Lost Treasures of Timbuktu - Time

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by Vivienne Walt

Stepping through a low doorway into his small house, Fida Ag Mohammed sits at a table and pats a pile of books in front of him. Even in the dim light it's clear that these are no ordinary volumes. The books are covered with intricately hand-tooled sheep- or goatskin; inside, hundreds of pages of yellowed paper are filled with Arabic calligraphy — the painstaking penmanship of Mohammed's forebears centuries ago. "One of my ancestors from the 12th century began our family library," Mohammed says. "There are hundreds of collections like this."

Those collections — stashed in libraries, locked away in closets or buried in the desert sands — have been preserved, in large part, by Timbuktu's isolation from the rest of the world. Landing in this blisteringly hot Malian town in the southwestern corner of the Sahara feels a little like arriving at the end of the earth. Dirt tracks melt into the featureless desert sands. Chickens peck in the shade between mud-walled houses. Little wonder that Timbuktu is a byword for remoteness. (Read: "Out of Africa: Saharan Solar Energy".)

But Timbuktu's manuscripts might just change that. The books date from between the 14th and 16th centuries, a time when the town was a thriving trading hub and intellectual center for West Africa. Now, scared that Timbuktu's 50,000 or so surviving books might disintegrate or be sold off to foreign collectors, African and Western organizations are racing to salvage the treasures, preserving them from the ravages of climate, dust and the passage of hundreds of years. Millions of dollars have been spent in laborious conservation and cataloguing of the works. A sleek new museum, completed last April, is scheduled to open to the public in November. The museum will display tens of thousands of Timbuktu's books to the world, and, its backers hope, shatter any lingering notion that Africa has no historic literary tradition of its own. (Read: "The U.N.'s World Digital Library".)

There is a catch, though. As Timbuktu opens to outsiders and word of its treasures spreads, so too does the interest in the books from outside collectors. In some ways, saving these old manuscripts could imperil them further. In decades past only the hardy visited Timbuktu; the journey required days of travel up the malaria-infested Niger River. Today, dozens of tourists arrive several times a week on small commercial planes from Bamako, the capital of the former French colony. Timbuktu has become a favorite jumping-off point to explore the world's biggest desert. As the modern world rushes in, attitudes among Timbuktu's youth — the generation who will take custody of all those precious manuscripts — is changing fast. Entertainment in Timbuktu these days includes sitting under the stars watching European football matches on satellite television. "This generation has the Internet, they see movies, they go away to study," says Mohammed, who is astonished at the changes he has seen in his 42 years. To look after the books "we choose a child who can take care of the manuscripts: someone who's always going to stay here." But kids keep leaving, the world keeps rushing in. Timbuktu's books have survived centuries of isolation. Can they survive their modern-day fame?

A Rush to Save the Treasures
Sitting at a junction of the Sahara's historic commercial routes on a lazy bend of the Niger River, Timbuktu used to be a hectic crossroads where gold traders heading north met herders and salt merchants trekking south across the desert. The city's lucrative trade fueled Mali's empires as well as a rich ethnic blend of black Africans and Mediterranean people, and an intellectual ferment with dozens of Koranic schools. Refugees from the Inquisition in Spain brought their libraries with them, and soon began writing and buying more books. Timbuktu's literary output was enormous, and included works covering the history of Africa and southern Europe, religion, mathematics, medicine and law. There were manuscripts detailing the movement of the stars, possible cures for malaria and remedies for menstrual pain. "I have here my family's whole history," says Ismael Diadié Haidara, whose ancestors carried their books to Timbuktu from Toledo, Spain when they fled religious persecution in 1467, and later wrote and purchased thousands more. "Families which were exiled, which had no country, had their libraries. It was people's security. They could say, 'This is where we come from.' "

About half the surviving works — some illuminated in gold and crimson, others illustrated with maps — are intact. But even the best works are fragile, the pages brittle, the covers damaged. "There are a lot of problems with the manuscripts," says Timbuktu's imam Ali Imam Ben Essayouti, 62, who has bought several manuscripts from locals who need the cash and sense they might otherwise lose them altogether. "Houses collapse in the rain. The termites eat them. People borrow them and never bring them back."

Malian researchers were amazed at what they found when they began riding camels through the Sahara in the 1970s in search of older works. "We were totally astonished by the volume of manuscripts. There were boxes and boxes of them from the 16th and 17th centuries," says Mahmoud Zouber, who in 1976 became the first director of Timbuktu's Ahmed Baba Institute, the main government-run research center, and who is now counselor on Islamic affairs to Mali's President. Zouber says he immediately realized the manuscripts' primary source importance. "Colonizers had always argued that they were here to civilize Africa," he says. "But there were many points of light. Clearly Africa was not living in obscurity."

The growing sense that the manuscripts are tangible proof of Africa's sophisticated history has inspired a series of projects to restore, conserve and keep them in Mali. A few of the 32 family libraries in Timbuktu have received foreign funding from institutions such as the Ford Foundation or governments such as those of Spain, Norway and Dubai. Six years ago, South Africa's government began the museum project to house the Ahmed Baba Institute's huge collection. Until now there has been no building in Timbuktu with the space or sophisticated temperature control in which to keep old documents. Curators hope the new building will persuade locals to entrust their collections to Mali's government, by loaning or selling them to the museum. "It inspires confidence in people," says Riason Naidoo, who led the Timbuktu project for South Africa.

The End of Isolation
The flurry of projects and interest has boosted Timbuktu's tourism trade. The driver who meets me at the tiny airport introduces himself (in perfect English) as "Jack — like Jack Bauer [from television's 24]." Crowds of Europeans converge every January to attend the musical Festival of the Desert in nearby Essakane. And young locals — armed with French and English — ply their trade as guides for adventure tour groups. (See pictures of the Festival au Desert in Mali.)

As news of the manuscripts has filtered out over the past few years, another group of visitors has begun arriving: antiques collectors and dealers looking to snap up rare and valuable treasures at bargain prices. Locals say the number of collectors has increased markedly over the past year. The village of Ber, an hour's drive from Timbuktu across the blazing sand and past boys leading donkeys that haul spindly thorn branches home for firewood, might seem remote and protected. But when I arrived there in May, collectors had recently visited in search of manuscripts, according to locals. "Since April, people have descended on the village from Libya, Burkina Faso, Morocco," says Mohammed Ag Mahmoud, 83, the imam of the tiny community of mostly Tuareg tribesman.

