Starting Points

Dec 16, 2009

Obama administration to buy Illinois prison for Guantanamo detainees

CONGRESS MUST VOTE ON PLAN
Critics are calling facility 'Gitmo North'

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 16, 2009; A03

CHICAGO -- President Obama, determined to change U.S. detention policy and shut the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, pointed Tuesday to a small town in Illinois as a big part of the answer.

A state prison in rural Thomson will be purchased and refitted to house dozens of terrorism suspects now held at Guantanamo Bay, the administration announced. But Obama immediately drew criticism that revealed just how controversial the issue remains.

Republicans in Illinois and in Washington called the president's move risky and reminded the administration that a congressional vote is required before detainees not facing trial can be held indefinitely on U.S. soil. GOP members of the House will "seek every remedy at our disposal to stop this dangerous plan," vowed Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). A vote is weeks or months away, Democrats said.

Civil liberties groups, while embracing the goal of closing Guantanamo Bay, said the administration would be wrong to move prisoners to the heartland without charging them with a crime.

"If Thomson will be used to facilitate their lawful prosecution, then this is truly a positive step," said Joanne Mariner, counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. If not, "President Obama will simply have moved Guantanamo to Illinois."

White House officials did not say how many inmates are likely to be transferred to the Thomson Correctional Center. Some detainees will be held for trial by military commissions on the prison grounds, while others could be held without charges.

"We are trying to get to zero here with the detainees," one administration official said, referring to the prison in Cuba. "If we have to detain any without trial, we will only do so as a last resort."

The official said individual cases will be subject to oversight by Congress and the federal courts.

One piece in the puzzle

The Thomson decision alone will not get Obama to his goal of shutting Guantanamo Bay, which became a symbol of what critics said was the Bush administration's willingness to flout international conventions.

But the plan is another piece of a puzzle that includes the prospective departure of 116 detainees recommended for release by an interagency team led by Justice Department prosecutors. The administration also announced last month that several suspects will be tried in New York federal court and others by the military.

Prisoners scheduled for transfer overseas will go directly from Guantanamo Bay, a White House official said, while detainees scheduled for trial in U.S. district courts will be held in nearby facilities.

To try to convince skeptics that terrorism suspects can be held safely in a farming town of fewer than 600 residents about 150 miles west of Chicago, U.S. officials pledged to create "the most secure facility in the nation."

Prisoners will not be permitted visits by family or friends, officials said. They will be guarded by military personnel. They will not mix with federal inmates who will share the prison. They will not be released in the United States.

The Pentagon said 1,000 to 1,500 personnel would move to the Thomson area to operate the military side of the prison once it is upgraded. About two-thirds would be members of the uniformed military, and the others would be civilians.

Improvements to the 1,600-bed prison, built eight years ago for $145 million and now housing fewer than 200 minimum-security inmates, are likely to take six months or more. Congress will be asked to approve the funding.

In addition to extra security, the prison is expected to need a courthouse for trials, an improved medical facility and a kitchen staff trained to prepare religiously appropriate meals.

'It's a wonderful thing'

Democrats pushed the prison's selection after Gov. Pat Quinn (D) relayed the suggestion to Obama in a White House meeting. They argued that a federal purchase of the 146-acre facility would produce as many as 3,000 jobs in a region with a 10.5 percent unemployment rate.

"It's a wonderful thing," said Thomson real estate agent Jeannine Mills. "At first, I was very apprehensive, but now I feel it will be very secure and, all in all, a good thing. We certainly need the economic boost."

Republicans have focused on security. Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) and several colleagues warned Obama in a letter last month that "our state and the Chicago metropolitan area will become ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization."

"The administration," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), "has failed to explain how transferring terrorists to Gitmo North will make Americans safer than keeping these terrorists off of our shores in the secure facility in Cuba."

Democrats on Capitol Hill voiced confidence that, once it is clear that sturdy security measures will be in place, Congress will reverse the bipartisan vote that barred prisoners from being held without trial on U.S. soil.

In a letter to Quinn announcing the decision, leaders of Obama's national security team said closing Guantanamo Bay "should not be a political or partisan issue." They said the project is backed by "the nation's highest military and civilian leaders who prosecuted the war against al Qaeda under the previous administration and continue to do so today."

Staff writers Kari Lydersen in Chicago and Perry Bacon Jr. and Peter Finn in Washington contributed to this report.

Dec 15, 2009

Google phone would break industry model

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In challenge to Apple, plans call for it to operate on any network

By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

With Google's disclosure over the weekend that it would launch its own cellphone, the online giant is staking claim to a piece of the fast-growing mobile marketplace and making a direct challenge to Apple's swift rise in the sector.

Google said in a corporate blog on Saturday that it has developed a phone based on its Android mobile operating system and distributed it to employees to try out. Soon after, pictures of the phone surfaced on the Twitter feeds of employees and outside bloggers with details that the device would be launched next month and sold directly to consumers. The new phone would be capable of operating on any network, according to a source close to the company who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Google's approach would run counter to the current practices of handset makers and carriers that partner up in exclusive deals to market and sell phones, and provide mobile service. AT&T, for instance, has been the sole provider of service for Apple's iPhone since the device was launched in 2007. Sprint tied up with Palm for its Pre smart phone earlier this year, and Verizon exclusively runs several versions of Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

In iPhone's case, the exclusivity agreement goes far beyond the choice of service provider. Apple tightly controls the applications that are available for the phone through its iTunes store, and its decision to block a voice application from Google sparked an inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission.

How Google's phone would connect to wireless networks was not clear Monday, and the company declined to comment on its plans beyond its Saturday blog posting. Apple also declined to comment.

But Google's latest plans appear to be aimed at countering that "closed loop" business model with a product that can run any application on any network -- a tactic that reminds experts of the battles between Microsoft and Apple over computer operating systems in the 1980s.

"This is a replica of the open-versus-closed war of the IBM mainframe versus the Macintosh for the mobile space," said Tim Wu, a professor of law at Columbia University. "And Google is settling in for a long war here."

The diverging approaches of Google and Apple, however, touch upon several regulatory debates playing out at the FCC. The agency is reviewing wireless industry practices, including exclusive handset agreements, and examining roaming deals after rural carriers asked for help in forcing bigger providers to share their networks.

Industry experts say any attempt by a carrier to block Google's phone could raise questions about net neutrality in the wireless industry. The FCC is considering proposed new rules that would prevent Internet service providers from blocking content. Wireless carriers have argued that those rules shouldn't apply as strongly to them and that such rules shouldn't prevent carriers from blocking certain devices.

