Human Rights Watch cites surge in brutal killings and gang rapes
By Stephanie McCrummen Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, December 15, 2009
NAIROBI -- The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo is collaborating with known human rights abusers as it backs a brutal Congolese military operation that has led to the deliberate killing of at least 1,400 civilians and a massive surge in rapes, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
The 183-page report, the fullest accounting so far of the operation, is a chronicle of horrors. It describes gang rapes, massacres, village burnings and civilians being tied together before their throats are slit -- many incidents carried out by a Congolese army being fed, transported and otherwise supported by the United Nations.
The report calls for the U.N. peacekeeping mission to "immediately cease all support" to the Congolese army until the army removes commanders with known records of human rights abuses and otherwise ensures the operation complies with international humanitarian laws.
"Continued killing and rape by all sides in eastern Congo shows that the U.N. Security Council needs a new approach to protect civilians," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.
The Security Council is scheduled to meet this week to discuss the Congolese peacekeeping mission's mandate, which is the United Nations' largest and most expensive. A mission spokesman said officials are studying the report and declined to comment. The United States also has a small military team in Congo assisting the Congolese army.
The Congolese military operations, which began in January, were intended to root out abusive Rwandan rebels who have lived mostly by force among eastern Congolese villagers for years, fueling a long-running conflict that has become the deadliest since World War II.
The rebels -- known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR -- include some leaders accused of participating in the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. The initial phase of the military operations were backed by Rwandan troops.
But as the Rwandans departed in February, U.N. peacekeepers stepped in, supplying attack helicopters, trucks, food and other logistical support to a Congolese army known as one of the most abusive militaries in the world. At the time, the head of the U.N. mission, Alan Doss, said that the operations were necessary and that some civilian casualties were inevitable.
But the Human Rights Watch report does not document the story of civilians accidentally caught in the crossfire. Instead, it details a chilling pattern of deliberate civilian killings by Congolese and Rwandan soldiers and the rebels they are fighting. Both sides, the report says, have carried out a strategy of "punishing" villagers they accuse of supporting the wrong side.
To that end, the report says, Congolese soldiers and their Rwandan allies did not simply shoot their victims but beat them to death with clubs, stabbed them to death with bayonets or chopped them into pieces with machetes, making a pile of body parts for other villagers to see.
In one village, the soldiers called women and children to a school for a meeting and then systematically began killing them, the report says. In another case, a woman said she watched as soldiers beat six members of her family to death with wooden clubs. Four soldiers then accused her of being a rebel wife and gang-raped her. In general, the report found, rape cases skyrocketed in areas where Congolese soldiers were deployed.
The report documents a similarly ruthless pattern of retaliation by the FDLR, which killed with machetes and hoes, accusing villagers of betraying them. The rebels often targeted village chiefs or other influential people to frighten the wider population, the report says. They gang-raped women, frequently telling their victims they were being punished for welcoming the Congolese army.
In all, the report's authors documented more than 1,400 killings, roughly half by the Congolese army and their Rwandan allies and half by rebels. It said more than 900,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since January, the sort of massive displacement that has led to an estimated 5 million deaths from hunger and disease since eastern Congo's conflict began about 15 years ago.
(Rio de Janeiro) - Police officers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo routinely resort to lethal force, often committing extrajudicial executions and exacerbating violence in both states, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
Rio and São Paulo police together kill more than 1,000 people every year in such alleged confrontations. While some of these "resistance" killings by police are legitimate acts of self-defense, many others are extrajudicial executions, the report found.
"Extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The residents of Rio and São Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police."
Unlawful police killings undercut legitimate efforts in both states to curb criminal violence, much of which is carried out by heavily armed gangs. In Rio, these gangs are largely responsible for one of the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere. In São Paulo, despite a drop in homicides over the past decade, gang violence also poses a major threat.
Human Rights Watch obtained credible evidence in 51 "resistance" cases that contradicted police officers' claims that victims died in a shootout. For example, in 33 cases, forensic evidence was at odds with the official version of what took place - including 17 cases in which autopsy reports show that police shot their victims at point blank range. The 51 cases do not represent the totality of potential extrajudicial killings, but are indicative of a much broader problem, the report concluded.
The report also draws upon extensive interviews with more than 40 criminal justice officials, including top prosecutors who view extrajudicial executions by the police as a major problem in both states.
Official government statistics support the prosecutors' assessment that the problem is widespread:
The Rio and São Paulo police have killed more than 11,000 people since 2003;
The number of police killings in Rio state reached a record high of 1,330 in 2007 and in 2008, the number was third highest at 1,137;
The number of police killings in São Paulo state, while less than in Rio, is also comparatively high: over the past five years, for example, there were more police killings in São Paulo state (2,176) than in all of South Africa (1,623), a country with a much higher homicide rate than São Paulo.
The high number of police killings is all the more dramatic when viewed alongside the comparatively low numbers of non-fatal injuries of civilians by police and of police fatalities.
The São Paulo Shock Police Command killed 305 people from 2004 through 2008 yet left only 20 injured. In all of these alleged "shootouts," the police suffered one death;
In Rio, police in 10 military policing zones were responsible for 825 "resistance" killings in 2008 while suffering a total of 12 police fatalities;
Rio police arrested 23 people for every person they killed in 2008, and São Paulo police arrested 348 for every kill. By contrast, police in the United States arrested over 37,000 for every person they killed in alleged confrontations that year.
"Police officers are permitted to use lethal force as a last resort to protect themselves or others," Vivanco said. "But the notion that these police killings are committed in self-defense, or justified by high crime rates, does not hold up under scrutiny."
In addition to the many "resistance" killings each year by police on duty, officers kill hundreds more while off-duty, often when they are acting as members of militias in Rio and death squads in São Paulo.
Police officers responsible for unlawful killings in Rio and São Paulo are rarely brought to justice. The principal cause of this chronic failure to hold police to account for murder, the report found, is that the criminal justice systems in both states currently rely almost entirely on police investigators to resolve these cases.
Human Rights Watch found that police officers frequently take steps to cover up the true nature of "resistance" killings. And police investigators often fail to take necessary steps to determine what has taken place, helping to ensure that criminal responsibility cannot be established and that those responsible remain unaccountable.