Preserving the documents in normal times is not easy: a flood flattened one house in Ber last October, obliterating more than 700 manuscripts. Mahmoud says his family's collection of thousands of manuscripts include many with termite damage. One of his sons, Omar Ag Mohammed, shows me about 30 of the books, which are kept stashed in a rickety wooden closet in his small house. The most cherished volumes are not here, but buried in the desert. "We use ashes to protect them from the termites," he tells me. "Then we build a dome on top of them, so we know where to find them."

But the real threat comes from people — both outsiders and insiders. Ber might at first seem unchanged by modern life. Tuareg traders still arrive on camel, bearing giant bricks of salt which they transport across the Sahara for weeks — just as traders did centuries ago when the area's manuscripts were originally written. In Mahmoud's mind, too, local attitudes remain unchanged. Locals remain fiercely distrustful of outsiders, he says, including Mali's government in Bamako, with which locals have been at odds for years. Many people still jealously guard family heirlooms as a tangible form of security. "We won't sell our manuscripts, even if you offer us billions. They will be left to the children who will look after them. We know which those are."

And yet younger Malians, even in Ber, deep in Mali's remote north, are very different from their parents' generation. Few can read the manuscripts' old Arabic script, and some are beginning to ignore long-held taboos against selling them. When I visit Essayouti, Timbuktu's imam, at home, he shows me four 
 15th century leather-bound manuscripts that locals had sold him the day before for about $200. Many locals, he says, simply need the money, or don't know who will next look after the books. "We are trying to explain to each new generation why these are important," he says, peeling back the pages of one of the tomes. "We tell them to pass them along through the generations. But many young people have no use for them. There are some who will see them as an easy way to make money."

If Timbuktu's children decide to sell the manuscripts, there will be nothing to stop them. Unlike antiquities laws which protect old carvings, for example, Mali has no law barring people from taking manuscripts out of the country. As international interest in the works grows, so too could their value on the world market, according to some experts. In 1979, Zouber, the President's counselor, bought 25 Timbuktu manuscripts from the daughter of a former French diplomat who had been stationed in Mali and had taken them with him when he left; Zouber tracked her down in Cannes and paid about $25,000 for the lot. "Now they're worth perhaps 10 times that amount," he says.

Such sums might be a great temptation to a generation that has so far seen little material benefit from its heritage. Fida Ag Mohammed says many elders still favor passing manuscripts down from father to son. "Each generation must appoint one youth to take care of them," he explains. "It has to be someone who will never leave." But as young Malians grow more modern and more mobile, getting them to stay may prove difficult.

Will McChrystal Quit? - Nation

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Yesterday morning, at a meeting of the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative, a former top US military officer suggested that General Stanley McChrystal might resign from his post if President Obama doesn't go along with his pending request for more troops for Afghanistan.

Brig. Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, a former Bush administration official and Centcom officer, in answer to a question from the panel's moderator, said that he hoped that the differences between the White House and its generals didn't escalate to such a dramatic level. But, he said, if Obama doesn't give McChrystal the resources he needs, then the four-star general might quit. "Most commanders would offer their resignation" if they perceive that the commander-in-chief isn't giving them what they need, he said. In that case, McChrystal might have to say: "I'm not capable of doing it. Maybe somebody else is."

At the conclusion of the panel, I asked Kimmitt about his comments, and he emphasized that he isn't predicting that McChrystal might quit. McChrystal, he said, is presenting Obama with three choices: a maximum option, that would involve up to 40,000 more troops, a middle option, and a low option. Under all three, Kimmitt said, McChrystal believes that he can do the job. On the other hand, if he doesn't get the low option, probably something like an additional 15,000 troops, the general might consider quitting.

Needless to say, the resignation of McChrystal, who's been elevated to near-hero status by the Republican right, would be a frontal challenge to the White House. So far, in a sign that the White House isn't playing patsy for the military, the administration has resisted bringing McChrystal back to Washington to testify, Petraeus-style, before Congress. And they've downplayed the significance of McChrystal's role, saying that his input is just one of many sources that are providing information to the White House as it considers the next phase of its failing Afghanistan strategy.

At least one report today suggests that Obama might refuse to support additional forces in Afghanistan, instead relying on targeted Predator-type attacks on Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"President Barack Obama's strategy against al-Qaida may shift away from more troops in Afghanistan and toward more drone strikes against terrorist targets.

"As the war worsens in Afghanistan, Obama could steer away from the comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy he laid out this spring and toward a narrower focus on counterterror operations.

"Two senior administration officials said Monday that the renewed fight against al-Qaida could lead to more missile attacks on Pakistan terrorist havens by unmanned U.S. spy planes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made."

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the administration has ordered McChrystal to delay submitting his call for more forces:

"The Pentagon has told its top commander in Afghanistan to delay submitting his request for additional troops, defense officials say, amid signs that the Obama administration is rethinking its strategy for combating a resurgent Taliban."

And the paper adds:

"One senior administration official involved in Afghan policy acknowledged that the White House and Gen. McChrystal's headquarters may not yet be on the same page on the way forward in Afghanistan.

"But the official said Mr. Obama needs to take a much broader view than the Afghan commander when deciding whether to send more forces.

"'Stan McChrystal is not responsible for assessing how we're doing against al Qaeda,' said the senior administration official. 'He's not assessing how the Pakistani military is doing in its counterinsurgency campaign. That's not his job. So Stan's report is a very important input into this overall strategy, but it's not the only input.'"

The New York Times, in its news analysis piece today, notes that McChrystal is a potent force:

"Even as the president expresses skepticism about sending more American troops to Afghanistan until he has settled on the right strategy, he is also grappling with a stark reality: it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal."

But, like the Journal, the Times notes:

"Administration officials said that the general's assessment, while very important, was just one component in the president's thinking."

It's clear that, for Obama at least, the catastrophic election in Afghanistan is a game-changer. Now, not only is the US fighting an uphill battle in Afghanistan, but it's fighting on behalf of an obviously corrupt, unrepresentative government that is hardly a model of democracy.

In fact, however, no democracy will be unfolding in Afghanistan anytime soon. As we exit, we'll have to leave that country to the tender mercies of its warlord-ridden, tribal based fiefdoms, including the pro-Taliban ones, and let them fight it out. As I've written before, Obama will have to sit down with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan, and ask them to use all their influence with the Taliban to get them to make a deal, at least one that excludes Al Qaeda from the mix. They'll have to sit down with Russia, India and Iran to get them to persuade their friends and allies, including the non-Pashtun Afghans that made up most of the Northern Alliance, to cut a deal with the pro-Taliban Pashtuns. And it will have to bring China into the package, too. It's a huge and complex diplomatic undertaking, and it will require the United States to give each of those countries some concessions in other areas, a price that they can extract for cooperating with Washington on its Afghan exit.

