As a U.S. senator during the 1960s, I agonized over the badly mistaken war in Vietnam. After doing all I could to save our troops and the Vietnamese people from a senseless conflict, I finally took my case to the public in my presidential campaign in 1972. Speaking across the nation, I told audiences that the only upside of the tragedy in Vietnam was that its enormous cost in lives and dollars would keep any future administration from going down that road again.
I was wrong. Today, I am astounded at the Obama administration's decision to escalate the equally mistaken war in Afghanistan, and as I listen to our talented young president explain why he is adding 30,000 troops -- beyond the 21,000 he had added already -- I can only think: another Vietnam. I hope I am incorrect, but history tells me otherwise.
Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all believed that the best way to save the government in Saigon and defeat Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Cong insurgents was to send in U.S. troops. But the insurgency only grew stronger, even after we had more than 500,000 troops fighting and dying in Vietnam.
We have had tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan for several years, and we have employed an even larger number of mercenaries (or "contractors," as they're called these days). As in Vietnam, the insurgent forces are stronger than ever, and the Afghan government is as corrupt as the one we backed in Saigon.
Why do we send young Americans to risk life and limb on behalf of such worthless regimes? The administration says we need to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But the major al-Qaeda forces are in Pakistan.
The insurgency in Afghanistan is led by the Taliban. Its target is its own government, not our government. Its only quarrel with us is that its members see us using our troops and other resources to prop up a government they despise. Adding more U.S. forces will fuel the Taliban further.
Starting in 1979, the Soviets tried to control events in Afghanistan for nearly a decade. They lost 15,000 troops, and an even larger number of soldiers were crippled or wounded. Their treasury was exhausted, and the Soviet Union collapsed. A similar fate has befallen other powers that have tried to work their will on Afghanistan's collection of mountain warlords and tribes.
We have the best officers and combat troops in the world, but they are weary after nearly a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why waste these fine soldiers any longer?
Even if we had a good case for a war in Afghanistan, we simply cannot afford to wage it. With a $12 trillion debt and a serious economic recession, this is not a time for unnecessary wars abroad. We should bring our soldiers home before any more of them are killed or wounded -- and before our national debt explodes.
In 1964, Johnson asked several senators who were not running for reelection that year if we would campaign for him. He assured those of us who were opposed to the war in Vietnam that he had no plans to expand the U.S. presence. Johnson won the election in a landslide, telling voters he sought no wider war. "We are not about to send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," he assured during his campaign.
But once elected, Johnson began to pour in more troops until American forces reached exceeded 500,000. All told, more than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, and many more were crippled in mind and body. This is to say nothing of the nearly 2 million Vietnamese who died under U.S. bombardment.
Johnson had a brilliant record in domestic affairs, but Vietnam choked his dream of a Great Society. The war had become unbearable to so many Americans -- civilian and military -- that the landslide victor of 1964 did not seek reelection four years later.
Obama has the capacity to be a great president; I just hope that Afghanistan will not tarnish his message of change. After half a century of Cold War and hot wars, it is time to rebuild our great and troubled land. By closing down the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can divert the vast sums being spent there to revitalizing our own nation.
In 1972, I called on my fellow citizens to "Come home, America." Today, I commend these words to our new president.
George McGovern, a former senator from South Dakota and a decorated World War II combat veteran, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.
In accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, President Obama talked about the quiet dignity of human rights reformers such as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, the bravery of Zimbabwean voters who "cast their ballots in the face of beatings" and the need to bear witness to "the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran." Earlier in the week, thousands of Iranians did just that, gathering at university campuses in the most substantial demonstrations in the country since the summer, when hundreds of thousands protested Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed presidential election.
But back in June, even as much of the world cheered the Iranian protesters, Obama seemed reluctant to weigh in. "It is not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling," he said at the time. The White House may have feared that public support from Obama would allow the regime to paint the demonstrators as American stooges or might undermine U.S. efforts on Tehran's nuclear program. Such fears seemed to paralyze the administration.
The irony of Obama's Nobel Prize is not that he accepted it while waging two wars. After all, as Obama said in Oslo: "One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek." The stranger thing is that, from China to Sudan, from Burma to Iran, a president lauded for his commitment to peace has dialed down a U.S. commitment to human rights, one that persisted through both Republican and Democratic administrations dating back at least to Jimmy Carter. And so far, he has little to show for it.
The reasons for this shift are complicated. After a number of conversations with current Obama advisers and former White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, I've concluded that the president's reasons for demoting human rights may have been well intentioned -- even if the strategy isn't working out as he planned.
For one thing, Obama clearly wants to distinguish himself from George W. Bush, who badly tainted the human rights agenda by linking it to the war in Iraq and by adopting an overly moralistic, evangelical tone about democracy. According to administration officials, this desire may have led Obama, early on, to be reticent about forcefully advocating democracy abroad, even as he boosted funding for democracy-promotion programs. But they believe the administration has reversed course, and they say the president is now talking more aggressively about democracy and human rights.
Some officials believe negotiating about human rights behind the scenes works better than bullying in public, since it permits nasty regimes to save face while, at least theoretically, allowing them to quietly make concessions. And some of the administration's top human rights advocates came into office focused, not unnecessarily, on cleaning up America's own abuses, from Guantanamo Bay to our rendition program -- believing that human rights advocacy starts with setting a better example at home.
In other cases, Obama seems to have decided that winning support on challenges such as nuclear proliferation and climate change means treading quietly around human rights. With China, the president may also be hesitant to risk alienating our $800 billion banker. Finally, the president seems to believe that, no matter how brutal a government he is dealing with, he can find common cause.
Yet there is little evidence that his strategy will succeed. Obama may have toned down U.S. rhetoric, but who's to say whether this will propel Iran and North Korea to halt their nuclear programs, or whether China will prove to be an effective partner on climate change. "The harder-to-fathom thing for me is why they think that cutting off support -- rhetorical or material -- to democrats and dissidents in repressive societies will gain the U.S. anything on the other agendas," said Tom Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog.
On occasion, the administration has diminished the focus on democracy at some basic institutional levels. Though the Bush administration established a deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy, Obama's National Security Council structure has explicitly downgraded the role of democracy specialists. And some parts of the government seem to be backing away from even the word "democracy." "The USAID Mission in Amman called in all its implementers (grantees and contractors alike) to announce, among other things, that the Democracy and Governance portfolio (and the titles of people in the Mission) would no longer be 'democracy & governance,' " Melia wrote in an e-mail. The United States Agency for International Development did not respond to a request for a comment.
These subtle signals have emerged even from the highest levels of the government: In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton highlighted "three Ds" that would allow the United States "to exercise global leadership effectively": defense, development and diplomacy. Democracy apparently did not make the cut.
The extent of the administration's shift is also visible on the ground -- even if the payoffs aren't. In Egypt, a critical arena for democratization efforts, the United States has cut funding to independent civil society groups that promote democracy and is instead working more closely with government-linked nonprofits, according to several human rights activists who closely follow Egypt. "The administration doesn't want to antagonize Egypt, a major Middle East ally, now that they might need Egypt's help if there is going to be action against Iran," said David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who previously worked on Middle East issues in the Bush administration.
