spin [get convinced]

AP: al-Shabaab beheads 7
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.

AJE: UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, accuses DRC military of human rights violations
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.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Baluch were rounded up in a harsh regime of secret detentions and torture under President Pervez Musharraf, who left office last year. Human rights groups and Baluch activists say those abuses have continued under President Asif Ali Zardari, despite promises to heal tensions...

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.

They have made him their go-to expert on policies toward minorities, which account for the more than 100 million of China’s 1.3 billion citizens who are not ethnically classified as Han. Those in power are reputed to have given him leading roles on senior advisory groups that coordinate and oversee ethnic policies...

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

++
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?

between the tragic and the ridiculous [just another day]

WSJ: Pakistan conflict, now in third week, creating fastest civilian displacement since Rwandan genocide
The U.N. believes around 15 to 20% of the displaced are in camps at the moment around 250,000 in some 24 camps, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said, "which means most people are either with host families, communities, in rented accommodation or somewhere else."...

Holmes said the U.N. had previously asked for an extra $150 million and had only received $50 million in firm contributions as of last week, but since then a number of countries have made pledges...

He said the U.N. is also reminding all sides to "make sure that civilians are protected insofar as is possible, that they're not targeted, that areas where they're known to be are avoided, that people are not using civilians as protection or human shields."
WT: Taliban flee from government attacks toward Pakistani capital
As the Pakistan military intensifies its attacks in the northwest and the U.S. keeps launching missiles there, more insurgents are seeking safety in Karachi and other urban areas, militants said.

"We come in different batches to Karachi to rest and if needed, get medical treatment, and stay with many of our brothers who are living here in large numbers," militant Omar Gul Mehsud, 32, told the Associated Press while strolling along the beach, astonished at the vastness of the sea, which he'd never seen before...

On the outskirts of Karachi, large settlements of Afghan and Pakistani refugees have swelled over the past year by as many as 200,000 people. These refugees are mostly Pashtun, the ethnic group that dominates the militancy. An intelligence report obtained by the AP warns that such neighborhoods have become favored hideouts for militants linked to Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's top Taliban commander.
AP: more concern that offensive may turn conflict into urban warfare
CSM: from clearing to holding in Pakistan's strategy
Pakistan is trying to wrest control of Buner from the Taliban, who seized the district – just 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad – last month. But the military Pakistan has a poor track record of holding cleared territory, leaving many experts and refugees skeptical about the long-term gains from this operation.

"The Army can clear if by clearing it means utter devastation, but it certainly doesn't seem able to hold," says Christine Fair, an analyst with RAND Corporation in Washington. "Partly they have a doctrinal problem. They don't have a lot of institutions you'd expect them to have, because they are not a counterinsurgency military."...

Pakistan does have some institutions valuable for this transition, however. One is the district coordination officer, or DCO, who acts as a bridge between military and civilian administration in a given region. It's a role that gained more power under the former military dictatorship of President Pervez Musharraf.

The DCO for Buner, Yahya Akhunzada, says he has been meeting nearly every day with the military to coordinate the return of people, police, and administration to cleared areas. Police are starting to return to Daggar and Totalai, two regions in lower Buner. Within a week, 200 police will be sent from the provincial capital of Peshawar as reinforcements, allowing routine policing to restart in these areas.... And until the police have regained their footing, it's unlikely judges will return to their courts, teachers to their classrooms, and residents such as Qamar to their homes.

Backstopping the police is where a good paramilitary force ought to step in to relieve the Army – and where Pakistan admits it has a problem.
BBC: US to give $110 million in emergency aid
The money will be used to provide generators, tents, water trucks and food to some of those forced to flee. An initial $26m will go towards the immediate purchase of wheat and other food produced in Pakistan itself...

"One of our guiding principles is that this should be more than just the delivery of supplies," Mrs Clinton said. "It should be an investment in the people of Pakistan, so we will buy locally from the bumper crop of wheat and we'll work to help create quick impact job programs that will put Pakistanis to work making goods for their fellow citizens."

NYT: Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan, to become country's "chief executive officer"?
Such an alliance would benefit Mr. Karzai by co-opting a potential rival. For its part, the White House has made no secret of its growing disenchantment with Mr. Karzai, and some Afghanistan experts said that enlisting Mr. Khalilzad would have the virtue of bringing a strong, competent leader into an increasingly dysfunctional Afghan government.

The position would allow Mr. Khalilzad to serve as “a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn’t be responsible to a parliamentary system,” a senior Obama administration official said... Administration officials insisted that the United States was not behind the idea of enlisting Mr. Khalilzad to serve in the Afghan government, and they gave no further details on what his duties might be.

They said that Mr. Karzai had sought out Mr. Khalilzad, but that the idea of enlisting a chief executive had also been raised by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister.
NYT: US says Afghans killed in last week's airstrike mostly Taliban

NYT: Iraqi government arrests two influential Sunni leaders for "committing crimes against civilians" in potentially destabilizing move
The Awakening movement played a crucial role in reducing the violence in Iraq over the past two years, but some Sunni leaders have complained that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has broken its promise to integrate their members in the country’s security forces. They also have expressed concern that the government regards them as a threat, and that it is planning attacks on Awakening members as the American military reduces its activities in Iraq.
CSM: implementing the US-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) requires reimaginging Iraq's city limits
WP: Kurd-Arab conflicts continue in the north
For a few frantic minutes, Iraq's most dangerous fault line came perilously close to becoming a battlefield. As with another standoff last fall between the pesh merga [a detachment of the Kurdish government militia] and the Iraqi army in the dusty border town of Khanaqin, Bashika has emerged as a flash point in a growing test of wills over who will control land claimed by Arabs and the Kurdish autonomous government in the north of Iraq that many fear may be resolved only through violence...

In the contested region, running along a crescent in northwestern Nineveh, offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the two main parties of the Kurdish autonomous government, have sprouted in almost every village in the four years of Kurdish rule... Together, the two parties control a variety of functions, including security, intelligence gathering and issuance of motor vehicle license plates. Mail from the Arab-controlled provincial council is often sent back, unopened, Kurdish officials said. Orders are ignored.

NYT: Obama says his Guantánamo plan “will begin to restore the [military] commissions as a legitimate forum,” amidst criticism
“I don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference,” said Cmdr. Suzanne M. Lachelier of the Navy, the military lawyer for one of the detainees charged with coordinating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “We’re going to end up with trials with evidence that is the product of coercion and secret hearings.”...

