The US has expressed deep concern about the fate of 20 Uighur asylum seekers deported from Cambodia back to China.
A statement by the US embassy in Phnom Penh came a day after the Uighurs were put on a plane to China, despite pleas from the UN refugee agency.
The agency condemned the expulsions, saying Cambodia had committed a grave breach of international refugee law.
The Uighurs fled to Cambodia after mass ethnic riots in China in July. Beijing has referred to the group as criminals.
Human rights organisations have warned that the asylum seekers are likely to face persecution on return to China.
Intense pressure
"The United States is deeply concerned about the welfare of these individuals, who had sought protection under international law," the US embassy in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh said in Saturday's statement.
"We are also deeply disturbed that the Cambodian government decided to forcibly remove the group without appropriate participation by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees."
The embassy also urged China to "uphold international norms and to ensure transparency, due process and proper treatment of persons in its territory".
Friday's expulsions followed intense pressure by China and came just two days before a visit to Cambodia by Chinese Vice-President Xi Jingping.
There has been no immediate comment from the Chinese foreign ministry.
At least 197 people died as violence flared in July, amid protests by Uighurs in the city of Urumqi, in Xinjiang region.
Shops were smashed and vehicles set alight while passers-by were set upon by Uighur rioters in the city, whose population is mostly from China's dominant Han group.
Groups of Han later went looking for revenge as police struggled to restore order.
Most of those killed in the unrest were Han, according to officials, and Urumqi's Han population had demanded swift justice.
Twelve people were sentenced to death after the riots.
Tensions between the mainly-Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang and Han have been growing in recent years. Millions of Han have moved to the region in recent decades.
Many Uighurs want more autonomy and rights for their culture and religion than is allowed by Beijing's strict rule.
The BBC's Jon Leyne says the death comes at a crucial time in a standoff between the government and opposition.
Iran's rulers will now fear the opposition may attempt a big turnout for his funeral on Monday and other ceremonies marking his death, especially in the run-up to the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura on 27 December, our correspondent says.
Mourners gather
Large crowds have gathered outside Montazeri's home in the holy city of Qom, following his death on Saturday evening.
He will be laid to rest at the shrine of Hazrate Masoumeh, one of the most revered female saints in Shia Islam, his office told AFP news agency.
Thousands of people from Isfahan, Najafabad, Shiraz and other cities are on their way to Qom to attend Monday's ceremony, according to one report.
The cleric's son told the BBC that his father had died of natural causes.
He was quoted by Ilna news agency as offering "condolences to... all people who seek freedom and justice, to those who fight in the path of God all over the world," reports AFP.
Illness
Montazeri's doctor told state television the cleric was a diabetic who also had lung problems and asthma.
"In fact he was suffering from several diseases," he said.
DEFIANT CLERIC
Born into provincial family in 1922 and educated at a seminary
Arrested and tortured for leading protests against Iran monarchy
Designated successor to Islamic Republic's founder, Khomeini
Fell out with Khomeini in 1989 over Iran's human rights record
House arrest in 1997 for criticising current Supreme Leader
Issues a fatwa against President Ahmadinejad after 2009's election
A thorn in the establishment's side, Montazeri issued a fatwa condemning President Ahmadinejad's government after June's disputed election.
But that was not his first clash with authority - he repeatedly accused the country's rulers of imposing dictatorship in the name of Islam and said the liberation that was supposed to have followed the 1979 revolution never happened.
During his lifetime, the cleric was transformed from a pillar of the Islamic revolution to one of the most vocal critics of its leadership.
He had been designated to succeed the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but the pair fell out over Iran's human rights record a few months before Khomeini died of cancer in 1989.
In 1997 he famously clashed with Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom he outranked in the religious hierarchy, after questioning the powers of the Supreme Leader.
This led to the closure of Montazeri's religious school and an attack on his office in Qom. He was placed under house arrest for six years.
After his detention, state-run media began referring to him as a "simple-minded" cleric, references to him in schoolbooks were erased and streets named after him were renamed, but he remained defiant.
Born into a provincial family and educated at a seminary, Hoseyn Ali Montazeri came to prominence as one of the early backers of Khomeini.
Tortured
Prior to the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, he organised public protests in support of Khomeini, following the latter's arrest.
As a result he was repeatedly detained himself and tortured in jail.
While Khomeini was in exile in Iraq, Montazeri was nominated as his representative in Iran, and after the revolution, he was designated as successor.
But he was marginalised after questioning decisions taken by the Supreme Leader and calling for a transparent assessment of the revolution's failures.
In his opposition to President Ahmadinejad, he became an unlikely inspiration for Iranian reformists.
Despite his old age and failing health, Hoseyn Ali Montazeri backed the opposition's claims that the 2009 election result, which gave President Ahmadinejad a landslide victory, had been widely rigged.
The cleric had often said his opinions were guided by his "sense of religious duty".
A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.
Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”
A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”
The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:
In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.
The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.
As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.
At the height of Iran's bloody civil unrest this year, a young doctor named Ramin Pourandarjani defied his superiors. He refused to sign death certificates at a Tehran prison that he said were falsified to cover up murder.
