mayday, mayday: slavery still exists

New Yorker: fighting trafficking (of people)
NYT: slavery in China

WP: CIA head claims that global demographic changes, immigration threaten stability
LAT: 3 Uzbek immigrants killed in Moscow, part of "ultra-nationalist" trend
"This year has seen a dramatic increase in skinhead and neo-Nazi attacks, human rights groups say, many of them aimed at Caucasian and Central Asian immigrants from hardscrabble former Soviet republics who flock to Russia to eke out a living. The bodies turn up beaten, bruised and stabbed, sometimes mutilated or bearing signs of torture."

WP: US deepens role in Sadr City, where 500 were killed last month
LAT: civilian deaths in April - 969 - reach highest level since August
"The number of civilian deaths reported by the Iraqi government for April was 969, the highest since August, when 1,773 were recorded killed. At least 28 Iraqi soldiers and 69 policemen also were reported killed. Officials at two hospitals in Sadr City alone said they had received 321 bodies in the last month."

WP: army medic who earned silver star - the 2nd woman since WWII - removed from her post because women can't serve in combat
"Pfc. Monica Brown cracked open the door of her Humvee outside a remote village in eastern Afghanistan to the pop of bullets shot by Taliban fighters. But instead of taking cover, the 18-year-old medic grabbed her bag and ran through gunfire toward fellow soldiers in a crippled and burning vehicle...'We weren't supposed to take her out' on missions 'but we had to because there was no other medic,' said Lt. Martin Robbins, a platoon leader with Charlie Troop, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, whose men Brown saved...Military personnel experts say that...the 1992 rules are vague, ill defined, and based on an outmoded concept of wars with clear front lines that rarely exist in today's counterinsurgencies."
Gdn: embedded journalist reports from Afghanistan
CSM: an Afghan officer leads NATO forces
"'The [Afghan National Army] has potential to face the challenges of face-to-face war if the spring offensive happens to have the form of conventional war,' says Ahmad Idrees Rahmani, a cofounder of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies in Kabul. 'The problem of the war against the Taliban is that [conventional warfare] is not their fighting strategy. Each time they take over a district, the ANA and other forces can easily take them out in a few days.'
Trouble begins, he adds, 'when they retreat and attack in the form of guerrilla fighters. Then it becomes hard to find a fish in the sea of people.'"
LAT: attack on drug eradication forces kills 19, wounds 40
CSM: insurgency moving north

LAT: Mexico deploys troops to Tijuana

BBC: Algeria and terrorism

Gdn: US kills "top Al-Qaeda militant" in Somalia

LAT: Mugabe concedes election, calls for run-off
Chris Blattman: summary of coverage
"It's a matter of hours before the South African government says something disappointingly conciliatory, and the Brits and Americans make ridiculous and empty threats."

LAT: El Fasher, Darfur "humanitarian boomtown"
"In stark contrast to the burned-out villages and squalid displacement camps that characterize much of Darfur, this dust-choked city is booming, thanks largely to an influx of scores of United Nations agencies and private charities, as well as the newly deployed U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission...Retail sales are soaring thanks to the comparatively high salaries paid to international staffers, though foreign demand is also driving up prices on everything from real estate to bottled water. 'It's a war economy,' said Abduljabber Abdellah Fadul, rural planning professor at El Fasher University."
WP: refugees unable to return to southern Sudan

BBC: the high cost of peace deals and coalition politics in Kenya
"Finance Minister Amos Kimunya says he may be forced to shift funding from vital programmes like resettling the displaced to pay for new ministries...Kenyan politicians are among the world's best paid MPs - each taking home about $17,000 in salaries and allowances each month."

BBC: contesting Obasanjo's legacy

BBC: ICC indicts Congo's warlord "the Terminator"

BBC: report says Mozambique police kill with impunity

BBC: Spain denies extradition request for Isabel Peron, accused of crimes during her 1974-76 rule of Argentina

Gdn: photos from a prison in Northern Ireland

LAT: the 33rd anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam, remembered in Little Saigon, Orange County

The Hoya: Georgetown exhibits shame, does not renew Feith's contract

shaking the tree

NYT: targeting the Mahdi army in Basra
"The dominant Shiite groups in Mr. Maliki’s government are political and military rivals of Mr. Sadr, and Mr. Maliki is freer now to move against him because Mr. Sadr’s party is no longer a crucial part of his coalition...
Though American and Iraqi officials have insisted that the operation was not singling out a particular group, fighting appeared to focus on Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods. In fact, some witnesses said, neighborhoods controlled by rival political groups seemed to be giving government forces safe passage, as if they were helping them to strike at the Mahdi Army. Even so, the Mahdi fighters seemed to hold their ground."
USAT: Sadr orders strike, effectively shutting down health system
"...the more immediate threat to Iraq's stability may stem not from al-Sadr's military might, but his political power to shut down the ministries and services essential to day-to-day life."
CSM: residents gearing up for violence in Sadr City

LAT: "odd couple" partnership between US Marine and Iraqi general

Slate: Iraqi refugees remain in Damascus

Gdn: new coalition gov't in Pakistan charts different path with US; Sharif says it will no longer be US "killing field"
WP: naturally, US continues to "shake the tree," launch attacks in tribal region until further notice

WP: meanwhile, militants in western Afghanistan target those accused of defection more precisely
"Extremists in the area rely on 'a strong network of informants in every village and town' to find suspected spies, said Malik Mumtaz, a tribal elder in Miram Shah, adding that the Taliban usually releases a DVD of the person being killed."
NYT: US contractor, headed by 22-year-old, supplying degraded ammunitions to Afghans
largest supplier to Afghanistan caught in almost unbelievable web of arms trafficking, incompetence and corruption

ICG: report on drug trade and "drug war" policies in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala flags dire effects on law and order, violence

NYT: North Korea expels South's diplomats

Gdn: weighing jurisdiction in Uganda: who will try Kony? who will capture him or make him surrender?
"...recent developments indicate that the Ugandan government is not, at present, pursuing the arrest and surrender obligation [it has as a signatory to the ICC]. Instead, as part of ongoing peace talks in Juba, the Uganda government signed an agreement with the representatives of the LRA on February 19 2008 to establish a national court to try those alleged to have committed 'serious crimes' during the conflict."
Gdn: UN court prepares to try alleged Hakiri assassins in the Hague
"Lebanon has been paralysed politically since Syria's allies, led by the Shia organisation Hizbullah, quit the Beirut government when it voted to establish the tribunal: one consequence is that the Lebanese presidency has been vacant for months and Fuad Siniora, the western-backed Sunni prime minister, will not attend the weekend Arab summit. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are also demonstratively staying away."

Salon: interview with modern slavery researcher
BBC: Indian men protest enslavement in US

BBC: a beauty pageant for landmine victims in Angola
"Perhaps the "Miss Landmine Survivor" contest will remind the rich and powerful in central Luanda that there is still a lot of work to be done, both in terms of ridding the country of landmines and of improving the lives of their victims."