unconventional priorities [tweet]

LAT: US Defense Sec Gates proposes shifting priorities in the Defense budget
Under his plan, 50% of the budget would be used to counter conventional threats, with about 10% going to go irregular warfare and 40% to weapons useful to both types of conflicts.
Slate: the key points
Foreign Affairs: Gates's rationale behind it
The strategy strives for balance in three areas: between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies, between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States' existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces, and between retaining those cultural traits that have made the U.S. armed forces successful and shedding those that hamper their ability to do what needs to be done.
Abu Muquwama: some people have strong opinions about it
Abu Muquwama: and some have wrong ones
James Inhofe should be ashamed of himself -- not for saying the new budget is "gutting" our military and "disarming America" but for traveling all the way to Afghanistan on the tax-payer's dime and failing to discover that the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets needed for Afghanistan are exactly the kinds of weapons systems and skillsets privileged in the budget. Don't use the war in Afghanistan a cheap prop, Senator, if you're not even going to study the nature of the war itself.
WP: Pentagon dedicating resources to studying the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 war in Lebanon
A big reason that the 34-day war is drawing such fevered attention is that it highlights a rift among military leaders: Some want to change the U.S. military so that it is better prepared for wars like the ones it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while others worry that such a shift would leave the United States vulnerable to a more conventional foe.

irregular threats
WP: bombings kill 34 across Baghdad, in worst violence in months
"Nobody knows," said Hussan Fadhil Aziz, 29, as he watched American soldiers cordon the area in Um al-Maalif. "We don't know who controls the area anymore."
He still ventured an explanation for the violence: Last week's bitter clashes between members of the Awakening, a U.S.-backed Sunni paramilitary force, and the mostly Shiite security forces had triggered a new wave of animosity.
NPR: conflict emerges among Anbar province's Sunni tribes
Stars & Stripes: doctor rejoins US Army after 37 years (via Tom Ricks)
WP: shoe-thrower/icon's sentence reduced to 1 year

AJE: apparent revenge attack against village in West Bank by Israeli settlers wounds several
The settlers from Bat Ayin, where a Palestinian killed a young settler last week, attacked cars and homes in the village of Safa on Wednesday.

The Israeli account is that the settlers, who were armed, came under attack when they entered Safa to pray, Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the West Bank, said.

The Palestinians were injured when the Israeli troops fired tear gas and live ammunition to break up the disturbance, medics said.

NYT: Sri Lankan military, Tamil Tigers ignore calls for a ceasefire, step up the fighting
The government said on its Defense Ministry Web site that it had killed more than 250 Tamil Tigers during weekend fighting and 420 more in foiling an ambush Monday morning. A pro-rebel site said that Sri Lankan shelling of the no-fire zone had killed at least 71 civilians and wounded 143 over the weekend...

The government said its troops had taken control of the Puthukkudiyiruppu area, the rebels’ last remaining stronghold at the edge of the safety zone. A general said Sunday that the rebels had been driven into the safety zone, a small strip of beachfront jungle in the country’s northeast.
BBC: interviews with civilians escaping the area
Gdn: Tamil supporters arrested in London protest

AJE: 2 bombings in Assam kill several
Police said they suspected both attacks to have been carried out by the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister from the ruling Congress party, was set to campaign in Assam on Tuesday...

The latest incidents occurred a day before the 30th anniversary of ULFA, which has previously carried out attacks around their anniversary and has been blamed for violence in Assam before.

ULFA is fighting for secession for the Assamese people in the northeast and is one of dozens of armed groups operating in the region.

WP: Somali pirates seize Dutch ship; US crew regains control

Reuters: Zetas training camp raided in Guatemala (via Tom Ricks)
Security forces were tipped off about suspicious activity at a ranch in Quiche, in the central highlands, by residents who said men in ski masks were asking villagers to join their ranks, police chief Marlene Blanco said at a news conference.

Two commanders of the Zetas, the armed wing of Mexico's Gulf cartel, and 37 recruits fled the camp before the police and army arrived, leaving behind 500 grenades, six rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Blanco said.

protests
NYT: Twitter, texting help mobilize post-election protests in Moldova
A crowd of more than 10,000 young Moldovans materialized seemingly out of nowhere on Tuesday to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership, ransacking government buildings and clashing with the police...

