many thousands of words [in place of]

NYT: speaking louder

NYT: and quicker

the first day of true and complete independence [fresh coat of paint]

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

experiments in policing [secret's out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SWJ: US issues new COIN guide

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC: investigating weapons use in Gaza

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

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

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

AJE: Rwanda announces troop pullout from Congo

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

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

BBC: lingering tensions in Kenya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

++
LAT: save the chinguiros!

mandate to protect [something will be happening here]

BBC: Colombian guerrillas release four hostages...
A helicopter collected the three police officers and a soldier from a pre-arranged spot in the jungle and flew them to Villavicencio, east of Bogota. They were the first captives to be unilaterally released by the rebels in almost a year. The Farc have suffered recent setbacks as the government drives them further into mountain and jungle areas. They have said they intend to free two politicians in the coming days.

The four were greeted by supporters waving flowers after they landed in Villavicencio. They had been among 28 "political hostages" held by the group, which wants to use them to secure the release of some of their own jailed members.
CSM: ...in a new political strategy?
In a combination of miscalculations and Colombian military successes, the rebels lost some of their top leaders in 2008. FARC founder Manuel Marulanda died, apparently of natural causes. FARC Cmdr. Raul Reyes was killed during a Colombian raid on his camp in Ecuador. Dozens of other FARC commanders and key guards deserted or were captured. The biggest blow came in July. Colombian intelligence officers duped the rebels into handing over their most prized hostages – French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three American defense contractors, along with 10 Colombian police and military officers.

But while the FARC has been hurt by those setbacks and by the sustained military and intelligence operations over the past six years, the FARC are estimated to still have nearly 10,000 fighters. A car bomb killed two people in the southwestern city of Cali Sunday night, following a smaller bomb blast in Bogotá last Tuesday that killed two people. The attacks may be rebel messages that they can still strike Colombian cities...

The latest hostage releases, however, could signal a shift in FARC strategy, says Gérson Arias of the Ideas para La Paz, a Colombian think tank... "They may have finally realized that it is politically counterproductive to hold civilians," Mr. Arias says.

NYT: Brazilian riot police occupy Sao Paulo slum in largest operation since 2006
Hundreds of riot police occupied one of Sao Paulo's biggest slums Tuesday following a night of shootouts and car burnings that saw three police officers shot in street combat with bands of young men.

Youths angry over the police killing of a suspect set vehicles and tires ablaze to blockade the streets of the Paraisopolis slum and looted cars and businesses, Sao Paulo's public safety department said in a statement.

Officers invaded the slum firing rubber bullets and lobbing tear gas, leading to overnight clashes in the sprawling hillside slum where some 80,000 people live in squat brick and block homes along narrow alleys. It sits next to some of Sao Paulo's richest neighborhoods...

Authorities were investigating whether the violence was ordered by the First Capital Command, a notorious gang that controls most of the drug trade in Sao Paulo's numerous slums.

The police show of force included officers toting automatic weapons and shotguns while using armored cars to plow through the debris. It was the biggest operation of its kind in South America's largest city since 2006.

NYT: marijuana "king crop" of Mexican cartels
Despite huge enforcement actions on both sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican marijuana trade is more robust — and brazen — than ever, law enforcement officials say. Mexican drug cartels routinely transported industrial-size loads of marijuana in 2008, excavating new tunnels and adopting tactics like ramp-assisted smuggling to get their cargoes across undetected.

But these are not the only new tactics: the cartels are also increasingly planting marijuana crops inside the United States in a major strategy shift to avoid the border altogether, officials said... Despite the fact that the authorities are discovering more marijuana production inside the United States, most of the cartels’ leadership remains in Mexico and, for now, so does most of the violence...

“The violence has left a large contingent of police on this side of the border,” Sheriff Estrada said. “The killing will stop when somebody dominates. When somebody takes control.”
NYT: Miss Sinaloa, arrested in Mexico in December on suspicion of trafficking, released
Laura Zúñiga, 23, the reigning Miss Sinaloa, was detained along with seven men at a military checkpoint near Guadalajara in December. The police found assault rifles and more than $55,000 in cash in the luxury vehicles they had been driving...

Prosecutors believe that her boyfriend is Ángel García Urquiza, a leader of the Juárez drug cartel who was with her at the police checkpoint. Mr. Urquiza and the other men arrested remain in a federal detention center.

NYT: artillery attacks hit hospital, pediatric ward, in Sri Lanka; government threatens to expel foreigners "sympathetic" to rebels
As the Sri Lankan military continued to push into a small corner of the island controlled by separatist guerrillas, three separate artillery attacks on Sunday struck a hospital overflowing with wounded patients, the last of them hitting a ward of women and children, according to international agencies and health workers. At least nine people were killed and 20 were wounded and the dead were still being counted Monday morning...

It was impossible to ascertain whether the shelling came from the military or the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The hospital is located in a small wedge of land still controlled by the Tamil Tigers in the island’s northeast...

Meanwhile, a senior government official threatened to expel foreign diplomats, aid agencies and journalists who appeared to be sympathetic to the rebels by, for instance, broadcasting images of civilian casualties.
BBC: key international donors encourage Tigers to disarm
The BBC's Ethirajan Anbarasan in Colombo says this is the first time the influential quartet [the US, EU, Japan and Norway, chairs of the Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka] has issued such an appeal to the Tamil Tigers. It is also the first international acknowledgement that the rebels may be near to defeat. In a joint statement, the quartet expressed "great concern" for the plight of civilians.

They urged the rebels to "discuss with the government of Sri Lanka the modalities for ending hostilities, including the laying down of arms, renunciation of violence, acceptance of the government of Sri Lanka's offer of amnesty; and participating as a political party in a process to achieve a just and lasting political solution"...

The Sri Lankan government has previously ruled out any ceasefire and has vowed to crush the rebels. The Tigers have said they will not lay down their arms until they have a "guarantee of living with freedom and dignity and sovereignty".
BBC: analysis of Tigers' reduced military capacity

NYT: Iran launches satellite that could be used for weapons
NYT: ...while North Korea prepares long-range missile for launch
North Korea has launched missiles in the past to win political or economic concessions. In recent weeks, it has said that its military had assumed an “all-out confrontational posture” and that it had scrapped all nonaggression pacts with South Korea...

