a war of existence [hemorrhaging]

LAT: "hemorrhaging" of Pakistani civilians from Swat Valley amidst intensified 12-day government offensive
In his interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," President Asif Ali Zardari brushed aside concerns that Pakistan's armed forces are still too focused on a potential threat from longtime rival India. He said the resources devoted to the fight against the Taliban -- 135,000 troops in the northwest, he estimated -- were sufficient. "It's a war of our existence," Zardari said.
NYT: military officials' tally: 1.3 million civilians displaced, 700 militants killed, 22 soldiers dead
The general’s claims are impossible to verify because reporters and other independent observers have been excluded from the area. There was no indication, for instance, that the fight to wrest the district capital, Mingora, from Taliban fighters, had begun. Pakistanis reached earlier this week said the militants had retained all the territory they held in Swat when the operation began.

The exodus, if it proves to be as large as the government says, would be one of the largest migrations of civilians in the region since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when as many as 14 million people left their homes for one of the newly independent countries...

As the fighting in Swat unfolded this week, missiles fired by a remotely piloted American drone killed 15 people, suspected of being militants, in a village in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on Tuesday morning. The missiles, apparently three in all, hit a suspected safe house operated by local militants in Sra Khawra, a village that sits on the border between the tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan.
LAT: part of new US-Pakistani joint operation with predator drones inside the country
The U.S. military has begun flying armed Predator drones inside Pakistan and has given Pakistani officers significant control over targets, flight routes and decisions to launch attacks under a new joint operation, according to U.S. officials familiar with the program...

For the U.S. military, the missions represent a broad new role in searching for Islamic militants in Pakistan. For years, that task has been the domain of the CIA, which has flown its own fleet of Predators over the South Asian nation.

Under the new partnership, U.S. military drones will be allowed for the first time to venture beyond the borders of Afghanistan under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working with American counterparts at a command center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan...

The Pakistanis, however, have yet to use the drones to shoot at suspected militants and are grappling with a cumbersome military chain of command as well as ambivalence over using U.S. equipment to fire on their own people.
NYT: new offensive brings number of displaced to 360,000 in last 12 days, 900,000+ since August
BBC: UN to deliver some emergency aid

BBC: US military claims the Taliban is using white phosphorus
LAT: at least 20 dead in coordinated suicide attacks in eastern Afghanistan
The assault was a worrying sign of insurgents' growing ability to stage sophisticated, multipronged attacks. Militants in the eastern part of the country are thought to have better access to training in Pakistan's tribal areas, a haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least one of the suicide bombers was disguised in a burka, the all-enveloping veil worn by many Afghan women. Insurgents also apparently laid an ambush for a rescue team deployed from the American base
NYT: ...and as many as 140 civilians dead in US attack, the largest single incident since start of the war; payments made to families
The U.S. military has said it believes the number of civilians killed was much lower, in the neighborhood of 50. American officials acknowledge bombing the area, but say at least some of the deaths were caused by insurgents.

LAT: Gates replaces Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in move toward fresh strategy stretching beyond the border with Pakistan
Gates has ousted a succession of top military officials since becoming Defense secretary, firing the Army secretary and top leaders of the Air Force as well as accepting the resignation of the former head of U.S. forces in the Middle East. But McKiernan is the first ground commander fired by Gates. McKiernan, who has been in command for 11 months, was originally supposed to serve for up to two years.
NYT: personal profile of replacement, "ascetic" Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.
NYT: McChrystal "ideally suited" for new strategy treating Afghanistan and Pakistan "as part of a single, urgent problem"
Among his last projects as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command was to better coordinate Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency efforts on both sides of the porous border...

As head of the Joint Special Operations Command, General McChrystal was a key advocate last year of a plan, ultimately approved by President George W. Bush, to use American commandos to strike at Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Under an arrangement put in place as part of the more aggressive posture, a senior C.I.A. official based at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan was put in charge of C.I.A. and military commando missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
CSM: Gates also nominates Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez to be his chief of staff; McChrystal has plans to alter redeployments
On Monday, Gates also nominated his own chief of staff, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, to a newly created position in Kabul that will oversee day-to-day operations. This is expected to result in greater US control over the multinational mission there...

McChrystal, who now heads the Joint Staff at the Pentagon under Adm. Mike Mullen, has mostly stayed behind the scenes, given his background in special operations. But he has recently led an effort to have certain units redeploy to the same places in Afghanistan again and again in order to build longer-term relationships with the population. The plan is still in the development stage.

