kafka in korea [they can't stop it]

WP: violence during protest 40th-day mourning of Neda, other demonstrators killed in Iran
The clashes were some of the most intense in recent weeks, suggesting that the anger that fueled demonstrations in the days after last month's disputed presidential election continues to run deep. With President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scheduled to be sworn in for another term next week, Thursday's demonstrations showed that almost 50 days after his apparent victory, authorities have not been successful in stamping out unrest...

Security forces worked aggressively Thursday to put down the protests, knowing that any major defeat in the streets could give new energy to the opposition. Police fired tear gas, attacked demonstrators with batons and smashed car windshields. But the protesters fought back, battling hand-to-hand with security forces in some of the most violent confrontations of the summer. In one case, three members of the much-feared voluntary militia known as the Basij were beaten with their own batons after a group of opposition activists pulled them off their motorcycles near a park. The motorcycles were set on fire, witnesses reported...

Even as security forces cracked down, the government was trying to appease opponents. Police announced Thursday that they had paid damages to hundreds of people who had been mistreated during previous demonstrations, doling out $50,000 in total.

Earlier in the week, the government closed a major prison where arrested protesters had been held, citing substandard conditions. The closure came after reports emerged in recent days that three detainees had died, and it was interpreted as a gesture of reconciliation by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But opposition leaders said more was needed to heal the deep rifts in Iranian society.

NYT: meanwhile, signs of fissure within the ruling coalition
Some opposition supporters were heartened by the turnout on Thursday. “You see they never thought this many people would turn out in the heat like this,” said a 45-year-old woman at the cemetery, where thick crowds of people chanted slogans deriding President Ahmadinejad as a dictator and calling on him to resign. “They can’t stop it now.”...

Public anger is rising at a difficult time for Mr. Ahmadinejad, who won the election on June 12 in a landslide that opposition supporters say was rigged. This month Mr. Ahmadinejad refused a direct order from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to drop a contested cabinet appointment. That provoked many hard-liners, who have warned that he may not last as president if he does not show more respect for the revered Ayatollah Khamenei. The deputy ultimately withdrew, but Mr. Ahmadinejad then named him chief of staff. Some on both sides of Iran’s political divide have linked the prison abuse to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s flouting of Ayatollah Khamenei’s authority, hinting that a broader lack of accountability is the problem. Lawmakers have complained that they were not given access to the those arrested after the election, who are widely believed to be under the control of the Revolutionary Guards. Many in the opposition say the election amounted to a coup by the guards, where Mr. Ahmadinejad spent formative years.

“This is the only way that we can stop everything from falling into the hands of the Revolutionary Guards,” said a 29-year-old physiotherapist who came to the cemetery. “You see, now they don’t even take notice of the clerics, it’s gone that far.”


NYT: (dated) Kenya's electoral violence yet to be reckoned with
“If we don’t deal with the impunity from this last election, the next one will be horrible,” said Maina Kiai, a former government human rights official.

Mr. Kiai says that ethnic gangs are rearming themselves across the country, this time with guns, not machetes. He contends that unless the culprits are punished for the killings last year, which included hacking up old men and burning toddlers to death, the next time there is a disputed election, which he thinks there surely will be, people will be emboldened to wreak havoc again...

In the days following the election, in December 2007, in which the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who is now prime minister, rival gangs rampaged across Kenya’s slums, in the hillsides and throughout many towns. Initially, a lot of violence appeared to be spontaneous outrage, vented along ethnic lines, though upon closer inspection, some of it seemed to have been organized, at least by local leaders and village elders. But what remains murky, many political analysts here say, is the extent to which top politicians were directly involved.


WP: North Korea's gulags
The camps have never been visited by outsiders, so these accounts cannot be independently verified. But high-resolution satellite photographs, now accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, reveal vast labor camps in the mountains of North Korea. The photographs corroborate survivors' stories, showing entrances to mines where former prisoners said they worked as slaves, in-camp detention centers where former guards said uncooperative prisoners were tortured to death and parade grounds where former prisoners said they were forced to watch executions. Guard towers and electrified fences surround the camps, photographs show...

Nor have the camps become much of an issue for the American public, even though annotated images of them can be quickly called up on Google Earth and even though they have existed for half a century, 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet Gulag. Although precise numbers are impossible to obtain, Western governments and human groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have died in the North Korean camps...

Like several former prisoners, Jung said the most arduous part of his imprisonment was his pre-camp interrogation at the hands of the Bowibu, the National Security Agency. After eight years in a government office that handled trade with China, a fellow worker accused him of being a South Korean agent.

"They wanted me to admit to being a spy," Jung said. "They knocked out my front teeth with a baseball bat. They fractured my skull a couple of times. I was not a spy, but I admitted to being a spy after nine months of torture."

When he was arrested, Jung said, he weighed 167 pounds. When his interrogation was finished, he said, he weighed 80 pounds. "When I finally got to the camp, I actually gained weight," said Jung, who worked summers in cornfields and spent winters in the mountains felling trees...

The number of camps has been consolidated from 14 to about five large sites, according to former officials who worked in the camps. Camp 22, near the Chinese border, is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. As many as 50,000 prisoners are held there, a former guard said.

There is a broad consensus among researchers about how the camps are run: Most North Koreans are sent there without any judicial process. Many inmates die in the camps unaware of the charges against them. Guilt by association is legal under North Korean law, and up to three generations of a wrongdoer's family are sometimes imprisoned, following a rule from North Korea's founding dictator, Kim Il Sung: "Enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations"...

Prisoners are denied any contact with the outside world, according to the Korean Bar Association's 2008 white paper on human rights in North Korea. The report also found that suicide is punished with longer prison terms for surviving relatives; guards can beat, rape and kill prisoners with impunity; when female prisoners become pregnant without permission, their babies are killed.

Most of the political camps are "complete control districts," which means that inmates work there until death.

There is, however, a "revolutionizing district" at Camp 15, where prisoners can receive remedial indoctrination in socialism. After several years, if they memorize the writings of Kim Jong Il, they are released but remain monitored by security officials...

An Myeong Chul was allowed to work as a guard and driver in political prison camps because, he said, he came from a trustworthy family. His father was a North Korean intelligence agent, as were the parents of many of his fellow guards.

In his training to work in the camps, An said, he was ordered, under penalty of becoming a prisoner himself, never to show pity. It was permissible, he said, for bored guards to beat or kill prisoners.

"We were taught to look at inmates as pigs," said An, 41, adding that he worked in the camps for seven years before escaping to China in 1994. He now works in a bank in Seoul.

The rules he enforced were simple. "If you do not meet your work quota, you do not eat much," he said. "You are not allowed to sleep until you finish your work. If you still do not finish your work, you are sent to a little prison inside the camp. After three months, you leave that prison dead."

An said the camps play a crucial role in the maintenance of totalitarian rule. "All high-ranking officials underneath Kim Jong Il know that one misstep means you go to the camps, along with your family," he said.

NYT: tent city governance, enforced by a chief
The chief emerges from his tent to face the leaden morning light. It had been a rare, rough night in his homeless Brigadoon: a boozy brawl, the wielding of a knife taped to a stick. But the community handled it, he says with pride, his day’s first cigar already aglow.