In Sudan, a country whose leader is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, U.S. policy now involves closer dealings than in recent years, and the administration's special envoy to the region, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, has deemphasized human rights abuses there. In September, he told The Washington Post that the United States should be "giving out cookies" to Khartoum, offering inducements for good behavior rather than punishment for bad -- as if a regime accused of genocide were a misbehaving child.
Obama has changed the U.S. approach toward Burma, too. For more than a decade, Washington emphasized the use of sanctions, visa bans and other tools to isolate the Burmese junta, which is accused of overseeing forced labor, mass rape campaigns and other abuses. But the Obama administration has called for direct dialogue with the junta. And although the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, has noted in congressional testimony that the administration maintains sanctions and is not writing the regime a blank check, it's not clear exactly what further bad deeds the junta would have to commit to warrant a more severe reprimand.
Of course, the administration's approach toward China has attracted the most notice. On his recent trip there, Obama was conspicuously silent about human rights in his public statements. At a town hall forum in Shanghai, he responded to a question about the Internet by saying, "I'm a strong supporter of noncensorship" -- a strangely twisted phrase from a normally masterful communicator.
Later, in a joint news conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao (in which the two men took no questions from journalists), Obama said that he "welcomes China's efforts in playing a greater role on the world stage," but he did not criticize Beijing's human rights record or mention its recent crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang. "We were told that the administration privately brought up Uighur issues, but that's it," said Omar Kanat, vice president of the World Uighur Congress, an activist group.
And in October, Obama's administration became the first since 1991 not to meet with the Dalai Lama, even privately, when the Tibetan leader was in Washington. According to Kanat, the administration has also refused any high-level meetings with Rabeeya Kadeer, the most prominent Uighur dissident and a woman welcomed to the White House by Bush. "We've asked for meetings with senior people at the NSC, State, but they always just say they are too busy," Kanat said.
When asked about these points, one administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, replied that the White House has welcomed other dissidents, including several Zimbabwean activists, and said administration officials will try to meet with Kadeer soon.
"Advancing human rights and promoting democratic principles are key tenets of this Administration's foreign policy," said the National Security Council's spokesman, Mike Hammer, in an e-mail. "The Obama Administration will meet with dissidents any time those meetings can serve to advance a just cause. The President spoke in Shanghai to an on-line audience of millions of Chinese about human rights and democratic freedoms as universal values. The President has been interviewed by a Cuban dissident blogger as well as the progressive Chinese Southern Weekly, and he will meet with the Dalai Lama."
On matters of democracy and human rights, past presidents have wielded the bully pulpit to impressive effect, sometimes winning the release of high-profile dissidents. After Bush highlighted the case of Ayman Nour, the most prominent Egyptian dissident, in early 2005, Hosni Mubarak's government released him from jail -- but when attention faded, the regime locked him up again.
Conversely, Obama's approach to Sudan may be encouraging the regime to use even tougher tactics in war-torn southern regions of the country. According to Michael Green, an NSC senior director for Asian affairs under Bush, "Authoritarian states take what leaders say more seriously than what bureaucrats say." In other words, when the president does not make human rights a priority, it becomes easier for Beijing or Khartoum to ignore requests by lower-level American officials.
For all Obama's compromises, the choice between human rights and other priorities may be a false one. Obama may not need to pick between criticizing regimes like those in China and Iran and working with those governments on other challenges. "You can see the Dalai Lama and rhetorically push on human rights and still have the other elements of the relationship with China," said Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.
Obama's speech in Oslo reminded us why the Nobel committee decided to honor him with the peace prize: This was Obama at the height of his oratorical powers, speaking of war and peace and, yes, human rights, and calling upon mankind to "reach for the world that ought to be." But the committee didn't set out to merely applaud Obama's great rhetoric; it bestowed this honor on him as an aspirational prize, one that would inspire him to even greater actions.
"The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone," Obama said in his speech. ". . . We must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time."
Let's hope he follows through.
Joshua Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
By Andrew Alexander Ombudsman Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Post recently announced plans to close its remaining domestic bureaus in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Are the foreign bureaus next?
For a money-losing newspaper with a "for and about Washington" focus, expensive overseas bureaus would seem endangered. If The Post can't afford correspondents in its own country, how can it justify them around the globe? Recently, the paper has quietly decided that bureaus will go dark in Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. Some Post staffers fear the beginning of the end of a storied commitment to foreign news.
Top editors insist it isn't. There's good reason to believe them. Readership data show strong demand for foreign news. And Washington has a large and literate international community.
"I wouldn't have come here if I didn't believe that the paper was committed to it," said Foreign Editor Douglas Jehl, who came on board in August from the New York Times to supervise the foreign operation, including its 13 bureaus. Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli said, "I don't see us reducing that staff."
But the focus of coverage is changing, geographically and conceptually.
"We're making some hard choices and we're not covering all parts of the world equally," said Jehl. "We're throwing more resources into those parts of the world that we think matter most."
A bureau is opening in Islamabad to expand Afghanistan-Pakistan coverage that had been provided by a sole Kabul-based reporter. Next year, a bureau will open in Beirut to increase coverage of the Arab world. Bureaus remain in Baghdad, London, Paris, Jerusalem, Beijing, Tokyo, New Delhi, Moscow, Nairobi, Mexico City, Kabul and Bogota. Reinforcements from Washington will continue to be assigned temporarily to overseas hot spots.
Jehl said readers will see fewer Post bylines on routine news stories already provided by wire services, fewer "touristic" features, less "stenographic" coverage and more emphasis on brevity.
"There were too many long stories in the past," said Jehl. "Too many stories took too long to unwind." He wants coverage that is "urgent and delivered at a length that is digestible, and in a form that's digestible." He added: "We're spending less time writing enormous, lengthy projects aimed at prize juries and fellow journalists."
Foreign coverage is expensive. Brauchli will say only that it costs The Post "somewhere between" $5 million and $10 million annually. With salaries, travel, war zone insurance, relocation expenses, cost-of-living adjustments, security personnel and local support staff, the total cost is probably near the high end of that estimate. At the peak of the Iraq war, yearly expenses for The Post's Baghdad bureau were roughly $1.5 million. The Post has sent more than 80 staffers to cover the war. For foreign coverage, it can draw on about 90 staffers who, combined, are fluent or conversational in 30 languages.
Post newspaper readership surveys in recent years have shown high interest in the world news pages. It is less than for the front page and the Metro section, but about equal to the Style section and comfortably more than in Sports, the opinion pages and Business. On The Post's Web site, the order of interest is somewhat different, and world news tends to rank behind those other sections.
Many of these readers are part of Washington's unique international constituency. Hundreds of thousands work for the State Department, the intelligence agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Pentagon, the diplomatic corps, and groups and corporations with global interests. A Brookings Institution report this year said the region has more than a million foreign-born residents.
The challenge is providing coverage that fits The Post's "for and about Washington" mantra. Jehl said this doesn't mean going hyper-local, such as covering local members of Congress on foreign fact-finding trips. Rather, it means focusing on "issues that matter most" in Washington. "It's not all about conflicts" like Iraq or Afghanistan, he said. It's also about economic or military matters in China or India that have special resonance with The Post's foreign news consumers.
