experiments in policing [secret's out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SWJ: US issues new COIN guide

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC: investigating weapons use in Gaza

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

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

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

AJE: Rwanda announces troop pullout from Congo

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

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

BBC: lingering tensions in Kenya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

++
LAT: save the chinguiros!

adventure tourism [wish you were here]

NYT: US backed failed attack on LRA in the Congo, leading to hundreds massacred
The United States has been training Ugandan troops in counterterrorism for several years, but its role in the operation has not been widely known. It is the first time the United States has helped plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, according to senior American military officials. They described a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command working closely with Ugandan officers on the mission, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

No American forces ever got involved in the ground fighting in this isolated, rugged corner of Congo, but human rights advocates and villagers here complain that the Ugandans and the Congolese troops who carried out the operation did little or nothing to protect nearby villages, despite a history of rebel reprisals against civilians. The troops did not seal off the rebels’ escape routes or deploy soldiers to many of the nearby towns where the rebels slaughtered people in churches and even tried to twist off toddlers’ heads...

The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls. Witnesses say the fighters have kidnapped hundreds of children and marched them off into the bush, the latest conscripts in their slave army...

Villagers across the area are now banding together in local self-defense forces, arming themselves with ancient shotguns and rubber slingshots. In the past in Congo, home-grown militias have only complicated the dynamic and led to more abuses.

AJE: police kill 30 demonstrators in Madagascar
Supporters of Andry Rajoelina, an opposition leader and former mayor of Antananarivo, were marching towards offices used by Marc Ravalomanana, the president, when the shooting began on Saturday...Last month, at least 68 people died when rioting and looting broke out after a similar protest.

AJE: new president arrives in MogadishuAhmed travelled to the presidential palace under the protection of government soldiers, local fighters and African Union (AU) peacekeepers.

The road from the airport was lined with hundreds of people who welcomed him from Djibouti, where he had been following his visit to last week's AU conference in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.
Slate: he apparently submitted his application fee on time
DB: maybe the pirate negotiator would've been a better choice
There are seven pirate clans in Somalia, and they do not go into each other’s areas. So the location of the ship tells us much about which group we were dealing with. As soon as I figure out the group, I try to link up with its leader through our contacts in Somalia.

AJE: treason charges dropped against opposition in Zimbabwe
The decision of the court underlined Zimbabwean government's eagerness to improve relations with the opposition, ahead of the formation of a unity government...On Thursday, the parliament passed a constitutional bill to allow the establishment of a coalition government under a power sharing deal signed in September.

AJE: Israel responds to two rocket attacks with air raids in Gaza
WP: UN suspends aid
Hamas officials in Gaza denied that the Islamist movement had seized the [aid] trucks, saying there had been a misunderstanding. But in an interview, Hamas economics minister Ziyad al-Zaza defended the group's decision to take 3,500 blankets and 400 food packages from the warehouse. Zaza said some employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency had been telling recipients that the aid was a gift of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is the leader of the Fatah party, Hamas's chief Palestinian rival.

"UNRWA is supposed to do work that is purely humanitarian," Zaza said. "But some of their employees want to use the aid to play politics."

John Ging, head of the relief agency in Gaza, called the allegation "nonsense," saying Hamas's actions had "crossed a red line."

AJE: killings continue in Pakistan, of police officers, civilians
AP: and, claims the gov't, militants
AJE: mosque bombing sparks crowd attack on police outpost in Punjab
Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said: "The attack angered a lot of people, they vented their anger on the police station this morning. [Police] were unable to provide security to these people in the procession. So there was considerable anger at police."

Slate: the US in Afghanistan
Some argue that the best way is to step up attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida forces directly, as—or perhaps before—they cross the border from Pakistan. Others say it's better to stop chasing terrorists all over the countryside and instead to protect the Afghan population, provide basic services, and build their trust. But since resources are limited, which segments of the population do you protect—those in the cities, where most of the people live, or in the villages, where the Taliban have made their deepest incursions?

President Obama has talked of sending three extra brigades to Afghanistan. That means about 12,000 combat troops. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks of deploying 30,000 extra troops—doubling the 30,000 we have there now.

These numbers sound far apart, but they're not. Obama's three brigades would also require "enablers"—military jargon for the personnel who enable the combat brigades to fight. They would include an aviation brigade (already in place), a division headquarters, a support brigade, military police, medics, military engineers (to build the expanded barracks and bases), and so on. Add all this into the mix, and you get 30,000 extra troops. Obama and Mullen are talking about the same troop boost.

How did they come up with this number? This is where the cause for worry begins. It didn't come from any assessment of how many troops are needed for a particular mission. No decisions about a specific mission—an operational goal—have yet been made.

The request for three brigades stems from one fact and one fact only: That's how many brigades will be available this year, as more troops pull out of Iraq.

It's a number based on what we have, not on what we need. It has no substantive rationale.

There soon will be a rationale, and it may well be the product of systematic thinking. Three "strategic reviews" of Afghanistan are currently in the works, due to be finished this month—one by the National Security Council, one by the Pentagon's Joint Staff, one by Gen. David Petraeus' staff and advisers at U.S. Central Command. (Petraeus' review encompasses Afghanistan, Iraq, and the surrounding region.)...

Judging from press accounts and from my own conversations with officials and advisers involved in these reviews, a consensus seems to be developing that—in the medium to long term—we should put most of our efforts into a counterinsurgency campaign, along the lines of Gen. Petraeus' field manual on the subject. This conforms to the school of thought that the best way to defeat insurgents is not to chase them here and there, but to protect the Afghan population and help build loyalty to the government.

However, there are widely differing views—both between and within the review teams—over what to do in the short term (as well as over how long the short term might last). The problem, widely acknowledged, is that a certain level of security has to be attained before a full-blown counterinsurgency campaign can work—and that many Afghan cities, villages, and roads haven't reached that level.
AP: maybe the Europeans will answer the NATO commander's plea for more troops
BBC: meanwhile, Karzai is displeased

AJE: Sri Lankan forces seeking LTTE rout; will not hold talks
AJE: ...as thousands of civilians are displaced and an LTTE sea base is captured
WP: meanwhile, some in Colombo are hopeful the war will end

AJE: confrontation between parties in Malaysia

NYT: Italian tourist visits Falluja

AJE: Panetta says he would end CIA renditions (mostly)

WP: President of Haiti requests emergency aid
Préval said he also urged Clinton to convert some of the $250 million in annual aid the United States now gives to Haiti into direct budget support for the government, instead of distributing the money through nongovernmental organizations. The United States is the biggest aid donor to Haiti, but he said "every last cent of the contribution" continues to be funneled through aid organizations, even though the government is better managed.