By community he means 80 or so people living in tents on a spit of state land beside the dusky Providence River: Camp Runamuck, no certain address, downtown Providence.

Because the two men in the fight had violated the community’s written compact, they were escorted off the camp, away from the protection of an abandoned overpass. One was told we’ll discuss this in the morning; the other was voted off the island, his knife tossed into the river, his tent taken down...

“I was always considered the leader, the chief,” Mr. Freitas says. “I was the one consulted about ‘Where should I put my tent?’ ”

By late June the camp had about 50 people. But someone questioned the role of Mr. Freitas as chief, so he stepped down. Arguments broke out. Food was stolen.

“There was no center holding,” recalls Rachell Shaw, 22, who lives with her boyfriend in a tidy tent decorated with porcelain dolls. “So everybody voted him back in.”

The community also established a five-member leadership council and a compact that read in part: “No one person shall be greater than the will of the whole.”

It is now late afternoon in late July, a month after nearly everyone signed that compact. The community remains intact, though the very ground they walk on says nothing is forever. Here and there are the exposed foundations of fish shacks that lined the river long ago.

Some state officials recently stopped by to say, nicely but firmly, that everyone would soon have to leave. The overpass poses the threat of falling concrete, and is scheduled for demolition.

precrime and prevention [throwing stones]

WP: Obama to combine DHS and NSC
[NSA James] Jones and [Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security John] Brennan, whom Obama tapped Feb. 23 to lead a 60-day organizational review, said the changes will strengthen the White House security staff, which includes aides detailed from other departments.

Among other things, Obama is establishing a new global engagement directorate to coordinate U.S. communications with other countries and to streamline U.S. diplomatic, aid, environment and energy policies in support of security objectives, officials said.
WSJ: public support for Afghanistan war weak, resolve and upholding "American values" necessary
American public support for the Afghan war will dissipate in less than a year unless the Obama administration achieves "a perceptible shift in momentum," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview...

The interview comes as Mr. Gates is trying to fundamentally change how the military prepares for and fights its wars. Mr. Bush brought him in to calm the waters in late 2006 after Donald Rumsfeld's contentious reign. Some predicted an unremarkable and fairly short tenure, but three years later, Mr. Gates has become one of the most powerful defense chiefs in decades. He has cut billions of dollars in high-tech weapons systems and fired a raft of high-ranking generals and senior Pentagon officials.

BBC: large Lahore attack aimed at ISI offices kills dozens, wounds hundreds; blamed on Taliban
Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters: "Enemies of Pakistan who want to destabilise the country are coming here after their defeat in Swat. There is a war, and this is a war for our survival."
CSM: women threatened amid " Talibanization" of Karachi
The warnings have caused a panic among upper- and middle-class women who have long enjoyed the liberal environment of Pakistan's most cosmopolitan city, where the fashion industry is thriving, female employment is on the rise, and the literacy rate of 65 percent far exceeds the national average of 46 percent.

While no physical attacks have been reported, some women have been threatened at gunpoint. Others, like prominent activist Attiya Dawood, have had eggs thrown at them while walking through residential parks.

Female students have also been targeted. Private, coed institutions have reportedly received letters signed by the Taliban warning them to close down or segregate their students, or face the consequences, which might include the kidnapping of students. When approached, school administration officials refuse to discuss the situation, with some arguing that it is better for their students' safety to be kept out of the media.

CSM: minors tried under harsh anti-terrorism law in Turkey
"I never thought I could go to prison for throwing a stone," says Hebun, who spent 10 months in an adult prison awaiting his initial trial. "I become really angry when I think that just for throwing a stone they were asking to put me away for 28 years. It's unjust." Now out on bail pending an appeal, he faces an amended sentence of seven years.

Hebun is one of hundreds of minors, some as young as 13, who have been arrested and jailed in Turkey over the past few years under strict new antiterrorism laws that allow for juveniles to be tried as adults and even be accused of "committing crimes in the name of a terrorist organization" for participating in demonstrations. Critics and rights defenders say the amended antiterrorism laws are deeply flawed and also violate international conventions on the detention of children.

BBC: Somalia conflict creates surge in victims, some 60,000 displaced
It comes as a radical cleric on the US terror list, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, formally became leader of the Somali Islamist rebel group Hisbul-Islam.

The militia, and an allied hardline group, al-Shabab, have been locked in fierce battles with pro-government forces that have displaced more than 60,000 civilians since 7 May.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which funds and runs two of Mogadishu's three hospitals, Medina and Keysaney, told the BBC more than 650 patients have sought treatment since the clashes began and that many more were trapped in conflict zones.

BBC: "Daddy Ken," Nigerian militant leader, arrested after being turned in by locals
It is unusual for people to turn in militants as they are often feared or pay Delta communities to keep quiet. But residents of Odi said they feared a repeat of an army operation 10 years ago which devastated the town...

A military operation is currently under way in the swamps of neighbouring Delta State. The military Joint Task Force (JTF) are hunting militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend). It has been impossible to verify any casualty figures as travel to the region has been restricted by the military.

BBC: former Ivorian rebels (belatedly) transfer control of territory, in move toward elections
Former rebel forces in Ivory Coast have relinquished territory in the north to civilian administrators appointed by President Laurent Gbagbo... He signed a peace deal with the New Forces rebels in 2007. Presidential elections - repeatedly postponed - are due to be held in November.

The former French colony was torn apart by a brief civil war in 2002 when the New Forces seized control of the mainly Muslim north of the country... The transfer of power, due in January under the latest United Nations-backed peace pact signed at the end of 2008, was twice postponed.
BBC: Rwandan parliament approves solitary confinement for cases of genocide, as well as rape and gang-related crimes

CSM: continued conflict in northern Darfur
The past fortnight has seen an upsurge in clashes as rebels try to claim a "liberated" zone ahead of rains due to begin within a couple of weeks.

In return, government Antonov planes have pounded targets every morning and evening, while rebels seek out whatever cover they can find in Darfur's empty desert.

Peace talks between the two sides are set to resume in Qatar on Wednesday. But with fighting on the increase and trust at rock bottom, few experts hold out hope for any major breakthroughs...

In the past year, the war has settled into a low-intensity phase, in sharp contrast to the early days, when government-backed janjaweed militias launched a scorched-earth campaign to deprive rebels of civilian support.

These days, death comes in ones and twos, with bombs dropped from Antonov warplanes. Or it comes day after day in the aid camps, as fragile children succumb to diseases of malnutrition and want.

At the same time, Sudan and Chad have stepped up their proxy war. Chadian war planes have been operating deep into Darfur seeking out bases of Khartoum-backed rebels who launched attacks inside Chad earlier this month.

JEM's offensive brings the risk of Sudanese reprisal against its own bases across the border, turning a war by proxy into a real front line.

WSJ: refugees trapped in Sri Lanka now being sorted into guerrilla and non-guerrilla
After Sri Lanka's army finished off the Tamil Tigers as a fighting force last week, the Sri Lankan government turned its attention to rooting out those who may have served in the separatist guerrilla movement -- willingly or unwillingly. Though the government says the screening is necessary to squeeze the last breaths from a 26-year insurgency, the process is proving wrenching for families who survived the war only to be separated in peace.