The object is believed to be a Taepodong-2 missile, Yonhap said. The missile is designed to fly at least 4,200 miles, far enough to reach North America, and carry a payload of 1,400 to 2,200 pounds, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.

NYT: Palestinian militants fire long-range rocket into Israel
Tensions and tit-for-tat attacks have spiraled since Jan. 27 , when Palestinian militants detonated a bomb that killed an Israeli soldier patrolling the border.

On Sunday, Palestinian militants fired at least four rockets and a shower of mortar shells from Gaza into Israeli territory, wounding two soldiers and a civilian. The Israeli Air Force responded with a nighttime bombing raid on Gaza. On Monday, militants fired two mortar shells from southern Gaza at Israel and Israel carried out an airstrike against what the military said were members of the launching squad as they tried to flee in a vehicle...

Though small Palestinian militant groups have taken responsibility for the recent fire, even in defiance of Hamas, Israel has said it will hold Hamas responsible for any violations of the calm.
BBC: ...Israel attacks Rafah tunnels in response...
Israel had warned of a harsh response to any further rocket fire from Gaza after the long-range Grad rocket hit Ashkelon on Tuesday. It was the first attack on Israel involving a Grad rocket since the ceasefires. Other rockets and mortars have been launched from Gaza, however, and Israel has bombed targets in the narrow coastal territory...

"I suggest Hamas doesn't fool around with us," said Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak. "The air force is operating in Gaza as we speak. We promised calm in the south and we will keep our promise."

Residents of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, said they received telephone calls from the Israeli military warning them to leave their homes ahead of the air raid.
BBC: ...and limits al-Jazeera's reach inside Israel, in response to Qatar trade dispute
Israeli officials say they are taking measures to restrict the work of the Arabic television network, al-Jazeera, inside Israel. It follows a decision last month by al-Jazeera's owners, the state of Qatar, to cut trade ties with Israel.

The work visas of some al-Jazeera employees based in Israel will not be renewed, according to reports.

Al-Jazeera's journalists will have limited access to Israeli news conferences and briefings.
AP: Hamas leaders in Egypt to discuss long-term truce with Israel
The Hamas delegation, which includes officials from its exiled leadership in Syria, will be briefed by the Egyptians about their separate meetings with the Israelis. Hamas and Israel do not negotiate directly.

Abu Zuhri, who spoke from Damascus in an interview on Al-Jazeera television, again said the group would not negotiate the release of a captured Israeli soldier held in Gaza as part of a cease-fire deal. Sgt. Gilad Schalit was captured in 2006 by Hamas-allied militants.

He also said talk of Hamas ending efforts to arm itself was out of the question. "We are a resistance movement and an occupied people and it is our right to possess weapons," Abu Zuhri said.
NYT: newly trained Palestinian security forces introduced in contested West Bank city
Hebron, the West Bank’s most explosive city, with a combustible mix of hard-line Jewish settlers and Palestinian militants from Hamas and other groups, is undergoing a shake-up through the introduction of hundreds of Palestinian security officers who over the past month have stopped car thefts, foiled drug deals and arrested scores of Hamas gunmen, even seizing explosives and suicide belts. They have also focused on quality-of-life issues like fighting clans and the sales of outdated food and medicine by criminal gangs.

The Palestinian commander, Brig. Gen. Sameh al-Sifi, has dubbed the deployment Homeland Rising. And while that may seem a lofty name for a law-and-order operation, he has a point. The injection of the newly trained security forces into Israeli-occupied Hebron is, both sides agree, a significant step if there is ever to be a Palestinian state...

This is the second phase of a plan to install in the West Bank a Palestinian security force sponsored by the United States and trained by Jordan. The first, begun in May in the northern area of Jenin, has been widely praised. But Jenin was selected as a pilot partly because it has neither Hamas nor Jewish settlers in any significant numbers. Yet here too the deployment is going better than expected.

“Some of the communities and neighborhoods in Hebron haven’t seen a policeman since 1967,” noted Dov Schwartz, aide to Gen. Keith Dayton, the United States security coordinator in the West Bank. “People have turned over criminals, drug dealers and militants. This isn’t some temporary crackdown. It is a sustained and determined effort.”
BBC: Palestinian Authority seeks ICC investigations into war crimes
The PA hopes recognition of the court's jurisdiction will allow it to investigate allegations. Israel does not recognise the ICC's jurisdiction.

The ICC's founding statute says only states can recognise its jurisdiction.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said it could take some time to decide whether the Palestinian Authority was legally able to make this move. The court has made public a letter from Palestinian Justice Minister Ali Khashan recognising the authority of the ICC - the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal. "My work now is to analyse if this is in accordance with the law," Mr Moreno-Ocampo said.

Human rights groups have called for international investigation of alleged war crimes during the conflict by both Israeli forces and Hamas militants.
CSM: ...but Israel more worried about European trials under "universal jurisdiction"
[I]nstead of international tribunals or the Israeli justice system, the main venue for the cases is expected to be European domestic courts that cite a legal approach known as "universal jurisdiction" that allows for the trial of cases of heinous acts, torture, or war crimes that allegedly occur outside their own borders.

Israelis consider the threats part of an ongoing political witch hunt. Palestinians and humanitarian activists, on the other hand, see the domestic courts as the only forum to argue whether war crimes were committed...

Just last week, a Spanish judge announced an investigation, sparking tension between Israel and Spain, and spurring more speculation in Israel of war crimes efforts...

In her debut address as the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice called on Israel to investigate the behavior of its military in the recent Gaza war and accused Hamas of its own violations for firing rockets at Israeli towns and working out of civilian areas.

An Israeli investigation is unlikely given the conviction by most Israelis that the Israel military did its best to limit injury to civilians. Israel and the US say Hamas has broken international law by shooting rockets at towns and cities and using Palestinian civilian areas as a base.

Ironically, Israel was one of the first countries to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction when its court system asserted its right to try Nazi chief Adolph Eichmann for crimes against humanity and war crimes during World War II.

