In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed a new layer of restrictions on travelers that could lengthen lines at airports and limit the ability of international passengers to move about an airplane.
Among other steps being imposed, passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps. Overseas passengers will be restricted to only one carry-on item aboard the plane, and domestic passengers will probably face longer security lines.
The restrictions will again change the routine of air travel, which has undergone an upheaval since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001 and three attempts at air terrorism since then.
Just a day after the attempt on Friday, travelers at airports around the world began experiencing heightened screening in security lines. On one flight, from Newark Airport, flight attendants kept cabin lights on for the entire trip instead of dimming them for takeoff and landing.
The limits, which brought to mind some of the most stringent policies after the 2001 attacks, come at a difficult time for the airline industry.
Travel has declined about 20 percent since 2008 because of the economy, and airlines have been dealing with numerous delays the past week because of snowstorms on the East Coast and in the Midwest.
Airline industry executives said the new steps would complicate travel as vacationers return home from Christmas trips, and could also cause travelers to cancel plans for flights in 2010.
But the Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said in a statement Saturday that passengers should proceed with their holiday plans and “as always, be observant and aware of their surroundings and report any suspicious behavior or activity to law enforcement officials.”
The Transportation Security Administration, which governs security at airports and on airplanes in the United States, had no immediate comment on the steps.
The T.S.A. planned to add more security resources as needed on a daily basis, a person with knowledge of the agency’s plans said. The person said travelers would not experience the same thing at every airport, and that the system would be unpredictable by design.
Two foreign airlines, Air Canada and British Airways, disclosed the steps in notices on their Web sites. The airlines said the rules had been implemented by government security agencies including the T.S.A.
“Among other things,” the statement in Air Canada’s Web site read, “during the final hour of flight customers must remain seated, will not be allowed to access carry-on baggage, or have personal belongings or other items on their laps.”
The suspect in the Friday attempt, identified as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, tried to ignite his incendiary device in the final hour of the flight while the plane was descending into Detroit.
On its Web site, American Airlines said the T.S.A. had ordered new measures for flights departing from foreign locations to the United States, including mandatory screening of all passengers at airport gates during the boarding process. All carry-on items would be screened at security checkpoints and again at boarding, the airline said. It urged passengers to leave extra time for screening and boarding.
In effect, the restrictions mean that passengers on flights of 90 minutes or less would most likely not be able to leave their seats at all, since airlines do not allow passengers to walk around the cabin while a plane is climbing to its cruising altitude.
The new restrictions began to be instituted Saturday on flights from Canada and Europe to the United States. Air Canada said it was waiving fees for the first checked bag, and it told passengers to be prepared for delays, cancellations and missed connections because of the new limits.
At airport terminals Saturday, travelers recounted the immediate differences they experienced. Though passengers arriving from Frankfurt passed speedily through United States customs at Kennedy Airport in New York, they said that in Germany the security was intensified.
“I really was surprised,” Eva Clesle said about the level of scrutiny in Frankfurt, adding that officials had inspected backpacks by opening “every single zip.”
In Rochester, one passenger waiting in a security line said she saw other passengers removed for additional screening.
The security administration, created in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, has emergency power to impose restrictions on air travel without consulting the airlines. Its steps have undergone modification in the past, however.
After the 2001 attacks, passengers bound for or leaving Reagan National Airport in Washington were not allowed to leave their seats for the first and last 30 minutes of a flight. The restriction was lifted in 2005.
Passengers still have to remove their shoes before entering screening machines, however, a step instituted at many airports and subsequently made mandatory after Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 by igniting explosives in his shoes.
Editor's Note: Many California state prisons are unaware that they can create regulations to accommodate the religious wishes of their Sikh prisoners, under a 2006 policy created by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
This story was done with a 2009 Irvine Foundation California Politics and Policy Fellowship administered by New America Media. It ran in India-West this week.
California state prisons continue to operate under a patchwork mosaic of policy for accommodating Sikh religion-mandated turbans and beards, despite three-year-old regulations specifically crafted to meet the community’s religious requirements.
Many state prison facilities are unaware that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation created regulations in 2006 governing Sikh religious attire, designed to bring the state in line with federal laws.
Officials contacted by India-West at San Quentin State Prison, California State Prison, Solano, and the CDCR itself were unaware of the new policy.
The new regulations are adjustments to California Penal Code Section 3000 regarding grooming in prison, and now permit acceptable “hair holding devices” in state facilities.
An old regulation, stating that hair not exceed three inches, has been struck out, along with regulations applying to beard length.
However, the regulations stipulate that each prison facility must form a religious review committee, which would then determine requests for religious accommodation on a case-by-case basis.
“Prisoners have a right to wear religious garb as their religion allows it,” Michael Risher, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, told India-West. “But quite often, people are told they cannot practice their religion in prison.”
Sikhs are required by their religion to wear five articles of faith, including a turban, also known as a dastaar; a small sword known as a kirpan; unshorn hair, kesh; a wooden comb, kanga; a steel bracelet, kara; and a pair of shorts, known as kaccha.
For orthodox Sikhs, appearing in public without a turban is tantamount to a strip search, Neha Singh, western region director of the Sikh Coalition, told India-West. “It is very humiliating.”
