south asian srebrenica [contested]

BBC: Sri Lanka rejects UN truce, despite incomplete evacuation of civilians
Between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians are still thought to be trapped in the zone - about 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of coastal area in Mullaitivu district.
Gdn: trapped Tamil civilians killed, wounded as Sri Lankan army shells no-fire zone
The casualties' graphic accounts of a fierce onslaught on the no-fire zone, supported by the evidence of their severe wounds, have been reported by doctors who have treated them at a field hospital at Pulmoddai, inside the military area, where thousands of evacuees have been taken by ship. According to the senior doctor handling the casualties for the Sri Lankan government as they arrive at Pulmoddai, shells are falling among the tightly packed tents and shelters that are home to tens of thousands of civilians, killing and wounding dozens every day...

And last night the Sri Lankan military sources said 2,857 civilians had broken through Tamil Tiger lines and made their way to safety during the day. They added that 5,000 people had tried to escape and had come under fire from the rebels. But it was not possible to verify the reports because the military has denied access to the area surrounding the no fire zone.

Until last month the government allowed civilians injured in the no-fire zone to be taken to the larger hospital in Trincomalee, but then decreed that they must be kept inside the military area...

Most of the Tamil Tiger fighters were on the front line, he said, but some were moving among the civilians, visiting family members or moving casualties. He said Tamil Tiger police were still operating, attempting to control the crowds.
NYT: can it be compared to Srebrenica?

BBC: Madagascar coup leader issues warrant for former president's arrest
BBC: others arrested in Turkish coup conspiracy, now involving nearly 150
BBC: Togo also on the trail: police allegedly preempt coup attempt by president's brother
Our correspondent says relations between the two went cold when the president sacked his brother as defence minister during a cabinet reshuffle without explanation in 2007.

He adds that the family feud risks introducing an ethnic dimension between the two half-brothers as the president's mother is from the Ewe group in southern Togo, while his sibling's mother is from the Kabye people in the north.
BBC: motley crew of mercenaries allegedly plot to assasinate Morales
Three died and two were arrested in the eastern city of Santa Cruz after police fought a gunbattle with the group.

Bolivian police officials said two of the five fought for Croatian independence. The three others are said to be Irish, Romanian and Hungarian.
CSM: violence between 'yellow' and 'red' shirts in Thailand
Econ: Fiji's fun with constitutions
Fleetingly, on April 10th, Fiji’s armed forces commander, Frank Bainimarama, seemed to lose his other job as prime minister. President Ratu Josefa Iloilo announced the abrogation of the country’s constitution, the sacking of the judiciary and the postponement of elections until 2014. Calling the president’s decision deeply regrettable, Mr Bainimarama resigned and said he was heading back to barracks. Yet the next day, he and his cabinet were back in their offices, as if nothing had happened. Belying the pretence of normalcy, however, soldiers were sent into the newsrooms of the country’s newspapers, and television and radio stations to prevent “negative” publicity; several foreign journalists were booted out of the country...

The trigger for the jettisoning of Fiji’s constitution was a ruling by the Court of Appeal declaring illegal Mr Bainimarama’s interim regime, which took power in a coup in 2006. The court demanded that a neutral caretaker be appointed prime minister, pending the dissolution of parliament and a general election.

WP: violence as India votes; Maoists kill 17
The staggered, five-phase national election, which ends May 13, will cost an estimated $2 billion, with about 714 million voters. Vote-counting is scheduled for May 16, with 543 lawmakers being chosen for the lower house of Parliament. More than 6 million security and civil officials are responsible for helping to oversee the elections, and 1.3 million voting machines will be used.

The government deployed hundreds of thousands of police and paramilitary forces to guard polling stations, especially along thickly forested areas that security officials call India's "red corridor" because of the Maoist presence...

The attacks targeted security forces and polling officials, not voters. Helicopters were flown into some areas to evacuate soldiers who had come under fire. Maoists also destroyed electronic voting machines. The Maoist rebels are active in 17 of India's 28 states, and for four decades, they have been waging a low-grade insurgency that they say is intended to promote the rights of landless farmers and tribal people...