The filing [to military judges]... said the revisions would involve the rules for the treatment of classified evidence, one of the most contentious issues at the prison at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

But the filing did provide details of several changes Mr. Obama outlined on Friday. He said, for example, that “the accused will have greater latitude in selecting their counsel.”... It said that a detainee would be permitted a lawyer “of the accused’s own choosing.” But it added that the requested lawyer must be assigned to the Pentagon’s office of military defense lawyers for Guantánamo.

Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, another defense lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee who is facing charges, said that change indicated that several of the Obama administration’s alterations to the Bush administration’s system were what he called “minor cosmetic changes.”...

The filing was part of a package of materials provided to the military judges at Guantánamo asking them to suspend cases until Sept. 17. The documents indicated that the administration had concluded that to win convictions it might need to retain the advantages the commissions were intended to give military prosecutors.
NYT: Senate rejects Obama's request for $80 million to close Guantánamo
Administration officials have indicated that if the Guantánamo camp closes as scheduled more than 100 prisoners may need to be moved to the United States, including 50 to 100 who have been described as too dangerous to release.

Of the 240 detainees, 30 have been cleared for release. Some are likely to be transferred to foreign countries, though other governments have been reluctant to take them. Britain and France have each accepted one former detainee. And while as many as 80 of the detainees will be prosecuted, it remains unclear what will happen to those who are convicted and sentenced to prison...

The House last week overwhelmingly approved the $96.7 billion spending measure after stripping the money for closing Guantánamo and inserting language barring Mr. Obama from transferring any detainees to the United States without first presenting a detailed plan to Congress, and giving lawmakers a chance to review it.

CSM: Supreme Court suit lets Mueller and Ashcroft off the hook for violating constitutional rights of Pakistani detainee, makes future cases more difficult
US Supreme Court handed a major victory to FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday when it dismissed a lawsuit that sought to hold both men personally responsible for allegedly violating the constitutional rights of post-911 detainees wrongly suspected of involvement in terrorism...

"A plaintiff must plead that each government-official defendant, through the official's own individual actions, has violated the Constitution," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. A plaintiff must "plead sufficient factual matter to show that [government officials] adopted and implemented the detention policies at issue not for a neutral, investigative reason but for the purpose of discriminating on account of race, religion, or national origin."

In a dissent, Justice David Souter said he would allow the suit to move forward. "[The complaint] does not say merely that Ashcroft was the architect of some amorphous discrimination, or that Mueller was instrumental in an ill-defined constitutional violation; [the complaint] alleges that they helped to create the discriminatory policy."

The high court decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal will help insulate high-level government officials – and former Bush administration officials – from similar war-on-terror lawsuits. At the same time, it will make it significantly more difficult for current or former terror suspects and their lawyers to obtain judicial oversight of their treatment by the US government. Similar civil lawsuits are pending in the federal courts against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Justice Department legal advisor John Yoo, among others.

In his dissent, Justice Souter said the majority decision undercuts the possibility of suing government supervisors for the unconstitutional actions of their subordinates. Such suits were authorized in a 1971 Supreme Court case called Bivens. "Lest there be any mistake," Souter wrote, "the majority is not narrowing the scope of supervisory liability; it is eliminating Bivens supervisory liability entirely."...

Many of the allegations in Iqbal's suit are consistent with the findings of an April 2003 report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General. The report criticized officials for establishing a system that punished detainees and treated them as guilty until proven innocent. The report said that many Muslim men were held under harsh conditions on baseless leads that the FBI took months to investigate and disprove.

The suit alleges systematic mistreatment, including being held 23 hours-a-day in a solitary-confinement cell with the windows painted over and the lights always on. Iqbal was given minimal bedding. The air conditioning was run in the winter, the heat turned on in the summer. He was subject to daily strip and body-cavity searches. The guards once forced him to submit to three consecutive body-cavity searches in a row. When he protested a fourth search, he was punched and kicked by the guards. By the time he was released, he'd lost 40 pounds.
WP: CIA concerned about losing right to use certain clandestine activities
Harsh interrogations were only one part of its clandestine activities against al-Qaeda and other enemies, and agency members are worried that other operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come under review, the officials said...

Agency officials said they will carry out any future debriefings or interrogations under provisions of the 2006 version of the Army Field Manual... But according to several past agency and military officials, the Field Manual is sometimes so broad as to be unclear...

The special task force set up by Obama in January will determine whether the Field Manual interrogation guidelines are too narrow and whether "additional guidance is necessary for CIA," according to a White House statement. A report on that study is not expected before July.
LAT: the story behind the US-led rendition and torture of an Egyptian from Italy
Lady seems a rather tragic figure at the heart of the case: a veteran spy who, after the Sept. 11 attacks, established himself as a point man in the shadows of the battle against the Islamic extremist underworld. Although he took risks to try to stop the abduction, in the end he allegedly became one of its dutiful architects.

The bearded, curly-haired Lady, now 55, spoke excellent Italian. He thrived in the convivial culture of Italian law enforcement, doing business over espresso and long lunches, hosting barbecues. He cultivated bonds with anti-terrorism units of agencies that are wary of one another: the SISMI spy service, the paramilitary Carabinieri and the national police. He passed along valuable leads from U.S. intercepts and offered cash and high-tech equipment for costly stakeouts...

Lady also developed his own agents at a mosque that was a European hub for Al Qaeda, targeting a network suspected of sending militants to training camps in northern Iraq. He helped Milan anti-terrorism police build a case against the rendition target, Abu Omar, regarded as a vehement ideologue in the group.

At a discreet sit-down with D'Ambrosio in October 2002, however, Lady said that his CIA bosses had decided to circumvent the police and abduct Abu Omar, supposedly hoping to force him to become an informant. As a result, Lady was embroiled in a feud in his own agency. The American told D'Ambrosio that he had an "awful" relationship with the CIA's Rome station chief, who resented Lady's criticisms of the planned rendition and had sent a tough deputy to Milan to make sure he followed orders...

The U.S. government has refused to comment. The Italian government has tried to scuttle the prosecution in the name of state secrecy laws. Responding to a high court decision on a government appeal, the judge here will decide Wednesday whether the trial can continue and what evidence can be used...