For Salon Owner, It's All About Roots - washingtonpost.com

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A Virginia Businesswoman Helps Other Hispanic Hairstylists Gain Confidence and Experience

By Dagny Salas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Corina Cornejo never forgets how she got her start: as a "shampoo girl" in a beauty salon in Arlington. In the mid-1980s, the owner of the salon put the Salvadoran immigrant in charge of washing hair and sweeping clippings while she studied for her cosmetology license. A few years later, Cornejo and her sister saved enough to open their own salon.

Now Cornejo is a mentor to stylists throughout Northern Virginia's Hispanic community. Her salon in Manassas and her sister's in Arlington, where Cornejo worked before selling her share to her sister, have served as training grounds for several aspiring salon owners to gain entrepreneurial confidence and experience before branching out on their own. "We have to share what we know," Cornejo said in Spanish. "God puts people that help you in your life. Now I can give it others."

With more than 500 foreign-born, self-reported Hispanic hairdressers in Virginia, mostly concentrated in Northern Virginia, salons are a popular choice in the immigrant-heavy region for newcomers who want to avoid low-paying, day-labor jobs in favor of a career. Hair salons require little overhead, have relatively fewer bureaucratic hurdles than some other businesses and tap into skills that many immigrants cultivated in their home countries.

Cornejo opened the salon, expanded and hired other immigrants who later took off on their own, a path not unlike that followed by Korean and Vietnamese nail salon workers and other new arrivals. Her shops helped train Ignacio Rodriguez, who operates in Alexandria; Yesenia Galdamez, who took over one of Cornejo's salons in Warrenton; and others whose intertwined histories demonstrate how many immigrants settle and prosper.

Cornejo's deep ties in the local community have paid off during the economic downturn. Although her annual revenue dipped from a high of about $200,000 in the late 1990s and early 2000s to $100,000 last year, Cornejo said she has not had to cut hours or employees. Her Manassas shop employs six stylists and an assistant manager.

But the economy has affected how often patrons frequent the shop. "You can say 'I don't have the money, I'll wait another week,' " but she expects customers to return as the economy improves. Freddy Ventura, a longtime Manassas business owner, remembers when Cornejo opened her Manassas salon in the early 1990s. There weren't many Spanish-speaking businesses in the area. Corina's Hair Design was a hit.

"That place was packed. I never went because of the long line," Ventura said. "But everyone knew the name of the business."

The Mid-Atlantic Hispanic Chamber of Commerce counts 400 businesses as members in the D.C. region, said Jacqueline Krick, vice president of the Northern Virginia regional office. The chamber opened its first office in Northern Virginia in January and a second last week in Arlington. Cornejo's client list has been built largely on word of mouth. Many of her future employees found her that way too.

In the early 1990s, Rodriguez walked into a well-known salon in the Culmore area of Fairfax County. The salon where Rodriguez had been working had just closed. He struck up a conversation with a stylist who knew Cornejo and her sister and learned that they had an open chair in their Arlington shop. Once he passed the in-person test, he was hired. When Cornejo opened the second salon in Manassas, Rodriguez followed her there.

During an interview he gave in Spanish, Rodriguez credits his time working for Cornejo as instrumental in opening his own salon.

"A lot of people come here without papers and have to clean bathrooms, but I got to work in my chosen profession," said Rodriguez, whose father had owned a barbershop in Mexico. Rodriguez picked grapes and strawberries in California when he first emigrated to the United States in the 1980s. "You open with a vision of what you'll do and you're excited about having your own business."

Other shop owners say that Cornejo gave them a chance when they didn't have much else. After losing two houses to foreclosure in 2006, Galdamez was in no position to open a business when Cornejo approached her last year about taking over her Warrenton shop where Galdamez worked. She had already tried running a house-cleaning service in Arlington, a lunch-truck serving pupusas along Route 1 in Woodbridge, and a hair salon in Herndon. But Cornejo told Galdamez that she believed in her and would support her.

"I always said to myself 'I just need one more opportunity,' " Galdamez said in Spanish. "When I started, I said: 'This is mine; this is what I want to do. I won't leave this.' " She said she still regularly calls Cornejo with questions about treatments, prices, how to treat a particular client.

After nearly two decades, Cornejo's reputation remains strong. A few weeks ago, Doris Morales burst into Cornejo's Manassas shop. She was on a mission to find the salon a friend had recommended for her granddaughter. Was this the right place? The granddaughter was guided to a stylist's chair as Morales sat to relax.

A ramp agent at Dulles International Airport, Morales sees what Cornejo has done for herself -- and for others -- as setting the kind of example the Hispanic community needs.

"A woman who has her own business has to want to fight to come out ahead," Morales said. "She gives opportunities to people who want to learn. That's how the community grows."

FCC Endorses Network Neutrality - washingtonpost.com

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By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The government would play a far more aggressive role in policing the public's unfettered access to Internet services and content under a proposal offered Monday by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The agency would be the "smart cop on the beat," Genachowski said in a speech, outlining a plan to prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or slowing certain technologies and content on their networks. The chairman proposed that firms be required to make public the steps they are taking to control Web traffic.

The proposal raised concerns among several providers, which said the regulation could hurt their business by limiting their ability to manage their networks.

Some of the loudest protests came from wireless service providers, including telecommunications giant AT&T. They argued that "net neutrality" rules should exclude the booming cellphone industry, where competition among carriers is healthy and resources are limited.

U.S. wireless networks are "facing incredible bandwidth strains . . . which require continued private investment at very high levels and pro-active network management to ensure service quality for 270 million customers," Jim Cicconi, AT&T's senior vice president of external and legislative affairs, said in a statement.

Others worried how the government would decide what offerings are acceptable.

"Should all product and service offerings be the same?" asked Chris Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for the wireless association CTIA.

Genachowski said the FCC would weigh such concerns as the agency goes about drawing up its regulatory principles.

"This is the announcement of the beginning of a process," said Colin Crowell, a senior adviser to Genachowski. "The chairman said two things with respect to mobile; first, that the principles ought to apply to all platforms, in order to be technologically neutral. The principals ideally apply in a technologically neutral way so that your expectations as a consumer and entrepreneur don't change as you choose different ways of reaching the Internet. Second, he indicated that how, to what extent, and when the principles will apply to different platforms is what the process will determine."