There was no sign that the authorities would cede to any of the protesters’ demands, and President Vladimir Voronin denounced the organizers as “fascists intoxicated with hatred.”

But Mihai Fusu, 48, a theater director who spent much of the day on the edges of the crowd, said he believed that a reservoir of political energy had found its way into public life.

“Moldova is like a sealed jar, and youth want more access to Europe,” he said. “Everyone knows that Moldova is the smallest, poorest and the most disgraceful country. And youth are talking about how they want freedom, Europe and a different life.”...

The immediate cause of the protests were parliamentary elections held on Sunday, in which Communists won 50 percent of the vote, enough to allow them to select a new president and amend the Constitution. Though the Communists were expected to win, their showing was stronger than expected, and opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging...

Behind the confrontation is a split in Moldova’s population. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought benefits to much of Eastern Europe, but in Moldova it ushered in economic decline and instability. In 2001, angry citizens backed the return of the Communists and their social programs...

The participants at that first gathering, on Monday, dispersed peacefully. But demonstrations on Tuesday spun out of control. News coverage showed protesters throwing stones at the windows of Parliament and the presidential palace, removing furniture and lighting it on fire. Riot police officers shielded their heads as demonstrators pelted them with stones. The police then used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Fires continued to burn late into the night.
Reuters: police take control of president's office
Ind: president: the Romanians are to blame
After riot police retook the smoking and wrecked buildings overnight and rounded up the protesters, Voronin said he was expelling Romania's ambassador and introducing visa regulations for Romanians wanting to enter Moldova.

"When the flag of Romania was raised on state buildings, the attempts of the opposition to carry out a coup became clear," the 67-year-old Communist leader said. He vowed "strict punishment" for the ringleaders.

Most of Moldova, an ex-Soviet republic, was part of Romania until World War Two and retains close cultural ties with its larger neighbour. Moldovans are split between those wanting reunification with Romania and those keen to stay independent.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said it was unacceptable that "the Communist power in Chisinau transfers responsibility for the Moldovan Republic's domestic problems on to Romania".

Voronin won strong backing from Russia which said the riots were aimed at undermining Moldova's sovereignty.

NYT: former prime minister's supporters protest in Bangkok
Wearing the red shirts of Thaksin loyalists, the demonstrators streamed into Bangkok throughout the day from his political strongholds in the rural north and northeast and by early evening the police estimated the crowds at 100,000.

The demonstrations were the biggest challenge to the four-month-old government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who took office after a pro-Thaksin government was dissolved when a court ruled that the governing party had engaged in electoral fraud.

BBC: police prevent protest in Egypt

trials
WP: Fujimori convicted of crimes against humanity; sentenced to 25 years
The verdict, delivered by a three-judge panel on a police base outside Lima where Fujimori has been held throughout the trial, marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited back to his home country, tried and convicted of human rights violations...

Many people in Peru admire Fujimori for largely defeating the Shining Path insurgency and ending a two-decade war that left about 70,000 people dead. But the tribunal found that Fujimori was guilty of creating and authorizing a military intelligence death squad that killed innocent people...

Fujimori's trial focused on two episodes of killings: a 1991 raid in which 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, were killed at a barbecue in Lima where the military intelligence unit was looking for Shining Path suspects. This raid, which became known as the Barrios Altos massacre, was followed by the 1992 abduction and killing of nine students and a teacher from La Cantuta University, also by the Colina Group...

One of the arguments Fujimori partisans sometimes offered was that the dead had been terrorists and that their deaths were, therefore, justified. But the tribunal wrote in the summary of the 711-page sentencing document that none of the 25 people killed in the two massacres had been members of the Shining Path.

AJE: former RUF leaders sentenced by Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal
The Freetown-based court handed down its highest ever sentence to Issa Sesay, the leader of the RUF, on Wednesday.

Sesay was sentenced to a total of 693 years, but the judges ordered the 16 sentences be served consecutively, meaning he will spend a maximum of 52 years in prison.