On the witness stand in October, D'Ambrosio summed it up: "We were between the tragic and the ridiculous."
NYT: Spanish lawmakers seek to limit judges' use of universal jurisdiction to only cases involving Spanish victims or on Spanish territory
As for universal jurisdiction laws, Belgium’s case may be instructive. Israel protested to Belgium in 2003 after survivors of the 1982 attacks on the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut filed a complaint in Belgium against Ariel Sharon, who was defense minister at the time of the attacks.

But it was American pressure that made Belgium retract its law in 2003, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld threatened Belgium that it risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters if it did not rescind the law.

If Spain restricts its current broad law, it will fall in line with most European countries. Germany also has a broad form of universal jurisdiction, but the state prosecutor must approve any criminal case before it can proceed. In Spain, an investigating judge can ignore the opinion of the state prosecutor.

LAT: major figure in "the Camorra," or Naples mafia, captured in Spain
The nickname of purported boss Raffaele Amato is "the Spaniard." He partied in Marbella, a beachfront refuge of high-rolling international desperadoes and dubious fortunes. Investigators say he set up multinational cocaine deals in Barcelona...

Amato's capture Saturday was a major victory for Italian investigators. The balding 44-year-old gained notoriety for allegedly setting off a turf war with a rival clan between 2004 and 2007 that littered the high-rise slums of Naples with 70 bodies...

The Camorra's intense activity in Spain reveals evolving alliances and shifting global crime networks, investigators say... "They reorganized the routes," Laudati said. "One important route for cocaine into Spain went through North Africa. Another crossed the Balkans into Italy. And Barcelona became a hub for a land route for cocaine to Italy through France, where the Marseilles underworld has always had close ties to the Camorra. So you had a mixed operational group of bosses base itself in Spain."

WSJ: prison break in Mexico sees more than 50 cartel enforcers released in inside job
PCB: Colombian defense minister resigns in bid to seek presidency

CSM: stronger NRA as anti-Obama hysteria grows; GOP seeks to tap in
Despite these successes, Mr. Lapierre, the NRA CEO, spoke almost in doomsday terms this weekend about opponents of the Second Amendment. "The bomb is armed and the fuse is lit," he said. "They are going to come at us with everything they've got, and we are going to be ready for them. If they want to fight, we will fight."

To critics, it is rhetoric completely out of proportion to the current threat. "Despite the fact that they won their Supreme Court case, they act as if they lost," says Josh Sugarmann, founder of the Violence Policy Center in Washington... The concern is that the amplitude of the rhetoric on the issue of gun rights is creating a certain hysteria. At a major gun show in Phoenix two weeks ago, Daniel Guier, a gun owner from Chandler, Ariz., witnessed an entry queue that snaked around an entire coliseum, people standing five abreast.

"There's a paranoia now that I've never seen before due to the unpredictability of Washington and the idea that, sooner or later, Obama will put up the fight," says Mr. Guier. "Unfortunately, that means that a lot of people who probably shouldn't be owning guns are buying guns."

WSJ: Tamil Tigers' leader is dead, but is the insurgency?
The rebel defeat echoes the experiences of other nations, from Colombia to Russia, where hard-fisted tactics defeated extremist foes. Yet as those nations also found, the political and economic turbulence left by decades of fighting suggests the limitations of such a victory.

Mr. Prabhakaran was the heart and soul of the Tamil Tigers, and security experts say he has left a profound and lasting influence on global terrorism. "The Tamil Tigers were the most creative terrorist group in the world," said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. "And they shared their expertise."

The 54-year-old Mr. Prabhakaran was shot with other senior leaders as they attempted to drive through a government security cordon in an ambulance, according to military and government officials. Troops had surrounded the last of the Tiger rebels in a slice of territory about the size of a football field, and were closing in.
LAT: Prabhakaran's innovations, and legacy
At its peak, the group controlled one-third of Sri Lanka, had its own sizable army and navy, a nascent air force, courts, tax collectors, hospitals, smuggling operations and liaison offices in 54 countries. Its innovations included the use of suicide vests lined with C-4 plastic explosives, recruiting female suicide bombers and perfecting political terror.

Tiger naval operations reportedly inspired Al Qaeda's 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole. Until the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Tigers, known formally as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, reportedly carried out two-thirds of all suicide attacks in the world...

But even as other militant groups such as the Irish Republican Army turned in their guns for a place at the negotiating table, his refusal to compromise ultimately left Tamils with little in the way of a lasting political legacy.

CSM: Nepalese peace on shaky ground as Maoists take on opposition role
Prachanda, a former rebel leader whose name means "the fierce one," quit [as caretaker Prime Minister] following a dispute with the Army over integrating his former fighters into the military as part of a 2006 peace accord that ended the insurgency. His resignation, ostensibly in "defense of civilian control over the Army" after the country's president countermanded his decision to sack the army chief on May 3, failed to ignite mass protests as the Maoists had hoped.

Instead, the Maoists find themselves increasingly isolated, with most rival parties joining hands to form a new government. Now the party looks set to take up the role of the country's main opposition, something new for the former rebels who were fighting a guerrilla war against government forces until 2006. Analysts say that the army chief row could effectively put an end to the politics of consensus that was the foundation of peace agreements signed after Maoists officially ended their war in November 2006... There are 19,702 Maoist fighters living in cantonments across Nepal monitored by the United Nations. Unless they are resettled into society, lasting peace is hard for most Nepalis to imagine.

LAT: Israeli prime minister meets with Obama, lays out his conditions for Palestinian statehood
Netanyahu has long contended that any Palestinian state would have to cede traditional sovereign powers to have a military and to control its borders and electronic communications, steps he said are necessary to give Israel "the means to defend itself."...

Though the two leaders exchanged praise and insisted they shared many goals, it was clear after the four-hour meeting that they remained separated by a wide distance on key issues. Where Obama emphasized that Israel must halt growth of Jewish settlements, Netanyahu said nothing on the subject in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office.
BBC: Israel's security leader says West Bank barrier wall not needed for security
The UN has criticised Israel, citing an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that parts of the barrier built inside Palestinian territory in the West Bank - 90% of the route - are contrary to international law... Meanwhile, Israeli police say a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza has landed in the town of Sderot, causing damage but no casualties... It was one of very few rockets launched from Gaza in recent weeks. Israeli security officials have said the Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, is trying to maintain a truce so it can re-arm following Israel's offensive earlier this year.
CSM: for Netanyahu, concessions re. Palestine risk fragmenting his coalition; Iran a priority
WT: RAND suggests change in rhetoric toward Iran


CSM: Islamists in Somalia near capital, throwing a wrench into Western stabilization plans
After a week of heavy mortar and rocket attacks that have left at least 135 people dead and sent tens of thousands fleeing, the insurgents have moved to within a half-mile of the hilltop presidential palace in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, which is being guarded by African Union peacekeepers with tanks and armored vehicles...

