Starting Points

Sep 21, 2009

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure' - washingtonpost.com

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 21, 2009

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document's five-page Commander's Summary on a note of muted optimism: "While the situation is serious, success is still achievable."

But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

McChrystal's assessment is one of several options the White House is considering. His plan could intensify a national debate in which leading Democratic lawmakers have expressed reluctance about committing more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. Obama said last week that he will not decide whether to send more troops until he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be."

The commander has prepared a separate detailed request for additional troops and other resources, but defense officials have said he is awaiting instructions before sending it to the Pentagon.

Senior administration officials asked The Post over the weekend to withhold brief portions of the assessment that they said could compromise future operations. A declassified version of the document, with some deletions made at the government's request, appears at washingtonpost.com.

McChrystal makes clear that his call for more forces is predicated on the adoption of a strategy in which troops emphasize protecting Afghans rather than killing insurgents or controlling territory. Most starkly, he says: "[I]nadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced."

'Widespread Corruption'

The assessment offers an unsparing critique of the failings of the Afghan government, contending that official corruption is as much of a threat as the insurgency to the mission of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition is widely known.

"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal says.

The result has been a "crisis of confidence among Afghans," he writes. "Further, a perception that our resolve is uncertain makes Afghans reluctant to align with us against the insurgents."

McChrystal is equally critical of the command he has led since June 15. The key weakness of ISAF, he says, is that it is not aggressively defending the Afghan population. "Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us -- physically and psychologically -- from the people we seek to protect. . . . The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves."

McChrystal continues: "Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect the Afghan population."

Coalition intelligence-gathering has focused on how to attack insurgents, hindering "ISAF's comprehension of the critical aspects of Afghan society."

In a four-page annex on detainee operations, McChrystal warns that the Afghan prison system has become "a sanctuary and base to conduct lethal operations" against the government and coalition forces. He cites as examples an apparent prison connection to the 2008 bombing of the Serena Hotel in Kabul and other attacks. "Unchecked, Taliban/Al Qaeda leaders patiently coordinate and plan, unconcerned with interference from prison personnel or the military."

The assessment says that Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents "represent more than 2,500 of the 14,500 inmates in the increasingly overcrowded Afghan Corrections System," in which "[h]ardened, committed Islamists are indiscriminately mixed with petty criminals and sex offenders, and they are using the opportunity to radicalize and indoctrinate them."

Noting that the United States "came to Afghanistan vowing to deny these same enemies safe haven in 2001," he says they now operate with relative impunity in the prisons. "There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan," his assessment says.

McChrystal outlines a plan to build up the Afghan government's ability to manage its detention facilities and eventually put all such operations under Afghan control, including the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, which the United States runs.

For now, because of a lack of capacity, "productive interrogations and detainee intelligence collection have been reduced" at Bagram. "As a result, hundreds are held without charge or without a defined way-ahead. This allows the enemy to radicalize them far beyond their pre-capture orientation. The problem can no longer be ignored."

McChrystal's Plan

The general says his command is "not adequately executing the basics" of counterinsurgency by putting the Afghan people first. "ISAF personnel must be seen as guests of the Afghan people and their government, not an occupying army," he writes. "Key personnel in ISAF must receive training in local languages."

He also says that coalition forces will change their operational culture, in part by spending "as little time as possible in armored vehicles or behind the walls of forward operating bases." Strengthening Afghans' sense of security will require troops to take greater risks, but the coalition "cannot succeed if it is unwilling to share risk, at least equally, with the people."

McChrystal warns that in the short run, it "is realistic to expect that Afghan and coalition casualties will increase."

He proposes speeding the growth of Afghan security forces. The existing goal is to expand the army from 92,000 to 134,000 by December 2011. McChrystal seeks to move that deadline to October 2010.

Overall, McChrystal wants the Afghan army to grow to 240,000 and the police to 160,000 for a total security force of 400,000, but he does not specify when those numbers could be reached.

He also calls for "radically more integrated and partnered" work with Afghan units.

McChrystal says the military must play an active role in reconciliation, winning over less committed insurgent fighters. The coalition "requires a credible program to offer eligible insurgents reasonable incentives to stop fighting and return to normalcy, possibly including the provision of employment and protection," he writes.

Coalition forces will have to learn that "there are now three outcomes instead of two" for enemy fighters: not only capture or death, but also "reintegration."

Again and again, McChrystal makes the case that his command must be bolstered if failure is to be averted. "ISAF requires more forces," he states, citing "previously validated, yet un-sourced, requirements" -- an apparent reference to a request for 10,000 more troops originally made by McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan.

A Three-Headed Insurgency

McChrystal identifies three main insurgent groups "in order of their threat to the mission" and provides significant details about their command structures and objectives.

The first is the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) headed by Mullah Omar, who fled Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and operates from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

"At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Omar announces his guidance and intent for the coming year," according to the assessment.

Mullah Omar's insurgency has established an elaborate alternative government known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, McChrystal writes, which is capitalizing on the Afghan government's weaknesses. "They appoint shadow governors for most provinces, review their performance, and replace them periodically. They established a body to receive complaints against their own 'officials' and to act on them. They install 'shari'a' [Islamic law] courts to deliver swift and enforced justice in contested and controlled areas. They levy taxes and conscript fighters and laborers. They claim to provide security against a corrupt government, ISAF forces, criminality, and local power brokers. They also claim to protect Afghan and Muslim identity against foreign encroachment."

"The QST has been working to control Kandahar and its approaches for several years and there are indications that their influence over the city and neighboring districts is significant and growing," McChrystal writes.

The second main insurgency group is the Haqqani network (HQN), which is active in southeastern Afghanistan and draws money and manpower "principally from Pakistan, Gulf Arab networks, and from its close association with al Qaeda and other Pakistan-based insurgent groups." At another point in the assessment, McChrystal says, "Al Qaeda's links with HQN have grown, suggesting that expanded HQN control could create a favorable environment" for associated extremist movements "to re-establish safe-havens in Afghanistan."

The third is the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgency, which maintains bases in three Afghan provinces "as well as Pakistan," the assessment says. This network, led by the former mujaheddin commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, "aims to negotiate a major role in a future Taliban government. He does not currently have geographical objectives as is the case with the other groups," though he "seeks control of mineral wealth and smuggling routes in the east."

Overall, McChrystal provides this conclusion about the enemy: "The insurgents control or contest a significant portion of the country, although it is difficult to assess precisely how much due to a lack of ISAF presence. . . . "

The insurgents make money from the production and sale of opium and other narcotics, but the assessment says that "eliminating insurgent access to narco-profits -- even if possible, and while disruptive -- would not destroy their ability to operate so long as other funding sources remained intact."

