Starting Points

Dec 19, 2009

Insurgents forced out of Pakistan's tribal havens form smaller cells in heart of nation

By Griff Witte and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 19, 2009; A01

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Militants forced to flee their havens in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas are establishing new, smaller cells in the heart of the country and have begun carrying out attacks nationwide, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

The spread of fighters is an unintended consequence of a relatively successful effort by the United States and Pakistan to disrupt the insurgents' operations, through missile strikes launched by unmanned CIA aircraft and a ground offensive carried out this fall in South Waziristan by the Pakistani army.

American and Pakistani officials say the militants' widening reach has added to the challenge for both nations' intelligence, which must now track an insurgent diaspora that can infiltrate Pakistan's teeming cities and blend seamlessly with the local population. A Pakistani intelligence official said the offensive had put militants "on the run" but added: "Now they're all over -- Afghanistan, North Waziristan and inside Pakistan."

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"They have scattered their network and structure," said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a security-oriented think tank. "It's easy for many of them to hide in Punjab or Karachi."

Pakistani officials insist that they are doing as much as they can to counter the extremist threat and that they are paying the price. In recent months, militants have unleashed a wave of attacks in Punjab province, the military's home base, with many of the strikes carried out by fighters who have left the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as the pressure there has mounted.

But the flow of militants out of the tribal areas has frustrated U.S. intelligence, which escalated the missile strikes using drone aircraft this year but has found targets increasingly scarce in recent months. Because of the Pakistani government's opposition, the CIA has not expanded its campaign of drone warfare beyond the lawless tribal belt in the northwest that hugs the Afghan border.

The United States has threatened to enlarge the scope of its drone campaign unless Pakistan steps up its efforts against insurgent groups that have found sanctuary in the country and that focus on attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But with anti-Americanism on the rise in Pakistan, drone attacks outside the tribal belt could elicit a powerful public backlash and could jeopardize Pakistani military cooperation, officials here say.

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Until this week, the pace of reported drone strikes in the tribal areas had been off sharply from summer highs. Although 2009 has set a record -- 50 drone strikes, compared with 31 last year -- the tempo declined this fall from six or seven per month to about two, according to a tally by the nonprofit group Long War Journal. In addition, until last week, there had been a three-month lull in reported deaths of senior al-Qaeda or Taliban operatives.

This week, however, has brought a surge in strikes: Suspected Predator drones killed six people Friday, and a barrage of as many as 11 missiles on Thursday killed 16. The strikes, all in North Waziristan, came just days after top U.S. military officials visited Pakistan and urged the government to broaden its offensive into that area. Pakistan declined, saying such a move would stretch its military too thin.

Pakistani officials complain that although the drone strikes help incite insurgent attacks against domestic targets, the United States generally does not go after militants who focus their firepower inside Pakistan. Instead, the officials say, the drones are trained on those Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders who are most troublesome for U.S. commanders in Afghanistan.

U.S. intelligence officials refuse to comment on drone strikes in Pakistan, or even to publicly acknowledge CIA involvement in such flights.

Still, American intelligence officials said the drop in reported incidents this fall does not indicate any slackening in the intensity of U.S. efforts to strike al-Qaeda and its allies in the tribal region.

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"There's been no decision by anyone to reduce any aspect of counterterrorism operations. That certainly includes the most effective activities," said a U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with the effort.

Several counterterrorism experts and former intelligence officials acknowledged, though, that finding targets has become more difficult in recent months. They said militants have adapted their tactics, improved security and executed anyone suspected of being an informant. They also acknowledged that some jihadists from the tribal belt have moved to urban areas, apparently to escape the threat of drones.

The Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Taliban and al-Qaeda have ruthlessly purged anyone in their organizations accused of being a spy. The markets in Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province, are full of DVD recordings of beheadings of suspected informants.

Just in North Waziristan, the official said, Pakistani intelligence agencies have lost 30 undercover operatives this year.

As a result of the killings, he said, "quite a few areas have literally become black holes for us."

Although the Pakistani government officially opposes the drone campaign, it cooperates behind the scenes, sharing intelligence with the CIA.

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In addition to killing suspected spies, Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders have destroyed communication towers, stopped talking on the phone and begun to move only at night -- all in an effort to avoid detection.

"They have truly gone underground," said Ashraf Ali, director of the FATA Research Center. "Before, they were openly roaming the streets. They would hold meetings. But in the daytime now, they can't be seen."

