Cleric Convicted of Terrorism-Financing Charge to Be Deported

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

A terrorism-financing case against a Yemeni cleric, which the U.S. government once claimed as a major victory against al-Qaeda, came to a murky end Friday as a federal judge ordered him to be released and deported, despite his 2005 sentence to 75 years in a maximum-security U.S. prison.

Sheik Mohammed al-Moayad, 60, a high-ranking political leader in Yemen, had been convicted after a five-week federal trial in New York City of conspiracy, providing material support to Hamas and attempting to support al-Qaeda.

His assistant and bodyguard, Mohamed Zayed, who is in his mid-30s, had been convicted of attempting to provide material support to Hamas.

In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned the convictions, saying U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr., improperly admitted evidence during the trial that prejudiced the jury.

In new plea deals, both defendants pleaded guilty Friday only to conspiring to provide material support to Hamas. U.S. District Judge Dora L. Irizarry sentenced them to the time they have served, most recently at the federal "supermax" prison in Florence, Colo.

The convictions of Sheik Mohammed al-Moayad and an assistant had been overturned in October by a U.S. appeals court. (AP)

Zayed, who was originally sentenced to 45 years, will also be released and deported to Yemen.

In a letter filed Friday with the court, Benton J. Campbell, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York City, said the deal is justified because the appeals court ruling would have made a conviction more difficult. He also cited "broader national security implications," which the government did not specify, and the fact that Moayad is in failing health.

"Given the international importance of this case and the fact that more than five years has elapsed since the defendants were extradited to the United States to face charges, the government feels strongly that a prompt and final resolution of this matter . . . is in the interests of justice," Campbell wrote.

The pleas and deportations mark a sudden end to an investigation that then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced in 2003, saying Moayad had admitted giving Osama bin Laden $20 million before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But before the trial, the government's star informant set himself on fire outside the White House in what he said was an attempt to get the FBI to pay him more money, and the case began to unravel.

U.S. officials say Yemen is a key front in counterterrorism efforts. The U.S. government is trying to work with weak governments there and in nearby Somalia, where insurgencies have created refuges for al-Qaeda. Yemeni authorities last month sentenced to death six al-Qaeda militants, whose attacks included an assault on the U.S. Embassy. U.S. officials reportedly hope to move as many as 70 Yemeni citizens from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia.

The Yemeni Embassy in Washington released a statement saying "the fair and just resolution" of the case is "an important step in further reinforcing" bilateral relations.

Moayad's trial lawyer, William H. Goodman, said his client will return home a hero, known for his work with the poor. "The effort on the part of the U.S. government to entrap him in the current situation is both petty in terms of the international struggle against terrorism, and poorly targeted because it made far more enemies in the Middle East -- particularly in Yemen -- than friends," he said.

His appellate lawyer, Robert Boyle, said his client is dying from ailments including cirrhosis arising from Hepatitis C and diabetes. Moayad was never alleged to be a combatant and was "set up" by U.S. authorities' overzealousness, Boyle said.

Moayad and Zayed were lured from Yemen and arrested by German officials in a Frankfurt hotel in January 2003 in a U.S. government sting operation. Moayad was recorded dealing with an undercover FBI agent posing as a rich Brooklyn donor who wanted to donate $2 million to terrorism causes. Moayad agreed to get the money to Hamas in return for funds for free bakeries, schools and charities he ran in Yemen, Boyle said.

Moayad was taped boasting that he once tutored bin Laden in Islamic law and that the al-Qaeda leader called him "my sheik" before parting two decades ago .

Churches Look to Residential Real Estate Development to Support Congregations

By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

The new apartments in Landover have all the features one expects to find in a luxury complex. There's a state-of-the-art fitness center, a quiet courtyard, nine-foot ceilings and oversize windows.

Residents can use a theater, a barbershop, a beauty salon -- even a chapel.

Yes, a chapel.

The small church, with its plush blue seats, ornate fixtures and pulpit, was included in the architectural plans at the request of the developer: Jericho City of Praise, a 19,000-member congregation in Landover.

"There is just so much to do here, so many amenities," said Eugene Selden, 67, who moved June 16 with his wife, Olivia, to Jericho Residences near FedEx Field.

For years, the faith community has been a driving force in building affordable housing such as the unit where the Seldens live. And despite the recession and the accompanying risk of attempting a project now, Jericho and some other Washington area churches have recently taken their involvement a step further, purchasing properties and partnering with developers or builders to construct communities that can include subsidized units, full-price residences and even commercial space.

Churches have a steady income from weekly donations to spend in a depressed real estate market and to qualify for financing. The churches say their goal is to diversify revenue streams so that, among other things, they can expand their community service projects to support growing congregations. And the developers can get tax benefits.

The churches acknowledge the financial risks, said Midgett Parker, an attorney who represents about 80 churches in Prince George's County. An oversupply of housing units and tightening credit markets have affected them, Parker said.

"The contract could fall through; the market could fall apart," he said. Churches "manage the risk," he said, by including clauses in contracts with developers that allow them to reclaim their property if a developer abandons a project.

Parker said many churches are counting on a turnaround in the real estate market. Plans for their projects are being drafted and are moving through the planning and zoning process so they will be well positioned when the market rebounds.

Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, a consortium of 43 churches and synagogues in the District, said the move is part of "a new economic reality" for churches that need money to "maintain a large vibrant congregation." Churches have to meet their social missions, and as memberships expand, the demand for services grows -- even beyond what they might be able to support with member donations, Lynch said. "You have to be savvy in how to pay for extended ministries," he said. "How do you offer substance abuse programs, food banks and other programs without reliable funding? On top of that, they are paying for utilities, youth ministries, educational facilities. . . . It's very daunting."

Jericho Senior Pastor Betty P. Peebles said the decision to build Jericho Residences, a 270-unit independent-living facility for seniors that opened in June, has been part of the church's vision since it moved from the District to Prince George's in 1997. Today, 130 residents live at the apartment complex.

"We've always wanted to serve the whole man," said Peebles, who moved the church to larger quarters where it could be closer to its congregants and expand its ministries. The apartment complex, which includes 110 affordable-housing units, complements the church's Christian training center, elementary school and youth center, she said.

Jericho, which paid off its mortgage in seven years, purchased the property for the apartment complex in 2007 for about $4 million, according to land records. It took out a mortgage on the property for $3.6 million.

Evangel Cathedral, another megachurch in Prince George's, with a membership of about 4,200, is seeking approval of a detailed site plan for a more expansive project. It would include 640 townhouses and multifamily units and 3,000 square feet of retail space on about 50 acres. Known as the Moore property, the site is in an unincorporated, rural area north of Route 4 just outside the District. The Evangel project is part of a larger 534-acre mixed-use development known as Westphalia, which would include 15,000 homes and about 6 million square feet of retail and commercial space, hotels and restaurants and a half-dozen schools.

The United House of Prayer in the District, which has built hundreds of apartments in the Shaw neighborhood, filed an application in March with the Zoning Commission to rezone property the church owns off Rhode Island Avenue NW, between Sixth and Seventh streets. The application to rezone the building for 16 apartments is scheduled to be reviewed Sept. 10 by the commission.

Parker, who is general counsel for Greater Morning Star Apostolic Ministries, said the church bought 50 acres off Ritchie-Marlboro Road in Largo when it moved from Northeast Washington in the mid-1980s. The church planned to build its sanctuary on the top of a hill and leave the rest of the property vacant but recently decided to bring in housing developer Trammel Crow Residential to plan a project on 15 acres there.