The election features three primary political alliances: the ruling, left-of-center coalition led by the Congress party; the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led group; and a third bloc consisting of smaller, regional and communist parties.
BBC: Muslim parties also contesting elections
More than two dozen Muslim political parties, big and small, are contesting these elections - almost double the figure of the last election...

Since India's independence from British rule, Congress has been getting a sizeable chunk of Muslim votes at national level, largely because Muslims felt they had to prove their loyalty to India in early post-partition days, experts say.

AJE: $5 billion in aid pledged for Pakistan at summit in Japan
Gdn: as Islamabad is targeting by the Taliban
CSM: breakdown of the umbrella organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan
NYT: Pakistan branches exploit class cleavage
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.

To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.

The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
BBC: thousands have been displaced in the process

NYT: Afghan women protest harsh new law despite risks
About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.

It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.

With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.
BBC: Afghanistan to recruit thousands more police ahead of August elections

Gdn: special series on Baghdad
Gdn: and Basra
Gdn: evaluating Britain's performance there
NYT: cobbling together provincial councils
BBC: sexual violence in the US military
According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed.

The Department of Defense acknowledges the problem, estimating in its 2009 annual report on sexual assault (issued last month) that some 90% of military sexual assaults are never reported.

AP: captives of Islamist rebels in Phillippinnes freed
The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 fighters, has been blamed for numerous kidnappings, bombings and beheadings. It is believed to have received funds from Al Qaeda and is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

AJE: 60,000 displaced Somalis have returned to Mogadishu
AJE: Somali parliament unanimously approves adoption of Sharia law; unclear how it will be enforced
Analysts say that the move to implement sharia is an attempt by political leaders to re-assert government control over southern and central parts of the country. [ceding the north to the pirates, apparently]
Slate: how to get a grip on the pirates
BBC: ...which have incredible reach
Reuters: how about sending more Dutch sailors to the scene?
random: hey, at least there's a bright side if it doesn't happen
(NYT: this can't be coincidence)

AJE: 10 JEM rebels sentenced to death by hanging for launching attack on Khartoum
Under Sudanese law, any death sentence must be ratified by both an appeals' court and the country's highest court. Then all death warrants must be signed and approved by Omar al-Bashir, the president.

"God is Great! Jem is strong! Revolution, revolution until victory!" the defendants shouted after hearing the verdict...

More than 220 people were killed when Jem fighters reached Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, more than 1,000km from the western Darfur region where it has been fighting government forces and allied Arab militias...

At least 50 other Jem fighters are already awaiting execution over the attack.

BBC: Ethiopians mobilize for release of opposition leader
[Birtukan] was among more than 100 people jailed for political offences after Ethiopia's election in 2005, most of whom have since been pardoned...

Ms Birtukan is a former judge and was one of the younger and more charismatic leaders of the coalition which did well against the ruling party in the 2005 elections.

Gdn: Human Rights Watch calls Eritrea a "giant prison"
There is no freedom of speech, worship or movement in Eritrea, while many adults are forced into national service at token wages until up to 55 years of age.

WP: Zuma, ANC expected winners in South African election

AP: Mugabe calls for reconciliation on independence day
NYT: while his thugs appear to have other ideas
...Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants, part of an inner circle called the Joint Operations Command, know that their 85-year-old leader may not be around much longer to shield them, and they fear losing not just their power and ill-gotten wealth, but also their freedom, officials in the party said.

Their fixation on getting amnesty was described by four senior ruling party officials, all Mugabe confidants, who spoke to a Zimbabwean journalist working for The New York Times. But some opposition officials say Mr. Mugabe’s loyalists are less interested in reaching a deal than in simply forcing them out of the new government through violence and intimidation. Others suspect a push for amnesty is being sought by a broad contingent of Mr. Mugabe’s party worried about accounting for the past...

