untold horror [only the beginning]

NYRB: the Holocaust was worse than you thought
The very reasons that we know something about Auschwitz warp our understanding of the Holocaust: we know about Auschwitz because there were survivors, and there were survivors because Auschwitz was a labor camp as well as a death factory. These survivors were largely West European Jews, because Auschwitz is where West European Jews were usually sent. After World War II, West European Jewish survivors were free to write and publish as they liked, whereas East European Jewish survivors, if caught behind the iron curtain, could not...

By 1943 and 1944, when most of the killing of West European Jews took place, the Holocaust was in considerable measure complete. Two thirds of the Jews who would be killed during the war were already dead by the end of 1942. The main victims, the Polish and Soviet Jews, had been killed by bullets fired over death pits or by carbon monoxide from internal combustion engines pumped into gas chambers at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor in occupied Poland.

Auschwitz as symbol of the Holocaust excludes those who were at the center of the historical event. The largest group of Holocaust victims—religiously Orthodox and Yiddish-speaking Jews of Poland, or, in the slightly contemptuous German term, Ostjuden—were culturally alien from West Europeans, including West European Jews. To some degree, they continue to be marginalized from the memory of the Holocaust...

An adequate vision of the Holocaust would place Operation Reinhardt, the murder of the Polish Jews in 1942, at the center of its history. Polish Jews were the largest Jewish community in the world, Warsaw the most important Jewish city. This community was exterminated at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor. Some 1.5 million Jews were killed at those three facilities, about 780,863 at Treblinka alone. Only a few dozen people survived these three death facilities. Be zec, though the third most important killing site of the Holocaust, after Auschwitz and Treblinka, is hardly known. Some 434,508 Jews perished at that death factory, and only two or three survived...

All in all, as many if not more Jews were killed by bullets as by gas, but they were killed by bullets in easterly locations that are blurred in painful remembrance...By the end of 1941, the Germans (along with local auxiliaries and Romanian troops) had killed a million Jews in the Soviet Union and the Baltics. That is the equivalent of the total number of Jews killed at Auschwitz during the entire war. By the end of 1942, the Germans (again, with a great deal of local assistance) had shot another 700,000 Jews, and the Soviet Jewish populations under their control had ceased to exist...

In shorthand, then, the Holocaust was, in order: Operation Reinhardt, Shoah by bullets, Auschwitz; or Poland, the Soviet Union, the rest. Of the 5.7 million or so Jews killed, roughly 3 million were pre-war Polish citizens, and another 1 million or so pre-war Soviet citizens: taken together, 70 percent of the total. (After the Polish and Soviet Jews, the next-largest groups of Jews killed were Romanian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak. If these people are considered, the East European character of the Holocaust becomes even clearer.)
NYRB: (podcast interview with historian Tim Snyder)

Gdn: alleged Nazi death facility guard to stand trial in Germany
Demjanjuk has claimed he was a Red Army soldier who was a prisoner of war, and that he never hurt anyone.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by US justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID card identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor camp and information that he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki in Poland.

BBC: violence in the Northern Caucuses

AP: presidential elections held in the DRC, opposition boycotts
Few took part in demonstrations called by the opposition in the lead-up to the vote, but there was apathy among many of the 2.2 million eligible voters.

Mr. Sassou-Nguesso, who has attracted large crowds at campaign rallies and told his followers not to fear political violence, voted under a heavy security presence.

He has been in and out of power since a 1979 coup, losing multiparty elections in 1992 before sweeping back into power in a war that destroyed much of the capital, Brazzaville, in 1997. He won the election in 2002, when his main rivals were barred or withdrew, citing irregularities.

LAT: contemporary child slavery in Ghana


LAT: militarization and murder in Mexican cities
The offensive [against drug cartels] has exposed corruption so widespread that key institutions, from police forces to city halls, appear rotten to the core. And a battered society has grown increasingly worried about the effects of the massive military deployment on its democracy...

By disrupting the cartels' operations, the offensive intensified turf struggles among the traffickers. About 11,000 people, some of them bystanders, have died in the violence...

More than 45,000 troops have been deployed in these 2 1/2 years to hot spots across the nation. It's not just boots on the ground: Army generals and colonels have taken command of law enforcement in seven states and, from Juarez to Tijuana to Cancun, have supplanted civilian authority...

In November, killers were able to break into the police radio frequency and play narcocorrido music [a style of music associated with, and often commissioned by, narcotraffickers] as a sign an officer had been killed, or was about to be. Now, officials are developing a secure radio system...

Troops were dispatched in February this year to the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico's wealthiest and long a symbol of relative stability. Traffickers quickly mobilized low-level dealers and their families to protest the military presence and to create the impression that the traffickers had a broad social base. Monterrey, the capital, and other cities were paralyzed for days...

A politician from the Monterrey area's richest district was caught on tape describing the power of the drug lords. Mauricio Fernandez is heard saying that the area was relatively peaceful because the Beltran Leyva cartel wanted it that way.

"Their families live here," he said. "You don't think it's the police [that maintain order], do you?"


WP: Marines with a new mandate in Helmand
But employing U.S. forces to restore a sense of normalcy in a country ravaged by 30 years of war involves a series of assumptions and a set of challenges that are already proving more complicated than mounting hunt-and-kill missions against the Taliban. Will residents want the Marines to stick around? Will those who do be convinced that the Americans will stay until security improves? Will residents trust the local leaders -- including the police chief, whom one Marine officer calls "the Tony Soprano of Nawa" -- to run the town better than the Taliban?...

Although he is now in a different country, with different traditions and a different insurgency, [Nicholson, the troop commander] nonetheless sees lessons from Anbar that can be applied to Helmand. At the top of his list is the need for more indigenous security forces...

Nicholson had wanted his troops to conduct every patrol and man every checkpoint with members of the Afghan National Army, largely because people here take less umbrage at being searched by fellow Afghans, and Afghan soldiers have a keener sense of who ought to be searched. But plans to partner with the Afghan army have been scaled back because the Marines have been allotted only about 400 Afghan soldiers instead of the several thousand Nicholson had sought.

He has been promised more troops, but they will not start rolling in until next year. In the interim, he has asked his superiors for permission to arm young men and train them to serve as a local protection force. It is similar to the Sons of Iraq initiative the Marines created in Anbar that resulted in locals turning against foreign fighters in the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

But senior commanders have shown no sign of approving the request. They feel Helmand has too many overlapping tribal rivalries. Arming groups of young men could exacerbate tensions and lead some factions to turn to the Taliban for protection.

NYT: more on Tamils still in IDP/internment camps
“We were liberated,” [a Tamil civil servant] said in an interview at one of the sprawling, closed camps set up here to house those displaced in the war against the rebel group, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. “Now we are prisoners again. I lost everything in this war. The Tigers killed my son. I lost my property. Now I have lost my freedom, too.”

