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

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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?

constitutions and crises [instigators]

AJE: Micheletti, military-backed leader of Honduras, quits crisis talks in Costa Rica
Zelaya told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that he was confident that the country's military-backed interim government would be dismantled as a result of the talks...

Meanwhile, after nearly two weeks of mostly muted response from the US, Washington said on Wednesday that it had suspended $16.5m in military assistance programmes and development assistance programmes to the Honduran interim government.
CSM: Hondurans divided over coup
NYT: and the constitution
Many abroad are obsessing over the question of whether Mr. Zelaya’s ouster was legal, or a classic military coup. But this debate obscures the fact that for many years, Honduras has just been one big crisis waiting to happen.

NYT: Iranians mark 10th anniversary of student protests with another round of demonstrations: ...there have been almost four weeks of defiance [since the elections], in the face of the government’s repeated, uncompromising and violent efforts to restore the status quo. The government did succeed in keeping people off the streets in the previous 11 days, leaving many to simmer on their own as political insiders and clerical heavyweights slugged it out behind the scenes.

But there was an opening to take to the streets again on Thursday in a collective show of defiance, and many protesters seized it, even though the principal opposition leaders stayed away. Mir Hussein Moussavi, who claims he won the election; another candidate, Mehdi Karroubi; and former President Mohammad Khatami have agreed to pursue their complaints through the legal system and to protest only when a permit is issued.

But the mood of the street never calmed. One witness said that had it not been for the overwhelming show of force, it appeared, tens of thousands would have turned out.
NYT: eyewitness accounts of the mobilization and state crackdown

WP: bombings in Iraq seem to be targeting Shiites
But the nature of the attacks Wednesday and Thursday is likely to raise people's fears about further bloodshed. The bombings seem to be targeting Shiite Muslims, in what many worry is an attempt to renew the sectarian strife of 2006 and 2007 that brought the country to the verge of collapse.

There were no signs of Shiite retaliation so far, but angry residents of Sadr City inspecting the damage left by two improvised mines Thursday said it would only be a matter of time.

"They want to instigate strife, and the Shiites will not remain silent," said Kazem Zayer, a 30-year-old unemployed laborer. "They are killing us one after the other."
LAT: or Kurds? either way, further rounds of sectarian violence feared
The worst attack Thursday occurred in Tall Afar in Nineveh province in the north, where a double suicide bombing killed 34 people, prompting a senior Iraqi official to express concern that the country's security forces, now fully responsible for protecting the cities, had been penetrated by armed groups...

Militants appear focused on the north, where Arabs and Kurds are locked in a dispute over a 300-mile stretch of land where Saddam Hussein's regime expelled Kurds and settled Arabs in their place. Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region wants to annex those areas, an idea Arabs oppose...

Provincial council member Yahya Abed Majoub, a member of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party, blamed the attack in Tall Afar on political factions as well as neighboring countries.

"There are groups who want to ignite sectarian and ethnic tensions all over Iraq. Nineveh is just the starting point," Majoub said. "There is a political agenda from inside and outside related to the election."
NYT: Kurdistan creates its own constitution
The proposed constitution enshrines Kurdish claims to territories and the oil and gas beneath them. But these claims are disputed by both the federal government in Baghdad and ethnic groups on the ground, and were supposed to be resolved in talks begun quietly last month between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, sponsored by the United Nations and backed by the United States. Instead, the Kurdish parliament pushed ahead and passed the constitution, partly as a message that it would resist pressure from the American and Iraqi governments to make concessions.

CSM: the US military in Afghanistan trying to convert southern push into extended presence
In particular, [troops] say they are caught in a vicious circle: To win over the locals, the troops must bring development, security, and economic prospects. To do this, they have to diminish the presence of the insurgency. But this, in turn, requires that the troops win support of the population...

the clearing phase of the strategy may be the easiest. Soldiers say they will need patiently to build rapport, something that might take months or years, if at all.

"We just have to earn their trust," says Staff Sgt. Adam Kapchus of the 10th Mountain Division. "We need to support clinics and support their economy."

To do so, the troops have been making an effort to visit villages.

"How is traffic? Have cars been coming through here and bringing business?" a soldier on a typical patrol asks one merchant, who says business is "OK."

"Have you seen any bad guys here?" the soldier continues.

"No sir. The bad people stay in the mountains," the merchant says, pointing to the purple peaks in the distance.

"That's good. Is there any way we can help you?" the soldier asks.

"Your helicopters fly overhead all night," the merchant says. "No one in our village can sleep. Please stop this – it is causing major problems."

The soldier promises to tell his superiors.

Despite such patrols, the troops generally don't have enough contact with the locals to convince them that they are here for their good, says Habibullah Rafeh, policy analyst with the Kabul Academy of Sciences. Most of the troops live in small, heavily fortified outposts near urban centers. Most Afghans, however, live in rural areas – only 0.5 percent of Wardak's population is urban, for example...

In Jaghatu District, Taliban forces had run the area as a fiefdom, complete with a court and administrative apparatus. The district government had fled, leaving a cluster of four ramshackle buildings that makes up the capital, called the district "center."

In mid-May, American forces entered and occupied the district center, displacing the insurgents. They set up a makeshift camp among the devastated buildings – one pockmarked structure, ravaged by frequent mortar fire, is an abandoned school, while another is an empty office. A small contingent of Afghan police and Army took up residence in the other buildings.

Together, this combined force is able to maintain control of the district center, but the Taliban still enjoy sovereignty in the surrounding countryside, according to residents. When an American patrol visits these areas, the insurgents melt into the surroundings, sometimes waiting to ambush the soldiers, other times waiting to fight another day.
CSM: local and regional alliances complicate the effort
In one recent ‌shura held in Sayadabad district, elders asked the Americans to leave, saying that they were happy with Taliban rule, which limits crime, and complaining that the troops "cause the price of everything to increase," according to one participant of the meeting.

But such sentiments may not be universal, says Habibullah Rafeh, policy analyst with the Kabul Academy of Sciences.

"The Taliban's appeal is limited to their own ethnic group, and also has a strong tribal dimension," he says.

In some areas in the east, for example, there are anti-Taliban tribes that regularly cooperate with Western forces. Parts of Wardak made up of the Hazara minority, for example, are strongly in favor of the troops. And most in urban areas such as Kabul don't identify with the rurally based insurgents.
CSM: ...which are also perceived to affect Afghan police allegiances and efficacy
Unlike the [Afghan National Army], the ANP here tend to be drawn mostly from the southern regions, so the likelihood of Taliban sympathizers in the force is higher. In many cases, according to members of the Wardak Provincial Council, the ANP works out arrangements with the insurgents so that they won't be attacked, and in return they allow the militants to operate unmolested.

Gdn: Karzai reelection could generate more violence
Although the Taliban have threatened to disrupt polling day itself, David Haight, the US colonel who is in charge of pacifying two strategically vital provinces on the southern doorstep of the capital, Kabul, says he is far more concerned about the aftermath of the election...

"I think that apathy is going to turn into some anger because when the administration doesn't change, and I don't think anyone believes now that Karzai is going to lose ... I think there is going to be frustration from people who realise there is not going to be a change. The bottom line is they are going to be thinking: 'four more years of this crap?'" Haight said...