Gdn: soldier kills 5 at stress counseling center in Baghdad
[Sergeant John] Russell, from Sherman, Texas, had been sent for counselling to the Liberty Combat Stress Control Centre. In a sign of the extent of the military's concern, he had had his weapon taken away last week.

Investigators are looking at reports that he had been taken to the clinic, had a row with staff, been escorted off the premises but managed to obtain a weapon and return. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the incident highlighted the need to deal with combat stress and the impact of multiple deployments.

Before the tours in Iraq, Russell had served in the Balkans. He had been due to leave Iraq in about three weeks.
CSM: repeated long tours of duty = major problem
Experts and commanders say 15-month tours are too long because they compound mental-health problems and other issues at home. Secretary Gates agrees. He extended Army tours from 12 to 15 months only reluctantly, saying it was needed to help support the "surge" of troops to Iraq in 2007. He has since lifted the policy, but there remain two units in Iraq still finishing 15-month tours that won't return until this summer and fall.

Yet perhaps the more important factor in stress among soldiers is "dwell time" – the amount of time the military allows servicemembers to stay at home. The Army's current dwell time is about 12 months, meaning 12 months at home followed by a 12-month deployment. By 2012, the service hopes to double the amount of time spent at home for every 12-month tour to a war zone.
NYT: inside these "restoration centers" in Iraq
Camp Liberty is one of four bases that also offers soldiers a place to go when they need more intensive counseling and rest. These so-called large restoration centers offer service members three hot meals and a cot to sleep in for up to four days to recharge. While they are there, they receive more rigorous care, including individual or group mental health counseling.

It is unusual for a commander to take a soldier’s weapon away in Iraq, and it is often prompted by concerns that the soldier said something about the possibility of suicide or harming somebody else. Mental health specialists can also make the determination to take away a soldier’s weapon.

WP: US district judge orders Yemeni prisoner released from Guantánamo; says government "produced virtually no credible evidence" to show he fought against the US
In a 45-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said the government failed to prove that Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, 25, supported the Taliban or al-Qaeda. He was arrested in Pakistan and has been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison since 2002.

She ordered the government to enter into diplomatic negotiations to release Ahmed, though it is unclear whether that will work. The United States has hesitated to send Yemenis back to their home country because of its instability.

Most of the evidence against Ahmed was classified, and the Justice Department has not released a public version of its allegations... Federal judges have ordered eight detainees released after they challenged their confinements in federal lawsuits. Three have been sent home.
WP: while federal jury finds guilty a man who tried to establish terrorism training camps in Bly, Oregon (population: 486)
Kassir traveled to Bly, Ore., in late 1999, according to prosecutors, to establish a military-style facility at the direction of Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fixture at the Finsbury Park mosque in London who has been designated a terrorist by the United States... He left the United States after two months, telling a witness that he was disappointed in the paltry number of people he had been able to attract to the camp, prosecutors said...

Kassir was arrested under an Interpol warrant in 2005 while traveling through Prague on his way to Lebanon. It took U.S. officials two more years to clear the path for his journey into the criminal justice system in New York...

The Kassir verdict came the same day that prosecutors in Miami won convictions against five men accused of conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, a case that twice had ended in mistrial. Jurors convicted the alleged ringleader, Narseal Batiste, on four counts of conspiracy. One defendant, Naudimar Herrera, was acquitted of all charges.

Experts on national security law had argued that the case, known as the Liberty City prosecution after the downtrodden neighborhood in Miami where the men set up headquarters, was built on flimsy and contradictory evidence. It has been viewed as a test of the government's desire to bring prosecutions in instances in which terrorist plots are in the early stages.
WP: unsolved intra-UN killing in Afghanistan, and the problems of internal enforcement
Lacking its own police force, the United Nations relies on a combination of local law enforcement authorities, internal U.N. investigators and outside consultants with varying degrees of competence and limited power to enforce their findings.

Early last year, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proposed establishing a U.N. anti-crime squad to respond more aggressively to allegations of corruption and sexual misconduct in peacekeeping missions. But the initiative encountered broad opposition from member states, including the United States, whose governments feared it would place too much power in U.N. hands.
WP: disappeared CIA detainee, tortured into giving false intelligence about the al Qaeda-Iraq connection, dead in Libyan prison
Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration... When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.

"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."

