war(,) on drugs [uninvited]

Gdn: efforts in Afghanistan hampered by corruption, mismanagement
BBC: ...and drugs - that is, use of opium and marijuana by Afghan police
WP: McKiernan estimates 60,000 US troops will be deployed for 3-4 more years
McKiernan said violence is likely to escalate in Afghanistan as fresh troops expand into insurgent-held areas where the military has little or no presence. "When we do put additional security forces, I would expect to see a temporary time where the level of violence might go up," he said.
WP: 'Human Terrain' researcher killed
Loyd's mission this time, as a researcher on contract to the Pentagon, was to get to know the villagers and their problems, to help the military map out what it called the "human terrain" of Afghanistan and thus improve its ability to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. With two interpreters at her side, she began to ask shoppers about the cost of fuel. One Afghan man, carrying a jug of gasoline, lingered to chat and thanked her for the visit. It was a bright winter day, and the mood in the market seemed relaxed and cordial.

Suddenly, the calm was shattered: According to court documents and government accounts, the man holding the jug abruptly hurled the gasoline at Loyd's face and chest, set her on fire and bolted. She fell to the ground in a fetal position, groaning, in flames. One guard took off after the attacker while the other rolled Loyd into a stream to douse the flames. Police began firing their guns in confusion. One guard, Don Ayala, had cuffed the man and pinned him to the ground when an Afghan interpreter ran over, screaming hysterically that Loyd was burning to death. Ayala turned and shot his prisoner in the head.

That brief flurry of violence has left a lingering trail of tragedy. The attacker died instantly, unable to shed light on his motives or possible conspirators. Ayala, one of three people in Loyd's tight-knit field team, was charged with murder in U.S. federal court and could face 15 years in prison. And Loyd, who had become deeply attached to Afghanistan, died 10,000 miles away in a San Antonio Army hospital, finally succumbing to her burns Jan. 7..

Although the Human Terrain System was designed by an anthropologist, it was ardently opposed by groups of social scientists who believe the military should not use scholars as collaborators in combat. After the program started in 2005, it generated an avalanche of heated debate in academic circles and online, which has intensified since Loyd's death.

"In theory, it is a good idea. . . . In practice, however, it has been a disaster," the magazine Nature said a recent editorial, noting that Loyd was the third civilian casualty on a Human Terrain mission in the past year. While conceding that scientific insights "have much to offer strategies in a war zone," the editors added that unless the program can be revamped to lessen "deadly mistakes, it needs to be closed down."...

"Paula died, and others will die. It is very hard to accept, but we need more people like her," [Brig. Phil Jones, an officer at the British Embassy] said. "Otherwise we will just be out there, blundering around in our diving boots and stomping on eggshells."
abu muquwama: an interview with Craig Mullaney on his new book
I had not expected to find the common ground in my interactions with local Afghans to be Bollywood pop culture. The larger value of graduate school and travel for me was changing my perspective. Traditionally, lieutenants and NCOs were handed missions / problems and they were expected to solve them within given parameters. "Answer this question. Solve this problem." In today's operating environment, and particularly in a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the hard part is defining the question and problem in the first place. Studying and traveling abroad continually exposed me to ambiguous, uncertain, and unscripted environments. I couldn't have asked for better preparation for the unfamiliarity of rural Afghanistan.

CSM: adjusting to new dynamics in Iraq
Ind: real estate booming in Baghdad; segregation sticking
Until recently anybody wanting to sell a house in Baghdad avoided putting up “for sale” signs because they were closely watched by gangs who would wait for the purchase to go through and then kidnap the seller or one of his children so they could demand the selling price as ransom.

House prices have risen by 50 per cent in many parts of central Baghdad during the past year, and rents have almost doubled. Mr Hadithi says that this is explained primarily by the end of the war. “Refugees are returning, but not to the places where they once lived,” he says. “A Shia who owns a new and expensive house in a Sunni area will want to sell it and buy a cheaper one in a Shia-majority district for safety reasons.”

Baghdad has become wholly divided into sectarian enclaves since the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07. Long grey concrete walls snake through the city, cutting off neighbourhoods from each other. Exits and entrances are closely guarded. Checkpoints every few hundred yards create horrendous traffic jams. There is far less violence than two years ago, but there are still daily bombings and assassinations.

The property market reflects the outcome of the Sunni-Shia war, in which the Shia were by and large the winners. Baghdad is today probably about 75 per cent Shia. The Sunni – traditionally the richer community – have been pushed into smaller enclaves.
WP: shoe-thrower defends himself; trial postponed
"I did not mean to kill the leader of the occupation forces," Muntadar al-Zaidi said, speaking clearly and forcefully from a wooden cage before a packed courtroom. "I was expressing what's inside of me and what's inside the Iraqi people from north to south and from west to east."

Throwing his shoes, fastball style, at the leader of the free world was not, Zaidi argued, a crime.

Zaidi, 30, who is charged with assaulting a foreign head of state, posited that Bush's Dec. 14 trip to Baghdad was not an official visit by a foreign dignitary because he arrived in the country without prior notice and didn't leave the Green Zone, which at the time was still under U.S. control.

"I am charged now with attacking the prime minister's guest," he said stoically, making his first public remarks since the incident. "We Arabs are famous for being generous with guests. But Bush and his soldiers have been here for six years. Guests should knock on the door. Those who come sneaking in are not guests."

Roughly an hour into the hearing, Presiding Judge Abdul Amir al-Rubaie announced that he would postpone the proceeding until March 12 to seek an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush's swan song visit to Baghdad was, in fact, an "official" one.

AJE: leader that brokered deal to impose Sharia law in Swat organizes march
Mohammad, who served six years in prison for leading thousands of local men across the border into Afghanistan to fight US-backed foreign forces there, intends to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to lay down their arms for the long term.

"I ask you to remain peaceful. We have reached an agreement with the provincial government and Nizam-e-Adl (Islamic system of justice) will soon be enforced here," he told his supporters.

"People will soon start getting justice and there will be a durable peace."

However, news of Monday's ceasefire agreement between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban fighters has alarmed Nato, the US and other Western powers.
BBC: journalist covering the story abducted and killed

New Yorker: will the Obama administration advocate a form of 'preventive' detainment?; weighing how to play the case of the last enemy combatant held in the US
NYT: this case a piece of the broader anti-terrorism legal picture, which doesn't look so different from Bush admin policies so far
The administration has also put off taking a stand in several cases that present opportunities to embrace or renounce Bush-era policies, including the imprisonment without trial of an “enemy combatant” on domestic soil, Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking legal opinions about interrogation and surveillance, and an executive-privilege dispute over Congressional subpoenas of former White House aides to Mr. Bush over the firing of United States attorneys.
Ind: a former Guantánamo guard offers a look inside the prison (and how he found himself there)
Did you get any briefing on who the soon-to-arrive prisoners were?

