Deadly Blast at Moscow’s Main Airport Seen as Terror Attack

By ELLEN BARRY and ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — A bomber strode into the arrivals hall at Moscow’s busiest airport on Monday afternoon and set off an enormous explosion, witnesses and Russian officials said, leaving bodies strewn in a smoke-filled terminal while bystanders scrambled to get the wounded out on baggage carts.

Russian authorities said at least 31 people were killed and 150 injured in the attack. The Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said in televised remarks that the blast was an act of terrorism and ordered the police to track down the perpetrators.

Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said the attack was probably carried out by a male suicide bomber, and that authorities were trying to identify him.

In the moments after the blast, the smoke was so thick that it was difficult to count the dead, eyewitnesses said. Arriving passengers stepped into the hall to the sight of blood on the floor and bodies being loaded onto stretchers. Ambulances sped away crowded with three or four patients apiece, bleeding heavily from shrapnel wounds to their arms and legs.

The blast hit Domodedovo Airport, a facility that is a showcase for modern Russia, just as Mr. Medvedev prepared to woo foreign investors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Mr. Medvedev promptly postponed his departure to manage the aftermath of the attack.

It is bound to further shake a country already on edge after a nationalist demonstration turned violent in mid-December, inflaming relations between ethnic Russians and migrants from the north Caucasus, a predominately Muslim region on Russia’s southern border.

Though there was no indication Monday evening of who was behind the blast, Moscow’s recurrent terror attacks have nearly always been traced to militants in the North Caucasus. The most recent came in March, when two women from Dagestan strapped on explosive belts and detonated themselves on the city’s subway, killing more than 40 people.

Doku Umarov, a rebel leader, took responsibility for that attack, posting a video in which he warned Russians that “the war will come to your streets, and you will feel it in your own lives and on your own skin.” Such attacks have typically strengthened the influence of Russian security forces and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin by firmly establishing security as the country’s top priority.

Mr. Putin appeared on television on Monday night, ordering the health minister to provide aid to all the bombing victims, visiting clinics one by one, if necessary, he said.

The bomber apparently entered the international arrivals terminal from outside, a witness said, advancing to the blue tape where taxi drivers and relatives wait to greet arriving passengers and setting off the explosion at 4:32 p.m. local time. The area is open to the general public, said Yelena Galanova, an airport spokesman, according to the Interfax news service.

Artyom Zhilenkov, who was in that crowd, said he was standing about 10 yards away from a short, dark-complexioned man with a suitcase — the bomber, he believes. They were awaiting flights from Italy, Tajikistan and Germany. Mr. Zhilenkov, a taxi driver, spoke to reporters several hours after the blast, wearing a track suit dotted with blood and small ragged holes.

“How did I manage to save myself? I don’t know,” he said. “The people behind me on my left and right were blown apart. Maybe because of that.”

Among the wounded were French and Italian citizens, according to the Health and Social Development Ministry.

Yuri, another witness, told Russia’s state-run First Channel TV that the shock wave was strong enough to throw him to the floor and blow his hat away. After that the hall filled with thick smoke and part of the ceiling collapsed, said Aleksei Spiridonov, who works at an auto rental booth. He said most of the victims were waiting to greet passengers.

“They pushed them away on baggage carts,” Mr. Spiridonov said. “They were wheeling them out on whatever they could find.”

Many of the victims suffered terrible wounds to their faces, limbs and bodies, witnesses said.

“One person came out and fell,” Olga Yaholnikova told RenTV television. “And there was a man with half of his body torn away.”

Investigators were working on Monday evening to determine the power and type of explosive used in the attack. Nikolai Sintsov, a spokesman for the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, said there are shrapnel holes in the arrival hall, but no shrapnel has yet been retrieved.

In televised remarks, Mr. Medvedev said that although Russia has imposed waves of new security procedures in the wake of terror attacks, they are not always implemented. He ordered police to boost security at all airports and on public transportation.

The airport, southeast of the capital, is Russia’s largest airline hub, with more than 20 million passengers passing through last year. Domodedovo was the site of a previous terror attack in August of 2004, when two Chechen suicide bombers boarded separate planes there, killing themselves and 88 others in midair. The attack exposed holes in security, since the two bombers, both women, had been detained shortly before boarding, but were released by a police supervisor. The authorities have since worked to tighten security there.

The airport remained open on Monday evening, and passengers continued to flow through the hall where the bomb had exploded. Gerald Zapf, who landed shortly after the blast, said his airplane circled the airport several times before landing, and passengers were forced to wait on board for some time before they were allowed to disembark.

When they finally made it into the airport, he said, he saw nothing of the carnage that had taken place, because it was hidden by large sheets of blue plastic. Monday’s explosion in Moscow pointed to the continuing fascination with air travel for militants, as well as the difficulty of carrying out an attack aboard a jet, said Stephen A. Baker, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security. “They’d like to be bombing planes and they can’t, so they’re bombing airports,” he said, adding that the attack “validates the focus that the U.S. has had on security at airports.”


Michael Schwirtz and Andrew Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, and J. David Goodman from New York.

Abyei, Sudan's potential tinderbox

By Rebecca Hamilton
Monday, January 24, 2011; A06

IN ABYEI, SUDAN Southern Sudan brimmed with optimism after a largely peaceful referendum this month that almost certainly will lead to the creation of a new nation. But in the contested border town of Abyei, the mood was somber.

In a mud-walled hut, Achol Deng Ngok stacked layers of kissera, a sorghum pancake, she had prepared to send to men north of town. Two weeks ago, clashes in the area left at least 36 people dead.

"We are scared, that's why we're sending our men food - so they stay in the villages north of here to protect us," she said.

But Ngok said she has an even bigger fear: "We don't want to be left behind when the south gets its independence."

That fear is pushing the Ngok Dinka, the town's dominant ethnic group, to consider declaring Abyei part of the south, even though they know that move might provoke the north to try to take Abyei by force.

Sudan's predominantly Muslim and Arab north and the largely Christian and animist south fought a 22-year war that led to the deaths of 2 million people. If Abyei's status is left unresolved, the area will be caught between two nations, possibly triggering a return to conflict in Sudan.

A 2005 peace agreement, which ended the war, promised the people of Abyei their own referendum on whether to be part of the north or south. The Abyei referendum was supposed to be held simultaneously with the main southern referendum, but the two sides failed to agree on who was eligible to vote.

Results of the main referendum are expected next month, but the Abyei referendum has been postponed indefinitely.

"If Abyei remains unresolved and the south secedes," said Jon Temin, director of Sudan programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, "the people of Abyei will be left in a very ambiguous and vulnerable position."

The agreement that ended the first Sudanese civil war in 1972 gave people here the opportunity to claim Abyei as a southern area, reversing a decree made during British colonial rule that had put it under northern administration.

