Corrupt Democracy in India

By Barbara Crossette

August 7, 2009

For decades, American leaders and opinion makers have chosen to ignore the dark side of democratic India. Now new reports documenting the pervasive abuses committed by the Indian police are providing firsthand evidence not only of warrantless arrests, illegal detentions, torture and the deaths of thousands of citizens but also the complicity of parties and political leaders who have turned police and paramilitary forces in a number of states into bodyguard agencies and private armies.

The title of the latest report from Human Rights Watch, Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police, leaves no doubt about its conclusions. But Human Rights Watch, which has been the most diligent of American organizations in monitoring and reporting on India in recent decades, is not alone. Another report, on the state of police reform in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, is soon to be published by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, based in New Delhi. A former Indian police official who has seen it says it will make many of the same observations.

The United States State Department has also been cataloging Indian rights abuses. Its latest survey of India, a chapter in the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on February 25, 2009, summarized pages of evidence this way:

Major problems included extrajudicial killings of persons in custody, disappearances, and torture and rape by police and other security forces. Investigations into individual abuses and legal punishment for perpetrators occurred, but for the majority of abuses, the lack of accountability created an atmosphere of impunity. Poor prison conditions and lengthy detentions during both pretrial and trial proceedings remained significant problems. Officials used special antiterrorism legislation to justify the excessive use of force. Corruption existed at all levels of government and police.... Increasing attacks against religious minorities and the promulgation of antireligious conversion laws were concerns. Violence associated with caste-based discrimination occurred. Domestic violence, child marriage, dowry-related deaths, honor crimes, female infanticide and feticide remain serious problems. Trafficking in persons and exploitation of indentured, bonded and child labor were continuing problems.

The killing of Sikhs, a largely prosperous religious minority in India, has been exhaustively documented by Ensaaf (Justice), a US-based shoestring human rights group founded by Americans of Indian descent. Its findings have not been significantly challenged by leading judges and government investigators in India, who are nonetheless powerless to force an end to extralegal behavior. About as many innocent Sikhs were murdered in the week following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh bodyguards in 1984 as all the Chileans who were killed or disappeared in seventeen years of Augusto Pinochet's regime. The Sikh killings, and illegal cremations of bodies, without documentation or notification to families, continued into the 1990s.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative operates on the principle that "democratic nations need democratic policing." Ironically, the Congress Party, dominant for most of India's sixty-two years of independence and recently re-elected to power at the head of a coalition, would have the political clout necessary to see that multiple commissions and court rulings on police abuses were enforced. It has not done this; nor has the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, whose chief minister in Gujarat state has been widely reported to have been behind the massacre of up to 2,000 Muslims in 2002.

The Indian media have often been the most effective virtual enforcers of prescribed conduct, reporting ceaselessly on the kind of dubious police actions and too-quick findings of guilt that have created wide questioning and disbelief in many official investigations among the public.

"While India rightly touts itself as an emerging economic powerhouse that is also the world's largest democracy, its police forces--the most visible arm of the Indian state--are widely regarded within India as lawless, abusive and ineffective," Human Rights Watch concludes.

Human Rights Watch has studied in depth the weaknesses in police departments, especially in rural areas, where underpaid, overworked constables are kept on 24/7 call and often expected to do VIP escort duty as well as their regular jobs. Police stations are often without phones, electricity or vehicles. In a barracks in the holy city of Varanasi, four policemen had to share one bed, and there was no extra living space. It is a recipe for brutality and corruption, with lowly constables who have no chance of advancement taking out their frustration and lack of human rights training on people even lower in society than they, the ethnic and religious minorities and Dalits, or "untouchables."

Middle-class Indians, and certainly the rich, inoculate themselves against the pervasive disease of impunity by paying bribes to the police, as well as to other public service agencies. Perhaps that is why, despite the hard work of many Indian nongovernmental organizations, a truly national movement against both police brutality and police deprivation never seems to get traction. In the US, a strong Indian lobby made up of professionals and business people--working with profit-hungry American corporations--plays down or rejects reports of endemic abuses. Indian political leaders escape censure by their American counterparts with the excuse that Indian democracy is self-correcting.

When American reporters comb the annual State Department human rights reports, they are looking for the usual suspects: China, Cuba, Burma, Pakistan and lately Sri Lanka, which has lost its UN Human Rights Council seat under a barrage of criticism from human rights campaigners. A closer reading of the chapter on India, with its almost 1.2 billion people, soon to be the world's most populous nation, might be in order.

About Barbara Crossette

Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.

She is the author of So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/Vintage Destinations in 1996, and a collection of travel essays about colonial resort towns that are still attracting visitors more than a century after their creation, The Great Hill Stations of Asia, published by Westview Press in 1998 and in paperback by Basic Books in 1999. In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, India: Old Civilization in a New World, for the Foreign Policy Association in New York. She is also the author of India Facing the 21st Century, published by Indiana University Press in 1993.

Refugees From Russia-Georgia Conflict Might Never Go Home

By Sarah Marcus
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

TSEROVANI, Georgia -- Just off the highway between the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and the city of Gori, epicenter of last year's war with Russia, lies this settlement of single-story, boxlike houses stretching toward the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

As Georgia marked the anniversary of the war this weekend with ceremonies and speeches, the internal refugees living here continued their daily struggle with the fallout of the fighting -- gathering in clusters to wait for humanitarian aid, searching in vain for jobs and managing the bittersweet memories of their lives before the conflict.

"I never expected this would happen," said Marina Dzhokhadze, 50, sitting in her basic, sparsely furnished home and describing how she had been forced to leave the South Ossetian village of Kemerti a year ago. "I am afraid that it will happen all over again. I pray that God will preserve us from another war."

Dzhokhadze is one of an estimated 30,000 people, mostly ethnic Georgians, who have been unable to return to their homes in the breakaway region of South Ossetia and the nearby area of Akhalgori, which was under Georgian control before the war but is now occupied by Russian forces.

Like many others, Dzhokhadze and her family, though not wealthy, enjoyed a comfortable existence in South Ossetia as farmers on fertile land. Now they struggle to make ends meet.

In an address to the country Friday night, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili paid tribute to internal refugees like Dzhokhadze and vowed to reunite the nation not by war but by "peacefully strengthening our democratic institutions, by constantly developing our economy."

A neatly lined collection of bright green and whitewashed houses, Tserovani is the largest of 36 settlements established by the Georgian government. The authorities won praise last year for quickly building the settlements before the onset of winter.

But today, the limits of the settlements are obvious. Almost all are located far from jobs that might be found in urban areas, while the houses sit on small plots that are all but useless for commercial farming.

As difficult as life is for residents in Tserovani, they at least live in structures that don't leak and are equipped with indoor toilets and running water. In other settlements, the houses are damp and as many as eight families share a tap.

"The living conditions are really bad here," said Neli Peruashvili, 53, a Georgian woman who fled her bomb-damaged house in the Ossetian village of Eredvi and now lives in a nearby settlement named Shavshebi. "We have no money. The water in the taps is too dirty to drink so the men have to bring clean water from the next village by hand."

In a nation suffering the effects both of war and the global financial crisis, most displaced by the fighting survive on humanitarian aid and monthly government subsidies of $16 per person because there are few jobs available. They joined a previous wave of more than 200,000 internal refugees from South Ossetia and the Black Sea region of Abkhazia who fled during the separatist wars fought in the 1990s after Georgia gained independence from the Soviet Union.

The Georgians who fled South Ossetia are coming to grips with the reality that they may never be able to return to homes and farmlands that they struggled for years to accumulate. The ethnic Ossetians, many of whom are married to Georgians, wonder when they will be able to see the relatives they left behind.

The South Ossetian authorities have made clear that Georgians who left are not welcome to return. But many of the estimated 6,800 people who fled homes in the Akhalgori region have been allowed to go back. Most, however, have been too frightened to stay for long.

"There is little security there. There are tanks in the streets, and if you speak Georgian, the Ossetians and Russians there dislike you," said Irma Basilashvili, 24, who fled the region in the days after the war as Ossetian militias looted homes and rumors of rape and other violence against Georgians circulated.

Though Russia signed a cease-fire pledging to withdraw troops to prewar positions and strengths, it has boosted its military presence in South Ossetia and refused to surrender Akhalgori. Russia says it is no longer bound by those promises because it has recognized South Ossetia as an independent state and Akhalgori as part of South Ossetia.

Addressing troops at a base not far from the Georgian border, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday that Moscow would never withdraw its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"Some of our partners have an illusion that it's a temporary thing, some kind of maneuvering," he said. "Such decisions are made once and for all, and there is no way back."