Many newspapers have sharply reduced or abandoned foreign coverage, prompting a myth that it's becoming extinct. In reality, it's evolving -- and thriving. Much of the coverage is now specialized. Bloomberg News, which began providing financial news in 1990 with a six-person staff, currently employs 1,500 people in 145 bureaus worldwide. And news organizations are sharing correspondents (The Post does this with NPR in Bogota) or have "bartered" to swap stories from parts of the world where one or the other needs coverage.
Jehl expects further modest budget belt-tightening through 2011. If The Post's financial fortunes worsen, of course, everything will be on the table. But for now, foreign coverage seems safe.
Russians, Europeans and Chinese win most contracts for developing major fields
By Ernesto Londoño Sunday, December 13, 2009
BAGHDAD -- Chinese, Russian and European companies won the right this weekend to develop major oil fields in Iraq, while U.S. firms made a paltry showing at auctions that represent the first major incursion of foreign oil companies into Iraq in four decades.
The companies that secured 10 contracts in auctions held over the weekend and in June stand to profit handsomely, but they are taking a significant gamble.
Iraq has the third-largest proven crude reserves in the world, but the country remains perilous; it suffers from chronic corruption and acrimonious politics that have prevented the passing of new laws to regulate the sector.
Of the seven U.S. companies that registered for the auctions, only one emerged as the leading partner in a consortium that won a contract. Another U.S. company has a minority stake in a contract.
China's state-owned oil company has a major stake in two contracts. Russian firms are parties in two others.
European firms made a strong showing. Royal Dutch Shell, Italy's Eni, British Petroleum and Norway's Statoil got deals.
Companies from Malaysia and Angola were parties to five winning bids.
Oil analysts say the outcome was surprising, considering that U.S. oil companies have long yearned to work in Iraq.
The analysts said it is ironic that U.S. companies do not appear poised to cash in on the aftermath of a war that many in the United States and the Middle East argued was motivated by a desire to tap into Iraq's oil reserves.
After the invasion, the United States paid oil executives to advise Iraq's Oil Ministry and set up large military and civilian task forces to boost the country's ailing energy sector.
"American oil executives provided free training to the ministry," said Ben Lando, bureau chief of Iraq Oil Report, a trade news outlet. "It is quite strange that after wanting access to Iraqi oil for so long, U.S. companies have largely remained on the sidelines."
Security concerns, underscored by coordinated bombings Tuesday, and the threat of political instability as the U.S. military withdraws probably gave American oil executives pause, analysts said.
In some cases, U.S. companies were at a disadvantage because their rivals, particularly the Chinese and Russians, have lower labor costs and do not answer to shareholders, which might allow them to take more risks.
"U.S. companies report back to their shareholders, not to public opinion," said Ruba Husari, editor of Iraq Oil Forum, another trade news site. Nonetheless, she said, "their low profile is intriguing," considering that the auctions are widely seen as the last major opportunity for years for international oil firms wanting to do business in Iraq.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill called the opening of Iraq's oil industry to foreign investment an achievement of "historical significance" and said he was encouraged by how transparent the process had been.
Hill said the embassy advised U.S. companies as they weighed the pros and cons of doing business in Iraq, as diplomats do around the world.
"I'm not in a position to express disappointment," he said of the American showing at the auctions. "They had to make a decision based on what they're prepared to pay."
Exxon Mobil was the only U.S. company that led a winning consortium. Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Inc. got roughly a 25 percent share in another.
The state-owned Chinese National Petroleum Corp. bid on more contracts than any other company.
In marked contrast to the Americans, Chinese diplomats in Baghdad have kept a low profile in recent years, working out of a hotel and drawing little public attention. But Iraqi officials say they have been struck by the caliber of Chinese diplomats, many of whom speak flawless Arabic and have developed a nuanced understanding of Iraqi politics.
"We all know that China is on track to become a major economic as well as technological power," said Assam Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry.
Under the 20-year service contracts, the Iraqi government will pay companies a set fee for each barrel produced above the current output level at each field.
The contracts also position the companies to play major roles in Iraq if the government loosens restrictions on foreign investment. The contracts awarded at the auctions are service contracts, which do not give companies a share of profits.
This weekend's auction was far more successful than the one in June, when the ministry awarded one contract out of the 10 on the auction block. Two other deals from that auction were reached later.
Of the 10 fields up for grab in the second round, the ministry awarded seven contracts.
Iraq's oil revenue, the backbone of its economy, has dipped below target this year as a result of lower prices and export volumes. Officials hope the refurbished fields could pump as much as 11 million barrels per day in eight years. The country currently pumps 2.4 million a day.
A dispute over federalism between politicians in Baghdad and their counterparts in the autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq is one of the biggest challenges oil companies entering Iraq are likely to face.
The chairman of the Iraqi parliament's oil and gas committee, a Kurd, has warned executives that the contracts are illegal. He has called for the resignation of Oil Minister Hussain Shahristani.
"These companies should think twice before signing contracts," said the lawmaker, Ali Hussein Belo.
Meanwhile, deals the Kurds have signed with foreign companies for fields in northern Iraq have come under fire in Baghdad, which banned those companies from participating in the auctions.
The fight could draw oil companies into one of the most protracted battles over power in Iraq. "We have faith in the government," Mounir Bouaziz, a vice president for Shell, said after his company won a coveted field. "The government is behind these contracts."
Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Aziz Alwan contributed to this report.
American was handing out mobile phones, laptops to activists
By William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 13, 2009
MEXICO CITY -- The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists, State Department officials and congressional sources said Saturday.
The contractor, who has not been identified, works for Bethesda-based Development Alternatives. The company said in a statement that it was awarded a government contract last year to help USAID "support the rule of law and human rights, political competition and consensus building" in Cuba.
Consular officers with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the capital, are seeking access to the contractor, who was arrested Dec. 5. The charges have not been made public. Under Cuban law, however, a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of "dangerousness."
The detention of an American contractor working for the U.S. government may raise tensions between the Castro brothers' communist government in Cuba and the Obama administration, which has been taking a "go-slow" approach to improving relations with the island.
The new U.S. policy stresses that if Cuba takes concrete steps such as freeing political prisoners and creating more space for opposition, the United States will reciprocate.
A senior Republican congressional aide said the American contractor was being held in a secure facility in Havana.
"It is bizarre they're just holding him and not letting us see him at all," said the aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record. Attempts to reach Cuban government officials to discuss the case were unsuccessful.
Cellphones and laptops are legal in Cuba, though they are new and coveted commodities in a country where the average worker's wage is $15 a month. The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year; they are used mostly for texting, because a 15-minute phone conversation would eat up a day's wages.
Internet use is extremely limited on the island. It is available in expensive hotels, where foreign visitors stay, and at some government facilities, such as universities. Cubans who want to log on often have to give their names to the government. Access to some Web sites is restricted.
A person familiar with the detained American's activity said he was "working with local organizations that were trying to connect with each other and get connected to the Internet and connect with their affinity groups in the U.S."