Despite a beefed-up African Union peacekeeping force and a UN-backed reconciliation effort, the moderate president, Sheik Sharif Ahmed, has failed to win the support of hard-liners such as Aweys or the powerful insurgent group Al Shabab, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist organization...

The top UN diplomat for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said Friday that 280 to 300 foreigners were fighting alongside the insurgents. Somali government officials say the foreigners come from countries such as Afghanistan and Chechnya and have trained local fighters in explosives and tactics.
BBC: guess who's baaaack? Ethiopia!
On Sunday, fighters from the al-Shabab group, which is linked to al-Qaeda, took the key town of Jowhar from government forces. This is the home town of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and now that the country's rainy season has arrived, Jowhar is the only passable route into central Somalia from the capital.

Since withdrawing at the beginning of the year, Ethiopian troops have kept up a strong presence along the Somali border... About 4,300 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers from the African Union have arrived in Mogadishu, where they have taken up positions vacated by the Ethiopians in January.

But analysts say they are only in effective control of the presidential palace, airport and seaport in Mogadishu, while the Islamist guerrillas control chunks of the capital, along with swathes of central and southern Somalia.
BBC: East Africa's Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) asks for port and air blockades

WP: Sudanese rebels to be brought before the ICC on war crimes charges
It is the first time that Darfur's rebels have been charged with war crimes since the court began investigating mass violence in that Sudanese region in 2005. Until now, the court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has focused on the Sudanese government's role in atrocities, and has issued arrest warrants for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a top aide and an allied militia leader...

While Darfur's rebel factions are believed to be responsible for a small portion of the killings in the region, they have frequently targeted foreign peacekeepers and aid workers, and have stolen vehicles, communications equipment and other items that they have used to bolster their capacity to fight the government.

Moreno-Ocampo wrote in November that he decided to prosecute the rebels because attacks on peacekeepers and aid workers constitute an "exceptionally serious offense" that strikes at the heart of the international community's ability to maintain peace and security in conflict zones such as Darfur.

WP: unstable power-sharing deal in Kenya, and remembering post-election violence
The gangs that carried out the massacre had come marching in a military formation, locked the church doors and shoved gasoline-soaked mattresses against the outside walls, hacking to death people who tried to escape the flames through windows.

But what newspapers and angry letters to the editors have focused on in the days since the memorial service is who did not attend the ceremony, billed by hopeful organizers as one of "healing, forgiveness and reconciliation."

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the former opposition leader in whose name the violence was carried out -- some of the gangs called themselves "Raila's Army" -- didn't show up. Not a single leader from the local Kalenjin community, whose members made up those machete-wielding, torch-bearing gangs, came to the ceremony, a deliberate boycott. Instead, some local Kalenjin residents said that if a monument to the victims were built, as has been proposed, they would destroy it.

adventure tourism [wish you were here]

NYT: US backed failed attack on LRA in the Congo, leading to hundreds massacred
The United States has been training Ugandan troops in counterterrorism for several years, but its role in the operation has not been widely known. It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, according to senior American military officials. They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

No American forces ever got involved in the ground fighting in this isolated, rugged corner of Congo, but human rights advocates and villagers here complain that the Ugandans and the Congolese troops who carried out the operation did little or nothing to protect nearby villages, despite a history of rebel reprisals against civilians. The troops did not seal off the rebels’ escape routes or deploy soldiers to many of the nearby towns where the rebels slaughtered people in churches and even tried to twist off toddlers’ heads...

The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls. Witnesses say the fighters have kidnapped hundreds of children and marched them off into the bush, the latest conscripts in their slave army...

Villagers across the area are now banding together in local self-defense forces, arming themselves with ancient shotguns and rubber slingshots. In the past in Congo, home-grown militias have only complicated the dynamic and led to more abuses.

AJE: police kill 30 demonstrators in Madagascar
Supporters of Andry Rajoelina, an opposition leader and former mayor of Antananarivo, were marching towards offices used by Marc Ravalomanana, the president, when the shooting began on Saturday...Last month, at least 68 people died when rioting and looting broke out after a similar protest.

AJE: new president arrives in MogadishuAhmed travelled to the presidential palace under the protection of government soldiers, local fighters and African Union (AU) peacekeepers.

The road from the airport was lined with hundreds of people who welcomed him from Djibouti, where he had been following his visit to last week's AU conference in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
Slate: he apparently submitted his application fee on time
DB: maybe the pirate negotiator would've been a better choice
There are seven pirate clans in Somalia, and they do not go into each other’s areas. So the location of the ship tells us much about which group we were dealing with. As soon as I figure out the group, I try to link up with its leader through our contacts in Somalia.

AJE: treason charges dropped against opposition in Zimbabwe
The decision of the court underlined Zimbabwean government's eagerness to improve relations with the opposition, ahead of the formation of a unity government...On Thursday, the parliament passed a constitutional bill to allow the establishment of a coalition government under a power sharing deal signed in September.

AJE: Israel responds to two rocket attacks with air raids in Gaza
WP: UN suspends aid
Hamas officials in Gaza denied that the Islamist movement had seized the [aid] trucks, saying there had been a misunderstanding. But in an interview, Hamas economics minister Ziyad al-Zaza defended the group's decision to take 3,500 blankets and 400 food packages from the warehouse. Zaza said some employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency had been telling recipients that the aid was a gift of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is the leader of the Fatah party, Hamas's chief Palestinian rival.

"UNRWA is supposed to do work that is purely humanitarian," Zaza said. "But some of their employees want to use the aid to play politics."

John Ging, head of the relief agency in Gaza, called the allegation "nonsense," saying Hamas's actions had "crossed a red line."

AJE: killings continue in Pakistan, of police officers, civilians
AP: and, claims the gov't, militants
AJE: mosque bombing sparks crowd attack on police outpost in Punjab
Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said: "The attack angered a lot of people, they vented their anger on the police station this morning. [Police] were unable to provide security to these people in the procession. So there was considerable anger at police."