While the insurgency is predominantly Afghan, McChrystal writes that it "is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan's ISI," which is its intelligence service. Al-Qaeda and other extremist movements "based in Pakistan channel foreign fighters, suicide bombers, and technical assistance into Afghanistan, and offer ideological motivation, training, and financial support."

Toward the end of his report, McChrystal revisits his central theme: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."

Josh Boak and Evelyn Duffy contributed to this report.

Sep 20, 2009

Soccer spoken here - Philadelphia Inquirer

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By Michael Matza

Inquirer Staff Writer

On a patchy South Jersey playground, on a summer Sunday afternoon, soccer coach Daniel Rodriquez paced in front of the bench - a clump of towels, really.

With one minute left, his team, Achuapa, was locked in a tense, 1-1 game with archrival La Mancha. Watching mostly in silence were about 100 spectators, sprawled on blankets and lawn chairs in the beating sun or under tarps tied to a chain-link fence.

At stake for the players in this immigrant soccer league was another step toward the championship game, to be played today at Campbell's Field, Camden's 6,400-seat riverside stadium.

On weekdays, the men are janitors, landscapers, farmhands, and factory workers across the region. Most Sundays from spring through fall, they seek exercise, camaraderie, competition, and bonds of ethnic identity in the sport many knew in their homelands as fútbol.

For decades, immigrant soccer leagues have flourished in ethnic enclaves throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Today, many are made up mainly of Latinos, but also include players from Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Caribbean.

"Most of us are from countries where we didn't have much, and soccer is our common denominator," said Liberian immigrant Joe Capehart, a forklift operator.

Capehart directs field operations for Imperial Azteca, the 900-player amateur league that includes Achuapa, La Mancha, and 26 other teams. It bills itself as the region's "premier" league and is among the largest.

Azteca was founded in Camden in 2003 by Milton Valdovinos, 33, a Mexican immigrant who owns Plaza Tepis Sports on Federal Street, where players often shop for uniforms and equipment.

But the economics of immigrant soccer do not end with striped shirts and shorts.

Including insurance and referees' fees for the 20-game season, each 22-man team pays about $600 a year to enroll in the Azteca league. On some teams, each player antes up his share. For other teams, such as Achuapa, the managers foot the bill. Some might even pay for players' cleats, uniforms - and a few tortillas now and then.

Those are usually available at the games, where league-authorized vendors do a lively business in Latino comfort food: refried beans, sugary Mexican soft drinks, and homemade, wagon-wheel-shaped crisps of fried dough called chicharrines.

In the proud subculture of immigrant soccer, newcomers to America feel at home on the field and the sidelines. And men like Achuapa manager Rodriguez - a cleaning-company manager with enough spare income to subsidize a team - live the dream of a sports career.

A final extravaganza

As the ball squirted free from a jarring tackle in the Achuapa-La Mancha game, fans shouted at the referee, "Es una mano, señor!" It's a hand ball, sir!

The ref ignored them.

Rodriguez, 35, a study in calm, said nothing and seemed confident that his stars, the wily forward Renberto "Diablo" Polanco and hefty fullback Hector "Pork Chop" Aguilar, would come through in the clutch. They played well, but the game ended 1-1.

"Every game is different," explained Rodriguez, reassuring himself he would make the final again this year. "I wasn't really scared because we're always the ones to beat."

So it will be this afternoon.

Achuapa will face Jalapa for the championship at 1, followed by an exhibition game at 4 between Chivas and América, visiting professional teams from Mexico that have been rivals for decades.

In a league rich with players from Latin America, Achuapa and Jalapa are dominated by Guatemalans. Like many teams, they are named for villages or famous teams back home. Most Achuapa players were born in Jutiapa, the half-mile-high town in Guatemala's south-central highlands. Jalapa is a village to the northwest.

Today's final is a far cry from the fields of bad bounces and twisted ankles where previous championships were played.

Valdovinos, Azteca's founder, is the impresario behind the 2009 extravaganza. The costs - including stadium rent, airfare for the two 18-member Mexican teams, accommodations at the Philadelphia Sheraton - could exceed $100,000, he said.

While admission to regular-season games is free, tickets for today's games are $20 and $25. If Campbell's Field sells out, proceeds will be about $150,000. Valdovinos said he would like to use at least a portion of any profit to improve Camden's playing fields.

"This helps, first of all, my business - I don't want to lie," he said. But sprucing up city parks is important, too, "because the soccer fields in this area are not good."

Social goals

Nonetheless, from such challenging turf across the region have sprung many immigrant leagues. There is no definitive number, since some are organized and others are little more than pickup games.

But the common thread goes well beyond sport. Participants across the leagues say the weekly games, while a connection to a familiar past, are also an informal marketplace for new and established immigrants to share information about jobs, affordable housing, and social services.

Liga Amistad, a six-team "Friendship League," was founded in Philadelphia in 2005, with weekly games at Sacks Playground on Washington Avenue in Southwark.

Organizers say the league, made up mostly of Mexicans, was created to address a drinking problem in the community.

"The guys would spend the day kind of partying, doing not-so-productive activities," said Varsovia Fernandez, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and one of the league's volunteer commissioners.

"In the Latino culture, Sunday is a family day. Now soccer brings them together in a healthy, recreational environment, and the wives and children come to watch."

For women who want to do more than watch, there is International Soccer 7, a female league of about 100 members on teams of seven players each. It was founded six years ago in South Philadelphia by Ruth Bull, 42, a player on Mexico's 2000 Olympic team who was sidelined by knee surgery.

For immigrants who work all week to support families in America or send remittances abroad, "soccer gives us something to do. It is a nice pastime," said Antiqua-born Mitch Williams, 41, a home remodeler who lives in Somerdale with his wife and four children.

A sinewy midfielder with a powerful kick, he modestly admitted to being able to "take a shot at a good distance with some force" - affirmed on a recent Sunday by the rocket shot he took from 50 yards out. It seemed to be still accelerating as it sailed over the goal.

As the only English speaker among Hispanics on the team called Juventud, Williams depends on body language and hand signals to communicate.

"When I first started playing, I would get so upset because there were simple little things that could improve the team's quality of play, but I couldn't communicate," said Williams, who is deeply competitive on the field.

"After dealing with it week after week . . . I started to see it from a different perspective," he said. "It's an opportunity to really let go. It's a type of joy we get nowhere else. We've been doing this since we were little kids without shoes in the streets."