Widely blamed for much of the corruption in modern Afghanistan, Karzai has nonetheless succeeded in gaining the support of most of the country's most important ethnic and tribal power-brokers, including a number of unsavoury characters accused of human rights violations.

The only doubt is whether Afghanistan's tribal warlords can deliver the necessary votes to Karzai, or whether the widespread disillusion with the corrupt state of the regime will lead voters to defy tribal and clan lines and back one of the opposition candidates.

AJE: displaced civilians from Swat begin return

WP: ethnic violence in China provoking exodus
Ye's family is among the many in Urumqi that find themselves at an unexpected crossroads in the aftermath of this week's violence, which has claimed at least 156 lives. Terrified of their Han neighbors, but accustomed to the comforts of the city they have made their home, they must weigh the benefits of staying in a place where they no longer feel welcome or returning to a countryside where their salaries will probably be reduced by half. On Wednesday, Ye and his wife, Mu Heti, made the painful decision to go back to the countryside of Ili in northern Xinjiang, joining an exodus of ethnic minorities out of Urumqi that has overwhelmed bus and train stations in recent days.

Before Tuesday night, Ye said, he thought that the violence would pass quickly and that life in Urumqi would return to normal. Ye, 40, who is Kazakh, and Mu, 36, who is Uighur, and their extended families have been in the city for eight years while he worked as a Chinese-Russian translator. The family members had settled into a life they loved...

But all that now seemed distant, Ye and Mu said, in light of the violence. Tensions between China's dominant Han population and people native to Xinjiang -- mostly Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking group, and Kazakhs, who are concentrated on the border with Kazakhstan, are mostly Muslim and speak their own Turkic language -- have existed since Chinese troops rolled into Xinjiang 60 years ago.

China has repeatedly said that it "liberated" the population, but many Uighurs and Kazakhs complain of government policies that they say are meant to wipe out their language, culture and religion in the name of assimilation...

The Xinjiang region in recent years has experienced a large influx of Han Chinese lured by the government's ambitious Develop the West program, which seeks to duplicate the success of the wealthier coastal areas. As a result, the region's Han population has jumped from 6 percent in 1949 to more than 40 percent in 2000, according to the last census. The initiative has boosted incomes all around, but it has also set up an uncomfortable hierarchy. Many of the new bosses are Han, while the workers are from minority groups.

The bloody riots on Sunday show just how deep the mistrust between Han Chinese and other ethnic groups runs, and how quickly a seemingly minor disagreement can escalate. The violence began with a false Internet rumor about the rape of two Han women by Uighur workers. That led to a fight in a toy factory in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan that left two Uighurs dead.

The investigation into the workers' deaths, which some Uighurs felt was inadequate, sparked a demonstration in Urumqi on Sunday. The protest spun out of control as paramilitary troops fired on protesters and rioters torched cars and businesses. A number of Han bystanders said they were attacked without provocation. Two days later, violence broke out as vigilante Han groups launched retaliatory attacks on Uighurs...

"It isn't just us who are scared of what's going on. Hans are also scared," Ye said. On Tuesday night, he said, he welcomed several Han women who needed refuge from the mob-fueled violence. As it turned out, everyone inside got lucky. The attackers moved on.
BBC: curfew reimposed in Urumqi

NYT: Al-Qaeda increasing activity in northern Africa

Gdn: Annan submits list of suspects involved in post-election violence in Kenya to ICC
The list of about a dozen people includes at least two senior cabinet ministers and will increase the pressure on Kenya's coalition government to establish a special local tribunal. Annan, who brokered an end to the crisis last year, had pledged to hand over the names if the government failed to hold accountable those most responsible for orchestrating the violence.

truth and relevance [hearing what you expect]

HuffPo, Rob Blair: Liberians' takes on the Sirleaf-TRC controversy
Sirleaf is under fire, it seems, because she failed to repent her actions, while more sordid characters were dropped from the TRC's list because they expressed remorse. Among them is the notorious Joshua Blahyi, alias Gen. Butt Naked, a warlord-cum-preacher known for his brutality and his penchant for entering battle wearing nothing but boots. Blahyi's compunction outweighed, in the TRC's peculiar calculus, the more than 20,000 deaths he caused during the war. Asks Kristof: "Can anybody explain?"...

I posed Kristof's question to five Liberians living in Monrovia. I picked individuals from disparate backgrounds to try to capture some of the variety in Liberian views on the TRC. Everyone I interviewed agreed that Sirleaf supported Taylor, but disagreed on just about everything else. These are some of their insights.

Making Sense of Darfur, Alex de Waal: on interviewing, listening, and understanding (via wronging rights)
I have observed the same person say completely different things in different contexts. It’s not deceit or even contradiction: it’s that courtesy demands saying certain things, context constrains what can be said, and the ways in which questions are posed—or discussions left unfinished—means that only one part of a complicated picture emerges. In some cases, political instructions dictate that certain things are said in a formal exchange, and other messages passed when the proceedings have formally closed.
Sudan commentary: Kristof responds to Mamdani (via Chris Blattman)

Boston Review: development debate featuring Collier, Miguel, Easterly, Diamond, Krasner, Birdsall, and McGovern (via Chris Blattman)
Collier:
Chad is not alone. It is one of a group of about 60 small, impoverished, post-colonial countries that “came unnatural into the world.” With neither the social unity needed for cooperation, nor the size to reap the benefits of larger scale, they are structurally unable to provide the public goods—such as security—that are critical for decent quality of life and imperative for economic development. They have diverged from the rest of mankind. They will never tap their vast reservoir of frustrated human potential unless the international community, at least for a time, supplies basic public goods that go beyond the typical aid agenda. This, stated baldly, is the thesis of my new book, Wars, Guns, and Votes. It is a troubling thesis. I have come to it reluctantly, and the international community has shied away from it, as have the societies of the bottom billion themselves.

Why is outside intervention necessary? The countries of the bottom billion are, paradoxically, too large to be nations, yet too small to be states. They are too large to be nations because, with rare exceptions, too many different peoples, with too many distinct ethnic and religious identities, live in them. This is not because they have large populations: on the contrary, the typical bottom-billion country has only a few million people. But these populations have yet to forge a strong sense of national identity that overrides older sub-national ethnic and religious identities. Considerable research shows that where sub-national identities predominate, it is more difficult for people to cooperate in providing public goods.

Easterly:
I have been troubled by Paul Collier’s research and policy advocacy for some time. In this essay he goes even further in directions I argued were dangerous in his previous work. Collier wants to de facto recolonize the “bottom billion,” and he justifies his position with research that is based on one logical fallacy, one mistaken assumption, and a multitude of fatally flawed statistical exercises...

Yet even if Collier got valid correlations, which he has not, correlation does not equal causation, which he also fails to address. As Daron Acemoglu of MIT commented on Collier’s earlier research on civil wars: “The correlations that are interpreted as causal effects are really no more than correlations. . . . It is too early to jump to policy conclusions.”

