WP: US to develop “civilian surge” in Afghanistan
At the briefing for Jones, Nicholson pointed to the mission statement, which said that "killing the enemy is secondary." His campaign plan states, "Protect the populace by, with and through the ANSF," the Afghanistan National Security Forces, which makes the absence of the additional Afghans particularly galling to Nicholson.
LAT: …while Pakistan puts military pressure on South Waziristan rebels
The army has now deployed in South Waziristan, where Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban's ruling council, along with Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding.
This is hopeful news. But the army will have to take a different path than in the past. Since 2005, the army and its intelligence services have periodically launched offensives against the Taliban along the Afghan border, only to pull back, holding talks and conducting cease-fires.
In the North-West Frontier Province, in the autonomous tribal agencies known as the Federal Administered Tribal Agencies, or FATA, the army has failed to protect pro-government tribal elders and chiefs. More than 300 were executed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, while hundreds more fled the region with their families. Just recently, a tribal leader who had switched sides from the Taliban to the government was shot dead by the Taliban.
The disappearance of that traditional leadership, which supported Islamic moderation, tribal culture and the code of the Pashtuns, allowed the Taliban to extend its writ over the whole region. Protecting the population, especially those loyal to the government, is the very first lesson in counterinsurgency, but the army failed to apply it in FATA. It cannot afford to make the same mistake in South Waziristan.
LAT: Ahmadinejad claims “soft” revolution failed
WSJ: ramifications of Iran’s domestic conflict for the region: more extremism
In the 10 days leading up to the June 30 deadline for American combat forces to leave Iraqi cities, more than 200 Iraqis were killed. In recent weeks, suspected al Qaeda militants have set off a string of car bombs in Shiite neighborhoods and marketplaces in Baghdad, killing dozens of civilians. On Tuesday, a car bomb killed at least 20 people in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq.
There have also been increased attacks in areas in Baghdad where Shiite extremists say they are regrouping, such as Baiyaa and Sadr City. An explosion in Sadr City last week at a market killed more than 70 people.
CSM: US troops leave Iraqi cities, cooperation in transition phase but still weak
"June 30 is the first day in the history of the true and complete independence of Iraq," said Atheel al-Najaifi, standing next to US military and state department officials at a press conference for Iraqi journalists on Thursday. To drive home the point, the top US general in the region displayed a sign reading "Iraqi approved US assistance teams" that will be placed on American military vehicles. He also showed a sign illustrating a military convoy with American vehicles sandwiched between Iraqi escorts.
CSM: UN hearings on war crimes in Israel-Gaza conflict faces criticism, roadblocks
Led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, himself of Jewish descent, the fact-finding mission has a mandate to investigate all suspected violations of international law, including those carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian militants throughout the conflict. A 15-member UN team came to Gaza earlier this month to speak with victims and survey the destruction.
Despite the mission's scope, however, serious doubts exist about its ability to yield prosecutions or produce a sense of justice for either side. Israel's refusal to cooperate with the mission, and the fact that it is not a party to the International Criminal Court (ICC), make it unlikely Israeli officials will end up on trial, human rights groups say.
CSM: Israel’s blockade of Gaza coast severely impacts once-flourishing fishing economy
Citing security concerns and fears of arms smuggling, Israel has progressively tightened the blockade over the past 15 years. Once a thriving enterprise, Gaza's fishing industry is now on the verge of collapse. Fishermen are cut off from the heavily populated shoals, and have seen total revenue drop by half in less than a decade…
Following the Oslo peace accords, signed in 1994 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel permitted the fishermen to go 20 nautical miles (NM) out to sea. This was restricted to 12 NM in 2002, after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. This area was further limited to the current 3 NM when the Islamic movement Hamas wrested control of Gaza after an intense fight with its rival Fatah led to a collapse of a unity government headed by Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
CSM: new leader of Kashmir faces troubles with new ideas
BBC: Ecuador court brings charges against ex-defense minister of Colombia for cross-border raid
CSM: Obama considering deployment of 1500 volunteer National Guard troops to border with Mexico
CSM: Sarkozy passes tough anti-gang law, criticized for vagueness of criminal definition
The new antigang law says that anyone identified with a group, formal or informal, known by police to have committed criminal acts, or is intending to, may be subject to a three-year sentence or a 45,000 euro (US$63,000) fine… The new measure allows police to make arrests of known gangs, but also in cases of spontaneous outbreaks of violence where gangs or mobs form quickly.
A compromise amendment to arrest only gangs already identified, or having a "structured" identity, was not adopted. But the new law does include measures for first-time offenders to enter community service programs.
The proximate cause of the law dates to a March 10 incident in Saint Seine Denis, a Paris suburb, of gang rivalry – possibly over a girl. A knife-wielding crowd entered a high school in session, and sought out and beat a student with iron bars. Eleven other students and staff were harmed in a general melee.
BBC: Guinea-Bissau elects new president after military-led coup
BBC: Niger Delta militants defy amnesty offer, attack oil facilities
The amnesty for militants is a bid to end years of crippling attacks, which have sharply cut oil production. Some of the militant groups which operate in the Niger Delta's lawless swamps have agreed to disarm, on condition that they meet the president to iron out various issues. The main group - the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) - has said it will not disarm until militant leader Henry Okah is freed from jail. He is facing trial on charges of gun-running and treason after being arrested in Angola in 2007. On Friday, the government offered to free him - but only if Angola agrees.
BBC: US envoy in Darfur to meet with rebels
Diplomatic sources say that the US envoy is hoping for a sign of the rebels' willingness to agree to a cessation of hostilities and to become more of a political force. However just four weeks ago Jem said they took and briefly held the towns of Kornoi and Um Baru in Darfur, and Jem sources told the BBC that they may consider trying to retake Kornoi if the circumstances are right. Although Mr Gration initially said it was not in his mandate to talk to Chadian rebels who recently staged an attack in the east of Chad, it is thought that he may now try to look at their role in the whole destabilisation of the region.
++++
CB: on political violence and transactional sex
Showing posts with label Israel Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel Gaza. Show all posts
21 April 2009
coming to america [i was a teenage pirate]
NYT: 17 year-old Somali pirate, Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, in the US for trial proceedings
“We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” ...
New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters, but in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation...
NYT: where to from here? 7 recommendations from the experts
AP: 28 dead in clashes with Mungiki gang in Kenya
The Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule, and the gang has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence. The group is believed to have thousands of followers, drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and the dominant force in the country's politics and business...
IRIN: 100,000 civilians still trapped in northeastern war zone
Reuters: Q+A on the current fighting
On Tuesday, the military was advancing and expanding its control of the 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) no-fire zone, after troops on Monday breached an earth bund blocking the main route out of the area. It is all but certain this will be the final conventional battle of the 25-year-old war. It is a safe bet the military will replicate the tactics they have used around the edges of the no-fire zone. They will use snipers to pick off Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels trying to block people from fleeing. In any case, the military has vowed no more truces. So a conventional defeat looks on the cards very soon for what has long been regarded by many as one of the most resilient and ruthless guerrilla groups.
AP: Gaza an environmental mess post-conflict with Israel
BBC: while Hamas accused of extrajudicial killings of Fatah rivals
Eighteen men were were summarily executed, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, during the fighting, HRW said. In the three months since January, another 14 people were killed, including at least four in detention, the report released on Monday said... "The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern," the report said.
Reuters: Pakistani government increases police salaries in North West Frontier Province by 30% amidst violence
BBC: Cheney favors disclosure of torture memos (as long as they're positive)
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News. "There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."
Gdn: Obama, for first time, opens up possibility of prosecutions for waterboarding
AP: Russian military makes moves toward South Ossetia
At a military checkpoint between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the word "Russia" is hand-painted in pink on a concrete security barrier. "It will be Russia," said a Russian army lieutenant as the Ossetian soldiers under his command nodded...
By reinforcing its military presence at a time of potential political instability, Russia appears determined to maintain pressure on Saakashvili, whom Moscow has openly said must be replaced before relations can be repaired.
AFP: quick! blog about it!
“We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” ...
New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters, but in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation...
NYT: where to from here? 7 recommendations from the experts
AP: 28 dead in clashes with Mungiki gang in Kenya
The Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule, and the gang has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence. The group is believed to have thousands of followers, drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and the dominant force in the country's politics and business...
[One member of the Mungiki] said hundreds of young men and policemen had come into Gathaithi on Monday night looking for Mungiki members, and he expected a second wave of attacks. Two of his colleagues had been shot and were hiding elsewhere in the bushes trying to recover, he said. A mob of villagers, he said, had killed 13 of his fellow gang members in the last three weeks...
[An anonymous source] told the AP that the Mungiki had been extorting money from businesses in the area with the full knowledge of the police until last week, when police switched sides and backed residents who then lynched gang members.
AP: al-Bashir in Ethiopia despite ICC war crimes warrant
Since the International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant on March 4, al-Bashir has visited Eritrea, Egypt and Libya, attended an Arab League summit in Qatar and performed a pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city, Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. In March, the Arab League formally rejected the charges against al-Bashir.
Many African countries have said they will not arrest al-Bashir. The African Union, which is based in Ethiopia, has said al-Bashir's arrest would dangerously imperil the fragile peace process in Sudan and has asked the U.N. to defer the warrant for one year.
CSM: the challenges of reconciliation in Algeria
In 2005, the country passed a National Reconciliation Charter with the approval of a reported 97 percent of the electorate. The controversial document ended the fighting between the state and Islamist militants by granting amnesty to almost all fighters on both sides.
It also offered financial compensation to the families of those disappeared in the war, but also made it illegal to criticize government conduct during the conflict, effectively closing the door to any future investigations... Under Article 45 of the charter, individuals are forbidden from filing complaints against the government, police, or military for their conduct during the war. Those who do, face a five-year prison term and a fine as high as $33,000.
CSM: and of maintaining security gains in Iraq
While the Iraqi Army has become relatively adept at conventional operations and has improved its planning and logistics, much of the drop in attacks over the past year has been achieved through counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations increasingly partnered with Iraqi troops but still led by US forces.
IRIN: 100,000 civilians still trapped in northeastern war zone
Reuters: Q+A on the current fighting
On Tuesday, the military was advancing and expanding its control of the 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) no-fire zone, after troops on Monday breached an earth bund blocking the main route out of the area. It is all but certain this will be the final conventional battle of the 25-year-old war. It is a safe bet the military will replicate the tactics they have used around the edges of the no-fire zone. They will use snipers to pick off Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels trying to block people from fleeing. In any case, the military has vowed no more truces. So a conventional defeat looks on the cards very soon for what has long been regarded by many as one of the most resilient and ruthless guerrilla groups.
AP: Gaza an environmental mess post-conflict with Israel
BBC: while Hamas accused of extrajudicial killings of Fatah rivals
Eighteen men were were summarily executed, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, during the fighting, HRW said. In the three months since January, another 14 people were killed, including at least four in detention, the report released on Monday said... "The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern," the report said.
Reuters: Pakistani government increases police salaries in North West Frontier Province by 30% amidst violence
BBC: Cheney favors disclosure of torture memos (as long as they're positive)
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News. "There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."
Gdn: Obama, for first time, opens up possibility of prosecutions for waterboarding
AP: Russian military makes moves toward South Ossetia
At a military checkpoint between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the word "Russia" is hand-painted in pink on a concrete security barrier. "It will be Russia," said a Russian army lieutenant as the Ossetian soldiers under his command nodded...
By reinforcing its military presence at a time of potential political instability, Russia appears determined to maintain pressure on Saakashvili, whom Moscow has openly said must be replaced before relations can be repaired.
AFP: quick! blog about it!
17 February 2009
overwhelming fire [from your friends in Pine Bluff, Arkansas]
BBC: LRA focuses brutal attacks on civilians in Congo and Sudan, in response to coordinated government offensive...
This pattern of attacks, all along a 300km (186-mile) stretch of the Sudan-Congo border, follows a co-ordinated offensive against the LRA late in 2008. On 14 December the forces of three countries - Uganda, Sudan and Congo - attacked LRA bases in Congo. It was an attempt to kill as many of the LRA as possible and shatter the movement's command structure.
But the operation was hampered by poor co-ordination and the dense forests in this region - ideal cover for guerrilla forces... The LRA responded as it had done in March 2002, when the Ugandan army launched a massive military offensive, named Operation Iron Fist, against the LRA bases in South Sudan, with the agreement of the government in Khartoum. In 2002 LRA leader Joseph Kony split up his forces, before bringing them together again and crossing back into Uganda to carry out attacks on civilians on a scale and a brutality not seen since 1995 to 1996.
In December 2008 the LRA repeated this tactic, dividing into small units, some as few as five or six men. These units launched a series of attacks on an unprecedented scale in towns and villages across northern Congo and South Sudan. The UN and humanitarian agencies estimate the rebels have slaughtered some 900 civilians since Christmas. Villages along the border are now empty as people have fled before the LRA atrocities, which have included tying groups of women together before smashing their skulls and killing babies with heated machetes.
BBC: ...and despite "catastrophic" effects for civilians, Uganda troops to continue offensive
The mandate of the Ugandan army in the DRC had been due to expire this week, but a Ugandan army spokesman said this had now been extended. A Congolese minister said the extension would last until the end of this month.
Last week a top UN official said the offensive against the Ugandan rebel LRA had been "catastrophic" for civilians. But he said the operation against the LRA should continue.