Such tactics do not neutralize the value of the drones, but they are "understandably effective in depriving the United States of the target-rich environment that existed when we first ramped up the attacks," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official said militant groups have concluded over the past year that "cities are safer, particularly the big cities, where there's anonymity but also support networks, communication -- everything they need."

But the former official also acknowledged a debate within the U.S. counterterrorism community over the balance between remote-control drone strikes and other operations that are more effective at gathering intelligence. "If you're killing people," he said, "you're not developing sources or informants."

Warrick reported from Washington.

Dec 18, 2009

Karzai's New Cabinet: Reform but No Clean Sweep

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KABUL (AP) -- Facing huge pressure to reform, President Hamid Karzai is submitting a Cabinet lineup to Parliament on Saturday that keeps U.S. favorites in several posts critical to the war and reconstruction -- a nod to American demands for trusted hands to help manage the conflict.

The new list also reflects Karzai's need to serve a second master -- political allies, including warlords, that kept him in power.

World leaders have threatened to hold back troops and development aid if Karzai does not cleanse his government of corruption and mismanagement.

But some Afghan lawmakers said the lineup looked too much like the existing one.

They said it signaled more of the same from a government which has been criticized as ineffective and corrupt. These lawmakers also expressed concern that a few of Karzai's new nominees -- they did not say whom -- were chosen because of links to political bosses or warlords.

Several of the new appointments have previous government experience and good educational credentials. It's unclear, though, whether they will clean up the bribery and graft that has become business as usual in the government. As with Karzai's first Cabinet, the new slate of proposed ministers is a collection of Western-educated Afghans and former mujahedeen or their nominees.

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''Nothing has changed,'' said Mirahmad Joyanda, a member of parliament from Kabul.

He and other members of parliament point to Karzai's decision to retain Water and Energy Minister Ismail Khan, a notorious warlord who holds political sway in the Herat region of western Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch has accused Khan of war crimes during Afghanistan's past quarter-century of conflict.

Joyanda was at the presidential palace on Thursday when Karzai spoke to about 100 lawmakers about various issues, including his Cabinet picks. When he heard the names, Joyanda said he became discouraged and walked out of the meeting.

''Nothing is new,'' he said. ''Half of the Cabinet remains. The other half is introduced by warlords.''

According to the list, however, Karzai wants to jettison the heads of two ministries embroiled in corruption probes.

Karzai wants to replace Muhammad Ibrahim Adel, the current minister of mines. Earlier this month, two U.S. officials in Washington alleged that Adel took a $20 million bribe to steer a $3 billion copper mining project to a Chinese company. The minister denied taking any bribes, saying the agreement was approved by the Cabinet and that Karzai was also aware of it.

The president also wants to replace Sediq Chakari, who heads the Ministry of Hajj and Mosque. Allegations surfaced recently that money was pocketed at the ministry. Chakari, who has denied involvement, said two of his employees were being investigated in connection with missing money.

Including Khan, Karzai wants to keep 12 of his 25 ministers in their jobs for now, according to three Afghan government officials, who divulged the list to The Associated Press on Friday on condition of anonymity because it had not been formally announced.

They said Karzai wants to retain the minister of foreign affairs and the ministers of defense and interior, which oversee the Afghan army and police. Karzai's proposed Cabinet list also includes the current ministers of finance, public health and agriculture, which receive billions of dollars in international aid.

A senior international official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the Cabinet, said the diplomatic and aid communities likely would react positively to Karzai's decision to retain these six key members of the Cabinet.

Karzai also wants the ministers of justice, education, women's affairs, communications and counternarcotics to stay on the job, the Afghan government officials said.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul withheld comment.

''We're awaiting an official announcement and want to see that the nominations put forward reflect President Karzai's stated commitment to good governance and integrity and professionalism within his Cabinet,'' U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

That was the promise Karzai made when he was sworn in for a second term last month following a fraud-tainted presidential election.

''The ministers of Afghanistan must possess integrity and be professionals serving the nation,'' Karzai said.

His image suggested otherwise. Standing at Karzai's side on that day were his two vice presidents -- Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili -- both former warlords widely believed to have looted Afghanistan for years. Karzai likely put them on his ticket to win votes from their minority ethnic communities.

Parwin Durani, a member of parliament, estimated that a third of the lawmakers at the palace meeting were unhappy that Karzai's list did not include more new faces.