Collier:
Nothing could better illustrate the true nature of the disagreement about peacekeeping than Easterly’s accusation of colonialism. This accusation is founded on coarse thought, not statistical rigor. Colonialism was an oppressive system in which non-democratic empires conquered territories and ran them according to the interest of their own elites. International peacekeeping is temporary, sanctioned by democratic governments whose electorates have no appetite for empire, and aimed at establishing governments that are accountable to their own citizens. Conflating peacekeeping with colonialism is too crude to constitute abuse.

LAT: Uighur - Han violence in China
China's worst ethnic violence in years broke out Sunday in the northwestern city of Urumqi, leaving 140 people dead and more than 800 injured, the state news agency Xinhua reported.
NYT: the violence was sparked by government repression of a Uighur protest
The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26. The brawl took place in a toy factory and left 2 Uighurs dead and 118 people injured. The police later arrested a bitter ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the fight by starting a rumor that 6 Uighur men had raped 2 Han women at the work site, Xinhua reported.

WP: Mexican army accused of egregious human rights abuses in drug war
In Puerto Las Ollas, a mountain village of 50 people in the southern state of Guerrero, residents recounted how soldiers seeking information last month stuck needles under the fingernails of a disabled 37-year-old farmer, jabbed a knife into the back of his 13-year-old nephew, fired on a pastor, and stole food, milk, clothing and medication...

Mexican security forces have long had a spotty human rights record, but the growing number of abuse allegations appears to be a direct response to the savagery unleashed by the cartels after President Felipe Calderón put the military in charge of the drug war in December 2006. Most of the violations have occurred in regions where the sight of dismembered bodies of soldiers and police is remarkably common. In the state of Michoacán, investigators with the government's National Human Rights Commission concluded that the army committed abuses against 65 people over three days -- including several cases of torture and the rape of two girls -- after five soldiers were killed in an attack in May 2007.

LAT: stellar series on gangs and intervention programs in South L.A.
...The boys' lives were at risk, she told him. The gun was for defense. There were no jobs, not here; they had no money to move away from their troubles. Finally, defeated, she whispered: "This is South-Central."

And so it's been for decades -- the cradle of the thug life, the home, still, to many of the city's 400 gangs. But nights like this one are no longer explained away as simply the way things are and the way things will be.

Looking to capitalize on declining crime rates, and gang violence in particular, the LAPD has doubled its rate of gang arrests in some pockets of South Los Angeles, as South-Central is now known officially, and has implemented a new enforcement strategy against six gangs, including Barrio Mojados. Meanwhile, a wave of construction is underway and, in an area long crippled by an absence of social services, community-based groups are bringing job training, kids' baseball -- even a free Internet "cloud" over one neighborhood.

This is still a troubled place, and will be for years to come. But police, residents and civic leaders alike believe there is an opportunity here, however fragile, to restore a sense of community that many feared was lost forever in the crack-and-bullet epidemic of the 1980s and '90s. If so, South L.A.'s identity within the city could begin to shift, revealing a far more dynamic place than the one cemented in the public consciousness as an intractable ghetto.

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NYT: a non-war-related story on Colombia! (who cares if it's about the 'environment'? SV will take it.)

a promise is a promise [dangerous if not outright deadly]

NYT: Sri Lankan government says it will stop using heavy weapons, artillery and air strikes in order to protect civilians...
In what appeared to be a concession to the visiting United Nations humanitarian coordinator, John Holmes, and foreign governments critical of the continued military offensive, a statement from President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s office said “combat operations have reached their conclusion.” The statement said military forces would “confine their attempts to rescuing civilians who are held hostage.”

But there was no sign on Monday that the government was backing away from its demand for a full surrender, after dismissing a unilateral cease-fire declared Sunday by the rebels... With only several hundred Tiger fighters remaining in a four-square-mile strip of territory, the government says it is close to ending the 25-year-old conflict. But Sri Lanka is coming under enormous international pressure to stop the fighting for the sake of the estimated 50,000 trapped civilians.
Gdn: ...but doesn't follow through
LAT: Q + A: how are conditions for those still trapped?
Dangerous if not outright deadly. The Red Cross has said the situation is "nothing short of catastrophic" for those in the tiny enclave. Food, water and medical care are in short supply, the agency says. That is to say nothing of the fighting.

Reuters: Egyptian efforts target Gaza tunnels
"Tunnel business has dropped to 20 percent of what it was before the war on Gaza because of Israeli destruction and the stepped-up security campaign by Egypt," said Abu Abdallah. The Egyptian effort was "more effective" than Israeli bombs, he said. They not only blow up the tunnels but also stop contraband goods reaching Egyptian cities near Gaza.

Accused in the past of turning a blind eye to the smuggling operations, Egypt is cooperating along with United States help in a bid to stop the contraband, which Israel says includes rockets that Gaza militants use against Israel. Since the Islamists seized control of Gaza in 2007, ousting forces of the Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel has completely blocked the entry of cement and steel, which it says Hamas will use for military purposes.
LAT: Obama plan to allow aid for a unified Palestinian government which includes Hamas
But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.

The aid measures may never come into play. Power-sharing negotiations between Hamas and its rival, the U.S.-backed Fatah faction, appear deadlocked. The two have been bitterly divided since 2007, when Hamas drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Fatah controls only the West Bank...

U.S. officials insist that the new proposal doesn't amount to recognizing or aiding Hamas. Under law, any U.S. aid would require that the Palestinian government meet three long-standing criteria: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and agreeing to follow past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Hamas as an organization doesn't meet those criteria. However, if the rival Palestinian factions manage to reach a power-sharing deal, the Obama administration wants to be able to provide aid as long as the Hamas-backed members of the government -- if not Hamas itself -- meet the three criteria.

NYT: torture and accountability: lessons from Israel
Until the court’s decision, Israel, like the Bush administration, had insisted that its methods of torment permitted in interrogating detainees were not “torture,” and therefore were not in violation of international and national law prohibiting the use of torture. Those methods included violent shaking, shackling prisoners to a low and tilted stool, covering their heads with urine-drenched hoods, and sleep deprivation... Israel’s official euphemism, “a moderate measure of physical pressure,” was a touch more honest than the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.” But the intent was the same.

Israel’s other line of defense, equally familiar, was that the country was embroiled in a “war on terrorism” (that was years before President George W. Bush used the term) and therefore could not deal gently with a Palestinian who may know of a — literally — ticking bomb.
FP: timeline of US torture, since 9/11
EmptyWheel(via Andrew Sullivan): and docs released in the last few weeks

LAT: the birth and slow death of the Sons of Iraq
The divergent fates of these two former Sunni insurgents highlight the major unknown about the intentions of Iraq's Shiite-led government: Is it reaching out to former Sunni insurgents such as Abu Azzam in the true spirit of "national reconciliation," or in hopes of splintering the movement?

And will the government's campaign against men such as Abu Maarouf succeed in snuffing out potential rivals? Or is it planting seeds for a long-term Sunni revolt?

