In China, Rx for Ailing Health System - WSJ.com

By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH

AFP/Getty

Employees at a community health center in Shanghai stand ready for patients.

QUNGUANG, China -- Here in China's agricultural heartland, signs of progress abound. Qunguang village's 1,000 inhabitants, who live among rolling fields of corn, rice and peanuts, are linked to the world by a new 215-mile, $1.6 billion expressway. An industrial park is under construction nearby. Incomes for rural people in the county jumped 85% between 2000 and 2008.

At the local health clinic, not far from the highway exit ramp, Mei Ruying diagnoses patients with little more than a stethoscope and a thermometer. To keep abreast of new drugs, Ms. Mei, who lacks a medical degree, reads instructions enclosed in the boxes.

China's rickety health-care system relies on thousands of practitioners like Ms. Mei. Often, they are poorly compensated and ill-equipped to serve their big rural constituencies. According to the national health ministry, just 17% of China's medical workers in 2005 were university graduates. In village clinics and township hospitals, just 2% were.

The Long March: The Revolution at 60

• Complete Coverage: The Long March

As China continues riding a long wave of prosperity, its health-care woes are under a spotlight. Medical treatment has improved greatly for many Chinese in recent times of heady growth. But the system of near-universal but basic coverage offered in the years after the Communist revolution has frayed. Opinion polls rank medical care among citizens' top concerns. Spiraling drug costs, inadequate insurance and big out-of-pocket expenses are all cause for public distress. In poor rural areas, many forgo treatment because they can't afford it.

Now, as the Communist Party leadership this month celebrates its 60th year in power, it is moving away from a nearly single-minded focus on economic growth that shaped policy for much of the past three decades.

This year, the government announced a plan to spend more than $120 billion on the first phase of a 10-year overhaul of the health-care system. By 2020, China says, it wants all its citizens to have access to affordable, basic medical services.

"The public is demanding this," says Mao Qunan, spokesman of the Ministry of Health. "Investment in health-care has not kept up," he says, and the new approach is meant to bring the country's health system "in line with China's economic and social development."

The government is renovating thousands of medical facilities and funding broader state-sponsored insurance coverage. After a recent push, the government says that about 77% of people are enrolled in insurance plans, though the portion of medical expenses covered is often relatively low. About 300 million people have no coverage at all.

Just as health-care reform in the U.S. is testing the Obama administration, China's medical policy has become a political lightning rod for China's president, Hu Jintao. Mr. Hu and other top officials have pledged to "put people first" and to pursue a more balanced approach to economic development than their predecessors.

William Hsiao, a Harvard University health economist who has studied Chinese health care for years, says previous Chinese leaders were deeply skeptical about the benefits of investing in health. The attitude, he says, was: "There's a surplus of labor. So, more people die prematurely. It doesn't affect the labor market materially."

Now, he says, President Hu and other top leaders -- who spent much of their careers working in rural areas -- have a better understanding of the troubles facing the country's rural poor. "They worry that unhappiness at the grass-roots level could result in social unrest. There is that sense of threat," he says.

In 2006, the latest year for which the government has released figures, nearly 10,000 incidents of violent protest were spurred by people unhappy with the care, or lack of it, provided by state hospitals.

In a speech last month, Li Keqiang, China's vice premier, said that repairing the health-care system would have "an overall impact on reform, development and stability" in China.

Chinese health-care reform could also play a role in making the economy less reliant on exports by stimulating domestic demand.

The specter of high medical costs -- and the lack of a social-security system -- is a major force driving Chinese to save rather than spend.

Whether China succeeds in the task has implications for global public health. China is the world's most-populous nation, with 1.3 billion people. And diseases that emerge here -- such as severe acute respiratory syndrome -- quickly spread around the world.

Officials are handicapped by years of underspending. Government outlays for health care amounted to less than 1% of gross domestic product in 2006, ranking China No. 156 out of 196 nations surveyed by the World Health Organization.

The $124 billion infusion, promised through 2011, will provide a substantial boost. But it is only a start. And the tab could be higher than expected: Chronic illnesses -- such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes -- are becoming more prevalent as China grows affluent.

In the first decades of Communist rule, China made significant public-health strides. Initiatives reduced malaria deaths and infant mortality rates. Workers on collective farms and in state-run factories received almost universal, if very basic, medical care.

That system started to unravel in the late 1970s as China began to embrace capitalist-market economics. Rural communes were disbanded and inefficient state enterprises went bust. Funding for public hospitals and clinics slowed. Out-of-pocket payments for medical services rose from 20% of health-care expenditures in 1978 to roughly 50% in 2006, according to government figures.

A central goal of Beijing is to improve the affordability and availability of care in China's less well-off rural areas, which are home to more than half the population. To do that, the government has launched a crash construction program for county hospitals and township clinics. And it is pouring more money into a rural-cooperative health-insurance program.

One beneficiary of the new funds is the Ninghe County Hospital, located in a farming area outside the northeastern port city of Tianjin. Using government cash, the hospital was able to complete an 11-story surgical in-patient building, more than doubling its capacity, to 800 beds from 350.

The new facility boasts nine operating rooms, a 15-bed intensive-care unit and a kidney-dialysis ward equipped with state-of-the-art blood-filtering equipment from Germany. The hospital also has two CT scanners and two MRIs.

"We are responding to the call of the government to help farmers with better health-care services," says Meng Qinghai, the hospital's deputy director. "Our goal is to provide a U.S. standard of modern medicine."

One problem, analysts say, is that few of China's rural poor can afford such high-tech offerings.

The government has been ratcheting up the insurance coverage available to farmers through county-level rural-cooperative insurance plans. The programs, which began in 2003, now cover roughly 90% of rural people, according to the health ministry.

So far, coverage remains limited. Most out-patient services and medicines aren't included in the plans at all. Bills for hospitalization are available for reimbursement at varying rates, which are different from county to county. The health ministry says its goal is 50% reimbursement for hospital stays by next year.

"Fifty percent may not seem like that much for Americans or British people. But for Chinese farmers, it's a very big milestone," says Mr. Mao, the health ministry spokesman.

Compared to having no coverage, which was common for rural Chinese as recently as a few years ago, it is a vast improvement. In Jingshan county, home to Qunguang, about 93% of people were enrolled in the cooperative insurance plan in 2008, up from 85% the year before.