She said Karzai told the lawmakers that while they had the power to seat the Cabinet, he would face pressure from the international community if they rejected certain nominees. Durani also said Karzai indicated that he might change some ministers in three months, which would be after an international conference on the way forward in Afghanistan being held Jan. 28 in London.

In Industrial Thailand, Health and Business Collide

Image by Gilbert R. via Flickr

By THOMAS FULLER

MAP TA PHUT, Thailand — Villagers here avoid walking in the rain because they say it burns their skin and causes their hair to fall out. They have trouble breathing at night when, they say, factories release toxic fumes. And they are terrified by what studies show are unusually high cancer rates.

Map Ta Phut is the heart of Thailand’s industrial underbelly, an area rarely seen by the millions of tourists who visit the country every year. Jutting out into the Gulf of Thailand, the industrial zone is on the scale of a midsize city — only instead of office buildings and apartments, there is block after block of tangled tubes of steel, vats of chemicals and towering, fire-breathing gas flares.

Two years ago, a group of residents decided to take their health grievances to the courts, a relatively rare move in Thailand, where street demonstrations are the preferred form of civil action. The lawsuit, filed by 27 villagers, has become a landmark in Thailand’s environmental movement, leading to a cascade of decisions that halted a staggering $9 billion worth of industrial projects, including Japanese steel factories and German-owned chemical plants.

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The judgments stunned foreign investors, infuriated powerful Thai companies and jolted an already shaky Thai government. The Thai Chamber of Commerce has warned that if the injunction against dozens of projects is not lifted soon, the entire Thai economy could suffer for the next decade.

But from the perspective of Srisuwan Janya, the lawyer who won the case, the injunction signaled a new dawn in the country’s development and the end of an era in which Thailand’s paramount objective was bolstering gross domestic product.

“From now on industries will not only care about making money,” said Mr. Srisuwan, who comes from a family of rice farmers. “They have to care about the environment and the well-being of the people in the community.”

Even among critics of the court decisions, there is widespread agreement that Map Ta Phut is heavily polluted and unhealthy for those who live nearby. But environmental experts remain skeptical that the court decisions will fix the problem.

The injunction stopped new projects, but older, more polluting facilities were allowed to carry on. The rulings require the government to write a new set of environmental laws. But what Thailand needs, experts say, is not new laws but better enforcement of existing ones.

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“In rural areas, there is almost no enforcement at all,” said Anthony Zola, an American environmental consultant. “Water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution — you can make all the complaints you want and no one pays any attention to you.”

Reports detailing how unhealthy this area is for those who live and work in the shadow of the refineries, plastics factories and other petrochemical facilities here have stacked up over the years.

Thailand’s National Cancer Institute found in 2003 that rates of cervical, bladder, breast, liver, nasal, stomach, throat and blood cancers were highest in Rayong Province, where Map Ta Phut and other industrial zones are located.

A study released in 2007 found that people living near Map Ta Phut had 65 percent higher levels of genetic damage to blood cells than people in the same province who lived in rural areas. Such cell damage, which is a possible precursor to cancer, was 120 percent higher for refinery workers than in residents of rural communities.

Marco Peluso, the lead author of the study, said similar levels of genetic damage might occur in some places in Eastern Europe or developing Asia, but it that would be rare to see these levels in the West.

The main problem appears to be air pollution. The Thai pollution control department reported in September that it had found nine types of carcinogenic compounds in the air around Map Ta Phut.

In March, an initial court decision from the lawsuit by the 27 villagers declared Map Ta Phut a “pollution control zone,” obliging the authorities to measure soil and water quality regularly and to come up with a plan to reduce pollution if it is too high.

But the real sting for companies came in September, when another court ruled in a related lawsuit that 76 projects, most of them under construction, should immediately stop work because they were not in compliance with environmental provisions in the country’s new Constitution. The decision was upheld by a higher court in December for all but 11 of the projects.

Among the companies affected are Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant; Aditya Birla Chemicals, an Indian conglomerate; BlueScope Steel of Australia; and two dozen companies belonging to PTT, the Thai energy giant.

Lawyers for the companies say the most galling aspect of the injunction was that they could not possibly comply with the law because detailed regulations have yet to be written — a problem that the government acknowledges.

The generals who carried out Thailand’s 2006 military coup promulgated a new Constitution that strengthened environmental law, requiring detailed studies before any project that causes “serious impact” to the environment or people’s health is approved.

