bad liars [caught on satellite]

WP: bombing reflects, deepens sectarian rift in northwest Pakistan, kills at least 30
The suicide bombing, which turned a solemn [Shia] mourning procession into a scene of strewed limbs and bloody clothing, provoked a frenzy of retaliatory violence against local Sunnis, police and witnesses said. Dozens of Sunni-owned houses and shops were burned, and security forces imposed a curfew on the area.
BBC: how the cleavage has changed over time
In Pakistan, the focus of the sectarian violence has arguably changed. In the 1980s and 1990s the problem was acute in Karachi and in the province of Sindh.

But tough policing - especially in Karachi - over this period meant that many militants were either killed or arrested.
Slate: more skepticism on the Swat Valley deal
...as respected journalist Ismail Khan notes in an article in today's Dawn, the country's most widely read English-language newspaper, the deal calls for Pakistan's secular criminal code to be observed, unless a council of sharia judges rules that some law or another is un-Islamic. The deal also calls for a halt in the fighting between the Pakistani army and the Taliban militias.

The key facts here are that, at the moment, there is no working judicial system of any sort in the Swat Valley—and that the Taliban militias have routed the numerically superior Pakistani army in their armed confrontations. So the deal imposes national secular authority even more than it legitimizes sharia justice. And given the balance of power, it's unclear why the Taliban would go along with that.

The deal was made not with "the Taliban" as a whole—the term implies a more cohesive entity than actually exists—but rather, specifically, with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, whom the Pakistanis arrested two years ago for leading jihadist raids across the border into Afghanistan. He was released from prison after agreeing to give up the struggle and to work for peace.

The hope is that he would strike a deal with his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, who is the deputy to a much more militant Taliban leader—or that, if he can't come to terms with his son-in-law, a wedge might be driven between various Islamist factions, peeling Sufi Muhammad and his followers away from the radicals and thus strengthening the hand of the central government.

This is why the deal is not only ill-fated but potentially disastrous: It reveals the severe weakness of the Pakistani state. The politicians pursued the deal only because the state cannot control its own territory. Unless Sufi Muhammad can convince his son-in-law to accept peace and obeisance to secular authority in exchange for a parcel of land where Islamic law carries some weight, the deal is more likely to convince the militant Taliban simply to press on for more favors still.
AP: ...but it appears that the Taliban have agreed to a cease-fire
Slate: technology and warfare: Google Earth pinpoints a US drone base in Pakistan
The picture, together with a second picture of the same site taken sometime this year and posted on Google Earth, destroys much of the political advantage of the U.S. drones. The drones aren't supposed to be a U.S. military presence in Pakistan. They're unmanned, and until now, they were thought to be flown exclusively from the Afghan border. The satellite images, backed by expert analysis, prove otherwise. The drones are on Pakistani soil. And if the drones are there, so are the U.S. personnel who physically manage them.

BBC: militias in Paktia, Afghanistan
The insurgency has raged and grown in this part of the country. Paktia borders Pakistan and is a route for insurgents coming into the country. The Taleban and al-Qaeda have a growing presence here and clashes between them and government and foreign forces have escalated.

But Ahmadabad district is an exception, thanks to the gunmen of the Arbakai, a tribal militia that has protected this area and its people for centuries, making it something of a safe-haven from the violence all around.

They are a volunteer force of men and boys, armed with old rifles and true grit. They are part of a traditional code of conduct and honour called Pashtunwali.

The tribal elder is Haji Gulam Khan. He tells us that the area is stable and that there is a good relationship between the people and the government.

He is in no doubt who to thank: "If it weren't for the Arbakai, this area would've been controlled by the Taleban or mafia groups."
AJE: US acknowledges 13 civilians killed in missile strike in Herat earlier this week

AP: US Army medic sentenced to life in prison for executing four detainees in Iraq
NYT: another US soldier found not guilty in killings of 2 New York National Guard soldiers
AJE: Abu Ghraib re-opens as "Baghdad Central Prison"
NPR: how many have died in Iraq since the start of the war?
"By orders of minister's office, we cannot talk about the real numbers of deaths," says a man who works at the Baghdad central morgue statistics office, where all the deaths that take place in Baghdad get recorded. He doesn't want his name used because he's been told by his superiors at the Ministry of Health that he is not allowed to talk to the media. "That's been the case since 2004. When press comes to the morgue, they are taken to our boss's office and we have never been allowed to meet with them."

The reason, he says, is because the number of deaths the morgue registers never corresponds with numbers from the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Interior.