"Political stability has been restored, but what is necessary is the creation of jobs," he said...

Préval acknowledged that there has been "donor fatigue" over Haiti, but he noted that a series of U.N. peacekeeping missions have each cost nearly $500 million. He said he told officials in Washington that it would be cheaper to give the country the $75 million to $100 million he is seeking rather than have to pay for yet another expensive U.N. mission later.

"We are going to go back to the series of missions unless we do the work necessary to put the country back on the rails," he said.

Préval spoke through an interpreter, but when asked when Haiti needed the money, he broke into English and simply declared, "Now."

++
Slate: denying the Holocaust
The closest thing to a codified definition of Holocaust denial is found in European law. Thirteen countries have laws banning Holocaust denial, including Austria, Germany, France, Israel, and Switzerland. (Other countries, like Canada, prohibit hate speech against any "identifiable group," including Jews, but don't refer specifically to the Holocaust.) Most of the laws are broad, like the Czech Republic's law punishing the "person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or Communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or Communists." In Israel, any published statement of "praise or sympathy for or identification with" the Nazis is a crime. Germany requires that the statement be part of a "public incitement." Those found guilty of Holocaust denial might get jail time—from six months to five years—or a hefty fine.

Slate: prehistoric animals were very, very large

weak and moderately functional [beware of armed asses]

Econ: the meaning and implications of state collapse and weakness
But for al-Qaeda, remoteness alone is not enough. Terrorists need protection too, and that has to be secured from local populations as in Pakistan’s tribal belt. International terrorists, moreover, need to be able to travel, communicate and transfer funds; they need to be within reach of functioning population centres. Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, argues in a forthcoming book that international terrorists do not find the most failed states particularly attractive; they prefer “weak but moderately functional” states. The shell of state sovereignty protects them from outside intervention, but state weakness gives them space to operate autonomously.
Econ: Yemen seems to fit the bill
With its rough terrain, weak central state and gun-slinging tribal culture, Yemen may prove a fairly secure redoubt for al-Qaeda. The group has suffered sharp setbacks in such places as Iraq, Lebanon and especially Saudi Arabia, where it has not mounted a serious attack since 2006. The relative quiet in Yemen, which some critics of its government ascribe to a secret amnesty whereby Sunni jihadists backed the state against a smouldering Shia insurrection in the country’s north, has been eroding. Waves of arrests, prompted partly by Western and Saudi pressure, have provoked an escalation of al-Qaeda attacks that culminated in a double car-bombing of America’s embassy in Sana’a last September; the attack failed to penetrate the fortified compound but left 16 people dead.

AJE: (video) Pakistan's military operations in the FATA region (ht: pstan)
AJE: police officers released by Taliban after promising to quit

WP: sheiks set to ignore election outcome in Anbar
"An honest dictatorship is better than a democracy won through fraud," Abu Risha said.

Here, in the cradle of the Sunni insurgency, tribal leaders nurtured and empowered by the United States appear ready to take control the old-fashioned way -- with guns and money -- if their political ambitions are frustrated...

Abu Risha and other leaders of the Awakening, the U.S.-backed Sunni sheiks who rose up to quell the insurgency, charge that Sunni politicians of the Iraqi Islamic Party have committed electoral fraud, which party officials deny...

Ever since they turned against the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq more than two years ago, a dozen of the sheiks who founded Awakening have considered themselves the saviors of Anbar. Enriched by U.S. contracts and courted by U.S. military commanders eager to preserve security gains, the tribes are more powerful than at any time since the demise of Iraq's monarchy half a century ago.

Now, they seek to transform their anti-insurgency credentials into political power. But democracy is a new concept for the Anbar sheiks, who are participating for the first time in elections. In 2005, they ordered their tribesmen to boycott the polls, allowing the Iraqi Islamic Party, a religious Sunni group, to take control of the province amid paltry voter turnout.

The tribal leaders' inexperience has shown. In a world of byzantine allegiances and fickle loyalties, the original Awakening leaders have split up, bickering over who has the authority to lead them. Several Awakening parties competed in the elections, dividing their vote. At least four founding sheiks were candidates...

The Awakening sheiks have a source of leverage in the police. An estimated 30,000 tribesmen have joined the provincial police, but most remain loyal to their tribes.
AJE: suicide bomber attacks in Diyala

AJE: Hamas seizes aid intended for civilians
AJE: and Israel follows suit
The Israeli military told Al Jazeera it had captured the Lebanese vessel and taken it to Ashdod, where authorities were examining its cargo. The passengers and crew, meanwhile, were being questioned by police.
LAT: ICC considers Gaza investigation
Now [Ocampo's] prosecutors must analyze three questions, [Ocampo] said: whether the Palestinian Authority has legal power to recognize the court's authority, whether war crimes occurred, and whether the governments involved conduct genuine investigations.
AJE: Abbas says 90,000 are homeless
Slate: finding humor in the tragedy
If tragedy and comedy are inseparable, as Eugène Ionesco believed, the Gazans are equipped to be among the world's funniest people. The strip is nowadays little more than a prison for its 1.5 million residents. The water is nearly poisonous, travel is restricted even for Fulbright scholars, and what remains of the civil infrastructure is administered by a mirthless set of militant Islamists.

And, weirdly, rage and sorrow often did give way to laughter among Jebalia's erstwhile residents. One man, a half-blind veteran of the British Mandate years, swung seamlessly from excoriating the U.S. government to weeping over his lost home to cackling about the death of his donkey. Why would Israel want the beast dead, he wondered—it couldn't even hold a gun.

AJE: Sudanese capture town in Darfur, defeating JEM fighters
Government forces have entered the city of Muhagiriya, 80km from Nyala, the south Darfur capital, and are pursuing Jem fighters, Sudan's army spokesman said on Wednesday.

The army started bombing the town earlier this week as the United Nations-African Union peacekeepers deployed in the area, refused to leave.

At least 30 people have been killed in the fighting and thousands of civilians have been forced to flee, a UN officials said...

Suleiman Sandal, the Jem commander, denied that the group had been pushed out of Muhagiriya, saying it had withdrawn voluntarily to spare the population from government air attacks...

There has been speculation that the increase in violence in Darfur is tied to a decision expected by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, for suspected war crimes.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, warned in a report issued Wednesday that an arrest warrant by the ICC could have an adverse impact on UN personnel in Sudan.