LAT: bloodiest day in Sri Lanka, says government doctor: 378 civilians dead, 800+ wounded
NYT: UN warns that "bloodbath" has become a reality
Concern for civilians trapped in the zone has grown in recent weeks. The area of fighting, which at one time had been set aside by the government as a “no-fire zone,” has shrunk to about 2.5 square miles. About 50,000 civilians, mostly Tamils, are thought to be caught there, along with a holdout force of between 200 and 500 rebel fighters.
Gdn: ...as a mortar shell hits the only functioning medical facility in the war zone
Doctors, nurses and medical administrators working out of a single room in their makeshift hospital in the school have become the eyes and ears of the world in this conflict. The government in Colombo has sought to dismiss them, to claim that they are pawns of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or even to claim that some do not exist...

The hospital was packed with more than 1,000 patients awaiting evacuation by a ship operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many of the patients fled after the attack and staff in the hospital said shells continued to fall around the perimeter.

NYT: weak ceasefires among ethnic groups create waves for new constitution in Myanmar and country's future
As Myanmar’s military government prepares to adopt a new and disputed Constitution next year, a fragile patchwork of cease-fire agreements between the central government and more than a dozen armed ethnic groups is fraying.

The new Constitution would nominally return the country to civilian rule after four and a half decades of military government and, in theory, could formally end the now dormant civil war that has plagued the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. But as a precondition for what they portray as a fresh start, Myanmar’s ruling generals are ordering the Kachin and other groups to disarm and disband their substantial armies.

So far, the answer is no.
FP: photos from inside North Korea, "land of no smiles"

BBC: Swedish report finds arms and aid shipped to African conflicts through the same carriers
Sipri's report called for agencies to deny contracts to air transport firms engaged in arms flights. But it also admitted that sometimes the only companies willing to fly aid to conflict zones were the same ones that also transported arms shipments.

BBC: "show me proof" of civilian killings, says Bashir in Darfur (that's just what the ICC wants to do, right?)
BBC: if you force 13 major international aid agencies out of Darfur, does it make a noise?
Two months after key international aid agencies were expelled from Sudan, the UN is cautiously optimistic about the humanitarian situation in Darfur. Visiting the region, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator said there was no hard evidence that more people had died because of the disrupted aid effort...

The dramatic expulsion of 13 foreign aid agencies followed the announcement that Sudan's president was being indicted by the International Criminal Court.

The impact in Darfur has been serious. But Mr Holmes said that recently there had been signs of much greater flexibility from the Sudanese authorities. Privately, other UN officials went further, arguing that the operating environment had actually improved, and welcoming the fact that the Sudanese government was being forced to take more of a role in the relief effort.

NYT: Congolese government, in search of path to peace, passes amnesty law for illegal armed groups in North and South Kivu Provinces

BBC: bloody days in Mogadishu, as hardliners fight interim government in intense battles
"The fighting erupted in the most densely populated areas," Elman Human Rights Group's Ali Shaykh Yasin told HornAfrik radio. "The number of people killed who we saw were 123, while 312 others were wounded," he said. His group estimates that more than 17,000 people have fled so far.
CSM: fighting appears to have calmed after the weekend, but conflict far from over
Reuters: and famine on the way!
The target for a U.N. appeal for Somalia this year has been increased to $984 million, but is only one-third funded by donors to date.
NYT: piracy and pirates respond to social pressures
Much like the violence, hunger and warlordism that has engulfed Somalia, piracy is a direct — and some Somalis say inevitable — outgrowth of a society that has languished for 18 years without a functioning central government and whose economy has been smashed by war.

But here in Garoowe, the pirates are increasingly viewed as stains on the devoutly Muslim, nomadic culture, blamed for introducing big-city evils like drugs, alcohol, street brawling and AIDS...

FP: Obama's visit with Egyptian leader test for human rights policy

AP: Colombian senator, ally of President Uribe, arrested for collusion with paramilitaries
CSM: sexual violence cases under Justice and Peace Law jump from 12 to 228, show systematic nature
A 2006 report by a special rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said: "The actors in Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the paramilitaries and guerrillas, use physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women as a strategy of war."... Paramilitary commanders have said that most were isolated cases of their men getting out of hand.

But Buriticá says testimonies she's collected show the practice was systematic and widespread, despite the extremely low numbers of reported cases. A 2006 report by a special rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said: "The actors in Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the paramilitaries and guerrillas, use physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women as a strategy of war."

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NYT: Sarah Palin to write a memoir
Ms. Palin, who graduated from the University of Idaho, told The Daily News that it would “be nice to put my journalism degree to work on this and get to tell my story, Alaska’s story.”