Stereotypes Study: What Ohio Thinks of U.S. Immigrants - Time

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by Jeffrey Kluger

It's never been easy to be part of the huddled masses. The Statue of Liberty may not be choosy about the wretched refuse she allows in the door, but Americans haven't always been so hospitable. Immigrants from Ireland landed in the U.S. in the 1850s only to find shop windows festooned with signs reading "No Irish Need Apply." The Chinese toiled to build our transcontinental railroad in the 1860s only to see the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act signed in 1882, suspending further immigration. The unwritten rule was simple: pretty much anyone was welcome, except the newest group — or at least the one arriving in the greatest numbers — who would have a harder go of things.

All that's changed, though, right? In our new postracial world, haven't we risen above such petty prejudice? Actually, no, we haven't. But the good news is, we're doing better than you might expect. According to a new study released by a pair of sociology professors, the battle between Lady Liberty and Lou Dobbs is now being fought to a draw, and our better angels may slowly be prevailing. (See pictures of the U.S. border patrol tracking illegal immigrants.)

The research, conducted by Jeffrey Timberlake of the University of Cincinnati and Rhys Williams of Loyola University Chicago, was presented this week at the annual convention of the American Sociological Association, in San Francisco. In order to take America's temperature on the often overheated topic of immigrants, the researchers went to an unlikely place: Ohio.

For all its purple-state, heartland rep, large portions of Ohio are still very monochrome — which is to say white — and mostly untouched by on-the-ground experience with people not born in the U.S. Local opinions about immigrants would thus presumably be shaped mostly by what people read or see on TV, combined with a general sense of America's shared melting-pot history. "This makes Ohio ideal for understanding public attitudes ... largely unaffected by actual immigrant levels," the researchers wrote.

Timberlake and Rhys surveyed more than 2,100 Ohioans about their attitudes toward four groups: Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners and Latinos, specifically asking them about each group's intelligence, income levels, self-sufficiency, ability to assimilate and proclivity toward violence. The results were often surprising — and often not. (Read TIME's 1987 cover story on an Asian-American stereotype.)

Uniformly, Asians finished first in the wealth, intelligence and self-sufficiency categories, followed by Europeans and Middle Easterners, with Latinos finishing last. Asians fell a notch, to second, in willingness to assimilate, with Europeans taking the top spot. When it came to violence, the order was reversed: Latinos on top, then Middle Easterners, then Europeans and Asians.

"In some respects, this was exactly what we expected," says Timberlake. The stereotypes of wealthy, studious Asians and ready-to-fit-in Europeans have been fixed in the public mind for years now, and endure even in homogenous communities in which the need for real assimilation ended long ago.

The extremely low marks for Latinos, on the other hand, are of more recent vintage. Immigrants from south of the border may never have enjoyed the same cultural cachet as, say, those from France or England, but the cratering of their numbers is almost surely the result of more than two years of campaign-trail rhetoric and cable fulminations on the issue of illegal Mexican immigrants. "I can't say for certain how the data would have been different in the pre–Lou Dobbs or Glenn Beck era," says Timberlake, "but it seems we're seeing the reflection of the general debate." (See pictures of the fence between the U.S. and Mexico.)

Still, there's happy news within the findings. Timberlake was especially pleased by the relatively positive marks given Middle Easterners — hardly something that would have been expected after Sept. 11. "Even in the post-9/11 context, we're not seeing Middle Easterners stirring much fear, or at least as much as we thought," says Timberlake. Indeed, they stir a fair amount of respect, with 75% of respondents not questioning their self-sufficiency, 81% having no quarrel with their intelligence and 69% rejecting the stereotype that they are generally poor.

Similarly, though Asians must often combat a reputation for standoffishness, just 38% of Ohioans saw them that way. And while only 31% of respondents believed Latinos were self-sufficient enough to get by without government handouts, another 23% had no opinion, meaning the idea that immigrants from the Spanish-speaking world cannot get by without the federal dole is now, at least, a minority view.

That may be small consolation for the Latino community, which just saw one of its members ascend to the Supreme Court but must still struggle for basic respect. Yet the study does suggest ways to fix the problem. For one thing, Timberlake says, the cable ranters should pipe down — or the audience should switch them off. "These people are entertainers seeking attention," he says. "I don't see the value of ginning up hatred of a particular group. All that does is diminish our chance to solve the problem."

Hard economic times — and the desperation with which people who still have jobs guard them — may also be exacerbating the problem. So as the fiscal crisis eases, the anti-immigrant bias may too. Most important, says Timberlake, is to remember U.S. history. Every immigrant group that was demonized and ostracized eventually overcame the prejudice and became part of the nation's cultural quilt. "We've seen this movie before," he says. It almost always ends happily.

Strong ethnic media market gets new weekly - SFGate

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A group of community leaders and journalists did something seemingly unusual last week - they started a newspaper, the Nichi Bei Weekly.

But while its introduction comes as economic pressures are forcing publications to scale down or close, it also comes at a time when the audience for ethnic media is bigger than ever.

According to a study earlier this year by New America Media, a San Francisco group that represents 2,000 ethnic news organizations around the country, readership in this sector increased by 16 percent over the last four years.

Still, it won't be easy. Despite an increasing readership, the ethnic press hasn't escaped the same downturn in advertising that has hurt mainstream publications.

The fledgling Weekly, in fact, was born out of the demise of the Nichi Bei Times, Northern California's oldest Japanese American paper.

In the past, ethnic publications were more recession-proof because of the advertising from small community businesses, particularly restaurants, auto dealers, travel agencies and real estate offices, according to Sandy Close, New America Media's executive director.

Even in down times, those bread-and-butter advertising sources were enough to sustain ethnic media outlets, which were already used to operating on shoestring budgets. But given the current economy, "All of those small businesses are hurting and they can't afford to advertise," Close said.

But there are signs of hope.

Decline stabilizing

Recent reports suggest the recession has ended and the rate of decline in advertising spending is stabilizing. The challenge is for these publications to hold on long enough.

"We need to be here for the community," said former Nichi Bei Times editor Kenji Taguma, who heads the English-language Nichi Bei Weekly. "This effort is true to our mission of keeping the community connected, informed and empowered."

According to the New America Media poll released in June, the ethnic press is reaching 57 million of an estimated 69.2 million African American, Asian American and Hispanic adults in the United States.

Close said the organization was surprised that the poll showed that much of an increase from the 49 million in 2005.

Newspapers aimed at Chinese Americans and Korean Americans have made progress, now reaching 70 percent and 64 percent of their audience, respectively, the New America study said.