Hundreds of thousands of Tamils remain locked in camps almost entirely off limits to journalists, human rights investigators and political leaders. The Sri Lankan government says that the people in the camps are a security risk because Tamil Tiger fighters are hiding among them...

“Perversely, if we keep helping we become the jailer of these people,” said one diplomat from a country that is helping pay for the relief effort.

AJE: Naxalites attack police in Chhattisgarh, India

spin [get convinced]

AP: al-Shabaab beheads 7
The public killings in the southwestern town of Baidoa followed weeks of fierce fighting as the Islamists try to seize Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, amid mounting concerns about the influx of hundreds of foreign fighters to the failed state.
NYT: some fighters recruited among Somali immigrants in the US
They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, embracing basketball and the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: one planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur...

The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber...

The men appear to have been motivated by a complex mix of politics and faith, and their communications show how some are trying to recruit other young Americans to their cause...

Most of the men are Somali refugees who left the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in two waves, starting in late 2007. While religious devotion may have predisposed them to sympathize with the Islamist cause in Somalia, it took a major geopolitical event — the Ethiopian invasion of their homeland in 2006 — to spur them to join what they saw as a legitimate resistance movement, said friends of the men.

For many of the men, the path to Somalia offered something personal as well — a sense of adventure, purpose and even renewal. In the first wave of Somalis who left were men whose uprooted lives resembled those of immigrants in Europe who have joined the jihad. They faced barriers of race and class, religion and language...

Even among the world’s jihadists, the young men from Minneapolis are something of an exception: in their instant messages and cellphone calls, they seem caught between inner-city America and the badlands of Africa, pining for Starbucks one day, extolling the virtues of camel’s milk and Islamic fundamentalism the next...

They cut their hair at Somali barber shops, prayed at Somali mosques and organized themselves along the same clan lines that had divided them for decades, calling on tribal elders to settle family disputes and community rifts...

Developments in the homeland, followed obsessively by the adults, held little interest among teenagers. They rolled their eyes at the older men known as “the sitting warriors,” who debated clan politics with such gusto at one Starbucks that the staff bought a decibel meter to ensure that the noise did not rise above legal limits...

Of the estimated 100,000 Somalis in the United States, more than 60 percent live in poverty, according to recent census data.

After graduating from high school in 2000, Mr. Ahmed [the suicide bomber] seemed to flounder, taking community college classes while working odd jobs, friends said. But he had done better than many peers, who turned to crime and gangs like Murda Squad and Rough Tough Somalis...

By 2004, Mr. Ahmed had found a new circle of friends. These religious young men, pegged as “born-agains” or “fundis,” set themselves apart by their dress. Their trousers had gone from sagging to short, emulating the Prophet Muhammad, who was said to have kept his clothes from touching the ground...

Spurred by a newfound sense of nationalism [after Ethiopia invaded Somalia], college students distributed T-shirts emblazoned with the Somali flag and held demonstrations during a frigid Minnesota winter.

The protests took on a religious dimension as well. While the United States had defended the Ethiopian invasion as a front in the global war on terrorism, many Somalis saw it as a Christian crusade into a Muslim land. They were outraged at reports of Ethiopian troops raping Somali women, looting mosques and killing civilians...

If the Ethiopians were seen as infidel invaders, an insurgent group known as the Shabaab — “youth,” in Arabic — was emerging as “freedom fighters.” In its online propaganda, the Shabaab conflated nationalist sentiments with religious ideology, following a tactic honed by Al Qaeda...

The recruitment of the Twin Cities men can be traced to a group of Somali immigrants from Northern Europe and other countries who, in 2005, traveled to Somalia to fight with the Islamist movement, a senior law enforcement official said. A handful of those men later went to Minneapolis, the official said, and helped persuade the first large group from the Twin Cities to leave for Somalia starting in late 2007...

If the first men who left for Somalia had struggled to find their place in America, the boys to follow were “our best kids,” in the words of one uncle...

“They saw it as their duty to go and fight,” the friend said. “If it was just nationalism, they could give money. But religion convinced them to sacrifice their whole life.”...

By January, most of the men were at a training camp in southern Somalia, following a strict routine that Mr. Hassan and others described to their Minneapolis friends in phone calls. They woke before dawn to pray and study the Koran. They engaged in rigorous training, running obstacle courses and learning to make bombs...

The manager of University Travel Services said that since November, he had turned away at least 20 men looking to buy tickets to Somalia, adding that the requests had slowed considerably. Meanwhile, some Somali parents in the Twin Cities have taken to hiding their sons’ passports...

For many older Somalis in Minnesota, the deepest mystery is why so many young refugees would risk their lives and futures to return to a country that their parents struggled to leave.

AJE: UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, accuses DRC military of human rights violations
The Congolese army, which is partly comprised of former rebels, has repeatedly been accused of rape, pillage and murder...

MONUC backs the army's operations against the FDLR, seen as a root cause of the violence in eastern Congo.

But aid agencies have criticised the drives for sparking rebel reprisals on local civilians rather than stabilising the situation.

NYT: Baluchistan Liberation Army seems to gain political ground in separatist war as Pakistani intelligence agency cracks down
Baluch nationalists and some Pakistani politicians say the Baluch conflict holds the potential to break the country apart — Baluchistan makes up a third of Pakistan’s territory — unless the government urgently deals with years of pent up grievances and stays the hand of the military and security services.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Baluch were rounded up in a harsh regime of secret detentions and torture under President Pervez Musharraf, who left office last year. Human rights groups and Baluch activists say those abuses have continued under President Asif Ali Zardari, despite promises to heal tensions...

Schoolchildren still refuse to sing the national anthem at assemblies, instead breaking into a nationalist Baluch song championing the armed struggle for independence, teachers and parents said.

For the first time, women, traditionally secluded in Baluch society, have joined street protests against the continuing detentions of nationalist figures. Graffiti daubed on walls around this town call for independence and guerrilla war, which persists in large parts of the province.

The nationalist opposition stems from what it sees as the forcible annexation of Baluchistan by Pakistan 62 years ago at Pakistan’s creation. But much of the popular resentment stems from years of economic and political marginalization, something President Zardari promised to remedy but has done little to actually address.
AJE: conditions insecure for return of displaced Swat residents

AJE: displaced Sri Lankans - mostly Tamils - continue to suffer, die in camps

NYT: map of China's ethnic groups
NYT: bureaucrat manages the ethnic conflict in western China
Mr. Wang, 64, the Communist Party secretary and absolute power in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, is largely unknown outside China, and until lately stayed in the shadows even at home. But China’s leadership elite, and perhaps especially his patron, President Hu Jintao, have put their faith in him: they have let him run Xinjiang for 15 years, well beyond the usually strict limit of a decade in one powerful post. They have elevated him to the Politburo, the ruling party’s inner sanctum.

