exit, voice and loyalty

NYT: "Mugabe's Tsunami": an estimated 1,000 are fleeing Zimbabwe for South Africa each day
the article does not include much information on the violence that is prompting the displacement, other than from one woman: "She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters."
Gdn: more details in this report
"...party militias and the army established torture camps in several provinces, where MDC members were taken to extract the names of opposition activists and deter the opposition from campaigning before what is expected to be a run-off between Mugabe and the MDC's candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai...The targeted areas include Murewa in Mashonaland East, where two of the city's three constituencies are held by Zanu-PF, one of them by Parirenyatwa. The MDC won the third constituency, Murewa West."
Gdn: meanwhile, the recount is slow
"The counting is paint-dryingly slow. The presiding officer holds each vote up for scrutiny by party agents. There are protracted arguments about individual papers – does a cross made with red ink mean that a ballot is spoiled? And once the presidential votes have been counted, the process is repeated for the senate, parliamentary and local council elections. Then the presiding officer, who looks like he wants to vomit up his fear, painstakingly goes through the electoral roll, checking that the number of names ticked off equals the number of votes cast. It's 1pm before the first box is finished. We've been at it for five hours...But despite the flaws in this weary process, there's no sign yet that anybody has stuffed any of the boxes."

Gdn: fleeing Somalia to Yemen fraught with danger
"From January to early April about 14,500 migrants - mainly Somalis - crossed the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. That represents more than half the number of people that made the journey in 2007, and the main crossing season later in the year still lies ahead.The high death toll is little deterrent. UN figures show that about 1,500 people died or disappeared trying to reach Yemen from Somalia last year, one for every 20 that attempted the journey." Yemen offers automatic asylum.
BBC: 70 reported killed in Mogadishu over the weekend, including massacre of clerics in a mosque
Gdn: Somali pirates strike again, hijack Spanish fishing crew

BBC: attempting election reform in Nigeria
"[Video] footage [from gubernatorial elections last year] shot in the northern state of Katsina, the president's home state, shows youths from a village who have not been able to vote, stopping an Inec minibus transporting ballot boxes and tearing them open, because they believe they have been stuffed with votes for the ruling People's Democratic Party."

BBC: protesting proposed reforms in Cameroon

BBC: first-hand accounts of the food shortage in Sierra Leone

WP: clashes in Sadr city between militia, apparently Mahdi Army, and US troops

USAT: NATO troop commitments for Afghanistan remain unrealized

BBC: the British in Waziristan, 90 years ago
book by British officer stationed there in 1919, "Walk Warily in Waziristan," depicts similar challenges facing foreign forces today

Ind: Human Rights Watch reports on Saudi women, who still "legally belong to" men
"The House of Saud, in alliance with an extremist religious establishment which enforces the most restrictive interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, has created a legal system that treats women as minors unable to exercise authority over even trivial daily matters...Too often, sex segregation results in an "apartheid" system in which facilities for women are either grossly inferior or non-existent. Women were denied the right to vote in the kingdom's first municipal elections because there were no separate voting booths for them."

Gdn: Carter says Hamas will recognize Israel
(didn't spot this story in any US paper)

Gdn: Guantánamo records "mysteriously lost"

BBC: Jemaah Islamiah militants jailed in Indonesia

WP: drug violence along the US-Mexico border
"Puerto Palomas [near the New Mexico border] became strategically important because Ciudad Juarez, the traditional drug-trafficking hub, has been inundated with Mexican army troops sent to contain a war between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels blamed for more than 200 deaths this year. The cartels probably knew that the Mexican military was coming months before its arrival in late March and saw Puerto Palomas as an acceptable alternative...On March 17, several Puerto Palomas police officers quit after being threatened by drug traffickers. García said the officers believed that they were targeted because of an inaccurate Mexican newspaper article that implied they would confront drug gangs. Within several hours, the entire police force had resigned, rendering the town lawless. Even Pérez Ortega, the stern police chief, left to seek asylum [in the US]."

LAT: Ex-bishop wins election, ends one-party rule in Paraguay

building states [with glue and bailing wire]

WP: "securocrats" making the calls in Zimbabwe, including in the electoral commission
"National decision-making increasingly has been consolidated within the Joint Operations Command, a shadowy group consisting of the leaders of the army, air force, police, intelligence agency and prison service -- a group Zimbabweans call the 'securocrats.'"
Ind: militia taking revenge on behalf of Mugabe
Chris Blattman: calling the embassy

WP: building bureaucracies in the Congo
"'The report must be in order,' said [a mid-level administrator], 62, a meticulous man in a khaki suit who explained how different things were when he worked for Mobutu's government. 'In the old system, I would just take the public money and go drinking with women. When I moved to a different job, I would take the typing machine, the lamps, even the curtains -- I would put them in my house. Now there is no way. Now there is shame.'"