Genachowski said he suggested that the FCC should evaluate alleged net neutrality violations on a case-by-case basis.

"This approach, within the framework I am proposing today, will allow the commission to make reasoned, fact-based determinations based on the Internet before it -- not based on the Internet of years past or guesses about how the Internet will evolve," Genachowski said in his speech, delivered at the Brookings Institution.

He said the proposed principles won't prevent broadband providers from "reasonably managing their networks." But defining what is reasonable management is where debate by carriers of all sizes and regulators will go forward, telecommunications specialists said.

David Young, vice president of regulatory affairs for Verizon Communications, questioned the need for new regulations because he said there hasn't been much proof that consumers or business have not been able to get the Web content and services they want.

"I'm pleased to hear that the chairman intends to do only as much as needed and no more . . . We need to see what are the problems that need to be fixed and what are the examples that require a dramatic change," Young said.

Genachowski said examples of discriminatory behavior -- such as Comcast's move to allegedly block peer-to-peer service BitTorrent on its network -- show that rules need to be in place to stop such practices and that there needs to be greater transparency by network operators for entrepreneurs and consumers of the Web to ensure that they are able to build Internet businesses and get the services they expect from their providers.

"This is not about protecting the Internet against imaginary dangers. We're seeing the breaks and cracks emerge, and they threaten to change the Internet's fundamental architecture of openness," Genachowski said.

U.S. Faces Doubts About Leadership on Human Rights - washingtonpost.com

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By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 -- From the beginning, the Obama administration has unabashedly embraced the United Nations, pursuing a diplomatic strategy that reflects a belief that the world's sole superpower can no longer afford to go it alone. But, as the U.N. General Assembly gets underway this week, human rights activists and political analysts say the new approach has undercut U.S. leadership on human rights issues.

Rights advocates have been frustrated by several episodes. They say U.S. diplomats have sent mixed messages about their intention to reward -- or punish -- the Sudanese government for its alleged role in genocide in Darfur. The United States rejected a U.N. proposal to compel Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations into war crimes in the Gaza Strip. And the administration has pursued a low-profile approach to Sri Lanka, where a military offensive against rebels is believed to have killed thousands of civilians.

The administration continues to assert that "the United States is not going to preach its values and not going to impose its values," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The problem is they are not American values -- they are international values."

U.S. officials assert they have shown leadership on human rights, citing the administration's decision to weigh prosecutions of CIA interrogators. They note that the administration joined the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing the Bush administration's policy of shunning the troubled rights agency in the hopes of reforming it. A U.S. vote on the Security Council in June was crucial in ensuring continued U.N. scrutiny of Sudan's rights record.

Being a Team Player

But U.S. officials say that American credibility also lies in their willingness to be team players. In the past several months, the United States has pledged to sign U.N. arms control and human rights treaties, and has committed to sending U.S. officers to far-flung U.N. peacekeeping missions. Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says cooperation with the global organization is essential for coordinating international efforts to combat terrorism, scrap nuclear weapons arsenals and fight pandemics.

"No single country, even one as powerful as our own, can deal with these challenges in isolation," Rice said. "We are fundamentally living in an era when our security and our well-being are very much linked to the security and well-being of people elsewhere. That's a simple recognition of reality."

John R. Bolton, one of the U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, said the Obama administration's strategy at the United Nations resembles a religious "act of faith." He questioned the wisdom of empowering the organization.

The United Nations' contribution to the "great questions of our time" -- counterterrorism and nonproliferation -- have been only "marginally effective," Bolton said.

He also has criticized U.S. support for the Human Rights Council, a body that "spends its time attacking Israel and the United States."

In April, the council, based in Geneva, called for an investigation into alleged abuses during the war in Gaza last winter. Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who headed the probe, insisted on expanding the investigation to examine abuses by Hamas and other Palestinian militants. His report accused both sides of committing war crimes and called on the Security Council to compel Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations.

Human rights advocates urged the United States to back Goldstone, saying it would show that the United States is willing to hold even its closest ally to account for abuses. But Rice rejected his recommendations, saying the "weight of the report is something like 85 percent oriented towards very specific and harsh condemnation and conclusions related to Israel. . . . In that regard it remains unbalanced, although obviously less so than it might have been."

Troubled About Darfur

Jerry Fowler, executive director of the Save Darfur Coalition, said the administration's approach to Darfur has been troubling. In recent months, Obama's special envoy, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, has pursued a more conciliatory approach toward Sudan, saying that genocide was no longer taking place in Darfur and that it was time to ease some sanctions.

"We have been pushing consistently for a balance of incentives and pressures, and so far we haven't really seen that balance," Fowler said. "Publicly, there has been more of an emphasis on incentives."

Rice said Gration's "vitally important" efforts to pursue a political settlement to crises in Sudan should not be interpreted to mean "that we are any less concerned" about Sudan's commission of atrocities "or that we are prepared to wield carrots in advance of concerted and very significant steps on the ground. That's not the policy of the United States."

Silence on Sri Lanka?

The other major concern of human rights advocates monitoring developments at the United Nations is Sri Lanka.

When the government launched its final offensive this year against the country's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), it was Mexico and Austria that first raised the alarm in the Security Council. France and Britain sent their foreign ministers to the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, to press the government to show restraint.

The United States supported those efforts to draw attention to the crisis in the Security Council, which China and Russia opposed. It backed a compromise that allowed for discussion on the Sri Lanka conflict in the U.N. basement.

"The U.S. government remained relatively silent on the Sri Lankan crisis, especially in the early stages of the fighting," said Fabienne Hara, vice president for multilateral affairs at the International Crisis Group. Its response to Sri Lanka "did not seem to match the commitment to preventing mass human rights abuses stated during the presidential campaign," she said.

Rice challenged that assessment, saying "my perception is that we spoke out very forcefully."She said that the United States had a strong ambassador on the ground in Sri Lanka, conveying American concerns, and that the assistant secretary of state for refugees traveled there to conduct an assessment mission. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rice said, had been personally focused on the issue.

"I think that is an instance where our stand was clear, consistent and principled," she said.

French Minister Rama Yade's Stardom Holds Political Promise - washingtonpost.com

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By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

LYON, France -- The photographer insisted on telling her how to pose. A television soundman thrust his microphone toward her face while behind him the intruding camera rolled. A knot of bystanders, meanwhile, edged in for a close-up look and opened fire with cellphone snapshots.