The only thing I can recall being told about the detainees that would arrive was that they were captured fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. And that they were known terrorists. And that many of them helped in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. We would be coming face-to-face with the worst people the world had to offer. Our mission would be to guard these terrorists so the United States could get more info on attacks and, possibly, stop more terrorist attacks.

As to us, we talked a lot about the detainees before they arrived. About them and what they had probably been involved in. A lot of us, including myself, were pissed off, and many people were out to get revenge for the havoc the United States had been through in recent months by these people.

But, as the months went on, one or two of us would question what was going on here, the way the detainees were being treated, and if they were actually terrorists or not, but being no ones, and young, and dumb, we never questioned anything further; just did our time until we went home.

NYT: political dissident released in Egypt

AJE: France sends police force to Guadaloupe after death of a union leader, injury of police

LAT: Colombian ex-paramilitary leader confesses to killing, money laundering
Fierro spent his first days on the stand last year meticulously reviewing hundreds of killings, a litany that included university professors, union leaders, peasants accused of giving aid and comfort to leftist guerrillas. Family members of victims, many of them in tears, watched via closed-circuit video.

Now the former Colombian army captain is just as scrupulously detailing how paramilitaries bled dry not just businesses and landowners, large and small, but public officials who either turned over chunks of their government budgets and revenue or were killed...

Foreign multinational companies apparently weren't exempt from paying the "war tax." Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo, a leader of a neighboring paramilitary group, testified last year that both Chiquita Brands International Inc. and Dole Food Co. paid a 3-cents-per-50-pound tax on bananas shipped through Caribbean ports.

BBC: thousands protest deployment of military against drug violence along US-Mexico border
Many of the protesters said border towns had become more dangerous since President Felipe Calderon sent the army in.

But the governor of one state - Nuevo Leon - said he believed the Gulf drugs cartel and its armed wing, the Zetas, were behind the border protests.
BBC: militarization in Cancun

NYT: militias form to defend villages from the LRA in the Congo
A terrible mismatch may be shaping up in this lush, isolated patch of northeastern Congo. Thousands of teenage boys and their farmer fathers are grabbing machetes, slingshots, axes and ragtag shotguns, wading into the bush to confront a band of experienced killers.

They bang on drums to signal to one another. They patrol at night in shifts. Already, several members of these so-called self-defense forces have been killed. And in Congo’s recent past, the advent of local militias has only led to more bloodshed and abuses.

But here, the people feel they have no choice...

“They took me on Christmas,” Mrs. Yebiye said. Several dozen villagers squeezed around. Her story was one of the first inside accounts of the rebel army Faradje had ever heard.

She said the rebels had dreadlocks and wild eyes. They believed in witchcraft and dabbed themselves with palm oil. They marched in seemingly endless circles, often through elephant grass as high as their heads, but never seemed to get lost. Sometimes, they liked to dance.

“The rebels would eat their marijuana and turn up their radios in the middle of the jungle,” she said. “If you didn’t dance with them, you got killed.”

It is stories like these that have sent the farmers and the other civilians out on loosely organized search-and-destroy missions. But in mid-January, in a village not far from here, it did not work out so well. Some farmers crossed paths with a band of rebel fighters, Mr. Dalafada said. The rebels killed four farmers and fled.
BBC: meanwhile, FDLR 'on rampage' further south

BBC: arrests made in Equatorial Guinea of alleged gunmen who fired on presidential palace last week; officials claim they have ties to Nigerian rebels

Gdn: Zimbabwe to pay soldiers and bureaucrats in dollars

BBC: India offers haven to Tamil civilians

WP: Obama administration considers new approach to Burma
"Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," [Sec of State Clinton] said, adding that the route taken by Burma's neighbors of "reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either."

WP: protests in China over Tibet prompt crackdown
Zhou Xiujun, owner of a grocery store, said that she witnessed a small protest near the county's main vegetable market Sunday that escalated into a much larger one about lunchtime Monday. On the second day, she said saw several hundred Tibetans gathered downtown, shouting "Long Live the Dalai Lama," the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists who lives in exile in India. In just a few minutes, she said, squads of police arrived and melee ensued.

NYT: Kosovo celebrates its one-year anniversary: a photo essay

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Econ: the Bloody White Baron (book review)
A PSYCHOPATHIC Buddhist warrior-king hardly sounds plausible in fiction, let alone in modern history. But the story of Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, an Estonian-raised, ethnically German, tsarist officer, who became the last khan of Mongolia amid the chaos of the Russian civil war, has so many bizarre elements that the reader will soon believe almost anything.

Econ: animals! decisions! how we social ones make them
But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues made a computer model of the decision-making process. By tinkering around with it they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees’ interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their independence in confirming this information.

This is something members of the European Parliament should think about.

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LAT: a new kind of nationalism? some African-Americans tracing DNA trail to contemporary African states

Ind: hip hop and political participation in Kenya
At a time where a political power struggle was inflaming tribal and ethnic divisions some of the finest voices in Nairobi's ghettos decided to see whether MCs could do a better job for their communities than MPs and the parliament was born.

rational collapses [digging in]

LAT: Marines back in Afghanistan, indefinitely
"Based in part on the experiences of the Two-Seven and the grit of its individual members, Marine Corps officials are planning to greatly expand their numbers here -- an unexpected result of a deployment that wasn't even supposed to be.

A replacement task force will consist of about 2,300 troops, more than double the size of the Two-Seven's initial deployment...

Like the Army, the Marine Corps was already stretched thin on equipment and manpower. The Two-Seven's basic mission -- mentoring the Afghan national police in sprawling Helmand -- was not expected to involve continuous combat.

But the Marines were repeatedly attacked as they established forward bases in the region and began to make contact with local villagers. Before long, the fighting overshadowed the mentoring. Though they had expected to be tested by the Taliban in an area where much of the poppy crop that funds the insurgents is grown, they had not anticipated the intensity of the conflict.

For six months, the Two-Seven had more members killed and wounded -- about 150 -- than did the 20,000 Marines deployed in Iraq. It also did its share of killing...

Meanwhile, the efforts to recruit and train Afghan police officers were beset by corruption and narcotics. In one class of 100 recruits, 35 were dismissed because of drug use. Some recruits showed up for training with the red-rimmed eyes of chronic hashish users, Hall said...

The battalion also faced a manpower shortage in mid-deployment as 150 members neared the end of their active-duty stints. An urgent call went out corpswide for volunteers, and more than 300 Marines stateside stepped forward. About 140 were accepted...

Maj. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said Marines, in effect, were starting over in Afghanistan after being the lead U.S. conventional force in toppling the Taliban regime in 2001.

"This is where it all started," Waldhauser told the troops at Delaram. "We're just starting over again. We're going to be at this a long time."