But after oil was discovered in Abyei, the Sudanese government refused to let the referendum go forward.

This time, the Ngok Dinka have decided to issue their own declaration.

"We want to be clear that Abyei is part of the south and we want to belong to the south," said Kuol Deng Kuol, paramount chief of the Ngok Dinka. Nomadic grazing


While the Ngok Dinka say Abyei belongs to the south, another group is equally adamant that it belongs to the north.

Each year the Misseriya, a northern nomadic group, migrate southward to graze their cattle near a river south of Abyei. The River Kiir, as the Ngok Dinka call it, or Bahr al-Arab, as the Misseriya term it, is a lifeline during the harsh dry season.

Historically, the two groups managed a relatively peaceful coexistence. But during the war years, that relationship frayed as governments in Khartoum armed the Misseriya to fight against the southern population.

The 2005 peace agreement promised the Misseriya continued grazing rights in Abyei regardless of whether the land ended up in the north or the south. The Ngok Dinka say they support that provision.

But in a phone interview, Misseriya leader Sadig Babo Nimir said grazing rights will mean nothing if Abyei goes to the south.

If the Ngok Dinka want to go to the south, he said, "let them go with pleasure. If they want to stay, let them stay with pleasure. But the land is part of the north."

These conflicting views are reflected at the national level, partly due to rumors about oil. While the one remaining oilfield in Abyei is in decline, U.S. oil exploration here in the early 1980s still prompts speculation that there are untapped reserves.

On the southern side, the secretary general of the ruling party, the Southern People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), Pagan Amum, has said that if the Abyei referendum is not conducted, the only remaining option is for Abyei to be transferred to the south by presidential decree. On the northern side, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said he will not accept Abyei being part of the south.

The Ngok Dinka say they fear that if they do not make their declaration before the votes are counted in the southern referendum, they will miss their chance to join the south.

"There is still time to find a political solution if President Bashir wishes to do so," said Rou Manyiel, chairman of civil society organizations in Abyei.

But with the referendum commission expected to announce the results by Feb. 14, the clock is ticking.

The Ngok Dinka were ready to make their declaration before voting started on Jan. 9. But two high-level officials from the SPLM persuaded them to hold off.

The officials said a declaration before the referendum would give the north "an excuse to disrupt" the vote, said Juac Agok, deputy chairman of the SPLM in Abyei.

The SPLM is now asking them to wait until after July 9, when southern independence would formally begin.

But Agok said, "I don't think it will be possible for me to convince the people of Abyei to wait." Peacekeeping challenge


Politicians in both north and south have accused each other of sending troops to the area around Abyei. Experts worry that violence in the contested borderland would be difficult to rein in.

"If unresolved, Abyei will continue to be a source of instability, risking broader escalation," said Zach Vertin, Sudan analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The Ngok Dinka leaders are preparing their people for the possibility of a Khartoum-backed attempt by the Misseriya to take Abyei.

"We are appealing to all the sons of Abyei to be aware of this, and telling them they should defend their family and property," said Kuol, the Ngok Dinka chief.

Misseriya leader Nimir denied that the group has any plan for a takeover, and said that far from feeling supported by Bashir, the Misseriya feel betrayed by the government for having agreed to an Abyei referendum in the first place.

But Nimir also said that if the Ngok Dinka declare that Abyei belongs to the south, "then we will defend our land by force."

Hamilton is a special correspondent in Sudan on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Related articles

• A border region caught in the middle as Sudan prepares to split (independent.co.uk)
• Living on the frontline (bbc.co.uk)

Hearings on Muslims trigger panic

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2011; A01

WESTBURY, N.Y. - They called it a summit to teach Muslims how to fight prejudice and fear. But all day long, fear was inescapable in the fluorescent-lit meeting hall of the Long Island mosque.

The top issue on everyone's mind this month at the Islamic Center of Long Island was this: What could be done to stop planned congressional hearings on alleged hidden radicalism among American Muslims and mosques?

The House hearings, scheduled to begin next month, have touched off a wave of panic throughout the U.S. Muslim community, which has spent much of the past year battling what it sees as a rising tide of Islamophobia. Conference calls, strategy sessions and letter-writing campaigns have been launched. Angry op-eds have compared the congressional inquiry to McCarthyism and the World War II persecution of Japanese Americans.

But for those who gathered at the Long Island mosque, the coming hearings represented not just a political issue, but a personal one. For the man organizing the hearings was the very lawmaker who was supposed to represent them in Washington - Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). Long before he had become their enemy, he had been one of their community's closest friends.

"He used to come to our weddings. He ate dinner in our homes," said the mosque's chairman, Habeeb Ahmed, a short medical technologist with graying hair sitting near the front. "Everything just changed suddenly after 9/11, and now he's holding hearings to say that people like us are radical extremists. I don't understand it."

At the meeting that day, Ahmed, a 55-year-old immigrant from India, was surrounded by more than a hundred Muslim leaders from New York and beyond.

There were Sunnis and Shiites. There were doctors, engineers and pharmacists who had left Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh to remake their lives in the United States. There were African Americans who had embraced Islam decades ago and new converts who were learning what it meant to be Muslim in America.

Some had flown in from as far away as Chicago. But most were regulars at the local Islamic center, including Ghazi Khankan, who had been one of its earliest members and had defended it for years against King's scorn.

"We have nothing to hide," Khankan said. "No matter what King says, others know that we are a peaceful community."

Although no member of the Islamic Center has ever been accused of terrorism, King has singled out the mosque as a hotbed of "radical Islam" and called its leaders extremists who should be put under surveillance. He maintains that most Muslim leaders in the United States aren't cooperating with authorities, even as arrests of homegrown terrorists are rising.

Now, as the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King said he is finally in a position to do something about it.

"My first goal is just to have people even acknowledge this as a real issue," King said. "This politically correct nonsense has kept us from debating and discussing what is one of this country's most vital issues. We are under siege by Muslim terrorists."

For years, such statements by King have provoked anger among Muslims in his district, but with the hearings looming, there is also a sense of shame and regret. Long Island Muslims worry that what began long ago as a broken relationship between them and their congressman could soon pose a threat to the entire U.S. Muslim community. Friend, then foe


The Islamic Center of Long Island sits just beyond the boundaries of New York's 3rd District. It is an imposing green-domed building nestled amid suburban split-levels and cul-de-sacs.

Muslims were once a rarity here, but a wave of immigration in the 1980s changed that. Today, 70,000 Muslims are estimated to live on Long Island, worshiping at about 22 mosques.

With 400 members, the Islamic Center is one of the largest and most prominent of the mosques. It took the lead in hosting the recent all-day summit for Muslim leaders, at which the discussion often devolved into anguished debate over how to deal with King.

We should pray for him, some said. We should try to vote him out of office, others said. One man proposed organizing protests outside King's congressional office. Another said that kind of reaction would play into the congressman's hands.