But “serious” was never defined, and specific guidelines for companies were never drawn up, partly because government officials have been distracted by Thailand’s continuing political turmoil.

“Right now companies don’t know which way to turn,” said Sivapong Viriyabusaya, a partner at Baker & McKenzie, which is representing companies affected by the injunction. “They want to comply but they cannot because there are no rules.”

Mr. Srisuwan, the lawyer who won the injunction, is unapologetic about the potential economic effects of the decision. “I don’t care about investors,” he said. “I don’t care about losing employment and the economy. I just care that people’s lives will be protected.”

The frustration is echoed by Noi Jaitang, a 70-year-old fruit farmer. Over the past two decades, Mr. Noi says, he has lost six members of his family to cancer. Now his wife has a cancerous tumor below her left eye. In October, Mr. Noi walked barefoot to Bangkok — about 125 miles away — to protest the pollution, which he blames for the deaths in his family.

“It’s not that I want to burn the factories down,” he said. “We just want to be able to live together.”

The government says it is moving as quickly as it can to pass the requisite laws that will allow the injunction to be lifted. But Mr. Srisuwan, the lawyer, calls this lawsuit only the “tip of the iceberg.”

There are another 181 factories in Thailand that are not complying with the new Constitution, including paper, steel and petroleum companies, he says. “I will file lawsuits against all of them.”

Nice Pojanamesbaanstit contributed reporting from Bangkok and Map Ta Phut.

Google Is in Talks to Buy Yelp

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

SAN FRANCISCO — In a sign that Google is interested in broadening its reach among local businesses, the search giant is in acquisition talks with Yelp, the review site for local businesses, according to three people with knowledge of the deal.

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The two companies have had conversations for several years, but a more serious round of acquisition talks began two months ago, one of the people said late Thursday. The companies have discussed a price and are negotiating the details, but have not yet signed an agreement.

Both Google and Yelp declined to comment on Friday.

The people with knowledge of the deal would not disclose the acquisition price, but one said that it was more than $500 million, the figure cited by TechCrunch, the industry blog that first reported the news Thursday evening.

Image via CrunchBase

Yelp, which has raised $31 million in venture capital, is on track to bring in about $30 million in revenue this year, one person said.

Yelp, which was founded in 2004 by two PayPal veterans, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, dominates the market for local business listings and ads in big American cities, and has listings in Canada and Britain. It gets more visitors than its closest rival, Citysearch, and many of them review local businesses prolifically.

Yelp makes money selling sponsorships to these businesses. For $300 to $1,000 a month, their ads appear on top of search results and on the profile pages of competitors, and businesses can post slide shows of photographs and prevent competitors from advertising on their page.

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Google has been showing greater interest in the local business market in the United States. It has expanded its profile pages for local businesses, which include location and hours, maps and reviews from other Web sites. In June, Google gave local businesses the ability to manage what people see on their profile pages, similar to what Yelp does.

Google has been reaching out to local businesses with simpler ways to advertise on the search engine. It is also distributing stickers that businesses post in their windows and passers-by can scan with cellphones to get coupons or information about the business.

The deal between Google and Yelp could still unravel, one person said, particularly if another acquirer comes forward now that details have leaked.

U.S. Charges 3 in Drug Case With Helping Al Qaeda

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By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed narcotics and terrorism conspiracy charges on Friday against three West Africans they said were associates of Al Qaeda and a related terrorist group, marking the first time such charges had been brought against people said to be linked to Al Qaeda.

The men, who were taken into custody on Wednesday in Ghana and flown to the United States on Thursday night, were arrested after a four-month investigation in which paid informants working with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration posed as members of a Colombian terrorist group, according to court papers.

Federal authorities have long maintained that Al Qaeda has been involved in drug trafficking, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

The two informants approached the defendants and sought their assistance in transporting and providing security for cocaine shipments as large as a ton from West Africa, through North Africa and on to Spain, according to the papers. One informant posed as a Lebanese radical who represented the Colombian group, the FARC, and the other as a member of the group.

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“Today’s allegations reflect the emergence of a worrisome alliance between Al Qaeda and transnational narcotics traffickers,” Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney in Manhattan said in a statement announcing the arrests. “As terrorists diversify into drugs, however, they provide us with more opportunities to incapacitate them and cut off the funding for future acts of terror.”

