Value to Big Powers May Not Save Kyrgyzstan

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the provisional government in Kyrgyzstan, landing by helicopter in the southern city of Osh on Friday, after days of ethnic fighting there.

By ELLEN BARRY

MOSCOW — A year and a half ago, the world’s great powers were fighting like polecats over Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked stretch of mountains in the heart of Central Asia.

The United States was ferociously holding on to the Manas Air Base, a transit hub considered crucial to NATO efforts in Afghanistan. Russia was so jealous of its traditional dominance in the region that it promised the Kyrgyz president $2.15 billion in aid the day he announced he was closing Manas. With the bidding war that followed, Kyrgyzstan could be forgiven for seeing itself as a global player.

And yet for the past week, as spasms of violence threatened to break Kyrgyzstan apart, its citizens saw their hopes for an international intervention flicker and die. With each day it has become clearer that none of Kyrgyzstan’s powerful allies — most pointedly, its former overlords in Moscow — were prepared to get involved in a quagmire.

Russia did send in several hundred paratroopers, but only to defend its air base at Kant. For the most part, the powers have evacuated their citizens, apparently content to wait for the conflict to burn itself out.

The calculus was a pragmatic one, made “without the smallest thought to the moral side of the question,” said Aleksei V. Vlasov, an expert in the politics of post-Soviet countries at Moscow State University.

“We use the phrase ‘collective responsibility,’ but in fact this is a case of collective irresponsibility,” he added. “While they were fighting about whatever — about bases, about Afghanistan — they forgot that in the south of Kyrgyzstan there was extreme danger. The city was flammable. All they needed to do was throw a match on it.” He referred to the city of Osh, which suffered days of ethnic rioting.

Kyrgyzstan might have unraveled anyway, but competition between Moscow and Washington certainly sped the process.

To lock in its claim on the base after the threat of expulsion, the United States offered President Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev $110 million to back out of his agreement with Russia, which had already paid him $450 million. Congratulating itself on its victory, Washington raised the stakes by announcing the construction of several military training facilities in Kyrgyzstan, including one in the south, which further irritated Moscow.

This spring, the Kremlin won back its lost ground, employing a range of soft-power tactics to undermine Mr. Bakiyev’s government. Mr. Bakiyev was ousted by a coalition of opposition leaders in April, and conditions in Kyrgyzstan’s south — still loyal to the old government — hurtled toward disaster.

“Let’s be honest, Kyrgyzstan is turning into a collapsing state, or at least part of it is, and what was partially responsible is this geopolitical tug of war we had,” said Alexander A. Cooley, who included Manas in a recent book about the politics of military bases. “In our attempts to secure these levers of influence and support the governing regime, we destabilized these state institutions. We are part of that dynamic.”

Last week, as pillars of smoke rose off Osh and Jalal-Abad, citizens begged for third-party peacekeepers to replace local forces they suspected of having taken part in the violence.

Roza Otunbayeva, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s interim government, asked Moscow for peacekeepers, and when that request was denied, for troops to protect strategic sites like power plants and reservoirs. She asked Washington to contribute armored vehicles from the base at Manas, which she said would be used to transport the dead and wounded, she told the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

So far, Moscow and Washington have responded mostly with humanitarian aid pledges — late on Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Ms. Otunbayeva’s request was still under consideration.

The United States, overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq, has neither the appetite nor the motivation for a new commitment. Russia, the more obvious player, sees the risks of a deployment outweighing the benefits. Russian troops would enter hostile territory in south Kyrgyzstan, where Mr. Bakiyev’s supporters blame Moscow for his overthrow, and Uzbekistan could also revolt against a Russian presence.

Mr. Vlasov, of Moscow State University, said: “Who are we separating? Uzbeks from Kyrgyz? Krygyz from Kyrgyz? Kyrgyz from some criminal element? There is no clearly defined cause of this conflict. It would be comparable to the decision the Soviet Politburo made to invade Afghanistan — badly thought through, not confirmed by the necessary analytical work.”

If the explosion of violence was a test case for the Collective Security Treaty Organization, an eight-year-old post-Soviet security group dominated by Russia, it seems to have failed, its leaders unwilling to intervene in a domestic standoff. In any case, neither the Russian public nor the county’s foreign policy establishment is pressing the Kremlin to risk sending peacekeepers.

