Abdullah widely expected to boycott Afghan run-off election - washingtonpost.com

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By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 31, 2009 11:51 AM

KABUL -- A presidential run-off election planned for Nov. 7 was thrown into turmoil Saturday, with the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, widely expected to pull out of the race.

Campaign spokesmen for Abdullah said he had not made a final decision but would announce it here Sunday at a gathering of his top supporters from around the country. Some analysts suggested the boycott threat was an eleventh-hour ploy to win a power-sharing agreement with Karzai.

However, several sources close to Abdullah said he had no option but to boycott the contest. They said Karzai had refused to meet Abdullah's demands to fire the nation's top election official and take other measures to prevent the fraud that marred the original presidential election in August.

"We don't want to boycott, but Mr. Karzai has not accepted any conditions, so he left us with no other choice," said one member of Abdullah's political team, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Abdullah has not yet announced his plans. "There is no guarantee that a second round would be free and fair. It would only create more problems than it solves."

The prospect of Abdullah's withdrawal could plunge Afghanistan into an even deeper political crisis after weeks of mounting tension and uncertainty over how to form a new government. Karzai's victory in the Aug. 20 presidential election was found invalid because of widespread fraud, leading to plans for the runoff.

A canceled or marred election would further complicate matters for the Obama administration, which is nearing a decision on whether to significantly expand its military commitment to the war against Afghan and al-Qaeda insurgents. Washington has been counting on the election to produce a credible administration and partner in the war effort.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who arrived in Abu Dhabi early Saturday for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, played down the importance of a possible Abdullah withdrawal, however, saying that his decision was a "personal choice which may or may not be made."

Asked whether a run-off would be legitimate with only one candidate running, Clinton said that "other countries" had faced similar situations. "We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides no to go forward. I don't think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election," Clinton said.

U.S. officials had pressed Karzai hard to accept the run-off and he reluctantly agreed, although there was widespread concern among Afghans that the second round would not only be marred by fraud but would be even more vulnerable to insurgent attacks than the first poll. This week, the Taliban killed six U.N. workers and threatened to violently sabotage the Nov. 7 vote.

Aides to Karzai said Saturday that Abdullah has no right to boycott the election and that if he does, it will be up to the Afghan election commission to decide what to do. However, they also said he is legally allowed to simply resign from the race, in which case Karzai would automatically win.

"He can resign, but he cannot boycott, because he already accepted the election the first time," Moinuddin Manastial, a legislator and campaign aide to Karzai, said late Saturday. "He is making excuses to do something that is not in the constitution, while we are ready to go for the elections 100 percent."

Election officials said that they are still preparing to hold the vote, that Afghan security forces are ready to protect the voters at more than 6,000 polling stations across the country, and that neither candidate has the right to withdraw at this late date. Whether Abdullah boycotts the vote or not, his name will remain on the ballot.

Some analysts said they thought the door might still be open to a last-minute compromise between Karzai and Abdullah. They said Abdullah's threats to quit were aimed at undermining Karzai's electoral legitimacy and at pressing him for a power-sharing deal. But there was no hint from either camp that an agreement is still being explored.

Independent election experts said it is not clear what will happen if Abdullah does quit the race. They said most of the possible options -- canceling the vote and having Karzai declared president; having him run alone; or postponing the race until spring and replacing Abdullah with the third-highest vote-getter -- would either leave the country in political limbo or Karzai as head of a weak and illegitimate new administration.

"The situation is both depressing and complicated," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, chairman of the private Free and Fair Elections Foundation. "The law is silent on what to do in this situation, and whatever happens is likely to bring us more deeply into trouble, because we will probably end up with a president who did not get the minimum number of votes in a fair election."

Local analysts and Kabul residents glued to TV news stations Saturday expressed concern that violence could erupt in the capital and other cities if Abdullah quits the race amid angry recriminations and Karzai remains in office. Some of Abdullah's powerful supporters who command regional or private militias have vowed not to recognize or obey a new Karzai administration.

Abdullah, who abruptly canceled a scheduled trip to India on Saturday, has delayed announcing his decision for the past several days amid a flurry of private negotiations and meetings involving Karzai, Abdullah and their political aides and allies, as well as several foreign diplomats.

But sources close to the discussions told various media outlets late Friday and Saturday that talks between the two rival leaders collapsed Friday after Karzai had already announced he would not meet Abdullah's demands to fire the election commission chairman and other officials.

Since then, several sources said, Abdullah has leaned toward boycotting the contest, which Karzai has been widely expected to win. In the first round, even after hundreds of thousands of votes for Karzai were found invalid and discounted, the president won more than 49 percent of the vote, while Abdullah won less than 30 per cent.

Although Abdullah's public manner has been polite and his demands have sounded reasonable, there is widespread public skepticism about his sincerity. Some analysts say he wants to remain in the race but is surrounded by ambitious allies who have been pressing him to make a deal with Karzai.

Diplomatic sources said earlier this week that Karzai was open to forming a "government of unity" after the elections that would include Abdullah and his allies, but that he would not make any deal in advance.

Some experts and diplomats have suggested that if the country's political crisis deepens or there is an eruption of violence, the wisest solution would be to establish an interim or caretaker government and hold a new election in the spring, when the winter snows have melted and voters can go to the polls again.

But U.S. officials already appear to be preparing to accept Karzai's extended presidency as a fait accompli. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who personally persuaded Karzai to accept the run-off during a visit to Kabul, told a TV interviewer in Washington on Friday that he has confidence in Karzai's political resilience and that the Afghan president is "prepared to embrace reforms" in a new term.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

BBC - Honduras rivals resolve deadlock

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The interim leader of Honduras says he is ready to sign a pact to end its crisis which could include the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Roberto Micheletti said the agreement would create a power-sharing government and require both sides to recognise the result of November's presidential poll.

Mr Zelaya said the deal, which requires the approval of the Supreme Court and Congress, would be signed on Friday.

The president was forced out of the country on 28 June.

His critics said he was seeking to amend the constitution to remove the current one-term limit on serving as president, and pave the way for his re-election.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described this agreement as "historic", that suggests we are extremely close to a deal.

It is also significant that both sides say that the Congress of Honduras has to approve this.

That could mean a slight delay, but it might actually also have been the key to the solution. Neither side could agree and so ultimately, perhaps to save face, they had to leave it to others finally, and symbolically, to make an agreement.

It appears the US government put the pressure on the Micheletti government to say leave this to the Honduran Congress. And although the Congress initially voted to remove President Zelaya from power, now it wants him back, as everyone understands that it is the only way out of this.

Mr Zelaya returned covertly to Tegucigalpa on 21 September and has since been holed up in the Brazilian embassy. He says he has returned "for the restoration of democracy".

His term of office is due to finish at the end of January.

Negotiators for Mr Zelaya and Mr Micheletti resumed talks in the capital on Thursday in an attempt to resolve the political crisis which has gripped Honduras since the army-backed coup four months ago.

The opponents had earlier been told by US Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon that they had to reach an accord in order to ensure international support for the election on 29 November.

Afterwards, Mr Micheletti announced that a power-sharing deal had been reached that included a "significant concession".

"I have authorised my negotiating team to sign a deal that marks the beginning of the end of the country's political situation," the interim leader told a news conference.