The concern has plagued the Westbury mosque for nine years. But it was not always so.

During King's earliest days as a congressman, he gave speeches at the Islamic Center and held book signings in the prayer hall. He took in Muslim interns and was one of the few Republicans who supported U.S. intervention in the 1990s to help Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.

In return, the Westbury mosque presented him with an award for his work in the Balkans. Many of its leaders regularly contributed to his campaigns, often paying $500 a person to attend his fundraisers.

King was even the main guest of honor on the day of greatest pride for the community: the 1993 opening of its long-awaited $3 million prayer hall, which many proudly note was built completely with locally raised funds. For years, a picture of King cutting the ceremonial ribbon hung on the bulletin board by the mosque's entrance.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. A breach of faith


In the weeks after the twin towers crumbled and the Pentagon burned, local reporters swarmed Long Island's mosques looking for reaction.

On Oct. 18, Khankan and another Westbury mosque leader were quoted in the local paper, repeating conspiracy theories that it wasn't Muslims who had orchestrated the attacks.

"Who really benefits from such a horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims and Arabs?" asked Khankan, the mosque's interfaith director at the time. "Definitely Muslims and Arabs do not benefit. It must be the enemy of Muslims and Arabs. An independent investigation must take place."

Safdar Chadda, a dentist from Pakistan who was then co-president of the mosque, speculated that "the Israeli government would benefit from this tragedy by now branding Palestinians as terrorists and crushing them by force."

Their statements infuriated King, who had lost friends in the attacks, as had many in his district, which lies 30 miles east of Manhattan.

"At this key moment for our country, the worst attack on us in history, these people who I thought were my friends were talking about Zionists and conspiracies," he said. "They were trying to look the other way while friends of mine were being murdered."

The day after the newspaper article appeared, the mosque's founder, Faroque Khan, went to a neighboring synagogue in a largely unsuccessful attempt to retract and explain what members of his mosque had said.

In the weeks that followed, Khan and others issued progressively stronger statements condemning al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for the attacks. They forwarded these to King's office, but the damage was already done.

To King, the fact that those words were ever uttered branded the mosque's leaders as radicals.

When told that King had specifically cited his statements after Sept. 11 as the turning point, a pained look spread across Khankan's face.

"You have to understand the confusion and shock at the time," said Khankan, who is 76, with a shuffling walk and a shock of white hair.

Tapes of bin Laden had just been released in which he praised but was not yet openly taking responsibility for the attacks. Many at the mosque recalled that Muslims had been immediately and falsely blamed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

After Sept. 11, Muslim children were being bullied at school, and someone had shot a pellet into the Islamic Center's window.

Khankan said he had spent most of his life working for Muslim groups, trying to create a bridge between outsiders and his community. That his words may have helped plant the seed for King's hearings, he said, is a heavy burden.

"I just wish I could talk to Pete today," he said. "I want to say to him: 'Tell me what I said or did so I can explain it. Give me a chance to clarify.' "

Targeting extremists




Since then, King has not set foot in the Islamic Center. Over the past decade, he has become one of the country's loudest voices on the dangers of Islamic extremism.

He has called for ethnic and religious-based profiling of air passengers and told Politico that there are "too many mosques in this country." He later tried to clarify that remark, saying he meant that "too many mosques in this country are not cooperating with law enforcement and too many have been taken over or are heavily influenced by extremists."

Of late, he has repeatedly alleged that 85 percent of U.S. mosques are run by radical extremists - an assertion he attributes to a 1999 statement by Sufi leader Hisham Kabbani at a State Department forum. It was rejected at the time by every major Muslim organization in the country.

But for some of King's Muslim constituents, his most hurtful words came in the form of his 2004 novel, "Vale of Tears." The story revolves around a fictional congressman who stumbles across a plan by terrorists - who are associated with a Long Island mosque and work with al-Qaeda and remnants of the Irish Republican Army - that could kill hundreds.

King dedicated the novel to "those who were murdered on September 11" and explained his purpose in the preface: "It describes how vulnerable we can become if we lower our guard - for even the slightest moment - and if we fail to recognize that our terrorist foes comprise a worldwide network with operatives active within our borders." Homegrown terrorism


Few take issue with King's assertion that homegrown terrorism is rising greatly.

In the past two years, according to Justice Department statistics, nearly 50 U.S. citizens have been charged with major terrorism counts - all of them allegedly motivated by radical Islamic beliefs.

But many law enforcement leaders disagree with King's allegation that most Muslim leaders do not cooperate with authorities. In the past, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has praised the community. And in a speech last month, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said: "The cooperation of Muslim and Arab American communities has been absolutely essential in identifying, and preventing, terrorist threats. We must never lose sight of this."

Experts also point to a string of recent terrorism cases that were foiled or reported by Muslim leaders.

Within King's district, Nassau County Lt. Kevin Smith said he couldn't recall the last time police received a tip from local mosques. But the detective said: "It's hard for us to judge what that means - whether that's because they're not reporting something or if there's just nothing to report. On the whole, though, I think we have a good relationship with the mosques in our county." Working with King


Many Muslim leaders say that after years of reaching out, they've given up on changing King's mind. At the Islamophobia summit, one man compared it to hitting his head against a brick wall: "If nothing changes, why keep beating yourself up?"

But one leader stood up and urged the crowd to keep trying. His name was Mohammed Saleh, and to the surprise of many, he called King a reasonable man.

"I have met King recently and talked to him," said Saleh, 63, a balding, bespectacled immigrant from Bangladesh. "In many ways, he is a good man."

Their relationship, Saleh said later, began as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks. As one of King's constituents, Saleh asked for help because someone with his name was on the government's airport watch list and he was being detained on international flights.

King helped devise a system by which Saleh could call authorities a few days in advance when he flies. Since then, Saleh has organized fundraisers for King and arranged for him to meet others in his circle of Bangladeshi Muslims.

Some Muslims question why Saleh would raise money for a man who regularly attacks their community. But as a pharmacist who has spent his life weighing dosages and prescriptions, Saleh said he has scrutinized the political makeup of King's district - a conservative strip amid a largely Democratic state. King won 72 percent of the vote in last year's election, he notes.

"I am a pragmatist, and it's clear we have to learn to work with Mr. King," Saleh said.

Saleh also says that as one of King's Muslim constituents, he bears a responsibility for King's views on Muslims. "If it was a broken relationship that sent King on his path now," Saleh said, "perhaps a new relationship will lead him back."

So, he spent most of last week trying to meet with King to express his concerns about the hearings and ask King to make sure they are fair.

In response, King said he is willing to listen but plans to push ahead with the hearings no matter how uncomfortable they may be for Muslims in his district or nationwide.

"This was not a fight I was looking for," King said. "I originally came into this as a supporter and friend of the Muslim community. But now we are facing a danger from within. And we need to see it and recognize it, because it's not something we can ignore anymore."

