Starting Points

Feb 22, 2011

Shattered Christchurch counts earthquake dead

Six months ago Christchurch residents thought that they had dodged a calamity but the catastrophe was postponed not avoided.

A woman is pulled from the rubble after the earthquake in Christchurch Photo: REUTERS

By Bonnie Malkin, Christchurch 10:00PM GMT 22 Feb 2011

After the city escaped with damage, but no deaths, from a 71. magnitude earthquake that struck in September, locals acknowleded their good fortune.

But at 12.51pm yesterday on Tuesday the cathedral city's luck resolutely ran out.

Officeworkers had settled down for lunch at their desks, shoppers thronged the city's malls and squares and children played in schoolyards across the city when the ground began to shake.

It did not stop shuddering violently for almost one full minute, all the time it took to turn the picturesque city into a disaster zone.

Buildings that had withstood hundreds of lesser earthquakes crumbled into piles of dust as the 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit. The cathedral's famous spire cracked and fell, liquefaction - earth literally turned to liquid - seeped up through the streets. Christchurch - New Zealand's vibrant second largest city - resembled a Hollywood apocalypse film for real.

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The worst of the destruction was in the city centre, where more than 100 people were trapped as offices, hotels and shops collapsed around them. Some managed to make it out by crawling, jumping and scaling the outside of cracked and fractured buildings. As masonry rained down and the aftershocks continued, there were reports of people trapped in the PGG Building, the Cantebury TV building and under fallen chunks of the cathedral.

With screams coming from the remains of buildings, it was obvious that this time the city would not escape without fatalities. Soon the death toll had climbed to 65, but there were rumours around the city that it could reach as high as 300 as rescuers started to pick through the rubble. Several of the dead were killed in buses and cars that were crushed like cans by falling debris. A backpacker died in the city's YHA. Another person was reported to have perished in a bookshop. There were also reports of dead bodies lying in Cashel Mall in the centre of the city, covered by t-shirts until rescuers could come and take them away. The authorities confirmed that the dead included children.

John Key, the prime minister, said it was the nation's "darkest day".

Bob Parker, the major, declared a state of emergency, saying the city had "paid a very heavy price here."

For the tearful and shellshocked survivors, the hours following the earthquake were bewildering.
The injured, some carried on makeshift stretchers from buildings by their workmates and friends, most bleeding, gathered in the city's parks where impromptu medical centres were set up. There were so many wounded that the city's ambulances could not cope and police and civilian cars were employed to help ferry those in need to packed hospitals. Others, fearful of returning home, set up tents in parks and open spaces to sit out the rainy and cold night.

Elsewhere, chaos took hold. One man was arrested for trying to enter a building to rescue a friend. Husbands frantically looked for their wives, parents desperately tried to track down their children, their efforts stymied by road closures, gridlocked traffic and a communications system rendered almost useless by the quake.
Some 80 per cent of the city was without power and water was running out.

As the dust started to clear and rescue workers started to move in, gingerly picking over debris and listening for calls for help, aftershocks continued to rumble through the city, sending large shards of glass and bricks onto the streets below.

Then the fires started. Several damaged buildings ignited, making rescue attempts even more hazardous. But the rescues continued.

During the night, emergency crews corndonned off the city so that they could listen properly for tapping and calls for help.

Through the night some 30 people were rescued alive from beneath fallen buildings, and several dead bodies were also recovered. Of those that survived, some had to undergo amputations to be freed from the wreckage, while rescue workers said that others were retrieved without suffering a scratch.

Anne Voss, who was trapped under her office desk, said she had called her children to say goodbye because she thought she was going to die, "It was absolutely horrible," she told New Zealand TV.

"My daughter was crying and I was crying because I honestly thought that was it.

"You want to tell them you love them, don't you?"

Sven Baker was another one of the lucky ones. He survived by diving under his desk in his four-storey office block when the earthquake hit. The decision saved his life.

"I went under the table just as the whole facade of the building collapsed on the street.

"It was a massive earthquake, unbelieveable, it took you off your feet," he told the Dominion Post.

"It was a miracle to have walked out."

By this morning disaster recovery crews were flying into Christchurch from Australia to help with the recovery effort.