"With regard to the most contentious subject in the deal, the possible restitution of Zelaya to the presidency" would be included, he said.

Mr Zelaya described the accord as a "triumph for Honduran democracy", and said he was "optimistic" of returning to power.

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, meanwhile said she wished to congratulate both sides on "reaching an historic agreement".

Mr Micheletti said the ousted president would only be able return to office after a vote in his favour in Congress that would first have to be authorised by the country's Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled that Mr Zelaya had violated the constitution in June, while Congress voted to remove him from office.

Mr Micheletti - who as the speaker of Congress was constitutionally second-in-line to the presidency - was sworn in by Congress as interim leader following the coup.

VOA News - Gabon's Oil Hub Tense After Disputed Vote

By Scott Stearns Dakar 05 September 2009

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Partial view of charred debris of Roger Buttin Social and Sports Center owned by French oil company Total, set ablaze in Port Gentil, 05 Sep 2009

Security forces in Gabon continued to clash with opposition demonstrators following the announcement that the son of the country's long-time ruler has been elected president. The French oil firm Total has evacuated foreign workers from Port Gentil, at the center of the violence.

Interior Minister Jean-Francois Ndongou told French state radio that two people killed overnight in Port Gentil were looters shot by a home owner.

Rioters in Port Gentil burned the French consulate and looted nearby shops Thursday following the announcement that former defense minister Ali Ben Bongo won last Sunday's presidential election.

That violence brought an overnight curfew to Port Gentil which was repeated Friday and will continue, Ndongou says, "as long as necessary if calm does not prevail."

Prisoners in Port Gentil were broken out of jail and demonstrators attacked facilities of the French oil firm Total. Expatriate staff and their families have now been evacuated to the capital, Libreville, where Total says they will remain until it is safe to return to Port Gentil.

The French Foreign Ministry says French nationals elsewhere in Gabon should stay in their homes.

Ali Bongo greets supporters in Libreville after being declared winner of bitter presidential election in Gabon, 03 Sep 2009

Opposition demonstrators are targeting French concerns because of the long relationship between French leaders and the 42-year-rule of Gabonese President Omar Bongo. His death in June raised expectations of change in Gabon. The election of his son in a vote that opposition candidates says was unfair has renewed allegations that Paris backed Ali Ben Bongo's candidacy.

The French Foreign Ministry says it was not involved in the campaign. It says Sunday's vote took place under "acceptable conditions" and losing candidates who want to contest the result should do so in Gabon's constitutional court.

Opposition leaders do intend to challenge a result that gave Bongo 42 percent of the vote. The electoral commission says former interior minister Andre Mba Obame and opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou each received about 25 percent.

Obame says the results are an "electoral coup." Mamboundou's party is calling on its supports to "resist" the outcome. Politicians allied with Mamboundou say he has gone into hiding after he was injured when police tear-gassed demonstrators following the results.

The African Union is calling on Gabonese to show "great restraint" and abstain from acts that might compromise peace and security.

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VOA News - Burma Refugees in China Head Home as Fighting Dies Down

By Daniel Schearf Bangkok 31 August 2009

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Refugees that fled to China to escape fighting in Burma are beginning to head home after Burmese authorities said the situation has returned to normal. But analysts say more fighting could break out as Burmese forces try to consolidate control ahead of next year's elections.

Kokang refugees walk with their belongings after returning to the China-Burma border town of Yanlonkyaing, Burma, 29 Aug 2009

Hundreds of refugees left China's Yunnan province Monday for home in Kokang, the mainly ethnic Chinese region of Burma's northeastern Shan state.

More than 30,000 people from Kokang had fled across the border to China to escape weeks of fighting between Burma's government forces and a local militia that controls the region.

Burma's state media reported more than 30 people were killed in the clashes but that the fighting in Kokang, which broke the region's 20-year ceasefire, had stopped.

Ian Holliday is dean of social sciences at the University of Hong Kong and researches Burma politics. He says Burma's military government is looking to take back control of the country's several militia-controlled areas in time for the 2010 elections.

"Ahead of that election, the junta is extremely keen to really pacify the entire territory and bring it under political control," said Holliday. "So, instead of having this rather gray area of a ceasefire deal which enables ethnic militias to control parts of the territory, the government now wants to make sure that its control extends across all of Burma. And, to do that, the government is upping the ante in its long standing struggle with these militias."

In June, Burmese forces attacked Karen rebels, who control territory on Burma's border with Thailand, forcing thousands of villagers to flee into Thailand.

Holliday says more fighting is possible in the coming weeks in other areas of Burma that are outside of government control.

But, he says the fighting in the Kokang region should stay quiet as China, one of Burma's few backers, is very concerned about stability on its western border.

"We are talking about something which goes right into Chinese security on a border which the Chinese themselves are very worried about," he said. "We have seen Tibet last year, we have seen Xinjiang this year... So, the last thing that they want is anything that might be destabilizing on a frontier like that.

Holliday says China has more leverage on Burma than any other country in the world and that it will use every means to prevent the spread of the conflict. But, he adds Beijing is facing an extremely nationalistic military government in Burma that does not like to take orders from anybody.

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Venezuelan State That Chávez Family Rules Is Rife With Kidnapping

By SIMON ROMERO

BARINAS, Venezuela — Stretching over vast cattle estates at the foothills of the Andes, Barinas is known for two things: as the bastion of the family of President Hugo Chávez and as the setting for a terrifying surge in abductions, making it a contender for Latin America’s most likely place to get kidnapped.

An intensifying nationwide crime wave over the past decade has pushed the kidnapping rate in Venezuela past Colombia’s and Mexico’s, with about 2 abductions per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Interior Ministry.

But nowhere in Venezuela comes close in abductions to Barinas, with 7.2 kidnappings per 100,000 inhabitants, as armed gangs thrive off the disarray here while Mr. Chávez’s family tightens its grip on the state. Seizures of cattle ranches and crumbling infrastructure also contribute to the sense of low-intensity chaos.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

“This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power as the rest of us fear for our lives,” said Ángel Santamaría, 57, a cattleman in the town of Nueva Bolivia whose son, Kusto, 8, was kidnapped while walking to school in May. He was held for 29 days, until Mr. Santamaría gathered a small ransom to free him.

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family.

“With each day that passes,” the governor said recently, “Barinas is safer than before.”

Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed.

In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.

Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men.

One opposition leader, Wilmer Azuaje, detailed to prosecutors and legislators what he said was more than $20 million in illegal gains by the family since the president’s father was elected governor in 1998. But in a brief review of those claims, National Assembly, under the control of Chávez loyalists, cleared the family of charges of illicit enrichment.

“In the meantime, while the family wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism, we are descending into a neo-capitalist chaos where all that matters is money,” said Alberto Santelíz, the publisher of La Prensa, a small opposition newspaper.

One reason for the rise in kidnappings is the injection of oil money into the local economy, with some families reaping quick fortunes because of ties to large infrastructure projects.

A new soccer stadium, built under the supervision of Adelis Chávez’s at a cost of more than $50 million, is still unfinished two years after its first game in 2007, joining other white elephants dotting Barinas’s landscape. Nearby lies the unfinished Museum of the Plains, intended to celebrate the culture of the president’s birthplace. A sprawling shopping mall stands half-completed after its backers fled a shakedown by construction unions.