They have made him their go-to expert on policies toward minorities, which account for the more than 100 million of China’s 1.3 billion citizens who are not ethnically classified as Han. Those in power are reputed to have given him leading roles on senior advisory groups that coordinate and oversee ethnic policies...

Iron fist and velvet glove, he has suppressed Islam, welcomed industry, marginalized the Uighur language, built roads and rail links to the outside world, and spied on, arrested and jailed countless minority citizens in the name of stopping terrorism and subsuming Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) into a greater China.

Even his detractors allow that he has done a masterful job. His nickname is “the stability secretary” — a tribute to his ability to step into chaos and haul it to order.
AJE: mosques in Urumqi defy order to close
It was not clear whether the decision to hold prayers at the mosques was a change of policy or whether the mosques were opened because crowds had gathered outside.


BBC: more than 500 Srebrenica victims buried, 14 years later
Some 8,000 Bosniak Muslims, mainly men and boys, were killed by Bosnian Serbs near the town of Srebrenica in 1995 and buried in mass graves.

About 5,000 of the victims have been identified to date..

Ranging in age from 14 to 72, most of latest victims to be buried were found in secondary mass graves where they had been moved from initial burial sites in a bid by Serb troops to cover up war crimes...

Gen Ratko Mladic, who led the Bosnian Serb troops involved in the killings, remains in hiding. He is said to be in Serbia.

LAT: in Honduras, old tactic for new politics
In some ways, it was a throwback to the old Latin America, when coups and men in uniform more often than not decided who ruled. But it was also emblematic of a struggle underway today on the continent, where a crop of leftist leaders with authoritarian tendencies have risen to power through elections, defied the status quo and tested the bounds of democracy.

Ideology might not have been important to Zelaya, but it was to his inner circle, whose members traced their roots to Honduras' small radical left that emerged in the 1970s. They had gone to university together, fought against the brutal military dictatorships of the day, suffered persecution. Eventually they went into human rights or became lawyers, but didn't abandon their goals.

They helped coax Zelaya to the left, and last year he stepped firmly into the Chavez camp by joining a group of Latin America's leftist presidents formed five years ago by the Venezuelan leader and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

With the old left gaining power, the old right leapt into action, with businessmen and the news media at their service, hitting back at Zelaya relentlessly.

Then came an old trauma. Zelaya began speaking of changing the constitution, and his enemies decided he was making a move to end term limits and so he could stay in office -- much as Chavez had done in Venezuela.

The Honduran Constitution bars presidential reelection, a provision born of a history replete with rulers who overstayed their welcome. Most famously, Tiburcio Carias, a military man with close ties to the foreign-owned fruit companies that made Honduras the original banana republic, rewrote the constitution to stay in office from 1933 to 1949...

Ignoring an appeals court ruling that again declared the June 28 vote illegal, Zelaya announced that the army would help with the election by distributing and collecting ballot boxes.

This threw the army command into turmoil: It was being tasked to carry out an operation that had been judged illegal.

On Thursday, June 25, troops deployed throughout the capital as Congress met to depose Zelaya. Politicians, including Micheletti, worked to put together the legal and constitutional cover to remove a president who was breaking the law...

Even among some who supported the removal of Zelaya, the decision to expel him went beyond the pale, and the army's chief juridical advisor now acknowledges that the expulsion was illegal.
WP: freedom of the press under fire
Several countries condemned the events of June 28 as a military coup. But in Honduras, some of the most popular and influential television stations and radio networks blacked out coverage or adhered to the de facto government's line that Manuel Zelaya's overthrow was not a coup but a legal "constitutional substitution," press freedom advocates and Honduran journalists said.

Meanwhile, soldiers raided the offices of radio and TV stations loyal to Zelaya, shutting down their signals. Alejandro Villatoro, 52, the owner of Radio Globo, said soldiers broke down doors and dismantled video surveillance cameras.

LAT: advisor to Khamenei recommends tolerance of dissent
"We cannot order public opinion to get convinced," Mohammadian said, according to the Mehr news agency. "Certain individuals are suspicious about the election result, and we have to shed light on the realities and respond to their questions."

Providing an unyielding counterpoint, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firoozabadi, the armed forces chief of staff, issued stern warnings against protesters.

"God has chosen us in military uniform to sacrifice our lives against the enemies," he said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency, or ISNA. "Certain individuals and groups imagine that we will back down if they shout slogans against us. We have come to die, and we have proved our determination during the war with Iraq."

NYT: in the category of least surprising, yet horrifying, revelations: Cheney ordered CIA to hide still-classified spy program from Congress
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy...

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
WP: DOJ investigation into CIA torture not completely ruled out

LAT: Obama visits Ghana

++
Slate: New Haven's finest...example of 'special treatment'? the lead plaintiff in the firefighters' case
The other way to look at Frank Ricci is as a serial plaintiff—one who reacts to professional slights and setbacks by filing suit, threatening to file suit, and more or less complaining his way up the chain of command...When Frank Ricci testifies against Judge Sotomayor, it will be worth recalling that under any other set of facts he would have looked to his GOP sponsors like the kind of unscrupulous professional litigant Rush Limbaugh lives to savage. Is America's conservative movement really ready for an anti-affirmative action hero who has repeatedly relied on the government to intervene on his behalf to win him—and help him keep—a government job?

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.

traditions [co-ed edition]

CSM: former friends make the worst enemies: the 'Haqqani network' in Afghanistan
The Haqqani network is considered the most sophisticated of Afghanistan's insurgent groups. The group is alleged to be behind many high-profile assaults, including a raid on a luxury hotel in Kabul in January 2008 and a massive car bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that left 41 people dead in July 2008.

The group is active in Afghanistan's southeastern provinces – Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Logar, and Ghazni. In parts of Paktika, Khost, and Paktia, they have established parallel governments and control the countryside of many districts. "In Khost, government officials need letters from Haqqani just to move about on the roads in the districts," says Hanif Shah Husseini, a parliamentarian from Khost.

The leadership, according to US and Afghan sources, is based near Miramshah, North Waziristan, in the Pakistani tribal areas. Pakistani authorities and leading Haqqani figures deny this, although former Haqqani fighters say this is indeed the case.

The network is better connected to Pakistani intelligence and Arab jihadist groups than any other Afghan insurgent group, according to American intelligence officials.

These links go back a long way. It was here – in the dusty mountains of Paktia Province, near the Pakistani border – that the group's putative leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, first rose to fame. Born into an influential clan of the Zadran tribe, Mr. Haqqani morphed into a legendary war hero for his exploits against the Russians in the 1980s. Many in the southeastern provinces of the country fondly recall his name, even those who are now in the government...