Over the past week, Georgia and South Ossetia have traded accusations of mortar fire and shootings. Since the end of the war, nine civilians and 11 police officers have been killed in Georgian border areas, according to the Georgian government.

Some residents said they felt caught in a never-ending cycle of conflict.

Khatuna Kasradze, 39, first fled Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, for the village of Ergneti during fighting between Ossetian and Georgian forces in the early 1990s. But then her new home was burned down by Ossetian militia in last year's war.

"Just as life was starting to improve a little bit, everything began again," she said, sitting in a small cottage she built with United Nations and European Union aid next to the ruined shell of her former house. "I don't think the situation will ever normalize."

U.S. Officials See Karzai Rival Ghani as Potential Chief Executive

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

KABUL, Aug. 10 -- Senior American officials are expressing renewed interest in a post-election plan for Afghanistan that would establish a chief executive to serve beneath President Hamid Karzai if he wins a second term next week, Afghan officials said Monday.

The latest U.S. overtures have focused on Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister who is challenging Karzai for the presidency. A campaign aide to Ghani said Monday that both Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and regional envoy Richard C. Holbrooke had made recent visits to explore the idea, a sign that the United States might be interested in an Afghan government with a more technocratic bent.

American officials have grown increasingly disenchanted with Karzai's leadership over the past five years, amid rising Taliban violence, rampant corruption and an ineffective bureaucracy. The idea of a chief executive for Afghanistan has circulated before in recent months, and speculation at one point arose that former U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan American, was in the running.

Ghani, a former finance minister with a doctorate from Columbia University, has worked for the World Bank and has a reputation as a competent technocrat. His work on Afghanistan's currency and budget during his time as a finance minister has drawn positive reviews, although colleagues have sometimes found him abrasive. As one of the main challengers to Karzai, who is the clear front-runner, Ghani has no plans to drop out of the race before the Aug. 20 election. He has been actively campaigning for president and plans to visit six provinces in the next eight days.

"I've been approached repeatedly; the offer is on the table. I have not accepted it," Ghani told reporters over the weekend, according to Reuters. He has not ruled out a position in the government if he loses.

Ongoing Negotiations

A spokesman for Karzai, Wahid Omar, would not confirm the specific offer from Karzai, but said there have been ongoing negotiations between the two campaigns. "Karzai does believe it is a good idea that someone like Ghani joins the team, and as a result the future government would be a stronger government," he said.

An Afghan official familiar with the negotiations said that Ghani expressed willingness to serve in a Karzai government, but that he wanted power to implement his own programs. The official, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, said negotiations on the issue were ongoing.

In a poll released Monday, Karzai led with 45 percent of the vote among decided voters, compared with 25 percent for Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. The U.S.-government-funded poll by Glevum Associates, conducted July 8-19, had Ghani fourth, with 4 percent of the vote.

During the campaign, Karzai has courted support from warlords, such as his running mate, Marshal Mohammed Fahim, the powerful Tajik leader, and Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, an Uzbek commander accused of slaughtering Taliban prisoners in 2001. American officials have said they are concerned that important jobs after the election may be given away in patronage without a focus on competence.

An Antidote to Karzai?

Some see Ghani as a modern managerial antidote to Karzai, who is known more as a dealmaker among rival factions.

"Karzai doesn't think in terms of growth in GDP in Afghanistan, unemployment, more services or security," said Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center for Research & Policy Studies. "He's a consensus builder. As long as he could win a consensus of important power brokers, he thinks he's a very successful man."

The jockeying came amid further violence in Afghanistan, which has intensified ahead of the elections.

Taliban fighters using assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the governor's office and police headquarters in Logar province, killing at least six people, according to Afghan officials.

The attack set off hours of urban combat in the provincial capital of Pul-e-Alam, about 40 miles south of Kabul.

About half a dozen Taliban fighters staged their attack from a building adjacent to the governor's compound, firing automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades beginning about noon. A car bomb also exploded during the fighting, said Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a U.S. military spokeswoman, while others described evidence of a suicide bombing. Din Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for Logar's governor, said two policemen died along with four Taliban members.

"It was very serious fighting. We could hear a lot of machine-gun fire," said Abdul Hakim Suliamankhel, head of the provincial council in Logar. "The people are really scared now."

The Afghan National Police led the counterattack against the Taliban, eventually surrounding and entering the building, which they found rigged with explosives, according to a U.S. military statement. The police killed three Taliban fighters inside the building, Darwish said.

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Potent Roadside Bombs Slow Marines' Offensive in Afghanistan

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

MIANPOSHTEH, Afghanistan -- In this harsh and unforgiving part of southern Afghanistan, where thousands of U.S. Marines are battling the Taliban this summer, the growing prevalence of roadside bombs means that even a small mishap can have deadly consequences.

Made primarily of large quantities of homemade explosives, the bombs have killed at least a third of the 16 Marines who have died in Helmand since they launched their offensive in early July. The ever-present threat has made the U.S. push in the southern Helmand River valley tougher than U.S. commanders initially anticipated; Marines have seized vital crossroads and population centers, only to discover that Taliban insurgents had filled in the dirt roads behind and around them with bombs.

The bombs have forced Marine commanders to put long stretches of road off-limits, requiring troops to walk instead of drive. Marines on foot patrol must keep a keen eye out for dug-up dirt and "ant trails" that could cover a wire.

All of that has made for delays in supplying the troops -- and, as one Marine company discovered in late July when its mission went badly off track, it has also required a diversion of manpower to the mundane but vital task of watching the roads, hoping to ambush anyone who attempts to plant a bomb.

"The explosion ripped the Humvee in half," whispered Lance Cpl. Jan Friis, 22, of Bethesda, whose best friend, Lance Cpl. Jeremy S. Lasher, was killed when a bomb blew to pieces the vehicle he was driving.

The attack that killed Lasher came on July 23, when a team from 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment had set out to recover a mine-resistant vehicle that had become stuck in a canal.

The Marines' Echo Company outpost is located in Mianposhteh, a cluster of villages deep in the Helmand River valley that is accessible only by two main roads. The roads are little more than dirt paths criss-crossed by a latticework of irrigation canals and ditches, too fragile to support the Marines' heavy armored vehicles, like the one that had become stuck.

Lasher, 27, of Oneida, N.Y., and three other Marines were returning from getting chains to tow the vehicle when the blast went off under their Humvee. Soon the word came over the radio: "Four urgent. Launch the birds."

When Lance Cpl. Kyle Castle arrived to help treat the casualties, the status had changed to "two urgent, two unknown." He asked Lance Cpl. Jeremy Dones where Lasher was, and Dones pointed to the other side of the canal, scattered with pieces of a flak vest and uniform. Castle, 24 of Everett, Wash., started to head across, but Dones just shook his head.

The gunner, Lance Cpl. Dominic Davila, had a shattered lower right leg. Castle and others had to hold Davila down to make sure the tourniquet that had been hastily applied was tight enough. Then, when lifting Davila onto the stretcher, Castle discovered another large hole in his left leg, and stuffed it with bandages to stop the bleeding. The treatment saved Davila's life, officers said later.

When Friis arrived to guard the area, Marines were searching for Lasher's body and loading Davila and two other wounded onto a helicopter. Lance Cpl. Trevor Paar had been blown from the Humvee; he suffered a severe head injury but survived. But vehicle commander Cpl. Nicholas G. Xiarhos, 21, of Yarmouth Port, Mass., died soon afterward.

'Be Aggressive'

A few hours later, at a larger Marine base 15 miles north, 2nd Lt. Brendan J. Murphy was preparing for another precarious run transporting supplies to Mianposhteh. The trip was urgent. Echo Company was almost out of packaged meals known as Meals Ready to Eat, and was rationing food. Fuel was low.

Now Murphy was given an even more dangerous assignment: recover the vehicles at the bomb site.

At 4 the next morning, Murphy, a young officer with a shaved head and a face worn from stress, briefed the Marines in his convoy on what to expect.

"They know we're coming into the area to do the recovery," he said, predicting an attack near the bomb site. "Be aggressive on the weapons systems."

Murphy's plan was to situate part of the convoy on desert high ground in a 360-degree defense, not unlike a wagon train circled on the frontier, while he led a team to recover the destroyed Humvee. As a final caution, he had the Marines repeat in unison how to respond when an unknown vehicle approached. First came a verbal order to halt, followed by warning shots. Finally, at a certain proximity, they were authorized, in their words, to "waste" the driver.

