Mexican drug cartels muscle in on lucrative movie and music piracy business

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By William Booth, Published: May 29

MEXICO CITY — When hundreds of Mexican police crashed through the doors into a warren of mysterious warehouses and humming laboratories, they uncovered one of the largest illegal manufacturing centers of pirated movies and music ever found in Latin America.

The pre-dawn raids last month netted 12 tons of movie disks and more than 1,000 DVD burners, enough machinery to produce a staggering 500,000 counterfeit copies of “Kung Fu Panda 2” a day, if the factories were running at capacity.

Defenders here in the rough barrio of Tepito, famous for its black-market bazaar, threw spikes down into the street to blow the tires of the crusading police. No arrests were made, and Mexican officials shrug that they do not know who ran the laboratories. But according to U.S. officials and American producers of the stolen films, music and software, Mexican drug cartels lurk in the shadows.

Led by the notorious La Familia and Los Zetas drug mafias, Mexican cartels now take a big cut of the hundreds of millions of dollars in bootleg disks sold in Mexico each year, according to U.S. officials and representatives of film studios and software manufacturers.

“This is no longer a victimless crime. There is blood on the product,” said Federico de la Garza, managing director of the Motion Picture Association in Mexico City, whose own investigators work closely with the Mexican attorney general.

Disk piracy and U.S. copyright violations are a challenge around the world, but in Mexico the sale of bootleg copies of “Toy Story 3” and Microsoft Windows XP are funding the powerful mafias whose relentless violence has left more than 35,000 Mexicans dead in the past four years.

Mexico has become the pirate capital of Latin America, exporting so many bootleg movies to Central America, for example, that the major studios no longer bother to sell their products on the shelves there, according to industry watchdogs.

And in Cancun or Monterrey or Tijuana, when you buy a bootleg Disney movie for the kids, it is as likely as not to bare a stamp that shows it was distributed by the Zetas (a stallion) or La Familia (a butterfly).

Video piracy is ubiquitous in Mexico, where more than nine of 10 movie DVDs sold are counterfeits. Mexican authorities rarely seize products from street dealers or market stalls. U.S. officials in Mexico suspect many vendors give kickbacks to local authorities to allow them to operate.

The bootleg units sell for about $1, versus the $12 charged for legal disks, and though the sound and picture are sometimes inferior, the copies are generally decent. Box-office blockbusters are available on the street a couple of days after they open in theaters in the United States.

About 26 million legitimate DVDs are sold in Mexico each year; another 235 million are bootlegs, according to the motion picture industry, which claims the bootlegs account for $300 million to $600 million in lost revenue. Some critics suggest that U.S. film studios are selling their product at a price point far above what the average Mexican is willing to pay and thus are stoking the piracy boom.

On Saturday in Mexico City, counterfeit copies of “The Hangover Part II” were already on sale at metro stops, two days after the picture premiered.

Asked if he thought it was a crime to buy a pirated DVD, Juan Figueroa, a college student, said, “nope.” He acknowledged that it was wrong, but compared it to littering. Plus, he said, the price was right. He paid 10 pesos for the film, about 85 cents.

“The resources the cartels gain from these enterprises is considerable,” Mexico’s deputy attorney general, Irving Barrios Mojica, said in an interview.

Barrios said the cartels probably don’t manufacture the disks themselves but have muscled into the business, forming partnerships with distributors and extorting vendors, demanding a monthly cut. “Organized crime, for example, will charge the vendors a thousand pesos a month — about $90 — to do business,” Barrios said.

There are hundreds of thousands of such small vendors to shake down in Mexico. A 2009 study by the attorney general here found that La Familia could generate as much as $2 million a day through video piracy.

The Mexican attorney general has discovered that pirate disk suppliers are offering their distributors a form of insurance: For an extra peso per disk, they will replace any film confiscated by authorities.

A U.S. official in Mexico with knowledge of piracy, but who could not be named because of security protocols, said the cartels are continuing a pattern of exploiting new business opportunities, moving from drug and arms smuggling to human trafficking to petroleum theft and now to piracy.

A bipartisan caucus in the U.S. Congress last week announced the creation of a “watch list” of countries where piracy has reached “alarming levels” and is controlled by organized crime. The caucus named Canada, China, Russia, Spain and Ukraine, and members said that Mexico would probably be named soon — although they applauded the country for passing legislation last year that makes piracy a crime and establishes protocols for enforcement.

But challenges remain. Mexico has yet to make a major arrest. According to industry reports, 83 low-level distributors have been arrested this year, though only six are in jail. But the authorities are busy: 83 laboratories, 476 warehouses, 400 cyber-cafes and 72 bars have been busted this year, and more than 5 million DVDs, CDs and Blu-rays seized.

“Organized crime, the saying goes, is very organized, and we saw that two to three years ago, these criminal groups noticed a huge industry, a golden opportunity, and they seized it,” said de la Garza. “They are killers, but they are also good businessmen.”

Researcher Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.

Haqqani insurgent group proves resilient foe in Afghan war

Joshua Partlow/ THE WASHINGTON POST - U.S. soldiers are on a mission to apprehend an alleged Haqqani network fighter they suspected of participating in a bombing that killed five Afghan police officers in January. (May 24)


By Joshua Partlow, Published: May 29


KHOST, Afghanistan — The United States knows where to find the most feared insurgent family in the Afghanistan war.

Troops can point to the downtown Khost mansion owned by its patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani; the million-dollar blue-tile mosque he built for the city’s residents; and his base of operations 20 miles away in Pakistan. They are aware of his trucking and warehouse businesses, his sons who command about 3,000 fighters, and their sophisticated training camps that conduct courses in withstanding interrogation and firing rockets across borders.

Defeating the Haqqanis is another matter.

“Haqqani is the most resilient enemy network out there,” said Col. Christopher Toner, commander of the U.S. military brigade in this eastern Afghan province.

Outnumbered by the Taliban and less famous than al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network nevertheless poses an intractable problem for U.S. troops, particularly as the focus of the war shifts toward the Pakistani border.

After an intensive focus on fighting Mohammad Omar’s Taliban in southern Afghanistan in 2010, the Obama administration is in talks, mediated by Germany and Qatar, with an Omar deputy. But a political deal with the Taliban — still a distant prospect — would not necessarily end the war in the east: the Haqqani network is seen as the least reconcilable of the Afghanistan war’s motley crew of insurgent factions.

The Haqqani family, protected from all threats save for the occasional U.S. drone strike in its Pakistani sanctuary of North Waziristan, has carved out a lucrative niche by exploiting the porous border with smuggling rings and bribery.

The Haqqanis rely on their Pash­tun tribal connections and their patrons in Pakistan’s intelligence service, according to U.S. military officials.

The Haqqanis hew to the relatively narrow goal of ruling a three-province swath of eastern Afghanistan that was once their exclusive domain but is now shared with thousands of American troops.

“They want power, wealth, money and a seat at the table when this thing is over,” Toner said.

The Haqqani fighters cooperate with the Taliban but are “not fully subordinate” to Omar and sometimes extract tolls from Taliban fighters who transit their territory, said a U.S. military intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter for the record.