The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the case, said Cuban authorities were aware of the project. "Why they picked on this situation," the person said, "is a bit of a mystery."
Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully.
"Counterrevolutionary activities," which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes.
"It should come as no surprise that the Cuban regime would lock up an American for distributing communications equipment," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), a Cuban American and the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The detention of an American in Cuba is rare. The handful of U.S. citizens behind bars in Cuba are there for crimes such as drug smuggling, said Gloria Berbena, the press officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
Human Rights Watch highlighted 40 cases, including that of Ramón Velásquez Toranzo, who was sentenced to three years in prison for "dangerousness" in 2007 after setting out on a peaceful protest march across Cuba.
Vivanco said that the accused in Cuba are often arrested, tried and imprisoned within a day. He said that any solution to the contractor's case would probably be political and that the Cuban government often provokes a negative reaction in the United States just as both countries begin to move toward more dialogue.
"Our prime concern is for the safety, well-being and quick return to the United States of the detained individual," said the contractor's boss, Jim Boomgard, chief executive officer of Development Alternatives.
Bold theft of $1 billion in oil, resold in U.S., has dealt a major blow to the treasury
By Steve Fainaru and William Booth washington post foreign service Sunday, December 13, 2009
MALTRATA, MEXICO -- Drug traffickers employing high-tech drills, miles of rubber hose and a fleet of stolen tanker trucks have siphoned more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico's pipelines over the past two years, in a vast and audacious conspiracy that is bleeding the national treasury, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.
Using sophisticated smuggling networks, the traffickers have transported a portion of the pilfered petroleum across the border to sell to U.S. companies, some of which knew that it was stolen, according to court documents and interviews with American officials involved in an expanding investigation of oil services firms in Texas.
The widespread theft of Mexico's most vital national resource by criminal organizations represents a costly new front in President Felipe Calderón's war against the drug cartels, and it shows how the traffickers are rapidly evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling to activities as diverse as oil theft, transport and sales.
Oil theft has been a persistent problem for the state-run Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, but the robbery increased sharply after Calderón launched his war against the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006. The drug war has claimed more than 16,000 lives and has led the cartels, which rely on drug trafficking for most of their revenue, to branch out into other illegal activities.
Authorities said they have traced much of the oil rustling to the Zetas, a criminal organization founded by former military commandos. Although the Zetas initially served as a protection arm of the powerful Gulf cartel, they now call their own shots and dominate criminal enterprise in the oil-rich states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.
"The Zetas are a parallel government," said Eduardo Mendoza Arellano, a federal lawmaker who heads a national committee on energy. "They practically own vast stretches of the pipelines, from the highway to the very door of the oil companies."
The Zetas earn millions of dollars by "taxing" the oil pipelines -- organizing the theft themselves or taking a cut from anyone who does the stealing, according to Mexican authorities. The U.S. Treasury Department this summer designated two Zeta commanders as narcotics "kingpins," which allows authorities to seize assets.
The Zetas often work with former Pemex employees, according to Ramón Pequeño GarcÃa, chief of anti-drug operations at Mexico's Public Security Ministry. The former employees "are highly skilled people who have the technical knowledge to extract oil from the pipelines. They are now under the control of the Zetas," Pequeño said.
Across the border
This year, executives of four Texas companies pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiring to receive and sell millions of dollars worth of stolen petroleum condensate. U.S. law enforcement officials said in interviews that they have no evidence showing that the men were connected to drug traffickers.
During his September arraignment in Houston, Arnoldo Maldonado, president of Y Gas & Oil, pleaded guilty to receiving about $327,000 to coordinate at least three deliveries of tankers filled with stolen condensate to another Texas company, Continental Fuels, according to a court transcript of the hearing.
Asked by U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. how the condensate had been stolen from Pemex, Maldonado replied: "I have no idea on that, sir."
Donald Schroeder, a former president of Houston-based Trammo Petroleum, pleaded guilty in May to buying $2 million worth of stolen Mexican condensate, according to a transcript of the hearing. Schroeder re-sold the condensate to another company, BASF, for a $150,000 profit, prosecutors told the court.
A spokesman for BASF, which has not been implicated in the case, said the company was unaware that the material was stolen and is cooperating with the investigation.
In August, U.S. authorities presented the Mexican government with an oversize check for $2.4 million as a repayment.
A sophisticated operation
Pemex reported losing $715 million worth of oil to theft last year. The company said it discovered 396 clandestine taps. This year, Pemex projects it will lose at least $350 million to oil pilfering. Nearly half of the thefts occur in the rugged hills around Veracruz, a largely rural state situated in a region with 2,136 miles of pipeline running from the Gulf of Mexico to refineries in other parts of the country.
To steal the oil, Mexican authorities said, thieves sometimes use safe houses from where they build extensive tunnel networks leading to the pipelines. They fabricate powerful drills that enable them to puncture the highly pressurized steel pipes and extract the oil without causing spills or suspicious drops in pressure. Pemex officials said they have found clandestine taps with as many as five spigots.
In Maltrata, in central Veracruz, Pemex officials showed a reporter a four-foot-deep, six-foot-wide trench ringed by yellow police tape that they said had been dug by thieves to reach an underground pipeline in a clearing near a federal highway last month.
After perforating the exposed two-foot pipeline using a hand-tooled drill and connecting valves to regulate the pressure, the officials said, the traffickers ran a 300-yard hose through the brush to a tanker and filled it with about 200 barrels of crude oil.
"They are very sophisticated -- in some cases, it's three kilometers from the pipeline to the tanker where they deposit the oil," said Mauro Cáceres, who oversees the pipeline network in the region. "It is just constant. They take, and they take, and they take, and they take."
Pemex lost 140,141 barrels of oil to theft last month in the Veracruz region alone, the company reported. At $75 a barrel, the current market price for Mexican oil, the loss comes to $10 million. The company reports that oil rustlers are stealing from the pipelines in all 31 Mexican states.
Defending the pipelines
"When they steal this oil, it's not just a regular crime," said Mendoza, the federal deputy. "It becomes a crime against society, because the people who steal this oil the next day are using it to kidnap us. Tomorrow, with that oil money, they are shipping drugs."
Mexico has launched an all-out campaign to defend the pipelines, drawing in the army, the attorney general's office, the Interior Ministry and the customs service. During the past two years, the government has conducted helicopter overflights, installed electronic detection devices inside the pipelines and beefed up Pemex's private security force.
Suárez estimates that Pemex will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three years defending its pipelines. With the company's maintenance staff overwhelmed, Pemex assembled 20-man teams this year to repair breaches caused by theft.
"The teams are working day and night," Cáceres said.
Pemex sent out a call for help to the federal government in 2007. In June that year, Mexican customs officials informed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that they had discovered dozens of Mexican companies that appeared to be conspiring with U.S. firms to export stolen petroleum products across the border.
Working closely with the Mexican customs service, ICE investigators said, they soon uncovered a network of Mexican and American companies that shipped stolen oil to the United States in tankers, stored it in aboveground containers in Texas and then shipped it in barges to end users in the United States.