As a pale pink spread across the sky, the convoy rolled out the gates of Forward Operating Base Delhi in a cloud of dust to cover what should have been a 15-mile trip south to the scene of the bombing, near Mianposhteh. But the circuitous journey took more than 16 hours. Forced to detour because of soft sand, the convoy didn't arrive until 9 a.m. After circling the vehicles, Murphy left to carry out the recovery mission half a mile away, while the rest of the Marines waited in the desert as the heat rose to 115 degrees.

Among those on watch were Lance Cpl. Leo Robinson, 22, of Elyria, Ohio, and Lance Cpl. Michael Barton, 21, of Troy, Pa., both of whom had suffered from heatstroke in the initial days of fighting and were only now returning to their unit.

"I was in a machine-gun bunker. I felt numbness from head to toe, fell backwards, and my muscles seized up," Robinson said. After about three weeks of "light duty," he and Barton were deemed well enough to return to the front lines, but doctors warned that they would be more vulnerable to heatstroke in the future.

"It's killing me. It's too hot," Barton said as he sat in a seven-ton truck, staring out over the monotonous, disorienting expanse. At about 11:30 a.m., the call came to mount up and prepare to leave. Minutes later, a loud explosion rippled over the sand. Murphy's team, approaching the blast site, had been hit by a bomb.

Capt. David Snipes, commander of the battalion's weapons company, was inside the hulking mine-resistant vehicle when it struck the bomb. The impact was like "hitting a brick wall," Snipes recalled later. The vehicle reared up and crashed back down.

Making his way through choking dust to open the rear hatch, Snipes was amazed to see the vehicle's 50-caliber machine gun sitting in the sand. "The 50-cal somehow went from the mount, past [the gunner's] head, and landed behind us," said Snipes. Surprisingly, the gunner was not badly injured. Murphy and his crew soon began the painstaking work of loading the twisted skeleton of the Humvee onto a recovery vehicle, and hooking up the mine-resistant truck -- now useless and missing a front wheel -- to be towed.

Logistical Challenges

Standing by the wreckage the next morning, Murphy explained that while several vehicles have been destroyed this way, the logistical challenges mean that replacements are slowly arriving. Indeed, Castle said Lasher and the other Marines had had to ride in a Humvee because one of their team's mine-resistant vehicles had been disabled. "If they had been in an MRAP, they probably all would have survived," Castle said.

Even as losses from roadside bombs mount, Marine commanders know they can bypass main roads for only so long. It is a matter of time, they say, before insurgents target the desert routes and foot patrols. Ultimately, they know the solution lies in dismantling the networks of Taliban bombmakers, and that, in turn, will come only with help from a wary Afghan population.

For now, if units such as Echo Company want to travel even small stretches of road, they must commit to the manpower-intensive work of keeping watch 24 hours a day. As they scrutinized the moonlit road leading to the desert last week, Friis and the other Marines reflected with some bitterness over the loss of their friends, and questioned whether many Americans appreciate -- or even know of -- their daily grind in the windswept purgatory of Helmand.

"People need to know these guys were heroes. They were fighting so the people living in Potomac and Fairfax in their million-dollar houses don't have to," said Friis, a dark-haired, soft-spoken enlistee who is the dog handler for a bomb-sniffing black lab named Jenny.

Paar and Davila, who had a leg amputated, are recovering at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Xiarhos's wake was recently held in Massachusetts.

As for Lasher, hundreds of mourners lined the streets of Oneida when the motorcade returned his body Thursday, and later filled a church for his funeral on Saturday. "All he wanted in life was to be a good husband and a good father," Friis said of his buddy, who had a 1-year-old son born when Lasher was in Iraq. "He was the best person I've ever known."

Myanmar's Suu Kyi Is Detained 18 More Months

By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter

Pro-democracy dissident Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to spend 18 more months under house arrest after a Myanmar court found her guilty of violating the terms of her detention in May.

View Interactive

Take a look at major events in the life of famed dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.

Tuesday's verdict means Myanmar's military junta will be able to keep the 64-year-old Nobel laureate -- who has already spent 14 of the past 20 years as a prisoner -- out of sight until after it wraps up a controversial election planned for next year.

It also complicates decisions for foreign governments, including the U.S., that have been trying to bring about change in Myanmar for years and that until recently were weighing options to soften their approach toward the country's harsh military regime.

Condemnation of the verdict came swiftly, with some foreign leaders and dissidents calling for a new round of punitive measures, including steps by the United Nations Security Council to publicly sanction Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "strongly deplores" Myanmar's action and urged the ruling generals "to immediately and unconditionally release" Ms. Suu Kyi, the Associated Press quoted his office as saying. It also said he was "deeply disappointed by the verdict." The AP said the Security Council, at France's request, planned to meet Tuesday afternoon.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at a news conference in Congo, said of Ms. Suu Kyi: "She should not have been tried. She should not have been convicted. We continue to call for her release."

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Ms. Suu Kyi's trial has been condemned around the world.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Myanmar's leaders are "determined to act with total disregard" for international law, while the European Union promised to reinforce its sanctions against Myanmar.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, called the verdict "a reprehensible abuse of power." The U.S. Campaign for Burma, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, urged a global arms embargo against Myanmar and an investigation into crimes against humanity in the country.

The verdict "should really make it clear that it's game over. ... [The junta leaders] have no intention of bringing changes about in their country," said Jeremy Woodrum, a spokesman for the group.

A group of 14 Nobel laureates wrote to the U.N. Security Council, saying that body must hold Myanmar's leadership "accountable for its crimes" and investigate "the full extent of its brutality."

The Yangon court sentenced Ms. Suu Kyi to three years in prison for allowing an American well-wisher to visit her home in May without notifying state authorities. But in a move apparently intended to appease the country's many international critics, Senior General Than Shwe ordered the court to cut the sentence in half and allow her to serve it at home.

Gen. Than Shwe said in a statement that he made the decision to "maintain peace and tranquility"' and because Ms. Suu Kyi was the daughter of Aung San, a national hero who helped win the country's independence from Britain, the Associated Press reported.

Singapore, a fellow member with Myanmar in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said it was "disappointed" with the conviction and sentence, but added, "We are, however, happy that the Myanmar government has exercised its sovereign prerogative to grant amnesty for half her sentence and that she will be placed under house arrest rather than imprisoned."

The Yangon court also convicted John Yettaw, the 53-year-old Missouri resident who triggered the case after he swam across a Yangon lake to reach Ms. Suu Kyi's residence, uninvited, on May 4. He later told officials he had had a dream she might be assassinated and wanted to warn her.

Mr. Yettaw was declared guilty of breaching conditions of Ms. Suu Kyi's house arrest as well as immigration rules. The court sentenced him to up to seven years imprisonment, including four with hard labor, though some analysts said they believe the government might soon deport the American.

The regime also convicted two aides that live with Ms. Suu Kyi, sentencing each for 18 months.

There were no immediate reports of serious unrest in Yangon, the country's commercial capital, which is tightly monitored by military authorities. Still, dissatisfaction with the decision was widespread, including among some elites who ordinarily would be expected to side with the junta.

Residents said that security measures had been stepped up across the city, with police trucks patrolling the streets, and plainclothes officers believed to be monitoring Internet cafes where young dissidents often gather.

"The court proceedings were just a sham," said a 42-year-old lawyer who works in Yangon. "From the beginning, she was predestined" to lose.

A retired army major sitting in a teahouse said, "I had already expected this kind of ruling. Justice has been raped by the generals."

The need to bring about some kind of regime change in Myanmar -- or at least reach some kind of diplomatic breakthrough with the junta -- is growing, dissidents say. Economic and social conditions have deteriorated significantly in the country in recent years, despite the fact that the government's financial strength has increased, largely due to surging trade in natural gas and other resources with China, Thailand and other Asian neighbors.

There is also growing concern that Myanmar's junta may be developing more-advanced weapons systems, possibly with help from North Korea, with a goal of gaining more control over its population and increasing its leverage in discussions with the West.

Several Myanmar citizens, some of them expatriates, have claimed direct knowledge of a nuclear-weapons program involving a reactor under construction in a remote part of the country. However, the area is off-limits to outsiders without government permission and the reports haven't been independently confirmed.

Myanmar officials rarely speak directly to the foreign media or to senior Western diplomats, and representatives at the government's Ministry of Information and in embassies overseas haven't responded to questions from The Wall Street Journal about the country's alleged weapons plans. North Korea has denied assisting with nuclear equipment.