"Please, could you back away a little? I would like to be alone for a bit," pleaded Rama Yade, France's junior minister for youth and sports and, at 32, one of the most popular political personalities in the country.

The recoil from pop-star treatment during a recent visit to Lyon, in eastern France, was a rare moment of hesitation in Yade's swift rise to fame and political fortune. Only nine years after graduating from the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Sciences, Yade has become more than a minister. She has become a phenomenon: black, Muslim, female -- and one of the brightest stars in President Nicolas Sarkozy's political constellation.

Along with two women of North African Arab descent also named to the government, Yade's main mission when she was appointed in May 2007 was to embody Sarkozy's effort to bring minorities into positions of responsibility. But with her good looks and impudence -- qualities French people cherish -- she has ended up two years later not only as a poster girl for integration but also as a politician with her own support and the promise of a career on the national stage.

"There is not just the image; there is also substance," said Lyon Mayor Gérard Collomb of the opposition Socialist Party.

Collomb, only half-joking, added that he had told Yade over lunch that he would find a place for her in the local government or parliamentary representation if she wanted to jump ship from Sarkozy's neo-Gaullist coalition and run for office in Lyon.

At a forum here on the role of sports in forming good citizens, however, Yade cited Charles de Gaulle in advocating the need to cultivate athletes capable of bringing glory to France. She rolled off statistics on the number of jobs that would be created by building more stadiums. But most of all, she walked around shaking hands, signing autographs and being photographed.

Conscious of her status as a neophyte, Yade tried loyally to play her assigned role, that of conscientious minister with a Hillary-style pantsuit and a relentless schedule. "I'm not here pushing an image," she told reporters following her travels. "I'm doing my job."

Reminded that she was constantly accosted like a rock star, she smiled and replied: "I can't observe myself. I am an actor, not an observer."

The Yade act will be on tour this week in Washington, where aides said the young minister has been invited to attend the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual legislative conference. President Obama is likely to attend, they added, inviting a comparison with the U.S. leader whose charisma, like Yade's, seems to eclipse racial considerations.

Yade's ascension to stardom was not foreordained, however, in a country where politics traditionally are as exclusive as a London gentlemen's club. Born Mame Ramatoulaye Yade in Senegal, West Africa, Yade was brought up on a tight budget by her immigrant mother in the Paris suburb of Colombes. Her father, a diplomat and professor, by then had gone his own way. The young girl was educated at a Roman Catholic secondary school and, after a tough entrance exam, entered the Institute of Political Sciences for her launch toward fame.

After several years as a staff assistant in the Senate, she joined Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, telling acquaintances she admired his proposals for positive discrimination to advance France's growing black and Arab populations. When Sarkozy was formally named the party's presidential candidate in January 2007, Yade gained celebrity with a conservative-oriented speech in which she castigated the opposition Socialist Party as the creator of a "service-window republic" in which immigrant children got "pity instead of respect."

About the same time her star began to rise in the party, Yade married Joseph Zimet, a high-level bureaucrat and the son of a well-known Yiddish singer.

Along with Rachida Dati, the daughter of Algerian immigrants, Yade emerged as a media star during the 2007 presidential campaign. When Sarkozy was elected, Dati was named justice minister and Yade was plopped down in the previously nonexistent post of junior minister for human rights under Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

During the same year, Yade published her first book, "Blacks of France," in which she analyzed the place in French society occupied by African immigrants' children and other French blacks. It reminded people that, despite her own swift rise in a conservative movement, Yade carried the heritage of a black woman in a predominantly white society.

As a girl, aides recalled, Yade pinned posters of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Michael Jordan in her room. Later, she collected press clippings of Obama's voyage to the White House, and she told French reporters after his election that she was "penetrated" by the history of American blacks and civil rights.

Soon after assuming her new job, Yade's refusal to submit to authority became an issue, rubbing fellow officials the wrong way but drawing favorable attention from the public.

Sarkozy, seeking political and economic gains, invited Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to Paris. Yade boycotted official functions, saying Gaddafi should be made to understand "our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come wipe the blood of his deeds off his feet."

Kouchner, who helped found Doctors Without Borders and had made a career of promoting human rights, swiftly became irritated at Yade's refusal to play by traditional Foreign Ministry rules. On last year's Human Rights Day, he told an interviewer that creating Yade's post was a mistake, and according to aides, his complaints were among the reasons Sarkozy recently eliminated the position.

Yade also refused Sarkozy's exhortation to run in elections for the European Parliament, letting it be known she regarded the European Parliament as a political parking lot and wanted instead to run for the French National Assembly.

Against that background, many commentators expressed surprise to see Yade named junior minister for youth and sports in a government reshuffle in June in which Dati and others departed. According to Le Point magazine, Yade responded by handing a note to Sarkozy during the first government meeting, saying, "Mr. President. One word: thanks!"

Despite her second chance in government, Yade has yet to prove herself as a candidate in a significant election, which aides acknowledge is an obligatory next step. She was elected last year on a government-coalition list to the council of her former home town of Colombes. But now, aides said, she is contemplating running for an office that would give her a political foothold and allow her to transcend the role of Sarkozy's television-friendly integration symbol.

In that, she has a way to go. As Yade walked down a platform to board a train for Paris, for example, heads turned and many travelers pointed in her direction, recognizing the showcase minister. A tall black man, asked if he knew who she was, replied, "Yes, that's Rachida Dati." Told he was wrong, he said, "Oh, yeah, it's the other one."

Number of Foreign-Born U.S. Residents Drops - washingtonpost.com

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

Construction, Manufacturing Job Cuts and Enforcement Cited in Loss of Hispanic Immigrants

By Carol Morello and Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The number of foreign-born people living in the United States declined last year, particularly among low-skilled immigrants from Mexico, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday.

The immigrant losses were particularly pronounced in California, Florida, Arizona and Michigan, all states where the recession hit early and hard. The metropolitan Washington area gained about 1,000 foreign-born residents, but a jump in the Asian population was offset by a significant drop in Mexicans and Salvadorans, the largest Hispanic immigrant group in the region.

The nationwide total of about 38 million foreign-born people decreased slightly, by just under 100,000. That brought down the share of the overall population that is foreign-born from 12.6 percent to 12.5 percent. Although the drop is relatively small, it was the first official decline in at least four years.

Demographers and other analysts said immigration is bound to pick up once the economy improves, although some said stricter enforcement of immigration laws played a role in the decline.

"This is clearly a downturn related to the economy in the U.S.," said demographer William Frey with the Brookings Institution. "What looks like negative immigration is something that, two or three years ago, you wouldn't have expected at all. It shows immigrants respond to the economy."

