outsourcing justice [slippery little bugger]

BBC: ICC issues warrant for Bashir's arrest; genocide charges dropped
Gdn: Bashir tells ICC to eat its warrant
He is accused of "masterminding and implementing" a counterinsurgency campaign designed to destroy the Fur, Marsalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, which were deemed supportive of a rebel uprising in Darfur in February 2003.

According to the ICC prosecution documents, Bashir's strategy caused 35,000 violent deaths.

But genocide is extremely difficult to prove, and even among human rights experts there is no consensus that it occurred in Darfur. Some analysts believe that the ICC will only push forward with the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Within Sudan, Bashir's indictment has increased the pressure on his ruling National Congress party, which faces an election this year. Senior ministers have warned that the ICC's action could trigger a rise in Islamic extremism, and attacks on foreigners in the country.
LAT: Salva Kiir, former SPLM leader, weighs in
[Q:] You just issued a statement that was very supportive of Bashir, calling him "Brother Bashir" and warning the international community against provoking chaos in Sudan. Does that mean you think the ICC case against Bashir is a mistake?

[A:] It's not a mistake. I didn't say it was a mistake. It's something that is looking for justice. The ICC is not indicting the whole country. It's looking for particular people that are accused of crimes against humanity and human rights violations. These include the president. The issue is that the president is still in office. The ICC has never done this to any president before. Why is it being done for the first time to the president of Sudan? That's the question that everyone is asking...

[Q:] The ICC case puts the SPLM in a tricky spot. Are you worried that if Bashir's government collapses, the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] could be at risk? At best, the ICC case will likely distract the government from implementing the final provisions of the peace deal.

[A:] It puts us in a very difficult situation as a country to have an indicted president who is not flexible in his movement. But we have said let us maintain the situation so that there are no clashes that will throw the whole country into chaos. The situation in Darfur can still be handled. And in southern Sudan, there is the CPA. Unless somebody is interested in taking people back to war, there is no connection between the ICC and peace in the south.

[Q:] Are you preparing militarily for possible violence?

[A:] I'm a soldier. I'm prepared.
BBC: Sudanese army deserter speaks out
Khalid, who is of black African origin, says he was forcibly recruited into President Omar al-Bashir's Sudanese army in late 2002.

He and several other men where he lived were taken to the headquarters of his regiment which was based near the north-western Darfur town of Fasher.

He admits to having taken part in seven different attacks on Darfur villages with the help of Janjaweed militia.

The first one was in the Korma area in December 2002 several months before the conflict in Darfur officially began.

He claims to have been extremely reluctant to carry out the savage orders he was given.

"When they asked me to rape the girl, I went and stood in front of her," he said.

"Tears came into my eyes. They said: 'You have to rape her. If you don't we will beat you.' I hesitated and they hit me with the butt of a rifle...

Before long, he said, he was ordered to join other brutal raids on Darfur villages.

I asked him what he was told to do with unarmed civilians who did not resist in any way.

"They told us, don't leave anybody, just kill everybody," he said.

"Even the children, if left behind in the huts, we had to kill them," he said. "People would cry and run from their huts.

"Many couldn't take all their children. If they had more than two they had to leave them behind. If you saw them you had to shoot and kill."

...

Khalid insists that he always fired over the heads of civilians and didn't kill anyone himself despite the orders he was given.

He says he could do this without his fellow soldiers noticing but he admits that there was no way he could avoid carrying out orders to torch peoples homes.

"I did take part," he admitted. "They forced me. We had no choice. If you didn't they would kill you."

Did anyone refuse?

"Two of my colleagues refused and they were shot dead."

I asked him how the Sudanese officers had justified killing unarmed civilians in cold blood. How they had explained the need to slaughter women, babies and children?

He replied: "They said they are the ones who take food and water to the rebels.

"They said that if we kill these people and burn their villages then the rebels will not have any supplies so they'll have to move out to the neighbouring country."
CSM: armed groups still competing for control of villages, and Darfuris continue to be displaced
[Mr. Hari] is one of 50,000 people displaced from the town of Muhajiriya in South Darfur after a rebel advance followed up by government and janjaweed reprisals in February.

More than 23,000 have trudged and trucked their way to the capital of North Darfur, filling already overstretched aid camps to the breaking point.

Thousands more have been arriving in Otash, on the outskirts of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur...

The town of Muhajiriya had been under the control of guerrillas loyal to Minni Minnawi, the only rebel leader to sign a 2006 peace deal with the government. However, a spate of defections and fighting saw the town switch to another rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement in January amid weeks of deadly clashes.

That was the signal for the government forces to retake the town, which they did with the help of air support.

AJE: Karadzic, on trial in the Hague, refuses to enter plea
Last week, judges at The Hague tribunal in the Netherlands approved the prosecution's third amended indictment against Karadzic, which lists two genocide charges and nine of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
LAT: Stanisic, Milosevic's intelligence chief on trial at ICTY, was a CIA informant
For eight years, Stanisic was the CIA's main man in Belgrade. During secret meetings in boats and safe houses along the Sava River, he shared details on the inner workings of the Milosevic regime. He provided information on the locations of NATO hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for grave sites and helped the agency set up a network of secret bases in Bosnia.

At the same time, Stanisic was setting up death squads for Milosevic that carried out a genocidal campaign, according to prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which was established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993 to try those responsible for serious human rights violations in the Balkan wars.

Now facing a trial at The Hague that could send him to prison for life, Stanisic has called in a marker with his American allies. In an exceedingly rare move, the CIA has submitted a classified document to the court that lists Stanisic's contributions and attests to his helpful role. The document remains sealed, but its contents were described by sources to The Times.

The CIA's Lofgren, now retired, said the agency drafted the document to show "that this allegedly evil person did a whole lot of good." Lofgren, however, doesn't claim to disprove the allegations against Stanisic...

The chief prosecutor, Dermot Groome, says that Stanisic's actions to help the CIA and counter Milosevic only underscore the power he had. In his opening argument, Groome said that the "ability to save lives is tragically the very same authority and the very same ability that [Stanisic] used . . . to take lives."...

At the time, CIA Director John M. Deutch was trying to clean up the agency's image by cracking down on contacts with human rights violators. Years later, the "Deutch rules" were cited as a reason the agency hadn't done better penetrating groups such as Al Qaeda.