The recent abductions of dozens of opposition and human rights activists began in October. Many were held for weeks or months in hidden locations. Most were eventually produced in court and many have provided sworn accounts, corroborated by doctors, of being tortured to elicit confessions that they were recruiting militants to overthrow Mr. Mugabe or were involved in bombing plots.

BBC: rebel leader in Burundi demobilizes
Agathon Rwasa, of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), gave his arms to African Union troops overseeing the peace process.

Up to 20,000 FNL rebels are due to be disarmed next week and some will be integrated into the security forces.

Econ: the aid to the DRC is as messy as the country

AP: Colombian capo, Don Mario, arrested
Rendón Herrera's organization is responsible for 3,000 killings in the past 18 months alone, said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, who directs the national police. Police said Rendón Herrera had offered his assassins $1,000 for each officer they killed, in hopes of evading arrest...

Rendón Herrera and his brother Freddy Rendón controlled an area near the border with Panama known as a major corridor for drug and arms traffickers. Before the arrival of their far-right militia, the area was dominated by leftist rebels.

The brothers were among the last paramilitary leaders to demobilize in 2006, under a 2003 peace deal that promised fighters reduced sentences and protection from extradition to the United States in exchange for pledges to renounce violence. But while his brother and other paramilitaries agreed to await justice in jail, Don Mario fled back to the jungle and rearmed, police say.

LAT: the war on drugs in Tijuana
The military also appears to be targeting symbols of narco culture. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos said the military was behind the destruction late last month of five shrines in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach dedicated to folk saints such as La Santa Muerte (Saint Death), whose followers include drug traffickers.

No one is claiming victory over organized crime in the key drug-trafficking corridors of northern Baja California; the recent tranquillity may merely reflect a temporary truce between Garcia and his rival, Fernando Sanchez Arellano, nicknamed El Ingeniero, the reputed leader of the Arellano Felix drug cartel...

The military's arrival in Tijuana two years ago was less than auspicious. Soldiers disarmed the city's 2,300-strong police force, long thought to be compromised by the cartels, and began rumbling down busy streets in public displays of force.

But the toll of killings and kidnappings only accelerated, as rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel clashed, leaving behind scrawled threats to each other beside decapitated bodies or barrels of lye with liquefied human remains...

In November, a captured cartel lieutenant began giving up names of police officers on the payroll of organized crime. Duarte's soldiers swept down on high-ranking commanders across the city...

The police departments in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach, as well as the state police, are now run by current or former army officers.

Gone are many of the police informants, or "antennas," that supplied organized crime with intelligence and cleared the streets before cartel kidnappings and raids, U.S. and Mexican authorities say.

LAT: mayors catching the brunt of the risk
Vergara, 34, a member of the once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is among at least 11 Mexican mayors and ex-mayors who have been killed or have disappeared during the last 15 months. Many more have received extortion demands. Others, such as Jose Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of beleaguered Ciudad Juarez, received public death threats.

Mexico's 2,400 mayors occupy a dicey spot on the front line of the country's war on drug traffickers. They are prime targets for bribe offers because they oversee local police. And well-meaning mayors are hard pressed: Most municipal governments have skimpy tax bases from which to equip and pay police well enough to break long-standing graft...

Analysts say the rise in violence at the municipal level reflects political changes in Mexico, where the former ruling party, the PRI, has ceded the top-to-bottom control it once wielded, including over the drug trade.

Under PRI mayors, governors and presidents, traffickers largely went about their business with little trouble as long as they kept killings down and maintained payoffs to the right politicians.

But the rise of a multiparty system in Mexico during the last 20 years has upended that tacit pact.
BBC: map of the cartels' strongholds
NYT: cocaine street price up, but indicator of drug war success doubtful

BBC: Afro-Bolivians create new kingdom
King Julio is one of the many poverty-stricken Afro-Bolivians. But a few years ago he discovered that he was a direct descendant of Bonifaz, a tribal king from central Africa.

Almost two years ago he was crowned at a lavish ceremony as the first Afro-Bolivian king - a move intended to further the group's cause and gain recognition in the country's new constitution.