He testified to a parliamentary committee that jailers were torturing and raping protesters, his family says. He told friends and family he feared for his life.
And on Nov. 10, the 26-year-old doctor was found dead in the military clinic where he lived and worked.
The family of Dr. Pourandarjani, who occasionally treated prisoners in fulfillment of Iran's obligatory military service, says he was killed for his refusal to participate in a coverup at the notorious Kahrizak detention center, widely criticized for its unsanitary conditions.
In a series of interviews over three weeks, Dr. Pourandarjani's family spoke in detail for the first time about their son's mysterious death.
Iranian officials first blamed the doctor's death on a car accident, then a heart attack, then suicide and then poisoning, according to family members and government statements.
The controversy over his fate is transforming the doctor into a martyr for the opposition movement challenging the legitimacy of Iran's rulers. In a sign of his mounting symbolic importance, on Dec. 8 Iran's national prosecutor, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, was pressed by local reporters at a news conference for answers. He said the case remains under investigation.
Mr. Mohseni-Ejei couldn't be reached for comment. A spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations said the case is being probed and declined to answer questions.
"I sent off my young, healthy and beautiful son to military service, and I got his dead body back," says his mother, Ruhangiz Pourandarjani, who lives in the northwest city of Tabriz. "Anyone who says he committed suicide is lying and should be afraid of God."
In Iran, protestors now carry the doctor's picture in street marches and chant his name along with that of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman whose shooting death in June was captured on video and broadcast world-wide. A popular new slogan at some marches: "Our Neda is not dead, Our Ramin is not dead, it's the Supreme Leader who is dead," a reference to Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mothers of individuals killed in Iran's antigovernment protests this year have formed a support group, Grieving Mothers, who march silently Sunday afternoons at Laleh Park in Tehran holding pictures of their dead children. This month, security officials arrested 15 members. They were freed a few days later when crowds gathered near the jail, demanding their release.
The opposition says more than 70 Iranians have been killed since June in a crackdown on the protests that erupted after the nation's disputed presidential election. The government says 17 people have died, including a dozen of its own security forces.
Iran denies allegations that jailed protesters were tortured or raped and blames the deaths in Kahrizak on a meningitis outbreak. The prison has been closed in the wake of torture allegations there.
An influential Iranian parliamentarian and former health minister, Masoud Pezeshkian, is pressing for a full investigation of Dr. Pourandarjani's death. The claim of a suicide by "someone who was a witness in Kahrizak, and has no background for mental illness, is suspicious," he told local news agencies. Mr. Pezeshkian couldn't be reached for comment.
This past Wednesday, the head of a parliamentary committee investigating the broader allegations of torture at Kahrizak prison said Dr. Pourandarjani's death didn't warrant examination. "As far as we are concerned, the death of the Kahrizak doctor is clear and doesn't need investigation," said the lawmaker, Farhad Tajari, according to the main parliamentary news service. Mr. Tajari couldn't be reached for comment.
Dr. Pourandarjani was born into a middle-class family in the ancient city of Tabriz, near a place that some researchers claim is a possible geographical location of the Garden of Eden. His mother is a retired elementary school teacher. His father, Ali-Qoli Pourandarjani, works in the city's traditional bazaar.
Ramin, the future doctor, was their first child.
They took his name from an epic poem, "Vis and Ramin," one of many legends of heroic battles against unjust rulers that help define Iranian culture and provide popular names for boys. "Vis and Ramin," the story of a prince who fights the king to free his lover, may also have inspired the story of Tristan and Isolde, some scholars say.
Dr. Pourandarjani's mother recalls that her son showed his intellect early. By the age of 1, she says, he was speaking full sentences in Farsi and Turkish. He could read and write by 3. Before entering first grade, Ramin was reading aloud from a children's newspaper aimed at 10-year-olds.
When he was 11, Ramin entered a school for gifted and talented children. At an age when most teenage boys were interested in playing videogames, his father says, Ramin read and wrote poetry. At 13 he won a national contest for young poets.
Relatives and friends described Dr. Pourandarjani as the family star. "I always told my son he should strive to be like Ramin. What can I say?" says his cousin, Sima, 44, reached by phone in Tabriz. "He was exceptional."
In Iran, students are placed in universities based on their performance on a national entrance exam. In 2001, Ramin Pourandarjani ranked 1,069 out of more than a half-million applicants. He won entrance to Tabriz Medical University, one of the top schools in the nation.
Ramin's younger brother, Amin, described his brother as a bookworm when it came to medical studies, but said he also loved watching French movies to practice his own French.
Last year, Dr. Pourandarjani graduated from medical school at the top of his class. A YouTube video shows him delivering the graduation speech in a new navy blue suit and a pink shirt and necktie. Although wearing neckties at public events and at universities is frowned upon by Iranian authorities as being too Western, Dr. Pourandarjani wanted to mark the occasion with special attire, his family recalls. Behind him, an Iranian flag fluttered in the breeze.
"Thank you to all our beloved families and distinguished professors for attending the celebration of the day we take flight and open our wings," Dr. Pourandarjani said. "If I could go back in time, I wouldn't change a thing."