NYT: Taliban suicide bomber kills 21 Afghani police
The attacker struck in Tirin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan Province, a mountainous area where the government’s authority is being contested by the Taliban. Oruzgan is the birthplace of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the founder of the Taliban movement...

In 2007, about 140 suicide bombers struck in Afghanistan; in 2008, the number dropped to about 80. As security has tightened against suicide attackers, the Taliban has turned to roadside bombs; in 2008, the number of attacks was double that in 2007.
NYT: Taliban attacks major bridge near Khyber Pass, causing suspension of NATO supply routes
NYT: new supply routes probably not through Kyrgyzstan, as the government denies US continued use of base
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, said during a trip to Central Asia last month that Manas air base would be key to plans to boost U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan by up to 30,000 soldiers in the coming months... The United States set up the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan and a base in neighboring Uzbekistan after the September 2001 terror attacks, to back operations in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan expelled U.S. troops from the base on its territory in 2005 in a dispute over human rights issues, leaving Manas as the only U.S. military facility in the immediate region.
CSM: instead, Uzbekistan routes likely

NYT: UNHCR official kidnapped in normally calm Quetta, Pakistan
High-profile kidnappings and other attacks have become more routine in Pakistan, particularly in Peshawar, the hub of the northwestern Pakistani frontier, which has experienced a spate of attacks on diplomats and Westerners in recent months...

A Pakistani security official in Quetta said he believed the abduction had probably been carried out either by the Taliban, which have a presence in the city, or by a group seeking a ransom. The official described the abduction as the first kidnapping of a Westerner in the city in recent memory, and he said it appeared to be modeled on the recent abductions in Peshawar.

Baluchistan, not far from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, has seen a low-level insurgency led by nationalists who are demanding more autonomy and a greater share of the province’s natural resources. At the same time, the Taliban have also maintained a presence in several districts of the province, especially in the areas near the border with Afghanistan.
BBC: Pakistan military claims 16 Taliban killed in Swat Valley offensive
The military launched its offensive last week in response to a public outcry over the Taleban's growing strength in Swat. The clash is the latest in an operation against an increasingly powerful Taleban insurgency in Swat. The militants have tightened their hold on the scenic valley, banning girls' education, setting up their own courts and executing those they oppose, sometimes beheading their victims.

Last week the military launched a fresh offensive against the Taleban with the army chief and the government vowing to restore state authority in Swat. But locals say the army action is often indiscriminate and officials report that women and children are among the dead from Sunday's fighting.
Reuters: ...amidst claims of civilian exodus
"Thousands of people are migrating from the areas of fighting because of the military operations and the militants' use of civilians as human shields," the valley's top administrator, Shaukat Khan Yousafzai, told Reuters.

"One of my officials said his village has a population of 25,000 people and almost 80 percent had left ... People are angry and disappointed," he said.

The people leaving Swat are joining several hundred thousand other villagers who have fled fighting elsewhere in the northwest, in particular the Bajaur region on the Afghan border.
BBC: Pakistani diplomat, citing government investigation, says Mumbai attacks not planned in Pakistan

BBC: Kashmir protests over jailed separatist leaders
Overall violence has fallen significantly across Indian-administered Kashmir since Delhi and Islamabad began peace talks in 2004. However the peace process has been abeyance since November's attack in Mumbai (Bombay) which killed at least 179 people and which India blamed on Pakistan.

BBC: 15 Indian policemen killed by Maoist rebels in western state of Maharashtra
The policemen were ambushed in a jungle near a village in the east of the state, described as a rebel stronghold, on Sunday...

Senior police official AN Roy told the AFP news agency that the clash happened in an area, where there had been regular battles with the Maoists in the past.

"The patrolling party was ambushed by the Naxalites [as the rebels are called in India] and 15 of our men died. The encounter went on for nearly one and a half to two hours," he said. "Our people also fired, killing and injuring some Naxalites."

This was the worst rebel attack in the state, he said. Reports said that the rebels had fled with some police weapons and a mortar shell.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoist insurgency is the "single biggest threat" to India's security.

WP: Christopher Hill named US ambassador to Iraq
Hill is a consummate dealmaker, but he does not speak Arabic, and his expertise lies in Europe and Northeast Asia. He was ambassador to Poland, Macedonia and South Korea and also was a top negotiator to the Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war in the mid-1990s...

Over the course of four years, Hill was largely responsible for dramatically shifting the Bush administration's policies on North Korea, despite opposition from Vice President Cheney, who opposed making what he considered concessions to the North Korean government. Hill struck a deal with North Korea and then, step by step, persuaded Pyongyang to halt its nuclear reactor and begin to disable it... In Seoul, he broke with diplomatic precedent -- and charmed the South Korean public -- by repeatedly visiting universities and other hotbeds of anti-Americanism to give speeches and have debates. He established an online chat room and personally answered questions from Koreans under the name "ambassador."

Hill's mentor in the 1990s was Richard C. Holbrooke, the former U.N. ambassador who was recently named special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Holbrooke described Hill as "brilliant, fearless and argumentative" in his book on the Dayton negotiations.
NYT: preliminary results in Basra and Mosul show support for Prime Minister al-Maliki's parliamentary slate
In two crucial but very different parts of Iraq — here in strategic Basra in the south and still violent Mosul in the north — people voted in provincial elections for similar aims: security and a centralized state strong enough to fend off those who seek to divide it...

“We are witnessing the revival of Iraqi nationalism,” said Mustafa Alani, an analyst with the Gulf Research Center, based in Dubai. “This has unified Iraqis against a number of threats.”

Mr. Alani said it was no surprise that this trend appeared to be most pronounced in the early voting results in Basra and Mosul, which he called “historic front lines.” These two cities and their surrounding regions, along with Baghdad in the center, were cobbled together in 1926 from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire to create Iraq. In the 1980s, Basra bore the brunt of the Iraq-Iran war. Mosul, with its long-troubled relations with Kurds, was the launching pad for Mr. Hussein’s atrocities against the rebellious Kurds during the same time in the adjacent Kurdistan region.
BBC: recruiter of women suicide bombers detained in Iraq, as US starts releasing Iraqi detainees under security pact
The US said it was scheduled to release up to 1,500 detainees each month, according to a statement quoted by Associated Press news agency. The US still holds about 15,000 detainees in Iraq, and the agreement - which came into force last month - states that all should be released in an orderly manner, or transferred to Iraqi custody...

