenery and a ski resort, which the militants burned down.
Over the last two years, they also burned down nearly 200 schools that provided education to girls and beheaded dozens of local officials and paramilitary troops, terrorizing anyone who dared speak against them.
The central government was not a party to the peace accord but signaled its approval and pulled back army troops.
CSM: ...and could threaten peace deal
In Swat's main town of Mingora, however, anger is overridden by a practical desire to maintain good relations with the Taliban whom residents say are in de- facto control of the region. The consensus is that the video, which was shot with a cellphone camera, took place in January – before the peace accord – and that the Taliban has done nothing as controversial since that time...
The much-vaunted Islamic courts are partly operational, hearing mainly financial or land disputes that are settled through a quick verdict by Qazis (religious scholars, who were already in place and working as magistrates before the peace-deal). Opposing parties describe their disputes, which could center around a bounced check or a defaulted loan, to the Qazi who in turn makes a swift decision and orders the families to come together and shake hands. There are few documents involved and no lawyers. One hundred and fifteen new cases have been heard since the peace deal, of which 50 have been resolved. "People seem to prefer it this way," says court clerk Zafar Ali. "Things are done a lot sooner."
NYT: human rights activist beaten in Russia...
NYT: ...as former Chechen general turned opposition leader is assassinated in Dubai
The attack evokes others on Chechens, in Russia and abroad, who ran afoul of President Ramzan A. Kadyrov.
The Kremlin has invested Mr. Kadyrov with almost unchecked authority in a bid to return stability to Chechnya after nearly a decade of bloody war and political turmoil. With Moscow’s blessing, Mr. Kadyrov has created a personality cult and imposed his own interpretation of Islamic morality in Chechnya, whose population is predominately Muslim.
He has also built a powerful security force that has all but crushed Chechnya’s separatist movement, often, rights groups say, with the help of torture and extrajudicial killings.
In January, a Chechen hit man tracked down and killed Umar S. Israilov, a former bodyguard of Mr. Kadyrov, who had received asylum in Austria after accusing the president, and officials in his circle, of kidnapping, torture and murder. Ruslan Yamadayev, one of Sulim’s brothers, was shot dead in his car last September as he waited in a traffic jam in Moscow just outside the White House, the government building where the offices of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin are situated.
NYT: firebombing anarchists in Athens attack banks and cars
NYT: Guinea-Bissau needs help to assure post-coup on-time elections
The tiny West African country, which is used by Latin American drug-smuggling gangs as a transit point to Europe, has said it will hold elections in June to replace the president who was assassinated last month.
Soldiers killed President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira on March 2 in a revenge attack after an explosion killed his rival, General Batista Tagme Na Wai, the military chief... The deaths of Vieira and Na Wai ended a long-running and violent feud between the two men.
But it left a power vacuum which analysts say could lead to greater instability and allow Latin American cocaine smuggling gangs, already active in Bissau, to extend their influence.
NYT: trial highlights crime, insecurity in South Africa; some clamor for reintroducing the death penalty
The nation’s homicide rate, while declining, is among the worst. In 2006, it was about eight times more than the United States’ and 20 times higher than Western Europe’s, according to Antony Altbeker, a criminologist. Electrified barbed wire surrounds many of the finest homes in Johannesburg. South Africa exceeds international norms in its number of police officers, and by some estimates there are more than four times as many private security guards as police officers, with most companies promising their clients “armed response.”
Criminologists have long puzzled over not only the nation’s high crime rate but also the unusual amount of homicide and torture that accompanies burglaries and carjackings...
The three men [on trial] did not realize that they had killed someone both famous and widely beloved until they read the newspapers the next day. They had thought their victim “was a Nigerian,” Ms. Maruping said.
Gdn: human rights case against Shell goes to court
In a New York federal court, Shell and one of its senior executives are to face charges that in the early 1990s in Nigeria they were complicit in human rights abuses, including summary execution and torture.
The Anglo-Dutch company, if found liable, could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of pounds in damages. No multinational has ever been found guilty of human rights abuses, although two previous cases saw major claims settled outside court...
Lawyers in New York will allege that Shell actively subsidised a campaign of terror by security forces in the Niger Delta and attempted to influence the trial that led to Saro-Wiwa's execution. The lawsuit alleges that the company attempted to bribe two witnesses in his trial to testify against him.
NYT: Arab leaders band together to back Sudan's Bashir
NYT: Fujimori, on trial for massacres during Peru's civil war, defends himself
Mr. Fujimori is believed to be the world’s first democratically elected former president to be tried for human rights violations in his own country...
