pay up [handsome boy ransoming school]

Salon: kidnapping on the rise in Afghanistan

"Kidnappers come either from the ranks of the Taliban, who target their ideological enemies, or from criminal gangs looking for victims with deep pockets or, sometimes, children to sell into prostitution or use as labor. The lines blur when criminal gangs sell their hostages to the Taliban, Kabul's police chief said in late November. The Taliban, who are closing in on the capital, already control much of southern Afghanistan, creating a sort of free zone to hold kidnap victims with impunity."

BBC: US employing COIN strategy, but it's slow going

"In Khost province, the US military insists it has hit upon a counter-insurgency model that is working. It has fanned out across the province, creating what it calls district centres, in effect, small military bases.

The idea is that you create a mesh - making it difficult for the insurgents to travel from area to area.

Rolling patrols are meant to reassure the local population that there is security and a permanent US presence.

Small reconstruction teams build projects that aid rural communities such as schools and health clinics. New roads are also being built.

These efforts are intended to pull the locals away from the insurgency and into the embrace of the Afghan government with a helping hand from Uncle Sam.

While it sounds entirely workable on paper, on ground, the difficulties of the process are laid bare.

Frequently patrols stop at local markets where an American officer wanders the streets speaking to shopkeepers who look decidedly uncomfortable with all the attention.

The officers' roll call of questions often has a just-out-of-Westpoint feel to it.

How are you? How's business? Have there being any attacks? Followed by the request: if you have any information please report it to the district centre. But not many Afghans ever do.

Many of them are fearful of insurgent reprisals if they are seen to be openly associating or passing on information to the US forces."
BBC: poppy farmers seeking alternative development

NYT: Hamas factions signaling opposite takes on whether truce will end Friday

LAT: recently freed Christian warlord in Lebanon apologizes for 'past mistakes'

"The war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, set the standard for a new kind of lawless, media-saturated civil conflict now common in desperate corners of the world. It left an estimated 100,000 people dead and nearly a million displaced. Palestinians, Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Christians and their foreign backers were pitted against one another, and sometimes against their own kind.

Geagea's story illustrates the complexity of coming to terms with that dark past.

He was a year away from completing medical school at the American University of Beirut when he was sucked into the conflict's vortex as a member of a right-wing Christian militia eventually called the Lebanese Forces. He gained a reputation for no-holds-barred killing, including violence against rival Christians.

In 1990, Syrian troops occupied the country, ending a conflict already petering out. There would be no truth commission to examine who did what during the conflict.

All parties agreed to sweep the war's dirty business under the rug. The government offered amnesty to all fighters except those accused of killing foreign diplomats, high-ranking officials and religious leaders.

Geagea immediately alienated other Christian leaders and Syrian-backed authorities, who charged him with bombing a church and assassinating several officials during the war. After a trial that independent observers said was seriously flawed, he was thrown into prison in 1994, in the third basement level, with "no fresh air, no sun, no winter, no summer . . . nothing," he said."

BBC: LRA bases attacked in Congo; calls off peace process

Econ: the ICC and/or justice in Sudan, plus post-civil war trials in Lebanon, Cambodia, Uganda, and CAR 

"...Sudan’s most prominent opposition politician, Sadiq al-Mahdi, thinks he has an answer: what he calls a “third way” between hauling Mr Bashir to The Hague and doing nothing about crimes in Darfur. He suggests setting up an independent “hybrid” court for Darfur, which would have both Sudanese judges and international ones and sit in Sudan."

BBC: meanwhile, ongoing clashes between ethnic groups in Darfur 
"Unamid says 150 people died as hundreds of members of the Fallata and Salamat ethnic groups attacked the Habaniya in South Darfur.

About 100 more died in clashes between two groups from the Gimir group.

These clashes do not appear to be directly linked to the Darfur conflict between Arabs and black Africans.

But UN officials say ethnic relations have not been helped by the Darfur conflict, which started in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government, accusing Khartoum of neglecting the western region.

This has seen an increased flow of weapons to the region."
BBC: troops withdraw from Abyei after fighting with police

Econ: getting by in Sierra Leone

"Demobilisation has gone fairly well. Sierra Leone is a less violent place than it has been for a long time; by and large, the rule of law prevails. A special court set up to try the okadas’ former commanders, directly responsible for ordering much of the mayhem, is winding down; some are going to jail. Moreover, the country has had two peaceful elections in a region not famed for democracy. Yet in many ways, despite the relative peace, Sierra Leone’s problems remain as intractable as ever, leaving those responsible for keeping the country on life-support wondering what to do next...