Resourceful network

Haqqani’s fighters slip into Afghanistan along mountain passes and historic trade routes, including several illegal border crossings used by hundreds of cargo trucks each day. The men generally fight in Afghanistan for many weeks before returning to Pakistan for a break of several months, U.S. officials say.

When in Afghanistan, the fighters move from village to village, never spending more than one night in the same house. They rarely use cellphones or radios, because the communications can be picked up by U.S. surveillance technology, and know to exploit the “red zone” — the one-kilometer-wide buffer zone near the border that U.S. troops do not enter without clearance from their commanders.

Even as U.S. troops work to deplete the ranks of Haqqani fighters — about 150 of them are killed or captured every month in Khost — the group regenerates. The Haqqanis dip into a seemingly endless supply of Afghan refugees and young men and boys schooled at conservative Islamic madrassas in Pakistan’s tribal areas. U.S. soldiers recently arrested a 15-year-old who they suspect is an insurgent cell leader.

To avoid detection, Haqqani fighters sometimes take elaborate precautions. U.S. troops noted how several people will convene at an Afghan safe house, each with a different bomb component — batteries, wire, clothespins and homemade explosives.

The fighters report to leaders in Pakistan and often do not know their comrades. Even if one is arrested, “he can’t give you the other six dudes,” said Capt. Daniel Leard, the company commander in the border district of Terezayi. “Even if you take out one arm, you can’t take out the whole network.”

‘The shadow government’

The titular head of the organization, Jalaluddin Haqqani, has been a militia leader for three decades, and he received money and weapons from the United States during the war against the Soviets. Then-U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-Tex.), who championed the rebel cause, famously described Haqqani as “goodness personified.” Haqqani exacted a heavy toll on Soviet troops by besieging his home town of Khost. His status as a war hero gave him a credibility among Afghans that lasts to this day.

Now in failing health, Haqqani plays more of a symbolic role in the organization, which has been run for the past few years by his son Sirajuddin and, to a lesser extent, a second son, Badruddin. Sirajuddin is known for his business savvy, earning money from trucking, extortion and racketeering. The fighters conduct kidnappings, collect illegal taxes and shake down Afghan shopkeepers for protection fees.

“They’re trying to position themselves as the shadow government that will take over as the official government if they can win the war,” said Lt. Col. Jesse Pearson, a battalion commander in Khost. “That’s what their motivation is. I do not see them as ideologically based.”

Haqqani fighters receive extensive training in Pakistan, U.S. troops said. They have “live fire training that is every bit as realistic and funded and supported as anything we do in the States,” Leard said.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed last month on Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost in separate rocket attacks; at least one is suspected to have been staged from Pakistan.

The level of expertise in the Haqqani network has helped the group strike targets far from its base, including in the Afghan capital, Kabul. A suicide bombing this month inside an Afghan military hospital, as well as several other assaults on hotels, embassies and shopping malls, have been attributed to Haqqani fighters.

Last month, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, openly accused Pakistan’s main intelligence agency of supporting the Haqqani network. To Afghan officials, there has long been little doubt of ties between the group and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “They are an element of the ISI. The whole world knows that,” said Lt. Col. Atiqullah Torzan, an Afghan border police commander in Khost. “They get 100 percent support.”

Pakistan denies the allegation. Pakistani officials have long pledged a military operation in North Waziristan to target the insurgents hiding there but have not delivered.

Weak links along border

To combat the Haqqani network, the United States has sent more troops to eastern Afghanistan: A 5,000-man brigade operates in Khost and in part of neighboring Paktia province. The Haqqanis are also a leading target of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

The military pressure has taken its toll not only in the number of killed and captured insurgents, but also in less tangible ways. U.S. military officials said the greater presence of troops at border checkpoints has slowed illegal truck traffic and diverted it to other parts of the border, increasing the costs of bringing weapons into battle. Insurgents have complained in intercepted communications of wanting to attack but not having the money, bombs or people to do it. Pearson, the battalion commander, says he thinks Haqqani’s men are in “full defense mode” and are “hiding and trying to stay alive.”

“Frankly, we’re bringing terror to the terrorists,” he said.

But the Afghan security forces along the border remain a weak link in the fight. In Terezayi district, along the Pakistan border, there are just seven policemen on any given shift to patrol an area with a population of more than 100,000.

The border police have more men on the payroll, about 300, but only a third are present for duty at any one time. Those who serve are notoriously susceptible to bribes, which helps the Haqqani fighters slip through. The price the policemen charge, about $4 per vehicle, rises to about $40 for more important insurgent cargo, U.S. military officials said.

“We’re talking illegal imports of up to 200 trucks a day, semitrailers,” Leard said. “That’s enough to feed the insurgency in all of Khost.”

 

Wikipedia goes to class

Norm Shafer/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST - James Madison sophomore Anna Wilson works on a Wikipedia-related assignment for a class called "Professional and Technical Editing.”

By Jenna Johnson, Published: May 29

A Virginia Tech graduate student hit save on her overview of the state workers’ compensation commission one spring day, but before her professor could take a look at it, someone else began deleting entire sections, calling them trivial and promotional.

It wasn’t a teaching assistant on a power trip — it was a Wikipedia editor known only as “Mean as custard.”


“I had worked on it for almost an entire day,” said Amy Pearson, a public administration master’s student. “It was kind of shocking.”

This school year, dozens of professors from across the country gave students an unexpected assignment: Write Wikipedia entries about public policy issues.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the Web site, organized the project in an effort to bulk up the decade-old online encyclopedia’s coverage of topics ranging from the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 to Sudanese refugees in Egypt. Such issues have been treated on the site in much less depth than TV shows, celebrity biographies and other elements of pop culture.

Many students involved in the project have received humbling lessons about open-source writing as their work was revised, attacked or deleted by anonymous critics with unknown credentials.

In the fall, Rochelle A. Davis, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, told undergraduates in her culture and politics course to create a Wikipedia page about a community they belonged to, then use that research to develop a thesis for an academic paper.

“Collectively, they were the best papers I’ve ever read at Georgetown,” Davis said. She said students benefited from vetting their ideas with a wider community — a practice that could help academics at all levels. “This is where we are going,” she said. “I think that’s a good thing.”

In the fall semester, nine professors were involved. There are about three dozen now. By next semester, the foundation hopes to expand to schools in India, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. The goal is to train at least 10,000 professors and students by 2013.

The total number of participants in the volunteer project is about 600. But in April alone, that group contributed 2.9 million characters worth of information, which would fill nearly 2,000 traditional printed pages.

“The outcome is just amazing,” said Frank Schulenburg, the foundation’s head of public outreach. “We have a much larger number of professors who are interested than we ever expected.”

Still, Wikipedia and academia make an odd pair. The “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” has long had an uneasy relationship with professors who dedicate their lives to filling scholarly journals and libraries. In their eyes, Wikipedia is an unreliable cheat sheet.

“I start every semester with the typical speech: ‘If you are turning in a paper and cite Wikipedia, then we have a problem. We need to talk,’ ” said Matt Dull, who is Pearson’s professor at Virginia Tech. But this time, he gave that speech and followed it with the Wiki assignment.