Then he quoted some poetry. "The person whose heart is filled with love will never die," he said, citing a well-known Persian verse. "Our perseverance is recorded in the book of time."
Like all Iranian males, Dr. Pourandarjani was required to complete a 19-month military service. Doctors serve at government hospitals and clinics as part of their military obligation.
Luck of the draw placed Dr. Pourandarjani at a clinic in Tehran, a 75-minute flight from home in Tabriz. The clinic is in the district that oversees Kahrizak, a rundown detention center for drug addicts and dealers.
The job mostly amounted to routine medical work, until July 9. That day, some 140 young men and women were arrested at a particularly large protest in Tehran. Some detainees were brought to Kahrizak.
It marked the beginning of a prison scandal that shook Iran. Members of the opposition have made allegations of widespread violence and rape in the prison during this time.
Over a period of nearly three weeks, Dr. Pourandarjani was called to the prison four times to treat the wounds of the detainees, according to his parents and Iranian media reports.
At least three prisoners died during this time.
One of them was Mohsen Ruholamini, the 19-year-old son of a conservative politician, who died in late July.
The government publicly blamed Mr. Ruholamini's death on meningitis. Mr. Ruholamini's family immediately disputed that. In public statements at the time, his father, Abdol-Hossein Ruholamini, said his son suffered a broken jaw and died from torture in prison.
In the medical report, Dr. Pourandarjani described Mr. Ruholamini's cause of death as physical stress, multiple blows to the head and chest, and severe injuries, according to the doctor's family and local press reports.
The news of deaths at the prison sparked an unusual public fury, even among government allies. Particularly shocking to Iranians was the death of Mr. Ruholamini, the son of a conservative politician who openly supported the republic's leadership.
In a televised meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Ruholamini's father told Mr. Khamenei: "The fact that I support the Islamic regime does not mean that I will give up my rights. I demand justice."
Mr. Ruholamini couldn't be reached for comment.
Two influential conservative lawmakers called for prosecution of individuals responsible for Kahrizak. Parliament named a special committee to investigate. Some of the highest Shiite clergymen in the holy city of Qom issued statements condemning the government for its handling of Kahrizak.
In the face of the allegations, Mr. Khamenei ordered the prison shut in late July.
The chief commander of the Iranian police, Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam, told state television in August that the detention center was closed "because the conditions inside were not very desirable. If some guards were a little rough with detainees, it was their bad judgment."
Over the next few months, security authorities called in Dr. Pourandarjani for interrogation, according to family members and reports in the Iranian media. They ordered him to revise the cause of death on medical reports from physical wounds to meningitis, his family members say. He refused.
When the parliamentary committee called him to testify, he told them what he had witnessed, his family says. Dr. Pourandarjani's statements to the committee aren't public record, and the committee has said it won't make its findings public.
In the fall, Dr. Pourandarjani was arrested.
According to his family and official Iranian media reports, he was detained in Tehran for a few days and interrogated by the police and medical officials. Family members say he was warned that if he continued to challenge the authorities, he could face medical malpractice charges and jail, as well as the loss of his medical license.
Iranian officials say in public statements that the doctor was questioned about whether he had given detainees appropriate medical care.
He was released on bail and continued working at the military health clinic, where he also lived in order to save money. He downloaded applications for medical schools in France and Germany and told friends he wanted to study abroad. His military service would end in April 2010. He asked his mother to look out for a nice young woman in Tabriz for him to marry.
In October, a few weeks before he died, both parents say Dr. Pourandarjani confided in them that he feared for his life because he refused to cover up what he had seen at the prison. He described threatening phone calls and said he was being followed.
His mother immediately phoned Abdol-Hossein Ruholamini, the conservative politician whose son had died in Kahrizak. She pleaded with him for help.
"My wife called the Ruholamini family and said, 'My son's life is in danger because he told the truth about the circumstances of your son's death. You must help him,'" Dr. Pourandarjani's father said in a telephone interview.
In early November -- the day before he died -- Dr. Pourandarjani took the unusual step of visiting the offices of Iran's parliament, his mother says, to ask for help because he felt his life was at risk.
That night, Dr. Pourandarjani phoned his parents to say he planned to come home to Tabriz for a family visit. He also emailed several friends that evening, according to an opposition Web site, Norooz, that obtained the email from the friends.
In the email, the doctor described the heavy pressure of the prison scandal but said he was looking forward to his trip home. He signed off by asking if his friends needed him to bring anything back from Tabriz, the friends said.
The next morning, Dr. Pourandarjani's father received a call from Tehran. His son had been in a car accident, he says he was told, and was unconscious with a broken leg. The caller asked him to travel to Tehran immediately.
When Mr. Pourandarjani arrived in Tehran, he was taken to a morgue. He says he was told his son had died from a heart attack.
He flew back to Tabriz with the body. Security authorities prohibited the family from viewing the body or opening the kafan, the traditional funeral shroud. The funeral took place under the supervision of several security agents, the family says.