Foreign governments were watching the Suu Kyi trial to see if Myanmar was willing to signal a desire for more engagement with the West. The junta has mostly declined to bow to foreign pressure, arguing it had to hold Ms. Suu Kyi under house arrest for much of the past decades for her own safety and to maintain political order, given her history of organizing residents opposed to a military regime that has ruled Myanmar since 1962.

Ms. Suu Kyi's political party, the National League for Democracy, won a resounding victory in the last Myanmar elections held in 1990. But the regime ignored the results and subsequently tightened its grip, imprisoning several hundred opposition figures. It has also cracked down hard whenever residents expressed serious discontent, including killing 30 or more people in street protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007.

Foreign governments, including the U.S., responded to the government's tactics with repeated calls for Ms. Suu Kyi's release and with increasingly stiff economic sanctions, including rules that have prevented all but a few Western companies from doing business there. More recently, a growing number of policy makers and dissidents had been arguing that the outside world needs to soften its approach and pursue more discussions with the regime, because sanctions and other punitive measures had failed to generate meaningful change.

The Obama administration earlier this year signaled it was reviewing policies toward Myanmar, and last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that if the regime freed Ms. Suu Kyi, it could open the way for the U.S. to allow more investments in the country. Charitable groups have called for a big rise in humanitarian aid to increase interaction between local citizens and the outside world. Leading members of the exile community -- including the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which describes itself as Myanmar's government-in-exile -- have discussed a new reconciliation program that would involve more dialogue with the junta.

However, the conviction of Ms. Suu Kyi complicates those efforts. Although the regime is planning an election next year, presumably to boost its legitimacy to the outside world, many opposition members have said they won't participate if Ms. Suu Kyi isn't allowed a voice. That increases the odds that foreign governments and dissidents will reject the outcome of the vote.

Afghanistan Enlists Tribal Militia Forces

By ANAND GOPAL and YOCHI J. DREAZEN

KABUL -- The Afghan and U.S. governments have launched a new effort to enlist tribal fighters from many of the country's most violent provinces in the war against the Taliban, hoping that a tactic first used in Iraq can help turn the tide here as well.

Thousands of armed tribal fighters from 18 Afghan provinces will initially be hired to provide security for elections on Aug. 20, officials from both countries said. If the security is effective, Afghan officials say they will try to give the tribesmen permanent jobs protecting their villages and neighborhoods.

The tribal initiative is being run by a new branch of the Afghan government called the Independent Directorate for the Protection of Highways and Public Property. In coming days, officials from the agency will ask tribal shuras, or councils, in participating provinces to organize armed militias to guard polling places, roads and public gathering spaces.

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Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

U.S. soldiers took position near Sari Ghundi village as they patroled near the Pakistani border, about 60 miles southeast of Kandahar Monday.

Officials hope that the militias will provide an additional layer of security to support the new American strategy of trying to better protect Afghan civilians from Taliban violence.

Members of the militias will be allowed to use their own AK-47s and other weapons, but they won't receive arms, ammunition or uniforms from the government.

Afghan officials said the effort is an attempt to import a successful tactic from Iraq, where Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar Province helped drive al Qaeda in Iraq out of the area. The so-called Awakening fighters are widely thought to have played a significant role in taming Iraq's once-unrelenting violence.

"We are trying to recreate the Awakening of Iraq here in Afghanistan," said Arif Noorzai, the director of the initiative. The militias are supposed to work in coordination with the Afghan National Army and Police, but their most important role might be in areas where the Afghan security forces aren't present, Mr. Noorzai said.

U.S. and Afghan officials are concerned that the Taliban will launch large-scale attacks to dissuade Afghans from voting and sap public confidence in the broader Afghan political process. Last week, Taliban fighters fired at least nine rockets into central Kabul.

On Monday, eight Taliban insurgents raided Pul-i-Alam, a provincial capital south of Kabul, firing rockets at government buildings and sparking a gun battle that left at least 11 people dead, including the attackers.

In restive Paktika province, Gov. Abdul Quoom Katwazi said there had been a sharp uptick in insurgent infiltration from neighboring Pakistan. "Many of our enemies are trying to cross into Afghanistan to disrupt the election," he said in an interview. "There may be bad days ahead."

Mr. Katwazi said he was trying to improve security in his province by hiring roughly 1,500 local tribal fighters. The so-called arbakai fighters -- the pashtu name for the militia forces -- will be paid $150 each for the month, and the governor said he hopes to keep them on his payrolls long-term. "We are going to test this system," he said. "If it works, we will continue it."

The new program is part of a broad American and Afghan push to forge closer ties with Afghanistan's tribes, which U.S. military strategists see as powerful potential allies in the fight against the Taliban.

A senior American military official in Kabul said the U.S. was working to develop detailed intelligence about local tribal power structures to better identify which groups and leaders to seek to engage.

The official said the U.S. is also trying to steer development money and reconstruction projects to smaller, less powerful tribes as a way of counteracting the Taliban's proven success in recruiting supporters from marginalized sectors of Afghan society.

The new initiative doesn't mark the first time U.S. and Afghan officials have tried to enlist the country's tribes in the fight against the Taliban.

In a few instances, tribal militias were formed in specific parts of the country but were disbanded after they were deemed ineffective. In some cases, the militias turned to criminal activity or took part in tribal feuds.

The most recent attempt was last year, when Afghan officials created a local-militia effort in parts of eastern Afghanistan's Wardak province. U.S. officials said at the time they hoped eventually to replicate the so-called Afghan Public Protection Program, or AP3, elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Nearly 10 months later, the program remains confined to Wardak. U.S. and Afghan officials there have struggled to recruit fighters from the majority Pashtun community, and the program is disproportionately made up of minority Hazaras. The imbalance has sparked tensions between the two groups and prevented American officials from increasing the program's size and reach.

"Nobody wants to join this force and be seen as working for the government," said Roshanak Wardak, a parliamentarian from Wardak province.

Senior U.S. officials said the tribal militias will have to be closely monitored and carefully controlled to prevent them from challenging the central government or falling under the sway of regional warlords.

"This is an area where warlords and militias got a very, very bad name, so we don't want to create anything that makes the Afghan people think we're going the wrong direction," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander here, said in a recent interview. "They'll say, 'we don't want any more armed groups around here.'"

Officials from both countries also warn that tribal allegiances can be fleeting. Two years ago, international forces withdrew from the southern town of Musa Qala, leaving it in the hands of a local tribe. The tribe then allowed the Taliban to gain control of the town, forcing Western troops to invade and recapture the area the following year.

Still, tribal leaders have had some successes. Earlier this summer, tribal elders in a district of northwestern Afghanistan's Baghdis province helped broker a cease-fire in which the Taliban pledged to not attack polling centers during the presidential elections and the government agreed to remove its forces from the area. Afghan officials see it as a possible template for other peace deals.

On a recent afternoon, Gen. Dawlat Khan Zadran, the police chief for Paktika, a large, rural province of more than 1 million people, signed individual contracts for 1,500 arbakai fighters. The one-page documents said the fighters would take orders from local police and army commanders and pledge not to interfere with the balloting. "I don't have enough police to protect the people," he said. "It's a gamble, but I hope the arbakai can help."

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com

Al Qaeda Vies for More Power in Pakistani Taliban Group

By ZAHID HUSSAIN IN ISLAMABAD and MATTHEW ROSENBERG IN NEW DELHI

Officials struggled Monday to figure out what is going on inside the Pakistan Taliban following the apparent death of its leader last week and said al Qaeda was trying to gain greater power in the group.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, says the U.S. military needs to make strategic changes to its presence in the region, including shifting more troops to cities. WSJ's Peter Spiegel reports.

Pakistan's top law-enforcement official said al Qaeda was taking advantage of a bloody succession battle to choose a leader favorable to its interests, while someone identifying himself as a contender who had been reported killed in that infighting called reporters to say he's alive and well.

The contender, Hakimullah Mehsud, also claimed that Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader U.S. and Pakistani officials say they are almost certain was killed last week in an American missile strike, is still alive. The two men aren't directly related.

Officials say Baitullah Mehsud, as the nominal leader of the Pakistan Taliban, helped orchestrate a series of bombings in Pakistan's major cities and Taliban offensives in its northwestern mountains. Also believed killed along with the militant leader were his second wife and a number of top aides.