The original Bonifaz was brought to Bolivia as a slave in the 16th Century to work in the silver mines of Potosi.
WP: race an issue at the Summit of the Americas

AJE: Haitian senate elections upcoming; Aristide's party excluded
WP: as the country, reliant on remittances and aid, struggles to get by

Econ: Correa likely to win re-election

BBC: 20 years on: Poland's evolution, as represented by Lodz
BBC: memories of Solidarity and betrayal
Natalia's father is 67 years old now. He won a presidential award for his contribution to Polish democracy.

"From time to time he puts on a suit and goes to meetings. He is very proud of his contribution. He jokes that he even wears his medal in bed."

But this recognition came with a bitter aftertaste. When his personal file was declassified, he discovered that close friends he had trusted had betrayed him.

Econ: political leadership (or lack of it) in post-communist states

CSM: Russia ends emergency rule in Chechnya, will withdraw half of troops
"Chechnya exists today as a kind of enclave, completely outside the framework of Russian or international law," says Tatiana Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Russia, who was reached by phone in Grozny. "This decision to lift the state of emergency has purely symbolic significance for the population of Chechnya. Today, the human rights abuses are committed by [pro-Moscow] Chechens rather than Russian security forces, but the atmosphere of impunity is the same," she says.

BBC: crime in Croatia

NYT: suspected ETA leader arrested in France

++

BBC: guernica

Army of Dude (via AM): game theory

the Onion: 'cost of living now outweighs benefits'

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

dark matter [when things collide]

NYT magazine: the Taliban (and Al Qaeda) unchallenged in Pakistan
"Pulling into Namdar’s compound, I felt transported back in time to the Kabul of the 1990s, when the Taliban were at their zenith. A group of men and boys — jittery, clutching rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — sat in the bed of a Toyota Hi-Lux, the same model of truck the Taliban used to ride to victory in Afghanistan. A flag nearly identical to that of the Afghan movement — a pair of swords crossed against a white background — fluttered in the heavy air. Even the name of Namdar’s group, the Vice and Virtue brigade, came straight from the Taliban playbook: in the 1990s, bands of young men under the same name terrorized Afghanistan, flogging men for shaving their beards, caning women for walking alone and thrashing children for flying kites.
The young fighters were chattering excitedly about a missile that had recently destroyed one of their ammunition dumps. An American missile, the kids said. “It was a plane without a pilot,” one of the boys explained through an interpreter. His eyes darted back and forth among his fellows. “We saw a flash. And then the building exploded.”
WP: US to deploy predator drones along Afghan-Pakistani border more frequently
In interviews, the officials attributed their failure to find bin Laden to an overreliance on military force, disruptions posed by the war in Iraq and a pattern of underestimating the enemy. Above all, they said, the search has been handicapped by an inability to develop informants in Pakistan's isolated tribal regions, where bin Laden is believed to be hiding.
BBC: here's a handy map of the region, where the Taliban is taking the long view

BBC: the delicate issues surrounding justice and the LRA
"Accounting for war crimes in Africa is always going to involve tough choices...If everyone is pursued, peace may remain a mirage - but if no one is hunted down, the rule of law may never recover."
BBC: Joseph Kony, LRA leader, still at large in the DRC
BBC: LRA spokesman denounces Congolese military mobilization to protect civilians
BBC: but maybe they can broker a deal with the military: elsewhere in the DRC, the army is working with FDLR rebels to extract profits
"Our researchers visited areas where the FARDC [DR Congo army] and the FDLR were operating side by side, each controlling their own territories, trading in minerals from 'their' respective mines without interfering with each other's activities. They depend on this mutual support to continue their trade," [a Global Witness official] said.
BBC: meanwhile, 12 goats spared humiliation of standing trial in Kinshasa

BBC: Russia has pulled out of Georgia; here's a map of other potential 'flash points'

WP: Kim Jong, Ill?
(credit for the witticism goes to Slate.com)

Gdn: Sri Lanka attacks kill 20; gov't shoots down LTTE plane

WP: devastation in Haiti

Econ: Beirut in the balance

Econ: El Salvador gearing up for elections in 2009
BBC: former Angola rebels accept election outcome

LAT: Zimbabwe bloggers important source of information
BBC: Morocco's king just shut one down

LAT: Thai prime minister booted for gaining income on a cooking show. he didn't get the memo that stock dividends from oil companies would've been a-ok.