BBC: still, more UN troops needed; Security Council to meet today to discuss
"We're seeing very little protection of civilians there. We have less than 300 UN peacekeepers in a humungous area, this is something like 15,000 sq km," Anneke van Woudenberg, a senior HRW researcher, told the BBC.
"Almost no UN peacekeepers are there. And of course the Ugandans and the Congolese who are involved in an operation against the LRA are not doing nearly enough to protect the civilians," she said. She said an additional 3,000 troops authorised for DR Congo by the Security Council had not yet materialised.
BBC: Sudanese government signs declaration of good intentions with Justice and Equality Movement rebels, in move toward peace deal
The accord was struck in Qatar, which has been mediating a week of talks. It includes an end to attacks on more than two million people in refugee camps and an exchange of prisoners.
But hanging over the agreement is a proposed indictment from the International Criminal Court of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for alleged crimes. And other rebel groups are refusing to talk to the government.
AJE: fresh protests in Madagascar as police fire warning shots
BBC: judge in trial of Niger Delta rebel steps down amidst discussions over the trial's location
Mr Okah's legal team had accused the judge of bias against their client, because of his insistence the trial continued behind closed doors miles away from where the offences occurred.
They have demanded the trial is relocated to the southern state of Bayelsa, where the alleged offences were committed... A militant group says two British hostages will only be handed over when Mr Okah is released.
LAT: Mugabe jails MDC opposition leader, previously named deputy agriculture minister, for treason; violates power-sharing agreement
[O]n Friday, Mugabe tried to swear in more than 20 ministers from his own party, not the 15 agreed upon by the two sides. He ended up with 18 -- and even senior members of the MDC were confused about whether Mugabe's last-minute maneuvering had stripped them of a majority in the Cabinet.
"We are absolutely angry. We are furious. You can't talk about power sharing when people are being arrested," a senior MDC member said, speaking by phone from State House, the presidential residence, shortly before the swearing-in ceremony... Another senior MDC figure said that in addition to the 18 ZANU-PF ministers, 15 with the MDC and three with a smaller MDC faction were sworn in. It was not clear Friday whether some of these would be excluded from the Cabinet.
Analysts said the treason charges against Bennett and the wrangling over Cabinet positions were ominous signs. Bennett was charged just days after a judge threw out treason charges against another top MDC member, Tendai Biti.
BBC: opposition politician charged with various crimes; defense claims the government is "shooting in the dark"
BBC: UN special rapporteur in Kenya investigating 2007 post-election killings...
[Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings,] will talk to human rights groups and eyewitnesses to the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential election. Mr Alston will also look into allegations of increased arbitrary killings by security officers. They include operations against rebel militias in Mt Elgon in western Kenya, and violent encounters against the Mungiki sect in the capital, Nairobi. His visit comes just days after the government's failure in parliament to establish a local tribunal to charge the perpetrators of the post-election violence which killed 1,500 people.
BBC: ...while Kofi Annan suggests an ICC investigation
[A Kenyan commission of inquiry into the 2007 violence] delivered a sealed list of suspects to Mr Annan and said it should be sent to the ICC if a local tribunal was not set up by 1 March...
Parliament on Thursday rejected a bill to establish the special court... Under parliamentary rules, the bill cannot be re-introduced to parliament until six months have elapsed... The opposition to the bill came from MPs who support both Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga.
BBC: Rwanda genocide expert Alison Des Forges one of the dead in Buffalo plane crash
LAT: Karadzic to face two genocide counts in UN tribunal for Bosnia war crimes
The new indictment covers the same allegations as the existing charge sheet but reduces the number of crime scenes from 41 to 27 in an attempt to speed up what is expected to be a lengthy trial... According to Monday's decision, the first genocide count covers ethnic cleansing campaigns throughout Bosnia and the second refers only to the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb troops and paramilitaries rounded up and murdered some 8,000 Muslim men...
Karadzic will be asked to enter pleas to the new indictment at a Feb. 20 hearing. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.
He refused to enter pleas when he was brought before the tribunal's judges last year after his arrest on a Belgrade bus in July ended 13 years on the run from international justice. The court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. No date has yet been set for his trial to begin.
LAT: France's top judicial body recognizes history of deporting Jews to death camps during the Holocaust; rules out any further reparations
LAT: Khmer Rouge torturer on trial
Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh — is charged with crimes against humanity, and is this first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the U.N.-assisted tribunal...
Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison — formerly a school — where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death.
He has made no formal confession. However, unlike the other four defendants, Duch "admitted or acknowledged" that many of the crimes occurred at his prison, according to the indictment from court judges. Duch, who converted to Christianity, has also asked for forgiveness from his victims.
NYT: ...amid criticism over politicized indictments and lengthy trials
Four senior Khmer Rouge officials who were in a position to give those orders are also in custody, but court officials say their trials may not start until next year. They are Nuon Chea, 82, the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, 76, who was head of state; Ieng Sary, 82, the former foreign minister; and his wife, Ieng Thirith, 75, a fellow member of the Khmer Rouge Central Committee...
The trials are being held by a hybrid tribunal supported by the United Nations that includes Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in an awkward legal compromise that has drawn criticism from human rights advocates and legal scholars.
The chief concern is that the Cambodian members of the tribunal will not be independent of their government’s political agenda. Questions have already been raised about the Cambodian co-prosecutor’s reluctance to recommend further indictments.
Foreign and Cambodian analysts say the government, fearing that a widening circle of defendants could reach into its own ranks, wishes to limit the number of those being tried, harming the tribunal’s credibility.
AJE: UN claims Tamil Tigers abusing civilians, preventing thousands from leaving the war zone
"There are two critical things here - one, that women and children be allowed to leave the conflict zone and go to safe areas where they can be reached with support; the other one is that both sides to this fight - the government troops and the LTTE - need to ensure absolute protection for those [trapped] civilians, and that has not been happening," [James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef] said Unicef has "reliable reports" that children as young as 14 are being forced to fight for the LTTE, Elder said.
BBC: pro-Tigers humanitarian organization claims UN not fulfilling its mandate
A statement by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) published on the pro-rebel website TamilNet said: "The UN's inability to fulfil its obligations to civilians is explicit. Yet they don't say who is preventing them from their responsibilities."
TRO president Velupillai Sivanadiyar was quoted as saying by the website that the UN was "openly" talking about "withdrawing even the remaining few local staff from the conflict zone, completely shedding its responsibility of caring for the civilians trapped here... If they really care for the civilians, this is not the time for useless talk and accusations," Mr Sivanadiyar said.
LAT: South Koreans make money as vigilantes by selling information on crime to the government
The former gas station attendant isn't choosy. Even small crime pays big time -- more than $3,000 last month alone, he says. "It's good money. I'll never go back to pumping gas. I feel free now."
The skinny 34-year-old is among a new breed of candid-camera bugs across South Korea -- referred to as paparazzi, though their subjects are not the rich and famous, but low-grade lawbreakers, whose actions are caught on film that is peddled as evidence to government officials.
In recent years, officials here have enacted more than 60 civilian "reporting" programs that offer rewards ranging from as little as 50,000 won, or about $36, for the smallest infractions to 2 billion won, or $1.4 million, for reporting a large-scale corruption case involving government officials. (That one has yet to be made.)
The paparazzi trend has even inspired its own lexicon. There are "seonparazzi," who specialize in pursuing election law violators; "ssuparazzi," who target illegal acts of dumping garbage; and "seongparazzi," who target prostitution, which is illegal in South Korea.
PCB: FARC massacres 17 members of indigenous tribe in Colombia's Nariño state...
IHT: ...but the guerrilla group claims just 8 "executions" of "combatants"
There are about 20,000 Awa, and like many indigenous groups, they have often become enmeshed in Colombia's conflict, where warring parties including far-right militias and drug traffickers frequently exact violence on civilians they accuse of collaborating with their foes.
"Given the pressure of the operation, their responsibility in the death of numerous guerrillas and their irrefutable active participation in the conflict, they were executed," the statement on the ANNCOL site said.
The country's armed forces chief called the guerrilla claim false... In a separate communique, the army division that operates in the area accused the FARC of forcing the Awa off their reserve so it can plant coca, the basis for cocaine. Fighting over coca crops is a key reason behind the forced displacement of more than 2.8 million Colombians — an internal refugee problem second only to that of Sudan.
LAT: Tabasco state police officer killed along with 10 of his family members in Mexico
A team of gunmen in southeastern Mexico opened fire on the homes of a state police officer and his extended family, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children, authorities said Sunday.
The shootings Saturday night in the state of Tabasco stunned an oil-rich part of Mexico that has not experienced the same level of drug-related warfare common elsewhere in the country, despite its position of strategic importance to traffickers.
The killing of police officer Carlos Reyes Lopez came days after police in Tabasco captured four gunmen and left one suspect dead. Although some speculate that the motive was retaliation, the state prosecutor's office also suggested that a personal dispute involving the Reyes Lopez family might have been behind the attack.
NYT: Hispanic day laborers easy targets for criminals in New Orleans
It is an under-the-radar crime epidemic: unarmed Hispanic workers are regularly mugged, beaten, chased, stabbed or shot, the police and the workers themselves say. The ruined homes they sometimes squat in, doubling- or quadrupling-up at night, are broken into, and they have been made to lie face down while being robbed.
They are shot when, not understanding a mugger’s command, they fail to hand over their cash quickly enough, shot while they are working on houses, and shot when they go home for the day. Some have been killed, their bodies flown home to families who had been dependent on their remittances.
NYT: Chávez wins battle over term limits
LAT: strikes against living costs and elite privilege turn violent in Martinique and Guadeloupe
Police detained about 50 people after coming under a barrage of stones as they tried to take down barricades on the island of Guadeloupe, said Nicolas Desforges, the island's top government official.
On the sister island of Martinique, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Guadeloupe, police said that as many as 10,000 demonstrators marched through the narrow streets of the capital to protest spiraling food prices and denounce the business elite.
Government offices, schools, banks and stores have been shuttered for most of the past 12 days as islanders demand lower prices and higher wages...
Living costs are high on the French islands, which depend heavily on imports and use the euro. The strike also is exposing racial and class tensions on islands where a largely white elite that makes up 1 percent of the population controls most businesses.
AJE: Pakistan to restore sharia law in Pakistan's Swat Valley, in peace move toward pro-Taliban rebels there...
The agreement was reached after talks in Peshawar between members of Tahrik-e-Nafiz Shariat Muhammadi and officials of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government on Monday... Officials gave few details of the kind of sharia they were planning to implement in the Malakand region, which includes Swat Valley, but said that laws that fail to comply with Islamic texts would be suspended... The Pakistani government has also agreed its troops will refrain from launching military operations in Swat as part of the deal.
The US, which is battling Taliban and al-Qaeda groups in the area, has previously said that such deals only serve to allow fighters to regroup. A senior US defence department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the deal a "negative development"...
[C]ritics expressed doubt that the deal would stop the violence in the region, pointing out that similar agreements in the past had broken down, the latest one in August, and only allowed fighters to regroup and rearm.
Shuja Nawaz, a strategic analyst with the South Asia Centre, told Al Jazeera that the agreement could prove problematic for Pakistan in future. "It will mean that the government is ceding territory to the Taliban, which will be a repeat of what happened when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was in power in 1994 and a number of districts in Swat and Malakand were handed over to essentially the same group so they could impose their rather convoluted view of sharia on those districts."
WP: ...despite past failures, hope for new, more fair justice system
In announcing the agreement, Pakistani officials asserted that the adoption of sharia law would bring swift and fair justice to the Swat Valley, where people have long complained of legal corruption and delays. They said the new system would have "nothing in common" with the draconian rule of the Taliban militia that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, during which thieves' hands were amputated and adulterers were stoned to death.
"There was a vacuum . . . in the legal system. The people demanded this and they deserve it," said Amir Haider Khan Hoti, chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province. The new system will include an appeals process, something the Afghan Taliban justice system did not allow for.
LAT: meanwhile, Predator strike in South Waziristan targets leader of Taliban in Pakistan...
NYT: ...and the Taliban extends its own reach to Swati immigrants in the US
Pakistani immigrants from the Swat Valley, where the Taliban have been battling Pakistani security forces since 2007, say some of their families are being singled out for threats, kidnapping and even murder by Taliban forces, who view them as potential American collaborators and lucrative sources of ransom. Some immigrants also say they, too, have been threatened in the United States by the Taliban or its sympathizers, and some immigrants say they have been attacked or kidnapped when they have returned home...
Before the start of the Taliban’s incursion into the region in 2007, Swat was treasured as a vacation spot, particularly among Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates the region. Known as “the Switzerland of Pakistan,” it has snowy peaks, fruit orchards, lakes and flower-covered meadows.
But the tourism industry has evaporated amid the Taliban’s uprising, and by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of residents have abandoned their homes, fleeing for Mingora or other regions of Pakistan. Immigrants have been coming from the Swat Valley for years, well before it became a front in the war between the Taliban and Pakistani government troops. There are an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people from the Swat Valley in the United States, about half of whom live in the New York metropolitan region...
WP: US played important role in bringing together Indian and Pakistani intelligence in investigation of Mumbai attacks...
In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters, according to U.S. and foreign government sources familiar with the arrangement.
The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad's announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil, the sources said.
The intelligence went well beyond the public revelations about the 10 Mumbai terrorists, and included sophisticated communications intercepts and an array of physical evidence detailing how the gunmen and their supporters planned and executed their three-day killing spree in the Indian port city. Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies separately shared their findings with the CIA, which relayed the details while also vetting the intelligence and filling in blanks with gleanings from its networks, the sources said. The U.S. role was described in interviews with Pakistani officials and confirmed by U.S. sources with detailed knowledge of the arrangement. The arrangement is ongoing, and it is unknown whether it will continue after the Mumbai case is settled.