Iraqi militants have increasingly used women to carry out suicide attacks, hiding explosives under their clothes as they are less likely to be searched than men. In the video [confession], which was shown to journalists in Baghdad, the woman said she had prepared the women for suicide before sending them for terror training at insurgent bases.

She said she had to speak to one elderly woman several times before persuading her to blow herself up at a bus station. She said it also took two weeks to recruit another woman who was a teacher and had problems with her husband and his family, according to the confession.

The new recruit eventually attacked members of government-backed Sunni groups in Diyala, Samira Jassim said.

BBC: major parties in European Parliament urge EU member states to accept Guantánamo detainees
The Christian Democrat, Socialist and Liberal blocs said they wanted states to accept prisoners who cannot be sent home for fear they might be mistreated.

"Europe cannot stand back and shrug its shoulders," said the Liberal bloc's leader, Graham Watson, during a debate...

Last week, EU foreign ministers said they wanted to help on humanitarian grounds, but could not act until the US demonstrated the prisoners did not pose a credible security risk.

Albania is the only country to have so far accepted Guantanamo detainees on humanitarian grounds, taking in five members of China's Uighur ethnic minority in 2006.

CSM: how will conditions change for Guantánamo detainees under Obama?
How conditions might change for the 245 detainees at Guantánamo is unclear, legal analysts say. Potential issues critics cite include use of solitary confinement, forced feeding of hunger strikers, access to books and religious materials, and communications with family members...

Not all detainees at Guantánamo are entitled to the full protections of the Geneva accords, legal experts note. Suspected war criminals or those charged with crimes can be held under more restrictive conditions, including solitary confinement. A detainee deemed a threat to others can be segregated.

What is less clear is whether most detainees are entitled to more social contact with their fellow prisoners.

NYT: Australia concludes largest terrorism trial in history, Muslim cleric sentenced to 15 years
The seven men were arrested in November 2005 after an undercover police operation found they were plotting to attack landmarks in their home city of Melbourne.

The men were convicted last September under legislation introduced in Australia following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Victoria State Supreme Court sentenced Mr. [Abdul Nacer] Benbrika to 15 years in prison for intentionally directing the activities of a terrorist organization, seven years for intentionally being a member of a terrorist organization and five years for possessing a compact disc connected with the preparation of a terrorist act. He was the first person to be convicted of leading a terrorist group inside Australia.

BBC: newly elected Somali president asks for "military aid"
The president did not specify if he was talking about extra AU peacekeepers, a UN mission, or another force.

Somali foreign ministry permanent secretary official Mohammed Jama told the BBC the president had spoken to the AU about "extremists who will abuse the peace process". "We are asking the international community to assist," he added...

He was elected president last Friday as part of a UN-brokered plan to try to form a unity government and bring peace to Somalia for the first time since 1991. But the hardline Islamist militia al-Shabab, which took advantage of Ethiopia's pull-out to boost its control of the south, accuses him of selling out to the West.
CSM: election of moderate Islamist doesn't mean they can hold on to power
The Ethiopian peacekeepers have withdrawn from Somalia and the radical Islamist militia called Al Shabab is rapidly moving in to take control of the war-battered country.

Perhaps the only thing standing in Al Shabab's way is an unlikely enemy: an army of citizens and clerics who are fighting to preserve what's left of the Somalia that they have known for generations. Western experts call them moderate Islamists; they call themselves Ahlu Sunna wa Jamaa.

Compared with the highly trained, well-funded Al Shabab, which took the transitional capital of Baidoa last week, Ahlu Sunna is poorly armed, but popular. And although the moderate Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was elected president of Somalia by a transitional parliament last week, Ahlu Sunna knows that its time is running out.
NYT: roadside bomb explodes in Mogadishu, AU peacekeepers accused of killing civilians in response fire
At least 20 people were killed and dozens wounded after a roadside bomb exploded in Mogadishu on Monday and African Union forces fired back in response, Somali officials said.

The blast, which African Union officials said was a remotely detonated landmine, hit an African Union peacekeeper truck near one of the African Union bases in Mogadishu, Somalia’s war-ravaged capital.

How many people died and exactly what caused the deaths — the explosion or the African Union soldiers’ response or both — remained in dispute late Monday.
AP: al Shabab leader calls for holy war against peacekeepers

NYT: Sudanese government asks UN peacekeepers to leave rebel town in anticipation of military attack
The request, which represents a challenge to the United Nations’ effort to prevent fighting in Darfur, is the first time the Sudanese have asked international peacekeepers to vacate a specific place in the troubled region.

Josephine Guerrero, a spokeswoman for the United Nations mission, which is known as Unamid, said the request concerned the town of Muhajiriya in southern Darfur, with a population of about 30,000.

That is where Sudan wants to begin an offensive against rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement, a group that is known to have occasionally received Chadian support and that has held the town since mid-January, said Akuei Bona Malwal, Sudan’s ambassador to the African Union...

Ms. Guerrero said the peacekeeping force would like to remain in place.“Our mandate is to provide protection to civilians and we would like to continue doing that,” she said.
BBC: ...but they're not leaving

WP: joint Congo-Rwanda military operation could create "civilian bloodbath"
On paper, the Congolese-Rwandan operation aims to disarm an estimated 6,500 Rwandan Hutu militiamen who fled into eastern Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide and have wreaked havoc ever since.

The operation is part of the wide-ranging military, political and economic deal between Congo and Rwanda, which represents a significant rapprochement between the two countries and offers the prospect of finally sorting out a conflict that by some estimates has killed 5 million people over the past decade.

As part of the deal, Rwanda agreed to pull the plug on its proxy, rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, whose advance across eastern Congo last year displaced at least 250,000 people and posed a serious political threat to President Joseph Kabila.

Congo, in turn, agreed to allow Rwandan troops in to fight the Hutu militias, whose leaders allegedly participated in the genocide and are now entrenched in lucrative mining businesses in the east. Rwanda also has enormous economic interests in eastern Congo.