The damage to Christchurch, which is the gateway to the South Island and is home to 390,000 people, was more extensive than in September because the quake was far shallower and more sudden than the last one.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 22 February 2011, 12:37 pm

Starving N. Korea begs for food, but U.S. has concerns about resuming aid

Image via WikipediaBy Chico Harlan
Tuesday, February 22, 2011; A06

TOKYO - North Korea recently took the unusual step of begging for food handouts from the foreign governments it usually threatens.

Plagued by floods, an outbreak of a livestock disease and a brutal winter, the government ordered its embassies and diplomatic offices around the world to seek help.

The request has put the United States and other Western countries in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to ignore the pleas of a starving country or pump food into a corrupt distribution system that often gives food to those who need it least.

The United States, which suspended its food aid to North Korea two years ago amid concerns about transparency, "has no plans for any contributions at this time," said Kurt Campbell, the State Department's top East Asia official.

Meanwhile, the U.N. World Food Program, responsible for much of the food aid in North Korea, said its current food supply could sustain operations in the communist country for only another month.

"We're certainly hopeful that new donations will be coming in the upcoming weeks," said Marcus Prior, the WFP's spokesman in Asia.

Next month, the WFP plans to complete an assessment of North Korea's food situation - a report that could influence how foreign governments respond. But few doubt that North Korea's 24 million people need food.

For two decades, since the collapse of a public distribution system that supplied food rations, Kim Jong Il's government has neglected to care for its people. In the early and mid-1990s, an estimated 1 million died in a famine.

North Korea has since developed a grass-roots network of private markets - a stand-in for government programs but also the target of occasional crackdowns from a leadership that views free-market activity as a threat.

Amid the food shortages, though, humanitarian experts describe another failure: the international aid effort. Outsiders have yet to devise a formula that reaches basic standards for monitoring or effectiveness. After 15 years and about $2 billion of aid efforts, one in four pregnant women is malnourished and one in three children is stunted.

The government places obstacles at every step of the distribution process - the top complaint from U.S. officials, who demand better transparency before aid resumes.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement this week calling it "essential" that U.S. assistance is "actually received by hungry North Korean children and their families, rather than reinforcing the North Korean military whose care is already a priority over the rest of the population."

Researchers and nongovernmental organizations disagree on the proportion of food aid the North Korean government diverts, with estimates ranging from 10 to 50 percent. Diverted food aid, according to experts, is given to the military, redistributed as gifts for elites or resold - at a steep profit - to vendors in markets. John Everard, the British ambassador in Pyongyang from 2006 to 2008, said he saw rice bags labeled "World Food Program" in market halls.

In recent years, North Korea has often banned food aid monitors from traveling to the most vulnerable provinces. It also demands that monitors do not know Korean. Though North Korea makes exceptions, Prior said, it generally demands seven days' notice before monitors can visit an area.

Kim Seong-min, a former North Korean army propaganda officer who defected, said he once saw a ton of rice aid arrive at a distribution center. The military distributed the food in a village at a monitor's request but later went door to door retrieving it.

"I remember some of the collection officers were complaining about not being able to collect 100 percent of the rice," Kim said.

Partly influenced by earlier distribution challenges, the WFP last July tailored its operation in North Korea exclusively to women and children, targeting hospitals, orphanages and schools. The program gave out blends of milk and rice or milk and cereal - concoctions unlikely to be presented as gifts to the most loyal cadres.

Hunger problems, however, threaten to grow wider this year, experts say. North Korea has endured its coldest winter in six decades, and farmers worry about below-average crop output. North Korea last week confirmed an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with its state-run news agency saying that "more than 10,000 heads of draught oxen, milch cows and pigs have so far been infected with the diseases and thousands of them died."

As of two years ago, the U.S. government ranked as the largest food donor to North Korea, giving 170,000 tons between May 2008 and March 2009. When that program was terminated, 22,700 tons of U.S.-donated food remained in the pipeline. North Korea hasn't accounted for how that food was distributed.

North Korea lost another major donor in 2008, when conservative President Lee Myung-bak came to power in South Korea. Lee promptly revoked the massive shipments of food - sometimes half a million tons annually - delivered by his liberal predecessors under the Sunshine Policy.