WP: ...which were indeed planned in Pakistan, admits the government
NYT: Taliban commander killed in Afghanistan
[Five months ago], Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, had intervened to release Mr. [Maulavi Ghulam] Dastagir from jail, where he was being held on charges of conspiring with the Taliban.
To many Afghans, the ambush seemed to vividly confirm one of the most biting complaints here: that the corrupt and the criminal often find a way to get out of jail. And it did it in a way that seemed to implicate the highest authority in the land...
But in the wilds of Afghanistan, fortunes can change in an instant. On Sunday night, five bombs fell on a compound in Badghis Province near the Turkmenistan border, where Mr. Dastagir and a half-dozen fellow Taliban commanders were meeting...
Mr. Karzai’s biggest mistake may have been failing to discover that some of the tribal elders who sought Mr. Dastagir’s release had been threatened and forced by the Taliban to seek the pardon, as some later admitted.
LAT: and new US troops deployed in conflictive region
The new unit — the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division — moved into Logar and Wardak provinces last month, and the soldiers from Fort Drum, N.Y., are now stationed in combat outposts throughout the provinces... Militants have attacked several patrols with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, including one ambush by 30 insurgents, Lt. Col. Steve Osterholzer, the brigade spokesman, said.
"In every case our vehicles returned with overwhelming fire," Osterholzer said. "We have not suffered anything more than a few bruises, while several insurgents have been killed."...
[Col. David B. Haight, commander of the 3rd Brigade] said he believes the increase of militant activity in the two provinces is not ideologically based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Quoting the governor of Logar, the colonel called it an "economic war." Afghan officials "don't believe it's hardcore al-Qaida operatives that you're never going to convert anyway," Haight said. "They believe that it's the guys who say, 'Hey you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a Humvee when it goes by,' and the guy says, 'Yeah I'll do that, because I've got to feed my family.'"
Still, Haight said there are hardcore fighters in the region, some of them allied with Jalaludin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a fighting family with a long history in Afghanistan. The two militant leaders are believed to be in Pakistan.
NYT: UN says Afghan civilian casualties increased by 40% in 2008
More than half of the 2,118 casualties were caused by militants’ roadside bombs and suicide attacks, but many were from airstrikes and other actions by NATO and American forces battling the resurgent Taliban, the report said... The insurgents were blamed for 1,160, or 55 percent, of the deaths — an increase of 65 percent over similar attacks in 2007, the report said. The report said 828 deaths, or 39 percent, were caused by pro-government forces, an increase of almost a third over the 2007 level.
AJE: as Holbrooke, in Afghanistan, signs an agreement with Karzai to include an Afghan delegation in review process of US policy
LAT: ...and the GAO reviews (negatively) US control of weapons in Afghanistan
LAT: on Russia's role in Afghanistan
In recent days, Russian officials have rushed forward to offer logistical help to NATO troops in Afghanistan -- at the same time dipping into a dwindling budget to offer impoverished Kyrgyzstan more than $2 billion in an apparent payoff for ejecting a U.S. military base crucial to the war against the Taliban.
In fact, Russia is tugged between two strong, conflicting impulses. It distrusts U.S. motives, especially when it comes to America's penetration of former Soviet states. But Moscow's sense of invulnerability appears shaken by falling oil prices and the precarious economy. Many analysts believe the Kremlin is looking for an opening to make nice with the West. Nearby Afghanistan, where instability also spells danger for Russia, presents a handy opening.
And so Russian officials offer help with one hand, lash out with the other.
NYT: Israel-Gaza cease-fire talks slow but steady
The new prospective accord, again being mediated by Egypt, is aimed at rebuilding Gaza after the war and involves both reconstruction and reconciliation between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, according to Ismael Ridwan, a Hamas spokesman, who spoke by telephone after extensive talks between Egyptian and Hamas officials.
He said among the materials that would be allowed to flow into Gaza in the new arrangement were cement and steel, which Egypt would monitor. Those materials are desperately needed for rebuilding, but the agreement would not allow pipes, cables and chemicals that Israel fears could be used for bombs.
Israel wanted to include the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, seized and held by Hamas since the summer of 2006, but Hamas said that would happen only in a separate, if linked, deal that frees hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
LAT: war crimes investigations may focus on events in Khozaa...
Weeks after Israel declared a unilateral end to its offensive in the Gaza Strip, the aftermath still burns in Khozaa, a farm town of 11,000 in the south of the territory. Chunks of white phosphorus still lie scattered throughout neighborhoods, buried in dirt and sand; when excavated, they immediately ignite and spew noxious smoke that smells vaguely of garlic.
As the International Criminal Court weighs a war crimes investigation of the Gaza offensive, the experience of Khozaa could be a key part in the evidence. It was here that Israeli troops staged a series of incursions from Jan. 11 to 13, facing off against local militant fighters and leaving a trail of accusations and recriminations in their wake.
LAT: ...as HRW examines evidence of white phosphorus use
On Jan. 24, a research team from Human Rights Watch visited Khozaa. Researcher Marc Garlasco, a weapons expert, examined the markings on the artillery shell that killed Hannan Najar. "This is clearly white phosphorus," said Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official. "See those markings? PB. This was made in Pine Bluff, Arkansas."
In the streets and yards around Najar's home, Garlasco found remnants of several more phosphorus shells. Khozaa, he concluded, had seen the heaviest use of the controversial munitions in the three-week Israeli offensive. Garlasco reconstructed the X-shaped tray that holds 160 phosphorus wafers per shell. When the tray ejects, the wafers disperse over a 150- to 250-yard radius, depending on the height of the airburst.
The burning phosphorus puts out a dense white fog and causes intense chemical burns if it comes in contact with human skin. Its use as an offensive weapon in residential areas is internationally banned. Israel isn't a signatory to the phosphorus treaty, but in response to questions from The Times, the Israeli military released a statement saying that it "only uses weapons permitted by law."
NYT: support for UN tribunal investigating 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister
A huge rally on Saturday marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri turned into a show of support for a United Nations court that will pursue the case. Anti-Syrian politicians also urged supporters who engulfed central Beirut to vote for them in force in a parliamentary election in June that will decide whether their coalition will retain its slim majority, or lose to an alliance led by the militant group Hezbollah...
The United Nations tribunal is due to open in The Hague on March 1... After more than three years of inquiries in Lebanon, a United Nations investigative team has yet to identify any suspects. The team leader, Daniel Bellemare, has said the opening of the tribunal does not mean that legal proceedings will start immediately.
Since Rafik Hariri’s killing, Lebanon has suffered a wave of political assassinations, mostly of anti-Syrian figures.
Mr. Hariri’s killing intensified anti-Syrian sentiment, helping Saad Hariri’s alliance win the last legislative election in 2005.
LAT: Hezbollah defends right to (anti-Israeli) air defense system
LAT: Iran reorganizes military to build up air defense too
NYT: moderation in new Saudi appointments weakens hard-liners
King Abdullah removed the chief of the feared religious police and a conservative cleric who declared last fall that it was permissible to kill the owners of television stations that broadcast immoral content, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Also, for the first time in the kingdom, he appointed a woman to serve as a deputy cabinet minister, choosing a respected technocrat who will preside over girls’ education.
The changes are seen as an effort to moderate the power of hard-line clerics in Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment, which wields tremendous power but has come under strong criticism in recent years. The intolerance of the cane-wielding religious police, known as the mutawa, has become a special source of popular anger...
The changes announced by the official news agency included a reconfiguration of the Grand Ulema Commission, an influential body of religious scholars from all branches of Sunni Islam. In the past, the commission had been dominated by clerics from the austere Hanbali school, but now moderates will be represented. There were also changes to the Saudi military establishment.
LAT: high unemployment of young men threatens stability in Iraq
Overall, the country's unemployment rate is 18%, but an additional 10% of the labor force is employed part time and wanting to work more, said the first Iraq Labor Force Analysis, which cited falling oil prices and a weak public sector as major problems facing the nation. Among its findings: 28% of males ages 15 to 29 are unemployed, 17% of women have jobs, and most of the 450,000 Iraqis entering the job market this year won't find work "without a concerted effort to boost the private sector."....
The findings also bode ill for government vows to find civilian employment for nearly 100,000 Sons of Iraq, the mainly Sunni Arab paramilitary force, many of whom once supported the insurgency but who have been paid about $300 a month to bolster security alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.
LAT: Shiite pilgrims face female suicide bomber in Iraq; 35 dead
NYT: Iraqi tourism and culture ministries debate reopening of the National Museum
The museum has undergone extensive renovations since the violence in 2003, with assistance from other countries, including Italy and the United States. Meanwhile, the repatriation of its looted treasures has continued, most recently with three objects that ended up in Peru, including a letter written on a tablet. The returning holdings, though, appear to have overwhelmed the museum and its staff. The Culture Ministry’s statement said the museum had effectively become “a large warehouse” for unregistered items, adding that allowing the public to visit could jeopardize “priceless relics.”...
The discord underscores the conflicting aims of the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. It has called the reopening of the museum, along with the preservation of archaeological sites, a high priority. But hopes of reviving a cultural institution and tourism have been tempered by declining resources and the danger that is still palpable in Baghdad, despite a significant drop in violence in the past year.
NYT: hunger-striking British Guantánamo detainee, whose lawyer begged for his release due to health reasons last week, to be released
WP: cases of four Guantánamo detainees reveal problems for Obama
As officials try to decide who can be released and who can be charged, they face a series of murky questions: what to do when the evidence is contradictory or tainted by allegations of torture; whether to press charges in military or federal court; what to do if prisoners are deemed dangerous but there is little or no evidence against them that would stand up in court; and where to send prisoners who might be killed or tortured if they are returned home.
Answering those questions, said current and former officials, is a massive undertaking that has been hampered by a lack of cooperation among agencies and by records that are physically scattered and lacking key details.
It is "a tough, unenviable task with imperfect solutions," said Sarah E. Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a report on closing Guantanamo Bay. "But they need to get fully underway now," she said, reviewing files, marshaling evidence and finding countries willing to take those detainees who can be released.
Approximately 60 detainees who have been cleared for release by the Bush administration remain at the camp. An additional 21 detainees are facing charges before military commissions and are almost certain to face trial in federal court, courts-martial or some new version of the current system of military commissions. Nearly 60 others could be prosecuted, the Pentagon has said, although many legal experts say that is unrealistic because of a lack of evidence and other problems. That leaves the fate of roughly 100 prisoners unclear.
+++
photographs of 2006 Congo election, from a current exhibit at the SF MOMA
This pattern of attacks, all along a 300km (186-mile) stretch of the Sudan-Congo border, follows a co-ordinated offensive against the LRA late in 2008. On 14 December the forces of three countries - Uganda, Sudan and Congo - attacked LRA bases in Congo. It was an attempt to kill as many of the LRA as possible and shatter the movement's command structure.
But the operation was hampered by poor co-ordination and the dense forests in this region - ideal cover for guerrilla forces... The LRA responded as it had done in March 2002, when the Ugandan army launched a massive military offensive, named Operation Iron Fist, against the LRA bases in South Sudan, with the agreement of the government in Khartoum. In 2002 LRA leader Joseph Kony split up his forces, before bringing them together again and crossing back into Uganda to carry out attacks on civilians on a scale and a brutality not seen since 1995 to 1996.
In December 2008 the LRA repeated this tactic, dividing into small units, some as few as five or six men. These units launched a series of attacks on an unprecedented scale in towns and villages across northern Congo and South Sudan. The UN and humanitarian agencies estimate the rebels have slaughtered some 900 civilians since Christmas. Villages along the border are now empty as people have fled before the LRA atrocities, which have included tying groups of women together before smashing their skulls and killing babies with heated machetes.
BBC: ...and despite "catastrophic" effects for civilians, Uganda troops to continue offensive
The mandate of the Ugandan army in the DRC had been due to expire this week, but a Ugandan army spokesman said this had now been extended. A Congolese minister said the extension would last until the end of this month.
Last week a top UN official said the offensive against the Ugandan rebel LRA had been "catastrophic" for civilians. But he said the operation against the LRA should continue.
BBC: still, more UN troops needed; Security Council to meet today to discuss
"We're seeing very little protection of civilians there. We have less than 300 UN peacekeepers in a humungous area, this is something like 15,000 sq km," Anneke van Woudenberg, a senior HRW researcher, told the BBC.
"Almost no UN peacekeepers are there. And of course the Ugandans and the Congolese who are involved in an operation against the LRA are not doing nearly enough to protect the civilians," she said. She said an additional 3,000 troops authorised for DR Congo by the Security Council had not yet materialised.
BBC: Sudanese government signs declaration of good intentions with Justice and Equality Movement rebels, in move toward peace deal
The accord was struck in Qatar, which has been mediating a week of talks. It includes an end to attacks on more than two million people in refugee camps and an exchange of prisoners.
But hanging over the agreement is a proposed indictment from the International Criminal Court of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for alleged crimes. And other rebel groups are refusing to talk to the government.
AJE: fresh protests in Madagascar as police fire warning shots
BBC: judge in trial of Niger Delta rebel steps down amidst discussions over the trial's location
Mr Okah's legal team had accused the judge of bias against their client, because of his insistence the trial continued behind closed doors miles away from where the offences occurred.