Like all of the other church developments, the Trammel Crow project is intended to appeal to many buyers but will provide congregants the opportunity to live within walking distance of their church.

The Prince George's District Council, which is made up of the County Council and reviews zoning cases, granted conditional approval of the project last year. Trammel Crow is preparing its detailed site plan.

"People are still working projects through the approval process on the assumption that financing will be available a year or two from now," said Tom Bozzuto, chief executive officer at Greenbelt-based Bozzuto Group, a construction and management firm that has worked on numerous church projects. "But in terms of actual starts, it's tougher to get financing than it was a year ago."

Patrick Ricker, a broker and developer who is working on the Moore property project with Bishop Don Meares, senior pastor of Evangel, said he will begin negotiations to sell the 375 lots to builders after the detailed site plans are approved. The plans have been filed, but it is not clear how long approval will take, said Ricker, who is not a member of Evangel.

"From a church standpoint, it's smart" to diversify, Ricker said. "It's just like any other investment, like buying a CD or buying stock." The Moore property is not Evangel's first real estate investment. Several years ago, the church sold land next to its sanctuary on Route 214 to a builder to construct an active-adult complex. Cameron Grove has 735 homes, including single-family houses, duplexes and condominiums.

For the developers, one advantage is that they can get tax credits for agreeing to work with nonprofit groups. Tax credits vary based on the project's location.

Bozzuto Group first began partnering with churches in 1994, when the company worked with Reston Interfaith Housing to build 48 apartments in Reston's North Point neighborhood. The units are for working families who pay below-market rents. Since then, Bozzuto has seen an increase in the number of churches becoming involved in housing developments.

The company is discussing housing developments with about three churches. "That would not have been happening years ago," said Bozzuto, who is not a member of Jericho. "I think there are more churches that define their ministries more broadly than they had years ago."

Jericho Residences is one of Bozzuto's most recent projects.

Olivia Selden, 67, who is a diabetic, has lost six pounds since she and her husband moved there, thanks to her exercise routine in the gym and her occasional walks around the hallways.

And, they are saving $546 a month in rent because they meet Jericho Residences' affordable-housing requirements.

"This place has just been a blessing all the way around," Olivia Selden said.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

U.S. and Britain Again Target Afghan Poppies

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

The U.S. and British governments plan to spend millions of dollars over the next two months to try to persuade Afghan farmers not to plant opium poppy, by far the country's most profitable cash crop and a major source of Taliban funding and official corruption.

By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan's harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest.

"We need a way to get money in [farmers'] hands right away," said a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan.

The program replaces the Bush administration's focus on crop eradication, which "wasted hundreds of millions of dollars," according to Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Destroying the crops succeeded only in "alienat[ing] poor farmers" and "driving people into the hands of the Taliban," he told reporters last week.

But many previous U.S.-funded crop-substitution programs have failed as well, from Asia to Latin America. A similar plan in Colombia, begun in the late 1990s, has barely made a dent in the level of cocaine production, although the country began to stabilize in recent years as its U.S.-trained military adopted new strategies against armed insurgents and civil institutions were strengthened.

Officials maintain that the new Afghan plan differs from unsuccessful "alternative" plans because it is an integral part of a military-development strategy that includes tens of thousands of U.S. troops to keep the Taliban and traffickers at bay while Afghan security forces are being trained. Plans call for hundreds of U.S. and international aid experts to work directly with farmers and local officials until the Afghan government has matured.

"The way [the assistance] is offered is important," said the senior U.S. military official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program on the record. "We are not providing subsidies . . . we are not just handing out cash." Farmers will have a "stake" in the program, he said, buying vouchers for seeds and fertilizers for about 10 percent of their value. Cash will be distributed only as credit or for work performed, the official added.

The United States and its allies in Afghanistan have long debated whether they should simply pay farmers for not planting poppy, a short-term fix that experts have deemed counterproductive. Farmers probably would take the money and "grow it anyways," said another U.S. official in Afghanistan. "We would likely drive the price up," he added, "as there would now be competition between the narcotics trade and the government. More farmers would therefore plant more poppy next year."

The epicenter of the overlapping wars against opium production and the Taliban is southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, where more than two-thirds of the country's poppy is grown. Thousands of Marines and British troops are in the midst of a major offensive there against entrenched insurgent forces and are providing security in villages as they are cleared.

"By this time next year," the senior military official said, "what we want to see is decreased poppy harvest. For us, that will be a metric of success. If we don't get conditions set now, in the next 60 days, we're not going to get the results we'd like."

The timeline is daunting. A planned "civilian surge" of hundreds of U.S. aid officials and agriculture experts has been slow to arrive. A micro-finance loan program is in the planning stages, and although $300 million in aid has been set aside for "rapid response" initiatives, including voucher programs for seeds and fertilizer, distribution has been sluggish. Mohammad Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, whom U.S. officials have praised for encouraging local communities to turn away from poppy, held the first of eight scheduled outreach meetings only last week.

The plan also includes stepped-up efforts to interdict drug shipments and destroy stockpiles. The Drug Enforcement Administration expects to increase its manpower on the ground from 13 agents in 2008 to 81 by the end of this year. The Marine assault in Helmand, a DEA official in Kabul said, has "greatly enhanced" the agency's ability to take action there, he said.

The DEA is also training Afghan police in counternarcotics investigations, and the Justice Department is developing a program for Afghan prosecutors, although those efforts are said to be moving slowly. Officials disagree over how much of the profit from Afghanistan's opium exports goes directly into Taliban coffers. According to Holbrooke, most Taliban funding comes from wealthy individuals in the Persian Gulf region. But there is widespread agreement among U.S. officials that drug traffickers, warlords, corrupt government officials and insurgents work cooperatively to continue cultivation, processing and exports.

Some of the greatest challenges to the new strategy are at the level of farmhouse economics. More than 365,000 Afghan farm households earned about $730 million from poppy last year -- a fraction of the $3.4 billion earned from opium exports, according to the United Nations, but an amount nearly equal to the national government's $750 million in official revenue.

"The average annual cash income of opium-poppy growing households in 2007 was 53 percent higher than those of non-opium poppy growing households," the U.N. 2008 Afghanistan Opium Survey reported, and "farmers in Helmand reported the highest cash income," 70 percent of which came from poppy.

The average Helmand farmer cultivates less than an acre of land, with about half an acre planted in poppy yielding a gross income of about $2,000. After paying 45 percent of that in production costs, and 10 percent in local taxes, he nets about $900, more than twice what he would earn from wheat at current, albeit rising, prices.

Spring opium is harvested in May, after the plant flowers and seed capsules develop. The capsules are lanced and a latex-like opium gum oozes out and is gathered by hand. In Helmand, where production per acre is highest, capsules are lanced an average of four times in a labor-intensive process.

Extra workers travel from all over Afghanistan for the harvest, and the pay is higher than it is for virtually all other forms of unskilled labor. The average daily wage for construction work, the United Nations reported, is $3.60. Wheat harvesting earns $4.40, and opium "lancing/gum collection" pays $9.50. Wages in Helmand for lancing, $15 a day, are the highest in the country.

"What we're looking for is a way to compete with that," the senior military official said of the opium economy. "This is not easy. . . . There is no silver bullet."