After routing the Taliban, the Marines were largely redeployed to Iraq. A special operations unit arrived in early 2007 but was sent home amid controversy over civilian deaths."

WP: legislators 'dumbfounded' by Pentagon's policy banning masks of Iraqi interpreters

Slate: Obama's national security transition team
WP: General Jim Jones slated for national security advisor


Gdn: an interview with a Somali pirate / tax collector
"We give priority to ships from Europe because we get bigger ransoms. To get their attention we shoot near the ship. If it does not stop we use a rope ladder to get on board. We count the crew and find out their nationalities. After checking the cargo we ask the captain to phone the owner and say that have seized the ship and will keep it until the ransom is paid.

We make friends with the hostages, telling them that we only want money, not to kill them. Sometimes we even eat rice, fish, pasta with them. When the money is delivered to our ship we count the dollars and let the hostages go.

Then our friends come to welcome us back in Eyl and we go to Garowe in Land Cruisers. We split the money. For example, if we get $1.8m, we would send $380,000 to the investment man who gives us cash to fund the missions, and then divide the rest between us.

Our community thinks we are pirates getting illegal money. But we consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea. With foreign warships now on patrol we have difficulties.

But we are getting new boats and weapons. We will not stop until we have a central government that can control our sea."

BBC: Islamists pursuing pirates, either for a cut or to punish them for hijacking a Muslim ship

BBC: NATO warships escorting food aid in the region

WP: state tries to manage protests in China
"The meeting Thursday between the governor of the northwestern province of Gansu and more than a dozen people was billed in the official state media as an example of a high-level politician reaching out to hear the concerns of ordinary Chinese.

But two of the people who attended the meeting said Friday that they were the only ones present who had participated in the protest against a government resettlement plan and that the rest were local officials...

The discrepancy between the protesters' accounts of the meeting and the media account raised questions about whether the Chinese government was newly committed to addressing and solving local unrest or more concerned with projecting a positive image to the public at a time when officials fear that the economic downturn is fueling protests that are taxing China's security services.

"I didn't dare mention in that meeting that everyone in this town wants Wang Yi to be fired," Wang said Friday, referring to the local party secretary. "We heard he has a good relationship with the provincial party secretary. If I'd said that, I'd be arrested just like all those other people yesterday."

But the New China News Agency quoted her as saying, "Now I know better the government's policy, and I will tell the others."

NYT: Tibetans stick with the middle way


WP: inter-caste marriages still taboo in India
"Even though India legalized inter-caste marriage more than 50 years ago, newlyweds are still threatened by violence, most often from their families. As more young urban and small-town Indians start to rebel and choose mates outside of arranged marriages and caste commandments, killings of inter-caste couples have increased, according to a recent study by the All India Democratic Women's Association.

In the past month, seven so-called honor killings have targeted inter-caste couples. In the latest incident, a Hindu youth in Bihar was beaten by villagers this week and thrown under an oncoming train because he sent a love letter to a girl of a different caste. The attacks continue despite decades of government decrees intended to dismantle the bulwark of caste, which is widely seen as the glue of traditional Indian society but is considered among the most corrosive features of the emerging new India."

LAT: the Obama family in Kenya deals with conflicts, presents security challenges

LAT: making music and citizens in Venezuela
"In the poor hillside neighborhood of Chapellín and at nearly 250 other locales throughout this nation, tens of thousands of young Venezuelans are learning to play classical music and to make art a permanent cornerstone of their lives. They're the latest recruits of El Sistema, or the System, a 34-year-old program that many regard as a model not only for music instruction but for helping children develop into productive, responsible citizens."

Econ: the secret tunnels of MI-6 in London (made the short list for Dick Cheney's future lair)
"A lift takes us down 100 feet, deeper than the London Underground, which we can hear rumbling above us. A set of atom-bomb-proof doors are swung open and we step out into the secret of Furnival Street: the Kingsway tunnels, a miniature city beneath a city.

Dug in 1940 as London was blitzed by German bombers, the tunnels were designed as a air-raid shelter for up to 8,000 people, and as a possible last-ditch base for the government in the event of an invasion. They were never used as a shelter; instead, towards the end of the war they were taken over by the “Inter Services Research Bureau”, a shady outfit that was in fact a front for the research and development arm of MI6 (perhaps better known as Q branch in the James Bond novels).

After the war, the tunnels were passed to the Post Office and then to British Telecom, which hopes to sell the warren for £5m now that it is surplus to requirements. “I think it would make a great disco, personally,” says Ray Gapes, a former switch-maintenance engineer who came to work in the tunnels as an 18-year-old apprentice and is now showing us around."

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NYT: SV sees more uncertainty in your future
“My Web traffic is up and up and up,” said Aurora Tower, a New Yorker who constructs spidery star charts for her growing clientele. “People will entertain the irrational when what they consider rational collapses.”

taking out the garbage [minding mafias]

NYT: neighborhood in Japan sues to oust mafia
"[Dojinkai leaders] said they had lived peacefully with their neighbors since moving to their current location in 1986. They believed that outsiders were exploiting their running factional conflict — which has led to seven killings in the past two years — to try to expel them.

The Dojinkai is one of the country’s 22 crime syndicates, employing some 85,000 members and recognized by the government.

Traditionally, the yakuza have run protection rackets, as well as gambling, sex and other businesses that the authorities believed were a necessary part of any society. By letting the yakuza operate relatively freely, the authorities were able to keep an extremely close watch on them...

Here in Kurume, people on the blocks surrounding the Dojinkai’s headquarters said they had had few complaints until two years ago. Schoolchildren used to walk past the headquarters without fear, they said. Dojinkai members used up all the street parking during their monthly syndicate-wide meeting, but that was about it.

But two years ago, a fight over succession led one faction to break off and form its own syndicate, called the Seidokai.

The ensuing and continuing war led to the killings of members on both sides, as well as the murder inside a hospital of a man mistaken for a rival by a Dojinkai member. (The Dojinkai leaders visited the victim’s widow, burned incense at the family’s home and later gave financial compensation.)

Many residents now say they fear getting caught in the cross-fire.

According to city hall, 603 plaintiffs living or working within 547 yards of the headquarters joined the lawsuit against the Dojinkai. Some 5,508 people signed a petition endorsing the lawsuit. Private donations to assist the suit totaled $90,000, on top of a $300,000 contribution from the city...

At that branch office, the Dojinkai’s next-door neighbor was an equally fearsome fixture of neighborhood life in Japan: the residential association leader who knows everybody’s business and makes sure that all residents abide by Japan’s Byzantine garbage disposal and sorting rules. The association leader, Akemi Shigematsu, 66, requested that the Dojinkai sign a memorandum of understanding when it opened the branch office 11 years ago.