So far, say army officials, the screening process has netted more than 9,000 Tamil Tigers. Most came forward voluntarily, army officials say. They are expected to spend about six months at rehabilitation camps, where they will be taught vocational skills and monitored to make sure they don't harbor allegiance to the Tigers and their violent separatist movement. A few hundred hard-core insurgents will be kept longer, army officials say.
CSM: new politics, and competition, among Tamils
Tamil activists say that the end of the 26-year war for a separate state for the island's ethnic Tamil minority should allow more moderate voices to emerge. But it could also spark instability as rivals duke it out in electoral battlegrounds in Tamil areas like Jaffna and among the population displaced by war. The presence of armed groups loyal to Tamil politicians and often in league with security forces adds to the combustible mix.

"The LTTE has always said it was the sole representative of the Tamil people. So who speaks for Tamils now?" asks a social activist in Colombo...

On Wednesday, the Sri Lankan officials said the government will continue its state of emergency, which includes police powers such as searches of private homes and 18-month detention of suspects without a trial. It said the restrictions are necessary to prevent a resurgence of the rebel movement. Sri Lankan officials also say they are holding some 9,100 rebel prisoners and will release many for "rehabilitation."
WP: UNHCHR calls for probe into government and rebel abuses

WP: North Korea sees South Korean decision to inspect ships suspected of nuclear activity as "declaration of war"

LAT: sweep of mayors and security officials for drug corruption in Michoacán, Mexico
Those detained include a key advisor to [state governor] Godoy, a judge and several top regional public security officials, the attorney general's office said. Most were taken to Mexico City for questioning after being rounded up during the morning from their homes, offices and city halls...

Although Mexican authorities have frequently arrested corrupt security agents in drug-related cases, this is the first time they have gone after such a large number of elected officials. The sweep was significant because it represents an effort to hit the political cover that the traffickers enjoy, though it may not make much of a dent in the smuggling network, analysts said... At least 83 of Michoacan's 113 municipalities are mixed up at some level with narcos, a Mexican intelligence source told The Times this month. The source, not authorized to talk to the press, spoke on condition of anonymity...

La Familia has been doing battle with the so-called Gulf cartel, which moved into Michoacan a few years ago in what was initially a strategic partnership. The arrangement ruptured last year, with the two groups struggling over control of land to produce drugs and over transport routes, including Michoacan's valued Lazaro Cardenas seaport. La Familia specializes in marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine. In the last year it has set up shop in 20 to 30 cities and towns across the United States, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said Tuesday.
PCB: Adam Isacson on Colombia's new "Integrated Action" security plan
It is a set of new Colombian government programs that have gone under many names in the past few years. These include Plan Colombia 2, Plan Colombia Consolidation Phase, Social Recovery of Territory (or Social Control of Territory), the National Consolidation Plan, the Center for the Coordination of Integrated Action (CCAI), or the “Strategic Leap.”

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s defense minister until last week, offered this definition: “It means state institutions’ entry or return to zones affected by violence to satisfy the population’s basic needs, like health, education and public services, as well as justice, culture, recreation and infrastructure projects.”

The underlying idea is that Colombia’s historically neglected rural areas will only be taken back from illegal armed groups if the entire government is involved in “recovering” or “consolidating” its presence in these territories. While the military and police must handle security, the doctrine contends that the rest of the government must be brought into these zones in a quick, coordinated way.

WSJ: predicting gang involvement in LA's youth: as easy as ABC
The multiple-choice screening, some 70 questions long, shows how closely Los Angeles has begun to examine the work of social scientists to tackle complex policy issues like gang violence. Last year, city officials turned to Dr. Klein and his colleagues at USC to design a test that they hope will empirically identify which children are headed toward a life on the street. This year, the test will help decide the direction of the millions of dollars the city spends annually on gang-prevention efforts.

The screening, intended for children between 10 and 15 years old, asks a range of questions on issues ranging from past relationships to drug use to attitudes toward violence. One question asks test takers if they recently had a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend; another asks test takers if they are kind to younger children.

In order to avoid stigmatizing children with the label of potential criminal, Dr. Klein says test takers aren't told that the questions are intended to screen for future gang involvement.

+++
FP: what (those sneaky) human rights advocates don't say about the use of child soldiers
WR: Angelina Jolie knows all about it
Jolie stopped by [the ICC] on her way to Cannes to observe the trial of Thomas Lubanga. As we've discussed previously, Lubanga is charged with using child soldiers during Congo's Ituri conflict. Prosecution of the use of child soldiers is of tremendous personal importance to Jolie, who is slowly assembling her own child army. Or she was there in her capacity as UNHCR goodwill ambassador. Whichever.

MSNBC: Rachel Maddow on Guantánamo, prolonged detention and "precrime"
Daily Show: dispose of them!

a war of existence [hemorrhaging]

LAT: "hemorrhaging" of Pakistani civilians from Swat Valley amidst intensified 12-day government offensive
In his interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," President Asif Ali Zardari brushed aside concerns that Pakistan's armed forces are still too focused on a potential threat from longtime rival India. He said the resources devoted to the fight against the Taliban -- 135,000 troops in the northwest, he estimated -- were sufficient. "It's a war of our existence," Zardari said.
NYT: military officials' tally: 1.3 million civilians displaced, 700 militants killed, 22 soldiers dead
The general’s claims are impossible to verify because reporters and other independent observers have been excluded from the area. There was no indication, for instance, that the fight to wrest the district capital, Mingora, from Taliban fighters, had begun. Pakistanis reached earlier this week said the militants had retained all the territory they held in Swat when the operation began.

The exodus, if it proves to be as large as the government says, would be one of the largest migrations of civilians in the region since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when as many as 14 million people left their homes for one of the newly independent countries...

As the fighting in Swat unfolded this week, missiles fired by a remotely piloted American drone killed 15 people, suspected of being militants, in a village in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on Tuesday morning. The missiles, apparently three in all, hit a suspected safe house operated by local militants in Sra Khawra, a village that sits on the border between the tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan.
LAT: part of new US-Pakistani joint operation with predator drones inside the country
The U.S. military has begun flying armed Predator drones inside Pakistan and has given Pakistani officers significant control over targets, flight routes and decisions to launch attacks under a new joint operation, according to U.S. officials familiar with the program...

For the U.S. military, the missions represent a broad new role in searching for Islamic militants in Pakistan. For years, that task has been the domain of the CIA, which has flown its own fleet of Predators over the South Asian nation.

Under the new partnership, U.S. military drones will be allowed for the first time to venture beyond the borders of Afghanistan under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working with American counterparts at a command center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan...