They have demanded the trial is relocated to the southern state of Bayelsa, where the alleged offences were committed... A militant group says two British hostages will only be handed over when Mr Okah is released.
LAT: Mugabe jails MDC opposition leader, previously named deputy agriculture minister, for treason; violates power-sharing agreement
[O]n Friday, Mugabe tried to swear in more than 20 ministers from his own party, not the 15 agreed upon by the two sides. He ended up with 18 -- and even senior members of the MDC were confused about whether Mugabe's last-minute maneuvering had stripped them of a majority in the Cabinet.
"We are absolutely angry. We are furious. You can't talk about power sharing when people are being arrested," a senior MDC member said, speaking by phone from State House, the presidential residence, shortly before the swearing-in ceremony... Another senior MDC figure said that in addition to the 18 ZANU-PF ministers, 15 with the MDC and three with a smaller MDC faction were sworn in. It was not clear Friday whether some of these would be excluded from the Cabinet.
Analysts said the treason charges against Bennett and the wrangling over Cabinet positions were ominous signs. Bennett was charged just days after a judge threw out treason charges against another top MDC member, Tendai Biti.
BBC: opposition politician charged with various crimes; defense claims the government is "shooting in the dark"
BBC: UN special rapporteur in Kenya investigating 2007 post-election killings...
[Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings,] will talk to human rights groups and eyewitnesses to the violent aftermath of the 2007 presidential election. Mr Alston will also look into allegations of increased arbitrary killings by security officers. They include operations against rebel militias in Mt Elgon in western Kenya, and violent encounters against the Mungiki sect in the capital, Nairobi. His visit comes just days after the government's failure in parliament to establish a local tribunal to charge the perpetrators of the post-election violence which killed 1,500 people.
BBC: ...while Kofi Annan suggests an ICC investigation
[A Kenyan commission of inquiry into the 2007 violence] delivered a sealed list of suspects to Mr Annan and said it should be sent to the ICC if a local tribunal was not set up by 1 March...
Parliament on Thursday rejected a bill to establish the special court... Under parliamentary rules, the bill cannot be re-introduced to parliament until six months have elapsed... The opposition to the bill came from MPs who support both Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga.
BBC: Rwanda genocide expert Alison Des Forges one of the dead in Buffalo plane crash
LAT: Karadzic to face two genocide counts in UN tribunal for Bosnia war crimes
The new indictment covers the same allegations as the existing charge sheet but reduces the number of crime scenes from 41 to 27 in an attempt to speed up what is expected to be a lengthy trial... According to Monday's decision, the first genocide count covers ethnic cleansing campaigns throughout Bosnia and the second refers only to the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb troops and paramilitaries rounded up and murdered some 8,000 Muslim men...
Karadzic will be asked to enter pleas to the new indictment at a Feb. 20 hearing. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.
He refused to enter pleas when he was brought before the tribunal's judges last year after his arrest on a Belgrade bus in July ended 13 years on the run from international justice. The court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. No date has yet been set for his trial to begin.
LAT: France's top judicial body recognizes history of deporting Jews to death camps during the Holocaust; rules out any further reparations
LAT: Khmer Rouge torturer on trial
Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh — is charged with crimes against humanity, and is this first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the U.N.-assisted tribunal...
Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison — formerly a school — where up to 16,000 men, women and children were held and tortured, before being put to death.
He has made no formal confession. However, unlike the other four defendants, Duch "admitted or acknowledged" that many of the crimes occurred at his prison, according to the indictment from court judges. Duch, who converted to Christianity, has also asked for forgiveness from his victims.
NYT: ...amid criticism over politicized indictments and lengthy trials
Four senior Khmer Rouge officials who were in a position to give those orders are also in custody, but court officials say their trials may not start until next year. They are Nuon Chea, 82, the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, 76, who was head of state; Ieng Sary, 82, the former foreign minister; and his wife, Ieng Thirith, 75, a fellow member of the Khmer Rouge Central Committee...
The trials are being held by a hybrid tribunal supported by the United Nations that includes Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in an awkward legal compromise that has drawn criticism from human rights advocates and legal scholars.
The chief concern is that the Cambodian members of the tribunal will not be independent of their government’s political agenda. Questions have already been raised about the Cambodian co-prosecutor’s reluctance to recommend further indictments.
Foreign and Cambodian analysts say the government, fearing that a widening circle of defendants could reach into its own ranks, wishes to limit the number of those being tried, harming the tribunal’s credibility.
AJE: UN claims Tamil Tigers abusing civilians, preventing thousands from leaving the war zone
"There are two critical things here - one, that women and children be allowed to leave the conflict zone and go to safe areas where they can be reached with support; the other one is that both sides to this fight - the government troops and the LTTE - need to ensure absolute protection for those [trapped] civilians, and that has not been happening," [James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef] said Unicef has "reliable reports" that children as young as 14 are being forced to fight for the LTTE, Elder said.
BBC: pro-Tigers humanitarian organization claims UN not fulfilling its mandate
A statement by the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) published on the pro-rebel website TamilNet said: "The UN's inability to fulfil its obligations to civilians is explicit. Yet they don't say who is preventing them from their responsibilities."
TRO president Velupillai Sivanadiyar was quoted as saying by the website that the UN was "openly" talking about "withdrawing even the remaining few local staff from the conflict zone, completely shedding its responsibility of caring for the civilians trapped here... If they really care for the civilians, this is not the time for useless talk and accusations," Mr Sivanadiyar said.
LAT: South Koreans make money as vigilantes by selling information on crime to the government
The former gas station attendant isn't choosy. Even small crime pays big time -- more than $3,000 last month alone, he says. "It's good money. I'll never go back to pumping gas. I feel free now."
The skinny 34-year-old is among a new breed of candid-camera bugs across South Korea -- referred to as paparazzi, though their subjects are not the rich and famous, but low-grade lawbreakers, whose actions are caught on film that is peddled as evidence to government officials.
In recent years, officials here have enacted more than 60 civilian "reporting" programs that offer rewards ranging from as little as 50,000 won, or about $36, for the smallest infractions to 2 billion won, or $1.4 million, for reporting a large-scale corruption case involving government officials. (That one has yet to be made.)
The paparazzi trend has even inspired its own lexicon. There are "seonparazzi," who specialize in pursuing election law violators; "ssuparazzi," who target illegal acts of dumping garbage; and "seongparazzi," who target prostitution, which is illegal in South Korea.
PCB: FARC massacres 17 members of indigenous tribe in Colombia's Nariño state...
IHT: ...but the guerrilla group claims just 8 "executions" of "combatants"
There are about 20,000 Awa, and like many indigenous groups, they have often become enmeshed in Colombia's conflict, where warring parties including far-right militias and drug traffickers frequently exact violence on civilians they accuse of collaborating with their foes.
"Given the pressure of the operation, their responsibility in the death of numerous guerrillas and their irrefutable active participation in the conflict, they were executed," the statement on the ANNCOL site said.
The country's armed forces chief called the guerrilla claim false... In a separate communique, the army division that operates in the area accused the FARC of forcing the Awa off their reserve so it can plant coca, the basis for cocaine. Fighting over coca crops is a key reason behind the forced displacement of more than 2.8 million Colombians — an internal refugee problem second only to that of Sudan.
LAT: Tabasco state police officer killed along with 10 of his family members in Mexico
A team of gunmen in southeastern Mexico opened fire on the homes of a state police officer and his extended family, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children, authorities said Sunday.
The shootings Saturday night in the state of Tabasco stunned an oil-rich part of Mexico that has not experienced the same level of drug-related warfare common elsewhere in the country, despite its position of strategic importance to traffickers.
The killing of police officer Carlos Reyes Lopez came days after police in Tabasco captured four gunmen and left one suspect dead. Although some speculate that the motive was retaliation, the state prosecutor's office also suggested that a personal dispute involving the Reyes Lopez family might have been behind the attack.
NYT: Hispanic day laborers easy targets for criminals in New Orleans
It is an under-the-radar crime epidemic: unarmed Hispanic workers are regularly mugged, beaten, chased, stabbed or shot, the police and the workers themselves say. The ruined homes they sometimes squat in, doubling- or quadrupling-up at night, are broken into, and they have been made to lie face down while being robbed.
They are shot when, not understanding a mugger’s command, they fail to hand over their cash quickly enough, shot while they are working on houses, and shot when they go home for the day. Some have been killed, their bodies flown home to families who had been dependent on their remittances.
NYT: Chávez wins battle over term limits
LAT: strikes against living costs and elite privilege turn violent in Martinique and Guadeloupe
Police detained about 50 people after coming under a barrage of stones as they tried to take down barricades on the island of Guadeloupe, said Nicolas Desforges, the island's top government official.
On the sister island of Martinique, 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Guadeloupe, police said that as many as 10,000 demonstrators marched through the narrow streets of the capital to protest spiraling food prices and denounce the business elite.
Government offices, schools, banks and stores have been shuttered for most of the past 12 days as islanders demand lower prices and higher wages...
Living costs are high on the French islands, which depend heavily on imports and use the euro. The strike also is exposing racial and class tensions on islands where a largely white elite that makes up 1 percent of the population controls most businesses.
AJE: Pakistan to restore sharia law in Pakistan's Swat Valley, in peace move toward pro-Taliban rebels there...
The agreement was reached after talks in Peshawar between members of Tahrik-e-Nafiz Shariat Muhammadi and officials of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government on Monday... Officials gave few details of the kind of sharia they were planning to implement in the Malakand region, which includes Swat Valley, but said that laws that fail to comply with Islamic texts would be suspended... The Pakistani government has also agreed its troops will refrain from launching military operations in Swat as part of the deal.
The US, which is battling Taliban and al-Qaeda groups in the area, has previously said that such deals only serve to allow fighters to regroup. A senior US defence department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the deal a "negative development"...
[C]ritics expressed doubt that the deal would stop the violence in the region, pointing out that similar agreements in the past had broken down, the latest one in August, and only allowed fighters to regroup and rearm.
Shuja Nawaz, a strategic analyst with the South Asia Centre, told Al Jazeera that the agreement could prove problematic for Pakistan in future. "It will mean that the government is ceding territory to the Taliban, which will be a repeat of what happened when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was in power in 1994 and a number of districts in Swat and Malakand were handed over to essentially the same group so they could impose their rather convoluted view of sharia on those districts."
WP: ...despite past failures, hope for new, more fair justice system
In announcing the agreement, Pakistani officials asserted that the adoption of sharia law would bring swift and fair justice to the Swat Valley, where people have long complained of legal corruption and delays. They said the new system would have "nothing in common" with the draconian rule of the Taliban militia that ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, during which thieves' hands were amputated and adulterers were stoned to death.
"There was a vacuum . . . in the legal system. The people demanded this and they deserve it," said Amir Haider Khan Hoti, chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province. The new system will include an appeals process, something the Afghan Taliban justice system did not allow for.
LAT: meanwhile, Predator strike in South Waziristan targets leader of Taliban in Pakistan...
NYT: ...and the Taliban extends its own reach to Swati immigrants in the US
Pakistani immigrants from the Swat Valley, where the Taliban have been battling Pakistani security forces since 2007, say some of their families are being singled out for threats, kidnapping and even murder by Taliban forces, who view them as potential American collaborators and lucrative sources of ransom. Some immigrants also say they, too, have been threatened in the United States by the Taliban or its sympathizers, and some immigrants say they have been attacked or kidnapped when they have returned home...
Before the start of the Taliban’s incursion into the region in 2007, Swat was treasured as a vacation spot, particularly among Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates the region. Known as “the Switzerland of Pakistan,” it has snowy peaks, fruit orchards, lakes and flower-covered meadows.
But the tourism industry has evaporated amid the Taliban’s uprising, and by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of residents have abandoned their homes, fleeing for Mingora or other regions of Pakistan. Immigrants have been coming from the Swat Valley for years, well before it became a front in the war between the Taliban and Pakistani government troops. There are an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people from the Swat Valley in the United States, about half of whom live in the New York metropolitan region...
WP: US played important role in bringing together Indian and Pakistani intelligence in investigation of Mumbai attacks...
In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters, according to U.S. and foreign government sources familiar with the arrangement.
The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad's announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil, the sources said.
The intelligence went well beyond the public revelations about the 10 Mumbai terrorists, and included sophisticated communications intercepts and an array of physical evidence detailing how the gunmen and their supporters planned and executed their three-day killing spree in the Indian port city. Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies separately shared their findings with the CIA, which relayed the details while also vetting the intelligence and filling in blanks with gleanings from its networks, the sources said. The U.S. role was described in interviews with Pakistani officials and confirmed by U.S. sources with detailed knowledge of the arrangement. The arrangement is ongoing, and it is unknown whether it will continue after the Mumbai case is settled.
WP: ...which were indeed planned in Pakistan, admits the government
NYT: Taliban commander killed in Afghanistan
[Five months ago], Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, had intervened to release Mr. [Maulavi Ghulam] Dastagir from jail, where he was being held on charges of conspiring with the Taliban.
To many Afghans, the ambush seemed to vividly confirm one of the most biting complaints here: that the corrupt and the criminal often find a way to get out of jail. And it did it in a way that seemed to implicate the highest authority in the land...
But in the wilds of Afghanistan, fortunes can change in an instant. On Sunday night, five bombs fell on a compound in Badghis Province near the Turkmenistan border, where Mr. Dastagir and a half-dozen fellow Taliban commanders were meeting...
Mr. Karzai’s biggest mistake may have been failing to discover that some of the tribal elders who sought Mr. Dastagir’s release had been threatened and forced by the Taliban to seek the pardon, as some later admitted.