With oil prices then at record highs, the scheme allowed U.S. companies to buy petroleum products at below-market value. The scam involved hundreds of people, according to Jerry Robinette, special agent in charge of the ICE office of investigations in San Antonio, which is overseeing the probe.
"The folks that made the most amount of money are the people who are going to harm us the most, and that was the organized crime in Mexico," Robinette said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
From YouTube to Pakistan: N.Va. men allegedly drafted to fight U.S. troops abroad
By Griff Witte, Jerry Markon and Shaiq Hussain Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 13, 2009
Pakistani authorities on Saturday were searching for an insurgent figure believed to have aided five Northern Virginia men who allegedly tried to join al-Qaeda, saying the case could help unravel a growing network of terrorist recruiters who scour the Internet for radicalized young men.
Investigators have identified the man, known as Saifullah, as a recruiter for the Pakistani Taliban and said he contacted one of the American men on YouTube, exchanged coded e-mails with the group, invited them to Pakistan and guided them once they arrived.
But the men, all Muslims from the Alexandria area, failed to reach the remote tribal zone that is al-Qaeda's home because the terrorist network's commanders thought they were sent by the CIA to infiltrate al-Qaeda -- and Saifullah could not convince them otherwise, a Pakistani intelligence official said Saturday.
"They were regarded as a sting operation. That's why they were rejected," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. The five men disappeared just after Thanksgiving and were arrested near Lahore on Tuesday. They have not been charged with any crime.
The developments point to the dangers posed by an extensive and sophisticated network of online terrorist recruiters, but also its limitations. Investigators and terrorism experts say recruitment worldwide has become far more Web-based, with recruiters playing a critical role in identifying potential radicals and determining whether they can be trusted.
Yet Saifullah's endorsement, secured through months of online contact with the five men, apparently did not carry much weight with Osama bin Laden's organization: It wanted someone who knew them better.
As a result, the five men wound up marooned in the eastern city of Sargodha, far from the terrorist haven in the forbidding mountains of northwest Pakistan that they were apparently trying to reach. Pakistani officials said the men were undeterred and kept trying to acquire the endorsements to gain access to al-Qaeda training camps -- with the ultimate goal of fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- when they were arrested.
The men, ages 18 to 24, traveled overseas without telling their families, triggering an international manhunt after concerned relatives contacted the FBI. The five -- Ramy Zamzam, 22; Ahmad A. Minni, 20; Umar Chaudhry, 24; Waqar Khan, 22; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18 -- were transferred Saturday from Sargodha to Lahore, where they were questioned by the FBI.
The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, met with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday to discuss the men and the timing of what officials said will be their eventual handover to the United States. But Pakistani officials said they want more time to question the men in an effort to learn more about Saifullah and other radicals they may know.
U.S. law enforcement officials are considering criminal charges against the men, but they said that no charges are imminent and that a decision on whether to file them could take weeks. The young men's friends and spiritual advisers have said they never saw any sign of radical activity or beliefs. The men's family members in Northern Virginia have declined to comment.
If the emerging case, as outlined by Pakistan officials, shows the difficulties online recruiters can encounter, it was also clear that the growth of online recruiting poses unique challenges for U.S. criminal investigators.
Federal officials said they were aware of the threat and concerned about its potential to radicalize Americans who might meet recruiters online, both Muslims and non-Muslims.
"Online recruiting has exponentially increased, with Facebook, YouTube and the increasing sophistication of people online," a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official said Saturday on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
But criminal investigators said the explosion of online communication made it extraordinarily difficult to monitor, and they indicated that their tracking abilities were limited by constitutional and privacy considerations. "Other countries may have different capabilities, and those are capabilities we don't have," said one federal law enforcement official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
Ironically, terrorism experts said one reason for the growth of online recruiting is the success of efforts by the United States and other nations to penetrate Islamist terrorist networks and Muslim communities since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Increasingly, recruiters are taking less prominent roles in mosques and community centers because places like that are under scrutiny. So what these guys are doing is turning to the Internet," said Evan Kohlmann, senior analyst with the U.S.-based NEFA Foundation, a private group that monitors extremist Web sites.
Since Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence has made it a top priority to place human assets inside al-Qaeda. The organization's recruiters act as gatekeepers, keeping out those who are not serious about their commitment to holy war as well as those who could be spies.
Would-be American recruits are treated with special scrutiny by al-Qaeda, analysts said. But they are also considered enormously appealing to the group because of their potential to access U.S. targets and because of their propaganda value.
But experts said terrorist organizations have become much more cautious in recent years about who they allow in as U.S. intelligence agencies grow increasingly knowledgeable about the groups' recruiting methods.
Terrorist group operatives, and even freelance recruiters, troll jihadi social-networking sites, attempting to establish relationships with young men who seem ideologically committed, and physically able, to commit violence in the name of radical Islam.
In one case, a recruiter named Younes Tsouli is thought to have used such sites to identify dozens of aspiring insurgents for the war in Iraq -- all without leaving his London basement.
Experts said the case of the Northern Virginia men is especially troublesome because it apparently involved recruiting on YouTube, a Web site with mass appeal that is extremely difficult to monitor.
Pakistani officials have said that Saifullah first contacted one of the men, Minni, on YouTube in August after Minni repeatedly praised YouTube videos showing attacks on U.S. forces.
A Pakistani police official involved in the investigation said Saifullah and the men exchanged coded e-mails for months thereafter. After their arrival in Pakistan, he advised them to wear the local dress and instructed them to take buses to a city near the edge of the tribal areas, from where they could be transported to North Waziristan, home base of al-Qaeda. They were arrested before they could make the journey.
The men have told investigators that Saifullah was the only one who welcomed them in Pakistan and that they were rejected by at least two other extremist groups.
Pakistani investigators say they believe that Saifullah spent time in the United States, because of his familiarity with American slang and geography. Officials said he was already wanted for his alleged role in an attack this year on the Sri Lankan cricket team as it visited Lahore for a tournament.
In most cases, experts said, potential recruits are the ones who reach out to radical Web sites and chat rooms in the hopes of finding someone to introduce them to a militant group.
"A recruiter does not radicalize a person from scratch," said Manuel R. Torres Soriano, a terrorism expert in Spain, where the Internet played a key role in influencing some of the perpetrators of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. "They deal with people who are already ready to die."
Witte reported from Kabul, Markon from Washington and Hussain from Sargodha. Special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan; correspondents Craig Whitlock in Berlin and Sudarsan Raghavan in Madrid; and staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington contributed to this report.
How quickly can the Afghan army stand up, so American troops can stand down? It's a question that could determine the success or failure of President Obama's "surge" in Afghanistan. The U.S. training program faces some formidable challenges in meeting Obama's 18-month timeline. Among the many issues: the problem of the "professional recruit." So ingrained is corruption and double-dealing in Afghan society that the country's meager Army finds itself sometimes recruiting the same men over and over again--scamsters who make off with guns and equipment each time.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak recently described to a U.S. official how one man signed up for the Afghan Army five times. Deserting after a couple of months, he would sell his rifle for a good price, shave his beard, sign up again--and then regrow it. He was finally recognized on his sixth attempt, the official, who didn't want to be named discussing a private conversation, tells NEWSWEEK. "Everyone's heard of these professional recruits," says Chris Mason, who retired from the State Department in 2006 after working on Afghanistan for five years. "They sign up, get $120 a month and three hots [meals] and a cot. Then they desert, sell their equipment on Chicken Street in Kabul, and do it again." The stories, Mason says, illustrate how hard it is to answer even so basic a question as how big the Afghan Army really is.