While officials lack physical evidence of Mr. Mehsud's death, they point to communications intercepts and information from informers in the remote South Waziristan tribal agency where the Taliban leader held sway. There are also other signs, such as the militants completely closing to outsiders the area around the parts of South Waziristan where Mr. Mehsud's faction is in control. Pakistani officials say that by claiming that Mr. Mehsud isn't dead, the Taliban may be trying to maintain unity in the movement in Pakistan, which appears to be seriously strained.

Pakistani officials and militants say members of Mr. Mehsud's faction -- there are more than a dozen different groups in the Pakistan Taliban -- have been meeting in recent days to choose a new leader and, presumably, a new overall leader for the loose confederation of groups, which is known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Hakimullah Mehsud, left, posing for media on Nov. 26, has reached out to news organizations in the past to issue Taliban threats to carry out attacks in Pakistani cities in retaliation for U.S. drone attacks.

Members of al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, which oversees but doesn't directly control the Pakistani side of the movement, have also been taking part in the deliberations, the officials and militants say.

But much remains murky. Over the weekend, Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking privately, said they were almost certain that Hakimullah Mehsud, who is one of the Taliban commanders believed to be among the top contenders, had been slain in a shootout between his supporters and the backers of another contender.

On Monday, Hakimullah Mehsud called to say the reports are untrue, the Associated Press reported. The AP said its reporter was familiar with the militant commander's voice.

Hours before the phone call, Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief, Rehman Malik, said al Qaeda is believed to have intervened to end the succession battle.

If Mr. Mehsud's death inadvertently allows al Qaeda to gain more influence, it could help the insurgents maintain their potency and reach. Pakistan was taking measures to stop that from happening, Mr. Malik said.

Write to Zahid Hussain in Islamabad at zahid.hussain@dowjones.com and Matthew Rosenberg in New Delhi at matthew.rosenberg@wsj.com

Trains and Vans May Beat Taxis to the Airport

By JANE L. LEVERE

Getting to the airport on the outskirts of town used to be a simple proposition — catch a taxi, even if it meant sitting in traffic.

But in recent years, the number of options has grown, especially at some of the biggest airports, with direct trains and shared-ride services. The additional options are cheaper and also more reliable, in many cases, if there is a lot of traffic on the highways.

Shared-ride transfers offered by companies like SuperShuttle in the United States and Go Airport Shuttle, which operates in North America and Britain, can be more time-consuming than a taxi or limousine ride, but are significantly less expensive. And fast trains — like the Heathrow and Gatwick Express trains in London and AirTrain JFK and AirTrain Newark in the New York area — are less expensive than a taxi and often faster.

The express trains and shared-ride transfers are becoming more attractive to business travelers, said Dave Kilduff, managing director of ground transportation consulting for the CWT Solutions Group, because in “this type of economic environment, corporations are turning over every rock to save money. They’re looking at alternative forms of transportation.”

And services like the Heathrow Express “are not only faster, they’re keeping people off the road, they’re environmentally friendly,” he added.

In the first six months of this year, the number of travelers whose flights ended at Heathrow Airport was down 8.9 percent from the period a year earlier. But Heathrow Express’s share of those passengers rose 1.6 percent in that period.

Similarly, passenger traffic at La Guardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports, all operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, declined 9.4 percent in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2008. But passenger traffic on the Kennedy and Newark AirTrains, also operated by the Port Authority, was 1.4 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.

William R. DeCota, the Port Authority’s director of aviation, estimates that on weekday peak travel times, one-third to one-half of passengers on the Kennedy and Newark trains are business travelers.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

In budget-conscious times, trains and shared-ride vans are becoming more popular as a way to get to and from the airport.

Perhaps the biggest attraction is the cost savings. The AirTrain JFK, which picks up travelers at the Howard Beach and Jamaica train and subway stations, is $5 one way. Travelers flying out of Newark can take a New Jersey Transit train from Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan to Newark Liberty International Airport station, where they pick up AirTrain Newark; the one-way fare for the entire trip is $15. By contrast, a one-way cab ride from Midtown Manhattan to Kennedy Airport is $45, plus tolls and tip, while a one-way cab ride from Midtown to Newark can go as high as $90, plus tolls and tip. Depending on traffic, an AirTrain transfer can also be quicker than a taxi.

Kenneth Lin, a senior planning manager in New York for Parsons Brinckerhoff, a consulting company that advised the Port Authority on construction of the AirTrain JFK, says he is a devotee of public transit, including AirTrain JFK.

“It’s cheaper than a taxi and more reliable during rush hour,” he said. “It reduces stress, as it is less idiosyncratic than taxis, and it usually arrives on time. In a car or taxi, it could be a very fast or very slow trip, depending upon traffic.”

The Heathrow and Gatwick Express trains — both of which have economy and first-class cars — offer significant time savings: the Gatwick Express travels to Victoria Station in 30 minutes, while the Heathrow Express takes only 15 minutes to get to Paddington Station. During rush hour, those trips can take triple the time in a taxi.

A round-trip economy-class fare on Gatwick Expressis £28.80 (about $48) and a round-trip first-class fare is £48. On Heathrow Express, the economy fare is £32 round trip, and the first-class round-trip fare is £50.

Money saved by using these trains is also significant: During rush hour, a cab ride from Heathrow to Paddington can cost as much as £80 ($134), without tip, while a cab ride from Gatwick to Victoria Station can cost as much as £90 without tip.

To lure business travelers, Heathrow Express has installed Wi-Fi and cellphone service; Gatwick Express offers cellphone service and refreshments. There is a charge for the Wi-Fi service and refreshments.

The two top providers of shared-ride service are SuperShuttle, which is owned by Veolia Transportation and serves 33 airports in 26 markets in the United States, and Go Airport Shuttle, a group of franchised operators that serve 80 airports in 36 cities in the United States and in Toronto and London.

Both companies set a 15- to 20-minute window of time for passenger pickups, at their home, office or hotel. Passengers travel to the airport in a van with others picked up along the way.

A taxi ride may be faster, but will certainly be more expensive. A one-way SuperShuttle ride to La Guardia from the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan is $14.15, and slightly higher from a Manhattan home or office. SuperShuttle typically requires a pickup three hours before a flight departure

ShuttleFare.com, a Web site that lets travelers book many types of airport transfers, including those offered by SuperShuttle and Go, recently introduced a corporate discount program that waives its normal $4 service fee per booking, and discounts fares by 7 percent.

Matthew Holdrege, director of international sales for Strix Systems, a wireless broadband manufacturer in Newbury Parks, Calif., said he found train transfers particularly attractive “as long as you travel light.” But, he added, “If I’m traveling with my wife, who can have a lot of luggage, she may prefer the princess treatment. So forget about public transportation.”

Downturn in Print Media Hits Photojournalists, Too

By DAVID JOLLY

PARIS — When photojournalists and their admirers gather in southern France at the end of August for Visa pour l’Image, the annual celebration of their craft, many practitioners may well be wondering how much longer they can scrape by.

Newspapers and magazines are cutting back sharply on picture budgets or going out of business altogether, and television stations have cut back on news coverage in favor of less costly fare. Pictures and video shot by amateurs on cellphones are posted to Web sites minutes after events occur. Photographers trying to make a living from shooting the news are calling it a crisis.

In the latest sign of distress, the company that owns the photo agency Gamma sought protection from creditors on July 28 after a loss of $4.2 million in the first half of the year as sales fell by nearly a third.

Gamma was founded in 1966 by the photographers Raymond Depardon and Gilles Caron. With Sygma, Sipa and, earlier, Magnum, it was one of the independent agencies that helped make Paris a world capital for photojournalism, attracting some of the best photographers the field has produced.

A Paris commercial court gave Gamma’s owner, Eyedea Presse, six months to reorganize itself. The company employs 56 people in its Paris headquarters, 14 of them photographers. Olivia Riant, a spokeswoman for Eyedea, said there would “inevitably” be job cuts to make the agency viable.

“The business model is not working today,” she said. “So without some changes, it won’t work tomorrow.”

“The problem is that news photography is finished,” Ms. Riant said. “Gamma wants to go back to magazines and newsmagazines. We will stop covering daily news events to more deeply cover issues.”

Gamma’s history shows how the market has changed. The agency was acquired in 1999 by Hachette Filipacchi Médias, a unit of Lagardère, which combined it with other operations to provide photos for its magazine empire. But the business did not prosper, and it was sold in 2007 to Green Recovery, an investment fund that buys and overhauls distressed companies.

Gamma’s rivals have fared little better: Sygma was acquired by Corbis in 1999, and Sipa by Sud Communication in 2001.