Correspondent Pamela Constable in Kabul and staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

U.S., Pakistan Say Apparent Killing of Mehsud Is Huge Setback for Taliban

By Joby Warrick, Joshua Partlow and Haq Nawaz Khan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 8, 2009

Without ever firing a shot at Americans, Baitullah Mehsud had managed to become something of an obsession for the CIA. Over 18 months, the agency tried three times to kill the stout, 5-foot-2-inch commander of the Pakistani Taliban, while spreading word of a $5 million bounty for his death or capture.

The agency apparently succeeded this week, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials said, when a missile launched by a CIA-operated unmanned aircraft homed in on the second-floor balcony of a villa in northwestern Pakistan where the reclusive, diabetic Mehsud was getting medical treatment.

The blast is thought to have eliminated a terrorist who was suspected to be behind the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and who was at the top of Pakistan's most-wanted list. Although Mehsud had been regarded primarily as a threat to that country, he was also a central figure in a network of South Asian and international terrorist groups whose operations had become increasingly coordinated in recent months. That alliance has exhibited an increasing ability -- and interest -- in striking targets in the West, former and current U.S. officials and terrorism experts said Friday.

"We were seeing different threat streams in the region, all coming together," said a former senior intelligence official who helped plan counterterrorism operations. "Most of these groups had become linked under Mehsud."

The apparently successful hit -- U.S. officials acknowledged that conclusive proof may be impossible unless a body is recovered -- was regarded by U.S. and Pakistani analysts as a devastating setback for the coalition of 13 Pakistani Taliban factions Mehsud had commanded. The confederation of tribally based groups was linked to a half-dozen suicide bombings in Pakistan that killed scores of people, including some Americans. . Terrorism experts say his apparent death will almost certainly disrupt Taliban operations inside Pakistan in the short term, while striking at least a symbolic blow against al-Qaeda as well as Taliban groups in Afghanistan.

It could also help ensure Pakistan's backing for continued U.S. efforts to battle al-Qaeda and loosely allied Taliban groups across the border in Afghanistan, sources said.

"When you take out someone who is that well-known, it creates a sense that momentum is on the side of the good guys and against the bad guys," said Paul Pillar, a former CIA counterterrorism official. "In these conflicts, people on the ground are looking to see who's winning and losing, because you want to be on the side of the ones who are coming out ahead."

The missile attack has launched a struggle for succession among the Pakistani Taliban factions, said U.S. and Pakistani officials, as well as Taliban members.

Although any one of a number of Mehsud's deputies could fill the void, his apparent killing is likely to sow fear and suspicion among his followers, making unity elusive, said John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director.

"The survivors quarrel about tactics, strategy and future leadership, while worrying that someone 'inside' might have betrayed them," McLaughlin said.

Neither the CIA nor the Obama administration has publicly confirmed the agency's role in the airstrike, but U.S. and Pakistani officials familiar with it said the Taliban commander was killed early Wednesday by a missile launched from one of the CIA's remotely controlled aircraft. More than 360 people have been killed in at least 31 such drone attacks this year. Although Islamabad has complained frequently about U.S. strikes, American and Pakistani officials have cited the string of hits on Taliban leaders and other insurgents, including foreign fighters, as evidence of improved cooperation between the countries' intelligence agencies. Indeed, the news of Mehsud's apparent death was widely welcomed in Pakistan.

"Pakistani and American officials are working closely to deal with a menace they both recognize," Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview. "If indeed the reports about Mehsud being killed are fully confirmed, this will be one of many events that bear evidence to the usefulness of Pakistani-U.S. cooperation."

According to Pakistani and American officials, as well as Taliban fighters reached by telephone Friday, Mehsud was staying at a house owned by his father-in-law in Zanghra, a village in the lawless border region of South Waziristan. Mehsud had summoned a local medic for help and was undergoing intravenous treatment for dehydration and stomach problems when the missile tore into the building, the sources said. Mehsud, his second wife and several bodyguards were killed, they said.

Taliban members confirmed Friday that Mehsud had been killed and was buried shortly afterward.

"Baitullah is no more with us," one Taliban fighter said.

A Pakistani intelligence officer based in the nearby town of Makeen said Mehsud's body had been "totally damaged except his head." The atmosphere in the region was described as tense, as security officials braced for a possible backlash from Taliban fighters.

Many Pakistani officials said that Mehsud's successor would be named quickly and that the group's formidable organization would ensure that it remains a potent force. Among the possible contenders were Wali-ur-Rehman Mehsud, a Taliban commander and spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, and Hakimullah Mehsud, another close aide who has been linked to sectarian attacks on Shiite Muslims as well as NATO supply convoys heading to Afghanistan.

Karim Mehsud, a lawyer in Peshawar who has met Baitullah Mehsud, said he doubted that killing him would fundamentally change the war. "Another Baitullah will emerge," he said. "This is an ideological war, this is not a local problem."

To those who studied his rise and fought with him -- and against him -- Baitullah Mehsud was no ordinary commander. From his base in the mountains of South Waziristan, he amassed a 10,000-strong army that worked closely with al-Qaeda operatives to impose a fundamentalist version of Islamic rule. Members waged a brutal war against troops and civilians who defied them.

While most other Taliban commanders trained their attention on NATO forces in Afghanistan, Mehsud pioneered the war against Pakistan, the country that helped create the Taliban movement in the 1980s.

In part because of the violence perpetrated by Mehsud and his lieutenants, Pakistan shifted its strategy from appeasement and negotiation with Taliban groups to military operations against some of them. In recent months, troops pushed into the Swat Valley to dislodge Taliban fighters, and regular Pakistani and U.S. airstrikes have pounded South Waziristan.

With reports of Mehsud's death, some analysts voiced concern that Pakistan's army may lose interest in pursuing plans to launch a ground offensive in South Waziristan.

Others said there is a danger that Mehsud's successor could draw the army into a deeper conflict by undertaking a major attack inside Pakistan to avenge the commander's apparent death.

"The army may now try to pressure groups in South Waziristan to break with Mehsud's party and reassert their own domination," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Institute, a Washington research group. "August will be a very hot month on the frontier."

Partlow reported from Kabul; Khan and special correspondent Shaiq Hussain reported from Islamabad. Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

For Puerto Ricans, Sotomayor’s Success Stirs Pride

By DAVID GONZALEZ

In the summer of 1959, Edwin Torres landed a $60-a-week job and wound up on the front page of El Diario. He had just been hired as the first Puerto Rican assistant district attorney in New York — and probably, he thinks, the entire United States.

He still recalls the headline: “Exemplary Son of El Barrio Becomes Prosecutor.”

“You would’ve thought I had been named attorney general,” he said. “That’s how big it was.”

Half a century later, the long and sometimes bittersweet history of Puerto Ricans in New York added a celebratory chapter on Thursday as the Senate confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Her personal journey — from a single-parent home in the Bronx projects to the Ivy League and an impressive legal career — has provoked a fierce pride in many other Puerto Ricans who glimpse reflections of their own struggles.

“This is about the acceptance that eluded us,” said Mr. Torres, 78, who himself earned distinction as a jurist, novelist and raconteur. “It is beyond anybody’s imagination when I started that a Puerto Rican could ascend to that position, to the Supreme Court.”

Arguably the highest rung that any Puerto Rican has yet reached in this country, the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor is a watershed event for Puerto Rican New York. It builds on the achievements that others of her generation have made in business, politics, the arts and pop culture. It extends the legacy of an earlier, lesser-known generation who created social service and educational institutions that persist today, helping newcomers from Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

Yet the city has also been a place of heartbreak. Though Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship in 1917 and large numbers of them arrived in New York in the 1950s, poverty and lack of opportunity still pockmark some of their neighborhoods. A 2004 report by a Hispanic advocacy group showed that compared with other Latino groups nationwide, Puerto Ricans had the highest poverty rate, the lowest average family income and the highest unemployment rate for men.