As the Wikipedia catalogue has grown to 18 million entries in more than 270 languages, the site has become one of the leading ways much of the world learns about new topics, double-checks memories of past events and settles bar bets.


§


Professors such as Dull are starting to see Wikipedia as an opportunity to educate a massive audience on the specialized topics their students research. Most college papers are read by a handful of people, at most, while a Wiki entry can be read by thousands (or millions) around the world.

“It’s the ability for students to feel that their works matters, that it doesn’t get trapped in the classroom,” said Adel Iskander, a Georgetown instructor who assigned Wiki entries in his graduate-level Arab media course. “We’re kind of challenging the academic establishment, in a way.”


To the uninitiated, writing for Wikipedia can be intimidating. There are complicated rules for what can be an entry and what counts as a reliable source. The language must hew to a neutral point of view. Writers also must learn how to add technical code to display their work properly on the Web.

To help students and professors, the foundation recruited a network of experts to organize campus workshops and answer questions via e-mail or online chats.

As students create the content, instructors must find a way to grade it. By the end of the term, the typical student has already received help — or headaches — from a host of Wiki editors. Automated Web tools known as bots have scoured their work for grammatical and coding errors.

“We had so many people, from God knows where, scold them for things that they have done and praise them,” said Cindy Allen, a technical writing and editing instructor at James Madison University who assigned two classes to write Wiki entries. “It’s really a different thing.”

Some professors have sifted through the editing histories of their students’ pages to pinpoint what they wrote. Some have simply given participation grades. Others have asked students to convert their entries into traditional term papers.

Some students walked away with an understanding of how to evaluate the quality of a Wikipedia page. Others found themselves contributing more to Wikipedia — just for fun.

“I got really sort of addicted to it,” said Jeff Reger, a Georgetown graduate student. “At this point, when I hear of something new, I find myself wondering, ‘Oh, I wonder what that Wikipedia page says.’ ”

 

Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?

Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

WISPS OF THE PAST Beyond Istanbul's landmarks, a legacy of cosmopolitan interchange of goods and ideas.
By ANTHONY SHADID, GAZIANTEP, Turkey
Published: May 28, 2011


LESS than a mile from the Syrian frontier, in the land of Kemal Ataturk, Ahmed Sheikh Said defies the identities that borders inspire.

Mr. Said was born in the Syrian town of Azaz and raised across a line on the map in Kilis, Turkey. A grocer, he speaks Turkish like a native to his customers, while holding an ear open to the Arabic telecasts of Al Jazeera playing in his store. His wife and his mother are Turkish, but Arab blood runs through his veins, he says, “till the end of time.”

“The bread of Azaz comes from Kilis, and the bread of Kilis comes from Azaz,” said Mr. Said, whose shop sits just off a road that once carried the business of the far-flung Ottoman Empire and now marks Turkey’s limits. “We’re the same. We’re brothers. What really divides us?”

As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.

It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.

Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.

Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.

“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.

“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”

There is admittedly a hint of romanticism in it all. The Arab world may in fact be bracing for years of sectarian and internecine strife in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. And in seeking to be a more prominent, and steadying, influence, Turkey’s ambitions may well be greater than its means. Still, economic realities are already restoring old trajectories that joined the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, tied Batumi in Georgia to Trabzon in Turkey, and knit Aleppo into an axis of cities — Mosul, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep and Iskenderun — in which Damascus, the leading but distant Arab metropole, was an afterthought.

THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.

One example is Marjayoun, my family’s ancestral hometown in Lebanon, nestled near the Israeli and Syrian borders in the heart of the old Ottoman realm, and little more than an afterthought on maps these days.

No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers. Massacres occurred, and Jews and Christians faced discrimination in taxes and commerce. There was no such thing as equality. To this day, the darkest moments of Marjayoun’s history remain those last breaths of the empire — the seferberlik. It was the Ottoman name for the draft, but it came to represent the famine, starvation and death that World War I brought to the town, when the famished searched the manure of animals to find an undigested morsel of grain.

Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine. The town was a way station on the route from the breadbasket of the Houran in southern Syria to Acre, the Levant’s greatest port on the coast of Palestine. Beirut was an afterthought. Marjayoun’s traders plied the steppe of the Houran, its gentry owned land in the Hula Valley, and its educated ventured to Haifa and Jerusalem to make their reputations.

World War I and the borders that followed augured the demise of this style of life, and not just in Marjayoun. The ideologies that gained prevalence in the town then were about contesting those frontiers — Arab nationalism, pan-Syrian nationalism and Communism, which itself was imagining a broader community. These movements failed as more borders were drawn in wars with Israel in 1948 and 1967. And with those lines on the map came a smaller sense of self. By the time Lebanon’s 15-year civil war began in 1975, ideologies had given way to identities, and most people in Marjayoun identified themselves simply as Christian, or perhaps Greek Orthodox, too unique to survive as a community.

A town of thousands is today a town of hundreds, strewn with the abandoned villas of another age. Hajar bala bashar, a friend once told me. “Stones without people.”

“A RECREATION OF THE HISTORIC AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” is how Mr. Davutoglu describes his vision for the region. And indeed, that vision, which is effectively government policy, has touched in a nerve in Turkey, a country with its own unresolved questions of identity.

Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.

“It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”

More than the talk of a salon, the vision comes at an obvious turning point in the Middle East. Though dealt setbacks by the Arab revolution — investments have been lost in Libya and the prospect of chaos stalks Syria — Turkey has stuck to its vision of an integrated region. A railway line linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq reopened last year; a fast train is to operate between Gaziantep and Aleppo. The resources of northern Iraq are strategic for Turkey’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to feed a pipeline from Turkey to central Europe. A common free-trade area has already been agreed upon by Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Turkish television series are dubbed into Syrian Arabic, and its stars’ posters sell by the tens of thousands in Iraq. In Baghdad, portraits of one famous actor are digitally altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress.

Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred. Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University who has done extensive polling in Turkey, especially among youth, calls this the emergence of “hybrid identities.”

“Young people don’t buy into this idea of a clash, and they don’t buy into this idea of fixed identity,” he said. “They know how to negotiate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new.”

THERE WAS A MOVIE more than a decade ago in Turkey called “Propaganda,” a dark comedy about the border drawn between Syria and Turkey, dividing family from family. It was inspired by the reality of relatives heading to the fence there on Muslim holidays — Bayram in Turkish, Id in Arabic — and throwing gifts to the other side.

These days, with the border effectively open, Syrians fill the hotels on weekends in Gaziantep, which is famous for its pistachios. Some merchants here talk about their trade growing tenfold since visa requirements were lifted. Debates rage over whether the kebab of Gaziantep is better than the kibbe in Aleppo.

Turks may still call a mess “Arab hair.” But they also judge a gift by the standards of “apricots in Damascus.” And the old notions of Ottoman tyranny (from the Arab point of view) and Arab betrayal in World War I (as Turks see it) have given way somewhat to the promise of profit in a market still booming even amid the uprising across the border.