The crackdown also points to a significant change in the U.S. forces' onetime policy of nurturing and protecting the Sons of Iraq. As the Iraqi government has arrested some of the movement's leaders, forced others into exile and failed to deliver jobs for rank-and-file fighters, the Americans have regularly deferred to Baghdad's wishes as they hand over responsibility for the country's security.
LAT: Iraqi government claims raid violated security pact with US

CSM: British court acquits only suspects ever tried in connection with 7/7 London bombings
The investigation into the July 7 plot is the largest criminal investigation in British history. Over the course of tens of thousands of man-hours, officers have taken 18,450 statements and produced 37,000 exhibits and 19,400 documents.

But, Mr. Gohel says: "What we are seeing repeatedly now is that the threshold for quality and quantity of evidence acquired is set so high it is almost impossible to obtain successful prosecutions unless there is irrefutable evidence, including a smoking gun and dead bodies, and the perpetrators being filmed in the act."

Gdn: Pakistani air strikes, troops fight Taliban expansion near Swat Valley
Fighter jets and helicopter gunships launched attacks on Taliban positions in Buner today in a dramatic expansion of a military operation to halt the march of extremists out of the Taliban-controlled Swat valley... Buner, a small mountainous district tucked into north-western Pakistan, was the centre of world concerns last week when Taliban militants overran the district, ransacking foreign aid agency offices and occupying government buildings.

Although the offensive posed no direct danger to Islamabad, the proximity of the advance to the capital stoked American worries that, as Hillary Clinton put it, Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to world security. Under immense domestic and international pressure the military launched an operation in Lower Dir district on Sunday, attacking Taliban positions with gunships and artillery.
NYT: leading Taliban's main negotiator to break off talks with the government...
Under the February peace agreement, the government agreed to the imposition of Shariah courts and both sides agreed to stop fighting. The military has ceased operations in the Swat Valley, but Taliban militants have insisted they will remain armed until the Islamic courts are set up and functioning.

Government officials said they would continue to try to hold the Swat peace agreement together, but have demanded that militants cease their activities in several districts adjoining Swat and lay down their weapons. Several provincial officials have expressed growing frustration with Mr. Muhammad and his failure to make the militants abide by the agreement.
AJE: ...and flight of up to 50,000 civilians
LAT: Swat Valley conflict as demonstrative of Pakistan's identity crisis?
Although they have different reasons for leaving, those who have lived through the last few years in Swat say they have experienced firsthand what passes for peace, Taliban-style, and fear the worst as militants gain more influence across the region.

A former tourist destination, the Swat Valley is now ground zero in Pakistan's identity crisis... Many here and abroad fear the rising tide of extremism in Swat could foretell changes in an overwhelmingly Muslim society that has been largely secular and open.

CSM: new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan: "cash and jobs instead of guns"
Others say agencies such as the Peace and Reconciliation Commission are part of the problem. Since 2005, the commission claims to have reconciled with nearly 4,000 fighters. It has lost track of most of these, however. Some critics charge that many of the surrendered were never with the insurgency or lied about surrendering to get a payment...

In many cases, the commission is unable to provide the jobs it promised to those fighters who genuinely want to reconcile, analysts say. Mr. Muzdja believes the government and the Americans must revamp the reconciliation program by making it more transparent and accountable.
LAT: Karzai to amend Afghani law basically permitting rape
The law, which sparked an international outcry after it was signed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone...

Though the law would apply only to the country's Shiite Muslims, who make up about 20% of Afghanistan's 30 million people, many fear its passage marks a return to Taliban-style oppression of women.

LAT: 7 police officers dead in Tijuana drug violence
NYT: intrigue of assassination plot highlights tensions in Bolivia
But the episode, with its dash of Balkan intrigue, remains far from an open-and-shut case of right versus left. Instead, it falls somewhere in that gray area of Bolivian politics, in which Mr. Morales’s claims of destabilization plots, now a regular feature of his government, and his opponents’ counterclaims that such plots are shams contribute to growing tensions between the central government and the rebellious lowlands...

Indeed, the mystery of the case revolves largely around this enigmatic figure, believed to be the group’s leader... Mr. [Eduardo] Rozsa Flores went further in the interview, saying his goal was not toppling Mr. Morales, but achieving autonomy for Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s wealthiest department, or province. Envisioning a clash with La Paz over this issue, he nonchalantly described his goal as “declaring independence and creating a new country.”

NYT: thousands imprisoned and hundreds dead as China seeks to weed out Falun Gong

CSM: vigilantes fight back against pirates in Somalia

Captain Phillips and the Somali pirates [the never-ending story]

NYT: the feat of the snipers who saved Captain Phillips from the Somali pirates
The hard part was not the distance, 75 feet, an easy range for an experienced sniper. Far more difficult were all the moving parts: the bobbing lifeboat, the rolling ship, hitting three targets simultaneously in darkness — and all without harming the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips...

Several dozen members of the Seals had secretly boarded the Bainbridge on Saturday, having flown to the area, parachuted into the ocean and then climbed aboard inflatable boats they had dropped into the sea. The Navy would not say where they were based or if they were part of even more elite, clandestine military units that have historically been used for hostage rescues.
CSM: but what to do with the one that survived?
[T]he rise of savvy Somali pirates also presents an oceanic legal problem: no clear, practical legal regime exists for the world to capture and try pirates. And there's no reliable place to evaluate the evidence or hold them accountable for their crimes... In fact, most captured pirates, who are usually not kingpins anyway, are simply turned loose on or close to shore.

"The real issue is to create an international legal framework," US Coast Guard chief Adm. Thad Allen said this week. "What you really have to have is a coordinating mechanism that brings these pirates to court where they can be held accountable."

Currently, some legal experts in the US and Europe hope that the Kenyan court system will take up the call – with Mombasa acting as a kind of Hague international tribunal for pirate crimes. Britain, the US, and the European Union have signed memorandums of understanding with Nairobi in recent months. Legal action is underway in Kenya for several Somali pirates already turned over by the US and Germany, in a pre-trial phase being closely watched for its legal acuity.
CSM: the time for more non-kinetic methods?
Mr. Gates calls for "enlightened counter-measures" to bolster vulnerable states that harbor violent networks. And this week, after the rescue of the kidnapped Capt. Richard Phillips, he went further to say there is "no purely military" solution to Somalia "unless you get something on land that begins to change the equation for these kids."

Yes, kids. The pirates were 17 to 19 years old. While they were greedy for a $6 million ransom, they came from poverty and a clannish community resentful of the way that foreign ships have overfished and polluted Somalia's coastal waters.
Xinhua: or just dolphins?
NYT: US congressman almost struck by mortars on visit to Somalia (against administration's advice)
The congressman, a Democrat from Newark, was unhurt and it was unclear if insurgents who routinely shell the airport were trying to hit his plane or were simply unleashing another assault on the city’s main lifeline.

The Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group vying for control of the country, later took responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.
WP: and another attempted attack, this one thwarted

NYT: in Afghanistan, from the welfare war to...?
Lieutenant Cheek, 25, is a platoon leader for Company C of the First Battalion, 26th Infantry. In nine months in one of Afghanistan’s more violent areas, the company has been a witness to a subtly changing war.