"Now that there's insurance, people come to see doctors. Before they were too poor," says Zhu Zhongnian, a surgeon the Jingshan county hospital. "It's a very good thing for ordinary people." But with the high cost of medical care, the coverage offered by the cooperative insurance still leaves many vulnerable.

Ma Deqing, a farmer here in Hubei's Qunguang village is a case in point. Mr. Ma, 67 years old, was diagnosed in the spring with cancer of the esophagus, the tube connecting the mouth and stomach, after a spell of vomiting and being unable to eat. He spent 44 days in the hospital before being discharged in July.

His medical bills totaled 25,000 yuan, or about $3,600 -- more than three times his family's annual income growing rice, peanuts and cotton. Mr. Ma had to pay the whole amount up front before his plan paid benefits, of about $1,000.

Mr. Ma, who lives with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and 7-year-old grandson, said his family used to be well-off by local standards. But it took the family's entire savings, gathered over years, to pay his medical bills. "If I need more treatment, I don't know what I'll do," he says.

Another problem with rural insurance, administered county by county, is that benefits aren't always portable. A worker who might have had coverage in one area but migrated to another could be out of luck. People who aren't registered residents of a county may be shut out of benefits, even if they pay premiums.

Zhang Jianfang has been renting farmland near Qunguang for years, growing corn, peanuts and cotton on a plot far from his hometown in the neighboring province of Henan. Mr. Zhang bought insurance through the local rural-cooperative plan for himself and his family. But when he had a motorcycle accident last year, the hospital told him he wouldn't be covered because his household registration was in Henan.

Local doctors said surgery to repair his broken collarbone would cost 10,000 yuan, or $1,400. Hoping to save money, he took a 24-hour train trip back to Henan, gritting his teeth against the pain and trying not to jostle his right arm. Surgeons there repaired the fracture with a steel plate for 3,000 yuan. But they wouldn't take his insurance, he says, since it was from Hubei province.

The government says that over time, it intends to increase benefits in order to reduce out-of-pocket expenses. And it is working on ways to ensure that people traveling or living outside their home counties will be covered in the event of illness or accident.

China's grass-roots medical personnel pose a different set of challenges. Driven in part by a fee-for-service model and a lack of sound treatment guidelines, they routinely overuse antibiotics and antiviral drugs, international public-health experts say. They prescribe them for patients with colds and flus -- a practice that could help spawn a new generation of drug-resistant pathogens.

The government is supporting continuing-education programs for rural practitioners and financing efforts to send more university-trained doctors to poor rural areas. Tuition assistance, for example, will be offered to medical students who pledge to spend a certain number of years working in the countryside.

In Qunguang, Ms. Mei's clinic income comes from fees for giving injections and the 15% markup she is allowed to charge for dispensing medicines. Still, she says, her medical work doesn't earn enough to support her. "If I didn't do farming, I couldn't even feed myself," says Ms. Mei, who, along with her husband, grows rice on a small plot.

Ms. Mei, who was a midwife before being selected to become a village doctor, passed an equivalence exam for a technical-high-school diploma in the 1990s. She says she thinks that is enough for her to do her job.

"It's complicated. We need a lot of medical knowledge," says Ms. Mei. "But you learn through experience."

—Ellen Zhu contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Fairclough at gordon.fairclough@wsj.com

New York Times Co. Will Hold On to Boston Globe - NYTimes.com

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By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

After months of hunting for a buyer, The New York Times Company said on Wednesday that it had decided not to sell The Boston Globe, the newspaper it threatened last spring to close because of mounting losses.

The Globe did not draw high bids, and the company chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said last month that the paper’s finances had improved enough that the company no longer believed it had to sell if the offers were not attractive enough.

Executives said this year that the paper was on track to lose $85 million in 2009, before making painful cost cuts that included wage, benefit and job security concessions from union employees. But even after those expense reductions, analysts say, The Globe probably does not operate in the black.

Two bidders made preliminary offers for The Globe and another paper, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, of about $35 million and the assumption of pension obligations. At least one prospective buyer, a local group led by Stephen E. Taylor, a former Globe executive whose family owned the paper for most of its history, submitted an updated offer last week. The other bidder was Platinum Equity, a private equity firm based in Beverly Hills that recently bought The San Diego Union-Tribune.

People briefed on the matter, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly, said that Platinum lost confidence that it could close the gap between its offer and what the Times Company wanted, and that Times Company executives, who would have preferred to sell to Mr. Taylor’s group, had raised questions about how solid its financing was.

Platinum declined comment.

Mr. Taylor said, “I wish that it had happened, but it’s The Times’s prerogative to make whatever they feel is the best decision for them,” adding, “I want the very, very best for The Globe in the future.”

The company broke the news that it would keep The Globe to the paper’s employees just after 5 p.m. by e-mail. The message said the Times Company was still looking at the possibility of selling The Telegram & Gazette, and that Janet L. Robinson, the company’s chief executive, would be in Boston on Thursday to address Globe employees. Company executives declined to make any other statement.

Even before this year’s crisis, The Globe, like most major American newspapers, had sharply trimmed its staff through buyouts and layoffs, and it had frozen salaries for several years. The contract concessions were a hard pill to swallow for workers, many of whom said they felt mistreated by the company.

There was a particularly bitter showdown with the largest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, whose members voted in June to reject the first contract proposal, only to have the company respond with a unilateral 23 percent pay cut. The guild accepted a modified proposal weeks later.

Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who has closely followed The Globe’s troubles, said it might be better for The Globe to remain with the Times Company than to go to a new owner that might do more cutting or replace top executives. “But the company has its work cut out for it in terms of rebuilding credibility with the employees and the community,” he said.

“I’m really just happy the uncertainty is over,” Patricia Wen, a reporter, said. “It’s not a statement about whether I preferred one owner over the other.”

Another reporter, Beth Daley, said the decision was not a surprise, given Mr. Sulzberger’s comments and the lukewarm response from buyers. But she said she hoped the company would try to earn good will with employees by restoring some health care cuts.