Hakan Cinkilic, foreign trade manager of a plastics company called Sun Pet, is reaping the benefits. Nearly 80 percent of its products go to Iraq, and the company set up a factory in Jordan last year. Its exports have more than doubled since 2008. This year he has already traveled to Libya, the United States, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

As he spoke, his cellphone rang. It was a customer in Kirkuk, Iraq, who spoke to him in Turkish. A few minutes later, a businessman called from the West Bank. The conversation unfolded in English, punctuated by Arabic expressions inflected by the vowels of his native tongue. You wouldn’t call him neo-Ottoman, given the term’s suggestion of a resurgent imperialism. He’s not really Levantine, an identity whose borders hug the Mediterranean coast. He seemed post-Ottoman, reinterpreting the past.

“It’s natural,” he said simply.

§


TORNADO experts had seen it all before: whole neighborhoods obliterated, big-box stores flattened, even a hospital badly damaged.

But what really shocked them about the powerful storm that struck Joplin, Mo., last week was the toll in lives: more than 125 and counting. “We thought we were done with the 100-dead tornadoes,” said Thomas P. Grazulis, a tornado historian in St. Johnsbury, Vt. “With warnings and Doppler radar, there was a lot of feeling that we were done with this stuff.”

Experts are not sure yet why the toll was so high. Forecasts were made and warnings were issued, and this was an area, in the heart of Tornado Alley, where people knew what to do to protect themselves. “But something didn’t work the way we’d like it to,” said Harold Brooks , a research meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

Experts say there will always be deaths when a strong tornado scores a direct hit on a heavily populated area. The question — for all disasters, not just twisters — has been how low casualty figures can go.

“The fundamental characteristic of a major disaster is that there is going to be loss,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “The goal of preparedness is to make that loss as minimal as possible, to optimize survival.”

During the 20th century, strides were made in optimizing survival from tornadoes. In the early part of the century, yearly deaths from twisters in the United States averaged a little less than 2 per million population, or about 200 per year in the 1920s. Beginning that decade, as awareness of the dangers increased and forecasting technologies were developed and improved, the death rate declined by an order of magnitude, reaching about 0.2 per million in the mid-1990s, or about 60 people per year.

Since then, Mr. Brooks said, it has leveled off, and while no one is certain why, researchers think the rise in mobile-home living is one reason. Lightly built and poorly anchored, mobile homes can be death traps in the extreme winds of a tornado.

This year, with more than 500 deaths already — including about 320 in an outbreak of several hundred tornadoes across Alabama and other states in late April — is an aberration, experts said, much like 1974, when there was a similar outbreak, and 1953, when strong tornadoes hit three cities: Waco, Tex.; Flint, Mich.; and Worcester, Mass. All of last year, only 45 people died, and in 2009 the number was 21. The toll next year is expected to be more like those figures than this year’s.

Mr. Brooks said the timing of the storm last week — 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday — may have had something to do with the 100-plus deaths. He compared the Joplin event to a tornado that struck Oklahoma City in 1999 and killed about one-fourth as many people. That twister hit after 7 p.m. on a Monday, when most people had settled in for the evening. “That’s not a bad time to get information to people,” Mr. Brooks said. But in Joplin, he added, “late Sunday afternoon, maybe there’s some issues with communication going on.”

Complicating the situation in Joplin was the fact that a high school graduation had occurred that afternoon, and more people were out and about, at parties or other events. And many people ended up in large stores, which tornado warnings say should be avoided because of the strong risk of collapse.

“Did people not receive the message?” Mr. Brooks said. “Did they not internalize the message in some way? Or did they make bad choices?”

While the tornado forecasting system works well, Mr. Brooks said, “we have to work on finding ways of communicating the messages better.”

“Perhaps we don’t do that in ways that people understand the threat,” he added.

And there is the possibility of issuing so many alerts that people become inured to the danger. Jasper County, where Joplin is located, receives many tornado warnings every year. “We’ve had no evidence in the past that people were overwarned,” Mr. Brooks said, “but we don’t know what the threshold of that is.” Beyond any improvements in forecasting and communication, getting even closer to zero deaths would require additional steps, said Stephen Flynn, president of the Center for National Policy, a Washington research group that studies preparedness issues. The destruction and deaths at the Joplin hospital, he said, pointed to one: replacing conventional windows with safety glass.

“Are you going to do that for a raised-ranch house?” he said. “No. But for a hospital facility where people are vulnerable, yes. And is that a huge cost issue? No, it’s not.”

But other efforts, like building community shelters for people in mobile-home parks or in areas with slab housing that lacks basements, can be costly. And the issue of cost, always major, has grown larger as economic conditions have worsened and governments have had to tighten their belts, Dr. Redlener said. “Dollars are limited,” he added. “States have to make decisions — are we going to provide health insurance for more children, or are we going to do better preparation for a disaster that may never happen?”

Beyond cost, though, are other considerations. In the case of community shelters, Mr. Brooks said, “you need to make sure that the shelter is open when people need it, but make sure it’s not open all the time, where your neighborhood pervert can do something in it.” Potential liability issues have forced many communities to abandon the idea of group shelters, he said.

Individuals can always build shelters for themselves, and one of the truths about natural disasters is that afterward, many people rush to make safety precautions they had ignored before.

Mr. Grazulis, the historian, said that no doubt some people in Joplin would rebuild their homes and include storm shelters, which can cost about $5,000 or more. “But I bet Joplin will not be hit again for a hundred or a thousand years,” he said. “The people that build these shelters — generations are not going to have to use them.”

Instead, the next disaster will happen elsewhere. And right now, Mr. Grazulis said, “the next town that needs them has no idea it needs them.”

 

Pressure For Reform in Southeast Asia

RFA

By Parameswaran Ponnudurai

2011-05-28

Singapore's 'watershed' election sends new signals for change across the region.

AFP

Singapore opposition party supporters celebrate results of general elections, May 8, 2011.

Rights activists constantly bombard Burma and its communist one-party state neighbors Vietnam and Laos for their stubborn refusal to embrace meaningful political reforms.

But shouldn't the more prosperous Southeast Asian nations—especially the founders of the ASEAN grouping—also take the flak for dragging their feet on expanding political liberties for their peoples?

The recent election in Singapore, in which the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) suffered its worst performance, has thrown the spotlight on lagging reforms not only in the island state but also in other more developed economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.   

The PAP's share of the popular vote slipped to an all-time low of 60 percent despite the island state's strong economic growth in the last five years, including a record 14.5 percent expansion in 2010.

The opposition romped home with six parliamentary seats, the highest number it has ever taken.

Many disenchanted young voters used the social media during the elections to press for a more open political system as they spoke out against Singapore's high living costs, low wages and lax immigration laws.

Reacting swiftly, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong unveiled sweeping Cabinet changes, opting for younger ministers, and with a pledge to review the high salaries earned by ministers, a raging election issue.

His blunt-speaking father, Lee Kuan Yew, the country's first prime minister, who has little patience for dissent, also stepped down from active politics after more than half a century at the very top.

But the public is crying for more reforms in the tightly-controlled state, demanding changes to sedition, libel and electoral laws and those that control media and freedom of assembly.

"It’s time for Singaporeans to realize that they will never be entitled to the full economic rights they deserve as citizens of Singapore without first reclaiming their political rights from the PAP," said Temasek Review, a popular Internet newspaper.

It urged Singaporeans to "first fight for their basic human rights of freedom of speech and assembly as enshrined and guaranteed" under the city state's constitution.