In villages across these green hills, however, there are signs that the joint operation will be messy and brutal. Human rights groups have warned that the operation could easily degenerate into a bloodbath for civilians...

CSM: militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta call off cease-fire

CSM: how to salvage a power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe

NYT: farmers riot, clash with police in Greek port city
The farmers sailed to the Greek mainland on Monday and tried to drive tractors and other farm vehicles to the capital to push demands for government aid and tax breaks following a harsh winter and a drop in commodity prices . Three people were injured in Monday’s clashes, and more farmers arrived in Piraeus on Tuesday to support the protest, news reports said.

In a separate episode on Tuesday, three hooded attackers fired shots and threw a hand grenade at a police station in a district of western Athens, the police said. No injuries were reported. The episode recalled events last month in which a riot policeman was shot and seriously wounded in central Athens in an attack blamed on a militant group called Revolutionary Struggle.

Social unrest is growing in Greece as the center-right government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis struggles to restore its credibility after student riots in December.
BBC: Athens police station attacked
Investigators said they suspected the left-wing group Revolutionary Struggle was behind the pre-dawn attack. Last month, the group claimed it was responsible for shooting and seriously wounding a policeman in central Athens.

Revolutionary Struggle said it was a response to the fatal shooting of a teenager by police in December, which sparked the worst riots in Greece for decades.The policeman who shot 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos has been charged with murder.

A police spokesman said at least three assailants were involved in the attack on the police station in Korydallos. Two were armed with automatic weapons while the other threw the grenade.

(not so) novel incentives [using their heads]

WP: Israel continues to bomb Gaza; moves 6,500 reserve forces to border
"While Israel claims the vast majority of those killed [estimated over 280] were active in Hamas's military operations, Palestinian medical officials in Gaza say that women and children have also been among the dead."
CSM: tunnels are targeted
"Israeli helicopters and combat jets struck the Hamas' main prison compound in Gaza city and, in a simultaneous strike, pounded about 40 supply tunnels leading under the Egyptian border on Sunday. Israel said the tunnels are the main artery of Hamas' improved arsenal of missiles. Palestinians say the tunnels are the only route for imported consumer goods after an Israeli blockade sealed commercial crossings."
NYT: it's Hamas's fault, according to Israel (and the US)
Gdn: Arab states unconvinced
Gdn: photos of the destruction

CSM: UN peacekeeping in South Lebanon

CSM: military officers reluctant to engage in drug interdiction in Afghanistan
"NATO commanders in Afghanistan say they are holding back because of concerns over the legality of drug operations. But they may also be unwilling to conduct what is seen as a politically unpopular mission that could endanger their troops."

WP: CIA gains allies in Afghanistan with Viagra
"The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes -- followed by a request for more pills...

While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations...

Not everyone in Afghanistan's hinterlands had heard of the drug, leading to some awkward encounters when Americans delicately attempted to explain its effects, taking care not to offend their hosts' religious sensitivities.

Such was the case with the 60-year-old chieftain who received the four pills from a U.S. operative. According to the retired operative who was there, the man was a clan leader in southern Afghanistan who had been wary of Americans -- neither supportive nor actively opposed.

The man had extensive knowledge of the region and his village controlled key passages through the area. U.S. forces needed his cooperation and worked hard to win it, the retired operative said. After a long conversation through an interpreter, the retired operator began to probe for ways to win the man's loyalty. A discussion of the man's family and many wives provided inspiration. Once it was established that the man was in good health, the pills were offered and accepted."

Slate: Kaplan says it's part of a plan, sort of
"The biggest problem is that the country's fate ultimately lies outside its borders. As long as Pakistan's northwest territories remain a lawless free-for-all, with Taliban and al-Qaida fighters crossing the border at will, Afghanistan will never be stable. And as long as Pakistan faces a threat from India to the east, its leaders will never deploy enough troops to quash the insurgents in the northwest territories."

WP: what's that, you say? Pakistan moves troops from Afghan to Indian border
"The Pakistani security official said the additional troops were deployed near the cities of Kasur and Sialkot in Punjab province as well as the Line of Control, the de facto border dividing Kashmir, a region that has been claimed by both countries since the bloody partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The official said the troops were removed from areas where insurgents were inactive because of the snowy winter...
Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, welcomed the government's decision to withdraw some troops from the tribal areas. "We will not attack the convoys of army withdrawing from tribal areas as it is a good development," he said, adding that the Taliban would help defend Pakistan against any aggression."

NYT: the Taliban takes opportunity for retribution
Four months ago, the people of the Pakistani mountain village of Shalbandi gained national repute after a village posse hunted down and killed six Taliban fighters who had tied up and killed eight local policemen. The posse displayed the Taliban corpses like trophies for other locals to see, and the village was celebrated as a courageous sign that the Taliban could be repelled.

On Sunday morning the Taliban struck back.

A suicide car bomber exploded at a school in Shalbandi that was serving as a polling place, as voters lined up to elect a representative to the national assembly. More than 30 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded, according to local political and security officials. Children and several policemen were among the dead...Shalbandi had received constant threats after the posse hunted down the Taliban. 'Disrupting elections is a general strategy for these elements,' Mr. Khattak [head of the Awami National Party in the province] said, 'but there was a reason for choosing this specific village.'..

...the efforts of villagers in northwest Pakistan have proved little deterrent to the Taliban, who continue to take over more territory despite major Pakistani military campaigns. In the latest sign of Taliban domination of Swat, militants announced last week that by Jan. 15 no girls would allowed to attend school in the valley."

CSM: voting mostly peaceful in Kashmir
"Instead of picking up a gun, Bashir, who asked that his real name not be used due to his political activities, has used text messages to create "flash mob" protests – instant rallies organized through cellphone messages – and posted videos on YouTube of unarmed protesters being shot, allegedly by Indian forces. Even as India and Pakistan rattle sabers after last month's massacre in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the 20-something's generation has helped Kashmir – the contested state at the heart of the two countries' enmity – take a historic step back from violence."