None of the 80 witnesses and nearly two dozen outside experts who testified during the trial have directly linked Mr. Fujimori to two deadly operations by the Colina group, a special military unit. Rather, prosecutors have argued that as commander in chief and leader, he did nothing to try to stop the killings of guerrilla suspects and their supporters. He is charged with failing to stop the Colina group from massacring 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, in 1991 at a barbecue in Lima, Peru’s capital.
He is also charged with human rights violations related to a raid at La Cantuta University in 1992 that left nine students and a professor dead. Their incinerated bodies were found a year later.
NYT: first defendant in Khmer Rouge trial tries the chain of command defense
One of five defendants in the United Nations-backed trial, [Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch] faces a life sentence on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as homicide and torture...
Duch’s lawyers presented a vigorous defense of a man who has admitted to overseeing the torture and execution of at least 14,000 people, portraying him as someone trapped in a giant killing machine who now finds himself singled out for prosecution.
Asserting that Tuol Sleng was just one of 196 similar institutions — and far from the worst of them — one of his lawyers, Kar Savuth, asked: “Is it fair? Is this called justice?
“Each prison had the same orders from Angkar,” he said, referring to the Khmer Rouge leadership, “all conducted torture and execution. Why is only Duch brought to trial? He is only a scapegoat.”
NYT: fate of Tamil leader central to outcome of Sri Lankan civil war
A pioneer in the tactic of suicide bombings, Mr. [Velupillai] Prabhakaran created a squad called the Black Tigers — up to 40 percent of its members women — that carried out scores of attacks over the years, both targeted assassinations and mass terrorist killings.
Many of his regular fighters have taken their own lives as well rather than surrender, biting into cyanide tablets that they often carry on strings like small memento mori around their necks.
This dedication is part of a cult-like devotion to Mr. Prabhakaran — a chubby man with a thick mustache whose charisma is not always evident to outsiders — and nobody knows what will come of his mission once he is gone.
Without Mr. Prabhakaran, some analysts say, his rebellion may collapse. Or perhaps he might be seen as a martyr and a rallying cry for further insurgency.
Gdn: while civilian suffering unlikely to decline soon
“If the brigandish U.S. imperialists dare to infiltrate spy planes into our airspace to interfere with our peaceful satellite launch preparations, our revolutionary armed forces will mercilessly shoot them down,” the North’s state-run Korea Central Radio said...
The United States, South Korea and Japan say that North Korea is using the launching to test its long-range missile technology, a violation of a 2006 United Nations resolution banning the country from all ballistic missile tests.
They warned that if North Korea presses ahead with it, they will seek punishment for the North at the Security Council.
LAT: ...which is considered a failure outside North Korea
NYT: Filipino militants kidnap, threaten to behead Red Cross workers
Abu Sayyaf head demanded that the military pull its soldiers out of an island province in the south, warning that it would behead one of the three Red Cross workers if the demand were not met by 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Abu Sayyaf, responsible for many of the deadliest terror attacks in the Philippines, has a grim record of following through on threats to behead its captives. Guillermo Sobero, an American from Corona, California, was decapitated by the group in 2001. Abu Sayyaf guerrillas also beheaded two Filipino teachers in 2000 as a “birthday gift” to President Joseph Estrada.
LAT: #2 in the Juárez drug cartel, son of the "Lord of the Skies," captured in Mexico City
Mexico is seeing a crop of younger, university-educated narcojuniors emerging as leaders of drug-trafficking organizations that are bound primarily by family ties. Carrillo Leyva was paraded before news cameras in a white Abercrombie & Fitch sweatsuit and stylish glasses -- a far cry from the narco archetype decked out in cowboy boots and oversized jewel-studded belt buckles...
The Juarez gang has been locked in a vicious turf war with a band of traffickers based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and led by Joaquin Guzman, the country's most wanted fugitive.
The bloodletting left about 1,600 people dead in Ciudad Juarez last year. Violence continued in the border city during the first two months of 2009 but has dipped since Calderon sent 5,000 more troops and hundreds of additional federal police there in recent weeks.
CSM: just as Holder and Napolitano arrive in Mexico to discuss the southward gun flow
WP: and complaints rise about delays on Mérida Initiative aid
NYT: peace semi-secured, Haiti now needs jobs
The [UN] has spent some $5 billion on peacekeeping operations here since 2004, when the government of the still popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled — many say with a shove from the Bush administration.
The peacekeeping force declared war against the gangs that plague Haiti, with some success. Kidnappings dropped to 258 victims last year from 722 in 2006, according to United Nations figures...