Alongside Sesay, Morris Kallon, a former RUF commander, received a total of 340 years in prison, but will spend a maximum of 39 years in jail under the judges' ruling.

Augustine Gbao, whom the court said was the RUF's ideology trainer, will spend 25 years in prison.

New Yorker: the British law professor who helped launch the investigation of Bush's 'torture team'
NPR: ICRC report found that CIA medics were involved in torture
The ICRC report was based on statements from 14 prisoners who were held in CIA prisons overseas before being sent to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006. The prisoners said that medical personnel were on hand when they were stripped naked, beaten, shackled for days in "stress positions" and subjected to the practice of controlled drowning, commonly known as waterboarding.

wronging rights: international justice round-up

the politics of history
AJE: commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide

LAT: no such acknowledgment of (what some call) the Armenian genocide during Obama's trip to Turkey
By refraining from calling the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 a genocide, Obama for the moment avoided offending a country whose help U.S. officials need in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. At the same time, he avoided infuriating his Armenian American supporters.

But Obama also contributed to the suspense surrounding a likely presidential proclamation expected in time for April 24, the annual Armenian remembrance day.

U.S. presidents usually issue statements deploring the mass killings without calling them genocide. Armenian American organizations are urging Obama to make good on his campaign pledge...

Turkish President Abdullah Gul emphasized that Turkey was willing to open its archives to historians investigating the subject and allow a joint commission to draw conclusions.

"It is not a political but an historic issue," he said. "That's why we should let historians discuss the matter." Obama administration officials said delicate talks are continuing between Turkey and Armenia over normalizing relations.

BBC: Bangladesh to investigate war crimes during its war of independence
The government says those suspected of collaborating with the Pakistani army in the killing and rape of thousands of civilians will be put on trial.

The party which fought for independence in 1971, the Awami League, has recently been returned to power.

The plan is opposed by one of the main opposition parties, Jamaat-e-Islami.

Its leaders are among those accused of alleged war crimes.

elections
Econ: 'election' campaigning in Algeria
Abdelaziz Bouteflika has conducted a vigorous campaign to be re-elected for a third term on April 9th. There is little doubt that he will emerge with a commanding majority in the first round, against largely token opposition from five rivals who have been widely derided as "rabbits" in the local press. However, the main focus of his campaign has been on emphasising the need for a respectable turnout to accord legitimacy to his new mandate....

Mr Bouteflika had also been constrained to lower his public profile owing to a resurgence of Islamist terrorist attacks during 2007 and 2008, including a suicide bombing in Batna, a town in the east of the country, which appeared to have been intended as an assassination attempt. His recent re-emergence at public meetings has come amid reports of setbacks suffered by the armed Islamist movement, which regrouped under the banner of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) at the end of 2006. Four former "emirs" (commanders) of the Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC; the precursor of AQIM) have issued a public appeal to Islamist fighters to lay down their arms and take advantage of Mr Bouteflika's reconciliation plan, which offers the chance of an amnesty from prosecution, and the security services reported at the end of March that they had killed several AQIM members in raids on the their hideouts in the mountainous region to the east of Algiers.
Gdn: Bouteflika promises referendum on amnesty for militants

WP: opposition presidential candidate in Iran calls for more freedoms
New Yorker: in-depth coverage of the campaign

governance and policing
LAT: South African tribe wins rights to natural resources revenue, provides public goods

New Haven Advocate: urban informants and police corruption
NYT: gangs of New York
It was mostly battles over turf. “They were like all these street gangs — ‘Don’t bother my territory, don’t get in my way’ — fighting for land or space,” he said. “In other words, ‘This is my territory, stay out of it,’ and so forth.”

From a law enforcement perspective, the motivation for joining a gang was apparent.

“They formed the gangs because they had close-knit living quarters in the tenements, and they formed gangs going to school, to protect themselves,” said Eric C. Schneider, who wrote “Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York.”...

“You have a transformation of gangs from social entities organized around turf or ethnicity or around projecting honor and learning what it is like to be a male to becoming, in the 1970s, more economic entities that are increasingly, over time, organized as means of entry into the underground economy,” Mr. Schneider said. “And kids then went from fighting with things like switchblades and car aerials to fighting with weapons that were supplied by returning veterans during the Vietnam era and eventually the surplus production of all our arms manufacturers.”

daily show: the turnover of power tastes like...

