CSM: Iranian Revolutionary Guard steps in against protesters, while foreign intervention blamed for violence
Until now, the government has employed police and ideological militia to quell protests. But now Iran's Revolutionary Guard have vowed to weigh in. It ordered protesters to "end the sabotage and rioting activities" and warned them to be ready for a "revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij, and other security... and disciplinary forces" if they dared to gather in public again.
The Revolutionary Guard is tasked with preserving the 1979 revolution, The force was created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini because he did not trust the regular Army. The Guard is considered more ideological than the regular Iranian Army.
But on Monday afternoon an estimated 1,000 protesters tried to gather at Haft-e Tir Square in central Tehran. Row upon row of waiting riot police and militiamen kept them from assembling. They were met with teargas and bullets fired into the air… The student rembembered, Neda Agha Soltan, was reportedly shot in the chest by a basiji militiaman passing on a motorcycle. Graphic Internet video of the aftermath has turned her into an instant icon of the movement lead by defeated moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi… Mr. Mousavi – who has not been seen since Thursday – urged his followers late Sunday to keep up the pressure…
But the protesters are torn between their desire to challenge an election result they consider a fraud – relying on Article 27 in Iran's Constitution that says peaceful marches "may freely be held" – and their fear of more violent confrontations that won't bring them any closer to their goals.
WSJ: ...and stakes rise for protesters
Witnesses said security forces appeared particularly alert to spectators on balconies or nearby buildings taking pictures or filming the clashes. Homemade videos and photos have flooded the Internet despite attempts by Iranian officials to restrict reporting of protests… A 33-year-old woman who has been attending protests said the stakes were getting higher as the crackdowns intensified and said she wasn't sure how long she and her friends would keep it up. "It's now crossed the line, if you come out it means you are ready to become a martyr and I'm not so sure I want to die yet," she said.
WP: a vision of Neda, the icon of the protests
CSM: Chatham House releases study showing numerous statistical problems in election
LAT: ...but no “major” irregularities, according to Guardian Council, so results remain
LAT: on the role of memory and imagery in rebellion
Rebellion is about passion, but it's driven by universal themes and images. It is moved by the clear delineation of two sides, which in Iran's case are a police state, where militias roam and camouflage-clad police race around on motorcycles, and a protest movement humming with text messages citing bygone heroes and video of anonymous bloodied hands rising toward cameras.
Twitter may be the sound bite of the new century, but it takes more than 140 characters to rally a nation. The electronic discourse streaming out of Iran onto online social networks feeds on images that offer the power of poems and anthems. Hence the references to King and Mohandas Gandhi -- unimpeachable moral authorities -- against the stony visage of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the white-bearded ayatollah who has scolded protesters and sent out security forces to force them back.
WrongingRights: protesters sing pre-Revolution anthem: "if the regime was going to get nervous this would be the moment."
Salon: dispatches from Tehran
WP: Republicans seek to draw contrast with "weak" Obama vis-a-vis Iran
During a single weekend interview, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) invoked the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the Prague Spring, the Solidarity movement, and Reagan's 1982 "evil empire" speech on the Soviet Union to argue for more explicit U.S. criticism of the Iranian government, which the Obama administration has made clear it will engage no matter who ultimately emerges as president.
WSJ: “Obama and the rogues”: on legitimacy and coercion
NYT: US to adopt new war planning strategy focused on hybrid warfare
In officially embracing hybrid warfare, the Pentagon would be replacing a second pillar of long-term planning. Senior officials disclosed in March that the review was likely to reject a historic premise of American strategy — that the nation need only to prepare to fight two major wars at a time…
The previous Pentagon strategy review focused on a four-square chart that described security challenges to the nation as perceived then. It included traditional, conventional conflicts; irregular warfare, such as terrorism and insurgencies; catastrophic challenges from unconventional weapons used by terrorists or rogue states; and disruptive threats, in which new technologies could counter American advantages.
“The ‘quad chart’ was useful in its time,” said Michele A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, who is leading the strategy review for Mr. Gates. “But we aren’t using it as a point of reference or departure,” she said in an interview. “I think hybrid will be the defining character. The traditional, neat categories — those are types that really don’t match reality any more.”
The nation’s top military officers are reviewing their procurement programs and personnel policies to adapt to the new environment, focusing in particular on weapons systems that can perform multiple missions.
CSM: gun laws, loopholes and the terror watch list
Nearly 900 people on the FBI’s terror watch list applied for and received a certificate to buy a gun in the United States between 2004 and 2009, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today… The GAO document is a follow-up to a 2005 report, which said the FBI cleared gun purchases for 80 percent of terror watch subjects who applied. The current report shows that the percentage has gone up: of 963 background checks, 865 were given the go-ahead – 90 percent.
There's currently no basis to automatically prevent a person from buying a gun simply because they appear on the terrorist watch list, wrote Ellen Larence, the GAO's director of homeland security and justice issues. There must be additional disqualifying factors, such as a felony conviction or illegal immigration status.
WP: Guantanamo detainee, first held and tortured by al-Qaeda, to be released
Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban for 18 months because the groups' leaders thought he was an American spy. Abandoned by his captors in late 2001, he was picked up by U.S. authorities, who shipped him to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on suspicion that he was a member of the two groups.
Yesterday, a federal judge ordered Janko's release, saying the government's legal rationale for continuing to detain him "defies common sense."
CSM: weekend attacks in Iraq kill more than 100, highlight tensions remaining before official US pull-out
The Iraqi government's failure to pass several important pieces of legislation also poses a threat to the country's political stability. They include:
•Approving a national oil law for an equitable distribution of the country's oil revenues.
•Finding a solution to Kirkuk's ethnically based territorial dispute.
•Passing legislation to help combat rampant corruption…
A less physically imposing but still robust American military and diplomatic presence should focus on developing "good governance" principles at all levels of the Iraqi government, says Mr. Nagl, author of a new report, "After the Fire: Shaping the US Relationship with Iraq." Moreover, the US must concentrate on building professionalism within the Iraqi military.
NYT: same goes for Afghanistan: focus on training local forces
The Bush administration planned to increase the Afghan Army from 90,000 troops to 134,000. That still won’t be big enough to secure a vast, rugged country with a larger population than Iraq’s. American planners propose expanding it to as many as 260,000 troops — roughly the size of Iraq’s Army. No decision has yet been made.
The Pentagon estimates that it would cost $10 billion to $20 billion over a seven-year period to create and train a force that size. Paying it would cost billions more, especially if the current $100-a-month salary is to become more competitive with the $300 the Taliban pays.
The total bill would still be a lot smaller than the cost of sustaining a huge American fighting force there. By the end of this year, there will 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, costing American taxpayers more than $60 billion a year.
Afghanistan’s national police force will have to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Kabul’s central government is notoriously corrupt, but the tales from the field are even more distressing. Journalists for The Times have reported seeing police officers burglarizing a home and growing opium poppies inside police compounds. American soldiers complain of police supervisors shaking down villagers, skimming subordinates’ wages and selling promotions and equipment. Muhammad Hanif Atmar, the interior minister, has pushed for greater accountability by senior police officials. He has a lot of work ahead of him.
LAT: McChrystal to issue new tactical directive to protect Afghan civilians
In a "tactical directive" to be issued in coming days, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has ordered new operational standards, including refraining from firing on structures where insurgents may have taken refuge among civilians unless Western or allied troops are in imminent danger, said spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith.
Also under revision are ground search and seizure practices and the treatment of detainees, changes officials hope will reduce tensions between U.S. forces and Afghan citizens, and build a "civilian surge" to improve reconstruction and governance.
The directive is described as the most stringent effort yet to protect the lives of Afghan civilians, which McChrystal has identified as the crucial task of NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
"We can easily destroy the enemy," Smith said. "But if we do not know precisely who is in that structure, we need to take measures to avoid loss of innocent life -- step back or put up a cordon, or other measures."
WSJ: rules on airstrikes highlight differences between two US wars
The rules reflect key differences between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq, most fighting took place in urban areas where the U.S. maintained enough troops that it rarely needed to call in airstrikes. In Afghanistan, combat mainly takes place in remote areas that reinforcements can't easily reach, leaving ground forces far more reliant on air power.
CSM: Qari Zainuddin, rival of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, killed
LAT: focus on institutions required to achieve goal of statehood, says Palestinian Authority PM
Western officials credit [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad], a Texas-trained economist, with improving the Palestinian Authority's effectiveness in the West Bank since being appointed to the post two years ago. He has modernized government ministries and overseen the deployment of Western-trained security forces to fight crime and armed militants in the territory's cities, though he said Monday that much work remains to be done.
BBC: former Rwandan deputy interior minister who lured thousands of Tutsis to be murdered sentenced to 30 years by ICTR; total tribunal judgments now reach 38
BBC: al-Shabab carries out amputations as punishment in Somali capital
Three mobile phones and two assaults rifles were displayed, which the accused had allegedly stolen, reports the AFP news agency... No date was set for the punishment, which will be carried out after the health of the accused is assessed. Furthermore, Monday was very hot and the court decided that carrying out an amputation in such conditions could lead the accused to bleed to death.
Amnesty International said the four men had not been given a fair trial.
CSM: Ethiopian troops quietly take up posts in Somalia, although "past foreign interventions haven't gone well"
Sources close to Western embassies in Nairobi confirmed news reports that Ethiopian troops have taken positions in the Central Somali town of Beledweyne, and that Ethiopian troops were also active in the Gelgadud region north of the capital of Mogadishu. Kenyan forces, too, are reportedly amassing along the Somali border as a defensive measure, in what Kenya's foreign minister described in a press conference as a matter of "national security."
The intervention – officially denied by the Ethiopian government – comes as Somalia's parliament speaker, Sheik Aden Mohamed Nor Madobe, sent an urgent call Saturday for military intervention by Somalia's neighbors within the next 24 hours. At present, pro-government militias and a 3,000-strong contingent of African Union peacekeepers control a few city blocks around the presidential palace in Mogadishu, along with the airport and seaport. The rest is firmly in the hands of hardline Islamist militias....
After a brief period of back-channel negotiation between the Sharif government and Sheikh Aweys, organized by clan elders, fighting broke out anew over the weekend. Clashes in the central parts of Mogadishu claimed the lives of at least 20 in the past two days, and wounded some 60 others.
The best evidence of a new foreign Islamist presence in Somalia are the string of high-level assassinations, most recently the suicide-bombing of Security Minister Omar Hashi in the central town of Beledweyne, and the attempted assassination of Interior Minister Sheikh Abdulkadir Ali Omar. The rising use of suicide attacks has even drawn the criticism of some top Islamist militia commanders, including Aweys, the leader of Hizbul Islam.
WP: many of 10,000+ dead in Mexico's drug war since 2006 are low-level dealers
Much attention is given to Mexican drug cartels warring over lucrative transport routes to the United States. But more and more, they're battling for an exploding number of Mexican consumers, a market that barely existed a decade ago. While the United States is expected to remain the largest and most coveted market, local consumers are a big and rapidly growing source of cash.
That makes street dealers like Mr. Rodriguez prime targets for assassins. Low-level sellers are easy prey for rivals seeking to expand turf because they work openly on street corners without bodyguards or armored cars...
His stints in prison put him in touch with important drug runners, and he used his contacts to move up from corner dealing to managing a handful of dealers when he got out.
Low-level dealers make about $20 a day on 100 hits of methamphetamine, said Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's public-safety secretary. Many opt to be paid in drugs instead to support their habits. That's a handsome wage in hardscrabble neighborhoods where bricklayers earn the equivalent of $5 a day and factory workers make $60 a week...
NYT: a profile of Mexican cartel hitmen in the US
The two teams of assassins took direction from Lucio Quintero, or El Viejon, a capo in the Zetas across the river, trial records show. They received $500 a week as a retainer and $10,000 to $50,000 for each assassination, and the triggerman was given two kilos of cocaine.
Detective Roberto A. Garcia Jr. of the Laredo Police Department said they all worked for Miguel Treviño, the leader of the Zetas in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican city across the river
from Laredo, who goes by the name El Cuarenta, which means Forty. (Many Zetas identify by a number.)
In addition to their retainers, the assassins received perks. At one point, Mr. Reta was given a new $70,000 Mercedes, for a job well done. Family members described how the young men would go to parties hosted by cartel capos. To keep up morale, the drug leaders would raffle off automobiles, firearms and even dates with attractive women, the family members said, speaking on the condition of anonymity...
Speaking of his upbringing, [one of the assassins] said that to him and his friends, growing up in ramshackle houses on dirt lots, the narcotics traffickers were heroes. The poorest counties in America lie along the Rio Grande, and Mr. Reta recalled stealing gummy bears from a local candy shop with Mr. Cardona when they were children.
“You know, here, all the little kids that are young, they say, ‘I want to be a firefighter when I grow up,’ ” Mr. Reta said, “Well down there, they say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a Zeta’... You know, it’s the money, cars, houses, girls,” he said, pausing, “and you know that ain’t going to last a lifetime, that it’s going to end.”
Chron: 7 Colombian police killed in FARC ambush in southwest
CSM: 11 officers killed in India, by Maoist Naxalites feared to be gaining momentum
Since [1967], the movement, which claims to fight for India's poorest, has spread across strips of eastern, central, and southern India. Naxalites now operate in at least 11 of the country's 28 states and are thought to boast some 22,000 fighters.
On Monday, the central government warned that five states in central and eastern India were under threat of attacks during a two-day strike called by the rebels. That strike was called to protest against a government offensive in Lalgarh, a Maoist-seized jungle enclave in West Bengal. Last week, after the local police fled, the state government sent 1,000 paramilitary forces to Lalgarh where they are still fighting to commandeer hundreds of villages.
Here, as in other areas affected by Naxalism, the rebels have set out to attract the poor and alienated – "any group that has a grievance," says Ajay Sahni, a terrorism expert at the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi. In India, where hundreds of millions survive on less than a dollar a day and 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas largely bypassed by the country's recent economic boom, there is no shortage of such groups.
Geography also plays its part. The areas of West Bengal into which the Maoists are making inroads are close to the eastern states of Orissa, Jharkland, and Chhattisgarh, where the Maoist presence is heaviest. There are new concerns, too, that the rebels, who have tended to focus their operations on rural areas, are attacking areas close to cities. Mr. Sahni says the rebels are also stepping up a campaign to recruit more Indians to their cause. In Delhi, where the Maoists have previously tried to appeal to university students, they are now seeking to attract small retailers who have been displaced by multinational companies and urban planning laws, he says.
LAT: Moscow-backed president of Ingushetia republic wounded in suicide attack
BBC: ICRC study finds civilians bear major costs of war
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
16 June 2009
guinness book of world suffering [hard nut to crack]
Gdn: number of IDPs worldwide reaches historic high; Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia lead growth
The number of people internally displaced within their own countries has reached a historical high of more than 28 million, the UN's refugee agency said today, as conflicts in Pakistan's Swat valley and Sri Lanka compound a growing global problem. At the end of last year the total number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution around the world stood at 42 million, including 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million people uprooted within their own countries, according to UNHCR's annual Global Trends report, which was released this afternoon...