In politics, the trailblazer Herman Badillo saw his career go from a series of heady firsts in the 1960s to frustration in the 1980s when his dreams of becoming the city’s first Puerto Rican mayor were foiled by Harlem’s political bosses. Just four years ago, Fernando Ferrer was trounced in his bid against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

All those setbacks lose their sting, if only for a moment, in the glow of Judge Sotomayor’s achievement, which many of her fellow Puerto Ricans say is as monumental for them as President Obama’s election was for African-Americans. It has affirmed a sense of Puerto Rican identity at a moment when that distinction is often obscured by catch-all labels like Latino and Hispanic — and even as it is subjected to negative comparisons.

“Many elite Latin Americans have implied that Puerto Ricans blew it, because we had citizenship and did nothing,” said Lillian Jimenez, a documentary filmmaker who co-produced a series of television ads in support of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination. “But we were the biggest Spanish-speaking group in New York for decades, and bore the brunt of discrimination, especially in the 1950s. We struggled for our rights. We have people everywhere doing all kinds of things. But that history has not been known.”

That history is in danger of disappearing in East Harlem, long the cradle of Puerto Rican New York. After waves of gentrification and development, parts of the area are now being advertised as Upper Yorkville, a new annex to the predominantly white Upper East Side. While the poor have stayed behind, many of East Harlem’s successful sons and daughters have scattered to the suburbs.

“We have a whole intellectual and professional class that is invisible — people who came up though the neighborhood, with a working-class background, who really excelled,” said Angelo Falcon, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

“But it’s so dispersed, people don’t see it. They do not make up a real, physical community, but they have the identity.”

For those who paved the way for Judge Sotomayor, embracing that identity was the first step in charting their personal and professional paths out of hardship. Manuel del Valle, 60, an overachiever from the housing projects on Amsterdam Avenue, made the same leaps as the judge — to Princeton University and Yale Law School — but preceded her by five years.

Taking a cue from the black students at Princeton, he and the handful of other working-class Puerto Ricans from New York pressured university officials to offer a course on Puerto Rican history and to admit more minority students. They saw their goal as creating a class of lawyers, doctors, writers and activists who would use their expertise to lift up their old neighborhoods.

“Talk about arrogance,” said Mr. del Valle, who now teaches law in Puerto Rico. “We actually believed we would have a dynamic impact on all the institutions American society had to offer.”

Judge Sotomayor’s appointment, he said, is a vindication of those efforts.

“We were invisible,” he said. “She made us visible.”

In New York, many have welcomed the judge’s visibility during a summer when the most celebrated — and reviled — local politicians were two Puerto Rican state senators who brought the state government to a standstill by mounting an abortive coup against their fellow Democrats.

“She really came at a moment when there is a public reassessment of the value of identity politics through this brouhaha in the Senate,” said Arlene Davila, a professor of anthropology at New York University who has written extensively on Puerto Rican and Latino identity. “Here came this woman who reinvigorated us with the idea that a Latina can have a lot to contribute, not just to their own group, but to the entire American society.”

But it is among her own — in the South Bronx, East Harlem or the Los Sures neighborhood of Brooklyn — where Judge Sotomayor’s success resonates loudest, for the simple reason that many people understand the level of perseverance she needed to achieve it.

Orlando Plaza, 41, who took time off from his doctoral studies in history about five years ago to open Camaradas, a popular bar in East Harlem, sees her appeal as a sort of ethnic Rorschach test.

“Whether it’s growing up in the Bronx, going to Catholic school or being from a single-parent household, there are so many tropes in her own story that we feel pride that someone from a background like ours achieved something so enormous,” he said. “This is the real Jenny from the block.”

And it is on the block, among the men and women who left Puerto Rico decades ago so their children might one day become professionals, where her story is most sweetly savored. The faces of the men and women playing dominoes or shooting pool at the Betances Senior Center in the Bronx attest to decades of hard work.

Many of them came to New York as teenagers more out of despair than dreams. Lucy Medina, who arrived in the 1950s, worked as a keypunch operator and in other jobs as she single-handedly raised two children. Today, her son is a captain in the city’s Department of Correction and her daughter is a real estate executive.

Impressive as the judge’s accomplishments are, Ms. Medina is more impressed with the judge’s mother, Celina Sotomayor, who did what she had to do in order to raise two successful children in the projects.

“Her mother and I are very similar,” said Ms. Medina, 77. “I know what she went through. We sacrificed ourselves so our children would get an education and get ahead. A lot of women here have done that. We stayed on top of our children and made sure they didn’t get sidetracked.”

Sotomayor Faces Big Workload of Complex Cases

By ADAM LIPTAK

Now comes the hard part.

With the Senate’s approval of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court on Thursday, the new justice will soon take on one of the most demanding jobs in the land.

Just over a month from now, Justice Sotomayor will hear her first case, one that may transform how elections are financed, at a special summer session of the court. A few weeks later, she will join her eight new colleagues to decide which of the hundreds of appeals that have piled up over the summer the court should hear.

The volume and difficulty of the work, and the task of fitting into a storied institution populated by strong and idiosyncratic personalities, has unnerved even judges with distinguished records on lower courts, fancy credentials and ample self-confidence.

“I was frightened to death for the first three years,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who joined the court in 1994, said in a 2006 interview. Justice David H. Souter once described coming to the court in 1990 as like “walking through a tidal wave.”

The new justice’s presence will unsettle and reshuffle the court, sometimes literally. When she takes the seat reserved for the junior justice — the one on the spectators’ far right side — four other justices will move to new places on the bench. When there is a knock at the door during the justices’ private conferences, it will be Justice Sotomayor’s job to answer it.

In addition to the blockbuster election-law case, the new term is frontloaded with important First Amendment, business, criminal and patent cases. Justice Sotomayor’s early votes and opinions, along with alliances she forges, will provide answers to at least some of the questions she avoided in confirmation hearings.

But Supreme Court specialists said they do not expect her to take a fundamentally different approach from Justice Souter, whom she is succeeding, in most kinds of cases. They also cautioned that a justice’s first few years are often a poor indicator of a long-term philosophy.

“Few justices write broadly or stake out new terrain in their first terms,” said Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University who served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall.

“The Supreme Court is an intimate group of equals who will live together for years,” Professor Pildes added. “Most newcomers tread gently as they come to terms with the dynamics of the group and a daunting array of new issues, including questions lower court judges never face, such as how bound to be by prior Supreme Court decisions. The cases are harder, the ramifications of decisions far more consequential.”

For Justice Sotomayor, the new job will start with hearing the election-law case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. It concerns whether the government may limit the showing of a negative documentary about Hillary Rodham Clinton under the campaign finance laws, and it attracted only limited attention when it was first argued in March.

In an unusual move in June, though, the court set the case down for re-argument on Sept. 9, asking the parties to address the question of whether it should overrule a foundational decision about the regulation of corporate speech and part of a decision upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, said Citizens United is “one of the most important First Amendment cases in years.”

“It has,” Mr. Chemerinsky added, “the potential for dramatically changing all federal, state and local elections if the court holds that corporations have a First Amendment right to contribute money to candidates.”