The statistics were part of the American Community Survey, an annual Census Bureau report that also includes data on household incomes and health insurance. The survey, conducted year-round, is based on a sample of about 3 million addresses.

The Washington area remains among the wealthiest places in the country. The median household income of $85,824 last year -- up from $83,200 in 2007 -- is second only to San Jose. Blacks, whites and Hispanics in the region are all on average the highest earners in the nation, while Asians here are the third highest, behind their counterparts in San Jose and Raleigh, N.C.

For the first time, the survey measured how many people do not have health insurance. Nationally, 15 percent are uninsured, but the figure varied widely among states. Texas had the most uninsured, at 24 percent, and Massachusetts had the least, at 4 percent.

The Washington area reflected big disparities among adults ages 18 to 64. In Prince George's County, for instance, 20 percent of adults in that age group have no insurance, compared with 10 percent in the District and 9 percent in Arlington County. About 16 percent of adults in Virginia have no insurance, as do 15 percent in Maryland.

The new statistics on foreign-born residents confirm findings by other researchers showing an ongoing drop-off in immigrants from Mexico, who comprise a third of all foreign-born residents and two-thirds of all Hispanic immigrants.

The Census found about 325,000 fewer immigrants from Mexico last year, a fall-off of 2.8 percent. Without that decline, there would have been a small increase in the overall number of immigrants.

Latinos decreased in all regions except the Northeast, where the population stayed flat. In the Washington area, the Mexico-born population dropped about 9,600, a net loss of 19 percent. Salvadorans were down about 10,700, a 7.4 percent drop. Together, they negated the addition of 16,500 Asians, a 4.4 percent increase.

A study this summer by the Pew Hispanic Center concluded that since 2006, there has been a sharp decline in new immigrants from Mexico, while the number who return home every year has stayed about the same.

Many Hispanic immigrants work in construction and manufacturing, and they have been particularly affected by the economic downturn, said Mark Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center.

Some might have been deterred by stricter immigration enforcement, too, he noted. In a 2008 Pew survey, 10 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they had been stopped by authorities and asked for their immigration status, as had 8 percent of Hispanics born in the United States.

"Many Hispanics worry that they themselves, or someone they know, may be deported," Lopez said.

But Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors fewer immigrants, said his research suggests almost 1 million immigrants left the country in the past year alone, most of them Hispanic.

"People continue to come, but significantly fewer are coming, and many more are going home," he said. "It appears the decline began before the economy went south. That strongly suggests increased enforcement played a significant role."

Others contend that the floundering economy is solely to blame and that the drop is temporary.

"We've had a lot of enforcement in play for years," said Michael Cassidy, head of the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a think tank that analyzes the impact of policy on low-income Virginians. "I think that points to the economic reasons behind the shift, as opposed to the enforcement reasons. When there are no jobs, people aren't coming and they're not staying."

Despite Institute's Woes, Rep. Murtha Still Seeks Earmarks - washingtonpost.com

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By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

INDIANA, Pa. -- The buzzer is broken at the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security, and a note invites visitors, "Please knock." On a summer afternoon, a lone intern answers the door of the mostly empty basement offices that through the years have overseen $50 million in federal money awarded to projects designed to make the nation safer.

Named for the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, who has shepherded most of its funding, the Murtha Institute was supposed to embark on projects to protect the country from terrorists and clean up environmental dangers. Much of the work went to companies and friends close to the congressman, and few of the projects met their goals, a Washington Post investigation shows.

But the institute's spotty performance and internal turmoil have not deterred Murtha (D-Pa.) or his alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which houses the center, from seeking more money or dreaming big about the future.

Plans are underway to move the Murtha Institute from its dormitory basement suite to a $53 million IUP athletic arena and conference center now under construction. Murtha secured a $3 million federal earmark for the building two years ago, and he sought another earmark this year before abruptly changing course as investigations of his defense appropriations and lobbying connections heated up. Murtha redirected some of that request to IUP research.

In a district that also boasts a regional airport named for Murtha and nearly a dozen other facilities bearing his name, the institute is another example of how the congressman has used federal money to revitalize this economically depressed former coal-mining region. In doing so, he has raised questions among watchdog groups and outside critics about using taxpayer money to fund projects that appear to mostly benefit Murtha loyalists.

"He who pays the most homage to Murtha is the one who gets the money," said Cathy Wentzel, who managed a research group linked to the Murtha Institute and left when her boss was fired.

Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey declined to comment. IUP President Tony Atwater acknowledged in a written statement that leadership changes "may have contributed to deferred and limited productivity in certain areas."

"IUP has implemented an extensive and rigorous review process that seeks to identify federal funding research projects that have a high probability of producing sound data for important national and world needs and we are proud of the progress the university has made in this area," he said.

Murtha did not graduate from IUP, Pennsylvania's fifth-largest university, but he took graduate courses there. The university often turned to him with funding requests from its various research entities. The school was particularly successful with homeland security requests, securing about $20 million in grants and earmarks through the congressman from the late 1990s until 2003.

University officials and business leaders envisioned creating in the city of Indiana a replica of the defense mecca that Murtha spawned an hour to the south in Johnstown, using earmarks to spur growth. In 2004, a year after IUP founded the Murtha Institute, the university won $18.5 million in federal funding, mostly for security research.

But the institute and its sister organizations struggled amid questions about its direction. Jeffrey Crane, its director from 2006 until last month, said the institute for years served as a "paper institute" with no clear mission. Crane was rebuffed by the IUP administration when he shared his concerns about contractor billing practices on some projects that the Murtha Institute was ostensibly overseeing, according to correspondence and to professors involved in the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Crane declined to comment, but acknowledged that he had no power over earmark money flowing to contractors.

"Whether or not I agree with what they've done with the projects or money so far, I have nothing to do with that," he said.

One of the institute's signature projects was supposed to be the National Emergency and Disaster Information System (NEDIS), a software system that would allow National Guard personnel to enter details of a crisis scene into a hand-held device that would spit out instructions for dealing with specific threats.

Jack McInnis, a former Navy program manager, pitched the idea to Murtha's office, and his then company, Production Technology in Arlington, won earmarked funding to develop the system in partnership with IUP. Thomas McCaffrey, a Production Technology employee and former deputy D.C. fire chief, set out to create an online inventory of rescue needs.

But developing the software proved challenging. The project's energy "just seemed to fizzle out," said Mona Garrison, a former IUP programmer.