But Deutch had no problems with Stanisic. He invited the Serbian to CIA headquarters in 1996, and an itinerary of the visit indicates that Stanisic got a warm welcome.

The Serbian spy chief was taken to hear jazz at the Blues Alley club in Georgetown and driven to Maryland's eastern shore for a bird hunt. Deutch even presented Stanisic with a 1937 Parker shotgun, a classic weapon admired by collectors.

Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, declined to comment.
LAT: chronology of Stanisic's alleged activities
March 1992 to 1995: Special [paramilitary] units [created by Stanisic] allegedly "committed crimes in and attacked and took control of towns and villages in the municipalities of Bijeljina, Bosanski Samac, Doboj, Sanski Most, Zvornik." Simultaneously, Stanisic cooperates with CIA, providing information on Milosevic regime and conveying communications from the U.S. to his boss.

CSM: in Kosovo, rebel leader turned politician
Limaj's own story began when he was a student leader in the early 1990s. The Berlin Wall had fallen, but Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic had revoked Kosovo's special status in Yugoslavia. The Albanian, 90 percent of the population, lived a second-class existence under brutal police-state repression – checkpoints, arbitrary killing, torture – as Serbs revived a deeply felt national myth of Kosovo as their spiritual heartland, something disallowed under Yugoslavia's longtime leader, Marshal Tito...

For a decade, Limaj and Kosovo waited as the political and spiritual leader of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, reacted to Serbian tactics with a Gandhian strategy of patience and nonviolence.

A tipping point for Kosovars arrived with the US-led Dayton peace deal on Bosnia.

"After Dayton, all our hopes and dreams fell," Limaj says. "That Milosevic could kill with impunity for years, then present himself as a man of peace ... this was totally depressing for us. There was no hope. We saw what he was doing here. It's true, if a normal person has choices, he would never choose war. But it was either leave Kosovo, or organize ourselves to resist."...

The former commander plays down his KLA hero status. But Limaj was the first to switch KLA tactics – characterized by guerrilla skirmishes in villages and hiding in the hills – by confronting Serb forces in the open. His units eventually held two main highways and sheltered 85,000 people, a hospital, and a radio station...

Limaj's time at The Hague remains a sensitive one. He was arrested for crimes while serving as KLA commander of the Llapushnik region. He denied guilt, but agreed to face charges. "As much as I didn't agree with the accusation, I felt it was our responsibility to respond," Limaj says. "So I said I would go to The Hague, and was sure justice would prevail."...

What Limaj took from Obama's "Audacity of Hope" was the new president's community organizing in Chicago. "He went house to house to understand the people, their hopes and dreams, so by the time he ran for president could speak to everybody."

That will be a task in Kosovo, still divided between Albanian and Serb. "Kosovo's intentions are humane… we don't want to harm or do damage to others… but allow everyone live together in a new state."

Ind: Guinea-Bissau president assassinated by soldiers
The country's 1.6 million people have endured years of instability since independence in 1974. This has been fuelled in recent years by the country's emergence as a key transit point in the smuggling of Latin American cocaine to Europe.

Vieira was a former military ruler who was ousted after a civil war in the 1990s and returned to power in a 2005 election.

He had been at odds with armed forces chief of staff General Batista Tagme Na Wai, who was killed in an attack on Sunday evening that also destroyed part of the military headquarters.

A security source said soldiers from Na Wai's Balante ethnic group led the attack on Vieira, who is from the smaller Papel community, and looted his home afterwards...

In January, the armed forces command said militiamen hired to protect Vieira had shot at Na Wai. The militia denied the shooting had been an assassination attempt but the miltiary nevertheless ordered the militia be disbanded.

The 400-strong force had been recruited as Vieira's personal bodyguard by the Interior Ministry after the president's house was targeted by heavy weapons late last year.

A policeman said soldiers loyal to Na Wai had freed people accused of that attack ahead of the president's death today.

According to the constitution, if the president dies, the speaker of parliament runs the country until new elections.

Following a bloody independence war, Guinea-Bissau's military has long been involved in politics. The military issued a statement on Monday saying that the situation was under control but it would respect democratic institutions.
AP: speaker of parliament now sworn in
CSM: some suspect link to drug trafficking
In recent years, Colombian drug cartels have begun flying small planes across the Atlantic, landing on tiny islands dotting the Guinean coastline. Since Guinea-Bissau has no navy to patrol its waters, the cartels were free to unload tons of cocaine destined for Europe. The drugs were then distributed to impoverished African migrants, who would carry the drugs north by boat to the shores of France, Italy, and Spain.

Government corruption, fed by poor government salaries at the bottom and uncertain political leadership at the top, means that Guinea Bissau has few tools to stop the drug trafficking...

"This recent set of killings can be explained [as] the action of the drug traffickers, who would not allow anything to get in the way or to obstruct their links with Europe," says David Zounmenou, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane, formerly known as Pretoria.

NYT: calm in the Congo?
wronging rights: maybe, but somehow doesn't seem sustainable

Econ: the Economist plays the optimist about Somalia (in the headline at least)
The battleground is Somalia’s centre and south, which has water and food. Everywhere the complex mix of clans and sub-clans is combustible. By contrast, the arid north, peopled largely by nomadic camel-herders, is fairly peaceful. Puntland, in the north-east, is semi-autonomous, but most of its people want to be part of a federal Somalia. It hosts some of the pirates, as well as people-traffickers, kidnappers and a fair number of jihadists. But its government has disarmed freewheeling militias and more or less keeps order.

The recently ousted previous Somali president, Abdullahi Yusuf, a Puntland warlord, has taken several hundred gunmen back north from Mogadishu and now seems more interested in his businesses, mainly in the town of Bossaso. Somaliland, a former British territory, has been fairly stable since it declared independence in 1991. If coming elections there go well, with voters using biometric identity cards, it may slowly start to win recognition from some African countries and others farther afield. It is not clear what Mr Ahmed thinks about independence for Somaliland. But nationalists and jihadists are violently against it, as is Puntland, which disputes a border zone with it.