Those conflicts have taken the number of internally displaced people to more than 28 million and the total number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution to 45 million, UNHCR said... The report says 80% of the world's refugees are in developing countries, as are the vast majority of internally displaced people. Since 2005 the agency has seen the number of people it cares for in the latter group double.
WP: displaced in Pakistan fear, and are feared
In the conflict between Pakistan and Islamist extremists, a fight that has drawn in the United States, trust is in short supply. Holbrooke's visit to this refugee camp and another earlier this month was an attempt to build confidence on all sides, and to seek some ground truth for the administration in a situation where it is sometimes as scarce as good faith. In the end, his presence boosted America's image in Pakistan but brought the refugees no closer to home.
Pakistani authorities appear distrustful of the refugees, wary of their loyalties and of the possibility of Taliban infiltrators. The government and military, while ostentatiously grateful for U.S. aid and concern, continue to mistrust American motives and staying power...
In meetings with Pakistan's government, military, judiciary and political opposition leaders, he pressed the message that getting the refugees back home safely was as crucial, and perhaps even more immediately important, as the ongoing military offensive. Temporary refugee camps tend quickly to become permanent, he argued. They are breeding grounds for public dissatisfaction and recruitment centers for extremists; getting people out of them is key to building confidence in the government.
"This has got to happen," he told a senior U.S. official in an aside at a dinner for international relief workers during the trip. "Figure out whatever we need to do. Don't worry about how much it costs."
Holbrooke is no stranger to refugee camps. He toured them in Southeast Asia, where he began his career as a junior Foreign Service officer in South Vietnam. In the 1990s, as chief U.S. negotiator for the Dayton peace accords, he walked the camps in Bosnia. As United Nations ambassador in the Clinton administration, and an activist official and board member for nongovernmental organizations during the George W. Bush years, he saw refugee squalor across Africa.
The Pakistani refugees, from their tent cities on the hot, dry plain west of the Indus River, can see the high mountain ridge to the north, the gateway to their homes in the Swat Valley and the neighboring districts of Buner and Dir. If they are still here when the summer monsoons arrive next month, the camps will become muddy swamps.
NYT: military offensive to begin in South Waziristan, targeting Taliban leader Baitullah Behsud
The government holds him responsible for dozens of suicide bombings across the country, including one on Sunday in western Pakistan that killed eight people, and the military has long indicated that he would be their next target.
The military has been conducting a campaign against the Taliban in a valley north of Islamabad, the capital, since last month, but the militants’ main base is Waziristan, and analysts said Pakistan could not curb their influence without controlling that area. Still, Mr. Ghani gave no specific time for the start of an operation, saying it would depend on the military, which has declined to disclose details in the past... South Waziristan is a mountainous area on the border with Afghanistan, an entry point for Taliban militants in the war against American soldiers. It is much more difficult terrain than the valley north of the capital, where 22,000 troops are currently fighting, and analysts expect the campaign to be much more costly in lives.
LAT: McChrystal officially takes command of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, puts civilians at core of mission
"The Afghan people are at the center of our mission -- in reality, they are our mission," he said to an audience of senior commanders, Afghan officials and diplomats. "We must protect them from violence, whatever its nature."...
Karzai's office said the president had stressed to McChrystal that recent instances of civilian casualties posed the single greatest threat to public support for the war effort... Because special-operations forces have been involved in many cases involving large-scale civilian deaths, McChrystal's extensive background in special operations may prove a double-edged sword.
NYT: only a third of Aghans now support Karzai
WSJ: leaders of India and Pakistan meet briefly, discuss security
The neighbors, with help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, are already sharing intelligence on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group believed by officials in all three countries to have carried out the gun-and-grenade rampage in Mumbai, which left more than 170 people dead…
Indian officials have linked nearly all terrorist attacks in the country since 2005 to Pakistan-based groups once nurtured by Pakistan's military to wage an insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. But until the Mumbai attack, New Delhi remained steadfast to the peace process.
CSM: Tamil Tigers call for formation of “provisional transnational government” to fight for independence; role of diaspora stressed
LAT: near-silent protest against Iran election result following 8 deaths from recent clashes
Mousavi supporters, who had been told by the candidate to stay away from the square, instead assembled in a quiet march in northern Tehran along Vali Asr Street. The crowd, holding green banners and flags, marched in near silence. They held up posters of Mousavi and placards calling Ahmadinejad a "liar." Anti-riot poice stood along the roadways but did not interact with the demonstrators.
The dispute over election results have riven Iran, leading to massive protests, demands for a recount and clashes that state radio said today had taken the lives of at least seven people.
Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council, which is led by a hardline cleric close to Ahmadinejad, to review the charges of voting fraud. Associated Press reported that a spokesman for the council, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, was quoted on state television as saying the recount would be limited to voting sites where candidates claim irregularities took place. He did not rule out the possibility of canceling the results, saying that is within the council's powers, although nullifying an election would be an unprecedented step.
The government meanwhile reportedly barred foreign media from covering today's rally by Ahmadinejad's supporters.
CSM: 300 rounds fired in scenes reminiscent of 1979 revolution
LAT: Netanyahu speech calls for two state solution conditioned on Palestinian demilitarization and possibly no right to return
Netanyahu has said previously that Israel could not agree to the creation of a Palestinian state that possessed a military, had full control of its borders or wielded authority over electronic communications...
U.S. officials were willing to overlook the fact that Netanyahu did not agree to the Obama administration's insistence on a complete halt in the growth of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories...
Netanyahu said in his speech that the Palestinians would need to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state," a comment that was widely taken to mean there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.
BBC: 800,000 displaced in DRC since January (pictures)
BBC: ex-Congolese VP Bemba to face 5 war crimes counts at the ICC for 2002-2003 CAR attacks
BBC: a view of Eyl, Somalia's main pirate town…
BBC: …and of the government navy trying to take down the pirates
When Somalia cut ties with the Soviet Union in 1977 (because of Russian support for Somalia's arch rival Ethiopia), Mogadishu signed a deal with Washington three years later. It gave the US access to Somali ports and airfields in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in military equipment and aid in subsequent years. "We used to be among the top navies in Africa. We had ships that carried deadly missiles and we had 10 battalions covering the whole coast," said Mr Omar.
The navy has not been operational since the country descended into violence in 1991, but its commander predicts a Somali naval renaissance. "The international community should give us one year and let them see what we are going to do," he said.
BBC: no more aid for refugees in Ethiopia, thanks to congested Djibouti port
Following a border war, Eritrea denied Ethiopia access to its ports, so the landlocked country relies on Djibouti. Correspondents say this time of year is known as "the hunger season", three months before the next harvest. The UN World Food Programme says breast-feeding mothers, children and refugees will be among those worst hit…
It warns after it hands out final rations this month there will be no further deliveries until September or October. The agency says it has no option but to cut back on the food they provide, which has already been cut by a third since July 2008.
CSM: Sudanese govt allows aid groups to return to Darfur, with few assurances and more red tape
As a result, Care Switzerland, Mercy Corps Scotland, and Padco, an international development consulting firm, have all begun the registration process. Save The Children Sweden is already operating in Darfur, after Save The Children US was expelled… The decision to return exposes rifts within the agencies and is opening fresh debate on how best to deliver aid to people living under oppressive regimes…
Fouad Hikmat, Darfur analyst with the International Crisis Group, says Khartoum was up to its old tricks, using tactics of divide and rule – this time directed at aid agencies, rather than tribes or rebel groups. "I would have thought [the aid groups] should have stuck together, insisted they had done nothing wrong, and established clear criteria for their return – guarantees on access, security, visas, an end to smears in the media. With that established, then they could think about returning," he says. "Instead, Khartoum has done a rather clever job of giving the US envoy what he wanted, but without any guarantees [that] conditions for the NGOs are going to be any better."
WSJ: high-level corruption and French-West Africa relations
Back then, Gabon was a budding oil producer. To maintain its sway on the country, France sealed a series of military, monetary and trade pacts with Gabon. Although the African country was independent, France kept a military base there, minted its currency -- the CFA franc -- and secured priority access to its raw materials. Defense deals, some of which remain secret, allowed France's military to intervene in Gabon to protect the country's national security or help with internal policing... Over the past decade, both France and Africa have focused on other directions, with France working on European Union integration, while Gabon started to trade extensively with China.
Still, France maintains a military base in Gabon with 1,100 soldiers, and French oil company Total SA produces about a third of Gabon's oil. Mr. Sarkozy has moved slowly toward fulfilling his pledge of making Gabon and other former French colonies in Africa fully responsible for their own security.
The embezzlement case due to be examined by the Paris appeals court stems from a complaint filed in December by the French branch of anticorruption association Transparency International against the "ruling families" of Gabon, Congo and Equatorial Guinea for "embezzlement of public funds."
Chron: nearly 10,000 migrants kidnapped in Mexico en route from Central America in last 6 months; bribes paid may total $25 million
WSJ: State Dept overpaid Blackwater by some $55 million due to "shortfalls"
The audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the State Department's Inspector General said the firm didn't employ enough guards, medics, marksmen and dog handlers to fully man the teams, which were responsible for protecting the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and other high-level officials.
The failure to consistently field the right numbers of guards endangered the U.S. officials whom the company was being paid to protect, the report concluded.
Chron: in released CIA memo, detainees (including KSM) say US torture made them give false evidence
One detainee, Abu Zubaydah, told the tribunal that after months "of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries."
Zubaydah was the first detainee subjected to Bush administration-approved harsh interrogation techniques, which included a simulated form of drowning known as waterboarding, slamming the suspect into walls and prolonged period of nudity. Zubaydah claimed in the hearing that he "nearly died four times… After a few months went by, during which I almost lost my mind and my life, they made sure I didn't die," Zubaydah said in his statement to the tribunal.
He claimed that after many months of such treatment, authorities concluded he was not the No. 3 person in al-Qaida as they had long believed.
WSJ: EU to accept some Guantanamo detainees
Since Mr. Obama ordered a review of each prisoner's case, government lawyers have reviewed the files of more than half the 232 men remaining at Guantanamo... Several have been recommended for prosecution in U.S. criminal courts and their case files are being reviewed by Justice Department lawyers to determine what charges may be brought. More than 50 have been approved for transfer to other countries...
In recent weeks, Guantanamo detainees have been transferred to France, Chad, Saudi Arabia and Bermuda. In some cases, the transferees are freed; in others, they are handed over for prosecution. Saudi Arabia is in talks to possibly accept a group of Yemenis, who make up the largest single nationality at the facility. The government of Palau, a Pacific island nation, said it will accept a group of Uighurs -- a minority ethnic group from China -- who have languished in Guantanamo for years despite being cleared for release...
The EU said it would "on a case by case basis" assist in resettling detainees "who the United States has determined it will not prosecute, and who for compelling reasons cannot return to their countries of origin." The U.S. promised to share intelligence on transferred detainees and to help with resettlement costs.
CSM: post-Guantanamo life for resettled Uighurs
WSJ: FBI to devote resources to “lone-wolf” political extremists, like Holocaust Museum attacker
The lone-wolf initiative is one element of a broader strategy to fight domestic terrorism, dubbed "Operation Vigilant Eagle," launched late last year in response to what the memo identified as "an increase in recruitment, threatening communications, and weapons procurement by white supremacy extremist and militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups."
The memo, and the recent killings, also show the limits of the lone-wolf effort. Both James von Brunn, who is charged with the Holocaust Museum shooting, and Scott Roeder, the man arrested in the murder of George Tiller in Kansas, had openly expressed to associates and on Web sites their extremist views, on anti-Semitism in Mr. von Brunn's case and on abortion in the case of Mr. Roeder. The FBI, in fact, was aware of Mr. von Brunn because of the postings but wasn't tracking him.
Neither man appears to have been active in groups that might have tipped off authorities to the danger. In the search for potentially violent individual extremists, "an emphasis should be placed on the identification of individuals who have been ostracized from a group for their radical beliefs," the FBI memo said. It added that officials should look for "those who have voluntarily left a group due to their perception of the group's inactivity, or those forced from the group for being too extreme and or violent." That description doesn't appear to have fit either Mr. von Brunn or Mr. Roeder.
WSJ: international monitors leave Georgia upon Russian SC veto
Moscow had already forced the U.S. and its European Security Council allies to abandon a draft resolution that would have given the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia, which monitors the conflict zone in the breakaway territory of Abkhazia, a fresh post-war mandate. That draft included language reaffirming Georgia's territorial integrity and calling for all sides to abide by the terms of an Aug. 12 cease-fire, which among other things requires a partial Russian troop withdrawal.
Russia said that language was unacceptable and that the mission needed to be renamed so it didn't include the word Georgia. Since the war last August, Moscow has recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. Only Nicaragua has followed Moscow's lead, but Russia insists the two territories are now independent.
The number of people internally displaced within their own countries has reached a historical high of more than 28 million, the UN's refugee agency said today, as conflicts in Pakistan's Swat valley and Sri Lanka compound a growing global problem. At the end of last year the total number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution around the world stood at 42 million, including 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million people uprooted within their own countries, according to UNHCR's annual Global Trends report, which was released this afternoon...
Those conflicts have taken the number of internally displaced people to more than 28 million and the total number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution to 45 million, UNHCR said... The report says 80% of the world's refugees are in developing countries, as are the vast majority of internally displaced people. Since 2005 the agency has seen the number of people it cares for in the latter group double.
WP: displaced in Pakistan fear, and are feared
In the conflict between Pakistan and Islamist extremists, a fight that has drawn in the United States, trust is in short supply. Holbrooke's visit to this refugee camp and another earlier this month was an attempt to build confidence on all sides, and to seek some ground truth for the administration in a situation where it is sometimes as scarce as good faith. In the end, his presence boosted America's image in Pakistan but brought the refugees no closer to home.
Pakistani authorities appear distrustful of the refugees, wary of their loyalties and of the possibility of Taliban infiltrators. The government and military, while ostentatiously grateful for U.S. aid and concern, continue to mistrust American motives and staying power...
In meetings with Pakistan's government, military, judiciary and political opposition leaders, he pressed the message that getting the refugees back home safely was as crucial, and perhaps even more immediately important, as the ongoing military offensive. Temporary refugee camps tend quickly to become permanent, he argued. They are breeding grounds for public dissatisfaction and recruitment centers for extremists; getting people out of them is key to building confidence in the government.
"This has got to happen," he told a senior U.S. official in an aside at a dinner for international relief workers during the trip. "Figure out whatever we need to do. Don't worry about how much it costs."
Holbrooke is no stranger to refugee camps. He toured them in Southeast Asia, where he began his career as a junior Foreign Service officer in South Vietnam. In the 1990s, as chief U.S. negotiator for the Dayton peace accords, he walked the camps in Bosnia. As United Nations ambassador in the Clinton administration, and an activist official and board member for nongovernmental organizations during the George W. Bush years, he saw refugee squalor across Africa.