LAT: fissures and alliances in Basra as elections approach
"The last provincial elections, in 2005, sparked an ugly cycle of assassinations and political violence, in which most political parties were implicated. The next elections could either shatter or bolster the stability established since March, when Maliki ordered the Iraqi army and national police to crack down on armed groups...

As the election nears, Maliki is busy maneuvering. He has tapped local leaders to organize tribes in support of the central government. And under Maliki's direction, the national government has funded $100 million worth of reconstruction projects in Basra, bypassing the provincial council. The national government also has started paying unemployment benefits in the province...

But other factions also are maneuvering. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Maliki's main partner in the national government but also his party's main rival, wants Basra to serve as an anchor of a Shiite-majority nine-state federal region in the south. Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's followers wish to reclaim their influence in the port city, which they dominated before the springtime military offensive. The Al Fadila al Islamiya party of Gov. Mohammed Waeli wishes to hold on to privileges accrued in the last four years, notably its influence in the oil industry."

Reuters: US sends Ambassador to Libya for first time in 36 years

Chris Blattman: while SV was celebrating the season, there was a coup in Guinea
(alas, SV is more pessimistic about the relevance of the coup's lack of popular support)
BBC: generals move to consolidate power - and those people? fickle.
"The junta, which took over in a bloodless coup, has said it wishes to "reassure the international community" of its commitment to stamping out corruption and holding elections in 2010.

Its seizure of power was condemned internationally but Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has urged the world community to recognise the new leadership.

Correspondents say the coup appears to have been welcomed by many people within the country who were tired of despotic rule under the former president and his corrupt government."

Ind: Mauritanian president released from house arrest after August coup

NYT: white dispossessed farmers win ruling against Mugabe, but are unlikely to see enforcement
"The case is rooted in one of the most fraught issues facing not just Zimbabwe, but other nations in the region, especially South Africa: the unjust division of land between whites and blacks that is a legacy of colonialism and white minority rule...

Zimbabwe’s handling of the land issue has had disastrous consequences. Since 2000, when Mr. Mugabe began encouraging the violent invasion of the country’s large, white-owned commercial farms — once the country’s largest employers — food production has collapsed, hunger has afflicted millions and the economy has never recovered.

Mr. Mugabe presents this redistribution as a triumph over greedy whites. But it set off a scramble for the best farms among the country’s ruling elite, who often had little knowledge or interest in farming, and became a potent source of patronage for Mr. Mugabe. His own relatives, as well as generals, judges, ministers and members of Parliament, were beneficiaries, farmer and human rights groups say.

By this year, the number of white-owned commercial farms dwindled to about 300 from 4,500. Even many of the remaining ones came under assault in this year’s bloodstained election season."

LAT: land is problematic in Kenya as well

BBC: war games in Mogadishu

NYT: post-war, less secular Bosnia
"Before the war, fully covered women and men with long beards were almost unheard of. Today, they are common. Many here welcome the Muslim revival as a healthy assertion of identity in a multiethnic country where Muslims make up close to half the population. But others warn of a growing culture clash between conservative Islam and Bosnia’s avowed secularism in an already fragile state...

Bosnia’s Muslims have practiced a moderate Islam that stretches back to the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century. Sociologists and political leaders say the religious awakening is partly an outgrowth of the war and the American-brokered Dayton agreement that ended it, dividing the country into a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic.

'The Serbs committed genocide against us, raped our women, made us refugees in our own country,' said Mustafa Efendi Ceric, the grand mufti and main spiritual leader of Bosnia’s Muslim community.

'And now we have a tribal constitution that says we have to share political power and land with our killers,' he said. 'We Bosnian Muslims still feel besieged in the city of Sarajevo.'...

Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, meanwhile, cleave to their own religious and cultural identities. Church attendance is on the rise; in the Serb Republic, even ministries and police departments have their own Orthodox patron saints."

BBC: elections set for Monday in Bangladesh
"For Bangladesh's eunuchs, river gypsies and prisoners, Monday's general elections will be a unique experience. It is the first time any will be allowed to vote.
But for the vast majority of the country's 81 million voters, the elections will mark a return to Bangladeshi politics as normal, after two years of emergency rule when an army-backed caretaker government tried to rewrite how things are done here."

NYT: Moro Islamic Liberation Front attacks kill 9 in the Philippines
"In recent months, fighting between the separatists and the government has killed dozens from each side and displaced more than half a million Filipinos from their homes. Tens of thousands are in refugee camps in several provinces.

Many Filipinos, particularly Christian politicians and local officials, opposed the agreement with the insurgents that would have created an enlarged Muslim autonomous region. The issue went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the pact was unconstitutional.

Since the agreement was rescinded in August, the government has been trying to repair the situation, and last week it announced a new negotiating panel in the hope that talks with the rebels could be restarted. But rebel leaders say any negotiations will have to resume where they left off: with the territorial agreement the Supreme Court found unconstitutional."

BBC: the Communist Party of the Philippines celebrates its 40th anniversary
"The CPP's armed wing, the New Peoples' Army (NPA), has an estimated 5,000 members and has been fighting the government since 1969 in one of Asia's longest-running insurgencies."

BBC: recovering from natural and human disaster in Aceh, Indonesia


war on drugs
WP: kidnapping of negotiator in Mexico draws attention to a trend
"Independent organizations say Mexico has one of the world's highest kidnapping rates, competing with Colombia, where kidnap crews tied to anti-government guerrillas perfected the art. About 70 abductions are officially reported each month in Mexico, although even the federal attorney general says the true number is far higher. Independent groups say about 500 people a month are abducted in Mexico. Many kidnap crews have been found to include police officers."

WP: Miss Sinaloa busted
"Zúñiga was arrested with a group of seven suspected gunmen and cartel associates, who were riding in a couple of trucks that got stopped at a military checkpoint around midnight Monday just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara. The headline in El Universal almost translates itself: 'Detienen a Miss Sinaloa y 7 narcos.'..The television news flashed back and forth between a beaming Miss Sinaloa clasping a bouquet of red roses and accepting her crown, and images of cartel violence, which has left more than 5,300 people dead this year."