"So long as they are left to police themselves these executions will continue unchecked, and legitimate efforts to curb violence in both states will suffer," Vivanco said.
The report provides recommendations to Rio and São Paulo authorities for curbing police violence and improving law enforcement. The central recommendation is the creation of specialized units within state prosecutors' offices to investigate "resistance" killings and ensure that officers responsible for extrajudicial executions are brought to justice.
The report also details measures that state and federal authorities should take to maximize the effectiveness of these special units. These include:
Requiring police officers to notify prosecutors of "resistance" killings immediately after they take place;
Establishing and strictly enforcing a crime scene protocol that deters police officers from engaging in false "rescues" and other cover-up techniques;
Investigating potential police cover-up techniques, including false "rescues," and prosecuting officers who engage in them.
In Yemen, al-Aulaqi tells of e-mail exchanges, says he did not instigate rampage
By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, November 16, 2009
SANAA, YEMEN -- In his first interview with a journalist since the Fort Hood rampage, Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi said that he neither ordered nor pressured Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to harm Americans, but that he considered himself a confidant of the Army psychiatrist who was given a glimpse via e-mail into Hasan's growing discomfort with the U.S. military.
The cleric said he thought he played a role in transforming Hasan into a devout Muslim eight years ago, when Hasan listened to his lectures at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Northern Virginia. Aulaqi said that Hasan "trusted" him and that the two developed an e-mail correspondence over the past year.
The portrait of the alleged Fort Hood shooter offered by Aulaqi provides some hints as to Hasan's mind-set and motivations in the months leading up to the Nov. 5 rampage, in which 13 were killed. Aulaqi's comments also add to questions over whether U.S. authorities, who were aware of at least some of Hasan's e-mails to Aulaqi, should have sensed a potential threat. U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted e-mails from Hasan, but the FBI concluded that they posed no serious danger and that an investigation was unnecessary, said federal law enforcement officials.
Aulaqi declined to be interviewed by an American journalist with The Washington Post. But he provided an account of his relationship with Hasan -- which consisted of a correspondence of a dozen or so e-mails -- to Abdulelah Hider Shaea, a Yemeni journalist and terrorism expert with close ties to Aulaqi whom The Post contacted to conduct the interview. The Post reimbursed Shaea's travel expenses but did not pay him.
On Sunday, Shaea offered details of his interview with Aulaqi, an influential preacher whose sermons and writings supporting jihad have attracted a wide following among radical Islamists. Shaea allowed a Post reporter to view a video recording of a man who closely resembles pictures of Aulaqi sitting in front of his laptop computer reading the e-mails, and to hear an audiotape in which a man, who like Aulaqi speaks English with an American accent, discusses his e-mail correspondence with Hasan.
The quotes in this article are based on Shaea's handwritten notes. Shaea said he was allowed to review the e-mails between Hasan and Aulaqi, but they were not provided to The Post.
The thick-bearded, white-robed Aulaqi, who was born in New Mexico, served as an imam at two mosques attended by three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers -- Virginia's Dar al-Hijra and another in California. Aulaqi, who is in his late 30s, is also fluent in Arabic. U.S. officials have accused him of working with al-Qaeda networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia. In mid-2006, he was detained in Yemen, his ancestral homeland, at the request of U.S. authorities. He was released in December 2007.
Explaining why he wrote on his Web site that Hasan was a "hero," According to Shaea, Aulaqi said: "I blessed the act because it was against a military target. And the soldiers who were killed were not normal soldiers, but those who were trained and prepared to go to Afghanistan and Iraq."
Aulaqi's views are controversial, earning him not only designation by U.S. counterterrorism officials as a leading English-language promoter and supporter of al-Qaeda, but also criticism from other fundamentalist Islamic clerics. Sheik Salman al-Awdah, a Saudi religious leader, gave an interview last week calling the massacre at Fort Hood "unjustified," "irrational" and "inadvisable" because it will cause a backlash against Muslims in America and Europe.
But Aulaqi's statements reflect the increasingly radical path he has taken since settling in Yemen in 2004. Print, video and audio files of his words have been found on the private hard drives of terrorism suspects in Canada in 2006 and in the United States in 2007 and 2008. He also wrote congratulations to al Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group leading an insurgency in Somalia, after it apparently used the first U.S.-citizen suicide bomber last fall.
"Fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today," Aulaqi allegedly wrote on his Web site after Hasan's ties to him were reported after the shootings. "The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."
On Dec. 23, 2008, days after he said Hasan first e-mailed him, Aulaqi also posted online words encouraging attacks on U.S. soldiers, writing: "The bullets of the fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq are a reflection of the feelings of the Muslims towards America," according to the NEFA Foundation, a private South Carolina group that monitors extremist Web sites.
Aulaqi is an "example of al-Qaeda reach into" the United States, U.S. officials said publicly in October 2008, years after his ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers were probed by the 9/11 Commission. The panel also revealed earlier FBI investigations into his connections to al-Qaeda associates.
Aulaqi described Hasan as a man who took his Muslim faith seriously, and who was eager to understand how to interpret Islamic sharia law. In the e-mails, Hasan appeared to question U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and often used "evidence from sharia that what America was doing should be confronted," the cleric told Shaea.
"So Nidal was providing evidence to Anwar, not vice versa," said Shaea. "Anwar felt, after seeing Nidal's e-mails, that [Hasan] had wide knowledge of sharia law." Shaea said he interviewed Aulaqi in his house on Saturday in Shabwa, a province in southern Yemen that has become an extremist stronghold and where al-Qaeda is seeking to create a haven.
Aulaqi told Shaea that Hasan first reached out to him in an e-mail dated Dec. 17, 2008. He described Hasan introducing himself and writing: "Do you remember me? I used to pray with you at the Virginia mosque."
Initially, Aulaqi said he did not recall Hasan and did not reply to the e-mail. But after Hasan sent two or three more e-mails, the cleric said he "started to remember who he was," according to Shaea.
Aulaqi said Hasan viewed him as a confidant. "It was clear from his e-mails that Nidal trusted me. Nidal told me: 'I speak with you about issues that I never speak with anyone else,' " he told Shaea.