Papers such as Sing Tao, the World Journal, Korea Daily and Korea Times have substantially increased circulation, and a Filipino community biweekly, the FilAm Star, began publishing in the Bay Area, the report said.

Meanwhile, English language publications reached 2.8 million Hispanic and 500,000 Asian adults.

Close also said that ethnic media will probably get a big boost when government ads for the 2010 U.S. Census are directed toward people not reached by mainstream news organizations.

Not alone

Still, the Nichi Bei Times is hardly alone in its demise. This year, Bay Area community papers AsianWeek, Ming Pao Daily and Pinoy Today all closed.

Ling-chi Wang, professor emeritus of Asian American studies at UC Berkeley, noted that although the recession claimed the 5-year-old Ming Pao Daily, Chinese Americans in the Bay Area are still served by four vibrant papers.

"The ethnic media is suffering, though to a lesser degree than the mainstream press, perhaps because immigrant communities do not have as much access to the Internet, especially the working class," Wang said.

Also, he said Chinese language readers have a "different relationship" with their papers, which have a higher literary standard than American papers, including "poetry, short stories, essays about simple things, about life."

Kevin Weston, director of new media for New America Media, said long-standing African American newspapers such as the Oakland Post and San Francisco Sun-Reporter have survived numerous "waves of recessions" in part because of the passion of the staff.

"The folks that are in the field see it as a business, but to them this is also community work, this is their life's work," Weston said.

Hispanic growth

Hispanic newspapers have increased in number nationally from 735 in 2005 to 834 in 2008, although the number of daily publications fell from 42 to 29 as the recession hit, according to the Latino Print Network, an advertising group that represents 625 Hispanic newspapers and magazines.

Circulation rose from 17.6 million to 17.8 million during that time. And those papers generated $909 million in ad revenue in 2008, although that was down from $996 million in 2005.

The 8,000-circulation Nichi Bei Times, started in 1946 as a successor to a paper founded in 1899, saw a "modest increase in subscribers" after the paper went from a daily bilingual schedule to publishing three times a week, with one weekly English edition, in 2006.

But the change didn't increase revenue enough for the paper to survive, prompting its board of directors to close the doors and leave the Northern California market to the rival Hokubei Mainichi, also based in San Francisco.

The Japanese American market is different because it's not growing substantially through immigration. That also means the demand for a Japanese-language publication has waned as its readers grow older.

Nonprofit status

So the Nichi Bei Foundation, the group that publishes the new weekly, decided to concentrate on an English edition. The group has applied for nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service, a process that could take months.

That delay makes it impossible to get grants from companies and community groups now, said Taguma, who is the foundation's president as well as the paper's editor. So the foundation is relying on individuals, who have donated as much as $5,000 each.

The group, which has a Web site at nichibeifoundation.org, has raised about $40,000, enough to cover about three months, and plans to publish a scaled down 12-page edition.

E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.

Will Amazon Become the Wal-Mart of the Web? - NYTimes.com

By BRAD STONE

Phoenix

THE hum of 102 rooftop air conditioners and a chorus of beeping electric carts provide the acoustic backdrop in Amazon.com’s 605,000-square-foot distribution facility on this city’s west side. But the center’s employees can almost always hear Terry Jones.

On a recent summer afternoon, Mr. Jones, an “inbound support associate” making $12 an hour, steered a hand-pushed cart through the packed aisles and shouted his location to everyone in earshot: “Cart coming through. Yup! Watch yourself, please!” Mr. Jones explained that he was just making his time at Amazon “joyful and fun” while complying with the company’s rigorous safety rules.

But his cries might double as a warning to the retail world: Amazon, the Web’s largest retailer, wants you to step aside.

Fifteen years after Jeffrey P. Bezos founded the company as an online bookstore, Amazon is set to cross a significant threshold. Sometime later this year, if current trends continue, worldwide sales of media products — the books, movies and music that Amazon started with — will be surpassed for the first time by sales of other merchandise on the site. (That transition already occurred this year in its North American business.)

In other words, in an increasingly digital age, Amazon is quickly becoming the world’s general store. Alongside the books and CDs and DVDs are diapers, Legos and power drills, not to mention replacement car clutches and more arcane items like the Jackalope Buck taxidermy mount ($69.97).

“Amazon has gone from ‘that bookstore’ in people’s mind to a general online retailer, and that is a great place to be,” said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, an eBay-backed company that helps stores like Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney sell online. Mr. Wingo envisions e-commerce growing to 15 percent of overall retail in the next decade from around 7 percent. “If Amazon grows their market share throughout that period, and honestly I don’t see anything stopping it, that is pretty scary,” he said.

Indeed, Amazon has been gobbling e-commerce market share since 2006, taking away customers from eBay in particular. But its advances are shaking up the entire retail world. Giants like Wal-Mart are warily replicating elements of its strategy, while small independent retailers in sporting goods and jewelry now worry their fate will be similar to that of small bookstores and independent video rental shops (remember those?).

Amazon’s expansion strategy has allowed it, almost alone among retailers, to thrive during the recession, even while its own media business has stagnated. Over the last year, shoppers have bought fewer books, CDs and DVDs, in many cases opting for cheaper digital downloads. In the quarter ending in June, for example, Amazon’s worldwide media sales grew only 1 percent, to $2.4 billion, highlighted by a slowdown in video games.

But during the same quarter, sales of other products, which the company lumps together on its balance sheet in a grouping dubbed “electronics and general merchandise,” grew by 35 percent, to $2.07 billion.

Its relentless ambition to sell more of everything is constantly on display these days. In July alone, Amazon introduced separate hubs on its site for outdoor sporting goods and cellphones and wireless plans. Then it capped the month by buying an emerging competitor, the online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos.com, in a stock exchange now worth more than $930 million.

Aside from using its stock and $3.1 billion in cash and marketable securities to make acquisitions, Amazon has fueled its growth as a general retailer by nudging loyal customers to buy a greater variety of products by offering free shipping and speedy delivery with clubs like the $79-a-year Amazon Prime.

It has also lured an increasing number of small sellers to list their own products on Amazon.com, and takes around a 15 percent cut of each sale. Such third-party transactions now account for 30 percent of all the sales on the site. And Amazon continues to expand its network of more than 25 distribution centers around the world, where it constantly hones the art of getting products to customers as quickly as possible.

Next week, Amazon will take yet another step in this strategy, expanding its private label business with a line of Amazon-branded audio-video cables and blank media discs. Amazon already offers hundreds of private label kitchen products and outdoor furniture, and uses these direct relationship with manufacturers to further undercut prices from the competition.