"It will be interesting to see if Google or other handset manufacturers raise concern that consumers might be blocked from using unlocked handsets," said Jason Oxman, senior vice president the Consumer Electronics Association, an Arlington-based trade group. "Whether that is the case today -- that carriers can block you -- is unclear."

Google's apparent approach is the standard practice in Europe, where customers typically pay higher upfront prices to buy phones but can carry them on any network at lower costs and without contract obligations. It's unclear how Google would price the phone, but industry experts say that if the company decides to charge more upfront for the phone, consumers may balk.

"We're not starting with a clean slate here," said Larry Downes, a non-resident fellow at Stanford University Law School. "The question is, who will pay the subsidy?"

Carriers subsidize a large portion of the cost of a phone to attract customers to buy new gadgets. The iPhone, for example, is estimated to cost AT&T about $350 in subsidies in order to offer the device to consumer for $199. In return, it asks consumers to sign one-to-two-year contracts to ensure it recoups the costs of those subsidies. Such exclusive contracts have come under fire recently, with the FCC asking Verizon to explain why it recently increased its penalty for customers who leave contracts early. Last month, Verizon began charging customers $350 instead of $150 for early-termination fees.

And even with the iPhone, its fastest version was initially priced at $599 in 2007 before AT&T began dropping the price. Thirty-three million iPhones have been sold worldwide.

"So this is a very, very different model, but if anyone can pull it off, it would be a Google, because of its brand awareness and ability to market it," Oxman said.

Human rights essential to U.S. policy, Clinton says

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Speech follows criticism that administration has lagged on issue

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that human rights and democracy promotion are central to U.S. foreign policy, in a major speech after months of criticism that the Obama administration was being too timid about denouncing abuses of basic freedoms abroad.

Clinton emphasized that the U.S. government could demand other countries observe human rights only if it got its own house in order, a reference to President Obama's moves to end torture and close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center.

She also put new focus on expanding the human rights discussion to include freedom from hunger and disease, an approach often emphasized by Third World countries.

But perhaps the most notable aspect of Clinton's speech was that she gave it at all, said activists and other experts on human rights. Her talk, and one last week by Obama at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, appeared to respond to concerns that the administration has not been forceful enough about abuses in places such as China.

"I think she went a long way in addressing what had become a kind of an issue that started to dog the Obama administration -- where do human rights and democracy fit with them?" said Sarah Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In her speech at Georgetown University, Clinton outlined several elements of the administration's approach. First, she said, every country would be held accountable for hewing to universal human rights standards -- "including ourselves."

Second, Clinton said, the administration would be pragmatic. She cited, for example, the decision to begin "measured engagement" with Burma after determining that isolating the regime was not helping.

Third, the administration plans to work with grass-roots groups as well as governments. Finally, Clinton said, human rights should be viewed as a broad category that includes issues such as women's rights and development.

Clinton was assailed early in the administration for appearing to play down human rights problems in China and the Middle East. On a recent trip to Russia, however, she denounced attacks on human rights promoters in a local radio interview and at a reception with pro-democracy activists and journalists.

David J. Kramer, an assistant secretary of state for human rights and democracy during the Bush administration, praised Clinton's speech for reflecting a bipartisan tradition of support for democracy and freedom.

He noted that Obama administration officials were initially reluctant to adopt some of the Bush administration's emphasis on promoting "freedom" and "ending tyranny." Critics had said Bush undermined that effort by inconsistently applying the ideas, especially in the Middle East.

"They wanted to distance themselves from it. But I think they made a mistake," Kramer said.

Carroll Bogert, associate director at Human Rights Watch, said Clinton's speech differed from Bush administration policy in its emphasis on accountability for the United States as well as for foreign countries.

Although human rights activists are pleased with Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, they are upset that some detainees there may be held indefinitely without trial in the United States. The administration may deem detainees too dangerous to release, but also may lack enough evidence to produce in court to convict them.

"Guantanamo is not a place; it's an idea," Bogert said. "They're still going to detain people without charge."

Clinton emphasized that her speech was not a "checklist" on how countries are doing on human rights. But she did single out some cases. She denounced the prosecution of signatories to Charter 08, a pro-democracy document in China.

And she noted the harassment of an elderly Chinese doctor, Gao Yaojie, for speaking out about AIDS in China.

"She should instead be applauded by her government for helping to confront the crisis," Clinton said.

Staff writer John Pomfret contributed to this report.

Supplying troops in Afghanistan with fuel is challenge for U.S.

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By Steven Mufson and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

President Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan will magnify one of the Pentagon's biggest challenges: getting aviation and diesel fuel to U.S. air and ground forces there.

As the number of U.S. and coalition troops grows, the military is planning for thousands of additional tanker truck deliveries a month, big new storage facilities and dozens of contractors to navigate the landlocked country's terrain, politics and perilous supply routes. And though Obama has vowed to start bringing U.S. forces home in 18 months, some of the fuel storage facilities will not be completed until then, according to the contract specifications issued by the Pentagon's logistics planners.

"Getting into Afghanistan, which we need to do as quickly as we can possibly do it, is very difficult because . . . next to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to fight a war," Ashton Carter, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said recently. "It's landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, different geography."

Navy Vice Adm. Alan S. Thompson, who directs the Defense Logistics Agency, earlier this year called support for operations in landlocked Afghanistan "the most difficult logistics assignment we have faced since World War II."

The military's fuel needs are prodigious. According to the Government Accountability Office, about 300,000 gallons of jet fuel are delivered to Afghanistan each day, in addition to diesel, motor and aircraft gasoline. A typical Marine corps combat brigade requires almost 500,000 gallons of fuel per day, according to a recent study by Deloitte Analysis, a research group. Each of the more than 100 forward operating bases in Afghanistan requires a daily minimum of 300 gallons of diesel fuel, the study said.

The GAO report said that in June 2008 alone, 6.2 million gallons of fuel went for air and ground operations, while 917,000 gallons went for base support activities including lighting, running computers, and heating or cooling.

The U.S. military remains heavily dependent upon supplies traveling long, windy and dangerous roads in the south from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Along those mountainous routes, theft is common and cash payoffs to insurgents and tribal leaders are believed to be made frequently by truck drivers navigating the region. The Defense Department reported that in June 2008, 44 trucks and 220,000 gallons of fuel were lost because of attacks or other events, according to the GAO.

"This has become a business," said Tommy Hakimi, chief executive of Mondo International, which arranges deliveries by 300 to 500 trucks a month. "The Taliban doesn't have interest in taking the life of a driver. And instead of blowing trucks up, they take possession. It's an asset. . . . Most of the time, they will sell it on the black market."

