The public killings in the southwestern town of Baidoa followed weeks of fierce fighting as the Islamists try to seize Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, amid mounting concerns about the influx of hundreds of foreign fighters to the failed state.
NYT: some fighters recruited among Somali immigrants in the US
They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, embracing basketball and the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: one planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur...
The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber...
The men appear to have been motivated by a complex mix of politics and faith, and their communications show how some are trying to recruit other young Americans to their cause...Most of the men are Somali refugees who left the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in two waves, starting in late 2007. While religious devotion may have predisposed them to sympathize with the Islamist cause in Somalia, it took a major geopolitical event — the Ethiopian invasion of their homeland in 2006 — to spur them to join what they saw as a legitimate resistance movement, said friends of the men.
For many of the men, the path to Somalia offered something personal as well — a sense of adventure, purpose and even renewal. In the first wave of Somalis who left were men whose uprooted lives resembled those of immigrants in Europe who have joined the jihad. They faced barriers of race and class, religion and language...Even among the world’s jihadists, the young men from Minneapolis are something of an exception: in their instant messages and cellphone calls, they seem caught between inner-city America and the badlands of Africa, pining for Starbucks one day, extolling the virtues of camel’s milk and Islamic fundamentalism the next...
They cut their hair at Somali barber shops, prayed at Somali mosques and organized themselves along the same clan lines that had divided them for decades, calling on tribal elders to settle family disputes and community rifts...
Developments in the homeland, followed obsessively by the adults, held little interest among teenagers. They rolled their eyes at the older men known as “the sitting warriors,” who debated clan politics with such gusto at one Starbucks that the staff bought a decibel meter to ensure that the noise did not rise above legal limits...
Of the estimated 100,000 Somalis in the United States, more than 60 percent live in poverty, according to recent census data.
After graduating from high school in 2000, Mr. Ahmed [the suicide bomber] seemed to flounder, taking community college classes while working odd jobs, friends said. But he had done better than many peers, who turned to crime and gangs like Murda Squad and Rough Tough Somalis...
By 2004, Mr. Ahmed had found a new circle of friends. These religious young men, pegged as “born-agains” or “fundis,” set themselves apart by their dress. Their trousers had gone from sagging to short, emulating the Prophet Muhammad, who was said to have kept his clothes from touching the ground...
Spurred by a newfound sense of nationalism [after Ethiopia invaded Somalia], college students distributed T-shirts emblazoned with the Somali flag and held demonstrations during a frigid Minnesota winter.
The protests took on a religious dimension as well. While the United States had defended the Ethiopian invasion as a front in the global war on terrorism, many Somalis saw it as a Christian crusade into a Muslim land. They were outraged at reports of Ethiopian troops raping Somali women, looting mosques and killing civilians...
If the Ethiopians were seen as infidel invaders, an insurgent group known as the Shabaab — “youth,” in Arabic — was emerging as “freedom fighters.” In its online propaganda, the Shabaab conflated nationalist sentiments with religious ideology, following a tactic honed by Al Qaeda...
The recruitment of the Twin Cities men can be traced to a group of Somali immigrants from Northern Europe and other countries who, in 2005, traveled to Somalia to fight with the Islamist movement, a senior law enforcement official said. A handful of those men later went to Minneapolis, the official said, and helped persuade the first large group from the Twin Cities to leave for Somalia starting in late 2007...
If the first men who left for Somalia had struggled to find their place in America, the boys to follow were “our best kids,” in the words of one uncle...
“They saw it as their duty to go and fight,” the friend said. “If it was just nationalism, they could give money. But religion convinced them to sacrifice their whole life.”...
By January, most of the men were at a training camp in southern Somalia, following a strict routine that Mr. Hassan and others described to their Minneapolis friends in phone calls. They woke before dawn to pray and study the Koran. They engaged in rigorous training, running obstacle courses and learning to make bombs...
The manager of University Travel Services said that since November, he had turned away at least 20 men looking to buy tickets to Somalia, adding that the requests had slowed considerably. Meanwhile, some Somali parents in the Twin Cities have taken to hiding their sons’ passports...
For many older Somalis in Minnesota, the deepest mystery is why so many young refugees would risk their lives and futures to return to a country that their parents struggled to leave.
The Congolese army, which is partly comprised of former rebels, has repeatedly been accused of rape, pillage and murder...
MONUC backs the army's operations against the FDLR, seen as a root cause of the violence in eastern Congo.
But aid agencies have criticised the drives for sparking rebel reprisals on local civilians rather than stabilising the situation.
NYT: Baluchistan Liberation Army seems to gain political ground in separatist war as Pakistani intelligence agency cracks down
Baluch nationalists and some Pakistani politicians say the Baluch conflict holds the potential to break the country apart — Baluchistan makes up a third of Pakistan’s territory — unless the government urgently deals with years of pent up grievances and stays the hand of the military and security services.
Schoolchildren still refuse to sing the national anthem at assemblies, instead breaking into a nationalist Baluch song championing the armed struggle for independence, teachers and parents said.
For the first time, women, traditionally secluded in Baluch society, have joined street protests against the continuing detentions of nationalist figures. Graffiti daubed on walls around this town call for independence and guerrilla war, which persists in large parts of the province.
The nationalist opposition stems from what it sees as the forcible annexation of Baluchistan by Pakistan 62 years ago at Pakistan’s creation. But much of the popular resentment stems from years of economic and political marginalization, something President Zardari promised to remedy but has done little to actually address.