Amazon executives are nonchalant about the shift to general retailing, regarding the moment as preordained destiny ever since the company announced its ambition to offer the biggest selection of goods on earth, before going public in 1997. But they have reason to feel vindicated: after the dot-com bust, some analysts thought the company could go broke trying to stock such a wide array of merchandise.

“It means we are becoming increasingly important in the lives of our customers, which has been our mission from the beginning,” said Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s senior vice president of North American retail. “We had the chance to earn the trust of the customer beyond media, and we took it.”

INSIDE Amazon’s vast shipping centers, the company’s growing capability as a general retailer is nearly invisible. What is clear is that the normal rules of retail don’t apply here.

Instead of storing similar items next to each other — televisions with other electronics, shampoo with other personal care items — randomness abounds. In the warehouse where Terry Jones loudly roams the aisles, which the company somewhat randomly dubs Phoenix 3, “Star Wars” action figures are stocked next to sleeping bags; bagel chips sit next to the “Beatles: Rock Band” video game.

In one high-risk valuables area, monitored by overhead video cameras, a single Impulse Jack Rabbit sex toy is wedged between a Rosetta Stone Spanish CD and an iPod Nano.

In nearby Goodyear, Ariz., at an even larger distribution center known as Phoenix 5, Amazon stores and ships more unwieldy items. Samsung 54-inch plasma HDTVs are stacked three high on the floor, next to crates of Pampers. Across the aisle, a kayak ($879) sits alone on the floor, wrapped tightly in cardboard and plastic.

Amazon says it stores dissimilar products next to each other on purpose, to minimize the possibility that employees select the wrong item. That seems unlikely: every product, shelving unit, forklift, roller cart and employee badge in these shipping centers has a bar code. Each physical move is orchestrated by software that calculates the most efficient path from shelf to the shipping area, telling employees on their wireless bar code readers which aisle and palette to go to next.

“Imagine how many customers we serve and if they were all here now,” said Bert Wegner, Amazon’s director of North American fulfillment, gesturing over the open space in Phoenix 5. “We are doing the heavy lifting for all of them in a hyper-efficient manner.”

Amazon also benefits greatly from its advanced inventory management methods and ability to negotiate beneficial payment terms with vendors. The company sells such a large volume of merchandise, and can predict customer demand so accurately, that it generally sells products within 65 days, before it has to pay suppliers for them.

That arrangement, which analysts call “negative working capital,” is unusual outside of grocery stores and allows Amazon to avoid the huge capital charges associated with buying and storing such a broad line of inventory. It also boosts the company’s cash flow, which it has used to pay down its debt to $109 million at the end of June from a hefty $2 billion in 2000, and to add more product lines to its Web site.

Amazon’s profit and margins have always been slender; it earned only $645 million in 2008, up 36 percent from the year before, compared to Wal-Mart’s $13.4 billion, up 5 percent. But Wall Street is more enamored by the promise of the online retailer, valuing Amazon at around 60 times earnings and Wal-Mart at 15 times earnings.

“They don’t have to incur huge inventory carrying costs and can add product categories almost ad infinitum,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “Amazon has an almost magical business model in terms of inventory management.”

AMAZON’S incursion into general retail has rivals scurrying to regroup and stop its advance.

In August, Target, which allowed Amazon to run its Web site for the last decade, announced it would end the affiliation when its contract was up in 2011, following other one-time Amazon partners like Borders and Toys “R” Us. This month, Wal-Mart said it would allow other retailers to sell their products on Walmart.com, mimicking Amazon’s third-party marketplace and trying to match its vast selection. Analysts believe Sears, which owns Kmart, is preparing to allow outside sellers on its sites as well.

But the Amazon effect may be most deeply felt by small independent stores, which cannot hope to compete with Amazon’s selection and prices and recall in fear how the company hastened the fate of both independent booksellers and prominent electronics chains like Circuit City.

Like many small business owners, Ken Lombardi, the C.E.O. of his family’s 60-year-old Lombardi Sports in San Francisco, views Amazon as a source of some of his business troubles. Though his store has been hit hard by the recession and the expansion of a sporting goods chain, R.E.I., in the Bay Area, Mr. Lombardi says that it is Amazon that has helped depress profit margins and snagged sales for basics like silicone swim caps, undershirts and running shoes — which, he adds, Amazon can offer without California’s 8.25 percent sales tax.

“People used to come in to buy a pair of running shoes and we would sell them a shirt or a workout outfit. We’re losing that,” Mr. Lombardi, who was recently forced to lay off a quarter of his 75-member staff.

In response to the gathering storm, Mr. Lombardi has overhauled his store, shrinking space for lagging items like Crocs clogs — which are offered cheaply on Amazon. He has added space for newer, hotter-selling items like Sanuk sandals, which are for sale on Amazon at about the same price. He also recently commissioned a new Web site to replace the static old one, which had not changed much over the years

“All we can do is tell a story physically and let people touch and smell and feel the product, which they can’t do online,” Mr. Lombardi said, lamenting his store’s future. “I think we are doing everything we can.”

There may be other ways to beat Amazon at its own game. One strategy discussed by rivals and analysts is to focus on the high-end luxury brands in specific categories, like Ralph Lauren clothes, Chanel fragrances or Wilson Audio speakers. Those companies resist selling on Amazon, fearing the downward effect it has on prices.

In shoes, Nike is perhaps the best example. The shoe giant has steadfastly declined to allow Amazon and most other Web retailers to sell its sneakers, and only late last year allowed some shoes to be sold on Zappos.com, which unlike Amazon does not present itself as a discounter.

Now that Amazon has bought the shoe site, a person familiar with internal discussions at Nike, who was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly, said the company was rethinking its arrangement with Zappos. This may be some comfort to Ken Lombardi, who says Nike shoes are among his store’s top-selling products.

There are similar holdout brands in almost every product category, but Amazon says that number is steadily shrinking. As the number of shoppers using Amazon.com even for basic product research grows, “every year we are able to sign up more and more brands,” said Jon Witham, Amazon’s vice president of toys, sports and home improvement.

Whether Amazon can dominate its newest product categories is another question. In markets like consumer electronics, where Amazon increasingly prevails, products like HDTVs from different companies are usually made by the same Asian factories, with little technical difference between brands. Shoppers then look for the best price and most convenient delivery, which Amazon can offer.

But the dynamics are different in categories like outdoor sporting goods. Different companies offer drastically different products, and the right brand of bicycle or snowboard matters to enthusiasts. Shoppers might also prefer to seek the guidance of an experienced sales clerk.