What is clear is that no one controls the country, neither the government, nor the Shabab. But, certainly until Mr Ahmed’s arrival, the Shabab have been in the ascendant. Its system of 20 to 30 men per cell, each one locking into larger command structures when they take a town, is hard to crack.
GQ: pirates still on patrol
Boosaaso is perfectly positioned near the mouth of the Red Sea, at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia, to supply this lawless corner of the world with all its contraband needs: guns, drugs, expired baby formula, counterfeit electronics, counterfeit dollars, even smuggled human beings. If it’s illegal and it makes money, then someone is trafficking in it here. When we arrived, the center of town was packed with people—money changers sitting sphinxlike in front of bricks of Somali shillings, waiting to convert pirate dollars into the filthy local notes; old men in skullcaps chewing camel steaks at dingy, whitewashed restaurants; boys hawking slices of watermelon from roadside carts. Several late-model Land Cruisers, trucks that cost at least $50,000, prowled the deeply rutted roads. As we moved through town, our driver jutted his finger toward a large white house with a steel gate. “C.I.A.,” he said. He may have been right. It was an open secret that the American government was working with notorious figures in northern Somalia to track Islamist terrorists. Not far from the center of town was a neighborhood called New Boosaaso, where just beyond a cluster of refugee huts made from bits of cloth and cardboard rose a colony of palatial new homes with huge walls surrounding them and satellite dishes on their roofs. Spectral figures tramped through the dust on the way to their hovels, and right next to them were some of the nicest houses I had seen anywhere in Somalia, where so many buildings have been reduced to piles of machine-gun-chewed bricks. I suspected that this was where the pirates lived...

[Pirate spokesman] Sugule seemed happy to chat. He talked for a while about the typical pirate diet—“rice, meat, bread, spaghetti—you know, normal human-being food”—and then he explained to us his notion of Somali piracy. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”

Ind: Pakistan 'at war' after attack on Sri Lankan cricket players in Lahore
The spectacular military-style raid in Lahore bore marked similarities to the assault in Mumbai last year, which left 172 people dead. Pakistani officials suggested the Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the carnage in the Indian city, also carried out the attack in Lahore.
NYT: arrests have been made
Gdn: 3 Taliban factions said to have formed alliance
The Guardian has learned that three of the most powerful warlords in the region have settled their differences and come together under a grouping calling itself Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen, or Council of United Holy Warriors.

Nato officers fear that the new extremist partnership in Waziristan, Pakistan's tribal area, will significantly increase the cross-border influx of fighters and suicide bombers - a move that could undermine the US president's Afghanistan strategy before it is formulated...

The Pakistani Taliban movement was split between a powerful group led by the warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his bitter rivals, Maulvi Nazir and Gul Bahadur. While Mehsud has targeted Pakistan itself in a campaign of violence and is accused of being behind the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Nazir and Bahadur sent men to fight alongside other insurgents in Afghanistan.
CSM: villagers around Peshawar forming militias
In the town of Budaber, six miles from Peshawar's city center, Daud Khan makes sure his Kalashnikov is loaded before stepping into the dark street. As he walks out, seven young men join him, all armed.

Mr. Khan is a member of the nighttime civilian patrols that guard the streets and escort residents home. They usually work from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., the peak time for bomb attacks, a local says.

Do-it-yourself security teams are becoming a fixture in and around Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, as residents grow wary of the Taliban's growing presence – and doubtful of the government's ability to protect them. Some officials have backed the vigilantes, even supplied them with weapons, raising concerns they may fall into the wrong hands...

A city of more than 1.4 million people, Peshawar has long been known as a melting pot of Afghan and Pakistani cultures and a haven for musicians, artists, and intellectuals.

Gdn: registering voters in Afghanistan for August elections
[The Independent Election Commission] is preparing for new presidential elections in August and its workers have just finished registering 4.5 million voters, visiting every district in the country without suffering a single casualty.

Zekria Barakzai, the deputy head of the commission, argues this extraordinary feat is explained by the IEC's softly-softly methods. Its officials do not arrive in a big cloud of dust and convoys of heavily armed men, even in the turbulent south.

"We organise security with the elders with the help of tribal leaders. We talk to them first," Barakzai said...

Karzai, with no previous experience of administration, has tried to run it from his mobile phone. As the Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid argues in his new book on the region (depressingly titled Descent into Chaos), the president has sought to project his power through deals with a network of strong personalities, warlords mostly, rather than building enduring institutions.

The one exception is the Afghan national army, which is more than 80,000-strong and involved in 90% of the military operations around the country. But the army cannot build roads, bring electricity or teach children. That requires a functioning and energetic government.

The British and French are working on a common approach to present to Obama before the Nato summit next month that would put more emphasis on local and traditional forms of government, and less on Kabul. The Americans are reluctant to give up on Karzai.

BBC: re-establishing order on Baghdad's roads
Law and order broke down straight after the US-led invasion in March 2003.

For many Iraqis, "democracy" meant doing exactly what you felt like, when you felt like it - including behind the wheel of a car.

The few traffic police who dared remain on duty did not dare to stop drivers. It could be anyone at all in the driver's seat, and he'd certainly have a gun. Many traffic policemen lost their lives at the hands of militants, or were blown up by roadside bombs.
Slate: Obama's plan for troop withdrawal
CSM: US contractors leaving Iraq
NPR: US military closing prisons
"It seems to be hard to get this in the press, but last year we released 18,600 detainees. Only had 157 come back," [Brig. Gen. David Quantock] says.

Quantock credits that low rate of recidivism to the rehabilitation programs offered by the U.S. detention system, including education programs, health care, and religious discussions with moderate Islamic clerics.

He also says the system works because it separates the extremists from people who were not motivated by ideology.

"Most of our detainees were motivated primarily by two things — money, because they didn't have jobs, they needed to earn some money, or fear of retribution. I mean, if you're in a bad neighborhood, you join the local gang," he says.

As for the most dangerous inmates, Quantock says the U.S. is building a new prison in the northern town of Taji, which will eventually be turned over to the Iraqi government.
NYT: who won those elections, anyhow?

Ind: arrest in Bangladesh of 'mutiny' leader
AP: charges filed against 1,000 border guards

NYT: privatizing security in India
Capsi, an industry trade group, estimates that India’s $2 billion private security sector will add a million employees this year, even as other industries lay off workers while the economy cools.

Already, it employs about 5 million people, 1.3 million more than India’s police and armed forces combined. In fact, with India’s official police stretched thin (there is one officer for every 1,000 people in India, less than half the United States average and one-tenth the average in China), security guards are moving from fetchers of tea at government offices and car washers at wealthy homes to becoming corporate India’s de facto police force...