The Pakistani refugees, from their tent cities on the hot, dry plain west of the Indus River, can see the high mountain ridge to the north, the gateway to their homes in the Swat Valley and the neighboring districts of Buner and Dir. If they are still here when the summer monsoons arrive next month, the camps will become muddy swamps.
NYT: military offensive to begin in South Waziristan, targeting Taliban leader Baitullah Behsud
The government holds him responsible for dozens of suicide bombings across the country, including one on Sunday in western Pakistan that killed eight people, and the military has long indicated that he would be their next target.
The military has been conducting a campaign against the Taliban in a valley north of Islamabad, the capital, since last month, but the militants’ main base is Waziristan, and analysts said Pakistan could not curb their influence without controlling that area. Still, Mr. Ghani gave no specific time for the start of an operation, saying it would depend on the military, which has declined to disclose details in the past... South Waziristan is a mountainous area on the border with Afghanistan, an entry point for Taliban militants in the war against American soldiers. It is much more difficult terrain than the valley north of the capital, where 22,000 troops are currently fighting, and analysts expect the campaign to be much more costly in lives.
LAT: McChrystal officially takes command of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, puts civilians at core of mission
"The Afghan people are at the center of our mission -- in reality, they are our mission," he said to an audience of senior commanders, Afghan officials and diplomats. "We must protect them from violence, whatever its nature."...
Karzai's office said the president had stressed to McChrystal that recent instances of civilian casualties posed the single greatest threat to public support for the war effort... Because special-operations forces have been involved in many cases involving large-scale civilian deaths, McChrystal's extensive background in special operations may prove a double-edged sword.
NYT: only a third of Aghans now support Karzai
WSJ: leaders of India and Pakistan meet briefly, discuss security
The neighbors, with help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, are already sharing intelligence on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group believed by officials in all three countries to have carried out the gun-and-grenade rampage in Mumbai, which left more than 170 people dead…
Indian officials have linked nearly all terrorist attacks in the country since 2005 to Pakistan-based groups once nurtured by Pakistan's military to wage an insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. But until the Mumbai attack, New Delhi remained steadfast to the peace process.
CSM: Tamil Tigers call for formation of “provisional transnational government” to fight for independence; role of diaspora stressed
LAT: near-silent protest against Iran election result following 8 deaths from recent clashes
Mousavi supporters, who had been told by the candidate to stay away from the square, instead assembled in a quiet march in northern Tehran along Vali Asr Street. The crowd, holding green banners and flags, marched in near silence. They held up posters of Mousavi and placards calling Ahmadinejad a "liar." Anti-riot poice stood along the roadways but did not interact with the demonstrators.
The dispute over election results have riven Iran, leading to massive protests, demands for a recount and clashes that state radio said today had taken the lives of at least seven people.
Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council, which is led by a hardline cleric close to Ahmadinejad, to review the charges of voting fraud. Associated Press reported that a spokesman for the council, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, was quoted on state television as saying the recount would be limited to voting sites where candidates claim irregularities took place. He did not rule out the possibility of canceling the results, saying that is within the council's powers, although nullifying an election would be an unprecedented step.
The government meanwhile reportedly barred foreign media from covering today's rally by Ahmadinejad's supporters.
CSM: 300 rounds fired in scenes reminiscent of 1979 revolution
LAT: Netanyahu speech calls for two state solution conditioned on Palestinian demilitarization and possibly no right to return
Netanyahu has said previously that Israel could not agree to the creation of a Palestinian state that possessed a military, had full control of its borders or wielded authority over electronic communications...
U.S. officials were willing to overlook the fact that Netanyahu did not agree to the Obama administration's insistence on a complete halt in the growth of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories...
Netanyahu said in his speech that the Palestinians would need to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state," a comment that was widely taken to mean there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.
BBC: 800,000 displaced in DRC since January (pictures)
BBC: ex-Congolese VP Bemba to face 5 war crimes counts at the ICC for 2002-2003 CAR attacks
BBC: a view of Eyl, Somalia's main pirate town…
BBC: …and of the government navy trying to take down the pirates
When Somalia cut ties with the Soviet Union in 1977 (because of Russian support for Somalia's arch rival Ethiopia), Mogadishu signed a deal with Washington three years later. It gave the US access to Somali ports and airfields in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in military equipment and aid in subsequent years. "We used to be among the top navies in Africa. We had ships that carried deadly missiles and we had 10 battalions covering the whole coast," said Mr Omar.
The navy has not been operational since the country descended into violence in 1991, but its commander predicts a Somali naval renaissance. "The international community should give us one year and let them see what we are going to do," he said.
BBC: no more aid for refugees in Ethiopia, thanks to congested Djibouti port
Following a border war, Eritrea denied Ethiopia access to its ports, so the landlocked country relies on Djibouti. Correspondents say this time of year is known as "the hunger season", three months before the next harvest. The UN World Food Programme says breast-feeding mothers, children and refugees will be among those worst hit…
It warns after it hands out final rations this month there will be no further deliveries until September or October. The agency says it has no option but to cut back on the food they provide, which has already been cut by a third since July 2008.
CSM: Sudanese govt allows aid groups to return to Darfur, with few assurances and more red tape
As a result, Care Switzerland, Mercy Corps Scotland, and Padco, an international development consulting firm, have all begun the registration process. Save The Children Sweden is already operating in Darfur, after Save The Children US was expelled… The decision to return exposes rifts within the agencies and is opening fresh debate on how best to deliver aid to people living under oppressive regimes…
Fouad Hikmat, Darfur analyst with the International Crisis Group, says Khartoum was up to its old tricks, using tactics of divide and rule – this time directed at aid agencies, rather than tribes or rebel groups. "I would have thought [the aid groups] should have stuck together, insisted they had done nothing wrong, and established clear criteria for their return – guarantees on access, security, visas, an end to smears in the media. With that established, then they could think about returning," he says. "Instead, Khartoum has done a rather clever job of giving the US envoy what he wanted, but without any guarantees [that] conditions for the NGOs are going to be any better."
WSJ: high-level corruption and French-West Africa relations
Back then, Gabon was a budding oil producer. To maintain its sway on the country, France sealed a series of military, monetary and trade pacts with Gabon. Although the African country was independent, France kept a military base there, minted its currency -- the CFA franc -- and secured priority access to its raw materials. Defense deals, some of which remain secret, allowed France's military to intervene in Gabon to protect the country's national security or help with internal policing... Over the past decade, both France and Africa have focused on other directions, with France working on European Union integration, while Gabon started to trade extensively with China.
Still, France maintains a military base in Gabon with 1,100 soldiers, and French oil company Total SA produces about a third of Gabon's oil. Mr. Sarkozy has moved slowly toward fulfilling his pledge of making Gabon and other former French colonies in Africa fully responsible for their own security.
The embezzlement case due to be examined by the Paris appeals court stems from a complaint filed in December by the French branch of anticorruption association Transparency International against the "ruling families" of Gabon, Congo and Equatorial Guinea for "embezzlement of public funds."
Chron: nearly 10,000 migrants kidnapped in Mexico en route from Central America in last 6 months; bribes paid may total $25 million
WSJ: State Dept overpaid Blackwater by some $55 million due to "shortfalls"
The audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the State Department's Inspector General said the firm didn't employ enough guards, medics, marksmen and dog handlers to fully man the teams, which were responsible for protecting the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and other high-level officials.
The failure to consistently field the right numbers of guards endangered the U.S. officials whom the company was being paid to protect, the report concluded.
Chron: in released CIA memo, detainees (including KSM) say US torture made them give false evidence
One detainee, Abu Zubaydah, told the tribunal that after months "of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries."
Zubaydah was the first detainee subjected to Bush administration-approved harsh interrogation techniques, which included a simulated form of drowning known as waterboarding, slamming the suspect into walls and prolonged period of nudity. Zubaydah claimed in the hearing that he "nearly died four times… After a few months went by, during which I almost lost my mind and my life, they made sure I didn't die," Zubaydah said in his statement to the tribunal.
He claimed that after many months of such treatment, authorities concluded he was not the No. 3 person in al-Qaida as they had long believed.
WSJ: EU to accept some Guantanamo detainees
Since Mr. Obama ordered a review of each prisoner's case, government lawyers have reviewed the files of more than half the 232 men remaining at Guantanamo... Several have been recommended for prosecution in U.S. criminal courts and their case files are being reviewed by Justice Department lawyers to determine what charges may be brought. More than 50 have been approved for transfer to other countries...
In recent weeks, Guantanamo detainees have been transferred to France, Chad, Saudi Arabia and Bermuda. In some cases, the transferees are freed; in others, they are handed over for prosecution. Saudi Arabia is in talks to possibly accept a group of Yemenis, who make up the largest single nationality at the facility. The government of Palau, a Pacific island nation, said it will accept a group of Uighurs -- a minority ethnic group from China -- who have languished in Guantanamo for years despite being cleared for release...
The EU said it would "on a case by case basis" assist in resettling detainees "who the United States has determined it will not prosecute, and who for compelling reasons cannot return to their countries of origin." The U.S. promised to share intelligence on transferred detainees and to help with resettlement costs.
CSM: post-Guantanamo life for resettled Uighurs
WSJ: FBI to devote resources to “lone-wolf” political extremists, like Holocaust Museum attacker
The lone-wolf initiative is one element of a broader strategy to fight domestic terrorism, dubbed "Operation Vigilant Eagle," launched late last year in response to what the memo identified as "an increase in recruitment, threatening communications, and weapons procurement by white supremacy extremist and militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups."
The memo, and the recent killings, also show the limits of the lone-wolf effort. Both James von Brunn, who is charged with the Holocaust Museum shooting, and Scott Roeder, the man arrested in the murder of George Tiller in Kansas, had openly expressed to associates and on Web sites their extremist views, on anti-Semitism in Mr. von Brunn's case and on abortion in the case of Mr. Roeder. The FBI, in fact, was aware of Mr. von Brunn because of the postings but wasn't tracking him.
Neither man appears to have been active in groups that might have tipped off authorities to the danger. In the search for potentially violent individual extremists, "an emphasis should be placed on the identification of individuals who have been ostracized from a group for their radical beliefs," the FBI memo said. It added that officials should look for "those who have voluntarily left a group due to their perception of the group's inactivity, or those forced from the group for being too extreme and or violent." That description doesn't appear to have fit either Mr. von Brunn or Mr. Roeder.
WSJ: international monitors leave Georgia upon Russian SC veto
Moscow had already forced the U.S. and its European Security Council allies to abandon a draft resolution that would have given the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia, which monitors the conflict zone in the breakaway territory of Abkhazia, a fresh post-war mandate. That draft included language reaffirming Georgia's territorial integrity and calling for all sides to abide by the terms of an Aug. 12 cease-fire, which among other things requires a partial Russian troop withdrawal.
Russia said that language was unacceptable and that the mission needed to be renamed so it didn't include the word Georgia. Since the war last August, Moscow has recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. Only Nicaragua has followed Moscow's lead, but Russia insists the two territories are now independent.
21 April 2009
coming to america [i was a teenage pirate]
NYT: 17 year-old Somali pirate, Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, in the US for trial proceedings
“We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” ...
New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters, but in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation...
NYT: where to from here? 7 recommendations from the experts
AP: 28 dead in clashes with Mungiki gang in Kenya
The Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule, and the gang has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence. The group is believed to have thousands of followers, drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and the dominant force in the country's politics and business...
IRIN: 100,000 civilians still trapped in northeastern war zone
Reuters: Q+A on the current fighting
On Tuesday, the military was advancing and expanding its control of the 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) no-fire zone, after troops on Monday breached an earth bund blocking the main route out of the area. It is all but certain this will be the final conventional battle of the 25-year-old war. It is a safe bet the military will replicate the tactics they have used around the edges of the no-fire zone. They will use snipers to pick off Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels trying to block people from fleeing. In any case, the military has vowed no more truces. So a conventional defeat looks on the cards very soon for what has long been regarded by many as one of the most resilient and ruthless guerrilla groups.
AP: Gaza an environmental mess post-conflict with Israel
BBC: while Hamas accused of extrajudicial killings of Fatah rivals
Eighteen men were were summarily executed, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, during the fighting, HRW said. In the three months since January, another 14 people were killed, including at least four in detention, the report released on Monday said... "The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern," the report said.
Reuters: Pakistani government increases police salaries in North West Frontier Province by 30% amidst violence
BBC: Cheney favors disclosure of torture memos (as long as they're positive)
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News. "There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."
Gdn: Obama, for first time, opens up possibility of prosecutions for waterboarding
AP: Russian military makes moves toward South Ossetia
At a military checkpoint between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the word "Russia" is hand-painted in pink on a concrete security barrier. "It will be Russia," said a Russian army lieutenant as the Ossetian soldiers under his command nodded...
By reinforcing its military presence at a time of potential political instability, Russia appears determined to maintain pressure on Saakashvili, whom Moscow has openly said must be replaced before relations can be repaired.
AFP: quick! blog about it!
“We are expecting this to be a very long trial proceeding,” said Omar Jamal, the director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, which helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues. “How long has it been since the United States tried a pirate? They must dig through the books for precedents.” ...
New York is a logical site for the trial because the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan has developed great expertise in trying crimes that occur outside the United States, including cases in Africa involving terrorism against Americans, such as the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. Under international law, any country can prosecute acts of piracy committed in international waters, but in practice, not all nations have incorporated anti-piracy statutes into their domestic legislation...
NYT: where to from here? 7 recommendations from the experts
AP: 28 dead in clashes with Mungiki gang in Kenya
The Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule, and the gang has been linked to extortion, murder and political violence. The group is believed to have thousands of followers, drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and the dominant force in the country's politics and business...
[One member of the Mungiki] said hundreds of young men and policemen had come into Gathaithi on Monday night looking for Mungiki members, and he expected a second wave of attacks. Two of his colleagues had been shot and were hiding elsewhere in the bushes trying to recover, he said. A mob of villagers, he said, had killed 13 of his fellow gang members in the last three weeks...
[An anonymous source] told the AP that the Mungiki had been extorting money from businesses in the area with the full knowledge of the police until last week, when police switched sides and backed residents who then lynched gang members.
AP: al-Bashir in Ethiopia despite ICC war crimes warrant
Since the International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant on March 4, al-Bashir has visited Eritrea, Egypt and Libya, attended an Arab League summit in Qatar and performed a pilgrimage to Islam's holiest city, Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. In March, the Arab League formally rejected the charges against al-Bashir.
Many African countries have said they will not arrest al-Bashir. The African Union, which is based in Ethiopia, has said al-Bashir's arrest would dangerously imperil the fragile peace process in Sudan and has asked the U.N. to defer the warrant for one year.
CSM: the challenges of reconciliation in Algeria
In 2005, the country passed a National Reconciliation Charter with the approval of a reported 97 percent of the electorate. The controversial document ended the fighting between the state and Islamist militants by granting amnesty to almost all fighters on both sides.
