The Way We Live Now - The Recession Leads to a Gender Gap - NYTimes.com

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By LISA BELKIN

At first blush, the history of women in the workplace seems a trajectory of success. From the assumption that they would be secretaries to the expectation that they can be C.E.O.’s, they have crashed through ceilings (though not enough of them), made workplaces more flexible (not completely, but significantly) and transformed the face of work. They have gone from holding 34.9 percent of all jobs 40 years ago to 49.8 percent today. They are on track to hold more than half of them any moment now; it might have happened while you were reading this.

Under other circumstances, that would be cause for celebration. But women have gained this latest bit of ground mostly because men have lost it — 78 percent of the jobs lost during this recession were held by men. So not only is it unseemly to rejoice over a larger share of a smaller pie, it is also unsettling to face the fact that so much of the history of women in the workplace (both their leaps forward and their slips back) is a reaction to what was happening to men.

That was the case in the 1930s, when working women were dismissed so that they didn’t take jobs from able-bodied males with families to support. During the 1940s women were invited back in, a replacement work force when the men went to war. By the 1950s and into the ’60s women lost their higher-paying blue-collar jobs and took lower-paying ones in the expanding retail and service sectors or returned home; in the 1970s the most ambitious among them rebelled — a period when women truly commandeered the train and drove it forward, often sacrificing dreams of children to get ahead. By the 1980s mothers worked because of the growing feeling that households needed two incomes, and the realization dawned that the workplace was designed to fit the life of a man with a wife at home rather than a woman juggling work and family.

The next two decades brought adaptations — words like “telecommuting” and “flextime” entered the vocabulary — and because times were good, companies saw the benefits of going along. Also because times were good, some women who could leave did, opting out of a system that fit women only marginally better than before.

Now they seem to be returning. Women will soon be the majority of workers because some are opting back in, and many others, who never left, are more likely to find and keep their jobs than men. Once again, the reasons for this are not a function of the clout of women but of the predicament of men and less a sign of how far women have come than of how far they have left to go.

“The things that traditionally hold women back in the work force are working in their favor now,” says Heidi Hartmann, a labor economist and president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “but those obstacles remain.”

Primarily, women are still cheaper. They earn 77 cents to every dollar earned by a man, and in a flailing economy employers see that as an attractive quality. Women who are returning to the work force after several years at home raising children are particularly cheap. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy, has estimated that the penalty is 10 percent of income for every two years out of the job market, a loss that is never recouped. From the hiring side of the table, that may be a good bargain.

In addition, women are concentrated in lower-paying industries, like health care and education, where there have been fewer layoffs, rather than in higher-paying realms, like finance, construction and manufacturing, which have contracted. Why this is true has long been an economic chicken-and-egg question — are these professions less lucrative and prestigious because they are predominantly held by women, or are they predominantly held by women because men are less likely to take them given their lower pay and status? But whatever the cause, the end result is that the “female” professions have not suffered as much this past year.

Women also benefit from some employers’ presumptions that they will settle. When choosing among overqualified applicants for a position, employers often seem more comfortable hiring a woman for a step-down job. Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute, says women might be seen as less resentful about taking a job with less money and authority, and they might also be less likely to bolt if something better comes along. Especially “if a woman is coming back to work and has had difficulty finding a job, the assumption is she is going to be more grateful than the man,” she says.

The point that the increase of women in the workplace is not somehow a victory for women is driven home by the fact that the most successful and highly paid women are losing their jobs at the same rates as successful and highly paid men.

There is also the fact that equality in the workplace has not translated into equality in the home, where women still do decidedly more of the work, on average, than men. That may change as more men are domesticated by unemployment, or it may become an additional burden of this new economy, because there is a different kind of tension in a home where a man is out of a job.

Adding to that tension is the fact that the scaffolding that women have struggled to build to help manage their lives over the years is eroding. The most recent numbers from the Society for Human Resource Management show that families are getting less help from their employers — in the form of flexible work options and other work-life benefits — at a time when workers arguably need them most.

Cataclysms are often classrooms. What we are learning from this one is that women have not reached parity, no matter what next month’s jobs data say. It is not good news when women surpass men because women are worth less. Perversely, real progress might come when we reach the place where a financial wallop means women lose as much ground as men.

Lisa Belkin is a contributing writer and the author of the Motherlode blog. She last wrote for the magazine about women and philanthropy.

Questions on Executions Mount in India - NYTimes.com

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By LYDIA POLGREEN

AHMEDABAD, India — The tableau was as improbable as it was grisly. The bullet-riddled bodies of four Muslims lay neatly lined up in the middle of a road. One of the dead cradled a machine gun. Bomb-making chemicals and a suitcase full of cash sat in the trunk of their car. Intelligence reports had identified the four as terrorism suspects.

It was a tidy crime scene with a story to match: four Islamic extremists who planned to assassinate the powerful chief minister of India’s richest state stopped cold by a fearless band of policemen early on the morning of June 15, 2004. The officers were hailed as heroes.

But the story was too good to be true, according to a recently released magistrate’s report. The supposed militants included a 19-year-old college student, a woman named Ishrat Jehan, who had no evident links to terrorist groups, the magistrate wrote.

The forensic evidence showed that the four had not died in a shootout but were shot at point-blank range, much earlier than the police had said. None of the four had actually fired a gun. They had been killed, the magistrate declared, in cold blood.

The sensational case has fed a heated national debate about the longstanding Indian police practice of killing suspects. Known euphemistically as “encounter killings,” such extrajudicial executions have been a tolerated and even celebrated method of dealing swiftly with crime in a country with a notoriously slow and sometimes corrupt judiciary. An officer in such cases invariably “encounters” a suspect and kills him, supposedly in self-defense.

In cities like Mumbai, which was for decades gripped by violent organized crime syndicates, officers who killed notorious gangland figures were often seen as dark folk heroes, selflessly carrying out the messy business of meting out justice. These officers, known as encounter specialists, became celebrities, even boasting about the number of gangsters they had killed.

But Indians have become increasingly wary of police officers crusading as judge, jury and executioner. Since 2006, 346 people have been killed in what seem to have been extrajudicial police killings, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

In many of these killings, investigations have found, the motive was not vigilante justice. The police often staged such killings for personal gain: bumping off a rival of a powerful politician in the hopes of a big promotion; killing a crime boss at the behest of one of his rivals; settling scores between businessmen.

Here in the state of Gujarat, the grim practice took on an even more sinister form. According to court documents, lawyers, human rights activists and the families of the victims, police officers seeking the favor of Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, began killing small-time Muslim criminals and framing them as big-time terrorists bent on mass murder. No evidence has been offered to show that Mr. Modi encouraged such killings.

Riots in Gujarat killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, in the aftermath of an attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims that killed 59 people in 2002. Mr. Modi, a prominent member of the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has long been accused of fueling the anti-Muslim violence with inflammatory remarks.