LAT: and new US troops deployed in conflictive region
The new unit — the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division — moved into Logar and Wardak provinces last month, and the soldiers from Fort Drum, N.Y., are now stationed in combat outposts throughout the provinces... Militants have attacked several patrols with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, including one ambush by 30 insurgents, Lt. Col. Steve Osterholzer, the brigade spokesman, said.
"In every case our vehicles returned with overwhelming fire," Osterholzer said. "We have not suffered anything more than a few bruises, while several insurgents have been killed."...
[Col. David B. Haight, commander of the 3rd Brigade] said he believes the increase of militant activity in the two provinces is not ideologically based but stems from poor Afghans being enticed into fighting by their need for money. Quoting the governor of Logar, the colonel called it an "economic war." Afghan officials "don't believe it's hardcore al-Qaida operatives that you're never going to convert anyway," Haight said. "They believe that it's the guys who say, 'Hey you want $100 to shoot an RPG at a Humvee when it goes by,' and the guy says, 'Yeah I'll do that, because I've got to feed my family.'"
Still, Haight said there are hardcore fighters in the region, some of them allied with Jalaludin Haqqani and his son Siraj, a fighting family with a long history in Afghanistan. The two militant leaders are believed to be in Pakistan.
NYT: UN says Afghan civilian casualties increased by 40% in 2008
More than half of the 2,118 casualties were caused by militants’ roadside bombs and suicide attacks, but many were from airstrikes and other actions by NATO and American forces battling the resurgent Taliban, the report said... The insurgents were blamed for 1,160, or 55 percent, of the deaths — an increase of 65 percent over similar attacks in 2007, the report said. The report said 828 deaths, or 39 percent, were caused by pro-government forces, an increase of almost a third over the 2007 level.
AJE: as Holbrooke, in Afghanistan, signs an agreement with Karzai to include an Afghan delegation in review process of US policy
LAT: ...and the GAO reviews (negatively) US control of weapons in Afghanistan
LAT: on Russia's role in Afghanistan
In recent days, Russian officials have rushed forward to offer logistical help to NATO troops in Afghanistan -- at the same time dipping into a dwindling budget to offer impoverished Kyrgyzstan more than $2 billion in an apparent payoff for ejecting a U.S. military base crucial to the war against the Taliban.
In fact, Russia is tugged between two strong, conflicting impulses. It distrusts U.S. motives, especially when it comes to America's penetration of former Soviet states. But Moscow's sense of invulnerability appears shaken by falling oil prices and the precarious economy. Many analysts believe the Kremlin is looking for an opening to make nice with the West. Nearby Afghanistan, where instability also spells danger for Russia, presents a handy opening.
And so Russian officials offer help with one hand, lash out with the other.
NYT: Israel-Gaza cease-fire talks slow but steady
The new prospective accord, again being mediated by Egypt, is aimed at rebuilding Gaza after the war and involves both reconstruction and reconciliation between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, according to Ismael Ridwan, a Hamas spokesman, who spoke by telephone after extensive talks between Egyptian and Hamas officials.
He said among the materials that would be allowed to flow into Gaza in the new arrangement were cement and steel, which Egypt would monitor. Those materials are desperately needed for rebuilding, but the agreement would not allow pipes, cables and chemicals that Israel fears could be used for bombs.
Israel wanted to include the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, seized and held by Hamas since the summer of 2006, but Hamas said that would happen only in a separate, if linked, deal that frees hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
LAT: war crimes investigations may focus on events in Khozaa...
Weeks after Israel declared a unilateral end to its offensive in the Gaza Strip, the aftermath still burns in Khozaa, a farm town of 11,000 in the south of the territory. Chunks of white phosphorus still lie scattered throughout neighborhoods, buried in dirt and sand; when excavated, they immediately ignite and spew noxious smoke that smells vaguely of garlic.
As the International Criminal Court weighs a war crimes investigation of the Gaza offensive, the experience of Khozaa could be a key part in the evidence. It was here that Israeli troops staged a series of incursions from Jan. 11 to 13, facing off against local militant fighters and leaving a trail of accusations and recriminations in their wake.
LAT: ...as HRW examines evidence of white phosphorus use
On Jan. 24, a research team from Human Rights Watch visited Khozaa. Researcher Marc Garlasco, a weapons expert, examined the markings on the artillery shell that killed Hannan Najar. "This is clearly white phosphorus," said Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official. "See those markings? PB. This was made in Pine Bluff, Arkansas."
In the streets and yards around Najar's home, Garlasco found remnants of several more phosphorus shells. Khozaa, he concluded, had seen the heaviest use of the controversial munitions in the three-week Israeli offensive. Garlasco reconstructed the X-shaped tray that holds 160 phosphorus wafers per shell. When the tray ejects, the wafers disperse over a 150- to 250-yard radius, depending on the height of the airburst.
The burning phosphorus puts out a dense white fog and causes intense chemical burns if it comes in contact with human skin. Its use as an offensive weapon in residential areas is internationally banned. Israel isn't a signatory to the phosphorus treaty, but in response to questions from The Times, the Israeli military released a statement saying that it "only uses weapons permitted by law."
NYT: support for UN tribunal investigating 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister
A huge rally on Saturday marking the fourth anniversary of the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri turned into a show of support for a United Nations court that will pursue the case. Anti-Syrian politicians also urged supporters who engulfed central Beirut to vote for them in force in a parliamentary election in June that will decide whether their coalition will retain its slim majority, or lose to an alliance led by the militant group Hezbollah...
The United Nations tribunal is due to open in The Hague on March 1... After more than three years of inquiries in Lebanon, a United Nations investigative team has yet to identify any suspects. The team leader, Daniel Bellemare, has said the opening of the tribunal does not mean that legal proceedings will start immediately.
Since Rafik Hariri’s killing, Lebanon has suffered a wave of political assassinations, mostly of anti-Syrian figures.
Mr. Hariri’s killing intensified anti-Syrian sentiment, helping Saad Hariri’s alliance win the last legislative election in 2005.
LAT: Hezbollah defends right to (anti-Israeli) air defense system
LAT: Iran reorganizes military to build up air defense too
NYT: moderation in new Saudi appointments weakens hard-liners
King Abdullah removed the chief of the feared religious police and a conservative cleric who declared last fall that it was permissible to kill the owners of television stations that broadcast immoral content, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Also, for the first time in the kingdom, he appointed a woman to serve as a deputy cabinet minister, choosing a respected technocrat who will preside over girls’ education.
The changes are seen as an effort to moderate the power of hard-line clerics in Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment, which wields tremendous power but has come under strong criticism in recent years. The intolerance of the cane-wielding religious police, known as the mutawa, has become a special source of popular anger...
The changes announced by the official news agency included a reconfiguration of the Grand Ulema Commission, an influential body of religious scholars from all branches of Sunni Islam. In the past, the commission had been dominated by clerics from the austere Hanbali school, but now moderates will be represented. There were also changes to the Saudi military establishment.
LAT: high unemployment of young men threatens stability in Iraq
Overall, the country's unemployment rate is 18%, but an additional 10% of the labor force is employed part time and wanting to work more, said the first Iraq Labor Force Analysis, which cited falling oil prices and a weak public sector as major problems facing the nation. Among its findings: 28% of males ages 15 to 29 are unemployed, 17% of women have jobs, and most of the 450,000 Iraqis entering the job market this year won't find work "without a concerted effort to boost the private sector."....
The findings also bode ill for government vows to find civilian employment for nearly 100,000 Sons of Iraq, the mainly Sunni Arab paramilitary force, many of whom once supported the insurgency but who have been paid about $300 a month to bolster security alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.
LAT: Shiite pilgrims face female suicide bomber in Iraq; 35 dead
NYT: Iraqi tourism and culture ministries debate reopening of the National Museum
The museum has undergone extensive renovations since the violence in 2003, with assistance from other countries, including Italy and the United States. Meanwhile, the repatriation of its looted treasures has continued, most recently with three objects that ended up in Peru, including a letter written on a tablet. The returning holdings, though, appear to have overwhelmed the museum and its staff. The Culture Ministry’s statement said the museum had effectively become “a large warehouse” for unregistered items, adding that allowing the public to visit could jeopardize “priceless relics.”...
The discord underscores the conflicting aims of the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. It has called the reopening of the museum, along with the preservation of archaeological sites, a high priority. But hopes of reviving a cultural institution and tourism have been tempered by declining resources and the danger that is still palpable in Baghdad, despite a significant drop in violence in the past year.
NYT: hunger-striking British Guantánamo detainee, whose lawyer begged for his release due to health reasons last week, to be released
WP: cases of four Guantánamo detainees reveal problems for Obama
As officials try to decide who can be released and who can be charged, they face a series of murky questions: what to do when the evidence is contradictory or tainted by allegations of torture; whether to press charges in military or federal court; what to do if prisoners are deemed dangerous but there is little or no evidence against them that would stand up in court; and where to send prisoners who might be killed or tortured if they are returned home.
Answering those questions, said current and former officials, is a massive undertaking that has been hampered by a lack of cooperation among agencies and by records that are physically scattered and lacking key details.
It is "a tough, unenviable task with imperfect solutions," said Sarah E. Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a report on closing Guantanamo Bay. "But they need to get fully underway now," she said, reviewing files, marshaling evidence and finding countries willing to take those detainees who can be released.
Approximately 60 detainees who have been cleared for release by the Bush administration remain at the camp. An additional 21 detainees are facing charges before military commissions and are almost certain to face trial in federal court, courts-martial or some new version of the current system of military commissions. Nearly 60 others could be prosecuted, the Pentagon has said, although many legal experts say that is unrealistic because of a lack of evidence and other problems. That leaves the fate of roughly 100 prisoners unclear.
+++
photographs of 2006 Congo election, from a current exhibit at the SF MOMA
24 January 2009
creating monsters [cynicism recovered]
WP: Hamas retains control of Gaza
"If there is any significant disenchantment with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is largely hidden behind the fear that many feel in speaking out against the group.
In dozens of interviews across Gaza on Friday, less than a week after the start of a tenuous cease-fire, Palestinians generally expressed either unbridled support for Hamas or resignation to the idea that the group's reign in Gaza will continue for the foreseeable future. No one suggested that the group is vulnerable, despite the hopes of some Israeli officials who have theorized that their military campaign could ultimately spur Palestinians to rise up against Hamas rule."
WSJ: and then there's counter-productive in the long-term
"Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric...
When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank...
After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the [Muslim] Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.
The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly...
In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines."
NYT: the cleavage endures: Hamas targeting suspected Fatah supporters
"Many Fatah members and supporters said in interviews that Hamas might feel somewhat weakened by the Israeli offensive and was concerned that its political rivals not take advantage of the disorder created by the war.
LAT: Hamas leadership still in hiding
LAT: debating what happened - and legal and moral implications
WP: tough terrain in Afghanistan hinders counterinsurgency
"Bessey, a tall, athletic-looking West Point graduate from Michigan, glanced over at the stalled convoy while he settled in on a pile of rocks and waited for help to arrive. He vigorously worked a plug of tobacco in the corner of his mouth while he listened to Malik Dalawar, the Khuga Kheyl tribal elder, plead his case.
Thick-fisted and balding, with a stubbly white beard, Dalawar took Bessey's measure with a long, hard look. We need guns, he said. At night, there are few NATO forces or Afghan police or troops around to safeguard local villagers. Dalawar said he and his people needed some way to defend themselves against the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who regularly sweep into the area from Pakistan. But Bessey was not entirely convinced.
Dalawar, a member of the Mohmand tribe, said he is no fan of the Taliban. But in places such as Khuga Kheyl, the pressure on tribal elders to join the Taliban is intense. Electricity is scarce. Paved roads are nonexistent. And insurgent hideouts are abundant on both sides of the border. Dalawar said insurgent commanders regularly try to entice him to join the fight against coalition forces...
"The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency."
AJE: ...as Zardari meets with tribal leaders in Islamabad
Slate: how many prisoners are still in Guantanamo, who are they, who has been released, and how many have returned to (or joined) terrorist groups?
Slate: ...and how many have gone to rehab?
"Detainees selected to enter Saudi Arabia's counseling program—usually Saudis who committed terror-related crimes and don't repent of their extremist beliefs in one-on-one interviews—are sent to a former desert resort outside Riyadh. There they swim in a pool, play soccer and volleyball, use Playstation, do art therapy, and learn to practice a more moderate form of Islam. They also take classes taught by clerics and social scientists. Coursework covers 10 subjects, from religious concepts like jihad (religious struggle) and takfir (calling someone an unbeliever) and walaah (loyalty) to psychological courses in self-esteem. The clerics impart the laws of Wahhabism—the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia—which prohibit jihad unless there is an official fatwa. At the end of six weeks, students take an exam. If they pass, they may be approved for release. (That is, if they have already served out their original jail sentence.) If not, they have to take the class again.
The goal of the rehab program is to give the "students" a stable social network that doesn't rely on terrorist organizations. Detainees eat and cook communally and live in rooms with fellow prisoners. Family members visit regularly, and detainees can phone them whenever they want. They can even request furlough for weddings and funerals. Families also receive generous stipends, since prisoners can't earn money...
Saudi Arabia isn't the only country to offer rehab to terrorists. Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Sinagpore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and now Iraq have similar programs. But none of these are as elaborate or well-funded as Saudi Arabia's. They have different approaches, too. In Indonesia, they bring in reformed extremists to talk to detainees. (The highest profile convert was Nasir Abas, who split from the group Jemaah Islamiya after the Bali bombing in 2005 and has since become the poster child for rehabilitation.)
