tough enough [energy to spare]

NYT: civil wars last a long time; but according to some, not long enough
But if you accept the general definition of a civil war as one fought within internationally recognized borders, then throughout history civil conflicts have tended to outlast international wars by a factor of about 20, according to Paul Collier...

Civil wars can be ended by outside intervention, as in the Balkans. But according to Edward N. Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, such intervention may in fact only prolong wars. “It leads to congealed wars,” he said. “In Bosnia now there is very little economic development or reconstruction, because actually it’s a frozen war. The best way is when people just exhaust themselves and run out of energy to fight.”

[sv wants to exhaust herself fighting this guy]

Gdn: this is what exhaustion looks like:
Sopika is one of at least 250,000 Tamil civilians being held in Menik Farm in the north of the country. Barbed-wire fences encircle the endless rows of white tents, preventing civilians from getting out and journalists from getting in, as the government continues to prevent the stories of Sopika and thousands like her from being told...

Her story is testimony to the brutality of both the Tamil Tiger fighters and the government during the final stages of a 26-year conflict, during which each side accused the other of acts of unspeakable cruelty. Both, it seems, were telling the truth and it is the Tamil civilians who paid the price....

The government has denied using heavy weapons. But by the time the family reached Mullaitivu, Sopika said she found the noise of the jets and artillery overwhelming. Her parents decided they had to make a break for it. It was 2am when they set off with several other families.

"As we were walking, the Tigers started to fire and the young boy walking in front of me got shot," she said. "My face and clothes were splattered with the blood of this boy. He died.

"We turned back because we were afraid of more death," she said.
LAT: ...and other lessons from Sri Lanka
The military budget grew by 40% a year, and the army exploded by 70% to 180,000 troops, adding 3,000 a month compared with 3,000 a year previously, drawing largely from rural Singhalese attracted by relatively high wages in a struggling economy.

With more soldiers, the army was able to hit the Tigers on several fronts simultaneously, breaking with years of hit-or-miss operations.

"Before, the army would take territory, then move on, allowing the LTTE to come back," said military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara. "That changed and we hit them on all four fronts so they could no longer muster all their resources into one place."...

Other lessons are either unique to Sri Lanka or would be politically unpalatable in other societies, including the high civilian and military death tolls and alleged human rights violations...

Because Rajapaksa's base was the nation's Sinhalese majority, there was relatively little domestic pushback over the deaths and displacement of ethnic Tamil civilians...

"A military precept the world over is that you can't win militarily against an insurgency, which is essentially a political struggle," said Maj. Gen. Mehta. "They turned that on its head."

WP: these high costs of the war
WP:...will not involve wars crimes charges, if government gets its way

LAT: some euros exhaust themselves trying to become jihadis
After getting ripped off in Turkey and staggering through waist-deep snow in Iran, the little band arrived in Al Qaeda's lair in Pakistan last year, ready for a triumphant reception...
Wary of spies, suspicious Al Qaeda chiefs grilled the half-dozen Belgians and French. They charged them $1,200 each for AK-47 rifles, ammunition and grenades. They made them fill out forms listing next of kin and their preference: guerrilla fighting, or suicide attacks?

Then the trainees dodged missile strikes for months. They endured disease, quarrels and boredom, huddling in cramped compounds that defied heroic images of camps full of fraternal warriors...

Beyayo is about 5-foot-5, chubby and bespectacled. Like the others, he is of North African descent. He grew up in the tough Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels, and his brothers have done time for robbery and arms trafficking. But he does not have a criminal record. He interspersed college courses with fundamentalist Islam...

After several men called their mothers from Iran, the group entered Pakistan via Zahedan, an Iranian border town that is a hub for militants and smugglers, the Belgian anti-terrorism official said. As they approached the tribal zone dominated by the Taliban, military patrols looked the other way and diners at a roadside restaurant seemed to know exactly where they were headed...

Fearful of the drones as well as informants spotting them and targeting hide-outs for missile strikes, the trainees hunkered inside during the day. They moved frequently among crowded, squalid houses shared with local families in mountain hamlets.