Staff researchers Jennifer Jenkins and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

In Tunisia, a warm embrace of fresh freedoms

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 24, 2011; A01

TUNIS - Workers stormed out of the state-run shipping company the other day. For decades, they had lived quietly in relative poverty as their bosses, all members of the former ruling party, drove luxury cars and owned mansions.

Only 10 days ago, the police would have suppressed this mini-uprising and arrested them. Now, it was a new order. Pumping their fists, the workers accused the company's chairman of embezzlement and demanded his resignation.

Across this nation, Tunisians are experiencing a blossoming of freedoms after a popular uprising ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from power on Jan. 14, ending his autocratic rule. Many are voicing their thoughts and ideas after living for nearly a quarter of a century in fear. Others, for the first time in their lives, are demanding justice for relatives killed by his regime.

The happiness is tempered by unease, for their future is still uncertain. Protests are unfolding daily in the capital to demand that the interim government purge all members of Ben Ali's party. The opposition is weak and divided; some fear militias that supported the president might create problems.

In a crackdown on key allies of Ben Ali, police on Sunday placed two high-ranking officials under house arrest and detained the head of a well-known private TV station for allegedly trying to slow the country's steps toward democracy.

But for now, at least, many here are embracing freedoms they thought they would never have.

"They stole the nation's money. They were a mafia. Our company is like a little example of what was wrong with Tunisia," said Sofiyan Abu Sami, one of the workers who walked off the job the other day. Some carried placards that read "No to corruption."

"Now, we can finally speak our minds," he said.

Under Ben Ali, Tunisia was perceived by the West as a model nation in the Arab world - moderate, relatively prosperous and secular. The autocratic leader, who seized power in 1987, stamped down on Islamic radicalism; he was a U.S. ally in the war against terrorism in a region where al-Qaeda was making inroads.

Ben Ali also lorded over a landscape of repression and corruption. Journalists were censored, harassed and monitored by his intelligence service. Critical voices were silenced.

His family owned more than half the companies in Tunisia, including banks, hotels and real estate development firms. Bribes and good ties with the government were the route to jobs and promotions.

In the streets, shops and offices, Ben Ali's photos were everywhere, as were the secret police.

For years, Mohammed Nasrallah, who was once jailed for supporting an opposition group, was forced to keep a large photo of Ben Ali in his restaurant near the Avenue Habib Bourghiba, the epicenter of the protests, which winds through downtown Tunis. Removing it would have meant a visit from city inspectors, stiff fines, perhaps even a beating by the secret police.

But after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Nasrallah took the photo from the frame and set it on fire. "It was like I was born again," he said.

A block away, Radhiya Mishirsi said she once worried that the police would insult her when she wore her head scarf. On Friday, she stood near a group of policemen and declared that she would cover her entire face, leaving only her eyes exposed. The policemen nodded and smiled. 'First, the people'


On the Avenue Bourghiba, Mohamed Dhakar carried a placard calling for a new national motto: "First, the people. Freedom. Rights. Justice."

"I am not part of any party," Dhakar yelled. "I am for Tunisia."

His presence attracted a large crowd and triggered an impromptu discussion.

"We are against the secret police. We want all of them in uniform," a man yelled.

"If the new government is making a piece of theater, the people will remove them like we did the old government," another man yelled.

Communists, socialists and atheists were all staging demonstrations downtown on this day. Opposition groups were once banned or harassed by the old government. On Friday, more than 1,000 Islamists marched along the avenue, calling for a parliamentary form of government. A group from a rural area in Tunisia's impoverished south distributed pamphlets demanding more jobs and development in their region.

Some hurled insults at the once-feared police.

"There is a God," a man shouted at some policemen. "There is a God to protect the truth. How can you have killed your own people?"

Sueda Guesmi was also asking that question. She said her son was accused of selling alcohol illegally and imprisoned without a trial. A few weeks later, she was told he had died in his cell.

"I want to know why my son was killed," Guesmi said. "I want justice for him." Writing without fear


At the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the 300 or so employees demanded that the minister, an ally of Ben Ali, depart along with his staff. He complied. As his chief of staff left the building, the employees exploded in thunderous applause.

"Long live the revolution! Long live Tunisia!" they chanted.

"We are rejecting this new government," said Rauda Assel, an employee standing outside the ministry building. "This is not the moment for taking your ministry car and your responsibilities, but to be with the people for the right cause."

The employees appointed a three-member committee from their own ranks to run the ministry until, they said, a government is formed that satisfies them.

At La Presse newspaper, the editor in chief, who was appointed by the former government, also stepped down. A committee of editors took over. Ten days ago, they were publishing official propaganda delivered by the state news agency. On the front pages, they always published a picture of Ben Ali. They wrote fawning articles about Besma - The Smile - a charity run by his wife, Leila Trabesi.

"It was a smoke screen to hide the corruption of the first family," said Hmida Ben Romdhane, an editor on the committee now running the newspaper. "Before the revolution, we were not publishing information. We published disinformation. The regime forbade any attempt to write the truth."

Now, for the first time in their lives, La Presse's 50 journalists are writing without fear.

Ben Ali's photo is no longer published on the front page - unless it accompanies a scathing article about the regime's excesses. Last week, La Presse published a story about Switzerland freezing Ben Ali's assets.

Soon, Ben Romdhane said, his reporters are planning to investigate the corruption and repression of the former regime. "We have to learn how to be free and work in this new atmosphere of freedom," he said.

His voice filled with emotion as he spoke about the profound change in the newsroom and his life.

"I am 59, and I have seen only two presidents. I have experienced two dictatorships," he said. "The freedom we have gained is a freedom imposed by the people on the political system. This freedom, I think, will last.

"It's a new era."

Related articles

• Marchers add to Tunisia pressure (bbc.co.uk)
• Tunisia arrests TV channel owner for "treason" (reuters.com)

China Grooming Deft Politician as Next Leader

By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

BEIJING — President Hu Jintao of China returned home this weekend after a trip intended to repair relations with the United States. But the next time the White House marches out the honor guard and polishes the crystal for a Chinese leader, it is unlikely to be for Mr. Hu.

Following a secretive succession plan sketched out years ago, Mr. Hu has already begun preparing for his departure from power, passing the baton to his presumed successor, a former provincial leader named Xi Jinping, now China’s vice president. While Mr. Xi is expected to formally take the reins next year in China, the world’s second-largest economy and fastest-modernizing military power, he remains a cipher to most people, even in China.

But an extended look at Mr. Xi’s past, taken from wide-ranging interviews and official Chinese publications, shows that his rise has been built on a combination of political acumen, family connections and ideological dexterity. Like the country he will run, he has nimbly maintained the primacy of the Communist Party, while making economic growth the party’s main business.