“When Amazon was first launching outdoors sporting goods, we panicked,” said John Bresee, cofounder of Backcountry.com, a growing Utah Web retailer owned by Liberty Media. “We kept waiting to see this giant sucking sound as our sales went away. But it hasn’t happened.”

WITH a flash of humility, a trait that Amazon executives try to cultivate in public, Jeff Wilke, the vice president, concedes that “there are going to be niches that no matter how hard we try, we will never be great at.”

Touring those massive distribution centers in Arizona, it does not appear that Amazon is thinking small. At Phoenix 5, the company is putting the finishing touches on 300,000 extra square feet, which will make the facility one of its largest in the country.

Mr. Wegner of Amazon promises — or is it a threat? — that the new space will be ready for the holiday shopping season.

Tuna Town in Japan Sees Falloff of Its Fish - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By MARTIN FACKLER

OMA, Japan — Fishermen here call it “black gold,” referring to the dark red flesh of the Pacific bluefin tuna that is so prized in this sashimi-loving nation that just one of these sleek fish, which can weigh a half-ton, can earn tens of thousands of dollars.

The cold waters here once yielded such an abundance of bluefin, with such thick layers of tasty rich fat, that this tiny wind-swept seaport became Japan’s answer to California’s Napa Valley or the Brie cheese-producing region of France: a geographic location that is nearly synonymous with one of its nation’s premier foods.

So strong is the allure of Oma’s tuna that during the autumn fishing season, tens of thousands of hungry visitors descend on this remote fishing town, located on the northernmost tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu. On a recent Sunday, dozens of tourists, filmed by no fewer than three local television crews, crowded into an old refrigerated warehouse on a pier where Oma’s mayor presided over a ceremony to slice up a 220-pound bluefin into brick-size blocks for sale.

“This is a pleasure you can only have a few times in your life,” said Toshiko Maki, 51, a homemaker from suburban Tokyo, as she popped a ruby-red cube of sashimi into her mouth.

But now the town faces a looming threat, as the number of tuna has begun dropping precipitously in recent years because of overfishing. This has given Oma another, less celebrated distinction, as a community that has stood out by calling for greater regulation of catches in a nation that has adamantly opposed global efforts to save badly depleted tuna populations.

Just a decade or two ago, each boat here could routinely catch three or four tuna a day, fishermen say. Now, they say Oma’s entire fleet of 30 to 40 boats is lucky to bring in a combined total of a half-dozen tuna in a day.

The problem, they say, is that all the fish are being taken by big trawlers that come from elsewhere in Japan, or farther out to sea from Taiwan or China. Some of these ships even use helicopters to spot schools of tuna, which they scoop up in vast nets or catch en masse with long lines of baited hooks. According to local newspapers, there have been repeated incidents of small fishing boats from Oma and other ports intentionally cutting such trawl lines.

“I’m furious at Tokyo’s bureaucrats for failing to protect our tuna,” said Hirofumi Hamahata, 69, the president of the Oma fishermen’s co-op, who has worked as a commercial fisherman since age 15. “They don’t lift a finger against the industrial fishing that just sweeps the ocean clean.”

Such flares of temper are rare in normally reserved Japan, and especially in conservative fishing communities like this one. But this is a town fiercely proud not only of its tuna, but also of how it catches them: in two-man open boats, using hand-held lines and live bait like squid.

Mr. Hamahata described catching tuna in this traditional way as a battle of wits against a clever predator that he called “the lion of the sea.” After hooking one, the contest becomes a battle of strength: he said it typically took one or two hours to pull a big tuna close enough to the boat that it could be stunned with an electric charge.

In one Hemingwayesque battle, Mr. Hamahata said he fought for 12 hours with a huge bluefin that finally broke free.

Despite such difficulties, Oma’s fishermen said they preferred their generations-old fishing method because it allowed them to catch just large, adult fish, leaving the smaller young ones to sustain local stocks.

Fishing experts say the overfishing is a result of a broader failure by the Tokyo authorities to impose effective limits on catches in its waters. Indeed, Japan, which consumes some 80 percent of the 60,000 tons of top-grade tuna caught worldwide, has lobbied hard against efforts to limit tuna catches, such as are now being proposed by European countries for the Atlantic Ocean.

“There are too many entrenched interests whose objective is maximizing profit, not sustainable use,” said Masayuki Komatsu, an expert on the fishing industry at Tokyo’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

In Oma, catching a big tuna has become rare enough — and the market price high enough — to be cause for celebration. On a recent evening, family members rushed to the pier to greet one boat that had caught a 410-pound bluefin, whose tear-shaped body had to be hoisted off the boat’s deck with a forklift.

Moving quickly to gut and ice the fish to preserve its value, workers from the fishing co-op presented the footlong dorsal fin as a trophy to the captain’s wife, who said it was the first catch in 10 days. The workers said the fish would fetch more than $10,000 at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market.

“Catching a tuna is like winning the lottery,” said another fisherman, 23-year-old Takeshi Izumi, who said his boat had yet to catch a tuna this season.

To maximize prices, Oma has registered its name as a trademark that can be used only with tuna brought ashore here. This has made Oma a brand that is gaining recognition even outside Japan. In March, a sushi chef from Hong Kong paid some $50,000 to buy half of a 280-pound Oma bluefin.

The prices can be even higher: In 2001, a Japanese buyer paid a record $220,000 for a 444-pound Oma bluefin.

One unfortunate side effect, said the town’s mayor, Mitsuharu Kanazawa, was that few of Oma’s 6,200 residents can now afford their own town’s tuna. However, he said the fish have been a boon to the town’s economy, pumping in some $15 million a year from fishing and tuna-related tourism.

After a popular 2000 TV drama featured Oma, the town increased tourism by starting a three-day tuna festival every year in mid-October, which now draws 15,000 visitors a day, as well as hordes from the Japanese media, Mr. Kanazawa said.

“We Japanese have a weakness for brands,” said Ryuko Nishimura, 43, a homemaker from Kuroishi, a three-hour drive away. “It makes the tuna taste two or three times more delicious.”

But with tuna now in danger of perhaps disappearing, the mayor said the town was struggling to find another local product to keep the tourists coming.

“We tried kelp and abalone,” Mr. Kanazawa said, “but nothing has the appeal of tuna.”

Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs - NYTimes.com

Image by Malingering via Flickr

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president.

“The problem is clear in the streets,” said Haitham Kamal, a spokesman for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs. “There is a strict and intensive effort now from the state to address this issue.”

But the crisis should not have come as a surprise.

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba.