The Dojinkai’s chairman at the time, Yoshihisa Matsuo, quickly complied, promising in the memorandum that members would not threaten passers-by, park illegally, mill around, throw away cigarette butts, litter or be a bad influence on schoolchildren.

In the beginning, there were problems, which Ms. Shigematsu jotted down in a notepad she has kept to this day. Entries for Oct. 10, 1998, included: (1) “no greeting”; (2) “speaking loudly on the phone on the street late a night;” (9) “messy disposal of garbage.”

Not surprisingly, Ms. Shigematsu said the yakuza now respected the neighborhood’s rules.

“They don’t bother the neighborhood,” she said, adding: “If I go speak to them about something — for example, about throwing away the trash — they’ll say, ‘Sorry!’ ”

Mrs. Shigematsu, however, still checked the contents of the Dojinkai’s garbage bins just to make sure.

The Dojinkai leaders said they and their subordinates, almost all locals, were also members of the community and simply followed neighborhood rules. They said they wanted to coexist with their neighbors, though they acknowledged that their activities sometimes “disturbed” society.

“If a friend is killed, an ordinary person will become emotional and probably dream of revenge,” Mr. Shinozuka said.

“But we go through with it,” he added. “That’s how we’ve been taught. And because of that difference, we disturb society.”

BBC: Nkunda, Congo rebel leader, agrees to respect a ceasefire
"BBC world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle, in Goma, says Gen Nkunda reaffirmed his support for a ceasefire he had declared unilaterally a week ago, and repeated his demand for talks with the government on political, economic and security issues.

None of this is new, our correspondent says, and some observers were surprised at how Mr Obasanjo appears to have been seduced by Mr Nkunda, who Congolese officials and human rights groups refer to as a "war criminal"."

NYT: tin mine funds renegade army group; extraction keeps Congo in vicious cycle
"Despite a costly effort to unite the nation’s many militias into a single national army, plus billions of dollars spent on international peacekeepers and an election in 2006 that brought democracy to Congo for the first time in four decades, the government is unable or unwilling to force these fighters — who wear government army uniforms and collect government paychecks — to leave the mountain.

The ore these fighters control is central to the chaos that plagues Congo, helping to perpetuate a conflict in which as many as five million people have died since the mid-1990s, mostly from hunger and disease...

In 2004, a group of Mai Mai fighters allied with the government took control.

Under the terms of the peace agreement that ended the war, the militia was absorbed into the national army and became the 85th Brigade. The fighters were supposed to be sent for military training and then deployed around the country to dilute the influence of regional militias.

But the 85th refused to disband. Its commander, Colonel Matumo, is known as a ruthless warrior with a keen eye for business who believes, as most Mai Mai do, that he has special powers connected to water that make him all but invincible. During the war these fighters would wear drain plugs dangling from their bulging biceps as amulets of their potency. These days the brigade’s members have mostly abandoned this practice in favor of the more practical army greens.

They violently enforce a system of illegal taxation of every worker, merchant and mineral trader who comes to the mine...

Bisie may be the middle of nowhere, but the ore it produces is tightly linked to the global market. After porters bear the loads, often heavier than the men themselves, the ore reaches middlemen along the main road. One such middleman, Bakwe Selomba, said he did not mind paying the militiamen because the payment guaranteed his investment.

“To be honest, it is better for us that they are there,” he said. “I can send my buyers walking through the jungle with lots of money, but nobody will touch them as long as we pay the tax. It protects us.”...

“A blanket ban on tin from Congo is nonsense because it penalizes the millions dependent on the sector the most,” said Nicholas Garrett, a mining expert who has written reports on Congo for the World Bank and other institutions. Putting those people out of work would simply invite another rebellion, Mr. Garrett said."

BBC: Somali president says rebels control most of country, are closing in on Mogadishu
Speaking to Somali parliamentarians in Kenya, President Yusuf said, "Islamists have taken over everywhere else, so if I ask you parliamentarians: do you know the situation we face? Who causes all these problems? We are to blame."

President Yusuf lamented that at this vital time when unity is needed, talks on forming a new transitional government had ended in failure.

He and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein have been unable to agree on the make-up of a new cabinet, missing a deadline issued by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) last month.

In the meantime members of al-Shabab, which the US believes to be linked to al-Qaeda, have consolidated their hold on southern Somalia, meting out punishments on the population based on their interpretation of Islamic law.

They whipped 25 women and seven men for holding a traditional dance, which they said was forbidden.

In October, a girl was stoned to death in a crowded stadium in the port city of Kismayo. Aged just 13, she had been convicted of adultery after complaining she had been raped."

Gdn: war ongoing in Yemen
"Fatima and up to 130,000 fellow Yemenis are the invisible victims of a war in the country's northernmost governorate of Sa'da that the Yemeni authorities would prefer you not to hear about. In its four-year conflict with armed rebels from an Islamist revivalist movement called "The Believing Youth," or Huthis, after their founder Husain al-Huthi, the government has banned journalists from the conflict zone. It has arbitrarily arrested those who report on civilian casualties and has cut off most mobile phone services in the region."

AP: Karzai offers protection for Taliban leader if he agrees to talks

Gdn: fighting militants along the Pakistani border
"The battle of Bajaur has huge local and international implications. Locally, it is a critical test for the new Pakistani civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari, the controversial widower of Benazir Bhutto. The recent bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad is thought to be a response to the Bajaur offensive. Regionally, the battle is a chance for the Pakistani Army to rebut allegations that it is dragging its feet in the fight against international extremism. Internationally, the fight is crucial for the 40-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Not only will its result determine who controls the supply route that crosses the Khyber Pass just to its south - where militants hijacked a 60-vehicle Nato convoy last week - but it will also show if the semi-autonomous 'tribal agencies' that line the mountainous zones on the Pakistan side of the frontier can be stabilised. It is there that al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban leadership are hiding. Peace in Afghanistan will remain a distant prospect until the frontier is calmed...

Bajaur's recent history is repeated all along the frontier. In the aftermath of 2001, militants fleeing from Nato operations in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan's own intermittent crackdowns on internal extremist groups, were able to exploit the social upheaval caused by conflict and economic change to establish themselves.

In Bajaur, local men formed bands around those with guns and access to cash, elbowing aside traditional tribal leaders. Militant leaders include a former teashop owner, a gunman, a known criminal and a minor cleric. One is from the violence-racked Kunar valley in Afghanistan. 'They are men from economically and socially marginalised elements in tribal society,' said a Peshawar-based expert and former senior bureaucrat, Khalid Aziz.

The disparate groups based themselves in the village of its chief and, with money and a little military training from al-Qaeda, soon established a miniature version of a hardline Islamist state, preaching jihad, closing girls' schools and DVD shops, and killing tribal leaders who stood in their way. According to Mohammed Shah, a former chief of security in the region, 'they are a loose federation rather than a unified movement'."