NYT: Somali pirates have their ransom for the Ukrainian tanker

IHT: Madagascar coup leader relieved of mayoral post

BBC: Qaddafi says democracy in Africa causes bloodshed
BBC: run-down of upcoming elections around the world

Ind: bombing closes last hospital in region where Sri Lanka troops are pursuing Tamil Tigers
Consisting of a payload of small bombs that spread over a wide area, cluster bombs are notorious for their impact on civilians and are particularly difficult to find and remove after a conflict has ended. In May 2008, 107 nations adopted the international Convention on Cluster Munitions, but Sri Lanka was not among them.

While the hospital had been struck several times by artillery shells fired from positions occupied by both government troops and rebel fighters, Mr Weiss suggested that the cluster munitions – believed to have been used for the first time since a ceasefire between the two sides broke down two years ago – had been fired by the rebels. "The government has assured us that they do not have these munitions and we have accepted that," he added...

If anything, the fighting seems set to intensify as the government seeks to crush the separatist LTTE, which has have been using guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers to fight for an independent Tamil homeland for the past 30 years. At a speech to celebrate Sri Lanka's 61st Independence Day yesterday, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said soldiers had "defeated the cowardly forces of terror that had wrapped our entire nation in fear".

Mr Weiss said there was evidence that the LTTE, forced into an ever-diminishing area of jungle, had been preventing civilians from crossing the front lines and escaping the conflict. He said LTTE fighters had also tried to commandeer two UN vehicles, but desisted once the staff argued with them...

Uncertainty hangs over the fate of the LTTE's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Reports say the rebel commander may have tried to flee the country but there has been no evidence to confirm that. This week, however, government troops revealed what they said was his underground bunker, a "luxury" hideout complete with air-conditioning, sound-proof generators, a four-poster bed and CCTV.
AP: testimony from survivors
Econ: civilians caught in the crossfire all too common
Gdn: gov't rejects call for ceasefire
The government said it would offer a limited amnesty to rebel forces that were ready to lay down their arms as they were on the brink of defeat in their 25-year-old struggle for a Tamil homeland. But ministers refused to hold peace talks, saying they would accept nothing less than total surrender.

Apparently down to their last 600 fighters, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam appear to be approaching the final battle with the Sri Lankan army. The military has encircled the rebels and says the Tigers are close to collapse, having lost almost 99% of the territory under their control only a year ago.

Slate: the durability of the Burmese junta

New Yorker:Nigeriatown in China

BBC: Brazil's occupation strategy for the favelas
After an initial violent confrontation with the Red Command - a drug gang that once controlled this district - police have, for the moment at least, established a full-time presence. Normally, they leave the area, with the traffickers still in control.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, President Lula said the state was making up for a time when it had abandoned its poorest citizens...

"In the past it was only the police intervening with lots of brutality which punished the guilty and the innocent - very often only the innocent. Now we have police there, who are becoming a community police force."

...with the traffickers gone and police maintaining a 24-hour presence, local commanders believe they can now win over hearts and minds.
AJE: police incursions still happen, though: at least 10 dead in Rio favelas

AP: in case you're keeping tabs, the Mexican gov't says the Gulf Cartel, with its Zeta hit squad, is the most violent - apparently based on the number of weapons captured

Plan Colombia & Beyond: former governor released by FARC after 7 1/2 years describes life in the jungle
“After being kidnapped for two days, they gave us a snack. It was Royal water and soda crackers. I put down the cup and put the soda crackers on top. I went out to “take care of business,” and when I came back, the crackers were folded over from the humidity. If that’s what it does to some crackers, imagine what it does to the people there. It kills and rots everything. That’s why the humanitarian exchange is urgent...

Around us, like planets orbiting, were many guerrillas of the vanguard and rearguard, who served as protection. On occasion they came close to us or we retreated. On one occasion when they came close, about 50 meters I think, the group that was in front encountered an Army patrol. We, who were a bit behind, heard the shots. They held me down on the ground, the shots continued. And so I didn’t know which bullets to protect myself from, those of the Army or those of the guerrillas. It was very tense, we stayed on the ground all afternoon until it got dark. Once it was night, we moved a bit backward. We had to walk in silence. I remembered Alan Felipe [his son] when he was 4 years old. One day he said to me, “Papi, I hate you,” and I thought that the world was backward. And that’s how it was that night, like the world backward: the guerrillas protecting me and the Army shooting. … In the past, on four occasions bombs and planes passed very close by. The guerrillas ran to get us out, to protect us.”

CSM: Venezuela plagued by inflation, ahead of referendum on whether Chávez can run for reelection indefintely

BBC: castration of sex offenders in the Czech Republic

BBC: demonstrations across Europe related to the economy
BBC: 'immigrant'-native conflicts in Italy also affecting Roma population
"A series of what appear to be racially motivated attacks and reprisals have contributed to concerns that a creeping xenophobia is infecting the country's social fabric, aided by a political discourse that often links Italy's social and economic woes to immigration."

Daily Beast: NYPD counterterrorism force
As I came back to New York from years in the Middle East and Europe, what fascinated me about the NYPD was that it offered an alternative to the dangerously ill-conceived, mismanaged, and highly militarized “global war on terror” that had pushed the United States into the gruesome occupation of Iraq and helped inspire a violent loathing for Americans around the world. When [NYPD Commissioner Ray] Kelly says the acronym as a single word, “the GWOT,” it’s with a twinge of irony that makes it sound almost obscene.

++
The Onion: Cheney dunk tank fundraiser the best stimulation package!
Organizers reported Sunday that the 44th White House Carnival was a rousing success, raising a record $800,000,066,845 for the federal government—$800 billion of which came from a dunk tank featuring former vice president Dick Cheney..."All right, you candy arms, let's go," Cheney shouted at the line of people, which consisted of Americans, non-Americans, out-of-work autoworkers, teachers, luminaries from the science community, gays, lesbians, military personnel, members of Congress, children, and the entire Arab-American population.

BBC: politics causing part of the increase in Indonesian divorce surge
But changes in lifestyle are not the only cause of marriage break-up, according to an official at the Religious Affairs Ministry, Nasaruddin Umar.

"Believe it or not," said Mr Umar, "some couples decide to divorce because the husband and wife have different takes on political issues. This has never happened before."

New Yorker: James Baldwin, Istanbul, and race in the US

ballots and bullets [paper planes]

AJE: Sri Lanka rejects call for ceasefire
The military said it would not cease all combat operations, but would stop shooting to allow civilians to get out as it did for a UN convoy on Thursday that carried out 226 seriously wounded people...

Following months of heavy fighting, government troops have captured the Tiger's political capital of Kilinochchi and, later, the Tamil Tiger bastion of Mullaittivu on the northeast coast.

Government forces say they have confined the Tamil Tigers into a 300 square kilometres pocket of territory in Mullaittivu district.

Humanitarian relief organisations say that about 250,000 civilians are still trapped in the rebel-held area...