Ramadan Hediya, 35, who makes deliveries for a supermarket, lives in Madinat el Salam, a low-income community on the outskirts of Cairo.

“The whole area is trash,” Mr. Hediya said. “All the pathways are full of trash. When you open up your window to breathe, you find garbage heaps on the ground.”

What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.

It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials.

“The main problem in Egypt is follow-up,” said Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department at the Ministry of Agriculture. “A decision is taken, there is follow-up for a period of time, but after that, they get busy with something else and forget about it. This is the case with everything.”

Speaking broadly, there are two systems for receiving services in Egypt: The government system and the do-it-yourself system. Instead of following the channels of bureaucracy, most people rely on an informal system of personal contacts and bribes to get a building permit, pass an inspection, get a driver’s license — or make a living.

“The straight and narrow path is just too bureaucratic and burdensome for the rich person, and for the poor, the formal system does not provide him with survival, it does not give him safety, security or meet his needs,” said Laila Iskandar Kamel, chairwoman of a community development organization in Cairo.

Cairo’s garbage collection belonged to the informal sector. The government hired multinational companies to collect the trash, and the companies decided to place bins around the city.

But they failed to understand the ethos of the community. People do not take their garbage out. They are accustomed to seeing someone collecting it from the door.

For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs — which they then slaughtered and ate.

Killing all the pigs, all at once, “was the stupidest thing they ever did,” Ms. Kamel said, adding, “This is just one more example of poorly informed decision makers.”

When the swine flu fear first emerged, long before even one case was reported in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak ordered that all the pigs be killed in order to prevent the spread of the disease.

When health officials worldwide said that the virus was not being passed by pigs, the Egyptian government said that the cull was no longer about the flu, but was about cleaning up the zabaleen’s crowded, filthy, neighborhood.

That was in May.

Today the streets of the zabaleen community are as packed with stinking trash and as clouded with flies as ever before. But the zabaleen have done exactly what they said they would do: they stopped taking care of most of the organic waste.

Instead they dump it wherever they can or, at best, pile it beside trash bins scattered around the city by the international companies that have struggled in vain to keep up with the trash.

“They killed the pigs, let them clean the city,” said Moussa Rateb, a former garbage collector and pig owner who lives in the community of the zabaleen. “Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.”

The recent trash problem was compounded when employees of one of the multinational companies — men and women in green uniforms with crude brooms dispatched around the city — stopped working in a dispute with the city.

The government says that the dispute has been resolved, but nothing has been done to repair the damage to the informal system that once had the zabaleen take Cairo’s trash home.

The garbage is only the latest example of the state’s struggling to meet the needs of its citizens, needs as basic as providing water, housing, health care and education.

The government announced last week that schools would not be opened until the first week of October to give the government time to prepare for a potential swine flu outbreak, a decision that could have been made anytime over the past three months, while schools were closed for summer break, critics said.

Officials in the Ministry of Health and other government ministries said they had not made this decision — and that they had counseled against pre-emptive school closings.

It appears to have been ordered by the presidency and carried out by the governors, who also ordered that all private schools, already in class, be shut down as well.

“We did not propose or call for postponing schools, so the reason is not with us,” said an official in the Ministry of Health who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the news media.

The heads of three large governorates, or states, in Egypt announced Wednesday that their strategy for keeping schoolchildren safe was to take classes, which on average are crowded with more than 60 students, and split them in half and have children attend school only three days a week, another decision that was criticized. There have been more than 800 confirmed cases of H1N1 in Egypt, and two flu-related deaths.

“The state is troubled; as a result the system of decision making is disintegrating,” said Galal Amin, an economist, writer and social critic. “They are ill-considered decisions taken in a bit of a hurry, either because you’re trying to please the president or because you are a weak government that is anxious to please somebody.”

Cairo’s streets have always been busy with children and littered with trash.

Now, with the pigs gone, and the schools closed, they are even more so.

“The Egyptians are really in a mess,” Mr. Amin said.

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.

Eager Students Fall Prey to Apartheid’s Legacy - NYTimes.com

Image by JP-Flanigan via Flickr

By CELIA W. DUGGER

KHAYELITSHA, South Africa — Seniors here at Kwamfundo high school sang freedom songs and protested outside the staff room last year because their accounting teacher chronically failed to show up for class. With looming national examinations that would determine whether they were bound for a university or joblessness, they demanded a replacement.

“We kept waiting, and there was no action,” said Masixole Mabetshe, who failed the exams and who now, out of work, passes the days watching TV.

The principal of the school, Mongezeleli Bonani, said in an interview that there was little he could do beyond giving the teacher a warning. Finally the students’ frustration turned riotous. They threw bricks, punched two teachers and stabbed one in the head with scissors, witnesses said.

The traumatized school’s passing rate on the national exams known as the matric — already in virtual free fall — tumbled to just 44 percent.

Thousands of schools across South Africa are bursting with students who dream of being the accountants, engineers and doctors this country desperately needs, but the education system is often failing the very children depending on it most to escape poverty.

Post-apartheid South Africa is at grave risk of producing what one veteran commentator has called another lost generation, entrenching the racial and class divide rather than bridging it. Half the students never make it to 12th grade. Many who finish at rural and township schools are so ill educated that they qualify for little but menial labor or the ranks of the jobless, fueling the nation’s daunting rates of unemployment and crime.

“If you are in a township school, you don’t have much chance,” said Graeme Bloch, an education researcher at the Development Bank of Southern Africa. “That’s the hidden curriculum — that inequality continues, that white kids do reasonably and black kids don’t really stand a chance unless they can get into a formerly white school or the small number of black schools that work.”

South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma, bluntly stated that the “wonderful policies” of the government led by his party, the African National Congress, since the end of apartheid 15 years ago, “have not essentially led to the delivery of quality education for the poorest of the poor.”

Scoring at Bottom

Despite sharp increases in education spending since apartheid ended, South African children consistently score at or near rock bottom on international achievement tests, even measured against far poorer African countries. This bodes ill for South Africa’s ability to compete in a globalized economy, or to fill its yawning demand for skilled workers.

And the wrenching achievement gap between black and white students persists. Here in the Western Cape, only 2 out of 1,000 sixth graders in predominantly black schools passed a mathematics test at grade level in 2005, compared with almost 2 out of 3 children in schools once reserved for whites that are now integrated, but generally in more affluent neighborhoods.

“If you say 3 times 3, they will say 6,” said Patrine Makhele, a math teacher at Kwamfundo here in this overwhelmingly black township, echoing the complaint of colleagues who say children get to high school not knowing their multiplication tables.