The suspects say they wanted desperately to fight American troops in Afghanistan. To their dismay, the chiefs made them cough up more cash for weapons. They were assigned to train with an Arab group numbering 300 to 500, but spread out in small units for security. Religious and military instruction took place indoors, with firearms and explosives sessions confined to courtyards for secrecy.

A Saudi chief named Mortez assured the Europeans that they would go to the Afghan front. But idle weeks followed...

Late last year, Beyayo, Othmani and two others finally came home and into the clutches of police, who had monitored them closely. A central question: the extent of their involvement in terrorist activity.

Their defense lawyers insist that they are failed holy warriors.

"They just weren't tough enough," Marchand said.

Investigators have doubts. French police point out that the explosives instruction described by Othmani is far more extensive than that received by many previous trainees.

Police think the Europeans may have exaggerated their haplessness to conceal a dark purpose.
AJE: 60 Taliban militants reported killed in Helmand province of Afghanistan, drug loot seized

WP: the military tries to regain its footing in Swat
The battle for Swat, which is seen as a crucial test in Pakistan's war with radical Islamist insurgents, has forced about 2 million civilians to flee the area. The vast majority of Mingora's residents have left, and they may not be able to return to their homes for months or longer. The military estimates that as many as 20,000 residents remain trapped in the city and has said it will move carefully to avoid civilian casualties as well as the mines that Taliban fighters are thought to have laid to destroy advancing vehicles...

The Taliban has controlled Swat off and on since late 2007. Under a peace deal with the government, its fighters were supposed to lay down their weapons this spring in exchange for the institution of Islamic courts in Swat. But the truce collapsed when Taliban fighters overran the adjacent areas of Buner and Dir, putting their forces within 60 miles of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. For nearly a month since the deal's demise, 15,000 Pakistani troops have fought about 3,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters up and down steep mountain passes...

The people of Swat have long been known for their moderation, but the valley was vulnerable to Taliban advances because of its proximity to the Afghan border and the ineffectiveness of the government in exerting local control. During their reign in the valley, the militants have instituted a severe interpretation of Islamic law, one that features public lashings for petty crimes and beheadings for those who dare to challenge Taliban authority. The militants are led locally by Maulana Fazlullah, a charismatic young preacher who spreads his message of armed insurrection against the state through pirated radio transmissions.
NYT: military captures 'slaughter square', or nearly does
The army’s capture of the central square, known as Green Square, carried symbolic weight. Under the Taliban, it had gained notoriety as “Slaughter Square.” Beheaded bodies — often of people accused of spying or of un-Islamic behavior — were thrown in the square to intimidate residents.

However, Mehmood Shah, a defense analyst and a retired brigadier in Peshawar who used to be in charge of security in the tribal regions of the North-West Frontier Province, said most of the captured neighborhoods were suburbs and the troops had not moved into the city in a “major way.”...

On Sunday morning, helicopter gunships struck multiple targets in the Orakzai tribal region, including a religious school, The A.P. reported, citing a local government official, Mohammad Yasin.

At least 6 civilians were among the 18 dead, Mr. Yasin said, adding that the targets were strongholds of Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy to the Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. Hundreds fled the area amid the fighting, he said.

The Pakistani military said curfew was relaxed from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Matta and Khawazakhela, two towns that have been cleared of militants.
NYRB: but Pakistanis are clearly not sufficiently exhausted
"According to the Islamabad columnist Farrukh Saleem, 11 percent of Pakistan's territory is either directly controlled or contested by the Taliban. Ten percent of Balochistan province, in the southwest of the country, is a no-go area because of another raging insurgency led by Baloch separatists. Karachi, the port city of 17 million people, is an ethnic and sectarian tinderbox waiting to explode. In the last days of April thirty-six people were killed there in ethnic violence. The Taliban are now penetrating into Punjab, Pakistan's political and economic heartland where the major cities of Islamabad and Lahore are located and where 60 percent of the country's 170 million people live. Fear is gripping the population there...