The cleric said Hasan informed him that he had become a devout Muslim around the time Aulaqi was preaching at Dar al-Hijrah, in 2001 and 2002. "Anwar said, 'Maybe Nidal was affected by one of my lectures,'" said Shaea.
Of the dozen or so e-mails, said Shaea, Aulaqi replied to Hasan two or three times. Aulaqi declined to comment on what he told Hasan. Asked whether Hasan mentioned Fort Hood as a target in his e-mails, Shaea declined to comment.
Aulaqi said Hasan's alleged shooting spree was allowed under Islam because it was a form of jihad. "There are some people in the United States who said this shooting has nothing to do with Islam, that it was not permissible under Islam," he said, according to Shaea. "But I would say it is permissible. . . . America was the one who first brought the battle to Muslim countries."
The cleric also denounced what he described as contradictory behavior by Muslims who condemned Hasan's actions and "let him down." According to Shaea, he said: "They say American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan should be killed, so how can they say the American soldier should not be killed at the moment they are going to Iraq and Afghanistan?"
Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu in Washington contributed to this report.
KILLEEN, Tex. — The policeofficer who brought down a gunman after he went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base was on the way to have her car repaired when she heard a report over a police radio that someone was shooting people in a center where soldiers are processed before they are deployed abroad, authorities said on Friday.
As she pulled up to the center, the officer, Kimberly Munley, spotted the gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, brandishing a pistol and chasing a wounded soldier outside the building, said Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the base.
Sergeant Munley bolted from her car and shot at Major Hasan. He turned toward her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and the gunmen went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.
Whether Sergeant Munley was solely responsible for taking down Major Hassan or whether he was also hit by gunfire from another responder is still unclear, but she was the first to fire at him.
Sergeant Munley, who is 34, is an expert in firearms and a member of the SWAT team for the civilian police department on the base, officials said.
She received two wounds in each thigh and one to her right wrist. The base’s fire chief applied torniquets to stop her bleeding, and she was taken to a hospital that the officials did not identify, where she was reported in stable condition on Tuesday
Sergeant Munley joined the police force on the sprawling base in January 2008 after a career in the Army. Mr. Medley described her as highly trained, and said she had received specific training in a tactic called active shooter protocol, which was intended for the kind of situation she encountered on Thursday.
She lives with her husband, who is a soldier, in a tidy community of ranch homes on the south side of Killeen. Her neighbors described her as quiet and friendly. Her husband, who has not been identified, is currently assigned to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
She was also scrupulously honest, according to friends. A year ago, she took pains to pay for the damage she caused to a neighbor’s car with her sport utility vehicle, even though no one had witnessed the fender bender.
“She seems like a sweet person, she tends to say hi when she drives by,” said one neighbor, Helen Pleas, 20 years old.
Sergeant Munley’s biography on her Twitter site reflected her sunny outlook. “I go to sleep peacefully at night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone’s life,” she wrote.
Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, commander of the base, said Friday morning that Sergeant Munley had reacted swiftly and aggressively to stop the gunman. “It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer,” he told the Associated Press.
Mr. Medley, the emergency services director, said that Sergeant Munley was an advanced firearms instructor for the civilian police force, which is employed by the Department of the Army to assist the military police on the grounds of the vast fort, where 150,000 soldiers and their families live and work.
Sergeant Munley comes from North Carolina, where her father owns a hardware store in Carolina Beach and is a former mayor. She attended Hoggard County High School.
According to the Associated Press, Sergeant Munley worked as an officer in the Wrightville Beach Police Department in North Carolina from 2000 to February 2002. She received three letters of commendation or recognition for her performance there.
KILLEEN, Tex. — Amid a public outpouring of grief on Friday for those gunned down at the Fort HoodArmy base, new details emerged about the chaotic moments of the shooting and the Army psychiatrist suspected of opening fire on dozens of his fellow soldiers.
The gunman, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was shot four times by a Fort Hood civilian policeofficer responding to the scene. He remained hospitalized on a ventilator on Friday in stable condition and was expected to live, Army officials said.
The death toll rose to 13 people, including 12 soldiers, in what is thought to have been the most lethal shooting on an American military base in history. Another 27 people were still hospitalized on Friday afternoon, all in stable condition.
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and John M. McHugh, the Army secretary, traveled to Fort Hood as a widespread investigation into the shooting began, and promised to provide whatever resources the staff at the base might need. The Army is already sending chaplains and mental-health counselors.
But General Casey acknowledged that the wounds from the shooting would not heal quickly.
“This is a tough one,” he said in a news conference at the base. “It is inside. And it’s a kick in the gut. There’s no doubt about that.”
As military and law-enforcement investigators waited to interview Major Hasan, a contradictory portrait of him emerged. Neighbors described him as a man who dressed alternately in a military uniform and flowing white robes, and who gave a copy of the Koran to his next-door neighbor a day before the shooting.
Reports from the shooting suggested that soldiers may have heard him shout something like “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — just before he fired two automatic handguns. He was shown on a security video tape from a local convenience store wearing white robes just hours before the shooting. And family members said that he had complained about being harassed expressly because he was a Muslim, and that he had expressed deep concerns about deploying.
Acquaintances said Major Hasan was upset about his future deployment in a war zone, and heatedly opposed United States foreign policy in discussions with fellow soldiers. Earlier this year law-enforcement officers monitoring Islamic Web sites identified a man of the same name as a blogger who posted comments on suicide bombings in which he equated such acts to those by soldiers who use their own bodies to shield fellow soldiers from exploding shrapnel.
But Major Hasan also reportedly required counseling at different times in his life, including for a time as a medical student before United States involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan were issues.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said Army officials were trying to determine “if there is something more than just one deranged person involved here.” She said in remarks at the base on Friday that while he was the only one who had fired at the other soldiers, it was still unclear if he had planned this completely alone.
“That is a question still to be asked,” she said. “That is not a question that has been resolved.”
Senator Hutchison said the shooting had prompted Army officials to examine procedures in tracking people who may have problems.
“Was enough done?” she asked. “Should there have been more triggers? I think that’s what we’re trying to learn right now. And I think that it’s a legitimate question and it’s a question the Army is asking itself.”
“I don’t think that anyone would have ever expected a psychiatrist trained to help others mental health would be the one who would go off himself, unless there’s more to it, and that’s what they’re looking for,” she added.