“If you send them, you have to shoot sooner or later,” said Sergei A. Karaganov, a prominent political scientist in Moscow. “Then you are not a peacekeeper, but something else.”

Though it seems that the worst of the violence has passed, great challenges remain. Beyond the immediate humanitarian crisis is an unstable state at the heart of a dangerous region. The Ferghana Valley, bordering Afghanistan, is a minefield of religious fundamentalism, drug trafficking and ethnic hatreds.

If Kyrgyz-style violence should radiate across borders in Central Asia, the result could be a rise in Islamic militancy that would directly threaten Russia and the United States.

The failure of international institutions last week should alarm both capitals. President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia began their relationship with the crisis over the Manas base, and as they grope toward tentative collaboration in the post-Soviet space, Kyrgyzstan has dominated their conversation.

Now, Kyrgyzstan needs help building a stable government that knits together the north and the south. Dmitri V. Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, suggested that NATO should be working with the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to develop a mechanism for collective action. The next time a Central Asian country is wobbling at the edge of a precipice, he said, someone must be prepared to accept responsibility.

“You can abstain from a local conflict in Kyrgyzstan,” Mr. Trenin said. “You can close your eyes to it — it’s bad for your conscience — but you can live with it. If something happens in Uzbekistan, you will not be able to just let it burn out.”

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China's Rich Youth Spark Bitter Divide - WSJ.com

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By SHAI OSTER

HANGZHOU, China -- When a wealthy street-car racer knocked down and killed a young man from modest origins last May, it ignited the flames of class conflict in this prosperous city in eastern China.

Mr. Hu appeared much heavier at his sentencing than in photos from the accident scene, and also seemed to be missing a distinctive scar on his arm, prompting rumors that Mr. Hu's family had paid for a stand-in.

The 20-year-old driver, Hu Bin, grew up the pampered son of a merchant family rich enough to own multiple cars and apartments along Hangzhou's tree-lined boulevards. The victim, Tan Zhuo, a 25-year-old telecom engineer, came from a gritty rural town where his laid-off parents struggled to pay tuition to fulfill their son's dream of a college education in Hangzhou, one of China's richest cities.

"Rich Boys in Luxurious Racing Cars Turn City Roads into F1 Race Track," blared the headline of a local tabloid a day after the fatal accident, kicking off a wave of public outrage. Photos of the driver in his flashy red Mitsubishi racer near the crumpled body of the victim went viral on the Internet, transforming just another of China's 70,000 annual traffic fatalities into a parable about class injustice that resonated among millions of Chinese.

On the eve of the 60th anniversary Oct. 1 of Communist rule that was supposed to create a classless utopia, China is instead gripped with a renewed sense of anger toward a new elite. The Mandarin phrase, "fen fu," or to hate the rich, has been coined in recent months to capture the public's bitter resentment.

Three decades ago, then-leader Deng Xiaoping launched China's economic miracle under the slogan, "to get rich is glorious." He added a caveat, however: "Let some people get rich first." They did -- but not everyone else followed.

China hasn't recreated its old class system, and even in Mao Zedong's day people resented abusers of power. Mr. Deng's reforms enabled hundreds of millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty. Yet today's richer China is also a more divided China. It is split between poor rural areas and richer cities; between developed coastal regions and poorer inland areas; between the educated and the uneducated. And these growing gaps, widely believed to be at the root of social unrest, are only part of the problem.

Incidents like the traffic accident in Hangzhou expose an equally profound grievance: a feeling that the newly rich, by virtue of their money and political connections, are solidifying their status in Chinese society and blocking the aspirations of those less well off.

With information now flowing instantaneously to more than 300 million Internet users, the foibles of the rich are quick fodder for an angry public. "There is more communication of all kinds," says David Goodman, author of "The New Rich in China." "Alongside the politically powerful, you now have the wealthy, and they're also politically powerful. There's a lot of suspicion against them."

Increasingly, public animosity is focusing on the sons and daughters of the generation of workers who launched Deng's economic reforms, unleashing the country's pent-up capitalist energy. Mr. Hu, the drag-car racer, has become a symbol of the "fu er dai," or rich second-generation. Now mostly in their 20s, they grew up as "little emperors" and are perceived to live in a protected cocoon, subject to different standards of justice than others.