South Africa’s schools are still struggling with the legacy of the apartheid era, when the government established a separate “Bantu” education system that deliberately sought to make blacks subservient laborers. Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister who was the architect of apartheid, said “Bantu” must not be subjected to an education that shows him “the green pastures of European society in which he was not allowed to graze.”

The struggle against apartheid dismantled the discredited structures of authority in education that Mr. Zuma’s government is now seeking to replace with a new approach to accountability. In those years, the African National Congress sought to make the nation — and its schools — ungovernable. Supervisors — part of an “inspectorate” that enforced a repressive order — were chased out of the schools, as were many principals.

Mary Metcalfe, who was the A.N.C.’s first post-apartheid education minister in the province that includes Johannesburg, recalled principals in Soweto being forcibly marched out of the township. After apartheid ended, Ms. Metcalfe, recently appointed director general in the country’s Higher Education Ministry, said there was a grab for “power and jobs and money.”

Most teachers in South Africa’s schools today got inferior educations under the Bantu system, and this has seriously impaired their ability to teach the next generation, analysts say. Teachers are not tested on subject knowledge, but one study of third-grade teachers’ literacy, for example, found that the majority of them scored less than 50 percent on a test for sixth graders.

But South Africa’s schools also have problems for which history cannot be blamed, including teacher absenteeism, researchers say. And then when teachers are in school, they spend too little time on instruction. A survey found that they taught for a little over three hours a day, rather than the five expected, with paperwork consuming too many hours. Mr. Zuma noted that this deficiency was worse in poor and working-class communities.

“We must ask ourselves to what extent teachers in many historically disadvantaged schools unwittingly perpetuate the wishes of Hendrik Verwoerd,” he recently told a gathering of principals, implicitly challenging the powerful South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, which is part of the governing alliance.

As South Africa has invested heavily in making the system fairer, the governing party made some serious mistakes, experts say. The new curriculum was overly sophisticated and complex. Teacher colleges were closed down, without adequate alternatives. The teachers’ union too often protected its members at the expense of pupils, critics say.

“We have the highest level of teacher unionization in the world, but their focus is on rights, not responsibilities,” Mamphela Ramphele, former vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, said in a recent speech.

South Africa’s new education minister, Angie Motshekga, said in an interview that a lack of accountability had weakened the whole system.

“There’s a complete breakdown,” said Ms. Motshekga, a former high school history teacher.

Teacher vacancies commonly go unfilled for months, she said. Principals cannot select the teachers in their schools or discipline them for absenteeism.

Ms. Motshekga said she had Mr. Zuma’s strong backing to give principals greater authority, and would also seek to change the law so the education department could pick principals directly — and hold them accountable.

“The president said to me, ‘Minister, immediately look at the powers of principals,’ ” she said.

Here in the Western Cape, where the opposition Democratic Alliance recently came to power, the province is considering monitoring teachers’ attendance by having them send text messages or e-mail messages — in response to an electronic query — to confirm they are present.

“We’ve got to get discipline back in schools,” said Donald Grant, the provincial education minister.

Discipline for Teachers

Kwamfundo Secondary School illustrates just how critical an effective principal and disciplined teachers are to student achievement — and how quickly a school’s success can crumble if they are lacking.

For much of this decade, Kwamfundo was led by Luvuyo Ngubelanga, a commanding man admired by students and teachers alike for his strict insistence on punctuality, his work ethic and his faith in them. He prowled the corridors of the yellow brick school, poking his head in classrooms and collaring misbehaving students, making them pick up litter, sweep the halls or clean the bathrooms.

Mr. Ngubelanga, who now runs a vocational college, said most teachers are dedicated, but some could “be naughty like kids.” He recalled finding a classroom packed with students and tracking down its AWOL teacher loafing at the back of another class.

In his years as principal, 75 to 82 percent of students passed the matric, a set of examinations given to seniors that shape their life chances. But the school has struggled since he was succeeded by his deputy, Mr. Bonani. The matric passing rate plunged to 65 percent in 2007 and 44 percent last year.

Teachers and students describe Mr. Bonani as a far less forceful presence, though he says he is engaged and active. Teacher absenteeism has been a major problem.

“There’s a lot of teachers who take sick leave,” said one teacher, who asked not to be named, as it would jeopardize his ability to work with colleagues. “They are not punctual in the morning. How do we expect learners to behave if we do not behave?”

Hungry for Knowledge

Despite last year’s violent episode, students seem to feel genuine affection for their school and speak of their hunger for knowledge and their faith in education to bring a better life.

The classroom itself, No. 12A, seemed shaken awake one recent first period as 52 seniors lifted their voices in harmony. Tall, lanky young men at the back of the room pounded out a driving beat on their backpacks in a morning ritual of song and rhythm.

Even when they realized the science teacher was absent, the student body president and his sidekick, a radiantly optimistic AIDS orphan, rose to lead a review session on evolution. And when the second-period English teacher was late, they just kept on talking about Darwin’s finches and genetic mutations.

“Quiet!” exclaimed Olwethu Thwalintini, 18, the student leader. “Can I have your attention, please. Exercise 2.1.”

Murmuring voices and shuffling papers fell silent.

“List two environmental factors which make it possible for the vertebrates to move onto land,” said Blondie Mangco, 17, the sidekick, whose mother died during final exams last year.

Blondie has barely passing grades in physical science, but she believes she will somehow raise them to A’s or B’s, win entrance to the university of her dreams and become an environmentalist, a doctor or a biomedical scientist. Now that her parents and big sister are dead of AIDS, she feels a duty to be a role model to her little brother.

“He’s looking up to me now,” she said.

Later that day, Arthur Mgqweto, a math teacher, strode into the classroom, jauntily wearing a township take on the fedora called a square. He teaches more than 200 students each day for a salary of $15,000 a year. His students describe him as a friend, a mother, a father, a guide.

“He comes early every, every, every day,” Blondie said. “He comes here early at 7 o’clock and he’s the last one to leave. He’s given himself to us.”

Mr. Mgqweto grew up in the countryside during the apartheid years, ashamed to go to school because he had no shoes. He finished high school in his 30s, sitting in class with children half his age. His only son was stabbed to death at age 21 in a nearby township.

“I always explain to them, life is very hard,” he said. “They must get educated so they can take care of their families when they grow old.”

His students bake chocolate cakes with him on their birthdays. Dozens come an hour early on weekdays and for Saturday morning sessions with him. He is paid nothing for those extra hours, except in their gratitude.

“I love that teacher,” said Olwethu, the student leader. “I love him.”