President Obama asked people to avoid “jumping to conclusions” while the investigations continued.
Army officials said Friday morning that Major Hasan had not caused any problems since transferring to the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood this year. Col. John Rossi, an Army spokesman, told reporters that investigators were examining whether Major Hasan had registered the two handguns used in the shooting.
Major Hasan is the sole suspect, after three others who were immediately taken in custody were released.
A joint investigation by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Army criminal investigative division is under way, as government officials discuss how to prosecute Major Hasan. He could face murder charges in federaldistrict court or a military court martial.
A law-enforcement official said high-level discussions between Justice Department and Pentagon officials over that question have been taking place since Thursday evening. The ultimate decision will be made in collaboration between the two agencies, the official said.
One factor that could shape the decision is whether investigators conclude that Major Hasan acted alone — so that it was a purely military-on-military crime — or whether they uncover evidence of any civilian co-conspirators off the base.
Under either civilian law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a murder conviction could carry a penalty of death. But there are some procedural differences between the two systems.
Army officials said they had declared a day of mourning on the base. President Obama said flags at the White House and other federal buildings would fly at half-staff until Veteran’s Day, “as a modest tribute to those who lost their lives.”
In interviews with reporters on Friday, Army officials praised the police officer who shot Major Hasan, Kimberly Munley, saying she and her partner had arrived within three minutes of reports of gunfire and put an end to the rampage. Ms. Munley, 34, was wounded in the exchange, officials said.
In a brief telephone interview, her stepmother, Wanda Barbour, said Ms. Munley had grown up in Carolina Beach, N.C., and described her as an excellent police officer.
“She’s concerned about all the people who’ve lost their lives,” Ms. Barbour said. “We’re just real proud of her and so grateful and thankful to the Lord that she’s going to be O.K.”
By midday on Friday, family members had publicly identified five of those killed. Among them was Sgt. Amy Krueger, a 1998 graduate of Kiel High School in Kiel, Wisc.
“Amy was a typical high school student,” said Dario Talerico, the high school’s principal. “She was kind of a tomboy type of kid. I know she was very, very proud of being able to serve in the military. She chose the military very soon after graduating.”
The victims were cut down in clusters as Major Hasan, clad in a military uniform, sprayed bullets inside a crowded medical processing center for soldiers returning from or about to be sent overseas, military officials said.
In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesman, was asked about the reports that Major Hasan had yelled “Allahu Akbar.” General Cone said soldiers at the scene had reported “similar” accounts.
Witnesses told military investigators that medics working at the center tore open the clothing of the dead and wounded to get at the wounds and administer first aid.
As the shooting unfolded, military police and civilian officers of the Department of the Army responded and returned the gunman’s fire, officials said.
Gunshot victims were “everywhere,” as were soldiers who rushed to the scene to help, said Sgt. Andrew Hagerman, 27. Some of them pressed uniforms onto victims’ wounds to stanch their bleeding while others broke down tables and used them as stretchers. Soldiers carried their wounded friends, and directed ambulance traffic.
“I was here all night,” said Maj. Stephen Beckwith, 33, who attended to victims in the hospital.
Fort Hood, near Killeen and about a two hours’ drive south of Dallas-Fort Worth, is the largest active duty military post in the United States, 340 square miles of training and support facilities and homes, a virtual city for more than 50,000 military personnel and some 150,000 family members and civilian support personnel. It has been a major center for troops being deployed to or returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
United States military around the world observed a moment of silence Friday afternoon, in honor of those who died at Fort Hood, which General Cone said, was “absolutely devastated.”
But already the shooting has been glorified on at least one Jihadist Web site. A nearly four-minute video displayed media clips of the aftermath of the shooting, and declared that Maj. Hasan "did Jihad in that base and killed no less than 13 Crusader foreigners" and "put terror and chaos in the ranks of the enemy."
Michael Brick and Campbell Robertson contributed reporting from Fort Hood, Tex.; Elisabeth Bumiller, Charlie Savage and David Stout from Washington; and Carla Baranauckas, Michael Luo and Liz Robbins from New York.
By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, November 5, 2009
KABUL -- Five Britishsoldiers were shot and killed Tuesday by an Afghan policeman while they were working together in southern Afghanistan, British officials said.
The shooting occurred in the Nad e-Ali district of Helmand province, one of the most violent areas of the country. The British soldiers were working with Afghan National Police at a checkpoint when one policeman opened fire, military officials said.
The gunfire wounded six other British soldiers and two Afghan policemen. Officials said the shooter fled the scene, but it was unclear whether he was arrested later.
Deaths among British troops, the second-largest contingent in Afghanistan after the U.S. military, have risen in recent months, mirroring the growing rate of American fatalities. At least 92 British soldiers have died this year, the deadliest of the war. Tuesday's attack follows a shooting a month ago in which an Afghan police officer killed two U.S. soldiers while they were patrolling together.
The ongoing violence comes amid the conclusion of Afghanistan's troubled presidential election. Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, who withdrew this week from a runoff vote, said Wednesday that he had no interest in joining President Hamid Karzai's second-term cabinet, which will be chosen in coming weeks.
Abdullah called the decision by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission to award Karzai a victory without holding the runoff "illegal" but made clear he would not challenge the decision. He said he will continue his efforts to bring "change and hope" from outside the administration.
"In this sort of environment, I would rather act like a pressure group in order to bring changes and reform in the system," he said.
The deaths of the British soldiers have raised fears about the extent of insurgent infiltration in the Afghan security forces, especially as the U.S. and Afghan governments rush to increase the size of both the Afghan army and police force.
Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said in a statement that Tuesday's shooting appeared "to be an isolated incident" and would be investigated by both Afghan and international officials. "We are deeply saddened for the loss of our ISAF partners and we extend our prayers to their families and those injured in this senseless attack," Atmar said, using the abbreviation for the International Security Assistance Force.
Afghanistan's defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said in an interview this week that the army has been "very watchful because we do have the reports that [insurgents] are really trying to infiltrate."
He said the army is trying to implement a biometric system that would collect such information as fingerprints and retinal scans to build a database of all recruits. The U.S. military set up similar systems for Iraqi security forces.