The company arrived after a ferocious battle and in a climate of political uncertainty about the degree of commitment to the war. But it has since been issued heavier fighting vehicles, seen another battalion reinforce its efforts in the region and fought what is essentially a holding mission to prepare for a large influx of American troops that President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan later this year.

This spring, as the pace of fighting has increased with warming weather, there have not been enough American soldiers here to clear Wanat of the insurgents openly living there. But there is a sense that soon the military could be able to break the stalemate of what some soldiers, sensing that Afghanistan had long been neglected in Washington, had taken to calling “the welfare war.”
NYT: creating local militias, Iraq-style
If the militias work in Wardak, the Americans say they want to replicate them throughout the country. So the experience in Wardak has been instructive, for what the Americans can accomplish and what they cannot...

The trouble came from the Pashtun enclave of Zayawalat, one of five large villages in Jalrez. The Americans setting up the guard force waited patiently, hoping to bring Zayawalat’s elders along. They agreed to a meeting with the elders, and then another and another. At a meeting last week, the fourth, the Pashtun elders said they would make a final decision and report back this week.

But when they showed up Monday morning, the elders said they still were not ready to give up their sons. “It’s not that the people in Zayawalat don’t support the government — they do,” said Hajii Janan, the leader of the Wardak provincial council, who presided over the meeting. “But, as you can see, people are under pressure.”
NYT: more claims of civilian deaths from NATO airstrikes

NYT: Pakistani president signs off on sharia law in Swat Valley
Mr. Zardari had delayed giving the agreement a national stamp of approval, saying that the militants should first demonstrate that they would abide by the cease-fire. He signed the measure under pressure from conservatives, even though little in the valley has changed...

The government now needs to press the militants by monitoring whether they hold up their end of the bargain to lay down their arms, Mr. Sherpao said... Critics of the deal worry that it could simply provide the militants with a new haven from which they can carry out attacks.
AJE: which has some Afghans worried about strengthening militants
NYT: attacks on Punjab signal a dangerous shift
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.

Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”...

The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.

Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

WSJ: Obama may keep secret some DoJ torture memos
Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos. Another approved tactic was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.

People familiar with the matter said some senior intelligence advisers to the president raised fears that releasing the two most sensitive memos could cause the Obama administration to be alienated from the CIA's rank and file, as happened during the Bush administration when Porter Goss, who was unpopular among CIA officers, headed the agency...

The government faces a court deadline Thursday in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the release of three 2005 memos issued by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under former President George W. Bush.

LAT: Lebanese drug traffickers responsible for deaths of 4 soldiers
Lebanese officials said gunmen, using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, fired on an army truck in a residential area of Baalbek, a city in the Bekaa Valley. Panicked people hid in their homes and paramedics rushed to remove the wounded.

Officials say the attack was revenge for the March 27 killing at an army checkpoint of a patriarch of the Jaafar clan, which is allegedly heavily involved in the trafficking of hashish and heroin. They predict a harsh response. By early evening, soldiers had raided the homes of the clan's late patriarch, local media reported.
LAT: Hezbollah a united military-political front with growing legitmacy (and public relations)

NYT: how US guns laws affect the illegal traffic to Mexico
Noting there are about 1,500 licensed gun dealers in the Houston area, he added: “You can come to Houston and go to a different gun store every day for several months and never alert any one.”... As a result, in some states along the Southwest border where firearms are lightly regulated, gun smugglers can evade detection for months or years. In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, dealers can sell an unlimited number of rifles to anyone with a driver’s license and a clean criminal record without reporting the sales to the government. At gun shows in these states, there is even less regulation. Private sellers, unlike licensed dealers, are not obligated to record the buyer’s name, much less report the sale to the A.T.F...

But Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Rifle Association, said tightening gun laws in the United States would penalize only people who enjoy marksmanship and hunting, or who buy firearms for self-defense, without solving Mexico’s problem.
AP: Obama to appoint border czar
PCB: the drug war in (revealing) numbers

Bloomberg: Lehman Bros. has enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb
A supply of 500,000 pounds of yellowcake is just “slightly” less than the amount needed to make one bomb, or fuel one nuclear power reactor for a year, if the latest enrichment technologies are used, said Gennady Pshakin, an Obninsk, Russia-based nonproliferation expert.
NYT: Obama may allow Iran to continue nuclear program under early stages of international negotiations
A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded...

Administration officials declined to discuss details of their confidential deliberations, but said that any new American policy would ultimately require Iran to cease enrichment, as demanded by several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
LAT: North Korea pulls completely out of nuclear talks, says "never again"

LAT: Sri Lankan president orders halt to army offensive during New Year celebrations, giving civilians temporary relief
AJE: while rebels call for permanent, internationally-recognized ceasefire

NYT: conflict not over in Thailand, but "red shirts" protests are
The red shirts, as the protesters are known, draw their strength from the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand. Many are farmers and small-businessmen who portray themselves as battling an entrenched, unelected but influential elite, notably the judiciary, the military and the powerful advisers of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

A central grievance of the red shirts is that the will of the electorate has been repeatedly thwarted: three prime ministers since 2006 have been forced from office — one in a military coup in 2006 and two removed by the courts in highly politicized trials...

Many of the red shirts are followers of Thaksin Shinawatra, the charismatic prime minister ousted in the 2006 coup who is seen by the poor as their champion and by the elite as a threat. Convicted last year of abuse of power and facing other charges in Thailand, he now lives in exile. Mr. Thaksin’s position now appears weakened by the collapse of the protests.

NYT: China releases a national human rights action plan, in part to ease dissatisfaction with public security officials
The two-year plan promises the right to a fair trial, the right to participate in government decisions and the right to learn about and question government policies. It calls for measures to discourage torture, such as requiring interrogation rooms to be designed to physically separate interrogators from the accused, and for measures to protect detainees from other abuse, from inadequate sanitation to the denial of medical care.

There are also specific protections for children, women, senior citizens, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.

Human rights activists applauded Beijing officials for showing an interest in the issue. But they cautioned that any implementation would require years of work by local, provincial and national government agencies, many of which have shown little interest in initiatives that may limit their power...

Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor who specializes in China’s legal system, said that the action plan was the result of growing worries in the Chinese leadership about public dissatisfaction with security forces and even outright hostility to police officers.

experiments in policing [secret's out]

Gdn: Sri Lanka rejects truce offer by LTTE
WP: behind recent military gains
[The two rice farmers] are among an estimated 45,000 largely Sinhalese villagers who have joined what is known here as the Civil Defense Forces, Sri Lanka's version of the National Guard, a paramilitary civilian group whose job is to defend villages, often in areas that have been attacked by ethnic Tamil separatist rebels in Asia's longest-running insurgency. After a few weeks of weapons training, the villagers are given uniforms, guns and a monthly salary of about $140.

"We know our roads. We know the jungle. And we are the most successful when it comes to saving our villages," said Kanthi, 36, wearing a uniform top over her skirt, a rifle slung across her chest. The mother of two is among 400 civilians in Periyaulukkulama, 15 miles west of Vavuniya, some of whom joined forces after their village was attacked on the Sinhalese New Year in April 2007, reportedly by rebels, who killed four female civilian officers...