It required five months to seat a new government after the April 2008 food riots, and United Nations officials say development is stymied by a corrupt judicial system, weak land tenure laws and wildly inefficient ports. The roads are such moonscapes that some 40 percent of the mango crop gets too bruised to be sold abroad, said Jean M. Buteau, a leading exporter.
CSM: Binghamton shootings put into question role of the economic downturn
That event, as well as three policemen wounded in a Pittsburgh shooting after responding to a domestic disturbance call – friends said that gunman was also upset about his recent firing – fit a larger pattern of mass killings which have seemed to proliferate since America's economic downturn, experts say. Forty-four people have died in a string of five such incidents in the past month, from Oakland, California to Alabama to North Carolina.
LAT: database on killings by long-haul truckers in US reveals patterns
But the pattern in roadside body dumps and other evidence has prompted many investigators to speculate that the mobility, lack of supervision and access to potential victims that come with the job make it a good cover for someone inclined to kill...
Michael Harrigan, who oversees the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, said the program helps local police "connect the dots" to slayings outside their jurisdictions. He said most of the victims led high-risk lifestyles that left them particularly vulnerable.
NYT: new Israeli foreign minister: “those who wish for peace should prepare for war”
The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved.
Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “has no validity.”...
As the new prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone, promising to hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority toward a permanent accord. But he has also stopped short of endorsing the two-state solution, putting the new government at odds with the United States and the European Union.
NYT: Israeli advocate general closes investigation into military abuses in Gaza
NYT: new face/phase of insurgency in Iraq
Most of the latest attacks, at a time when overall violence is at its lowest level since the beginning of the war in 2003, have singled out Iraqis, but one development affects the Americans. A new weapon has appeared in Iraq: Russian-made RKG-3 grenades, which weigh just five pounds and, attached to parachutes, can be lobbed by a teenager but can penetrate the American military’s latest heavily armored vehicle, the MRAP. The grenades cost as little as $10, according to American military officials, who would not say how often they have killed soldiers...
Military officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the news media, say they have reduced the number of jihadi militants to under 2,000, from about 3,800. “In most places there isn’t an insurgency in Iraq anymore,” said an American military intelligence officer in Washington, who was not authorized to be quoted by name. “What we have now is a terrorism problem, and there is going to be a terrorism problem in Iraq for a long time.”
Other officials, Iraqi and American, are more worried. They observe jihadi and other insurgent groups activating networks of sleeper cells, which are already striking government and civilian targets. Insurgent groups linked to the rule of Mr. Hussein are also reviving.
NYT: along with the end of blackwater?
CSM: all under a new US commander
NYT: Taliban militants attack government office in Kandahar, during democracy seminar
The assault by multiple gunmen followed a pattern of militant attacks across the region recently, from Kabul, the Afghan capital, to Lahore in Pakistan and Mumbai in India...
The attack, in daylight in the center of the city, was the second in the past year in which Taliban fighters infiltrated Kandahar, an important city in the south, in such a brazen manner.
Hajji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member who attended the institute’s seminar, said the attackers were dressed in Afghan National Army uniforms.
NYT: European role in Afghanistan conflict uncertain, but probably a "civilian surge"
[Obama's] increasing American troops in Afghanistan to some 68,000 by the end of the year, from 38,000 today, is also likely to significantly Americanize an operation that in recent years had been divided equally between American troops and allied forces. By year’s end, American troops will outnumber allied forces by at least two to one.
His NATO allies are giving the president considerable vocal support for the newly integrated strategy. But they are giving him very few new troops on the ground, underlining the fundamental strains in the alliance.
The war in Afghanistan was the first time that NATO had ever invoked its Article 5, which requires collective defense of a member under attack... What Afghanistan needs, a senior German official said, is not more foreign soldiers but more Afghan troops and police officers. Germany is sending in new police mentoring teams, and several hundred more police officers and gendarmes will come from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain, according to the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. France is trying to coordinate a second pillar of the European police force in Afghanistan to do training in the countryside for periods of up to 11 months. That project, which European officials say is more efficient than trying to bring local police officers to Kabul for mass training, can have a European label.
Europeans will also concentrate on the “civilian surge” to help create functioning Afghan political, judicial and security structures in the countryside.
LAT: ...comes down to 5,000 combat troops and trainers
NYT: DoD officials testify before Senate: Pakistani intelligence agency a "problem"; benchmarks for success are coming
...Ms. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, acknowledged the administration’s concerns about a wing of the ISI, which American intelligence officials say is providing money and military assistance to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan...