Murtha's district office closely watched the project, warning IUP officials and contractors during a meeting that they had better deliver a working system soon, two sources said. McCaffrey left the project when a new program manager, Tom Dalton, questioned his billing and contribution.

"It was pretty ugly," said McCaffrey, who defended his billing. "Every time I turned around, there was another company working on the software." Two years later, Dalton left when IUP shifted control of the project to John Cavendish, who headed an affiliated IUP research entity. But Cavendish came under fire from professors who accused him of loose accounting of federal grants.

Cavendish paid out $880,000 to the Rockville company Dalton had hired for software development, but he also paid substantial fees to two other companies for similar work, tax records show. He paid $1 million to a firm in Bowie, Md., that was hired on the recommendation of Murtha's office, and $326,000 to another recommended firm that used Robert "Kit" Murtha, Murtha's brother, as its lobbyist. Cavendish said he retained the firms because "up there, believe me, you want to hook up with companies that Murtha smiles on."

Cavendish resigned in 2005, denying that he had mishandled money. In an interview, he contended that he was ousted because IUP leaders resented his questions about the use of earmark money.

"Just giving people money is almost always going to lead to a lot of waste, like it did there," Cavendish said.

After spending $6 million on the project, IUP finally won National Guard acceptance of its NEDIS system. But the Guard never deployed the device in the field.

Although the project ended in disappointment, Murtha found more earmarked funding for clients of McInnis, and this year he has requested an additional $3.5 million for a biomedical sensor project to be done by a new company McCaffrey founded.

"I think it's kind of sad," McCaffrey said of NEDIS. "I know Mr. Murtha really wanted this done. If the people didn't do what he wanted done, then that's not good."

McCaffrey, who also does lobbying work, secured other earmarks through Murtha's office for his clients.

A more successful institute effort was a training program on weapons of mass destruction that won $4.4 million in start-up earmarks soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

IUP took up the effort with Concurrent Technologies, a Johnstown firm Murtha helped create in 1988 with earmarks. Some at IUP questioned why Concurrent was entitled to half of the money, but spokeswoman Mary Bevan said the firm "performed a significant amount of the total workload."

Murtha also proved to be an IUP ally in its plan to build a regional athletic and conference center. And by agreeing to move the Murtha Institute into the shiny new complex, the university tapped into another federal funding avenue.

Construction began in November on what is to be the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex. The center, named for the local family that owned the land, will include an arena, an auditorium, a hotel and convention space.

The state agreed to put up $20 million if IUP could raise the same amount. Murtha pitched in to help.

He successfully set aside $3 million in the 2006 transportation spending bill and promised to deliver $4 million more this year, but then he redirected some of the money to IUP research and declined to explain why.

Atwater predicted at the November groundbreaking ceremony that Indiana's days of economic hardship were over.

"Indiana needs to be lifted up to a level of commercial and economic resilience not seen since earlier decades when 'coal was king,' " he said. "That lift is coming, and it is the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

In S.C., One Road Divides Two Ways of Thinking - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Views on Obama, and Race, Hold Firm

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

ORANGEBURG, S.C. -- The Bolen and Elmore homes, three blocks apart in opposite directions off Columbia Road in this small city, could not seem more alike. Both are simple brick ranch-style houses occupied by retired couples, the men former police officers, who spend hours a day in dark dens where cigarette smoke wafts beneath the whirl of ceiling fans.

Inside the hush of these rooms, however, their differences become clear. Columbia Road is a long and narrow country highway that serves as the border between the congressional districts of Rep. Joe Wilson, a white Republican who heckled President Obama during a speech, and Rep. James E. Clyburn, Capitol Hill's top-ranking black Democrat, who led the House vote to punish Wilson for it.

Along Columbia Road, and throughout Wilson's and Clyburn's districts, race has long been an inescapable topic of debate. And as Wilson's outburst brought the issue back to the surface, residents here voiced both divergent and hardened opinions. Their emotions are raw, even if cloaked in Southern gentility and graciousness.

The Bolens have seven antique miniature wooden grandfather clocks hanging on their wall. Their den is decorated with metal trinkets and classic Coca-Cola memorabilia. They said they could not bring themselves to watch Obama's health-care address on their 60-inch Magnavox because they think he is a liar. They live west of Columbia Road, in an area represented by Wilson, and they are white.

"Joe Wilson apologized to the president, and the president accepted it. My God, give me a break. I'm sick of this racism stuff," said Barbara Bolen, 66, a retired textile factory manager. "Oh, and Jimmy Carter! I'm so mad about him calling it racism. I think that's awful."

The Elmores have a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hanging on their wall. Their den is sprinkled with Obama campaign souvenirs, including a card that reads "Yes We Did." They watched the president's speech together, but they have grown disillusioned, saying that the election of the first African American president has not transcended racial divisions, pointing to a summer of loud and angry opposition to Obama. They live east of Columbia Road, an area represented by Clyburn, and they are black.

"Everybody tries to say that it's merely because of the health care, but there is some underlying, you know, racism," said Joseph Elmore, 66. "The South has its way of covering up racism. They're not used to a black man running America. They're not used to a black man wielding that kind of power. You had 43 presidents who were white, and now you have a black one."

More than two dozen Orangeburg residents interviewed here last week -- white and black, rich and poor, doctors and lawyers and plumbers and biscuit bakers -- had varying opinions about the role of race in the opposition to Obama. Many were outspoken and shared the views of the Bolens or the Elmores, but some offered more nuanced thoughts.

Orangeburg lies at the heart of the Old South, a working-class, well-educated and heavily Democratic city in the South Carolina midlands. Blacks outnumber whites by about 2 to 1, and the subject of race still hovers over the sleepy historic downtown, where a monument to Confederate soldiers stands. In 1968, police here fired into a crowd of demonstrators protesting a segregated bowling alley, killing three unarmed black men and wounding 27 others in what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

But the city, home to two historically black colleges, has a youthful energy and is attracting businesses. At a fundraiser for the local technical college one evening, many of Orangeburg's well-to-do shushed away questions about race as they sipped fine wine and nibbled on scallops and lamb chops.

"I've known Joe for a long time, and I do not think there was any racism involved," said Brad Hutto, 52, a lawyer and Democratic state senator who is white, but is supported by both black and white voters.

But Linda Blume whispered in a corner that racist sentiments bubble up when she and other white women play bridge twice a month.