It also offered financial compensation to the families of those disappeared in the war, but also made it illegal to criticize government conduct during the conflict, effectively closing the door to any future investigations... Under Article 45 of the charter, individuals are forbidden from filing complaints against the government, police, or military for their conduct during the war. Those who do, face a five-year prison term and a fine as high as $33,000.
CSM: and of maintaining security gains in Iraq
While the Iraqi Army has become relatively adept at conventional operations and has improved its planning and logistics, much of the drop in attacks over the past year has been achieved through counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations increasingly partnered with Iraqi troops but still led by US forces.
IRIN: 100,000 civilians still trapped in northeastern war zone
Reuters: Q+A on the current fighting
On Tuesday, the military was advancing and expanding its control of the 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) no-fire zone, after troops on Monday breached an earth bund blocking the main route out of the area. It is all but certain this will be the final conventional battle of the 25-year-old war. It is a safe bet the military will replicate the tactics they have used around the edges of the no-fire zone. They will use snipers to pick off Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels trying to block people from fleeing. In any case, the military has vowed no more truces. So a conventional defeat looks on the cards very soon for what has long been regarded by many as one of the most resilient and ruthless guerrilla groups.
AP: Gaza an environmental mess post-conflict with Israel
BBC: while Hamas accused of extrajudicial killings of Fatah rivals
Eighteen men were were summarily executed, most suspected of collaborating with Israel, during the fighting, HRW said. In the three months since January, another 14 people were killed, including at least four in detention, the report released on Monday said... "The widespread practice of maiming people by shooting them in the legs is of particular concern," the report said.
Reuters: Pakistani government increases police salaries in North West Frontier Province by 30% amidst violence
BBC: Cheney favors disclosure of torture memos (as long as they're positive)
"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News. "There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."
Gdn: Obama, for first time, opens up possibility of prosecutions for waterboarding
AP: Russian military makes moves toward South Ossetia
At a military checkpoint between Georgia and its breakaway region of South Ossetia, the word "Russia" is hand-painted in pink on a concrete security barrier. "It will be Russia," said a Russian army lieutenant as the Ossetian soldiers under his command nodded...
By reinforcing its military presence at a time of potential political instability, Russia appears determined to maintain pressure on Saakashvili, whom Moscow has openly said must be replaced before relations can be repaired.
AFP: quick! blog about it!
08 February 2009
selection and mutations [but the nation died]
AJE: campaigning in Israel
About 20 per cent of Israelis remain undecided on who they will vote for, polling organisations say, and the leading candidates in the election are focusing their efforts on winning them over.
Gdn: in Umm al-Fahm, conflict between far-right and Arab-Israelis
If Lieberman [head of the far-right Israel Our Homeland Party] has his way - and his party has surged ahead of Labour to push it to a humiliating fourth place - Umm al-Fahm may be transferred out of Israel into the Palestinian Authority, something its residents forcefully oppose in exchange for Israeli "villages", or settlements.
If confirmed—the final results are not expected for several weeks—Mr Maliki will be well placed to run for a second term in the general election due within a year. His success, though, did not reflect a trend towards voting along religious lines. Quite the opposite. The prime minister, who leads the Dawa Party, a Shia religious movement, seems to have benefited from his party’s decision to join with others to form the State of Law Coalition, which campaigned, in a non-religious way, on themes of national unity, law and order. Mr Maliki thus managed to profit from an apparent shift to secularism.
IHT: unlikely candidate, former Baathist, wins in Karbala
WP: how General Odierno shaped the surge
Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as "fairly desperate, frankly."
Perhaps the most basic change is that suspects are presumed innocent, reversing the inquisitional system brought by Spanish colonizers. The arrested are no longer tossed straight into jail, but can remain free while prosecutors present evidence in hopes of winning an indictment.
Many residents question whether the reforms that include more rights for the accused may be to blame for a yearlong wave of killings in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez. A little less than a year after the reforms debuted in the capital, lawmakers responded to public pressure and made more suspects subject to incarceration before appearing in court.
But killings tied to drug trafficking are federal offenses. Robberies, assaults and murders not linked to organized crime are handled in state courts.
LAT: witnesses are being killed in Colombian trial linked to former governor
Diaz, the reform-minded mayor of El Roble in northern Sucre state, had received death threats from paramilitary groups, and told [President] Uribe during a community meeting in February 2003 that he feared for his life.
The 47-year-old doctor had resisted the right-wing militias' efforts to take control of El Roble's treasury and health system for fear they would loot them, according to his son, Juan David.
Diaz had also denounced Arana at the 2003 meeting before Uribe, saying the then-governor backed paramilitary fighters.
Despite his warnings, two months later, in April, Diaz was kidnapped, tortured for five days and killed. The mayor had been on his way to a meeting supposedly to reconcile with Arana.
PCB: meanwhile, Uribe decries left-leaning leaders the 'intellectual bloc' of the FARC
CNN: ...as Colombians for Peace (the NGO organized by said leaders) negotiates release of politician kidnapped in 2002 by the FARC; he was the last politician held, though police officers and soldiers are still in captivity, as well as hundreds of civilians
BBC: reforms in Bolivia reveal regional divisions
There are two main areas where the opposition is likely to continue its fight.
The first is in Congress, where the ruling Movement to Socialism party (MAS) does not have a majority in the upper house.
Dominance by a single man or family was not uncommon in Brazil’s north-east. But it is fading away. The Sarney clan is becoming unusual. Mr Sarney’s daughter, Roseana, has been Maranhão’s governor and currently represents it in the Senate. His son was a minister in Brazil’s previous government. Other relatives are scattered in positions of authority in Maranhão’s courts and the civil service. One of his lieutenants, Edison Lobão, is Lula’s minister for mines and energy. When he took the job, Mr Lobão’s seat in the national Senate went to his son; his wife sits in the lower house. All three of Maranhão’s senators answer to Mr Sarney, as do his fellow senators from Amapá.
This control is aided by the Sarney family’s ownership of Maranhão’s biggest media company.
WP: economic downturn in Russia endangers immigrant laborers
Econ: the problem is likely under-reported, given the targeting of journalists
Both [human rights lawyer] Mr Markelov and [journalist] Ms Baburova were killed in broad daylight in the centre of Moscow. The next day, a party of Russian nationalists brought champagne to the murder scene to celebrate the “elimination” of their enemies. Her death was part of a continuing battle between fascists and anti-fascists in Russia, which is seldom so plainly revealed to the outside world...
[Baburova] and her friends rightly identified fascism as the biggest and most pressing threat to her country. She swore to fight it. She sensed accurately the social kinship between Stalinism and fascism: the link between attempts to portray Stalin as a “successful manager”, and the current upsurge of nationalism.
BBC: Poland, the Round Table Talks and communism's fall
Twenty years ago, Poland's communist government did something without precedent - it sat down with the banned Solidarity trade union to try to defuse growing social unrest.
Ind: Burmese seeking opportunities risk enslavement
It appears that the businesswoman's potential customers are middlemen, probably Chinese. Through a translator, they discuss placing the men on boats in the South China Sea, trawling for tuna. First, they will be flown to a Chinese city. In echoes of the slave trade, she describes a selection process worthy of a livestock market. In a 21st-century twist, she does so with the aid of pictures on her laptop.
[Human Rights Watch] says that Ethiopian troops burned down villages and killed, raped and tortured civilians in a counter-insurgency campaign against the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front after its fighters had killed 74 Ethiopian and Chinese oil-exploration workers in 2007. Ethiopia’s government was so incensed by the description of “systematic atrocities” in the Ogaden that it commissioned a report of its own that dismissed Human Rights Watch’s allegations as hearsay and its methods as slapdash.
AJE: opposition in Madagascar undeterred by state violence
LAT: the accord in Zimbabwe and power sharing in general
Critics argue that African-brokered power-sharing deals such as those signed after Kenya's violent 2007 elections and Zimbabwe's disputed vote last year have set a precedent that leaders in Africa can cling to power when voted out, just by refusing to leave office.
They say bodies such as SADC [the Southern African Development Community] and the African Union have done little to protect democracy or stop violence and human rights abuses, tending to side with incumbent leaders such as the long-ruling Mugabe, whose regime has been accused of unleashing violence to stay in power and denying food to opposition villagers.
BBC: water vendors in Abuja
The urban poor in developing world cities including Abuja pay much more for their water than citizens of rich cities such as New York or Tokyo, precisely because the poor have to depend on private providers rather a piped municipal supply.
++
NYT: satirizing politics in Lebanon
Although direct political satire is virtually impossible in most of the Arab world, the impulse has long thrived in more oblique and private forms. “Basmat Watan” draws on the live comedy and song performances known as chansonières, which started in Beirut theaters in the early 1960s and continue today. For centuries before that, villagers here would gather to sing “zajal” — an indigenous form of poetry that is partly improvisatory, a kind of ancient Levantine rap.
About 20 per cent of Israelis remain undecided on who they will vote for, polling organisations say, and the leading candidates in the election are focusing their efforts on winning them over.
Gdn: in Umm al-Fahm, conflict between far-right and Arab-Israelis
If Lieberman [head of the far-right Israel Our Homeland Party] has his way - and his party has surged ahead of Labour to push it to a humiliating fourth place - Umm al-Fahm may be transferred out of Israel into the Palestinian Authority, something its residents forcefully oppose in exchange for Israeli "villages", or settlements.
Its young people may be required to serve in the army, which they currently resist as they consider that army is fighting their own people in the Palestinian Territories. They would, all in all, be required to demonstrate - in Lieberman's own words - their loyalty to the state, both ordinary people and politicians, in exchange for citizenship.
LAT: Livni works women, leftists for their vote
Gdn: and everyone goes clubbing for the youth vote in Tel Aviv
BBC: where a new party has emerged, advocating reform of the closed-list PR electoral system
"Every day he changes his dirty underwear... This is the way also he votes in elections - when there is a dirty government, he replaces it with a clean one.
"And when the second government is more dirty than the first, we swap them back."
With this sales pitch, Haisraelim, a new, single issue party has entered the political fray ahead of Israel's 10 February elections, pushing for a change in the electoral system...
While rockets from Gaza and potential nuclear bombs from Iran are looming large in the minds of Israeli voters, the party's leader, political science Professor Gideon Doron, says the voting system itself is a "threat to Israel's existence".
"We can't make peace and we can barely make war," he says, as he fields phone calls about election billboards.
Econ: parsing the election results in IraqIf confirmed—the final results are not expected for several weeks—Mr Maliki will be well placed to run for a second term in the general election due within a year. His success, though, did not reflect a trend towards voting along religious lines. Quite the opposite. The prime minister, who leads the Dawa Party, a Shia religious movement, seems to have benefited from his party’s decision to join with others to form the State of Law Coalition, which campaigned, in a non-religious way, on themes of national unity, law and order. Mr Maliki thus managed to profit from an apparent shift to secularism.
IHT: unlikely candidate, former Baathist, wins in Karbala
WP: how General Odierno shaped the surge
Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as "fairly desperate, frankly."
So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above him, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top commander in Iraq and Odierno's immediate superior.
Communicating almost daily by phone with retired Gen. Jack Keane, an influential former Army vice chief of staff and his most important ally in Washington, Odierno launched a guerrilla campaign for a change in direction in Iraq, conducting his own strategic review and bypassing his superiors to talk through Keane to White House staff members and key figures in the military. It would prove one of the most audacious moves of the Iraq war, and one that eventually reversed almost every tenet of U.S. strategy.
NYT: the state of Iraq, after the invasion, surge and elections (not so enlightening analysis)
WP: unclear why presence of mani/pedi salon for soldiers in Mosul not considered, for example
TAL: Americans talk to an Iraqi (part 1; part 2)
"I think people here want me to say yes, that things will get better, so you will feel better."
Reuters: Bush shoe-thrower trial set; if convicted, faces 15 years in prison
WSJ: the tedious and dangerous work sniffing out roadside bombs in Afghanistan
Perhaps the most basic change is that suspects are presumed innocent, reversing the inquisitional system brought by Spanish colonizers. The arrested are no longer tossed straight into jail, but can remain free while prosecutors present evidence in hopes of winning an indictment.
Many residents question whether the reforms that include more rights for the accused may be to blame for a yearlong wave of killings in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez. A little less than a year after the reforms debuted in the capital, lawmakers responded to public pressure and made more suspects subject to incarceration before appearing in court.
But killings tied to drug trafficking are federal offenses. Robberies, assaults and murders not linked to organized crime are handled in state courts.
LAT: witnesses are being killed in Colombian trial linked to former governor
Diaz, the reform-minded mayor of El Roble in northern Sucre state, had received death threats from paramilitary groups, and told [President] Uribe during a community meeting in February 2003 that he feared for his life.
The 47-year-old doctor had resisted the right-wing militias' efforts to take control of El Roble's treasury and health system for fear they would loot them, according to his son, Juan David.
Diaz had also denounced Arana at the 2003 meeting before Uribe, saying the then-governor backed paramilitary fighters.
Despite his warnings, two months later, in April, Diaz was kidnapped, tortured for five days and killed. The mayor had been on his way to a meeting supposedly to reconcile with Arana.
PCB: meanwhile, Uribe decries left-leaning leaders the 'intellectual bloc' of the FARC
CNN: ...as Colombians for Peace (the NGO organized by said leaders) negotiates release of politician kidnapped in 2002 by the FARC; he was the last politician held, though police officers and soldiers are still in captivity, as well as hundreds of civilians
BBC: reforms in Bolivia reveal regional divisions
There are two main areas where the opposition is likely to continue its fight.
The first is in Congress, where the ruling Movement to Socialism party (MAS) does not have a majority in the upper house.
It is likely that more than 100 new laws will need to be passed to make the constitution operational. Some members of Podemos, the main opposition party in Congress, are bound to try to block them.
The second area is how the various levels of autonomy will work.
AJE: opposition mounts massive demonstration against Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms
WP: Jews raise concerns about anti-Semitic attacks and rhetoric
Dominance by a single man or family was not uncommon in Brazil’s north-east. But it is fading away. The Sarney clan is becoming unusual. Mr Sarney’s daughter, Roseana, has been Maranhão’s governor and currently represents it in the Senate. His son was a minister in Brazil’s previous government. Other relatives are scattered in positions of authority in Maranhão’s courts and the civil service. One of his lieutenants, Edison Lobão, is Lula’s minister for mines and energy. When he took the job, Mr Lobão’s seat in the national Senate went to his son; his wife sits in the lower house. All three of Maranhão’s senators answer to Mr Sarney, as do his fellow senators from Amapá.
This control is aided by the Sarney family’s ownership of Maranhão’s biggest media company.
WP: economic downturn in Russia endangers immigrant laborers
Econ: the problem is likely under-reported, given the targeting of journalists
Both [human rights lawyer] Mr Markelov and [journalist] Ms Baburova were killed in broad daylight in the centre of Moscow. The next day, a party of Russian nationalists brought champagne to the murder scene to celebrate the “elimination” of their enemies. Her death was part of a continuing battle between fascists and anti-fascists in Russia, which is seldom so plainly revealed to the outside world...