The docket is also studded with business cases, and the decisions in them will provide hints about how the court will treat disputes arising from economic legislation pushed through Congress by the Obama administration.

“The Supreme Court,” said Joseph A. Grundfest, a law professor at Stanford, “will likely issue important decisions defining the permissible level of punitive damages, the validity of business method patents, whether and when parallel conduct among competitors violates the antitrust laws, and statutes of limitations in securities fraud action. But who the heck knows how Justice Sotomayor will vote in any of these cases?”

A former prosecutor, district and appellate court judge, she has a more fully developed record on criminal issues. Her views are in some ways more conservative than those of Justice Souter, meaning that this is an area where her vote may make a difference.

“I would have expected her to have voted against subjecting scientific experts to cross-examination,” said Craig M. Bradley, a law professor at Indiana University, referring to a 5-to-4 decision from the court in June. The decision, with Justice Souter in the majority, ruled that crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for creating them give testimony and subject themselves to cross-examination.

The court has agreed to hear a follow-up case, and the new justice will have to consider whether to narrow the scope of the decision from June, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.

A pair of cases concerning whether the Constitution allows juvenile offenders to be sentenced to life without parole for crimes in which no one was killed will also illuminate Justice Sotomayor’s views on harsh punishments. They may also answer a question not fully resolved at her confirmation hearings, that of whether she will look to the decision of foreign courts in considering the issue, as the court did in barring the execution of juvenile offenders in 2005.

The lower courts in the two new cases, both from Florida, had no difficulty ruling against the inmates who brought them. The courts said they were bound by Supreme Court precedent. But the Supreme Court itself is free to alter or reinterpret its precedent.

Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who served for more than 30 years and who wielded his charm and intellect to forge sometimes unlikely liberal majorities, said there was no way to get ready for such a task.

“I say categorically that no prior experience, including prior judicial experience, prepares one for the work of the Supreme Court,” Justice Brennan wrote in 1973. “The initial confrontation on the United States Supreme Court with the astounding differences in function and character of role, and the necessity for learning entirely new criteria for decisions, can be a traumatic experience for the neophyte.”

Senate Approves Sotomayor to Supreme Court

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, concluding a 10-week battle with a resounding victory for the White House.

The largely party-line vote, 68 to 31, brought Judge Sotomayor, 55, to the threshold of one of the United States’ most prestigious institutions, completing an extraordinary narrative arc that began in a Bronx housing project where the Puerto Rican girl was raised by her widowed mother.

In brief remarks at the White House, President Obama hailed her confirmation as “breaking yet another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union.”

“With this historic vote,” he said, “the Senate has affirmed that Judge Sotomayor has the intellect, the temperament, the history, the integrity and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation’s highest court.”

A White House spokesman said the judge watched the vote on television in her chambers in New York City, and she released no statement. But when Judge Sotomayor returned to her West Village home Thursday night, she beamed and waved at neighbors who lined the sidewalks to clap and shout encouragement.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is expected to swear the new justice in at a private ceremony at the Supreme Court on Saturday morning, a court spokeswoman said.

Leaders of conservative groups had tried to delay the confirmation vote, but Democrats pushed it through to ensure that Judge Sotomayor would be installed by September, when the court takes up a campaign-finance case left over from its last term. She is not expected to alter the balance of the court on most issues, as her views appear to be similar to those of David H. Souter, the retired justice she is succeeding.

Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation was never in much doubt, given Democrats’ numerical advantage in the Senate. But the final vote showed a partisan divide. No Democrat voted against her, while all but 9 of the chamber’s 40 Republicans did so. She will become the first justice nominated by a Democratic president to join the court since 1994.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is ailing and did not vote. But the rest of the Senate filled the chamber beneath a packed gallery, solemnly rising one by one to cast a vote in the hushed room. Senator Robert C. Byrd, the 91-year-old Democrat of West Virginia who has also been ill, made a rare appearance in a wheelchair, raising his hand and murmuring his assent with a smile when a clerk called his name.

During three days of debate on the Senate floor, Republicans labeled Judge Sotomayor a judicial activist, criticizing several of her speeches about foreign law and judicial diversity — including a now-famous line lauding a “wise Latina” judge — as well as her votes in cases involving Second Amendment rights, property rights and a racial discrimination claim brought by white firefighters in New Haven.

“Judge Sotomayor is certainly a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background,” the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said this week. “But a judge must be able to check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice evenhandedly, as the judicial oath requires. This is the most fundamental test. It is a test that Judge Sotomayor does not pass.”

Democrats portrayed Judge Sotomayor as a qualified judge whose biography — rising from humble beginnings to excel at two Ivy League universities, serve stints as a prosecutor and corporate lawyer, and then 17 years as a district and appeals court judge — is a classic American success story. Her judicial record, they said, is moderate and mainstream.

“Judge Sotomayor’s career and judicial record demonstrates that she has always followed the rule of law,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday. “Attempts at distorting that record by suggesting that her ethnicity or heritage will be the driving force in her decisions as a justice of the Supreme Court are demeaning to women and all communities of color.”

Many political strategists warned Republicans that opposing the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court would jeopardize the party in future elections, and some Democrats sought to portray Republican opposition as an insult to Hispanics.

In July, the National Rifle Association, which historically has stayed out of judicial nomination fights, came out against Justice Sotomayor and said it would include senators’ confirmation vote in its legislative scorecard on gun-rights issues for the 2010 election, a pointed threat to Democrats from conservative-leaning states.

But both efforts to appeal to interest-group politics largely faltered.

The vote was “a triumph of party unity over some of the interest-group politics that you would have expected to play a bigger role,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice.

Many Republicans took pains to emphasize that their vote against Judge Sotomayor did not mean they were anti-Hispanic.

Before announcing his opposition to her nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona, last year’s Republican presidential nominee, first described her as an “immensely qualified candidate” with an “inspiring and compelling” life story. And he dwelled on his support for Miguel Estrada, an appeals-court nominee of President George W. Bush whom Democrats blocked from a vote even though “millions of Latinos would have taken great pride in his confirmation.”

Many Republicans echoed Mr. McCain’s approach, and some conservatives noted that Hispanics are ideologically diverse. But for some Hispanic voters, the symbolism of the first Hispanic joining the Supreme Court — and the memory of who opposed her — could be all that lingers, said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, an Hispanic advocacy group.

“This is a singularly definitive historic moment,” Ms. Murguía said. “So it is a vote, I think, that will matter to the Latino community and will be remembered by the Latino community.”

The vote could also have lingering consequences for Democratic senators from conservative-leaning states who confirmed Judge Sotomayor’s nomination despite the N.R.A.’s opposition.

Manuel A. Miranda, a conservative judicial issues advocate, said he believed that the threat of lower ratings by the N.R.A. had an impact by prompting more Republicans to vote against Judge Sotomayor.

Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to Mr. Bush who had warned Republicans to be civil, disagreed. The Supreme Court confirmation process has simply become increasingly polarized along party lines, Mr. Dowd said.

“My view is that gun rights had nothing to do with it,” Mr. Dowd said. “Supreme Court nominations have become dodgeball games, with Democrats lining up on one side and Republicans lining up on our side.”

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting from New York.

Turkey and Russia Conclude Energy Deals

By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — Russia and Turkey concluded energy agreements on Thursday that will support Turkey’s drive to become a regional hub for fuel transshipments while helping Moscow maintain its monopoly on natural gas shipments from Asia to Europe.