The Pakistanis, however, have yet to use the drones to shoot at suspected militants and are grappling with a cumbersome military chain of command as well as ambivalence over using U.S. equipment to fire on their own people.
NYT: new offensive brings number of displaced to 360,000 in last 12 days, 900,000+ since August
BBC: UN to deliver some emergency aid

BBC: US military claims the Taliban is using white phosphorus
LAT: at least 20 dead in coordinated suicide attacks in eastern Afghanistan
The assault was a worrying sign of insurgents' growing ability to stage sophisticated, multipronged attacks. Militants in the eastern part of the country are thought to have better access to training in Pakistan's tribal areas, a haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. At least one of the suicide bombers was disguised in a burka, the all-enveloping veil worn by many Afghan women. Insurgents also apparently laid an ambush for a rescue team deployed from the American base
NYT: ...and as many as 140 civilians dead in US attack, the largest single incident since start of the war; payments made to families
The U.S. military has said it believes the number of civilians killed was much lower, in the neighborhood of 50. American officials acknowledge bombing the area, but say at least some of the deaths were caused by insurgents.

LAT: Gates replaces Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in move toward fresh strategy stretching beyond the border with Pakistan
Gates has ousted a succession of top military officials since becoming Defense secretary, firing the Army secretary and top leaders of the Air Force as well as accepting the resignation of the former head of U.S. forces in the Middle East. But McKiernan is the first ground commander fired by Gates. McKiernan, who has been in command for 11 months, was originally supposed to serve for up to two years.
NYT: personal profile of replacement, "ascetic" Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job.
NYT: McChrystal "ideally suited" for new strategy treating Afghanistan and Pakistan "as part of a single, urgent problem"
Among his last projects as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command was to better coordinate Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency efforts on both sides of the porous border...

As head of the Joint Special Operations Command, General McChrystal was a key advocate last year of a plan, ultimately approved by President George W. Bush, to use American commandos to strike at Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. Under an arrangement put in place as part of the more aggressive posture, a senior C.I.A. official based at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan was put in charge of C.I.A. and military commando missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
CSM: Gates also nominates Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez to be his chief of staff; McChrystal has plans to alter redeployments
On Monday, Gates also nominated his own chief of staff, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, to a newly created position in Kabul that will oversee day-to-day operations. This is expected to result in greater US control over the multinational mission there...

McChrystal, who now heads the Joint Staff at the Pentagon under Adm. Mike Mullen, has mostly stayed behind the scenes, given his background in special operations. But he has recently led an effort to have certain units redeploy to the same places in Afghanistan again and again in order to build longer-term relationships with the population. The plan is still in the development stage.

Gdn: soldier kills 5 at stress counseling center in Baghdad
[Sergeant John] Russell, from Sherman, Texas, had been sent for counselling to the Liberty Combat Stress Control Centre. In a sign of the extent of the military's concern, he had had his weapon taken away last week.

Investigators are looking at reports that he had been taken to the clinic, had a row with staff, been escorted off the premises but managed to obtain a weapon and return. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the incident highlighted the need to deal with combat stress and the impact of multiple deployments.

Before the tours in Iraq, Russell had served in the Balkans. He had been due to leave Iraq in about three weeks.
CSM: repeated long tours of duty = major problem
Experts and commanders say 15-month tours are too long because they compound mental-health problems and other issues at home. Secretary Gates agrees. He extended Army tours from 12 to 15 months only reluctantly, saying it was needed to help support the "surge" of troops to Iraq in 2007. He has since lifted the policy, but there remain two units in Iraq still finishing 15-month tours that won't return until this summer and fall.

Yet perhaps the more important factor in stress among soldiers is "dwell time" – the amount of time the military allows servicemembers to stay at home. The Army's current dwell time is about 12 months, meaning 12 months at home followed by a 12-month deployment. By 2012, the service hopes to double the amount of time spent at home for every 12-month tour to a war zone.
NYT: inside these "restoration centers" in Iraq
Camp Liberty is one of four bases that also offers soldiers a place to go when they need more intensive counseling and rest. These so-called large restoration centers offer service members three hot meals and a cot to sleep in for up to four days to recharge. While they are there, they receive more rigorous care, including individual or group mental health counseling.

It is unusual for a commander to take a soldier’s weapon away in Iraq, and it is often prompted by concerns that the soldier said something about the possibility of suicide or harming somebody else. Mental health specialists can also make the determination to take away a soldier’s weapon.

WP: US district judge orders Yemeni prisoner released from Guantánamo; says government "produced virtually no credible evidence" to show he fought against the US
In a 45-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said the government failed to prove that Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, 25, supported the Taliban or al-Qaeda. He was arrested in Pakistan and has been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison since 2002.

She ordered the government to enter into diplomatic negotiations to release Ahmed, though it is unclear whether that will work. The United States has hesitated to send Yemenis back to their home country because of its instability.

Most of the evidence against Ahmed was classified, and the Justice Department has not released a public version of its allegations... Federal judges have ordered eight detainees released after they challenged their confinements in federal lawsuits. Three have been sent home.
WP: while federal jury finds guilty a man who tried to establish terrorism training camps in Bly, Oregon (population: 486)
Kassir traveled to Bly, Ore., in late 1999, according to prosecutors, to establish a military-style facility at the direction of Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fixture at the Finsbury Park mosque in London who has been designated a terrorist by the United States... He left the United States after two months, telling a witness that he was disappointed in the paltry number of people he had been able to attract to the camp, prosecutors said...

Kassir was arrested under an Interpol warrant in 2005 while traveling through Prague on his way to Lebanon. It took U.S. officials two more years to clear the path for his journey into the criminal justice system in New York...

The Kassir verdict came the same day that prosecutors in Miami won convictions against five men accused of conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, a case that twice had ended in mistrial. Jurors convicted the alleged ringleader, Narseal Batiste, on four counts of conspiracy. One defendant, Naudimar Herrera, was acquitted of all charges.

Experts on national security law had argued that the case, known as the Liberty City prosecution after the downtrodden neighborhood in Miami where the men set up headquarters, was built on flimsy and contradictory evidence. It has been viewed as a test of the government's desire to bring prosecutions in instances in which terrorist plots are in the early stages.
WP: unsolved intra-UN killing in Afghanistan, and the problems of internal enforcement
Lacking its own police force, the United Nations relies on a combination of local law enforcement authorities, internal U.N. investigators and outside consultants with varying degrees of competence and limited power to enforce their findings.

Early last year, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proposed establishing a U.N. anti-crime squad to respond more aggressively to allegations of corruption and sexual misconduct in peacekeeping missions. But the initiative encountered broad opposition from member states, including the United States, whose governments feared it would place too much power in U.N. hands.
WP: disappeared CIA detainee, tortured into giving false intelligence about the al Qaeda-Iraq connection, dead in Libyan prison
Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration... When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.

"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."

LAT: bloodiest day in Sri Lanka, says government doctor: 378 civilians dead, 800+ wounded
NYT: UN warns that "bloodbath" has become a reality
Concern for civilians trapped in the zone has grown in recent weeks. The area of fighting, which at one time had been set aside by the government as a “no-fire zone,” has shrunk to about 2.5 square miles. About 50,000 civilians, mostly Tamils, are thought to be caught there, along with a holdout force of between 200 and 500 rebel fighters.
Gdn: ...as a mortar shell hits the only functioning medical facility in the war zone
Doctors, nurses and medical administrators working out of a single room in their makeshift hospital in the school have become the eyes and ears of the world in this conflict. The government in Colombo has sought to dismiss them, to claim that they are pawns of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or even to claim that some do not exist...

The hospital was packed with more than 1,000 patients awaiting evacuation by a ship operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many of the patients fled after the attack and staff in the hospital said shells continued to fall around the perimeter.