Initially, authorities refused the family's request for an autopsy. This month, because of the public outcry, the government conducted an autopsy, indicating that his last meal, prepared and delivered by the clinic where Dr. Pourandarjani had lived, contained propranolol, a blood-pressure medication that can cause cardiac arrest at high dosages. The government cites the report as evidence of possible suicide, which the family dismisses.
Dr. Pourandarjani's parents are still in mourning. Mrs. Pourandarjani said she sometimes goes into Ramin's bedroom. "I want to turn on his computer to read his poetry and look at his pictures, but I can't bring myself," she said.
This Thursday, in keeping with Islamic tradition, the family held a memorial service at a local mosque on the 40th day after Dr. Pourandarjani's death. These are usually private affairs. But this ceremony attracted hundreds of strangers who came to pay their respects.
In an unexpected gesture, one of the strangers, a university student from Tabriz, stood up and read from a statement, the doctor's relatives said.
"We are all children of Iran," the student said. "And today we mourn our dear Ramin."
The crowd spilled into the streets. It included a heavy presence of plainclothes government security agents, according to several people in attendance.
WASHINGTON — On Oct. 16, four sport utility vehicles barreled into Karz, Afghanistan, the hometown of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, and pulled up to the home of one of his cousins, Yar Mohammad Karzai.
Teams of armed guards blocked the street and herded passers-by into a nearby mosque while seizing their cellphones, then removed the front door of the house, according to Karzai family members and several people from the mosque. A man in traditional white Afghan robes, accompanied by two security guards, walked inside and found two of Yar Mohammad Karzai’s children, 18-year-old Waheed and his 12-year-old sister, Sona, doing their schoolwork in their bedroom.
The girl later said that she remembered the robed man raising a pistol and shooting Waheed three times as she shouted: “Don’t kill my brother! Don’t kill my brother!”
As the intruders fled, firing their weapons, a cousin, Zalal Karzai, 25, came running from elsewhere in the house and saw Waheed stagger from the bedroom. “What happened to you?” Zalal Karzai recalled asking.
“ ‘Hashmat shot me!’ ” he said the youth screamed back.
Waheed Karzai, who relatives say provided the same account to other family members before dying two days later at an American military hospital in Kandahar, was referring to Hashmat Karzai, 40, a first cousin of President Karzai and the owner of a private security company that has close ties to the Afghan government and millions of dollars in contracts with the United States military.
The murder in Karz, the identity of the man accused of being the killer and the fact that the episode involves Afghanistan’s most prominent family make for a dramatic — and divisive — tale, one that has not been previously reported. The killing has set off a bitter split within the family in Afghanistan and the United States, with charges, countercharges and claims of a cover-up by Afghan officials.
Some relatives said they believed that the death was vengeance for an “honor killing” of Hashmat Karzai’s father nearly 30 years ago by Yar Mohammad Karzai. For his part, Hashmat Karzai denies any role in Waheed’s death, instead saying that the boy was shot by drug dealers intending to harm someone else.
“They mixed up the houses and killed the boy by mistake,” Hashmat Karzai said in a telephone interview from Dubai, where he is staying with his family. “I had nothing to do with it.”
There has been no investigation of the shooting by the Afghan government nor any mention of it in the press. The F.B.I. questioned Hashmat Karzai a month ago, he acknowledged, but it is not clear whether American investigators are pursuing the matter. An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment.
While some family members accuse the Karzai government of stonewalling, they do not claim that the president played an active role in blocking an investigation. Instead, they blame several of his brothers, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, the political boss of Kandahar and southern Afghanistan, for trying to hush up relatives and forestall an official inquiry, perhaps with the president’s knowledge.
“Not a single soul has come to investigate,” Yar Mohammad Karzai, 62, said in a recent telephone interview. “I told one local official, what do you want me to do, knock on Obama’s door?”
Noor Karzai, 40, a cousin who lives in Maryland, expressed similar disappointment. “They are protecting Hashmat,” he said. “He is sitting in Kabul getting money from the U.S. government. No one will touch him. We are sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to Afghanistan, and this is how the government operates.”
A spokesman for the Afghan president said that the case was a criminal matter and denied that the president sought to interfere. Reached by telephone on Saturday, Ahmed Wali Karzai declined to comment on the matter, as did officials at the United States Embassy in Kabul.
Frustrated by the seeming inaction on the killing, nearly a dozen family members agreed to be interviewed for this article. Some, including Yar Mohammad Karzai, Sona Karzai and Zalal Karzai, who witnessed aspects of the shooting or its immediate aftermath, also provided documents about the killing. They include a complaint that Yar Mohammad Karzai filed with the Dand district police in Kandahar Province naming Hashmat Karzai as Waheed’s assailant, the boy’s hospital records and a death certificate stating that he died of gunshot wounds.
Other family members, saying they feared retribution, agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, as did three witnesses from the Karz mosque. All three said they heard the shooting across the street; one identified Hashmat Karzai as the robed man he saw exiting the house.
The death of Waheed Karzai came after the Afghan election in August, in which President Karzai’s government was widely accused of electoral fraud and attacked for corruption.