"Sounding board"

The "political tsunami" in Singapore serves as a "sounding board for the future political landscape in Southeast Asia," wrote Kavi Chongkittavorn, editor of The Nation newspaper in Thailand.

"Changes, albeit small and at a snail pace, as it may be in the island republic, sends a strong signal to similar kinds of governments in ASEAN that they either take up reform or soon be challenged by their own people," he said.

Rapid economic growth "is no longer sufficient criteria to sustain power holding without democracy and acceptable governance."

Reforms and polls

Elections are also approaching in Thailand in July and in Malaysia possibly within a year with planned reforms weighing heavily in the polls.

In Thailand, a high level panel that has recommended decentralizing the government's powers in a bid to give more rights to citizens was disbanded this month ahead of the elections.

The National Reform Committee was set up last year following political violence in a bid to heal deep social divisions, strengthen civil society and promote fairness as part of a government reconciliation agenda.

“Political parties (campaigning in the election) should make national reform a major policy. But so far no party has a clear-cut policy,” lamented Thailand's ex-premier Anand Panyarachun, who headed the panel.

The election is set to boil down to a clash between prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and exiled businessman Thaksin Shinawatra, who was twice elected premier only to be forced out by the military in 2006.

Any reform will have to scrutinize the role of the army in Thailand, which has endured at least 18 coups in the last eight decades. The military is believed backed by a small establishment of royalists and business elite.

Race-based policy

In Malaysia, reforms to a four-decade-old race-based policy that has led to blatant abuses and corruption and spawned a patronage-ridden economy have failed to take off one year after they were announced.

Prime Minister Najib Razak appears reluctant to move forward with his "New Economic Model" to revamp the affirmative action policy favoring majority ethnic Malays, due to opposition from right-wing  groups.

While the new model envisions an open high-income economy and attempts to ease criticism of racial discrimination against the ethnic minority Chinese and Indians, it does not go far enough in grappling with the enormous challenges facing the economy.

The reform plan "doesn't reflect and address the structural challenges or even identify them adequately," said Kamal Malhotra, a senior United Nations Development Programme official, Malaysia's official Bernama news agency reported.

Democratic reforms are also slow to come by in Malaysia, which still maintains a draconian law that allows indefinite detention of without trial. Newspapers must renew their licenses every year, and cannot petition the courts if the government revokes them.

Political parties

In the Philippines, much delayed political party reforms are still languishing in the legislature despite support from many lawmakers and non-government organizations.

The reforms set limits to campaign contributions and state financing for political campaigns as well as prohibit political turncoatism in a country driven by personality politics and where political parties are almost inconsequential.

The current Philippine system requires a "radical re-engineering as it is studded with opportunism and turncoatism and there is no transparency or accounting of political contributions or donations," said veteran politician and senator Edgardo Angara.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who was elected by a landslide last year, has also come under fire for not being firm in efforts to weed out corruption and poverty in the archipelago where more than 40 per cent of the people live on less than U.S. $2 a day.

It took eight months for Aquino to get cracking on a committee to plan the government's agenda and prioritize legislative programs. Even then, the initial list did not include bills that he had championed, including those on reproductive health and freedom of information.

Islamic radicalism

In Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest state, efforts to spread democracy have slowed and some hard-fought reforms implemented following dictator President Suharto ouster in 1998 risk being rolled back due to pressure from conservatives, according to reports.

Rising Islamic radicalism is also posing a threat in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told American journalists who traveled to Indonesia recently that his country was serious in conducting reforms but admitted it will be a long and "painful" process" and that "democracy takes time."

Electoral management, the fight against corruption and the lack of protection of minority rights are major areas where conservatives have sought to unwind reforms, Australia-based scholar Marcus Mietzner said in a report.

He argued that a civil society push-back was the only reason there had not been a full-blown reversal.

Swift reforms in the leading ASEAN countries are key to prodding the others in the group to open up their economies, especially Burma, which is under increasing pressure to release the more than 2,000 political prisoners it holds at present.

"It’s not wrong to regard Burma as the epitome of an evil regime in Southeast Asia, but this view shouldn’t prevent us from exposing and resisting the varying shades of authoritarianism in the region that are anathema to the building of a genuine democracy," said Mong Palatino, Southeast Asia editor at the international bloggers' forum Global Voices.

Pakistani military worried about collaborators

BANARAS KHAN/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Pakistani security forces fire toward an attacker next to a security checkpoint in Quetta on May 17, 2011.

By Karin Brulliard, Friday, May 27, 1:52 PM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Embarrassed by the Osama bin Laden raid and by a series of insurgent attacks on high-security sites, top Pakistani military officials are increasingly concerned that their ranks are penetrated by Islamists who are aiding militants in a campaign against the state.

Those worries have grown especially acute since the killing of bin Laden less than a mile from a prestigious military academy. This week’s naval base infiltration by heavily armed insurgents in the megacity of Karachi — an attack widely believed to have required inside help — has only deepened fears, military officials said.

Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who like the civilian government has publicly expressed anger over the secret U.S. raid, was so shaken by the discovery of bin Laden that he told U.S. officials in a recent meeting that his first priority was “bringing our house in order,” according to a senior Pakistani intelligence official, citing personal conversations with Kayani.

“We are under attack, and the attackers are getting highly confidential information about their targets,” the intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Pakistan’s top military brass claimed to have purged the ranks of Islamists shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Since then, the nation’s top officials have made repeated public assurances that the armed forces are committed to the fight against extremists, and that Pakistan’s extensive nuclear arsenal is in safe hands.

But U.S. officials have remained unconvinced, and have repeatedly pressed for a more rigorous campaign by Pakistan to remove elements of the military and intelligence services that are believed to cooperate with militant groups.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a surprise visit to Islamabad on Friday, emphasized U.S. demands for greater cooperation in the war against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other violent Islamist organizations that have taken root in Pakistan. Standing beside Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clinton said the United States would be looking “to the government of Pakistan to take decisive steps in the days ahead.”

It is unclear how authentically committed Kayani and other top military leaders are to cleansing their ranks. U.S. officials and Pakistani analysts say support by the nation’s top military spy agency for insurgent groups, particularly those that attack in India and Afghanistan, is de facto security policy in Pakistan, not a matter of a few rogue elements.

But Kayani is under profound pressure, both from a domestic population fed up with the constant insurgent attacks and from a suspicious international community, which views the bin Laden hideout as the strongest evidence yet that Pakistan is playing a double game.

U.S. officials say they have no evidence that top Pakistani military or civilian leaders knew about bin Laden’s redoubt, though they are still examining intelligence gathered during the raid. Some say they doubt Kayani or Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, had direct knowledge; others find it hard to believe they did not, particularly because Kayani was head of the ISI in 2005, when bin Laden is believed to have taken refuge in Abbottabad.

“I think he was in protective custody,” one former U.S. official who worked closely on Pakistan issues said of bin Laden.

Pakistan strenuously denies that. But military officials acknowledge that members of the services have cooperated with militants. One senior military official said military courts have in recent years convicted several soldiers for roles in attacks on security installations — convictions that have not been made public. Four naval officers previously arrested on suspicion of links with militants were questioned this week in connection with the assault on the naval base in Karachi, another security official said.

