Letter from Dijon: In a place known for wine and mustard, Elithis Tower shows fine taste for energy conservation - washingtonpost.com

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By Edward Cody
Sunday, October 25, 2009

DIJON, FRANCE -- The Elithis Tower, its builder says, is an office building like no other, an oval-shaped showcase for how to help save the planet on a reasonable budget.

According to Thierry Bièvre, the 10-story tower in the eastern city of Dijon has the potential to become the world's first commercially priced office building that produces more energy than it consumes. Already, he boasts, it is the most "environmentally sober" such tower in operation, using an average of 20 kilowatts per square meter, or 11 square feet, a year -- 400 is the average in France -- to heat, cool, light and otherwise occupy its 54,000 square feet of office space.

Getting the rest of the way, from 20 to zero and beyond, Bièvre adds, will entail cooperation from the people who work in the building -- turning off their computers at night, using low-consumption bulbs at their desks or walking down the stairs at quitting time rather than automatically taking the elevator.

"To get the best results, you have to change your behavior," he said, shortly before heading from his ninth-floor office down the brightly painted staircase to where his hybrid car awaited outside.

Bièvre, 49, who heads the Elithis engineering firm, said in an interview that he did not start out as an environmental missionary, but as a businessman who wanted to make money. The tower's main purpose, he specified, is to make a profit from rents and sales and, over time, attract clients from around France and abroad to hire his firm to build more such energy-saving towers.

With that in mind, the building was designed and constructed over three years for about $10 million, which Bièvre said was a standard commercial price for such structures. The difference, he said, was that his team of architects and engineers focused relentlessly on energy conservation, making it a priority in every decision and employing every known trick to cut back consumption of electricity, fuel and water.

The roof was covered with solar panels, and the tower's south side was shrouded in a "light shield," a grille that controls heat-producing sunshine without cutting off the natural light flowing in through windows that make up 75 percent of the building's surface. Water, collected from rain, turns off automatically in the lavatories when users walk away, as do the overhead lamps.

Carefully controlled ventilation means that 85 percent of the time there is no need for air conditioning to maintain an average of 68 degrees. At above 39 degrees outside, the building gets all the heat it needs from sunshine. When it is needed, heating comes from a biomass system that provides enough for a year with the equivalent of 86 square feet of wood.

"This building says who we are, and with this we want to develop our business," said Bièvre, a native of the celebrated Burgundy wine country that surrounds Dijon, about 190 miles southeast of Paris. "We don't just make mustard," he added, referring to the city's fame as a producer of the spicy condiment.

Dijon has long been known as a capital of conservation -- mostly of the kind of ageless traditions that make Burgundy's wine great and that local mustard a world favorite. Until only eight years ago, for instance, cafes here were barred from opening terraces because the then-mayor, Robert Poujade, a Gaullist conservative who ran the city for 30 years, thought customers might get rowdy and disturb the cosseted tranquillity of nearby residents.

But in 2001, Poujade was succeeded by François Rebsamen, a Socialist and champion of ecology, who has set out to make the city a center for a different kind of conservation. The new mayor welcomed Bièvre's crusade.

"This building is an example of what the world will have to do in the future," Rebsamen said in a conversation with foreign reporters. "We encouraged him. We helped him. And now I am happy to see that people are coming from around the world to visit it."

Rebsamen said some of the techniques fine-tuned by Bièvre will be put into use in "eco-neighborhoods" that the city and its suburbs plan to build in the next several years. The neighborhoods will have low-energy buildings throughout, he said, and will be serviced by public transportation with the goal of making cars unnecessary for people who live and work there.

In general, France has been slow to alter its energy consumption habits, particularly compared with Germany or the Scandinavian countries. But despite its late start, it has wakened in recent years to the appeal of conservation, turning it into a political issue that pays. President Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, has made the environment a major theme of his administration.

Sarkozy pushed hard last winter to get the European Union to adopt ambitious goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases and has prodded the Obama administration to do the same at the environmental summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen. His enthusiasm for the cause redoubled in June, when France's Green parties scored well in European Parliament elections, creating an opening for Sarkozy to attract votes from the Socialists, his main opposition.

Bièvre, however, emphasized that individual decisions, multiplied across society, remain the most effective way to reduce human pressure on the environment. Driving his hybrid the same way he used to drive his high-powered German cars, he found, meant he still used a lot of gasoline. To get the best results, he recalled, he had to train himself to accelerate slowly and hold down the speed.

"It's the little actions that will change things," he said.

Karzai rules out sharing power - washingtonpost.com

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By Joshua Partlow and Pamela Constable
Sunday, October 25, 2009

KABUL -- President Hamid Karzai's team shifted aggressively into campaign mode Saturday and ruled out any possibility of a power-sharing deal with challenger Abdullah Abdullah ahead of a runoff election in two weeks.

"In our view there is no alternative to a second round. This is the only constitutional way to establish a new government" and "put an end to the current crisis," said Karzai's campaign spokesman, Wahid Omar, at a news conference. "All our energy is now focused on preparations for the second round."

Abdullah, however, has renewed concerns about the credibility of the Independent Election Commission and wants its leadership replaced before the Nov. 7 vote, according to officials in his campaign. He does not want a repeat of the rampant electoral fraud found in the August first round -- much of it favoring Karzai. Abdullah fears nothing will change unless officials he considers loyal to Karzai are removed, the sources said.

"We want to go to the second round, but provided that there are some conditions, especially to remove some of these figures from the so-called Independent Election Commission," said Ahmad Wali Massoud, a close ally of Abdullah's. "So long as these people are not being removed from the commission, I don't think we are going to have a free and fair election, because they were the main ones responsible for the rigging and fraud."

Abdullah is seeking the removal of the commission's president, Azizullah Lodin, along with two members of the commission's secretariat. Lodin and other election-commission officials have denied they were partial toward Karzai and brushed aside Abdullah's concerns as the complaints of a sore loser.

At the news conference Saturday, Omar said Karzai's team had "no specific opinion" about Abdullah's demands, but that Karzai wants the second round to be "more transparent and responsive" than the first. To that end, he said, "we will support all measures . . . whatever it takes will be acceptable to us."

Omar said a variety of groups that endorsed Karzai the first time have renewed their commitment. He said there would be no large public campaign rallies, but that an aggressive media campaign would encourage people to vote. Karzai was considering a public debate with Abdullah, as proposed by the election commission, he said.