AJE: conditions insecure for return of displaced Swat residents
AJE: displaced Sri Lankans - mostly Tamils - continue to suffer, die in camps
NYT: map of China's ethnic groups
NYT: bureaucrat manages the ethnic conflict in western China
Mr. Wang, 64, the Communist Party secretary and absolute power in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, is largely unknown outside China, and until lately stayed in the shadows even at home. But China’s leadership elite, and perhaps especially his patron, President Hu Jintao, have put their faith in him: they have let him run Xinjiang for 15 years, well beyond the usually strict limit of a decade in one powerful post. They have elevated him to the Politburo, the ruling party’s inner sanctum.
Iron fist and velvet glove, he has suppressed Islam, welcomed industry, marginalized the Uighur language, built roads and rail links to the outside world, and spied on, arrested and jailed countless minority citizens in the name of stopping terrorism and subsuming Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) into a greater China.
Even his detractors allow that he has done a masterful job. His nickname is “the stability secretary” — a tribute to his ability to step into chaos and haul it to order.AJE: mosques in Urumqi defy order to close
It was not clear whether the decision to hold prayers at the mosques was a change of policy or whether the mosques were opened because crowds had gathered outside.
BBC: more than 500 Srebrenica victims buried, 14 years later
Some 8,000 Bosniak Muslims, mainly men and boys, were killed by Bosnian Serbs near the town of Srebrenica in 1995 and buried in mass graves.
About 5,000 of the victims have been identified to date..
Ranging in age from 14 to 72, most of latest victims to be buried were found in secondary mass graves where they had been moved from initial burial sites in a bid by Serb troops to cover up war crimes...
Gen Ratko Mladic, who led the Bosnian Serb troops involved in the killings, remains in hiding. He is said to be in Serbia.
LAT: in Honduras, old tactic for new politics
In some ways, it was a throwback to the old Latin America, when coups and men in uniform more often than not decided who ruled. But it was also emblematic of a struggle underway today on the continent, where a crop of leftist leaders with authoritarian tendencies have risen to power through elections, defied the status quo and tested the bounds of democracy.
Ideology might not have been important to Zelaya, but it was to his inner circle, whose members traced their roots to Honduras' small radical left that emerged in the 1970s. They had gone to university together, fought against the brutal military dictatorships of the day, suffered persecution. Eventually they went into human rights or became lawyers, but didn't abandon their goals.
They helped coax Zelaya to the left, and last year he stepped firmly into the Chavez camp by joining a group of Latin America's leftist presidents formed five years ago by the Venezuelan leader and Cuba's Fidel Castro.
With the old left gaining power, the old right leapt into action, with businessmen and the news media at their service, hitting back at Zelaya relentlessly.
Then came an old trauma. Zelaya began speaking of changing the constitution, and his enemies decided he was making a move to end term limits and so he could stay in office -- much as Chavez had done in Venezuela.
The Honduran Constitution bars presidential reelection, a provision born of a history replete with rulers who overstayed their welcome. Most famously, Tiburcio Carias, a military man with close ties to the foreign-owned fruit companies that made Honduras the original banana republic, rewrote the constitution to stay in office from 1933 to 1949...
Ignoring an appeals court ruling that again declared the June 28 vote illegal, Zelaya announced that the army would help with the election by distributing and collecting ballot boxes.
This threw the army command into turmoil: It was being tasked to carry out an operation that had been judged illegal.
On Thursday, June 25, troops deployed throughout the capital as Congress met to depose Zelaya. Politicians, including Micheletti, worked to put together the legal and constitutional cover to remove a president who was breaking the law...
Even among some who supported the removal of Zelaya, the decision to expel him went beyond the pale, and the army's chief juridical advisor now acknowledges that the expulsion was illegal.
WP: freedom of the press under fire
Several countries condemned the events of June 28 as a military coup. But in Honduras, some of the most popular and influential television stations and radio networks blacked out coverage or adhered to the de facto government's line that Manuel Zelaya's overthrow was not a coup but a legal "constitutional substitution," press freedom advocates and Honduran journalists said.
Meanwhile, soldiers raided the offices of radio and TV stations loyal to Zelaya, shutting down their signals. Alejandro Villatoro, 52, the owner of Radio Globo, said soldiers broke down doors and dismantled video surveillance cameras.
LAT: advisor to Khamenei recommends tolerance of dissent
"We cannot order public opinion to get convinced," Mohammadian said, according to the Mehr news agency. "Certain individuals are suspicious about the election result, and we have to shed light on the realities and respond to their questions."
Providing an unyielding counterpoint, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firoozabadi, the armed forces chief of staff, issued stern warnings against protesters.
"God has chosen us in military uniform to sacrifice our lives against the enemies," he said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency, or ISNA. "Certain individuals and groups imagine that we will back down if they shout slogans against us. We have come to die, and we have proved our determination during the war with Iraq."
NYT: in the category of least surprising, yet horrifying, revelations: Cheney ordered CIA to hide still-classified spy program from Congress
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy...
The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
WP: DOJ investigation into CIA torture not completely ruled out
LAT: Obama visits Ghana
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Slate: New Haven's finest...example of 'special treatment'? the lead plaintiff in the firefighters' case
The other way to look at Frank Ricci is as a serial plaintiff—one who reacts to professional slights and setbacks by filing suit, threatening to file suit, and more or less complaining his way up the chain of command...When Frank Ricci testifies against Judge Sotomayor, it will be worth recalling that under any other set of facts he would have looked to his GOP sponsors like the kind of unscrupulous professional litigant Rush Limbaugh lives to savage. Is America's conservative movement really ready for an anti-affirmative action hero who has repeatedly relied on the government to intervene on his behalf to win him—and help him keep—a government job?
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