Slate: the US in Afghanistan
Some argue that the best way is to step up attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida forces directly, as—or perhaps before—they cross the border from Pakistan. Others say it's better to stop chasing terrorists all over the countryside and instead to protect the Afghan population, provide basic services, and build their trust. But since resources are limited, which segments of the population do you protect—those in the cities, where most of the people live, or in the villages, where the Taliban have made their deepest incursions?

President Obama has talked of sending three extra brigades to Afghanistan. That means about 12,000 combat troops. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks of deploying 30,000 extra troops—doubling the 30,000 we have there now.

These numbers sound far apart, but they're not. Obama's three brigades would also require "enablers"—military jargon for the personnel who enable the combat brigades to fight. They would include an aviation brigade (already in place), a division headquarters, a support brigade, military police, medics, military engineers (to build the expanded barracks and bases), and so on. Add all this into the mix, and you get 30,000 extra troops. Obama and Mullen are talking about the same troop boost.

How did they come up with this number? This is where the cause for worry begins. It didn't come from any assessment of how many troops are needed for a particular mission. No decisions about a specific mission—an operational goal—have yet been made.

The request for three brigades stems from one fact and one fact only: That's how many brigades will be available this year, as more troops pull out of Iraq.

It's a number based on what we have, not on what we need. It has no substantive rationale.

There soon will be a rationale, and it may well be the product of systematic thinking. Three "strategic reviews" of Afghanistan are currently in the works, due to be finished this month—one by the National Security Council, one by the Pentagon's Joint Staff, one by Gen. David Petraeus' staff and advisers at U.S. Central Command. (Petraeus' review encompasses Afghanistan, Iraq, and the surrounding region.)...

Judging from press accounts and from my own conversations with officials and advisers involved in these reviews, a consensus seems to be developing that—in the medium to long term—we should put most of our efforts into a counterinsurgency campaign, along the lines of Gen. Petraeus' field manual on the subject. This conforms to the school of thought that the best way to defeat insurgents is not to chase them here and there, but to protect the Afghan population and help build loyalty to the government.

However, there are widely differing views—both between and within the review teams—over what to do in the short term (as well as over how long the short term might last). The problem, widely acknowledged, is that a certain level of security has to be attained before a full-blown counterinsurgency campaign can work—and that many Afghan cities, villages, and roads haven't reached that level.
AP: maybe the Europeans will answer the NATO commander's plea for more troops
BBC: meanwhile, Karzai is displeased

AJE: Sri Lankan forces seeking LTTE rout; will not hold talks
AJE: ...as thousands of civilians are displaced and an LTTE sea base is captured
WP: meanwhile, some in Colombo are hopeful the war will end

AJE: confrontation between parties in Malaysia

NYT: Italian tourist visits Falluja

AJE: Panetta says he would end CIA renditions (mostly)

WP: President of Haiti requests emergency aid
Préval said he also urged Clinton to convert some of the $250 million in annual aid the United States now gives to Haiti into direct budget support for the government, instead of distributing the money through nongovernmental organizations. The United States is the biggest aid donor to Haiti, but he said "every last cent of the contribution" continues to be funneled through aid organizations, even though the government is better managed.

"Political stability has been restored, but what is necessary is the creation of jobs," he said...

Préval acknowledged that there has been "donor fatigue" over Haiti, but he noted that a series of U.N. peacekeeping missions have each cost nearly $500 million. He said he told officials in Washington that it would be cheaper to give the country the $75 million to $100 million he is seeking rather than have to pay for yet another expensive U.N. mission later.

"We are going to go back to the series of missions unless we do the work necessary to put the country back on the rails," he said.

Préval spoke through an interpreter, but when asked when Haiti needed the money, he broke into English and simply declared, "Now."

++
Slate: denying the Holocaust
The closest thing to a codified definition of Holocaust denial is found in European law. Thirteen countries have laws banning Holocaust denial, including Austria, Germany, France, Israel, and Switzerland. (Other countries, like Canada, prohibit hate speech against any "identifiable group," including Jews, but don't refer specifically to the Holocaust.) Most of the laws are broad, like the Czech Republic's law punishing the "person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or Communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or Communists." In Israel, any published statement of "praise or sympathy for or identification with" the Nazis is a crime. Germany requires that the statement be part of a "public incitement." Those found guilty of Holocaust denial might get jail time—from six months to five years—or a hefty fine.

Slate: prehistoric animals were very, very large

learning about the past [doomed anyhow]

CSM: aware of dangers, NATO looks to ally with Afghan tribes
"As recently as the 1980s, America was arming and training local fighters in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet Army. The result was four years of civil war after the Soviets withdrew, as the new warlords fought each other, killing thousands. The chaos led to the rise of the Taliban.

Moreover, Afghanistan is an enormously complex web of intersecting tribal and ethnic allegiances that must be negotiated with great delicacy. Bolstering one Pashtun tribe in eastern Afghanistan, for example, could upset Tajiks and Hazaras in the north – who feel that their old foes are being strengthened – as well as rival Pashtun clans in the south.

For this reason, a consensus is emerging here and in Washington that whatever program emerges must be run by the Afghan government itself – perhaps by the police or Army."
CSM: Taliban's "shadow government"
"The [Taliban] militants' parallel government here in Logar Province – less than 40 miles from Kabul, the capital – tried and convicted the [local thieves], tarred their faces, paraded them around, and threatened to chop off their hands if they were caught stealing in the future. The thieves never bothered the locals again.

In several provinces close to Kabul, the government's presence is vanishing or already nonexistent, residents say. In its place, a more effective – and brutal – Taliban shadow government is spreading and winning local support.

"The police are just for show," one local says. "The Taliban are the real power here."

Widespread disillusionment with rampant crime, corrupt government, and lack of jobs has fueled the Taliban's rise to de facto power – though mainly in areas dominated by fellow ethnic Pashtuns. Still, the existence of Taliban power structures so close to Kabul shows the extent to which the Afghan government has lost control of the country."
WP: NATO commanders told to restrict air strikes in Afghanistan
"Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette, NATO's chief spokesman in Afghanistan, said commanders are now under orders to consider a "tactical withdrawal" when faced with the choice of calling in air support during clashes in areas where civilians are believed to be present. The goal of the order is to minimize civilian casualties, encourage better coordination with Afghan troops and discourage overreliance on air power to repel insurgent attacks, Blanchette said."
NYT: more civilians apparently killed on Thursday nonetheless
NYT: foreign insurgent recruits redirecting to Afghanistan rather than Iraq
Slate: Petraeus to review overall strategy
"The strategic review, which involves more than 100 advisers working in six task forces, will focus on two issues in particular, the Post reports: reconciliation of moderate Taliban insurgents with the Afghan government (or at least with the fight against al-Qaida) and diplomatic initiatives with neighboring countries toward the ultimate goal of weakening jihadist forces in Pakistan."