There is little in his record to suggest that he intends to steer China in a sharply different direction. But some political observers also say that he may have broader support within the party than Mr. Hu, which could give him more leeway to experiment with new ideas. At the same time, there is uncertainty about how he may wield authority in a system where power has grown increasingly diffuse. Mr. Xi also has deeper military ties than his two predecessors, Mr. Hu and Jiang Zemin, had when they took the helm.

For much of his career, Mr. Xi, 57, presided over booming areas on the east coast that have been at the forefront of China’s experimentation with market authoritarianism, which has included attracting foreign investment, putting party cells in private companies and expanding government support for model entrepreneurs. This has given Mr. Xi the kind of political and economic experience that Mr. Hu lacked when he ascended to the top leadership position.

He is less of a dour mandarin than Mr. Hu is. The tall, stocky Mr. Xi is a so-called princeling — a descendant of a member of the revolutionary party elite — and his second marriage is to a celebrity folk singer and army major general, Peng Liyuan.

Unlike the robotic Mr. Hu, Mr. Xi has dropped memorable barbs against the West into a couple of recent speeches: he once warned critics of China’s rise to “stop pointing fingers at us.” But he has enrolled his daughter in Harvard, under a pseudonym.

The Climb Up the Ladder

Mr. Xi (his full name is pronounced Shee Jin-ping) climbed the ladder by building support among top party officials, particularly those in Mr. Jiang’s clique, all while cultivating an image of humility and self-reliance despite his prominent family ties, say officials and other party members who have known him.

His subtle and pragmatic style was seen in the way he handled a landmark power project teetering on the edge of failure in 2002, when he was governor of Fujian, a coastal province. The American company Bechtel and other foreign investors had poured in nearly $700 million. But the investors became mired in a dispute with planning officials.

After ducking foreign executives’ repeated requests for a meeting, Mr. Xi agreed to chat one night in the governor’s compound with an American business consultant on the project whose father had befriended Mr. Xi’s father in the 1940s.

Mr. Xi explained that he could not interfere in a dispute involving other powerful officials. But he showed that he knew the project intimately and supported it, promising to meet the investors “after the two sides have reached an agreement.” That spurred a compromise that allowed the power plant to begin operating.

“I thought, ‘This person is a brilliant politician,’ ” said the consultant, Sidney Rittenberg Jr.

Mr. Xi’s political skills paid their greatest dividend last October, when he was appointed vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, a move that means he will almost certainly succeed Mr. Hu as party secretary in late 2012 and as president in 2013. Mr. Hu, the commission’s chairman, could retain his military post for another few years.

Over the years, Mr. Xi built his appeal on “the way he carried himself in political affairs,” said Zhang Xiaojin, a political scientist at Tsinghua University.

“On economic reforms and development, he proved rather effective,” Mr. Zhang said. “On political reforms, he didn’t take any risks that would catch flak.”

Mr. Xi also emerged as a convenient accommodation to two competing wings of the party: those loyal to Mr. Hu and those allied with Mr. Jiang, who in China’s collective leadership had an important role in naming Mr. Hu’s successor.

Mr. Xi’s elite lineage and career along the prosperous coast have aligned him more closely with Mr. Jiang. But like Mr. Hu, Mr. Xi also spent formative years in the provincial hinterlands. Mr. Hu was once close to Mr. Xi’s father, a top Communist leader during the Chinese civil war.

The father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of the more liberal party leaders and was purged several times under Mao. He was a mastermind in the early 1980s of China’s first special economic zone in Shenzhen. Behind closed party doors, he supported the liberal-leaning leader Hu Yaobang, who was dismissed in 1987, and condemned the military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.

The younger Mr. Xi grew up in Beijing and went to the premier military-run high school. But he had to fend for himself during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. At age 15, he was sent to labor among peasants in the yellow hills of Shaanxi Province. He stayed seven years in the village of Liangjiahe, which eventually named him party secretary.

Mr. Xi came to hate ideological struggles. In an essay published in 2003, he wrote, “Much of my pragmatic thinking took root back then, and still exerts a constant influence on me.”

Even at that early age, his conciliatory leadership style was evident. “When people had a conflict with each other, they would go to him, and he’d say, ‘Come back in two days,’ ” said Lu Nengzhong, 80, the patriarch of a cave home where Mr. Xi lived for three years. “By then, the problem had solved itself.”

Mr. Xi later relied on family ties to enter Tsinghua University in Beijing. He began his political career as an aide to Geng Biao, a powerful military bureaucrat allied with Mr. Xi’s father.

By the early 1980s, party elders had identified Mr. Xi as one of a brood of prospective future leaders. His first provincial post was in Hebei, where he promoted local tourism and rural enterprise, but ran up against the conservative provincial leader. The party then sent him to Fujian Province, across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan. Mr. Xi bounced through three cities over 17 years.

There, he courted Taiwanese investors. For 14 years, he also supervised the local military command. His exposure to the Taiwan territorial issue “may shade his views on cross-strait relations in the direction of flexibility,” said Alice L. Miller, a scholar of Chinese politics at the Hoover Institution.

Some ambitious investments drew national scrutiny while Mr. Xi governed Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian. City leaders signed a contract with Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong real estate tycoon, to redevelop the old city quarter, but that fizzled after a public outcry. A new international airport grossly overshot its budget.

Nor was Mr. Xi untainted by corruption scandals. One party investigation into bribe-taking in Ningde and Fuzhou, publicized years after he left Fujian, toppled two former city leaders whom Mr. Xi had promoted.

Gaining Beijing’s Notice

But back in Beijing, top leaders were watching out for Mr. Xi. He actually finished last when party delegates voted for the 344 members and alternates of the Party Central Committee in 1997 because of general hostility toward princelings. But Mr. Xi slipped in as an alternate anyway. Mr. Jiang, the party leader, and his power broker, Zeng Qinghong, helped back Mr. Xi’s continued rise, said Cheng Li, a scholar of Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

His next assignment, as provincial party boss up the coast in Zhejiang, was cushier. There, too, the economy was humming. Mr. Xi hewed to Beijing’s initiatives to embrace private entrepreneurs. He also hitched his star to homegrown private start-ups that have since gone global.

Soon after his arrival in late 2002, he visited Geely, then the province’s sole carmaker. The firm’s indefatigable founder, Li Shufu, had just begun to receive some financing from state banks. “If we don’t give additional strong support to companies like Geely, then whom are we going to support?” Mr. Xi remarked.

Last year, Geely bought the carmaker Volvo from the Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Xi bestowed early recognition, too, on Ma Yun, founder of Alibaba, now an e-commerce giant and Yahoo’s partner in China. After he left Zhejiang in 2007 to become the top official in Shanghai, Mr. Xi extended an invitation to Mr. Ma: “Can you come to Shanghai and help us develop?”