Gdn: win a trip to Iraq this winter!

Slate: what will happen if the Large Hadron Collider generates a big black hole? it's highly unlikely, but still. (ps, SV likes the modesty of the name for the massive device that will help physicists discover the foundations of the universe)

carried away

NYT: civilians caught between bullets in Sadr City...
NYT: and amidst heaps of trash
"On Saturday, three Sadr City residents gingerly approached an American Army position to deliver a warning: Unless the Iraqi government or its American partner did something to restore essential services and remove the piles of garbage, the militias would gain more support."

the strained US military employs short-term measures:
USAT: involuntary extensions for soldiers
Gdn: and "moral waivers" for recruits

CSM: meanwhile, Congress haggles over latest Iraq funding bill

WP: negotiations between secular and Islamist groups in Pakistan

Gdn: Lebanon still in "presidential limbo"
"A power struggle between the pro-western ruling coalition, supported by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, has paralysed the government.
Politicians have been unable to reach consensus since the term of the pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, expired. Both sides have agreed that army chief General Michel Suleiman should fill the post, but his confirmation by parliament has been repeatedly derailed by a dispute over how to share power in a future cabinet.
Today's attempt was the 18th time parliament has called a presidential election. The vote was abandoned because not enough members were present to make up the necessary quorum. Members of the Syrian-backed opposition have been staying away from the parliamentary chamber, leaving it unable to convene a vote."

Ind: Islamists seize two towns in Somalia

Ind: Kenyan troubles disrupt Masai community program
"Since the non-profit Mara Conservancy was founded in 2001, and the compensation scheme established, the number of lions in the reserve has doubled to 40. But now that the fund has been suspended [because of lack of tourists], many Masai are threatening to resume hunting the lions and leopards which eat their cows, goats and sheep.
'We know we shouldn't kill it, but we might have to,' said Konchellah Ololmaneie, who has lost six of his 80 goats to the leopard.
So far rangers in the Mara have managed to dissuade him from hunting down the leopard. But without the £10 per goat compensation he has been accustomed to, Mr Ololmaneie has nonetheless had to resort to desperate measures. He has decided to sell a cow before the leopard can get to it – a decision not taken lightly.
'If you don't have a cow, you are counting down the days until you die," he says. "Your cow is your bank.'"

BBC: diary from Harare

AP: 20 Haitians drown off coast of Bahamas, presumably trying to reach US

BBC: Catholic priest missing after flying away with 1,000 helium balloons off southern coast of Brazil

perceptions

NYT: Sadr City fighting continues
NYT: (op-ed) the conflict in Basra foretold
"As has been widely reported of late [in 2005], Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Recruited from the same population of undereducated, underemployed men who swell these organizations' ranks, many of Basra's rank-and-file police officers maintain dual loyalties to mosque and state."
WP: report released Sunday on state of Iraqi police confirms not much progress has been made
WP: Shiites splitting
"The hostilities highlighted how intra-sect struggles, after five years of war, are increasingly defining the nature of conflict in Iraq, as violence lessens between Sunnis and Shiites."
CSM: Sunni groups, Islamic Army of Iraq, still fighting, though
"Chasing out Al Qaeda has benefited us a lot," he says, explaining that AQI militants have largely been driven out of Anbar and Baghdad and are now concentrated in parts of Diyala, Nineveh, and Salaheddin provinces to the north. He says AQI used indiscriminate violence to subdue other Sunni insurgent groups....
He says the situation pushed Sunnis to the brink of a protracted internal battle, so siding with the US military to root out AQI and preserve Sunni unity made sense.
'Some people joined ... while others are still in the resistance.… We wanted to prevent fitna [discord] among Sunnis, and to unite our front,' he says.
Members of these US-backed militias now number almost 91,000 and are paid a total of $16 million a month in salaries by the US. They are often lauded by President Bush in his speeches on Iraq.
The US military now calls these Sunni militias 'Sons of Iraq.' Iraqis simply refer to all these groups as sahwas. But the Shiite-led government is resisting US pressure to fold these groups, especially the ones in Baghdad and Diyala provinces, into the Army and police. 'Trust me, the sahwas are ultimately with the resistance, heart and mind,' says Abu Abdullah. He says IAI continues to have a loose affiliation with other factions that share its outlook, such as Muhammad's Army, the Rashideen Army, and Mujahedeen Army."
CSM: the Marines still fighting in Anbar
Slate: Petraeus and Crocker were predictable