Tensions between Hindus and Muslims here are high. The officers who carried out the killings hoped to win promotions and other favors from lawmakers, according to court documents and human rights workers here.

In Gujarat, the team of officers suspected of carrying out these killings usually chose their victims carefully. In all five cases pending in the courts so far, the main targets had shady pasts confirmed by an arrest or conviction, usually for a petty crime. Most were Muslims.

But in the killing of Ms. Jehan that formula went awry. She hardly fit the usual profile of encounter victims. She was a full-time college student who also worked to provide for her widowed mother and six siblings.

According to her family, she was on a trip with her employer to help him set up his marketing business. On June 15, she was shot, according to the police, along with her accomplices as they tried to evade capture.

But the Gujarat magistrate’s report shredded that claim. The food in the victims’ stomachs proved that they had been killed much earlier, the report said. Their wounds were consistent with point-blank shootings. Their hands showed no trace of gunpowder residue. The police had planted weapons on the victims and staged the crime scene.

Gujarat government officials dispute the magistrate’s report, and Gujarat’s High Court has stopped the authorities from arresting the officers it named as the court conducts an inquiry.

Jay Narayan Vyas, a spokesman for the state government, said that the four people killed had been identified by the central government as terrorism suspects. A government intelligence report said that the four were possible terrorism suspects, but the central government has said that these were merely suspicions and could not justify the killings. Mr. Vyas said that the magistrate had overstepped his authority. He dismissed the findings as “false propaganda” from political opponents who wished to discredit Gujarat’s leaders.

Lawyers had known for years that something strange was happening in the Gujarat police force and that the killings of terrorism suspects were dubious, said Mukul Sinha, a lawyer for the relatives of several victims. But hardly anyone thought the killers would be brought to justice.

Then in 2005, the brother of one victim — a small-time bandit named Sohrabuddin Sheikh — sent a letter to India’s Supreme Court demanding an inquiry into the death of Mr. Sheikh, who had been killed by the police and branded a terrorist and who, like the four killed in June 2004, had been accused of planning to kill the chief minister of Gujarat.

Under Indian law any citizen can petition the country’s highest court directly, and the Supreme Court demanded an investigation. In 2007, Gujarat’s government acknowledged that the killing did not happen as the police had claimed and that the police had also killed Mr. Sheikh’s wife to cover up the crime.

The revelation opened the floodgates. “People realized that something can be done, that it is not impossible to get justice in Gujarat,” Mr. Sinha said.

After the officers who made up the elite squad that had carried out these encounters were arrested in the death of Mr. Sheikh, the killings stopped.

“All of a sudden the terrorists have stopped coming to kill Modi,” Mr. Sinha said.

But families of the victims are still waiting for justice.

Ms. Jehan’s mother, Shamima Kausar, said that the charge that her daughter was a terrorist was ludicrous. “She was just a college girl,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “She was my right hand. I am lost without her.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

Yemeni’s Case Shows Hurdles to Leaving Guantánamo - NYTimes.com

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By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — To understand how hard it is proving for President Obama to close the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, consider the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, Internee Security No. 692. His long-delayed departure last week leaves 97 Yemenis at the complex in Cuba, by far the largest remaining group.

It was seven years ago that Mr. Ahmed, then 18, was swept up by Pakistani security forces in a raid on a Faisalabad guesthouse and taken to the prison. It was five months ago that a federal judge, after reviewing all the government’s classified evidence, ruled that his incarceration had never been justified and ordered the government to get to work “forthwith” on his release.

But Obama administration officials were worried. Even if Mr. Ahmed was not dangerous in 2002, they said, Guantánamo itself might have radicalized him, exposing him to militants and embittering him against the United States. If he returned to his troubled homeland of Yemen, the officials feared, he might fall in with the growing contingent of Al Qaeda there, one more Guantánamo survivor to star in their propaganda videotapes.

So American officials first sought to route him to a rehabilitation program for militants in Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis would take him only if he wanted to go — and he did not.

Last weekend, as Judge Gladys Kessler of United States District Court in Washington appeared to be losing patience with the delay in complying with her May 11 release order, an American military jet finally delivered Mr. Ahmed to the Yemeni capital, Sana. “Seven years are gone from his life and can never be gotten back,” said the brother, Wagdi Ahmed, a surgeon’s assistant in the port city of Aden, speaking through a translator. “The feeling of the family is his detention at Guantánamo was not rightful. But nonetheless, we just say, praise God.”

Alla Ahmed, now 26, was expected to spend a week or more in the custody of Yemeni security officials, who were questioning him about other Yemenis at Guantánamo and about his views and plans. Then, his brother said, he will join his family in Aden and decide whether to look for work or try to resume his education.

Mr. Ahmed is the first Yemeni to depart Guantánamo since Mr. Obama’s promise, the day after his inauguration, to close the prison complex in Cuba within a year — a deadline that aides now say may not be met. Since Yemenis now make up nearly half of the 220 remaining prisoners, an exit route for them is critical.

For Mr. Obama, Guantánamo has become both a security challenge and a political headache. A group of retired generals and admirals who stood behind him when he signed the closing order were back in Washington last week to make sure the administration did not renege on its pledge. Meanwhile, the House approved a nonbinding recommendation that no Guantánamo detainee be brought to American soil, even for trial.

The public file on Mr. Ahmed suggests a highly ambiguous case that typifies many at Guantánamo. He told a review board that he had traveled to Pakistan to study “religion and science” — but he said one reason he wanted to attend an Islamic university was that religious schools accepted students with lower grade point averages.

The guesthouse where he was captured was used by both students and terrorist operatives. Four fellow prisoners later reported having seen him fighting or undergoing training in Afghanistan, but Judge Kessler found their accounts unpersuasive, flawed by inconsistencies, contradictions and mental illness.

She rejected the government’s so-called mosaic theory, which asserted that the pattern of indications of terrorist ties added up to a strong case. “If the individual pieces of a mosaic are inherently flawed,” she wrote, “then the mosaic will split apart.” Ultimately, the government may not have had much faith in its own case, since it chose not to appeal Judge Kessler’s order.

Brent N. Rushforth, a lawyer in Washington who represents Mr. Ahmed, said his client never supported terrorism and was known as “the sweet kid” to other prisoners. “Alla has never exhibited any bitterness,” he said.

Yemen, with a population of 24 million, is a fragile state plagued by a separatist insurgency and a growing presence from the group called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. American officials say the government is weak and does not control parts of the country; the escape of 23 terrorism suspects in 2006 shook confidence in Yemen’s counterterrorism capabilities. That is why, even as 117 Saudis and 197 Afghans have left Guantánamo, only 16 Yemenis have been transferred.