At the time, party authorities were pushing private companies to form party cells, part of Mr. Jiang’s central vision to bring companies and the party closer. Officials under Mr. Xi parceled out vanity posts to entrepreneurs, granting some the coveted title of local legislative delegate. Mr. Xi also cautiously supported small-scale political reforms in Zhejiang, where democratic experiments were percolating at the grass roots.

When cadres in one village in Wuyi County allowed villagers to elect three-person committees to supervise their leaders, Mr. Xi took notice. He issued pivotal directives that helped extend the obscure pilot program, said Xiang Hanwu, a county official. The system won praise from the Central Party School, where rising cadres are trained. In August, Zhejiang approved a provincewide rollout, though with additional party controls.

Mr. Xi also got an important career boost from Zhejiang’s push to forge business ties with poorer provinces inland. He led groups of wealthy Zhejiang businessmen who met with officials in western provinces, winning points with other provincial leaders.

Seizing the Throne

For years before a party congress in October 2007, Mr. Xi was not deemed the front-runner to succeed Hu Jintao as party leader. The favorite was Li Keqiang, a protégé of Mr. Hu. But Mr. Xi’s political capital surged in March 2007 when he was handed the job of party boss in Shanghai after a pension fund scandal had toppled the previous leader.

Shanghai was the power base of Mr. Jiang and Mr. Zeng. During his short seven-month stint there, before he joined the elite Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing, Mr. Xi helped ease the aura of scandal on their turf, while stressing Beijing’s prescriptions for the kind of measured growth favored by Mr. Hu.

It was a balancing act of a kind that had served him well for decades.

Since joining the inner sanctum in Beijing, Mr. Xi has reinforced his longstanding posture as a team player. As president of the Central Party School, Mr. Xi recently made a priority of teaching political morality based on Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideals, a resurgent trend in the bureaucracy.

His views of the West remain difficult to divine. He once told the American ambassador to China over dinner that he enjoyed Hollywood films about World War II because of the American sense of good and evil, according to diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks. He took a swipe at Zhang Yimou, the renowned Chinese director, saying some Chinese filmmakers neglect values they should promote.

But on a visit to Mexico in 2009, when he was defending China’s record in the global financial crisis before an audience of overseas Chinese, he suggested that he was impatient with foreigners wary of China’s new power in the world.

“Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us,” he said. “First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?”


Li Bibo and Benjamin Haas contributed research.

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Iran's fuel blockade strains relations with Afghanistan, prompts protests

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 17, 2011; A07

KABUL - A protracted fuel blockade by Iran sparked protests in Afghanistan for the second day in a row Sunday as tensions rose between the Islamic neighbors, who share a long border and a complicated history.

Afghan demonstrators in the western border city of Herat threw eggs and stones at the Iranian consulate, protesting the six-week border blockade of fuel tankers passing through Iran that has caused prices of gasoline and winter heating fuel to rise between 35 and 60 percent across the country.

Afghanistan's commerce minister, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, said at a news conference in the capital Sunday that the government was "not happy" with Iran, marking the first public criticism of the actions by Afghan officials. He said the Afghan government had not received any plausible explanation for the blockade, which has left up to 2,000 fuel trucks stranded on the border. "Whatever reason they have given is not acceptable to us," Ahady said.

Iranian officials said they were stopping the fuel transports because the government suspects the product ends up with NATO - and perhaps U.S. - forces in Afghanistan. "We have news that fuel transited through Iran is handed over to NATO forces. We are extremely worried about this," Fada Hossein Maleki, Iran's ambassador to Afghanistan, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Jan. 5.

"We will provide fuel for the people, but no one has the right to give it to the military of a country who will use it against the interests of the nations of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.

NATO officials here have repeatedly denied that the fuel was being sold to U.S. and NATO troops fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Ahady said that until early December, about 2,400 tons of fuel per day had been entering Afghanistan through Iran, most of it coming from Iraq. That had supplied almost half the nation's domestic fuel needs, he said, but once it stopped, a poorly regulated system of private fuel importation had left the country without a plan to manage the crisis. He pledged that Afghanistan would import 200,000 tons of fuel through other routes in the coming month.

Afghan news media reported this week that Iran had reacted angrily to a series of protests outside its embassy in Kabul and its consulate in Herat, calling in the Afghan ambassador in Tehran and demanding that the protest organizers be arrested.

Maleki told the news agency that, after the protests in front of his embassy, Iran had demanded the arrest of the "key elements of this suspicious act." If that happens, he said, "the Islamic Republic of Iran might reconsider the fuel transit."

But some Afghan officials and many civilians have complained that Iran has no right to dictate to its government.

The crisis has added a new chapter to the tense and contradictory relationship between the two countries. Iran has long served as an economic and wartime safety valve for millions of Afghan refugees, while Afghan rivers provide a steady flow of water to Iran under a 60-year-old agreement. Iran, the wealthier and more powerful neighbor, has also been providing financial support to Kabul, some of it in the form of cash payments to President Hamid Karzai.

Yet many Afghans suspect that Tehran wants to weaken their country, undermine its alliance with the West and increase Shiite Muslim influence in their Sunni-dominated society. There are periodic reports of covert Iranian activities in Afghanistan, and constant tensions along the border where thousands of Afghans cross back and forth.

A recent series of violent border incidents involving Afghan job seekers has added to the tensions. Afghan human rights and political activists said Iranian border guards regularly abuse Afghans who try to cross illegally in search of jobs, beating many and fatally shooting several in recent months.

"Iran wants Afghanistan to be weak and unstable, and their cruelty has caused a serious crisis for poor Afghans, but our government remains silent," said Najibullah Kabuli, an Afghan legislator and TV channel operator who organized several of the recent anti-Iran rallies here.

The fuel crisis has put Karzai's government in an awkward position on several fronts. It is caught between the widening domestic anger at Iran and its historic dependence on Tehran for help with fuel, refugees, jobs and trade. At the same time, it is hosting tens of thousands of American and other NATO troops to help fight Taliban insurgents, while trying to preserve cordial relations with a neighbor that is a sworn enemy of the United States.

Ahady, Afghanistan's commerce minister, declined to comment on Iran's relationship with his government, and Karzai, who is politically beholden to several former Shiite militia leaders with ties to Iran, has said almost nothing about the current crisis. Last month Vice President Mohammed Fahim Khan visited Tehran and reportedly appealed to Iranian officials to halt the blockade. Since then, Iran has been letting a trickle of 30 to 40 tankers a day cross the border, while thousands more sit idle.

The halt of fuel transports coincided with an overhaul in the way state subsidies are handed out in Iran, prompting a sharp increase in the price of gasoline and other staples.

Before the plan started on Dec. 20, the Iranian government had been stocking up on fuel in case the changes led to unrest or shortages. Although Iran praises itself for exporting gasoline and petrochemical products to neighboring countries while it faces international trade sanctions, some have speculated that the stopped tankers on the border are serving as a possible backup in case the fuel is needed inside Iran.