Bribery is illegal for U.S. firms, but local drivers and truck owners make their own decisions. People "factor into the cost of services the bribes or tributes or whatever you want to call it," said Brian Neuenfeldt of Atlas Freight Systems, which is seeking Pentagon contracts and proposing a way to make fuel tankers more secure.

In an effort to diversify its supply sources, the Defense Department is asking contractors to bring in more fuel supplies by northern routes. Although the routes are more secure, they are still long and costly. Contractors bring refined oil products from Russia and central Asia through pipelines or from Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea before transferring the product to tanker trucks. It means making transit arrangements across Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan.

Although the Pentagon declined to give details, the blog of Sohbet Karbuz, an engineer and economist who specialized in fuel logistics, says that refined oil products are shipped more than 1,000 miles by rail and truck from a Turkmen refinery or by barge and railcar from Azerbaijan to U.S. facilities in Afghanistan. The fuel takes up to 10 days to reach the Afghan border. There it is loaded onto trucks and can take two to four days to reach one of the military's fuel hubs.

In August 2008, the Pentagon gave a $308 million two-year contract for jet fuel delivery to Red Star Enterprises, a London-based company that is bringing in fuel from the north. The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center said that Red Star has been working in the region for about 15 years. Earlier that month, Red Star received a $721 million contract to deliver fuel to Bagram Air Base through a six-inch pipeline it built from its 3 million gallon storage facility near a former Russian air base. Under that contract, it delivers about 250,000 gallons of jet fuel a day to the base.

To facilitate increased supplies from the north, the Pentagon has been talking to other contractors such as Hakimi, who is part Uzbek and speaks Uzbek, Farsi and English. Hakimi said he is negotiating with two refiners for possible deliveries through northern Afghanistan. The Pentagon is also seeking help in tracking possible shipments across the Caspian Sea from Baku, a major oil city.

Another measure of the fuel needs -- and the long-term planning associated with them -- can be seen in the number of solicitations for storage facilities being put forward in the past months.

The largest would construct a new bulk fuel storage system for Bagram. It would require tanks to hold 1.1 million gallons of fuel, along with pumps, controls and supporting facilities. The overall facility, including electric, water, sewer, curbs and security measures, is to cost up to $25 million.

Although Obama has said that U.S. forces would begin returning home in 18 months, the fuel storage facility at Bagram would take almost 15 months to build, once the contract is awarded early next year. The contract requires storage for 6 million gallons of U.S.-standard jet fuel, 3 million gallons of Russian standard jet fuel and 1 million gallons of diesel fuel. The facility must be capable of receiving fuel from up to 100 tank trucks a day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Facilities that can store 3 million gallons will be built in Ghazni and at Sharana.

U.N. urged to cease aid to Congo regime accused of horrific acts

Image by Julien Harneis via Flickr

Human Rights Watch cites surge in brutal killings and gang rapes

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

NAIROBI -- The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo is collaborating with known human rights abusers as it backs a brutal Congolese military operation that has led to the deliberate killing of at least 1,400 civilians and a massive surge in rapes, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

The 183-page report, the fullest accounting so far of the operation, is a chronicle of horrors. It describes gang rapes, massacres, village burnings and civilians being tied together before their throats are slit -- many incidents carried out by a Congolese army being fed, transported and otherwise supported by the United Nations.

The report calls for the U.N. peacekeeping mission to "immediately cease all support" to the Congolese army until the army removes commanders with known records of human rights abuses and otherwise ensures the operation complies with international humanitarian laws.

"Continued killing and rape by all sides in eastern Congo shows that the U.N. Security Council needs a new approach to protect civilians," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

The Security Council is scheduled to meet this week to discuss the Congolese peacekeeping mission's mandate, which is the United Nations' largest and most expensive. A mission spokesman said officials are studying the report and declined to comment. The United States also has a small military team in Congo assisting the Congolese army.

The Congolese military operations, which began in January, were intended to root out abusive Rwandan rebels who have lived mostly by force among eastern Congolese villagers for years, fueling a long-running conflict that has become the deadliest since World War II.

The rebels -- known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR -- include some leaders accused of participating in the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. The initial phase of the military operations were backed by Rwandan troops.

But as the Rwandans departed in February, U.N. peacekeepers stepped in, supplying attack helicopters, trucks, food and other logistical support to a Congolese army known as one of the most abusive militaries in the world. At the time, the head of the U.N. mission, Alan Doss, said that the operations were necessary and that some civilian casualties were inevitable.

But the Human Rights Watch report does not document the story of civilians accidentally caught in the crossfire. Instead, it details a chilling pattern of deliberate civilian killings by Congolese and Rwandan soldiers and the rebels they are fighting. Both sides, the report says, have carried out a strategy of "punishing" villagers they accuse of supporting the wrong side.

To that end, the report says, Congolese soldiers and their Rwandan allies did not simply shoot their victims but beat them to death with clubs, stabbed them to death with bayonets or chopped them into pieces with machetes, making a pile of body parts for other villagers to see.

In one village, the soldiers called women and children to a school for a meeting and then systematically began killing them, the report says. In another case, a woman said she watched as soldiers beat six members of her family to death with wooden clubs. Four soldiers then accused her of being a rebel wife and gang-raped her. In general, the report found, rape cases skyrocketed in areas where Congolese soldiers were deployed.

The report documents a similarly ruthless pattern of retaliation by the FDLR, which killed with machetes and hoes, accusing villagers of betraying them. The rebels often targeted village chiefs or other influential people to frighten the wider population, the report says. They gang-raped women, frequently telling their victims they were being punished for welcoming the Congolese army.

In all, the report's authors documented more than 1,400 killings, roughly half by the Congolese army and their Rwandan allies and half by rebels. It said more than 900,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since January, the sort of massive displacement that has led to an estimated 5 million deaths from hunger and disease since eastern Congo's conflict began about 15 years ago.

The Palestinians' opposite poles

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Divide between Gaza and West Bank may affect thinking on an independent state

By Howard Schneider
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

JABALYA, GAZA STRIP -- Sami and Tayseer Barakat grew up together in the concrete warrens of this refugee camp in Gaza, but the common thread ends there.

As young adults, Tayseer moved to the West Bank while Sami remained in Gaza. The choices have shaped the brothers' lives, values, prosperity and opportunities, and they have placed the two at very different points in what is now a three-way feud among Israelis and Palestinians.