AJE: immigrants and asylum-seekers break out of holding center on Italian island, march to city hall
"Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention.
But to Jesús Mercado, who takes tourists on romantic carriage rides, the city that tourists see is far from being the real Cartagena. "They show the tourists and the foreigners the good face of Cartagena," he said. "But the dark side, the southeast side, they do not show that. They hide it."
Indeed, in this city of 1 million people, 600,000 are poor, and tens of thousands are destitute. The percentage of residents lacking basic necessities -- a yardstick used by demographers to measure poverty in Colombia -- is 26 percent, nearly three times the rate in Bogota, the capital."
BBC: the state of the landless movement in Brazil
Gdn: referendum on new constitution to be held in Bolivia on Sunday
Ind: Castro starting to fade
"On Thursday night, he instructed Cuban officials to start making decisions without taking him into account. In a column titled "Reflections of Comrade Fidel", he suggested his days are numbered, saying Cuban officials "shouldn't feel bound by my occasional 'Reflections', my state of health or my death. I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long time. I receive information and meditate calmly on those events. I expect I won't enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama's first presidential term has ended." The lines had the ring of a farewell."
BBC: with spiraling crime, Mexico considering reinstatement of the death penalty
NYT: hip hop in China
" 'Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll — we can talk about our lives, what we’re thinking about, what we feel,' said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy. 'The Chinese education system doesn’t encourage you to express your own character. They feed you stale rules developed from books passed down over thousands of years. There’s not much opportunity for personal expression or thought; difference is discouraged.' "
NYT: the gag rule is gone!
"If there is any significant disenchantment with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is largely hidden behind the fear that many feel in speaking out against the group.
In dozens of interviews across Gaza on Friday, less than a week after the start of a tenuous cease-fire, Palestinians generally expressed either unbridled support for Hamas or resignation to the idea that the group's reign in Gaza will continue for the foreseeable future. No one suggested that the group is vulnerable, despite the hopes of some Israeli officials who have theorized that their military campaign could ultimately spur Palestinians to rise up against Hamas rule."
WSJ: and then there's counter-productive in the long-term
"Instead of trying to curb Gaza's Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah. Israel cooperated with a crippled, half-blind cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, even as he was laying the foundations for what would become Hamas. Sheikh Yassin continues to inspire militants today; during the recent war in Gaza, Hamas fighters confronted Israeli troops with "Yassins," primitive rocket-propelled grenades named in honor of the cleric...
When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and '80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank...
After the 1948 establishment of Israel, the [Muslim] Brotherhood recruited a few followers in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and elsewhere, but secular activists came to dominate the Palestinian nationalist movement.
At the time, Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The country's then-president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a secular nationalist who brutally repressed the Brotherhood. In 1967, Nasser suffered a crushing defeat when Israel triumphed in the six-day war. Israel took control of Gaza and also the West Bank...
In Gaza, Israel hunted down members of Fatah and other secular PLO factions, but it dropped harsh restrictions imposed on Islamic activists by the territory's previous Egyptian rulers...The Muslim Brotherhood, led in Gaza by Sheikh Yassin, was free to spread its message openly...
In fact, the cleric and Israel had a shared enemy: secular Palestinian activists. After a failed attempt in Gaza to oust secularists from leadership of the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, Mujama staged a violent demonstration, storming the Red Crescent building. Islamists also attacked shops selling liquor and cinemas. The Israeli military mostly stood on the sidelines."
NYT: the cleavage endures: Hamas targeting suspected Fatah supporters
"Many Fatah members and supporters said in interviews that Hamas might feel somewhat weakened by the Israeli offensive and was concerned that its political rivals not take advantage of the disorder created by the war.
The Palestinian human rights worker shared that view. “The internal security department is sending a very clear and strong message to Fatah to be quiet,” he said.
The shoemaker’s cousin, who actively supports Fatah, said that he had been moving from house to house after Hamas members searched his home on Sunday while he was out.
“They’re afraid that Fatah will take advantage of the chaos to come back to power,” the cousin said. “The message is: Stay at home. Be afraid. We didn’t lose power.”
A few patterns did seem to be emerging. Those who had Fatah and Hamas political affiliations within a single family tended not to be targets. And the cousin said it was not the central Hamas leadership that was looking for him, but only people from the party’s neighborhood branch, confirming, in part, what Mr. Nunu of the Gaza government said.
Several people said Hamas had given children cellphone credits to keep tabs on them. They are called “drones,” and when they pass, everyone knows to stop talking, said a man in Bureij, a town south of Gaza City, who said he had been told by local Hamas supporters to stay inside his house."LAT: Hamas leadership still in hiding
LAT: debating what happened - and legal and moral implications
WP: tough terrain in Afghanistan hinders counterinsurgency
"Bessey, a tall, athletic-looking West Point graduate from Michigan, glanced over at the stalled convoy while he settled in on a pile of rocks and waited for help to arrive. He vigorously worked a plug of tobacco in the corner of his mouth while he listened to Malik Dalawar, the Khuga Kheyl tribal elder, plead his case.
Thick-fisted and balding, with a stubbly white beard, Dalawar took Bessey's measure with a long, hard look. We need guns, he said. At night, there are few NATO forces or Afghan police or troops around to safeguard local villagers. Dalawar said he and his people needed some way to defend themselves against the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who regularly sweep into the area from Pakistan. But Bessey was not entirely convinced.
Dalawar, a member of the Mohmand tribe, said he is no fan of the Taliban. But in places such as Khuga Kheyl, the pressure on tribal elders to join the Taliban is intense. Electricity is scarce. Paved roads are nonexistent. And insurgent hideouts are abundant on both sides of the border. Dalawar said insurgent commanders regularly try to entice him to join the fight against coalition forces...
"I am an elder, so if someone has a gun and I don't, I can't do anything," Dalawar said.
"If the area is secure, then you don't need a weapon," Bessey replied.
Dalawar tried again: "If something happens and I do not have an AK-47, it could be a problem."
"If you have a weapon, it could be a problem for someone else," Bessey said.
In other parts of Afghanistan, the debate over whether to arm local tribal leaders has been largely settled. In southern Afghanistan and in provinces near the capital, Kabul, where the Taliban is strongest, the training and arming of local tribal militias will soon be underway.
Nevertheless, some Afghans have said they fear that arming local militias will lead to abuses and could reignite the same intertribal frictions that sparked a protracted and brutal civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s."
LAT: the debate about 'public guard' forces
"For many Afghans, the notion of private militias also evokes nightmarish memories of urban battles between warlords in the early 1990s. Entire districts of the capital, still rocket-pocked and battered, serve as a testament to that spasm of factional fighting that helped set the stage for the rise of the Taliban.
Critics also point to a disastrous 2006 effort by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to create an auxiliary force to supplement the regular police. With little or no screening of recruits, large numbers promptly deserted to join the insurgency, taking their government-issued weapons with them.
"We need to protect our country with our police and army, not a bunch of uneducated guys running around with guns," said Khan Mohammed, a businessman in the southern city of Kandahar. "One trained soldier or policeman is better than 10 or even 50 militiamen, because they won't follow any rules."
But to authorities in places like Wardak, where long stretches of the main national highway are littered with the remains of bombed-out convoys and government control is tenuous everywhere except district centers, the idea seems worth trying.
"We need something to fill the gap; there aren't enough police and there aren't enough troops," said Mohammed Halim Fidai, Wardak's governor. "Who is more motivated than someone guarding his home and family?"...
Many of the plan's Afghan backers say, however, that they expect the public guards to be modeled on traditional tribal groups called arbakais -- in no small measure because in rural Afghanistan almost everything breaks down along tribal lines.
Some Afghan officials worry tribal leaders' main goal in supporting the initiative is to expand influence, particularly because money to pay guards will be funneled through tribal councils, which are also supposed to vouch for those picked to serve as "paid volunteers."
Another sensitive point is weaponry. If the public guards are given guns, as expected, it would fly in the face of years of efforts by the Afghan government to disarm private militias. But few believe village-based groups would dare confront the Taliban, even indirectly, unless they have ready access to weapons.
U.S. and NATO officials said they did not envision arming the public guards. But one American military official acknowledged that nearly every village home has weapons, and use of them might be tacitly allowed.
Critics consider that hypocritical."
WP: US continues air strikes in Pakistan
"The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency."
AJE: ...as Zardari meets with tribal leaders in Islamabad
Slate: how many prisoners are still in Guantanamo, who are they, who has been released, and how many have returned to (or joined) terrorist groups?
Slate: ...and how many have gone to rehab?
"Detainees selected to enter Saudi Arabia's counseling program—usually Saudis who committed terror-related crimes and don't repent of their extremist beliefs in one-on-one interviews—are sent to a former desert resort outside Riyadh. There they swim in a pool, play soccer and volleyball, use Playstation, do art therapy, and learn to practice a more moderate form of Islam. They also take classes taught by clerics and social scientists. Coursework covers 10 subjects, from religious concepts like jihad (religious struggle) and takfir (calling someone an unbeliever) and walaah (loyalty) to psychological courses in self-esteem. The clerics impart the laws of Wahhabism—the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia—which prohibit jihad unless there is an official fatwa. At the end of six weeks, students take an exam. If they pass, they may be approved for release. (That is, if they have already served out their original jail sentence.) If not, they have to take the class again.
The goal of the rehab program is to give the "students" a stable social network that doesn't rely on terrorist organizations. Detainees eat and cook communally and live in rooms with fellow prisoners. Family members visit regularly, and detainees can phone them whenever they want. They can even request furlough for weddings and funerals. Families also receive generous stipends, since prisoners can't earn money...
Saudi Arabia isn't the only country to offer rehab to terrorists. Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Sinagpore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and now Iraq have similar programs. But none of these are as elaborate or well-funded as Saudi Arabia's. They have different approaches, too. In Indonesia, they bring in reformed extremists to talk to detainees. (The highest profile convert was Nasir Abas, who split from the group Jemaah Islamiya after the Bali bombing in 2005 and has since become the poster child for rehabilitation.)
So, does rehab work? Recidivism figures come from the local governments, so they aren't particularly reliable. The Saudis claim that, since 2003, they have converted and released 1,400 participants; as of 2008, only 35 of them—or 2 percent—had been rearrested. Of the 121 or so prisoners repatriated from Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia, six have been rearrested. These are, of course, cases of known recidivism. The real numbers may be much higher."
Slate: speaking of social networks - how they influenced soldiers' decisions and survival in the US Civil War
"Costa and Kahn look at the larger stakes decision of whether Union soldiers [in the US Civil War] chose to risk death by remaining to fight or desert and save their own skins. The authors reason that social bonds are stronger among soldiers from similar backgrounds. New England-born soldiers, for example, will feel greater kinship with other New Englanders, the Irish with other Irish, blacksmiths with other blacksmiths. In companies where men had shared backgrounds, fewer soldiers would be expected to abandon their comrades, both because of the greater kinship among men with a sense of social connection and because their shared network would make it easier to punish and censure cheaters back home...
The military service records of every Union soldier—including birthplace, occupation, age; whether he deserted, got captured, won a Medal of Honor—were sent to the National Archives after the war. To test their theory, Costa and Kahn analyzed the records of soldiers in 354 Union companies, a total of 41,000 men. They found that on average, nine out of 100 men deserted. However, in companies populated by a relatively homogeneous group of men—of similar ages, born in the same place, who worked similar jobs before the war—the desertion rate was closer to two in 100. Belief in the cause mattered—enlistees from pro-Lincoln counties were less likely to desert. And the likelihood of catching a bullet by staying and fighting naturally figured into soldiers' decisions to go AWOL as well—desertion rates went down when the war tilted in the Union's favor. But neither belief in the war nor hopes for survival mattered nearly as much as the strength of social bonds in predicting who would stay and fight.
This wasn't because soldiers felt safer surrounded by friends whom they could count on for life-saving favors—a soldier's best chance at survival was to desert, regardless of the strength of his fighting unit. Rather, it was the shame and embarrassment of abandoning one's comrades. A community quickly got word of cowardice as well as heroics through soldiers' letters home, and deserters were nearly 50 percent more likely to pick up and move to a different state after the fighting ended."
BBC: remembering Roma victimization in the Holocaust
"Historians often call it "the forgotten Holocaust". Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers."
NYT: Nkunda caught
wronging rights: why did Rwanda turn on him?
BBC: Congo seeking extradition
Econ: a brief synopsis of the convoluted war
Gdn: Thai gov't turning away migrants from Burma and Bangladesh without enough provisions to survive at sea; more than 400 have died
AJE: immigrants and asylum-seekers break out of holding center on Italian island, march to city hall
"Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention.
They were joined by a few hundred locals who also want the inmates transferred to bigger camps elsewhere in Italy...
The UNHCR said it is only built for 850 people but now has up to 2,000 crammed in, many sleeping under plastic sheets. Originally a temporary stop for people waiting for transfer to other centres in Italy, the camp's role has changed this year with tough new immigration rules meaning all those rescued are kept in Lampedusa until being granted asylum or expelled... Italy's interior ministry estimates that 31,700 immigrants landed on Lampedusa in 2008, a 75 per cent increase on the previous year." AJE: Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will return to peace talks if Philippine gov't puts secession back on the agenda WP: reviews of 'Slumdog Millionaire' in Mumbai
"The 12,000-strong MILF has...continued the struggle for political autonomy, becoming one of four groups that are fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines."