AP: Odinga sworn in as Kenya's prime minister
"Within hours, a feared gang [the Mungiki] promised to heed new Prime Minister Raila Odinga's call to stop its campaign of terror in the capital -- one small sign that resolving Kenya's political crisis could help return peace and stability to the fragile nation...
The apparent olive branch offered to the Mungiki, a gang dedicated to spreading Kikuyu culture, by Odinga, a Luo, is another strange strand in Kenya's web of politics, ethnicity and violence.
Many Mungiki say they were approached during the violence by Kikuyu politicians to act as an ethnic militia but refused to get heavily involved because the gang was angered by the extrajudicial killings of more than 450 Kikuyu youths last year.
The gang blamed police in Kibaki's administration in the deaths."

WSJ: US commanders begin releasing detainees in Iraq
"U.S. officials also believe freeing the primarily Sunni detainees will help persuade the embattled minority to participate more in Iraq's Shiite-heavy political process."
NYT: US building wall in Sadr City
WP: Congressional report strongly criticizes US efforts to rebuild communities in Afghanistan and Iraq
"'Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.), the subcommittee's ranking Republican, [said], 'The organizational structure is a little goofy,' he said, adding that it had been 'put together with glue and baling wire.'
...lawmakers praised the theory behind the PRTs, which focus on community and local governmental capacity-building in urban neighborhoods and in areas outside the capitals of Iraq and Afghanistan. They also recognized the dedication of individuals working on the teams, often under dangerous conditions. But the report notes that the success of the teams depends heavily on the "personalities" of staff individuals. It says that training is insufficient and that many staffers are unsuited for the jobs they are expected to perform."
Gdn: it would be helpful if NATO didn't supply the Taliban, for starters
WP: on a related note, GAO reports that US unprepared to operate in Pakistan "tribal region"
LAT: suicide bomber kills 50 at a funeral
"It was the latest strike in an internal war among Sunni Arabs, some of whom have aligned themselves with the Americans and others with the group Al Qaeda in Iraq."
WP: suicide bombing in general on the rise since 2001
WP: militias offer aid to the displaced
LAT: nearly 20% of US veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from depression or stress disorders
WP: stop-loss for diplomats too

Slate: dispatches from Saudi Arabia

WP: fighting the drug cartels in Mexico with the army, violating citizens' rights along the way; the US is considering sending a huge aid package to the military
LAT: the violence has led the US to issue a travel alert for US citizens
LAT: cocaine use highest among adults in Spain, once just a transit point
LAT: drug trafficking contributing to destruction of livelihoods, culture on Colombia's Pacific coast

Gdn: Paraguay presidential elections set to change one-party rule

LAT: Southern California man convicted of "conspiring to kill in a foreign country" (read: trying to overthrow the Cambodian government)
"'Obviously, we can't have private U.S. citizens waging war against foreign countries,' [Asst US Attny] Lee said."

CSM: Maoists won big in Nepal elections

BBC: the Simpsons are back in Venezuela
WP: but it's not just controversial there - they've angered the Argentines too
"During the episode, Homer and his friends gathered at Moe's Tavern and grumbled about their choices of political candidates. The conversation seemed innocent enough, until Homer's buddy Carl Carlson opened his mouth.
'I'd really go for some kind of military dictator, like Juan Perón," Carl said, mentioning the general who was elected president by Argentines three times. "When he 'disappeared' you, you stayed disappeared.'
Carl's friend Lenny then delivered a coup de grâce: 'Plus, his wife was Madonna.'
Most Argentines don't consider Perón a dictator, and they certainly don't blame him for the fact that up to 30,000 dissidents went missing during the country's "dirty war." Those disappearances are attributed to a military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983, after Perón's death."

New Yorker: book recommendation: Panther Soup
"This is a book about the appetites of war and peace—for food, sex, and human comfort—unbridled, sordid, and, somehow, in their ability to lead a civilization back to itself, redeeming."