"They do it on purpose," he says. "I would go home and look at the news. The ministry would say 10 people got killed all over Iraq, while I had received in that day more than 50 dead bodies just in Baghdad. It's always been like that — they would say one thingm but the reality was much worse."...

Dougherty [of Iraq Body Count] estimates at least 20,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during U.S. military operations.

The military and human rights groups often disagree over whether victims were civilians or insurgents.

Econ: Turks and (Iraqi) Kurds getting along better for the moment
Turkish officials, who used to dismiss Iraq’s Kurdish leaders as “tribal upstarts”, privately concede that part of the solution is to co-opt Iraq’s Kurds. In the past year Turkish intelligence men and diplomats have held secret talks with Nechirvan Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish region’s prime minister, to get the PKK to call off its fight, even as Turkish aircraft continue, with America’s blessing, to pound rebel strongholds near Iraq’s mountain border with Iran. One idea is that rebels untainted by violence might be coaxed home and their leaders offered cash inducements to move to any European country that would take them in.

NYT: Netanyahu invites Kadima and Labor parties to form moderate coalition
Mr. Netanyahu and Ms. Livni have agreed to meet Sunday, but the negotiations are likely to be tough. Ms. Livni, his chief rival for the premiership, has said she would rather go into opposition than serve as a fig leaf for a coalition of the right.

Mr. Barak, whose Labor Party fared badly in the elections, has already said he would head into the opposition.

To many here, it is increasingly likely that Mr. Netanyahu’s government will consist exclusively of parties from the right, which oppose a Palestinian state and favor expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, making it much harder for him to exercise his pragmatic penchant.

NPR: Saudi religious police facing more constraints

NPR: Lebanon no longer requiring sect identification

WP: Calderón will not relent, despite demonstrations against militarization
Calderón, who has sent more than 45,000 troops to fight the cartels, said the military would remain on patrol until the government had control of the most violent parts of the country and civil authorities were fully able "to confront this evil."

Only then, he said, "will the army have completed its mission." Turf battles involving the drug traffickers, who are fighting the army, police and one another in order to secure billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States, took the lives of more than 6,000 people in Mexico last year. The pace of killing has continued in 2009, with more than 650 dead, most in the violent border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana. In the past few days, a running gun battle between soldiers and gunmen through the streets of the northern city of Reynosa, captured live on television, left five people dead.
LAT: Ciudad Juárez police chief opts out after threats, though
BBC: photos of the violence indicate why
SDT: lessons from Colombia's drug war (via Adam Isacson)
The drug-trafficking operation in Mexico is different than in Colombia. While there is some marijuana and opium grown in Mexico, as well as methamphetamine manufacturing, the cartels aren't fighting over production. They are battling to control the smuggling routes used to move drugs, including Colombian cocaine, into the United States...

The strategy of Mexico's leaders is to break the cartels into smaller pieces, as happened in Colombia, where local police in urban areas were better able to get a handle on street crime once the larger criminal organizations receded.

The assumption is that smaller drug operations would be better handled by state and local police, Shirk said. But it is not clear such a strategy will succeed, and institutional corruption presents a challenge...

But even if the Mexican government is successful in breaking up the big cartels, neither Mexican soldiers nor U.S. equipment and training are going to stop the demand for drugs, [former DEA regional director] Holifield said.

“The biggest lesson is for the U.S.,” he said. “And that is to stop using (drugs). Until that happens, nothing the U.S. does can prevent these people from doing this. There is absolutely no way to stop it.”
NPR: on top of that drug demand issue, US also arming Mexico, informally
The weapons and ammunition are being bought on the black market and at gun shows, but mostly from licensed dealers. Arizona and Texas make it especially easy to buy guns retail. Basically, any adult with a valid ID and no criminal record can buy as many as he or she wants...Authorities call the weapons smuggling trafico de la hormiga, or "ant traffic," because it's done in small steady shipments to avoid detection. And after all, the main mission of the customs service is not examining vehicles leaving the U.S....nearly 8,000 guns sold in America last year were traced to Mexico. That was more than double the number the year before.

Econ: Ortega as Somoza

WP: LTTE bomb Colombo, kill three and injure 48
The attack shows the apparent air power of the Tamil Tigers far from the northern war zone, where they are said to be boxed into a 34-square-mile sliver of the jungle, with government troops closing in.

AJE: riots claim lives in Bauchi, Nigeria
Several churches and mosques were set on fire in the violence on Saturday and at least 28 people were injured, but it was not immediately clear what triggered the unrest.