More than a decade into the Chávez family’s rule in Barinas, the state remains Venezuela’s poorest, with average monthly household income of about $800, according to the National Statistics Institute. Kidnapping, once feared only by the wealthy, has spread in Barinas to include the poor. In one case this year of a 3-year-old girl kidnapped in the slum of Mi Jardín, the abductor, when told that the only thing of value owned by the girl’s mother was a refrigerator, instructed her to sell it to pay the ransom.

Kidnapping specialists here said the abductors were drawn from two Colombian rebel groups, a small Venezuelan guerrilla faction called the Bolivarian Liberation Front, other criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Just a fraction of the kidnappings result in prison sentences.

“With impunity rampant in Barinas, how can our governor say with a straight face that people are kidnapping themselves?” asked Lucy Montoya, 38, a hardware store owner whose sister, Doris, a 41-year-old mother of three, was kidnapped in March.

Doris Montoya’s abductors have not freed her or communicated with her family since receiving ransom money in May, Lucy Montoya said, adding, “The government’s handling of this crisis is an affront to our dignity as human beings.”

Meanwhile, new figures show kidnappings climbing to 454 known cases in the first six months of 2009, including about 66 in Barinas, compared with a nationwide 2008 estimate of between 537 and 612. But officials acknowledge that the true figures are probably higher because many cases are never reported.

Here in Barinas, victims seethe over the inaction of the president and his family. “Our ruling dynasty is effectively telling us we are expendable,” said Rodolfo Peña, 38, a businessman who was abducted here last year. “The only other plausible theory,” he said, “is that they are too inebriated by power to notice the emergency at their feet.”

Mauritania Opposition Rejects Presidential Election Results

By Scott Stearns Nouakchott, Mauritania 19 July 2009 Mauritanian opposition candidates are rejecting results from a presidential election that show former military leader Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz winning. With more than 70 percent of ballots counted, Mauritania's electoral commission says Aziz is winning more than 52 percent of the vote. If that count holds up, the leader of last August's coup would win election in the first round - avoiding a run-off in which his main political opponents had vowed to unite against him. Those opponents immediately rejected the provisional results as an "electoral charade, which is trying to legitimize the coup." In a joint statement, Ahmed Ould Daddah, Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, and Hamai Ould Meimou denounced what they called "prefabricated results." They are calling for the international community to investigate what they say were voting irregularities, including counting opposition ballots for Aziz. The opposition leaders are asking "competent bodies", including the country's constitutional council and Interior Ministry to not validate the results. Their joint statement is urging Mauritanians to mobilize to defeat what opposition leaders are calling an "electoral coup d'etat." During the campaign, Daddah said he was quiet when he says vote fraud denied him victory in presidential elections in 1991 and 2007. But he said this time he is not prepared to be silent if the election is stolen and told his supporters neither should they. Arab electoral observers monitored more than 300 of Mauritania's 2,500 polling stations. They saw irregularities including partisan electoral officials, security forces inside polling stations, and the denial of voters who registered after June 6th - most of whom support the opposition. But the group's preliminary report says it does not believe those irregularities will affect the overall outcome of the vote. Mohsen Marzouk is Secretary General of the Arab Democracy Foundation. Marzouk says Mauritania is a crucial point that will affect all its people. He called for political parties and official institutions to adhere strictly to democracy as the best way to solve the political crisis and promote stability and development. Arab observers say they will consider opposition complaints and include them in its final report. Boulkheir and Daddah had both publicly pledged to support the other in a potential run-off against Aziz if no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote. This election was meant to restore constitutional rule to Mauritania after Aziz led a coup 11 months ago that toppled the nation's first freely-elected leader. Aziz ran a populist campaign, calling himself the "Candidate of the Poor" pledging to improve access to health care while lowering food and fuel prices. To the cheers of his supporters, he vowed to build more jails to imprison his political opponents, who he says are corrupt. Aziz campaigned far longer than most of his opponents as he began running for a previously-scheduled June election that he agreed to postpone as part of a power-sharing deal that included the opposition dropping their electoral boycott.

Karzai's Challengers Skirt Thorny Issues, Face Huge Odds in Afghan Campaign

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 6, 2009

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- As U.S. Marines launched a major offensive against Taliban insurgents in southern Helmand province, the presidential campaign unfolding in more peaceful parts of northern and eastern Afghanistan last week seemed to be taking place on another planet.

Whether addressing rallies, chatting with voters in the streets or receiving delegations of tribal leaders, candidates barely mentioned the violent insurgency that international experts fear could sabotage the Aug. 20 polling.

Instead, the presidential hopefuls stuck to themes they knew would resonate with Afghan audiences. They denounced civilian casualties by foreign forces and called for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. They railed against corruption in government, evoked past military triumphs and hyped their personal ties to late national leaders.

"I decided to launch my campaign here because this is where the holy war began," said Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, addressing a large outdoor rally Wednesday in this muggy eastern city. "I want to stand and struggle for the honor and dignity of the holy warriors. I want to build an Afghanistan that can defend itself without foreign troops."

Dressing for the occasion, the dapper professional wore a traditional Afghan tunic and baggy trousers. He also strove for ethnic balance by donning a rolled wool cap worn by Afghan Tajiks, then exchanging it for a striped turban favored by Pashtuns.

His audience, mostly men rounded up by a local legislator and former anti-Soviet militia leader, listened politely in the steamy tent. Later, after Abdullah had departed in a government helicopter for Kabul, the capital, some said they had not decided whom to support for president, but many said they were fed up with the incumbent, Hamid Karzai.

"We gave Karzai a chance, but he did not serve the people. He is weak, and his administration is corrupt," said Ghulam Sahi, 48, a tribal elder. A man named Zaman ul-Haq complained that Karzai's government had "taken away our weapons but not given us jobs. Today only the mafia people get jobs. After three decades of war, we need a strong and honest leader."

Public opinion surveys show that Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since soon after the overthrow of Islamist Taliban rule in late 2001, is still likely to emerge the winner. To shore up his flagging popularity, he has made preelection deals with powerful tribal, business and militia figures -- including some with unsavory reputations -- who command large numbers of votes.

Within the field of 41 candidates, only Abdullah and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani are considered remotely in the running; most others are expected to pull out or support one of the big three. Karzai can hold endless televised news conferences in his secure palace, while the threat of insurgent attacks makes it dangerous for other candidates to venture into the countryside to enhance their name recognition.

As a result, with just over six weeks until the election, only a handful of the country's 10 million to 12 million voters have met any of the candidates in person. Most campaign events have been highly guarded and orchestrated, such as Abdullah's visit here, which included closed-door meetings with local officials but not a single handshake with audience members.

"There is very little public enthusiasm for this election," said Haroun Mir, director of the Afghan Center for Research and Policy Studies. "The old political actors are still running things, and the attempt to form an opposition coalition failed. No matter who wins the presidency, the government will be dysfunctional -- with little hope of reform."

International concern has focused on whether the Taliban will follow through on threats to attack the polling places, especially in the south, where low turnout could raise the prospect of ethnic imbalance in the national count. The United States and NATO are sending extra troops to protect the vote, but officials said it would be impossible to guarantee the safety of all 28,000 polling stations.

Election advisers and opposition candidates said they are also worried about pro-government rigging on election day. They warned that this could trigger a violent confrontation similar to what has recently occurred in Iran -- only worse because Afghanistan is awash with weapons.