WP: Iraqi cabinet supports agreement for US troops to stay through 2011

AP: Tibetan exiles meet in northern India

LAT: drug trafficking networks targeted in US
"The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities."

collective (in)action [fire up the bat signal]

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sideshows [good for managing people]

WP: Taliban runs "parallel state" in Afghanistan
"The new Taliban movement has created a parallel government structure that includes defense and finance councils and appoints judges and officials in some areas. It offers cash to recruits and presents letters of introduction to local leaders. It operates Web sites and a 24-hour propaganda apparatus that spins every military incident faster than Afghan and Western officials can manage...Today's Taliban also has a much greater degree of formal organization. The old Taliban was disastrous at governing, and ministries were run by barefoot mullahs who scribbled orders on scraps of paper. The new Taliban structure has councils for each area of governance, appoints officials in controlled areas and confers swift justice for crimes and disputes."

Slate: but a 'surge' won't work there
"...any tactical advantage reaped from killing jihadists across the border is far outweighed by the strategic disaster unleashed as a result of intensifying anti-American sentiment, radicalizing the Pakistani population, and further alienating—possibly destabilizing—its new civilian government...Pakistan is not a sideshow to Afghanistan. It is the main show, dwarfing every other problem in the region. To deal with it, we can do one of two things. We can declare war on Pakistan—an option for which we lack the will, the allies, the resources, the troops, and (let's hope) the sheer suicidal idiocy. Or we can coordinate a region-wide campaign of pressures and incentives—political, economic, diplomatic, and military—with as many concerned powers as possible, including, yes, the Shiite leaders of Iran, who must have less interest than even we do in seeing radical Sunni jihadists take over huge chunks, if not all, of Pakistan...
The ultimate military goal [in Afghanistan]—one lesson from Petraeus' strategy in Iraq that is worth learning and might be applicable—is to protect the Afghan population, and that requires putting a lot of troops in the neighborhoods of towns and villages, to provide security and build trust. It might be possible to do this in Afghanistan, just as it was done in many Iraqi neighborhoods with one important difference—it has to be done by the Afghan National Army, not by us."

Econ: and expanding the front into Pakistan's FATA won't help
"Yet it is true that Afghanistan will never know peace while the tribal areas provide a haven for insurgents. Force will be part of the solution. But, as Mr Zardari knows, there also needs to be a comprehensive plan to develop the region—building roads and providing buses, schools and hospitals, but also dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and, eventually, integrating the FATA fully into Pakistan proper. America’s cross-border pressure may have been intended in part to impress upon Pakistan’s leaders the urgency of the military aspect."

NYT: fallout from deadly bombing in Islamabad
BBC: playing both sides: Pakistan says it will continue push into the FATA
BBC: and against US troops near border

WP: Karzai to meet Palin
"Palin, governor of Alaska for two years, has had limited experience abroad. She took one trip to Germany, Kuwait and Iraq in 2007, but barely crossed the Iraq border. She has also traveled to Canada. Democrats have mocked Palin for citing knowledge of Russia because she can see the nation from her home state."

NYT: delicate equilibrium in Iraq
"But if this is not peace, it is not war, either — at least not the war I knew. When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.

And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?"

LAT: regional paramilitary groups cropping up in Bolivia
"Bolivia's polarization has reached the point where "defense" bands -- some call them militias -- are popping up here in the defiant lowlands and in the pro-government high plains to the west.

...Mob violence has been the inevitable outcome of the jump in the number of Bolivians aligned with one faction or another.

Both sides in the conflict insist that they are defending their regions, and their very identities, in a nation split by social, geographic and ethnic rifts.

In Santa Cruz, a semitropical city of 1.2 million that is the epicenter of the opposition to Morales, Ruiz has become the posthumous inspiration for the youthful militants of the right. His slaying is seen as a call to the barricades against the collas (pronounced COY-yas), as Indians from the mountainous west are disparagingly called by Santa Cruz natives, known as cambas."

WP: settling Tibetan nomads in China
"Settlement policies vary, and their effect on the social fabric of nomadic communities is complex. In many places, nomads have been encouraged to give up their animals, leading to reduced incomes, a rise in alcoholism and other social costs. A lack of planning has resulted in some settlements lacking water or power, officials admit. In many cases, nomads are ill-equipped to compete with Chinese migrant workers for jobs in nearby cities, and there has been insufficient retraining, experts said. The government has relocated hundreds of thousands of nomads in towns and cities in recent years, drawing them with government-subsidized housing and other incentives...[One settled nomad said,] 'It's also good for managing people. In the past, if government officials wanted to hold a meeting, it would take a long time to inform nomads who are scattered all over. And of course, if the government senses a bad thing is going to happen, it's quite easy to mobilize forces to surround a settlement. Then nothing will happen.'"

BBC: Sri Lanka begins census of displaced Tamils in Colombo
"The government says the rebel Tamil Tigers are using the influx of people to infiltrate the city and plant bombs."

Gdn: ETA bombing claims life of Spanish soldier
Gdn: Spain to open graves from the civil war

CSM: monks taking the long view: preparing children for dissent in Burma

WP: Mbeki resigns
"Mbeki, a top government leader since the end of apartheid in 1994, had faced increasing pressure to resign after a judge's ruling suggested his administration had schemed to charge his rival, Jacob Zuma, with corruption. Mbeki was due to step down after next year's national elections, and Zuma is expected to win his job."
LAT: Olmert resigns

WP: modern art in Tehran
"'Many people think I'm insane. Why would one man spend his money on students? Why is the entrance free of charge? But when they come here and see the museum, they tell me there should be much more of these places in Iran,' Motamedi said."

NYT: work, play, and religion in Dubai

Slate: attention witches: go underground until Wall St. sorts it all out

AP: Dick can't destroy the documents

was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? hell no!

NYT: Iraqi (Maliki government) troops move into Sadr City

BBC: Lebanese unity plan "in trouble" (tastefully understated)

CNN: no one can agree if Bush apologizes for soldier using Koran as target practice

Indian Express: Pakistani artillery barrages along Line of Control; 1 Indian soldier killed

Indian Express: militants crack the whip
"Top militant leaders of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen have warned Pakistan government against softening its stance towards India and threatened to wage a "war in Islamabad and Lahore" if there is any "retreat" on the Kashmir issue. . . . Militant leaders like Salahuddin have re-emerged since the new government led by the Pakistan People's Party came to power in March, and have been addressing meetings in different parts of the country."

Daily Mirror (Colombo): secrets and lies on battle casualty figures, but one way or another there are definitely a lot of them

Me: I took a photo of this white-domed Buddhist temple back in March; turns out it got badly damaged in this lethal LTTE suicide attack last week

Ind: they beat the Nazis - but can they hold off the Brits?
"With kick-off not until 10.45pm local time (7.45pm BST), there are concerns about the heavy handed tactics of Russia's feared Omon riot police, who have been tasked with dealing with any crowd trouble. In the wake of last week's riots in Manchester, critics have pointed out that allowing plenty of time for fans to drink during the hours leading up to the game could be problematic.