'The military are saying they're are not coming because the Tamil Tigers are refusing to allow them out, they are using them as a human shield. There are even stories of mines being put around their settlements to stop them from leaving,' [AJE correspondent Tony] Birtley reported.

'Of course, the Tigers say that people are scared to come because they may be abused by the army, they may be killed by the army and they'll almost certainly go into a camp to be interrogated by the army.

'It's very unclear why [civilians are not leaving], but these people have spent a long long time living under the Tamil Tigers ... and there's a lot of distrust.' "
Gdn: ...but the president urges civilians to move towards gov't forces, promising safety
Daily Beast: M.I.A. is upset about Sri Lanka's offensive
youtube: but then, one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist (via Sheely)

Iraq holds elections tomorrow
WP: elections in Iraq: 3 Sunni candidates killed
"Hazam Salim Ahmad, a candidate for the National Unity list, was killed as he left his house in the city of Mosul, where Sunni Arabs and Kurds are vying for control amid attacks by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq...

In Diyala province, gunmen kidnapped Abbas Farhan al-Jubouri, a candidate for the secular National Movement of Reform and Development, after a campaign rally in Mandali...[his body was found 3 hours later]...

In Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood, gunmen killed Omar Faruq al-Ani, a candidate with the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political bloc..

The spate of assaults raised to five the number of candidates killed in the run-up to Saturday's voting. Four were Sunnis. "
Gdn: reports of corruption widespread as well
"Voters across the country have reported receiving visitors bearing food baskets and toys which they dispensed in return for signed commitments to vote for them, sometimes alongside an Islamic oath.

The vote is being seen as a tussle between the incumbents – largely a group of returned exiles backed into office by the US and Britain, and rebellious regions that want to drain power from the central government and divide it among themselves...

This time 400 political blocs will stand, representing 14 of the 18 provinces. Only the disputed province of Kirkuk and the three Kurdish provinces will be exempt from the election, which will see all the Sunni interest groups take part. A total of 440 provincial council seats are up for grabs and up to 75% of Iraqis of voting age are expected to cast ballots...

'These people stay in the Green Zone protected by the tanks they came in on,' added the sheikh, a co-leader of the 7 million-strong Damini tribe, and a key figure in Anbar province, which comprises almost one-third of Iraq. 'This is nonsense. Democracy, American style, came from another world and is not part of our culture.

'As tribes, we don't trust the central government. We don't feel they have the ability to take the country forward. We are the most influential group in the country, yet all the decisions are made inside the green zone and we know nothing about them.

'We are not al-Qaida, but we, the tribes, say that if after eight months there is no change we will demolish everything. We cannot stand this situation anymore. We will withdraw from the political process and we will not stand in the way of any militia groups who send their armed fighters back to the streets.'...

Violence has steadily increased in the fortnight before the poll, with attacks on Iraqi police patrols, in particular, higher than they have been for months.

However Baghdad's police chief yesterday predicted the militias that ruled the capital for more than two bloody years could not rise again. The city will be in lockdown over the weekend with nearly all cars banned from streets and most residents effectively housebound."

NYT: the fight for control in Mosul
"This is the test of the provincial elections in Mosul, a last bastion of the Sunni and jihadi insurgency: whether a political system that more closely reflects local ethnic and sectarian splits will be a first step toward stability. The issue is the same in places around Iraq where calm is still fragile: whether democracy can trump violence.

There are some encouraging signs here in Mosul, even if many people fear the elections are simply another means for Arabs and Kurds to continue their bloody struggle over land, oil and sovereignty. Certainly there is no progress on the more threatening issue of Kirkuk, a city to the southeast so full of oil and ethnic tension that elections there were postponed.

But politics are changing here. In the last provincial elections, in 2005, most Arabs boycotted. As a result, Kurdish groups, who make up at most a third of the city, hold 31 out of 41 seats on the provincial council in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh Province. The provinces have broad local authority to spend and govern.

Now the council has 37 seats, and Arabs, represented by two main parties, are expected to win, and Kurds largely accept that — one reason, many here say, that the violence, while still much higher than in most of Iraq, has not flared more...

After the Kurds ruled the city for four years — a time of extreme violence, with the latest killings last fall forcing thousands of Christians to flee Mosul — Kurdish groups readily concede that Arabs should control the city itself...

But [Goran, deputy governor] is equally frank that their real goal is winning rural areas outside the city — places where Kurds say they have a majority and that, they argue, should ultimately belong to the nearby autonomous enclave of Kurdistan. The Kurds have long been frustrated by the failure of international promises for a census and referendum to settle Kurdish claims, particularly in Kirkuk.

So Mr. Goran said the elections would serve as their own census, he hoped, to further the Kurds’ agenda.

'We are looking not only to know our political size but our ethnic size,' he said. 'How can we know the truth? By democratic means. We don’t want to force any identity on anyone. Voters will choose what identity they want.'...

More and more, the roads out of Mosul feel like an international boundary, with checkpoints and virtual customs stops before the Kurdish cities of Dohuk and Erbil. While Mosul is battened down and tense, Kurdistan is safe and lively, full of construction, car dealerships and nice Turkish washing machines for sale. Arabs say that, despite their holding Iraqi passports, Kurdish pesh merga troops harass them and admit them only grudgingly."
BBC: ...and Najaf, where Shiite parties compete

BBC: Iraqi troops, prisoners, and hospitalized have started to vote
NYT: thousands of Shiite pilgrims may miss the polls

NYT: women are running for office
"Of the estimated 14,400 candidates, close to 4,000 are women. Some female candidates have had their posters splattered with mud, defaced with beards or torn up, but most have been spared the violence that has claimed the lives of two male candidates and a coalition leader since the start of the year. But on Wednesday, a woman working for the Iraqi Islamic Party was killed when gunmen burst into her house in Baghdad and shot her 10 times in the chest, according to an Interior Ministry official."
LAT: ...as are Communists
Gdn: and Black Iraqis
"In Iraq's deep south another American-led revolution is stirring. But this time it is being sparked by popular voice, not bombs.

The country's 1m-plus black citizens have tapped into Obama-mania like few other groups across the Arab world. For them Obama's inauguration was the dawn of a civil rights movement that they never had the impetus to strive for.

Black Iraqis will this week stand for the first time as an electoral bloc in provincial polls that will help shape Iraq in its slow transition to full sovereignty and possibly help shake off the stereotype that places them near the top of the heap in a nation of persecuted minorities.

Like the marsh Arabs to the north of their relative stronghold in Basra, black Iraqis are an underclass who find it near impossible to rise above their time-worn status of hard-labourers and peasants. Up to 50% of black Iraqis migrated to the Arabian Peninsula after the birth of Islam 1,500 years ago.