"The stakes are very high, so if the race gets tight, all the stops may be pulled out to deliver the vote," said one international election observer in Kabul. An election complaint office has been established, but its cumbersome procedures might be unable to forestall a wave of public anger.

Karzai has pledged not to use his government status and powers to influence the election. He has also complained that U.S. officials, while maintaining a formally neutral position, recently held high-profile meetings with several key opponents. Relations between the Afghan president and Washington have gone steadily downhill in the past year.

Yet only a few of Karzai's challengers have journeyed into the provinces on their own or mingled with crowds in Kabul. One is Ramazan Bashardost, a former planning minister and eccentric crusader whose office consists of a tent pitched outside the parliament. Another is Shala Attah, a psychologist and legislator who spent 20 years as a war exile in Alexandria, Va., and returned home in 2007.

"I'm not afraid of people, and I'm not afraid to speak the truth," said Attah, 41, who left her husband and five children behind in Virginia and said she misses them terribly. "There is too much corruption in this country. There are women in villages living in caves. There are boys killing for the Taliban. Someone has to talk about the real problems."

One evening last week, Attah drove through the capital and stopped in a busy market, draped in an elegant black cloak, to greet astonished shoppers. Because she has near-zero name recognition, her campaign posters feature images of the late Mohammed Daud Khan, a former president.

"Daud Khan was a good man, and this lady says she will follow in his footsteps," said Ghulam Haider, 51, a cook who was bicycling home and stopped to take one of Attah's fliers. "What we really need from our next leader is to negotiate with the Taliban. They are our brothers, and the foreigners have destroyed our country. We have to end this war."

Several other candidates, including Ghani and former anti-drug official Mirwais Yasini, have developed substantive policy platforms but tend to campaign in the traditional Afghan way, through private meetings and elaborate receptions for visiting provincial elders.

Like Abdullah, both men are former senior aides to Karzai who broke with him and are now highly critical of his performance. Ghani has accused Karzai of wasting billions in foreign aid and allowing corruption to poison the state.

Yasini tends to sound the same alarm, saying Karzai is running the government like a crony enterprise and cozying up to ethnic strongmen. Yasini is the only candidate who has dared to speak strongly in favor of keeping Western troops in the country, but he scoffs at opinion polls predicting that he and other challengers have little chance.

"Unless the election is rigged, Karzai is not unbeatable," Yasini said in an interview. "He thought he could use the warlords, but they won't help him because the people are fed up with these dragons. This boat is sinking, and if Karzai stays or the wrong man takes his place, the country will drown."

Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.

Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public. Ayatollah Khamenei is supreme religious leader.

The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners. Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people have been detained.

They fear the confessions are part of a concerted effort to lay the groundwork for banning existing reformist political parties and preventing any organized reform movement in the future. “They hope with this scenario they can expunge them completely from the political process,” said Hadi Ghaemi, coordinator of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group. “They don’t want them to come back as part of a political party.”

The confessions are used to persuade a domestic audience that even cultural and academic outreach by some of the nation’s top academics is really cover to usher in a velvet revolution, human rights workers and former prisoners say.

“If they talk about the velvet revolution 24 hours a day people don’t care,” said Omid Memarian, a former Iranian journalist who was arrested and forced to issue his own confession in 2004. “But if reformers and journalists say they are involved in it, it makes the point for them. Once my interrogators said, ‘Whatever you say is worth 100 times more than having a conservative newspaper say the same thing.’ ”

Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a Newsweek reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted.

In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister.

In 2007, Iran produced a pseudo-documentary called “In the Name of Democracy,” which served as a vehicle to highlight what it called confessions of three academic researchers charged with trying to overthrow the state. “They don’t like new ideas to get to Iran,” said a researcher once investigated about his work, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They don’t like social and cultural figures in Iranian society to become very popular.”

In 2001, Ali Afshari was arrested for his work as a student leader. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in.

“They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year,” Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. “They eventually broke my resistance.”

The problem, he said, was that he was not sure what he was supposed to confess to. So over the next several months, he said, he and his interrogators “negotiated” what he would say — and, more ominously, whom he would implicate. Once his confession was complete, he said, he practiced it for 7 to 10 days, and then it ran on state-run television.

Three years later, Mr. Memarian, the journalist and blogger, was arrested in another security sweep. He said that his interrogator at first sought to humiliate him by forcing him to discuss details of his sex life, and that when he hesitated, the interrogator would grab his hair and smash his head against the wall. He said the interrogator asked him about prominent politicians he had interviewed, asked if they ever had affairs, and asked if he had ever slept with their wives.

“I was crying, I begged him, please do not ask me this,” said Mr. Memarian, who is in exile now in the United States. “They said if you don’t talk now you will talk in a month, in two months, in a year. If you don’t talk now, you will talk. You will just stay here.”

The pressure was agonizing, he said, as he was forced to live in a small cell for 35 days with a light burning all the time and only three trips to the bathroom allowed every 24 hours. He was forced to shower in front of a camera, he said. At one point the interrogators threatened to break his fingers.

“They came up with names, and topics,” he said. “They gave me a three-page analysis and said read this and include it in your confession. My interrogator once said, ‘You have written seven years for the reformists; it’s O.K. to write for us for two months.’ ”

Mr. Memarian said that even in 2004, his interrogators were most interested in several leading reformers, including Mr. Abtahi, who at the time was an adviser to the president. When he was finally released, and after his confession was published by Fars, he was asked to testify before a committee led by the reform government investigating confessions, which included Mr. Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi, who has not been heard from since his arrest on June 16, understood even back then just how vulnerable he was, Mr. Memarian recalled.

“Abtahi said, ‘We cannot guarantee anyone’s security,’ ” Mr. Memarian said. “ ‘We know what happened to you guys. When you leave this building we do not know will happen to you, or what can happen to us in this committee.’ ”

(An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a conservative Web site that referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformer. The Web site is Alef, not Atef.)

Iran Cleric Says British Embassy Staff to Stand Trial

By JOHN F. BURNS and STEPHEN CASTLE

LONDON — A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British embassy staff members on trial, a move that could provoke a tightening of European sanctions against Iran, including the withdrawal of ambassadors.

The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshipers at Friday Prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had “made confessions” and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.

In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking clarification from the Iranian government as to whether the cleric’s remarks represented official policy.

“We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement. “We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran.”

He said he planned to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.

Of the nine staff members seized Sunday, five were released Monday after the first British and European protests, and Iranian state media said Wednesday that three more had been freed, leaving one in custody. British officials, however, said that two remained under arrest.

As local employees of the embassy, those arrested did not have diplomatic immunity. None are British citizens.

Although the Foreign Office has denied that it had any role in stirring the ferment in Iran, officials in London have said that the embassy in Tehran had not forbidden its local employees to participate in the protests as individuals. The Iranian authorities say they have video evidence of some embassy employees at the protests.

Hours after the threat of trials, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 of the group’s countries to send “a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release,” said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the group’s rules.

Other graduated measures — like a slowdown in issuing visas to Iranian officials seeking to visit Europe and a potential withdrawal of all European ambassadors — would be considered, the diplomat said. He said Iranian diplomats would be told that the arrest of the embassy employees and the threat of trials were considered a threat to all European Union diplomatic staff members in Iran.