NYT: weak ceasefires among ethnic groups create waves for new constitution in Myanmar and country's future
As Myanmar’s military government prepares to adopt a new and disputed Constitution next year, a fragile patchwork of cease-fire agreements between the central government and more than a dozen armed ethnic groups is fraying.

The new Constitution would nominally return the country to civilian rule after four and a half decades of military government and, in theory, could formally end the now dormant civil war that has plagued the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. But as a precondition for what they portray as a fresh start, Myanmar’s ruling generals are ordering the Kachin and other groups to disarm and disband their substantial armies.

So far, the answer is no.
FP: photos from inside North Korea, "land of no smiles"

BBC: Swedish report finds arms and aid shipped to African conflicts through the same carriers
Sipri's report called for agencies to deny contracts to air transport firms engaged in arms flights. But it also admitted that sometimes the only companies willing to fly aid to conflict zones were the same ones that also transported arms shipments.

BBC: "show me proof" of civilian killings, says Bashir in Darfur (that's just what the ICC wants to do, right?)
BBC: if you force 13 major international aid agencies out of Darfur, does it make a noise?
Two months after key international aid agencies were expelled from Sudan, the UN is cautiously optimistic about the humanitarian situation in Darfur. Visiting the region, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator said there was no hard evidence that more people had died because of the disrupted aid effort...

The dramatic expulsion of 13 foreign aid agencies followed the announcement that Sudan's president was being indicted by the International Criminal Court.

The impact in Darfur has been serious. But Mr Holmes said that recently there had been signs of much greater flexibility from the Sudanese authorities. Privately, other UN officials went further, arguing that the operating environment had actually improved, and welcoming the fact that the Sudanese government was being forced to take more of a role in the relief effort.

NYT: Congolese government, in search of path to peace, passes amnesty law for illegal armed groups in North and South Kivu Provinces

BBC: bloody days in Mogadishu, as hardliners fight interim government in intense battles
"The fighting erupted in the most densely populated areas," Elman Human Rights Group's Ali Shaykh Yasin told HornAfrik radio. "The number of people killed who we saw were 123, while 312 others were wounded," he said. His group estimates that more than 17,000 people have fled so far.
CSM: fighting appears to have calmed after the weekend, but conflict far from over
Reuters: and famine on the way!
The target for a U.N. appeal for Somalia this year has been increased to $984 million, but is only one-third funded by donors to date.
NYT: piracy and pirates respond to social pressures
Much like the violence, hunger and warlordism that has engulfed Somalia, piracy is a direct — and some Somalis say inevitable — outgrowth of a society that has languished for 18 years without a functioning central government and whose economy has been smashed by war.

But here in Garoowe, the pirates are increasingly viewed as stains on the devoutly Muslim, nomadic culture, blamed for introducing big-city evils like drugs, alcohol, street brawling and AIDS...

FP: Obama's visit with Egyptian leader test for human rights policy

AP: Colombian senator, ally of President Uribe, arrested for collusion with paramilitaries
CSM: sexual violence cases under Justice and Peace Law jump from 12 to 228, show systematic nature
A 2006 report by a special rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said: "The actors in Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the paramilitaries and guerrillas, use physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women as a strategy of war."... Paramilitary commanders have said that most were isolated cases of their men getting out of hand.

But Buriticá says testimonies she's collected show the practice was systematic and widespread, despite the extremely low numbers of reported cases. A 2006 report by a special rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights said: "The actors in Colombia's armed conflict, particularly the paramilitaries and guerrillas, use physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women as a strategy of war."

+++++

NYT: Sarah Palin to write a memoir
Ms. Palin, who graduated from the University of Idaho, told The Daily News that it would “be nice to put my journalism degree to work on this and get to tell my story, Alaska’s story.”

Captain Phillips and the Somali pirates [the never-ending story]

NYT: the feat of the snipers who saved Captain Phillips from the Somali pirates
The hard part was not the distance, 75 feet, an easy range for an experienced sniper. Far more difficult were all the moving parts: the bobbing lifeboat, the rolling ship, hitting three targets simultaneously in darkness — and all without harming the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips...

Several dozen members of the Seals had secretly boarded the Bainbridge on Saturday, having flown to the area, parachuted into the ocean and then climbed aboard inflatable boats they had dropped into the sea. The Navy would not say where they were based or if they were part of even more elite, clandestine military units that have historically been used for hostage rescues.
CSM: but what to do with the one that survived?
[T]he rise of savvy Somali pirates also presents an oceanic legal problem: no clear, practical legal regime exists for the world to capture and try pirates. And there's no reliable place to evaluate the evidence or hold them accountable for their crimes... In fact, most captured pirates, who are usually not kingpins anyway, are simply turned loose on or close to shore.

"The real issue is to create an international legal framework," US Coast Guard chief Adm. Thad Allen said this week. "What you really have to have is a coordinating mechanism that brings these pirates to court where they can be held accountable."

Currently, some legal experts in the US and Europe hope that the Kenyan court system will take up the call – with Mombasa acting as a kind of Hague international tribunal for pirate crimes. Britain, the US, and the European Union have signed memorandums of understanding with Nairobi in recent months. Legal action is underway in Kenya for several Somali pirates already turned over by the US and Germany, in a pre-trial phase being closely watched for its legal acuity.
CSM: the time for more non-kinetic methods?
Mr. Gates calls for "enlightened counter-measures" to bolster vulnerable states that harbor violent networks. And this week, after the rescue of the kidnapped Capt. Richard Phillips, he went further to say there is "no purely military" solution to Somalia "unless you get something on land that begins to change the equation for these kids."

Yes, kids. The pirates were 17 to 19 years old. While they were greedy for a $6 million ransom, they came from poverty and a clannish community resentful of the way that foreign ships have overfished and polluted Somalia's coastal waters.
Xinhua: or just dolphins?
NYT: US congressman almost struck by mortars on visit to Somalia (against administration's advice)
The congressman, a Democrat from Newark, was unhurt and it was unclear if insurgents who routinely shell the airport were trying to hit his plane or were simply unleashing another assault on the city’s main lifeline.

The Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group vying for control of the country, later took responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.
WP: and another attempted attack, this one thwarted

NYT: in Afghanistan, from the welfare war to...?
Lieutenant Cheek, 25, is a platoon leader for Company C of the First Battalion, 26th Infantry. In nine months in one of Afghanistan’s more violent areas, the company has been a witness to a subtly changing war.

The company arrived after a ferocious battle and in a climate of political uncertainty about the degree of commitment to the war. But it has since been issued heavier fighting vehicles, seen another battalion reinforce its efforts in the region and fought what is essentially a holding mission to prepare for a large influx of American troops that President Obama has ordered to Afghanistan later this year.

This spring, as the pace of fighting has increased with warming weather, there have not been enough American soldiers here to clear Wanat of the insurgents openly living there. But there is a sense that soon the military could be able to break the stalemate of what some soldiers, sensing that Afghanistan had long been neglected in Washington, had taken to calling “the welfare war.”
NYT: creating local militias, Iraq-style
If the militias work in Wardak, the Americans say they want to replicate them throughout the country. So the experience in Wardak has been instructive, for what the Americans can accomplish and what they cannot...