[Baburova] and her friends rightly identified fascism as the biggest and most pressing threat to her country. She swore to fight it. She sensed accurately the social kinship between Stalinism and fascism: the link between attempts to portray Stalin as a “successful manager”, and the current upsurge of nationalism.
BBC: Poland, the Round Table Talks and communism's fall
Twenty years ago, Poland's communist government did something without precedent - it sat down with the banned Solidarity trade union to try to defuse growing social unrest.
What became known as the Round Table Talks led to the first multi-party elections in the Soviet bloc and a stunning victory by Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, which heralded the collapse of communism across the eastern half of Europe.
NYT: the legacy of war in Bosnia
Today, the country known as Bosnia and Herzegovina has a new class of young entrepreneurs, a growing influx of tourists and new shopping malls selling everything from luxury ski equipment to mango bathing gel. But the country remains weighed down not just by a bloated bureaucracy, but also by a national brand inextricably linked with ethnic violence and an economy overly dependent on foreign aid.
BBC: technology and warfare: using cell phones to fight Maoists in India
The government in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand has given free mobile phones to more than 200 village leaders to help fight Maoist rebels.
Police say the aim is to receive swift tip-offs about rebel movements...
Jharkhnd is under presidential rule, which ensures Delhi's direct control over its administration.
More than 6,000 people have died during the Maoists' 20-year fight for a communist state in parts of India.
The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and landless workers.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoist insurgency is the "single biggest threat" to India's security.
The rebels operate in 182 districts in India, mainly in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.Ind: Burmese seeking opportunities risk enslavement
It appears that the businesswoman's potential customers are middlemen, probably Chinese. Through a translator, they discuss placing the men on boats in the South China Sea, trawling for tuna. First, they will be flown to a Chinese city. In echoes of the slave trade, she describes a selection process worthy of a livestock market. In a 21st-century twist, she does so with the aid of pictures on her laptop.
"We make them stand in the sun for one hour," she says. "In the middle of the day when it is very hot. We see how they manage, if they look uncomfortable." The group leans in to see the pictures on her computer. "We make them carry 20 kilos, like this," she continues, showing them photographs I cannot see. "For deep-sea fishing, they may need to carry very big fish for long distances across the ship."
Then comes the seasickness test. "We put them in here," the woman says, but I can't see the picture. I think it must be an enclosed truck or some sort of container on water. "Then we start to move them around. If they are sick or find it hard to breathe we don't select them. This is how we select the best bodies."
The group nods. The images of Burma's Rohingya boat people, fleeing oppression only to be allegedly abused and cast adrift by the Thai military, has drawn international attention to the plight of one of the world's most downtrodden people. The Muslim Rohingyas face particular persecution in military-ruled Burma, but throughout the country, impoverished men and women who see no future at home are embarking on risky journeys abroad in search of an income for their families.
Econ: HRW accuses Ethiopia of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ogaden[Human Rights Watch] says that Ethiopian troops burned down villages and killed, raped and tortured civilians in a counter-insurgency campaign against the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front after its fighters had killed 74 Ethiopian and Chinese oil-exploration workers in 2007. Ethiopia’s government was so incensed by the description of “systematic atrocities” in the Ogaden that it commissioned a report of its own that dismissed Human Rights Watch’s allegations as hearsay and its methods as slapdash.
AJE: opposition in Madagascar undeterred by state violence
LAT: the accord in Zimbabwe and power sharing in general
Critics argue that African-brokered power-sharing deals such as those signed after Kenya's violent 2007 elections and Zimbabwe's disputed vote last year have set a precedent that leaders in Africa can cling to power when voted out, just by refusing to leave office.
They say bodies such as SADC [the Southern African Development Community] and the African Union have done little to protect democracy or stop violence and human rights abuses, tending to side with incumbent leaders such as the long-ruling Mugabe, whose regime has been accused of unleashing violence to stay in power and denying food to opposition villagers.
BBC: water vendors in Abuja
The urban poor in developing world cities including Abuja pay much more for their water than citizens of rich cities such as New York or Tokyo, precisely because the poor have to depend on private providers rather a piped municipal supply.
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NYT: satirizing politics in Lebanon
Although direct political satire is virtually impossible in most of the Arab world, the impulse has long thrived in more oblique and private forms. “Basmat Watan” draws on the live comedy and song performances known as chansonières, which started in Beirut theaters in the early 1960s and continue today. For centuries before that, villagers here would gather to sing “zajal” — an indigenous form of poetry that is partly improvisatory, a kind of ancient Levantine rap.
The actors in “Basmat Watan” often break into zajals, which by tradition often include satire and plays on words. The name “Basmat Watan” is itself a play on words, with the sounds meaning both “The Smile of the Nation” and “But the Nation Died.”...
Mr. Bou-Gedeon becomes grim when asked about the role of comedy, and dramatic art in general, in Lebanon. Only shallow work is possible, he said, because the Lebanese are always trying to escape themselves.“Shakespeare said, ‘Show a mirror to the people,’ ” he said. “But people do not want to see themselves here. They want an image that is false, not the truth.”
Mr. Khalil, who cites Woody Allen and Mel Brooks as two of his chief influences, concedes that satire is not a very powerful weapon in a country where politics is still largely a matter of feudal allegiance. But he seems willing to settle for making people laugh.
LAT: celebrating Darwin, evolving faster than ever
As it happens, the pace of evolution has been speeding up -- not slowing down -- in the 40,000 years since our ancestors fanned out from Ethiopia to populate the globe.
And in the 5,000 to 10,000 years since agriculture triggered the growth of large societies, the pace has accelerated to 100 times historical levels.
"When there's more people, there are more mutations," [paleoanthropologist] Wolpoff said. "And when there are more mutations, there's more selection."
27 January 2009
engagement [just listening]
BBC: first ICC trial begins, against militia leader for use of child soldiers in DR Congo conflict...
"[T]he case is the first in history to focus exclusively on the use of child soldiers as a war crime and the first time victims will have been allowed to participate fully in an international trial...
The prosecution says children were snatched as they walked to school and suffered beatings and other abuses. Many were plied with marijuana and told they were protected by witchcraft, according to human rights groups."
NYT: ...a trial that almost didn't happen
"Turf wars within the court, bitter legal squabbles and irritation among the trial judges had almost torpedoed the case. Last July, as the trial was about to start, judges put a halt to the proceedings, citing legal and strategic errors by the prosecution, and said Mr. Lubanga should be set free, though he was ultimately kept in custody. The judges said the prosecution’s handling of evidence amounted to “wholesale and serious abuse” of the process and ruled that a fair trial was not possible at that point...
One question now being asked in The Hague is whether the Obama administration will re-establish links with the court. The Clinton administration signed the 1998 treaty establishing the court on its last days in office, but President Bush ordered the signature withdrawn, leaving the United States as the only major Western power not to join.
In his opening statement on Monday, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the court, said Mr. Lubanga’s militia included children, some as young as 9 years old, who were used as cooks, cleaners, spies, scouts and sex slaves. They were ordered to kill, pillage and rape, he said, and they were often killed and raped themselves.
Congolese rights groups say that Mr. Lubanga is by no means the most senior commander responsible for the widespread killing in Congo’s ethnic conflicts, but that he became available to the court after he was arrested in 2005 during an investigation into the killing of United Nations peacekeepers in Congo... The case is making use of a new step in international law, namely allowing victims to play a direct role in the trial and to be represented by their own lawyers."
BBC: profile of Lubanga
Open Society Institute: daily coverage of Lubanga's trial
LAT: UNHCR says Congolese refugees fleeing to South Sudan to escape LRA; more than 600 civilians killed in last month
NYT: Gen. Laurent Nkunda captured by Rwandan army
"General Nkunda was one of Congo’s most powerful and unpredictable rebel leaders, a megalomaniac with proven military skill who, until his arrest along the Congo-Rwanda border, had single-handedly destabilized a large chunk of central Africa... Congo is now urging Rwanda to extradite him to stand trial for war crimes and treason charges.
A few weeks ago, top rebel commanders suddenly split off from General Nkunda, a charismatic figure who until then had appeared to engender fierce loyalty. Thousands of Rwandan troops then stormed across the border as part of a joint mission with the Congolese Army to flush out Hutu militants left over from Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.
The latest twist came Thursday, when instead of attacking the Hutu militants, the Rwandans marched straight into General Nkunda’s territory and bundled him away.
At least that is what the Rwandans say, though some of General Nkunda’s former fighters say he was lured into Rwanda for a meeting and then either captured or told to go underground."
WPost: in Zimbabwe, unclear if power-sharing agreement dead or not
"Leaders of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community met Monday in Pretoria, South Africa, in what was depicted as a last-ditch effort to salvage a deal between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition. After 14 hours of negotiations that ended at dawn, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe told reporters that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would be sworn in as prime minister Feb. 11, after Zimbabwe's parliament passes a constitutional amendment creating the position.
But Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, swiftly issued a statement indicating that was not the case. While a communique issued by SADC addressed some of the opposition party's demands -- including, for example, a call for the parties to discuss the assignment of provincial governors -- the MDC said it had not gone far enough."
NYT: Islamist insurgents in Somalia take Baidoa...
"Islamist insurgents took over the city that houses Somalia’s Parliament on Monday, just hours after Ethiopian troops withdrew and formally ended a failed two-year effort to defeat Islamist militants in the country... Parliament is supposed to select a new president to replace Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who resigned in late December. Many Somalis, Western diplomats and aid officials have crossed their fingers in the hope that moderate Islamists and transitional government figures would work together to pick a new, unifying leader.
Mr. Yusuf, a former warlord, had been widely criticized for trying to thwart peace negotiations. One of the leading contenders to replace him is a moderate Islamic cleric."
NYT: ...and impose Sharia law
"The Shabab, one of the most militant Islamist militias fighting for control of the country, captured the town, Baidoa, on Monday, hours after the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops who had been protecting it... In addition to Baidoa, a market town that has served as the seat of Somalia’s transitional government, the Shabab controls most of Mogadishu, the main city and official capital, and much of the southern part of the country. The Shabab, listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, seeks to turn Somalia into an Islamic state under its particularly strict brand of Islamic law...
Several moderate factions have sent delegations to Djibouti, where they are working with the Parliament to establish a unity government based on a power-sharing deal made in October.
That process moved forward on Monday when the Parliament voted to expand its membership to add 200 legislators from the ranks of the moderate Islamists. The new members are to be sworn in on Wednesday, bringing the total number of seats to 550.
The Parliament also hopes to elect a new president within five days, according to local radio reports..."
LAT: Japan dispatches ships to Somalian seas
AJE: 25 dead in Madagascar riots
NYT: "rehabilitated" jihadists at it again
"Nine graduates of an influential Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups since the program started in 2004, Saudi officials said Monday...
If doubts are raised about the Saudi program, they could complicate President Obama’s plan to close the Guantánamo detention center within a year, as required by one of his first executive orders after taking office last week. Almost half of the remaining prisoners there are Yemeni, and their return home depends in part on Yemen’s creation of a rehabilitation program, paid for partly by the United States, that is modeled on the Saudi one.
Pentagon officials have said that 61 of the more than 525 Guantánamo detainees who have been released have returned to terrorism. That claim has generated some skepticism, and the Pentagon is expected to declassify portions of a report on the subject in the coming days."
LAT: violent protests against Bahrain government after coup charge
"The riots continued Tuesday after the prosecutor's office announced that the three had been charged with promoting a coup "through terrorism," according to a statement by the office.
The statement said they also were charged with joining an outlawed group, violating other citizens' liberties and inciting hatred against the ruling regime. One activist was released but banned from traveling, and the two others were in custody, the statement said."
NYT: politics of rebuilding in Gaza...
"Aid agencies expect several hundred million dollars to be pledged at a conference next week for items like food, medicine and spare parts for electrical grids. But that does not touch the broader question of rebuilding, which will require large quantities of cement, metal and glass, all of which Gaza lacks.
The task is enormous: An estimated 4,000 homes were destroyed and 17,000 damaged in the three-week war that began Dec. 27, Palestinian authorities said.
Israel said that letting such supplies in freely would be risky. Hamas militants have built rockets from pipes imported for a sanitation plant last year, Israeli officials said, and while Israel is attending to humanitarian aid — the number of trucks with food and other urgent supplies that now pass through Israeli crossings into Gaza has tripled — the Israeli authorities have yet to decide what else they will permit into Gaza."
AJE: ...complicated, as Hamas says it will give victims reconstruction money
"We are a government that is in charge of all of Gaza," [Ahmed al-Kurd, the Hamas-appointed minister of social affairs] said. "The ministries have budgets, they have funds, just like in the rest of the countries of the world."
Gdn: 1 Israeli soldier and 1 Palestinian killed today post-ceasefire
"Israel also closed its crossings into Gaza, through which all humanitarian aid and other supplies have to pass. "The crossings have been closed due to the attack," Peter Lerner, an Israeli defence official, said. "This is another example of terrorist activities against the crossings, the same crossings that serve the Palestinian people for humanitarian aid."
AJE: ...prompting Israel to bomb Gaza-Egypt tunnels, again
"Israel has confirmed that it carried out the raids. It says the strikes on the Rafah tunnels are aimed at stopping alleged weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip by Hamas fighters.
The tunnels are also used to smuggle food, fuel and consumer goods from Egypt and are considered a life-line for thousands of ordinary Gazans.
The latest attack came despite fragile ceasefires declared by Israel and Hamas last week, ending a 22-day Israeli military campaign on Gaza in which 1,300 people were killed.
Israeli warplanes had targetted scores of cross-border tunnels during the recent war, but many tunnels resumed work shortly after the ceasefire."
NYT: just as Obama's Middle East envoy is on tour
"Mr. Obama has moved swiftly to engage in the Middle East, phoning Arab and Israeli leaders on his first full day in office and announcing [George] Mitchell’s appointment the next day.
Mr. Mitchell, a seasoned negotiator, helped broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and led a commission investigating the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians."
NYT: closed crossings mean humanitarian aid sits, waiting
AJE: photos reveal Israeli white phosphorus use on UN compound
"White phosphorus - a high-incendiary substance that burns brightly and for long periods on contact with the air - is often used to produce smoke screens.
But it can also be used as a weapon producing extreme burns when it makes contact with human skin.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported a brigade of paratroop reservists fired about 20 white phosphorus shells into the built-up area of Beit Lahiya on January 17, which landed in the UN-run compound where the two Palestinian children were killed and severe burns were inflicted on 14 other people.
Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, has accused Israel of war crimes over its use of the munitions in heavily populated areas."
NYT: move to the right in Israel post-Gaza invasion
"That is not because Israelis have regrets or have become faint-hearted about the casualties and destruction in Gaza. To the contrary, there appears to have been a shift further to the right, reflecting a feeling among many voters that an even tougher approach may now be required.
Recent polls indicate that Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing opposition party, has retained and even increased its lead. The other party that appears to have gained the most ground is the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman."