The senior military official said belief in militant jihad — long glorified in the national education curriculum — is prevalent in the rank and file, making screening for it a daunting task that the military has been loath to perform.






The ISI is believed to have an entire branch — known as the “S Wing” — devoted to relationships with militant organizations. Some analysts believe the wing operates with relative independence, whether by design or default, that gives top brass plausible deniability when cooperation between the spy service and insurgents comes to light.

U.S. officials, for example, say they do not believe Pasha or Kayani knew about Pakistani militants’ plans to attack Mumbai in 2008. But federal prosecutors have implicated the ISI in a trial underway in Chicago, where the star witness has said he was paid by the spy agency to help arrange the siege.

U.S. officials have emphasized since the bin Laden raid that billions of dollars in U.S. assistance could end if Pakistan is found to have harbored the al-Qaeda leader. Pakistani officials said that pressure has included demands that the military purge Islamists in its ranks and identify agents connected to bin Laden.

“We take the Pakistanis at their word that they’re committed to an aggressive fight against militants and to the investigations they’ve announced. But it’s way too early to say that their actions are honoring their stated commitments,” one U.S. official said.






Working against any reform effort is the fervent anti-Americanism felt throughout Pakistan, including within the armed forces. Some Pakistani officials and soldiers accuse the United States of using the bin Laden raid to embarrass the nation into doing American bidding. This week, talk-show pundits condemned the navy’s security lapse at the Karachi base but also brimmed with conspiracy theories about CIA orchestration of the siege.

“Any public action on the part of the military at this point will be seen as capitulating to U.S. demands,” said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

One Pakistani security official said the Karachi attack had prompted the military to begin a “thorough overhauling” of the armed forces. But, he asked: “If someone is helping the militants from inside the forces, why are they doing it? And the answer, to us, is their disdain for the U.S. and anger at Pakistanis cooperating with Americans.”


Special correspondents Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report. Staff writer Greg Miller contributed from Washington.

Mongolian Protests Spread

2011-05-26

Thousands in northern China march to government buildings.

SMHRIC

Protests at Inner Mongolia's Left Ujumchin banner, May 26, 2011.

Protests by ethnic Mongolians living in northern China spread across the region on Thursday, as thousands more took to the streets to demand protection of their rights following the death of a herder run over by a truck.

Protesters marched in Inner Mongolia's Hunveet Shar and Left Ujumchin banners, the equivalent of counties, on Thursday, according to the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC).

"Thousands more Mongolian herders and students took to the streets...to urge the Chinese authorities to respect the Mongolian herders' right to their land and right to maintain their traditional way of life," SMHRIC said in an e-mailed press release.

Protesters held banners and posters carrying the slogan "Defend the rights of Mongols" and "Defend the Homeland" and marched towards the government buildings of their respective banners, it said.

Photos posted online and sent to RFA by participants showed a group of elementary school children among the protesters, holding a banner with the slogan "Protect our Grasslands." The children were later taken back to school by teachers, sources said.

"There were students and herders from the countryside on the streets," said one protester on Thursday. "The banners they carried called for the protection of the grasslands."

Ecosystem

A section of the protests at Inner Mongolia's Huveet banner, May 26, 2011

The Chinese government has begun relocating more than 250,000 nomads from Inner Mongolia's grasslands in recent years, saying the move is necessary to protect the fragile ecosystem of the region.

The policy has been seen among ethnic Mongolians as further marginalization for Mongolian nomadic herders, who are already vastly outnumbered by Chinese peasants.

"There were more than 1,000 of us who left Xiwu banner together," the protester said. "But I daren't say much more than that because I think there aren't just going to be protests here today, but right across all the banners in the Xilinhot League."

Local officials said the government had already paid out nearly a million yuan (U.S.$154,000) in compensation to the family of Murgen, the man killed following clashes between Mongolian herders in Abag banner (in Chinese, Abagaqi) and mining company truck drivers.

Murgen's relatives only agreed to his cremation once the deal had been struck, sources said.

A Chinese Communist Party committee member from Murgen's home township of Haoletu said:
"We thought the government's arrangements were okay, actually. The government has even paid compensation for the polluted grasslands."

"They also gave a million to Murgen's family, so as to resolve this issue, which was all settled on May 23 and 24," the official said.

Murgen's death on May 11 sparked protests by more than 2,000 students and herders in Xilinhot city on Wednesday.

They dispersed after officials promised to bring to justice the driver involved in the incident.

Mines shut

But the Haoletu official said he didn't know if the herders detained in the May 11 clashes had been freed.

"I don't really know about that," the official said. "That was done by the banner-level government. We are just the rural level of government."

He said the mines accused of polluting the grasslands had been opened last year. "They have been open for nearly a year now," the official said. "The mines have stopped operation now, and there are no more trucks."

But he said he didn't know whether they would stay shut.

"We rural herding people don't know much about what is going on," he said.

Protesters also called online Thursday for further protests in towns and cities in the herding district of Inner Mongolia.

Using online social networking tools like QQ and Facebook, Mongolians were invited to further gatherings in Alshaan Left Banner on Friday, Ordos city on Saturday and Tongliao on Sunday, SMHRIC said.

A further protest was scheduled in Erenhot, on the border with Mongolia, on Monday, it said.

Nahubisgalat, an ethnic Mongolian Chinese national currently living in Japan, said Mongolians across the Xilinhot region would be watching to see what happened next.

"A lot of banners are likely to take part," he said. "It's not just a matter of one or two. This is likely to get bigger."

Organizing skills

He said there was a lot of resentment about development of the grasslands regions, and that herding families had been getting poorer and poorer.

"There is no organization here," he said. "People are just coming out onto the streets."

However, the protesters appeared to have learned from the nationwide crackdown on "Jasmine" rallies in major Chinese cities in recent months in the wake of uprisings in the Middle East. The chinese rallies fizzled out as they attracted more police than participants.

According to New Zealand-based rights activist Wang Ning, who lived in the Xilinhot area for many years, the protesters were organizing themselves at the very last minute.

"They are being very, very secret about it, so that the authorities have no way to know," Wang said. "They don't put it on the Internet until the people have pretty much arrived [at the protest site.]"

"They also change arrangements at the last minute," he said. "They will say, today we are going to the government buildings, then they will show up at the television station, and walk to the government buildings."

Currently, ethnic Mongols represent a tiny 17 percent of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s 23 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom are Han Chinese.

Reported by Ding Xiao for RFA's Mandarin service, and by Dai Weisen for the Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

CIA to search bin Laden compound

Image via WikipediaBy Greg Miller and karen DeYoung, Updated: Thursday, May 26, 12:53 PM

Pakistan has agreed to allow the CIA to send a forensics team to examine the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, giving the agency permission to use sophisticated equipment in a search for al-Qaeda materials that might have been hidden inside walls or buried at the site, U.S. officials said.

The arrangement would allow the CIA for the first time to enter a complex that it had previously scrutinized only from a distance, using satellites, stealth drones and spies operating from a nearby safe house that was shuttered when bin Laden was killed.