"Some of Mumbai's poor also are taking offense. On Thursday, a small band of slum residents, organized by a social activist, held up banners reading "Poverty for Sale" and "I am not a dog" outside the home of Anil Kapoor, one of the film's stars.
But many more slum residents -- the people who keep this teeming metropolis running by working as drivers, tea wallahs (or vendors), cobblers, laundry men and tailors -- say it's about time they received some attention in a country that tries to present itself as a success story, better known for its booming economy and its growing roster of millionaires than for the mayhem of its slums, among the world's largest. They say slumdogs are underdogs who deserve a film about their lives."
WP: slums receiving short shrift in Colombia as well
"Yodiris Parra, 32, one of 55,000 people who arrived in Cartagena during the past decade after being displaced by war , says her life has changed very little in recent years.
Her home is a wood-plank shack in the teeming Villa Hermosa slum. There is no running water, and raw sewage flows in the streets outside. Though Parra's husband works in construction, ostensibly benefiting from a building boom, she said that the typical meal she serves her three children is soup filled out with a bone...
As Uribe lobbies Washington for a free trade agreement, held up so far because of Democratic concerns over human rights abuses, he makes the case that his twin policies of fostering a healthy business climate and fighting armed groups have improved the lives of ordinary Colombians...
Here, inside Cartagena's ramparts and along an adjacent stretch of luxury seaside high-rises, it is easy to see signs of that investment and feel the optimism that has come with it...But to Jesús Mercado, who takes tourists on romantic carriage rides, the city that tourists see is far from being the real Cartagena. "They show the tourists and the foreigners the good face of Cartagena," he said. "But the dark side, the southeast side, they do not show that. They hide it."
Indeed, in this city of 1 million people, 600,000 are poor, and tens of thousands are destitute. The percentage of residents lacking basic necessities -- a yardstick used by demographers to measure poverty in Colombia -- is 26 percent, nearly three times the rate in Bogota, the capital."
BBC: the state of the landless movement in Brazil
Gdn: referendum on new constitution to be held in Bolivia on Sunday
Ind: Castro starting to fade
"On Thursday night, he instructed Cuban officials to start making decisions without taking him into account. In a column titled "Reflections of Comrade Fidel", he suggested his days are numbered, saying Cuban officials "shouldn't feel bound by my occasional 'Reflections', my state of health or my death. I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long time. I receive information and meditate calmly on those events. I expect I won't enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama's first presidential term has ended." The lines had the ring of a farewell."
BBC: with spiraling crime, Mexico considering reinstatement of the death penalty
NYT: hip hop in China
" 'Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll — we can talk about our lives, what we’re thinking about, what we feel,' said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy. 'The Chinese education system doesn’t encourage you to express your own character. They feed you stale rules developed from books passed down over thousands of years. There’s not much opportunity for personal expression or thought; difference is discouraged.' "
NYT: the gag rule is gone!
22 January 2009
border crossing [brief encounters of the worst kind]
WP: by way of explanation for lack of posts this week, SV temporarily overwhelmed by hope
Slate: - at least she wasn't alone -
Slate: and is still breaking out in occasional goosebumps
"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
WP: Obama issues orders to close Gitmo and secret prisons, speed withdrawal of troops from Iraq
WP: outgoing ambassador to Iraq warns against pulling out too quickly
WP: ...as the country, and Basra, prepares for provincial elections this month
"Though the Supreme Council has matured, it still exudes the air of the clandestine organization it was in exile. While Sadr's men are often confident in a street-savvy way, and Dawa's are sometimes cerebral, even aloof, the Supreme Council's officials tend to look at any question with squinting suspicion. They still push an unabashedly Shiite message, even as Iraq haltingly recovers from sectarian war."
WP: atrocities coming to light, now that Israel out of Gaza (but article very short on details)
"Early Wednesday, Israel completed its pullout from the Gaza Strip after a military offensive that began Dec. 27. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed and the operation caused an estimated $2 billion in property damage to the already impoverished territory. Thirteen Israelis died during the offensive.
"The commanders here call the current situation “stalemate,” meaning they can hold what they have but cannot do much else. Of the 20,000 British, American and other troops here, only roughly 300 — a group of British Royal Marines — can be moved around the region to strike the Taliban. All the other units must stay where they are, lest the area they hold slip from their grasp."
Gdn: US accused of killing 25 civilians after bombing called in
AJE: civilians trapped between LTTE and gov't forces in Sri Lanka
AJE: gov't trying to get 250,000 into a "safety zone"
"The Sri Lankan air force on Wednesday dropped leaflets in the region telling civilians to move to the 35sq km zone until the army can transport them to safer locations."
WP: Rwanda deploys troops into Congo
"On Tuesday morning, U.N. soldiers reported that 1,500 to 2,000 Rwandan troops entered eastern Congo around the village of Kibati, which is just north of the main eastern city of Goma, Dietrich said. They were headed north toward the town of Rutshuru, a stronghold of Nkunda's rebels."
wronging rights: there is cause for pessimism
WP: with Ethiopians out of Somalia, Islamists are in but fractured
"After the deaths of at least 10,000 people and the displacement of 1 million, Ethiopia and the United States are now supporting a political compromise that stands to return to power some of the same moderate Islamist leaders they originally ousted.
Those leaders...face an even worse version of the same problem they had when they first tried to govern: how to control the Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist group. After fighting a two-year-long insurgency, the Shabab has split off from the core movement and become more radical and battle-hardened, with various factions controlling much of southern Somalia.
++
Gdn: travel recommendation - next time you're in Mexico, don't miss the narco bling museum
The Onion: SV has an extra ticket for this show if you're interested
Slate: - at least she wasn't alone -
Slate: and is still breaking out in occasional goosebumps
"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
WP: Obama issues orders to close Gitmo and secret prisons, speed withdrawal of troops from Iraq
WP: outgoing ambassador to Iraq warns against pulling out too quickly
WP: ...as the country, and Basra, prepares for provincial elections this month
"Though the Supreme Council has matured, it still exudes the air of the clandestine organization it was in exile. While Sadr's men are often confident in a street-savvy way, and Dawa's are sometimes cerebral, even aloof, the Supreme Council's officials tend to look at any question with squinting suspicion. They still push an unabashedly Shiite message, even as Iraq haltingly recovers from sectarian war."
WP: atrocities coming to light, now that Israel out of Gaza (but article very short on details)
"Early Wednesday, Israel completed its pullout from the Gaza Strip after a military offensive that began Dec. 27. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed and the operation caused an estimated $2 billion in property damage to the already impoverished territory. Thirteen Israelis died during the offensive.
'We don't have any illusion. We know they will come back. But thank God they are finally gone,' said Adel Hamed, 34, of Gaza City. 'If they were trying to destroy us, they failed.' "
LAT: one family's horrific experience of being gunned down trying to escape, and left to die
" 'It was so terrifying,' Shurrab said the next day from his hospital bed in Khan Yunis. 'I shouted at the soldiers to help us, but no answer.'
With the body of [his son] Kassab lying in the street, Shurrab said, he and [his other son] Ibrahim sat bleeding in their car for 20 hours.
Shurrab called the local ambulance service and was told that they were waiting for coordination with the Israeli army so they could come safely to the scene. He phoned his relatives, who called the Red Cross and gave his number to local journalists.
As night approached and his bleeding son grew weaker, he spoke with Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic and several local radio stations, pleading to be rescued.
Ibrahim complained to his father that he felt cold.
"I could not do anything for my son," Shurrab said.
Around midnight, the cellphone battery died. Soon afterward, Ibrahim stopped responding.
"I waited for my fate," Shurrab said, crying.
Israeli troops allowed an ambulance through at 11 a.m. Saturday. Ambulance driver Mahmoud Heikal said he saw Israeli troops watching from a nearby house as he approached the red Land Rover. Kassab Shurrab lay dead in the street. Ibrahim had bled to death in the car."
Gdn: and this family lost 48 members
AJE: Amnesty Int'l joins other groups in denouncing Israeli gov't for white phosphorous weapon use in Gaza
"The commanders here call the current situation “stalemate,” meaning they can hold what they have but cannot do much else. Of the 20,000 British, American and other troops here, only roughly 300 — a group of British Royal Marines — can be moved around the region to strike the Taliban. All the other units must stay where they are, lest the area they hold slip from their grasp."
Gdn: US accused of killing 25 civilians after bombing called in
AJE: civilians trapped between LTTE and gov't forces in Sri Lanka
AJE: gov't trying to get 250,000 into a "safety zone"
"The Sri Lankan air force on Wednesday dropped leaflets in the region telling civilians to move to the 35sq km zone until the army can transport them to safer locations."
WP: Rwanda deploys troops into Congo
"On Tuesday morning, U.N. soldiers reported that 1,500 to 2,000 Rwandan troops entered eastern Congo around the village of Kibati, which is just north of the main eastern city of Goma, Dietrich said. They were headed north toward the town of Rutshuru, a stronghold of Nkunda's rebels."
wronging rights: there is cause for pessimism
WP: with Ethiopians out of Somalia, Islamists are in but fractured
"After the deaths of at least 10,000 people and the displacement of 1 million, Ethiopia and the United States are now supporting a political compromise that stands to return to power some of the same moderate Islamist leaders they originally ousted.
Those leaders...face an even worse version of the same problem they had when they first tried to govern: how to control the Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist group. After fighting a two-year-long insurgency, the Shabab has split off from the core movement and become more radical and battle-hardened, with various factions controlling much of southern Somalia.
Militarily, the Shabab is now the biggest threat to the fragile transitional government and the moderate Islamists seeking to become part of it.
At the same time, the Shabab is showing signs of internal divisions. And with the Ethiopians' exit, it is facing an array of new challengers, including local militias and warlords with such nicknames as White-Eyed and Greasy who are restyling themselves as Islamists...
In the south, for instance, a group known as the Juba Valley Resistance Movement is marketing itself as an anti-Shabab militia allied with moderate Islamists. "The international community needs to support us," said Mohamed Amin Abdullahi Osman, its leader. "We are against Shabab and want to defeat it."
In the same region, a warlord named Barre Hiiraale who was ousted by the Shabab in October is attempting to revamp his image by associating himself with an old and widely respected moderate Muslim group, al-Sunna wal Gama'a. Hiiraale's militia has successfully fought the Shabab in several towns in southern Somalia in recent weeks...
Though Somalia's fundamental social structure is based on clan, Islamic scholars and charities representing a spectrum of beliefs have long played a respected and, until recently, apolitical role in society.
A more political version of Islam began to take hold after Somalia's last central government collapsed in 1991 and peaked with the Islamic Courts' brief takeover of Mogadishu.
The movement's leaders never settled on what version of Islam they represented -- some militiamen shut cinemas and frowned on music, for instance -- but the group still managed to open ports and get business going and to establish a measure of security in the capital for the first time in 15 years.
It also accomplished the minor miracle of uniting clans under a shared religious order, an idea that endures.
But the Ethiopian invasion fragmented the movement, scattering its leaders to Djibouti and Eritrea. The Shabab remained, gaining a kind of popularity by default among Somalis who did not necessarily care for its radical ideology but were glad someone was fighting Ethiopia."
LAT: militias may be recruiting as far away as Minnesota
"The youths, who have U.S. passports, followed a well-trod trail from Minneapolis to Mogadishu. Another group took off in August. The FBI believes that over the last two years, 12 to 20 Minnesotans have gone to Somalia.
As a result, a joint terrorism task force led by the FBI is scrambling to determine if extremist Islamic groups are seeking recruits here in the nation's largest Somali community -- as well as in San Diego, Seattle, Boston and other cities."
Gdn: talks fail in Zimbabwe
Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, described the failure of 12 hours of talks brokered by regional leaders as "probably the darkest day of our lives" for his Movement for Democratic Change and for the nation, which is hit by mass hunger, cholera and hyperinflation.
LAT: desertions up from the FARC
"Added patrols and checkpoints also created supply problems for the rebels, who depended on sympathetic farmers or rebel family members to bring food and clothing to drop points in the zone.
At the same time, the army stepped up its campaign to urge rebels to lay down their arms and join the demobilization program, promising cash for intelligence. The message was written on thousands of leaflets thrown from helicopters over the rugged mountains ringing this town, and read out regularly over the 6th Army Brigade's radio station in Ibague. The army says it even knows the decimated 25th Front's remaining soldiers and unit commanders: Accumulated intelligence has enabled it to re-create an organizational chart...
Ernesto was reluctant to dial the phone number given out over the radio, fearing that he could end up being killed in the process, a fear heightened by the recent scandal of "false positives," in which the Colombian army killed civilians and later claimed them as battle casualties.
But he called and agreed to meet an army patrol at a predetermined location. He later surrendered his machine gun and was promised a $500 reward. For providing intelligence that led to the capture of an extortion specialist known as Chucho, he was promised a second sum of $25,000. He said, smiling, that he was still "patiently waiting" for the government to pay up.
'The FARC treated its people well. They taught me how to read,' Ernesto said. 'But it was time to start a new life. I want to be an engineer.' "
LAT: but they seem to be doing well just over the Venezuelan borde
"Although the border area has long absorbed Colombian refugees fleeing decades of war, members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have become visible as never before in the last two or three years, buying supplies, looking for medical assistance and forging relationships with indigenous women, said Venezuelan Congressman Arcadio Montiel, a Wayuu Indian.