LAT: postwar boom for Gazan businesses... selling posters of martyrs
Gdn: Britain's security and counter-terrorism minister says Gaza attacks will fuel extremism
"In an outspoken assessment of the terror risk facing Britain, Gordon Brown's security adviser was scathing about the assertion, made by Tony Blair when prime minister, that foreign policy did not alter the UK's risk of a terror attack. "We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism," he said. "Well, that was clearly bollocks."...
West, meanwhile, described the threat of international terrorism as a severe one... "Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices are now, today, the greatest threat to us. If you put one near an old building the whole thing will collapse."
Gdn: British gov minutes discussing legality of Iraq war invasion to be released
"Secret government discussions about the Iraq war are to be disclosed after an information tribunal today ordered the release of cabinet minutes from 2003... The meetings considered the highly controversial issue of whether the invasion was allowed under international law. Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general at the time, initially suggested that the legality of the invasion was legally questionable before subsequently issuing legal advice saying that it would be compatible with international law."
NYT: US helicopters down in Kirkuk; Iraqi budget also down as oil prices fall
"An Iraqi security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was forbidden to speak to the news media, said the helicopters had crashed in an open field in an area known as Chalak, about 10 miles south of Kirkuk... [A]fter the American military retrieved the wreckage, the Sunni Arab insurgent group known as the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, sometimes referred to as the Naqshbandi Army, distributed leaflets in the area claiming it had downed the two helicopters with makeshift rockets...
The group, named after a Muslim Sufi order, is linked to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was one of Saddam Hussein’s top aides, and members of his family, according to American military intelligence officers. Mr. Douri, who is ailing but whose whereabouts remain a mystery, is an ardent follower and patron of the Naqshbandi order in Iraq...
The squeeze in Iraq’s finances comes as the government seeks to solidify fragile security gains by improving basic services, spurring job creation and rehabilitating the country’s battered infrastructure. In the past week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been on a whirlwind campaign tour of impoverished southern Iraq, drumming up support for his slate of candidates in provincial elections this Saturday.
He promised rapt audiences everywhere to provide jobs and housing.
“We have set our sight on rebuilding Iraq, providing an honorable life for its citizens, supporting agriculture, resuscitating our factories and plants, and building our armed forces,” Mr. Maliki told crowds during a rally on Monday in Babil Province.
But given the country’s immense investment needs, fulfilling some of these promises, at least in the short term, hinges on stable oil prices and higher production."
AJE: Abu Ghraib to be reopened under different name
LAT: hmm, any other signs of "normalcy" in Iraq?
NYT: Shiites on pilgrimage during provincial elections could bring unexpected surprises
LAT: Secretary of Defense Gates advises limited mission in Afghanistan
"Rather than the pursuit of democracy, Gates said the primary U.S. mission should be ensuring that Afghanistan did not again become a haven for Al Qaeda...
One new unit, the Ft. Drum, N.Y.-based 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, has arrived in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of U.S. troops to 36,000. The unit was originally scheduled to go to Iraq.
By spring, two additional brigades will be sent to Afghanistan, to be joined by a third in midsummer, Gates said.
Gates said it would be difficult to send troops to Afghanistan much faster than is currently planned because of a lack of infrastructure -- dining halls, bases, hospitals and logistics hubs -- there."
NYT: ...and wants to decrease delays for treatment of wounded soldiers there...
LAT: ...while Biden expects higher casualties and the Army pays for civilian casualties
"U.S. commanders on Tuesday traveled to a poor Afghan village and distributed $40,000 to relatives of 15 people killed in a U.S. raid, including a known militant commander. The Americans also apologized for any civilians killed in the operation... [Karzai] told the villagers he has given the U.S. and NATO one month to respond to a draft agreement calling for increased Afghan participation in military operations.
Karzai said if he does not receive a response within that time, he would ask Afghans what he should do about international military operations. The statement from the presidential palace describing the meeting did not elaborate...
Lt. Col. Steven Weir, a military lawyer who helped oversee the payments, said the payments were not an admission by the U.S. that innocents were killed. "It's a condolence payment," he said. "The villagers said none of them were in the Taliban, just peaceful individuals from the village. So by this payment they will understand it's not our goal to kill innocent people. This may help them understand we're here to build a safer and more secure Afghanistan."
NYT: Iranian terrorist group (says Iran) not a terrorist group (according to EU)
"The European Union removed a prominent Iranian opposition group from its list of banned terrorist organizations on Monday, a step that could worsen its relations with Tehran, which strongly opposed the move.
The decision, by the foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc, ended a long battle by the group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, to be removed from Europe’s list of proscribed organizations. It was placed on the list in 2002... The group advocates the overthrow of Iran’s religious leaders and the creation of a democratic, secular government. After the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against the group, executing many of its members. The group has claimed responsibility for bombings that killed hundreds of officials and civilians in the 1980s...
Several thousand of the group’s members live in a camp north of Baghdad, where they have had American military protection since 2003. Iraq has been under pressure from Iran to expel the group, but if its members are sent back to Iran they will probably be accused of treason and almost certainly be executed."
NYT: Sri Lankan army takes Mullaittivu, last major rebel-held town
"The army’s taking of the rebel garrison town of Mullaittivu on Sunday may signal the end of conventional battles but not of suicide attacks and other deadly tactics that the guerrillas have used for decades in their campaign for an independent state in the northeast...
The army said it took the de facto rebel capital, Kilinochchi, three weeks ago, and Elephant Pass, a key corridor, a week later.
It is impossible to verify the government’s accounts because the authorities deny journalists access to anywhere near the front lines and because those who question the official version of events in the war are rebuked as traitors.
A journalist, a publisher and his wife have been held under antiterrorism laws for 10 months. A leading newspaper editor was killed this month, another was beaten on his way to work and a television station was attacked. Several journalists have fled the country recently."
AJE: looking for Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
"Officials said they were using spy planes that monitored satellite phone transmissions and took photographs of the jungle region to try to pin-point Prabhakaran's location... MR Narayan Swamy, an Indian journalist who wrote a biography of the LTTE leader, said the loss of Prabhakaran would be devastating to the group. "He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul, and the whole organisation runs around him," he said."
NYT: no safe zone for civilians or UN staff
"First, the team of mostly Sri Lankan aid workers and their families were prevented by the guerrillas, also known by the initials L.T.T.E., from leaving the war zone. Then, on Saturday, they took shelter in what the government described as a no-fire zone, erecting a temporary compound, around which many civilians had also gathered.
A shell landed near the compound on Saturday evening, and then another early Sunday morning, killing 9 civilians and wounding more than 20, according to a memo sent by United Nations officials in Sri Lanka to their headquarters in New York."
AJE: Philippine rebel group to rejoin peace talks, on one condition: a separate Muslim state in the south
"The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippine government are trying to revive peace negotiations after a proposed deal broke down last year when the supreme court stopped the government from signing the deal... Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Talayan in Mindanao, says thousands of people, mostly farmers, have been living in evacuation centres since last August, surviving on handouts under harsh conditions.
WPost: "Stew Maker" is captured, admits to burning bodies of 300 narco-rivals in acid
LAT: two former members of Peruvian military freed after courts fail to convict them for Barrios Altos massacre--after 6 years
"The former military officers are on trial on charges of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy in the 1991 massacre of 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, at Lima's Barrios Altos tenement, court clerk Daniel Luna told The Associated Press.
Barrios Altos is one of two massacres that ex-President Alberto Fujimori is charged with authorizing."
LAT: Obama has "constructive and cordial" conversation with Colombian president; they discuss security and Plan Colombia, among other issues
NYT: Iceland's government collapses
"Last week, [Prime Minister Geir] Haarde called elections for May, bringing forward a vote originally scheduled for 2011, after weeks of protests by Icelanders angered by soaring unemployment and rising prices. But Mr. Haarde said he would not lead his Independence Party into the new elections because he needed treatment for cancer.
Iceland has been in crisis since the collapse of its banks because of large debt in September and October, with its currency, the krona, plummeting. The government has negotiated $10 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries, but the standard of living for the average person has sunk along with the currency, and the economy is expected to contract by nearly 10 percent this year."
LAT: Medvedev to alter Russian treason bill (in a challenge to Putin?)
AJE: former Serb general, Vlastimir Djordjevic, on trial at The Hague for ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
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NYT blog/Errol Morris: the Bush years in pictures
Gdn: on "responsible sovereignty"
"A new phrase has rolled off the production line of foreign policy analysts: responsible sovereignty. In a world where the threats are transnational - climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the banking crisis - states not only have a responsibility to their own citizens, but to their neighbours and to the international community as well. States need to take responsibility for the international implications of their domestic actions. Responsible sovereignty underpins current attempts by a distinguished group of US experts to create a new world order based on revitalised international institutions, diplomacy and negotiation. They call it a project to manage global insecurity."
"[T]he case is the first in history to focus exclusively on the use of child soldiers as a war crime and the first time victims will have been allowed to participate fully in an international trial...
The prosecution says children were snatched as they walked to school and suffered beatings and other abuses. Many were plied with marijuana and told they were protected by witchcraft, according to human rights groups."
NYT: ...a trial that almost didn't happen
"Turf wars within the court, bitter legal squabbles and irritation among the trial judges had almost torpedoed the case. Last July, as the trial was about to start, judges put a halt to the proceedings, citing legal and strategic errors by the prosecution, and said Mr. Lubanga should be set free, though he was ultimately kept in custody. The judges said the prosecution’s handling of evidence amounted to “wholesale and serious abuse” of the process and ruled that a fair trial was not possible at that point...
One question now being asked in The Hague is whether the Obama administration will re-establish links with the court. The Clinton administration signed the 1998 treaty establishing the court on its last days in office, but President Bush ordered the signature withdrawn, leaving the United States as the only major Western power not to join.
In his opening statement on Monday, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the court, said Mr. Lubanga’s militia included children, some as young as 9 years old, who were used as cooks, cleaners, spies, scouts and sex slaves. They were ordered to kill, pillage and rape, he said, and they were often killed and raped themselves.
Congolese rights groups say that Mr. Lubanga is by no means the most senior commander responsible for the widespread killing in Congo’s ethnic conflicts, but that he became available to the court after he was arrested in 2005 during an investigation into the killing of United Nations peacekeepers in Congo... The case is making use of a new step in international law, namely allowing victims to play a direct role in the trial and to be represented by their own lawyers."
BBC: profile of Lubanga
Open Society Institute: daily coverage of Lubanga's trial
LAT: UNHCR says Congolese refugees fleeing to South Sudan to escape LRA; more than 600 civilians killed in last month
NYT: Gen. Laurent Nkunda captured by Rwandan army
"General Nkunda was one of Congo’s most powerful and unpredictable rebel leaders, a megalomaniac with proven military skill who, until his arrest along the Congo-Rwanda border, had single-handedly destabilized a large chunk of central Africa... Congo is now urging Rwanda to extradite him to stand trial for war crimes and treason charges.
A few weeks ago, top rebel commanders suddenly split off from General Nkunda, a charismatic figure who until then had appeared to engender fierce loyalty. Thousands of Rwandan troops then stormed across the border as part of a joint mission with the Congolese Army to flush out Hutu militants left over from Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.
The latest twist came Thursday, when instead of attacking the Hutu militants, the Rwandans marched straight into General Nkunda’s territory and bundled him away.
At least that is what the Rwandans say, though some of General Nkunda’s former fighters say he was lured into Rwanda for a meeting and then either captured or told to go underground."
WPost: in Zimbabwe, unclear if power-sharing agreement dead or not
"Leaders of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community met Monday in Pretoria, South Africa, in what was depicted as a last-ditch effort to salvage a deal between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition. After 14 hours of negotiations that ended at dawn, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe told reporters that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would be sworn in as prime minister Feb. 11, after Zimbabwe's parliament passes a constitutional amendment creating the position.
But Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, swiftly issued a statement indicating that was not the case. While a communique issued by SADC addressed some of the opposition party's demands -- including, for example, a call for the parties to discuss the assignment of provincial governors -- the MDC said it had not gone far enough."
NYT: Islamist insurgents in Somalia take Baidoa...
"Islamist insurgents took over the city that houses Somalia’s Parliament on Monday, just hours after Ethiopian troops withdrew and formally ended a failed two-year effort to defeat Islamist militants in the country... Parliament is supposed to select a new president to replace Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who resigned in late December. Many Somalis, Western diplomats and aid officials have crossed their fingers in the hope that moderate Islamists and transitional government figures would work together to pick a new, unifying leader.
Mr. Yusuf, a former warlord, had been widely criticized for trying to thwart peace negotiations. One of the leading contenders to replace him is a moderate Islamic cleric."
NYT: ...and impose Sharia law
"The Shabab, one of the most militant Islamist militias fighting for control of the country, captured the town, Baidoa, on Monday, hours after the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops who had been protecting it... In addition to Baidoa, a market town that has served as the seat of Somalia’s transitional government, the Shabab controls most of Mogadishu, the main city and official capital, and much of the southern part of the country. The Shabab, listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, seeks to turn Somalia into an Islamic state under its particularly strict brand of Islamic law...
Several moderate factions have sent delegations to Djibouti, where they are working with the Parliament to establish a unity government based on a power-sharing deal made in October.
That process moved forward on Monday when the Parliament voted to expand its membership to add 200 legislators from the ranks of the moderate Islamists. The new members are to be sworn in on Wednesday, bringing the total number of seats to 550.
The Parliament also hopes to elect a new president within five days, according to local radio reports..."
LAT: Japan dispatches ships to Somalian seas
AJE: 25 dead in Madagascar riots
NYT: "rehabilitated" jihadists at it again
"Nine graduates of an influential Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups since the program started in 2004, Saudi officials said Monday...
If doubts are raised about the Saudi program, they could complicate President Obama’s plan to close the Guantánamo detention center within a year, as required by one of his first executive orders after taking office last week. Almost half of the remaining prisoners there are Yemeni, and their return home depends in part on Yemen’s creation of a rehabilitation program, paid for partly by the United States, that is modeled on the Saudi one.
Pentagon officials have said that 61 of the more than 525 Guantánamo detainees who have been released have returned to terrorism. That claim has generated some skepticism, and the Pentagon is expected to declassify portions of a report on the subject in the coming days."
LAT: violent protests against Bahrain government after coup charge
"The riots continued Tuesday after the prosecutor's office announced that the three had been charged with promoting a coup "through terrorism," according to a statement by the office.
The statement said they also were charged with joining an outlawed group, violating other citizens' liberties and inciting hatred against the ruling regime. One activist was released but banned from traveling, and the two others were in custody, the statement said."
NYT: politics of rebuilding in Gaza...
"Aid agencies expect several hundred million dollars to be pledged at a conference next week for items like food, medicine and spare parts for electrical grids. But that does not touch the broader question of rebuilding, which will require large quantities of cement, metal and glass, all of which Gaza lacks.
The task is enormous: An estimated 4,000 homes were destroyed and 17,000 damaged in the three-week war that began Dec. 27, Palestinian authorities said.