On Sunday, the Omon, best known internationally for their crushing of opposition rallies and gay parades, held training exercises in the Luzhniki Stadium aimed at dealing with potential disturbances."

Ind: Mbeki decries attacks on immigrants in South Africa; army going in?
"In scenes reminiscent of unrest during the apartheid era, gangs of men armed with clubs and jugs of petrol have been targeting Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Malawians and others who they claim are taking scarce jobs and houses and committing crime.

The country's Human Rights Commission supported by the opposition Democratic Alliance called on the ANC government to mobilise the army in the worst affected areas."

Gdn: no Downing Street visit for the Dalai Lama; yet another person who won't vote for Gordon Brown!

Irish News: dissident republicans in N Ireland nearly kill off-duty Catholic police officer

Sunday Tribune: threats of more to come
"The Real IRA has warned of further attacks on the security forces after the attempted murder of a police officer in Co Tyrone with an under-car bomb last week.

The dissident organisation said the attack showed the seriousness of its intention to kill "members of the crown forces." It claimed its capacity to do so would be demonstrated in further attacks."

MSNBC: specialists in a particular kind of violence

"Two Belgian beer fans have launched a video game named 'Place to Pee', which allows players to slalom down ski slopes or kill aliens while relieving themselves at urinals."

made in china

LAT: Marines move into Helmand, Taliban-dominated region in Afghanistan
"Several hundred Marines, many of them veterans of the Iraq war, pushed into the town of Garmser in an operation to drive out militants, stretching NATO's presence into an area littered with poppy fields."
Ind: those poppy fields fund the insurgency
"Russian gangsters who smuggle drugs into Britain are buying cheap heroin from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns. Smugglers told The Independent how Russian arms dealers meet Taliban drug lords at a bazaar near the old Afghan-Soviet border, deep in Tajikistan's desert. The bazaar exists solely to trade Afghan drugs for Russian guns – and sometimes a bit of sex on the side...The drugs come mostly from Helmand, where most of Britain's 7,800 troops are based. The opium grown there is turned into heroin at factories inside Afghanistan, sold into Tajikistan and smuggled to Europe. The guns are broken down into parts, smuggled back into Afghanistan and delivered to the Taliban. One kilogram of heroin can buy about 30 AK-47 assault rifles at the bazaar."
Econ: Taliban forces increasingly avoiding direct confrontations in favor of indirect assaults
"Overall Taliban violence is rising. The nature of confrontations is changing too. Casualties among Western forces are increasingly caused by 'asymmetric warfare', such as roadside bombs and suicide attacks, rather than by conventional battles."


NYT: non-violent protests, street battles, and a dust storm in Sadr City
The mix of peaceful protest and armed attacks is characteristic of the many levels on which the Sadr movement and the government are locked in an all-out fight for political advantage. At stake is the outcome of October provincial elections in which other Shiite parties in the government stand to lose seats to Mr. Sadr’s supporters...The residents of Sadr City 'are Iraqis,' [a parliament member from Anbar province] said, 'they are very poor people with very few services, and the military action has caused so much loss of life.'
Mr. Maliki has said that, before the government will stop its fight, Mr. Sadr must comply with four conditions: hand over heavy weapons; stop fighting the security forces; stop menacing government workers; and hand over outlaws sought by the government.
But on Sunday, an aide to Mr. Sadr in Najaf rejected those terms, accusing the government of trying to resolve political differences by force."
USAT: US drone attacks in Iraq rise in April
Newsweek: Libyan town exporter of jihadists

Gdn: Cheney's lawyer says Congress has no authority over him; rejects requests by Democrats to interview his chief of staff over involvement in approving interrogation/torture methods for Guantánamo

BBC: BBC alleges UN cover-up in investigation of its troops trading in arms, gold and ivory in the Congo
UN operation there largest in the world, with 18,000 troops

• "Pakistani peacekeepers in the eastern town of Mongbwalu were involved in the illegal trade in gold with the FNI militia, providing them with weapons to guard the perimeter of the mines
• Indian peacekeepers operating around the town of Goma had direct dealings with the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide, now living in eastern DR Congo.
• The Indians traded gold, bought drugs from the militias and flew a UN helicopter into the Virunga National Park, where they exchanged ammunition for ivory"
  

BBC: political leader of banned Mungiki gang shot dead in Kenya
BBC: central gov't tries to broker deal to end prison guards' strike

NYT: violence against opposition and suspected opposition voters in Zimbabwe
"Villagers from Manicaland said they were roused from sleep around midnight one night this month by young marauders who had come to punish them for voting against Mr. Mugabe. They said the gangs pelted them with stones fired from slingshots and dragged some from their homes.
The next day, rather than protecting them, police officers ordered them to empty their small huts of their meager possessions, witnesses said. Then the young thugs returned to the small settlement just north of the city of Mutare, bashing down people’s homes with iron bars or setting them ablaze."
LAT: two factions of the opposition have agreed to set aside differences to create parliamentary coalition; some ruling party members rumored to be defecting

BBC: an interview with a Somali al-Shabab militant
"...it has become clear there are deep divisions within the insurgency over which direction it should take, with many of the recent attacks attributed to one group - a radical Islamist organisation called al-Shabab, meaning 'The Youth.'
'We are killing the enemy of Allah, and until we get them out of the country we will continue doing so... those people who are telling you their people have been killed they are wrong.
They are working for the Ethiopians, we never kill ordinary people.'"

BBC: mosque of minority sect in Indonesia set ablaze

AP: Colombian congress at impasse over scandal linking lawmakers to paramilitaries
"Sen. Jorge Enrique Gomez replaced a jailed senator, who had replaced a senator who resigned under criminal investigation, who had replaced a jailed senator. But the evangelical preacher's lack of legislative experience hardly matters — Congress doesn't do much these days anyway...
The scandal broke in late 2006 after political analyst Claudia Lopez found what she called massive vote-rigging in areas controlled by the paramilitaries..."
Miami Herald: arrest of Uribe's cousin may link him to paramilitaries
"With his cousin in the presidential palace, Mario Uribe was a proponent within Congress of the original law regulating the 2003 demobilization of 30,000 paramilitary fighters that would have granted the leaders near-amnesty for their crimes, some of the most atrocious in Colombia's four-decade-old war. The Constitutional Court later imposed harsher sentences of up to eight years for the top leaders.
Mario Uribe also led the push in Congress for the constitutional reform that allowed President Uribe to seek a second term, which he won in 2006."