The insurgency in Pakistan is perhaps even more deadly than the one in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there is only one ethnic group strongly opposing the government—the Pashtuns who make up the Taliban—and so fighting is largely limited to the south and east of the country, while the other major ethnic groups in the west and the north are vehemently anti-Taliban. Moreover, more than a few Pashtuns and their tribal leaders support the Karzai government. In Pakistan, the Pashtun Taliban are now being aided and abetted by extremists from all the major ethnic groups in Pakistan. They may not be popular but they generate fear and terror from Karachi on the south coast to Peshawar on the Afghan border."
BBC: remembering Swat's idyllic period

WP: Iraqi displaced waiting for a permanent settlement
The camp illustrates some of the problems Iraq faces as it attempts to build the institutions of a modern state: Although there is a semblance of peace, the country remains riddled with fault lines of sect and ethnicity, and saddled with competing authorities...
WP: car bomb in Baghdad
WP: another on friday

AJE: fighting in Mogadishu intensifies
AJE: and thousands leave the city
NYT: ...as the cleavage shifts to a religious one inland
Their shrines were being destroyed. Their imams were being murdered. Their tolerant beliefs were under withering attack.

So the moderate Sufi scholars recently did what so many other men have chosen to do in anarchic Somalia: they picked up guns and entered the killing business, in this case to fight back against the Shabab, one of the most fearsome extremist Muslim groups in Africa.

“Clan wars, political wars, we were always careful to stay out of those,” said Sheik Omar Mohamed Farah, a Sufi leader. “But this time, it was religious.”

In the past few months, a new axis of conflict has opened up in Somalia, an essentially governmentless nation ripped apart by rival clans since 1991. Now, in a definitive shift, fighters from different clans are forming alliances and battling one another along religious lines, with deeply devout men on both sides charging into firefights with checkered head scarves, assault rifles and dusty Korans...

If Mogadishu falls, Somalia will be dragged deeper into the violent morass that the United Nations, the United States and other Western countries have tried hard to stanch, and the country will fragment even further into warring factions, with radical Islamists probably on top.

But out here, on the wind-whipped plains of Somalia’s central region, it is a different story. The moderates are holding their own, and the newly minted Sufi militia is about the only local group to go toe-to-toe with the Shabab and win...

But the Sufis have achieved what the transitional government has not: grass-roots support, which explains how they were able to move so quickly from a bunch of men who had never squeezed a trigger before — a rarity in Somalia — into a cohesive fighting force backed by local clans.
CSM: Somaliland attempts secesion by order
If this doesn't feel like Somalia, residents say that's because it's not. This is Somaliland, a northern former British protectorate that broke away from chaotic southern Somalia in 1991, established an admirably stable government, and hoped never to look back.

No country has recognized Somaliland's independence, however. The argument has always been that to do so would further destabilize Somalia, even as Somalia seems to be destabilizing well enough on its own...

A territory of 5 million people, Somaliland is trying to be a good regional citizen, hosting tens of thousands of refugees from southern Somalia and, lately, trying and imprisoning pirates, which few governments anywhere have been eager to do.

At least 26 men are serving time in Somaliland prisons for piracy. Last month, a European warship stopped nine men who were attempting to hijack a Yemeni vessel but allowed them to flee in a lifeboat. The would-be pirates washed ashore in Somaliland, where police and the scrappy coast guard, which patrols a 600-mile coastline with two speedboats and a tiny fleet of motorized skiffs, chased them down...

Yes, the territory has a foreign minister, along with liaison offices — don't call them diplomatic missions — in a handful of countries including the United States. It has a president and a bicameral legislature, as well as feisty opposition parties. It issues its own currency — crisp bills printed in the United Kingdom — and its own passports and visas...

From colonial times, Somaliland took a different path. In the 19th-century scrum over Africa, Britain acquired the territory mainly to supply its more important garrison in Aden, across the sea in Yemen.

Relatively few British expatriates settled here, leaving tribes and institutions intact, while southern Somalia became a full-fledged colony of Italy, complete with Italianate architecture and banana farms to supply the home country.

The British and Italian territories were joined at independence to form the Somali Republic, but in 1991, with the southern-based regime verging on collapse, a rebel government in Somaliland declared itself autonomous. After two years of fighting, a new government emerged that melded traditional clan structures with Western-style separation of powers, a hybrid system that some experts have called a prototype for the rest of Somalia.

TNR: the war on terror
Slate: send Cheney back to the bunker

LAT: the FARC ventures into Panama
The heavily armed rebels usually show up in groups of 20 or more, dressed in green fatigues and seeking food.