On May 7 at around 8 p.m., Mr. Hu's souped-up Mitsubishi plowed into Mr. Tan on a zebra-striped pedestrian crosswalk near Hangzhou's scenic lake. The impact sent Mr. Tan's body flying some 20 yards. Bystanders and reporters quickly converged on the scene, watching as a half dozen of Mr. Hu's friends gathered to console him. While Mr. Hu sat in the car with his face buried in his hands, his friends smoked cigarettes and joked around as police and ambulance crews arrived.

Photos soon circulated online, sparking a furor of angry comments by Chinese readers outraged at the callous behavior depicted in the pictures.

Under public pressure, Hangzhou police held a news conference the following day, where they estimated the speed of the car was only about 43 miles per hour. They denied allegations that Mr. Hu's car had been illegally modified to give the vehicle more zip -- despite eyewitness accounts that he was traveling at high speed, which would trigger tougher criminal penalties.

The Chinese public smelled a cover-up: Internet blogs buzzed with angry posts. "See how rich parents are going to resolve this for their son!" wrote one.

Some 14,000 comments were left on one blog post alone, analyzing the speed and arc of Mr. Tan's body after he was hit by the car. Others suggested Mr. Hu's family was using connections to lighten the crime. In an unusually brazen challenge, Zhejiang University students issued an open letter to the mayor, demanding a new investigation into their alum's death.

Later that night, hundreds of students and residents gathered for a candlelight vigil at the scene of the accident, where they lay wreaths and lighted candles along the sidewalk. The next morning, police detained the young driver pending further investigation.

On May 11, the day of Mr. Tan's funeral, more than 1,000 mourners lined the streets in a rare public display of solidarity as his hearse passed by. After the outpouring of grief, that evening local police issued a statement promising to thoroughly investigate the accident.

Then, a week after the accident, local police held a second news conference. This time, police admitted their initial speed estimate was wrong, doubled the number and acknowledged that the car engine was retrofitted. Those admissions only further raised suspicions that the driver's parents were using connections to get their son off the hook.

In the face of public indignation, Mr. Hu's family agreed to give Mr. Tan's parents a financial settlement of about $165,000.

Still, public fury was reignited in mid-July after a court sentenced Mr. Hu to three years in prison, widely considered a lenient punishment. In an unusual twist, Mr. Hu appeared much heavier at his sentencing than in photos from the accident scene, prompting Internet rumors that Mr. Hu's family had paid for a stand-in. Chinese authorities have strongly denied this.

The victim's father, Tan Yue, has been outspoken in his criticism of the court's sentencing. He is among those who doubt whether the convicted felon now serving jail time is really Mr. Hu. Mr. Hu's family, through an attorney, declined to comment.

A tall thin man with his son's eyes, Tan Yue says that the accident has drawn so much attention because of the government's mishandling of the investigation. Hangzhou citizens were "angry at these rich second-generation kids drag-racing on their streets," he says. "The government couldn't guarantee their safety to even cross the street. Then, trying to control the media made people angrier."

Before his death, Tan Zhuo was a modern Chinese success story, an example of how someone from a relatively poor family can rise up through hard work and study to win a coveted white-collar job.

He was born in a small town an hour's drive through bamboo forests from Changsha, the capital of central Hunan province, and grew up in a simple three-story cement home built by his parents. His father worked as a manager at a state-run transportation and logistics firm and his mother with a state-run caterer. Both were laid off several years ago and had to scramble to find work doing everything from selling food and underwear to working at a school doing odd jobs.

Tan Zhuo was a promising student, winning third place in a province-level math Olympiad when he was in middle school.

"You have to rely on yourself because I don't have the connections or resources to help you," Tan Yue recalled telling his son, standing in Tan Zhuo's bedroom where his college graduation picture hangs over a wooden bed. "But in this society you don't need money or social standing to make it. You can succeed on your own."