NYT: Latvian PM steps down, gov't dissolves over recession
BBC: 100,000 march in Dublin
Many are angry at plans to impose a pension levy on public sector workers.

Trade union organisers of the march said workers did not cause the economic crisis but were having to pay for it.

BBC: Bosnian Serbs ordered to pay for mosques destroyed between 1992-1995

Ind: German MP appointed to head new museum of expellees from Eastern Europe after WWII; Poland takes umbrage
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland’s special envoy on German affairs and a former foreign minister, summed up Warsaw’s objections to Mrs Steinbach’s planned appointment. “It is as if the Vatican had decided to give the Holocaust-denying Bishop [Richard] Williamson the task of overseeing its relations with Israel,” he said.

NYT: Guantánamo complies with Geneva Conventions, according to Pentagon report
Slate: (other) prison growth in the US
The United States has a prison population like nowhere else. With one out of every 100 adults behind bars, our incarceration rate is the highest in the entire world. Our inmates—1.5 million in prison, with another 800,000 in jail—comprise one-third of the world's total. This is a surprisingly recent development. After barely budging for 50 years, our incarceration rate increased sevenfold (to 738 per 100,000 people) between 1978 and 2008.

BBC: Italy implements new rape law
The decree sets a mandatory life sentence for the rape of minors or attacks where the victim is killed.

It also establishes rules for citizen street patrols to be conducted by unarmed and unpaid volunteers.

The number of sexual assaults fell last year, but three high-profile rapes last weekend sparked national outrage.

Many recent rapes have been blamed on foreigners, especially Romanians. Violent attacks on immigrants have since been reported.

Police say a mob of around 20 masked men beat up four Romanians outside a kebab restaurant in Rome on Sunday in an apparent vigilante attack.

The government has pointed to official statistics saying immigrants committed as many as 35% of crimes in Italy in 2007.

But analysts and opposition parties say many of these are related to breaches in immigration rules, and that foreigners have often been unfairly targeted amid a xenophobic backlash from right-wing politicians and the media.

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Slate: Q: does decapitation have a special meaning in Islam?
A: Yes, but it's important in other cultures, too. [eg, Mexican drug gang violence above.]

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Salon: Murakami accepts award in Israel
In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies...

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories -- stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

NYT: resisting North Korean propaganda by parody

war crimes [on the hook]

Al Jazeera (English): Israel destroys hospital, UN outpost in Gaza
"Officials said that a building of the UN relief agency in Gaza had been hit by Israeli shells and set ablaze.

"They are phosphorus fires so they are extremely difficult to put out because if you put water on it, it will just generate toxic fumes and do nothing to stop the burning," John Ging, the director of UN relief operations, said...

About 500 people were inside the hospital in Tal al-Hawa when it came under attack. Many had taken shelter in the hope of escaping the onslaught."
AJE: death toll has reached 1,000; civilians have nowhere to go
"More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into densely-populated urban areas.

Thousands of civilians fled their homes on Thursday as tank shells and missiles exploded causing black smoke to rise above the neighbourhoods of Tal al-Hawa, Zeitoun and Shujaiyeh in Gaza City.

Battles raged in the northern town of Jabaliya and Israeli ground troops backed by dozens of tanks pushed at least 1km into the southern town of Khan Yunis."

WP: civilians account for estimated half of deaths; almost any target is 'legitimate' for Israel, while Hamas fighters hide among civilians
"The Israeli military blames Hamas for using Gazans as human shields and for retreating to densely populated areas to fight the war. But Palestinians and human rights groups say that Israel has been reckless and that in pursuing Hamas, it has employed tactics that unnecessarily drive up the civilian toll...

Later in the week, Harb stood in the street of the southern town of Rafah with his wife and six children and looked on as his neighborhood was systematically turned to rubble. His family had been warned to leave, he said, but in Gaza there is nowhere to go. The street seemed the safest place to ride out the airstrikes that landed like an earthquake every five minutes, each one sending a thick black plume into the sky from the spot of ground where a house once stood.

Some of the houses, Harb acknowledged, had concealed tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle weapons from Egypt. But most, he said, did not...

The Geneva Conventions, an international agreement on a code of war, say civilians must be permitted to escape from fighting, but "the Gazans are not allowed to flee," Myers said. "That's a big problem." None of the border crossings is open. And no part of the strip -- which is about 25 miles long and five miles wide -- has been insulated from the fighting."
NYT: Israeli rights groups issue call for war crimes investigation
"Nine Israeli human rights groups called on Wednesday for an investigation into whether Israeli officials had committed war crimes in Gaza since tens of thousands of civilians there have nowhere to flee, the health system has collapsed, many are without electricity and running water, and some are beyond the reach of rescue teams."