"Of course you have to give it to them," said one resident of this isolated village 35 miles west of the Colombian border. "People don't like that they're here, but with few police and many informants around, they keep quiet."

Then just as suddenly, the rebels with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, melt back into the jungle.

Over the last decade, the leftist insurgents have regularly spilled over into Panama, seeking rest and respite from pursuing Colombian armed forces. But rarely have they appeared as frequently or penetrated so deeply into Panamanian territory as in recent months, say residents and officials here in Darien province...

U.S. counter-narcotics officials believe that the FARC and other Colombian traffickers are shipping more drugs from Colombia overland across Panama to avoid tighter control of Pacific and Caribbean coastal waterways by the Panamanian and U.S. naval forces...

"In the last year or two, you really notice them more," another El Real resident said this month. "They come around to buy necessities -- rice, beans, salt and milk -- and they always pay. They don't involve themselves in local disputes and other issues. But they have their informants who tell them if the police are coming."

Like others interviewed for this story, El Real residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of FARC reprisal.

They have good reason. In early April, rebels killed a Colombian refugee in nearby Boca de Cupe in front of his three children, leaving a note pinned to his chest inscribed with the word sapo -- Spanish slang for "snitch."...

A recent census turned up the presence of 108 gangs in the country, a revelation to authorities who thought Panama was immune to a problem that has spawned crime waves in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Many of the gangs are thought to have links to the FARC.

In reaction, the U.S. Embassy has launched a $4-million anti-gang program that is funded from the Merida Initiative, the anti-drug aid package that was passed by Congress mainly to help Mexico fight the cartels.
WP: meanwhile, in the land of futile policymaking, trying to get crop substitution to stick

DLC: report on the 'narcoinsurgency' in Mexico
LAT: Mexico prison break was an inside job, caught on camera

BBC: Bolivia celebrates 200 years of independence, and hangs on to some of its colonial legacy
But in Sucre, the festival has a sombre side. There is still a huge split between the city's European descendents and the indigenous people - a split which is repeated in many countries of the region...

"There are many myths saying Indians are dangerous. From when they are very young, children in the cities are told "don't go there or the Indian will get you". In cities like Sucre, people panic if you say 'Indians are coming to take over'," [a priest] said.

"In the past, people were told Indians would come, rape the women and steal everything. Actually, it is the other way round. Even today young Indian girls working as maids are still sexually abused. It's common for young men to be allowed to use them to get sexual experience."

BBC: presidential elections in Mongolia
Last year, five people died and hundreds were hurt in protests over alleged fraud in general elections.

President Enkhbayar of the former Communist Party campaigned on law and order.

Mr Elbegdorj of the Democratic Party pledged to fight corruption and reform control of Mongolia's natural resources.

In 1990, Mongolia abandoned its 70-year-old Soviet-style one-party state and embraced political and economic reforms.

AJE: Nepal settles on a communist prime minister, after days of negotiating; Maoists boycotted
Kumar's predecessor Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the leader of the [Maoist party] UCPN-M, resigned on May 4 after the country's president stopped him from firing the army chief.

Though Dahal attempted to block parliamentary proceedings for Saturday's vote, he did put an end to protests several days ago that made Kumar's election possible.

Both Dahal's and Kumar's parties are communist but differ in policies and beliefs.

AP: Canadian court finds Rwandan resident guilty of war crimes
Munyaneza was living in Toronto when he was arrested in October 2005 after reports that he had been seen circulating among Canada's Rwandan community. At the time, African Rights, a Rwandan group that has documented the genocide, linked Munyaneza to key figures indicted by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

During his trial, more than 66 witnesses testified in Montreal, and in depositions in Rwanda, France and Kenya, often behind closed doors to protect their identities. Many accused Munyaneza, who was 27 at the time, of being a ground-level leader in a militia group that raped and murdered dozens.

AP: Naxalites kill 16 police officers near Nagpur

++
WSJ: ask and tell already

NPR: it's just business, arrgh
That surprising call marked another step in an unusual working relationship, between a bargainer for pirates demanding a $7 million ransom and the businessperson trying to save sailors' lives. "We started talking because I was curious about the inner working of the system ... and he was very forthcoming with that," Gullestrup says.