The three men in custody were identified as Oumar Issa, Harouna Touré and Idriss Abelrahman. They were charged with conspiracy to commit narco terrorism and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorist groups — Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The court papers in the case, an 18-page criminal complaint unsealed in United States District Court in Manhattan, detail the international sting operation that ensnared the three men, all members of what prosecutors described as “a criminal organization operating in the West African countries of Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali.”

The group had close ties to Al Qaeda, which was to provide security for the last leg of the drug shipment’s journey through the North African Desert, according to the complaint.

The two informants met with the men several times from September to December to negotiate the terms and plan the shipments, sessions that were secretly recorded by the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to the complaints. The complaints said the informants also communicated with the defendants by telephone and e-mail as they made arrangements.

Mr. Touré initially cited a transportation price of $2,000 per kilogram of cocaine, as the men discussed shipments ranging from 500 to 1,000 kilograms, the complaint said. But he later upped the price to $10,000 a kilo, citing his own costs and expenses, including paying people along the route. While the informants initially balked, they eventually agreed, according to the complaint.

The three defendants identified themselves to the informants as associates of Al Qaeda and said they had provided similar services to the terrorist group in the past, officials said.

The men were set to be arraigned Friday afternoon before Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV in United States District Court in Lower Manhattan.

A defense lawyer for Mr. Abelrahman, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, said he was reviewing the charges.

“Mr. Abelrahman will benefit from the full panoply of rights guaranteed to him under the Constitution of the United States and the laws governing criminal procedure,” he said.

James M. Roth, a lawyer for Mr. Toure, declined to comment; Mr. Issa’s lawyer, Julia Gatto, could not be reached for comment.

The three men were charged under statutes passed in 2006 that give federal drug agents the authority to prosecute narcotics and terrorism crimes committed anywhere in the world if a link between a drug offense and a specified act of terrorism or a terrorist organization can be established.

Vietnam: End Attacks on Bat Nha Buddhists

Thich Nhat Hanh via last.fm

EU, Other Donors Should Condemn Officials’ Complicity in Pagoda Siege

December 16, 2009

(New York) - Heavy-handed tactics by Vietnam's central government to disband followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a prominent Buddhist monk who has called for religious reforms, illustrate Vietnam's ongoing contempt for human rights and religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said today.

For three days, beginning December 9, 2009, orchestrated mobs that included undercover police and local communist party officials terrorized and assaulted several hundred monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue pagoda in central Lam Dong province. Phuoc Hue's abbot has provided sanctuary to the monastics since late September, when police and civilian mobs violently expelled them from their own monastery of Bat Nha, located in the same commune.

During last week's attack, mobs targeted Phuoc Hue's abbot, threatening and haranguing him until they finally forced his consent to a December 31 deadline for the Bat Nha monastics to vacate the pagoda.

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"Vietnam's international donors should insist that the government halt the attacks on the monks and nuns in Lam Dong, allow them to practice their religion, and prevent any further violent expulsions," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "And they should make clear they will keep close tabs on the situation."

The three-day vigilante assault on Phuoc Hue disrupted a December 9 European Union (EU) fact-finding mission to the pagoda, which was followed by an EU human rights dialogue with Vietnam on December 11. A European Parliament resolution passed in late November called on Vietnam to respect religious freedom and condemned the harassment and persecution of Buddhists in Lam Dong, as well as of followers of other religions and branches of Buddhism.

The EU, one of Vietnam's largest donors, pledged US $1 billion in aid to Vietnam at a donor conference in early December. Sweden - the current EU president - and other donors have pressed Vietnam to lift its restrictions on independent media, religious freedom, and peaceful dissent. A 1995 EU-Vietnam Cooperation Agreement affirms that respect for human rights and democratic principles is the basis for the cooperation.

"The vigilante action to prevent diplomats from meeting with the monks and nuns is a real slap in the face to the EU," Pearson said. "The EU needs to make clear that it has leverage and will use it."

Over the past year, government officials have intensified efforts to disband the community of young monks and nuns that until September was based at a meditation center at Bat Nha monastery established by Thich Nhat Hanh in 2005. Authorities began to take steps to close the center after Thich Nhat Hanh urged the government in 2007 to ease its restrictions on religious freedom.