More than ever before, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank represent opposite poles of a future state of Palestine, each increasingly distinct, adding fresh obstacles to the quest for a two-state solution that envisions Israel and Palestine existing side by side. Gaza has become imbued with a narrow Islamist culture that considers Israel's elimination the ultimate goal; the West Bank, in contrast, has become relatively open and secular, with its government trying to resolve disputes with Israel through politics and diplomacy.

In the process, the two Palestinian territories have grown increasingly antagonistic toward each other.

The notion of a single "Palestine" seems to be receding, for the Barakat brothers and all Palestinians, a process accelerated by Israeli policies that restrict travel into and out of the Gaza Strip and limit its economic growth in a bid to undercut support for the area's ruling Islamist Hamas movement. Gaza and the West Bank are not only run by competing governments but also differ in indicators such as birthrates, population growth, cultural and religious attitudes, and prosperity. What is a two-hour car trip seems like a world away, with travel and other restrictions making it difficult for friends to visit and family members to gather.

Where the West Bank is enjoying renewed economic growth and an emerging sense of possibility, Gaza -- dependent on foreign aid even in the best of times, because of its large refugee population -- has become a place of makeshift jobs, handouts and smuggled goods, still not able or allowed to rebuild after a punishing three-week war with Israel that began last December.

Doubts have deepened about how and whether two places so different can be knit back together. As the different lives being lived by the Barakat brothers suggest, the divergence has a momentum of its own.

In one, an aspiring lot

On a Thursday in the West Bank, men and women gather at Ramallah's Ziryab restaurant for the start of the weekend. They sip beer and smoke in a room decorated with original art and sculpture, much of it made by Tayseer Barakat, the owner and the younger of the Barakat brothers.

There's a new burst of activity in Ramallah, the center of cultural and political life for the West Bank's 2.4 million Palestinians. Construction cranes slice the sky, and bulldozers clear large lots for the next project. There are film festivals and investment companies, new shopping centers and planned communities.

Though the West Bank remains occupied by Israel and suffered years of violence during an intifada, or uprising, this decade, Barakat has seen his horizons gradually open. He arrived here in the mid-1980s after attending art school in Egypt, looking for a livelihood that would leave time to paint and sculpt. After teaching for a few years, he pursued a more independent path, opening a restaurant and redecorating it by hand with a modern and elegant collection of artwork.

Ramallah was the ideal spot. It had a professional class that could afford a night out, returning expatriates who might splurge on a painting and the cultural temperament to let him do what he wanted.

"The situation here -- it is like giving someone an aspirin," said Barakat, 50. "It could change at any time. But compared to Gaza, it is good."

The politics of struggle has been replaced by a more aspirational sensibility. On a recent fall afternoon, Barakat prepared to say goodbye to his son, Odai, 18, who is soon leaving to study at Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus.

It's a routine family passage, but it is profound in the Palestinian context. Tayseer Barakat is among the few Gazans allowed by Israel to shift his legal address to the West Bank -- a change in status that, among other things, means predictable access to the world beyond.

Odai hopes to study film and then return to make his contribution to Palestinian society. It has nothing to do with reconquering land, he said, but reflects an idea taking root in the West Bank -- to help put a bandage on old wounds so they can heal and give rise to something new and durable.

"The first film I'll make will be about the Palestinian cause. I'll tell the story," he said, likening his vision to the movie "Braveheart" and its tale of Scotland's rise alongside England. The Scottish leader William Wallace was not trying to destroy the English, Odai pointed out, but was attempting to carve out a place for his people on land of their own.

In the other, a grim lot

In Gaza, Sami Barakat gave his children strict instructions as an uprising against Israel raged through the first years of the decade: Stay away from protest sites such as the Erez crossing into Israel. On an October day in 2000, that advice came undone. Yousef Barakat, then 13, boarded a bus headed to a rally at Erez. Later that day, a rubber bullet hit him in the head.

He survived but lost sight in his right eye. A plaque displayed in the family's living room, sent to Yousef by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, honors "the blessed intifada, that you enflamed, and gave it your blood, which scents the Palestinian sand."

Yousef, now 22, is studying history at al-Quds University and has no clear sense of what will follow his upcoming graduation. Under the strategy that Israel has employed in Gaza, that lack of opportunity should lead the young man to certain conclusions: reject Hamas, reconcile with the rival government in the West Bank and then with Israel, and see Gaza reopened to the world.

But the incident nine years ago left its mark. If the West Bank branch of the Barakat family views coexistence with Israel as important, the Barakat branch in Gaza is not so sanguine. Although hardly radical and not supportive of violence -- the family members here say they are disenchanted with aspects of Hamas's governance -- the children, in particular, do not envision peace.

"There is no chance to coexist," Yousef said. "Israel does not want peace."

Israel's rules have choked off the economy in Gaza, increasing poverty and despair among its 1.5 million people. In addition, since winning elections two years ago, Hamas has shut down much of the cultural and political life.

The seaside nightspots that began to develop here in the 1980s and 1990s, a more open era, are now limited to ragged tea huts and a handful of hotels and clubs that host international visitors and the well-to-do.

There are no cinemas and little nightlife. Even seemingly nationalist events -- the anniversary of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death or an annual Palestinian independence day -- are shaped to reflect Hamas's aim of building a "resistance society" hunkered down for a long-haul struggle. That means tough going for anyone trying to build a business.

Sami Barakat, 55, ran a small grocery store near Jabalya before learning the money-changing trade and opening an office. It let him pay the bills and buy a house. But of late, being a money-changer is a losing proposition in an economy with little cash and little commerce with the rest of the world. He now depends on whatever Tayseer Barakat and a brother in the United States can contribute each month.

Nor are things much easier for the one member of the family who sees his future in religion -- what might be considered Gaza's growth industry.

Mohammed Barakat, 23, just graduated from Gaza's Islamic University with a degree in Islamic law and hoped for appointment as an imam at a mosque. He sees himself as a sort of bridge, strict in his observance of Islam's social aspects but against the use of violence against Israel.

But he is not a member of Hamas. As a result, his ideas won't be heard from the pulpit at Friday prayers.

"The problem is that people who rely on their emotions are the majority," he said. "I try to convince them that you should react out of logic. They call me a coward."

Dec 14, 2009

Pakistan Rebuffs U.S. on Taliban Crackdown

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By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Demands by the United States for Pakistan to crack down on the strongest Taliban warrior in Afghanistan, Siraj Haqqani, whose fighters pose the biggest threat to American forces, have been rebuffed by the Pakistani military, according to Pakistani military officials and diplomats.