NYT: secret military trials in Afghanistan
NYT: defense lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners try to delay trials, because don't want to confer legitimacy on tribunal system
LAT: a Saudi prisoner refuses to participate

LAT: policing in LA: public perceptions of racial violence (especially Latino-Black) vs how homicides have been recorded
"[Police Chief] Bratton now concedes that his 'just the facts' approach hasn't worked. Black commentators have accused him of downplaying a rising menace. Reporters have pressed him at every turn."
Ind: police in South Africa given shoot-to-kill orders from minister
"'You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations,' said Deputy Safety and Security Minister Susan Shabangu."

LAT: gangs in Zimbabwe target opposition
"Intimidation of opposition activists is occurring -- outside the limelight -- in rural areas of Zimbabwe that have traditionally been ruling party strongholds but where the MDC scored upset parliamentary victories. One activist has been killed. The fear tactics are viewed both as political retribution and as an attempt to scare opposition supporters from backing the MDC in a possible presidential runoff, allowing the 84-year-old Mugabe to hold on to power. Thus far, many believe the heavy-handed tactics are working."
Gdn: regional summit called to try to broker election outcome

Ind: unrest in Kenyan slum as power-sharing agreement still not implemented
NYT: displacement still leaves some without adequate resources; threatens to reshape politics
"Hundreds of thousands have already resettled in areas where their ethnic group dominates, because that is seen as the only way to guarantee safety."

NYT magazine: memories of Liberia

LAT: Sudan census - first in 25 years - won't include religion or ethnicity

Ind: captured yacht reveals sophisticated pirate network
UNOSAT: a map of Somali pirate attacks (HT: Chris Blattman)

WP: Nepalis voting despite violence
Gdn: good Q&A on background of the elections

Gdn: riots continue in Haiti

BBC: Kosovo adopts new constitution
BBC: Burma puts its up for sale
BBC: Senegal amends its to charge Habre

Gdn: 1971 Bangladesh war of independence in photos

BBC: four army death squad members convicted of 1992 university massacre in Peru

NYT: (op-ed) more on MLK Jr and his legacy

NYT: Zakaria's take on Bhutto's take on Islam and politics

the Onion: Mead releases new grad-school-ruled notebook
BBC (really, not the Onion): for the good of the children, Venezuela drops the Simpsons for Baywatch

commemorating

MLK Jr's last speech
NYT: RFK's speech in Indianapolis upon learning of MLK Jr's assassination; two months before he himself was killed
(listen to the speech here)
"You know, Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn't bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice." -Barack Obama speaking in Ft Wayne yesterday
the Root: how the assassination changed music
BBC: lingering questions about James Earl Ray
WP: the state of pioneering civil rights groups today