The activities of the president’s family have fed some of the criticism. Afghan and American officials, for example, have said that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been involved in or benefited from drug trafficking, while another brother, Mahmoud, has been accused of exploiting his family name to get lucrative business deals. Some relatives said they believed that news of the fatal Karzai family feud would have been an embarrassment for the president.
According to family members, the roots of the dispute go back to when Yar Mohammad Karzai was about 5, and his father arranged a marriage between him and another Karzai cousin. But when the girl grew up, she left Karz, became a teacher, married another man and eventually settled in the United States.
Relatives say Yar Mohammad Karzai was angered by the woman’s rejection and her family’s failure to make amends by offering a formal divorce or an apology. To punish her family, relatives said, Yar Mohammad Karzai fatally shot Khalil Lula Karzai, the girl’s brother, in 1982 or 1983 in Quetta, Pakistan, where both men were then living.
In an interview, Yar Mohammad Karzai declined to say whether he had killed Khalil Karzai, who was Hashmat’s father. He was never charged in the death, though he said he was briefly arrested in 1997 or 1998 when Hashmat Karzai pressed the Taliban government to detain him. Because the crime occurred in Pakistan, however, the Taliban soon released him. Both men went to Quetta, where family members pressed Hashmat to drop the matter and mediated a peace deal between the men.
But, Yar Mohammad Karzai said, he knew it was not over.
“I never felt comfortable with the closing of this story,” he said. “And neither did Hashmat.”
Hashmat Karzai disputes that. “The father killed my father, we captured him more than 10 years ago and brought him to Pakistan, and we chose to have forgiveness,” he said. “In Islam, I have the right to kill him, but I chose not to do so.”
After Khalil Karzai’s murder, his family moved to the United States and settled in Maryland. Hashmat, the oldest son, became an American citizen, and until 2007 worked at a Toyota dealership in Virginia.
He returned to Afghanistan, where his younger brother, Hekmat, 36, runs the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies, a Kabul-based research organization that supports the Karzai government. Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Hekmat was a student and worked in restaurants in the Washington area.
After the American invasion of Afghanistan, he served as a political officer at the Afghan Embassy in Washington. In 2006, he moved back to Kabul to start his research group. He said he briefed American military officials on his research. Several family members described him as an informal adviser to President Karzai and said they believed that his influence helped his brother’s rise in Kabul.
Soon after arriving in Kabul, Hashmat Karzai took over the Asia Security Group, a company that now employs 500 to 600 guards, he said. In recent months, Asia Security has been awarded $16.2 million in five contracts with the United States military to provide security for five American bases in Afghanistan, according to Col. Wayne M. Shanks, an American military spokesman.
According to its Web site, Asia Security also has other major American customers in Afghanistan, including DynCorp International, a Virginia-based firm with large contracts with the American government in Afghanistan. Hekmat’s Karzai’s research center is also an Asia Security client, the Web site said.
This year, Hashmat Karzai began building a large house in Karz, near Yar Mohammad Karzai’s home. Some relatives say they believe that Waheed Karzai was singled out as a way to inflict deep pain on his father.
“If he had killed Yar Mohammad Karzai, it would have been wrong, but we would have understood,” said Mohammad Karzai, a cousin from Maryland. “The family would have been silent about it. But instead, he killed an 18-year-old boy who had nothing to do with this feud.”
Hashmat Karzai agrees that Waheed was an innocent victim, but he attributed his death to drug dealers. He said that Yar Mohammad Karzai and his brothers were involved in the drug trade — an allegation that Yar Mohammad rejects — and that one brother cheated some dealers. Intending to kill that man’s son, they mistakenly shot Waheed, Hashmat Karzai said.
He said he told President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai that he played no part in the crime. He added: “Why would I do a killing there, right where I am building a house? That would be stupidity.”
The village of Karz is in Kandahar Province, about three miles outside the city of Kandahar, where Ahmed Wali Karzai, one of the president’s brothers, wields enormous political power. But after Waheed’s killing, government officials in the Kandahar area were strangely unhelpful, according to Yar Mohammad Karzai and other family members.
Immediately after the shooting, Yar Mohammad Karzai said, he called the nearest police station. But no one answered the phone, he recalled. He soon realized that the convoy had come to the shooting scene and gone without having to stop at a police checkpoint on the road into Karz.
Frantic to get help, Zalal Karzai said he called a friend working for President Karzai in Kabul, who gave him a private number for Ahmed Wali Karzai in Kandahar. Reaching someone in that office, he reported the killing. Later that night, some police officials went to the scene of the shooting, collected some shell casings and left. Yar Mohammad Karzai said they had not returned since then.
Meanwhile, at least three of President Karzai’s brothers — Ahmed Wali, Mahmoud and Qayum — have been urging family members to allow relatives to deal with the killing privately without bringing in the police, said Noor and Mohammad Karzai, the brothers from Maryland.