At Zhejiang University, Tan Zhuo majored in telecommunications. His family struggled to pay the annual $1,464 fees for tuition, food and board. But when he graduated in 2006, the family's financial problems melted away. He was recruited by ECI Telecom Ltd., an Israeli telecom firm with research and development facilities in the city, earning about $14,640, or seven times the average annual income in China. He sent money home and planned to buy a house for his parents.

Mr. Hu's life was a marked contrast. He grew up near Hangzhou's West Lake, which is ringed by designer stores, restaurants serving expensive seafood and car showrooms -- including two Ferrari showrooms. His parents were merchants who owned a clothing business. At the time of the accident, Mr. Hu was a sophomore at a teachers college in the city where he majored in physical education.

Apparently, his main love was cars. He mixed with a group of young kids who raced illegally modified sports cars, the kind known as tuners in the U.S., according to local authorities. Mr. Hu's photograph still hangs at the F2 International Racing Club, where he won first place in a go-kart race last winter. His family bought him a red second-hand Mitsubishi sports car, which was covered in car club decals.

At the Hangzhou Motoring Club, a popular hangout for the drag-racing crowd decorated with tires and chrome-plated wheel rims, owner Wang Ke recalls fixing the clutch on Mr. Hu's car. His customers are typically the sons of private business owners and overseas Chinese who have picked up a fascination with refitted cars.

Still, Mr. Wang thinks that the media hasn't been fair to Mr. Hu. "If Hu Bin is rich, then lots of people are rich," he says.

In China, class is a concept loaded with decades of bloody conflict and political turmoil. China's Communist Party rose to power 60 years ago promising a classless workers' utopia.

In the early years after the Communists' rise to power in 1949, as many as a million landlords were killed in what would be the first of many class struggles led by Chairman Mao Zedong as he tried to purge China of its capitalists. The campaigns peaked in the 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution when anyone with a wealthy background could be denounced as a counterrevolutionary, bringing China to the brink of civil war.

These days, government propaganda campaigns call for the construction of a "Harmonious Society." Billions of dollars are being promised for health care and education reform in an effort to level the playing field, but criticism of rising corruption and cronyism has proved harder to stamp out.

So far, China's crime rate is lower than in other rapidly developing countries such as Brazil. And the country is more stable than India. But if left unattended, some Chinese commentators fear, the mounting sense of powerlessness could change from focused grievances against corrupt local officials and the nouveau riche to broader complaints about the entire regime.

China's legal system is often part of the problem. Before handing down a sentence, judges in criminal cases typically take into account how much compensation is paid to victims and their families, creating the impression that the rich can literally get away with murder.

In southwestern China's Chongqing municipality in August, a hotel manager accused of beating to death a mother whose young child had picked a plastic flower from the lobby paid 285,000 yuan, or $41,720, to the dead woman's family. In widely reported comments, the unrepentant manager allegedly told a witness after the beating, "at the worst, I would spend two million yuan to buy this person's life." He awaits trial and could face jail time, according to local police.

In Hangzhou, authorities promised to crack down on drag-racing, and even painted big hearts on city crosswalks to encourage safer driving. But just a few weeks after Mr. Hu was sentenced, on a crosswalk not far from the accident scene, a young migrant working as a waitress was struck and killed by a 28-year-old driver in a Porsche SUV.

"Why do you think the children of rich parents act this way?" asked Dai Wangchao, the victim's 21-year-old boyfriend. "Because they think they won't be punished." He added: "If it was the other way around, I would have to spend a long time in prison."

After Mr. Hu's trial, Tan Yue returned to his hometown, carrying a black suitcase containing a handful of his son's academic awards, his driver's license, Communist Party membership card and a few photos. Every time they open the suitcase, both parents start to cry, even holding on to a lint remover, still in its paper box. In line with tradition, Tan Yue was planning on burning these objects, but now thinks he wants to keep them to build a memorial to his son.

He plans to use the compensation money to move into a new home and buy health insurance for himself and his wife. "Everything was that son. Now, we don't have anything," Mr. Tan says.

—Jeremy Chan and Sue Feng contributed to this article.

Write to Shai Oster at shai.oster@wsj.com

Landowners Still in Exile From Unstable Pakistan Area

By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Even as hundreds of thousands of people stream back to the Swat Valley after months of fighting, one important group is conspicuously absent: the wealthy landowners who fled the Taliban in fear and are the economic pillar of the rural society.