Turkey granted the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom use of its territorial waters in the Black Sea, under which the company wants to route its so-called South Stream pipeline to gas markets in Eastern and Southern Europe.

In return, a Russian oil pipeline operator agreed to join a consortium to build a pipeline across the Anatolian Peninsula, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Gazprom affirmed a commitment to expand an existing Black Sea gas pipeline for possible transshipment across Turkey to Cyprus or Israel.

Energy companies in both countries agreed to a joint venture to build conventional electric power plants, and the Interfax news agency in Russia reported that Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin offered to reopen talks on Russian assistance to Turkey in building nuclear power reactors.

The agreements were signed in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in meetings between Mr. Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has joined Mr. Putin on several energy projects, attended the ceremony. The Italian company Eni broke ground on the trans-Anatolian oil pipeline this year.

While the offer of specific pipeline deals and nuclear cooperation represented a new tactic by Mr. Putin, the wider struggle for dominance of the Eurasian pipelines is a long-running chess match in which he has often excelled.

As he has in the past, Mr. Putin traveled to Turkey with his basket of tempting strategic and economic benefits immediately after a similar mission by his opponents. A month ago, European governments signed an agreement in Turkey to support the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline, which would compete directly with the South Stream project.

By skirting Russian territory, the Nabucco pipeline would undercut Moscow’s monopoly on European natural gas shipments and the pricing power and political clout that come with it. That may explain why Nabucco, which cannot go forward without Turkey’s support, has encountered a variety of obstacles thrown up by the Russian government, including efforts to deny it vital gas supplies in the East and a customer base in the West.

Turkey and other countries in the path of Nabucco have been eager players in this geopolitical drama, entertaining offers from both sides. Turkish authorities have even tried, without much success, to leverage the pipeline negotiations to further Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, while keeping options with Russia open, too.

“These countries are more than happy to sign agreements with both parties,” Ana Jelenkovic, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in a telephone interview from London. “There’s no political benefit to shutting out or ceasing energy relations with Russia.”

Under the deal Mr. Putin obtained Thursday, Gazprom will be allowed to proceed with seismic and environmental tests in Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, necessary preliminary steps for laying the South Stream pipe, Prime Minister Erdogan said at a news conference.

After the meeting, Mr. Putin said, “We agreed on every issue.”

The trans-Anatolian oil pipeline also marginally improves Russia’s position in the region. The pipeline is one of two so-called Bosporus bypass systems circumventing the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, which are operating at capacity in tanker traffic.

The preferred Western route is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which allows companies to ship Caspian Basin crude oil to the West without crossing Russian territory; the pipeline instead crosses the former Soviet republic of Georgia and avoids the crowded straits by cutting across Turkey to the Mediterranean.

Russia prefers northbound pipelines out of the Caspian region that terminate at tanker terminals on the Black Sea. The success of this plan depends, in turn, on creating additional capacity in the Bosporus bypass routes. Russia is backing two such pipelines.

Mr. Putin’s offer to move ahead with a Russian-built nuclear power plant in Turkey suggests a sweetening of the overall Russian offer on energy deals with Turkey, while both Western and Russian proposals are on the table.

The nuclear aspect of the deal drew protests. About a dozen Greenpeace protesters were surrounded by at least 200 armored police officers in central Ankara on Thursday.

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow.

Migrants to China’s West Bask in Prosperity

By ANDREW JACOBS

SHIHEZI, China — They marched through the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and countless small towns propelled by patriotic cheers and thumping drums. It was 1956, and Mao Zedong was calling on China’s youth to “open up the west,” the vast borderland known as Xinjiang that for centuries had defied subjugation.

After a monthlong journey by train and open-air truck, thousands arrived at this Gobi Desert army outpost to find that the factory jobs, hot baths and telephones in every house were nothing but empty promises to lure them to a faraway land.

“We lived in holes in the ground, and all we did night and day was hard labor,” recalled Han Zuxue, a sun-creased 72-year-old who was a teenager when he left his home in eastern Henan Province. “At first we cried every day but over time we forgot our sadness.”

More than five decades of toil later, men and women like Mr. Han have helped transform Shihezi into a tree-shaded, bustling oasis whose canned tomatoes, fiery grain alcohol and enormous cotton yields are famous throughout China.

This city of 650,000 is a showcase of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a uniquely Chinese conglomerate of farms and factories that were created by decommissioned Red Army soldiers at the end of the civil war.

“Put your weapons aside and pick up the tools of construction,” one popular slogan went. “Develop Xinjiang, defend the nation’s borders and protect social stability.”

With a total population of 2.6 million, 95 percent of it ethnic Han Chinese, Shihezi and a string of other settlements created by the military are stable strongholds in a region whose majority non-Han populace has often been unhappy under Beijing’s rule. Last month, that discontent showed itself during vicious ethnic rioting that claimed 197 lives in Urumqi, the regional capital, which is a two-hour drive away.

The government says that most of the dead were Han Chinese bludgeoned by mobs of Uighurs, Muslims of Turkish ancestry whose presence in Xinjiang has been steadily diluted by migration from China’s densely populated east.

“Ever since we arrived they’ve resented us and had no appreciation for how we’ve improved this place,” said He Zhenjie, 76, who has spent his adult life leveling sand dunes, planting trees and digging irrigation ditches. “But we’re here to stay. The Uighurs will never wrest Xinjiang away.”

Even if many Uighurs view the settlers as nothing more than Chinese colonists, many Chinese consider the bingtuan, meaning soldier corps, a major success. In one fell swoop Mao deployed 200,000 idle soldiers to help develop and occupy a resource-rich, politically strategic region bordering India, Mongolia and the Soviet Union, a onetime ally turned menace.

Shihezi and other bingtuan settlements quickly became self-sufficient, a relief to a government lacking resources, and its “reclamation warriors” worked without pay those first few years, steadily turning thousands of acres of inhospitable scrubland into some of the country’s most fertile terrain.

With an annual output of goods and services of $7 billion, the settlements run by the bingtuan include five cities, 180 farming communities and 1,000 companies. They also report directly to Beijing and run their own courts, colleges and newspapers.

“During peaceful times, they are a force for development, but if anything urgent happens, they will step out and maintain social stability and combat the separatists,” said Li Sheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a former bingtuan member who writes about the region’s history.

In those early years, the ranks of the bingtuan were fortified by petty criminals, former prisoners of war, prostitutes and intellectuals, all sent west for “re-education.” During the mid-1950s, 40,000 young women were lured to Xinjiang with promises of the good life: they arrived to discover their main purpose was to relieve the loneliness of the male pioneers and cement the region’s Han presence through their progeny.

Demographics have always been a tactical element of the campaign to pacify the region. In 1949, when the Communists declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, there were just 300,000 Han Chinese in Xinjiang. Today, the number of Han has grown to 7.5 million, just over 40 percent of the region’s population. The percentage of Uighurs has fallen to 45 percent, or about 8.3 million.

Their grievances have multiplied even as Xinjiang has grown more prosperous, thanks in part to its huge reserves of natural gas, oil and minerals. Many Uighurs complain about the repression of their Islamic faith, official policies that marginalize their language and a lack of job opportunities, especially at government bureaus and inside the bingtuan.

During a recent visit to Shihezi, armed paramilitary policemen stopped every car and bus entering the city. But only Uighurs were made to step out of vehicles for identification checks and searches.