NYT: the effect of the bombing on Palestinian cleavages
"The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians."
WP: polarization seems to favor Hamas
"Men who say they have never fought before or were not Hamas loyalists now vow to join the struggle against Israel when they return to Gaza. They include policemen and other professionals who form part of the backbone of Gazan society."
CSM: Fatah's (in)action drawing scrutiny
"Fatah is keeping a lid on protests, not letting West Bankers draw it into Israel's war on Hamas. Senior voices in the secular party that runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) see restraint as key to its quest for statehood. Getting entangled in Gaza, they say, would only embolden Hamas.

Others say Fatah is making a fatal mistake. Its inaction will irreparably damage its standing in the eyes of Palestinians and erode support for the group that both America and Israel view as peace partners."

CSM: violence down, but some Iraqis can't return home
"...after the US-led invasion, his Sunni neighbor began threatening Mr. Mohamed, a Shiite. When the neighbor killed four of Mohamed's cousins, Mohamed and his family fled, selling his home of more than 20 years for $126,000 – just half its market rate.

Now, with relative calm returning, Mohamed is trying to reconstruct his former life. But while he's happy about the greater security, he's confronting a troubling reality that underscores that recovery will take more than an end to fighting. Like many Iraqis, he can't afford his old neighborhood."
NYT blog: a peek at the (very confusing) ballots for next month's election

Slate: military lawyer says suspect was tortured; someone will have to stand trial
"What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.

The consequences go further. Crawford also told Woodward that the charges against al-Qahtani were dropped because he was tortured. This has devastating consequences for the Bush administration's entire rationale for the new techniques of interrogation: that they would make the United States safer by producing intelligence and keeping dangerous individuals off the streets. We now know they do neither. The torture produced no useful information from al-Qahtani, and the cruelty heaped upon him will make it more difficult, if not impossible, to justify his long-term incarceration.

There is a third major consequence to the Crawford interview: Her principle objection to detainee abuse is not ephemeral or spiritual, but a damning indictment of the impact it will have on American troops and the prospects for America's authority abroad: "If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."...

Under the 1984 Torture Convention, its 146 state parties (including the United States) are under an obligation to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." These states must take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. The convention allows no exceptions, as Gen. Pinochet discovered in 1998. The state party to the Torture Convention must then submit the case to its competent authorities for prosecution or extradition for prosecution in another country.

The former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army has spoken. Her clear words have been picked up around the world. And that takes the prospects of accountability and criminal investigation onto another level. For the Obama administration, the door to the do-nothing option is now closed. That is why today may come to be seen as the turning point."
WP: 'trials' against Guantanamo inmates also undermined by basic incompetence
"[Former military prosecutor] Vandeveld said in a phone interview that the 'complete lack of organization' has affected nearly all cases at Guantanamo Bay. The evidence is often so disorganized, he said, 'it was like a stash of documents found in a village in a raid and just put on a plane to the U.S. Not even rudimentary organization by date or name.' ...

Military defense lawyers also said yesterday that the Office of Military Commissions may have accidentally withdrawn the charges against all defendants at Guantanamo Bay facing trial, including Jawad and even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Defense lawyers said the Office of Military Commissions, while creating new jury panels, took the additional step of re-referring all charges, which, they said, would return all cases to square one and require new arraignments."
NYT blog: closing Gitmo is gonna be tough

CSM: discovered arms cache raises suspicion of secular coup plot in Turkey

NYT: riots in Latvia over economy
"In the wake of the demonstrations, President Valdis Zatlers threatened Wednesday to call for a referendum that would allow voters to dissolve Parliament, saying trust in the government, including in its ability to deal with growing economic problems, had “collapsed catastrophically.”

For years, Latvia boasted of double-digit economic growth rates, but it has been shaken by the global economic downturn. Its central bank has spent a fifth of its reserves to guard against a steep devaluation of its currency, the lat, and experts expect a 5 percent contraction of the country’s gross domestic product in 2009. Salaries are expected to fall substantially, and unemployment is expected to rise"

AP: fighting in Mogadishu: al-Shabab attacks presidential palace, says African Union forces next
"There are currently about 2,400 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers in Mogadishu whose mandate is restricted to guarding key government installations such as the port and airport. To date, they have rarely been the target of insurgent attacks...