Those who are trying to strengthen the country’s institutions and economy know they are in a race against time. The region’s warlords are being replaced by drug lords, many from Colombia. Circling like vultures around weak states, they are starting to use Sierra Leone as a base to ship drugs on to Europe and beyond, with all the corruption and violence that will come with it. A country like Guinea-Bissau, just up the coast, has already fallen prey; it is now almost a 'narco-state.'"

UN dispatch: counter-piracy (via Chris Blattman)

"There's a pirates nest, I guess; where are they? If you can separate them from their ports or wherever they hide out, then obviously you get them before they even come out. The difficulty you have there is what you have with most insurgent-type activities: sorting out the good from the bad."
NYT: undaunted at sea
"More than a dozen warships from Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Britain, Malaysia and the United States have joined the hunt.

And yet, in the past two months alone, the pirates have attacked more than 30 vessels, eluding the naval patrols, going farther out to sea and seeking bigger, more lucrative game, including an American cruise ship and a 1,000-foot Saudi oil tanker.

The pirates are recalibrating their tactics, attacking ships in beelike swarms of 20 to 30 skiffs, and threatening to choke off one of the busiest shipping arteries in the world, at the mouth of the Red Sea."

WP: Somali PM fired by president
"Hours later, as the government veered toward collapse, Islamist insurgents held a brazen news conference in the capital and vowed never to negotiate with the leadership."

BBC: ...who is then sanctioned by Kenya

BBC: Tuaregs kidnap UN envoy to Niger
"The Tuaregs have traditionally been a nomadic people roaming across the Sahara Desert but some took up arms, saying the Niger government is not doing enough to improve their lives.

The FFR [Front des Forces de Redressement] broke away from the better known Tuareg MNJ rebels who are fighting for greater autonomy and a larger share of northern Niger's vast mineral wealth.

The MNJ has had frequent clashes with the country's army and has also kidnapped foreigners working in the uranium mines."

LAT: 22 activists disappeared in Zimbabwe over last 6 weeks

LAT: it's a tactic that allows Mugabe hangs on

"To help understand his staying power, one need only rewind to the 1980s and the massacres of his early years in power, when he was a conquering hero who had thrown out the white minority regime of Ian Smith.

The name of the murderous operation, Gukurahundi, was as lyrical as a haiku: the wind that blows away the chaff before the spring rains.

Mugabe's political opponents were the chaff. The spring rains were supposed to signify the golden era of a one-party state (or rather, a one-man state).

Western leaders and news media ignored the massacres of the "dissidents" by the army's crack Five Brigade in Matabeleland province in southern Zimbabwe. Some estimates put the dead at 20,000.

Mugabe drew his most important lesson from the West's blase reaction, analysts believe: that there's a level of "acceptable" violence that will escape international condemnation, but still destroy any threat to his power."

WP: dissident ANC members establish new political party in South Africa

"The new party, the Congress of the People, has been accused of offering little more than criticism and is not expected to topple the ANC in general elections next year. But the ANC is clearly worried about an exodus of members to the new party, and whether that might signal there is enough discontent among voters to seriously cut into its large parliamentary majority."  

NYT: signs of renewed conflict along ethnic lines in Bosnia

"The power-sharing agreement between former foes has always been tense. Now, however, the uneasy peace has been complicated by Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, which many here worry could prompt the Serbian Republic to follow suit, tipping the region into a conflict that could fast turn deadly...

But the decentralized political system that Dayton engineered has entrenched rather than healed ethnic divisions. Even in communities where Serbs, Muslims and Croats live side by side, some opt to send their children to the same schools, but in different shifts."

AP: mass arrests at protest outside Kremlin

"The Other Russia movement organized the protest, in defiance of a ban, to draw attention to Russia's economic troubles and to protest Kremlin plans to extend the presidential term from four years to six. Critics say the constitutional change is part of a retreat from democracy and is aimed at strengthening the grip of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his allies.

News broadcasts on Russia's main television networks made no mention of the Moscow crackdown or of protests in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok.