Many consider the Afghan police more susceptible to insurgent infiltration than the army. Wardak said there have been "very few cases" in which insurgents have been caught within the army.
"As far as the army's concerned, we have been relatively successful. It has not been a major problem up to now," he said.
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Hundreds of former military draftees rallying outside Chile's presidential palace were asked Sunday to come forward and reveal crimes they committed and witnessed during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.
The draftees have long feared that if they name names and reveal where bodies are buried, they will face prosecution by the courts or retaliation by those who ordered them to torture and kill.
But now the information they once promised to carry to their graves has become both a heavy psychological burden and a bargaining chip. By offering confessions, some of these now-aging men believe they can improve their chances of getting government pensions and mental health care.
''Perhaps today is the day when the moment has come, for us to describe what we saw and what we suffered inside the military bases, the things that we witnessed and that we did,'' said Fernando Mellado, who leads the Santiago chapter of the Former Soldiers of 1973.
Mellado told his fellow former soldiers that he's made little progress with lawmakers as he lobbies for military draftees to be recognized as victims of the dictatorship, in part because no one understands what they went through.
''Our human rights were also violated,'' he declared. ''The moment has come for former military draftees to tell our wives, our families, the politicians, the society, the country and the whole world about the brutalities they subjected us to. I believe the moment has come for us to speak, for our personal redemption.''
Mellado has been working with similar groups across Chile to figure out whether and how to turn over the information. He urged those in the crowd to provide their evidence to him, and promised to protect their anonymity.
Of the 8,000 people drafted as teenagers from Santiago alone in the tumultuous year when Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende's government and cemented his hold on power, Mellado believes ''between 20 and 30 percent are willing to talk.''
A small crowd among the former draftees was inspired enough by Mellado's call to immediately approach Associated Press journalists at the rally.
''They made me torture -- I am a torturer -- because they threatened me that if I didn't torture, they would kill me,'' volunteered Jorge Acevedo. He said several prisoners died when he applied electricity during torture sessions, and that their bodies may have been dumped in abandoned mines at the Cerro Chena prisoner camp.
Chilean security forces killed 3,186 people during the dictatorship, including 1,197 who were made to disappear, according to an official count.
In nearly two decades of democracy since then, less than 8 percent of the disappeared have been found, said Viviana Diaz of the Assembly of Family Members of the Disappeared Detainees.
Hundreds of recovered remains, some just bone fragments, have yet to be identified. Only those who buried the bodies know where other common graves lie. Diaz, for one, hopes the former draftees do start talking, even if they do so in a way that avoids prosecution.
Chilean law allows for a ''just following orders'' defense if people submit to the mercy of the courts, naming names and providing information that could help resolve some of the thousands of crimes committed under Pinochet's 1973-1990 rule.
The defense ''theoretically applies and exists'' in Chile, and judges can even have people testify in secret, said attorney Hiram Villagra, who represents families of the dead and disappeared.
But most former soldiers fear the consequences for themselves and their families. Some worry that judges who rose through the ranks under Pinochet might protect their former superior officers instead.
Mellado maintains that the former draftees also are victims -- forced into service as minors and made to do unspeakable things -- and that many now want to get it off their chests.
One confessed to shooting an entire family. Another -- now an alcoholic who sleeps in the street in Santiago -- said he was forced to drown a 7-year-old boy in a barrel of hardening plaster. Others describe harrowing torture sessions, and loading bodies onto helicopters to be dumped at sea.
''Our mission was to stand guard outside, and listen to their screams,'' former draftee Jose Paredes said as he told the AP about his service at the Tejas Verdes torture center. ''They would end up destroyed, torn apart, their teeth and faces broken.''
''There are things that I've always said I will take to the grave,'' Paredes said, his grizzled face running with tears as he named a half-dozen officers who he said gave the orders. ''I've never told this to anyone.''
The Chilean government has made several high-profile efforts to resolve dirty war crimes, but Mellado said former draftees who wanted to testify were turned away: The Defense Ministry sent them to civilian courts, while civilian authorities considered them to be military.
Villagra agrees the time is overdue for the soldiers to seek redemption -- and sent a message of support for Mellado's efforts to gather their testimony.
''Clearly there is no desire from our part for these soldiers to carry the burden of guilt of the officers, who were the ones who made the decisions,'' Villagra said.
An AP review found 769 current and former security officers, most of them military, have been prosecuted for murders and other human rights violations. Almost all deny committing crimes. Only 276 have been sentenced.
Much of the evidence came from former prisoners. Testimony from former soldiers could do much to resolve these cases.
Death squads, operating with the involvement of local authorities and with virtual impunity in Davao City and elsewhere in the Philippines, have frequently included children among their targets. In Davao City alone, more than 908 people have been killed by death squads since 1998. At least 82 victims, or 9 percent, were children. So far this year, more than 70 people have been killed.
"Children, some of whom already have miserable lives on the street, continue to be among the targets of the Philippines' lawless death squads," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Child Rights Committee should press the Philippines to prosecute these killings."
Death squads target alleged criminals, including street children and children in conflict with the law. They operate with at least the tacit approval of police officers and local officials.
Human Rights Watch, the Coalition Against Summary Execution and the Kalitawhan Network called on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to give special attention to death squad killings of children in a joint letter sent August 24, 2009.
Abubaker Saddique: 9/12/09 A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL
Criticism and anger are mounting over the rescue of a Western journalist from Taliban militants.
The September 9 predawn raid in a remote corner of northern Afghanistan rescued "New York Times" correspondent Stephen Farrell. But four people died in the shoot-out, including Farrell's Afghan colleague Sultan Munadi and a British commando.
Afghan journalists are holding remembrance ceremonies and have staged protests across the country blaming international troops for Munadi's death. They have also criticized NATO commandos for leaving Munadi's body behind after the raid.
Angry Afghan journalists want this incident to be thoroughly investigated. They claim it is emblematic of a larger problem, when such operations often result in freeing Western hostages while caring little for Afghan nationals.
In Britain, media outlets are questioning whether military force should have been used, as negotiations with the hostage takers appeared to be making progress.
The two were kidnapped in northern Konduz Province while reporting on the recent controversial NATO bombing of two hijacked fuel tankers, which killed scores of people.