Obama and his ground commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, hope to create an Afghan Army of 134,000 by October 2010 (the president set aside McChrystal's further goal of 240,000 as "too large and too far out," a senior administration official told reporters at a White House briefing). But is 134,000 even attainable? Mason and Thomas Johnson, an Afghanistan expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, think not. "Projections of a 134,000-man force by 2010 or a 240,000-man [Army] in the future are absurd," they wrote in a study in Military Review, the Army's professional journal, that's caused a stir.
But Lt. Gen. Richard Formica, who until this fall ran the program to train the Afghan Army, thinks McChrystal's goal is "going to be difficult but achievable." Retired Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who ran the program to train the new Iraqi Army and went to Afghanistan earlier this year, cautiously echoes Formica's optimism, though, he warns, "the training program was very well thought out, but now it will have to be changed." The biggest hurdles, Dubik and others say, are the shortage of bases and training schools; a lack of senior and noncommissioned officers; too little equipment; a near-total absence of support functions like logistics, communications, and medical services; and the Army's deep ethnic divisions. The bottom line, says a former U.S. general involved in many training missions who didn't want to be named casting doubt on the effort: "I can't think of anything like this that's been done in less than 10 years."
SEOUL—Google Inc. this week changed the simple look of its home page in South Korea, adding blocks of links under the main search box about topics and news that are popular with Korean Internet users.
The move marks the first time that Google has significantly altered the iconic appearance of its home page to adapt to local market conditions, said Ted Cho, engineering site director for Google's Korea unit, although the company has made cosmetic tweaks to accommodate different languages. "I think the whole company is watching," Mr. Cho said.
The move represents Google's attempt to revamp its image in South Korea and there are no signs the company is contemplating similar changes to its U.S. homepage, which it keeps deliberately sparse.
Google declined to comment about whether it plans to roll out the new design elsewhere
While Google is the leading search engine and Web service provider in the U.S. and much of the world, the company in South Korea significantly trails two domestic Web portals in usage.
The two Korean companies— NHN Corp. and Daum Communications Inc.—present users with home pages that look more like those of media outlets than a search engine. They include the latest news, photos, videos and updated lists of highly trafficked blogs and popular online chat sites.
Mr. Cho said that he has often heard from South Koreans that they don't know what to do with a search engine that just provides a blank page and search box. "They visit these portals to find information about what's going on and what everyone is talking about," he said. "Then they start a search."
In November, NHN's Naver site led the market with 66% of search queries, according to KoreanClick, an Internet-industry research firm in South Korea. Daum was next with 21%, followed by SK Telecom Inc.'s Nate portal at 6%, Yahoo Inc.'s Korea site at 3% and Google at 2%.
The success of Naver and Daum is rooted in the homogeneity and density of South Korea, which is the size of a midsize U.S. state such as Indiana but with roughly the same number of people as California and Texas, the two most populous U.S. states, combined. South Koreans tend to be interested in the same things, and it shows in Internet search requests.
Both Naver and Daum keep users captive for a longer period than Google or Yahoo by creating vast databases of popular content and linking to them first. For instance, a search for information about lung cancer on Naver or Daum will first yield results from articles the sites have acquired or commissioned from Korean doctors or hospitals.
By contrast, a Google search yields results from the broader Web ranked by Google's search algorithm. Mr. Cho said that wouldn't change in South Korea.
Google found that, on any given day in South Korea, the top 10,000 search items account for 40% to 50% of all requests, more than twice the rate of any other country and far more than in countries with diverse populations.
NEVSEHIR, Turkey -- Sadegh Shojai fled Iran after government agents raided his Tehran apartment, seizing his computer and 700 copies of a book he published on staging revolutions.
Now, he and his wife spend their days in this isolated Turkish town in a cramped, coal-heated apartment that lacks a proper toilet. But Mr. Shojai, 28 years old, continues to churn out articles on antigovernment Web sites about Iranian political prisoners, and helps to link students in Tehran with fellow students in Europe.
"I feel very guilty that I have abandoned my friends and countrymen, so I make up for it by burying myself in activism here," he says.
He's part of a small but spreading refugee exodus of businesspeople, dissidents, college students, journalists, athletes and other elite Iranians that is transforming the global face of Iran's resistance movement.
"Because of new technology and the Internet, prominent figures of the opposition can be more effective outside of Iran and do things they wouldn't be able to do there," says Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University. People staying behind "are ridiculed and sidelined," or thrown in jail.
The United Nations says more than 4,200 Iranians world-wide have sought refugee status since Iran's controversial June presidential vote and bloody street violence. This provincial Turkish town -- near the famed carved-rock dwellings of Cappadocia that harbored outcasts in millennia past -- is home to 543 Iranians seeking asylum.
After sometimes spending weeks hiding in and hopping between safe houses, Iranians have turned up in countries as far away as Australia, Canada and Sweden. They typically seek refugee status.
"What good can a lawyer do in Iran if she is in jail?" says Nikahang Kousar, an Iranian political cartoonist in Toronto who formed an "underground railroad" of sorts to advise and assist other Iranians trying to leave Iran.
A spokesman with Iran's U.N. mission in New York declined to comment on the refugees or their claims of repression or violence.
Iran's refugee exodus is exacerbating a brain drain that has stunted the country's development for years. Mr. Dabashi, the Columbia professor, says he has fielded hundreds of inquiries from students in Iran wanting to study overseas -- more than 20 times the rate of previous years. "It's mind-boggling how many extremely accomplished young people are trying to come abroad," he says.
Not all defectors are necessarily politically active. Two athletes from the national wrestling and karate teams, a well-known anchor on state television and a young film director have applied for political asylum in Europe in recent months.
The most popular destination remains neighboring Turkey, which shares a long border with Iran. Turkey is one of the few countries that doesn't require Iranians to obtain a visa in advance, making it a relatively easy escape.
But not everyone can openly cross the border. About 20 individuals (mostly journalists) have escaped Iran illegally since June because they had been jailed or been blocked from leaving, according to Omid Memarian, a human-rights activist in San Francisco who is another participant in the loose-knit global underground railroad.
Steve Stecklow/The Wall Street Journal
Maryam Sabri fled Iran in September after being jailed.
Hanif Mazroui, the son of a reformist Iranian politician, says he snuck across the border, leaving behind a wife and newborn baby he hasn't met. Today Mr. Mazroui is in Belgium where he is working as a journalist for reformist Web sites.
No matter the route, many Iranians arrive abroad carrying pictures or videos of themselves participating in post-election demonstrations in Tehran. Some also continue their antigovernment activities by blogging or distributing photos, videos, articles and news to Iranians inside and outside the country.