LAT: conflict in Mosul between Sunnis and Kurds
"The Iraqi government and U.S. military spokesmen blame the chaos on Al Qaeda in Iraq, a loosely organized Sunni Arab insurgent group, which desires to create a new base in the north. But the problems date to 2003, when the Kurds first sent fighters into Mosul, and the status of the city's Arab elite was diminished...
The Kurds want a referendum, called for under Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, to formally annex the disputed areas to Kurdistan. The referendum, postponed last year after the Iraqi government failed to conduct a census in the contested north, would also determine the status of the city of Kirkuk and other areas along the border of Kurdistan. A vote could prove to be the trigger for greater Arab-Kurdish bloodshed or a bridge to conciliation and prosperity...
U.S. officials recognize that their dependence on the Kurds may have tipped the balance of power in favor of their longtime ally. The Americans relied on Kurdish forces to stop Sunni fighters from seizing Mosul in November 2004, and the influx of Kurdish fighters allowed Kurdistan to cement its grip on Mosul's northern and eastern outer rings"...
an American official compared "Kurdish fighters favorably to Shiite security forces in Baghdad who have been accused of indiscriminately killing and arresting Sunni Arabs [said] 'When Kurds get killed in Mosul, Kurdish special operations/intelligence units surgically go after that person' who did the killing, the former official said. "It's not collective punishment, but they will go and kill that individual. . . . The Kurds are very responsible about it.'"
BBC: Maliki calls off attacks on militias, any "people who carry weapons"

Ind: US renews contract with Blackwater
AP: a contractor is charged under military law for the first time since Vietnam

LAT: Bush pledges more troops for Afghanistan

Gdn: veterans from the 1965 war - the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform - want Mugabe to go
WP: the opposition rejects calls for a run-off; police prevent them from filing lawsuit to release poll results

BBC: Nigerian rebel leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) charged with treason and gun running

BBC: the Maoists' transition from bullets to ballots in Nepal; elections to be held Thurs for a constitutional assembly

BBC: new Tibetan riots in Sichuan
BBC: riots in Kashmir over treatment of political prisoners
LAT: 3 die in Haiti riots over food distribution

Gdn: German military officers accused of selling training services to Libyans

NYT: Sderot, town near Gaza, becomes symbol for Israel's survival, mostly for foreign donors

Ind: pirates are at it again

keeping quiet and speaking up

Gdn: "forgotten" war in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia
"Deep in these desert wastes lie the Somali state zones (provinces) of Degehabur, Fik and Qorahay. It is here, largely unseen and unreported, that the Ethiopian army, backed by rival sub-clans, has waged a violent nine-month-long campaign against factions of the Ogadeni clan, the backbone of the ONLF."
LAT: horrific story of one woman accused of collaborating with the Ogaden National Liberation Front

BBC: talks in Somalia to end violence
interim PM met with elders of the Hawiye clan, though it's unclear if they can influence the most active armed group, al-Shabab (whose members are mostly Hawiye). Al-Shabab carrying out hit-and-run attacks on villages in central and southern Somalia:
"A pattern is emerging whereby the militia briefly occupy the town, often killing a number of people, then withdraw with arms, ammunition and military vehicles seized from Somali government and Ethiopian troops."

Gdn: Mugabe printing an extra 3 million ballots, just in case vote rigging plan A goes awry
Gdn: vote rigging necessary because former allies have become the opposition

LAT: US death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000
CSM: attack on green zone launched from Sadr City
WP: another dispatch from Fallujah, where "brute force" keeps the peace (profile of the former Sunni insurgent turned local police chief)

BBC: new Pakistan PM to reinstate judges
BBC: Musharraf says he'll cooperate with new government

WP: Bhutan monarch imposes voting, despite popular opposition

LAT: cocaine production on the rise in Peru; Shining Path group involved
"...this time, the traffickers may be more difficult to combat because the flashy kingpins from Colombia have been replaced by a piecemeal network, a sort of gold rush of international entrepreneurs...A wave of drug-related lawlessness -- assassinations, ambushes, threats against prosecutors -- has fanned fears of the kind of narco-instability that afflicts Colombia and Mexico... And renewed militancy among the peasants who grow the coca leaf has sparked road closures and violent clashes with law enforcement officers...
'The narcos and their sicarios [hired killers] act in these zones with complete impunity,' said Rospigliosi, the former interior minister. 'They've bought off local officials and have complete control.'
The flourishing narco trade, authorities say, is stimulating a fresh incarnation of the Maoist rebel group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, which terrorized the nation before being beaten down in the 1990s. Shining Path was never vanquished in coca country, where the rebels have long imposed "taxes" on traffickers, timber harvesters and others."