In a telephone interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan from Paris, Reza Moini, a regional researcher with Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres), joined the call for a thorough investigation.
"Our efforts will not be limited to conveying condolences and expressing our sympathies," he says.
"What is important for us is that Munadi's killing happened under circumstances that have raised many questions. That's why our [formal] statement demanded an investigation into this incident. And we want the troops involved in this rescue operation to answer our questions."
Major Rethink
The raid was the second major incident this month which has brought the West's military role in Afghanistan into the spotlight.
According to Afghan officials, an earlier NATO air strike on two hijacked fuel tankers on September 4 killed scores of people, including many civilians. The incident has created rifts among NATO allies and fueled Afghan concerns about the West's military effort in the country.
A quest for a major rethink on Afghanistan is increasingly obvious in Western capitals.
Last week Britain, Germany, and France jointly called for a United Nations-led conference on Afghanistan to develop a plan for transferring more security responsibilities to the Afghan authorities.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the initiative at a news conference in Berlin on September 6, saying they were launching it together with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Many hopes had been pinned on the August 20 Afghan presidential election, which had been expected to deliver a new administration that would work with its international partners to deliver improved governance and play its role in defeating the Taliban insurgency.
Instead, the elections results have been marred by allegations and investigations of fraud as the Afghan political elite splits into increasingly hostile camps.
In a week of bad news for the country, the London-based International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) issued a report on September 11 saying that the Taliban and other militants now have a "permanent presence" in 80 percent of Afghanistan. Another 17 percent of the country, according to the report, has "substantial" Taliban or militant activity.
Training Locals
Nobody seems to have clear answers to the troubling question of what happens next in Afghanistan.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, the new Canadian Ambassador in Kabul, William Crosbie, remained cautiously optimistic that despite the deteriorating security situation in southern Afghanistan, where 3,000 Canadians are battling Taliban insurgents, greater training of the Afghan forces could still help in improving the situation:
"We have been working closely in the [Kandahar] Province and the national government to train policemen and to train the Afghan national army to assume a greater role in providing security," Crosbie says.
"But I think the security situation in Kandahar reflects the deterioration in security in various parts of the country, which is of concern to us. The additional resources which ISAF will be bringing into Afghanistan, the increased training, the increased number of Afghan national security forces -- those will be critical to turn around the security situation."
But experts suggest that training Afghan security forces cannot happen in a political vacuum as clouds of uncertainty hang over the Afghan election.
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, has urged critics of the poll not to "jump to conclusions."
Meanwhile, despite an expected request for more troops for Afghanistan by top U.S. and NATO Commander General Stanley McChrystal, senior leaders in America's Democratic Party are now publicly questioning the logic of sending additional soldiers in harm's way.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and the chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, is expected to oppose more troops for Afghanistan in a speech on September 11. This comes a day after the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said that she sees little support among U.S. legislators for sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Such comments put President Barack Obama in an uneasy position.
Pelosi is the highest-ranking Democrat to signal that any White House or Pentagon push for more troops will be resisted in Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, meanwhile, said he is urging Democrats to withhold judgment until Obama decides what to do.
Earlier this year, Obama ordered 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which would bring the total number of U.S. forces there to 68,000 by the end of 2009.
Editor's Note: RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondents Jawad Mujahid and Sharifa Esmatullah contributed to this report
Pakistani police say the leader of a banned Sunni Muslim militant group was shot dead Monday during an attack in the south.
A Pakistani paramilitary soldier stands guard at a tense area after the killing of an Islamic religious leader Ali Sher Haideri, in Karachi, 17 Aug 2009
Officials say gunmen killed Ali Sher Haideri and one of his companions as they were driving in Sindh province, northeast of Karachi. One of the attackers was also killed when Haideri's guards returned fire.
Police said the killing appeared to be related to a personal dispute - not sectarian violence.
Haideri led Sipah-e-Sahaba, a Sunni extremist group blamed for attacks against Pakistan's minority Shi'ites. The group was banned in 2002.
In a separate incident Monday, a truck bomb exploded at a fuel station in the northwest, killing at least six people. The blast hit the town of Charsada, near Peshawar. Officials say two women and at least two children were among the dead.
Pakistan banned Sipah-e-Sahaba in 2002 after joining the U.S.-led fight against terrorism following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The U.S. State Department has labeled the group a terrorist organization.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
Gay Iraqi men are being murdered in what appears to be a co-ordinated campaign involving militia forces, the group Human Rights Watch says.
It says hundreds of gay men have been targeted and killed in Iraq since 2004.
So-called honour killings also account for deaths where families punish their own kin in order to avoid public shame.
The report says members of the Mehdi Army militia group are spearheading the campaign, but police are also accused - even though homosexuality is legal.
Witnesses say vigilante groups break into homes and pick people up in the street, interrogating them to extract the names of other potential victims, before murdering them.
"Murder and torture are no way to enforce morality," said HRW researcher Rasha Moumneh, quoted in the report.
"These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq's post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens."
In some cases, Human Rights Watch says it was told, Iraqi security forces had actually "colluded and joined in the killing".
Witch-hunt
Recently, posters appeared in Sadr City - a conservative, Shia area of Baghdad - calling on people to watch out for gay men and listing not only their names but also their addresses.
One gay man in Baghdad described the killing campaign as a witch-hunt.
“ These killings will continue, because it has simply become normal in Iraq to kill gay men ” Unnamed gay Iraqi man
Nearly 90 gay men have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of January and many more are missing, local gay rights campaigners say.
The report, called They want us exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq, says horrifically mutilated bodies of gay men have been left on rubbish tips.
Sometimes their bodies are daubed with offensive terms such as "pervert", or "puppy" which is a hate word for gay men in Iraq.
The report contains detailed testimonies of a range of brutal treatment of gay Iraqi men.
"We've heard stories confirmed by doctors of men having their anuses glued and then being force-fed laxatives which leads to a very painful death," says Ms Moumneh told the BBC.
'Feminised men'
When questioned in the past, officials in Iraq have condemned the killings, but the BBC's Natalia Antelava in Baghdad reports that gay men there say nothing has been done to protect them.
"These killings will continue, because it has simply become normal in Iraq to kill gay men," said a gay Iraqi man who did not want to be named.