But the potential for a standoff over the election commission could further complicate a vote that will be difficult to execute even under the best circumstances. The Taliban issued a statement Saturday threatening more violence and warning Afghans not to vote in the runoff, which they called "a failed, American process," according to the Associated Press.

Snow and freezing weather could make voting impossible in some parts of the country. And many people say there is not enough time to replace and vet election officials to prevent fraud. Karzai initially received 54 percent of the vote, but nearly one-third of his votes were considered rigged and he finished with 49 percent.

"When you have a million-odd votes thrown out, you've got to ask yourself, what was the IEC doing and who is going to be held accountable?" said Saad Mohseni, an owner of a prominent media company in Afghanistan.

Election officials plan to reduce the number of polling places from about 6,300 to about 5,800 in an attempt to prevent fraud in volatile areas where votes were recorded at stations that never opened.

One senior Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media by name, said there was "way over a 50-50 chance" that the runoff would be held despite the potential problems.

The diplomat said many of Karzai's top aides think he is unable to make an advantageous deal because he is too weak politically and needs to first win the runoff to "enhance his stature." He also said the international community had been strongly united in its demand for Karzai to complete the legal election process and was not pushing him to make a pre-polling deal.

Diplomatic sources said Karzai hated the idea of a coalition government, in which he would have to share power with Abdullah. But Karzai left the door open to a "government of unity," formed after he presumably wins the runoff, in which he would still be president but with figures from Abdullah's camp and other factions playing major roles in the administration, the sources said.

"Karzai detests the idea of a solution like Kenya or Zimbabwe, with two drivers sharing the same car. What he does seem open to is a situation where he would still be top dog but there would significant changes below," said a United Nations official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "There is a subtle but important difference between the two things."

Sources said that if Abdullah were seeking a deal, he would demand substantive and structural changes in the government, perhaps over time. One of Abdullah's main campaign platforms was to change the government from a presidential system to a more decentralized parliamentary system, with governors and mayors elected rather than appointed, and with elections based on political party tickets rather than individuals.

But diplomats and other observers here said the runoff was now probably both inevitable and necessary to restore legitimacy to the election process before any deals can be struck.

"A coalition government might seem like a quick solution, but it's not in the constitution and it would never work politically. It would be like having a cart with two horses pulling in opposite directions," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, president of the Foundation for Free and Fair Elections. "Instead of a functioning government, it would produce a stalemate."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

A new demand for uranium power brings concerns for Navajo groups - washingtonpost.com

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Mining planned at a mountain considered sacred

By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 25, 2009

ACOMA, N.M.-- Uranium from the Grants Mineral Belt running under rugged peaks and Indian pueblos of New Mexico was a source of electric power and military might in decades past, providing fuel for reactors and atomic bombs.

Now, interest in carbon-free nuclear power is fueling a potential resurgence of uranium mining. But Indian people gathered in Acoma, N.M., for the Indigenous Uranium Forum over the weekend decried future uranium extraction, especially from nearby Mount Taylor, considered sacred by many tribes. Native people from Alaska, Canada, the Western United States and South America discussed the severe health problems uranium mining has caused their communities, including high rates of cancer and kidney disease.

Uranium companies and government authorities do not dispute this, and federal environmental remediation and workers' compensation programs related to past uranium mining are ongoing. But mining companies say today's methods and regulations have improved so much that locals have nothing to fear.

Uranium mining and milling in New Mexico began in the late 1940s but nearly ceased in the late 1980s as prices dropped. In 2007, prices climbed to a record $139 per pound, and companies applied for or renewed permits and staked new claims. The economic crisis has had a chilling effect, with prices now at about $43 per pound. But industry officials say they expect high prices soon, especially with the likely passage of a climate bill putting a price on carbon emissions.

The Grants Mineral Belt, extending 100 miles west from Albuquerque, holds 300 million pounds of extractable uranium. Companies are hoping to mine the country's largest single deposit, about 100 million pounds, around Mount Taylor. This year the National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of the nation's 11 most endangered places, and the state granted protected status to a swath of the mountain. The company Rio Grande Resources wants to reopen a former Mount Taylor mine that yielded 8 million pounds of uranium for previous owner Chevron from 1986 to 1989.

About 50 miles from Mount Taylor, the company Hydro Resources Inc. (HRI) also plans to begin mining 101 million pounds starting around the Navajo towns of Church Rock and Crownpoint, N.M. HRI plans to do most of its extraction through in-situ leaching (ISL), where chemicals are injected into an aquifer to mobilize uranium deposits, then the metal is sucked out while the water is purified and returned to the aquifer. Rick Van Horn, senior vice president of operations for HRI's parent company, Uranium Resources, said the process is environmentally safe. Opponents fear it could contaminate their water supply.

"This has multi-generational effects. I won't even live long enough to see what it does to people in 500 years," said Earl Tulley, who lives near Church Rock and is vice president of the Navajo environmental group Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment. His wife had breast cancer and his daughter had an ovarian tumor removed, both of which were attributed to uranium exposure. "People are being taken apart from the inside out."

The Grand Canyon watershed also holds vast uranium deposits, with more than 8,000 mining claims filed over a 1 million-acre area. Interior Secretary Ken L. Salazar over the summer instituted a two-year moratorium on awarding new claims or beginning production on claims not already established as viable. While it is not tribal land, this region is considered sacred to many Indians. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. and other tribal leaders testified in support of a House bill introduced this year by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) that would ban Grand Canyon watershed uranium mining.

Shirley is a staunch proponent of existing and proposed coal mining and coal-fired power in the Navajo Nation. For several years his administration has been fighting Navajo and outside environmentalists over the proposed Desert Rock coal-burning power plant, which would bring increased coal mining on the reservation. Shirley, who could not be reached for comment, has said the coal plant would be an economic boon for the reservation. Uranium proponents, including some Navajo, likewise say the industry would create badly needed investment and jobs on a reservation where unemployment regularly tops 50 percent.

Van Horn said HRI would create about 120 jobs for locals and would result in nearly $1 million a year in royalties to the Navajo Nation. Mount Taylor mine manager Joe Lister said their planned operations would create about 600 temporary construction jobs and 400 permanent jobs.