The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who came to power in 2005 amid a wave of Sinhalese nationalism, has had a free hand to crush the separatists, diplomats here said. The majority of Sri Lankans were apparently fed up with the war that has killed at least 70,000 people and seemed willing to give the new president any powers necessary to bring about its end.

In just two years, the country enlarged its military by 40 percent, adding as many as 7,000 recruits a month. Officials sent text messages to youths and put patriotic pop hits on the radio. Sri Lanka's military now has about 300,000 troops, military officials said.

The country's defense minister, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a brother of the president who once lived in California, is seen as the main architect of the government's new strategy.

"We gave clear instructions: no cease-fires, no negotiations until we defeat the LTTE completely," he said in an interview. "The LTTE would use cease-fires and peace talks to reorganize and resupply weapons. There have been five presidents, eight governments, different political parties and different personalities, dozens of negotiations and more than 10 cease-fires. Everything failed. After every period of negotiation, they came back stronger. We decided enough was enough."...

Some say the Tamil Tigers, as the group is commonly known, has grown weaker and lost popularity among civilians for its practice of forcing every family to send at least one fighter, often a child, into battle.

...the Sri Lankan government forged new relationships with China and Pakistan after the United States cut off direct military aid last year, mainly because of alleged human rights abuses and the use of children by a breakaway rebel faction now under the control of the government in the east, according to a State Department human rights report.
LAT: recruitment another factor, despite high casualties
...it's the rice- and coconut-growing areas such as Kuliyapitiya district with its 150,000 population that have paid the highest toll. The government's all-volunteer army has found fertile ground for recruiting in rural areas where job prospects are limited and the army offers adventure, a uniform and a decent paycheck of about $200 a month. "Join the winning side," says a nationwide radio advertisement.

Recently, funerals in these parts have been running about two or three a week, said Chandana Bulathsinhala, an aide to the local opposition lawmaker, adding steadily, relentlessly, to the area's estimated 5,000 casualties since the war's inception -- a staggering one in 30 people.

Bulathsinhala estimates that 99% of the recruits sign up for economic reasons, with many schoolchildren now wanting to be soldiers rather than doctors or lawyers.

"War is always cruel, but the media has promoted good war news, so more people are encouraged to join," he said...

Nationwide, the missing number in the thousands, the result of desertions, front lines that have shifted repeatedly and dense jungle that can decompose a body in rapid order.

WP: Burma begins releasing thousands of prisoners, though few seem to be political
State media said that those who had been released were freed because of good conduct and so they could vote in elections due to be held next year.

New Yorker: secret talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir failed; were ongoing over 3 years

NYT: US Special Forces more involved in Pakistan than previously acknowledged
More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said...

They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command...

A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said...

Officials from both Pakistan and the United States agreed to disclose some details about the American military advisers and the enhanced intelligence sharing to help dispel impressions that the missile strikes were thwarting broader efforts to combat a common enemy.
Slate: (but SV wonders if it wasn't the drone base spotting by Google Earth that forced their hand)

SWJ: US issues new COIN guide

NPR: Kilcullen urges new approach in Afghanistan
Kilcullen says the militants are elusive, and don't have to hold and defend territory. He says that instead of hunting the extremists, the U.S. would do better to focus its efforts on providing the local population with better security as a way to gain their cooperation and trust...

Kilcullen says the U.S. needs to isolate the militants from the rest of the population — in large part by creating links with the local people by learning their ways, their relations with other tribes and trying to provide justice. He says that often it is the Taliban that has filled that vacuum. The best way to build those links, Kilcullen says, is to deploy in the communities.

Locals will begin to feel safe, he says, if there is a unit that lives in their village that they see every day, that they know will protect them and ensure that assistance programs work.
NPR: civilian advisers trying to cobble together an approach
NYT: Russia's interests in the outcome not quite favorable for US

LAT: Sunni parliamentarian linked to bombing, string of violence
Ind: clashes seem to be on uptick between Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga in the north
Khasro Goran, the Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh province, who operates from heavily-fortified headquarters in Mosul, said it was “not acceptable” for non-Kurdish military units to move into disputed areas. “If they try to do so we will stop them.” On the streets outside Mr Goran’s office, once a Baath party office and now the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, an array of competing military forces holds power.
WP: tracing a released Guantánamo detainee's path from Kuwait to suicide bombing in Mosul
...there is also a view in some quarters of the U.S. government that cases such as Ajmi's are the inevitable result of locking up 779 foreigners in an austere military prison, without access to courts or consular representation, and subjecting them to interrogation techniques that detainees say amount to torture. Some of them are bound to seek revenge, these officials believe. The challenge is figuring out which ones.
NYT: war widows need aid in Iraq
As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war, their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency.

Officials at social service agencies tell of widows coerced into “temporary marriages” — relationships sanctioned by Shiite tradition, often based on sex, which can last from an hour to years — to get financial help from government, religious or tribal leaders.

Other war widows have become prostitutes, and some have joined the insurgency in exchange for steady pay. The Iraqi military estimates that the number of widows who have become suicide bombers may be in the dozens.
BBC: National Museum reopens

BBC: investigating weapons use in Gaza

LAT: 11 peacekeepers killed in Mogadishu suicide bombing
Insurgents from the Shabab militia, which claims links to Al Qaeda, took responsibility and vowed to continue assaults against AU soldiers who have been helping shore up Somalia's shaky transitional government.

Newly appointed Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a former leader of the Islamist alliance that once included Shabab, has been calling upon his former partners to join the government, which was expanded in January to incorporate a major Islamist faction.

On Saturday, a clerics group in Somalia urged insurgents to halt their attacks against African Union soldiers and allow peace to return to the capital, Mogadishu.

AJE: Rwanda announces troop pullout from Congo

IHT: Belgium takes Senegal to court in the Hague, in attempt to extradite and try Habré, ex-leader of Chad on charges of war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity
A Chadian truth commission said in 1992 that his government had killed up to 40,000 opponents and tortured many others. Survivors of the prisons run by the political police have described atrocities, including the torture and killing of fellow prisoners.

Habré's government received extensive support from Western countries, including the United States and France, which saw Chad, a former French colony, as a bastion against neighboring Libya. The Reagan administration provided covert support to help Habré take power in 1982 and continued to provide him with military aid.

BBC: lingering tensions in Kenya

BBC: Colombian secret police, the DAS, embroiled in wiretap scandal
What started as allegations that some rogue agents of the Das (Department of Administrative Security) could have intercepted the phone calls and e-mails of judges, politicians, government officials and journalists, appear now to be accepted as fact.

The information garnered from their wire taps could have been passed on to criminal elements, drug-traffickers, paramilitaries and even Marxist rebels.

WP: MIT Poverty Action Lab conducting police training in Rajasthan, India
Researchers conducted a survey in 2005-2006 in the western state of Rajasthan and found that more than 70 percent of crime victims never reported incidents because many felt that the police would either do nothing or ask for a bribe to file a complaint. More than 80 percent said no constable had ever visited their neighborhood. The survey also found that an average of 64 percent of police officers were transferred every year.