The Times Company paid $1.1 billion for The Globe in 1993. It was by far the highest price paid for a single newspaper to that time, and it was solidly profitable during that decade. But in the last few years, as a steep advertising downturn has battered the industry, The Globe has suffered more than most, in part because of the loss of crucial New England-based advertisers.

Palestinians, in Reversal, Press U.N. Gaza Report - NYTimes.com

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By SHARON OTTERMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

The Palestinian leadership tried to regain lost credibility by pressing forward Wednesday on a United Nations report on the Gaza war at a specially scheduled debate at the United Nations Security Council, saying it would call for a formal endorsement of the report this week in Geneva.

The Security Council debate represented the first major step in the Palestinian effort to reverse its surprise decision two weeks ago to delay action on the report, which found evidence of Israeli war crimes, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The decision, made under American pressure after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened that advancing the report would end any chance of peace talks, prompted a strong reaction against the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr. Abbas is a relatively moderate leader whom the United States and Israel have tried to bolster in the face of popular gains by Hamas, and there was a sense that the pressure on him had backfired.

Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign affairs minister for the Palestinian Authority, told delegates gathered at the Security Council that the Palestinians would seek to “rectify the malfunction that occurred” in Geneva when the Human Rights Council met on Thursday and Friday. He added that Palestinian leaders were hopeful that the 47-member council would “endorse and formally convey the report to the appropriate United Nations agencies, in accordance with the report’s recommendations.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, responded by reiterating Israel’s stance that the report was one-sided and biased against Israel. The report, she said, “favors and legitimizes terrorism” and was “destructive to the peace process.” She added: “If Israel is asked to take further risks for peace, the international community must recognize our right to self-defense.” But there was no Israeli comment as harsh as Mr. Netanyahu’s earlier warnings.

The 575-page report, created by a four-member panel led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, details evidence of war crimes committed by both the Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in connection with last winter’s fighting, though it reserves its harshest language for Israeli actions. Foremost among its recommendations is that allegations of war crimes by both sides should be referred to the Security Council for possible prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague if credible investigations are not undertaken within six months.

Israeli officials have engaged in extensive diplomatic efforts to discredit the Goldstone report since its release in mid-September. Their efforts intensified this week as it became clear that the Human Rights Council was no longer going to delay until March a decision on whether to formally endorse the report. Facing a furor at home, particularly from Hamas — the militant Islamic group that is the Palestinian Authority’s main rival — Mr. Abbas backtracked on his support for the delay, instructing his ambassador in Geneva to gather enough signatures to have the council reconvene. The council announced the special session on Tuesday.

To shore up support for Israel before the Geneva meeting, Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke Tuesday night with the foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner; the British foreign secretary, David Miliband; and the foreign ministers of Spain and Norway, among other foreign officials. According to a statement released by Mr. Barak’s office on Wednesday, the Israeli minister told the foreign officials that the Goldstone report was “false, distorted, tendentious and encouraged terrorism.”

In Geneva, although the Palestinians mustered the 16 votes needed to call a special session, it was unclear just how strong a majority they could get on a new resolution. An endorsement of the report with a less than significant majority of the Human Rights Council would be considered weak.

Given the record of the Human Rights Council, the chance of a no vote on a resolution appeared slim. But an official in Jerusalem said privately, because of the delicate nature of the diplomacy, that Israel hoped to see “at least a moral victory — to get all the reasonable countries on the right side of the vote.”

Other countries expressed reservations about a resolution for a number of reasons, namely that the Palestinians were reversing course in such a short time span, and that a draft in circulation complicated the issue by adding demands, including that Israel cease excavations around Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem and ensure access to the holy site for Palestinian worshipers.

In compromise negotiations that were expected to continue into Thursday at least, the Brazilians offered alternative wording for a potential resolution that would basically keep the Goldstone report within the Human Rights Council for the time being. Under the Brazilian language, the resolution would endorse the findings of the report and the call for both Israel and the Palestinians to conduct investigations into any possible war crimes. But it would stop short of endorsing the recommendation that the matter be referred to the Security Council or even the International Criminal Court if such investigations did not take place.

“We feel that if we escalate this issue it might not be productive for the peace talks,” said Maria N. Farani Azevedo, the Brazilian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

So far, the Palestinians have been reluctant to make changes, which diplomats and human rights organizations attributed in part to their intensive effort to quell the domestic fallout after the previous postponement. As part of that effort, the Security Council agreed last week to move up its monthly debate on the Middle East to Wednesday, from next week, to discuss the report’s findings.

Human Rights Watch said that internal investigations into the accusations were crucial and that the prospect of some international action was most likely needed to spur them.

“We are convinced that without addressing the issues contained in this report there is no solid basis for a peace process,” said Julie de Rivero, the Geneva advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “For us, it would be important that there is a strong endorsement of the findings.”

Official Says Peace Effort Stalled

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, said Wednesday that the Obama administration’s efforts to restart an Israeli-Palestinian peace process seemed to be at an impasse and that he feared the Israelis intended to offer the Palestinians “a Mickey Mouse state, if that.”

By that, he meant a state that is “not serious,” according to an aide — one that fell short territorially and in other ways.

Mr. Fayyad said the Palestinians aspired to an “independent, sovereign, viable Palestinian state” in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Mr. Fayyad, a respected economist, was speaking to foreign reporters at a news conference in Ramallah.

Sharon Otterman reported from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar from Rome. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

With Obama as President, U.S. Words Have New Weight in Guinea - NYTimes.com

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By ADAM NOSSITER

CONAKRY, Guinea — The Club Obama does not look like much, just a square thatched-roof platform jutting out to the ocean where jembe music, beer and the young mix at the edge of the pungent Boulbinet fish market.

Soldiers gather there, too, particularly the feared Red Berets; a notorious military camp is within view. Everybody, it seems, wants to relax under the sign of the American president.

There is no Club Sarkozy nearby in this sweltering, squalid capital; in West Africa, the French president cannot compete at present, despite his country’s historic connections as the former colonial power here. Right now, in this volatile region, mere mention of being from America — Obama’s America — is enough to avert an armed soldier’s grim gaze, defuse a mob’s anger, soften an unyielding border guard or lower the demands from ubiquitous bribe-seeking policemen.