U.S. officials said a CIA team is expected to arrive at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, within days, and that the objective is to scrub the site for items that were not recovered by American commandos during the raid or Pakistani security forces who secured the facility in the aftermath.

“The assault team was there for only 40 minutes,” a U.S. official said. The aim is to return to the site “to do another, more thorough, look.” The officials, like others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

CIA Deputy Director Michael J. Morell negotiated access to the Abbottabad site during a trip to Islamabad last week, when he met with the head of Pakistan’s main intelligence service, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, officials said.

Pakistan’s agreement is seen as an encouraging sign that the two spy services will continue cooperating despite anger in Islamabad over the American operation to kill bin Laden, and a series of recent ruptures between the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart.

Pakistan has also agreed to allow the CIA to examine materials that Pakistan’s security forces have recovered from the compound, officials said. The agency has also asked Pakistan’s spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, for assistance in analyzing some of the records that were seized in the raid and brought to a CIA document exploitation facility in Northern Virginia.

In particular, U.S. officials said that the CIA is seeking help in deciphering references to names of individuals and places. U.S. intelligence officials have described the stash of material recovered from the bin Laden compound as the largest intelligence haul ever recovered relating to al-Qaeda or any other terrorist network.

The materials include dozens of computer storage devices as well as thousands of pages of paper.

Even so, U.S. officials said they want to be sure that other material has not been overlooked. The CIA plans involve the use of infrared cameras and other devices capable of identifying materials embedded behind walls, inside safes or underground.

Pakistan agreed in part because it does not have such equipment, officials said, and breaking through portions of the structure to conduct a search might risk destroying any materials hidden inside.

The agency also has equipment that could be used to recover information that has been burned or otherwise damaged. U.S. officials have said that residents burned their trash inside the compound’s walls.

U.S. officials said they have seen no evidence that there were tunnels underneath the compound. Indeed, one official said that the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies concluded before the May 2 raid that there were not likely to be any underground escape routes for bin Laden because the water table in Abbottabad is so close to the surface.

The CIA has already been given access to three of bin Laden’s wives who were taken into custody by Pakistan after the raid. But officials said none of them has been cooperative with U.S. interrogators or provided meaningful intelligence.

Correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad contributed to this report.

 

Egyptian bloggers rally against military

Hundreds risk potential prosecution to voice criticisms of post-revolution military rule and slow pace of reforms.

Evan Hill Last Modified: 23 May 2011 19:34

Kareem Amer was the first blogger to face trial in Egypt; such prosecutions have continued under the army [Evan Hill]       Hundreds of Egyptians have staged an unprecedented show of online defiance against their country's military leadership, taking to their blogs to write at times scathing critiques of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that assumed power after longtime president Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February. The show of anger on Monday came ahead of a "million-man" protest that activists have called for Friday, one they hope will be the largest since the revolution and will demonstrate widespread public support for their call to put former government officials on trial and restrain the power of the armed forces. Criticising the military in any form is a dangerous act in Egypt and is sometimes considered a crime. Maikel Nabil, a pacifist who blogged against the army, was tried and sentenced to three years in prison by a military court in April. It was the first trial of a blogger since the revolution. But on Monday, the military appeared to strike a different tone. "This is freedom of expression, and we have no problem with it," a spokesman told Al Jazeera. The bloggers - the vast majority of whom published in Arabic, but a few in English - said they believed their sheer numbers, and their tone, would help spare them from arrest. By Monday afternoon, at least 203 blogs criticising the Council had been published, according to one widely cited count on Facebook. "I'm 10 per cent worried, but I specifically write in very sarcastic ways, and I never directly insult," said Amr Bassiouny, a research manager at a real estate investment and development firm. "So no matter what I say, all they can do is take me in for making fun of them." Mohamed Abdelfattah, a freelance journalist, said the point of the day was to blog collectively and mitigate the risk of being singled out. "The military council cannot silence hundreds of bloggers who are adamant at showing its violations and mistakes," he said. "We said we will all blog on May 23rd, and they can arrest us all if they want." The blogging campaign was mirrored by a continuous stream of commentary on Twitter, where a multitude of well-known activists and other users were making scores of remarks every minute with the "noSCAF" hashtag. "I am now, for the first time in my life, setting up a blog," wrote Noor Noor, the son of once-jailed opposition presidential candidate Ayman Nour. "This step is ignited by my dissatisfaction with the SCAF." The day of online activism also happened to coincide with the release of dozens of people who had been arrested by the army at a May 15 protest at the Israeli embassy and put before military trials. The majority of the prisoners were handed one-year suspended sentences. Mosaab Elshamy, one of the men arrested, wrote on Twitter about his mistreatment while in army custody, spurring more attention for the anti-military campaign. Soldiers allegedly used homosexual slurs to describe prisoners with long hair or beards, and everyone was routinely made to watch soldiers abuse newly arrived detainees. Near the end of their detention, an officer spoke with the group in an attempt to convince them of the military's good intentions. He said Egyptians were living in "turbulent times," that the country was on the verge of bankruptcy, and that it was "naive" to protest. At the end of their stay, Elshamy said, another officer told him that he would likely be under surveillance by military intelligence for years. "The sheer spite they had for us and for the revolution will never be forgotten," he wrote. Backwards from Mubarak Most of the bloggers on Monday focused on the need to achieve what they said were the revolution's twin goals: freedom and social justice. Military rule presents an obstacle to achieving those goals, and in some cases represents a step back from the Mubarak era, they wrote. "This post is simply a comparison between back then in the Mubarak days and now in the SCAF days," wrote Mostafa Sheshtawy, a 23-year-old graduate student in computer science. "Back then, in the Mubarak days, protesters used to be beaten up by the [Central Security Forces] and arrested, then tortured by them in the prisons. Now the army arrest the protesters, beat them up and torture them in their military prisons." Amira Mikhail, who helps run a student leadership scholarship programme at the American University in Cairo, quoted Vaclav Havel, the post-Communism president of Czechoslovakia, as she described the qualities she hoped to see in Egypt's new politicians. "[Havel] wrote of the 'higher responsibility' that is placed on politicians and leaders," Mikhail wrote. "When I hear these words from a man who at the time was leading his country through a transition to democracy, similar to that of Egypt's now, I ask myself if the men that lead my country now are also grounded in the same principles and values that guided Havel." Mikhail noted that 100 days had passed since Mubarak's ouster, and she had not seen evidence of Havel's "higher responsibility" in the army's conduct. "SCAF, a ruling military council, is making the mistake of functioning in the old manner of dictatorship, where instead the people need them to speak and lay things out transparently," she wrote. In the months since Mubarak stepped down, activists say the military has illegally arrested, imprisoned and tried as many as 10,000 civilians, without providing access to lawyers or family members. The army has been criticised for routinely breaking up demonstrations with violence, not bringing enough former regime officials to trial, and not moving quickly to transfer power to a civilian government. Mikhail and Amr Moneib, another blogger, described how any trust they might have had in the military's leadership had disappeared since the revolution. "The Egyptian army has long been seen as the saviour of this country ... Yet, we can't and we shouldn't forget that those officers who have implemented the [1952] coup d'etat ... sent us to 60 years of ultimate dictatorship," Moneib wrote. "Four months later and we can see that every single person who had his doubts was right and all those who handed their revolution on a silver plate to the SCAF were so naive that they almost lost us everything." The military has muffled freedoms of speech and assembly, made unilateral decisions about electoral laws, overseen "charade" trials of former regime officials, and failed to defend churches and protesters from damage and attack, he wrote. In Arabic, the same demands The hundreds who wrote their entries in Arabic expressed similar anger, though some tied the United States and the West into the army's conduct. "What we are doing now is not just fighting against the remnants of the regime, because in my opinion they are really only a tool for implementing the vision of those who do not want a truly democratic Egypt," wrote Mohamed Effat, an independent journalist who was briefly detained at the Israeli embassy protest. "Come and let's look at those who don't want want true democracy to begin in Egypt: Israel, America, and Europe, timidly." Those countries, Effat wrote, had provided enormous military aid to Egypt, filling the coffers of the army, which was loyal and close to Mubarak's regime. The army also continues to maintain its massive investments in the state, including factories, hotels, tourist resorts and agriculture, he said. The first step, Effat wrote, is to change the leadership of the Egyptian media and remove the "hypocrites" on television who opposed the revolution during its early days. He echoed calls for a large protest on Friday. Mona Seif, an activist who helps lead the No to Military Trials for Civilians campaign, appealed to anyone who had suffered from the armed forces: "If you know a relative or a friend or anyone who was beaten in a protest by the army ... If you were standing before a military court that should not try your case ... If you turned on Egyptian [state] television to Channel One and found a picture of your brother bearing marks of beating and torture and under that the word 'thug,' ... join us and monitor the military council, by writings, video, pictures, sound recording, blog entries, [and] notes on Facebook." Some bloggers appeared to have taken up the call. Tamer Saleh, an information technology worker in Alexandria, wrote that the "noSCAF" campaign had inspired him to write again, and his entry on Monday was his first in 2011. "Most Egyptians agree on one demand ... and we are all prepared to sacrifice ourselves for it. The demand is freedom and justice," he wrote. "Around 100 days after Mubarak's ouster, we have discovered that nothing we demanded has been achieved and also that the military council has sold to us the same package that we refused to buy from Mubarak." Maged Roland, a blogger who wrote in both Arabic and English and identified himself as a part-time mechanic employed in the tourism industry, wrote that he believed the military leadership was deliberately provoking fears of a security vacuum and economic breakdown to make the public feel they need them. This fall, when Ramadan arrives, those suffering from high food prices are likely to revolt again, he said. A revolution online, and perhaps in the streets Though hundreds took to the Internet to criticise the Council, some activists wondered how much of the Egyptian public held the same opinions. "Sadly, I don't think it is that widespread," Mikhail said. From taxi drivers to her upper class colleagues, most tell her that the armed forces are the only power Egypt has left, and that without them, the country will become like Iraq and fall into anarchy. Bassiouny agreed, but said the situation had been similar before the revolution. "We're back to being a small base of educated aspiring Egyptians who want to create real change, and the rest just want to get along with their lives," he said. He anticipated that the turnout on Friday would be similar to those who protested on January 25, the first day of Egypt's uprising, but that the military and remnants of Mubarak's regime would send people to make trouble. Bassiouny said he did not think the new wave of protests would reach "critical mass," as happened during the revolution. The media does not back the anti-military movement, he said, and the army is "a much more dangerous animal than the police ever was". "When the [Central Security Forces] used to attack, we could stand up and fight them," he said. "But then what do you do against military soldiers? You run."