Photojournalism, often said to have begun with the American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, experienced a golden age lasting from before World War II through the 1970s. Magazines like Time, Life and Paris Match — and virtually all of the world’s major newspapers — had the budgets to put legions of shooters on the ground in competition for the best pictures.

Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Stéphane Ledoux, chief of the parent company of the Gamma photo agency. The company has sought bankruptcy protection.

But today, at a time of shrinking advertising revenue and layoffs, photo editors at many publications have to think hard about sending a photographer into the field at a cost of $250 or more and expenses.

“I’m 92 years old, and I’ve survived a lot of crises in photojournalism,” said John G. Morris, a former photo editor whose résumé includes years at The New York Times (which publishes The International Herald Tribune), Life magazine and The Washington Post. “I find the present situation depressing, but I’m crazy enough to be hopeful. There have never been more images out there, and we need more help in sorting out all the information.”

Eyedea Presse said its problems were compounded by a provision of French labor law that requires agencies to take on photographers full time after using a certain amount of their work, a serious competitive disadvantage when their overseas competition employs many freelancers.

“We held out as long as we could, but this business model just isn’t viable anymore,” Stéphane Ledoux, the Eyedea chief executive, said after the court hearing. “They’ve killed French photojournalism by requiring the agencies to make salaried employees of the freelancers.”

French photographers acknowledge that problem, but they say agency managers exaggerate it to justify job cuts.

The major newswires — The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters, along with regional powerhouses like Kyodo in Japan and Xinhua in China — dominate news photography. But the business of marketing and selling digitized pictures is led by two global companies: Getty Images, founded in 1995, and Corbis, founded in 1989 by the Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates.

The stock photo companies rose to prominence by buying up hundreds of image archives and making them available for sale online. While they do continue to sponsor photojournalism — Getty Images employs 130 photographers around the world — the companies are, in effect, services for managing digital property rights.

If Eyedea Presse were to be liquidated, its archives of nearly 33 million images, including those from Gamma, Rapho and Keystone, would be a valuable addition to the collections of any of the major players.

At Getty, 70 percent of revenue is generated by the sale of stock images, said its chief executive, Jonathan Klein. With the addition of resources it calls on through a partnership with Agence France-Presse, Mr. Klein said the agency was gaining market share at the expense of the newswires.

“Photojournalism means the photographers can tell the story themselves in pictures, and there were places where they could publish those photos,” Mr. Klein said. “In the print world, many, if not most, of those places have since disappeared.”

Still, he said, there are reasons to be optimistic, because “thanks to the Web, there are now billions of pages for photographers to show their work,” he added. That has led to more photos being used, he said, but at lower prices.

Jean-François Leroy, organizer of the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival, which runs in Perpignan, France, for two weeks beginning Aug. 29, pointed to a declining emphasis in the media on serious subjects as another problem.

“Photographers are producing plenty of great stuff, but now the media seem interested only in celebrities,” he said. “When Michael Jackson died, it wasn’t part of the news, it was the news. How many photographs of his funeral did we really need?”

Mr. Leroy said he would advise budding photojournalists to think carefully about their commitment to the calling. Twenty years ago, a photojournalist made enough money to live on, he said. “I’m not pretending you would get rich, but you were able to live decently,” he said. “That is not the case now.”

Lorenzo Virgili, a veteran photographer in Paris, said the average salary of a freelance photographer was about $2,400 a month, and that unpaid postproduction work on the computer was taking up ever more time.

Some photographers have taken to working for advocacy organizations, large institutions or companies to continue doing what they love, Mr. Virgili said. But that arrangement is ultimately unsatisfactory, he said, because “as a journalist you have a professional ethic, and by working for them you risk compromising your neutrality, you lose your independence.”

Ten years ago, Dirck Halstead, who spent 29 years as a White House photographer for Time magazine, wrote in Digital Journalist: “When I speak of photojournalism as being dead, I am talking only about the concept of capturing a single image on a nitrate film plane, for publication in mass media.”

Visual storytelling has itself been around since the Stone Age, he noted, and “will only be enhanced” by the changes now taking place. Revisiting that column last month, Mr. Halstead wrote that, if anything, conditions today were worse than he had predicted. To be a photojournalist today, he wrote, “You have to be crazy.”

“Those people who will do anything to come back with a story will be out there shooting for a long time,” he concluded.

One of Yemen’s 3 Insurgencies Flares Up

By ROBERT F. WORTH

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An intermittent rebellion in northwestern Yemen has flared up again in the past 10 days, leaving dozens dead and wounded and adding a new element of instability to a country that is already facing a violent separatist movement in the south and an increasingly bold insurgency by Al Qaeda.

After a series of armed clashes with the military, Shiite rebels led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi appeared to be in control of several areas of Saada Province, the remote, mountainous area in the north where an insurgency has raged on and off since 2004, witnesses and local officials said. Efforts toward a cease-fire were under way on Sunday and Monday, with no clear result.

Yemen, a poor, arid country in the southern corner of the Arabian peninsula, has gained new attention in recent months from American military officials, who are concerned about Al Qaeda’s efforts to set up a regional base there. Late last month, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top United States commander in the Middle East, visited Yemen and pledged to support its counterterrorism efforts.

The New York Times

The military has clashed with rebels in Saada Province.

Al Qaeda’s growing presence in Yemen — where it took credit for a deadly attack on the American Embassy last year — is especially troubling because the country’s fractious tribes and rugged geography make it notoriously difficult to control.

In recent months, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has expertly played Yemen’s various tribes and factions against one another for decades, has faced more serious threats to his authority.

In the south, a simmering protest movement has burst into open rebellion, with armed rebels raising the flag of the formerly independent South Yemen. In late July, at least 20 people were killed after demonstrators in southern Abyan Province threatened to break open a local prison where detainees were being held. A series of ambushes by rebel forces has left a number of police officers dead; details are difficult to ascertain because the government has clamped down on news coverage.

As important as the violence has been the defection of some leading political figures. In April, Tareq al-Fadhli, an important ally of Mr. Saleh, joined the southern secessionist movement. Mr. Fadhli is an influential tribal figure who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and helped organize former jihadists to fight against a southern secession movement on Mr. Saleh’s behalf in 1994.

North and south Yemen were unified in 1990 after years of turmoil, but many southerners, including former military officers, say they are treated as second-class citizens. Rising unemployment has fueled the discontent.

Last week, in an interview on Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, a member of one of Yemen’s most powerful families surprised the country’s political establishment by calling for Mr. Saleh to step down. The man, Hamid al-Ahmar, whose father was one of Mr. Saleh’s most important allies, brazenly said he could speak out against the president — something scarcely anyone dares to do — because his tribal confederation would protect him.

Yemen has long been a haven for jihadists, and the turmoil of recent years — along with a severe crackdown on terrorism in neighboring Saudi Arabia — has led some Qaeda figures to resettle there. Several former Guantánamo detainees fled this year to Yemen from Saudi Arabia and pledged to mount attacks on Saudi Arabia and other countries from their Yemeni redoubt. The Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda has an active propaganda arm and appears to have built relationships with tribes in the Marib region that have helped protect it, analysts say.

Despite the Yemeni government’s periodic claims that all three insurgencies — in the south, the north and by Al Qaeda — are united against it, there is no evidence that they are working together. Still, the convergence is troubling.

“All of these problems are coalescing and exacerbating each other in ways that are not completely knowable at this time,” said Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen expert who is currently in the country. “The three crises have combined, along with the economy, to make things look bleaker here than they have in a long time.”

Although Yemen has had some notable successes in fighting jihadists and has built a crack counterterrorism strike force, the government has been hampered by a lack of money and by widespread corruption. The country’s small oil supplies are rapidly disappearing, a water crisis is growing worse and the population of 22 million is swelling.

Yemen has also long suffered from violent tribal feuds, banditry and kidnapping, much of it beyond the control of the central government. In June, nine foreigners were kidnapped while on a picnic in Saada Province, and three soon turned up dead. Six remain unaccounted for: three toddlers and their parents, who are German, and a British engineer.

In that context, the renewed violence in the north — where a truce last summer seemed to have ended the war — bodes ill for Yemen’s stability. The conflict has already left thousands dead in the past five years and produced tens of thousands of refugees. It also has troubling sectarian overtones: the rebels are Zaydis, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the government has sometimes used hard-line Sunni tribesmen as proxy warriors.

The media office for Mr. Houthi, the Shiite rebel leader, issued a statement on Friday saying government helicopters were dropping leaflets calling on the people to take up arms against his supporters. The statement called on the government to stop its attacks and to release Houthi supporters being held in prison.