The president’s name, freshly painted, appears above a barbershop, a grocery, a school, even tire stores here, as well as the cabaret in Boulbinet. In a leading bookstore downtown, a full-scale poster of Obama looks out from behind a closed door, a visual echo of the sentiments of those who go in to discuss politics.

The implications of this new American authority in an unfamiliar spot received a tryout last week, when the Obama administration sent a senior diplomat here to condemn the massacre of dozens of unarmed civilians protesting Guinea’s military government in September. They seem clear: America punches above its weight, in a part of the world that it has hitherto left to the French. The United States, with few practical sticks to beat the junta, nonetheless has a moral authority in the streets that the big-dog French do not match.

But there is another competitor for influence here, the Chinese, who are seen as supporting the junta, particularly after the junta said it had recently reached an agreement with a Chinese company that could provide it with up to $7 billion in infrastructure. The quid pro quo was not specified, but China is known to be interested in the country’s bauxite and other minerals.

China has not yet confirmed the deal, but analysts said it was a potential boost to the junta and a setback to China’s push to be seen as a responsible competitor for natural resources.

“What happened in Guinea was extreme in terms of its violence and cruelty,” said Princeton N. Lyman, a former American diplomat in Africa who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, so China could become “something of a target in a way they haven’t been for some time.”

The deal arrived amid a wave of popular anger and restiveness that preceded the massacre, fueled by years of lockdown by repressive governments. Guinea’s army has fired on demonstrators before, yet tens of thousands risked their lives by amassing at a soccer stadium last month to protest the junta, which seized power after the death of the nation’s longtime strongman, Lansana Conté, late last year.

On Wednesday, the International Criminal Court in The Hague confirmed that it was looking into the killings.

“We don’t accept it anymore,” said Sow Baïlo, a Guinean actor and intellectual with a wide following. “That’s why we went to the stadium.”

In that context, the tough American stance against the government, as enunciated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, carried a special weight.

“After the declaration of Hillary Clinton, the people regained confidence in themselves,” said Mamadi Kaba, president of the Guinean branch of the African Assembly for Human Rights. “It was a very powerful symbol. People understood that they had not been abandoned.”

There were indications that the junta itself understood the potency of the American position.

When William Fitzgerald, deputy assistant secretary of state, delivered an unusual personal dressing-down to the junta leader, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, the reaction was not sputtering rage, as it had been after tough words from the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. Instead, the volatile officer listened with apparent calm. He kept the American envoy an hour beyond the appointed 60-minute meeting, while repeating his justifications for the massacre and asserting his lack of responsibility.

“We were there for two hours,” Mr. Fitzgerald said afterward. “I was quite uncomfortable.”

Captain Camara kept senior African officials waiting outside, in particular Burkina Faso’s president, Blaise Compaoré, who had just been sent as a mediator by other West African states.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s message to the captain was that the United States held him responsible for the killings, that he was becoming a “pariah” and that he should not run in coming elections.

But the officer, though visibly ill at ease, only rapped the table a few times, according to people who were there.

Similarly, when Mrs. Clinton said the next day that she was “appalled” by the “vile violation of the rights of the people” in Guinea, Captain Camara had nothing to say, publicly at least. But when Mr. Kouchner called for an international intervention force, the captain angrily said, “Guinea is not a subprefecture, is not a neighborhood in France.”

The differing reactions were not lost on local observers. Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, an opposition leader, said Captain Camara “dared to defy France, but he didn’t dare defy the U.S.”

“America is a power that counts,” Mr. Diallo said. “You can’t turn your back on them.”

Nadim Audi contributed reporting from Paris, and Michael Wines from Beijing.

Tarim Journal - Crossroads of Islam, Past and Present - NYTimes.com

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By ROBERT F. WORTH

TARIM, Yemen — This remote desert valley, with its towering bluffs and ancient mud-brick houses, is probably best known to outsiders as the birthplace of Osama bin Laden’s father. Most accounts about Yemen in the Western news media refer ominously to it as “the ancestral homeland” of the leader of Al Qaeda, as though his murderous ideology had somehow been shaped here.

But in fact, Tarim and its environs are a historic center of Sufism, a mystical strand within Islam. The local religious school, Dar al-Mustafa, is a multicultural place full of students from Indonesia and California who stroll around its tiny campus wearing white skullcaps and colorful shawls.

“The reality is that Osama bin Laden has never been to Yemen,” said Habib Omar, the revered director of Dar al-Mustafa, as he sat on the floor in his home eating dinner with a group of students. “His thinking has nothing to do with this place.”

Lately, Al Qaeda has found a new sanctuary here and carried out a number of attacks. But the group’s inspiration, Mr. Omar said, did not originate here. Most of the group’s adherents have lived in Saudi Arabia — as has Mr. bin Laden — and it was there, or in Afghanistan or Pakistan, that they adopted a jihadist mind-set.

Mr. Omar set out 16 years ago to restore the ancient religious heritage of Tarim. It is an extraordinary legacy for an arid, windswept town in the far southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula.

About 800 years ago, traders from Tarim and other parts of Hadramawt, as the broader area is known, began traveling down the coast to the Arabian Sea and onward in rickety boats to Indonesia, Malaysia and India. They thrived, and they brought their religion with them. Nine especially devout men, all with roots in Tarim, are now remembered as “the nine saints,” Mr. Omar said, because of their success in spreading Islam across Asia.

“This town, with its thousand-year tradition, was the main catalyst for as many as 40 percent of the world’s Muslims’ becoming Muslim,” said John Rhodus, a 32-year-old Arizonan who has studied at Dar al-Mustafa off and on since 2000. Tarim’s Sufist tradition also appears to have helped shape the relatively moderate Islam practiced in much of South Asia.

Hadrami merchants remained an extraordinarily intrepid and successful network until well into the 20th century. Some made their fortune in Saudi Arabia — including Muhammad bin Laden, Osama’s father, who became a construction magnate — and remained there. Others returned home and built flamboyant palaces as monuments to their success. Dozens of palaces remain, in a variety of styles — Mogul, modernist, British colonial — that contrast oddly with Tarim’s traditional mud-brick homes and mosques.

Most of the merchants fled after a Communist junta seized power after the British withdrawal from south Yemen in 1967. Now their palaces are abandoned and decayed, too grand even for the state to maintain in this desperately poor country.