"Although they won't admit it, I really think it's prejudice in Orangeburg -- prejudice against blacks," said Blume, 63, who owns an entertainment booking agency and said she supported Obama. "They're all doctors' wives and old Orangeburg society people. They're all good women, but you can't mention anything about Obama or they go crazy. They have fear of outside elements, fear of the unknown, fear of their world changing."

At South Carolina State University, one of Orangeburg's historically black institutions, political scientist Willie Legette said: "I think people are being dishonest if they don't acknowledge that this is to a large degree about race. But what can you do about it?"

South Carolina has been symbolic in this age of Obama, representing both the hope of moving beyond race in the nation and a test of how hard that can be. This is where Obama soared to victory in the Democratic primary with a coalition of black and white voters, defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton by 29 percentage points. It is also where former president Bill Clinton made remarks about Obama that many -- including Clyburn -- believed were racially charged.

But Obama lost South Carolina in the general election, and since then, the Palmetto State has emerged as a hostile check on the new administration's ambition. The governor was the most vocal critic of the economic stimulus package, and one of the state's U.S. senators suggested that health-care reform could be the president's "Waterloo."

Obama's election alone "will not take us to a post-racial society," Clyburn said in an interview. "I think that it's a step in that direction, but my Lord, there's a long ways to go. One election cannot erase the long, sordid history of race that we have in this country."

Longtime state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D), who is black, said the euphoria African Americans felt about Obama's election has ebbed. "There was this inference that America had arrived because we elected a person of color as president, but what is incredibly clear is all is not right with the world," she said.

Some residents voiced deep suspicions of Obama and fear about the broadening reach of federal government, and dismissed talk that their opposition may be laced with racism as nonsense.

"I don't think much of him," said Henry Bozard, 83, a retired air-conditioning worker who joined his wife and daughter for the $6.85 baked chicken lunch special at Mama's Kountry Kookin'. "It's not because he's black. I've got nothing against a black man. He's nothing but a big liar who runs his mouth and can't do nothing right."

Bozard, who is white, continued: "Joe Wilson is the only one who has a backbone. He called Obama a liar, and he is a liar."

"Joe Wilson was speaking for me," added Judi Hagan, 56, the restaurant's owner, who also is white. "I don't like what President Obama is trying to do. But it's not a racist thing. No, no, no. We have lots of black customers. It's not like we only serve the whites."

Two miles up the road, at the Brown Derby, another Southern cafeteria, opinions were vastly different. Owner Daisy Brown Orr, 65, said she is disillusioned by what she considers racist attacks on Obama. She leaned across the table and told of growing up as an African American here. Her mother would force her and her siblings to stay quiet after dusk on Saturdays, when Ku Klux Klan members would ride through their neighborhood.

Change, she said, has been too slow.

"I knew [Obama] couldn't turn things around instantaneously," she said. "I knew there were still racists in the closet. I knew that there would still be people out to get him."

Back along Columbia Road, dozens of ranch-style houses like the Bolens' and the Elmores' are tucked off the main street, behind grassy driveways and Baptist churches. On one side are Clyburn's constituents; on the other, Wilson's.

"Joe Wilson was expressing what his constituents think," Joseph Elmore said. "His white constituents are probably saying, 'Hey, anything being done is not appropriate for us because he's black'. . . . But the people over there, I don't think all of them echo his beliefs."

Barbara Bolen sat on a folding chair in her carport, smoking a Seneca beneath an American flag and wind chimes. She said she takes offense at the assumption that because she is a white Southerner her opposition to a black president is rooted in racism.

"I've worked with the blacks all my life," Bolen said. "I'm not a racist. When I go to the grocery store, I talk to the blacks. When I was at the Wal-Mart the other day at 6 in the morning, I saw a black I knew and hugged him."

"Ohhh, don't bring up racism," she added. "It bothers me."

Philippine Soldiers Find Rebel Stronghold After Deadly Fight - WSJ.com

" style="border: medium none ; display: block;">Image by The Mindanao Examiner via Flickr

By JAMES HOOKWAY

Philippine authorities said soldiers killed as many as 17 suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group Sunday and discovered a heavily fortified bunker complex that appears to be the group's base of operations on an island that has given them years of trouble.

The discovery could explain why Abu Sayyaf has remained so elusive on the relatively small island of Jolo, about 590 miles south of Manila, despite years of U.S. military assistance and training in the area.

Philippine soldiers were tracking suspected Abu Sayyaf members when they stumbled on the complex, military officials said. The complex could accommodate as many as 500 people, and the various bunkers were connected by a network of trenches cut into the steep mountainside, said Ben Dolorfino, a lieutenant general in the Philippine army. During Sunday's six-hour battle, the military called in air strikes, he said.

Abu Sayyaf guerrillas Monday ambushed and killed eight Philippine soldiers who were returning to base after securing the rebels' lair, authorities said.

The guerrilla group, which first came to international prominence in 2000 for kidnapping and ransoming tourists, has baffled Philippine military officials for the way its members seemingly melt away into Jolo's dense foliage. The unearthing of the bunker network suggests how Abu Sayyaf has been able to persist on the roughly 40-mile-wide island despite intensive manhunts and the use of U.S. satellites.

The loss of the apparent rebel base marks the second major blow to Islamist terrorist groups operating in Southeast Asia in the past week. On Thursday, Indonesian police tracked down and killed Noordin Mohamed Top in central Java. Mr. Noordin, a Malaysian national, participated in or masterminded a series of terrorist strikes against Western interests in Indonesia, including bombings in Bail in 2002 and 2005 and an attack on two Jakarta hotels in July.

Philippine military officials are now preparing to examine the Jolo bunker complex for further clues to how the seemingly loose-knit Abu Sayyaf and its top leaders operate. Philippine authorities said Sunday's battle may already have disrupted a meeting between Abu Sayyaf chieftains who were being tracked in the area, including Isnilon Hapilon, for whom the U.S. is offering a bounty of $5 million for information leading to his capture.

Formed in the late 1980s with financing provided by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, Abu Sayyaf was intended to radicalize the Philippines' more established Muslim insurgency, but for a period it degenerated into kidnapping for ransom.

The group later attempted to attract the attention of al Qaeda-linked financiers by teaming up with militants in neighboring Malaysian and Indonesia, including members of the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah group, which orchestrated the Bali bombings. Philippine intelligence officials say Abu Sayyaf is still harboring two important Indonesian terrorist suspects, Umar Patek and Dulmatin, who are wanted for their alleged role in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed over 200 people.

The Abu Sayyaf rebels themselves have planned major terrorist attacks across the Philippines, including the firebombing of a crowded ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that killed 116 people.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com