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Slate: faith no more: the scientific explanation of Biblical miracles

LAT: hip-hop in the Arab world
Iranians rhyme about stifled lives and street-level viciousness born of economic hardship. Lebanese rap subtly about sectarian blood feuds. Palestinians sling verses about misery in refugee camps and humiliation at Israeli checkpoints. Egyptians lament the fragmentation of the Arab world.

pay up [handsome boy ransoming school]

Salon: kidnapping on the rise in Afghanistan

"Kidnappers come either from the ranks of the Taliban, who target their ideological enemies, or from criminal gangs looking for victims with deep pockets or, sometimes, children to sell into prostitution or use as labor. The lines blur when criminal gangs sell their hostages to the Taliban, Kabul's police chief said in late November. The Taliban, who are closing in on the capital, already control much of southern Afghanistan, creating a sort of free zone to hold kidnap victims with impunity."

BBC: US employing COIN strategy, but it's slow going

"In Khost province, the US military insists it has hit upon a counter-insurgency model that is working. It has fanned out across the province, creating what it calls district centres, in effect, small military bases.

The idea is that you create a mesh - making it difficult for the insurgents to travel from area to area.

Rolling patrols are meant to reassure the local population that there is security and a permanent US presence.

Small reconstruction teams build projects that aid rural communities such as schools and health clinics. New roads are also being built.

These efforts are intended to pull the locals away from the insurgency and into the embrace of the Afghan government with a helping hand from Uncle Sam.

While it sounds entirely workable on paper, on ground, the difficulties of the process are laid bare.

Frequently patrols stop at local markets where an American officer wanders the streets speaking to shopkeepers who look decidedly uncomfortable with all the attention.

The officers' roll call of questions often has a just-out-of-Westpoint feel to it.

How are you? How's business? Have there being any attacks? Followed by the request: if you have any information please report it to the district centre. But not many Afghans ever do.

Many of them are fearful of insurgent reprisals if they are seen to be openly associating or passing on information to the US forces."
BBC: poppy farmers seeking alternative development

NYT: Hamas factions signaling opposite takes on whether truce will end Friday

LAT: recently freed Christian warlord in Lebanon apologizes for 'past mistakes'

"The war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, set the standard for a new kind of lawless, media-saturated civil conflict now common in desperate corners of the world. It left an estimated 100,000 people dead and nearly a million displaced. Palestinians, Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Christians and their foreign backers were pitted against one another, and sometimes against their own kind.

Geagea's story illustrates the complexity of coming to terms with that dark past.

He was a year away from completing medical school at the American University of Beirut when he was sucked into the conflict's vortex as a member of a right-wing Christian militia eventually called the Lebanese Forces. He gained a reputation for no-holds-barred killing, including violence against rival Christians.

In 1990, Syrian troops occupied the country, ending a conflict already petering out. There would be no truth commission to examine who did what during the conflict.

All parties agreed to sweep the war's dirty business under the rug. The government offered amnesty to all fighters except those accused of killing foreign diplomats, high-ranking officials and religious leaders.

Geagea immediately alienated other Christian leaders and Syrian-backed authorities, who charged him with bombing a church and assassinating several officials during the war. After a trial that independent observers said was seriously flawed, he was thrown into prison in 1994, in the third basement level, with "no fresh air, no sun, no winter, no summer . . . nothing," he said."

BBC: LRA bases attacked in Congo; calls off peace process

Econ: the ICC and/or justice in Sudan, plus post-civil war trials in Lebanon, Cambodia, Uganda, and CAR 

"...Sudan’s most prominent opposition politician, Sadiq al-Mahdi, thinks he has an answer: what he calls a “third way” between hauling Mr Bashir to The Hague and doing nothing about crimes in Darfur. He suggests setting up an independent “hybrid” court for Darfur, which would have both Sudanese judges and international ones and sit in Sudan."