The Communist years, which lasted until North and South Yemen unified in 1990, were even worse for those who refused to accept the new government’s enforced secularism.

“Some religious scholars were tortured, others murdered,” Mr. Omar said. “Some were tied to the backs of cars and driven through the streets until they were dead.” Mr. Omar’s father, who had been a renowned religious teacher in Tarim, was kidnapped and killed.

In 1993, Mr. Omar began teaching Sufi-inspired religious classes in his home. Three years later, he moved into a two-story white school building, with a mosque attached. There are now about 700 students, at least half of them South Asians, with a rising number of Americans and Britons.

Most of the students are between 18, the minimum age, and 25. They usually spend four years studying here before returning to their homes. Mr. Omar encourages them to pursue careers and spread their beliefs quietly rather than becoming religious scholars.

But even as the school grew, a more militant Islam was gaining followers across the region. Saudi Arabia, on Yemen’s northern border, was financing ultraconservative religious schools and scholars in an effort to shore up its influence here. In 1991 the Saudi king, angered by Yemen’s public support for Saddam Hussein, abruptly sent home a million Yemeni laborers, many of whom had lived in Saudi Arabia for decades and had been shaped by it.

The Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accommodated the Saudis and welcomed many Arab jihadists who had fought in Afghanistan. Later, he enlisted the jihadists to fight his political enemies at home, incurring a political debt that has complicated his efforts to fight Al Qaeda.

Some of the former fighters resettled in Hadramawt. Two years ago, one of Al Qaeda’s top regional commanders was killed, along with two lieutenants, in a fierce gun battle with the Yemeni military just a few blocks from Dar al-Mustafa.

And in March a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt killed four Korean tourists and their Yemeni guide in the nearby city of Shibam. Al Qaeda’s Arabian branch claimed responsibility. The small trickle of adventure tourism that had remained in Hadramawt (it may not help that the name means “death came” in Arabic) slowed to almost nothing.

Several students at Dar al-Mustafa said there was concern about possible conflict with hard-line Islamists in Hadramawt, though the school itself has not been attacked or threatened.

On a tour of Tarim, one of the school’s teachers, Abdullah Ali, pointed to the house where the Qaeda leaders had been killed. They had been there for some time, he said, escaping scrutiny by disguising themselves as women under thick black gowns. A trove of explosives and weapons was found in the house.

“We are mulaataf,” Mr. Ali said, using an Arabic term that describes a divine rescue from danger.

Mr. Omar acknowledged, somewhat reluctantly, that his own, milder approach to Islam had enemies in Hadramawt.

“There are differences,” he said. “But we find the appropriate way to deal with these people is to remind them of Islamic principles, not to speak ill of them.”

Europeans Criticize Turkey Over Threats to Media Freedoms - NYTimes.com

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By STEPHEN CASTLE and SEBNEM ARSU

BRUSSELS — European officials gave Turkey new warnings on Wednesday over threats to freedom of expression in the country as part of an annual progress report on its efforts to join the European Union.

The European enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, in particular criticized the Turkish tax ministry’s recent move to impose a fine of 5.7 billion liras — roughly $3.9 billion — on the country’s biggest media conglomerate, Dogan Yayin, whose affiliates and ownership have been critical of the governing party. The government reiterated on Wednesday that the issue was purely a tax matter, but Mr. Rehn argued that it seemed politically motivated.

“If a tax fine is worth the annual turnover of the company,” he said, “it is quite a strong sanction, and it may not only be a fiscal sanction but also it feels like a political sanction.”

Mr. Rehn also criticized efforts to take legal action against journalists and writers, including the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. And the report listed Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to vessels from Cyprus, a European government that Turkey does not recognize because of a longstanding territorial dispute over the island, as a continuing factor hurting Turkey’s efforts to join.

In general, the progress report, composed by the European Commission and including assessments of seven Balkan nations also seeking to join the European Union, did not close the door on Turkish membership. It praised several developments over the past year, including government efforts to end decades of hostilities with Armenia and open borders, and to ease tensions with the Kurdish minority in Turkey.

The Turkish minister in charge of negotiations with Europe, Egemen Bagis, called the reports a balanced document and said that the detailed nature of the criticism was a good sign for Turkey.

“The precise approach in the comments show that Turkey has entered an advanced phase in negotiations,” he said. “It tells us to keep up the good work, and continue with reforms, a message that we will be following in future.”

Still, the public criticism underlined the fragility of Turkey’s efforts to join. France’s and Germany’s outspoken opposition to full membership for Turkey have raised doubts both in Europe and within Turkey itself that a deal can be reached any time soon.

Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul-based research group, said that the European Commission appeared to be putting a positive gloss on the talks to try to keep the process alive.

“There has been a conscious effort on the part of the commission to appear a bit more positive than the situation warrants,” he said, “in view of the fact that there is a lot of opposition in Europe about Turkish accession.”

Mr. Ulgen added that France’s opposition, in particular, has given “the impression in Turkey that no matter what we do we will never get to the E.U.”

Stephen Castle reported from Brussels, and Sebnem Arsu from Bursa, Turkey.

The Road to Copenhagen - Big Obstacle to Global Warming Deal Is How to Pay for It - Series - NYTimes.com

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By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

As world leaders struggle to hash out a new global climate deal by December, they face a hurdle perhaps more formidable than getting big polluters like the United States and China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: how to pay for the new accord.

The price tag for a new climate agreement will be a staggering $100 billion a year by 2020, many economists estimate; some put the cost at closer to $1 trillion. That money is needed to help fast-developing countries like India and Brazil convert to costly but cleaner technologies as they industrialize, as well as to assist the poorest countries in coping with the consequences of climate change, like droughts and rising seas.

This financing is an essential part of any international climate agreement, negotiators and scientists say, because developing nations must curb the growth of their emissions if the world is to limit rising temperatures. Based on calculations by the International Energy Agency for 2005 to 2030, 75 percent of the growth in energy demand will come from the developing world.

Many developing countries have made it clear that they will not sign a treaty unless they get money to help them adapt to a warmer planet. Acknowledging that a new treaty needs unanimity for success, industrialized nations like the United States and those in Europe have agreed in principle to make such payments; they have already been written into the agreed-upon structure of the treaty, to be signed in Copenhagen in December.