"Iran is our neighbor and we share the same religion, but it is always creating problems for us," said Jamshid Khan, a construction company administrator who was waiting in a line of cars at a Kabul gas station Saturday. "If they don't let the tankers go soon, I am going to have to start riding a bicycle to work."

Correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran contributed to this report.

Lebanon prepares for 'the toughest week ahead'

By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 17, 2011; A06

BEIRUT - The head of the militant Shiite Hezbollah movement on Sunday defended the decision to bring down Lebanon's government, arguing that the move was necessary to protect the country from the consequences of indictments expected soon from a controversial United Nations tribunal.

The comments from Hassan Nasrallah - his first public remarks since the government's collapse - set the stage for what are likely to be lengthy negotiations on forming a new government that will stall Lebanese institutions and frustrate the nation.

Hezbollah and its allies resigned from the government Wednesday to protest Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri's refusal to renounce the work of a U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 killing of Hariri's father, former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The move follows a long standoff over the tribunal that has paralyzed the country, pitting Hariri, backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia, against Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran.

Parliamentarians are expected to meet Monday to nominate a new prime minister for this tiny coastal nation of Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Christians that has long been a regional battleground for influence.

Political leaders here are deeply divided, and choosing a new government will prove difficult if a compromise is not reached. Nasrallah vowed that members of the March 8 alliance, led by Hezbollah, would not back Hariri, who is now serving as a caretaker prime minister. Instead, the group and its allies are trying to gather the parliamentary support they need to select someone for the position.

"It was our moral and patriotic duty to make this government fall in order to open a door to form a strong government," Nasrallah said in his address on the Hezbollah television channel Al Manar. "This step was constitutional, legal and civilized. We did not go to the streets or use weapons."

Sealed draft indictments in the 2005 assassination will be sent soon to the pre-trial judge at the tribunal, and they are widely expected to implicate several of Hezbollah's members. The group has staunchly denied involvement in the killing of Rafiq al-Hariri and 22 others and has demanded that the government stop cooperating with the tribunal.

"They could not make a plan to deal with the indictments," Nasrallah said, adding that the Hariri-led administration "exposed" the country and had become "incompetent." He added, "We exercised our beliefs for the sake of our country."

Both the pending indictments and the related political crisis are sensitive issues in a nation that on the surface seems calm but is, in fact, deeply divided by religion and sect and often teeters somewhere between peace and conflict.

On the radio in Beirut, one weekend news bulletin summed up things in just four words: "The toughest week ahead."

Nasrallah asked why the "world is interfering" in an internal issue, referring to Western and Arab countries that have rallied behind Hariri. Before signing off, he warned Hariri that the deposed dictator in Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was an ally to the West, but those friends quickly turned on him, and no Western airport opened its doors after his people ousted him from power.

"There is a huge responsibility tomorrow on the members of parliament to decide the destiny of the country," he said.

Such uncertainty is the norm in Lebanon, whose institutions have been stalled intermittently since the 2005 killing.

Most people here agree that an internal war will not engulf Lebanon. Many say they don't want to fight, and only one party is strong enough to win, the armed Shiite movement of Hezbollah, founded nearly 30 years ago when Israel invaded Lebanon. In 2008, Hezbollah showed its military might when it took to the streets and briefly took control of parts of the city.

"They could have kept the city, they could have taken it all, but they didn't. They just wanted to show that all of this is a play," said Ahmed Waheed, 45, as he hawked meat pies on the side of the road in the northern city of Tripoli. "We want the truth but these politicians have taken us into a dark tunnel, and we don't know where we are anymore."

Around him, banners graced the bridges and traffic circles of this city. "Whoever betrays Saad Hariri, betrays Lebanon," reads one in the center of the mostly Sunni city where Hariri has wide support.

"They fight with each other so they can get paid from the outside," Waheed said. Most months, the Sunni man can't make his rent. He steals his electricity because he can't pay for it, and every time there is a crisis, food prices rise. His wife holds a master's degree, but she can't get a job. "We want to protest, but there is no government to protest."

Waheed's frustrations are echoed across the country.

In south Beirut, the Shiite heartland of the Lebanese capital, Hassan Ramadan squeezed fresh juice for his customers Sunday. The front of his store was adorned with a picture of Nasrallah.

He and his family had a store in Tarik al Jadida, a Sunni district of Beirut where sectarian skirmishes were most fierce in 2008. Sunni men from the neighborhood destroyed his store because it was Shiite-owned. He still hasn't reopened. The time to do that is not now, he said, because the sectarian tensions are too high.

"Lebanon is always in a crisis," Ramadan said. "When the leaders sit together and agree, the people will calm down and everything will be okay. The politicians decide the safety of the streets."

"Lebanon is a battlefield for the whole world," added his customer, Mohammed Srour, as he dipped his plastic spoon into a cup of sliced fruit and fresh juice.

fadell@washpost.com Special correspondent Moe Ali Nayel contributed to this report.

Officials try to regain order in Tunisia

By Bouazza Ben Bouazza and Elaine Ganley
Monday, January 17, 2011; A06

TUNIS - Major gun battles erupted outside the palace of Tunisia's deposed president, in the center of the capital, in front of the main opposition party headquarters and elsewhere on Sunday as authorities struggled to restore order and the world waited to see whether the North African nation would continue its first steps away from autocratic rule.

Police arrested dozens of people, including the top presidential security chief, as tensions appeared to mount between Tunisians buoyant over Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's departure and loyalists in danger of losing major perks.

There were cheers and smiles in much of Tunis, the capital, as residents tore down the massive portraits of Ben Ali, some of them several stories high, that hung from lampposts and billboards and were omnipresent during his 23-year reign.

Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannoushi said on state TV that a new national unity government will "most certainly" be announced Monday "to open a new page in the history of Tunisia." There are three legal opposition parties that could be included in the government Ghannoushi has been directed to form by the interim president, Fouad Mebazaa. Negotiations are advanced, Ghannoushi said Sunday night.

Worries among Tunisians, however, grew with the violence and worsening shortages of essentials such as milk, bread and fresh fish.

"We're starting to feel it now," said Imed Jaound at the Tunis port, which has been closed since Friday, when Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.

A gun battle broke out around the presidential palace late Sunday afternoon in Carthage on the Mediterranean shore, about 10 miles north of Tunis. The army and members of the newly appointed presidential guard fought off attacks from militias loyal to Ben Ali, said a member of the new presidential guard. Helicopters were surveying the zone.

The militias emerged from a forest to charge, the guard member said by telephone. He said the militia are "numerous" and are using various kinds of arms but gave no further details. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be publicly named.

Residents of Carthage - a center of power in ancient times but now a Tunis suburb popular with tourists - said they have barricaded themselves inside their homes amid the shooting. Many soldiers were in the palace, but it was unclear whether any of the interim government's leaders were.