BBC: meanwhile, ongoing clashes between ethnic groups in Darfur 
"Unamid says 150 people died as hundreds of members of the Fallata and Salamat ethnic groups attacked the Habaniya in South Darfur.

About 100 more died in clashes between two groups from the Gimir group.

These clashes do not appear to be directly linked to the Darfur conflict between Arabs and black Africans.

But UN officials say ethnic relations have not been helped by the Darfur conflict, which started in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government, accusing Khartoum of neglecting the western region.

This has seen an increased flow of weapons to the region."
BBC: troops withdraw from Abyei after fighting with police

Econ: getting by in Sierra Leone

"Demobilisation has gone fairly well. Sierra Leone is a less violent place than it has been for a long time; by and large, the rule of law prevails. A special court set up to try the okadas’ former commanders, directly responsible for ordering much of the mayhem, is winding down; some are going to jail. Moreover, the country has had two peaceful elections in a region not famed for democracy. Yet in many ways, despite the relative peace, Sierra Leone’s problems remain as intractable as ever, leaving those responsible for keeping the country on life-support wondering what to do next...

Those who are trying to strengthen the country’s institutions and economy know they are in a race against time. The region’s warlords are being replaced by drug lords, many from Colombia. Circling like vultures around weak states, they are starting to use Sierra Leone as a base to ship drugs on to Europe and beyond, with all the corruption and violence that will come with it. A country like Guinea-Bissau, just up the coast, has already fallen prey; it is now almost a 'narco-state.'"

UN dispatch: counter-piracy (via Chris Blattman)

"There's a pirates nest, I guess; where are they? If you can separate them from their ports or wherever they hide out, then obviously you get them before they even come out. The difficulty you have there is what you have with most insurgent-type activities: sorting out the good from the bad."
NYT: undaunted at sea
"More than a dozen warships from Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Britain, Malaysia and the United States have joined the hunt.

And yet, in the past two months alone, the pirates have attacked more than 30 vessels, eluding the naval patrols, going farther out to sea and seeking bigger, more lucrative game, including an American cruise ship and a 1,000-foot Saudi oil tanker.

The pirates are recalibrating their tactics, attacking ships in beelike swarms of 20 to 30 skiffs, and threatening to choke off one of the busiest shipping arteries in the world, at the mouth of the Red Sea."

WP: Somali PM fired by president
"Hours later, as the government veered toward collapse, Islamist insurgents held a brazen news conference in the capital and vowed never to negotiate with the leadership."

BBC: ...who is then sanctioned by Kenya

BBC: Tuaregs kidnap UN envoy to Niger
"The Tuaregs have traditionally been a nomadic people roaming across the Sahara Desert but some took up arms, saying the Niger government is not doing enough to improve their lives.

The FFR [Front des Forces de Redressement] broke away from the better known Tuareg MNJ rebels who are fighting for greater autonomy and a larger share of northern Niger's vast mineral wealth.

The MNJ has had frequent clashes with the country's army and has also kidnapped foreigners working in the uranium mines."

LAT: 22 activists disappeared in Zimbabwe over last 6 weeks

LAT: it's a tactic that allows Mugabe hangs on

"To help understand his staying power, one need only rewind to the 1980s and the massacres of his early years in power, when he was a conquering hero who had thrown out the white minority regime of Ian Smith.

The name of the murderous operation, Gukurahundi, was as lyrical as a haiku: the wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains.

Mugabe's political opponents were the chaff. The spring rains were supposed to signify the golden era of a one-party state (or rather, a one-man state).

Western leaders and news media ignored the massacres of the "dissidents" by the army's crack Five Brigade in Matabeleland province in southern Zimbabwe. Some estimates put the dead at 20,000.

Mugabe drew his most important lesson from the West's blase reaction, analysts believe: that there's a level of "acceptable" violence that will escape international condemnation, but still destroy any threat to his power."

WP: dissident ANC members establish new political party in South Africa

"The new party, the Congress of the People, has been accused of offering little more than criticism and is not expected to topple the ANC in general elections next year. But the ANC is clearly worried about an exodus of members to the new party, and whether that might signal there is enough discontent among voters to seriously cut into its large parliamentary majority."  