Over the course of their conversations, Gullestrup asked about the pirates' thinking when they lowered the ransom figure. Gullestrup won't say exactly how much the company paid, only that it was between $1 million and $2 million.

For his part, Mohammed says he was curious about the shipping company's bargaining strategy, and that the men have continued to e-mail back and forth — two or three times a day.

"We talk about the issues of piracy or this or that," Mohammed says...

Pirates, meanwhile, are colluding, sharing intelligence in an unregulated environment. Economists would say the dynamic centers on market power. The situation makes it hard for a shipper like Gullestrup to figure out the market rate for ransom.

"The owners are escalating the ransom payments because they're not coordinating how to deal with pirates," Gullestrup says. "The pirates are extremely good at sharing information. We know for a fact from Ali the pirates have piracy workshops. Pirates of various clans, [their] elders are getting together and they will exchange information."...

Mohammed says he gets something out of the relationship, too. He doesn't see himself as a pirate. He says he agreed to negotiate for pirates so he could learn enough about their business to start his own.

"If I become an expert on piracy and try to milk that, I think it is a legit business," he says. "The news media and global news media will need someone who is going to be an authority, to report from the inner feelings of a pirate, and to report whether pirates are going to stay around for a long time or not, and how to eliminate piracy."...

The executive expresses a certain appreciation for Mohammed's character. "He's a very kind person, and he has a wife and a son," Gullestrup says. "He has a large herd of camels. He sent me an e-mail that said he allocated three camel babies to me, for which I'm honored."

Mohammed called the gift a good gesture. "It's those little things that count."
WP: US trains coast guards in Africa

NYT: remembering perpetrators in a horrific, and (relatively) human light
MR. LU’S fascination with war came from eight years of service in the Chinese Army. That period began when, at 18, he enrolled in the People’s Liberation Army Institute of International Relations, in Nanjing. It was an unusual move for the elder of two sons from an intellectual family; Mr. Lu’s father is a prominent novelist. But it was one that his father insisted on, Mr. Lu said, because he did not want him to get caught up in the chaos of 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square student protests and massacre.

OI: Jack Bauer vs Barack Obama

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

'there must be something better out there'

africa
BBC: Annan condemns violence, elections in Kenya
Mr Annan said conflict may have been triggered by disputed elections, but it had evolved into 'something else.'"
Econ: (meanwhile, high-tech voter fraud in the US?)

Econ: run-down of the peace deal and outstanding issues in Congo

asia
WP: "strolling" in Shanghai: middle-class citizens carefully organize protests against train extension
WP: video taken on anonymous protester's cellphone here

WP: shoring up the US military base in Guam
"The Pentagon has chosen Guam, a quirkily American place that marries the beauty of Bali with the banality of Kmart, as the prime location in the western Pacific for projecting U.S. military muscle. Guam has served as an important U.S. military outpost since World War II. But now the sultry tropical island, about three times the size of the District of Columbia and with a population of 173,000, is set to become a rapid-response platform for problems ranging from pirates to terrorists to tsunamis, as well as a highly visible reminder to China that the United States is nearby and watching."

WP: North and South Korea hold first talks of the year

middle east
LAT: Gazans keep crossing border into Egypt, face riot police; Hamas bulldozes another gap in wall, police withdrawn
Slate: what everyone should know about the Gaza Strip (no, not the latest pole dance)

NYT: Maliki to send troops to Mosul after attacks there
"'We have defeated Al Qaeda, and there is only Nineveh [the province Mosul is capital of] and Kirkuk left where the terrorists have fled to,' Mr. Maliki said in the southern city of Karbala. 'Today the forces started to move to Mosul, and the battle will be final.'
By most accounts, the struggle is likely to be challenging and unlikely to be final. Sunni insurgents have long been active in Nineveh. The province borders Syria, which has been a conduit for foreign fighters, and is a region marked by tensions between Sunni Arabs and Kurds."

Ind: Musharraf allays all concerns, says elections will be free and fair
WP: US reiterates that it will send troops to help Pakistani security forces against Al-Qaeda and extremist groups

Ind: bomb in Beirut targeted terrorism investigator

latin america
BBC: after killing, call for more security in Peru for judges, prosecutors, witnesses, and defendants in drug trafficking trials
"The latest killing marks the growing boldness of drugs gangs operating in Peru as cocaine production increases."