The rest have come steadily in the centuries since, some trafficked as slaves and others lured by broken promises of riches."

Ind: Blackwater brings Iraqis together: the firm is banned from operations
CSM: Iraqi courts to gradually assume jurisdiction over 15,100 detainees in Iraq

NYT: Obama administration likely to quiet down the democracy talk
NYT: and take harder line towards Karzai
"[Administration officials] said that the Obama administration would work with provincial leaders as an alternative to the central government, and that it would leave economic development and nation-building increasingly to European allies, so that American forces could focus on the fight against insurgents."
AJE: ...who also tampers democracy talk - postpones elections until August

Gdn: more reports of reprisal violence in Gaza
"Among the dead are Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Israeli military. Others include criminals who were among the 600 prisoners to escape from Gaza City's main jail when it was bombed as the war began. Their attackers are thought to be their victims' relatives...

Palestinians in human rights organisations are reluctant to speak publicly about what is a sensitive issue, but one respected human rights worker in Gaza said he believed between 40 and 50 people had been killed in reprisal attacks since the start of the war. But there was not yet enough evidence to suggest this was an organised campaign by Hamas, he said."
Gdn: Spanish judge launches investigation into alleged Israeli war crime in Gaza, in 2002

AJE: judge rejects motion to delay Guantanamo trial of alleged planner of USS Cole attack

Slate: ex-Marine advoctes end to torture training
"...a review of the experiences of American servicemen captured in Iraq and Somalia shows that our enemies don't water-board their captives. Nor do they have the resources to mount a program of systematic sensory deprivation and humiliation, as we did in Guantanamo and in the American prison at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base. In fact, our soldiers need training from SERE based on an entirely different premise, as illustrated by the experience of Michael Durant, the helicopter pilot who spent several weeks in captivity when he was captured by Somali fighters during the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" raid. Durant survived by befriending his captors and forcing them to see him as a fellow human being. SERE conditions servicemen to expect nothing but the worst from their captors; Durant's life depended on his ability to understand his captors and find ways to manipulate them psychologically.

At the same time, the problem with SERE extends far beyond its questionable relevance to the threats that the war on terrorism pose to American soldiers. The school, which all pilots and special-forces soldiers attend, unintentionally serves to legitimize the use of torture by U.S. personnel in the field."

CSM: Pakistan military launches offensive in Swat
"Within 100 miles of the capital Islamabad, Swat was until recent yearsa thriving tourist venue renowned for its lush forests, clear rivers, and ski resorts. But since their resurgence last September, militias led by Maulana Fazlullah have conducted brutal killings of political foes and those deemed "immoral." On Sunday, 43 people – including former and present ministers – were added to the hit list, which is read on the radio. Almost all of the politicians named have since fled.

Headless bodies are strung up daily in a public area residents now call Khooni Chowk ("bloody intersection"), for sins ranging from non-adherence to dress codes to defiance of the militants' regime, says Niaz Ali Khan, a student from Mingora who studies in Swat."
NYT: Taliban targeting police
"Last year, 70 police officers were beheaded, shot or otherwise slain in Swat, and 150 wounded, said Malik Naveed Khan, the police inspector general for the North-West Frontier Province.

The police have become so afraid that many officers have put advertisements in newspapers renouncing their jobs so the Taliban will not kill them."

LAT: opposition agrees to join another attempt at unity government in Zimbabwe
"Under severe pressure from Southern African leaders, Zimbabwe's opposition voted Friday to join a unity government under President Robert Mugabe, despite failing to win its key demand for control of the police."

AJE: Somalia's transitional (non-functional) gov't to elect new (powerless) president
"Parliament is meeting in neighbouring Djibouti because of the security situation in Somalia, where armed opposition groups are battling government forces and each other...

The election on Friday comes two days after 200 members of the opposition ARS were sworn into parliament as part of an agreement brokered by the UN.

Another 75 seats are still to be filled by other opposition and civil society groups, as part of an effort to bring former opponents into the government."

BBC: the effects of recent sectarian riots in Nigeria
"Jos is at a crossroads between the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria and the mainly Christian south.

The latest violence followed a disputed local election in which a Christian candidate defeated a Muslim.

Most of the clashes have been between members of the Hausa-Fulani community – the biggest ethnic group in northern Nigeria - and local ethnic groups, that are mainly Christian.

However, many feel that the conflict is not about religion but about who should be seen as the rightful owners of the city.

Members of the Hausa-Fulani community say they are discriminated against because the government of Plateau State sees them as 'settlers'...

Many local governments in Nigeria operate policies that give preferential rights to communities that are judged to be the original inhabitants of an area.

In Jos, there are three ethnic groups - all predominantly Christian - which are recognised as indigenous...

Tensions between indigenes and settlers occur across Nigeria and as the population has grown, competition between them for land, jobs and education has intensified.

However in Jos, the friction between settlers and indigenes coincides with religious and ethnic divisions."

BBC: Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, remains empty after violence

BBC: first trial at the ICC hits snag as witness recants testimony

NYT: North Korea abandons accord with South Korea on border

WP: grassroots online organizing in China

BBC: FARC to release high-profile captives Sunday
Bloomberg: ...may have detonated bomb in busy Bogota sector that killed 2

Plan Colombia and Beyond: jailed paramilitary leader explains the cocaine trade from Colombia
LAT: Mexican capos might have arrived at a truce
LAT: the DEA is out of Bolivia
Ind: maybe they can just use Google Earth, like the Swiss
"Swiss police said they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software."

Gdn: separtists, the mafia, and ecologists in Corsica
Fighting to defend the law is not easy on a Mediterranean island where clans, mafia godfathers and armed separatists crisscross in a nebulous atmosphere of omertà (code of silence), clientelism and protection rackets, and where property speculation is the fast money earner...

Corsica, 100 miles south of the French coast, is one of the last remaining unspoiled corner of the western Mediterranean. Due to France's stringent coastal protection measures and the spectre of violent separatism, the mountainous island still boasts large expanses of coastline that have been spared mass construction. Now the Corsican executive, headed by a member of Sarkozy's ruling centre-right party, has proposed a new 20-year development plan to boost the island's economy, which will declassify stretches of protected land to allow for more building. Environmental groups warn that Corsica risks repeating the concrete nightmare of Majorca or France's Côte d'Azur.

The plan, known by its acronym Padduc, has spawned a movement called the anti-Padduc front, made up of 80 different groups including trade unions and ecologists. The row has also boosted the island's nationalist and separatist cause. This weekend, Corsican hardline nationalists will launch their new political party, Corsica Libera. They oppose building developments which, they say, threatens the island's national identity.