The MIT economic researchers launched a two-year pilot project to try to fix the widespread distrust and hostility that Indians nurse about the police and to rev up the morale of the police in 162 stations in Rajasthan.

Under the program, they gave police officers one day off each week, froze transfers, invited a community volunteer every day to the station to observe the police work, rotated work among officers and trained the police in etiquette, stress management and scientific investigation skills...

The trials created such a buzz that local police officers refer to these police stations as "MIT-thana," or "MIT-station."...

"We are not experts in policing, but we in the economics department wanted to provide Indian officials with rigorous evaluation of policy interventions," said Daniel Keniston, a PhD candidate at MIT who coordinated field research for the project. "The project is not about a feel-good, public relations exercise. It impacts issues like national security. Terror plots are foiled by the police very often because of the cooperation of the community and its network of informers. Local people should feel comfortable working with the police, and the police's familiarity with the area is critical."
Ind: police anticipating labor demonstrations in China
BBC: policing and peackeeping in the Solomon Islands
Fifteen Pacific countries responded to a neighbour in need, and an intervention force of only about 500 foreigners has led to major changes in this nation of 500,000 people.

In the late 1990s, rival militias tried to take advantage of ethnic tensions in order to secure greater political power.

Scores of people were killed. The violence was fuelled in part by the problems created by the resettlement of ethnic Malaitans on the main island of Guadalcanal.

In July 2003, the Solomons government got the intervention force it had asked for...

The warlords have been captured, and brought to justice. But ethnic mistrust remains.

Australia and its neighbouring island countries only want to leave the Solomons in the hands of a trusted, professional police service.

Solomon Islanders know that when the peacekeepers go, their own police will be their only protectors, once again.

Five years on, it's not clear whether the Solomon Islands police are ready.
BBC: policing pirates (or trying to) in the Gulf of Aden

Salon: the entrenchment of contractors in the US military
NYT: media blackout policy at coffin arrivals reviewed
NPR: back pay: Philippine veterans of WWII finally get their due from the US
NYT: contemplating democracy promotion post-Bush
CSM (op-ed): the US should learn from Latin America and create a truth commission
What Specter and the rest of the US can learn from Latin America is this: If we are to control our own destiny, we must reclaim our past. A truth commission, along the lines suggested by Leahy, would be a good means of beginning that process. The alternative – to turn the page without knowing what is on it – could doom us to a haphazard and unpredictable future in which individual consciences and other nations' courts control our destiny.

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LAT: save the chinguiros!

war(,) on drugs [uninvited]

Gdn: efforts in Afghanistan hampered by corruption, mismanagement
BBC: ...and drugs - that is, use of opium and marijuana by Afghan police
WP: McKiernan estimates 60,000 US troops will be deployed for 3-4 more years
McKiernan said violence is likely to escalate in Afghanistan as fresh troops expand into insurgent-held areas where the military has little or no presence. "When we do put additional security forces, I would expect to see a temporary time where the level of violence might go up," he said.
WP: 'Human Terrain' researcher killed
Loyd's mission this time, as a researcher on contract to the Pentagon, was to get to know the villagers and their problems, to help the military map out what it called the "human terrain" of Afghanistan and thus improve its ability to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. With two interpreters at her side, she began to ask shoppers about the cost of fuel. One Afghan man, carrying a jug of gasoline, lingered to chat and thanked her for the visit. It was a bright winter day, and the mood in the market seemed relaxed and cordial.

Suddenly, the calm was shattered: According to court documents and government accounts, the man holding the jug abruptly hurled the gasoline at Loyd's face and chest, set her on fire and bolted. She fell to the ground in a fetal position, groaning, in flames. One guard took off after the attacker while the other rolled Loyd into a stream to douse the flames. Police began firing their guns in confusion. One guard, Don Ayala, had cuffed the man and pinned him to the ground when an Afghan interpreter ran over, screaming hysterically that Loyd was burning to death. Ayala turned and shot his prisoner in the head.

That brief flurry of violence has left a lingering trail of tragedy. The attacker died instantly, unable to shed light on his motives or possible conspirators. Ayala, one of three people in Loyd's tight-knit field team, was charged with murder in U.S. federal court and could face 15 years in prison. And Loyd, who had become deeply attached to Afghanistan, died 10,000 miles away in a San Antonio Army hospital, finally succumbing to her burns Jan. 7..

Although the Human Terrain System was designed by an anthropologist, it was ardently opposed by groups of social scientists who believe the military should not use scholars as collaborators in combat. After the program started in 2005, it generated an avalanche of heated debate in academic circles and online, which has intensified since Loyd's death.

"In theory, it is a good idea. . . . In practice, however, it has been a disaster," the magazine Nature said a recent editorial, noting that Loyd was the third civilian casualty on a Human Terrain mission in the past year. While conceding that scientific insights "have much to offer strategies in a war zone," the editors added that unless the program can be revamped to lessen "deadly mistakes, it needs to be closed down."...

"Paula died, and others will die. It is very hard to accept, but we need more people like her," [Brig. Phil Jones, an officer at the British Embassy] said. "Otherwise we will just be out there, blundering around in our diving boots and stomping on eggshells."
abu muquwama: an interview with Craig Mullaney on his new book
I had not expected to find the common ground in my interactions with local Afghans to be Bollywood pop culture. The larger value of graduate school and travel for me was changing my perspective. Traditionally, lieutenants and NCOs were handed missions / problems and they were expected to solve them within given parameters. "Answer this question. Solve this problem." In today's operating environment, and particularly in a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the hard part is defining the question and problem in the first place. Studying and traveling abroad continually exposed me to ambiguous, uncertain, and unscripted environments. I couldn't have asked for better preparation for the unfamiliarity of rural Afghanistan.

CSM: adjusting to new dynamics in Iraq
Ind: real estate booming in Baghdad; segregation sticking
Until recently anybody wanting to sell a house in Baghdad avoided putting up “for sale” signs because they were closely watched by gangs who would wait for the purchase to go through and then kidnap the seller or one of his children so they could demand the selling price as ransom.

House prices have risen by 50 per cent in many parts of central Baghdad during the past year, and rents have almost doubled. Mr Hadithi says that this is explained primarily by the end of the war. “Refugees are returning, but not to the places where they once lived,” he says. “A Shia who owns a new and expensive house in a Sunni area will want to sell it and buy a cheaper one in a Shia-majority district for safety reasons.”

Baghdad has become wholly divided into sectarian enclaves since the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07. Long grey concrete walls snake through the city, cutting off neighbourhoods from each other. Exits and entrances are closely guarded. Checkpoints every few hundred yards create horrendous traffic jams. There is far less violence than two years ago, but there are still daily bombings and assassinations.

The property market reflects the outcome of the Sunni-Shia war, in which the Shia were by and large the winners. Baghdad is today probably about 75 per cent Shia. The Sunni – traditionally the richer community – have been pushed into smaller enclaves.
WP: shoe-thrower defends himself; trial postponed
"I did not mean to kill the leader of the occupation forces," Muntadar al-Zaidi said, speaking clearly and forcefully from a wooden cage before a packed courtroom. "I was expressing what's inside of me and what's inside the Iraqi people from north to south and from west to east."