NYT: signs of renewed conflict along ethnic lines in Bosnia

"The power-sharing agreement between former foes has always been tense. Now, however, the uneasy peace has been complicated by Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, which many here worry could prompt the Serbian Republic to follow suit, tipping the region into a conflict that could fast turn deadly...

But the decentralized political system that Dayton engineered has entrenched rather than healed ethnic divisions. Even in communities where Serbs, Muslims and Croats live side by side, some opt to send their children to the same schools, but in different shifts."

AP: mass arrests at protest outside Kremlin

"The Other Russia movement organized the protest, in defiance of a ban, to draw attention to Russia's economic troubles and to protest Kremlin plans to extend the presidential term from four years to six. Critics say the constitutional change is part of a retreat from democracy and is aimed at strengthening the grip of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his allies.

News broadcasts on Russia's main television networks made no mention of the Moscow crackdown or of protests in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok.

Kasparov and other prominent liberals have just launched a new anti-Kremlin movement called Solidarity in a bid to unite Russia's liberal forces and encourage a popular revolution similar to those in Ukraine and Georgia."
BBC: Abkhazia wants in

BBC: Turkmenistan holds first parliamentary elections since adoption of new constitution

Ind: Turkish intellectuals issue apology to Armenians
"Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed during the collapse of the Ottoman empire, but insists they were victims of civil strife and that Muslim Turks also died. Most Western historians agree that the ethnic cleansing that killed roughly 700,000 Armenians amounted to genocide...

The public apology coincides with a diplomatic rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, whose shared border has been closed since the Nagorny-Karabakh war in 1993 and who have been locked in almost 100 years of hostility. President Abdullah Gul made history in September when he became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia, and the two countries have been talking about restoring full diplomatic relations."

Obs: comparing ETA and Islamic terrorist groups 
"Personal networks are hugely important in recruiting. Islamic militant cells, especially in Europe, have often used outdoor adventure activities to bring otherwise disparate individuals together. As one British security source said last year: 'That moment when someone takes someone else's rucksack because they are exhausted is worth a decade of indoctrination in terms of preparing a group for violent action.'"

Ind: Italy arrests 100 alleged mafia associates  

BBC: Colombian NGO calls gov't data 'unbelievable'
"About 114,000 members of the warring factions were said to have been dealt with by the army in the last six years.

However, other estimates say there are only 30,000 in the warring factions.

Even allowing for recruiting to replenish depleted ranks, the government figures suggest that eight members of the warring factions are killed every single day in Colombia, something not substantiated by any other sources." 

BBC: museum dedicated to Pinochet opens in Santiago

WP: new leader for Thailand - 3rd in four months

WP: Secret Service slow to respond to shoe

BBC: journalist beaten, still in custody; supporters rally for 2nd day

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wronging rights: charity porn / pornographic charity (via Chris Blattman)

lessons in foreign policy [we hope she's reading]

WP: Somali pirates hold 100 people hostage in Gulf of Aden
"The attacks are being carried out by increasingly well-coordinated Somali gangs armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, maritime officials said. Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, and remains one of the world's most violent and lawless countries."

WP: Egyptian forces kill refugees and migrants on the Sinai border
"Since the first recorded border killing in the summer of 2007, when Egyptian authorities announced a live-fire policy on the Sinai border, Egyptian security forces have shot dead at least 28 migrants as they left Egypt for Israel, the rights group Amnesty International said Thursday. Of those, the group said, 23 have been killed since January."

Gdn: peace-keeping forces in Darfur lacking equipment, adequate troops
"Unamid formally took over peacekeeping responsibilities at the beginning of this year, but only 10,000 of the agreed 26,000 troops and police have so far arrived in Sudan.

"Most people expect us to carry out the primary role of our mandate - protection of civilians, helping the humanitarian agencies. But right now that is not our priority, because for us to be able to do that we need the troops, we need the equipment ... so we are struggling," the Nigerian general said. "Now we have even turned some of our own personnel into drivers to bring in the equipment."

BBC: tax-paying pride in Freetown ghetto
"The chains that dangle around the necks of the handful of local loiterers are not the customary gangsta dog tags, but plastic holders displaying nothing less than tax receipts.