“My mom talks to Qayum and Ahmed Wali every day,” said another family member in the United States, who asked not to be identified. “They have both told her, ‘Why don’t you keep quiet and we will take care of it?’ ”
Yar Mohammad Karzai said that Ahmed Wali Karzai had come to his house to offer his condolences. “But he never mentioned what had happened or who did it,” he said. “Later, when a family member asked him about the killing, he said, ‘You know who did this, why do you need to hear it from me?’ ”
Some family members in the United States have become so Americanized that they are unwilling to abide by Afghan traditions and have gone to the United States authorities about the case. Mohammad Karzai said he contacted the F.B.I. Later, he said he got an angry call from Hashmat Karzai, who reported that an F.B.I. agent had interviewed him. Hekmat Karzai, who also said his brother did not kill Waheed, acknowledged that he was questioned by the F.B.I. as well.
The shooting has left the family badly shaken, especially Sona, Waheed’s sister.
“I can’t sleep in my room anymore,” she said in a telephone interview from Karz. “I sleep with my parents now.”
By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 19, 2009; 11:03 AM
Amidst the spectacle that has become the health care debate, Democrats have taken comfort in the belief that they will be rewarded politically if in the end they pass something -- almost anything. That proposition is being sorely tested in these final days of maneuvering.
For all the talk of the damage President Obama has sustained during this long and difficult year, congressional Democrats have suffered at least as much -- and will have to face the voters far sooner than the president.
Senate Majority Leader Hary Reid announced Saturday he had the 60 votes to pass the bill, but the House still must be persuaded to go along. The long fight has been costly. The health care debate has split the Democratic coalition. Unity has given way to bitter infighting.
This has been a moment for individuals to make war on one another. What good will that existed among Democrats at the start of Obama's presidency has been shattered and will be difficult to put together again.
Joe Lieberman who bolted the party in 2006 to salvage his Senate seat and then accepted the Democrats' generosity to maintain his committee chairmanship despite having backed John McCain in last year's presidential race, held the party hostage in negotiations, enraging many liberals.
Howard Dean, who has grievances about the way he was discarded by the Obama team after running the Democratic National Committee for four years, has led a vocal guerrilla war against the bill from outside the Congress, enraging the party leadership.
Democratic centrists have extracted costly promises to stay aboard but still fear for their political futures. Bloggers and progressive activists have counterattacked against them vowing retribution. Labor is unenthusiastic to hostile.
Progressives in Congress have swallowed hard over the compromises that have been needed to round up enough votes to beat back a Republican filibuster.
Hard-headed politicians would say there was no way to avoid this kind of squabbling, given the stakes and complexity of health care reform and the rules of the Congress. There are no immaculate legislative struggles on a piece of social legislation of this consequence.
They also believe that, in the end, voters care less about process than about outcomes. If the Democrats produce historic changes in the availability of health care to millions more citizens and protect against some of the arbitrary practices of the insurance industry, that will override the messy path to success.
But there is something broader for Democrats to worry about as they try to finish their work this year and prepare for 2010 and the midterm elections. What began as an undercurrent of dissatisfaction has grown throughout the year. Disappointment with the president is dwarfed by discontent with the Congress.
No Congress is ever loved, but the assessments of this Congress are striking in their negativity. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll only seven percent rated the performance of Congress above average, and 34 percent called it one of the worst.
Two benchmarks put that number into perspective. In October 1994, shortly before Republicans ousted Democrats from power in the House and Senate, 16 percent called that Congress one of the worst. In October 2006, just before Democrats recaptured control, 25 percent called that Congress one of the worst. In the past five months, the percentage who rate this Congress that low has jumped 11 percentage points.
Thirty-five percent gave the Democratic Party a positive rating, still higher than the 28 percent who rated the Republican Party that way. But since February, Democrats have seen their overall image go from net positive to net negative. Republicans, while still living in negative territory, have improved slightly.
A third finding underscores the problem for Democrats: 38 percent said their member of Congress deserves to be reelected, while 49 percent said it is time to give a new person a chance. That is identical to the percentage who said give a new person a chance a month before the 1994 GOP landslide and slightly above the number a month before the 2006 Democratic takeover.
Why won't that anti-Washington sentiment fall equally on Republicans and Democrats? Because it rarely does. Republicans are hardly secure or popular, but Democrats are in control. If the public is ready for change again next November, the Democrats will feel the brunt of that anger.
Many factors contribute to the dissatisfaction with Washington. People are angry about bailouts for bankers. The unemployment rate is at 10 percent. They see the deficit rising and worry about the long-term consequences. Conservatives and liberals question whether their leaders have the right priorities.
Health care has exhausted the Democrats and tested their capacity to govern. Democrats hope that passage of a health care bill will prove to be a political restorative. But the longer the debate has gone on, the less people like what they think they may be getting. Congress may be on the cusp of a historic achievement, but right now the public believes the status quo is preferable to change.
Democrats have a dual problem. They must find the votes to pass a bill and avoid the charge that, even with their big majorities, they are incapable of governing. They also must persuade voters that the policy changes they want to enact include far more plusses than minuses.
That is a big challenge, not only for Obama and Democratic leaders trying to hold together their warring coalition, but also for the entire party. No wonder Democrats are bracing for a bad start to the new decade.
By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 19, 2009; A10
It will take at least until 2014 to encrypt video feeds from the U.S. military's Predator and Reaper drones to prevent enemy forces from intercepting the information, Air Force officials said Friday.