Afghanistan says Taliban leader Omar has ‘disappeared’

Arshad Butt/ AP - Local residents stand outside a shop with graffiti reading "leader of Muslims Mullah Mohammad Omar," on Sunday, May 8, 2011, in Pashin, 100 kilometers south of Quetta, Pakistan.

By Sayed Salahuddin and William Branigin, Updated: Monday, May 23, 11:15 AM

KABUL — Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency said Monday it is investigating reports that Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and some of his top commanders have left their hideout near the Afghan-Pakistan border and cannot be located.

The reports led some Afghan media outlets to say that Omar might have been killed. But the Taliban staunchly denied that in a statement issued Monday.


“Claims and rumors were spread this morning by the Kabul stooge regime’s intelligence directorate, other officials and some media outlets that the esteemed Amir ul-Mumineen was martyred in Pakistan,” the Taliban statement about Omar said. “We strongly reject these false claims of the enemy.” The statement referred to Omar by a high Islamic title that translates as “commander of the faithful.”

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence bureau, Lutfullah Mashal, told reporters in Kabul that he “cannot confirm officially whether [Omar] is dead or alive.”

Mashal quoted unidentified “sources” on the Pakistani side of the border as saying Omar “disappeared from his location in the last four or five days.” He said Omar has been living in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, for 10 years.

“Our sources and senior Taliban commanders have confirmed that they have not been able to contact Mullah Omar,” Mashal said. “So far, we cannot confirm the death or killing of Mullah Omar officially, but we can confirm that he has ... disappeared from his hideout in Quetta of Baluchistan.” Quetta, a city of about 900,000 people, lies 124 miles southeast of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Afghan Taliban and long a stronghold of the Islamist radical movement in southern Afghanistan.

Omar, who is believed to be in his early 50s, was born into an impoverished Pashtun family near Kandahar and joined the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He lost an eye in battle from a shrapnel wound sometime in the 1980s and began studying and teaching in Islamic seminaries, or madrassahs, in Pakistan. It was during this period when he reportedly met Osama bin Laden, who went on to found the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

The Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving behind a Soviet-backed government that fell three years later. In the ensuing chaos of civil war among the anti-Soviet mujaheddin factions, Omar began organizing madrassah students in an armed Islamist movement that became known as the Taliban.

By September 1996, the movement had captured Kabul, although the civil war continued in northern parts of the country against an alliance led largely by ethnic Tajiks. The Taliban formed a government called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, with Omar as the de facto head of state. The movement imposed a harsh version of Islamic law on the country. It suppressed women, forced men to wear long beards, punished transgressors with stonings and amputations and destroyed the country’s renowned pre-Islamic Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

Omar mostly stayed away from Kabul, preferring to lead a reclusive existence in Kandahar, where he lived in a house reportedly built for him by bin Laden and shunned contact with most foreigners.

Omar remained close to bin Laden, however, allowing the al-Qaeda leader to set up training camps and safehouses and plot terrorist attacks against the United States, including the strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. In retaliation for those attacks, the United States launched a campaign of airstrikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and helped the Afghan forces known as the Northern Alliance drive the Taliban from Kabul in November 2001.

Omar fled Kandahar and went into hiding. Bin Laden escaped across the border into Pakistan, eventually establishing himself in a fortress-like house in the military garrison city of Abbottabad, about a two-hour drive north of the capital, Islamabad. There, U.S. commandos found and killed him in a raid early on May 2.

In a November 2001 interview with the BBC’s Pashto service, conducted through an intermediary, Omar declared as a goal “the destruction of America” and predicted that “this will happen within a short period of time.” He said a plan to destroy the United States was “being implement,” adding: “But it is a huge task, which is beyond the will and comprehension of human beings.”

Branigin reported from Washington.