But for a few months after the US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan, Haqqani was on the fence as to whether to join the new Afghan government or fight against it, according to those who knew him at the time. A series of American bombing raids killed members of Haqqani's family, and he disappeared across the Pakistani border, telling friends that "the Americans won't let me live in peace," according to Mr. Saadullah. American officials, however, countered that he was abetting Al Qaeda fighters in their escape from Afghanistan into Pakistan and was not a neutral figure.
NYT: about those airstrikes: mistakes have been made, report finds
The official said the civilian death toll would probably have been reduced if American air crews and forces on the ground had followed strict rules devised to prevent civilian casualties. Had the rules been followed, at least some of the strikes by American warplanes against half a dozen targets over seven hours would have been aborted...

According to the senior military official, the report on the May 4 raids found that one plane was cleared to attack Taliban fighters, but then had to circle back and did not reconfirm the target before dropping bombs, leaving open the possibility that the militants had fled the site or that civilians had entered the target area in the intervening few minutes.

In another case, a compound of buildings where militants were massing for a possible counterattack against American and Afghan troops was struck in violation of rules that required a more imminent threat to justify putting high-density village dwellings at risk, the official said.

LAT: casualties likely to increase in Afghanistan: McChrystal
"I don't think that the Taliban have any reason right now to turn their back on Al Qaeda," McChrystal said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, his first public remarks since being selected last month to lead an overhauled U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

One reason is that the Taliban is widely perceived in the region as prevailing against coalition forces. He also cited intermarriage among Al Qaeda members and Taliban-connected tribes along the border with Pakistan. "They've created connections that are beyond just organizational," he said.
WSJ: ...apparently accompanied by a new body count policy (though it's unclear how centralized this is)
In recent months, the U.S. command in Afghanistan has begun publicizing every single enemy fighter killed in combat, the most detailed body counts the military has released since the practice fell into disrepute during the Vietnam War.

The practice has revealed deep divides in military circles over the value of keeping such a score in a war being waged not over turf, but over the allegiance of the Afghan people. Does it buck up the troops and the home front to let them know the enemy is suffering, too? Or does the focus on killing distract from the goals of generating legitimacy and economic development?

American commanders have detailed nearly 2,000 insurgent deaths in Afghanistan over the past 14 months. U.S. officers say they've embraced body counts to undermine insurgent propaganda, and stiffen the resolve of the American public...

"Recording an ongoing body count is hardly going to endear us to the people of Afghanistan," says British Royal Navy Capt. Mark Durkin, spokesman for the 42-nation, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, or ISAF...

Even those who endorse the idea face the challenge of actually counting the bodies. Commanders know there's a good deal of uncertainty when firefights often take place at ranges of up to 1,000 yards and end with aerial bombardments. Insurgents frequently remove their dead, in what Lt. Col. Nielson-Green calls the "self-cleaning battlefield."...

Enemy death tolls have been a feature of war ever since armies stuck heads on pikes. They appear in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and in the Old Testament, which enumerates the casualties of King David's wars, including 360 Benjamites, 18,000 Edomites and 22,000 Arameans of Damascus.

In modern warfare, combatants have usually measured success by territory held. German progress during World War II was marked by front lines that advanced east and west across Europe. Allied progress was marked by pushing those lines back toward Berlin from the beaches of Normandy and the suburbs of Moscow.

That changed when the U.S. found itself mired in a guerrilla war in Vietnam, where front lines were blurred and villages taken or lost didn't indicate who was winning, says Dale Andrade, senior historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. "Vietnam was the first war in which the body count became the one and only statistic on which victory was measured," he says...

As the insurgency intensified and American combat deaths rose, however, the U.S.-led military command in Iraq began releasing enemy casualty counts on occasion, generally after a big battle. Sometimes individual units detailed such information in press releases. But the military as a whole had no body-count policy...

In fact, the military kept classified its running tally of enemy deaths in Iraq between June 2003 and September 2007 -- 18,832 -- and only revealed the figure in 2007 when forced to do so under a Freedom of Information Act petition. That number hasn't been publicly updated.

In Afghanistan, counting bodies is now more prevalent than it ever was in Iraq...

Then the publicity battlefield shifted to the issue of civilian casualties. Time and again, American forces found themselves defending against allegations that bad intelligence and reckless tactics caused large-scale civilian casualties. The insurgents' media campaigns were often a step ahead of the U.S., according to U.S. officers, making it difficult for the Americans to debunk what they saw as enemy propaganda...

In October, Col. Julian assumed responsibility for public affairs for a new unified command, U.S. Forces -- Afghanistan, taking over much of the work done by the 101st Airborne. He immediately ordered his staff to get ahead of their Taliban counterparts by reporting enemy casualties, no matter how small. From now on, he decided, news releases would provide ample detail about each fight to add to their credibility.

ALL: tips for American soldiers deploying to Afghanistan (via AM)

A basic understanding of this will assist you in your observations of Afghan behavior. Observations of behavior are critical; your best way to prepare for danger is to be able to recognize what normal looks like. It is only through learning what normal looks like that you will have any hope of recognizing what abnormal looks like. Being able to recognize abnormal behavior or circumstances will help you to stay alive and keep your Soldiers safe. At first, when you arrive, your "Spidey sense" will be alerting you constantly, overloading your mind and your emotions. Relax. Learn. In a short time (2-3 weeks) you will have seen much of Afghan behavior enough to know (mostly) what normal looks like...

Do not confuse illiteracy with stupidity. Afghans very often learn quickly by observation. They have a strong tradition of oral history. Be aware of why they are consummate fence-sitters, the ferocity of their lack of commitment born of a strong survival instinct. Understand that, often, what we see as corruption they see as the price of doing business.

Newsweek: Yemen's attempt to moderate jihadis
Yemen's secret police, under pressure from American officials to crack down on local militants even before the World Trade Center attacks, didn't wait long to scoop him up. In December 2000, al-Bahri was arrested and locked in a small cell in the solitary-confinement wing of Sana's political prison. "I expected the worst torture," he recalled. Instead, one day the door opened and a figure wearing a white pillbox cap and flowing ceremonial robes stepped inside. The man dropped a stack of books—the Qur'an, volumes of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings—on the table. The only weapon he carried was his jambiya, the traditional Yemeni dagger that dangled from his waistband.

The visitor was Hamoud al-Hitar, a local judge who had been enlisted by the Yemeni government to try to reform the country's burgeoning ranks of Islamic militants. Al-Hitar's idea was to engage the prisoners in what he called "theological duels," challenging them to justify their beliefs by citing religious texts. Al-Hitar would then counter with his own usually more moderate interpretation of the same texts. If a militant seemed to be making progress, after a few sessions the judge would offer him a written pledge to sign in which he renounced violence. In exchange, the young jihadist would be given several hundred dollars and granted his freedom. Most, like al-Bahri, were put under a loose "house arrest," which meant that they could travel freely throughout Sana, as long as they checked in regularly with their parole officers. Nearly 400 prisoners attended al-Hitar's classes, repented and were released.