NYT: delay in response time by Chinese police during Tibetan violence
BBC: Tuareg rebels launch attacks in Mali
BBC: fighting in Afghanistan
BBC: and Kashmir;
BBC: imminent on island of Anjouan in the Comoros

Gdn: technology and justice: Argentines using DNA to identify disappeared

USAT: witnesses in US keeping quiet, fearing reprisals

NYT: nostalgia for Duvalier in Haiti
"Mr. Planess, 53, who complains that hunger has become so much a part of his life that his stomach does not even growl anymore, is not alone in his nostalgia for Haiti’s dictatorial past. Other Haitians speak longingly of the security that existed then as well as the lack of garbage in the streets, the lower food prices and the scholarships for overseas study." the article also mentions that the prime minister has appointed a commission to consider reconstituting the army.

WP: eradicating slavery in Mauritania
"The ancient tradition of slavery endures in Mauritania, although it was officially abolished in the 1980s. There are roughly half a million slaves among the country's population of 3.3 million, and at least 80 percent do not have access to a formal education, [former slave and activist] Messaoud said...Under the still-prevalent tradition, children inherit the status of their mothers and are passed on by masters as part of dowries or shared with other family members."

NYT: Suriname wrestles with language and identity

LAT: protest through poetry in Pakistan

let's share. or not.

BBC: Kenya MPs weigh making power-sharing deal between Odinga and Kibaki constitutional
BBC: Zanzibar and Tanzania reach power-sharing deal

BBC: after 9 months, Belgium reaches its own - you guessed it - power-sharing deal

BBC: OAS brokers truce among Ecuador, Colombia (and Venezuela)
Gdn: calls for UK Foreign Office minister to resign, after linking human rights and labor organization to FARC

Gdn: Mugabe bucks the trend, won't share: threatens to ban foreign press from upcoming election coverage, accusing them of spying

BBC: clashes in the Comoros with renegade leader of Anjouan, one of the islands in the federation
"Since gaining independence from France in 1975, the Union of Comoros - an impoverished three-island archipelago off Africa's east coast - has suffered 19 coups or coup attempts...Bacar unilaterally declared himself president of semi-autonomous Anjouan last July after winning an election which the central authorities declared illegal."

BBC: Liberian women in Ghana strip in protest of planned return and $100; they ask for $1000 and resettlement in West

LAT: not enough sharing: Tibetan grievances
Gdn: elsewhere in China, leading dissident goes on trial

IHT: no cross-class gym going for Haitians

BBC: attacks in Manipur, India continue: 11 killed

BBC: Joseph Kony, head of the LRA, moves from base in Uganda to Central African Republic, violating terms of cease-fire

BBC: Afghan inmates take over parts of prison in days-long, ongoing stand-off

LAT: Hamas gains popularity over Fatah

Gdn: (video) "killing fields" outside Sadr City
Gdn: Pentagon avoided brain screenings of veterans

IHT: US considers cold war tactics to fight terrorism
"After piecing together a more nuanced portrait of terrorist organizations, they say there is reason to believe that a combination of efforts could in fact establish something akin to the posture of deterrence, the strategy that helped protect the United States from a Soviet nuclear attack during the cold war." (sounds to SV like Shapiro's emphasis on containment)

Gdn: Turkish constitutional court considers banning ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP)
Chief prosecutor seeking ban because of "anti-secular" turn; AKP threatens to curb judiciary's power

Gdn: "Europe's last dictator," Belarus's Lukashenko hires Thatcher's old spin doctor to soften image

BBC: Somali pirates receive ransom for Dutch ship owner

Slate: did strategic, Rush-inspired voters give Clinton the edge in Texas?
NYT: they won't get the chance in Florida, and maybe not in Michigan either (even if there is a re-vote there)

USAT: Q&A on the financial crisis and Fed bailout
including: "What is an investment bank, and why should I care what happens to one?"