Yemeni authorities say that none of those have joined terrorist groups, and that Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, who spent nearly seven years at Guantánamo and whose legal challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling, is leading a quiet life as a cabby in Sana.

But given the instability, some experts say, the administration is right not to simply send most of the Yemenis home. “Right now, there’s no comprehensive program to integrate these guys back into Yemeni society,” said Christopher Boucek, who studies Yemen as an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

John O. Brennan, a presidential adviser on counterterrorism and a former C.I.A. station chief in Saudi Arabia, has made repeated trips there and to Yemen, trying to persuade the Saudis to accept a large number of Yemenis in their rehabilitation program. But Saudi officials have balked, in part because of the negative publicity when 11 of the program’s graduates turned up on a Saudi list of most-wanted terrorists in February.

American officials still have a high opinion of the Saudi program. But Mr. Boucek said it depended on the involvement of relatives, who participated with the former militants and helped police their behavior.

That means that the Saudi program might work for the roughly 20 Yemenis at Guantánamo who grew up in Saudi Arabia or have relatives there. For the rest, he said, the Saudi program is “a catastrophically bad idea.”

American and Yemeni officials are now discussing how Yemen might build its own version of the Saudi program.

“It won’t be quick, and it will cost some money,” Mr. Boucek said. “But I think it may be the best choice among a bunch of not very good alternatives.”

Inside Indonesia - A shadow falls

Review: Andrew Beatty’s new book tells the story of his experiences in a Banyuwangi village

Nicholas Herriman

What would it be like to live and research in an Indonesian village for several years?

With his family in tow, Beatty lived in a village in mountainous Banyuwangi district, which he gives the pseudonym ‘Bayu’. The book is divided into 22 engaging small chapters or vignettes which deal with aspects of life in Bayu as diverse as a night on the town, a pilgrimage to forest caves, local transsexuals, eroticism and child care. Admirably depicted with a delicate touch, these little tasters of village life beautifully enhance the reading experience.

Bayu village

Picturesque Bayu village is found halfway up the ridge of a volcano. It is one of several villages located in close proximity, and situated only a dozen kilometres from Banyuwangi city. In Bayu and these surrounding villages pre-Islamic rituals are still practiced, including a shamanistic trance ritual (seblang), which forms a part of a ritual for cleansing the village community (bersih desa) and the reciting and performance of Javanese texts (tembang). The rituals and traditions of these villages, as with mountain communities elsewhere in Java, appear to be waning.

Bayu itself boasts Banyuwangi’s most lively arts scene. Some local residents have made conscious attempts to preserve or revive the culture and the ways of the Osing people, the group who consider themselves indigenous to the area. This cultural revival is practised through ‘traditional’ weaving and architecture. Bayu is also home to the most highly reputed gandrung singer/dancers. Gandrung is typically an all-night event which is focused on a woman who dances with men and sings. It is still popular in many Osing villages, but other rituals of Bayu seem exotic to the average Indonesian, and even to other Osing people from elsewhere. Beatty notes, for example, that the rituals in Bayu ‘attracted reporters and school students, jostling for pictures, noting down ‘Osing custom’’.

Bayu’s cool, ethereal air, its morning views to the plains below and volcano above and nearby coffee plantation, mean it is little wonder the local government is attempting to promote it as a tourist village. All of this combines to provide Bayu with, I would argue, a uniqueness. Although Beatty claims that ‘it could have been any village in Java’, I think it is precisely Bayu’s uniqueness which makes it such an interesting place to study and which makes it particularly ideal for studying forms of religious adherence that have all but disappeared in the rest of Banyuwangi, not to mention elsewhere in Java.

Religious continuum

Beatty’s earlier work, Varieties of Javanese Religion was based on his fieldwork in Bayu. In it Beatty describes Javanese religion as a continuum. At one end of the continuum are proponents of a ‘purer’ version of Islam for whom he uses the term first popularised by Clifford Geertz in the 1960s, santri. At the other end are the mystics, who the see the human body, forests and foods as symbols of the divine which reside in all of us, and the animists who live in a world populated by spirits. In between these, is the middle- or common-ground, which Beatty calls ‘practical Islam’.

A Shadow Falls gracefully complements Varieties. It also focuses on the religious continuum described in Varieties, and it does so in a very personal and illuminating way. Throughout the book, mystics, animists and lay Muslims benefit from Beatty’s sensitive analysis, although most of the discussion relates to Beatty’s close relationship with the mystics. Beatty is charmingly frank about his relationship with the mystics in Bayu and his initiation into a mystical organisation, Sangkan Paran. He explains, ‘I found myself drawn to the mystics. In a simple-minded way, we like people who like us and among the mystics I felt accepted and liked.’ The author makes no secret of where his sympathies lie. He seems genuinely moved when he joins a pilgrimage with these friends; he praises the village guardian spirit and describes a book written by a ‘handsome’ local mystic as a treasure.

A ‘shadow in the heart of Java’

This sympathy is in stark contrast to his relationship with proponents of the purer form of Islam. He sharply criticises their adherence to ‘a puritan grassroots Islam hostile to tradition and political compromise’ led by ‘vanguard’ of ‘reformist zealots’. The pious, orthodox Muslims irritated Beatty and he makes no secret of his antipathy towards them. Seeing their religious practice as a ‘threat’, he describes them as ‘watchful…alert to openings, and he warns that ‘their time would come’. He characterises this type of Muslim as the ‘unfriendly neighbour’ with a ‘hectoring tone’ and a ‘thin smile’, prone to ‘ostentation’ and a ‘desire to impress’. Beatty felt ‘excluded’ by ‘the dogmatist’. He found their teaching ‘uninspiring and pointless’ and was ‘appalled’ when they attend prayers instead of assisting the family of a deceased villager. In sum, the transformation they represent is ‘shocking’.

Beatty is not anti-Muslim, rather he is anti-puritan. … he becomes a player in the religious tensions he depicts

Puritanism isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Describing the Reformation in England Max Weber wrote that ‘asceticism descended like a frost on the life of ‘Merrie Old England’’. Beatty would surely concur. Puritanism is, as the book’s title suggests, a ‘shadow in the heart of Java’. Beatty also unapologetically aligns himself with old (the ‘strange and sensual’) against the new (the ‘harsh and puritanical’). He is not anti-Muslim; rather, he is anti-puritan. However, unlike Weber, he becomes a player in the religious tensions he depicts. Beatty shares, for example, a mocking joke with his more tolerant friends at the expense of the pious.