Now that President Barack Obama has pledged to close the prison at Guantána-mo Bay within the year, some Yemeni and American officials want al-Hitar's help again. Nearly half of the Gitmo detainees—about 100 of the 240 still incarcerated—are originally from Yemen. A new Yemeni rehab program would allow Obama to send them home with a measure of political cover—and a scapegoat if things go badly. Last year Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced that he had struck a deal with the United States to build a campus for the returnees, using U.S. funds. When I met with him one recent afternoon, Saleh told me that the Americans had promised him $11 million for the facility. The president insisted that al-Hitar would help direct the new program.

There is only one problem with all this: al-Hitar's program doesn't work. By 2004 at least some of the judge's graduates had begun showing up in Iraq, American officials warned their Yemeni counterparts. Among al-Hitar's students, the program was a joke. "To be frank, everyone was making fun of him," says one former prisoner, who gave his name only as "Abu Hurieh" to avoid drawing renewed attention from the secret police. "We all understood that it was just extortion to take money from the Americans. They were just playing with us." Even Saleh acknowledges that al-Hitar's program was only effective about 60 percent of the time. The flaw, in retrospect, seems obvious: a prisoner will say anything to get out of jail. "If Satan himself told me to sign, I would have," al-Bahri told me. Al-Hitar's program, he explained, "was completely useless."

LAT: US-Philippines partnership 'model' for counterinsurgency
There are about 600 U.S. service members in Manila advising Philippine commanders and staff officers -- a small force that has been able to reduce the influence of the main Muslim militant group, Abu Sayyaf.

America's former role as a colonial ruler of the Philippines has left many Filipinos wary of a large U.S. military presence. Army Col. William Coultrup, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force, said the Americans provide the Philippine military with their experience, resources and intelligence information. But, he said, it is the Filipinos who take the lead.

The Philippines, like Pakistan, has been reluctant to allow large numbers of U.S. troops to operate on its soil. The American forces on the ground are focused on training, not direct military action. Special operations soldiers generally stay off the front lines, and instead advise and train Philippine commanders and their staffs.

When the mission in the Philippines began in 2002, the United States viewed the southern portion of the country, including parts of Mindanao and the Sulu islands, as ungoverned spaces. Abu Sayyaf had ties with Al Qaeda and was using the area to train for attacks against Western targets.

The Philippine armed forces, according to a U.S. military official, were in a "shambles" and unable to counter Abu Sayyaf's advances. Over seven years of training, the Philippine military has grown in capacity.

"They were not looking too good," said a military official. "Now they are carrying on many operations without us."


LAT: protesters against the Taliban and US in Pakistan
While pundits and social critics quite freely attack extremism from the relative safety of Pakistani television studios or opinion pages, hitting the streets, where you're vulnerable to a real attack, is rarer.
WP: Pashtuns hosting the displaced

Because of the culture of extreme hospitality that prevails here, few have lacked for a place to stay. Pashtuns, who predominate in Pakistan's northwest, live by an ancient, unwritten honor code known as Pashtunwali, which dictates that a host must provide shelter, food and water for his guests, no matter how many there are or how long they stay.

In many ways, Pashtunwali has been the refugees' salvation. But it has also become a curse for their hosts, who are silently buckling under the strain.

As civilians continue to flee the scenes of the fighting, aid groups and government officials are concerned that the host communities could also become destabilized as they run out of money and resources trying to help their guests.


WP: violence ahead of elections in Iran
Violence in [Zahedan,] the ethnically mixed city near Iran's border with Pakistan and Afghanistan and bomb threats and attacks on opposition figures elsewhere have ratcheted up tension in the country ahead of a presidential election scheduled for June 12...

On Friday, three people were wounded when gunmen attacked a local campaign headquarters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On Saturday, three men were hanged in Zahedan's central square after being convicted of involvement in the attack on the mosque.

Over the weekend, the city was roiled by rioting following protests against the participation of Sunni religious figures in a memorial service for the Shiite victims of the bombing, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported. According to unofficial sources, several people were killed during the unrest.
NYT: presidential contenders debate
Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister whose moderate views have won him support from other reformers in Iran, including former President Mohammad Khatami, has positioned himself as the strongest challenger to Mr. Ahmadinejad. Support from the Islamic authorities for the president, who is a religious conservative, appears to have weakened, and he is now widely criticized for Iran’s economic malaise.


LAT: Iraqi casualties down, US casualties up last month
Iraqi casualties in May fell by more than half compared with the previous month and were at a record low for the years for which statistics are available, according to figures released Sunday.

The statistics suggested that insurgents have not been able to sustain the onslaught of attacks they mounted in April.

The U.S. military toll, meanwhile, was at its highest level since September, with 24 deaths recorded.


LAT: land rights in Zimbabwe: 'possession if 9/10ths of the law'
The invaders, led by a war veteran named Chimbambira, arrived at Mount Carmel on April 3. There were about 10 young thugs, armed with pellet guns.

But about 150 farmworkers, afraid they would lose their jobs if Campbell left the farm, confronted the invaders and chased them away.

The next morning, a phalanx of riot police arrived and beat or arrested many of the workers. That night the invaders were back, on the Campbells' veranda, singing war songs.
Gdn: at least Mugabe is polite?


LAT: Salvadorans swear in first leftist president
The new president faces a pile of problems, topped by an economic crisis and runaway street crime that has resulted in one of the world's highest homicide rates. Funes will have to navigate between a right-wing opposition that controls Congress and leftist hard-liners within his own party, the FMLN...

Funes has assembled a moderate-looking Cabinet drawn from Salvadoran intellectuals and allies within the FMLN whose views have mellowed since the conflict ended with the signing of peace accords in 1992.


LAT: South Ossetia holds elections
Residents of South Ossetia trooped to the polls Sunday in the first election since Russia and Georgia fought a brief and bitter war over the breakaway republic's fate.

Residents in the rebel territory, which was purged of Georgian troops by Russian intervention and recognized as an independent state by Moscow, cast votes for a 34-seat parliament. Georgia's central government dismissed the balloting as illegal...

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are emotional issues in Georgia, which is now home to refugees from conflicts in both places. The sight of the two territories marching ahead as self-declared countries under the patronage of powerful Russia has led many Georgians to criticize Saakashvili for bringing the country into a losing war.

CSM: diaspora radicals try to keep Tamil separatism alive

AJE: Mauritanian political leaders reach agreement to delay election in bid to get opposition groups to participate

AJE: Madagascar court sentences former leader to prison for corruption


++
BBC: first woman speaker selected in Indian parliament
Ms Kumar, who is from the low-caste Dalit (formerly untouchable) community, called her appointment "historic".

Gdn: women join parliament in Kuwait
All four winners came from the three (of five) primarily urban districts but a fifth woman, lawyer Thekra al-Rashidi, got 6,635 votes in a tribal constituency.