Senators on the panel expressed some impatience with the Obama administration’s failure so far to articulate benchmarks for judging progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although Ms. Flournoy promised that they would be ready soon...
Ms. Flournoy responded that “a key point of defining success is when both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have both the capability and the will to deal with the remaining threat themselves.”
NYT: US drone aims for Taliban leader in Pakistani tribal region, kills at least 12
The attack was the first of its kind in the Orakzai region, which lies southwest of Peshawar and close to the border with Afghanistan, residents said. The region is strategically important because it borders other areas in Pakistan known for widespread Taliban activity.
Mr. [Hakimullah] Mehsud is a prominent lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who claimed responsibility for an assault this week on police cadets in Lahore, Pakistan.
NYT: militants attack police training center in Punjab, resulting in 8 hour siege...
The attackers issued no demands but went on a rampage, killing at least eight recruits and instructors. One attacker was killed in the siege that followed and, in a gory finale, three detonated suicide belts, killing themselves. More than 100 people were wounded.
“They were barbaric,” a senior trainer at the center said. “They had no demands. We didn’t understand what they wanted. They just kept killing.”...
Some at the police academy believed that the attackers had come from Afghanistan, or at least were Pashtun, an ethnicity indigenous to tribal areas in western Pakistan...
The attackers had more sophisticated weaponry than in past attacks, said Mr. Sukhera, the police official. A factory-made antipersonnel explosive that bore the markings Claymore Mark 5 was found near one of the dead attackers in a plastic box, said Zulifkar Hameed, an elite force member who was among the first inside.
Gdn: ...and a few days later, 22 killed in suicide attack on mosque
LAT: video released on public flogging of a 17-year old girl by the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley causes outrage
Jahangir said the girl was believed to have been punished after refusing to marry a Taliban commander in the Swat Valley, where the government in February struck a truce with Islamic militants to stem violence. The militants then accused her of immoral behavior and ordered 34 lashes, Pakistani news reports said...
The Swat accord was reached between the North-West Frontier Province government and a cleric named Sufi Muhammad, whose son-in-law Maulana Qazi Fazlullah leads a Taliban army that for nearly two years held off army and paramilitary troops seeking to regain control of Swat.
The alpine valley was once a tourist haven, with stunning mountain scenery and a ski resort, which the militants burned down.
Over the last two years, they also burned down nearly 200 schools that provided education to girls and beheaded dozens of local officials and paramilitary troops, terrorizing anyone who dared speak against them.
The central government was not a party to the peace accord but signaled its approval and pulled back army troops.
CSM: ...and could threaten peace deal
In Swat's main town of Mingora, however, anger is overridden by a practical desire to maintain good relations with the Taliban whom residents say are in de- facto control of the region. The consensus is that the video, which was shot with a cellphone camera, took place in January – before the peace accord – and that the Taliban has done nothing as controversial since that time...
The much-vaunted Islamic courts are partly operational, hearing mainly financial or land disputes that are settled through a quick verdict by Qazis (religious scholars, who were already in place and working as magistrates before the peace-deal). Opposing parties describe their disputes, which could center around a bounced check or a defaulted loan, to the Qazi who in turn makes a swift decision and orders the families to come together and shake hands. There are few documents involved and no lawyers. One hundred and fifteen new cases have been heard since the peace deal, of which 50 have been resolved. "People seem to prefer it this way," says court clerk Zafar Ali. "Things are done a lot sooner."
NYT: human rights activist beaten in Russia...
NYT: ...as former Chechen general turned opposition leader is assassinated in Dubai
The attack evokes others on Chechens, in Russia and abroad, who ran afoul of President Ramzan A. Kadyrov.
The Kremlin has invested Mr. Kadyrov with almost unchecked authority in a bid to return stability to Chechnya after nearly a decade of bloody war and political turmoil. With Moscow’s blessing, Mr. Kadyrov has created a personality cult and imposed his own interpretation of Islamic morality in Chechnya, whose population is predominately Muslim.
He has also built a powerful security force that has all but crushed Chechnya’s separatist movement, often, rights groups say, with the help of torture and extrajudicial killings.
In January, a Chechen hit man tracked down and killed Umar S. Israilov, a former bodyguard of Mr. Kadyrov, who had received asylum in Austria after accusing the president, and officials in his circle, of kidnapping, torture and murder. Ruslan Yamadayev, one of Sulim’s brothers, was shot dead in his car last September as he waited in a traffic jam in Moscow just outside the White House, the government building where the offices of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin are situated.