The trouble came from the Pashtun enclave of Zayawalat, one of five large villages in Jalrez. The Americans setting up the guard force waited patiently, hoping to bring Zayawalat’s elders along. They agreed to a meeting with the elders, and then another and another. At a meeting last week, the fourth, the Pashtun elders said they would make a final decision and report back this week.

But when they showed up Monday morning, the elders said they still were not ready to give up their sons. “It’s not that the people in Zayawalat don’t support the government — they do,” said Hajii Janan, the leader of the Wardak provincial council, who presided over the meeting. “But, as you can see, people are under pressure.”
NYT: more claims of civilian deaths from NATO airstrikes

NYT: Pakistani president signs off on sharia law in Swat Valley
Mr. Zardari had delayed giving the agreement a national stamp of approval, saying that the militants should first demonstrate that they would abide by the cease-fire. He signed the measure under pressure from conservatives, even though little in the valley has changed...

The government now needs to press the militants by monitoring whether they hold up their end of the bargain to lay down their arms, Mr. Sherpao said... Critics of the deal worry that it could simply provide the militants with a new haven from which they can carry out attacks.
AJE: which has some Afghans worried about strengthening militants
NYT: attacks on Punjab signal a dangerous shift
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.

Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”...

The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.

Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

WSJ: Obama may keep secret some DoJ torture memos
Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos. Another approved tactic was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.

People familiar with the matter said some senior intelligence advisers to the president raised fears that releasing the two most sensitive memos could cause the Obama administration to be alienated from the CIA's rank and file, as happened during the Bush administration when Porter Goss, who was unpopular among CIA officers, headed the agency...

The government faces a court deadline Thursday in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the release of three 2005 memos issued by Steven Bradbury, then acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under former President George W. Bush.

LAT: Lebanese drug traffickers responsible for deaths of 4 soldiers
Lebanese officials said gunmen, using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, fired on an army truck in a residential area of Baalbek, a city in the Bekaa Valley. Panicked people hid in their homes and paramedics rushed to remove the wounded.

Officials say the attack was revenge for the March 27 killing at an army checkpoint of a patriarch of the Jaafar clan, which is allegedly heavily involved in the trafficking of hashish and heroin. They predict a harsh response. By early evening, soldiers had raided the homes of the clan's late patriarch, local media reported.
LAT: Hezbollah a united military-political front with growing legitmacy (and public relations)

NYT: how US guns laws affect the illegal traffic to Mexico
Noting there are about 1,500 licensed gun dealers in the Houston area, he added: “You can come to Houston and go to a different gun store every day for several months and never alert any one.”... As a result, in some states along the Southwest border where firearms are lightly regulated, gun smugglers can evade detection for months or years. In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, dealers can sell an unlimited number of rifles to anyone with a driver’s license and a clean criminal record without reporting the sales to the government. At gun shows in these states, there is even less regulation. Private sellers, unlike licensed dealers, are not obligated to record the buyer’s name, much less report the sale to the A.T.F...

But Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Rifle Association, said tightening gun laws in the United States would penalize only people who enjoy marksmanship and hunting, or who buy firearms for self-defense, without solving Mexico’s problem.
AP: Obama to appoint border czar
PCB: the drug war in (revealing) numbers

Bloomberg: Lehman Bros. has enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb
A supply of 500,000 pounds of yellowcake is just “slightly” less than the amount needed to make one bomb, or fuel one nuclear power reactor for a year, if the latest enrichment technologies are used, said Gennady Pshakin, an Obninsk, Russia-based nonproliferation expert.
NYT: Obama may allow Iran to continue nuclear program under early stages of international negotiations
A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded...

Administration officials declined to discuss details of their confidential deliberations, but said that any new American policy would ultimately require Iran to cease enrichment, as demanded by several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
LAT: North Korea pulls completely out of nuclear talks, says "never again"

LAT: Sri Lankan president orders halt to army offensive during New Year celebrations, giving civilians temporary relief
AJE: while rebels call for permanent, internationally-recognized ceasefire

NYT: conflict not over in Thailand, but "red shirts" protests are
The red shirts, as the protesters are known, draw their strength from the northern and northeastern regions of Thailand. Many are farmers and small-businessmen who portray themselves as battling an entrenched, unelected but influential elite, notably the judiciary, the military and the powerful advisers of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

A central grievance of the red shirts is that the will of the electorate has been repeatedly thwarted: three prime ministers since 2006 have been forced from office — one in a military coup in 2006 and two removed by the courts in highly politicized trials...

Many of the red shirts are followers of Thaksin Shinawatra, the charismatic prime minister ousted in the 2006 coup who is seen by the poor as their champion and by the elite as a threat. Convicted last year of abuse of power and facing other charges in Thailand, he now lives in exile. Mr. Thaksin’s position now appears weakened by the collapse of the protests.

NYT: China releases a national human rights action plan, in part to ease dissatisfaction with public security officials
The two-year plan promises the right to a fair trial, the right to participate in government decisions and the right to learn about and question government policies. It calls for measures to discourage torture, such as requiring interrogation rooms to be designed to physically separate interrogators from the accused, and for measures to protect detainees from other abuse, from inadequate sanitation to the denial of medical care.

There are also specific protections for children, women, senior citizens, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.

Human rights activists applauded Beijing officials for showing an interest in the issue. But they cautioned that any implementation would require years of work by local, provincial and national government agencies, many of which have shown little interest in initiatives that may limit their power...

Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor who specializes in China’s legal system, said that the action plan was the result of growing worries in the Chinese leadership about public dissatisfaction with security forces and even outright hostility to police officers.

peaceful satellite launch preparations [into the sea]

NYT: North Korea threatens to shoot down US planes "spying" on its rocket launch...
“If the brigandish U.S. imperialists dare to infiltrate spy planes into our airspace to interfere with our peaceful satellite launch preparations, our revolutionary armed forces will mercilessly shoot them down,” the North’s state-run Korea Central Radio said...

The United States, South Korea and Japan say that North Korea is using the launching to test its long-range missile technology, a violation of a 2006 United Nations resolution banning the country from all ballistic missile tests.

They warned that if North Korea presses ahead with it, they will seek punishment for the North at the Security Council.
LAT: ...which is considered a failure outside North Korea

NYT: Filipino militants kidnap, threaten to behead Red Cross workers
Abu Sayyaf head demanded that the military pull its soldiers out of an island province in the south, warning that it would behead one of the three Red Cross workers if the demand were not met by 2 p.m. Tuesday.

Abu Sayyaf, responsible for many of the deadliest terror attacks in the Philippines, has a grim record of following through on threats to behead its captives. Guillermo Sobero, an American from Corona, California, was decapitated by the group in 2001. Abu Sayyaf guerrillas also beheaded two Filipino teachers in 2000 as a “birthday gift” to President Joseph Estrada.

LAT: #2 in the Juárez drug cartel, son of the "Lord of the Skies," captured in Mexico City
Mexico is seeing a crop of younger, university-educated narcojuniors emerging as leaders of drug-trafficking organizations that are bound primarily by family ties. Carrillo Leyva was paraded before news cameras in a white Abercrombie & Fitch sweatsuit and stylish glasses -- a far cry from the narco archetype decked out in cowboy boots and oversized jewel-studded belt buckles...