Kammesh Baboo Rathore, a 28-year-old recruit, said that Terra Force was his third choice. “I tried the army and the police and didn’t get through” he said. “This is my next choice. I want to work for the nation and am enamored by the uniform.”

WP: getting through military checkpoints in Sri Lanka
The passengers quietly exited the bus and stood behind the razor wire, identification cards in hand. The men split off into one line. A far smaller number of women went into a separate row, some cradling sleeping babies.

But it was the women's line that took twice as long to navigate. That's because female officers rummaged through women's purses and bags before moving on to their breasts, even feeling the insides of their bras for explosives.

They didn't stop there. They patted down their groins and occasionally looked inside their underwear. Pregnant women routinely had their swollen bellies squeezed or prodded, just to make sure.

Women are often singled out for scrutiny because, in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, more than two-thirds of the Tamil Tiger suicide bombers have been women, according to experts from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

AJE: 'scuffle' between opposition and ruling party in northern Malay state

LAT: Mexico sends more troops, federal police to Ciudad Juarez
The border city is in the throes of a vicious turf war between a local drug-smuggling organization and rivals from the northwestern state of Sinaloa. The feud, and the Mexican government's 2-year-old crackdown on organized crime, has sent killings soaring.

The city's police chief, Roberto Orduna Cruz, resigned almost two weeks ago after several of his officers were shot to death and anonymous signs appeared warning that an officer would be killed every 48 hours unless he stepped down.
Foreign Policy: is it really just crime? or a civil war?
The U.S. Department of State has its view of Mexico's problems: On Feb 20, it issued a travel alert to U.S. citizens, warning them about "small-unit combat," "large firefights," and "public shootouts during daylight hours" in Mexican cities along the U.S. border. According to the State Department, since January 2008 there have been 1,800 killings in Juárez, a border city with a population of 1.6 million.

Does Mexico have a really bad crime problem? Or is Mexico at war with itself and at risk of sudden societal collapse? To answer this question, we should look not just at quantitative measures of the violence (as grim as they are), but also qualitative factors...

...Mexico's struggle against the drug cartels seems more like a counterinsurgency campaign than a fight against crime. According to the Wall Street Journal, the cartels control 200 counties in Mexico, including much of the U.S. border; generate more than $10 billion in annual revenue; and can muster thousands of gunmen, including defectors from Mexico's Army Special Forces. With much of the police suborned, Calderón has now deployed the Army, exposing its soldiers to the same corruption. The outcome of this campaign remains unknown, as are its consequences for the United States.

BBC: after worst year in four decades, FARC launches 'Plan Rebirth'
Last October, security forces captured several laptop computers and memory sticks that outline the new rebel strategy and the focus of Plan Rebirth, including:

• increase urban attacks
• wage a war of attrition on two fronts. The first is military, using homemade anti-personnel mines and snipers to increase army casualties and undermine morale and secondly economically by attacking infrastructure just as the global credit crisis begins to be felt in the country
• build up finances through extortion and drug-trafficking
• expend more effort on political indoctrination to counter growing desertion
• consolidate territorial control, particularly in the areas where drugs crops are grown
• launch a campaign of political work, both nationally and internationally, to recover lost ground and increase followers, particularly in urban areas

The Farc is certainly a leaner army now, down to perhaps 8,000 fighters from more than double that in 2002.

Finances have been hit along with morale. However, a leaner Farc may well turn out to be harder to hit.

Econ: the Yakuza is even feeling the squeeze
“IN THE old days,” laments the retired mobster, with a broad smile, slicked hair and a heavily tattooed body, “the yakuza served a useful purpose in society to solve civil disputes and keep the streets clean.” He draws on his cigarette, the stub of an amputated little finger visible in his beefy hand. “Now”, he goes on, “it has lost its samurai spirit to moneymaking.”

Or perhaps, the yakuza—Japan’s organised-crime groups that date from the 17th century—are getting squeezed. For most of the post-war period they operated openly: tolerated by the public, used by politicians and protected by police. Crime will happen anyway, went the argument, so better to know whom to call when it crosses the line. In the 1950s ministers and industrialists relied on the mobsters and nationalist groups to quash unions and socialists. The gangs upheld classic Japanese virtues of manliness and loyalty—and paid for mistakes by slicing off one of their fingers in atonement.

NYT: Ukraine faces unrest over economic downturn
It is not hard to understand why world leaders are increasingly worried about the discontent and the financial crisis in Ukraine, which has 46 million people and a highly strategic location. A small country like Latvia or Iceland is one thing, but a collapse in Ukraine could wreck what little investor confidence is left in Eastern Europe, whose formerly robust economies are being badly strained.

It could also cause neighboring Russia, which has close ethnic and linguistic ties to eastern and southern Ukraine, to try to inject itself into the country’s affairs. What is more, the Kremlin would be able to hold up Ukraine as an example of what happens when former Soviet republics follow a Western model of free-market democracy.

Gdn: for first time in 29 years, nationalists lose election in Basque region

Econ: upcoming elections in Albania

NYT: the CIA destroyed 92 interrogation tapes
LAT: US pledges to reduce nuclear weapons stockpile
NYT: US sends two envoys to Syria, in play to try to isolate Iran

++
abu muquwama: civil war rivalries die hard

the lives of others [dirty tricks and disenchantment]

LAT: Central Intelligence Organization officer in Zimbabwe speculates on Mugabe's support
"The CIO casts a long shadow. Small, everyday encounters become fraught with fear. Common coincidences are magnified into something sinister. Everyone knows how the CIO guys work: You never notice them until you spot a car behind you, then drive around the block a few times and find it's still there.

There are plenty of terrifying stories about what happens to the people who are arrested, ranging from lengthy interrogation to torture. So I'm a little taken aback by the man from the President's Office. He turns out to be thirtysomething, educated, articulate and urbane. Had he been born in any other country, he might have found a career at a bank, a think tank, a law firm. Instead, he learned about dirty tricks and disenchantment.

For years, the Mugabe regime has used the CIO to undermine and frighten the opposition, keep an eye on journalists and neutralize threats. But these days the name President's Office is a misnomer, says the senior officer, who, unsurprisingly, speaks on condition of anonymity. He estimates that 60% to 70% of CIO officers -- all but the hard-line ideologues -- no longer back Mugabe...

Slowly and cautiously, [the officer] is trying get a foot into the opposition camp as well, by leaking information to the MDC's security wing through an intermediary. But it's a nerve-racking business, given the ruling party's predilection for watching its own as avidly as it watches the enemy."