But to date there is no concrete strategy to raise such huge sums. There is not even agreement about which nations should pay or in what proportion.

“The level of ambition in funding is not matching up to the sense of urgency everyone now has,” said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, the lead climate negotiator for Brazil, which hopes to get financing to preserve its rain forest.

He added, “Financing and an inadequate level of financing are a deal breaker for us.”

At a United Nations summit meeting in New York on climate change and at the Group of 20 meetings in Pittsburgh last month, national leaders, including President Obama and President Hu Jintao of China, stressed the urgency of combating climate change. But they offered no new proposals for financing and put no new cash on the table.

Perhaps even more troublesome, the United Nations Adaptation Fund, which officially began operating in 2008 to help poor countries finance projects to blunt the effects of global warming, remains an empty shell, largely because rich nations have failed to come through with the donations they promised. The fund now holds about $18 million, a tiny fraction of what it was supposed to have, according to fund officials.

United Nations officials regard the failure to come up with financing as a blind spot that jeopardizes a new global treaty.

“How important is this? It is critical,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees the treaty negotiations.

The United States and other industrialized nations will certainly have to contribute heavily to any financing program. But the global recession has tightened purse strings, and nations are having trouble backing their good intentions and previous pledges with cash.

The money woes of the United Nations fund, set up as an exemplar of international cooperation in addressing climate change, are symptomatic. The fund was supposed to benefit from two income streams: the first is a 2 percent tax on carbon credits sold in the United Nations carbon trading system, in which rich nations invest in green projects in the developing world to offset emissions at home; the second is voluntary donations by richer countries.

The 2 percent tax is expected to generate at least $1.6 billion by 2012. But the donations have not materialized, Mr. de Boer said.

A number of proposals are on the table to generate money to help developing countries rein in future emissions as well as to adapt to the effects of climate change. But most remain far from producing money.

In September, the European Union offered a plan in which “industrialized nations and economically more advanced developing countries” would provide $33 billion to $74 billion a year to help poor countries adapt, with the European Union’s share placed at $3 billion to $22 billion. The climate bill passed by the House in the United States in June would auction emissions permits, and donate a portion of revenues to help poor countries. The climate legislation is now before the Senate.

Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister of climate and energy, who will be chairwoman of the Copenhagen meeting, recently suggested imposing a new tax on shipping fuel or on airline flights — which both cause substantial emissions — to finance adaptation in poor countries.

“We need more innovative financing,” Ms. Hedegaard said in an interview. “The G-20 should come up with fast-track financing that would send a very strong signal that developed countries are serious about this.”

Many poor countries say they are increasingly skeptical, having witnessed the way past promises evaporated when the economy soured. They are likewise nervous about market-based solutions, like using a portion of revenues from carbon credits.

“Developing countries are not convinced that the market will find them the $100 billion they need,” said Mr. Figueiredo Machado, Brazil’s climate negotiator. “They want guarantees.”

When Germany and France suggested at a recent Group of 20 meeting in London that they would contribute to the fund by reducing other types of aid, India rebelled. Financing to help poor countries adapt to climate change or to reduce emissions “should not be at the cost of other monetary support,” said Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister.

Equally contentious is the issue of which countries should give, and which should receive. Should the contributors be only industrialized nations, or should they include rapidly developing — and increasingly wealthy — polluters like China?

Xie Zhenhua, the lead Chinese climate negotiator, speaking at a news conference in New York last month, said the United Nations should not expect China to pay.

“Global warming is a result of CO2 from developed countries during their industrialization,” Mr. Xie said. “China is one of the countries that has borne the brunt of that.”

Off the Shelf, Onto the Laptop - Libraries Try Digital Books - NYTimes.com

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By MOTOKO RICH

Kate Lambert recalls using her library card just once or twice throughout her childhood. Now, she uses it several times a month.

The lure? Electronic books she can download to her laptop. Beginning earlier this year, Ms. Lambert, a 19-year-old community college student in New Port Richey, Fla., borrowed volumes in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold and a vampire novel by Laurell K. Hamilton, without ever visiting an actual branch.

“I can just go online and type my library card number in and look through all the books that they have,” said Ms. Lambert, who usually downloads from the comfort of her bedroom. And, she added, “It’s all for free.”

Eager to attract digitally savvy patrons and capitalize on the growing popularity of electronic readers, public libraries across the country are expanding collections of books that reside on servers rather than shelves.

The idea is to capture borrowers who might not otherwise use the library, as well as to give existing customers the opportunity to try new formats.

“People still think of libraries as old dusty books on shelves, and it’s a perception we’re always trying to fight,” said Michael Colford, director of information technology at the Boston Public Library. “If we don’t provide this material for them, they are just going to stop using the library altogether.”

About 5,400 public libraries now offer e-books, as well as digitally downloadable audio books. The collections are still tiny compared with print troves. The New York Public Library, for example, has about 18,300 e-book titles, compared with 860,500 in circulating print titles, and purchases of digital books represent less than 1 percent of the library’s overall acquisition budget.

But circulation is expanding quickly. The number of checkouts has grown to more than 1 million so far this year from 607,275 in all of 2007, according to OverDrive, a large provider of e-books to public libraries. NetLibrary, another provider of e-books to about 5,000 public libraries and a division of OCLC, a nonprofit library service organization, has seen circulation of e-books and digital audio books rise 21 percent over the past year.

Together with the Google books settlement — which the parties are modifying to satisfy the objections of the Department of Justice and others — the expansion of e-books into libraries heralds a future in which more reading will be done digitally.

“As young people become used to reading virtually everything online,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, “that is going to propel a change in terms of readership of e-books rather than readership of physical books.”

For now, the expansion will be slowed partly because, with few exceptions, e-books in libraries cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle, the best-selling electronic reader, or on Apple’s iPhone, which has rapidly become a popular device for reading e-books. Most library editions are compatible with the Sony Reader, computers and a handful of other mobile devices.

Most digital books in libraries are treated like printed ones: only one borrower can check out an e-book at a time, and for popular titles, patrons must wait in line just as they do for physical books. After two to three weeks, the e-book automatically expires from a reader’s account.

But some publishers worry that the convenience of borrowing books electronically could ultimately cut into sales of print editions.