Leaders of several Indian communities clustered around this town in a wild rain forest area that forms the border with Colombia told The Times over the weekend that the FARC's presence is harming their culture and youth.
"They have replaced the caciques, or chiefs, as authority figures and so who do the youths now want to emulate? The rebels," said Javier Armato, a Yupa Indian who is a former Zulia state deputy and onetime Chavez supporter...
Montiel and several community leaders say the FARC operates camps in the Perija Mountains to the west, where they say the rebels rest and recruit and train Venezuelan Indian youths...
But Indian leaders here say the rebels are slowly corrupting their cultures with arms, drugs and values that are anathema to their ways. They are also slowly taking control of Indian lands by squatting and by marrying indigenous women
On many Saturdays, rebel mule trains descend from the rugged Perija Mountains through the two dozen Indian communities that surround this town, indigenous leaders said.
After parking their mules in foothill pastures, the rebels continue on by bus into Machiques, the nearest big city, to make telephone calls, run business errands and go to a market, they said. The supplies are taken back up into the mountains.
At other times, they suddenly appear at doorways, seeking food, clothing or medicines.
"They don't pay for anything, it's always for 'solidarity.' But you can't say no to them. Nor can you complain about them to others, because someone might inform on you," said one indigenous leader, who requested anonymity because of security concerns."
LAT: violence, tension surround approaching referendum for Chavez
"The fiery Chavez has at times used violent rhetoric, including the threat of "civil war," to warn of chaos if he loses the vote next month. In a speech Saturday in Carabobo state, he vowed to break up student protests with tear gas."
++
Gdn: travel recommendation - next time you're in Mexico, don't miss the narco bling museum
The Onion: SV has an extra ticket for this show if you're interested
15 January 2009
war crimes [on the hook]
Al Jazeera (English): Israel destroys hospital, UN outpost in Gaza
"Officials said that a building of the UN relief agency in Gaza had been hit by Israeli shells and set ablaze.
AJE: death toll has reached 1,000; civilians have nowhere to go
"More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into densely-populated urban areas.
NYT: Israeli rights groups issue call for war crimes investigation
"Nine Israeli human rights groups called on Wednesday for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza since tens of thousands of civilians there have nowhere to flee, the health system has collapsed, many are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams."
NYT: the effect of the bombing on Palestinian cleavages
"The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians."
WP: polarization seems to favor Hamas
"Men who say they have never fought before or were not Hamas loyalists now vow to join the struggle against Israel when they return to Gaza. They include policemen and other professionals who form part of the backbone of Gazan society."
CSM: Fatah's (in)action drawing scrutiny
"Fatah is keeping a lid on protests, not letting West Bankers draw it into Israel's war on Hamas. Senior voices in the secular party that runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) see restraint as key to its quest for statehood. Getting entangled in Gaza, they say, would only embolden Hamas.
"...after the US-led invasion, his Sunni neighbor began threatening Mr. Mohamed, a Shiite. When the neighbor killed four of Mohamed's cousins, Mohamed and his family fled, selling his home of more than 20 years for $126,000 – just half its market rate.
"What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.
AP: fighting in Mogadishu: al-Shabab attacks presidential palace, says African Union forces next
"There are currently about 2,400 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers in Mogadishu whose mandate is restricted to guarding key government installations such as the port and airport. To date, they have rarely been the target of insurgent attacks...
"The 29-member government would comprise both civilians and military, coup leaders said in a statement aired on national radio and television on Thursday.
"Officials said that a building of the UN relief agency in Gaza had been hit by Israeli shells and set ablaze.
"They are phosphorus fires so they are extremely difficult to put out because if you put water on it, it will just generate toxic fumes and do nothing to stop the burning," John Ging, the director of UN relief operations, said...
About 500 people were inside the hospital in Tal al-Hawa when it came under attack. Many had taken shelter in the hope of escaping the onslaught."AJE: death toll has reached 1,000; civilians have nowhere to go
"More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into densely-populated urban areas.
Thousands of civilians fled their homes on Thursday as tank shells and missiles exploded causing black smoke to rise above the neighbourhoods of Tal al-Hawa, Zeitoun and Shujaiyeh in Gaza City.
Battles raged in the northern town of Jabaliya and Israeli ground troops backed by dozens of tanks pushed at least 1km into the southern town of Khan Yunis."
WP: civilians account for estimated half of deaths; almost any target is 'legitimate' for Israel, while Hamas fighters hide among civilians
"The Israeli military blames Hamas for using Gazans as human shields and for retreating to densely populated areas to fight the war. But Palestinians and human rights groups say that Israel has been reckless and that in pursuing Hamas, it has employed tactics that unnecessarily drive up the civilian toll...
Later in the week, Harb stood in the street of the southern town of Rafah with his wife and six children and looked on as his neighborhood was systematically turned to rubble. His family had been warned to leave, he said, but in Gaza there is nowhere to go. The street seemed the safest place to ride out the airstrikes that landed like an earthquake every five minutes, each one sending a thick black plume into the sky from the spot of ground where a house once stood.
Some of the houses, Harb acknowledged, had concealed tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle weapons from Egypt. But most, he said, did not...
The Geneva Conventions, an international agreement on a code of war, say civilians must be permitted to escape from fighting, but "the Gazans are not allowed to flee," Myers said. "That's a big problem." None of the border crossings is open. And no part of the strip -- which is about 25 miles long and five miles wide -- has been insulated from the fighting."NYT: Israeli rights groups issue call for war crimes investigation
"Nine Israeli human rights groups called on Wednesday for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza since tens of thousands of civilians there have nowhere to flee, the health system has collapsed, many are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams."
NYT: the effect of the bombing on Palestinian cleavages
"The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians."
WP: polarization seems to favor Hamas
"Men who say they have never fought before or were not Hamas loyalists now vow to join the struggle against Israel when they return to Gaza. They include policemen and other professionals who form part of the backbone of Gazan society."
CSM: Fatah's (in)action drawing scrutiny
"Fatah is keeping a lid on protests, not letting West Bankers draw it into Israel's war on Hamas. Senior voices in the secular party that runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) see restraint as key to its quest for statehood. Getting entangled in Gaza, they say, would only embolden Hamas.
Others say Fatah is making a fatal mistake. Its inaction will irreparably damage its standing in the eyes of Palestinians and erode support for the group that both America and Israel view as peace partners."
CSM: violence down, but some Iraqis can't return home"...after the US-led invasion, his Sunni neighbor began threatening Mr. Mohamed, a Shiite. When the neighbor killed four of Mohamed's cousins, Mohamed and his family fled, selling his home of more than 20 years for $126,000 – just half its market rate.
Now, with relative calm returning, Mohamed is trying to reconstruct his former life. But while he's happy about the greater security, he's confronting a troubling reality that underscores that recovery will take more than an end to fighting. Like many Iraqis, he can't afford his old neighborhood."
NYT blog: a peek at the (very confusing) ballots for next month's election
"What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.
The consequences go further. Crawford also told Woodward that the charges against al-Qahtani were dropped because he was tortured. This has devastating consequences for the Bush administration's entire rationale for the new techniques of interrogation: that they would make the United States safer by producing intelligence and keeping dangerous individuals off the streets. We now know they do neither. The torture produced no useful information from al-Qahtani, and the cruelty heaped upon him will make it more difficult, if not impossible, to justify his long-term incarceration.
There is a third major consequence to the Crawford interview: Her principle objection to detainee abuse is not ephemeral or spiritual, but a damning indictment of the impact it will have on American troops and the prospects for America's authority abroad: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."...
Under the 1984 Torture Convention, its 146 state parties (including the United States) are under an obligation to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." These states must take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. The convention allows no exceptions, as Gen. Pinochet discovered in 1998. The state party to the Torture Convention must then submit the case to its competent authorities for prosecution or extradition for prosecution in another country.
The former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army has spoken. Her clear words have been picked up around the world. And that takes the prospects of accountability and criminal investigation onto another level. For the Obama administration, the door to the do-nothing option is now closed. That is why today may come to be seen as the turning point."
WP: 'trials' against Guantanamo inmates also undermined by basic incompetence
"[Former military prosecutor] Vandeveld said in a phone interview that the 'complete lack of organization' has affected nearly all cases at Guantanamo Bay. The evidence is often so disorganized, he said, 'it was like a stash of documents found in a village in a raid and just put on a plane to the U.S. Not even rudimentary organization by date or name.' ...
Military defense lawyers also said yesterday that the Office of Military Commissions may have accidentally withdrawn the charges against all defendants at Guantanamo Bay facing trial, including Jawad and even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Defense lawyers said the Office of Military Commissions, while creating new jury panels, took the additional step of re-referring all charges, which, they said, would return all cases to square one and require new arraignments."
NYT blog: closing Gitmo is gonna be tough
CSM: discovered arms cache raises suspicion of secular coup plot in Turkey
NYT: riots in Latvia over economy
"In the wake of the demonstrations, President Valdis Zatlers threatened Wednesday to call for a referendum that would allow voters to dissolve Parliament, saying trust in the government, including in its ability to deal with growing economic problems, had “collapsed catastrophically.”
AP: fighting in Mogadishu: al-Shabab attacks presidential palace, says African Union forces next
"There are currently about 2,400 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers in Mogadishu whose mandate is restricted to guarding key government installations such as the port and airport. To date, they have rarely been the target of insurgent attacks...
The Ethiopian army, one of Africa's largest, was viewed by many Somalis as abusive and heavy-handed. But few expect the Somali government now can ensure security. It controls only pockets of the capital, Mogadishu, and Baidoa, where parliament sits -- and has tried to rule without a president for weeks.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in fighting in the past year, particularly in the capital, and hundreds of thousands have fled the violence...
Rival Islamic groups control other areas of southern and central Somalia, with the al-Shabab making the most dramatic gains in recent months. Al-Shabab, which denies it is a terrorist organization, says its goal is to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.
Also today, officials said gunmen had abducted an Egyptian teacher in Somalia's relatively peaceful northwestern breakaway republic where such kidnappings are rare...it is rare for abductions to take place in northwestern region of Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 and has its own regularly elected government, parliament and judiciary. The breakaway republic has avoided much of the chaos and anarchy that exists in the rest of the country."
BBC: UN says Eritrea must pull out of Djibouti
"The 29-member government would comprise both civilians and military, coup leaders said in a statement aired on national radio and television on Thursday.
Members of the military were appointed to defence, security, justice and finance ministries.
No representatives of political parties, however, have been included in the new government."
AJE: reemergence of Shining Path, self defense forces in Peru
Gdn: Rio police say City of God no longer ruled by gangs
"Until the success of Meirelles' film, which was nominated for four Oscars, City of God, or Cidade de Deus, was a little-known slum on the western outskirts of Rio. Based on a book of the same name published in 1997, the film documented the bloody struggle between cocaine traffickers that ravaged the community during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the actors recruited from Rio's favelas.
Attempts to evict the real traffickers from the City of God, which is home to about 50,000 people, are part of a police initiative that authorities hope will help them regain control of the slums and serve as a blueprint for fighting urban crime across South America. "The state is going back to occupy territories from which it was absent, both in terms of public security and in terms of social investment," Rio's governor, Sérgio Cabral, said.
In their battle against the city's three drug factions, police have traditionally launched "hit and run" attacks on the favelas. The police kill more than 1,000 people each year, according to official figures, many during such raids.
Now the authorities plan to permanently station hundreds of military policemen inside three favelas as part of a pilot project to combat organised crime.
The police, who will spend 24 hours a day in the communities, aim to build trust, gather intelligence and help rebuild the slums. Millions of dollars will be invested in infrastructure and housing. City of God, where about 700 troops will be deployed, is the second favela in which the new "hearts and minds" policy will be tried...
The community policing scheme has not pleased everyone. Many predict the authorities will soon withdraw from places such as City of God and Dona Marta, allowing the traffickers to return. The government has also admitted its "policy of confrontation" will not end as a result of the community policing project.
Others view the initiative as little more than a marketing stunt by a media-savvy government, arguing that the City of God was only chosen because of its notoriety."
CSM: targeting gangs' assets in LA
"The city of Los Angeles, plagued by 23,000 violent gang crimes since 2004, including 784 murders and 12,000 felony assaults, announced Tuesday that it had won its first civil judgment, for $5 million, against a criminal gang that had dominated the heroin trade downtown for decades.
The verdict could bode well for another first-of-its-kind lawsuit the city filed last month that goes after all assets of gang leaders, not just those associated with their criminal activity. Both suits seek to plow the money back into improving the neighborhoods affected by the gangs through a fund..
The tactic of trying to cripple organizations by taking away their assets has been commonly used against the mafia. More recently, it has been used against white supremacist organizations. In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million verdict against the Aryan Nations that forced the organization to give up its 20-acre compound in Idaho...
The City Attorney's office says it is moving against the 18th Street gang on behalf of residents who can't file suit themselves because they can't afford the expenses and they fear retaliation. Gangs control certain neighborhoods by exacting so-called "street taxes" on home and business owners as well as street vendors.
The suit seeks compensation for property damage, emotional distress, personal injury, and intangibles such as residents not being able to use public parks because of gang activity...
The city currently has 463 known gangs with 26,000 members, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
But the use of injunctions has been controversial, Mr. Parrish says, because of "perceived selective enforcement and various civil rights issues."
The new law, too, "may raise significant civil rights issues depending on how it's used," Mr Parrish adds.
Unlike with organized groups, street gang members may be hard to identify."
++
more on the transition:
The Onion: luring Cheney out of his lair
NYT blog: while Bush declares national emergency
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