NYT: 'white collar' rebels try to establish order in Congo
"Inside his office, Mr. Banga sat at a desk behind a rising stack of paper, listing residents by neighborhood. Rutshuru and neighboring Kiwanja are home to about 150,000 people in all, the largest population area in eastern Congo under rebel control.

“Hoes and seeds,” he said. “That’s what we need. We want to get these people back to work.”

But Mr. Banga, a former power plant engineer who said he joined the rebel army “for revolution,” said his new administration was short of cash.

Not surprisingly, rebel soldiers have begun tax collection — at gunpoint, demanding $120 from each truck that passes through their checkpoints. Aid workers say that the rebels seem more serious about providing security than Congolese government troops, who are notorious for raping and plundering, but that the new taxes are hampering the emergency efforts.

There are new rebel stamps saying “Unity, Justice, Development.” And even a new rebel police force, distinct from the bush fighters, with officers wearing stolen government police uniforms.

“What’s the difference between us and soldiers?” said one young police officer, too young to shave. “We protect people.”

But many of their new subjects are not so sure.

“At night, they invade our homes, looking for money,” said Kavuo Anatasia, 17, a mother. “Kill us, no. But they beat us.”

BBC: in Rutshuru, a rebel seminar on the history of the Congo
"One of the participants at the meeting sought permission from his superiors to be interviewed by me. Nevertheless, I thought he was extremely brave to agree to speak.

"They are trying to teach us the history of our country," said the participant, choosing his words carefully.

I asked him if the reality was that he and his colleagues were being forced to accept the new ideology.

"No," he said. "We are not being forced. We accept their analysis of the situation," he added in a deliberate voice.

I asked him if he was scared.

"We are not scared," he insisted. "It is in the interests of us and of our people to accept these people. We live here; we cannot leave our town. We are going to see how we can try to live together and build the country."

While rebel soldiers stood nearby, the local administrator added:

"From what I have seen of them they are kind. They are more disciplined than the government army - they are not looting and there is security. Although people are still scared, security is coming here step-by-step."

BBC: EU pressuring Kenya to prosecute politicians linked to last year's violence

Econ: trial underway in France against alleged gun runners to Angola in the early 90s
"After a seven-year investigation, the trial of the 42 individuals accused of involvement in arms trafficking to Angola in the 1990s finally got underway. The so-called "Angolagate" scandal involved arms sales to Angola worth US$790m in 1993-2000, during that country’s civil war, by a French businessman, Pierre Falcone, and his Russian-born associate, Arcady Gaydamak, in which numerous French and Angolan officials allegedly received pay-offs and gifts worth US$56m. Both Mr Falcone and Mr Gaydamak deny any wrongdoing...
So far no Angolan officials have been indicted in the trial which will focus on whether French nationals broke French law relating to arms-trafficking and bribery. Demands by the Angolan government's lawyers for the case to be dismissed, arguing that the trial could reveal sensitive military and diplomatic secrets which would constitute an attack on Angola's sovereignty, have been ignored."

Gdn: EU fleet heading to Gulf of Aden
Gdn: but action against pirates hindered by lack of coherent legal framework
"The UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos) defines piracy as "all illegal acts of violence or detention ... committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship". But it says that piracy can take place only "on the high seas" or "outside the jurisdiction of any state", which excludes the territorial waters of states, including the coastal areas of Somalia.

Efforts to tackle Somali piracy have relied instead on UN security council resolutions. In June a resolution was passed allowing states that had the consent of Somalia's transitional federal government to "enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea" and to "use ... in a manner consistent with the action permitted on the high seas with respect to piracy under relevant international law, all necessary means to repress acts of piracy and armed robbery".

However, "action permitted on the high seas" does not permit pursuing and boarding a pirate vessel or arresting those on board. To do so needs the further authorisation of the transitional government.

There have also been suggestions that Somali hijackers could escape the Unclos definition of "pirates" by claiming they are motivated by "political" rather than "private" gain, although it appears that the funds are being used for private enrichment in Somali communities."

Econ: lack of clarity also an issue dealing with these pirates

Slate: revisiting the Russian and Georgian invasions
"Georgia started it and killed civilians in the process. My conclusion? We knew that already. We also knew, and indeed have known for some time, that the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is susceptible to extreme bouts of criminal foolhardiness. A year ago this month, he attacked demonstrators in Tbilisi with riot police, arrested opposition leaders, and even smashed up a Rupert Murdoch-owned television station—possibly not, I wrote at the time, the best way to attract positive international media coverage. I'm told Saakashvili—who did indeed overthrow the corrupt Soviet nomenklatura that ran his country—has many virtues. But caution, cool-headedness, and respect for civilian lives and democratic norms are not among them.

We knew that about him—and so did the Russians. That was why they spent much of the previous year taunting and teasing the Georgians, shooting down their planes, firing on their policemen, and attacking their villages, all in an attempt to create a casus belli, either in South Ossetia or in Abkhazia, another Russian-dominated, semi-autonomous enclave inside the Georgian border. And when Saakashvili did what they'd been hoping he'd do, they were ready. As one Russian analyst pointed out, the Russian response was not an improvised reaction to an unexpected Georgian offensive: "The swiftness with which large Russian contingents were moved into Georgia, the rapid deployment of a Black Sea naval task force, the fact that large contingents of troops were sent to Abkhazia where there was no Georgian attack all seem to indicate a rigidly prepared battle plan." There was, it seems, one minor miscalculation. As a very senior Russian official recently told a very senior European official, "We expected the Georgians to invade on Aug. 8, not Aug. 7."
BBC: AI reports 20,000 Georgians still unable to return
"A new twilight zone has been created along the de facto border between South Ossetia and the rest of Georgia, into which people stray at their peril," Amnesty's Nicola Duckworth said."

Econ: in Moldova, a different approach to separatist demands
"Unlike the belligerent Georgia, Moldova has taken a gentle approach to its Russian-backed separatists, and it is not trying to join NATO. Yet it is barely nearer than Georgia to a deal over lost territory...
Russia does not recognise Transdniestria’s independence, but it wants to keep troops there, a condition all other parties reject...