Reports this week said U.S. forces had discovered that insurgents in Iraq, using inexpensive, off-the-shelf software, had been able to hack into video feeds from the drones, which are used for surveillance and launching missiles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some Pentagon officials initially dismissed the reports, saying this was an old problem that had been addressed.
But the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan acknowledges concern. Work on encryption began this year on the Air Force's fleet, but the report said it will not be finished until 2014 and even then will not "account for the retrofit of the existing fleet."
The Army also operates unmanned aircraft and has acknowledged the need to protect the feeds sent from its fleet.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that U.S. forces had confiscated a laptop computer from an Iraqi insurgent that contained video files with feeds from drones. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, told reporters in Iraq on Friday that although he was concerned about cybersecurity, there had been no known damage to U.S. military operations as a result of the intercepted information.
Still, former military officials said the failure to protect the video feeds was a serious issue.
Former Air Force secretary Michael Wynne, who served from November 2005 to June 2008, said that if the enemy is able to collect and archive enough feeds, "it could be useful in understanding our concepts of operation and many times how our tactics are used against them." The enemy, he said, "could essentially go to school on archived footage."
Though U.S. officials have known about the flaw for more than a decade, they considered the threat minimal compared with the advantage the drones provide to commanders and troops in the field.
"We were aware of the vulnerability, but at the time, we wanted to distribute the information as widely as possible, especially to our coalition partners, and unencrypted streaming video was the easiest," Wynne said. He said the linking up of the Predator system saved "a lot of lives" over the past 14 years.
He noted that in addition to encrypting the drone feeds, the receivers that troops on the ground use must be updated. The work must be done fast, Wynne said, and 2014 is "too late."
On Capitol Hill, some lawmakers called for hearings after the reports.
"I'm especially angry that people at the Pentagon knew this was a vulnerability going back to the 1990s and they didn't do anything," said Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services and Intelligence committees.
"They didn't think our adversaries would figure it out. So you've got people from Third World countries who've figured out a way to hack into our systems. That greatly disturbs me."
Written by Bill Roggio on December 19, 2009 12:31 AM to The Long War Journal
The US military carried out cruise missile attacks against two al Qaeda camps in Yemen, killing several terrorist commanders and fighters as well as civilians.
The attacks, which took place on Dec. 17, were carried out in conjunction with the Yemeni military, who targeted al Qaeda bases in the provinces of Sana'a and Abyan. The Yemeni government and the US launched the raids after intelligence indicated al Qaeda was planning to conduct attacks against Yemeni and US installations in the region.
Abyan is a known al Qaeda haven. The terror group opened a large training camp in Yemen this year, which reportedly housed more than 400 al Qaeda fighters from the Middle East [see LWJ report, "Al Qaeda opens new training camp in Yemen"]. Many of the fighters were Yemenis, Saudis, and Somalis.
The Yemeni government claimed 34 al Qaeda fighters were killed and 17 more were captured in the joint air and ground strikes. Muhammad Salih al Awlaqi, al Qaeda's leader in Abyan province, and commanders Muhammad al Amburi and Munir al Amburi were also reported killed in the Abyan strikes, according to reports in Quds Press and Al Sahwah.net.
Qasim al Rimi, a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's shura, or executive council, was reportedly the main target of the strike. He is thought to have escaped. Al Rimi is a senior lieutenant to Nasir al Wuhayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a senior US military intelligence official told the Long War Journal.
Leaders in Abyan disputed the government's claims that only al Qaeda fighters were killed, and claimed more than 60 civilians have died in the strikes. Ali Husayn Ashal, a Member of Parliament and a leader in the opposition Islah Party, accused the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh of intentionally targeting civilians.
"The government took pride in saying that some al Qaeda members have been targeted in this monstrous operation, while it knows very well where do these wanted elements move around," Ashal said, according to Al Sahwah.net. "These elements move around openly and publicly before the government's eyes. The government can, at any given time, target those who are believed to be outlaws, without inflicting dozens of innocent casualties."
The Islah Party is closely aligned with the radical cleric Sheik Abdulmajid al Zindani, who is designated as a terrorist financier by the UN's 1267 committee and as a spiritual adviser to bin Laden by the US Treasury. Zindani is also close ally to the Yemeni government.
Saleh and the weak Yemeni government are also known to collude with al Qaeda, including using the terror group's foot soldiers to battle the Houthi rebels in the North in exchange for safe haven.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP] has reportedly battled back after the cruise missile strikes and ground operations in Abyan. According to a report in Al Hayat, AQAP "raided government centers" in the Ludat district in Abyan.
Heavy fighting took place between AQAP and government forces, and AQAP apears to have gained the upper hand in much of the province. "parts of the governorate, which is one of the hard-line groups' strongholds, fell into the gunmen's hands," Al Hayat reported.
The US has conducted at least one other covert strike in Yemen. In November 2002, Abu Ali al Harithi, an al Qaeda operative who was the mastermind of the suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole, Ahmed Hijazi, a US citizen, and four other al Qaeda fighter were killed in a Predator strike in Marib.