NYT: prisoners describe Iran's training program for Iraqi insurgents
"Such is a typical day at a dusty military base outside Tehran, where for the past several years members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives have trained Iraqi Shiites to launch attacks against American forces in Iraq, according to accounts given to American interrogators by captured Iraqi fighters...The prisoners’ accounts cannot be independently verified. Yet the detainees gave strikingly similar details about training compounds in Iran, a clandestine network of safe houses in Iran and Iraq they used to reach the camps and intra-Shiite tensions at the camps between the Arab Iraqis and their Persian Iranian trainers."
LAT: Shiite groups in Iraq tries to hasten saint's return by spreading violence
"The Shiite faithful believe that in the world's darkest hour, Imam Mahdi will return and bring justice and calm. But where mainstream Shiite believers wait patiently for that day, groups such as the one that tried to enlist Iman are convinced that they can hasten his reappearance by spreading chaos...

Abu Jassem said the group preyed upon him when he was unemployed.

His recruiter was a good friend who knew of his religious fervor, and of his need for money. The friend sweetened the deal with the promise of a stipend for joining the cult. But then he told Abu Jassem of the one catch: He had to let his fellow believers sleep with his wife, daughter and sister."
CSM: upcoming elections might upset security gains

LAT: new evidence that the Nixon and Ford administrations undercut the Shah
"The report, after two years of research by scholar Andrew Scott Cooper, zeros in on the role of White House policymakers -- including Donald H. Rumsfeld, then a top aide to President Ford -- hoping to roll back oil prices and curb the shah's ambitions, despite warnings by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that such a move might precipitate the rise of a "radical regime" in Iran."

CSM: Colombia begins process of documenting war before it's over
"When La Violencia ended, Colombia turned the page and looked forward, leaving victims' families bitter and angry and demanding justice.

"This is a country that was accustomed to ending its conflicts with wide-sweeping amnesties and pardons," says [historian Gonzalo] Sánchez. "The idea of victims barely existed, the dead were dead and that was it."

That's now changing. The Historic Memory Group has tallied 2,505 massacres in which 14,000 victims died between 1982 and 2007. The government has registered more then 145,000 deaths and disappearances, as well as more than 3 million internal refugees.

Under the so-called 2005 Justice and Peace Law, hundreds of demobilized paramilitary fighters and rebel deserters are confessing to thousands of those crimes in exchange for reduced sentences. This, observers say, is working as a catalyst for victims who are reporting their version of events for the first time...

But the way victims and victimizers remember history often differs greatly. Sometimes, because of the official setting of the confessions, the former fighters are given more credence than to those who survived their crimes."
WP: Human Rights Watch says Uribe obstructing justice in paramilitary demobilization process
HRW: here's the full report
CNN: indigenous protesters killed by police
"[The commander of the police riot squad] also said leftist guerrilla fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had infiltrated the demonstration and were motivating the protest. Indian organizations deny the accusation, which law enforcement officials frequently level at social protests across the country."

Chris Blattman: pirate wars on the horizon

WP: an estimated 100,000 displaced by ongoing violence in Eastern Congo
"The fighting has mainly been in the hilly, forested eastern province of North Kivu, where Laurent Nkunda has over the years established a kind of fiefdom, flying the flag of his party, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, taking over villages, levying taxes and broadcasting his own radio programs.

Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi who maintains close ties to neighboring Rwanda, has said he is protecting the region's Tutsi minority from ethnic Hutu militias led by a core group that fled to eastern Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

In recent weeks, Nkunda has expanded his ambitions, vowing to "liberate" the entire Central African nation of 65 million people as the government of President Joseph Kabila struggles to assert control.

Nkunda and Rwandan officials have accused the Congolese army of collaborating with the Hutu militias instead of disarming them, as Congolese and Rwandan diplomats agreed to do in an accord signed last year."
NYT: victim speaking out on sexual violence
"In Bunia, a town farther north, rape prosecutions are up 600 percent compared to five years ago. Congolese investigators have even been flown to Europe to learn “CSI”-style forensic techniques. The police have arrested some of the most violent offenders, often young militia men, most likely psychologically traumatized themselves, who have thrust sticks, rocks, knives and assault rifles inside women...

Poverty, chaos, disease and war. These are the constants of eastern Congo. Many people believe that the rape problem will not be solved until the area tastes peace. But that might not be anytime soon.

Laurent Nkunda, a well-armed Tutsi warlord, or a savior of his people, depending on whom you ask, recently threatened to wage war across the country. Clashes between his troops, many of them child soldiers, and government forces have driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in the past few months. His forces, along with those from the dozens of other rebel groups hiding out in the hills, are thought to be mainly responsible for the epidemic of brutal rapes."

AP: protesters beaten in Zimbabwe
"The Bulawayo demonstrators were carrying a statement from the civil rights group Women of Zimbabwe Arise, accusing politicians of offering empty promises in their Sept. 15 agreement."

Econ: delays in Khmer Rouge trials
"The tribunal, based in the outskirts of the capital, is an unwieldy compromise. The original proposal was for it to be entirely under the UN’s control, like the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. But China threatened to veto this, perhaps fearing that such an independent international body would unearth embarrassing evidence of its close support for the Khmer Rouge.

The Cambodian government, led by Hun Sen (a former Khmer Rouge officer, though not himself implicated in the regime’s enormities), was also keen to ensure the UN did not have too much control over the tribunal. So what was agreed in the end was an “Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia”, with a majority of local judges. The result has been constant tensions between the international and Cambodian staff."