The advantage of Beatty’s approach is that we get can see what religious modernisation looks like from the mystic’s perspective. Unfortunately, readers of A Shadow Falls don’t get a sense of what the apparently repugnant reformist Muslims see in their own beliefs. I assume that reformist Muslims are concerned with following God’s word and saving souls (both theirs and others), but Beatty does not provide their side of this story. Expressions of their Islamic adherence such as loudspeaker broadcasting of recitations or the wearing of the veil, although new to Bayu, seem to have been characteristic of villages throughout Java in the 1990s. An indignant Beatty portrays these as an assault on Javanese values, but their puritanism might also be quite restrained by national standards. In any case, Beatty doesn’t tell us how they compare to Muslims associated with the national mainstream organisations of traditional Islam (NU), modernity (Muhamadiyah), Islamism, let alone the greater extremism of smaller groups.

Perhaps wanting authors to be able to blend anthropology and travel writing in a single book is like wanting to have your cake and eat it too

This highly personal approach is not uncommon in the travel genre—the shelf on which this book will be found in major book stores—indeed it’s what we expect. Perhaps becoming personal and engaged is what is required to make the shift from scholarly author to successful travel writer. In the travel book Lost Japan, the American Alex Kerr similarly dedicates himself to the study of local culture, becomes involved in ‘traditional’ arts and ends up berating the modern Japanese for not being Japanese enough. While Beatty relishes the informality and humanity of local beliefs, he criticises the reformist Muslims for not being ‘Javanese’—this is awkwardly reminiscent of the kind of exclusion involved in describing someone as un-American or un-Australian. Perhaps wanting authors to be able to blend anthropology and travel writing in a single book is like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. But travel writing can allow for real sensitivity and nuance. Whatever the shortcomings of novelist VS Naipul’s earlier publication Beyond Belief, his accounts of travels in Indonesia in that book sincerely and sympathetically engage with literal or puritanical forms of Islam. Readers may thus be disappointed that Beatty does not draw on his exceptional knowledge and experience of Bayu to provide a similar sort of balance.

For better or worse, a great travel book allows the writer to get ‘personal’ and the reader to be taken along for the journey. This book certainly does that. Regardless of how one feels about puritanical Islam, the honesty, intensity and insight with which Beatty writes is a real delight. ii

Andrew Beatty. A Shadow Falls in the Heart of Java. London: Faber & Faber, 2009. 336 pp.

Nicholas Herriman (Nicholas.Herriman@adm.monash.edu.au) is a postdoctoral fellow in the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash Asia Institute, Monash University.

America’s high-tech sweatshops - BusinessWeek.com- msnbc.com

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U.S. companies may be contributing to the exploitation of workers

By Steve Hamm and Moira Herbst

Business Week

updated 1:12 p.m. ET, Sun., Oct . 4, 2009

Vimal Patel was studying for a master's in business administration in London when he saw an advertisement for work in the U.S. The ad offered a job in the tech industry, as well as sponsorship for the kind of work visa that allows foreign nationals to take professional-level jobs in the country. So Patel applied and paid his prospective employer, Cygate Software & Consulting, in Edison, N.J., thousands of dollars in up-front fees. But when Patel arrived, Cygate had no tech job for him. He ended up working at a gas station, and Cygate nevertheless took a chunk of his wages for years, according to documents in a criminal case against Cygate.

After a federal investigation into Cygate, Patel and five other natives of India recruited by the company pled guilty to visa violations in June. They were sentenced to 12 to 18 months of probation, assessed fines of $2,000 each, and now face deportation. But at Patel's sentencing in the federal courthouse in Newark, N.J., his lawyer said the slim 36-year-old, with a mop of brown hair spilling over his forehead, was more victim than villain. Like many ambitious workers from abroad, he came to the country seeking his fortune, and he suffered for the effort. "It's a sad day," said Anthony Thomas, the public defender assigned to represent Patel. "He always dreamed of coming to the U.S."

Cygate, which changed its name to Sterling System after the lawsuit, is one of thousands of low-profile companies that have come to play a central role in the U.S. tech industry in recent years. These companies, many with just 10 to 50 employees, recruit workers from abroad and, when possible, place them at U.S. corporations to provide tech support, software programming, and other services. While many outfits operate legally and provide high-quality talent, there is growing evidence that others violate U.S. laws and mistreat their recruits.

Several types of fraud have become common, according to documents from recent lawsuits and interviews with foreign workers, employers, lawyers, and consultants. In some cases companies target young men and women hungry to get well-paid tech jobs in the U.S. and charge them exorbitant fees for visas, which is not allowed under American immigration laws. Even after paying, some workers never get a visa; those who do may find the company they paid has no job for them, as Patel did. This violates U.S. law because companies are supposed to have an open position before they apply for a work visa.

Workers who land tech jobs may face other kinds of trouble. Some companies place foreign workers at client sites and then siphon off part of their pay or charge ongoing fees, which violates U.S. law. Many workers allege they're not paid in between jobs at client sites, though such "benching" without pay isn't allowed either. In other cases, companies claim they're employing people in low-salary regions when they're actually working in high-wage areas, in violation of rules requiring payment of the region's prevailing wage.

Sterling President Nilesh Dasondi was charged with multiple counts of visa violations in the case filed by the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. The government says he collected fees of up to $15,000 from the six workers, left them to find jobs on their own, and extracted more fees to launder their pay through his company. The workers acquiesced because Dasondi, like all employers of visa recipients, held their visa documents and could have revoked the papers if they objected. "This is a microcosm of a big issue that's facing our country — visa fraud," said Sandra L. Moser, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case in an interview after Patel's sentencing.

Dasondi greeted a reporter at the doorway to his offices in Edison one summer day. From a glass door on the parking lot side of a beige one-story building, he led the way through a warren of cramped rooms, with half a dozen people pecking away at computer keyboards. "My life is such a mess right now," he confided once he was seated in a small conference room. He wouldn't discuss details of the cases against him or Patel, but he promised to talk after it is resolved. Dasondi's lawyer, Eric R. Breslin, says his client "has been an asset to his community" and that Sterling "performs legitimate services for its customers."

‘Body shops’
Tech service outfits such as Sterling have thrived in recent years because of shifts in the U.S. economy. As cost-cutting pressures have increased, companies turned over management of tech systems and other back-office operations to outsourcing firms, including many that bring workers from India and other countries into the U.S. on temporary visas such as the H-1B.

One important way outsourcers hold down costs is by keeping a lean workforce at each client site — then turning to smaller companies, such as Sterling, when they need to increase staff for specific projects, such as installing new software or building a new Web site. These companies are known as "body shops" because of their role, and often rely heavily on foreign workers who come into the country on H-1Bs and other visas. "This is where a lot of the shenanigans take place," says Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has written extensively on work visas. A study by the federal government last year estimated that 54 percent of visa rule violations were committed by companies with fewer than 25 employees.