The Obama administration wants Pakistan to turn on Mr. Haqqani, a longtime asset of Pakistan’s spy agency who uses the tribal area of North Waziristan as his sanctuary. But, the officials said, Pakistan views the entreaties as contrary to its interests in Afghanistan beyond the timetable of President Obama’s surge, which envisions drawing down American forces beginning in mid-2011.

The demands, first made by senior American officials before President Obama’s Afghanistan speech and repeated many times since, were renewed in a written demarche delivered in recent days by the United States Embassy to the head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, according to American officials. Gen. David Petraeus followed up on Monday during a visit to Islamabad.

The demands have been accompanied by strong suggestions that if the Pakistanis cannot take care of the problem, including dismantling the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, then the Americans will by resorting to broader and more frequent drone strikes in Pakistan.

But the Pakistanis have greeted the refrain with official public silence and private anger, illustrating the widening gulf between the allies over the Afghan war.

Former Pakistani military officers voice irritation with the American insistence daily on television, part of a mounting grievance in Pakistan that the alliance with the United States is too costly to bear.

“It is really beginning to irk and anger us,” said a security official familiar with the deliberations at the senior levels of the Pakistani leadership.

The core reason for Pakistan’s imperviousness is its scant faith in the Obama surge, and what Pakistan sees as the need to position itself for a major regional realignment in Afghanistan once American forces begin to leave.

It considers Mr. Haqqani and his control of broad swaths of Afghan territory vital to Pakistan in the jostling for influence that will pit Pakistan, India, Russia, China and Iran in the post-American Afghan arena, the Pakistani officials said.

Pakistan is particularly eager to counter the growing influence of its archenemy, India, which is pouring $1.2 billion in aid into Afghanistan. “If American walks away, Pakistan is very worried that it will have India on its eastern border and India on its western border in Afghanistan,” said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who is pro-American in his views.

For that reason, Mr. Fatemi said, the Pakistani Army was “very reluctant” to jettison Mr. Haqqani, Pakistan’s strong card in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Pakistanis do not want to alienate Mr. Haqqani because they consider him an important player in reconciliation efforts that they would like to see get under way in Afghanistan immediately, the officials said.

Because Mr. Haqqani shelters Qaeda leaders and operatives in North Waziristan, Washington was opposed to including Mr. Haqqani among the possible reconcilable Taliban, at least for the moment, a Western diplomat said.

In his reply to the Americans, the head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, stressed a short-term argument, according to two Pakistani officials familiar with the response.

Pakistan currently had its hands full fighting the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan and other places, and it was beyond its capacity to open another front against the Afghan Taliban, the officials said of General Kayani’s response.

The offensive has had the secondary effect of constraining the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and driving some of its commanders and fighters across the border to Afghanistan, senior American military officials in Afghanistan said.

But implicit in General Kayani’s reply was the fact that the homegrown Pakistani Taliban represent the real threat to Pakistan. They are the ones launching attacks against security installations and civilian markets in Pakistan’s cities and must be the army’s priority, General Kayani argued, the officials said.

For his part, Mr. Haqqani fights in Afghanistan, and is considered more of an asset than a threat by the Pakistanis. But he is the most potent force fighting the Americans, American and Pakistani officials agree.

He has subcommanders threaded throughout eastern and southern Afghanistan. His fighters control Paktika, Paktia and Khost provinces in Afghanistan, which lie close to North Waziristan. His men are also strong in Ghazni, Logar and Wardak provinces, the officials said.

Because Mr. Haqqani now spends so much time in Afghanistan — about three weeks of every month, according to a Pakistani security official — if the Americans want to eliminate him, their troops should have ample opportunity to capture him, Pakistani security officials argue.

As a son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a leading mujahedeen fighter against the Soviets who is now aged and apparently confined to bed, Siraj Haqqani is keeper of a formidable lineage and history.

In the early 1970s, the father attended a well known madrassa, Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqaniya in the Pakistani town of Akora Khattack in North-West Frontier Province.

In the 1980s, Jalaluddin Haqqani received money and arms from the C.I.A. routed through Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence, to fight the Soviets, according to Ahmed Rashid, an expert on the Afghan Taliban and the author of “Descent Into Chaos.”

In the 1990s, when the Taliban ran Afghanistan, Jalaluddin Haqqani served as governor of Paktia Province.

The relationship between the Haqqanis and Osama bin Laden dates back to the 1980s war against the Soviets, according to Kamran Bokhari, the South Asia director for Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company.

When the Taliban government collapsed at the end of 2001 and Qaeda operatives fled from Tora Bora to Pakistan, the Haqqanis relocated their command structure to North Waziristan and welcomed Al Qaeda, Mr. Bokhari said.

The biggest gift of the Pakistanis to the Haqqanis was the use of the North Waziristan as their fiefdom, he said.

The Pakistani Army did not appear to be assisting the Haqqanis with training or equipment, he said. More than 20 members of the Haqqani nuclear family were killed in a drone attack in North Waziristan last year, showing the limits of how far the Pakistanis could protect them, Mr. Bokhari said.

Today Siraj Haqqani has anywhere from 4,000 to 12,000 Taliban under his command. He is technically a member of the Afghan Taliban leadership based in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province.

That leadership is headed by Mullah Omar, the former leader of the Taliban regime. But Mr. Haqqani operates fairly independently of them inside Afghanistan.

Siraj Haqqani maintains an uneasy relationship with the Pakistani Taliban, said Maulana Yousaf Shah, the administrator of the madrassa at Akora Khattack.

Mr. Haqqani believed the chief jihadi objective should be forcing the foreigners out of Afghanistan, and he had tried but failed to redirect the Pakistani Taliban to fight in Afghanistan as well, he said.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan; Pir Zubair Shah from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt from Kabul, Afganistan.

Manila Eases Crackdown

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Martial Law Lifted in Philippines, but Violence Persists

By PATRICK BARTA

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo lifted martial law in a southern province where 57 people were massacred late last month, but unrest in the southern Philippines continued.

A group of armed men stormed a jail on the southern island of Basilan on Sunday morning, smashing through a wall to free at least 31 inmates, authorities said. One attacker and a guard were killed.

Some of the escapees were believed to be members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, Muslim rebel groups linked to past violence in the region, police said.

The jailbreak -- which occurred more than 60 miles from last month's massacre -- underscored the lawlessness in a region tormented by bandits, private armies and insurgents, including Communists and al Qaeda-linked Muslim separatists.

There was some good news Sunday: Officials said gunmen released 47 hostages who had been held in a jungle hideout elsewhere in the south. A group of around 15 abducted the hostages from a village on Thursday, but freed them after government negotiators agreed not to arrest the gunmen for the abductions or for past criminal activities, the Associated Press reported.