LAT: what's a girl to do?: beauty queens become the girlfriends of capos in places like Sinaloa "This is where narco folklore started, with songs and icons that pay homage to gangsters, and where children want to grow up to be traffickers. How Sinaloa confronts its own divided soul offers insight on where the drug war may be going for Mexico, where more than 5,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence this year...

Political pluralism in Mexico may have made room for more firebrands like [state legislator] Del Rincon, but it also fed a free-for-all among trafficking gangs, which began to splinter and compete.

'The state was no longer the referee, and so the traffickers had to referee among themselves,' Astorga said. And that was not going to be a well-mannered process...

That chaos might make some nostalgic for the old days, when a few Sinaloa dynasties dominated the drug trade, as they had for generations. Amado Carrillo Fuentes branched out from Sinaloa into Chihuahua in the 1980s and '90s and ran the Juarez drug network that made him one of the richest men on the planet, owner of a fleet of jets and vast real estate holdings the world over.

As the centralized system broke down, the Sinaloans met a new challenge: the Gulf cartel.

Based in the state of Tamaulipas, the Gulf gang was reputed to have ties with, and the protection of, Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. After the arrest of its leader, Osiel Cardenas, the Gulf cartel became the first of the drug mafias to introduce a paramilitary army.

The narcotics ring recruited from Mexican and Guatemalan army special forces and formed the Zetas, ruthless hit men. The Zetas left one of their earliest calling cards in the town of Uruapan in Michoacan state in September 2006, when they tossed five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall...

Buscaglia warns against the "Afghanistan-ization" of Mexico, in which rival kingpins gradually take over different states.

"If one criminal organization takes over one state, and another criminal organization takes another, then you have the ingredients of civil war," Buscaglia [an expert on organized crime who advises Mexico's Congress] said. Mexico is not there yet, Buscaglia said, but that breakdown looms as a real danger."

LAT: violence is astronomical in Ciudad Juarez, home of the Juarez cartel and a quarter of all homicides in Mexico in 2008
"The killings here are carried out in a style best described as baroque, with bodies hung headless from bridges, stuffed upside down in giant stew pots, lined up next to a school's playing field. Often, they are accompanied by taunting, handwritten messages, the hit man's equivalent of an end-zone dance."

LAT: money laundering avoids crackdown


modern slavery
WP: enslavement of girls for domestic work in Togo
"The number of girls like Adiza, who leave their communities or even their countries to clean other people's houses, has surged in recent years, according to labor and human rights specialists. The girls in the maid trade, some as young as 5, often go unpaid, and their work in private homes means the abuses they suffer are out of public view."
Ind: and India
"Far from being trained in the skills of acupuncture, for two years she was forced to work as an unpaid domestic help in the home of the "doctor" supposed to be teaching her. She toiled from 5am to midnight, seven days a week. She was abused and mistreated. Almost certainly she was brought to Delhi by a professional trafficker; what is beyond doubt is that once she got here she lived the life of slave."

Harper's: the truly astounding Index dedicated to Mr. Bush
featuring: "Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069...Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3...Estimated number of juveniles whom the United States has detained as enemy combatants since 2002: 2,500"

LAT: on that last point, when can a child be held accountable as a combatant?
" 'Under international law, adults who recruit children for combat are to be prosecuted for that offense. But the children caught up in combat are to be protected, not prosecuted,' said Diane Marie Amann, a UC Davis law professor who observed the latest hearing in Khadr's case for the National Institute of Military Justice...Now 22, Khadr has spent almost a third of his life in U.S. custody. He was raised in a militant Muslim family and was surrounded in his teen years by holy warriors. His lawyers describe him as confused, immature and emotionally damaged."

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Salon: best indie films of 2008
Salon: one that makes the list is Waltz of Bashir
"[The film] invents an ingenious new method of portraying the notoriously untrustworthy realm of memory, which is especially fraught when one is trying to dredge up memories one has worked hard to suppress for 25 years. By his own account, Folman remembered only bits and pieces from his wartime experience before making the film, and remembered them almost as a movie he had seen, or as things that had happened to someone else...

'I think there are a lot of ways to define war. One of them is definitely as a very bad acid trip, and I wanted the audience to go on this sort of trip.'...

...one of those events is the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982, when Christian militias allied with Israel massacred hundreds or perhaps thousands of Palestinian civilians in two refugee camps. It's such an explosive topic, with unresolved questions about how much the Israeli government and military knew, and how much responsibility they bore. Were you hesitant about addressing such a painful and loaded subject?

'No. I don't think the film brings any news with regard to what happened at Sabra and Shatila. There was a government committee that made an inquiry, and top generals were banned from office. Arik Sharon was banned from office as the minister of defense, even though he came back later as prime minister. I think everyone knows what happened in terms of, like, journalistic facts.

I was not interested in that at all, because I thought I had nothing new to say. I was interested in the common soldier, his point of view, and in the chronology of massacre. Meaning, when do you put all the facts you hear and see, and all the hints you get, into one frame that makes you realize there is a mass murder going on just around the corner? I was interested in that -- telling that story through the eyes of a simple soldier.' "

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WP: to take us out on a high note (or something), Dave Barry reviews notable events of 2008 in the US

in training [who's the most nationalist of them all]

NYT: the US military is training African troops in effort to control territory more effectively
"In Africa, a five-year, $500 million partnership between the State and Defense Departments includes Algeria, Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia, and Libya is on the verge of joining.

American efforts to fight terrorism in the region also include nonmilitary programs, like instruction for teachers and job training for young Muslim men who could be singled out by militants’ recruiting campaigns...

With only 10,000 people in its military and other security forces, and just two working helicopters and a few airplanes, Mali acknowledges how daunting a task it is to try to drive out the militants.

The biggest potential threat comes from as many as 200 fighters from an offshoot of Al Qaeda called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which uses the northern Malian desert as a staging area and support base, American and Malian officials say." 

Just the Facts: it's been training Latin American troops for years; the Center for Int'l Policy, Latin America Working Group, and the Washington Office on Latin America track it

WP: UN links Rwandan and Congo elites to rival militias

"The panel found evidence that "Rwandan authorities have been complicit in the recruitment of soldiers, including children, have facilitated the supply of military equipment, and have sent officers and units from the Rwandan Defence Forces" to Congo in support of Nkunda's forces.