The Onion: Nation agrees not to talk about politics (with so many other important things going on)

BBC: good luck on this news round-up quiz - sorry SV didn't help you out this week

no protection

NYT: massive death persist even during "peace" in the Congo
"The survey, released Tuesday, estimated that 45,000 people continue to die every month, about the same pace as in 2004, when the international push to rebuild the country had scarcely begun. Almost all the deaths come from hunger and disease, signs that the country is still grappling with the aftermath of a war that gutted its infrastructure, forced millions to flee and flattened its economy."
Chris Blattman: assesses the utility of the survey and its estimate (conducted by the IRC)

LAT: instability persists in Kenya
Ind: weighs in, deems election of Kibaki fradulent
WP: Kenya elite avoid the clashes, but not the ethnic conflict

LAT: reflecting on the situation in Anbar, early mistakes in Iraq
"Gaskin, who commands 35,000 Marines and soldiers, credits the turnaround [in Anbar] to an alliance between U.S.-led forces and tribal sheiks who have turned against the insurgency.
'Nothing happens out here without tribal approval,' he said. 'They were tribal before they were Muslims.'"
LAT: negotiating with tribes in border region with Syria

NYT: in Iraq, Awakening Council members, or Concerned Local Citizens, increasingly targets of violence
"Officials say that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has a two-pronged strategy: directing strikes against Awakening members to intimidate and punish them for cooperating with the Americans, and infiltrating the groups to glean intelligence and discredit the movement in the eyes of an already wary Shiite-led government...Both Sunni and Shiite officials in Baghdad blame two government-linked Shiite paramilitary forces for some of the attacks: the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization. Sunni officials charge that militia leaders are involved, while Shiite officials believe that the attackers are renegade members of the groups...Killings of guardsmen are mounting even as Awakening members are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Iraqi government, which has yet to fulfill its promise to integrate 20 percent of the volunteers into the Ministries of Interior and Defense and give nonsecurity jobs to the rest — a process that American officials say could take until the end of the year."
BBC: Iraqi police chief dies in suicide attack in Mosul

LAT: not at war, but militants would be ready for violence in Lebanon

LAT: in Mexico, soldiers disarm police in 3 border cities
"'There are municipal police forces that have collapsed and that function more as support staff to organized crime rather than as guardians of public safety,'" [Atty Gen] Medina Mora said."
Reuters: which may not be a good sign for the civilian population
"The army and navy, which play a leading role in President Felipe Calderon's campaign against organized crime, should be withdrawn to their barracks, said Jose Luis Soberanes, head of the country's human rights commission. 'Individuals belonging to the armed forces committed grave abuses,' he told Mexico's Congress. 'In 2007, we widely documented cases of torture, rape and homicide.'"
Econ: summarizes increasing violence in last two weeks, highlights open fighting in Tijuana
WP: sting on Sinaloa cartel in Mexico City
NYT: Gov Spitzer proposes a $200/gram tax on cocaine (like 29 other states have already enacted)

BBC: in other news on the failed drug war front: eradication of poppy in Afghanistan, um, failing.
Gdn: young Afghan journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy, being brother of reporter who exposed northern warlords' human rights abuses

Gdn: Burmese poet arrested for criticizing general in verse
"The eight-line poem appeared to be an innocent verse about Valentine's day, by Saw Wai. But when read vertically the first word of each line describes Burma's leader, General Than Shwe, as 'power-crazed'."
Econ: depressingly, junta has tremendous power that seems unaffected by protests

Gdn: speaking of power-crazed generals, Musharraf claims Pakistan on track for March elections
LAT: but we'll see how long that lasts, as critics increasingly vocal
LAT: US moves ahead with plans to train security forces, with new army chief

BBC: Putin bans critic from elections because he doesn't have 2 million signatures

NYT: move over anti-Castro constituents, make room for anti-Chavistas
"According to census data, the Venezuelan community in the United States has grown more than 94 percent this decade, from 91,507 in 2000, the year after Mr. Chávez took office, to 177,866 in 2006."

LAT: cyanide kills witness, dirty secrets of Argentina's dirty war

LAT: Paraguay Colorado party nominates woman as presidential candidate
in case you haven't heard of it, Paraguay is "a landlocked tropical nation of almost 7 million people in an area nearly the size of California..."

Gdn: Beijing face-lift before Olympics to include a "'social cleansing' operation to clear the city of beggars, hawkers and prostitutes."

NYT: remembering the children's rights pioneer and orphanage martyr
"[Janusz Korczak's] work at the orphanage was interrupted in 1940 when the Nazis forced him and his orphans into the Warsaw Ghetto."
Gdn: German railway acknowledges role in holocaust

BBC: Alaskan language dies with its last speaker

The Onion: as usual, they have the story first: Clinton's in