The decision to lift martial law late Saturday in another zone of the southern Philippines also suggested tensions there may be easing. But the area's problems are far from resolved, and analysts warn there could be further outbreaks of violence in the months ahead.

Mrs. Arroyo declared martial law in Maguindanao province earlier this month to enable the military to disarm suspected militia members after an apparent feud between rival political clans erupted into a massacre on Nov. 23. The move allowed police and soldiers to make arrests without warrants.

Opposition politicians criticized the decision to impose martial law, which they feared could lead to widespread civil-rights violations and hand too much power to Mrs. Arroyo's government ahead of national and local elections next May.

The Philippines Supreme Court had ordered the government to respond by Monday to several petitions challenging the legal basis for the move.

On Sunday, government officials said they felt they had made enough progress to relax their grip after executing several missions in Maguindanao in recent days.

Soldiers raided properties controlled by members of the Ampatuan clan, which is accused of leading the Nov. 23 massacre that killed 30 journalists and others linked to the rival Mangudadatu family. The government also uncovered large supplies of arms, including assault weapons and armored personnel carriers.

Associated Press

Prison guards cover a hole after armed men knocked down a concrete wall and barged into a jail, freeing at least 31 inmates.

In the past several weeks, authorities have replaced the province's entire 1,000-person police force, and have arrested as many as 600 suspected militants, including some the government said may have been plotting a rebellion.

Prosecutors have filed multiple murder charges against Andal Ampatuan Jr., a local mayor, for allegedly leading the massacre. His father, former Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., and other clan members have also been arrested and charged with rebellion.

The family maintains its innocence.

"We set specific objectives and we felt we had accomplished those objectives," said Cerge Remonde, a spokesman for Mrs. Arroyo, of lifting martial law.

He said a state of emergency, which allows security forces to set up road checkpoints and seize weapons from civilians, would remain in place in the zone.

The region remains restive. Officials have been targeting as many as 2,400 armed Ampatuan loyalists, many of whom may still be at large.

Analysts have said it could take months, if not years, to pacify a region where the government has long supplied weapons to family-based militias to help them hem in Communist and Muslim insurgencies.

Write to Patrick Barta at patrick.barta@wsj.com

Gang Violence Grows on an Indian Reservation

Image by jimmywayne via Flickr

By ERIK ECKHOLM

PINE RIDGE, S.D. — Richard Wilson has been a pallbearer for at least five of his “homeboys” in the North Side Tre Tre Gangster Crips, a Sioux imitation of a notorious Denver gang.

One 15-year-old member was mauled by rivals. A 17-year-old shot himself; another, on a cocaine binge and firing wildly, was shot by the police. One died in a drunken car wreck, and another, a founder of the gang named Gaylord, was stabbed to death at 27.

“We all got drunk after Gaylord’s burial, and I started rapping,” said Mr. Wilson, who, at 24, is practically a gang elder. “But I teared up and couldn’t finish.”

Mr. Wilson is one of 5,000 young men from the Oglala Sioux tribe involved with at least 39 gangs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The gangs are being blamed for an increase in vandalism, theft, violence and fear that is altering the texture of life here and in other parts of American Indian territory.

This stunning land of crumpled prairie, horse pastures turned tawny in the autumn and sunflower farms is marred by an astonishing number of roadside crosses and gang tags sprayed on houses, stores and abandoned buildings, giving rural Indian communities an inner-city look.

Groups like Wild Boyz, TBZ, Nomads and Indian Mafia draw children from broken, alcohol-ravaged homes, like Mr. Wilson’s, offering brotherhood, an identity drawn from urban gangsta rap and self-protection.

Some groups have more than a hundred members, others just a couple of dozen. Compared with their urban models, they are more likely to fight rivals, usually over some minor slight, with fists or clubs than with semiautomatic pistols.

Mr. Wilson, an unemployed school dropout who lives with assorted siblings and partners in his mother’s ramshackle house, without running water, displayed a scar on his nose and one over his eye. “It’s just like living in a ghetto,” he said. “Someone’s getting beat up every other night.”

The Justice Department distinguishes the home-grown gangs on reservations from the organized drug gangs of urban areas, calling them part of an overall juvenile crime problem in Indian country that is abetted by eroding law enforcement, a paucity of juvenile programs and a suicide rate for Indian youth that is more than three times the national average.

If they lack the reach of the larger gangs after which they style themselves, the Indian gangs have emerged as one more destructive force in some of the country’s poorest and most neglected places.

While many crimes go unreported, the police on the Pine Ridge reservation have documented thousands of gang-related thefts, assaults — including sexual assaults — and rising property crime over the last three years, along with four murders. Residents are increasingly fearful that their homes will be burglarized or vandalized. Car windows are routinely smashed out.

“Tenants are calling in and saying ‘I’m scared,’ ” Paul Iron Cloud, executive officer of the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Housing Authority, told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in July at a special hearing on the increase of gang activity.

“It seems that every day we’re getting more violence,” Mr. Iron Cloud said.

Perhaps unique to reservations, rivals sometimes pelt one other with cans of food from the federal commodity program, a practice called “commod-squadding.”

As federal grants to Pine Ridge have declined over the last decade, the tribal police force has shrunk by more than half, with only 12 to 20 officers per shift patrolling an area the size of Rhode Island, said John Mousseau, chairman of the tribe’s judiciary committee.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has proposed large increases in money for the police, courts and juvenile programs, and for fighting rampant domestic and sexual violence on reservations.

Christopher M. Grant, who used to head a police antigang unit in Rapid City, S.D., and is now a consultant on gangs to several tribes and federal agencies, has noted the “marked increase in gang activity, particularly on reservations in the Midwest, the Northwest and the Southwest” over the last five to seven years.

The Navajo Nation in Arizona, for example, has identified 225 gang units, up from 75 in 1997.

One group that reaches across reservations in Minnesota, called the Native Mob, is more like the street gangs seen in cities, with hierarchical leadership and involvement in drug and weapons trafficking, Mr. Grant said.

Many of the gangs in Pine Ridge, like the Tre Tre Crips, were started by tribal members who encountered them in prison or while living off the reservation; others have taken their names and colors from movies and records.

Even as they seek to bolster policing, Pine Ridge leaders see their best long-term hope for fighting gangs in cultural revival.

“We’re trying to give an identity back to our youth,” said Melvyn Young Bear, the tribe’s appointed cultural liaison. “They’re into the subculture of African-Americans and Latinos. But they are Lakota, and they have a lot to be proud of.”

Mr. Young Bear, 42, is charged with promoting Lakota rituals, including drumming, chanting and sun dances. He noted that some Head Start programs were now conducted entirely in Lakota.