This month, one of Corsica's main armed separatist groups, the FLNC-UC, issued its strongest statement in which it made death threats against the island's ruling political class, warned against the building plans and laid claim to 14 bomb attacks over the last six months.

In the low-level separatist violence that has simmered on the island for 30 years, empty holiday homes have been sporadically targeted with homemade bombs. While tourists are welcome, mainland French "foreigners" acquiring land are not."

Gdn: Iceland on fast-track to joining EU
Ind: with the world's first gay premier

Slate: reform US federal government archiving practices
Slate: end taxation without representation for DC

trapped [don't follow the leader]

WP: Gazan civilians are trapped
"As Israeli forces attacked Gaza by land, sea and air, residents living in the congested coastal strip faced a fateful question: Flee the shelling and shooting, or hole up inside their homes and hope for the best?"
NYT: sometimes there are no good options...
"The Samouni family knew they were in danger. They had been calling the Red Cross for two days, they said, begging to be taken out of Zeitoun, a poor area in eastern Gaza City that is considered a stronghold of Hamas. No rescuers came. Instead, Israeli soldiers entered their building late Sunday night and told them to evacuate to another building. They did. But at 6 a.m. on Monday, when a missile fired by an Israeli warplane struck the relatives’ house in which they had taken shelter, there was nowhere to run."
LAT: ...since missiles often fail to reach their intended target
WP: even areas of refuge aren't safe: at least 30 killed in UN school shelter
Gdn: (this story several hours before the bombing highlights the tragedy)
"Besides the schools in Jabaliya, three others have been turned into shelters in Gaza City, one in Rafah, in the south of the strip, and a handful of others scattered around. But Hasna says there will be more, although he is only marginally more confident than Khalil that the UN flag will provide protection.

"We depend on it being a UN installation with a big flag. We hope the Israelis will respect that. We are contacting them and telling them," he said."

WP: as death toll surpasses 550, Israel ignores European calls for ceasefire
LAT: Q&A on the sustained assault
NYT: reactions in the West Bank
"Fatah leaders are growing deeply worried over popular reaction and support for its rival, Hamas, to the point of crushing recent demonstrations.

There is also, after so many years of struggle, of Palestinian against Israeli and of Palestinian against Palestinian, no small degree of weariness with yet another deadly round. Even with the war in Gaza, there is no sign of a third intifada, or uprising, despite Hamas’s call for one.

“The people are tired,” said Jamal Fayez, who runs a modest restaurant in the city center...

[Others interviewed] said that support for Hamas would grow as this conflict went on, and that they were intimidated by the Palestinian security forces of Mr. Abbas and his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad — forces subsidized by the United States and trained by Jordan — which have cracked down on a series of demonstrations and banned the showing of the Hamas flag."
WP: repercussions in France...
CSM: ...and Arab states

LAT: meanwhile, Israel dealing with its own domestic issues: gang war is on
"An over-the-top gang war between Israeli crime families, complete with daylight bombings, bystander deaths and the occasional rocket attack, has laid bare the shortcomings of the country's formidable security apparatus...

Organized crime blossomed here in the 1980s and '90s while security forces were focused on Palestinian terrorist threats. By the time Israeli authorities truly began to grapple with the problem a few years ago, they faced a sophisticated global network of gambling, prostitution and drug trafficking, with Los Angeles as one of its hubs."

WP: speaking of urban warfare, Rio police apply some tactics to fight gangs
"The police have regularly launched large operations in Brazil's favelas, or slums, in their battle against drug gangs over the years, but authorities say the occupation of Santa Marta, a relatively small, contained neighborhood, is part of a new approach, a pilot project for the future of crime fighting in this violent city. Brazilian police officers are attempting counterinsurgency tactics similar to those used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- setting up small bases occupied around the clock inside violent neighborhoods, developing intelligence by living among their adversaries, and using government funds to rebuild broken areas and generate goodwill."
Gdn: which hasn't been so popular
"Authorities say the R$1m (£300,000) "eco-barrier", which will encircle part of the famous Dona Marta slum in southern part of the city, is intended to protect the nearby Atlantic rainforest from illegal occupation as well as improve security and living conditions for slum residents.

As tenders for construction of the 3-metre-high (10ft) wall opened yesterday, critics claimed the project was a form of "social apartheid", comparing it to ­Israel's security barrier."

WP: female suicide bomber kills 40 at Baghdad shrine
NYT: violence trends over time: better days, but still deadly ones

BBC: Taliban kills three in Pakistan for spying
Slate: ...the incident is not an isolated one

NYT: 6 years in Guantanamo

BBC: Nigerians get in on the piracy gig

WP: Ethiopia withdraws from Somalia
Econ: travelogue from the other side of the country, in border area with Kenya

AP: opposition leader declared winner in Ghana
"Ghana is now one of the few African countries to successfully transfer power twice from one legitimately elected leader to another. It made the transition to a mature democracy after experiencing years of coups in the 1970s and 1980s, and survived the closest presidential vote in its history with Atta Mills's win."

LAT: reconciliation efforts underway in Kenya after less successful election
"In a sun-drenched valley of central Kenya, a few dozen villagers gather each Saturday to sit under the trees and conduct the painstaking work of reconciliation that their government leaders seem happy to avoid.

These traumatized victims of Kenya's post-election clashes meet to talk, pray, sing and -- they hope -- heal...

At most sessions, group members still segregate themselves by tribe. But singing, dancing and a touch of pragmatism have helped break the ice."
BBC: those government leaders, meanwhile, are in 'crisis talks'
"Our correspondent says tensions were heightened on Friday when President Kibaki approved the media law, which journalists say will muzzle the press.

Mr Odinga had asked the president to reconsider the measures, after it was bitterly opposed by journalists."

BBC: Congo CNDP rebels rebel against Nkunda
BBC: ...then take it back

LAT: Subcomandante Marcos makes an appearance
"In January 1994, the Zapatista guerrillas launched an offensive aimed at dramatizing the bleak living conditions, poverty and alienation of Mexico's indigenous population. They managed to seize control of several towns in Mexico's southernmost province, Chiapas, before the army beat them back into remote hills. It was over in less than two weeks.

Since then, the Zapatistas functioned as a largely political movement. A folk culture emerged around the masked Marcos, meanwhile, as he gave interviews, received visitors from around the world and saw dolls and T-shirts bearing his likeness. And although he and his followers brought attention to the plight of Mexican Indians and achieved some voice in local governments, Chiapas remains mired in poverty and violence."

WP: Ohio man could face Nazi crimes trial in Germany
Slate: reporting from the Holocaust archives
"This is the Central Names Index—CNI—which covers three rooms and includes 50 million references for 17.5 million victims."