For the first time in generations, people have been flocking to pay their local council tax of 5,000 leones (about $1.5, 90 UK pence) in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown."

BBC: Kenyan IDP camp closure delayed
10,000 have lived there since December displacements related to electoral violence

BBC: calls to prevent outbreak of new war in the Kivus, DRC

Gdn: power-sharing agreement reached in Zimbabwe: MDC will control police, Mugabe retains military
Gdn: profiles of Mugabe and Tsvangirai

Gdn: interactive maps are cool (here's one of Africa)

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WP: Chavez boots the US Ambassador from Venezuela, recalls Ambassador from DC, accepts Russian bombers
"Go to hell, Yankees," he said as the crowd hollered in support."

NYT: South Ossetian leader calls for independence, not to join Russian Federation

LAT: alliance in Lebanon unstable

LAT: US-backed Sunni groups targeted by Iraqi government

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Slate: the scandalous report on the corrupt Interior Dept. SV wonders why Dems (other than Bill Nelson) aren't jumping on this

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Slate: SV has resisted joining the Facebook group 'I have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.' but we're only being polite.

cat and mouse [destruction in their wake]

NYT: US to make enormous prison in Bagram, Afghanistan more permanent, less "spartan"; unlikely to be "more legal"
you have to wait til the last three paragraphs to learn:
"The population at Bagram began to swell after administration officials halted the flow of prisoners to Guantánamo in September 2004, a cutoff that largely remains in effect. At the same time, the population of detainees at Bagram also began to rise with the resurgence of the Taliban.
Military personnel who know both Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site, 40 miles north of Kabul, as far more spartan. Bagram prisoners have fewer privileges, less ability to contest their detention and no access to lawyers.
Some detainees have been held without charge for more than five years, officials said. As of April, about 10 juveniles were being held at Bagram, according to a recent American report to a United Nations committee."
BBC: meanwhile, aid destined for civilians doesn't arrive

WP: Iraqi refugees not receiving enough either
LAT: Iraqi government offers amnesty to militia members in Mosul
"'Gunmen who carried weapons against government forces but were not involved in crimes against civilians shall be granted amnesty and also the opportunity to participate in building the new Iraq,' the statement said." Maliki says "monetary compensation" will be offered to weapons turned in.
Ind: camera phones fuel honor killings in Iraq; women's status in Iraq worse than before occupation
"In 2007, at least 350 women, double the figure for the previous year, suffered violence as a result of mobile phone "evidence", according to Amanj Khalil of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, citing figures compiled by women's organisations and the police directorate in Sulaymaniyah.The true figure is probably much higher...The position of women in Iraqi society has deteriorated dramatically since the start of the occupation. Despite the horrific number of honour killings, their status may be improving only in Kurdistan, where the government is secular, in contrast to Baghdad where the religious parties hold power. The Kurdish police and courts are also more sympathetic than elsewhere in Iraq to women whose lives have been threatened. There are no shelters for women in Baghdad or Basra...A woman can only get a new passport if she is accompanied by a male relative. One woman, whose father was too ill to attend the passport office, had to take her 14-year-old brother with her to vouch for her before officials would give her a new passport. Many women escape from miserable marriages, often arranged by their families, not by flight but by suicide. In 2007, some 600 women and girls in Kurdistan killed themselves..."

WP: US "reward for justice" not working
WP: the back story, on scoring an interview with a bounty-bound Yemeni, is more interesting

LAT: quake response may signal important changes in China
or not: "A government rooted in authoritarianism and with the world's largest army may be in a better position to marshal relief resources and manpower than a decentralized democracy."