“I don’t have to get in my car, go to the library, look at the book, check it out,” said John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, which publishes authors like Janet Evanovich, Augusten Burroughs and Jeffrey Eugenides. “Instead, I’m sitting in the comfort of my living room and can say, ‘Oh, that looks interesting’ and download it.”

As digital collections grow, Mr. Sargent said he feared a world in which “pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.” Partly because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allow its e-books to be offered in public libraries.

Simon & Schuster, whose authors include Stephen King and Bob Woodward, has also refrained from distributing its e-books to public libraries. “We have not found a business model that works for us and our authors,” said Adam Rothberg, a spokesman.

For now, the advent of e-book borrowing has not threatened physical libraries by siphoning away visitors because the recession has driven so many new users seeking free resources through library doors. And in some cases, few library patrons seem to know that e-book collections even exist.

In the Brooklyn Public Library system recently, eight people were waiting for three digital copies of “The Lost Symbol,” Dan Brown’s follow-up to “The Da Vinci Code,” while 715 people were waiting for 526 print copies.

Some librarians suggest that because digital books never wear out, take up no shelf space and could, in theory, be read by multiple people at the same time, the purchasing model for e-books should be different than it is for print.

Pam Sandlian Smith, library director of the Rangeview Library District, which serves a suburban community north of Denver, said that instead of purchasing a set number of digital copies of a book, she would prefer to buy one copy and pay a nominal licensing fee each time a patron downloaded it.

Publishers, inevitably, are nervous about allowing too much of their intellectual property to be offered free. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said Ms. Smith’s proposal was “not a sustainable model for publishers or authors.”

Some librarians object to the current pricing model because they often pay more for e-books than do consumers who buy them on Amazon or in Sony’s online store. Publishers generally charge the same price for e-books as they do for print editions, but online retailers subsidize the sale price of best sellers by marking them down to $9.99.

“ ‘The Lost Symbol’ is $9.99 on the Sony Reader book page, and I just paid $29.99 for that for the library,” said Robin Bradford, the collection development librarian at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. Ms. Bradford said she would consider buying additional digital copies if the price were lower. But “to buy nonphysical copies at the same price,” she said, “I just won’t do it.”

Academic publishers have been more willing to experiment with subscription models, inviting libraries to pay an annual fee for unlimited access to certain books. Scholastic Inc., the children’s book publisher, also offers library subscriptions to BookFlix, a collection of picture books that children can read online.

Steve Potash, the chief executive of OverDrive, said publishers should regard library e-books as a form of marketing. Many people who browse a library’s online catalog end up buying the books, he said, although he could provide no evidence of that.

Some publishers agree that library e-books, like print versions, can attract new customers. “We’ve always strongly believed that there is a conversion point where they do start to buy their own,” said Malle Vallik, the director of digital content at Harlequin Enterprises, the romance publisher.

In libraries, readers are attracted to free material. Nancy Gobel, a dental hygienist who already downloads digital audio books from her library in Indianapolis, said she currently buys print books. But she is considering purchasing an electronic reader so she can borrow them for free. “I would still continue to buy, but I would download as much as I can,” she said. In many cases, she said, buying “doesn’t make sense.”

New York Stock Exchange Shrinks as Rivals Take Over Trades - NYTimes.com

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By GRAHAM BOWLEY

For most of the 217 years since its founding under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange was the high temple of American capitalism.

Behind its Greco-Roman facade, traders raised a Dante-esque din in their pursuit of the almighty dollar. Good times or bad, the daily melee on the cavernous trading floor made the Big Board the greatest marketplace for stocks in the world.

But now, even as the Dow Jones industrial average topped 10,000 for the first time since the financial crisis sent it tumbling, the exchange and its hometown face an unsettling truth: the Big Board, the symbolic heart of New York’s financial industry, is getting smaller.

Young, fast-moving rivals are splintering its public marketplace and creating private markets that, their critics say, give big banks and investment funds an edge over ordinary investors.

Some of the new trading venues — “dark pools,” the industry calls them — are all but invisible, even to regulators. These stealth markets enable sophisticated traders to buy and sell large blocks of stock in secrecy at lightning speed, a practice that has drawn scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

These upstarts are utterly unlike the old-school Big Board, which is struggling to make its way as a for-profit corporation after centuries of ownership by its seat-holding members. Last year, its parent company, NYSE Euronext, lost $740 million.

Wall Street’s judgment has been swift and brutal. Since January 2007, the share price of NYSE Euronext has lost nearly three-quarters of its value, even though stock trading over all has soared.

While the exchange has been under assault since the beginning of the decade, its decline has accelerated in recent years as aggressive competitors have emerged. Today, 36 percent of daily trades in stocks that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange are actually executed on the exchange, down from about 75 percent nearly four years ago. The rest of are conducted elsewhere, on new electronic exchanges or through dark pools.

The old Big Board was far from perfect. Its floor brokers — who occupy a privileged, and potentially lucrative, niche between buyers and sellers — have sometimes enriched themselves at their customers’ expense.

But changes inside the exchange’s grand Main Hall are startling. For decades, the New York Exchange was the kind of place where sons followed their fathers onto the trading floor. But half of the jobs there have disappeared over the last five years. Many of the 1,200 or so remaining workers retreat quietly to their computers shortly after the opening bell clangs at 9:30 a.m.

The Big Board has been forced to close one of its five trading halls, and it has repopulated two others with business from the American Stock Exchange, which NYSE Euronext bought last year. The Main Hall — the soaring, gilded room opened in 1903 — can seem little more than a colorful backdrop for CNBC.

“It has not been pretty,” said Benn Steil of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “All the big established exchanges around the world have experienced the same phenomenon, but the New York Stock Exchange has taken the biggest beating.”

It is a remarkable comedown for the New York Exchange, and for New York. Once the undisputed capital of capital, the city is struggling to retain its dominance in finance as the industry globalizes. “Wall Street” seems to be no longer a place, but a vast, worldwide network of money and information.

The Big Board says that it is fighting back — and that its hybrid of computers and human traders can beat the new rivals. It slashed commissions and developed its own purely electronic exchange, Arca, in Chicago. Arca has captured about 11 percent of the market for Big Board-listed stocks. It is also winning business in areas like derivatives.