CSM: Uighurs in western China live under "colonial-like" system
"Since the Communist government took over Xinjiang in 1949 from a warlord allied with the Nationalist Army, the proportion of Han Chinese (China's dominant ethnic group) in the province has shot up from 6.7 percent to 40.6 percent, according to official figures. The Han population now almost matches the Uighur population, after a six decades-long campaign by Beijing to settle Han in the remote region...Uighurs are resentful at the way Han Chinese monopolize the best jobs and the top political posts, even though Xinjiang is theoretically an autonomous province. Han residents routinely complain that Uighurs are dirty, lazy, and dishonest."
BBC: globalization, conflict, and irony: "Free Tibet" flags made in China

commemorating

MLK Jr's last speech
NYT: RFK's speech in Indianapolis upon learning of MLK Jr's assassination; two months before he himself was killed
(listen to the speech here)
"You know, Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn't bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice." -Barack Obama speaking in Ft Wayne yesterday
the Root: how the assassination changed music
BBC: lingering questions about James Earl Ray
WP: the state of pioneering civil rights groups today

LAT: conflict in Mosul between Sunnis and Kurds
"The Iraqi government and U.S. military spokesmen blame the chaos on Al Qaeda in Iraq, a loosely organized Sunni Arab insurgent group, which desires to create a new base in the north. But the problems date to 2003, when the Kurds first sent fighters into Mosul, and the status of the city's Arab elite was diminished...
The Kurds want a referendum, called for under Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, to formally annex the disputed areas to Kurdistan. The referendum, postponed last year after the Iraqi government failed to conduct a census in the contested north, would also determine the status of the city of Kirkuk and other areas along the border of Kurdistan. A vote could prove to be the trigger for greater Arab-Kurdish bloodshed or a bridge to conciliation and prosperity...
U.S. officials recognize that their dependence on the Kurds may have tipped the balance of power in favor of their longtime ally. The Americans relied on Kurdish forces to stop Sunni fighters from seizing Mosul in November 2004, and the influx of Kurdish fighters allowed Kurdistan to cement its grip on Mosul's northern and eastern outer rings"...
an American official compared "Kurdish fighters favorably to Shiite security forces in Baghdad who have been accused of indiscriminately killing and arresting Sunni Arabs [said] 'When Kurds get killed in Mosul, Kurdish special operations/intelligence units surgically go after that person' who did the killing, the former official said. "It's not collective punishment, but they will go and kill that individual. . . . The Kurds are very responsible about it.'"
BBC: Maliki calls off attacks on militias, any "people who carry weapons"

Ind: US renews contract with Blackwater
AP: a contractor is charged under military law for the first time since Vietnam

LAT: Bush pledges more troops for Afghanistan

Gdn: veterans from the 1965 war - the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform - want Mugabe to go
WP: the opposition rejects calls for a run-off; police prevent them from filing lawsuit to release poll results

BBC: Nigerian rebel leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) charged with treason and gun running

BBC: the Maoists' transition from bullets to ballots in Nepal; elections to be held Thurs for a constitutional assembly

BBC: new Tibetan riots in Sichuan
BBC: riots in Kashmir over treatment of political prisoners
LAT: 3 die in Haiti riots over food distribution

Gdn: German military officers accused of selling training services to Libyans

NYT: Sderot, town near Gaza, becomes symbol for Israel's survival, mostly for foreign donors

Ind: pirates are at it again

above the law

WP: the infamous memo has been released: it's as bad as everyone said
Slate: how to undo the damage, to rule of law in wartime, and to the presidency
WP: some domestic laws need attention too

LAT: tracking Al-Qaeda's "chief of external operations"

Gdn: Iraqi military moves in to Shia stronghold in Basra; the British will stick around
Econ: regulated fighting good for getting along

Gdn: Mugabe on the fence, but pressure builds against him
Ind: state-run media suggests there will be a run-off
Econ: some ideas for how to intervene if Mugabe goes in the end

BBC: Betancourt needs urgent medical attention; Colombia suspends military activity in area, France sends medical mission with Red Cross
Adam Isacson: Chávez needs to intervene

global protest hopping
WP: China says the Dalai Lama incited riots

BBC: Nike factory workers strike in Vietnam

BBC: rare protest in Uzbekistan over relocation of market

BBC: riots in the Ivory Coast over cost of food

BBC: riot police tear gas protest in Kenya over Kibaki's move to increase the number of cabinet members

Econ: protests continue in Armenia over election

hodgepodge
BBC: Kashmir police refuse request to identify 1,000 bodies found in unmarked graves

LAT: peace talks in Darfur "going nowhere"

LAT: Bernie Ahern to resign as Ireland's PM, financial inquiry turning into scandal

BBC: Turkey continues its assault on the PKK, killing 16

BBC: Russia to send aid to Kosovo Serbs

Gdn: drug tourism, day 2: stupid backpackers in Colombia
NYT: intervening on the demand side of the drug trade

Econ: can't think? eat something!

checkpoints

NYT: heavy fighting with Shiite militias in Baghdad and southern cities, especially in Basra
"A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. 'They are clearing the city block by block,' Major Holloway said...Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi Army’s power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what appeared to be several American units. A New York Times photographer who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts...Basra, which until 2005 enjoyed relative peace, has since been riven by power struggles among the Mahdi Army and local Shiite rivals, like the Badr Organization and a militia controlled by the Fadhila political party, a group that split from the Sadr party."
LAT: potential preview of election cycle violence
"The U.S. military says it is targeting rogue elements of Sadr's militia who continue to attack its forces, allegedly with Iranian backing, though Tehran denies the charges. Sadr loyalists accuse his Shiite rivals in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party of using the Iraqi army and police to round up the cleric's followers ahead of the elections."
LAT: summary of the main Shiite factions
WP: Maliki gives militias 72 hours to stop fighting; rockets hit Green Zone in Baghdad

Gdn: Islamic Courts briefly seize Jowhar, Somalia

Gdn: Mugabe makes opposition eat campaign posters

Ind: behind the coup in the Comoros (ok, it's not really a coup, but SV favors alliteration)

Gdn: (slide show) Congo's displaced people

WP: violence in Sri Lanka escalates; famous monk advocates a "military solution"

WP: 1,000 arrested in Tibet protests

WP: US intelligence estimates to become more rigorous in attempt to regain credibility
(though it could be argued the NIE was only reflecting the executive, will rebound in Jan 2009)

jurisdiction, smurisdiction
LAT: US Supreme Court pushes back against executive power (so Texas can implement the death penalty unimpeded)
Slate: but seems ok with the executive denying habeas corpus to citizens held by "multinational forces"

WSJ: Black funeral parlors facing violence during services

Slate: apparently suicide bombers shave their bodies before attacks

BBC: sex workers' workshop canceled by Ugandan gov't

keeping quiet and speaking up

Gdn: "forgotten" war in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia
"Deep in these desert wastes lie the Somali state zones (provinces) of Degehabur, Fik and Qorahay. It is here, largely unseen and unreported, that the Ethiopian army, backed by rival sub-clans, has waged a violent nine-month-long campaign against factions of the Ogadeni clan, the backbone of the ONLF."
LAT: horrific story of one woman accused of collaborating with the Ogaden National Liberation Front

BBC: talks in Somalia to end violence
interim PM met with elders of the Hawiye clan, though it's unclear if they can influence the most active armed group, al-Shabab (whose members are mostly Hawiye). Al-Shabab carrying out hit-and-run attacks on villages in central and southern Somalia:
"A pattern is emerging whereby the militia briefly occupy the town, often killing a number of people, then withdraw with arms, ammunition and military vehicles seized from Somali government and Ethiopian troops."