Relations between Turkey and Iran have warmed in recent years. Just last month, the two sides announced a trade agreement, including construction of new power plants and establishment of a free-trade zone on the border. Turkey also relies on Iran as a major supplier of natural gas.
Turkey also opposes U.S.-backed sanctions on Iran over Tehran's nuclear program. Just this past Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with President Barack Obama at the White House. "We believe that the role of Iran can only be changed through diplomacy," Mr. Erdogan said afterward.
U.S. officials view Turkey as a central player in forging an international consensus on pressuring Iran, due to Ankara's expanding economic and diplomatic ties to Tehran and Mr. Erdogan's considerable influence across the Middle East. The Obama administration also sees Turkey as a crucial ally in addressing a range of regional security issues, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
Steve Stecklow/The Wall Street Journal
Sadegh Shojai operates in Turkey as an online middleman between Iranians at home and abroad.
A State Department official says the U.S. is prepared to accept more Iranian refugees provided the U.N.'s refugee agency makes the referrals. The official said there is a refugee quota of about 35,000 this year for the Near East and South Asia, so "there's enough wiggle room that we could increase the number of people we take out of Turkey."
Turkey is one of the world's only countries that bans refugees from taking up permanent residence within its own borders. The U.N. has found no evidence that Turkey is treating Iranian political refugees any differently than other refugees.
Still, there is fear among Iranian refugees in Turkey of being caught or harassed by Iranian intelligence agents. Many say they are afraid to call their families back home, believing the phone lines in Iran are tapped and that relatives there will face reprisal.
Ibrahim Vurgun, project coordinator for a Turkish nonprofit that is under contract with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, to assist refugees, says Iranian intelligence operatives have infiltrated the ranks of asylum seekers.
"It's very easy to get into Turkey, and you can't differentiate between an Iranian intelligence agent and a real refugee," he says.
Steve Stecklow/The Wall Street Journal
Masoume Mohammadian is seeking work in Nevsehir.
Maryam Sabri, a 21-year-old refugee in Kayseri, an industrial city home to more than 1,000 fleeing Iranians, says two Iranian men she believes were security agents chased her in Ankara, but she ran into Turkish police and her assailants fled. She says her hope is that she can leave Turkey as soon as possible. "I am not safe here," she said.
Ms. Sabri came to Turkey in early September, shortly after spending two weeks in a Tehran prison, she says, after being arrested while protesting the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose videotaped shooting on the street in Iran became a rallying cry for the protest movement.
A miniaturist painter, Ms. Sabri says she had produced fliers for opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. In prison, Ms. Sabri says, her interrogator repeatedly raped her and warned her that she would be tracked after release. "If you do not do everything we want, we are going to finish you off somewhere, very easily," she says she was told.
The Iranian government has denied that any prisoners have been raped and has called the allegations propaganda by opposition groups.
The Turkish government requires refugees to live in remote locations far from big cities like Istanbul. This is how many wind up here in Nevsehir, about a five-hour bus ride south of Ankara. A community of Iranian asylum seekers has sprung up in a dusty hillside neighborhood of stone streets and cinder-block dwellings known as "350 Houses."
That's where Mr. Shojai, the Iranian publisher of revolutionary materials, lives with his wife, Fateme Faneian, a 25-year-old blogger who worked at an opposition Web site in Iran before the government shut it down.
They arrived in Turkey in August after hiding in Iran for more than a month while participating in demonstrations. She says that during one protest in Iran, police kicked her in the stomach, causing her to have a miscarriage.
It's their first time outside Iran. They arrived by train with four suitcases of belongings, including several bags of rice.
Mr. Shojai says he now spends eight to 10 hours a day online, acting as an intermediary for a large network of student activists within Iran to get updates on arrests, interrogations and jailings back home. He then distributes what he learns globally on Facebook, Twitter and Balatarin, an Iranian news and social-networking site.
Because of Turkey's strict rules for refugees, Iranians can find themselves in a bureaucratic limbo that can last for years.
Once here, Iranians must wait for the U.N. to approve their status as refugees, which can take several months. If approved, they then next wait for assignment to another country (typically the U.S., Canada or Australia), which can take two years because of immigration quotas. If they're rejected as refugees, they can appeal, extending the process.
"Time can be the best torturer," says Kiumars Kamalinia, an Iranian Christian living in Nevsehir who says he was forced to flee Iran two years ago because of evangelical activities. He says the U.N. recognized him as a refugee a year ago but he's still awaiting resettlement.
An official with Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who declined to be named, said the refugee issue "is very complex and should be addressed by the international community." Noting that 67,000 people have sought refuge in Turkey since 1995 -- nearly half of them from Iran -- the official said Turkey wants to avoid a "mass influx" of additional refugees.
The 1,000 or so Iranians who have arrived in Turkey since the June elections joined more than 3,000 others already waiting to be declared refugees or to be resettled. They include Christians and members of the Bahai faith who say they fled to escape religious persecution. There also is a sizable community of gay and lesbian Iranians. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran.
UNHCR officials say the number of refugees in Turkey has increased in recent years, largely because of an influx of Iraqis. Waiting periods for resettlement have also grown.
Last year, there were only about 5,000 placements for 18,000 refugees. The U.S. accepted 1,099 Iranians from Turkey. An additional 486 went to six other countries.
While refugees wait, Turkey charges them the same residential-permit fees as any foreigner, about $200 per adult and $100 per child, every six months. The fees have stirred up resentment, since Turkey also prohibits refugees from finding legal employment if Turkish citizens are qualified to do the job. Many work illegal, $10-a-day jobs like housepainting.
Hossein Salman Zadeh, an Iranian news photographer who fled to Turkey in September to avoid arrest for taking pictures of demonstrations, says he was fined $50 for failing to pay the residential-permit fees on time, even though the office that collects the money was closed for a holiday.
"The fee itself is a serious burden, every six months having to come up with that money in a country where you cannot work legally," says Brenda Goddard, a refugee-status determination officer at UNHCR in Ankara.
The Turkish foreign-ministry official said the government is considering changes in the permit fees to benefit the refugees.
However, Turkish unemployment is fairly high at around 11%, and because of that, it's "not really an option to allow these applicants to work in Turkey," another government official said. The official added that Turkey is worried that if it allowed refugees to remain, the country would soon become "a huge warehouse for asylum seekers from European Union countries."
MANILA — Gunmen took 75 people hostage at an elementary school in the southern Philippines on Thursday, later releasing 27, including all the children, officials said.
The standoff, about 500 miles south of Manila in a restive region that has been the scene of recent violence, began when 15 to 20 assailants took the hostages after police officials tried to serve an arrest warrant on one of their leaders, said Maj. Randolph Cabangbang, an army spokesman.
The leader, identified as Ondo Perez, is suspected of heading a criminal organization called the Perez Group and is wanted for the murder of a resident of the town of Prosperidad, in Agusan del Sur Province on the southeastern island of Mindanao.
Senior Superintendent Nestor Fajura, operations chief of the Philippine police in the region, told ABS-CBN television that Mr. Perez and his group took the hostages at a school in Prosperidad to prevent his arrest. Mr. Fajura said that the abductors were demanding the withdrawal of the murder charge against Mr. Perez and a halt to police and military operations against the group.