The celebrations were hardly over, however, when a lawyer brought a case against the two second-district winners, Rola and Aseel, for having violated the election law – because they do not veil. A last-minute and vaguely worded add-on to the law requires female – but not male – candidates and elected officials to abide by "Islamic law". What precisely was meant was not clarified at the time but few saw it as more than a demand for separate polling stations for women and men.

WP: woman wins court decision in South Africa, becomes chief
Last year, her six-year battle with a cousin went to South Africa's top court. The cousin said the 70,000-member tribe's tradition of male leadership gave him the right to be hosi, or chief. The court disagreed, citing the Valoyi royal family's decision to give Nwamitwa the throne, and she assumed the job full time last month...

These days, the job of hosi is a constant navigation of old and new. The land on which the Valoyi have lived for five generations, for example, belongs to the tribe's administrative branch. But it is subject to government land-use rules, which is why Nwamitwa brought a municipal official to a recent meeting with her 34 village headmen.

Like many traditional chiefs, Nwamitwa's predecessors generally let residents settle where they wanted, the official explained, pinning up a map inside the tribe's worn conference hall. It was marked "Spatial Development Framework," and its various colors, he told the group, indicated where houses could be built and crops planted...

Nwamitwa said she expects to remain hosi until death, at which point the succession question could resurface. Her only son was killed in a car accident at age 7, and her three daughters are married professionals who, she said, have little interest in the job.

The solution will be based on custom, she said. As hosi, Nwamitwa can marry a woman to bear a child from the "seed" of a man selected from within the royal family. The child would be accepted as Nwamitwa's -- and designated as the next hosi.

But the identity of the child's father would never be revealed, Nwamitwa said with a smile. Because surely that man, she said, "would want to take over."

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NYT: a novel approach to gun control
...I propose curbing gun violence not by further restricting the availability of guns but by expanding and reorienting it. Men would still be forbidden to walk the streets armed, in accordance with current laws, but women would be required to carry pistols in plain sight whenever they are out and about.

Were I to board the subway late at night, around Lincoln Center perhaps, and find it filled with women openly carrying Metropolitan Opera programs and Glock automatics, I’d feel snug and secure. A train packed with armed men would not produce the same comforting sensation. Maybe that’s because men have a disconcerting tendency to shoot people, while women display admirable restraint. Department of Justice figures show that between 1976 and 2005, 91.3 percent of gun homicides were committed by men, 8.7 percent by women.

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BBC: Nigerian masquerades

writers and despots [like recognizes like*]

BBC: Chávez ends 4-day-long television broadcast to celebrate 10th anniversary of Alo Presidente, has spat with Vargas Llosa
The decision to suspend Alo Presidente comes after a series of challenges and counter-challenges about holding a televised debate with the Peruvian writer - and arch-critic of President Chavez - Mario Vargas Llosa.

Mr Vargas Llosa is currently in Venezuela to attend an opposition-led seminar about democracy and authoritarianism in Latin America...

The Venezuelan leader has described his four-day TV extravaganza as a "soap opera", promising that there would be singing, debate and "a little bit of everything".
NYT: while everyone's watching the telenovela, Chávez grabs more control of military
Since February, Mr. Chávez has moved against a wide range of domestic critics, and his efforts in recent weeks to strengthen his grip on the armed forces have led to high-profile arrests and a wave of reassignments.

These are seen here as part of a larger effort by Mr. Chávez to cement loyalty in the military, where some officers are growing resentful at what they see as his micromanagement and politicizing of a proud and relatively independent institution...

In March, Mr. Chávez replaced the chiefs of the army, the air force and the Bolivarian Militia, a Cuban-inspired reserve force created to repel what Mr. Chávez repeatedly raises as the threat of an invasion by the United States.

BBC: writers' glimpses of Nigeria, on 10th anniversary of democracy

BBC: after 100 days, still awaiting substantive change in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's prime minister has set out a bleak assessment of the pace of democratic change in what was once one of Africa's most prosperous nations...Although his party is now part of the government, commentators have warned that the MDC has responsibility without authority.

BBC: Sudanese military takes Darfuri town back from JEM
An army spokesman said Jem had "completely evacuated" the area of Kornoi, 50km (31 miles) from Chad, and retreated towards the border, AFP news agency reports.

Jem seized Kornoi earlier this month and it tried to take an army base at nearby Umm Baru twice last week.

The rebels said they had withdrawn from the area for "humanitarian purposes" to protect the civilian population from air attacks.
WP: astounding one-third of refugees surveyed report or show signs of sexual violence
About half the rapes were carried out in Darfur by Janjaweed militiamen allied with the Sudanese government, and half were assaults by Chadian villagers near the U.N. refugee camp, usually when the women left to search for firewood or herd livestock, according to the report by the U.S.-based group Physicians for Human Rights.

The group reached the 88 women included in the survey through camp leaders and by word of mouth -- a sampling method the report said hinders drawing general conclusions about the prevalence of rape in Darfur or in the Farchana refugee camp in Chad...Further complicating the effort, women displaced inside Darfur live mostly in government-controlled areas and fear reprisal...

As many as 450,000 people have died as a result of the violence, mostly from disease, hunger and malnutrition, and more than 2.5 million have been forced from their homes. About 250,000 have fled into Chad, where they live in refugee camps.
AP: tribal clashes in Kordofan region leave hundreds dead
Tribal clashes over cattle grazing and water rights is common across Sudan, but the violence has grown worse over the years with the number of arms left over from the two-decade long civil war between the north and the south that ended in 2005.

The Messariah and Rezeigat tribes that clashed Tuesday and Wednesday straddle the border region between southern Kordofan and neighboring Darfur, where a separate conflict that has claimed 300,000 lives has raged for more than six years.

Interior Minister Hamed Ibrahim told the Cabinet on Thursday that in addition to the police, 169 tribesman were killed in the fighting, including 89 from the Messariah and 80 from the Rezeigat. Calm has now returned to the area, he was quoted as saying by the state news agency.

A previous round of fighting last year between the two tribes left over 70 from both sides dead, Messariah chief Babou Nimr Mukhtar told The Associated Press.

Mukhtar said fighting began Tuesday when 2,000 Rezeigat gunmen on horseback and in trucks attacked his tribe. Police were deployed to the area to prevent the fighting but were attacked by the Rezeigat, he said.

"Calm is restored. But there is no guarantee it will last," said Mukhtar. He stressed that tribal chiefs, not security forces, were the only ones who could end the rivalry...

Separate tribal clashes in the country's south over the last three months claimed the lives of some 900 people, mostly women and children.

Gdn: report from Mogadishu (spoiler alert: things aren't good)
After the parliament voted to introduce sharia I went back to visit the police officer. He shrugged and smiled when I told him about the debate. "We have always used sharia in our work," he said, handing me a cup of murky tea. "When the whole state is collapsing all that we have is our religion."