The Iranian authorities accused the employees of fomenting and orchestrating the protests that drew tens of thousands of Iranians into Tehran’s streets after the June 12 election. The demonstrations provoked a security crackdown that had largely ended the public protests but not the political ferment over the elections. The hard-line incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been officially declared the winner by a landslide, but his main opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has vowed to continue his campaign to have the official result declared fraudulent.

Ayatollah Jannati, who is an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not say how many of the detainees would be tried or on what charges, news reports said. But, in unofficial translations provided by news agencies, he said that the British Embassy had a “presence” in the postelection unrest and that “some people” had been arrested. It was “inevitable” that they would face trial, he said.

The Guardian Council is an influential panel of 12 clerics whose responsibilities include vetting elections. On Monday it certified Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory, a step that emboldened hard-line officials to warn of a harsher crackdown if protests continued.

Britain has sought diplomatic help from the European Union, which is thought to hold more sway with Iran. But some European countries, led by Germany, have been reluctant to risk worsening ties with Iran, particularly at a time when European diplomats have been pressing it for concessions over its nuclear program. They have argued that a withdrawal of envoys, a step urged by Britain, would leave few diplomatic options if the crisis deteriorated further.

But there were signs that the threat of trials had stiffened resolve in other countries.

“Our solidarity with Britain is total,” said President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, adding that France favored tightening sanctions.

The Iranian authorities have frequently blamed foreigners for the turmoil, but they have singled out the British as instigators. They cited Britain’s covert role in past political upheavals, including the toppling in 1941 of Reza Shah Pahlavi, suspected of having pro-German sympathies during World War II, and the ouster in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after his government nationalized Iran’s British-dominated oil industry.

At the same time, Tehran has sent mixed signals about the fate of the embassy employees.

Hassan Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Monday that Iran was eager to maintain normal diplomatic relations with the European Union, its biggest trading partner. “Reduction of ties is not on our agenda with any European country, including Britain,” he said.

But on Wednesday, the semiofficial Fars news agency said that one of the embassy employees, who was not identified by name, “had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes.”

While Ayatollah Jannati is not a member of the government or the judiciary, his words as the head of the Guardian Council and a close associate of the supreme leader carry some weight.

At Friday Prayer — a forum Iran has often used to convey significant political messages — he accused Britain of trying to provoke a “velvet revolution.” As long ago as March, he said, the British Foreign Office had said street riots were possible during the June elections. “These are signs, revealed by themselves,” he said.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

Drug-Cartel Links Haunt an Election South of Border

By JOEL MILLMAN and JOSE DE CORDOBA

COLIMA, Mexico -- The candidacy of Mario Anguiano, running for governor in a state election here Sunday, says a lot about Mexican politics amid the rise of the drug cartels.

A brother of the candidate is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Mexico for peddling methamphetamine. Another Anguiano is serving 27 years in a Texas prison for running a huge meth ring. A few weeks ago, a hand-painted banner hung on a highway overpass cited the Zetas, the bloodthirsty executioners for the Gulf Cartel drug gang, praising the candidate: "The Zetas support you, and we are with you to the death."

Mr. Anguiano says his meth-dealing brother was just an addict who sold small amounts to support his habit. He says the man jailed in Texas, reported by local media to be his cousin, may or may not be a relative. "If he is my cousin, I've never met him," he says. Denying any involvement with traffickers, he says the supposed Zetas endorsement was just a dirty trick by his election rivals.

If so, it backfired. In the weeks after the banner made local headlines, new polls showed Mr. Anguiano pulling ahead in the race. He is expected to be elected governor on Sunday.

The reaction suggests how blasé some voters have become about allegations of ties between their politicians and the drug underworld, as Mexico prepares to elect a new lower house of Congress, some state governors and many mayors. This, even as political experts and law-enforcement people worry that violent drug gangs are increasingly bankrolling a wide range of politicians' campaigns across Mexico, in return for turning a blind eye to their activities.
Cartel Turf Wars

The election comes amid President Felipe Calderón's all-out war on drug gangs, which wield armies of private gunmen and account for the bulk of illegal drugs sold in the U.S. The conservative president has deployed 45,000 troops to fight the gangs. In bloody confrontations between his forces and the cartels, and especially in turf battles among the cartels, an estimated 12,000 lives have been lost since Mr. Calderón took office in late 2006. June was the deadliest month yet: 769 drug-related killings, according to a count by Mexican newspapers.

Until recent years, Mexican drug traffickers focused the bulk of their bribery efforts on law enforcement rather than politicians. Their increasing involvement in local politics -- in town halls and state capitals -- is a response, experts say, to the national-level crackdown, to changes in the nature of the drug trade itself and to the evolution of Mexico's young democracy.

Mario Anguiano's campaign for governor in Mexico reveals the problems of power in a country with increasing narcotics trafficking and violence. WSJ's Joel Millman reports.

Starting in 2000, a system of fiercely contested multiparty elections began to replace 71 years of one-party rule, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "In this newly competitive, moderately democratic system, it takes serious money to run a political campaign," says James McDonald, a Mexico expert at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. "This has given the narcos a real entree into politics, by either running for office themselves or bankrolling candidates."

In addition, the gangs have evolved from simple drug-smuggling bands into organized-crime conglomerates with broad business interests, from local drug markets to extortion, kidnapping, immigrant smuggling and control of Mexico's rich market in knockoff compact discs. "There is more at stake than before. They need to control municipal governments," says Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor of law and economics at both Columbia University and Mexico's ITAM University.

Because of the federal crackdown and the warfare between rival cartels the drug traffickers also need more political allies than ever before.

Politicians who won't cooperate sometimes are threatened. On Monday, in the drug-producing state of Guerrero, a grenade blew up a sport-utility vehicle belonging to Jorge Camacho, a congressional candidate from President Calderón's National Action Party, or PAN. A message next to the destroyed car said, "Look, you S.O.B. candidate, hopefully, you will understand it is better you get out, you won't get a second chance to live."

Mr. Buscaglia says criminal groups' one-two punch of bribes and threats has given them either influence or control in 72% of Mexico's municipalities. He bases his estimate on observation of criminal enterprises such as drug-dealing and child-prostitution rings that operate openly, ignored by police.

According to a September 2007 intelligence assessment by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the governors of the states of Veracruz and Michoacán had agreements with the Gulf Cartel allowing free rein to that large drug-trafficking gang. In return, said the report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the cartel promised to reduce violence in Veracruz state and, in Michoacán, financed a gubernatorial race and many municipal campaigns across the state.

In Veracruz, the FBI report said, Gov. Fidel Herrera made a deal with the cartel letting it secure a drug route through the state. In an interview, Mr. Herrera said the allegation is "absolutely false, and has no basis in fact -- it never happened." The PRI politician said he has never had any dealings with a criminal organization and blamed a rival political operative, whom he declined to name, for trying to sabotage his career.

In Michoacán, the FBI report said, "in exchange for funding, the Gulf Cartel will be able to control the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, to continue to introduce cocaine and collect a 'tax'" from other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
Control of Ports

Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, the Michoacán governor from the leftist PRD party who was in the office when the FBI said the deal was made, says the allegation is "totally false." Mr. Cárdenas Batel, grandson of the former Mexican president for whom the port is named, said Mexican ports are controlled by federal agencies, so drug traffickers have nothing to gain from bribing state officials in connection with them.