"Everyone is paying attention to the Native Americans and the environment, but where is Joe Public, that working man who comes in his car with his family from Arizona or Texas and asks, 'Are there any jobs here?' " he said. "No, there's no jobs now. But we hope there will be."

Chris Shuey, a specialist on uranium mining at the Southwest Research and Information Center, says many uranium companies do not intend to mine unless prices soar.

"I don't think they're being honest about the chances of new mining. They're . . . setting up false expectations," he said. "It doesn't take a lot of money to put up a fancy Web site. It's a whole other thing to actually reopen a mine, hire staff and produce that first ton of ore. If you're going to propose mining uranium, you should either put up or shut up. And these guys aren't doing it."

Israel conference to open amid controversy - washingtonpost.com

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Liberal J Street's gathering sets off debate on U.S. relations

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 25, 2009

A Washington conference hosted this week by a new liberal Jewish advocacy group has sparked a diplomatic row and proxy battle over the Obama administration's stance on Israel at a time of simmering tensions between Washington and Israel's right-leaning government.

J Street, an advocacy and lobbying firm created 18 months ago, is holding its first annual conference beginning Sunday, with participation from about 150 Democratic members of Congress, many current and former Israeli politicians and U.S. national security adviser James L. Jones, who will be giving a keynote speech Tuesday.

But the self-described "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group has been rebuffed in its attempts to get Israel's U.S. ambassador, Michael Oren, to speak at the gathering. In a statement explaining the refusal, the Israeli Embassy accused J Street of endorsing policies that "could impair Israel's interests."

The organization also abruptly canceled plans for a "poetry slam" at the event after conservative activists and bloggers unearthed writings by two participants that compared the suffering of Holocaust victims to that of Palestinians in Israel's occupied territories. In addition, at least 10 members of Congress, including Republicans, canceled participation in the conference under pressure from conservative critics, according to J Street and legislative aides.

The skirmishing comes at a time of ongoing tensions between President Obama, who has vowed to restart Mideast peace talks by year's end, and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has resisted U.S. demands to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and take other steps in advance of negotiations.

The furor also underscores unhappiness among some long-established Jewish groups that believe the Obama administration has snubbed their concerns about the Middle East conflict. The administration has made a point of meeting with a wide range of groups on the topic; Jones recently spoke to the American Task Force on Palestine, while Obama is scheduled to address the Jewish Federations of North America next month.

Tommy Vietor, an administration spokesman, said "the White House always welcomes the opportunity to discuss the president's views and engage in a dialogue with interested parties."

J Street was formed on the theory that existing U.S. Jewish groups, including the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), lean too far to the right compared with the views of American Jews. J Street has garnered controversy for many of its positions, including opposing immediate sanctions on Iran and criticizing Israel's incursion into Gaza as "disproportionate."

J Street's executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said many of the group's positions dovetail with those taken by Obama, who remains highly popular among Jews in the United States. He said the group has been the victim of "thuggish smears" by conservatives who favor more hawkish policies in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and said he had hoped that Oren would have accepted an invitation to speak at the conference.

"I am extremely disappointed that this is the reaction of the government of Israel to an organization that is looking to expand the base of support in this country for Israel and is deeply concerned about its future," Ben-Ami said.

The conference and its scheduled participants set off criticism from conservatives such as Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb, a former adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Goldfarb referred to the conference as an "anti-Israel bash" and raised questions about the poetry event before it was canceled.

Some conservatives have also criticized J Street for accepting donations from individuals connected to organizations doing Palestinian and Iranian advocacy work. In addition, conservatives have attacked the conference for including Salam al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who apologized in 2001 for suggesting on a radio show that Israel should be considered a suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks.

StandWithUs, a Los Angeles-based Jewish advocacy group, has taken out newspaper ads this month criticizing J Street and faxed a "statement of concern" about the group to members of Congress listed as hosts of the conference. At least 10 lawmakers, including House Republican and likely senatorial candidate Michael N. Castle (Del.), dropped off the schedule amid the complaints.

Roberta Seid, research and education director for StandWithUs, said she views J Street as "outside the mainstream," and that broad support for Obama among American Jews does not mean agreement with the administration's Israel policy.

"American Jews seem to love Obama; American Jews are liberal," Seid said. "But they are much firmer in their support of Israel and opposed to viewing the conflict as equally Israel's fault. I think they draw the line there."

But Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies, said many critics are missing what the White House and State Department are attempting to achieve by addressing multiple groups in the Middle East conflict.

"I don't see this as the Obama administration choosing one approach or the other; I see the Obama administration as engaging broadly," said Alterman, who is scheduled to be a panelist at the J Street conference. "There's a broad effort to speak to diverse audiences about the president's level of engagement and his desire to move this process forward."

Mobile print reader makes D.C. area crime-solving a snap - washingtonpost.com

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More Washington area police using mobile print reader, but critics worry about privacy

By Allison Klein
Sunday, October 25, 2009

Prince George's County police found two men shot in the back of the head and dumped in a Suitland cemetery. Detectives identified one man by the driver's license in his pocket, but the second had no ID. Police needed to know his name and fast. The first 24 hours are the most important in a homicide case.

Investigators called Alexandria police, who had a gadget straight out of a "CSI" spinoff: a mobile fingerprint reader. Officers got to the cemetery with the device, scanned the dead man's fingers and identified him within three minutes. Detectives made an arrest days later. Without the device, police would have waited at least 36 hours for an autopsy, officials said.

The fingerprint system, based on technology developed for the military, has helped police in Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland solve countless cases as officers use the devices on the street and during traffic stops.

Fairfax County police were the first in the region to use the devices, and they have been spreading to departments across the Washington area. Montgomery County police have a few on the street and put out a dozen last week. Prince George's recently started using several they consider experimental. And District police just got about 20 they plan to roll out soon.

More and more police departments are relying on high-tech tools to solve crimes, and the science is getting more sophisticated. With a simple upgrade, for example, the fingerprint readers can take a picture of a suspect's eyes and use the pattern of the iris for identification. Police say they hope the iris scanners will hit the streets in the next several years, a development civil rights activists say could lead to a troubling and unwanted surveillance of the general public.

The fingerprint devices came to the region in 2007 through a $14 million grant Fairfax received from the Department of Homeland Security. They cost about $2,300 each and work through remote cellular technology. That money spread the technology to other departments as well.