He told me he had joined the army in 1970 and then the police just before the collapse of Mogadishu 20 years ago. He had been wearing the same beige uniform ever since. "You are trying to impose law but where is the law when everyone is fighting? When the Ethiopians came those same Islamists that are in the government attacked us every day. They said we were supporting the invaders. In one day 15 shells fell on our police station. Now they are the government hopefully things will be better."...

"This how we establish sharia," the judge told me. "First we establish order and judgment in the middle of the chaos of war and destruction. When we started back in 1996 we were not a political movement. We started as judges to bring justice, then we became a political movement and then we became military." We crossed the basketball pitch of the compound that was once an army college. A lone boot sat in the middle of the pitch. The judge went on: "You know, sharia is fearing God and establishing religion. It's not about chopping hands off. First we establish security and then impose the rulings. It's the fear and hunger and chaos. If I cut the hands of hundreds of thieves I will not bring justice. Feed the hungry first and then punish them if they steal."...

After 20 years people had become used to life without a functioning state, explained one businessman with interests in fuel, mobile telephones and food. "Businessmen learned to do their work without a government. In the port the shipment is downloaded just as if there was a government – only you are the government, so if you have a ship you have to bring your men and your guards and do your work. Amongst the businessmen everything is run through trust – for example, when we need to buy fuel 20 merchants put money together, send it to Dubai, and our Somali friends send us a fuel tanker. Every merchant has his own militia and men who protect his interests. We do business with the government and the Shabaab. Our friends in Dubai are envious of us because we live without a state and we can do trade everywhere without control."

AJE: ongoing protests become clashes between civilians and police in south Yemen
Aden is the former capital of South Yemen, which was united with the north of the country in 1990.

Protesters carried banners with anti-government messages and posters of Ali Nasser Mohammed, the former president of South Yemen.

The death toll since protests started in the south in late April is now 16, including five security personnel.

Socialists, who formerly ruled the south, previously tried to gain secession in 1994, igniting a two-month civil war before the movement was crushed by forces loyal to the government.

Some southerners want independence because of alleged discrimination and neglect.

However, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has give warning that the nation could split up into several entities.


NYT: what unrequitted means during wartime
It goes like this: Boy meets girl. They exchange glances and text messages, the limit of respectable courting here. Then boy asks girl’s father for her hand. Dad turns him down. Boy goes to girl’s house and plants a bomb out front. The authorities call it a “love I.E.D.,” or improvised explosive device, and it is not just an isolated case.

WP: Pakistan military claims control of Mingora
Capturing Mingora, 80 miles north of Islamabad, the capital, has been one of the army's primary objectives. But Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, conceded that the Taliban had not put up a strong fight for the city and that many insurgents probably slipped away. Large parts of Swat remain beyond the government's grip.
LAT: in possible tactical shift, the Taliban targets Pakistan's cities
Only a week ago, the military said it was expecting a long, hard-fought battle with Pakistani Taliban militants who had fortified themselves in the city's hotels and buildings. It now appears that, after initially putting up stiff resistance, many militants chose to flee...

But the militants may have decided to fight another way: seeding fear in other parts of the country through well-coordinated bombing attacks.
WP: meanwhile, insurgent-linked groups offering humanitarian aid to some of the millions displaced from Swat
The government has been overwhelmed by the human tide that has washed over the northwest as about 2 million people have fled fierce clashes in Swat. With Pakistan experiencing its largest exodus since the nation's partition from India in 1947, only a fraction of the displaced civilians are receiving assistance in government-run camps. The rest are fending for themselves or getting help from private charities, including some that are allied with the very forces the Pakistani army is fighting in Swat.

Refugee camps in Pakistan have been prime recruiting grounds for militant groups ever since the Soviet invasion forced millions of Afghans to cross into Pakistan in the 1980s. Now, concern is growing that this latest wave of displacement will create a fresh crop of Pakistanis with grievances against the government and loyalty to groups that seek to undermine the state through violent insurgency.

AP: violence in Afghanistan's western Bala Murghab district; bomb detonated in Kunduz
Northern Afghanistan was once thought to be a peaceful enclave unaffected by rampant Taliban violence in the south and east. But militants have increased attacks in the area in the last two years as the insurgency has spread across the country.

LAT: Azerbaijan enters the fray
The case offers an inside look at one of the stealthy duels being fought by Israel on one side and Hezbollah and Iran on the other in remote locales, from Latin America to Central Asia...

Azerbaijan, a moderate Muslim nation of 8 million, finds itself in a delicate spot. It has strong commercial and diplomatic ties to Iran, on its southern border. About a quarter of Iran's population, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are ethnic Azeris.


AP: battle between Hamas, Palestinian police leave 6 dead
Despite Hamas' threats of reprisals, it was not immediately clear whether it would change its tactic of lying low in the West Bank while it weathers Abbas' crackdown. Since Hamas' Gaza takeover, Abbas' security forces have detained hundreds of Hamas supporters in the West Bank and closed the group's institutions and charities.

The Qalqiliya clash began late Saturday when Palestinian troops surrounded a hideout of Mohammed Samman, a leader of Hamas' military wing, and his assistant, Mohammed Yassin. Both had been on Israel's wanted list for six years, Palestinian security officials said..

Hamas officials in the West Bank said that some 40 loyalists of the group had been arrested in Qalqiliya in the past week as part of the search for the top two fugitives. Some 200 Hamas supporters are in Palestinian Authority custody...

But Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said going after militants is key to one day setting up a Palestinian state. "To build our country and our state, we need to have one authority, one gun, one law," he said.
WP: Obama pushes Israel to stop settlements


BBC: contested statistics in Sri Lanka
The Sri Lankan government has strongly denied allegations that more than 20,000 civilians were killed during its recent onslaught against Tamil rebels.

The figures published in The Times newspaper in the UK - quoting official documents and witness accounts - is far higher than previously thought...

"I am bemused that The Times, like a jilted old woman, is continuing a bitter campaign against Sri Lanka based on unverified figures and unsubstantiated assertions," [Permanent Secretary to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Palitha Kohona] said.

"The simple fact is that Sri Lanka eliminated a detestable terrorist group and in the process rescued over 250,000 hostages held as a human shield by the terrorists."
WP: satellite imagery seem to back the jilted old woman

WP: in Northern Ireland, eleven Protestants arrested in death of Catholic
Kevin McDaid, a plasterer who worked with youths in the community, was beaten to death by a large number of Protestants who drove into a Catholic neighborhood armed with bats and clubs after a soccer match. McDaid had gone into the street to make sure his four children were safe.