One Carthage resident said she saw four men in a taxi speed through a military checkpoint at the end of her street and toward the palace nearby. Soldiers shot at the taxi and the men inside returned fire.

The resident, who asked not to be named because of security concerns, said her neighbors saw other armed men break through checkpoints in civilian cars. The gun battle lasted about four hours before calm returned in the evening, she said.

Other gunfights broke out near the PDP opposition party headquarters and a two-hour-long gun battle raged behind the Interior Ministry, long feared during Ben Ali's reign as a torture site. Residents of the city center heard constant volleys of gunfire throughout much of the afternoon; they were ordered to stay away from windows and keep their curtains closed.

The prime minister said Sunday night that police and the army have arrested numerous members of armed groups, without saying how many.

"The coming days will show who is behind them," Ghannoushi said. He added that arms and documents have been seized from those arrested.

"We won't be tolerant towards these people," the prime minister said.

The security chief, Ali Seriati, and his deputy were charged with a plot against state security, aggressive acts and "provoking disorder, murder and pillaging," the TAP state news agency reported.

- Associated Press

Glacier melt in Peru becomes more than a climate issue

By Heather Somerville
Sunday, January 16, 2011; 11:39 PM

HUARAZ, Peru - Glacier melt hasn't caused a national crisis in Peru, yet. But high in the Andes, rising temperatures and changes in water supply over the last 40 years have decimated crops, killed fish stocks and forced villages to question how they will survive for another generation.

Without international help to build reservoirs and dams and improve irrigation, the South American nation could become a case study in how climate change can destabilize a strategically important region, according to Peruvian, U.S. and other officials.

"Think what it would be like if the Andes glaciers were gone and we had millions and millions of hungry and thirsty Southern neighbors," said former CIA Director R. James Woolsey.

Peru is home to 70 percent of the world's tropical glaciers, which are also found in Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile. Peru's 18 mountain glaciers, including the world's largest tropical ice mass, are critical to the region's water sources for drinking, irrigation and electricity.

Glaciers in the South American Andes are melting faster than many scientists predicted; some climate change experts estimate entire glaciers across the Andes will disappear in 10 years due to rising global temperatures, creating instability across the globe as they melt.

If Peru and its allies don't fund and create projects to conserve water, improve decrepit water infrastructure and regulate runoff from glaciers within five years, the disappearance of Andean glaciers could lead to social and economic disaster, said Alberto Hart, climate change adviser at Peru's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"This will become a problem for the United States," he said. "When you have a dysfunctional country, you have a problem for the entire region."

The United States spent $30 million on climate change assistance in Peru in fiscal year 2010, according to documents provided by the State Department. The funding, allocated as part of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, went mostly to preserving the Amazon rainforest in Peru.

Peruvian officials would hardly turn away money to preserve the Amazon. But the immediate problem is adaptation to rapid glacier melt, Hart said.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers the majority of climate funds, recently received a $1.25 million grant to work with The Mountain Institute, a Peruvian non-profit organization, through 2012 and assist mountain communities in adapting to glacier melt.

"It will take more resources than are currently available . . . but the trend is going in the right direction," said Steve Olive with USAID in Peru.

The Peruvian government is asking Washington and other allies for at least $350 million every year through 2030 to build reservoirs and dams, and improve irrigation, said Hart.

Japan, Australia and Switzerland also have offered assistance for climate change, Hart said. The World Bank is also working in Peru to monitor water supplies and implement drought-resistant agriculture, part of a larger climate change project that includes several Andean nations, according to Walter Vergara, a World Bank engineer who started the project in 2004.

But Peruvian officials say the United States has a majority share of the responsibility to help Peru, because of the close trade alliance between the two nations, and because the United States is the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

"We are knocking on many doors, and obviously the U.S. is one big door we are knocking on," said Hart.

Bolivia and Ecuador are also threatened by glacier melt and Colombia's costal and riverside cities are being wiped out by floods and landslides - disasters that are only expected to get worse, according to a study by the Pew Center on Climate Change.

Climate change is "a significant threat" to the region, and the United States must "really come to terms" with the security challenges it poses, Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Arturo Valenzuela said recently.

Its ice is melting, but the majesty of Huascarán Mountain hasn't diminished. Its white peak still pierces the clouds on an overcast day in the Cordillera Blanca, part of the Andes range that stretches through Peru's northwest region of Ancash.

Communities revere Huascarán, Peru's tallest mountain, for its beauty and its water that allows them to survive the extreme terrain. But over the last 20 years, they've watched Huascarán's glacier diminish.

"It used to take you two or three hours walking to reach the ice. But now you have to walk five, six hours to reach ice," said Maximo Juan Malpaso Carranza, a farmer in Utupampa, a small community high in the Cordillera Blanca.

"We all get water from there," he said, pointing to Huascarán. "But if the ice disappears, there won't be any more water."

More than 2 million people, stretching from the Andes to the coastal cities, get their drinking water and irrigation from rivers fed by glacier runoff from Cordillera Blanca. But research by Cesar Portocarrero, the Peruvian government's lead glacier scientist, shows the Cordillera Blanca has lost 30 percent of its glaciers since 1970.

Most of Peru's agriculture is fed by water from the Andes. Glacier-fed rivers also support the nation's largest hydroelectric plants. Lima, the world's second-largest desert city, is almost totally dependent on Andean rivers from the Cordillera Central, where some mountains have lost more than 60 percent of their glaciers in the last 40 years.

Water conflicts have been frequent in southern Peru over the last few years, and glacier melt will create even more across the country, and, in extreme cases, spreading to neighboring countries, said retired Maj. Gen. Luis Palomino Rodriguez, head of Peru's National Civil Defense Institute, in an interview.

The Pentagon is starting to address the impacts of climate change. It gave the Southern Command, in charge of Latin America, $600,000 to develop a mapping tool that will allow Latin America and the United States to share information about climate change risks. It is also spending $1.4 million to study the climate change effects on foreign military bases.

SouthCom will release a new environmental security strategy in the next couple months, but the military is far from integrating its climate change studies into operations.

"We have a lot to do," said Myrna Lopez, environmental security expert with SouthCom. "We're not there yet where we have a complete buy-in from the DoD that this is a core military role."

Peru has taken steps, but lacks resources. It created a national strategy on climate change in 2003 and has set up a Ministry of Environment with oversight of climate change programs. Officials are working with USAID and non-profit organizations to build reservoirs in Andean communities and monitor water flow from the glaciers.

"We may think that current wait-and-see policies are adequate to the task," said Chad Briggs, Minerva Chair for Energy and Environmental Security with the U.S. Air Force. "Peru may be a looming example of how that is not the case."

This article is part of the "Global Warning" series on the national security implications of climate change produced by the National Security Reporting Project at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.