When a fingerprint is scanned, it is electronically matched against a police database of more than 1 million prints. If there's a hit, it comes back within minutes, often with a picture of the suspect. Officers say participation is voluntary unless a suspect is under arrest.

"They are pretty incredible," said Prince George's Maj. Joseph McCann, the officer who called for help in the cemetery months before his agency got the devices. "It would have taken us days to identify that person."

Fairfax police deployed the device recently to identify an unconscious woman who had been in a traffic accident. In Montgomery, police used it a few weeks ago to arrest a robbery suspect who was lying about his identity. And in Alexandria, it was key in detaining a man who was part of an identity theft ring.

Military-based technology

The units have become part of a trend of military technology trickling down to local police agencies, often through federal grants. Examples include computerized license plate readers first used by the Border Patrol and now used by police to find stolen cars. In 2006, the District was the first department in the area to get ShotSpotter, a military application that pinpoints the location of gunfire.

And the mobile fingerprint devices also contain technology used in Iraq and Afghanistan: a facial recognition camera, allowing officers to take pictures of a suspect on the street and electronically compare facial features to a database of mug shots. It works in minutes.

The iris scan technology is being used in combat zones, but some jurisdictions across the country are using the application to track sex offenders, and others use it to help identify missing children or seniors.

Such military technology is reaching the local level because of "a tremendous amount of money" dedicated to research and development in the military, said Roger Morrison, director of federal sales for Datastrip, the company that makes the mobile fingerprint/iris scan units.

Morrison said fingerprint and iris scan devices are "rapidly being embraced by law enforcement as the next big thing." Mobile fingerprint devices are used in places such as Los Angeles, Charleston, S.C., and Austin.

Civil rights questions

But civil rights activists, including Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, are concerned about the new tools. He questioned whether police agencies should have this type of anti-terrorism grant.

"This is money from the Department of Homeland Security. There should be a connection to terrorism in some way," Calabrese said. "This doesn't seem like anti-terrorism. It seems like mass surveillance of the innocent population."

He said criminal investigations would benefit if police knew the identities of everyone on the streets. "But that would terrorize ordinary people and make them fear their government," he said.

Local agencies are hoping that the FBI, which is upgrading its fingerprint repository, will add iris scans, DNA and voice recognition.

"The technology is the easy part," said Stephen L. Morris, deputy assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division. "The challenge we face is being able to navigate through policies and privacy issues -- how we use it, store it and disseminate it."

Police say that unless suspects are under arrest, they can decline the fingerprint scans and any other biometric collection. But few do, officers say.

"People are intrigued by it," said Alexandria Cmdr. Charles Bailey, who heads the department's Crime Scene Investigation Section and is in charge of the agency's mobile fingerprint devices.

He said suspects are often surprised by the device and don't know what to expect, or they don't believe officers when they explain what it can do. "Some people think it's a joke," he said.

It works by connecting to fingerprint and mug shot databases across the region and is able to search more than 1.5 million entries.

Fairfax recently bought 10 upgraded units, which are about the size of an iPod and connect to the officer's mobile phone or PDA. In one case several weeks ago, Fairfax Officer Brian Bowers stopped a man in a car who had illegally tinted his windows. The man said he didn't have a driver's license but agreed to let Bowers scan his fingers. Within minutes, Bowers learned that the man was a registered sex offender who had violated his probation.

In another case, Bowers stopped a woman who cut him off in traffic. She said she didn't have a driver's license with her, and she gave Bowers a false name. A fingerprint scan revealed that she had a suspended license and that she was employed as a bus driver in Arlington County.

Another time, Fairfax officers arrived at a home to serve a warrant on a man wanted for domestic violence. The man's wife answered the door and said he wasn't home. Bowers and another officer searched the house and found a man hiding in a closet who said he was the woman's brother-in-law.

"We had no way to prove who he was or wasn't," Bowers said.

But the man agreed to have his finger scanned, and the officers learned that he was the man they were looking for.

Bowers said that he uses the device about once each shift and that it has never caused a bad experience with a suspect or a criminal.

"More often than not, we've gotten positive reaction from criminals who say: 'That's pretty neat. That's amazing,' " he said. "I think it's only going to get better and better."

As Indonesia debates Islam's role, U.S. stays out - washingtonpost.com

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Post-9/11 push to boost moderates gives way

By Andrew Higgins
Sunday, October 25, 2009

In the early 1980s, Nasir Tamara, a young Indonesian scholar, needed money to fund a study of Islam and politics. He went to the Jakarta office of the U.S.-based Ford Foundation to ask for help. He left empty-handed. The United States, he was told, was "not interested in getting into Islam."

The rebuff came from President Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a U.S. anthropologist who lived in Indonesia for more than a decade. Dunham, who died in 1995, focused on issues of economic development, not matters of faith and politics, sensitive subjects in a country then ruled by a secular-minded autocrat.

"It was not fashionable to 'do Islam' back then," Tamara recalled.

Today, Indonesia is a democracy and the role of Islam is one of the most important issues facing U.S. policy in a country with many more Muslims than Egypt, Syria, Jordan and all the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf combined. What kind of Islam prevails here is critical to U.S. interests across the wider Muslim world.

"This is a fight for ideas, a fight for what kind of future Indonesia wants," said Walter North, Jakarta mission chief for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who knew Dunham while she was here in the 1980s.

It is also a fight that raises a tricky question: Should Americans stand apart from Islam's internal struggles around the world or jump in and try to bolster Muslims who are in sync with American views?

A close look at U.S. interactions with Muslim groups in Indonesia -- Obama's boyhood home for four years -- shows how, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, rival strategies have played out, often with consequences very different from what Washington intended.

In the debate over how best to influence the country's religious direction, some champion intervention, most notably a private organization from North Carolina that has waded deep into Indonesia's theological struggles. But, in the main, U.S. thinking has moved back toward what it was in Dunham's day: stay out of Islam.

A change in public mood

In many ways, Indonesia -- a nation of 240 million people scattered across 17,000 islands -- is moving in America's direction. It has flirted with Saudi-style dogmatism on its fringes. But while increasingly pious, it shows few signs of dumping what, since Islam arrived here in the 14th century, has generally been an eclectic and flexible brand of the faith.

Terrorism, which many Indonesians previously considered an American-made myth, now stirs general revulsion. When a key suspect in July suicide bombings in Jakarta was killed recently in a shootout with a U.S.-trained police unit, his native village, appalled by his violent activities, refused to take the body for burial.