New Yorker: the legacy of Arendt
Econ: and Huntington

++
The Onion: Hallmark scientists discover three new emotions

mixing it up [don't call it a comeback]

WP: young men fleeing to avoid forced recruitment by rebels in East Congo
"I ran away with about 20 others my age," said Christophe Maombi, 27, who fled his rebel-held village of Rugari when he said rebels tried to march him into the bush. "There are so many weapons there. If they see a young boy, they just give him a weapon and tell him to fight."
AP: UN reports that army troops are raping women
WP: displaced also dispossessed
"As panicked thousands have abandoned villages across eastern Congo in recent months, the scale of looting that has followed has been massive, a crime reflecting the predatory culture pervading Congo since the Belgian colonizers perfected it decades ago.
The millions of minor thefts may pale in comparison to the more professional looting of eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth, which is helping to finance the conflict. Collectively, though, the thieving soldiers have set back an already economically marginal population by years, if not decades, making it even harder to reverse the effects of a conflict that threatens to destabilize the entire Central African region."
CSM: Nkunda's goals
BBC: Rwanda agrees to send troops to fight Hutu militias
BBC: Obasanjo to mediate on UN behalf

AP: Islamist rebels seize port city in Somalia
"On Wednesday, al-Shabab added the town of Merka, 56 miles (90 kilometers) from the capital, to its list of conquests after poorly paid government fighters simply ran away.
The group now controls most of the country's south, with the crucial exceptions of Mogadishu and Baidoa, where the parliament sits...
Al-Shabab was part of the Islamic militia that controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six months in 2006 before Ethiopian troops arrived to drive them out with the tacit support of the United States.
The group quickly fractured into hardline and more moderate factions. Al-Shabab's hard-liners are at the heart of the insurgency, which has killed thousands of civilians caught up in roadside bombs, grenade attacks and mortar fire."

WP: Shining Path reemerges, reformed, in Peru
"After years in relative obscurity, the Shining Path, one of Latin America's most notorious guerrilla groups, is fighting the Peruvian military with renewed vigor, feeding on the profits of the cocaine trade and trying to win support from the Andean villagers it once terrorized, according to residents and Peruvian officials....
Experts said the guerrillas have renounced the brutal tactics espoused by their original leader, Abimael Guzmán, who was captured in 1992. Unlike Guzmán, who said 10 percent of the Peruvian population had to be assassinated for the Shining Path to take power, the new leaders tell their followers they must protect the villagers and instead target the military and anti-drug authorities.
In numbers, the guerrillas' ranks remain a fraction of their former size: 400 to 700 full-time fighters in the branch that insists on armed struggle, according to various estimates; in the low thousands if offshoots that call for more-peaceful political revolution are included. In ideology, they appear to have abandoned the strict Maoism that Guzmán preached and to have adopted a muddled form of communism that welcomes foreign investment and large international mining companies, among others, provided they treat their workers well."
WP: interesting side-report by the journalist looking for them
"The purpose of this excursion was to explore the territory of the Shining Path, the communist rebel group whose guerrillas have resumed fighting the Peruvian military. We would not find them. Neither, it seems, does anyone else who goes looking. Perhaps the most basic reason the Shining Path has been able to survive for 28 years and counting is that they are so hard to get to. Forget the mines and booby traps and tunnels, or the dense jungle or constant cloud-cover, there seems no better defense than these roads.
Road is not the right word. A few minutes outside of the Andean cities of central Peru, tires roll onto something closer to goat trails, shoulderless single-lane ruts of dirt and rock fragments hacked and blasted out of the near vertical mountain slopes...
Our ultimate destination was a place called Pukatoro, a copper mining camp of unknown size somewhere in the mountains. The maps we could find did not care to mark this settlement. But the Shining Path had found it, why couldn't we? At each cross-rut, or as close to it as we could find a shepherd or avocado farmer, we would stop and Willy would ask if we were on the right path. Most of them hadn't heard of Pukatoro."

LAT: fighting amnesty for those who killed priests in El Salvador in 1989

CSM: Brazil's anti-poverty program a success
"The world's first conditional cash transfer programs were introduced in Brazil in 1995 at the municipal level, and were implemented at a national level in Mexico the following year."

WP: tribal militias in Pakistan "between the devil and the deep sea"
"But, so far at least, the tribal militias have been no panacea. Instead, the use of the militias, known as lashkars, has set off a debate over whether such a strategy will contribute to a civil war in the northwest that could engulf all of Pakistan. Yet some tribal leaders say they have little choice but to fight their brothers, cousins and neighbors: The Pakistani military, they say, has threatened to bomb their villages if they do not battle the Taliban."

WP: more US troops requested for Afghanistan

CSM: changes in a Diyala town that switched sides from Al-Qaeda in Iraq to the US/Iraqi coalition
"In 2006 and 2007, no US or Iraqi troops made it along roads laced with bombs to this remote village of 300 Sunnis. AQI operated with impunity, publicly killing one man who opposed them, imposing strict new social rules, and forcing villagers into a pact to reject any US or Iraqi military presence.
When Sheikh Thamir returned with US and Iraqi forces in January, his neighbors at first rejected them, saying that AQI had warned days before that "collaborators" would die. After days of pushing – sometimes with tears in his eyes from fear – Sheikh Thamir prevailed, joyfully declaring that the "power [of the people] is bigger than what Al Qaeda was expecting."

When the men of Dulaim finally agreed to don fluorescent green reflective belts and man checkpoints, much of AQI's weapons and money traffic from the unruly east side of the Diyala River dried up.

It also turned Al Qaeda fully against the village.

"If we quit, Al Qaeda will kill us," says Talib Ali Hussein, an SOI guard with a rifle and sun-bleached sash at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Dulaim. The recent AQI ambush was "a message from Al Qaeda that 'We are still here.' The key thing is they want to kill us."
WP: draft terms of troop agreement between Iraq and US unacceptable to Sadr; he threatens to defect if approved

BBC: ceasefire hangs in the balance in Gaza

BBC: Burma imprisons more protesters from last year, total rises to 60

BBC: village remains contested in Georgia; after Russians pull out, South Ossetian militia enters

BBC: inmate in German jail mails himself to freedom; manhunt underway

retrospective
The Onion: 'Nation finally shitty enough to make social progress'
"Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American."

The Onion (2001): Bush's visionary leadership paved the way [comedy becomes tragedy]
"Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."...