The reluctance of the landowners to return is a significant blow to the Pakistani military’s campaign to restore Swat as a stable, prosperous part of Pakistan, and it presents a continuing opportunity for the Taliban to reshape the valley to their advantage.

About four dozen landlords were singled out over the past two years by the militants in a strategy intended to foment a class struggle. In some areas, the Taliban rewarded the landless peasants with profits of the crops of the landlords. Some resentful peasants even signed up as the Taliban’s shock troops.

How many of those peasants stayed with the militants during the army offensive of the last several months, and how many moved to the refugee camps, was difficult to assess, Pakistani analysts said.

But reports emerging from Swat show that the Taliban still have the strength to terrorize important areas. The army continues to fight the Taliban in their strongholds, particularly in the Matta and Kabal regions of Swat, not far from the main city, Mingora, where many refugees have reclaimed their homes.

In those regions, the Taliban have razed houses, killed a civilian working for the police in Matta and kidnapped another, worrying counterinsurgency experts, who fear that the refugees may have been encouraged by the Pakistani authorities to go back too soon.

The rebuilding of Swat, a fertile area of orchards and forests, is a critical test for the government and the military as they face Taliban insurgencies across the tribal belt, particularly in Waziristan on the Afghanistan border.

In a sign of the lack of confidence that Mingora was secure, the Pakistani military declined a request by the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, to visit the town last week.

There was nervousness, an American counterinsurgency expert said, that the plans by the Pakistani authorities to build new community police forces in Swat would not materialize quickly enough to protect the returning civilians, who are also starved of basic services like banks and sufficient medical care.

“There is no apparatus in place to replace the army,” said an American counterinsurgency official. “The army will be the backstop.”

About two million people have fled Swat and surrounding areas since the military opened its campaign to push back the Taliban at the end of April. The United Nations said Monday that 478,000 people had returned to Swat so far, but it cautioned that it was unable to verify the figure, which was provided by the government.

Assessment trips by United Nations workers to Swat scheduled for Monday and Tuesday were canceled for security reasons, and the United Nations office in Peshawar that serves as the base for Swat operations was closed Monday because of a high threat of kidnapping, a spokesman said.

The landlords, many of whom raised sizable militias to fight the Taliban themselves last year, say the army is again failing to provide enough protection if they return.

Another deterrent to returning, they say, is that the top Taliban leadership, responsible for taking aim at the landlords and spreading the spoils among the landless, remains unscathed.

If it continues, the landlords’ absence will have lasting ramifications not only for Swat, but also for Pakistan’s most populated province, Punjab, where the landholdings are vast, and the militants are gaining power, said Vali Nasr, a senior adviser to Mr. Holbrooke, the American envoy.

“If the large landowners are kept out by the Taliban, the result will in effect be property redistribution,” Mr. Nasr said. “That will create a vested community of support for the Taliban that will see benefit in the absence of landlords.”

At two major meetings with the landlords, the Pakistani military and civilian authorities requested that they return in the vanguard of the refugees. None have agreed to do so, according to several of the landowners and a senior army officer.

“We have sacrificed so much; what has the government and the military done for us?” asked Sher Shah Khan, a landholder in the Kuz Bandai area of Swat. He is now living with 50 family members in a rented house about 60 miles from Swat. Four family members and eight servants were killed trying to fight off the Taliban, he said.

At one of the meetings, Mr. Khan said he had asked the army commanders to provide weapons so the landlords could protect themselves, as the landowners had in the past.

The military refused the request, he said, saying it would fight the Taliban. Yet Pakistani soldiers had failed to protect his lands, he said. Twenty of his houses were blown up by the Taliban after the army ordered him and his family to leave their lands on two hours’ notice last September, he said.

A letter he sent last month to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the head of the Pakistani military, asking for compensation has gone unanswered, he said. In the meantime, one of his tenants called asking if he could plant crops on Mr. Khan’s property. He refused but had little idea what was happening back home, Mr. Khan said.

Other landlords are equally frustrated. The mayor of Swat, Jamal Nasir, fled after his father, Shujaat Ali Khan, regarded as the biggest landlord in Swat, narrowly avoided being killed by the Taliban. Mr. Nasir, a major landowner himself, now stays in his house in Islamabad.