BBC: Sec Rice in Medellín to push for free trade pact with Colombia

WP: Brazil to try to halt increase in Amazon deforestation and development

europe
BBC: new, no-name far-right mega party in EU

LAT: Prodi loses vote of confidence, Italy's gov't collapses

BBC: former Tamil Tiger-turned government collaborator jailed in UK for identity fraud

Gdn: Moscow police arrested mafia boss's alias for tax evasion before realizing who they had
WP: no mistakes here: drafting young opposition leaders into military service
"Service in the army, which has a well-documented history of violent and sometimes fatal hazing, is feared by many young Russians, not just those who oppose the government."

misc
NYT: pages all reporters to weigh in on how the (democratic) primaries are playing out around the world
"'It is in many ways an uplifting sight to see a great democracy functioning at that most basic of levels,' said Lord Tom McNally, the leader of the small, opposition Liberal Democrats in Britain’s House of Lords. 'Even with all the money, the publicity, the power of television, the person who wants to be the most powerful man or woman in the world still has to get down and talk in small town halls and stop people on the street and stand on soapboxes'...'There is a desperate sense of need that there must be something better than Bush out there...'"

(not so) great expectations

NYT: counterinsurgency and presidential politics
"Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who regularly visits Iraq, put it this way: 'You have to grade all the candidates between a D-minus and an F-plus. The Republicans are talking about this as if we have won and as if Iraq is the center of the war on terrorism, rather than Afghanistan and Pakistan and a host of movements in 50 other countries.

'The Democrats talk about this as if the only problem is to withdraw and the difference is over how quickly to do it.'

On the ground with the troops, it is clear that a major military change was in fact made in Iraq last year — not so much the addition of 30,000 troops, but the shift to a counterinsurgency strategy for using them."

WP: back story on foreign-born Iraqi insurgents
Ind: fighting continues in south of Iraq between police forces and Shia cult
NYT: Pentagon might reassign Petraeus to NATO post

LAT: Bush administration lowers expectations on foreign policy goals (who knew it was possible)
"The upshot is that the Bush administration is going to be spending the next year managing crises and tidying up messes until the next president takes over, rather than reaching legacy milestones, as officials recently had hoped."
WP: the Post is not so pessimistic

NYT: Kenya killings might have been planned pre-elections
"Several local chiefs of the Kalenjin and Masai communities said they held meetings before the election discussing how they would attack Kikuyus and push them off their land. Top opposition politicians have said they were not involved and that there were no plans for violence...The disappointing reality is that all this has happened before in Kenya: the same places, the same ethnic fault lines, even the same tactics, down to the mud-smeared faces. Both of the times that ethnic violence has swept across the Rift Valley, the early 1990s and now, local tensions have been ignited by politics."

Gdn: militia leader and tribal sheik given government post in Sudan
"Musa Hilal, who is accused of leading militias on a state-sponsored campaign to cleanse parts of Darfur of non-Arab farmers, will act as special advisor to the minister of federal government, local media reported...Hilal has admitted recruiting local Janjaweed militias for the government, but denies personal involvement in the scorched earth campaign that has driven more than two million people from their homes, and seen more than 200,000 people die." [unclear how recruiting does not imply personal involvement]

Gdn: Israel blocks fuel to Gaza, threatening humanitarian emergency

WP: run-off likely in Serbia

NPR: focus on Turkish women in Germany
"One of the biggest problems in these multi-ethnic societies is the wall of silence behind which tens of thousands of uneducated Muslim women live...In 2004, the German ministry for family affairs claimed that 49 percent of Turkish women had experienced physical or sexual violence in their marriage. And in the last decade, there have been 49 known cases of honor killings, 16 in Berlin alone...'The Muslim institutions, they see these problems, that families are having problems,' [a social worker] explains. 'They say, 'If you become again religious or get back to your roots and your religious beliefs, then everything will become better.' And that's why we have this movement, religious institutions are becoming bigger and stronger...[At the same time,] Under the guise of religious tolerance, [a rights leader] says, German institutions turn a blind eye to women's rights violations."

New Yorker: the Obama-Clinton choice