The rebels and the Yemeni military appear to be building up their forces in the area, and some military officials have predicted that if another round of conflict breaks out in Saada, it will be bloodier than any of those in the past.

War Without Borders - Mexico’s Drug Traffickers Continue Trade in Prison

By MARC LACEY

MEXICO CITY — The surveillance cameras captured it all: guards looking on nonchalantly as 53 inmates — many of them associated with one of Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels — let themselves out of their cells and sped off in waiting vehicles.

The video shows that prison guards only pulled out their weapons after the inmates were well on their way. The brazen escape in May in the northern state of Zacatecas — carried out in minutes without a single shot fired — is just one of many glaring examples of how Mexico’s crowded and cruel prison system represents a critical weak link in the drug war.

Mexico’s prisons, as described by inmates and insiders and viewed during several visits, are places where drug traffickers find a new base of operations for their criminal empires, recruit underlings, and bribe their way out for the right price. The system is so flawed, in fact, that the Mexican government is extraditing record numbers of drug traffickers to the United States, where they find it much harder to intimidate witnesses, run their drug operations or escape.

The latest jailbreak took place this weekend, when a suspected drug trafficker vanished from a Sinaloa prison during a party for inmates featuring a Mexican country music band. The Mexican government is considering isolating drug offenders from regular inmates to reduce opportunities for abuse.

The United States government, as part of its counternarcotics assistance program, is committing $4 million this year to help fix Mexico’s broken prisons, officials said. Experts from state prisons in the United States have begun tutorials for Mexican guards to make sure that there are clear ethical guidelines and professional practices that distinguish them from the men and women they guard. “There’s no point in rounding all these characters up if they are going to get out on their own,” said an American official involved in the training, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Although Mexican prisons call themselves Centers for Social Rehabilitation, “Universities of crime would be a better name,” said Pedro Héctor Arellano, who runs the prison outreach program in Mexico for the Episcopal Church.

Mexico’s prisons are bursting at the seams, with space for 172,151 inmates nationwide but an additional 50,000 crammed in. More arrive by the day as part of the government’s drug war, which has sent tens of thousands to prison since President Felipe Calderón took office nearly three years ago.

Inside the high concrete walls ringed by barbed wire, past the heavily armed men in black uniforms with stern expressions, inmates rule the roost. Some well-heeled prisoners pay to have keys to their cells. When life inside, with its pizza deliveries, prostitutes and binges on drugs and alcohol, becomes too confining, prisoners sometimes pay off the guards for a furlough or an outright jailbreak.

“Our prisons are businesses more than anything else,” said Pedro Arellano Aguilar, an expert on prisons. He has visited scores of them in Mexico and has come away with a dire view of what takes place inside. “Everything is for sale and everything can be bought.”

Guards Work for Inmates

For drug lords, flush with money, life on the inside is often a continuation of the free-spirited existence they led outside. Inmates look up to them. Guards often become their employees.

For more than a decade, Enrique, a strapping man with a faraway look in his eyes, worked in one of the roughest prisons in Mexico, imposing his will. He assigned prisoners to cell blocks based on the size of the bribes they made. He punished those who stepped out of line.

“I was the boss,” he declared. Not exactly. Enrique, whose story was corroborated by a prisoner advocates’ group, was actually an inmate, serving time inside Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente prison in Mexico City for trafficking cocaine. “It shouldn’t work the way it does,” said Enrique, now released, who asked that his full name not be published so he can resume life after his 12-year sentence.

Miguel Caro Quintero, a major drug trafficker wanted in Arizona and Colorado on charges of supplying multi-ton shipments of marijuana and cocaine to the United States, was jailed for 10 years in Mexico. Federal prosecutors accused him, like many drug lords, of continuing illegal activities from behind bars, using smuggled cellphones to maintain contact with his underlings on the outside and recruiting prisoners who were nearing the end of their sentences.

When his sentence in Mexico was up, he was sent off to the United States to face charges there, becoming one of more than 50 Mexicans, most of them drug offenders, extradited this year.

“When we keep a criminal in a Mexican prison, we run the risk that one way or another they are going to keep in contact with their criminal network,” Leopoldo Velarde, who heads extraditions for the federal attorney general’s office, said. “The idea is to stop criminals, not just jail them.”

Life in Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente prison’s Dormitory No. 9, where many top drug traffickers are held, shows the clout that influential inmates enjoy. The prisoners are a privileged lot, wearing designer clothing and enjoying special privileges ranging from frequent visits by girlfriends to big-screen televisions in their spacious cells, federal prosecutors told local newspapers after one of the inmates recently bought his way out.

Traffickers continue to run their operations through their lieutenants inside the prison as well as outside, using supposedly banned cellphones.

The government says it is moving aggressively to ship off dangerous criminals who are wanted in the United States and are likely to restart their criminal enterprises from jail. Once the legal requirements are met by both governments, the handcuffed suspects are flown by American government agencies to face trial in the United States. Usually the country that requests extradition pays expenses, but American officials said that who pays depends on individual cases.

Since Mr. Calderón came to office in December 2006, his government has surprised the United States by extraditing more than 200 criminal suspects, more than double the rate of predecessors. Based on the legal battles they begin to avoid extradition, it is clear that inmates fear going to the United States. Their support network, prison officials in both countries say, is considerably weaker there.

For years, the Justice Department lobbied Mexico to allow more criminal suspects to face trial in the United States. But until 2005, Mexican court rulings limited extradition to those cases in which neither the death penalty nor life in prison was sought, and Mexican pride about sovereignty made Mexican officials drag their feet. That changed with Mr. Calderón’s resolve to embark on a tougher drug war.

American officials say they are thrilled with the Mexicans’ more aggressive extradition policy. “The best way to disrupt and dismantle a criminal organization is to lock up its leaders and seize their money — so we will work with our Mexican counterparts to locate and extradite, when appropriate, cartel leadership to the United States for prosecution,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in July.

A Wave of Escapes

The jailbreak in May at the Cieneguillas prison in Zacatecas was just one of several escapes that showed how porous Mexican jails are. The Zetas, a paramilitary group known for its ruthlessness in protecting its drug turf, planned the escape, and have organized jailbreaks in at least four states, Mexican law enforcement officials said. Zacatecas prison has had at least three escapes in recent years.

The situation there is so bad, according to a local lawyer, Uriel Márquez Valerio, that inmates managed to invite a musical group into the prison in 2005 to celebrate the birthday of a drug trafficker, who several weeks later found a way to escape.

In recent weeks, the authorities have managed to catch three of the 53 escapees from May and have thrown 51 prison officials, including the director, into jail while the investigation into collusion in the escape continues. The prime piece of evidence against the prison employees was the surveillance system they were supposed to use to monitor inmates. The video, leaked by law enforcement officials and now available on YouTube, recorded the jailbreak in detail.

It was clearly an inside job, one that prompted Interpol to issue an international alert for 11 of the escapees, who were deemed “a risk to the safety and security of citizens around the world.”

One of the escapees, Osvaldo García Delgado, a 27-year-old trafficker with the nickname Vampire, said after he had been re-arrested that the Zetas planned the breakout. Carefully plotted for weeks, the operation was designed to release some top Zeta commanders. Scores of lower-level Zetas were taken along as well.

The Vampire told police interrogators that the prisoners were awakened early one morning and told to dress in their best clothes. He expressed surprise that the guards were doing no guarding that day but instead had become instrumental players in the escape plan.

The men carrying out the escape were dressed in federal police uniforms and drove what appeared to be police vehicles, with lights, sirens and official-looking decals affixed to the sides. There was a helicopter flying overhead as well, giving the operation the air of legitimacy. Since drug cartels frequently recruit law enforcement officials as allies, it is never clear in Mexico whether they will in fact enforce the law — or whether they are impostors.

In this case, the authorities later disclosed that the uniforms worn by the gunmen who carried out the escape were either outright fakes or outdated outfits. The vehicles, which screeched away from the scene with sirens blaring, were not actual police-issue either, the authorities said. All that said, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that corrupt law enforcement officials helped carry out the operation.

After the latest escape, federal authorities have begun interviewing prison workers to determine how Orso Iván Gastélum Cruz, who was arrested by the army in 2005, disappeared Sunday from jail in Sinaloa, where one of Mexico’s major drug cartels is based.

Last July, Luis Gonzaga Castro Flores, a trafficker working for the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, bought his way out of Reclusorio Preventivo Oriente prison, where he was described by the local media as the godfather of Dormitory No. 9, the area where many drug prisoners are kept.