The Juarez gang has been locked in a vicious turf war with a band of traffickers based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa and led by Joaquin Guzman, the country's most wanted fugitive.

The bloodletting left about 1,600 people dead in Ciudad Juarez last year. Violence continued in the border city during the first two months of 2009 but has dipped since Calderon sent 5,000 more troops and hundreds of additional federal police there in recent weeks.
CSM: just as Holder and Napolitano arrive in Mexico to discuss the southward gun flow
WP: and complaints rise about delays on Mérida Initiative aid

NYT: peace semi-secured, Haiti now needs jobs
The [UN] has spent some $5 billion on peacekeeping operations here since 2004, when the government of the still popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled — many say with a shove from the Bush administration.

The peacekeeping force declared war against the gangs that plague Haiti, with some success. Kidnappings dropped to 258 victims last year from 722 in 2006, according to United Nations figures...

It required five months to seat a new government after the April 2008 food riots, and United Nations officials say development is stymied by a corrupt judicial system, weak land tenure laws and wildly inefficient ports. The roads are such moonscapes that some 40 percent of the mango crop gets too bruised to be sold abroad, said Jean M. Buteau, a leading exporter.

CSM: Binghamton shootings put into question role of the economic downturn
That event, as well as three policemen wounded in a Pittsburgh shooting after responding to a domestic disturbance call – friends said that gunman was also upset about his recent firing – fit a larger pattern of mass killings which have seemed to proliferate since America's economic downturn, experts say. Forty-four people have died in a string of five such incidents in the past month, from Oakland, California to Alabama to North Carolina.
LAT: database on killings by long-haul truckers in US reveals patterns
But the pattern in roadside body dumps and other evidence has prompted many investigators to speculate that the mobility, lack of supervision and access to potential victims that come with the job make it a good cover for someone inclined to kill...

Michael Harrigan, who oversees the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, said the program helps local police "connect the dots" to slayings outside their jurisdictions. He said most of the victims led high-risk lifestyles that left them particularly vulnerable.

NYT: new Israeli foreign minister: “those who wish for peace should prepare for war”
The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved.

Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “has no validity.”...

As the new prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone, promising to hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority toward a permanent accord. But he has also stopped short of endorsing the two-state solution, putting the new government at odds with the United States and the European Union.
NYT: Israeli advocate general closes investigation into military abuses in Gaza

NYT: new face/phase of insurgency in Iraq
Most of the latest attacks, at a time when overall violence is at its lowest level since the beginning of the war in 2003, have singled out Iraqis, but one development affects the Americans. A new weapon has appeared in Iraq: Russian-made RKG-3 grenades, which weigh just five pounds and, attached to parachutes, can be lobbed by a teenager but can penetrate the American military’s latest heavily armored vehicle, the MRAP. The grenades cost as little as $10, according to American military officials, who would not say how often they have killed soldiers...

Military officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the news media, say they have reduced the number of jihadi militants to under 2,000, from about 3,800. “In most places there isn’t an insurgency in Iraq anymore,” said an American military intelligence officer in Washington, who was not authorized to be quoted by name. “What we have now is a terrorism problem, and there is going to be a terrorism problem in Iraq for a long time.”

Other officials, Iraqi and American, are more worried. They observe jihadi and other insurgent groups activating networks of sleeper cells, which are already striking government and civilian targets. Insurgent groups linked to the rule of Mr. Hussein are also reviving.
NYT: along with the end of blackwater?
CSM: all under a new US commander

NYT: Taliban militants attack government office in Kandahar, during democracy seminar
The assault by multiple gunmen followed a pattern of militant attacks across the region recently, from Kabul, the Afghan capital, to Lahore in Pakistan and Mumbai in India...

The attack, in daylight in the center of the city, was the second in the past year in which Taliban fighters infiltrated Kandahar, an important city in the south, in such a brazen manner.

Hajji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member who attended the institute’s seminar, said the attackers were dressed in Afghan National Army uniforms.
NYT: European role in Afghanistan conflict uncertain, but probably a "civilian surge"
[Obama's] increasing American troops in Afghanistan to some 68,000 by the end of the year, from 38,000 today, is also likely to significantly Americanize an operation that in recent years had been divided equally between American troops and allied forces. By year’s end, American troops will outnumber allied forces by at least two to one.

His NATO allies are giving the president considerable vocal support for the newly integrated strategy. But they are giving him very few new troops on the ground, underlining the fundamental strains in the alliance.

The war in Afghanistan was the first time that NATO had ever invoked its Article 5, which requires collective defense of a member under attack... What Afghanistan needs, a senior German official said, is not more foreign soldiers but more Afghan troops and police officers. Germany is sending in new police mentoring teams, and several hundred more police officers and gendarmes will come from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain, according to the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. France is trying to coordinate a second pillar of the European police force in Afghanistan to do training in the countryside for periods of up to 11 months. That project, which European officials say is more efficient than trying to bring local police officers to Kabul for mass training, can have a European label.

Europeans will also concentrate on the “civilian surge” to help create functioning Afghan political, judicial and security structures in the countryside.
LAT: ...comes down to 5,000 combat troops and trainers

NYT: DoD officials testify before Senate: Pakistani intelligence agency a "problem"; benchmarks for success are coming
...Ms. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, acknowledged the administration’s concerns about a wing of the ISI, which American intelligence officials say is providing money and military assistance to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan...

Senators on the panel expressed some impatience with the Obama administration’s failure so far to articulate benchmarks for judging progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although Ms. Flournoy promised that they would be ready soon...

Ms. Flournoy responded that “a key point of defining success is when both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have both the capability and the will to deal with the remaining threat themselves.”
NYT: US drone aims for Taliban leader in Pakistani tribal region, kills at least 12
The attack was the first of its kind in the Orakzai region, which lies southwest of Peshawar and close to the border with Afghanistan, residents said. The region is strategically important because it borders other areas in Pakistan known for widespread Taliban activity.

Mr. [Hakimullah] Mehsud is a prominent lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who claimed responsibility for an assault this week on police cadets in Lahore, Pakistan.
NYT: militants attack police training center in Punjab, resulting in 8 hour siege...
The attackers issued no demands but went on a rampage, killing at least eight recruits and instructors. One attacker was killed in the siege that followed and, in a gory finale, three detonated suicide belts, killing themselves. More than 100 people were wounded.

“They were barbaric,” a senior trainer at the center said. “They had no demands. We didn’t understand what they wanted. They just kept killing.”...

Some at the police academy believed that the attackers had come from Afghanistan, or at least were Pashtun, an ethnicity indigenous to tribal areas in western Pakistan...

The attackers had more sophisticated weaponry than in past attacks, said Mr. Sukhera, the police official. A factory-made antipersonnel explosive that bore the markings Claymore Mark 5 was found near one of the dead attackers in a plastic box, said Zulifkar Hameed, an elite force member who was among the first inside.
Gdn: ...and a few days later, 22 killed in suicide attack on mosque
LAT: video released on public flogging of a 17-year old girl by the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley causes outrage
Jahangir said the girl was believed to have been punished after refusing to marry a Taliban commander in the Swat Valley, where the government in February struck a truce with Islamic militants to stem violence. The militants then accused her of immoral behavior and ordered 34 lashes, Pakistani news reports said...