Mehdi army spokesmen and clerics have condemned what they call the "feminisation" of Iraqi men and have urged the military to take action against them.
The report said many gay men have fled to other countries in the region, despite consensual homosexual activity being illegal there, because the risk of victimisation is reduced.
HRW says the threats and abuses have spread from Baghdad to Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although persecution remains concentrated in the capital.
Officials say part of the problem in dealing with the attacks is that victims' relatives seldom if ever provide information to the police.
"They consider talking about the subject worse than the crime itself. This is the nature of our society," ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8204853.stm
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels are spreading far beyond their original battleground in Algeria and increasingly threatening Africa's Sahara belt, scaring away investors and tourists as they undercut the region's fragile economies.
Dozens of security personnel, as well as an American aid worker and a British tourist, were killed by militants in several attacks in the region this summer alone. The attacks -- which prompted this year's lucrative Paris-Dakar car race to relocate to South America -- have become more frequent and brazen. Recent hits occurred not just in the remote desert but also in Mali's tourist magnet Timbuktu and in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, where a suicide bomber attacked the French Embassy last weekend.
Though still dominated by the veterans of Algeria's civil war, this Saharan insurgency has grown deep local roots. Armed bands roaming the desert include hundreds of recruits from Mauritania, Mali and Niger -- vast and impoverished countries that straddle the Arab world and black West Africa, and that relied on the now-collapsed tourism industry as the key source of foreign exchange.
"What had started out as an Algerian problem is now engulfing Mali and Mauritania. They are the weak link," says Zakaria Ould Ahmed Salem, a specialist on political Islam at the University of Nouakchott.
An Islamist insurgency that cost 200,000 lives erupted in Algeria 18 years ago, after that country's secular regime annulled the second round of elections that the Islamists were poised to win. But it is only in the past few years, as Algerian security forces contained the violence at home, that the rebels -- who seek to create an Islamic state encompassing North Africa -- began mounting operations in neighboring Saharan countries that had been unscathed by international terrorism.
Underlining its wider ambitions, the main Algerian insurgent movement, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, re-branded itself in 2007 as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. Actual operational links between AQIM militants in the Sahara and traditional al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan or Afghanistan are tenuous, if they exist at all, Western officials say.
But the group's new name has made it easier to find money and recruits for the cause outside Algeria. "Someone like Bin Laden is considered a hero here," explains Mohamed Fall Ould Oumere, publisher of La Tribune newsweekly in Nouakchott.
Mauritania, where most people speak Arabic and watch satellite TV chains like Al-Jazeera, is a particularly fertile ground for AQIM's growth, and accounts for a growing share of the movement's cadres, Western diplomats say. In Mali, Niger and Chad, the bulk of AQIM recruits also come from Arab-speaking communities, which in these countries are outnumbered by black African majorities.
AQIM is trying to spread south, "aiming to attract the young Muslims of the region -- white ones and black ones," says Isselmou Ould Moustafa, a specialist on AQIM who interviewed many of the group's members for his Mauritanian publication, Tahalil Hebdo.
Security officials in Nigeria recently claimed that AQIM trained in Algeria some members of Boko Haram, the Islamist sect whose armed uprising cost several hundred lives in northern Nigeria last month. According to some experts on AQIM, there is also evidence of contacts between the Saharan insurgents and the Shabaab, the radical Islamist militia controlling a chunk of Somalia. "It's an arc of fire," says Mr. Oumere.
All the governments in the region say they are fighting back. But the area's political instability and frequent bickering between neighboring countries have long made it easy for Islamist rebels to roam the Sahara, obtaining sanctuary and help from local tribes. Mali and Mauritania both have strained relations with Algeria. Planned regional summits to tackle the cross-border terrorism problem have been repeatedly postponed.
A military coup in Mauritania last year complicated the situation: The U.S. reacted to the overthrowing of Mauritania's democratically elected president by reducing military cooperation with the country and pulling out a reconnaissance plane that flew regular sorties over the Sahara to search for insurgents. Cooperation is likely to be restored now that Mauritania has held a democratic election last month.
Government officials here say that, without outside help, Saharan countries have little chance of defeating AQIM. "This is a zone that can't be controlled. We don't know who's out there in the vast desert and what are they doing," says Mohamed Ould Rzeizim, who served until this week as Mauritania's minister of interior.
To finance its campaign, AQIM is smuggling Europe-bound cigarettes, drugs and illegal immigrants through the desert, Mauritanian and Western officials say. Depots of untaxed cigarettes, often brought in by ship from South America, dot the desert along Mauritania's porous northern borders.
An equally important source of revenue for AQIM is ransom money -- estimated at tens of millions of dollars -- paid by European governments for the freedom of European tourists kidnapped in separate attacks in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and Niger. The hostages were usually transported across the Sahara to AQIM's bases in lawless northern Mali, where local officials helped negotiate the ransom collection and the tourists' release.
Mali's role as a sanctuary for AQIM has long infuriated Algeria and the U.S. The country appears to be taking a harder line after the Islamist rebels -- who refrained from killing their hostages in the past -- announced in June that they executed their British captive, Edwin Dyer.
A few days after the killing of Mr. Dyer, suspected militants also gunned down in Timbuktu the regional chief of Malian intelligence, Lt. Col. Lamina Ould Bou. The colonel, an ethnic Arab and former Islamist rebel, had played a crucial role in Mali's efforts against AQIM. According to Malian government accounts and al Qaeda Internet postings, armed clashes in the region in following weeks killed dozens of Malian troops and Islamist guerrillas.
"We are now engaged in a total struggle against al Qaeda," Mali's President Amadou Toumani Touré declared last month.
The Saharan rebels have so far targeted only foreigners and security forces, sparing civilian targets like restaurants and hotels. In Algeria, Pakistan and Iraq, by contrast, al Qaeda-affiliated militants showed no concern about killing large numbers of Muslim civilians.
"These youngsters are not yet ready to carry out blind attacks and to explode car bombs, Algerian-style. They have not yet completely broken with the Mauritanian society," says Mr. Moustafa, the AQIM expert. But, he cautions, bloodier attacks are likely to happen soon: "They have bad teachers. Their future targets will be Mauritanian."