A band of Islamic moral vigilantes this month forced a Japanese porn star to call off a trip to Jakarta. But the group no longer storms bars, nightclubs and hotels as it did regularly a few years ago, at the height of a U.S. drive to promote "moderate" Islam. Aceh, a particularly devout Indonesian region and a big recipient of U.S. aid after a 2004 tsunami, recently introduced a bylaw that mandates the stoning to death of adulterers, but few expect the penalty to be carried out. Aceh's governor, who has an American adviser paid for by USAID, opposes stoning.

Public fury at the United States over the Iraq war has faded, a trend accelerated by the departure of President George W. Bush and the election of Obama. In 2003, the first year of the war, 15 percent of Indonesians surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a favorable view of the United States -- compared with 75 percent before Bush took office. America's favorability rating is now 63 percent.

There are many reasons for the change of mood: an economy that is growing fast despite the global slump; increasing political stability rooted in elections that are generally free and fair; moves by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a U.S.-trained former general who won reelection by a landslide in July, to co-opt Islamic political parties.

Another reason, said Masdar Mas'udi, a senior cleric at Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's -- and the world's -- largest Islamic organization, is that the United States has backed away from overt intrusions into religious matters. A foe of hard-line Muslims who has worked closely with Americans, Mas'udi said he now believes that U.S. intervention in theological quarrels often provides radicals with "a sparring partner" that strengthens them. These days, instead of tinkering with religious doctrine, a pet project focuses on providing organic rice seeds to poor Muslim farmers.

In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington deployed money and rhetoric in a big push to bolster "moderate" Muslims against what Bush called the "real and profound ideology" of "Islamo-fascism." Obama, promising a "new beginning between America and Muslims around the world," has avoided dividing Muslims into competing theological camps. He has denounced "violent extremists" but, in a June speech in Cairo, stated that "Islam is not part of the problem."

North, the USAID mission chief, said the best way to help "champions of an enlightened perspective win the day" is to avoid theology and help Indonesia "address some of the problems here, such as poverty and corruption." Trying to groom Muslim leaders America likes, he said, won't help.

Rethinking post-9/11 tack

This is a sharp retreat from the approach taken right after the Sept. 11 attacks, when a raft of U.S.-funded programs sought to amplify the voice of "moderates." Hundreds of Indonesian clerics went through U.S.-sponsored courses that taught a reform-minded reading of the Koran. A handbook for preachers, published with U.S. money, offered tips on what to preach. One American-funded Muslim group even tried to script Friday prayer sermons.

Such initiatives mimicked a strategy adopted during the Cold War, when, to counter communist ideology, the United States funded a host of cultural, educational and other groups in tune with America's goals. Even some of the key actors were the same. The Asia Foundation, founded with covert U.S. funding in the 1950s to combat communism, took the lead in battling noxious strands of Islam in Indonesia as part of a USAID-financed program called Islam and Civil Society. The program began before the Sept. 11 attacks but ramped up its activities after.

"We wanted to challenge hard-line ideas head-on," recalled Ulil Abshar Abdalla, an Indonesian expert in Islamic theology who, with Asia Foundation funding, set up the Liberal Islam Network in 2001. The network launched a weekly radio program that questioned literal interpretations of sacred texts with respect to women, homosexuals and basic doctrine. It bought airtime on national television for a video that presented Islam as a faith of "many colors" and distributed leaflets promoting liberal theology in mosques.

Feted by Americans as a model moderate, Abdalla was flown to Washington in 2002 to meet officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, the then-deputy secretary of defense and a former U.S. ambassador to Jakarta. But efforts to transplant Cold War tactics into the Islamic world started to go very wrong. More-conservative Muslims never liked what they viewed as American meddling in theology. Their unease over U.S. motives escalated sharply with the start of the Iraq war and spread to a wider constituency. Iraq "destroyed everything," said Abdalla, who started getting death threats.

Indonesia's council of clerics, enraged by what it saw as a U.S. campaign to reshape Islam, issued a fatwa denouncing "secularism, pluralism and liberalism."

The Asia Foundation pulled its funding for Abdalla's network and began to rethink its strategy. It still works with Muslim groups but avoids sensitive theological issues, focusing instead on training to monitor budgets, battle corruption and lobby on behalf of the poor. "The foundation came to believe that it was more effective for intra-Islamic debates to take place without the involvement of international organizations," said Robin Bush, head of the foundation's Jakarta office.

Abdalla, meanwhile, left Indonesia and moved to Boston to study.

One U.S. group jumps in

While the Asia Foundation and others dived for cover, one American outfit jumped into the theological fray with gusto. In December 2003, C. Holland Taylor, a former telecommunications executive from Winston-Salem, N.C., set up a combative outfit called LibForAll Foundation to "promote the culture of liberty and tolerance."

Taylor, who speaks Indonesian, won some big-name supporters, including Indonesia's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, a prominent but ailing cleric, and a popular Indonesian pop star, who released a hit song that vowed, "No to the warriors of jihad! Yes to the warriors of love." Taylor took Wahid to Washington, where they met Wolfowitz, Vice President Richard B. Cheney and others. He recruited a reform-minded Koran scholar from Egypt to help promote a "renaissance of Islamic pluralism, tolerance and critical thinking."

Funding came from wealthy Americans, including heirs of the Hanes underwear fortune, and several European organizations. Taylor, in a recent interview in Jakarta, declined to identify his biggest American donor. He said he has repeatedly asked the U.S. government for money but has received only $50,000, a grant from a State Department counterterrorism unit.

"You can't win a war with that," said Taylor, who is working on a 26-part TV documentary that aims to debunk hard-line Islamic doctrine. "People in Washington would prefer to think that if we do nothing we will be okay: just cut off the heads of terrorists and everything will be fine."

As the atmosphere has grown less hostile, Abdalla, the much-reviled American favorite, returned this year to Jakarta. He hasn't changed his liberal take on Islam but now avoids topics that fire up his foes. "I've changed. The environment has changed," he said. "We now realize the radical groups are not as dominant as we thought in the beginning."