Yemen is an al Qaeda stronghold
Yemen has become one of al Qaeda's most secure bases as well as a hub for activities on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is based in Yemen and carries out its attacks against the Saudi government from there. The group is also known to operate terror camps in Aden, and in the Alehimp and Sanhan regions in Sana'a. It has conducted attacks on oil facilities, tourists, Yemeni security forces, and the US embassy in Sana'a.
The terror group has also been instrumental in supporting al Qaeda's operation in Somalia, US intelligence officials told The Long War Journal. Yemen serves as a command and control center, a logistics hub, a transit point from Asia and the Peninsula, and a source of weapons and munitions for the al Qaeda-backed Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.
"Yemen is Pakistan in the heart of the Arab world," one official said. "You have military and government collusion with al Qaeda, peace agreements, budding terror camps, and the export of jihad to neighboring countries."
By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, December 19, 2009; A09
When Muslim worshipers showed up at the Bilal Mosque early Sunday morning, they found two pig's ears and a poster of the French flag stapled to the door; a pig's snout dangled from the doorknob. "White power" and "Sieg heil" were spray-painted on one side, they recalled, and "France for the French" on the other.
The desecration of the main mosque in Castres, a tranquil provincial town 50 miles east of Toulouse, was an ugly exception in generally easygoing relations between the native French population and a pocket of about 10,000 Muslims, mostly Algerian immigrants and their children, who in recent years have made Castres their home, according to Muslim as well as native French residents. Mayor Pascal Bugis was quick to condemn the outrage, visiting the scene to express dismay, and police vowed a swift arrest of those responsible.
But for Abdelmalek Bouregba, head of the Castres Islamic Association, which administers the mosque, the vandalism was a troubling sign of the times. Signals are flashing everywhere that France is increasingly uneasy with its more than 5 million Muslims, he said, and the atmosphere has soured particularly since President Nicolas Sarkozy's government last month began what it calls "a great debate on national identity."
"All this encourages this kind of thing," Bouregba said at his mosque. "This gives ideas to extremists. Otherwise, they might have anti-Muslim ideas, but they would never act on them. . . . In my view, the national identity debate has stoked tensions."
The government-endorsed French Council for the Muslim Religion issued a similar warning the day after the desecration here was discovered. "The exploitation of these debates by some people presents a real danger of stigmatization against France's Muslims," it said. Outside the Muslim world, SOS Racism, a nongovernmental advocacy group, deplored what it called the "liberation of racist expressions, a liberation that the national identity debate permits and organizes."
The Socialist Party, France's main opposition group, called on Sarkozy to close the debate before it does further damage. Even within the governing coalition, some parliamentary figures not closely tied to Sarkozy also suggested it is becoming a Pandora's box.
A recent poll taken for the Nouvel Observateur magazine showed that 55 percent of those queried think the debate is at best unnecessary. Another 42 percent expressed fear that it has gone off in the wrong direction, focusing on problems caused by Muslims and immigrants rather than on what it means to be French.
The president, however, has portrayed his decision to launch the debate as a noble undertaking, a necessary expression of French people's feelings, and has shown no sign of backing down. After Swiss voters decided in a referendum Nov. 29 to ban construction of minarets, he issued a statement saying such unease was understandable, calling on Europe's Muslims to avoid ostentatious displays of their beliefs lest they jolt the continent's Christian traditions.
Eric Besson, Sarkozy's minister of immigration, integration and national identity, has been managing the debate and has also been assigned to sum up its conclusions in a major speech in two months. That, critics pointed out, will be just before March's regional elections, in which Sarkozy's coalition hopes to sweep up votes that normally would go to the ultra-right National Front, the country's main anti-immigration political movement.
Anti-Muslim vandalism has long occurred occasionally in France but the Interior Ministry did not respond to a query about how many desecrations were on record this year and whether the number has risen.
Formerly a farm building on the edge of town, the Castres mosque is surrounded by a Christian cemetery, with rows of crosses and statues of angels. It was remodeled in 1986 with Moorish tiles around the entrance and glass chandeliers for what became the main prayer room, which attracts about 300 worshipers for Friday prayers.
Before that, Muslims here had gathered to pray on Fridays in a church hall made available by a Roman Catholicpriest.
The town's Christian origins are clear -- Christmas carols from town hall loudspeakers float over the main square -- but Muslims here have not encountered widespread hostility, Bouregba said. Only twice before in the mosque's 23 years of operation had vandals spray-painted slogans on the outside wall, he recalled, and once a pig's head was fixed to the gate.
Encouraged by their growing numbers, Castres Muslims this year began raising funds to build a new mosque. Bouregba, who works for city hall in a youth center and signs his e-mails "French citizen," said plans call for a considerably larger facility to include classrooms, a conference hall and perhaps a tea room "to embellish the situation of our religion in the community."
Although negotiations are under way with the proposed site's owner, there has been no sign of organized opposition. At a neighborhood meeting last week, however, homeowners questioned whether it was a good idea to build a mosque so close to a nearby public school, according to the weekly newspaper Ici Castres.
"It is a logical question," Bouregba said, declining to qualify it as a sign of hostility.
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