His successor, the winner of the 2007 election, is Leonel Godoy, also of the PRD. He calls the FBI allegation "an infamy" with "not a shred of evidence or any proof," and said he had never met or cut deals with drug traffickers. Messrs. Cárdenas Batel and Godoy both say they had alerted authorities before the elections about the growing infiltration of drug traffickers in Michoacán.

None of the three men -- Messrs. Cárdenas Batel, Godoy and Herrera -- have been charged with any crime. U.S. intelligence documents have occasionally proved unreliable in the past.

Police agents in Mexico City stand guard in May after a group of top officials from Michoacán were detained due to their alleged ties to 'La Familia' drug cartel. Ten mayors and 17 other officials were detained.

The Gulf Cartel doesn't appear to be the only gang with alleged influence in Michoacán officialdom. In May, soldiers and federal police arrested 10 mayors, as well as 17 police chiefs and state security officials, including a man who was in charge of the state's police-training academy. They have been charged with collaborating with "La Familia," the state's violent homegrown drug gang. Those arrested, who have said they are innocent victims of political vendettas, represented all three of Mexico's main political parties. On Monday, three more people, including the mayor of Lázaro Cárdenas, were arrested and charged with the same offense, according to the attorney general's office.

Five hundred miles to the north in the wealthy Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza García, a mayoral candidate from President Calderón's party sparked a scandal in June when he was recorded telling a gathering of supporters that security in the town was "controlled by" members of one of Mexico's most fearsome drug cartels, the Beltran Leyva gang.

The candidate, Mauricio Fernandez, seemed to suggest he would be willing to negotiate with the Beltran Leyvas if elected. "Penetration by drug traffickers is for real, and they approach every candidate who they think may win," Mr. Fernandez was recorded saying. "In my case, I made it very clear to them that I didn't want blatant selling."

Mr. Fernandez has acknowledged the audiotape's authenticity, but says his statements were taken out of context and that he had never met with members of the Beltran Leyva cartel. He says the full tape captures him saying he would not negotiate with the drug traffickers. As the election nears, he leads polls by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, Mayor David Monreal of the town of Fresnillo denied having anything to do with 14.5 tons of marijuana police found months ago in a chili-pepper-drying facility owned by his brother. Mr. Monreal, who plans to seek the governorship next year, said his political enemies planted the mammoth stash.

In the campaign, the state of Mexico's economy appears to trump the drug issue for many voters. The economy is shrinking amid slumps in oil production, in exports to the U.S., in tourism and in remittances from emigrants. Polls give the PRI, the party that ruled for seven decades, an advantage of about six percentage points.

The governing party has made President Calderon's campaign against drug traffickers its main theme, and polls show his policy of using the military in the effort is widely popular. But they also show a majority of Mexicans don't think he is winning the narco-war.

Drugs are certainly campaign fodder in the border state of Chihuahua, where former Ciudad Juárez Mayor Héctor Murguía is the PRI's candidate for a congressional seat. Two years ago, Mayor Murguía named as his chief of public security a businessman named Saulo Reyes Gamboa. Last year, Mr. Reyes was arrested by U.S. law-enforcement agents in El Paso, Texas, after allegedly paying someone he thought to be a corrupt U.S. federal officer to help smuggle drug loads. During the operation, federal agents found nearly half a ton of marijuana in a Texas house, which they say Mr. Reyes had arranged to smuggle from Mexico.

Mr. Reyes, who pleaded guilty and is now serving eight years in a federal prison in Kentucky, couldn't be reached for comment. Mayor Murguía says that he has had no involvement with the Juárez Cartel and that Mr. Reyes never contributed "even five pesos" to support his political career.

Despite the bad publicity, Mr. Murguía is leading in polls and is expected to win Sunday -- not unlike Mr. Anguiano, the candidate in Colima with the supposed endorsement from the Zetas.
Talking Frankly

In Colima, the candidate for governor from President Calderón's party, Martha Sosa Govea, hasn't faced any narco-tie allegations. But there has been plenty of comment about her protegé, national assembly candidate Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, thanks to a tape of him talking frankly about politics and drug traffickers, recorded by members of a rival party he was trying to win over.
[Drug-Cartel Links Haunt Election]

"You don't imagine how many 'nice' people have relations with those drug-trafficking bastards, and through them, the bastards bring things to you," he said on the tape. "They try to seduce you....They got close to me like they get close to half the world, and they sent me money."

Mr. Mendoza declined to comment, but has previously denied he took any money from the cartels. Ms. Sosa said the tape might have been doctored, and in any case, "just because they have him on a tape getting an offer of dirty money, there's still nothing on tape proving he accepted it."

The tape was turned over to federal authorities to determine whether it had been altered. Citing the proximity to the election, the Attorney General's office declined to comment on any of the drug cases.

Colima, though largely exempt from the narco-violence raging in neighboring states, has a reputation as a haven for traffickers, a sleepy place where residents don't ask questions about rich new neighbors. In the 1980s, Colima was home to a gentleman rancher from Guadalajara whom everybody knew as Pedro Orozco. He spent lavishly on schools, gave to charity and hung around with politicians.

In 1991, Mr. Orozco was gunned down in a firefight in Guadalajara, then Mexico's drug capital. It turned out the generous man-about-town was actually Manuel Salcido Uzueta, a top drug capo better known as Cochiloco, meaning the Mad Pig.

Ever since, Colima residents have grown cynical about the influence of drug gangs in politics. "Corruption? Drug ties? They say that about everyone who runs for office. Who can you believe?" says Salvador Ochoa, a local lawyer.

Ms. Sosa has been hammering her opponent, Mr. Anguiano, with claims that he has links to drug trafficking. But, she concedes, the response of many voters is, "Poor guy, why don't they just leave him alone?"

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com and Jose de Cordoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com

Opposition Leaders Defy Iranian Authorities, Call Ahmadinejad Government Illegal

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009

TEHRAN, July 1 -- Three opposition leaders, including a former president, openly defied Iran's top political and religious authorities Wednesday, vowing to resist a government they have deemed illegitimate after official certification of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection.

Their defiance in the face of harsh official denunciations and threats of arrest and prosecution appeared to dash the government's hopes of pressuring the opposition into accepting the disputed June 12 election.

Rather than dropping his complaints of extensive vote-rigging, leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi took his fight to a new level Wednesday, risking arrest by urging followers to continue their protests. After formal certification of the election results Monday night by the Guardian Council, a top supervisory body of Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists, Iranian authorities warned that no further protests would be tolerated.

Mousavi, 67, a former prime minister, was joined in his dismissal of the official results by two other opposition leaders: presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, 71, a cleric and former speaker of parliament, and Mohammad Khatami, 65, a cleric who served as president for eight years before Ahmadinejad, now 52, was first elected in 2005. They also called for the annulment of the June 12 vote and the continuation of protests, although Khatami's remarks were not as tough as those of the two candidates.

The three made clear that they do not oppose Iran's system of religious government, but they charged that the country is turning into a dictatorship. The government regards Mousavi and Karroubi as bad losers who are ignoring a legal election result and are trying to overthrow the system by organizing a "color revolution" similar to those that swept away governments in Eastern and Central Europe this decade.