Tired of being branded a fringe American stooge, he plans to run in an election next year for leadership of Nahdlatul Ulama, a pillar of Indonesia's traditional religious establishment. He doesn't stand much of a chance but wants to "engage with the mainstream instead of the periphery." His Liberal Islam Network doesn't get U.S. money anymore, skirts touchy topics on its radio show and no longer hands out leaflets in mosques.

"Religion is too sensitive. We shouldn't get involved," said Kay Ikranagara, a close American friend of Obama's late mother who works in Jakarta for a small USAID-funded scholarship program. Ikranagara worries about Islam's growing influence on daily life in the country, but she's wary of outsiders who want to press Indonesians on matters of faith.

"We just get in a lot of trouble trying to do that," she said.

Va. GOP makes timely adjustment to changes in state - washingtonpost.com

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McDonnell looks to end string of Democratic victories

By Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar
Sunday, October 25, 2009

In the 12 years since James S. Gilmore III last claimed the governor's mansion for Republicans, Virginia has undergone dramatic demographic changes, becoming more populous, diverse, wealthy and educated. There are almost a million more Virginians; six in 10 are minorities, and 43 percent live in Northern Virginia

Democrats have taken advantage of these changes to claim nearly every major office in the state, but their decade-long run is in jeopardy this year as Republican Robert F. McDonnell appears to be making inroads among suburbanites and minorities through concerted outreach, a message built around quality-of-life issues and a direct embrace of Northern Virginia.

McDonnell's approach has been apparent throughout the race. He officially launched his campaign with a rally in Annandale, has returned to Northern Virginia repeatedly to target specific minority groups and has used the region as a backdrop for many major policy announcements.

The day before news of McDonnell's 1989 graduate thesis broke, as he and his aides scrambled to respond, he spent 12 hours in Northern Virginia opening campaign offices, canvassing in cul-de-sacs and meeting with Vietnamese and Latino voters. Two days after the story appeared, as McDonnell sought to limit damage from a paper in which he argued that working women are detrimental to the family, he went to a high school in Alexandria to announce his education plan.

Equally evident is what McDonnell has avoided: rhetoric that ignites the conservative base but could turn off independent voters. He has been careful to intermingle praise for President Obama's education policies with criticism of his spending and health-care initiatives. He pronounced himself "delighted" that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, separating himself from those in his party who were ridiculing the president. And after personally asking former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for help early in the summer, he changed his mind in August and asked the controversial conservative to stay away.

McDonnell campaign strategists said they don't expect to win Northern Virginia or a majority of minority votes, but they don't think they need to. In a state that remains Republican in most places, they said their goal is to keep Democrat R. Creigh Deeds from getting more than 60 percent of the vote in Northern Virginia -- the magic number strategists in both parties have come to see as a threshold for Democratic victories. In a Washington Post poll conducted this month, McDonnell trailed Deeds by just 5 points in Northern Virginia, 51 to 46 percent.

"Successful Republican candidates must be able to compete in Northern Virginia," said Phil Cox, McDonnell's campaign manager. "The old model where you could run up big numbers south of the Occoquan and hope for the best in Northern Virginia is a thing of the past."

The changes in Virginia have mirrored shifts that have occurred nationally, helping Democrats win elections by appealing to increasingly diverse, moderate, well-educated and affluent suburban voters outside such cities as Philadelphia, Denver and Minneapolis. On his way to winning the White House, Obama tapped into those shifts in Virginia and other states that previously tended to be unfriendly to Democrats.

National Republicans think a victory by McDonnell, who has led in every poll since June, would resonate well beyond Virginia because it would show that although many new, suburban voters have backed Democrats in recent elections, they're not wedded to the party.

"I think a win in Virginia will be a shot heard around the world and will show a strong comeback in the making," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, who added that a McDonnell victory would create a "template for Republicans on a national level."

Strategy alone has not thrust McDonnell into the lead in the polls. He has benefited from general discontent about Obama and the direction of the country. Virginia Republicans are desperate for a win and solidly behind him. And he enjoys a big money advantage that has allowed him and his supporters to dominate the airwaves during the final weeks of the campaign.

History is also on McDonnell's side. In every gubernatorial election since 1977, Virginians have elected the party out of power in the White House.

McDonnell has further benefited by running against an opponent who doesn't come from Northern Virginia and hasn't followed the same strategy as other Democrats. A native of rural western Virginia, Deeds has made a point of campaigning in what he terms "Deeds Country": Shenandoah Valley communities and towns near the North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky borders, where Democratic votes can be hard to come by. Deeds returned to that part of the state Saturday, with stops in Roanoke, Blacksburg and elsewhere.

Deeds has been the candidate more concerned with social policy. He has worked to paint McDonnell as an extremist, first over the Republican's opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest and then with an ad campaign built around the Republican's thesis.

Unlike many of his Republican predecessors, McDonnell has not sought a debate over social issues, despite his focus on them during his legislative career.

The Deeds campaign is also trying to reach out to suburbanites and minorities, with a concerted push in the final two weeks of the race. Deeds spent last Sunday at a number of African American churches in Richmond and plans to hit at least 10 this Sunday, and campaign supporters are targeting the young, minority and suburban voters across the state who backed Obama in last year's presidential election.

They think that Virginia's changes present a huge pool of new voters inclined to back Democrats, if they can be persuaded to vote. They note that Republican John McCain actually received more votes last year than George W. Bush did when he won the state four years earlier. But his gain was swamped by 500,000 new votes for Obama.

"The math is definitely there," Deeds said. "The voters are identified. It's just a matter of motivating them to get out."

Republicans are showing signs of adjusting to the reality of a changed state. In past elections, they have held an Ethnic Unity Rally in Fairfax County targeted to a slew of groups. But this year, they ditched the old focus and name -- not wishing to appear condescending and out-of-touch by lumping minorities together as "ethnic" groups -- and instead held a rally for Hispanic voters. McDonnell headlined the event this month, which drew more than 150 people.

Democrats question whether McDonnell can erase a historical stain on the Republican brand in minority communities, made worse in Virginia in recent years with then-Sen. George Allen's use of what many considered a racial slur in his 2006 campaign and the party's harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration.

But McDonnell has barely mentioned immigration this year, instead choosing to try to make inroads with communities Republicans have struggled to attract. He has organized six coalitions dedicated to Asian Americans, who have campaign signs written in Korean, Vietnamese and other languages. He has also attended 60 events geared to Asian American communities.