Neatly laid out on a grid, its sidewalks graced by apple trees and elms, the city is populated by the sturdy and defiantly proud who think of Xinjiang as China’s version of Manifest Destiny, the doctrine undergirding the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century. But just beneath the self-satisfaction runs a deep vein of bitterness, especially among those who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s.

“I thought I was going to be a nurse, but I ended up sweeping the streets and cleaning toilets,” said Yue Caiying, who moved here in 1963, and, like many of those with an education, was forced to set aside personal ambition.

Lu Yiping, an author who spent five years interviewing women trucked into Xinjiang from Hunan Province, tells of girls lured with promises of Russian-language classes and textile-mill jobs. In an interview published online, he told the story of arriving women greeted by Wang Zhen, the famously hard-line general who helped tame the region. “Comrades, you must prepare to bury your bones in Xinjiang,” he quoted Mr. Wang as telling the women.

Still, for many early settlers, Xinjiang offered an escape from the deprivation that stalked many rural areas between 1959 and 1962, when Mao’s disastrous attempt to start up China’s industrialization led to famine that killed millions.

Early settlers like Ma Xianwu, who arrived here in 1951 and helped dig the first thatch-covered pits that served as shelter, offer a typical mix of conflicted emotions. He expressed wonder at the city he had helped create, but also sorrow over the hardship he and others had endured.

“People would lose ears and toes to frostbite,” said Mr. Ma, who is 94 and nearly toothless.

But any sense of bitterness has faded. “We were serving the motherland,” he said, waving off the adulation of a visitor. “The glory belongs to the party. I’m just one drop of water in the ocean.”

White House Struggles to Gauge Afghan Success

By DAVID E. SANGER, ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

This article is by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker.

WASHINGTON — As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan buildup, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won.

Those “metrics” of success, demanded by Congress and eagerly awaited by the military, are seen as crucial if the president is to convince Capitol Hill and the country that his revamped strategy is working. Without concrete signs of progress, Mr. Obama may lack the political stock — especially among Democrats and his liberal base — to make the case for continuing the military effort or enlarging the American presence.

That problem will become particularly acute if American commanders in Afghanistan seek even more troops for a mission that many of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters say remains ill defined and open-ended.

Senior administration officials said that the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, approved a classified policy document on July 17 setting out nine broad objectives for metrics to guide the administration’s policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Another month or two is still needed to flesh out the details, according to officials engaged in the work.

General Jones and other top National Security Council aides, including Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, gave an update to top Congressional leaders over recent days.

But as the Bush administration learned the hard way in Iraq, poorly devised measurements can become misleading indicators — and can create a false sense of progress.

That is especially difficult in a war like the one in Afghanistan, in which eliminating corruption, promoting a working democracy and providing effective aid are as critical as scoring military success against insurgents and terrorists.

For instance, some of the measures now being devised by the Obama administration track the size, strength and self-reliance of the Afghan National Army, which the United States has been struggling to train for seven years. They include the number of operations in which Afghan soldiers are in the lead, or the number of Afghan soldiers who have received basic instruction.

White House officials say they are taking the time to get the measurements right.

In some cases, old measurements are being thrown out. Commanders in Afghanistan say they no longer pay much attention to how many enemy fighters are killed in action. Instead, they are trying to count instances in which local citizens cooperate with Afghan and allied forces.

And in drafting a metric important to senior members of Congress, the administration is considering conducting an opinion poll to determine Afghan public perception of official corruption at national, provincial and district levels. This would give insight into how Afghan citizens view police performance at the neighborhood level all the way up to the quality of national political appointments.

But as the architects of similar metrics in Iraq learned, even the best-constructed measures can miss the larger truth.

In 2005 and 2006, for example, the White House was often citing the “rat rate” in Iraq, a measure of good tips from Iraqis about the location of insurgents or the planting of roadside bombs.

“We thought this was a good measure of how well the public was turning against” Al Qaeda and other insurgents, said Peter D. Feaver, a professor at Duke University who served in the National Security Council at the time. “What we discovered was that the rat rate numbers steadily improved over the course of 2006 — and the violence was rising.”

That experience helps to explain why the Obama administration has taken so much time. But some frustrated lawmakers said the delay might prove costly.

“We have been in Afghanistan now for more than seven and a half years,” said Representative Ike Skelton, a Democrat of Missouri and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “These metrics are required to help make the case for the American people that actual progress is being made, or if we need to change the course to another direction. I think that time is not on our side.”

When President Obama unveiled his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in March, he emphasized the importance of these measures.

“We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.”

All that now seems unlikely to be completed before his field commanders finish their proposals for carrying out their marching orders. Their recommendations were originally due at the Pentagon within the next two weeks, but Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued expanded instructions for the assessment to the commanders last weekend and gave them until September to complete their report.

Skeptical lawmakers have implored Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to produce what Mr. Obama promised, and they have made specific recommendations of their own.

“The metrics are critically important to keep everyone’s feet to the fire on this and for the public to know how we’re doing and have some ways to measure it and not have just rhetoric,” said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We all share the president’s goal of succeeding in Afghanistan,” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “The challenge here is how we are going to define success in the medium term, given the difficult security environment we face.”

Senior White House officials say their objectives are grouped in three main categories: counterterrorism, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The counterinsurgency objectives are highly classified and cover a “full range” of efforts to help Pakistan combat the militant threat in its tribal areas.

Others address Pakistan’s ability to maintain and strengthen democratically elected civilian government; the country’s ability to confront and defeat an internal insurgent threat; and international support for Pakistan, including international donors, the United Nations and the World Bank.

In Afghanistan, they would assess suppression of the insurgency; building and strengthening Afghan security forces; shoring up support for the government and reviving the economy; and garnering support from NATO, the European Union, the United Nations and international donors.

Baitullah Mehsud Dead, Aide Confirms

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, has been killed in a US missile strike, a Taliban commander and aide to Mehsud said Friday.

‘I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan,’ Kafayatullah told The Associated Press by telephone. He would not give any further details.

Earlier on Friday, three Pakistani intelligence officials said the militant commander had been killed in the missile strike and his body had been buried.

But one of the three said no intelligence agent had actually seen Baitullah Mehsud's body.

Intelligence sources have confirmed Baitullah’s death, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad, adding that authorities would travel to the site of the strike to verify his death.

‘To be 100 per cent sure, we are going for ground verification,’ Qureshi said. ‘And once the ground verification re-confirms, which I think is almost confirmed, then we'll be 100 per cent sure.’

A senior US intelligence official had earlier said there were strong indications that Mehsud was among those killed in Wednesday's missile attack, but he did not elaborate.