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further."

don't stand so close to me

Ind: riot by low-caste tribe in Delhi to be UNtouchable
"India's centuries-old controversy over caste and discrimination brought parts of Delhi to a halt yesterday as thousands of members of an ethnic group demanded that their official status be lowered [from "the second-lowest group, Other Backward Classes (OBC)"] in order to provide them with better access to jobs and education. Members of the Gujjar tribe blocked major roads and highways into Delhi in sit-down protests and set fire to tyres as they vowed to create gridlock across India's capital and the surrounding area...
The Gujjars say they have been discriminated against in terms of jobs, health care and education – particularly in Rajasthan – but say that by being reclassified [in Scheduled Tribes and Casts, (STC)] they will be eligible for government positions and university places that are reserved for that group...

Yesterday's unrest was the latest in several weeks of confrontations between the tribe and the police; 40 people have died in violence across the north and west of India in recent weeks. In a number of villages and towns in Rajasthan, police used live ammunition to suppress demonstrations, killing dozens of people. In one case, a policeman was lynched by protesters.

This time last year, 26 people were killed in similar demonstrations.

In Rajasthan yesterday, protesters blocked roads with the bodies of those demonstrators who were shot dead by police. They said the bodies would not be cremated until the government agreed to their demands...

During the 1857 uprising against British colonial rule, Hindu and Muslim Gujjars fought tenaciously against the imperial troops and in support of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the ruler who proved to be the last of the Moghul emperors.

In the aftermath of the uprising, brutally suppressed by the British, the Gujjars and about 150 other ethnic groups were then listed as "criminal tribes".

This listing was officially lifted in 1952 under India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Two years earlier, India's constitution had outlawed discrimination based on caste though the banned practice remains widespread."

NYT: massacre in Mexican town
"The entire municipal police force quit after the attack, and officials fled the town for several days, leaving so hastily that they did not release the petty criminals held in the town lockup. The state and federal governments sent in 300 troops and 16 state police officers, restoring an uneasy semblance of order. But townspeople remain terrified...Mexico’s drug violence has by now become so pervasive that it is infecting even small communities like this one, which has fewer than 9,000 residents."

Survival Int'l: report on the estimated 100 'uncontacted' tribes in the world
Gdn: The Guardian provides the cliffs notes version

LAT: Basra is calm - for now
"'There are 47 parties in Basra, and all of them have militias,' said a high-ranking security official with detailed knowledge of the Basra operation. Like many others interviewed for this report, he spoke on condition of anonymity...Before the campaign ["Knights' Onslaught"], Sadr's radical movement had been poised for victory in provincial elections, scheduled for fall, which the United States hopes will go a long way toward ending Iraq's strife.
'We controlled everything in Basra. We were able to apprehend the criminals. The police couldn't believe it,' Mahdi Army spokesman Muhannad Hashimi told The Times. 'We had more authority than the government. We had supporters everywhere and the people loved us.'"
WP: huge mobilization of Shiites to protest possibility of US staying indefinitely in Iraq

Ind: Tutu calls Gaza blockade "abominable" after 3-day visit
"'My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma.'"

NYT: speaking of the criminals, monks struggle to fill void by junta's lack of response to cyclone Nargis; meanwhile, junta evacuates refugee camps because "they are embarrassing"

Gdn: update on Zimbabwe
BBC: soldiers told they must vote for Mugabe or leave the army

Irish Times (via Slate): making specialists irrelevant

this announcement will self-destruct

WP: the 5-year anniversary of the accomplished mission (for some sailors on a ship at that moment not really the war in general and the whole thing has been taken out of context and the president really was aware that a strategy for occupying Iraq and preventing insurgency and sectarian warfare was essential, so when he said "end of combat operations," he meant for a small group of people on that particular deployment. on that day. sheesh.)
"Now, after half a trillion dollars and the deaths of 4,000 troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the president's spin doctors have waved the white flag of surrender over the USS Abraham Lincoln episode. "President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific, and said mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters this week."
WP: The problem, sources tell us, is that White House planners couldn't figure out how to get all that on the sign in letters large enough for people to read on television.
Gdn: British don't think mission is accomplished yet in Basra, or will be anytime soon
Gdn: Turkey bombs Kurdish targets in Iraq

New Yorker: wire-tapping gone haywire

BBC: press freedom in the world, touch and go
Gdn: freedom gained for one Al-Jazeera camerman, after imprisonment for 6 years without charges in Guantánamo

CSM: building the police force in Afghanistan
"Unlike the Army, in which the public has much confidence, the police have been seen as weak, ineffectual, and corrupt."

Ind: Gaza in the line of fire
Gdn: and under blockade; Israel pressured to ease up

Ind: car bomber in Yemen kills 6 outside mosque in Saada
"It was not known who planted the bomb near the door of the mosque, but the northwestern province has been rocked by sporadic violence since a conflict broke out in 2004 between government forces and rebels loyal to Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes in Saada since the conflict began.
Seven Yemeni troops were killed late on Tuesday in an ambush by the rebels, who often clash with troops of the U.S.-allied Yemeni government and tribes loyal to it.
Yemeni officials say the rebels, from the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam, want to return to a form of clerical rule prevalent in the country until the 1960s. The rebels say they are defending their villages against what they call government aggression.
Sunni Muslims form a majority of Yemen's 19 million population, while most of the rest, including Houthi and his supporters, are Zaydis."

LAT: Ecuador overhauls military
"Correa is expected to appoint a seven-member commission in the next several days to look into what he says is possible CIA infiltration of his military's intelligence.
The military's exalted status under Ecuadorean law is expected to change with the new constitution that Correa's legislative allies are drafting in a special assembly, which will be put to a national vote...
After Ecuador emerged from military dictatorships in 1979, defense ministers were either active-duty or retired military commanders. That changed under Correa; since taking office last year, he has named only civilian defense ministers."

BBC: Santa Cruz moving forward with referendum on autonomy from Bolivia

BBC: Taylor had $5 billion in US banks during rule

BBC: US announces new sanctions against Burma

BBC: sex workers in Calcutta get life insurance

LAT: gay rights in Nepal
"In less than a decade, [activist] Pant's Blue Diamond Society has scaled massive heights in a nation known mostly as the home of Mt. Everest. Despite deep-seated social conservatism, the group has won a landmark Supreme Court anti-discrimination ruling, chalked up support for gay rights from two of the biggest political parties and garnered international accolades...An extraordinary week in 2004 catapulted his cause to the center of public attention. Even conservative Nepalese who don't approve of homosexuality were horrified by the actions of a policeman who slit the throat of a transgendered person after forcing her to perform oral sex. When 39 members of the Blue Diamond Society were arrested at a protest a few days later, sympathetic media coverage and international outrage stung the government."
BBC: residents of Lesbos, in Greece, take gay rights group to court over word lesbian
"The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.
The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians. Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece's third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?"