Israel said that letting such supplies in freely would be risky. Hamas militants have built rockets from pipes imported for a sanitation plant last year, Israeli officials said, and while Israel is attending to humanitarian aid — the number of trucks with food and other urgent supplies that now pass through Israeli crossings into Gaza has tripled — the Israeli authorities have yet to decide what else they will permit into Gaza."
AJE: ...complicated, as Hamas says it will give victims reconstruction money
"We are a government that is in charge of all of Gaza," [Ahmed al-Kurd, the Hamas-appointed minister of social affairs] said. "The ministries have budgets, they have funds, just like in the rest of the countries of the world."
Gdn: 1 Israeli soldier and 1 Palestinian killed today post-ceasefire
"Israel also closed its crossings into Gaza, through which all humanitarian aid and other supplies have to pass. "The crossings have been closed due to the attack," Peter Lerner, an Israeli defence official, said. "This is another example of terrorist activities against the crossings, the same crossings that serve the Palestinian people for humanitarian aid."
AJE: ...prompting Israel to bomb Gaza-Egypt tunnels, again
"Israel has confirmed that it carried out the raids. It says the strikes on the Rafah tunnels are aimed at stopping alleged weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip by Hamas fighters.
The tunnels are also used to smuggle food, fuel and consumer goods from Egypt and are considered a life-line for thousands of ordinary Gazans.
The latest attack came despite fragile ceasefires declared by Israel and Hamas last week, ending a 22-day Israeli military campaign on Gaza in which 1,300 people were killed.
Israeli warplanes had targetted scores of cross-border tunnels during the recent war, but many tunnels resumed work shortly after the ceasefire."
NYT: just as Obama's Middle East envoy is on tour
"Mr. Obama has moved swiftly to engage in the Middle East, phoning Arab and Israeli leaders on his first full day in office and announcing [George] Mitchell’s appointment the next day.
Mr. Mitchell, a seasoned negotiator, helped broker a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and led a commission investigating the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians."
NYT: closed crossings mean humanitarian aid sits, waiting
AJE: photos reveal Israeli white phosphorus use on UN compound
"White phosphorus - a high-incendiary substance that burns brightly and for long periods on contact with the air - is often used to produce smoke screens.
But it can also be used as a weapon producing extreme burns when it makes contact with human skin.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported a brigade of paratroop reservists fired about 20 white phosphorus shells into the built-up area of Beit Lahiya on January 17, which landed in the UN-run compound where the two Palestinian children were killed and severe burns were inflicted on 14 other people.
Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, has accused Israel of war crimes over its use of the munitions in heavily populated areas."
NYT: move to the right in Israel post-Gaza invasion
"That is not because Israelis have regrets or have become faint-hearted about the casualties and destruction in Gaza. To the contrary, there appears to have been a shift further to the right, reflecting a feeling among many voters that an even tougher approach may now be required.
Recent polls indicate that Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing opposition party, has retained and even increased its lead. The other party that appears to have gained the most ground is the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman."
LAT: postwar boom for Gazan businesses... selling posters of martyrs
Gdn: Britain's security and counter-terrorism minister says Gaza attacks will fuel extremism
"In an outspoken assessment of the terror risk facing Britain, Gordon Brown's security adviser was scathing about the assertion, made by Tony Blair when prime minister, that foreign policy did not alter the UK's risk of a terror attack. "We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism," he said. "Well, that was clearly bollocks."...
West, meanwhile, described the threat of international terrorism as a severe one... "Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices are now, today, the greatest threat to us. If you put one near an old building the whole thing will collapse."
Gdn: British gov minutes discussing legality of Iraq war invasion to be released
"Secret government discussions about the Iraq war are to be disclosed after an information tribunal today ordered the release of cabinet minutes from 2003... The meetings considered the highly controversial issue of whether the invasion was allowed under international law. Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general at the time, initially suggested that the legality of the invasion was legally questionable before subsequently issuing legal advice saying that it would be compatible with international law."
NYT: US helicopters down in Kirkuk; Iraqi budget also down as oil prices fall
"An Iraqi security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was forbidden to speak to the news media, said the helicopters had crashed in an open field in an area known as Chalak, about 10 miles south of Kirkuk... [A]fter the American military retrieved the wreckage, the Sunni Arab insurgent group known as the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, sometimes referred to as the Naqshbandi Army, distributed leaflets in the area claiming it had downed the two helicopters with makeshift rockets...
The group, named after a Muslim Sufi order, is linked to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was one of Saddam Hussein’s top aides, and members of his family, according to American military intelligence officers. Mr. Douri, who is ailing but whose whereabouts remain a mystery, is an ardent follower and patron of the Naqshbandi order in Iraq...
The squeeze in Iraq’s finances comes as the government seeks to solidify fragile security gains by improving basic services, spurring job creation and rehabilitating the country’s battered infrastructure. In the past week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been on a whirlwind campaign tour of impoverished southern Iraq, drumming up support for his slate of candidates in provincial elections this Saturday.
He promised rapt audiences everywhere to provide jobs and housing.
“We have set our sight on rebuilding Iraq, providing an honorable life for its citizens, supporting agriculture, resuscitating our factories and plants, and building our armed forces,” Mr. Maliki told crowds during a rally on Monday in Babil Province.
But given the country’s immense investment needs, fulfilling some of these promises, at least in the short term, hinges on stable oil prices and higher production."
AJE: Abu Ghraib to be reopened under different name
LAT: hmm, any other signs of "normalcy" in Iraq?
NYT: Shiites on pilgrimage during provincial elections could bring unexpected surprises
LAT: Secretary of Defense Gates advises limited mission in Afghanistan
"Rather than the pursuit of democracy, Gates said the primary U.S. mission should be ensuring that Afghanistan did not again become a haven for Al Qaeda...
One new unit, the Ft. Drum, N.Y.-based 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, has arrived in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of U.S. troops to 36,000. The unit was originally scheduled to go to Iraq.
By spring, two additional brigades will be sent to Afghanistan, to be joined by a third in midsummer, Gates said.
Gates said it would be difficult to send troops to Afghanistan much faster than is currently planned because of a lack of infrastructure -- dining halls, bases, hospitals and logistics hubs -- there."
NYT: ...and wants to decrease delays for treatment of wounded soldiers there...
LAT: ...while Biden expects higher casualties and the Army pays for civilian casualties
"U.S. commanders on Tuesday traveled to a poor Afghan village and distributed $40,000 to relatives of 15 people killed in a U.S. raid, including a known militant commander. The Americans also apologized for any civilians killed in the operation... [Karzai] told the villagers he has given the U.S. and NATO one month to respond to a draft agreement calling for increased Afghan participation in military operations.
Karzai said if he does not receive a response within that time, he would ask Afghans what he should do about international military operations. The statement from the presidential palace describing the meeting did not elaborate...
Lt. Col. Steven Weir, a military lawyer who helped oversee the payments, said the payments were not an admission by the U.S. that innocents were killed. "It's a condolence payment," he said. "The villagers said none of them were in the Taliban, just peaceful individuals from the village. So by this payment they will understand it's not our goal to kill innocent people. This may help them understand we're here to build a safer and more secure Afghanistan."
NYT: Iranian terrorist group (says Iran) not a terrorist group (according to EU)
"The European Union removed a prominent Iranian opposition group from its list of banned terrorist organizations on Monday, a step that could worsen its relations with Tehran, which strongly opposed the move.
The decision, by the foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc, ended a long battle by the group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, to be removed from Europe’s list of proscribed organizations. It was placed on the list in 2002... The group advocates the overthrow of Iran’s religious leaders and the creation of a democratic, secular government. After the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against the group, executing many of its members. The group has claimed responsibility for bombings that killed hundreds of officials and civilians in the 1980s...
Several thousand of the group’s members live in a camp north of Baghdad, where they have had American military protection since 2003. Iraq has been under pressure from Iran to expel the group, but if its members are sent back to Iran they will probably be accused of treason and almost certainly be executed."
NYT: Sri Lankan army takes Mullaittivu, last major rebel-held town
"The army’s taking of the rebel garrison town of Mullaittivu on Sunday may signal the end of conventional battles but not of suicide attacks and other deadly tactics that the guerrillas have used for decades in their campaign for an independent state in the northeast...
The army said it took the de facto rebel capital, Kilinochchi, three weeks ago, and Elephant Pass, a key corridor, a week later.
It is impossible to verify the government’s accounts because the authorities deny journalists access to anywhere near the front lines and because those who question the official version of events in the war are rebuked as traitors.
A journalist, a publisher and his wife have been held under antiterrorism laws for 10 months. A leading newspaper editor was killed this month, another was beaten on his way to work and a television station was attacked. Several journalists have fled the country recently."
AJE: looking for Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
"Officials said they were using spy planes that monitored satellite phone transmissions and took photographs of the jungle region to try to pin-point Prabhakaran's location... MR Narayan Swamy, an Indian journalist who wrote a biography of the LTTE leader, said the loss of Prabhakaran would be devastating to the group. "He is their brain. He is their heart. He is their god. He is their soul, and the whole organisation runs around him," he said."
NYT: no safe zone for civilians or UN staff
"First, the team of mostly Sri Lankan aid workers and their families were prevented by the guerrillas, also known by the initials L.T.T.E., from leaving the war zone. Then, on Saturday, they took shelter in what the government described as a no-fire zone, erecting a temporary compound, around which many civilians had also gathered.
A shell landed near the compound on Saturday evening, and then another early Sunday morning, killing 9 civilians and wounding more than 20, according to a memo sent by United Nations officials in Sri Lanka to their headquarters in New York."
AJE: Philippine rebel group to rejoin peace talks, on one condition: a separate Muslim state in the south
"The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Philippine government are trying to revive peace negotiations after a proposed deal broke down last year when the supreme court stopped the government from signing the deal... Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Talayan in Mindanao, says thousands of people, mostly farmers, have been living in evacuation centres since last August, surviving on handouts under harsh conditions.
The MILF formed as a breakaway group in 1977 after splitting from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
The MNLF subsequently entered into negotiations with the government in Manila and signed an agreement a decade later relinquishing its stated goal of independence.
The 12,000-strong MILF has, however, continued the struggle for political autonomy, becoming one of four groups that are fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines."
LAT: Mexico a failed state? No way, says Mexican governmentWPost: "Stew Maker" is captured, admits to burning bodies of 300 narco-rivals in acid
LAT: two former members of Peruvian military freed after courts fail to convict them for Barrios Altos massacre--after 6 years
"The former military officers are on trial on charges of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy in the 1991 massacre of 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, at Lima's Barrios Altos tenement, court clerk Daniel Luna told The Associated Press.
Barrios Altos is one of two massacres that ex-President Alberto Fujimori is charged with authorizing."
LAT: Obama has "constructive and cordial" conversation with Colombian president; they discuss security and Plan Colombia, among other issues
NYT: Iceland's government collapses
"Last week, [Prime Minister Geir] Haarde called elections for May, bringing forward a vote originally scheduled for 2011, after weeks of protests by Icelanders angered by soaring unemployment and rising prices. But Mr. Haarde said he would not lead his Independence Party into the new elections because he needed treatment for cancer.
Iceland has been in crisis since the collapse of its banks because of large debt in September and October, with its currency, the krona, plummeting. The government has negotiated $10 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries, but the standard of living for the average person has sunk along with the currency, and the economy is expected to contract by nearly 10 percent this year."
LAT: Medvedev to alter Russian treason bill (in a challenge to Putin?)
AJE: former Serb general, Vlastimir Djordjevic, on trial at The Hague for ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
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NYT blog/Errol Morris: the Bush years in pictures
Gdn: on "responsible sovereignty"
"A new phrase has rolled off the production line of foreign policy analysts: responsible sovereignty. In a world where the threats are transnational - climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the banking crisis - states not only have a responsibility to their own citizens, but to their neighbours and to the international community as well. States need to take responsibility for the international implications of their domestic actions. Responsible sovereignty underpins current attempts by a distinguished group of US experts to create a new world order based on revitalised international institutions, diplomacy and negotiation. They call it a project to manage global insecurity."
02 January 2009
day of rage [rocks and rockets]
AFP: Hamas calls for "day of rage" in response to death of leader Nizar Rayyan, killed in a targeted airstrike Thursday; so far, mostly sporadic rock-throwing
NYT: Israeli military claims Rayyan was one of Hamas' "most extreme" leaders; that his house stored weapons, had a secret tunnel and served as a communications center. But what's next?
"Israel’s stated goal for its operation is to halt the rocket fire from Gaza and to create a new security situation in southern Israel, where three civilians and a soldier have been killed in rocket attacks in the past six days... But in including symbols of the government among its targets, Israel seemed to be blurring the lines. On Thursday, Israeli warplanes and naval forces bombed the legislative building — a Gaza landmark — and the Ministry of Justice, the Israeli military said."
In Paris, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rejected a French proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire: “There is no humanitarian crisis in the strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.”
Gdn: the UN would disagree
"Much of Gaza's public infrastructure has been destroyed and the territory is in a "critical emergency" after seven days of devastating bombing with air strikes averaging one every 20 minutes, the UN said yesterday... "By any definition this is a humanitarian crisis and more," said Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinians. He said there had been on average one air strike every 20 minutes since the bombing began, intensifying at night and covering the whole Gaza Strip."
NYT: more on Gaza's tunnels
Gdn: interactive overview of Israeli air attacks during the conflict's first days and Israel's main political and military options
"Israel says Hamas has been weakened and is facing popular discontent but does not claim it is about to be overthrown. Barring such a drastic development the most likely scenario for the end of this crisis remains a more sustainable ceasefire than the one that ended on December 19. But as Ma'ariv's Shelah put it: "Each side wants the other to reach that point on their knees."
Gdn: poll shows that 52% of Israelis support airstrikes, 19% back a land invasion, and only 20% want a ceasefire
WP: Israeli ground invasion seems more likely as weather clears up, troops amass on border
"Analysts expect Israel to seek a truce with Hamas on terms more favorable to the Jewish state than the ones under the six-month deal brokered by Egypt that expired in mid-December.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Thursday floated the idea of using international monitors, or even armed forces, to ensure that any future cease-fire holds. Israel has indicated it would welcome unarmed international observers...
But there is pressure within Israel for the government to continue its campaign, and perhaps topple Hamas altogether. That would almost certainly require a ground operation, which would be likely to raise the death toll substantially on both sides.
"There is no way to take Hamas out without going into Gaza. The problem is the price," said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli major general..."
CNN: to protect against retaliatory violence, Israel closes West Bank entries, men under 50 prevented from entering Jerusalem mosques
CSM: conflict with Gaza may be shifting Israeli opinion leftward, before February's parliamentary elections
IHT: foreign journalists still not allowed into Gaza
WP: Iraqis take control of Green Zone as part of security handover; al-Maliki declares sovereignty restored, but uncertainty abounds
NYT: some violence during handover, including 24 Iraqi tribal leaders killed at a meeting to discuss national reconciliation efforts
LAT: what the transition looks like on the ground: "Sometimes the Americans lead, other times the Iraqis."