Yet the dispute has none of the deep hostilities of the Caucasus. Trade across the Dniester is flourishing. The Transdniestrian football team, Sheriff, tops the Moldovan league. Tiraspol is something of a museum of Soviet nostalgia, with its Lenin statue and Karl Marx street. But Sergei Cheban, head of the foreign-affairs committee in the Transdniestrian parliament, tries to be reasonable. Of Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he says “we do not need that kind of recognition,” holding out the chance of a sovereignty deal with Moldova."

BBC: Albanian children trapped by blood feuds
"The non-governmental National Reconciliation Committee (NRC), a group that tries to mediate between warring families, estimates that several thousand Albanian families are currently embroiled in feuds nationwide, leaving some 800 children confined to their homes.

Blood feuds were officially banned during the 40-year rule of Albania's communist-era hardliner Enver Hoxha, but in the chaos that accompanied the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the practice resurfaced, often sparked by disputes over rural property, or slurs on family honour."

BBC: International Court of Justice to hear Croat claims of Serbian genocide
"Croatia first filed the complaint in 1999, accusing Serbia of "a form of genocide which resulted in large numbers of Croatian citizens being displaced, killed, tortured, or illegally detained as well as extensive property destruction".

It referred to crimes committed "in the Knin region, and in eastern and western Slavonia and Dalmatia".

In February 2007, the ICJ cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the Bosnian war.

However, it said Serbia had broken international law by failing to stop the killings."

WP: Ortega consolidates power in Nicaragua
"The U.S. Embassy has been accused of counterrevolutionary subversion. A nervous Catholic Church is appealing for calm. The opposition party is crying electoral fraud, while roaming gangs armed with clubs are attacking marchers. The mayor here has called it anarchy. And everyone is asking: What is President Daniel Ortega after?

This sounds more like the Central America of the 1980s. But Ortega, the former Marxist revolutionary comandante who returned to the president's office in 2006, is at the center of a chaotic new struggle. Critics charge that he and Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America, are marching backward, away from relatively peaceful, transparent, democratic elections to ones that are violent, shady and stolen."

Gdn: teachers targeted by gangs in Ciudad Juarez

BBC: Brazil to deploy heat sensing plane to monitor uncontacted tribes
"Officials say the plane will help them to protect remote communities without interrupting their way of life.
Some 39 isolated groups are believed to be living in the Amazon region."

BBC: Iraqi gov't paying Sons of Iraq
"...the plan is for all the estimated 100,000 Sahwa militiamen to be on the Iraqi payroll by early next year.

Leaders in several Baghdad districts are unhappy though - including some in especially violence-prone areas - because salaries have been reduced to the same level as their men...

US commanders acknowledged several years ago that a lack of jobs was a key factor in driving the insurgency - the biggest single cause of that being the early US decision to disband the old Iraqi army, providing thousands of potential recruits overnight.

While the Sahwa began as a tribal rebellion against al-Qaeda in Iraq in late 2006, the US military has in effect turned it into a massive programme to buy out large chunks of the insurgency - in many cases re-employing former Saddam Hussein-era soldiers they sacked five years ago."

AP: Pakistan bristles at US missile attack beyond the FATA

BBC: Sri Lanka army captures LTTE stronghold
"The Tigers are believed to have three more defensive lines on the narrow isthmus of land that divides rebel territory from the government-controlled Jaffna in the far north, he said."
BBC: AI warns of humanitarian crisis; estimates that two-thirds of residents now displaced, living in camps run by the Tigers

WP: cab drivers latest to protest in China

++
strange maps: democratic votes, 2008 and cotton production, 1860

sort of like the boyscouts [hot commodities]

LAT: Mongols motorcycle gang infiltrated, indictments issued for racketeering, violent offenses
"The key to the investigation -- dubbed Operation Black Rain -- was the work of the undercover agents who spent several years gaining the Mongols' trust, officials said. Before being admitted to the gang, they were checked out by a private investigator who had been hired by the Mongols and they were given polygraph exams.

The Mongols were formed in the 1970s by a small group of Latinos who reportedly had been rejected by the Hells Angels. The gang now has between 500 and 600 members, the vast majority of them in Southern California, according to law enforcement officials.

The gang has a constitution and bylaws and some of the trappings of more conventional organizations -- its members are provided cellphones, for example. Decisions regarding membership, dues collection and club policy are made by leaders known in the gang as the "Mother Chapter." They have a headquarters in West Covina that is stocked with assault rifles, shotguns and bulletproof vests, according to the indictment.

As with many organizations, patches are awarded to signify the status or achievements of its members, though the behavior celebrated by the Mongols differs from most. For instance, a skull and crossbones patch or one proclaiming "Respect Few, Fear None" is given to members who commit murder or other acts of violence on behalf of the gang, according to the indictment...

There also are patches associated with the gang's alleged sexual rituals. Members are awarded wings of varying colors for engaging in sex acts with women at prearranged "wing parties," the indictment states. For example, members who have sex with a woman with venereal disease are given green wings, according to the indictment...

Much of the violence described in the indictment involved clashes between the Mongols and their longtime rivals, the Hells Angels...

But the violence was not limited to disputes between warring gangs; some were motivated by race, but others appeared to be random acts."

WP: Saudis held talks with the Afghan and Pakistani officials, Taliban
BBC: nearly 1,000 to go on trial in Riyadh for links to Al-Qaeda

WP: US-backed sheiks shaping local authority in Anbar
"A man from the Dulaimi tribe had killed a man from the Jenabi tribe. The elders of both tribes could have sought justice in a provincial court. They could have conferred with traditional sheiks versed in centuries-old ways of resolving disputes. But they didn't. They came to Sweidawi, a sunburned, American-backed chieftain who in less than two years had become the most powerful man in this patch of eastern Ramadi.

He asked the men if they trusted his authority. They nodded. Within minutes, he worked out a settlement. The men were not happy, but they also feared Sweidawi and needed his protection...

But the rise of these sheiks, collectively called the Awakening, is already touching off new conflicts that could deepen without U.S. military backing for the movement. They have stripped traditional tribal leaders of influence. They have carved up Sunni areas into fiefdoms, imposing their views on law and society and weakening the authority of the Shiite-led central government. Divisions are emerging among the new breed of tribal leaders, even as they are challenging established Sunni religious parties for political dominance...

Their ascent reflects how the struggle for local and regional centers of power is increasingly shaping Iraq's future. And their growing clout ensures that large segments of Iraq will remain influenced by tribal codes, rather than modern laws, posing an obstacle to the democratic foundations that many would like to see built here."
CSM: third-party brokering by US military between Kurds and Arabs in Diyala
"Few issues will affect Iraq's future more than the final relationship between the Kurds – whose autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has its own president, ministers, militia, and flag – and the Shiite-run central government in Baghdad.