DRESDEN, Germany — In early July thousands of mourners took to the streets in Egypt, chanting “Down with Germany.” Thousands more Arabs and Muslims joined them in protests in Berlin. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added to the outcry by denouncing German “brutality.”
The provocation was the murder on July 1 of Marwa al-Sherbini, a pregnant Egyptian pharmacist here. She was stabbed 18 times in a Dresden courtroom, in front of her 3-year-old son, judges and other witnesses, reportedly by the man appealing a fine for having insulted Ms. Sherbini in a park. Identified by German authorities only as a 28-year-old Russian-born German named Alex W., he had called Ms. Sherbini an Islamist, a terrorist and a slut when she asked him to make room for her son on the playground swings. Ms. Sherbini wore a head scarf.
The killer also stabbed Elwi Okaz, Ms. Sherbini’s husband and a genetic research scientist, who was critically wounded as he tried to defend her. The police, arriving late on the scene, mistook him for the attacker and shot him in the leg.
More than a week passed before the German government, responding to rising anger across the Arab world, expressed words of sorrow while stressing that the attack did occur during the prosecution of a racist and that the accused man was originally from Russia.
Dresden is one of the great cultural capitals of Europe. It is also the capital of Saxony, a former part of East Germany that, along with having a reputation as Silicon Saxony, has made more than a few headlines in recent years for incidents of xenophobia and right-wing extremism. One wonders how to reconcile the heights of the city’s culture with the gutter of these events.
This year’s annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, showed that far-right crime rose last year by 16 percent across the country. Most of these offenses were classified as propaganda crimes — painting swastikas on Jewish headstones or smashing the windows of restaurants run by immigrants — but politically motivated violent acts like murder, arson and assault accounted for 1,042 of the nearly 20,000 crimes recorded, a rise of 6.3 percent over 2007.
And these violent crimes turned out to be far more commonplace in parts of the former East Germany. Saxony, with roughly 5 percent of the country’s population, accounted for 12 percent of the violence classified as far right in nature, the report said.
These days Dresden’s center, once obliterated by Allied bombs, is a marvel of civility, a restored Baroque fairyland surrounded by Socialist-era and post-Socialist-era sprawl. The rebuilt Frauenkirche, the great Baroque cathedral where Bach played, again marks the skyline with its bell-shaped dome, as it did for centuries.
The ruin of the Frauenkirche became a gathering spot for protests against the East German regime during Communist times. In February, as usual on the anniversary of the Allied air raids, neo-Nazis marched through the streets. Some 7,500 of them carried banners condemning the “bombing holocaust.” They were outnumbered, Spiegel Online reported, by anti-Nazi demonstrators, but 7,500 was nonetheless twice as many neo-Nazis as showed up last year.
The other day only the benign clop-clop of horse-drawn carriages sounded across the cobblestone square outside the cathedral, the carriages bouncing camera-toting tourists past high-end jewelry shops and overpriced cafes. Nearby, the Zwinger palace, perhaps the most beautiful of all Baroque complexes, attracted the usual supplicants to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which was paired in the Gemäldegalerie with an African sculpture.
Germany is now a bastion of democracy in the heart of Europe. But the far right is on the rise across the Continent, and xenophobia is gaining in this country, not least among youth and not least singling out Muslims. A recent two-year government survey of 20,000 German teenagers classified one in seven as “highly xenophobic” and another 26.2 percent as “fairly xenophobic.”
“It was known that the figures were high,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said. “But I’m appalled that they’re this high.”
The newspaper Tagesspiegel reported that Alex W. asked Ms. Sherbini in the courtroom, “Do you have a right to be in Germany at all?” before warning her that “when the N.D.P. comes to power, there’ll be an end to that.”
“I voted N.D.P..,” he added.
No surprise.
The far-right National Democratic Party, a marginal but noisy troublemaker on the German political scene with a tiny official membership (some 7,000), is as strong in Saxony as it is anywhere. Recent polls have routinely shown its support in the state as nearing 10 percent of the population; it claims 8 seats out of the 124 in the state parliament in Dresden. On Tuesday the party issued a statement calling for a black politician, Zeca Schall, working on regional elections in Thuringia for the ruling Christian Democratic Union, “to head home to Angola.” Thuringia should “remain German,” the statement said. Mr. Schall, Angolan-born, has lived in Thuringia, another region in the former East, since 1988.
High-tech industries and research institutes like the one where Ms. Sherbini’s husband works, which recruit foreign experts, have lifted Dresden economically above much of the rest of the former East, and last year nearly 10 million tourists fattened the city’s coffers. With half a million residents, some 20,000 of them foreigners, the capital looks prosperous and charming, like its old self.
All of which gets back to the problem of reconciliation: What are the humanizing effects of culture?
Evidently, there are none.
To walk through Dresden’s museums, and past the young buskers fiddling Mozart on street corners, is to wonder whether this age-old question may have things backward. It presumes that we’re passive receivers acted on by the arts, which vouchsafe our salvation, moral and otherwise, so long as we remain in their presence. Arts promoters nowadays like to trumpet how culture helps business and tourism; how teaching painting and music in schools boosts test scores. They try to assign practical ends, dollar values and other hard numbers, never mind how dubious, to quantify what’s ultimately unquantifiable.
The lesson of Dresden, which this great city unfortunately seems doomed to repeat, is that culture is, to the contrary, impractical and fragile, helpless even. Residents of Dresden who believed, when the war was all but over, that their home had somehow been spared annihilation by its beauty were all the more traumatized when, in a matter of hours, bombs killed tens of thousands and obliterated centuries of humane and glorious architecture.
The truth is, we can stare as long as we want at that Raphael Madonna; or at Antonello da Messina’s “St. Sebastian,” now beside a Congo fetish sculpture in another room in the Gemäldegalerie; or at the shiny coffee sets, clocks and cups made of coral and mother-of-pearl and coconuts and diamonds culled from the four corners of the earth in the city’s New Green Vault, which contains the spoils of the most cultivated Saxon kings. But it won’t make sense of a senseless murder or help change the mind of a violent bigot.
What we can also do, though, is accept that while the arts won’t save us, we should save them anyway. Because the enemies of civilized society are always just outside the door.
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