U.S. companies usually don't know — and don't press to find out — which body shops are tapped to support their tech operations. The result is that prominent American companies can easily end up doing business with tech service outfits that violate visa laws. Breslin wouldn't identify specific Sterling clients, but he says they include "significant companies." Dasondi named Computer Sciences as one customer in a 2006 lawsuit: Dasondi wanted the technology giant to pay him for hiring away one of his employees. Computer Sciences would not comment on the case beyond saying it had been settled.

In recent months workers have alleged mistreatment while working for body shops in the offices of Qualcomm and JPMorgan Chase. In a civil suit filed in May and a complaint to the U.S. Labor Dept., Prasad Nair charged that Unified Business Technologies got him an H-1B visa in 2007 by saying he would work in the company's Troy (Mich.) offices and receive $60,000 a year as a programmer and analyst. Instead, UBT sent him to work at chipmaker Qualcomm's offices in San Diego, where the cost of living and prevailing wage for such a position are much higher. The 32-year-old alleged UBT made unlawful pay deductions, delayed payments, failed to pay overtime, and postponed health benefits for his family. David Blanchard, Nair's attorney, says he struggled "paycheck to paycheck" to take care of his wife and 9-month-old daughter and regularly ate at Burger King to save money.

An opaque system
UBT's lawyer, John G. Coutilish, says Nair's charges are "baseless." Coutilish says UBT agreed to make a "nuisance" payment of $2,500 to end the civil suit, though the Labor Dept. investigation is continuing. UBT has filed its own suit against Nair alleging he quit without giving proper notice and defamed the company with his accusations. Qualcomm declined to comment on the case, but a spokeswoman says the company requires vendors it works with to "explicitly acknowledge that they must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including employment and immigration laws."

In another complaint to the Labor Dept., Benly Ebenezer alleges he was underpaid or not paid at all while working in the Manhattan offices of JPMorgan. In the complaint, Ebenezer, who has two master's degrees in computer science, was brought to the U.S. on an H-1B visa by Itek Consulting in 2005. Ebenezer says Itek paid him about 10 percent less than the promised $50,000 a year while he worked at the bank, and then stopped paying him altogether between December 2006 and February 2007. The Labor Dept. ruled in Ebenezer's favor in May. He declined to be interviewed because his situation remains "sensitive."

The phone number for Itek is now disconnected. JPMorgan declined to comment on the case.

U.S. executives often have little visibility into the treatment of contract employees because several layers of companies are involved. One recruiter for a major U.S. outsourcing firm says there's no way his clients know how body shop workers are treated because, until recently, even he didn't know. He discovered that some of the firms he was hiring for short-term projects weren't using their own people but instead bringing in subcontractors, which often underpaid workers. He just put in place new policies so he knows when a firm he hires is using a subcontractor, but he still can't find out how much workers are paid or in which state they're supposed to be working. "We don't like it," he says. "The agreements seem almost criminal."

RIT professor Hira says the situation is similar to what happened years ago when Western companies began using sweatshops in China for manufacturing. Companies such as Nike sought to lower costs by using overseas manufacturers, which in turn squeezed workers with low pay and poor working conditions. After a public outcry, Nike, Disney, and others started to monitor labor standards abroad. American companies may know little about the tech contractors who work for them in the U.S. now, but Hira says companies should take steps to track the situation more closely. "I don't know of any [top executives] who have made an issue of this," he says. "We haven't had a public discussion of what the clients' responsibility is."

Moving against corruption
While American companies may overlook the treatment of contract workers in their midst, the workers are vulnerable because of government policies. When a foreign worker comes into the country on an H-1B visa, the visa is held by the employer, not the worker. If an employee complains, the company can terminate its visa sponsorship, forcing the worker to leave the U.S. Workers can't shift jobs unless they find another sponsor, which can be difficult. And while workers can gain their freedom with permanent citizenship, the wait even for high-skilled visa holders can be 5 to 10 years. "Many of these people don't know their rights," says Michael F. Brown, an attorney in Appleton, Wis., who handles immigration cases. "They're essentially captives."

Most of the discussion of U.S. work visas in recent years has focused on the effect of visas, when used legally, on the American workforce. Some U.S. tech workers contend that bringing in foreign workers drives down their salaries and makes it easier to move jobs overseas. Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have introduced a bill to overhaul the visa program aimed at protecting U.S. workers. But they also want to boost enforcement to combat the mistreatment of foreign visa holders. "We want to stop corruption of [all types in] the [H-1B] program," Grassley said in an interview.

Body shops have sprung up around major metropolitan areas to be close to their clients. One cluster is in northern New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Hundreds of small tech services firms operate in such towns as Belleville, West Windsor, and Edison, where Sterling is headquartered.

At times, the region feels like a front in the battle between foreign and domestic workers. U.S. tech workers in the area have lost thousands of jobs in recent years with the decline of AT&T (T) and Lucent Technologies, and many blame outsourcing firms for taking the remaining well-paid jobs in finance and other sectors. Tech services companies say they're simply responding to clients' needs and are being blamed unfairly for any loss of jobs. In this heated debate, cases of visa abuse, like those alleged against Sterling, have fueled passions on both sides.

John Miano, a 45-year-old software programmer and labor rights attorney, waits for a reporter in a booth in the Summit Diner, a classic mid-20th century eatery in tony Summit, N.J. Miano is the founder of the Programmers' Guild, an association of U.S. software programmers. Over cheeseburgers, he argues that the work visa program is hurting demand for American workers. "The job situation for American tech workers in this area is horrible," he says. "The consulting market has been wiped out. Now it's mostly Indian-owned companies, and they're looking for people with H-1B visas."

He says the rise of body shops has made the situation worse: The companies are usually so small they're overlooked by regulators and law enforcement, so they can squeeze foreign workers and put Americans at even more of a disadvantage. Miano clutches a list of companies in the Summit area that have applied for H-1B visas. They are all over the place — some tucked away in offices on the second or third floors of buildings; one filling the entire first floor of a white-columned brick building on a side street; two of them just mailboxes in a UPS Store. Venkateshwara Computers, in a modest home in nearby Livingston, put in for two programmers. Ajay Pimpariya, the owner, complains that his visa applications weren't approved because he followed the rules, while other companies falsify documents. "If Homeland Security wants to take the information," he says, "I'll tell them who's doing what."

Immigration authorities acknowledge that one reason it's difficult to stop visa abuses is that checking on so many small companies is labor intensive. "The cases are difficult to investigate and difficult to prove," says James Spero, who heads Immigration & Customs Enforcement's fraud unit.

The Dasondi case illustrates how the visa system ties into a human supply chain that reaches halfway around the world. According to court documents, the New Jersey businessman recruited workers in Britain and India. In October 2001, he arranged through an intermediary to meet with Kishor Parikh, a mechanical engineer in the western Indian city of Ahmadabad. Dasondi allegedly instructed him to buy a fake university degree and coached him on how to lie to interviewers in the U.S. Consulate. Parikh allegedly paid $9,000 to Dasondi for sponsoring his H-1B application.