“What’s going on here is a reinvention,” said Lawrence Leibowitz, head of United States markets and global technology at NYSE Euronext. “How can you bring this institution forward into the 21st century?”

Proponents of the new exchanges and private trading systems contend that ordinary people benefit from the technologies whether they know it or not.

“Competition has benefited the average investor,” said William O’Brien, chief executive of Direct Edge, one of the new exchanges. “Their broker has so many choices available, on or off exchanges, anywhere in the world, and they can get their order executed in less than a second.”

Critics maintain that only the most sophisticated players are benefiting, able to execute their trades seconds before smaller investors and in private.

“There are tools now that certain investors have that give them an advantage over other investors,” said Joseph Saluzzi, who trades equities for institutional investors and hedge funds at his boutique brokerage, Themis Trading.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is beginning to take notice of such complaints, opening investigations into the new type of trading venues and promising action. It is worried, for example, that dark pools, with their scale unknown, could destabilize the market.

Unlike the Big Board, the new electronic exchanges are virtually unknown outside financial circles. Direct Edge, the largest, is in Jersey City. Another, the BATS Exchange, is based in Lenexa, Kan. Both are only about five years old. But each now accounts for about a 10th of daily United States stock trading.

In its fight to survive, the Big Board is building a new data center in New Jersey and another outside London. The Main Hall is being overhauled, in an attempt to lure business back to the floor. There is even a new coffee shop, Outtakes.

Even so, the world still watches — literally — what happens on the New York Stock Exchange. Twenty television networks broadcast live from the exchange, in nine languages.

But whichever way the market goes from here, many see a difficult road for the Big Board. The competition is unlikely to let up.

“There has been a sea change,” said Sang Lee of the Aite Group, a financial services consulting company. “I don’t envy what any of the exchanges have to do.”

Win or Lose, Abdullah May Play Pivotal Role in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

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Reaction to Results Of Recount Crucial

By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 15, 2009

KABUL -- Abdullah Abdullah stood before a roomful of supporters at a hotel here last week, slamming the failings of the Afghan government like a man still on the campaign trail -- which, the presidential candidate insists, he is.

"It doesn't seem to me we can avoid a second round," Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai's former foreign minister, said in an interview, repeating what has become his refrain since Afghanistan's fraud-marred election in August.

Abdullah may yet be proved right. Though he polled about half as much of the vote as Karzai's 54 percent, according to a preliminary tally, an ongoing recount by a U.N.-backed commission could disqualify enough fraudulent ballots to push Karzai below the majority he needs and force a runoff.

But many Western officials doubt that will happen -- a view some observers suspect Abdullah shares despite his assertions to the contrary. And how he reacts to a Karzai victory, analysts say, could determine whether Afghanistan erupts in clashes between Abdullah's Tajik supporters and Karzai's Pashtun followers or whether it calmly transitions to a coalition government -- albeit one potentially hamstrung by division.

Abdullah and his advisers say they will decide their next step only when the recount is finished, as is expected this week. But they insist any alliance with Karzai is not an option. Abdullah, who was dismissed from the cabinet in 2006 and has drawn support from Karzai opponents of various stripes, is running for president and nothing else, they say.

"When we decided he should be a candidate, we did not decide in order for him to have a position in government," said Ahmed Wali Massoud, an Abdullah confidant and former ambassador to Britain. "This is very naive, I think."

But in a nation where ethnic divisions often spur violence, fears abound that Abdullah's rejection of a Karzai win could stoke an uprising by his supporters, particularly in the increasingly unstable north. Abdullah has urged calm, a call he said he would repeat if the recount affirms a Karzai victory. But, Abdullah said in the interview, he would "not be in a position to guarantee anything."

"If we are going to protest, there must be tight security," said Mahmood Shah, 34, a tailor sitting at his sewing machine in Kabul's Khair Khana, a heavily Tajik neighborhood and Abdullah stronghold. "Even if they say it will be a peaceful protest, it will not be."

Analysts said they do not expect Abdullah to incite strife, citing his vows not to. But one of his northern allies, Balkh province governor Atta Mohammed Noor, is another matter. Noor, a Tajik, has accused the central government of distributing weapons to northern Pashtuns in preparation for post-recount conflict. A Karzai aide denied the allegation.

"Abdullah's standing has gone up quite considerably, I think, both in Afghanistan and internationally," said a Western diplomat in Kabul. "If he was seen to be instigating violence, that would go against him. We feel he's unlikely to create any problems."

Abdullah might be open to a deal with Karzai, analysts said, a possibility that nervous Western officials are said to be pressuring Abdullah to consider, though the candidate denied that. Arsala Jamal, a Karzai campaign manager, said members of Abdullah's camp had approached the president about the idea.

"I believe [Karzai] will be sitting at the same table as Abdullah. That is his nature," Jamal said. "Political diversity, we need it."

Abdullah may have little choice but to negotiate, said Haroun Mir, director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies in Kabul. In the impoverished country, he said, power is tied to government money and access, stunting the influence of any opposition figure who does not have massive outside funding. Abdullah might not seek a government position for himself, but he would probably want spots for his allies as ministers or governors, who are appointed, Mir said.

What's more, Karzai, who has been tainted by accusations of fraud, probably needs Abdullah's support to regain credibility. Yet while a pact might be the least volatile outcome, it would be no victory for Afghanistan, Mir said: Karzai is beholden to various warlords and power brokers, and a unity government would bring more of the same paralysis.

"It's nice to bring people together, but the problem is we need a functioning government," Mir said. "Karzai is not a manager. . . . He wants to satisfy everyone at the detriment of having good governance. This is the problem we have had, unfortunately, the past five years, and this is the problem we might be headed for the next five years."

Raz Mohammed Dalili, a member of Abdullah's campaign team and a former governor, put it another way: "As long as Mr. Karzai has the leadership, there won't be any unity in this country."

To campaign- and strife-weary Afghans interviewed on a recent morning in Khair Khana, however, an Abdullah-Karzai handshake did not sound so bad. In Khair Khana, the West-- with its support for a democratic process widely seen as being marred by rampant fraud -- is the main subject of scorn.

"If there is a coalition government, we will be happy. That will prevent violence," said Agha Shireen, 25, an Abdullah supporter who was hawking round loaves of golden bread. "All we care about is security and peace."