Kasparov and other prominent liberals have just launched a new anti-Kremlin movement called Solidarity in a bid to unite Russia's liberal forces and encourage a popular revolution similar to those in Ukraine and Georgia."
BBC: Abkhazia wants in

BBC: Turkmenistan holds first parliamentary elections since adoption of new constitution

Ind: Turkish intellectuals issue apology to Armenians
"Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed during the collapse of the Ottoman empire, but insists they were victims of civil strife and that Muslim Turks also died. Most Western historians agree that the ethnic cleansing that killed roughly 700,000 Armenians amounted to genocide...

The public apology coincides with a diplomatic rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, whose shared border has been closed since the Nagorny-Karabakh war in 1993 and who have been locked in almost 100 years of hostility. President Abdullah Gul made history in September when he became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia, and the two countries have been talking about restoring full diplomatic relations."

Obs: comparing ETA and Islamic terrorist groups 
"Personal networks are hugely important in recruiting. Islamic militant cells, especially in Europe, have often used outdoor adventure activities to bring otherwise disparate individuals together. As one British security source said last year: 'That moment when someone takes someone else's rucksack because they are exhausted is worth a decade of indoctrination in terms of preparing a group for violent action.'"

Ind: Italy arrests 100 alleged mafia associates  

BBC: Colombian NGO calls gov't data 'unbelievable'
"About 114,000 members of the warring factions were said to have been dealt with by the army in the last six years.

However, other estimates say there are only 30,000 in the warring factions.

Even allowing for recruiting to replenish depleted ranks, the government figures suggest that eight members of the warring factions are killed every single day in Colombia, something not substantiated by any other sources." 

BBC: museum dedicated to Pinochet opens in Santiago

WP: new leader for Thailand - 3rd in four months

WP: Secret Service slow to respond to shoe

BBC: journalist beaten, still in custody; supporters rally for 2nd day

++

wronging rights: charity porn / pornographic charity (via Chris Blattman)

of state-building and service-providing [unlikely saboteurs]

WP: NATO devising 'surge' of state-building in Afghanistan
"NATO alliance troops facing ever more aggressive Taliban insurgents are planning a winter "development surge" of civil works projects in eastern Afghanistan designed to win over tribes in regions near the Pakistan border and to prevent their sons from joining the Taliban's ranks, according to military officials here."
Slate: but the current programs have some perverse problems
"This is a country in which all the best people are being hired away from the national government by the alphabet soup of aid agencies on the ground; in which the same alphabet soup of aid agencies is driving up real-estate and food prices; in which millions of dollars are squandered on dubious contractors, both local and foreign; in which the minister for rural development says he doesn't know what all the NATO reconstruction teams in rural districts do; in which the top U.N. official, given a mandate to coordinate the donors, says the donors don't respond to his attempts to coordinate them...
Conflicting agendas, overlapping projects, money badly spent. We've been here before, many times, and the conclusions are always the same. Some of them have been recently restated by a former Afghan minister of finance, Ashraf Ghani, and his co-author, Clare Lockhart, in their book Fixing Failed States. Its central argument: Well-meaning foreigners should not fix roads; they should teach the Afghan government how to fix roads, thus helping it acquire legitimacy. Foreigners shouldn't feed Afghans, either; rather, they should develop Afghan agriculture so the Afghans can feed themselves, export their surplus, and thus develop a stake in the rule of law."

WP: census of Baghdad enclave raises fears among residents
"The document asked for a copy of the deed to his house, his children's names and, most disturbing, the name of his tribe, which identifies his religion and ethnicity. In Iraq, such a request has often been the first step toward death...The forms were part of an effort to enhance the rule of law and encourage reconciliation by identifying residents living in houses that had been emptied by sectarian cleansing and prodding them to return to their own neighborhoods.

NYT: Burma increases security ahead of year anniversary of protests
BBC: has anything changed?
"Meanwhile the military appears to be continuing with its political plans as if the protests had never happened.

It is pressing ahead with its new constitution and so-called "roadmap for democracy", which promises an eventual elected government but has already been labeled a sham by the international community."