A 1998 peace accord known as the Good Friday agreement is often credited with ending the religious violence that had caused more than 3,600 deaths since 1969. But despite enormous political strides, an average of four incidents of sectarian violence or threats are reported to police each day in Northern Ireland. Now, instead of paramilitary groups using rifles and bombs, the incidents often involve youths armed with knives, bats and hate...

The mob Sunday night assembled after the Rangers, a soccer team with a long history of Protestant support, clinched the league championship over archrival Celtic, a team favored by Catholics. Both teams are Scottish, and many of their Northern Irish fans fly or take the boat over to Scotland for every game.

The rivalry between the two teams is a "proxy war" between the two long-feuding groups in Northern Ireland, Shirlow said. He said territorial conflicts continue in working-class neighborhoods where boundaries between Catholics and Protestants are clearly known and often marked by fluttering flags: the Union Jack or the Irish Republic's flag. The wearing of a blue-and-white Rangers scarf or the green-and-white Celtic shirt also distinguishes Catholics from Protestants.

After the championship match that the Rangers won Sunday, a group of fans, many of whom had been drinking, drove in several cars to a Catholic housing estate in Coleraine, a town of 24,000 people 55 miles northwest of Belfast. Witnesses told police they beat up the first people they came across.

McDaid had worked with youths in the community to ease sectarianism and had married a Protestant. His wife was severely beaten and suffered head injuries. Another man, Damien Fleming, was critically injured...

Between April 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, police recorded 1,595 incidents of sectarian violence or threats, a slight rise over the year before. Most are not publicized, and few result in death. The largest category -- nearly 500 reports -- involved "criminal damage," and 287 were assaults...

Catholics accounted for 40 percent of Northern Ireland's 1.7 million people in the 2001 census, while 45 percent considered themselves Protestant. Bew said Protestants would probably remain in the majority for at least another generation. But in many areas, traditional working-class Catholic neighborhoods are expanding because of larger Catholic families and exiting Protestants. In the shrinking Protestant enclaves, some feel threatened and "left behind," Bew said.

LAT: La Familia penetrated state political institutions in Michoacan
A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing an agenda that goes beyond the usual money-only interests of drug cartels...

Just last week it became clear how deeply embedded La Familia is. Federal authorities detained 10 mayors and 20 other local officials as part of a drug investigation, saying the organized-crime group has contaminated city halls across the state. The roundup comes at the height of the electoral season, as Michoacan and the rest of Mexico approach local and national contests July 5.

Dozens of mayors, city hall officials and politicians have been killed or abducted in Michoacan as La Familia has extended its control in the last couple of years...

Unlike some drug syndicates, La Familia goes beyond the production and transport of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine and seeks political and social standing. It has created a cult-like mystique and developed pseudo-evangelical recruitment techniques that experts and law enforcement authorities say are unique in Mexico.

No party has been spared its influence or interference, politicians of all stripes said in a series of interviews conducted before the arrests of the mayors...

La Familia emerged this decade as a local partner of the so-called Gulf cartel, whose operatives were moving into the region along with their ruthless paramilitary force, the Zetas. La Familia and the Zetas gradually muscled out most of the other gangs, and La Familia announced its dominance by tossing five severed heads onto the floor of a dance hall in the Michoacan city of Uruapan in September 2006. The gruesome calling card soon became all too common in areas where drug traffickers settle accounts...

Nonetheless, La Familia is stronger today than ever. It has expanded into the neighboring states of Guerrero, Queretaro and Mexico, which abuts the national capital, Mexico City, while battling remaining pockets of the Gulf cartel.

La Familia also has steadily diversified into counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealerships. The group offers money or demands bribes; increasingly, people in Michoacan pay protection money to La Familia in lieu of taxes to the government...

They recruit at drug rehab centers and indoctrinate followers with an ideology akin to religious fundamentalism, complete with group prayer sessions. Some armed guards wear uniforms with the FM logo, witnesses say. Failure by a recruit to live by the rules is said to be punishable by death.
NYT: being part of una familia has its pay-offs and consequences
NYT: Mexican cartels expanding business in US


Slate: there already are inmates convicted of terrorism in US jails

NYT: the NYC projects where Sotomayor (and Jay-Z, Wesley Snipes, and Marc Anthony) grew up
Slate: status question: can you immigrate from within the Commonwealth?
In the [2001] speech, Sotomayor called her parents "immigrants," but the island they departed has been an American territory for 111 years. Why it has remained so longer than any other overseas possession (save the odd atoll or guano deposit) is an enduring historic puzzle.

Puerto Rico is often described as the world's oldest colony, having recently entered its sixth century under off-island rule. Spanish settlers seized Puerto Rico from the Taíno Indians in 1508, a decade and a half after Christopher Columbus "discovered" it. It remained a Spanish colony until the United States chased Spain out of the neighborhood in the Spanish-American War. That was 1898, the same year the United States acquired the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii became a state. Puerto Rico did not. (Another island acquired in 1898 is Guam, which would share Puerto Rico's 111-year record as a U.S. territory but for its seizure by Japan during World War II.)...

Debate now focuses on whether to continue commonwealth status or to make Puerto Rico a state. Commonwealth status has the advantage of sharply restricting island dwellers' exposure to federal taxation but the disadvantage of limiting their representation in Congress, excluding them from nonprimary presidential elections, and reducing their eligibility for Medicaid and other federal entitlements. Statehood would bring more taxes, more representation, more government benefits, and some loss of cultural identity (including, in all likelihood, additional pressure to make English the island's primary language). During the past 40 years, Puerto Rico has conducted four plebescites on the island's fate.

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NYT: sv mournfully suggests new Cleveland slogan: 'better luck next year'

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*sv has finally gotten to 'the brief wondrous life of oscar wao,' in which she currently delights, and from which this allusion comes: "What is it with Dictators and Writers, anyway? Since before the infamous Caesar-Ovid war they've had beef. Lke the Fantastic Four and Galactus, like the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, like the Teen Titans and Deathstroke, Foreman and Ali, Morrison and Crouch, Sammy and Sergio, they seemed destind to be eternally linked in the Halls of Battle. Rushdie claims that tyrants and scribblers are natural antagonists, but I think that's too simple; it lets writers off pretty easy. Dictators, in my opinion, just know competition when they see it. Same with writers. Like, after all, recognizes like" (p97, fn11). sidenote: he was referring to a dissertation writer in particular.
bonus sidenote: to wit, the ferocity of poets
triple bonus sidenote: Pinochet henchman arrested this week for murder of Jara 36 years ago
Jara, a political songwriter and poet and high-profile supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, was among thousands swept up in the aftermath of Pinochet's CIA-backed coup in September 1973. The author of El cigarrito and Manifiesto was herded into Santiago's football stadium which was used as a mass jail.

Soldiers broke the musician's hands before shooting him in the head and riddling his body with bullets, one of 3,100 murders committed by Pinochet's forces during military rule which lasted until 1990, when democracy returned to the South American country.