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.