BBC: ICC chief prosecutor ignores criticism, remains steadfast on indictment of al-Bashir

Reuters: pirates demand $35 million ransom for Ukrainian ship

Gdn: bombs in Damascus and Delhi

BBC: Ecuadorans vote tomorrow on sweeping constitutional changes
"These are some of the more controversial proposals:

• The state to tighten control of vital industries such as oil, mining and telecommunications and reduce monopolies
• Some foreign loans to be declared illegitimate, which could allow the government to stop debt repayments
• The state allowed to expropriate and redistribute idle farm land and ban large land-holdings
• The president allowed to stand for a second four-year term in office
• Free health care for older citizens
• Civil marriage for gay partners"

BBC: Turkmenistan takes on constitutional reforms
"The measure was passed unanimously by the People's Council, a group of 2,500 tribal elders and local lawmakers...However, exiles and observers said the measures were superficial, leaving President Berdymukhamedov free to rule by decree."

Gdn: judge opens inquiry into Republican repression during Spanish Civil War
"The names of those killed on the orders of Republican tribunals or by leftwing or anarchist death squads are readily available as they were gathered during Franco's 36-year dictatorship. Franco's courts dealt with many of the perpetrators of those atrocities - often by sending them to the firing squad...Many campaigners say it is too late for the perpetrators of the repression carried out by Franco's side to be put on trial as the people involved are mostly dead and the crimes are covered by a 1977 amnesty law."

BBC: memoir of museum-based resistance in WWII France purchased on ebay
"With her artist's eye, her self-deprecating humour, her talent for spotting the absurd and her palpable sense of outrage, Humbert was an irresistible companion, who offered a riveting day-by-day account of the genesis of the Resistance...That stifling summer, in a leap of blind faith and reckless courage, she and a handful of her distinguished colleagues at the Musée de l'Homme - eminent ethnographers and Egyptologists, linguists and librarians - formed what was almost certainly the very first organized Resistance group. It was as though the upper echelons of the British Museum had turned to new careers as urban guerrillas and saboteurs."

WP: Zulu virginity testing continues despite ban in South Africa
"The debate over virginity testing is an example of the clash common throughout Africa as governments try to regulate traditional practices that have long held sway, particularly in rural areas. Legal experts say the topic is particularly complex in post-apartheid South Africa, where patriarchal tribal cultures have dusted off long-stifled traditions under one of the world's most progressive constitutions, which lauds diversity but requires cultural customs to bend to individual rights."

NYT: test your specialty with squirt guns

que viva [shouting for something]

LAT: marking independence with a bang: bomb kills 7 in Michoacan state, Mexico
LAT: 21 dead in Tijuana prison riots
"The prison has seen several uprisings in recent years as state officials have been unable to improve overcrowded conditions and control guard brutality and corruption."
LAT: breakdown of Mexico's police agencies
LAT: the police in charge of policing the police
LAT: massive arrest of 175 suspected Gulf Cartel members in the US

WP: Chavez's aides accused of collaborating with FARC
WP: HRW says Chavez undermining democracy in Venezuela too
"Since [2002], Chávez has used the putsch bid to harangue opponents, enact laws restricting the news media and justify discriminatory policies at the state oil company and other institutions, the report said."

LAT: violence in Bolivia
CSM: where rivals try to broker deal

Gdn: police raid homes in Muslim area of Delhi after bombs, kill 2 suspects
"In protest local shops closed and a number of residents came out onto the narrow streets shouting slogans. Many appeared perturbed that the police had used deadly force near a local mosque. More than 5,000 police were quickly drafted in to keep the peace...In the past few days it has become clear that police have blundered repeatedly in the past year in their attempts to track terror cells, particularly in the Muslim community who have been wary of cooperating with Indian intelligence."
WP: Hindu-Christian violence in India

AP (via WP): Thailand lifts emergency, because it wasn't good for tourism
oh, you hadn't heard?
"Emergency rule was imposed by the government Sept. 2 after a night of clashes between its supporters and opponents left one man dead and dozens injured. Images of the mayhem were broadcast around the world, prompting travel advisories from several countries.

Calm was quickly restored in the capital, and business and daily life continued as usual. The army refused to exercise its authority under the decree to oust tens of thousands of protesters from the prime minister's compound, where they have been camped in tents since Aug. 26."