When Parikh arrived in the U.S., he learned that Dasondi didn't have a job for him. Instead, Parikh found work at a greeting card shop. He lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment with his wife, parents, and two children, according to his lawyer, John McDonald. Parikh sent Dasondi about $4,000 per month in money orders, which Dasondi ran through his payroll system as if the money came from a corporate client to pay for Parikh's services, according to court records. The payment scheme, which made it look like Parikh was a legitimate tech worker, is a common strategy called "running the payroll."

‘We were like prisoners’
A tech service firm called Vision Systems Group has been charged, in a criminal suit filed in February, with taking another approach to visa fraud. Under federal law, companies that apply for work visas need to pay the prevailing wage for a specific occupation in a particular region. The rule is aimed at preventing employers from reducing their costs by hiring foreign workers to replace Americans.

Federal prosecutors say Vision Systems, based in New Jersey, set up an office in low-wage Coon Rapids, Iowa, and claimed that up to 25 immigrant employees worked there between August 2003 and December 2008, when they actually worked in higher-wage regions. That would allow Vision Systems to pay a visa holder the prevailing wage of $20.05 per hour in Coon Rapids for an entry-level computer specialist instead of $30.43 at its headquarters in New Jersey. Vision Systems CEO Viswa Mandalapu could not be reached for comment.

Vision Systems identifies JPMorgan Chase and insurance giant Cigna as two of its clients on the reference site Hoovers.com. Both companies declined to comment.

When Akhil Gupta heard about the Vision Systems bust, he celebrated. The Mumbai native who now lives in London had paid the company nearly $3,000 in 2006 for an H-1B visa that never came through. "Vision Systems exploited my dreams," he says. "All I see is a huge amount of money and time lost."

Even workers who land jobs in the U.S. can end up on the bench, without a paycheck for weeks or months. Rajiv Dabhadkar, an Indian who was assigned to such companies as AT&T and Merrill Lynch on guest worker visas, recalls that when a staffing company replaced him with a new visa holder from India, he was so short of cash he couldn't pay the electric bill for his Belleville apartment. He and his wife and their 5-year-old daughter had to wear coats indoors for a few days in the winter. Ultimately, he says, his wife returned to India and filed for divorce. "I am a survivor and a witness," says Dabhadkar, who now lives outside Mumbai and runs the National Organization for Software & Technology Professionals, which publicizes abuses of guest workers.

One Brazilian worker originally came to the U.S. as a college student but was unable to find work when he graduated. Desperate to stay in the country, he took a job with a body shop in New Jersey that promised to sponsor his visa application, train him, and place him in an IT position in a corporation.

Things didn't work out as he had hoped. The company put him up in a two-bedroom apartment in West Windsor that he shared with half a dozen other trainees. It was so cramped he slept in the closet, with his feet sticking out the door. Not a fan of the curries favored by his roommates, he ate his meals at a nearby Subway sandwich shop. At the office, he studied hard in his training courses but was taken aback when the managers instructed him to write up a résumé full of false claims about his skills and work experience. He ended up working for $800 a month. "We were like prisoners," says the man, who would not let his name be used because he is in the country illegally. He ultimately quit and got a tech job in another state.

Foreign workers aren't waiting for American companies or the U.S. government to address the issue of high-tech sweatshops. They've set up Web sites to discuss their experiences with different companies. On sites such as Desi Crunch and Goolti, they talk anonymously and steer one another away from the worst employers. On Desi Crunch, one writer marvels that a company can still attract any potential employees. The worker compares the firm to "an H-1B prison camp" and says, "trust nothing they say or write."

Law Bans 'Separatist' Talk - RFA

Authorities pass a law that bans the discussion of separatism in a northwestern China divided by ethnic tensions.

AFP

Chinese paramilitary police trucks drive through downtown Urumqi, July 9, 2009.

HONG KONG—Authorities in China's northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have passed a law making it a criminal offense to discuss separatism on the Internet following months of ethnic strife.

Xinjiang's People's Congress Standing Committee passed the "Information Promotion Bill" last week banning people in the region from using the Internet in any way that undermines national unity, incites ethnic separatism or harms social stability.

Armed police now stand guard in public places around the XUAR and are detaining anyone found with footage of ethnic riots that erupted in the regional capital Urumqi last July.

Meanwhile, local residents and officials said Urumqi was tense and fearful following a series of stabbings in public places with hypodermic syringes in early September.

"Ever since the needle stabbing incidents ... there have been armed police on the buses, especially at night, checking people's bags," a resident surnamed Zhou said.

"Now, whenever we ride the bus or go to the supermarket or other public places, they check everyone's bags. This is done out of desperation."

Hunt for evidence

A government official in Urumqi said that the hunt was on to collect evidence related to the recent ethnic violence, which began July 5 after police suppressed a peaceful demonstration of Uyghurs and has left 197 mostly Han Chinese residents dead, according to official media.

"The public security bureau started trying to collect evidence, pulling stones and rocks out of the rubble, trying to find traces of blood," the government official said.

"But there wasn't enough evidence left behind. It had all been cleared away to make the streets clean again. It looked as if nothing had happened, but in fact, the evidence was all gone."

Meanwhile, Urumqi authorities were stepping up controls to ensure that no photos or footage of the July violence was leaked to the outside world.

"They are preventing people from leaving Xinjiang with any photos or video footage of the July 5 incident," an informed source in the city said.

"If they catch anyone trying to do that, they'll be detained."

Discussion blocked

Sichuan-based Internet engineer Pu Fei said a number of cell phone users in Xinjiang had received garbled SMS messages in recent weeks, possibly resulting from their use of "forbidden" words on the list used by government communications filters.

Communications networks in the troubled region have been closed several times in the wake of the July 5 ethnic violence in Urumqi, and any online discussion of the tensions resulted in blockages and closures of Internet and cell phone networks.

"It's very rare to see such a starkly worded piece of legislation," Pu said. "Until now, the regulations have just reminded everyone to avoid certain topics. Now it's been made into law. I think this shows a pessimistic outlook for freedom of speech in this country."

"It seems as if [what happened in] Xinjiang has had a bad effect on everything."

Munich-based World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Rashit said the legislation should be applied, if at all, to the whole of China, not just to Xinjiang, as people all over the country are discussing the ethnic strife.

"Now, the Uyghurs, who have already been denied their freedom of expression by the Chinese government, are being prevented from expressing themselves either inside China or overseas," he said.

Legal experts said the new legislation was based on rather vague definitions of "subversion."

"The principle behind this piece of legislation is in accordance with China's national security legislation, but it lacks a detailed explanation about what exactly subverting the state means, and what incitement to violence actually consists of," said professor Wang Youjin, of the Chinese University of Political Science and Law.