There was no immediate response by authorities, but Morteza Agha Tehrani, an influential pro-government member of parliament, was quoted by a local news agency as saying that some lawmakers would soon file a court case against Mousavi.

The opposition's persistence appeared to put the government in a bind. If Iran's top leaders order the arrest of Mousavi and the political and religious figures who support him, they risk further undermining the country's complex system of religious and democratic governance. But if they allow Mousavi to continue calling for protests and challenging the election results, they could jeopardize the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other key figures who have backed Ahmadinejad's reelection.

Political factions and some grand ayatollahs, senior Shiite religious leaders with tens of thousands of followers, have voiced disapproval of the violent response to street protests and have called on authorities to heed demonstrators' complaints.

"There has been a velvet revolution against the people and against the republicanism of the system," Khatami said during a meeting with families of war casualties, according to a Web site associated with his faction. "A big segment of society has lost all trust in the system, and this is a disaster."

A leading moderate party formed by reformers close to Khatami, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, called the election a "coup d'etat" and the result "unacceptable."

In Tehran late Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents shouted "Allahu akbar!" (God is great) from their balconies and rooftops, a form of protest supporting Mousavi and Karroubi. But the only traffic on the capital's normally bustling streets appeared to be special police patrolling in black SUVs. Main squares all over the city were empty, witnesses said, although Wednesday night is the traditional start of the Iranian weekend.

The country's text-messaging service, turned off since the day before the election, resumed Wednesday, with Tehran's residents sending one another carefully formulated messages to avoid attracting official attention.

Meanwhile, Iran's national police chief, Brig. Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, announced that detained protesters "have been sent to the public and revolutionary courts in Tehran." He said that 1,032 people were detained during post-election unrest and that most have been released.

The police chief also said that 20 "rioters" were killed after the election, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. He said that no police officers died but that more than 500 of them had been injured. "The police behavior toward the illegal gatherings staged during the final days of unrest was completely legal," Fars quoted him as saying.

For his part, Ahmadinejad canceled a planned trip to Libya on Wednesday to attend an African Union summit, the Foreign Ministry announced.

Staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.

Hello from Havana

by Jorge I. Dominguez

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Scenes from Havana, taken in March 2007

President Raúl Castro’s principal contribution thus far to the lives of ordinary Cubans has been that television soap operas now start on time. He often reminds his fellow citizens of this seemingly impossible accomplishment, after decades during which his elder brother commanded the airwaves and disrupted all public and personal schedules. But he alluded to this achievement most cleverly last December, prompting laughter with the opening sentence of his remarks before a summit meeting of the presidents of the Latin American countries in Bahia, Brazil, hosted by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. According to Cuba’s official press reports, Castro began, “I hope that our colleague and dear friend Lula will not complain because I give shorter speeches than Chávez’s.”

The presidential summit was one stop on Raúl Castro’s first international trip since becoming Cuba’s acting president in August 2006 (when Fidel Castro was rushed to the hospital), and in that one sentence, he made several points. To most of the Latin American presidents, who did not know him well, and indeed to his fellow Cubans, he demonstrated that even a 78-year-old General of the Army could have a sense of humor. To the same audiences, but also to the incoming Obama administration, he demonstrated some distance and independence from Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, notwithstanding the tight economic and political bonds between their two countries. This was only the most recent and most public instance of Raúl Castro’s reiterated mocking comparison between Chávez’s propensity to speak forever and his own much shorter and self-disciplined speeches. (Of course, all those in the audience also knew that he was poking fun not just at Chávez but at his brother, who never met a time limit he did not despise.) And, finally, he highlighted, especially for his own people, that he honors and respects the time of others.

Raúl Castro’s military style of life cherishes punctuality and efficiency. Schedules, all schedules, even those for TV telenovelas, should be observed. Even during the waning moments of Fidel Castro’s rule, the time of Cubans was frequently occupied by marches, mobilizations, and the need to listen to the logorrheic Maximum Leader. There was even a cabinet minister in charge of what Fidel Castro called the “Battle of Ideas.” Now, marches occur on designated public holidays. And the minister in charge of the Battle of Ideas lost his job in March--and his ministry was disbanded.

Economic Evolution

The nuances in Cuban public life since Raúl became president in his own right in February 2008 are evident as well in the enactment of economic-policy reforms that were rolled out immediately following his formal installation. Consider some examples. Previously, Cubans had not been able to stay at hotels or eat at restaurants designed for international tourists, even if they had the funds to pay, unless they were on official business; now they were given access to all these facilities, so long as they could pay. Cubans had also been prohibited from purchasing cell phones and subscribing to such services unless officially authorized to do so. They were not allowed to purchase computers or DVD players. Now they were able to purchase such products so long as they had the funds.

How the Cuban government adopted these changes is important. It could simply have announced a general deregulation of prohibitions regarding purchases of consumer durables, for example. Instead, the government made each of these announcements separately: one week you could stay at tourist hotels, the next week you could purchase a computer, the following week you could obtain cell-phone services, and so forth. The government even announced that some products would be deregulated for purchase in 2009 (air conditioners) or 2010 (toasters).

This method of deregulating implied a desire to win political support over time, not all at once. It communicated that the government retained the right to micromanage the economy, deregulating product by product and service by service. The government also signaled that it expected to remain in office for years to come, behaving in the same way. Finally, most Cubans knew that they could have been purchasing these same consumer durables all along, albeit only on the black market. Thus the policy of postponed deregulation implied an official tolerance of some current criminality (knowing that some Cubans would buy toasters illegally in 2008, instead of waiting for 2010), because the government valued its economic micromanagement more.

Whom the government sought to benefit was equally newsworthy. In its most revolutionary phase, during the 1960s, the Cuban government adopted strongly egalitarian policies. Many Cubans came to believe in egalitarian values and resented the widening of inequalities in the 1990s. Consider, then, Raúl’s reforms. Hotels and restaurants designed for international tourist markets are expensive; so, too, are computers and DVD players. When these economic changes were announced in 2008, the median monthly salary of Cubans amounted to about $17: that is, the average monthly salary was below the World Bank’s worldwide standard for poverty, which is one dollar per day. To be sure, Cubans had free access to education and healthcare and subsidized access to some other goods and services. Nevertheless, only a small fraction of Cubans could take advantage of these new economic policies, because the purchases of such consumer durables and the access to such tourist services had to be paid for in dollar-equivalent Cuban currency at dollar-equivalent international prices. (Cuba has two currencies; the peso convertible is a close equivalent to the dollar, whereas the peso is worth about $0.04.) Raúl’s government was appealing to the upper-middle-class professionals.

Making Difficult Decisions

I have emphasized Raúl’s penchant for humor and nuance because Washington and Miami have not taken much notice of these traits. At the same time, no one should underestimate his capacity for decisiveness. A salient feature in his biography is his long-standing role as Cuba’s equivalent of a chief operating officer. President Fidel Castro made the decision to dispatch some 300,000 Cuban troops to two wars in Angola and one in Ethiopia from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, but it was Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and General of the Army Raúl Castro whose officers recruited, trained, promoted, equipped, and steeled these armies for battle. The United States lost the war in Vietnam. The Soviet Union lost the war in Afghanistan. Cuban troops won the three African wars in which they fought. Cuba’s was the only communist government during the entire Cold War that successfully deployed its armed forces across the oceans. And the “worker bee” for those victories was Raúl.