The Swat accord was reached between the North-West Frontier Province government and a cleric named Sufi Muhammad, whose son-in-law Maulana Qazi Fazlullah leads a Taliban army that for nearly two years held off army and paramilitary troops seeking to regain control of Swat.

The alpine valley was once a tourist haven, with stunning mountain scenery and a ski resort, which the militants burned down.

Over the last two years, they also burned down nearly 200 schools that provided education to girls and beheaded dozens of local officials and paramilitary troops, terrorizing anyone who dared speak against them.

The central government was not a party to the peace accord but signaled its approval and pulled back army troops.
CSM: ...and could threaten peace deal
In Swat's main town of Mingora, however, anger is overridden by a practical desire to maintain good relations with the Taliban whom residents say are in de- facto control of the region. The consensus is that the video, which was shot with a cellphone camera, took place in January – before the peace accord – and that the Taliban has done nothing as controversial since that time...

The much-vaunted Islamic courts are partly operational, hearing mainly financial or land disputes that are settled through a quick verdict by Qazis (religious scholars, who were already in place and working as magistrates before the peace-deal). Opposing parties describe their disputes, which could center around a bounced check or a defaulted loan, to the Qazi who in turn makes a swift decision and orders the families to come together and shake hands. There are few documents involved and no lawyers. One hundred and fifteen new cases have been heard since the peace deal, of which 50 have been resolved. "People seem to prefer it this way," says court clerk Zafar Ali. "Things are done a lot sooner."

NYT: human rights activist beaten in Russia...
NYT: ...as former Chechen general turned opposition leader is assassinated in Dubai
The attack evokes others on Chechens, in Russia and abroad, who ran afoul of President Ramzan A. Kadyrov.

The Kremlin has invested Mr. Kadyrov with almost unchecked authority in a bid to return stability to Chechnya after nearly a decade of bloody war and political turmoil. With Moscow’s blessing, Mr. Kadyrov has created a personality cult and imposed his own interpretation of Islamic morality in Chechnya, whose population is predominately Muslim.

He has also built a powerful security force that has all but crushed Chechnya’s separatist movement, often, rights groups say, with the help of torture and extrajudicial killings.

In January, a Chechen hit man tracked down and killed Umar S. Israilov, a former bodyguard of Mr. Kadyrov, who had received asylum in Austria after accusing the president, and officials in his circle, of kidnapping, torture and murder. Ruslan Yamadayev, one of Sulim’s brothers, was shot dead in his car last September as he waited in a traffic jam in Moscow just outside the White House, the government building where the offices of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin are situated.
NYT: firebombing anarchists in Athens attack banks and cars

NYT: Guinea-Bissau needs help to assure post-coup on-time elections
The tiny West African country, which is used by Latin American drug-smuggling gangs as a transit point to Europe, has said it will hold elections in June to replace the president who was assassinated last month.

Soldiers killed President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira on March 2 in a revenge attack after an explosion killed his rival, General Batista Tagme Na Wai, the military chief... The deaths of Vieira and Na Wai ended a long-running and violent feud between the two men.

But it left a power vacuum which analysts say could lead to greater instability and allow Latin American cocaine smuggling gangs, already active in Bissau, to extend their influence.
NYT: trial highlights crime, insecurity in South Africa; some clamor for reintroducing the death penalty
The nation’s homicide rate, while declining, is among the worst. In 2006, it was about eight times more than the United States’ and 20 times higher than Western Europe’s, according to Antony Altbeker, a criminologist. Electrified barbed wire surrounds many of the finest homes in Johannesburg. South Africa exceeds international norms in its number of police officers, and by some estimates there are more than four times as many private security guards as police officers, with most companies promising their clients “armed response.”

Criminologists have long puzzled over not only the nation’s high crime rate but also the unusual amount of homicide and torture that accompanies burglaries and carjackings...

The three men [on trial] did not realize that they had killed someone both famous and widely beloved until they read the newspapers the next day. They had thought their victim “was a Nigerian,” Ms. Maruping said.

Gdn: human rights case against Shell goes to court
In a New York federal court, Shell and one of its senior executives are to face charges that in the early 1990s in Nigeria they were complicit in human rights abuses, including summary execution and torture.

The Anglo-Dutch company, if found liable, could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of pounds in damages. No multinational has ever been found guilty of human rights abuses, although two previous cases saw major claims settled outside court...

Lawyers in New York will allege that Shell actively subsidised a campaign of terror by security forces in the Niger Delta and attempted to influence the trial that led to Saro-Wiwa's execution. The lawsuit alleges that the company attempted to bribe two witnesses in his trial to testify against him.
NYT: Arab leaders band together to back Sudan's Bashir
NYT: Fujimori, on trial for massacres during Peru's civil war, defends himself
Mr. Fujimori is believed to be the world’s first democratically elected former president to be tried for human rights violations in his own country...

None of the 80 witnesses and nearly two dozen outside experts who testified during the trial have directly linked Mr. Fujimori to two deadly operations by the Colina group, a special military unit. Rather, prosecutors have argued that as commander in chief and leader, he did nothing to try to stop the killings of guerrilla suspects and their supporters. He is charged with failing to stop the Colina group from massacring 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, in 1991 at a barbecue in Lima, Peru’s capital.

He is also charged with human rights violations related to a raid at La Cantuta University in 1992 that left nine students and a professor dead. Their incinerated bodies were found a year later.
NYT: first defendant in Khmer Rouge trial tries the chain of command defense
One of five defendants in the United Nations-backed trial, [Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch] faces a life sentence on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as homicide and torture...

Duch’s lawyers presented a vigorous defense of a man who has admitted to overseeing the torture and execution of at least 14,000 people, portraying him as someone trapped in a giant killing machine who now finds himself singled out for prosecution.

Asserting that Tuol Sleng was just one of 196 similar institutions — and far from the worst of them — one of his lawyers, Kar Savuth, asked: “Is it fair? Is this called justice?

“Each prison had the same orders from Angkar,” he said, referring to the Khmer Rouge leadership, “all conducted torture and execution. Why is only Duch brought to trial? He is only a scapegoat.”

NYT: fate of Tamil leader central to outcome of Sri Lankan civil war
A pioneer in the tactic of suicide bombings, Mr. [Velupillai] Prabhakaran created a squad called the Black Tigers — up to 40 percent of its members women — that carried out scores of attacks over the years, both targeted assassinations and mass terrorist killings.

Many of his regular fighters have taken their own lives as well rather than surrender, biting into cyanide tablets that they often carry on strings like small memento mori around their necks.

This dedication is part of a cult-like devotion to Mr. Prabhakaran — a chubby man with a thick mustache whose charisma is not always evident to outsiders — and nobody knows what will come of his mission once he is gone.

Without Mr. Prabhakaran, some analysts say, his rebellion may collapse. Or perhaps he might be seen as a martyr and a rallying cry for further insurgency.
Gdn: while civilian suffering unlikely to decline soon

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