If confirmed, Mehsud's demise would be a major boost to Pakistani and US efforts to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Mehsud has al-Qaeda connections and has been suspected in the killing of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan viewed him as its top internal threat and has been preparing an offensive against him. For years, though, the US considered Mehsud a lesser threat to its interests than some of the other Pakistani Taliban, their Afghan counterparts and al-Qaeda, because most of his attacks were focused inside Pakistan, not against US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. That view appeared to change in recent months as Mehsud's power grew and concerns mounted that increasing violence in Pakistan could destabilise the country and threaten the entire region. But while Mehsud's death would be a big blow to the Taliban in Pakistan, he has deputies who could take his place. Whether a new leader could wreak as much havoc as Mehsud depends largely on how much pressure the Pakistani military continues to put on the network, especially in the tribal area of South Waziristan. The Pakistani intelligence officials said Mehsud was killed in Wednesday's missile strike on his father-in-law's home and that his body was buried in the village of Nardusai in South Waziristan, near the site of the strike. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. One official said he had seen a classified intelligence report stating Mehsud was dead and buried, but that agents had not seen the body since the area is under Taliban control. Interior Minister Rehman Malik had earlier told reporters outside Parliament he could confirm the death of Mehsud's wife but not of the Taliban leader himself, although information pointed in that direction. ‘Yes, (a) lot of information is pouring in from that area that he's dead, but I'm unable to confirm unless I have solid evidence,’ Malik had said. A security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said ‘about 70 per cent’ of the information pointed to Mehsud's being dead. Another senior Pakistani intelligence official said phone and other communications intercepts — he would not be more specific — had led authorities to suspect Mehsud was dead, but he also stressed there was no definitive evidence yet. An American counterterrorism official said the US government was also looking into the reports. The official indicated the United States did not yet have physical evidence — remains — that would prove who died. But he said there are other ways of determining who was killed in the strike. He declined to describe them. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on the matter publicly. A local tribesman, who also spoke on condition his name not be used, said Mehsud had been at his father-in-law's house being treated for kidney pain, and had been put on a drip by a doctor, when the missile struck. The tribesman claimed he attended the Taliban chief's funeral. Last year, a doctor for Mehsud announced the militant leader had died of kidney failure, but the reports turned out to be false. In Afghanistan, Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said Mehsud's fighters would cross the border into eastern Afghanistan occasionally to help out one of most ruthless Afghan insurgent leaders Siraj Haqqani. ‘He was an international terrorist that affected India, Pakistan and Afghanistan,’ Azimi said without confirming Mehsud was dead. In March, the State Department authorised a reward of up to $5 million for the militant chief. Increasingly, American missiles fired by unmanned drones have focused on Mehsud-related targets. Pakistan publicly opposes the strikes, saying they anger local tribes and make it harder for the army to operate. Still, many analysts suspect the two countries have a secret deal allowing them. Malik, the interior minister, said Pakistan's military was determined to finish off Pakistan's Taliban. ‘It is a targeted law enforcement action against Baitullah Mehsud's group and it will continue till Baitullah Mehsud's group is eliminated forever,’ he said. Pakistan's record on putting pressure on the Taliban network is spotty. It has used both military action and truces to try to contain Mehsud over the years, but neither tactic seemed to work, despite billions in US aid aimed at helping the Pakistanis tame the tribal areas. Mehsud was not that prominent a militant when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, according to Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for the tribal regions. In fact, Mehsud has struggled against such rivals as Abdullah Mehsud, an Afghan war veteran who had spent time in Guantanamo Bay. But a February 2005 peace deal with Mehsud appeared to give him room to consolidate and boost his troop strength. Within months of that accord, dozens of pro-government tribal elders in the region were gunned down on his command. In December 2007, Mehsud became the head of a new coalition called the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistan's Taliban movement. Under his guidance, the group killed hundreds of Pakistanis in suicide and other attacks. Analysts say the reason for Mehsud's rise in the militant ranks is his alliances with al-Qaeda and other violent groups. US intelligence has said al-Qaeda has set up its operational headquarters in Mehsud's South Waziristan stronghold and neighbouring North Waziristan. Mehsud has no record of attacking targets in the west, although he has threatened to attack Washington. However, he is suspected of being behind a 10-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January 2008 for plotting suicide attacks in Spain. Pakistan's former government and the CIA have named him as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of Benazir Bhutto. He has denied a role.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-intelligence-sources-have-confirmed-baitullah-death-fm-qureshi-qs-06

It's Jjia jjia, But Written in Hangeul

	A tribe in Indonesia has begun using Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, as their writing system to express their spoken aboriginal language, which is on the verge of extinction. It is the first time the alphabet has been officially adopted outside the Korean Peninsula. The 60,000 person tribe in the city of Baubau, located in Buton of Souteast Sulawesi, has been working to transcribe its native language "Jjia jjia" into Hangeul. The Baubau city counsel decided to adopt Hangeul as the official alphabet in July 2008. Work soon began and the textbooks were completed on July 16 this year. By July 21, elementary and high school students began learning their spoken language through the Hangeul writing system. Textbooks were completed with the help of the Hunminjeongeum Society of Korea that is leading the Hangeul globalization project. The next step includes setting up a Korean center and using Hangeul on their signposts across the city, as well as training Korean language teachers. Hangeul has been lauded around the world by linguists for its logic-based structure. The language is a combination of 52 phonetic symbols. "This is quite significant to see another race of people start using it. This will also greatly help our project that we believe will be a long-term one," Seoul National University linguistics professor and member of the Hunminjeongeum Society Lee Ho-young told The Korea Herald. The textbook comprises writing, speaking and reading sections and also explains the tribe`s history, language and culture. It also has a Korean fairy tale. The entire book is written in Hangeul. Due to a lack of writing system, the tribe has seen its language almost disappear. "This will be all the more meaningful in an anthropological sense as well if Hangeul contributes to resurrect the dissipating language and culture," Kim Joo-won, head of the Hunminjeongeum Society said. Hangeul was created in the mid-15th century when King Sejong the Great commissioned scholars to create a new language to differentiate Korea from China. Organized into syllabic blocks, each consists of two or more 24 Hangeul letters that is comprised of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. These blocks take on the shape of how each is pronounced, and can be arranged both horizontally and vertically. The Hunminjeongeum Society began its project to promulgate Hangeul abroad last year. "In the long run, the spread of Hangeul will also help enhance Korea`s economy as it will activate exchanges with societies that use the language," Kim Joo-won said. While past efforts to introduce Hangeul have been difficult, this time it was possible because of avid support by the local government, Seoul National University, said. The association targets regions without their own alphabet where the local government would not oppose the efforts. It also takes into consideration whether the country has had close contact with Korea, such as those that send their nationals to work in Korea (like Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and Vietnam). (angiely@heraldm.com)

Trafficking on Trial

Friday, 07 August 2009 15:03 Nathan Green

Photo by: Shaju John/UNDP

A victim of human trafficking breaks down during testimony on Thursday at the Court of Women in Bali, Indonesia.

Bali, Indonesia
WITH tears flowing down her face, a trafficking survivor told a court of international jurists how she was condemned to a life with HIV by handlers who repeatedly raped her for refusing to have sex with strangers in a Malaysian brothel.

"I haven't talked to anyone about having the disease at all, except for my doctor," she told the Southeast Asia Court of Women on HIV, Human Trafficking and Migration on Thursday. "Whenever we talk about it, all I can do is cry, but I want to share my story so that if others are facing similar situations, they will have an idea of what to do."

The Cambodian, who uses the pseudonym Wanta and spoke only on condition of anonymity, was barely a teenager when she was forced into prostitution, but officials say she is far from alone in her plight.

Though the exact number is not known, it is estimated that more than 250,000 women and children are trafficked in Asia each year - one-third of the global total.

Caitlin Wiesen, Regional HIV/Aids practice leader and programme coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme, said: "These numbers are staggering and involve forms of violence that are numbing."

Trafficking is not only a "hideous crime" and "gross violation of human rights", but also a major contributor to the spread of HIV, Wiesen warned. "Sexual exploitation is an integral part of human trafficking, and unprotected sex is the major vector for the transmission and spread of HIV."

Wanta appeared with 21 other survivors of trafficking and exploitation, including the woman pictured above, at an emotionally charged 37th sitting of the Court For Women in Bali, Indonesia, set up to explore the links between HIV and human trafficking.