Within the first calendar year of his presidency, Raúl gave another example of this decisiveness: the reform of Cuba’s pension laws. Cuban law authorized and funded the retirement of women at age 55 and of men at age 60. In December 2008, the retirement ages were raised to 60 and 65 respectively. The speed of the change signaled as well a key difference between the Castro brothers.

It had long been a matter of public record that Cuban life expectancy had lengthened to reach the levels of the North Atlantic countries. Cuban demographers had also faithfully recorded that Cuba has been below the population replacement rate since 1978. They had developed various forecasts that showed that its population would age rapidly, creating a vast problem of pension liabilities, and then decline. The demographers committed only one error: they expected the demographic decline to set in near the year 2020, but the population has already declined (net of emigration) in two of the last three years.

Notwithstanding this abundance of information, Fidel chose not to act. The fiscal crisis of the state was much less fun than leading street marches to denounce U.S. imperialism. But Raúl’s prompt and effective change of the pension laws, making use of information supplied by social scientists, is yet another illustration of the difference between the brothers as rulers. And, of course, the one obvious change that was not made to the pension laws demonstrates as well that even a powerful government senses some limits to its power: although the life expectancy of women is longer, the pension reform retained the lower retirement age for them. Raúl Castro doesn’t dare take a perk like early retirement away from Cuban women.

Political Authoritarianism

The Castro brothers’ styles of rule of course show important similarities on matters that do and should matter in assessing their political regime. Cuba remains a single-party state that bans opposition political parties and independent associations that may advance political causes. The government owns and operates all television and radio stations, daily newspapers, and publishing houses. The number of candidates equals the number of seats to be filled in elections for the National Assembly. The constraints on civil society remain severe, even if there has been since the early 1990s a somewhat greater margin of autonomy for communities of faith, some of which (including Roman Catholic archdioceses) are permitted to publish magazines.

The two brothers have also demonstrated a strong preference for ruling with a small number of associates whom they have known for many years. For example, when Raúl became president formally in February 2008, he had the right to make wholesale changes in the top leadership. Instead, the president and his seven vice presidents had a median birth year of 1936. Raúl went a step further. He created a small steering committee within the larger Political Bureau of the Communist Party--and the members of the new committee were the exact same seven. Raúl’s buddies are the gerontocrats with whom he chooses to govern.

Yet there are stirrings of change. Although National Assembly elections are uncompetitive, they provide a means to express some opposition to the government. The official candidates are presented in party lists; each voting district elects two to five deputies from those lists and the number of candidates equals the number of posts to be filled in that district. The government urges voters to vote for the entire list, but voters have been free to vote for some but not all candidates on the list, thereby expressing some displeasure. The number of nonconforming voters (voted blank, null, or selectively) exceeded 13.4 percent of the votes cast in the most recent (January 2008) National Assembly elections--1.1 million voters. Both the percentage and the number of nonconforming voters were slightly larger than in the 2003 election, with the largest expression of nonconformity recorded in the province named City of Havana.

Yet another sign of change arises from Raúl’s own family. His daughter, Mariela Castro, has been for some years the director of Cuba’s center for the study of sexuality. This center has been principally known, however, for its advocacy for, and defense of, the rights of homosexuals, including special training for Cuban police officers, formulating changes in regulations, and disseminating information designed to create safer spaces for homosexuals.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Cuban government pursued very harsh policies toward homosexuals. In the early stages of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, those who tested HIV-positive were automatically compelled to enter a quarantined facility at the cost of their jobs and family lives. At the time of the Mariel emigration crisis in 1980, the government activated its affiliated mass organizations to make life impossible for homosexuals, fostering their emigration under duress. And in the mid 1960s, the government had established the “military units to aid production” (UMAP). These were concentration camps to which “social deviants,” mainly but not exclusively male homosexuals, were sent to be turned, somehow, into “real men.” The commander in chief of the UMAP was, of course, Armed Forces Minister Raúl Castro.

It is unlikely that Raúl is a closet liberal, though there is evidence that he has been a loving father. It is not impossible, however, that he regrets having served as an architect of repression over the lives of many Cubans--not just homosexuals--especially in the 1960s, but also at other times. His daughter’s work during the current decade may be an instrument for elements of social liberalism.

U.S.-Cuban Relations

Raúl Castro understood earlier than his brother that the collapse of the Soviet Union and European communist regimes implied that Cuba had to change more and faster than Fidel wanted. In 1994, in the most public difference yet between the brothers, Raúl favored liberalizing agricultural markets, allowing producers to sell at market prices, even though Fidel remained opposed. Raúl showed more sustained interest in the economic reforms of China and Vietnam than did Fidel. And by the late 1990s, Raúl began to give the speech that he has now repeated many times, most notably this April in response to the Obama administration’s beginning of changes in U.S.-Cuba policies (authorizing Cuban Americans to travel and send remittances to Cuba): his government is ready to discuss anything on the U.S. government agenda.

In January 2002, Raúl even praised the Bush administration for having given advance notice of the incarceration of Taliban prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay. He also praised the professional military-to-military cooperation between the two countries’ officers along the U.S. base’s boundary perimeter, as well as between the coast guards in the Straits of Florida. In August 2006, his first public remarks upon becoming acting president made just two points: he did not much like to speak in public, and he was ready to negotiate with the United States. And this April, he took the time to make it clear that negotiating with the United States about any topic did, indeed, include discussion about political prisoners in Cuban jails. He made a specific proposal to exchange such political prisoners (estimated by Cuban human-rights groups as between 200 and 300 people) for five Cuban spies in U.S. prisons.

The Context for Change

The pace of political and economic change in Cuba has been slow by world standards. But the pace of social change has been very fast. Cuba’s people live long lives, thanks in part to good, albeit frayed, healthcare services--free of charge. Cuban children go to school and many become professionals. Indeed, Cuba’s principal area of export growth is the provision of healthcare services to the people of other countries. Until this most recent development, however, Cuba had exemplified how a half-century of investment in human capital could generate very poor economic-growth returns. Yet Cubans since the early 1990s have demonstrated entrepreneurial capacities in creating small businesses, whenever the government has permitted them, suggesting that with better economic incentives there could be a productive combination that would lead to economic growth. Cubans can talk seemingly endlessly at officially sponsored meetings, yet they demonstrate in other settings a capacity for insight, criticism, and imagination that could readily contribute as well to much faster political transformation.

U.S. policy toward Cuba for the bulk of this past decade has assisted the Castro government’s state security in shutting out information from the outside world: the United States banned the shipment of information-technology products, instead of facilitating Cuban electronic access to the world, and allowed Cuban Americans to visit their relatives only once every three years, instead of enabling cousins from both sides of the Straits of Florida to speak face to face about how a different, better Cuba might be constructed. (The United States has even protected ordinary Cubans from the Harvard Alumni Association, which could not lead tour groups there.) Perhaps the United States will stop being an obstacle to change in Cuba during the century’s second decade.

Jorge I. Domínguez, who most recently visited Cuba in March, is Madero professor of Mexican and Latin American politics and economics, vice provost for international affairs, and special adviser to the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for international studies. He shared a previous overview of U.S.-Cuba policy with this magazine’s readers in “Your Friend, Fidel” (July-August 2000, page 35).