Gdn: Mugabe printing an extra 3 million ballots, just in case vote rigging plan A goes awry
Gdn: vote rigging necessary because former allies have become the opposition

LAT: US death toll in Iraq reaches 4,000
CSM: attack on green zone launched from Sadr City
WP: another dispatch from Fallujah, where "brute force" keeps the peace (profile of the former Sunni insurgent turned local police chief)

BBC: new Pakistan PM to reinstate judges
BBC: Musharraf says he'll cooperate with new government

WP: Bhutan monarch imposes voting, despite popular opposition

LAT: cocaine production on the rise in Peru; Shining Path group involved
"...this time, the traffickers may be more difficult to combat because the flashy kingpins from Colombia have been replaced by a piecemeal network, a sort of gold rush of international entrepreneurs...A wave of drug-related lawlessness -- assassinations, ambushes, threats against prosecutors -- has fanned fears of the kind of narco-instability that afflicts Colombia and Mexico... And renewed militancy among the peasants who grow the coca leaf has sparked road closures and violent clashes with law enforcement officers...
'The narcos and their sicarios [hired killers] act in these zones with complete impunity,' said Rospigliosi, the former interior minister. 'They've bought off local officials and have complete control.'
The flourishing narco trade, authorities say, is stimulating a fresh incarnation of the Maoist rebel group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, which terrorized the nation before being beaten down in the 1990s. Shining Path was never vanquished in coca country, where the rebels have long imposed "taxes" on traffickers, timber harvesters and others."

NYT: delay in response time by Chinese police during Tibetan violence
BBC: Tuareg rebels launch attacks in Mali
BBC: fighting in Afghanistan
BBC: and Kashmir;
BBC: imminent on island of Anjouan in the Comoros

Gdn: technology and justice: Argentines using DNA to identify disappeared

USAT: witnesses in US keeping quiet, fearing reprisals

NYT: nostalgia for Duvalier in Haiti
"Mr. Planess, 53, who complains that hunger has become so much a part of his life that his stomach does not even growl anymore, is not alone in his nostalgia for Haiti’s dictatorial past. Other Haitians speak longingly of the security that existed then as well as the lack of garbage in the streets, the lower food prices and the scholarships for overseas study." the article also mentions that the prime minister has appointed a commission to consider reconstituting the army.

WP: eradicating slavery in Mauritania
"The ancient tradition of slavery endures in Mauritania, although it was officially abolished in the 1980s. There are roughly half a million slaves among the country's population of 3.3 million, and at least 80 percent do not have access to a formal education, [former slave and activist] Messaoud said...Under the still-prevalent tradition, children inherit the status of their mothers and are passed on by masters as part of dowries or shared with other family members."

NYT: Suriname wrestles with language and identity

LAT: protest through poetry in Pakistan

gross national (un)happiness index

WP: is the FARC almost done?
" 'The civilian population does not want to collaborate,' [a guerrilla deserter] added. 'There is a complete rejection. Even civilians are telling guerrillas: 'Desert. Don't let yourself get killed.'

Last year, 2,480 rebels abandoned the FARC, up from 1,558 the previous year, according to the Defense Ministry. Most are classified as 'men in arms,' fighters on the front lines of a simmering conflict. About 40 percent are plainclothes militiamen who carry out intelligence operations and supply provisions to FARC units...The deserters also say that increasingly paranoid commanders have started to stage more 'war councils,' jungle trials in which guerrillas face execution if found guilty of treachery."

(mobilization on Facebook may deal a fatal blow; a group is organizing a "rescate civil" of 1,000 civilians to march to a FARC stronghold and demand the release of the kidnapped. HT to Adam Isacson)

NYT: new coalition in Pakistan to try new approach with militants: negotiation
“ 'We are dealing with our own people,' said Mr. Sharif, who was twice prime minister in the 1990s. 'We will deal with them very sensibly. And when you have a problem in your own family, you don’t kill your own family. You sit and talk. After all, Britain also got the solution of the problem of Ireland. So what’s the harm in conducting negotiations?' ”
CFR: (this approach doesn't seem all that new to SV; see "peace deals with tribal areas")
BBC: Pakistan People's Party to nominate prime minister today

SWJ: non-commissioned officers' reflections on their deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq

LAT: women imprisoned and abused in Iraq
WP: how the US bullied allies in the run-up to the Iraq invasion

LAT: violence by all sides in Tibetan protests
"Tibetans randomly beat and killed Chinese solely on the basis of their ethnicity: a young motorcyclist bludgeoned in the head with paving stones and probably killed; a teenage boy in school uniform being dragged by a mob. When authorities did regroup, paramilitary troops fired live ammunition into the crowds. Witnesses did not see protesters armed with anything other than stones, bottles of gasoline or a few traditional Tibetan knives.
Despite a massive deployment of Chinese forces, the protests show no signs of abating."
Gdn: China deploying more troops, paramilitaries
WP: also using unconventional means: pro-Tibet groups face cyber attacks

WP: Hezbollah said to be mobilizing in Lebanon for another confrontation with Israel
BBC: in refugee camp in southern Lebanon, fighting between Fatah-backed militia and pro-Syria Islamist group

Ind: British minister for International Development warns of future wars over water

Ind: the power of pop: young Afghans attend 'idol' competition despite militant threats

AP: clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurds celebrating spring festival

BBC: DRC bans Bandu dia Kongo after fighting in west

BBC: Armenian opposition to protest elections again

WP: Nepalis on the verge of voting

Slate: a creative compromise to end the Democratic battle (but eh, one that SV finds unpalatable)
Slate: what if Hillary gave a speech on gender a la Obama's on race? (and why she can't/won't)

Slate: public service announcement from SV: if you're on spring break somewhere delightfully warm, enjoying a coast, beware of jumping fish

Slate: and when you get back, catch up on how the economy's been crumbling
WSJ: maybe the US should switch to Bhutan's approach and measure Gross National Happiness instead. then again, that may not work out too well either...