"There are very few detailed provisions in the National Security Law, and this is causing difficulties."

Communications severed

Residents of Urumqi have frequently reported being cut off from the outside world entirely, as the authorities block media and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Officials say terrorists, separatists, and religious extremists used the Internet, telephones and mobile text messages to spread rumors and hatred during the ethnic violence, sparking one of the most comprehensive Internet shutdowns ever reported.

Some footage of the riots has managed to appear on video-sharing sites like YouTube in spite of the clampdown, mostly posted by exiled Uyghurs outside of China.

Urumqi resident Zhou said he was having trouble keeping in touch with his two grown children studying at overseas universities.

"Our eldest daughter is studying at a university overseas. We can't make international phone calls ... and we can't reach her online, either...Basically we have totally lost touch with them," he said.

"We rely on friends in Beijing and other places to relay messages. Complaining about it makes no difference. Who is stronger, the individual or the government?"

"There's nothing we ordinary people can do except sit and wait. What choice do we have? We aren't an armed, military organization."

Original reporting in Cantonese by Hai Lan, and in Mandarin by Qiao Long. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

The Hispanic Origin Population in the United States: 2007 and 2008 - Docuticker

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Source: U.S. Census Bureau

National-level tabulations from the Current Population Survey on this population group are shown by a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. They include information on the generational distribution of the Hispanic population, as well as of specific groups, such as Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban. There are also tabulations on educational attainment, nativity and citizenship status, year of entry of the foreign-born, household type, labor force and employment status, occupation, earnings and poverty, housing tenure, mobility and health insurance status.

+ The Hispanic Population in the United States: 2007 — Detailed Tables

U.N. Human Rights Council Shelves Divisive Report on Gaza War - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Howard Schneider and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 3, 2009

JERUSALEM, Oct. 2 -- The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday shelved a controversial report on Israel's recent war in the Gaza Strip, averting a crisis in the push to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks but potentially scuttling efforts to initiate broad war-crimes prosecutions over the conflict.

Palestinian officials dropped their support for a scheduled Friday vote on the report after intense lobbying from the Obama administration, which argued that action on the study would "backfire" by driving Israel away from possible peace talks and strengthening opposition among Western countries worried about similar investigations of their soldiers.

A fact-finding mission chaired by former South African judge Richard Goldstone concluded that there is evidence of war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters and said that if the two sides did not conduct independent investigations, the International Criminal Court should consider prosecutions. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded angrily that the panel's findings undermined the right of nations to self-defense by playing down Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel in the years before the three-week winter war.

Israeli officials said this week that if the Geneva-based Human Rights Council forwarded the report to the U.N. General Assembly, the action would all but end hopes for restarting peace negotiations -- a message reinforced by U.S. officials in talks with Palestinians.

White House special envoy George J. Mitchell has been meeting this week in Washington with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, and President Obama has set a mid-October deadline for efforts to restart direct talks between them.

"We said we have to keep our eye on the ball," said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I think they [the Palestinians] recognized that to push this up the hill, it could really backfire."

Israeli officials did not comment on the decision. Human Rights Watch urged the United States either to press for Israel and Hamas to conduct their own probes or to support their referral to the International Criminal Court.

"The larger danger is that it legitimizes the Netanyahu argument that democratic states can't be constrained in the way they fight terrorism -- that enforcing respect for the rules is an inherent challenge to the right of self-defense," Tom Malinowski, director of Human Rights Watch's Washington office, said of the decision.

While defusing an issue for Netanyahu's government, the delay is a potential blow to the political standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian leader is being pulled by Washington toward renewed negotiations despite the inability of Mitchell and Obama to coax Israel into agreeing to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank -- a step Abbas felt would broaden Palestinian support for the talks. Along with his attendance at a meeting with Netanyahu in New York last week, the delay in action on the Goldstone report marks a second big accommodation to the United States.

"These developments in New York and now in Geneva have affected negatively the slightly improving public position of our leadership. It is disappointing on all levels," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian Authority spokesman.

Abbas was already caught in the middle of the Gaza conflict, a ground and air war directed at his main rival, the Islamist Hamas movement. Abbas holds power only in the West Bank, and he used the security forces under his control to tamp down protests as Israel rolled into Gaza, which Hamas had seized in 2007. More than 1,100 Palestinians were killed in the war, according to Israeli officials, while officials in Gaza say more than 1,400 died, including hundreds of civilians. Thirteen Israelis were killed.

Hamas criticized the delay in Geneva as a sign of Abbas's "collusion" with Israel.

Also Friday, Hamas celebrated the release of 20 Palestinian prisoners traded for a videotape sent to Israel of captured soldier Gilad Shalit. Held for more than three years since being seized in a cross-border raid, the 23-year-old soldier appeared relaxed and healthy on the 2 1/2 -minute video, which was shown on national television and offered the first tangible proof of his condition.

Lynch reported from New York.

Pakistan Plans Key Offensive - washingtonpost.com

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By Ann Scott Tyson and Haq Nawaz Khan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 3, 2009

Pakistan's military is preparing for what may be one of its most significant offensives in years against a major Taliban stronghold near Afghanistan, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials and local residents.

The operation in and around the tribal area known as South Waziristan will target Taliban fighters from the powerful Mehsud tribe, according to one Pakistani official.

Two Pakistani army brigades are in Wana, a town in South Waziristan, and additional troops have recently moved into the region, according to a Pakistani intelligence official in Wana.

"The military has made all arrangements, and a full-scale operation against the Taliban could begin anytime," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Widespread rumors of an operation have prompted residents to begin fleeing the area. Some residents said they have been told by soldiers to evacuate. These refugees have joined thousands who fled earlier in the year as Pakistani and U.S. aircraft struck Taliban targets in South Waziristan.

In Washington, Pentagon officials have spoken for months of an upcoming offensive in South Waziristan, but the timing and scope of the planned Pakistani military operation remained unclear Friday. The Pentagon offered no official comment on the operation.

Pentagon officials did say, however, that they welcomed more aggressive efforts by Pakistan to wage a sustained counterinsurgency campaign in tribal areas where Taliban fighters have held sway.

"We've been heartened by the increased operational tempo of the Pakistani military in the western regions of their country," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "We've also been very pleased by the fact that they have sustained this pressure after beating back the incursion in the Swat Valley, and they continue to keep pressure on militant groups throughout the region, including in Waziristan," he said.

Maulana Tayyab, an Islamic cleric, said he had departed his home town of Makeen without his belongings after residents were asked to leave the Mehsud tribal areas. The "Mehsud tribesmen were saying that the military asked the people to leave if they had no links to the Taliban," he said.