Thich Nhat Hanh first drew international attention in the 1960s as a leader of South Vietnamese Buddhists opposed to the US war in Vietnam, critical of all sides to the conflict. He continued his anti-war activities from exile in France after he left the country in 1965. The government barred him from returning as he increasingly took on human rights issues, including the plight of the thousands of boat people who fled Vietnam after the communist victory in 1975 and the persecution of Buddhist clergy and patriarchs.

Since the September eviction at Bat Nha, authorities have relentlessly harassed and pressured the Bat Nha Buddhists to vacate Phuoc Hue and other pagodas that took them in, periodically cutting electricity and water and barring local lay people from providing food and supplies. According to government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, in late November local officials were ordered to begin organizing civilians to demonstrate against the monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue, demand the expulsion of the pagoda's abbot, and pressure the monks and nuns to return to their home provinces.

Mob action at Phuoc Hue

On December 9, more than 100 people marched into Phuoc Hue pagoda. Many wore motorcycle helmets, baseball caps, and dust masks - common attire on Vietnam's roadways but not inside Buddhist temples. Coordinated by whistle-blowing leaders, the crowds dragged the abbot out of his room, shouting insults, and demanding that he expel the Bat Nha Buddhists. Video footage captured by some of the monastics show the attackers shoving aside monks and nuns trying to protect the abbot, and assaulting others trying to take photographs.

The crowds, which swelled to 200 people at times over the course of the three days, included people brought in from as far away as Nam Dinh province - 1500 km north of Lam Dong - who told observers they had been mobilized by government officials for three days' work, at 200,000 dong (US $11) a day.

Police cordoned off the streets around the pagoda, with officers posted at the homes of townspeople who had been providing food to the monks and nuns, to prevent them from leaving their homes. The police did nothing to stop the mobs - some armed with hammers and sticks - from attempting to break down the door to the abbot's room, overrunning the pagoda, and terrorizing the monks and nuns. When nuns sat down to pray and chant civilians loomed over them, pulling at their ears and shouting so close to their faces that the nuns had to wipe away the spit.

Leaders of the mob, who included local cadre from party-controlled mass organizations, used megaphones to blast the sounds of police sirens and intensely loud electronic dance music into the pagoda compound. In desperation, the monks began ringing the temple bell constantly to sound an alarm. An ambulance was parked in front of the pagoda.

The provincial head of a special police unit within the Ministry of Public Security called A41 was present during the three days of mob activity. Often called the "religious police," A41 monitors groups the government considers to be religious "extremists" throughout Vietnam.

"What's disturbing about this mob attack is that the Vietnamese government not only failed to protect its own citizens, but that the authorities actively participated in the abuses," said Pearson.

More than half of the Bat Nha monastics remaining at Phuoc Hue are young Vietnamese women recently ordained as nuns. "The nuns don't know where to go - they feel trapped now," one observer told Human Rights Watch. "The whole experience was very traumatic - some were pushed, shoved, spit upon, and even assaulted. Their community has been spiritually killed. They are afraid to be split up and sent back to their home provinces - they want to stay together, in a safe place."

The December 31 eviction deadline for the young monks and nuns at Phuoc Hue coincides with an International Conference on Buddhist women hosted by the Vietnamese government in Ho Chi Minh City. "It's ironic that as young nuns and monks face the possibility of another violent eviction on December 31, participants at a government-hosted international Buddhist conference in Vietnam will be discussing the role of female Buddhists in preventing conflicts and violence," said Pearson.

Orchestrated mob action is not a new phenomenon in Vietnam, particularly in remote "hot spots," where authorities want to prevent any interaction between local communities and international visitors such as diplomats and journalists.

"What was different in Lam Dong is that diplomats saw with their own eyes government-orchestrated suppression of religious freedom and basic rights," Pearson said. "As such, the EU is uniquely placed to convey its strong concerns to the Vietnamese government about what happened."

Human Rights Watch has obtained copies of a series of directives from the government, ruling Communist Party, and government-appointed Buddhist officials that appear to order the assault on the pagoda.

A November 26 directive from the government's Religious Affairs Committee instructed local Buddhist officials and the Communist People's Committee to "mobilize" the Bat Nha Buddhists to return to their "proper residences" in their home provinces. Similar directives were issued by the official Vietnam Buddhist Church - a government-appointed body - on November 30, and by the local People's Committee on December 7.

"The EU and other donors should make it clear that they hold the Vietnamese government responsible for last week's events in Lam Dong," Pearson said. "Vietnam's donors need to voice their strong concerns, monitor the situation very closely, and do their best to be physically present at Phuoc Hue pagoda on the December 31 eviction deadline."