AP (via WP): Malaysia's new prime minister
BBC: his rival just resigned

BBC: battle at sea in Sri Lanka

WP: violence reignited in Philippines
"After years of calm, the oldest insurgency in Asia has flared into a brutish war, with burned villages, slain families, artillery bombardments, vigilante death squads and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

The match was lit last month when the Philippine government abruptly backed out of an all-but-done peace deal it had been quietly negotiating for years. That enraged Muslim rebels here on Mindanao, a lush and resource-rich island where Muslims and Christians have been elbowing each other for power and land for more than four centuries.

At 4:30 a.m. Aug. 18, aggrieved rebels attacked this mostly Christian village of 4,000 residents. The rebels looted rice and canned sardines. They doused 22 houses with gasoline and set them on fire, while killing 13 Christian villagers, according to a government tally. The youngest victim was 10; the oldest, 95.

Tipped off about the raid, Muslims in the village fled before the rebels arrived. But if the Muslims come home, they face the vengeance of a Christian vigilante group called the Ilaga, which last operated in the 1970s."

WP: violence in Nigeria
BBC: militants 'warn of war'

LAT: opposition supporters come to rally in Zimbabwe

LAT: rioting over witches and soccer in Congo

GDN: details of power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe

BBC: troops die in Mauritania clash

BBC: AU peacekeeper killed in Somalia
WP: France rescues two pirate hostages

BBC: Rwandans hold election for parliament
Econ: and elect first majority-women parliament in history

BBC: violence in Turkmenistan related to drug trafficking

LAT: war in Georgia sparks domestic conflict in Ukraine

WP: defense contracts in Afghanistan
Econ: civilian deaths reach new levels
AP (via WP): SecDef says US reviewing its strategy
but: "Gates did not say the current U.S. approach in Afghanistan is failing. Nor did he explicitly call for a change of direction. He alluded, instead, to the 2007 makeover of U.S. strategy in Iraq and suggested in an interview with a group of reporters that the administration is reconsidering fundamental aspects of its strategy."

WP: new flash point in Iraq

LAT: Iranian veteran's film on war with Iraq
"The movie questions the very myths about war upon which the Islamic Republic rests: namely, who from Iranian society fought in the war, out of which strata they hailed and why they fought. As the hero, Majid, risks his life to walk through a minefield to clear the way for an offensive, the images rushing through his head are not fantasies of 72 virgins in heaven, but a shot of the woman he loves, his memories from a stint in prison and a grandfatherly cleric back in Tehran."

Gdn: gang violence in Paris
"French police are struggling to contain a gang war in north-eastern Paris that has left one dead and several injured, as locals complain that they are being fenced into high-rise ghettoes to make way for the middle-class...north of the canal, a war between rival gangs on high-rise estates has escalated, with riot police moving in to control it. For 15 years, local rivalries between the Curial and Riquet estates have seen vicious knife-fights and score-settling, but now more youths are turning to 'le gun'."

WP: SV says this tricky Dick may be worse than the last

what time is it?

Foreign Affairs: failing intervention in the Congo
"The international community must fundamentally revise its strategy. It must focus on local antagonisms, because they often cause or fuel broader tensions, and regional and national actors hijack local agendas to serve their own ends. Until the local grievances that are feeding the violence throughout eastern Congo are addressed, security in the entire country and the Great Lakes region overall will remain uncertain."
BBC: fighting broke out again in the east; aid stopped

NYT: US says opposition clear winner in Zimbabwe
"'This is a government rejecting the will of the people,' [the Asst Sec of State for African Affairs] said, referring to the Zimbabwe electoral commission’s refusal to announce who won the March 29 presidential election. 'If they had voted for Mugabe, the results would already have been announced. Everyone knows what time it is.'"
WP: meanwhile, the police raided opposition headquarters

BBC: Pakistan wants NATO to back off in the border
NYT: because it might jeopardize the deal the gov't has almost reached with militants in the region; US expresses skepticism that it will work.
BBC: others think it might

BBC: Sri Lanka military takes control of Roman Catholic shrine after heavy fighting Wed

BBC: malaria increases mortality rates of the displaced

Weekly Standard: crime drops within US prisons
NYT: the US, with 5% of the world's population, has 25% of world's inmates

Gdn: Turkmenistan turns the calendar back
"The late dictator renamed the months in 2002 - one of a series of bizarre decrees that earned Turkmenistan the reputation of being one of the world's most repressive states. Ordinary Turkmen stuck with the old names, but the new forms became mandatory for officials and state television."