NYT: firebombing anarchists in Athens attack banks and cars
NYT: Guinea-Bissau needs help to assure post-coup on-time elections
The tiny West African country, which is used by Latin American drug-smuggling gangs as a transit point to Europe, has said it will hold elections in June to replace the president who was assassinated last month.
Soldiers killed President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira on March 2 in a revenge attack after an explosion killed his rival, General Batista Tagme Na Wai, the military chief... The deaths of Vieira and Na Wai ended a long-running and violent feud between the two men.
But it left a power vacuum which analysts say could lead to greater instability and allow Latin American cocaine smuggling gangs, already active in Bissau, to extend their influence.
NYT: trial highlights crime, insecurity in South Africa; some clamor for reintroducing the death penalty
The nation’s homicide rate, while declining, is among the worst. In 2006, it was about eight times more than the United States’ and 20 times higher than Western Europe’s, according to Antony Altbeker, a criminologist. Electrified barbed wire surrounds many of the finest homes in Johannesburg. South Africa exceeds international norms in its number of police officers, and by some estimates there are more than four times as many private security guards as police officers, with most companies promising their clients “armed response.”
Criminologists have long puzzled over not only the nation’s high crime rate but also the unusual amount of homicide and torture that accompanies burglaries and carjackings...
The three men [on trial] did not realize that they had killed someone both famous and widely beloved until they read the newspapers the next day. They had thought their victim “was a Nigerian,” Ms. Maruping said.
Gdn: human rights case against Shell goes to court
In a New York federal court, Shell and one of its senior executives are to face charges that in the early 1990s in Nigeria they were complicit in human rights abuses, including summary execution and torture.
The Anglo-Dutch company, if found liable, could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of pounds in damages. No multinational has ever been found guilty of human rights abuses, although two previous cases saw major claims settled outside court...
Lawyers in New York will allege that Shell actively subsidised a campaign of terror by security forces in the Niger Delta and attempted to influence the trial that led to Saro-Wiwa's execution. The lawsuit alleges that the company attempted to bribe two witnesses in his trial to testify against him.
NYT: Arab leaders band together to back Sudan's Bashir
NYT: Fujimori, on trial for massacres during Peru's civil war, defends himself
Mr. Fujimori is believed to be the world’s first democratically elected former president to be tried for human rights violations in his own country...
None of the 80 witnesses and nearly two dozen outside experts who testified during the trial have directly linked Mr. Fujimori to two deadly operations by the Colina group, a special military unit. Rather, prosecutors have argued that as commander in chief and leader, he did nothing to try to stop the killings of guerrilla suspects and their supporters. He is charged with failing to stop the Colina group from massacring 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, in 1991 at a barbecue in Lima, Peru’s capital.
He is also charged with human rights violations related to a raid at La Cantuta University in 1992 that left nine students and a professor dead. Their incinerated bodies were found a year later.
NYT: first defendant in Khmer Rouge trial tries the chain of command defense
One of five defendants in the United Nations-backed trial, [Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch] faces a life sentence on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as homicide and torture...
Duch’s lawyers presented a vigorous defense of a man who has admitted to overseeing the torture and execution of at least 14,000 people, portraying him as someone trapped in a giant killing machine who now finds himself singled out for prosecution.
Asserting that Tuol Sleng was just one of 196 similar institutions — and far from the worst of them — one of his lawyers, Kar Savuth, asked: “Is it fair? Is this called justice?
“Each prison had the same orders from Angkar,” he said, referring to the Khmer Rouge leadership, “all conducted torture and execution. Why is only Duch brought to trial? He is only a scapegoat.”
NYT: fate of Tamil leader central to outcome of Sri Lankan civil war
A pioneer in the tactic of suicide bombings, Mr. [Velupillai] Prabhakaran created a squad called the Black Tigers — up to 40 percent of its members women — that carried out scores of attacks over the years, both targeted assassinations and mass terrorist killings.
Many of his regular fighters have taken their own lives as well rather than surrender, biting into cyanide tablets that they often carry on strings like small memento mori around their necks.
This dedication is part of a cult-like devotion to Mr. Prabhakaran — a chubby man with a thick mustache whose charisma is not always evident to outsiders — and nobody knows what will come of his mission once he is gone.
Without Mr. Prabhakaran, some analysts say, his rebellion may collapse. Or perhaps he might be seen as a martyr and a rallying cry for further insurgency.
Gdn: while civilian suffering unlikely to decline soon
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