In recent months, numerous defector groups in South Korea have reported food shortages not just among civilians in the North but also within the 1.2 million-member military.

Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group that has informants in the North, reported in January that the ruling Workers' Party had ordered a nationwide food donation for soldiers.

"The regime doesn't mind that much if the civilian population goes hungry," Everard said. "But if its core supporters and the military don't get fed, then it starts to get nervous."

Special correspondent Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

Washington Post

How Qaddafi Lost Libya

Feb 21,2011 by Andrew Solomon

It seemed unlikely that Libya, sandwiched between regime collapse in Tunisia and regime collapse in Egypt, could be untouched by the movement. Qaddafi has had dominion over an increasingly malcontent country, and the citizens have been increasingly disgusted by the gap between his rhetoric of direct democracy and his autocratic grip on power. When I wrote about Qaddafi for The New Yorker, in 2006, the question was whether a much-advertised reform process was really underway. The ostensible champion of reform was Qaddafi’s son Seif-al-Islam. Seif usually talks a good game, but he does so with minimal regard for the truth. I was amazed, at a meeting with Seif and some senior American diplomats, in 2008, to hear him describe as imminent the exact same plans he’d so described to me in 2005, without the slightest embarrassment that nothing he had promised then had even inched forward. The regime has always wanted credit for its beneficent decrees, without accepting blame for its failure even to try to turn them into results. Libyans are aware that this represents a higher degree of hypocrisy than is common in most of the rest of the world. For a long time, they did not much love Qaddafi, but they did not hate him, either; he was in many ways irrelevant to their lives, which chugged along according to a tribal logic that had been in place long before the regime came to power. Libyans are leery of democracy; they like a strong ruler who can keep tribal rivalries from erupting. But they do not particularly like their current strong ruler.

The Qaddafi regime has made several strategic errors since my article was published in 2006. The most obvious has been the retreat from Seif’s plans for reform. It was in Qaddafi’s interests to sustain the fierce battle between hardliners and moderates, to present his moderate spokesman to the West (hence the meeting between Seif and diplomats), and to keep his hardliner face visible to his own people. Within the government, each side had moments of believing itself in favor, but the best guarantee of Qaddafi’s continued hegemony was to keep them constantly embattled. When this became unsustainable, however, in 2008, he quashed the reformers, and Seif was generally seen as having fallen from grace. Even though most Libyans had been cynical about the reform process—which was predicated on economic reform rather than on the introduction of real democracy—it had kept hope on the horizon, had allowed them to indulge the idea that Qaddafi was really interested in what was best for the population rather than for himself and his family. To give hardliners more power, as Qaddafi did in 2008, was catastrophic.

That Seif was chosen to go on Libyan television last night to warn of “civil war” and to promise a conference on constitutional reforms is very telling. Qaddafi would not have chosen him as spokesman if he didn’t recognize the hunger for reform, and if he didn’t know that quashing Seif’s ambitions had fed the fire now consuming Tripoli. Monday morning, Qaddafi announced that Seif would be forming a committee to investigate what is happening. But Seif’s too-little-too-late performance—which Al Jazeera described as “desperate,” and which some commentators have said was aimed at his friends in the West rather than at the Libyan people—has almost certainly not helped his cause.

A second mistake has been the lack of attention to the poverty of the population. Libya is North Africa’s most prosperous country, given its tremendous oil wealth and small population. Yet most Libyans live in deplorable conditions. The state provides little by way of civil society and does not take care of even the most basic government obligations. There are police to control people who stray from supporting the Leader, but there is little else. As a housing crisis has escalated in the past few years, the regime has made no effort to provide adequate public accommodation. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very few. It would have been easy for Qaddafi to raise the standard of living for the population as a whole either by creating a sustainable non-oil economy or simply by distributing some portion of oil revenues, but he chose to do neither.

A third mistake has been to ignore the needs of the young. When a third of the population is under fifteen and a further large proportion is under twenty-five, the young become central to coherent governance. Qaddafi has stuck with his old cronies, and has not taken on board the nature of the widespread discontent. The most obvious problem here, as in much of the Middle East, is vast youth unemployment, for the amelioration of which there are no programs at all. Qaddafi has never made any attempt to reach out to disgruntled youth, and they feel that their voices are not heard and carry no weight.