Muhammad Aslam, a resident who arrived in Dera Ismail Khan from Makeen, said that two days ago he saw military convoys heading toward South Waziristan, adding that he was stuck in traffic for two hours while trying to flee. A source close to the political administration in North Waziristan said the military authorities have also been engaged in negotiations with Pakistani militant leaders Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir, in an attempt to secure their support before the operation began.

Pentagon officials have stressed that U.S. military operations aimed at clearing Taliban insurgents from adjacent border areas in Afghanistan will succeed only if Pakistan takes similar efforts to eliminate safe havens inside its tribal regions.

"That is how we impeded these terrorists from operating and ultimately defeat them: We maintain the pressure from the Pakistani side and from the Afghan side," Morrell said.

Khan reported from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Corruption, Shortage of Mentors Hinder Afghan Forces, U.S. Says - washingtonpost.com

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By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 3, 2009

As the White House weighs a request from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan for additional troops for combat and training there, a new report from the Defense Department's inspector general attributes shortcomings in the Afghan army and police force to a shortage of U.S. mentors and trainers, corruption and illiteracy among Afghan soldiers and a lack of strategic planning.

"Expansion of the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] beyond currently approved levels will face major challenges," the 224-page report concludes, listing a major one as "time necessary to develop ethical, competent leaders."

Not all of the report is negative. In discussing how $19 billion has been spend so far on the Afghan forces, the inspector general notes that Afghan army units "have demonstrated consistently that they will fight" and now take the lead in 54 percent of operations. In addition, the report says, the Afghan National Police force has reformed pay and promotion procedures, and it is considered more capable in 52 districts.

The report also says that the Defense and Interior ministries, as well as the army and police, "are beginning to make progress in addressing what has been the endemic problem of corruption."

It adds, however, that it will "likely be at least another year before the ANSF would be able to demonstrate measurable progress."

The inspector general reports, for example, that Afghan army leaders are manipulating a new electronic pay system "to extort soldiers' pay." Afghan officers or noncommissioned officers, the report says, take soldiers' identification cards when they leave posts to give their money to relatives or banks and then require them to pay to get the cards back.

An American officer reported that in his area, there was no system for holding Afghan soldiers accountable for their weapons, uniforms, assigned vehicles or other equipment. Another U.S. mentor said that in his area only about 80 or 90 units of a 100-unit supply order would make it to the Afghan company that ordered it. The officer added that "300 percent of the necessary cold weather gear had to be fielded to the 1st brigade, with no explanation for the duplication and no consequences to anyone for the loss and/or theft of the gear."

Officers in Kabul reported that fuel was a "systematic problem" in the national police force, with corruption and hoarding leading to patrols being curtailed in some districts.

The inspector general describes shortages of U.S. trainers and mentors at almost every level of the Afghan operation: "Mentor and Liaison Teams have historically been and still are under-resourced against required personnel levels, which has delayed the development of the Afghan Army and Police."

Expansion of the teams beyond the currently approved ceilings "will require additional U.S., Coalition, and ISAF personnel resources assigned in support of the train and equip mission," according to the report.

As an example, the report says that of 5,688 U.S. trainers required to develop a competent Afghan military force of 134,000 men, only 2,097 were sent to do the job. Of about 103 liaison teams needed for the mission, 70 were available. In one area, embedded training teams, which normally are made up of 16 personnel, were averaging only four, with additional help borrowed from nearby support or security units.

Police training teams have been "impeded" because they are below the necessary personnel strength. In one area, the target was to have 635 teams fully operational, but there were only 90. More broadly, there were to be 2,375 teams, but just 992 were assigned.

The Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for building Army forward operating bases and police headquarters in Afghanistan involving $4 billion in expenditures over two years, had only 411 personnel assigned of 641 that had been authorized.

Overall, the Afghan unit "had 1029 personnel, including contractors, while the U.S. Army Engineer's Gulf Resources Division in Iraq and Kuwait manages approximately $3 billion worth of projects with three districts and 3,326 personnel, including contractors."

Leader Says Somalia's Plight Is Urgent - washingtonpost.com

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By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 3, 2009

The president of war-torn Somalia said Friday that he urgently needs help to beat back an insurgency linked to al-Qaeda, adding that he has received only a fraction of the $200 million pledged at a U.N.-sponsored donors conference last spring to support his fragile government's security forces.

Sharif Ahmed also expressed support for the Obama administration's first airstrike in Somalia, a daring helicopter raid last month that killed one of the country's top al-Qaeda operatives. But, in an interview in his suite at the Willard Intercontinental hotel, Ahmed said such operations had to be supplemented by other aid if the extremists are to be defeated.

"The people fighting us are affiliated with al-Qaeda," he said, speaking through an interpreter. "Whenever the assistance or support to the government is delayed, the problems tend to increase."

During her recent trip to Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met the 45-year-old president, who took office in January, and said his moderate Islamist government was "the best hope we've had in quite some time for a return to stability" in Somalia. The country has been without a functioning government since 1991, and 14 attempts to establish state authority since then have failed.

But Ahmed's government nearly fell this year after an offensive launched in May by Islamist militias led by al-Shabab, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist group. The United States rushed in about 40 tons of ammunition and weapons and more than $1 million in cash.

Ahmed said he pressed officials in Washington and at U.N. meetings in New York in recent days for thousands more peacekeepers in addition to the 5,300 African Union troops in Somalia. He also requested more economic, humanitarian and military assistance. U.S. officials told him they were studying the requests, he said.

Ahmed said he had expected a boost in resources from a U.N.-sponsored donor conference in April, but that "very little of that money materialized" -- less than $5 million. He urged the U.S. government to help him collect on the pledges, he said.

The U.S. government is one of Somalia's largest donors, providing about half its food aid and roughly $180 million so far this year in humanitarian aid, according to State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. He said that Washington had pledged $26 million at the donors conference, but that it directed the contribution to the peacekeeping force. The United States separately funds training of Somalia's military.

Analysts have said in recent months that al-Shabab appears to be weakened by internal divisions and a loss of support among Somalis, who traditionally subscribe to a moderate form of Islam. Ahmed said, however, that he fears the group is strengthening, noting that it recently proclaimed victory over a rival Islamist militia in the southern port city of Kismaayo. Government forces control only a sliver of the country.

Ahmed said it was "appropriate" for the U.S. military to launch the helicopter strike last month that killed Saleh Ali Nabhan, allegedly one of two top al-Qaeda leaders in Somalia. The Somali government wants to get "al-Qaeda out of our country by any means necessary," he said.

After the strike, al-Shabab attacked peacekeeping forces in what it called retaliatory strikes and released a video showing its members pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda. The group is largely Somali and focused on the domestic conflict but has al-Qaeda instructors, analysts say.

A senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities said this week that the administration is planning an interagency policy review on Somalia soon. The U.S. government has encouraged African nations to provide more peacekeepers, he said, but "with the level of intensity of fighting going on . . . there has been a great reluctance."