The Ethiopian army, one of Africa's largest, was viewed by many Somalis as abusive and heavy-handed. But few expect the Somali government now can ensure security. It controls only pockets of the capital, Mogadishu, and Baidoa, where parliament sits -- and has tried to rule without a president for weeks.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in fighting in the past year, particularly in the capital, and hundreds of thousands have fled the violence...

Rival Islamic groups control other areas of southern and central Somalia, with the al-Shabab making the most dramatic gains in recent months. Al-Shabab, which denies it is a terrorist organization, says its goal is to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.

Also today, officials said gunmen had abducted an Egyptian teacher in Somalia's relatively peaceful northwestern breakaway republic where such kidnappings are rare...it is rare for abductions to take place in northwestern region of Somaliland, which declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 and has its own regularly elected government, parliament and judiciary. The breakaway republic has avoided much of the chaos and anarchy that exists in the rest of the country."

BBC: UN says Eritrea must pull out of Djibouti

AJE: Guinea names new gov't
"The 29-member government would comprise both civilians and military, coup leaders said in a statement aired on national radio and television on Thursday.

Members of the military were appointed to defence, security, justice and finance ministries.

No representatives of political parties, however, have been included in the new government."

AJE: reemergence of Shining Path, self defense forces in Peru

AP: Chávez wins constitutional amendment vote allowing him to run for office indefinitely; referendum to be held

Gdn: Rio police say City of God no longer ruled by gangs
"Until the success of Meirelles' film, which was nominated for four Oscars, City of God, or Cidade de Deus, was a little-known slum on the western outskirts of Rio. Based on a book of the same name published in 1997, the film documented the bloody struggle between cocaine traffickers that ravaged the community during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the actors recruited from Rio's favelas.

Attempts to evict the real traffickers from the City of God, which is home to about 50,000 people, are part of a police initiative that authorities hope will help them regain control of the slums and serve as a blueprint for fighting urban crime across South America. "The state is going back to occupy territories from which it was absent, both in terms of public security and in terms of social investment," Rio's governor, Sérgio Cabral, said.

In their battle against the city's three drug factions, police have traditionally launched "hit and run" attacks on the favelas. The police kill more than 1,000 people each year, according to official figures, many during such raids.

Now the authorities plan to permanently station hundreds of military policemen inside three favelas as part of a pilot project to combat organised crime.

The police, who will spend 24 hours a day in the communities, aim to build trust, gather intelligence and help rebuild the slums. Millions of dollars will be invested in infrastructure and housing. City of God, where about 700 troops will be deployed, is the second favela in which the new "hearts and minds" policy will be tried...

The community policing scheme has not pleased everyone. Many predict the authorities will soon withdraw from places such as City of God and Dona Marta, allowing the traffickers to return. The government has also admitted its "policy of confrontation" will not end as a result of the community policing project.

Others view the initiative as little more than a marketing stunt by a media-savvy government, arguing that the City of God was only chosen because of its notoriety."

CSM: targeting gangs' assets in LA
"The city of Los Angeles, plagued by 23,000 violent gang crimes since 2004, including 784 murders and 12,000 felony assaults, announced Tuesday that it had won its first civil judgment, for $5 million, against a criminal gang that had dominated the heroin trade downtown for decades.

The verdict could bode well for another first-of-its-kind lawsuit the city filed last month that goes after all assets of gang leaders, not just those associated with their criminal activity. Both suits seek to plow the money back into improving the neighborhoods affected by the gangs through a fund..

The tactic of trying to cripple organizations by taking away their assets has been commonly used against the mafia. More recently, it has been used against white supremacist organizations. In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million verdict against the Aryan Nations that forced the organization to give up its 20-acre compound in Idaho...

The City Attorney's office says it is moving against the 18th Street gang on behalf of residents who can't file suit themselves because they can't afford the expenses and they fear retaliation. Gangs control certain neighborhoods by exacting so-called "street taxes" on home and business owners as well as street vendors.

The suit seeks compensation for property damage, emotional distress, personal injury, and intangibles such as residents not being able to use public parks because of gang activity...

The city currently has 463 known gangs with 26,000 members, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

But the use of injunctions has been controversial, Mr. Parrish says, because of "perceived selective enforcement and various civil rights issues."

The new law, too, "may raise significant civil rights issues depending on how it's used," Mr Parrish adds.

Unlike with organized groups, street gang members may be hard to identify."

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more on the transition:
The Onion: luring Cheney out of his lair
NYT blog: while Bush declares national emergency