Michael Little Boy Jr., 30, of the village of Evergreen, said he had initially been tempted by gang life, but with rituals and purifying sweat lodges, “I was able to turn myself around.” He is emerging as a tribal spiritual leader, working with youth groups to promote native traditions.

Mr. Grant said a survey of young men in South Dakota reservations found that the approach might be helping.

Mr. Wilson, the 24-year-old gang member, said he regretted not learning the Sioux language when he was young and now wondered about his own future.

“I still get drunk and hang with my homeboys, but not like I used to,” he said.

His car, its windows shattered, sits outside his house, so he cannot get to the G.E.D. class he says he would like to attend. His goal is to run a recording studio where his younger half-brother, Richard Lame, 18, could make rap songs. Mr. Lame is finishing high school and says he wants to go to college.

But he admits that he still joined 30 or so homeboys in town to party any chance he got — “for the rush, the thrill.” As he spoke, he was dressed in the dark colors of his set, the Black Wall Street Boyz; his tiny bedroom was decorated with movie posters of Al Pacino as the megalomaniacal drug dealer Tony Montana in “Scarface,” and he wore a black bandanna.

He pulled out a thick sheaf of his rap lyrics and gave an impromptu performance.

Ever since birth

I been waitin’ for death ...

As thousands flee regime, Eritrea goes it alone

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Facing the prospect of U.N. sanctions and increasing 'brain drain,' young nation's authoritarian president chooses defiance

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 14, 2009

ASMARA, ERITREA -- With the threat of U.S.-backed sanctions looming over this isolated Red Sea nation, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki recently summed up his defiant attitude toward the United States, and indeed most things he deems foreign -- a free press, certain religions, electoral democracy, political parties, global warming.

"Leave us alone," said the commandingly tall former guerrilla leader who became Eritrea's first and only president in 1993, after a 30-year struggle for independence from Ethiopia. "We don't want to be pushed around."

Over the past year, the United States and other nations have accused Eritrea of sending money and weapons to al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels in nearby Somalia, and a draft resolution calling for sanctions is now circulating at the U.N. Security Council.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Isaias, 63, dismissed the charges as "fabricated," blamed the United States for pursuing years of failed policies in the region and said of the threatened sanctions: "It will be a regrettable move if it's meant to blackmail or intimidate Eritrea."

But Eritrea's alleged spoiler role in Somalia is only one facet of a country that many observers say should be drawing attention for another, glaring reason: While striving to be an egalitarian, self-reliant utopia, Eritrea has become one of the most unapologetically repressive countries on Earth.

In the name of national security and unity in this nation of 5.5 million people, the government controls all media, officially allows only four religions ("We have enough religions," Isaias said), and so tightly controls the economy that the only Coca-Cola factory here had to close because its owners could not import syrup.

According to Eritreans interviewed here, house searches, arbitrary arrests, and a repertoire of torture that includes stuffing prisoners in tires and rolling them around in the desert are part of a vast system of social control that extends from this petite art deco capital to the tiniest village.

The country's extensive prison system of shipping containers and pits in the desert is by some estimates holding tens of thousands of people without trial, including journalists, Jehovah's Witnesses and citizens who tried to flee the country.

Even so, one young Eritrean said the defining feature of the system is not how brutal it is but how "normal" it now seems. He said he has been arrested without explanation 10 times, once while reporting a crime.

"The first time I was kind of worried," said the young man, who, like most people interviewed here, was afraid to give his name. "But eventually I was like, 'Okay, I'll be out in a few days. Let me get my jacket.' "

Indefinite conscription

The centerpiece of the system is mandatory national service, which forces all 18-year-olds into military training, then duty in the army or ministry for as little as $30 a month. It is a sacrifice many here said they would willingly make, were it not indefinite.

Instead, many young people have a secret motto these days: "Leave to live!" Despite what human rights groups say is a shoot-to-kill order on the border, more than 62,000 Eritreans sought asylum last year, the second-highest number in the world, according to the United Nations.

"I'd say 90 percent of my peers have left," said one young man who is planning his own exit. "All the best brains are leaving."

Observers say Eritrea's leadership still clings to its rebel ideology, which enforced Marxist and egalitarian values in opposition to imperial Ethiopian rule. Largely abandoned by the world during their fight for independence, the rebels made do with weapons they captured, diaspora funding and a strict discipline that helped them pull off a stunning victory against a far better-armed enemy.

"They won their struggle on their own," said Tasier Ali, a Sudanese peace activist who lives in Asmara. "I think, in a way, time stopped for them there."

Since independence, Eritrea has had a bloody border war with Ethiopia that ended with a U.N.-sponsored border demarcation that Ethiopia, a U.S. ally, has not recognized. More recently, Eritrea has been in a tense standoff with neighboring Dijibouti, where the United States has a military base, over a sandy patch of disputed land at the mouth of the Red Sea.

Isaias, often referred to here simply as "the man," said that national security and economic planning have made national service a harsh necessity. The young Eritreans who are leaving, he said, are simply "weak."

"We are not at all bothered," he said, referring to the swelling diaspora that sends home money totaling about a third of the economy. "The best brains do not make the wrong choice for their lives."

Fierce independence

It was a typically bright morning in Asmara, a palm-tree-lined capital where pale yellow, green and gray buildings are detailed with circles, diamonds and lines that lend an air of fantasy. The controlled economy creates a listless mood. Cafes stay fairly full. Shopkeepers close for three hours at lunch. But these days, there is another sight: skinny women and children from the countryside, where a hunger crisis is worsening, begging on the streets.

Isaias, who said he enjoys "Star Wars" films and Tom Clancy novels, walked to his interview at a presidential guesthouse. Though he qualifies as a dictator, he prefers a humble style. In contrast to African leaders who speed about their capitals in long motorcades of Mercedes-Benzes, his consists of an old BMW and a Toyota.

Isaias said that Eritrea is in the midst of a "social transformation" aimed at self-reliance -- which excludes most outside aid for the country -- and dissolving tribal and religious differences in the mostly Muslim and Orthodox Christian country. The process is also aimed at dissolving tribal and religious differences. Elections held too soon would invite divisive tribal politics, he said. Asked how long it would take until Eritreans are ready to vote, he said: "A long, long, long time."

If there is a sense of quiet submission here, some young Eritreans say they are true believers in a system that has produced, by basic measures, one of the healthiest populations in Africa. There is a sense of pride at places such as Medeber, a massive, clanking workshop on the edge of town where hundreds of workers in blue coveralls hammer scraps from old tanks, trucks, beds and bikes into new items: an Orthodox cross, whose circle is made out of an old tank gear; a hair comb made from a mortar.