But this town in Iraq's troubled eastern Diyala Province is 15 miles south of the KRG line, and but one flash point along a swath of "disputed areas" where Kurdish troops and authorities have expanded control beyond their borders.

Iraqi Arabs charge that Kurds are forcing them out of these areas, in the same way that Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" efforts in the 1970s and '80s brutally removed tens of thousands of Kurds...

Kurdish forces were sometimes invited in years past to help secure these areas before the new Iraqi Army could deploy. But now as Iraqi security forces are expanding and taking a more proactive role, towns like Khanaqin are torn...

Top of the list is clarifying the blend of federal and local government authority. Resolving the 12 "disputed areas" is so sensitive that the UN makes no map of them public."
BBC: status of US troops agreement hits road bumps
Slate: Ackerman and Hathaway say that Bush doesn't have the authority to make an agreement anyhow (SV says, 'not that that's stopped him before...')

Nature: social science and the Pentagon
Newsweek: one psychologist tries to get others out of interrogation business

Econ: military offensive in Sri Lanka

Econ: Bashir organizing talks on Darfur, but main rebel groups uninterested

BBC: in Zimbabwe, MDC calls for new elections

Slate: commodity prices and civil war: coffee and oil in Colombia
"Using newspaper reports of violent skirmishes in 950 Colombian municipalities between 1988 and 2005, Dube and Vargas find that when coffee prices went up, violence went down in locations where a large fraction of land area was under coffee cultivation. When coffee prices fell, however, as they did by almost 70 percent in the late 1990s, violence in coffee areas rose dramatically. The researchers estimate that an additional 500 deaths may have resulted from the increased conflict that came from lower coffee prices. The opposite was true for oil: It was higher prices that intensified conflict in areas with productive oil wells or pipelines. (Since both coffee and oil prices are traded in global markets, it is unlikely that price increases were caused by panicking commodities traders spooked by increased civil-war violence in Colombia.)"
LAT: and then there's the commodity that really counts: cocaine ring bust in Colombia, linked to Hezbollah
"The suspects allegedly worked with a Colombian cartel and a paramilitary group to smuggle cocaine to the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Harb traveled extensively to Lebanon, Syria and Egypt and was in phone contact with Hezbollah figures, according to Colombian officials."
LAT: Sinaloa cartel leader arrested
BBC: human heads sent to police in northern Mexico
"The heads, all of men believed aged between 25-35, arrived last week in an icebox marked as containing vaccines."

BBC: agreement reached between gov't and opposition in Bolivia
"The proposed new charter sets out greater central control of the economy, greater distribution of wealth to Bolivia's indigenous majority and land reform."

BBC: Albanian tradition of women living as 'honorary men' or 'sworn virgins' (depending on the circumstances)
"Tradition, particularly prevalent in the north of Albania, dictated that turning down a suitor could lead to the man's family exacting revenge on the girl's father or brother.
The only way to settle the dispute without bloodshed, according to the same tradition, was for the girl to declare herself a virgin for life and assume the role of a man - and thus never marry."

the Hill: police prepare for election-day violence, in the US.
"Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors...
“We’re prepared for the best-case scenario, we’re prepared for the worst-case scenario,” [Detroit second deputy chief Tate] said. “The worst-case scenario could be a situation that requires law enforcement.”
But Tate declined to describe what the worst-case scenario might look like, speaking gingerly like other police officials who are wary of implying that black voters are more likely than other voting groups to cause trouble."
the Root: maybe the exurbs are really where deployment should increase
ABCNews: SV, for one, can't promise a pacific response if this one gets elected
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a local interview that the vice president is "in charge of" the U.S. Senate and "can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes" – the second time she has claimed a more expansive role for the vice president than the U.S. Constitution outlines."
BBC: the Brits' helpful guide to the Joes of US politics

deconstruction [shiva clocks overtime]

NYT: burning out insurgents in Chechnya
"In a campaign to punish families with sons suspected of supporting the insurgency, at least a dozen homes have been set ablaze since midsummer, residents and a local human rights organization said.

The burnings have been accompanied by a program, embraced by Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s president, that has forced visibly frightened parents of insurgents to appear on television and beg their sons to return home...

The burnings have occurred in several districts or towns — including Alleroi, Geldagan, Khidi-Khutor, Kurchaloi, Samashki, Shali, Shatoi, Nikikhita and Tsenteroi — suggesting that the arsonists have been operating with precise information and with a degree of impunity in a republic that is crowded with police and military units.

Residents and the human rights organization said that the impunity was unsurprising, because the arsonists appeared to be members of the police...

In a series of state-run news programs this summer in Chechnya, senior officials spoke openly of the collective responsibility of people whose relatives have joined the insurgency, and of collective punishment."

WP: Chechen refugees in Georgia fear Russians again
"[Pankisi Gorge, with its] fruit orchards and towering mountains has not been stable for long. During the Chechen war, it became a base for fighters making excursions into Chechnya and attracted a stream of money and fighters from Muslim nations. For years, it was a lawless pocket where men strode through villages with automatic weapons strapped to their bodies and where street shootings were common. At one point, Russia dropped bombs here to wipe out the fighters.

Then, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States began a $64 million program to train and equip Georgian forces to help root out suspected al-Qaeda agents -- a program that eventually expanded into a general training program for the Georgian army. The valley is now under the Georgian police's control, and locals say the "Arabians" who had settled here have melted away.

The war last month did not reach the valley, and Georgian officials say the helicopters spotted by the locals were most likely Georgian, conducting routine border patrols. But for Chechens living here, seeing Russian tanks cross into Georgia reawakened old fears. It also brought surprise. Some recalled watching TV reports of Russian tanks near the capital and finding it strange to see no resistance from the Georgians, not even a rock thrown.

Chechens would never have let that happen, said Lia Margoshvili, a Georgian Chechen who works with refugees here. "Chechen kids, when they're in fifth or sixth grade, they learn that they have to kill Russians -- but the Georgian kids, they learn, I don't know, books or something."

BBC: opposition in Belarus does not win one parliamentary seat in "election"
BBC: Lukashenko's days on the farm prepared him to be dictator
"His experience at the farm is what keeps him in power today," Mr Gulyaev says.