"With this relationship you have one battalion commander, an Iraqi battalion commander in the lead. He has an American commander to advise him," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Richardson...
U.S. officials say they need their own combat formations out with the Iraqis in order to help mentor them in all aspects of soldiering. They think such "partner units" will be necessary even after June 30, when the security accord calls for all U.S. forces to leave Iraq's cities."
BBC: US soldiers will be playing by new rules
"Iraqis now have the right to prosecute US soldiers for any crimes committed while off-base and off-duty..."
Gdn: Iraqis take over camp of Iranian dissidents, tell them it's time to go
"US troops disarmed the opposition group known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) after the 2003 invasion. They removed hundreds of armoured vehicles donated by Saddam Hussein but kept the camp intact because some Bush administration officials allegedly saw the MEK as a potential tool for regime change in Iran."
WP: reflecting on the next steps
AP: US preparing for 20,000-strong troop surge in southern Afghanistan...
NYT: ...and seeking new supply routes through Central Asia, as alternatives to the Khyber Pass in Pakistan.
"More than 80 percent of the supplies for American and allied forces in Afghanistan now flow through Pakistan... Khyber and the narrow highway that winds through it were once relatively safe, guarded by tribes paid by the Pakistani government that were subject to collective punishment for crimes against travelers, no matter who committed them. But this year militants, including forces led by an upstart lieutenant to the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, have largely taken over the area....
The officials said delicate negotiations were under way not only with the Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan but also with Russia, to work out the details of new supply routes... But the new supply arrangements could leave the United States more reliant on cooperation from authoritarian countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which have poor records on democracy and human rights."
NYT: the Taliban kills 20 Afghan police officers, targets high-profile defector in Musa Qala, Helmand Province.
"The attack on Mullah Salam was emblematic of the fight for Musa Qala, long a Taliban stronghold and a center for opium smuggling... [It] was precipitated by a last-minute switch of allegiance by one of the area’s police chiefs, Abdul Manan, who took 15 of his gunmen with him. Mr. Manan and his men joined the attack against his former boss."
Manan explained the reason for his shift in allegiance: "I saw the bad behavior of infidels, I saw the bad behavior of Afghan forces, so that’s why I joined the Taliban... It was a shame working with this government, which seeks the support of non-Muslims. I am a Muslim, and I should support Muslims. I will carry on jihad against them in the future."
NYT: corruption in Afghanistan worsening, "contributing to the collapse of public confidence in [the Karzai] government and to the resurgence of the Taliban"
NYT: Army-wide review possible of violence committed by soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan
"Focusing attention on soldiers charged with killings is a shift for the military, which since the start of the war in Iraq has largely deflected any suggestion that combat could be a factor in violent behavior among some returning service members..."
Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, responsible for a similar inquiry in Colorado, said the Army is "looking for a trend, something that happened through their life cycle that might have contributed to this, something we could have seen coming."
NYT: Sri Lankan military takes Kilinochchi, rebel capital; suicide attack killing 3 in Colombo is assumed retaliation
"Over the last several months, the military has advanced steadily into rebel-held territory, first sweeping the L.T.T.E. away from the northwestern coast and then pushing them further into the northeast.
As the fighting has spread, more and more civilians have been displaced from their homes, cornered deeper into rebel-held areas and forced to sleep in temples and schools and some only in makeshift lean-tos in paddy fields. The United Nations has been allowed to send food rations to what it estimates to be over 200,000 civilians displaced by the war...
The test now is whether the government, now that it seems to have cornered the rebels militarily, can deliver a political solution acceptable to its Tamil minority."
Reuters: possible effects for the future of the Tamil Tigers
"The diplomatic currency on which the Tigers had long traded -- that they are defending a minority -- suffered in December when Human Rights Watch accused them of mistreating and forcibly recruiting the Tamils they say they represent. Many analysts say Prabhakaran may order bombings or air raids in Colombo, but will not be able to reverse military gains as spectacularly as he did in the 1980s and 1990s. The military and analysts expect the Tigers to increasingly go underground as they lose turf, changing back into the guerrilla group they started as and away from the conventional force they have become. In a possible sign of things to come, a suspected rebel suicide bomber killed three airmen in Colombo hours after Kilinochchi fell."
Gdn: reminds us that the government captured Kilinochchi before and the Tigers took it back; suggests the military's next major target likely to be Mullaitivu port
CNN: terrorist attacks in India kill 5; United Liberation Front of Asom suspected author
NYT: after the resignation of Somalia's president, new opportunity or status quo?
"The scramble to succeed Mr. Yusuf could set off an ugly clan-based political melee. By contrast, the prime minister and other top Somali officials could give the post to a moderate Islamist leader, who might be the unifying figurehead that Somalia so desperately needs.
Or it may simply be too late because so much of the country has already fallen into the hands of powerful, hard-line Islamists who behead opponents and have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who said she had been raped."
BBC: the International Maritime Bureau says anti-piracy efforts off Somalia are working...
LAT: ...as an Egyptian ship is seized and Malaysia comes to the rescue of an Indian tanker
CSM: China sees this as a chance to boost its naval power
NYT: the LRA massacres some 200 people in Congo
"[T]he rebels are known as excellent jungle fighters. They often carry solar panels on their backs to power their satellite phones and they can live on very little food and water. In the past several weeks, they seemed to have eluded the government troops and airstrikes.
In the process, they have raided several Congolese villages, possibly to signal that they are still a lethal force to be reckoned with. According to United Nations officials, the rebels struck a village called Faradje on Thursday, killing 40 people. Over the next two days, they attacked two more villages, Doruma and Gurba, killing 149 more people.
Ugandan military officials have said that most of the victims were women and children, who were cut into pieces. A rebel spokesman denied responsibility for the killings, telling Agence France-Presse that the rebels were not in the area."
LAT: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev eliminates jury trials for "crimes against the state"
"The law does away with jury trials for a range of offenses, leaving people accused of treason, revolt, sabotage, espionage or terrorism at the mercy of three judges rather than a panel of peers. Critics say the law is dangerous because judges in Russia are vulnerable to manipulation and intimidation by the government."
New Yorker: challenges facing aid workers in eastern Chad
NYT: Israeli military claims Rayyan was one of Hamas' "most extreme" leaders; that his house stored weapons, had a secret tunnel and served as a communications center. But what's next?
"Israel’s stated goal for its operation is to halt the rocket fire from Gaza and to create a new security situation in southern Israel, where three civilians and a soldier have been killed in rocket attacks in the past six days... But in including symbols of the government among its targets, Israel seemed to be blurring the lines. On Thursday, Israeli warplanes and naval forces bombed the legislative building — a Gaza landmark — and the Ministry of Justice, the Israeli military said."
In Paris, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rejected a French proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire: “There is no humanitarian crisis in the strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.”
Gdn: the UN would disagree
"Much of Gaza's public infrastructure has been destroyed and the territory is in a "critical emergency" after seven days of devastating bombing with air strikes averaging one every 20 minutes, the UN said yesterday... "By any definition this is a humanitarian crisis and more," said Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinians. He said there had been on average one air strike every 20 minutes since the bombing began, intensifying at night and covering the whole Gaza Strip."
NYT: more on Gaza's tunnels
Gdn: interactive overview of Israeli air attacks during the conflict's first days and Israel's main political and military options
"Israel says Hamas has been weakened and is facing popular discontent but does not claim it is about to be overthrown. Barring such a drastic development the most likely scenario for the end of this crisis remains a more sustainable ceasefire than the one that ended on December 19. But as Ma'ariv's Shelah put it: "Each side wants the other to reach that point on their knees."
Gdn: poll shows that 52% of Israelis support airstrikes, 19% back a land invasion, and only 20% want a ceasefire
WP: Israeli ground invasion seems more likely as weather clears up, troops amass on border
"Analysts expect Israel to seek a truce with Hamas on terms more favorable to the Jewish state than the ones under the six-month deal brokered by Egypt that expired in mid-December.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Thursday floated the idea of using international monitors, or even armed forces, to ensure that any future cease-fire holds. Israel has indicated it would welcome unarmed international observers...
But there is pressure within Israel for the government to continue its campaign, and perhaps topple Hamas altogether. That would almost certainly require a ground operation, which would be likely to raise the death toll substantially on both sides.
"There is no way to take Hamas out without going into Gaza. The problem is the price," said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli major general..."
CNN: to protect against retaliatory violence, Israel closes West Bank entries, men under 50 prevented from entering Jerusalem mosques
CSM: conflict with Gaza may be shifting Israeli opinion leftward, before February's parliamentary elections
IHT: foreign journalists still not allowed into Gaza
WP: Iraqis take control of Green Zone as part of security handover; al-Maliki declares sovereignty restored, but uncertainty abounds
NYT: some violence during handover, including 24 Iraqi tribal leaders killed at a meeting to discuss national reconciliation efforts
LAT: what the transition looks like on the ground: "Sometimes the Americans lead, other times the Iraqis."
"With this relationship you have one battalion commander, an Iraqi battalion commander in the lead. He has an American commander to advise him," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Richardson...
U.S. officials say they need their own combat formations out with the Iraqis in order to help mentor them in all aspects of soldiering. They think such "partner units" will be necessary even after June 30, when the security accord calls for all U.S. forces to leave Iraq's cities."
BBC: US soldiers will be playing by new rules
"Iraqis now have the right to prosecute US soldiers for any crimes committed while off-base and off-duty..."
Gdn: Iraqis take over camp of Iranian dissidents, tell them it's time to go
"US troops disarmed the opposition group known as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) after the 2003 invasion. They removed hundreds of armoured vehicles donated by Saddam Hussein but kept the camp intact because some Bush administration officials allegedly saw the MEK as a potential tool for regime change in Iran."
WP: reflecting on the next steps
AP: US preparing for 20,000-strong troop surge in southern Afghanistan...
NYT: ...and seeking new supply routes through Central Asia, as alternatives to the Khyber Pass in Pakistan.
"More than 80 percent of the supplies for American and allied forces in Afghanistan now flow through Pakistan... Khyber and the narrow highway that winds through it were once relatively safe, guarded by tribes paid by the Pakistani government that were subject to collective punishment for crimes against travelers, no matter who committed them. But this year militants, including forces led by an upstart lieutenant to the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, have largely taken over the area....
The officials said delicate negotiations were under way not only with the Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan but also with Russia, to work out the details of new supply routes... But the new supply arrangements could leave the United States more reliant on cooperation from authoritarian countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which have poor records on democracy and human rights."
NYT: the Taliban kills 20 Afghan police officers, targets high-profile defector in Musa Qala, Helmand Province.
"The attack on Mullah Salam was emblematic of the fight for Musa Qala, long a Taliban stronghold and a center for opium smuggling... [It] was precipitated by a last-minute switch of allegiance by one of the area’s police chiefs, Abdul Manan, who took 15 of his gunmen with him. Mr. Manan and his men joined the attack against his former boss."
Manan explained the reason for his shift in allegiance: "I saw the bad behavior of infidels, I saw the bad behavior of Afghan forces, so that’s why I joined the Taliban... It was a shame working with this government, which seeks the support of non-Muslims. I am a Muslim, and I should support Muslims. I will carry on jihad against them in the future."
NYT: corruption in Afghanistan worsening, "contributing to the collapse of public confidence in [the Karzai] government and to the resurgence of the Taliban"
NYT: Army-wide review possible of violence committed by soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan
"Focusing attention on soldiers charged with killings is a shift for the military, which since the start of the war in Iraq has largely deflected any suggestion that combat could be a factor in violent behavior among some returning service members..."
Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, responsible for a similar inquiry in Colorado, said the Army is "looking for a trend, something that happened through their life cycle that might have contributed to this, something we could have seen coming."
NYT: Sri Lankan military takes Kilinochchi, rebel capital; suicide attack killing 3 in Colombo is assumed retaliation
"Over the last several months, the military has advanced steadily into rebel-held territory, first sweeping the L.T.T.E. away from the northwestern coast and then pushing them further into the northeast.
As the fighting has spread, more and more civilians have been displaced from their homes, cornered deeper into rebel-held areas and forced to sleep in temples and schools and some only in makeshift lean-tos in paddy fields. The United Nations has been allowed to send food rations to what it estimates to be over 200,000 civilians displaced by the war...
The test now is whether the government, now that it seems to have cornered the rebels militarily, can deliver a political solution acceptable to its Tamil minority."
Reuters: possible effects for the future of the Tamil Tigers
"The diplomatic currency on which the Tigers had long traded -- that they are defending a minority -- suffered in December when Human Rights Watch accused them of mistreating and forcibly recruiting the Tamils they say they represent. Many analysts say Prabhakaran may order bombings or air raids in Colombo, but will not be able to reverse military gains as spectacularly as he did in the 1980s and 1990s. The military and analysts expect the Tigers to increasingly go underground as they lose turf, changing back into the guerrilla group they started as and away from the conventional force they have become. In a possible sign of things to come, a suspected rebel suicide bomber killed three airmen in Colombo hours after Kilinochchi fell."
Gdn: reminds us that the government captured Kilinochchi before and the Tigers took it back; suggests the military's next major target likely to be Mullaitivu port
CNN: terrorist attacks in India kill 5; United Liberation Front of Asom suspected author
NYT: after the resignation of Somalia's president, new opportunity or status quo?
"The scramble to succeed Mr. Yusuf could set off an ugly clan-based political melee. By contrast, the prime minister and other top Somali officials could give the post to a moderate Islamist leader, who might be the unifying figurehead that Somalia so desperately needs.
Or it may simply be too late because so much of the country has already fallen into the hands of powerful, hard-line Islamists who behead opponents and have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who said she had been raped."
BBC: the International Maritime Bureau says anti-piracy efforts off Somalia are working...
LAT: ...as an Egyptian ship is seized and Malaysia comes to the rescue of an Indian tanker
CSM: China sees this as a chance to boost its naval power
NYT: the LRA massacres some 200 people in Congo
"[T]he rebels are known as excellent jungle fighters. They often carry solar panels on their backs to power their satellite phones and they can live on very little food and water. In the past several weeks, they seemed to have eluded the government troops and airstrikes.
In the process, they have raided several Congolese villages, possibly to signal that they are still a lethal force to be reckoned with. According to United Nations officials, the rebels struck a village called Faradje on Thursday, killing 40 people. Over the next two days, they attacked two more villages, Doruma and Gurba, killing 149 more people.
Ugandan military officials have said that most of the victims were women and children, who were cut into pieces. A rebel spokesman denied responsibility for the killings, telling Agence France-Presse that the rebels were not in the area."
LAT: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev eliminates jury trials for "crimes against the state"
"The law does away with jury trials for a range of offenses, leaving people accused of treason, revolt, sabotage, espionage or terrorism at the mercy of three judges rather than a panel of peers. Critics say the law is dangerous because judges in Russia are vulnerable to manipulation and intimidation by the government."
New Yorker: challenges facing aid workers in eastern Chad
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