"We must do it ourselves," said Isak Ybaye, offering a mantra others repeated. "We are preparing something to serve the people!"

During a rare drive with foreign journalists to the port city of Masawa, Information Ministry worker Raffaele Giuseppe marveled at the beauty of his country.

"This road, we are proud of it -- we built it with our own hands," he said. "That's freedom!"Asked about the tens of thousands of people who apparently wish to be free from Eritrea, Giuseppe said the statistics are propaganda.

"We have the same ideology, we have the same perspective, the same mind," he said, allowing that some might disagree "only if they have the perspective of foreign elements in their mind."

"Only until they get enlightened in the cause," Giuseppe added. "The greater Eritrean cause."

Afghan promises to insurgents often empty

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Incentives to fighters to switch sides are key to U.S. plan

By Griff Witte
Monday, December 14, 2009

JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN -- His path marked by moonlight, with a Kalashnikov strapped to his back, Feda Mohammed hiked the well-worn trail through the mountains of Pakistan and into Afghanistan. He had traveled the route dozens of times before to attack U.S. soldiers. But this time, Mohammed was on a secret mission to surrender.

Lured to quit the insurgency by the government's promise of a job, land for his family and an end to the misery of fighting, Mohammed illustrated the hope of the top U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, for ultimately bringing about an end to the eight-year-old war. Programs to reintegrate former fighters into Afghan society, and perhaps even turn them against their brothers in the insurgency, are at the core of the Obama administration's new strategy.

Yet Mohammed's experience offers a cautionary tale: Four months after he gave himself up, the Afghan government has reneged on all its commitments, leaving him unemployed and his family of 10 with nowhere to live. Hunted by the Taliban and fearful of the U.S. military, he spends much of his time in hiding.

In a war in which everyone must pick a side, Mohammed regrets his choice.

"I'm stuck," he said one day last week, huddled beneath a tattered blanket to ward off the winter chill. "I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go."

Such cases are a major reason the United States and its allies are planning significant investments in programs aimed at using jobs and other incentives to peel Taliban fighters away from their cause.

"This touches every part of McChrystal's plan," said British Maj. Gen. Richard Barrons, who arrived last month to lead NATO's reintegration efforts. "I am absolutely convinced it can be done, and that the time is right. This is an opportunity the Afghan people aren't going to get again. Most of them realize that, and are keen to take it now."

Mohammed, thin and balding at 36, first picked up a Kalashnikov in the late 1980s when Soviet troops still occupied Afghanistan, and like many of his countrymen he has hardly stopped fighting since. For the past eight years, his enemy has been the Americans.

But this summer he was feeling exhausted by war, and he wanted to return to his native Afghanistan after years of living among insurgents-in-exile in Pakistan. One night in August, he tricked his commanders into believing he was traveling to Afghanistan to attack a U.S. base, and ended up defecting along with five of his brothers and their father. He thought the decision would give his family a fresh start.

"Now my children ask me why we can't go back to the way it was when I was fighting," he said, saying his family lived better while on the Taliban payroll. "I don't have an answer."

The men who recruited Mohammed to the government's side said they feel sorry for him, and for the dozens of other insurgents they have persuaded to stop fighting this year through promises they knew to be false.

"We have nothing to offer these people," said Haji Jan Mohammed, director of the government's reconciliation program for Nangarhar and Laghman provinces, in Afghanistan's volatile east. "We don't get any kind of assistance from the central government, so we promise them jobs but there are no jobs, and we promise them land but there is no land."

When the former fighters learn they have been deceived, the results are predictable.

"In a lot of cases, they go right back out and pick up their weapons again," said Haji Sana Gul, a senior adviser to the reconciliation campaign here.

Najibullah Mojadidi, the Kabul-based deputy director for reconciliation, acknowledged the program's flaws but said it gets virtually no support -- either from the Afghans or from foreign governments. Over the past 4 1/2 years, he said, the program's total budget has been less than $3 million.

Barrons, the British general, said that is about to change.

The Bush administration displayed little enthusiasm for Afghan reintegration efforts, preferring to fight insurgents over trying to make peace with them, but Obama's strategists on Afghanistan have bet heavily on the idea. A recent Japanese government pledge of $5 billion in aid for Afghanistan is expected to be applied largely to reintegration efforts, and the United States has also vowed to commit money.

But the effort could be limited, since U.S. and allied officials here say the Afghan government will need to take the lead on the project. "We're not going to put one tiny foot ahead of where the Afghan government wants to go with this," Barrons said.

Still, Barrons and other international officials here have definite ideas of what they want the program to look like. Their vision is inspired by the example of Iraq, but not directly modeled after it.

There, the United States paid Sunni tribal leaders to rise up against al-Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups. Here, officials said, the situation is more complicated because of the many motivations for insurgents, including religion, ethnicity, poverty, illiteracy, the weakness and corruption of the central government and support from powerful elements in neighboring countries, especially Pakistan.

Barrons said the plan is not to pay former fighters directly, but rather to focus on cash-for-work programs that could give them an alternative source of income to the Taliban, which compensates its fighters relatively well.

Barrons also said the United States and its allies will work with the government to facilitate the creation of village-defense forces, which could be used locally to guard against Taliban encroachment and to supplement Afghan national security forces. But he said the groups would not receive direct military assistance.

The hope is that such efforts could, by this time next year, put a significant strain on the Taliban and ultimately lead to high-level reconciliation between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Taliban leaders such as Mohammad Omar.

For the moment, such talks are considered unlikely because the Taliban has the momentum, and some here worry that it is too late for reintegration efforts to have any meaningful impact. If anything, the flow of fighters today appears to be toward the Taliban, not away from it.

Still, three decades of nonstop war in Afghanistan have created a desperate desire for peace, and U.S. planners are betting that some may respond to any offer they get to leave the battlefield behind.

Mohammed Abid, 24, abandoned the Taliban and joined the government's reconciliation program this fall. He represents, he said, a test case for about 70 other insurgents who are also sick of war, but want to know whether the government is serious about its promise to welcome former fighters back home.

So far, Abid said, he feels tricked, and no less resentful of the U.S. forces he thinks are occupying his country.

"History teaches us that all the other religions are against Islam, so as a Muslim, when I see the foreign troops, I can't help but feel hate," said Abid, his glare icy. "I feel it in every inch of my body."

With that, he wrapped a gray scarf tightly around his face, stepped out into the manic traffic of a Jalalabad morning and slipped away.