LAT: China abandons land reform

NYT: debt bondage and cotton in Tajikistan

WSJ: intrigue surrounding murder of Tbilisi CIA station chief in 1993
"Those who don't buy the official explanation suspect that the answer lies in the spy games that played out on Russia's frontier following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Woodruff was an early actor in a dangerous drama. American spies were moving into newborn nations previously dominated by Soviet intelligence. Russia's security apparatus, resentful and demoralized, was in turmoil, its nominal loyalty to a pro-Western course set by President Boris Yeltsin shredded by hard-line spooks and generals who viewed the Americans as a menace."

NYT: the mob and politics in Bulgaria
"By almost any measure, Bulgaria is the most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union. Since it joined last year, it has emerged as a cautionary tale for Western nations confronting the stark reality and heavy costs of drawing fragile post-Communist nations into their orbit, away from Russia’s influence...

As in Russia and some other Balkan nations, corruption has seeped into the fabric of life. Sofia has a thriving black market for blood outside hospitals, where patients’ families haggle over purchases with dealers, according to Bulgarian news reports that track the prices.

The roots of this organized crime date to the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s. Thousands of secret agents and athletes, including wrestlers once supported and coddled by the state, were cast onto the street. During the United Nations embargo of warring Serbia in the 1990s, they seized smuggling opportunities and solidified their networks."

Slate: special series on immigration in Europe

WP: Canadian conservatives hold on to power

WP: Whitehouse gave the go-ahead to CIA torture

Slate: code language in American politics - from Wallace to Palin
Slate: the US patchwork system is inefficient at handling voter registration and voting; plus, why vote on Tuesdays?
"(Tuesday voting, for the record, is entirely vestigial. In 1845, Congress fixed upon Tuesday because getting to and from polling places used to be a two-day ordeal, and voting on the weekend or Monday would have meant traveling on the Sabbath.)"
Slate: how did Qpac become a polling machine?
Slate: speaking of the 19th century - mobilizing voters resembled civil war military tactics
LAT: Kenyans following the race
"Despite Sen. Barack Obama's strong lead in the polls and his huge popularity here in his father's homeland, some Kenyans can't shake a sense of doubt about whether Americans are ready to put a black man in the White House."

of unity and separation

NYT: principal-agent problems in Pakistan
"The threat from the militants, the former [Inter-Services Intelligence] officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”... Today Pakistan’s tribal areas are host to a lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits."
BBC: Pakistani troops killed in clashes with militants (perhaps former trainees).

LAT: meanwhile, US trying to negotiate bringing the Sunni Awakening into the Shiite fold
NYT: Iraqi minister estimates ten more years of US military assistance is necessary on the borders
BBC: US plans to turn over control of Anbar to local forces by March

WP: (non-violent) conflict among NATO allies in Afghanistan
LAT: Gates gets explicit:
"In an unusual public criticism, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he believes NATO forces currently deployed in southern Afghanistan do not know how to combat a guerrilla insurgency, a deficiency that could be contributing to the rising violence in the fight against the Taliban."
Ind: more specifically, US against UK plan to arm locals (but so is the NATO chief quoted in the article)
BBC: Afghan police, NATO soldiers killed in attacks in south
Ind: Taliban suicide attack on luxury hotel may signal shift in tactics
Gdn: more details on the origins of the attack, linked to one family in particular

WSJ: cocaine "boom" in Europe leads to new money laundering practices. "Some narco-euros are laundered directly in Europe. But officials say the lion's share is routed back to South America as cash and eventually ends up in the U.S....A high-level Spanish banking official says a disproportionate share of the euro zone's €500 notes, known as Bin Ladens for their scarcity, circulate in Spain...Spain now has a larger percentage of its population (3%) using cocaine than the U.S. (2.3%), the previous top per-capita consumer, according to United Nations figures. In the first half of 2007, a kilo of cocaine sold for €33,000, or about $43,900, in Madrid, more than triple the $12,500-$14,600 it fetched in Los Angeles and far more than the $13,000-$26,000 it sold for in New York, according to the Spanish police and the DEA...Spain is a favorite entry point because of its proximity to Africa, its long coastline and its language, which it shares with Colombia and most other South American countries."

LAT: revisiting Mao's long march

WP: back story on destroyed CIA tapes

Ind: Admiral Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says Guantánamo should be shut down (where is the US press on this? did I miss it?)

Ind: Kenyan police had orders to shoot to kill, which Human Rights Watch blames for violence leading to 575 deaths
BBC: opposition gains boost in parliament vote during first session since the violence

BBC: Mugabe losing control of party, challenged from within

BBC: Liberia can't afford to hold elections; President will appoint mayors

Gdn: bombing in Lebanon kills 6

BBC: two journalists on trial in Niger for contact with the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ), rebels based in the north. they could receive the death penalty if found guilty.

BBC: Italian police break up Nigerian gang allegedly trafficking women and children to Europe

BBC: rebels in Darfur claim Sudanese army bombing

BBC: separatists in Corsica broke into, set fire to parliament

BBC: violence in Assam wounds 15, United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa) suspected by Indian police

BBC: separatists in southern Thailand ambush troops, kill 8
"The attack in Narathiwat took place around 0940 (0240 GMT) as the soldiers returned after escorting schoolteachers to work...Militants have targeted teachers in the past, perceiving them as a symbol of domination by the Thai state, and so soldiers now provide an armed escort."

BBC: bombings in Burma; junta blames the Karen National Union

BBC: 2 people killed, 15 injured at protest in Yemen for national unity

BBC: protests in Georgia over election rigging - Saakashvili declared winner with 53%, avoiding run-off

WSJ: if you can't change reality, change the subject: it's not freedom and democracy anymore, but justice, that Bush seeks in the Middle East.
BBC: how about some nice, new weaponry to go with the justice?

BBC: update on garbage and governance: Sardinians clash with police after trash shipped to the island

st nick

NYT: concerns about a US plan to fund tribal areas in Pakistan
(LAT had the story back on Nov 5 and Nov 18)

NYT: meanwhile, $5 billion in US aid to Pakistan diverted from intended counterinsurgency to conventional military investment

LAT: intra-agency squabbles in the CIA and the debate over the tapes

WSJ: Chávez's former ally's role in Venezuelan politics

LAT: pro-Putin youths running rackets:
"When Young Russia needs money, he explains earnestly, they find some local businesspeople to shake down. If the businesspeople are sensible and pay up, Young Russia will "lobby their interests with the organs of state power," he says.

If they prove stingy, forget about it.

"We're talking here about a civilized protection racket," he says, cool as ice. "If they don't give us money, we attack them."