The hostage takers initially released 17 children and an older woman, Major Cabangbang said. Also among the hostages were a teacher and two employees of a logging company, he said. Police officials have not yet established the identities or the conditions of the remaining hostages, he said.
Early Friday, The Associated Press reported the release of nine more hostages, eight women and one man, reducing the number of captives to 48.
Major Cabangbang said negotiators had been sent to the village to try to persuade the men to surrender. “The situation remains fluid at this point,” he said by telephone.
Mr. Perez is a former member of a paramilitary group that the military armed and trained to help in counterinsurgency operations, police officials said.
Such groups have often been accused of criminality and human rights violations.
A recent massacre on Maguindanao Province, also in Mindanao, of 57 people — most of them journalists and media workers — was attributed to militiamen who the authorities say were under the command of Andal Ampatuan Jr., a scion of the province’s most influential family.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_v8NQq6fL0cMCbfj3MAjuOUzlf636JfXWumGXKSpxHm3Gflus2Gbe1T6HnXgICYuBgPefVGRFYnNdE7FgI2tfurEoxJl_FlatlGFlIXWfyZ8ZmBIcOjPItLUCtuvZt4uwfQzp8HLTdWmqMPcT6ckbxJ=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vH556yHCqvImxaCRsGw9gLXjwUMY6Ea3UCvM4F_BFGJYWqstq-n-yi4QI5bNayKTFythrGCdjoNsi6_QRQjNQZfzFStmfn8MnM-fgKKVQ3HFx1F8rkXFS2gsGUSt8mCVx1_w499qYq1HKjaRxu1qu3=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t4wzmrakGUSboFzA6Si6RC4obVMf1_TLsGvrmIHenZOcJKg-Lrj62cLguvTMrC7CKl7eklcaf0bAeeGRIeaK1fm4xnPy-xhg1PJCmD_EXA_yTzT4RaxhscL5UO8HuRLyfuDLdtjj-TxhKQsdxk4oxl=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sOSLpspUIaibotxh9EVcrXVnuab1NghVOgEfnJVt-OzAhxD3-koSf62gs-U3f2kKhXxCcSaNSm1_IcX63hrBq6ThQ7ZucgkF76zMdXXf5_7B8YlyTz43yu4Z2WylY1d5NHr4cYbuBLb6iczc6eNzWA=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sWkxn-CQQONIPugrKG_R4m4NiJ5wZBQzlwStqcfeTwodazCAhLv7uezDW7qrsNmwpHiEzjffavvDoFoMchyvb_D6_BmmlmDTy8DYURIVP9TGXlGFiwM9EXjnt6qEukz49F3UN14BKRYy6fmYRX0ME=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uU9Fe1EKMQIPN1mDoEya3555aejMTIzRQqSNypRCINLFZHmSLDCrtuAlMbCQvFuqYY_7W0VSEzaC1UPsIbfHyOu82g3mbcrUIzcCNY4zXDcs3GqDvUEy5VvuXkepj5a-bQL9gH2psSl4HhGgCXYMw=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uC2ts6BE4d1HW7iLbFnTviO9b0e6IH60uhex58eEjAkYfmyHDUGBsTst3feaATYK9lIWKKOZisTsRC__FrUNRiLa0Aqzecyv5Yzh60hFgC7celj-aEMlXfuGjFV8mcC1ALuD4sBtRGOghSFH6AgXyo=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vLiuHvKBV9PsAQI49C-6j6Kvxan5bZ6UZXG8K6IDJ9q-VDuhzo1mCT7uE7vWYV1Yx1ErVuPuTypmXcPsaeZTGAI5smZIZ6FTuTKIKWmJy16yXVCa2iLLdv_yNzzF7YCtjjnkEDEGEehFnP6Fm4jNs=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sIpLbXbjbcol4lwnkfYc_acHBdWca1g1n3N1Ro8gGY0zdCNNeuJ_iCs2Bu0-2h4Qs9NUnguI3zi_fy6qIeBdDTv_A49rHIoByoR0vtA8HCY2IxcnCeueTmyly64SYmk5iy7wnGonF4hdQRhmgl7AAG=s0-d)
![[The Exodus]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_syaGrhZfzM8bjUJ1UR22E6pz3MHX5CtVkLWRf6FH0QC-3G56ImxlGf_7SUujVw2aDaab1VIJKNZECizr1SU_-8l_Hk2QkiuK8dlHKONE91U7HaHtf9UisEr9b1SyLlSwMfo9SE_Um-g7bnW2wFDaOLhQ=s0-d)
![[Maryam Sabri fled Iran in September after being jailed.]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u8O3wBZfRsAJd-syt15TftYBLdFix5e4ErCdyTuq73wLAEv7C_rIEdCZnKJdRCGM6JQiLtD16vOxfZVT4j6wYjyFO7_m8f-WCjfulBRjkbXg1ZIx4HGbyToqMEbnkTmvoZSuhTSEOeN4RY0PcaFXAAXA=s0-d)
Steve Stecklow/The Wall Street Journal ![[Sadegh Shojai, center, operates in Turkey as an online middleman between Iranians at home and abroad.]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tTUnxLTN-R7YQITB_GJBu24wJUtHeKnMN0tHlp7g-QapaRumftTUnqXjpZAS2lRINHMGMrrZRI-g5Kvhm9ZE6-FFrU6jSFH-Tadbx4TT_ASj6OEOFR9RbzW_d3KtRzkoStd4lfnwoy7v2fMp76h0Xg=s0-d)
Steve Stecklow/The Wall Street Journal ![[Masoume Mohammadian is seeking work in Nevsehir.]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_se6kyoOmFYLPh8DjmMaTWy-N58UskXBNazhbD2ZnnWM9V9jcjR_FcigJHm4flDg2SO1Hk8w0-Z-kiE4F36jESe8R6w7telXMZBfxoij1RPzu2stECw0uL932NcYfM5D_u3gnssDwJ7MRQ4mg_ATah-=s0-d)
Steve Stecklow/The Wall Street Journal ![[Map]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tgZObGQP19uYK-C7H_KDdlrXl3W07xeMz66QYl9Ml4qyjoURpVeetOIWgCSXK2V166nIOwUTp0g9u24zpno7FYGJEetRWyc5M4fLJJi8OjHTwCDyB00CS3elDGiL_116NpNCNLRQz0NQ2xXOtC6bZ6Iw=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uItKLU-bn57V1zsKJBjscZA9fw71fCZCDSlZmMwKJu3VWIyEerZNtKhbK16LN1Cpk_Z02fW5QWcRKU4fvUJcUb4UHqAQAoNOA0s0RxxA_dxZZslv5uBOl09zqY7YJwdaH0v69qfSHCMCV1QVU3f_1S=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sj2pjsF0ePJZNME-9Ts0gqmhYq1KH1n-Rmf5cPFBgvKvu6LBQB_phYyos6Tq_5r6aPjQExaqU4ShBOqu19Aa1rXMYAO7J3rGVTcrIHpfG8XnpmuX9XYT4tBsskbCwclIwlQD46ZgwHgTDuPRm3mohy=s0-d)