To woo Hispanics, McDonnell has run ads in Spanish-language newspapers and encouraged Hispanic businesses to post signs in their windows. He has ads on African American radio in which he talks positively about Obama, former Democratic governor L. Douglas Wilder and businesswoman Sheila Johnson.

McDonnell has also made a point of appealing to Northern Virginia's business community, presenting himself as a can-do executive who speaks the language of the state's increasingly high-tech business base.

That sort of pitch would not have been as necessary a dozen years ago, when a list of the state's top private employers included a number of fast-food chains and convenience stores, such as Pizza Hut, 7-Eleven and Hardee's. Today, those names have been replaced by some of the nation's top government contractors: Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Science Applications International Corp., which announced last month that it is moving its corporate headquarters and 1,200 new high-paying jobs to Tysons Corner.

"Virginia's been a big winner in the technology boom, and it's attracted highly educated people from all over the world," said Richmond lawyer Frank Atkinson, author of two books on Virginia politics and an adviser to McDonnell and other Republicans. The result, he said, has been an increase in independent suburbanites. "It's a mistake to assume that voting patterns are static. What really goes on in Virginia is that party fortunes tend to ebb and flow based on issues, and that drives the outcome of statewide races."

Staff researcher Meg Smith and polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.

Beliefs - Changes in Religion All Over the Map, Report Shows - NYTimes.com

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By PETER STEINFELS

The world is growing more religious. Or maybe it’s not.

On Friday, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago released what it described as “the most comprehensive analysis to date of global religious trends.” Anyone studying its 9,000-word analysis and perusing 330 additional pages of references and tables will be quickly disabused of the idea that the currents of religious belief and practice are flowing in one or two or even a half-dozen clear directions.

“Religious change around the world is a complex phenomenon,” the report begins, in an almost comic understatement. “No simple description such as secularization, religious revival, or believing without belonging captures the complexity of the process.”

The report mines dozens of surveys by American and European social science researchers that measure religious trends over the last four decades in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world.

The United States, as often noted, remains unusually religious among advanced industrial nations. Nearly 6 out of 10 Americans pray one or more times each day; high percentages report feeling close to God, experiencing God’s presence or guidance on most days. Faith in God, they say, is “very important” in their lives.

Nonetheless, belief in God has slipped a little, and more Americans, though still believing, acknowledge some uncertainty about God’s existence. A growing number of Americans no longer identify themselves with any particular religious group. Those who do belong are less likely to say they are strong members. Regular attendance at religious services has declined, and the numbers never worshiping have increased.

Yet more Americans believe in a life after death and pray daily than in the 1970s. And to complicate things, most of these trends have had their ups and downs, leaving open the possibility of future spurts or reversals.

“The tilt of religious change in the United States over the last half century has clearly been in the secular direction,” the report concludes, “but the pattern is complex and nuanced.”

Europe, already significantly secular in the 1970s, has undergone a further secular shift, but here the modest overall changes are far less striking than the dramatic differences from nation to nation.

One 1997 survey question found 1.9 percent of Greeks and 2.8 percent of Italians calling themselves atheists, compared with 24.3 percent of the French and 59.7 percent of East Germans. Those who said that they both believed in God and practiced their faith ranged from 5.5 percent in Denmark to 51.9 percent in Ireland.

One could surmise from this data a large historical drift continuing to push Europe away from religion, but much more important were all the swirls and countercurrents of local histories and circumstances distinguishing one nation from another.

The collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe 20 years ago opened a whole new landscape of religious change. After decades of repression, government constraints and ideological pressures on religion were lifted. Religion rebounded in some places; the drift away from it was merely slowed in others. Again, the report concludes, “there is no uniform post-Communist religious pattern.”

One 2005 survey found 90 percent of Romanians believing in a God understood as a “person,” compared with 16 percent of Estonians. A 2006 survey indicated that three out of four Poles prayed daily, compared to one out of eight Czechs. Poles are six times as likely to believe in an afterlife as East Germans.

The once-reigning assumption that religion necessarily declined with modernization has been dethroned, largely because of the American counterexample. But after looking at various measures of religiosity, on the one hand, and of per capita wealth, life expectancy and educational levels, on the other hand, the National Opinion Research Center report detects at least some life in this venerable “secularization thesis.”

“With more modernization in general and with more education in particular, religious beliefs and behaviors across countries do tend to decline,” the report states, and then promptly warns that these correlations are “moderate” and “many are not statistically significant.” Conclusion? “The relationship is neither overwhelming nor uniform across countries.”

Modernization is, of course, linked to scientific knowledge and progress.

The NORC report shows that compared with other college-educated workers, scientists, engineers and physicians are less likely to believe firmly in God, believe in an afterlife, pray daily and attend religious services weekly. But the report also points out that “the difference between them and those in nonscientific occupations is not especially large,” and in fact most of them remain religious, with large proportions believing in God, identifying with a religion, praying and attending services.

“In sum,” the report says, “the proposition that science leads people in general and scientists in particular away from religion is only weakly supported by the available evidence.”

Surveys of belief and practice are only one way of exploring religious change, but they have grown increasingly sophisticated. The NORC report comes on the heels of useful surveys examining in detail religious political activists on the right and the left; the growing number of Americans who do not identify with any religion; and congregations coping with declining church attendance and financial strains.

In the face of all this data, it is tempting to grasp for simplifying patterns: growth or decline, the religious United States or secular Europe, scientific modernity or traditional faith. The reports suggests that when it comes to tracking religious change, there is a strong case for suspending belief.

Suicide Bomber Attacks Pakistani Air Force Complex - NYTimes.com

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By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bombing at Pakistan’s premier aeronautical manufacturing complex killed seven people on Friday morning. It was one of a string of attacks on major government installations this month.

The bomber blew himself up at the checkpoint at the entrance to the complex, 40 miles northwest of Islamabad, as workers arrived for the morning shift, said a district police official, Fakhur Sultan.

Two men guarding the checkpoint and five civilians were killed, Mr. Sultan said. The Pakistan Aeronautical Complex at Kamra is the country’s main air force maintenance and research hub, where engineers and workers build and overhaul fighter jets and radar systems.

The relentless assaults against sensitive and prominent targets in Pakistan come as the army is conducting a major offensive against militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the remote tribal area of South Waziristan. The attacks are seen as reprisals by the militants.