BBC: Burma continues to obstruct aid efforts; France's UN envoy says it could lead to crime against humanity

NYT: the horn of Africa "perfect storm" of hunger and violence

BBC: Tsvangirai delays return because of assassination plot; US Ambassador says violence "out of control"

BBC: former RUF leader Sesay on trial in Sierra Leone

BBC: Dominican president wins 3rd term

BBC: reverse-colonial influence: Portuguese parliament approves bill conforming language to Brazilian standards

BBC: cat chases mouse, causes 72-hour blackout in Albania [this really happened]

Slate: Bushism of the day [he really said that]
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."—Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

exit, voice and loyalty

NYT: "Mugabe's Tsunami": an estimated 1,000 are fleeing Zimbabwe for South Africa each day
the article does not include much information on the violence that is prompting the displacement, other than from one woman: "She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters."
Gdn: more details in this report
"...party militias and the army established torture camps in several provinces, where MDC members were taken to extract the names of opposition activists and deter the opposition from campaigning before what is expected to be a run-off between Mugabe and the MDC's candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai...The targeted areas include Murewa in Mashonaland East, where two of the city's three constituencies are held by Zanu-PF, one of them by Parirenyatwa. The MDC won the third constituency, Murewa West."
Gdn: meanwhile, the recount is slow
"The counting is paint-dryingly slow. The presiding officer holds each vote up for scrutiny by party agents. There are protracted arguments about individual papers – does a cross made with red ink mean that a ballot is spoiled? And once the presidential votes have been counted, the process is repeated for the senate, parliamentary and local council elections. Then the presiding officer, who looks like he wants to vomit up his fear, painstakingly goes through the electoral roll, checking that the number of names ticked off equals the number of votes cast. It's 1pm before the first box is finished. We've been at it for five hours...But despite the flaws in this weary process, there's no sign yet that anybody has stuffed any of the boxes."

Gdn: fleeing Somalia to Yemen fraught with danger
"From January to early April about 14,500 migrants - mainly Somalis - crossed the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. That represents more than half the number of people that made the journey in 2007, and the main crossing season later in the year still lies ahead.The high death toll is little deterrent. UN figures show that about 1,500 people died or disappeared trying to reach Yemen from Somalia last year, one for every 20 that attempted the journey." Yemen offers automatic asylum.
BBC: 70 reported killed in Mogadishu over the weekend, including massacre of clerics in a mosque
Gdn: Somali pirates strike again, hijack Spanish fishing crew

BBC: attempting election reform in Nigeria
"[Video] footage [from gubernatorial elections last year] shot in the northern state of Katsina, the president's home state, shows youths from a village who have not been able to vote, stopping an Inec minibus transporting ballot boxes and tearing them open, because they believe they have been stuffed with votes for the ruling People's Democratic Party."

BBC: protesting proposed reforms in Cameroon

BBC: first-hand accounts of the food shortage in Sierra Leone

WP: clashes in Sadr city between militia, apparently Mahdi Army, and US troops

USAT: NATO troop commitments for Afghanistan remain unrealized

BBC: the British in Waziristan, 90 years ago
book by British officer stationed there in 1919, "Walk Warily in Waziristan," depicts similar challenges facing foreign forces today

Ind: Human Rights Watch reports on Saudi women, who still "legally belong to" men
"The House of Saud, in alliance with an extremist religious establishment which enforces the most restrictive interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, has created a legal system that treats women as minors unable to exercise authority over even trivial daily matters...Too often, sex segregation results in an "apartheid" system in which facilities for women are either grossly inferior or non-existent. Women were denied the right to vote in the kingdom's first municipal elections because there were no separate voting booths for them."

Gdn: Carter says Hamas will recognize Israel
(didn't spot this story in any US paper)

Gdn: Guantánamo records "mysteriously lost"

BBC: Jemaah Islamiah militants jailed in Indonesia

WP: drug violence along the US-Mexico border
"Puerto Palomas [near the New Mexico border] became strategically important because Ciudad Juarez, the traditional drug-trafficking hub, has been inundated with Mexican army troops sent to contain a war between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels blamed for more than 200 deaths this year. The cartels probably knew that the Mexican military was coming months before its arrival in late March and saw Puerto Palomas as an acceptable alternative...On March 17, several Puerto Palomas police officers quit after being threatened by drug traffickers. García said the officers believed that they were targeted because of an inaccurate Mexican newspaper article that implied they would confront drug gangs. Within several hours, the entire police force had resigned, rendering the town lawless. Even Pérez Ortega, the stern police chief, left to seek asylum [in the US]."

LAT: Ex-bishop wins election, ends one-party rule in Paraguay