Throwing his shoes, fastball style, at the leader of the free world was not, Zaidi argued, a crime.

Zaidi, 30, who is charged with assaulting a foreign head of state, posited that Bush's Dec. 14 trip to Baghdad was not an official visit by a foreign dignitary because he arrived in the country without prior notice and didn't leave the Green Zone, which at the time was still under U.S. control.

"I am charged now with attacking the prime minister's guest," he said stoically, making his first public remarks since the incident. "We Arabs are famous for being generous with guests. But Bush and his soldiers have been here for six years. Guests should knock on the door. Those who come sneaking in are not guests."

Roughly an hour into the hearing, Presiding Judge Abdul Amir al-Rubaie announced that he would postpone the proceeding until March 12 to seek an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush's swan song visit to Baghdad was, in fact, an "official" one.

AJE: leader that brokered deal to impose Sharia law in Swat organizes march
Mohammad, who served six years in prison for leading thousands of local men across the border into Afghanistan to fight US-backed foreign forces there, intends to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to lay down their arms for the long term.

"I ask you to remain peaceful. We have reached an agreement with the provincial government and Nizam-e-Adl (Islamic system of justice) will soon be enforced here," he told his supporters.

"People will soon start getting justice and there will be a durable peace."

However, news of Monday's ceasefire agreement between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban fighters has alarmed Nato, the US and other Western powers.
BBC: journalist covering the story abducted and killed

New Yorker: will the Obama administration advocate a form of 'preventive' detainment?; weighing how to play the case of the last enemy combatant held in the US
NYT: this case a piece of the broader anti-terrorism legal picture, which doesn't look so different from Bush admin policies so far
The administration has also put off taking a stand in several cases that present opportunities to embrace or renounce Bush-era policies, including the imprisonment without trial of an “enemy combatant” on domestic soil, Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking legal opinions about interrogation and surveillance, and an executive-privilege dispute over Congressional subpoenas of former White House aides to Mr. Bush over the firing of United States attorneys.
Ind: a former Guantánamo guard offers a look inside the prison (and how he found himself there)
Did you get any briefing on who the soon-to-arrive prisoners were?

The only thing I can recall being told about the detainees that would arrive was that they were captured fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. And that they were known terrorists. And that many of them helped in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. We would be coming face-to-face with the worst people the world had to offer. Our mission would be to guard these terrorists so the United States could get more info on attacks and, possibly, stop more terrorist attacks.

As to us, we talked a lot about the detainees before they arrived. About them and what they had probably been involved in. A lot of us, including myself, were pissed off, and many people were out to get revenge for the havoc the United States had been through in recent months by these people.

But, as the months went on, one or two of us would question what was going on here, the way the detainees were being treated, and if they were actually terrorists or not, but being no ones, and young, and dumb, we never questioned anything further; just did our time until we went home.

NYT: political dissident released in Egypt

AJE: France sends police force to Guadaloupe after death of a union leader, injury of police

LAT: Colombian ex-paramilitary leader confesses to killing, money laundering
Fierro spent his first days on the stand last year meticulously reviewing hundreds of killings, a litany that included university professors, union leaders, peasants accused of giving aid and comfort to leftist guerrillas. Family members of victims, many of them in tears, watched via closed-circuit video.

Now the former Colombian army captain is just as scrupulously detailing how paramilitaries bled dry not just businesses and landowners, large and small, but public officials who either turned over chunks of their government budgets and revenue or were killed...

Foreign multinational companies apparently weren't exempt from paying the "war tax." Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo, a leader of a neighboring paramilitary group, testified last year that both Chiquita Brands International Inc. and Dole Food Co. paid a 3-cents-per-50-pound tax on bananas shipped through Caribbean ports.

BBC: thousands protest deployment of military against drug violence along US-Mexico border
Many of the protesters said border towns had become more dangerous since President Felipe Calderon sent the army in.

But the governor of one state - Nuevo Leon - said he believed the Gulf drugs cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, were behind the border protests.
BBC: militarization in Cancun

NYT: militias form to defend villages from the LRA in the Congo
A terrible mismatch may be shaping up in this lush, isolated patch of northeastern Congo. Thousands of teenage boys and their farmer fathers are grabbing machetes, slingshots, axes and ragtag shotguns, wading into the bush to confront a band of experienced killers.

They bang on drums to signal to one another. They patrol at night in shifts. Already, several members of these so-called self-defense forces have been killed. And in Congo’s recent past, the advent of local militias has only led to more bloodshed and abuses.

But here, the people feel they have no choice...

“They took me on Christmas,” Mrs. Yebiye said. Several dozen villagers squeezed around. Her story was one of the first inside accounts of the rebel army Faradje had ever heard.

She said the rebels had dreadlocks and wild eyes. They believed in witchcraft and dabbed themselves with palm oil. They marched in seemingly endless circles, often through elephant grass as high as their heads, but never seemed to get lost. Sometimes, they liked to dance.

“The rebels would eat their marijuana and turn up their radios in the middle of the jungle,” she said. “If you didn’t dance with them, you got killed.”

It is stories like these that have sent the farmers and the other civilians out on loosely organized search-and-destroy missions. But in mid-January, in a village not far from here, it did not work out so well. Some farmers crossed paths with a band of rebel fighters, Mr. Dalafada said. The rebels killed four farmers and fled.
BBC: meanwhile, FDLR 'on rampage' further south

BBC: arrests made in Equatorial Guinea of alleged gunmen who fired on presidential palace last week; officials claim they have ties to Nigerian rebels

Gdn: Zimbabwe to pay soldiers and bureaucrats in dollars

BBC: India offers haven to Tamil civilians

WP: Obama administration considers new approach to Burma
"Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," [Sec of State Clinton] said, adding that the route taken by Burma's neighbors of "reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either."

WP: protests in China over Tibet prompt crackdown
Zhou Xiujun, owner of a grocery store, said that she witnessed a small protest near the county's main vegetable market Sunday that escalated into a much larger one about lunchtime Monday. On the second day, she said saw several hundred Tibetans gathered downtown, shouting "Long Live the Dalai Lama," the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists who lives in exile in India. In just a few minutes, she said, squads of police arrived and melee ensued.

NYT: Kosovo celebrates its one-year anniversary: a photo essay

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Econ: the Bloody White Baron (book review)
A PSYCHOPATHIC Buddhist warrior-king hardly sounds plausible in fiction, let alone in modern history. But the story of Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, an Estonian-raised, ethnically German, tsarist officer, who became the last khan of Mongolia amid the chaos of the Russian civil war, has so many bizarre elements that the reader will soon believe almost anything.

Econ: animals! decisions! how we social ones make them
But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues made a computer model of the decision-making process. By tinkering around with it they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees’ interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their independence in confirming this information.

This is something members of the European Parliament should think about.

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LAT: a new kind of nationalism? some African-Americans tracing DNA trail to contemporary African states

Ind: hip hop and political participation in Kenya
At a time where a political power struggle was inflaming tribal and ethnic divisions some of the finest voices in Nairobi's ghettos decided to see whether MCs could do a better job for their communities than MPs and the parliament was born.