"Under that system, the director of the collective farm was equal to God, the tsar and the commander-in-chief. His word is the law, and no-one can argue with him."

NYT: policewoman killed by Taliban in Afghanistan
"Ms. Kakar, with the rank of captain, was head of Kandahar’s department of crimes against women. She joined the police in the city in 1982, following in the footsteps of her father and brothers, but was forced out after the Taliban captured Kandahar in the mid-1990s and barred all women from working.

She was the first female police officer in the country to return to work after the Taliban were ousted. Her commitment was particularly notable for the fact that it took place in Kandahar, which became the headquarters for the Taliban soon after the movement was formed in the early 1990s."

BBC: forming self-defense militias in Pakistani villages
"Tribal elders gather in a mammoth meeting place, or jirga hall, to tell us why they support the military offensive.

They accuse the Pakistani Taleban of setting up a parallel state in Bajaur, undermining the traditional tribal leadership. They say they've exhausted all attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution to the problem."

WP: several attacks in Baghdad leave 27 dead

Reuters: car bomb in Tripoli kills 5

LAT: code of honor survives in Albania
"Many still live at least in part by the Kanun, a code handed down through the centuries in which "besa" -- loosely translated as word of honor or sacred promise -- is paramount. The code was adhered to by Albania's Muslim majority and Catholic and Orthodox Christian minorities.

The code covers everything from inheritances and the rights of the church to the treatment of livestock. Disobeying the Kanun could lead to harsh penalties that might include banishment or the transgressor's household being burned. A slight could lead to a blood feud that lasted for generations.

In Theth, nobody will sell land to an outsider, or even to another villager. Brides must come from outside the valley, a tradition that follows along the lines of the Kanun's rule that marriage within the same clan is forbidden.

"The Kanun is the law. Just like the state law," explains Gjovalin Lokthi, 39, a gruff "kryeplak," or elected chief of the village...

The Kanun has survived despite four decades of communist rule after World War II, with hardships such as mass imprisonment in labor camps and attempts to stamp out tribal practices."

WP: 52 Somalis die at sea trying to reach Yemen

Econ: whites leaving South Africa's violent crime

NYT: hurricane recovery as opportunity in Cuba

WP: Ecuadorans approve new constitution

NYT: conflict lingers in Bolivia
"Increasingly, the question confronting Bolivia, a country of deep ethnic and geographical divisions, is how they will wield that power, and whether Mr. Morales can redress the historical grievances of Bolivia’s indigenous majority while keeping his country from descending into chaos...

As violent as his opponents have sometimes been, they charge that Mr. Morales is achieving much of this by running roughshod over them. They say he has ignored court rulings that challenge his policies and used some of the same intimidation tactics he honed as a leader of the powerful coca growers unions before he was elected president.

As such tactics spread on both sides, fears are growing throughout the region that Bolivia’s crisis could produce, if not civil war, then pockets of fierce conflict across its rebellious tropical lowlands, which are an important source of natural gas and food for neighboring countries."

Slate: the history (and future?) of humanitarian intervention

LAT: decoding men's headbands in Iraq
"Like the people who wear the agal and for whom it is a crucial part of daily dress -- everyone from rural farmers to Arab kings -- the headband's history is intriguing for its mix of tragedy and toughness. Some say it evolved from the collapse of Islamic rule in Andalusia. One version says the caliph ordered men to wear black headbands in mourning. Another says that distraught women tore their hair out and hurled it at men to show their rage at the men's inability to protect Islam. The men then wrapped the locks of black hair around their heads in shame and sorrow.

In the most practical version, Bedouins carried the black bands on their heads in case ropes were needed to secure their camels."

BBC: Maoists cancel Ms. Nepal pageant

NYT mag: deconstructing my city (literally - Clevelanders are not postmodern)

NYT: maybe McCain should use his own height logic to support universal health care in the US

there will be blood

NYT: 'I just wish the other family would kill someone in our family so that this nightmare would finally be over'; blood feuds in Albania

"Christian’s misfortune is to have been born the son of a father who killed a man in this poor northern region of Albania, where the ancient ritual of the blood feud still holds sway.

Under the Kanun, an Albanian code of behavior that has been passed on for more than 500 years, “blood must be paid with blood,” with a victim’s family authorized to avenge a slaying by killing any of the killer’s male relatives. The Kanun’s influence is waning, but it served as the country’s constitution for centuries, with rules governing a variety of issues including property ownership, marriage and murder.

The National Reconciliation Committee, an Albanian nonprofit organization that works to eliminate the practice of blood feuds, estimates that 20,000 people have been ensnared by blood feuds since they resurfaced after the collapse of Communism in 1991, with 9,500 people killed and nearly 1,000 children deprived of schooling because they are locked indoors.

By tradition, any man old enough to wield a hunting rifle is considered a fair target for vengeance, making 17 male members of Christian’s family vulnerable. They, too, are stuck in their homes. The sole restriction is that the boundaries of the family home must not be breached. Women and children also have immunity, though some, like Christian, who physically matured at an early age, begin their confinement as boys. Family members of the victim are usually the avengers, though some families outsource the killing to professional contract killers.

Blood feuds have been prevalent in other societies, like mafia vendettas in southern Italy and retaliatory violence between Shiite and Sunni families in Iraq. Appalachian bootleggers in the 19th century also took up arms to defend family honor.

But the phenomenon has been particularly pronounced in Albania, a desperately poor country that is struggling to uphold the rule of law after decades of Stalinist dictatorship.

Blood feuds all but disappeared here during the 40-year rule of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s Communist dictator, who outlawed the practice, sometimes burying alive those who disobeyed in the coffins of their victims. But legal experts in Albania say the feuds erupted again after the fall of Communism ushered in a new period of lawlessness...

'I live in constant fear and anxiety that Christian will be killed, that they are hunting my children,' said [Christian's mother], who relies on charity to support her, the two boys and their two sisters. 'I just wish the other family would kill someone in our family so that this nightmare would finally be over.'

She said she had sent a mediator to try and seek forgiveness from the other family, but to no avail.

The family of the victim, Simon Vuka, declined to comment. But Mr. Kola, who is mediating the case, said that the family was not prepared to forgive the feud because the victim had two young sons who had been left fatherless. 'Many victims’ families feel that imprisoning all the men in the killer’s family inside their homes is a better revenge than killing them.'"

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