Genocide charge for Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan

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A UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia has charged Khieu Samphan, formerly the head of state for the Khmer Rouge, with genocide.

The move came after genocide charges were filed against two other Khmer Rouge leaders, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea.

All the genocide charges relate to the men's treatment of Cambodia's Vietnamese and Muslim minorities.

All three men had already been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Those charged are already in pre-trial detention although the trial is not expected to begin before 2011.

Denial

Up to two million people are thought to have died under the Khmer Rouge's rule.

Khieu Samphan, 78, has never denied these deaths, but both he and his lawyers insist that, as head of state, he was never directly responsible.

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One member of his defence team is the infamous French lawyer Jacques Verges, whose previous clients have included Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan hijacker Carlos the Jackal.

Mr Verges, 83, has known Khieu Samphan since they were both involved in left-wing student activities in France in the 1950s.

WHO WERE THE KHMER ROUGE?

Maoist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979

Founded and led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998

Abolished religion, schools and currency in a bid to create agrarian utopia

Up to two million people thought to have died from starvation, overwork or execution

He says he has lived a life of poverty since the Khmer Rouge regime was toppled.

A court official confirmed that the allegations related to the treatment of two minority groups: Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese people.

Image by Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia via Flickr

Researchers believe that the Khmer Rouge killed hundreds of thousands of Chams because of their religious beliefs.

The accusation of genocide carries enormous symbolic weight, says the BBC's Guy De Launey in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

Final arguments were heard last month in the trial of Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, who has admitted being responsible for overseeing the deaths of 15,000 people.

Judges at the tribunal are expected to rule on his verdict early next year.

Eritrea's national soccer team seeks asylum in Kenya

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By Barney Jopson
Friday, December 18, 2009; A14

KAMPALA, UGANDA -- Eritrea's entire national soccer team is seeking asylum in Kenya, joining tens of thousands of compatriots who have fled one of Africa's most repressive governments.

The team absconded after traveling to Nairobi for a regional tournament. Eritrea, with only about 4 million people, was the second-biggest source of asylum seekers in the world last year, and the missing players are probably the highest-profile defectors since the country won independence in 1993.

The 11 players and one substitute were reported missing over the weekend when the team plane returned to Eritrea without them after a match against Tanzania.

After going into hiding, the players contacted the U.N. refugee agency in Nairobi, which directed them to file asylum applications at Kenya's Immigration Ministry.

Nicholas Musonye, a Kenyan soccer official who first alerted the authorities to the missing players, said: "I have been informed by the tour guide who was with them that they are in Nairobi and have been seeking political asylum."

The number of Eritrean asylum seekers worldwide last year was second only to the total from Zimbabwe, according to the United Nations.

People are fleeing a combination of political repression, food shortages, open-ended military service and a moribund economy.

More than half of them, about 34,000, fled overland to Sudan, braving harsh terrain and army shoot-to-kill orders. But many more are likely to have escaped without registering with the U.N. refugee agency.

Musonye, the general secretary of the Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations, said he had spoken to officials at the Eritrean National Football Federation, who were "a bit upset."

"The federation has a responsibility to bring the players home, so they have a lot to explain," he said.

Individual players have gone missing from the Eritrean national team before. Musonye said six absconded three years ago after a match in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Ali Abdu, Eritrea's information minister, told the BBC that the players would get a "good welcome" if they returned home in spite of "betraying" their country.

Human rights groups say failed defectors and critics of President Isaias Afwerki's government are often tortured and confined to shipping-container prisons in the desert.

The government denies the allegation.

Mexican drug lord killed in gunfight with federal forces

Image by El_Enigma via Flickr

By William Booth and Steve Fainaru
Friday, December 18, 2009; A12

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO -- Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the alleged leader of one of this country's top drug cartels, was killed Wednesday night in a two-hour gun and grenade battle with federal forces, ending the reign of a man who liked to describe himself as the "boss of bosses" in Mexico's criminal underworld.

Beltrán Leyva, born and raised in the lawless mountains of Sinaloa, where fields of poppies and marijuana carpet the hidden valleys, is a household name in Mexico and one of the highest-value targets captured or killed in President Felipe Calderón's bloody three-year-old war on the drug cartels.