The top guns of the Taliban are still in Swat, or perhaps in neighboring Dir, Mr. Nasir said. “These people should be arrested,” he said. “If they are not arrested, they are going to come back.”

Another landlord, Sher Mohammad, said he was still bitter that the army refused to help as he, his brother and his nephew fought off the Taliban last year for 13 hours, even though soldiers were stationed less than a mile away. Mr. Mohammad was hit in the groin by a bullet and lost a finger in the fight.

At one of the meetings with the military in Peshawar, Mr. Mohammad, a prominent politician with the Pakistan Peoples Party, said he told the officers that he was not impressed with their performance.

“They said, ‘We will protect you,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘We don’t trust you.’ ”

In Guatemala, Chasing Away the Ghost of Alvarado

by Tim Padgett

It's been five centuries since Pedro de Alvarado, a homicidal Spanish conquistador, seized from the Maya the volcanic realm that became Guatemala. But his bloodlust still haunts the country, which today has one of the highest homicide rates in the western hemisphere. Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war, which ended in 1996, killed 200,000 people. Its cloak-and-dagger murders have made locals so paranoid that "even the drunks are discreet," as one 19th century visitor wrote.

That neurosis still shrouds Guatemala City, a gloomy capital that no amount of marimba music can brighten. Rich and poor communities alike are surrounded by walls topped with enough razor wire and rifle-toting guards to look like penitentiaries. This year tandem motorcycle-riding was banned because it was such a popular M.O. for drive-by shootings, and daylight saving time was canceled because the dark mornings created too many opportunities for foul play. Even so, bus drivers face being killed by armed extortionists during rush hour, and lawyers who complain about government corruption can turn up under the bougainvilleas with a few bullets to the head.

That's apparently what happened to Rodrigo Rosenberg, a corporate lawyer murdered on May 10 while biking near his home. In a twist that's macabre even for Guatemala, Rosenberg had taped a video three days earlier in which he anticipated his assassination and put the blame on President Alvaro Colom and his imperious wife Sandra Torres. They deny it, saying their right-wing foes coerced Rosenberg into making the video and then had him killed.

But since the shocking video was uploaded to YouTube on May 11, the nation has begun to confront the benighted lawlessness that plagues not only Guatemala but most of the rest of Central America too. Younger Guatemalans, organizing protests via social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, have turned out by the thousands to protest their putrid judicial system and festoon Rosenberg's murder scene with banners. "Older people say they haven't seen an awakening like this in 60 years," says Alejandro Quinteros, 26, a cherubic fast-food manager and political novice who helps lead the National Civic Movement. "We're not afraid anymore."

Fear is understandable in a country that feels like a "baroque game of chess played with bodies," says Francisco Goldman, whose book The Art of Political Murder details the 1998 assassination of Catholic bishop Juan Gerardi, who was bludgeoned to death after issuing a report on army massacres during the civil war. In a nation where just 2% of last year's 6,200 murders were solved, "impunity opens doors to murderous imaginations," says Goldman.

But the outcry over the Rosenberg case has opened doors to reform. Guatemala's congress was compelled to pass a law, long resisted by powerful political and business interests, that allows public scrutiny of judicial appointments. This month lawmakers say they're set to convene at least one special session to act on measures such as concealed-weapons laws and the creation of organized-crime and anticorruption courts. Activists like Alfonso Abril, 24, of the civic group ProReforma, want to revise Guatemala's sclerotic constitution to modernize lawmaking and codify individual rights. "I'm from the upper class," says Abril, "but I know we can't keep living in a country like this."

He also knows Guatemalan politics is still treacherous. More than 50 candidates were assassinated during the general election in 2007, the same year three visiting Salvadoran congressmen were murdered by rogue policemen (who were then mysteriously killed themselves). In his video, Rosenberg says his coffee-baron client Khalil Musa was gunned down along with his daughter in April because Musa knew too much about drug-money-laundering. "Rodrigo wanted to talk about the deadly manipulation of laws and lives here," says his half brother Eduardo Rodas. Guatemala has asked the U.N. and the FBI to investigate his murder. After 500 years, Rosenberg's ghost may be the first to challenge Alvarado's.