AP: 5 former Guatanamo captives convicted of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise" in France, sentenced to time already served. 1 acquitted.

LAT: the junta in Burma supported by enslaved children's labor in mines

NYT: before St Nicholas became Santa, he freed children from slavery

out of (and back into) the shadows

Time: a tsar is born. (can't top that title.) i like how the article casually refers to one of his advisors as his "ideologist." also, unironically starts a paragraph: "Vladimir Putin gives a first impression of contained power..."
still working on the consolidation bit: Petraeus is runner-up for person of the year. "And yet Petraeus has not failed, which, given the anarchy and pessimism of February, must be considered something of a triumph."

Salon: different nominees from the same war "Both men represented the best of America's democratic tradition, where even in wartime, enlisted soldiers have a right to their opinions."

Salon: teenage insurgent in Iraq - complete with all the inconsistencies of adolescence

Salon: testimony from 19 months in a CIA "black site"
"After 19 months of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the CIA, the agency released him with no explanation, just as he had been imprisoned in the first place. He faced no terrorism charges. He was given no lawyer. He saw no judge. He was simply released, his life shattered."

NYT: community still divided, justice still evasive in Chiapas 10 years after a massacre

Econ: local elections in India - results due out today

Econ: turnover in South Korea
NYT: and, in rebuke to the military junta, potentially in Thailand
Econ: (background here)
NYT: and Kenya too: "[the liberal candidate] even played left wing in soccer."
Econ: ANC party leadership shifts to Zuma "Yet despite this victory, Mr Zuma is by no means assured of the national presidency in 2009."

NYT: housing protest turns violent in New Orleans
WP: new mayor in Philly tries to address violent crime with new policing strategies
"While the homicide rate among black men age 18 to 24 has dropped dramatically from the highs of the early 1990s during the height of the urban crack war, the group's murder rate is still about 10 times higher than for white men the same age, and far higher than the rate for any other group of black people...A pair of black activists has put out a call to 10,000 black men to step forward and become mentors, big brothers and community observers on the lookout for bad behavior."

WP: Afghan art and national treasures exhibit at the National Gallery in DC
"In 2003, a group of boxes from the museum was unexpectedly located in a sealed vault under the presidential palace. A year later, a team of international experts and Afghan officials began opening them...Jawad added that the Kabul government also hopes to bring some of the officials who hid the museum pieces, so they can tell their stories. "They could have gotten passports and fled like other people, but they stayed and saved these treasures," he said. "They are the real heroes."

The Onion: Bush warms up to science
plus, an update on Rove's activities: "Longtime political adviser and Republican strategist Karl Rove announced Aug. 13 that he would step down from his role as White House deputy chief of staff to spend more time in the shadows and devote his energy to the things he really cares about, such as creeping, slithering, and disappearing for all time into an ever-darkening realm shut off from hope and goodness."

doing what we can

WP: more pressure to shift focus, troops from Iraq to Afghanistan
NYT: reviewing the US and NATO mission in Afghanistan in three reports. but, “It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this week. “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.”

LAT: US to shift forces from periphery to Baghdad
USAT: and Iraqi central gov't moves to support the (mostly) Sunni private security militias

NYT: Ethiopia trying out civilian militias too

WP: refugees and displaced are returning to a segregated Baghdad. "...in many cases the local militias . . . have seized control and threw out anybody in that neighborhood they didn't like."

WP: US has given intel to Turkey, supporting attacks on the PKK. plus, Turkey moves 300 troops inside northern Iraq, and Secretary Rice makes surprise visit to Kirkuk.

NYT: Syria "cracking down" on political activists
BBC: or easing up? (some confusion on the situation, pointed out by Jonah)

WP: how much did those CIA tapes capture anyhow? and, that recurring theme: does torture "work"?

Econ: background and status of negotiations in Colombia

NYT: US abandons allies in Laos decades ago; bands of "rebels" still evading the gov't there.

Slate: apartheid in Saudi Arabia?

Slate: the Supreme Court takes up another case on courts and the war on terror

evolution

with mild reluctance, i'm moving specialists in violence to the blogosphere. (and look what's happened - i'm already using terms like blogosphere.) it seems like this format will be more convenient than the group email.

Ind (and everyone else): Bhutto's back. Pakistan's court will rule in 10-12 days on whether or not Musharraf's re-election was legal.

LAT: Turkey voted to authorize force in Iraq; already has an estimated 1500 troops in 3 battalions in Iraq.

Ind: Somali gov't troops arrested the head of the UN's World Food Program for unclear reasons 3 days after the program started; "Since Ethiopian troops drove out the Union of Islamic Courts at the end of December, violence in the capital has increased dramatically with insurgents engaging Ethiopian and Somali government troops almost daily." Islamic Courts members formed a new party in Asmara, Eritrea; appear to be biding time for stand-off between Somalia's president and prime minister to blow up.

So to sum up the web of issues smoldering in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia: Eritrea is mobilizing residents into military for potential clash with Ethiopia, which has reportedly moved troops to the border because Eritrea is allowing Islamists to operate from the country. Ethiopia-backed gov't on edge of collapse in Somalia; Eritrea at least passively backing exiled rivals. Finally, Ethiopia fighting a separatist insurgency in region of Ogaden by targeting civilians. uf.

Ind: looking for relief? try Mauritius

Ind: burmese junta acknowledges 3,000 have been arrested, 468 still held. observers suspect it's an underestimate. but the generals are steadfast, rebuking calls for democratization: "We will go ahead. We will not deviate from our path...We will get rid of the barriers and obstacles on the way."

Ind: gang violence in the UK

Slate: taking the principle out of principle-agent: an update on the CIA investigation of its own investigator general.

Slate: law and order: how mormon fundamentalists and the amish get to break so many laws. "Such group rights are a challenge for a legal system centered on the individual;" does the US gov't allow groups to regulate themselves on the condition that no members can live under both systems? the amish give 18-year-olds a year to work out if they'll commit to the community, if not, they're banished. mormon fundamentalist boys, among others, are kicked out for transgressions from group rules (or to increase the supply of women available to older men to marry). both are extreme in the sense that community members can't even maintain contact with the outsiders. contact Ryan for a comparison with nomads and pastoralists in Kenya. (note: the entire series is an interesting look at how law flexibly keeps order.)

USAT: armed group recruitment sometimes misfires

New Yorker non sequitur: race in the indie rock scene