It is striking that the protests began in the eastern part of Libya. The area around Benghazi has always been the one least under Qaddafi’s thumb, and most of his problems have originated there. Qaddafi’s tribe is a desert one, and the verdant east resents his authority. In the nineteen-nineties, eastern Libya was the site of an armed Islamic insurgency, based in Benghazi and the Green Mountains. It was in part Qaddafi’s fear of Benghazi that led him to champion the notion that an epidemic of HIV among children had somehow been caused by Bulgarian nurses’ deliberate acts on behalf of Mossad. Qaddafi has always been good at deflecting the anger of one enemy onto another, removing himself from the line of fire, and in the episode of the Bulgarian nurses he skillfully turned the rage in the east against the Bulgarians. But it was not possible to suppress permanently the fact of his unpopularity in Benghazi; people there have always felt freer to express disapprobation of the regime than people in the western parts of the country, and they have long waited for a moment when they could act on those expressions.

I am not a soothsayer, and cannot guess whether the regime can withstand the revolution that is underway. The response to protests has been swift and brutal, since Qaddafi had seen how ineffective more moderate responses were in Egypt and Tunisia. It is not clear, however, that brutality will work; it appears to be making more and more Libyans incensed. A Libyan diplomat said today, “The more Qaddafi kills people, the more people go into the streets.” Qaddafi’s power has for a long time relied on the docility of ordinary Libyans. As he ignored the youth of his country, though, he seems to have ignored the possibility that he is ruling a less passive population. The new generation is ready to push out the old. Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations said today that if Qaddafi does not willingly step down “the Libyan people will get rid of him.” Two members of the Libyan Air Force have defected to Malta rather than attack protesters in Benghazi. Others may well follow, and a loss of loyalty within the army would be the end of Qaddafi’s reign.

A post-Qaddafi Libya could easily be roiled in internal battles, ultimately dividing into several smaller countries, each dominated by local tribes. That could make life better for some Libyans, and it could make life worse for others; it would almost surely be problematic for Western companies with oil interests in the country. Modern Libya is an artificial construct, a remnant of colonialism. The glue holding it together is failing, and the warnings of chaos are real. The choice between chaos and oppression is always a tricky one, but this population is tired of oppression and corruption, and chaos may look more attractive to them.

Chaos tends, however, to wear thin. We all understand that there is strong opposition to Qaddafi, but it’s not clear whether there is any internal coherence to that opposition. Though the Muslim Brotherhood did not run the Egyptian revolution, they did help give people a flag under which to rally, and Libya does not have any real opposition leaders; it hardly has any internal opposition as we generally define the word. If these protests are successful, and if Qaddafi flees, as there are already rumors he has, then who will take over? Libya has another important difference from Egypt: it’s a tiny country, with a population of just over six million. Even Tunisia has a population of over ten million. All the educated and competent people in Libya know one another, and most of them have worked in one way or another with the Qaddafi regime. If Qaddafi goes, there are not enough trained bureaucrats or statesmen to construct a new Libyan government that is not an extension of the old one, and this fact alone could propel Libya back into some form of tribalism. That failing, his stooges are likely to end up playing a significant part in running the show.

Seif had aspired to improve overall communications in the country, bringing the Internet into the Sahara, but he was not successful in that mission; in this regard, at least, his father may be glad he didn’t listen to him. The government has been exercising control over communications, shutting off both Internet and phone services. One of my contacts in Libya managed to call last night just before all lines were cut. He said, “It’s awful, much worse than you think. Please get out the word to support us.”

Jan 24, 2011

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

By ELLEN BARRY and ANDREW E. KRAMER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abyei, Sudan's potential tinderbox

By Rebecca Hamilton
Monday, January 24, 2011; A06

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hearings on Muslims trigger panic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Targeting extremists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Tunisia, a warm embrace of fresh freedoms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some hurled insults at the once-feared police.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's a new era."

China Grooming Deft Politician as Next Leader

By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Climb Up the Ladder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaining Beijing’s Notice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seizing the Throne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Li Bibo and Benjamin Haas contributed research.