On Thursday morning, a senior army officer, Brig. Moinuddin Haider, was assassinated by two gunmen who attacked his jeep during rush-hour traffic in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The Taliban had warned before the start of the campaign in South Waziristan that they planned to attack Pakistan’s military assets.

The Taliban attacked the headquarters of the Pakistani Army, in Rawalpindi, in a commando-style raid on Oct. 10. The insurgents took more than 40 civilians and soldiers hostage for 20 hours, and more than 20 people were killed in the siege.

With the military nearing the end of its first week of fighting in South Waziristan, some military reports said Friday that soldiers had captured the strategic town of Tor Ghundai on the southeast axis of the army’s assault path.

Elsewhere, at least 16 people were killed when a minibus hit an antitank mine on Friday in the tribal area of Mohmand, bordering Afghanistan, district officials said.

“It was an antitank mine, and consider the damage it would have caused to a minibus,” a senior official in Mohmand said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “There have been few survivors.” Among the dead were four women and two children.

He said that the area was under the control of militants, and that troops from the government’s paramilitary Frontier Corps had begun an operation to flush them out of the area. “It seems that the militants had planted the mine to stop the advancing forces,” he said.

Six people wounded in the minibus explosion were taken to Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, where there was another attack on Friday. Militants set off a car bomb in the parking lot of a banquet hall in Peshawar, wounding 10 people, district officials said.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

Iran Said to Arrest Prominent Detainees’ Wives - NYTimes.com

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By NAZILA FATHI

Iranian authorities arrested the wives and family members of a number of high-profile political detainees at a religious ceremony in Tehran, several reformist Web sites reported Friday.

The raid happened Thursday after the family members of one detainee, Shahab Tabatabee, announced on the Web site Norooz News that they were holding a prayer ceremony for his release. Mr. Tabatabee, a member of the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front, was sentenced to five years in prison last week.

The police raided the ceremony at a private home a few minutes after it began, according to a relative of some of the people who were arrested.

Officers arrested nearly all the guests except for several young women who were attending with infants and toddlers.

There were conflicting reports on the Web sites as to the number arrested. The relative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said 60 people had been arrested, which would make it the largest mass arrest in recent months.

Two senior clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri and Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, denounced the raid, opposition Web sites reported. At least three opposition Web sites reported the arrests, each citing witnesses.

The wife of Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, a prominent prisoner who was the government spokesman under former President Mohammad Khatami, and the wives of several former members of Parliament were among the detainees.

About 10 people were released Friday. About a dozen others were transferred to the notorious Evin prison, the relative said.

He said the raid had been carried out under a warrant issued by the prosecutor general.

The arrests appeared to be a warning to the families of the detainees, who have been vocal in their opposition to the arrests.

Many reformist politicians were arrested immediately after the disputed June 12 elections, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a landslide victory.

His re-election set off some of the largest protests since the 1979 revolution, and his opponents have accused him of rigging the results.

More than 100 people, including reform activists and journalists, are still in jail, and their relatives have said most were being held in solitary confinement with limited access to their families or lawyer.

The government has been unable to extinguish the protests despite mass arrests and a violent crackdown. The opposition has hijacked government-backed rallies and religious ceremonies in the past months as an opportunity to stage protests.

Authorities hinted this month that they might try to arrest the opposition leaders Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi in an effort to stop the protests.

Some 100 hard-line members of Parliament signed a petition last week against Mr. Moussavi, laying the groundwork for his arrest. One of the signers, Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, told state-run television that the complaint was aimed at stopping Mr. Moussavi from planning a protest scheduled for Nov. 3.

The Special Court of Clergy also said last week that it was looking into charges against Mr. Karroubi.

On Friday, Mr. Karroubi was attacked by baton-wielding vigilantes when he visited a media exhibition in Tehran, the student Web site Advarnews reported.

Mr. Karroubi’s white turban was knocked off, and the official Fars news agency carried a photo showing a shoe being tossed at him.

Group Says China Has Executed 4 for Roles in Tibet Riots - NYTimes.com

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By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — A Tibetan exile group in India says that the Chinese authorities have executed four people convicted for their roles in the riots that convulsed Tibet last year.

According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, the four were put to death on Tuesday, more than six months after they were tried and convicted of starting fires in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, that killed seven people.

At least 18 people died in March 2008 during violence that was directed at Han Chinese migrants, whose growing presence in the region has angered many native Tibetans. Since then at least 84 people have been convicted during trials that rights groups say are opaque, cursory and unfair.

The executions were not announced by the Chinese news media, and a woman who answered the phone at the Lhasa Municipal Intermediate People’s Court hung up when asked to confirm the accounts provided by the exile group.

The executions come at a time of deteriorating relations between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader who has been trying to negotiate greater autonomy for Tibetans. This week Chinese officials angrily denounced his planned visit to a Buddhist area of India that China claims as its own. China views the Dalai Lama, who fled to India three decades ago, as an instigator of Tibetan separatism.

Although they claim that Tibetans are sometimes secretly killed in detention, exile groups say the executions this week were the first in Tibet since 2002. They identified three of those killed as Lobsang Gyaltsen and Loyak, both men, and a woman named Penkyi.

Tashi Choephel, a researcher at the center, said he was unable to confirm the identity of the fourth. “It is extremely difficult to get any news out of Tibet, and those who provide information do so at great risk to their own lives,” he said, speaking from Dharamsala, India.

In announcing the convictions in April, the state-run news agency Xinhua said the accused had set fire to downtown clothing stores, killing employees who were cowering inside. “These arsons were among the worst crimes,” according to a court official quoted at the time.

“They led to extremely serious consequences, resulted in great loss of life and property and severely undermined social order, security and stability.”

In an effort to maintain order since the riots, the authorities have intensified their grip on daily life in Tibet and imposed greater restrictions on Buddhist monks and nuns, many of whom were at the center of the initial protests that turned violent.

According to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which released a report on Thursday that documents the crackdown, at least 670 Tibetans have been jailed in 2009 for activities that include peaceful protest or leaking information to the outside world.

The report detailed a widespread “patriotic education” campaign that requires monks and nuns to pass examinations on political texts, agree that Tibet is historically a part of China and denounce the Dalai Lama.

“The government has in the past year used institutional, educational, legal and propaganda channels to pressure Tibetan Buddhists to modify their religious views and aspirations,” the report said.