Image by El_Enigma via Flickr

At the global climate summit in Copenhagen, Calderón called the raid by marines "an important achievement for the government and people of Mexico." Mexico listed Beltrán Leyva as one of its "most wanted" drug barons and offered a $2 million bounty for his capture.

The U.S. government unsealed an indictment against Beltrán Leyva in August, charging that he and his former partners in a cartel known as the Federation were responsible for smuggling at least 200 tons of cocaine into the United States and shipping $6 billion in cash back to Mexico. The indictment detailed their operation in Chicago, which the cartel used as a hub to distribute drugs throughout the Midwest and as far away as Washington. U.S. officials estimate that about 90 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States comes through Mexico.

Four other members of Beltrán Leyva's organization died in the gunfight, at a ritzy apartment enclave in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. One killed himself as he was being arrested.

Image by El_Enigma via Flickr

Mexican authorities had been closing in on Beltrán Leyva in recent months, capturing and killing his junior associates. They raided a lavish party in the colonial town of Tepoztlan, near Cuernavaca, last week and killed three alleged Beltrán Leyva cartel members. Performing at the party was Ramón Ayala, a popular Texas-based singer, whose attorney denied that his client had any ties to organized crime. [On Thursday, a judge ordered Ayala jailed for up to 40 days pending investigation, the Associated Press reported.] In another near-miss, Beltrán Leyva associates were arrested after attending a baptism he hosted in Acapulco.

Beltrán Leyva was alleged to have masterminded a corruption racket involving high-level Mexican officials in the attorney general's office and federal police, including a former chief of the unit targeting organized crime, Noé Ramírez Mandujano. Ramírez is suspected to have taken almost $500,000 in bribes from Beltrán Leyva.

Mexican officials also hold Beltrán Leyva responsible for the assassination of federal police chief Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez last year.

Mexican and U.S. drug officials had hinted for two months that authorities would soon capture some "big fish" in Mexico. The death of Beltrán Leyva follows a strategy pushed by officials on both sides of the border to go after his cartel's leadership.

"They are the big thinkers. . . . At the minimum, this will cause quite a bit of dislocation in the organization, and it is possible it could cause a power struggle within the cartel," said Tony Payan, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and an authority on drug trafficking.

Beltrán Leyva and his brothers were once partners with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa cartel and the most famous drug lord in Mexico. Their bitter feud and split last year sparked a wave of grisly violence, during which foes were routinely kidnapped and tortured to death. Their decapitated bodies were then dumped in public spaces, accompanied by notes taunting officials and their adversaries and signed "the boss of bosses."

"This is a very strong strike against organized crime in Mexico," Attorney General Arturo Chávez said after the killing of Beltrán Leyva.

But, Chávez added, "in this war, nobody really ever wins."

Lord's Resistance Army and the Threat against Civilians in Southern Sudan

Author:

Ledio Cakaj

Dec 18, 2009

LRAThreatSouthernSudan.pdf

Enough experts expose the ongoing violence and turmoil caused by the Lord's Resistance Army in central Africa.

Conflict Minerals, Congo

^{Source: Enough / Ledio Cakaj}

Arrow Boys are local militia that have organized to defend communities against the LRA.

The cross-border nature of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA—currently active in northeastern Congo, the Central African Republic, and southern Sudan—is a clear threat to international peace and security, but the United Nations Security Council has yet to take seriously its responsibility to protect civilians from the LRA and marshal the will and the resources to put in place an effective counterinsurgency strategy.

In Western Equatoria State in Southern Sudan, where LRA attacks in recent months have killed at least 135 people and driven 67,000 from their homes, the Government of Southern Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA, have been unable and in some cases unwilling to protect southern Sudanese civilians. Unfortunately, U.N. peacekeepers deployed to support implementation of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement have not risen to the direct challenge to peace posed by the LRA. The Government of Southern Sudan and the United Nations must do better, but improved civilian protection is only one element of a comprehensive strategy to address the LRA threat. Civilians in the affected region will not be safe so long as the LRA continues to operate as a transnational terrorist group.

The U.N. Security Council must authorize and member states must resource a comprehensive strategy to protect civilians in LRA-affected areas, identify and sever external lines of support, increase opportunities for rank-and-file fighters to defect, and end the insurgency once and for all through more effective military pressure on LRA leader Joseph Kony and his high command.

_______________________________________

John Prendergast speaks to activists about the LRA at the How It Ends lobby days event, organized by the Enough Project, Invisible Children, and Resolve Uganda.

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