Nkunda has presented himself as a defender of the region's ethnic Tutsis from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed Rwandan Hutu movement that played a central role in orchestrating Rwanda's 1994 genocide. A former officer in the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, which seized power in Rwanda in 1994, Nkunda has denied receiving Rwanda's military support. 

The Congolese government has pledged to disarm the FDLR and enable the return of its members to Rwanda, where many would probably by prosecuted for their role in the genocide. But the U.N. panel said it had obtained "strong evidence" showing that the Congolese army has "collaborated extensively" with the FDLR since 2007.

Congo stands accused of supplying the Rwandan militia with large shipments of ammunition in exchange for participating in joint military operations against Nkunda's forces, according to the panel."

Gdn: illicit gains fuel the conflict
"The FDLR, a Hutu force whose original members are linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, relies on the illegal mineral trade to raise most of its funds. It earns profits "possibly worth millions of dollars a year" through the trade of cassiterite and coltan, which are used in consumer electronics products and gold, and wolframite, which is used to make tungsten...

For Laurent Nkunda's Tutsi rebel group, the CNDP, land and cows provide key revenue and external financing. Land records showed that six local businessmen with close links to the CNDP had recently purchased ranches in areas under its control. The rebels are paid protection money.

Grazing restrictions imposed by the Rwandan government have caused many cattle to be moved across the border into Congo. Official agricultural documents show that, in just one small part of their territory, CNDP officers own more than 1,500 cows, worth up to £500,000.

Nkunda's rebels were also reported to have earned about £470,000 in the last year by controlling the Bunagana customs post on the Congo-Uganda border."

BBC: violence in disputed town in Sudan

BBC: election protester shot by police as voting begins in Kashmir

AP: riots reach 7th day in Greece, spread to other cities in Europe

"The violence has hammered Karamanlis' conservative government, which already faced vociferous opposition to economic and social reforms. Karamanlis, whose party has only a single seat majority in parliament, rejected calls for him to resign, saying today that Greece needed to focus instead on the global financial crisis...

Protesters who are occupying high schools and universities are demanding a reversal of public spending cuts, the resignation of the country's interior minister and the release of arrested riot suspects.

About 200 people have been arrested during the riots and 70 injured.

As unrest spilled over into other European cities, concerns have been raised that the clashes could be a trigger for opponents of globalization, disaffected youth and others outraged by the continent's economic turmoil and soaring unemployment...

Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy this week have smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks, while in France, cars were set ablaze outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux."

WP: specialists in violence gaining skills in Mexico
"In Mexico's chaotic drug war, attacks are no longer the work of desperate amateurs with bad aim. Increasingly, the killings are being carried out by professionals, often hooded and gloved, who trap their targets in coordinated ambushes, strike with overwhelming firepower, and then vanish into the afternoon rush hour -- just as they did in the Huerta killing.

The paid assassins, known as sicarios, are rarely apprehended. Mexican officials say the commando squads probably travel from state to state, across a country where the government and its security forces are drawing alarming conclusions about the scope and skill of an enemy supported by billions of dollars in drug profits." 

LAT: Central American migrants targeted by organized crime (to add to the list of border crossing perils)
"Tens of thousands of Central Americans traverse Mexico illegally each year on their way to the U.S. border. The trek, which can involve perilous journeys by boat and through isolated countryside and mean city streets, often ends unhappily.

Migrants have been maimed or killed hopping aboard freight trains. Others are robbed or raped. Often, they are arrested, and held in squalid cells or denied medical care. In hundreds of cases, Central American families never hear from their relatives again."

AP: Colombia extradites 'Don Diego' - last head of Norte de Valle cartel - to US

"Colombia's cocaine trade is now splintered among far smaller groups and much of the profits -- and competition-related violence -- have shifted to Mexican cartels.

At the time of his capture. Montoya headed a private army of several hundred gunmen. He had remained a fugitive for years by paying off military and police officials.

Montoya, 47, was indicted in two U.S. courts -- southern Florida and District of Columbia. He sent tons of cocaine to the United States and is responsible for at least 1,500 killing in a two-decade career, Colombian officials say."

NYT: sit-in successful in Chicago
The word came just after lunch on Dec. 2 in the cafeteria of Republic Windows and Doors. A company official told assembled workers that their plant on this city’s North Side, which had operated for more than four decades, would be closed in just three days...

There was a murmur of shock, then anger, in the drab room lined with snack machines. Some women cried. But a few of the factory’s union leaders had been anticipating this moment. Several weeks before, they had noticed that equipment had disappeared from the plant, and they began tracing it to a nearby rail yard.

And so, in secret, they had been discussing a bold but potentially dangerous plan: occupying the factory if it closed...

all the workers wanted, they said, was what they deserved under the law: 60 days of severance pay and earned vacation time.

And to their surprise, their drastic action worked. Late Wednesday, two major banks agreed to lend the company enough money to give the workers what they asked for...

In many ways, however, Republic was an unlikely setting for a worker uprising. Many workers interviewed, including some who had been at the plant for more than three decades, said they considered it a decent place to work. It was a mostly Hispanic work force, with some blacks. Some earned over $40,000 a year, including overtime, pulling them into the middle class and enabling them to set up 401(k) retirement accounts and buy modest homes." 

Slate: corruption competition: Illinois vs Louisiana

LAT: they should consider a pageant: nationalism and swimsuit competitions, outdoors, in the Russian winter? meet Miss Constitution.

"In between trilling traditional songs extolling the Moscow scenery and strutting in their bathing suits, the blond from Rostov-on-Don and three other nubile finalists paused to answer questions about authority, state obligations and the role of the elite.

"Who is the only source of authority in the Russian Federation?" the announcer asked.

"The multiethnic people of the Russian Federation!" one of the women fired back.

Organized by the government and the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, or Ours, the pageant was aimed at whipping up public enthusiasm for the constitution. The 15th anniversary of the post-Soviet constitution has come at a sensitive moment, as President Dmitry Medvedev, backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is pushing for the first-ever amendments."

WP: who put the politics in my cricket match?