Other detainees escape before ever getting to prison or while being transferred to court, often with the aid of their cartel colleagues as well as complicit guards. In March, an armed group opened fire on a police convoy outside Mexico City, freeing five drug traffickers who were being taken to prison.

The government acknowledges it does not have full control of its prisons, but it attributes part of the problem to its aggressive roundup of drug traffickers. Escapes are on the rise, a top federal law enforcement official, Luis Cárdenas Palomino, told reporters recently, because the government was locking up so many leading operatives that it was getting harder for the cartels to function.

A Space Crunch

Mexico’s prison system is a mishmash of federal, state and local facilities of varying quality. The most dangerous prisoners are supposed to be housed in maximum security federal facilities, but there is nowhere near enough space. So the federal government pays the states to take in drug traffickers and other federal prisoners in their far less secure lockups.

From August through December 2008, in the most recent statistics available, state prisons across Mexico reported 36 violent episodes with 80 deaths, 162 injuries and 27 escapes, the government said. There was no breakdown in those statistics of how much of the violence was linked to traffickers, but experts said prisoners involved in the drug trade tend to be the most fierce and trouble-prone of all.

“These are clear signals that the penal system, as it is currently organized, is not meeting its primary obligation of guarding inmates efficiently and safely while they serve their sentences,” the federal government’s recently released strategic plan on prisons said of the string of assaults and escapes.

To relieve the congestion and better control the inmates, the government is planning a prison-building spree that will add tens of thousands of new beds in the coming years. One goal, officials say, is to keep drug lords separate from petty criminals as well as the many people who have been imprisoned but never convicted, thus reducing their ability to recruit new employees.

The government is also focusing on personnel, boosting guards’ pay, putting them through a newly created training academy and screening them for corruption. Mexico recently sent several dozen of its guards to beef up their skills at the training academy used by the New Mexico Department of Corrections.

All of the trainees, even guards with 15 years’ experience, had to start with the basics, shining their boots, cleaning out dormitory toilets and listening to lectures on how conniving inmates can be in trying to win over weak-willed guards.

Some of those Mexican guards who are now active participants in Mexico’s deeply flawed penal system say they welcome the moves toward professionalism.

One prison guard acknowledged, “We have guns, but we know it is them, not us, who really control things.”

Ailing States Face Bleak Outlook in Next Fiscal Year

By Keith B. Richburg and Ashley Surdin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

NEW YORK -- As states across the country grapple with the worst economy in decades, most have cut services, forced workers to take unpaid days off, shut offices several days a month and scrambled to find new sources of revenue.

The good news is that much of the pain this year has been cushioned by billions of dollars of federal stimulus money, which has allowed states and localities to avoid laying off teachers, prison guards, police officers and firefighters.

The bad news is that for the next fiscal year, beginning in July, the picture looks even bleaker. Revenue is expected to remain depressed, even if the national economy improves. There will be only half as much federal stimulus aid available, and many states have already used up their emergency reserves.

Most states have just approved a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, and their legislatures have adjourned for the summer. But in a dozen or more states, those budgets have already gone into the red less than two months into the fiscal year, by a total of about $24 billion. More than 30 states are projecting deficits for next year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, and other expert estimates.

The economic picture in state capitals has looked bad since last fall, when the national economy first went into freefall and many governors called their legislatures into emergency sessions to make drastic mid-year cuts for such things as health-care services and support for public colleges and universities. But as legislatures have just completed their regular budgeting process, the extent of the fiscal disaster is only now becoming clear -- and some are already talking about additional special sessions this fall, with more painful cost-cutting ahead.

Maryland, with a $1.9 billion budget, faces a $700 million gap, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The District has a new $650 million budget with a $150 million shortfall. Virginia, with a $1.8 billion budget, also faces a new deficit, but the size has not been determined.

For the next two fiscal years, the states face a combined budget shortfall of $350 billion, according to the center and the Council of State Governments, using roughly the same projections.

"I think that states are going to have to look at revenue and programs across the board, or they're going to have to raise revenue in an anemic economic environment," said Chris Whatley, deputy executive director of the Council of State Governments. "Either way you look at it, it's going to be about tough decisions in state capitals."

Already, in California, the epicenter of the states' fiscal meltdown, domestic-violence shelters have been turning people away because state funding was eliminated, and some shelters have shut down.

State funding has also been eliminated for several programs run through California's office of AIDS, and for a black infant health program that helps 6,000 African American pregnant women and new mothers statewide. "This is the worst I've ever experienced, and I've been with the County of Sacramento for 23 years," said Sharon Saffold of the county's health department.

State offices across Michigan were closed Friday, but not for a holiday. It was the fourth of six furlough days for more than 37,000 state workers, with two more shutdowns due before Labor Day.

New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D), struggling in a reelection campaign, recently signed a new $29 billion budget that was $1.5 billion less than the first budget he signed as governor four years ago. But even that was not enough to stop Moody's, the Wall Street rating agency, from downgrading New Jersey's credit outlook to "negative," citing the state's huge debt and the use of one-time budget gimmicks.

Even with the national economy showing signs of improvement -- joblessness for July had the smallest monthly loss for a year -- conditions for states and localities are likely to remain dire for some time, economists and experts said. The depressed value of housing will continue to mean lower revenue from sales taxes and property taxes. Also, continued high unemployment will mean reduced income-tax receipts, more expenditures for unemployment claims and more demand for "safety net" services.

Unlike the federal government, most state governments are barred by their constitutions from running a deficit or borrowing money to cover operating costs. Their only choices are to cut services further -- although most say programs already have been pared to the bone -- or to raise revenue in the form of new taxes or fees, something legislatures are loath to do in a recession.

Already, to balance their fiscal 2010 budgets, governors have increased fees, raised sales taxes and imposed new taxes on high-income earners. New Yorkers will pay more for licenses to drive, hunt, boat and fish. New Jersey has raised taxes on cigarettes, wine and liquor. Other states are said to be considering expanding sales taxes to include such services as landscaping, pest control, cable television and diaper delivery.

This year, the federal stimulus package signed into law by President Obama in February served as a lifeline. For all the intense partisan debate in Washington over whether the stimulus so far has worked, in the states there is little question that federal cash has staved off catastrophe.

According to the General Accounting Office's July report, by June 19 the federal government had disbursed $29 billion to the states, with 90 percent of that money going to Medicaid, to help states maintain coverage levels, or to help them stabilize budgets and avoid layoffs.

"The stimulus has had a tremendous effect in forestalling some of the worst cuts," said Elizabeth McNichol, a senior fellow with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It's absolutely worked for the states."

Whatley, of the Council of State Governments, said state deficits would be 40 percent worse if not for the stimulus funds. The federal funds have given states "breathing room," he said, but he added that "the stimulus cushioned the blow of the state fiscal crisis, but it didn't blunt it."

The stimulus money "is helping California weather the worst fiscal crisis in recent memory," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance. But Palmer said the crisis is far from over: "We hope that the worst of this recession is behind us, but whoever is the next governor will face continuing fiscal challenges."

On Friday, Corzine, who has had little good news lately, was able to announce that New Jersey had received $10.5 million in federal stimulus money for homelessness prevention, and that the state's community affairs department would immediately start taking applications from nonprofit groups and local governments. The money can go to people on public assistance or victims of domestic violence.

In Los Angeles, that kind of help is desperately needed.

A heavyset, hazel-eyed woman, originally from Texas, described last week how she and her 8-year-old son spent two weeks wandering Los Angeles's streets looking for room at a shelter. She said they spent days at a McDonald's restaurant trying to stay cool, and nights sleeping on a hand-sewn quilt under the 110 Freeway in South Central Los Angeles.

The woman, who spoke on the condition that she would not be identified, said she was fleeing an abusive boyfriend who had beaten her for more than a year. She had hoped to move immediately into a shelter for abused woman but was regularly turned away. "They just didn't have room," she said in her Texas drawl.

The woman eventually found a place at the Jenesse Center, near South Los Angeles. But that shelter is now full and turned others away. With state aid eliminated, the Jenesse shelter lost 30 percent of its revenue -- money used to pay for diapers, baby formula, food, paint, and plumbing repairs. The staff, after layoffs, is nearly half the size it used to be at a time when the number of homeless people seeking shelter is growing.

"It's devastating to the survivors and the victims who need these services," said Adrienne Lamar, associate director of the Jenesse Center. She said she knew of at least three other domestic-violence shelters that have closed.

She added: "The potential outcome for this is deadly, just deadly."

Surdin reported from Los Angeles.