Congress in 2000 enacted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which prohibits any prison facility receiving federal funding from placing restrictions on prisoners’ rights to practice their religion while incarcerated, in accordance with the provisions of the U.S. constitution’s first amendment. The first amendment prohibits Congress from impeding the free exercise of religion.
All state prisons and many local jails in California receive varying amounts of federal money. State prisons in New York, Kentucky and Vermont, as well as federal prisons, allow turbans, unshorn hair and beards.
The CDCR began examining its own policies on Sikh religious accommodation in 2005, after Harpal Singh Ahluwalia — incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison for allegedly contracting to kill his wife — and Sikh prisoners at the California State Prison, Solano, began complaining of unfair treatment.
Regulations at the time mandated that prisoners keep their hair no longer than three inches; facial hair and turbans were not permitted. Muslims, however, were allowed to wear kufis, a sort of skull cap, and Jewish prisoners were allowed to wear yarmulkes.
The Sikh Coalition, a national civil rights organization, was contacted by Ahluwalia and others, and began investigating the claims of unfair treatment and the inability to practice the Sikh religion while incarcerated.
Requests for vegetarian meals — many Sikhs eat no meat — also went unheeded at both facilities. In 2004, 72-year-old Khem Singh — a former priest incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison for allegedly molesting a young girl during Sunday prayers — reportedly died of starvation after refusing to eat non-vegetarian meals.
Amardeep Singh, former executive director of the Sikh Coalition, met with officials of the CDCR in December 2005 in a meeting arranged by Rep. Jackie Speier, who was then a state senator, and worked out proposed new regulations that were adopted the following summer, after a public hearing on March 30, 2006.
But the CDCR’s stipulation that each facility decides its own means for accommodating religious requests means “in effect, there’s no policy at all,” Singh, who now serves as the Sikh Coalition’s director of programs and advocacy, told India-West.
Dean Borg, the former chief of adult operations at the CDCR who crafted the new policies, did not return calls for comment.
And the regulations remain largely unknown throughout the state prison system. A public information officer at California State Prison, Solano, said, “I am not aware of any specifics implemented statewide,” when asked how requests for religious accommodation were adjudicated. A similar response was received from a PIO at San Quentin State Prison. Terry Thornton, a public information officer with the CDCR, also told India-West she was unaware of statewide regulations regarding religious accommodation.
Thornton asked this publication to supply her with the text of the new policies, and commented after the paper complied with her request.
“The overall standard is that inmates may possess and wear religious items so long as they don't pose an undue security risk,” she said.
“CDCR's property matrix allows inmates to possess religious items in their cells as approved by each religious review committee. This includes yarmulkes, kufi caps and prayer rugs, etc.”
“There is nothing in our regulations or policies that preclude a Sikh inmate from possessing and wearing a turban, but I do not believe there are any prisons that allow inmates to wear a turban either,” said Thornton.
Asked why the CDCR had allowed each state prison facility to determine its own guidelines for religious requests, rather than setting statewide regulations, Thornton said: “It is important to note that every prison in the state is different, houses different kinds of offenders, and has different missions.”
“Each committee needs to have the ability to review requests consistent with each institution's mission, operations, activities, space, custody level and other issues,” she said.
Sikhs have long struggled with the wearing of turbans and kirpans in public places. The Transportation Security Agency only recently amended its rules to allow Sikhs to keep their turbans on during routine airport security checks. Earlier this year, Sikh students were granted permission to wear turbans at MCAT and other professional examinations.
The U.S. Army has just begun accommodating Sikh religious wear on a case-by-case basis, allowing a Sikh doctor and dentist to serve on active duty with a turban and long hair, including a beard. And Sikhs are now allowed to serve as officers with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while keeping both turbans and beards.
But dastaars and kesh remain out of the landscape of most of the nation’s state prison systems, because of possible safety issues.
Sgt. Michael Jones, of the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department, provided testimony last year in the case of Gurparkash Singh Khalsa, who has been without his turban since he entered San Joaquin County Jail in April 2007.
Khalsa is accused of killing his daughter’s ex-boyfriend Ajmer Hothi, who was 23 at the time of his death.
“It’s a concealment issue,” Jones told India-West. “There are all kinds of things a defendant can pick up and hide in his turban to be used as a weapon later,” he said.
Ballpoint pens can be used for stabbing, as can paper clips, said Jones, pointing out that both can fit very easily into the tightly-wound folds of a turban.
“All kinds of potential dangers are lying about. So we make no exceptions to the rule about headwear for defendants. No one is allowed to wear headwear of any type,” he said.
Singh countered Jones’ statements about concealment.
“Prisoners fit contraband into clothing all the time. Does a turban give more access than regular clothes would?” he queried.
“Even if the answer is yes, this is a question of religious practice. Can the interest of prison safety be met with a quick search?”
“The solution can’t always just be ‘remove the turban.’ This is a core religious requirement,” he said. Khalsa’s attorney Daniel Horowitz — who filed and lost one of the first cases regarding religious headwear in California state prisons — told India-West: “Religious freedom always gives way to security concerns.” A long-winding piece of cloth could be used in a number of different ways, including committing suicide, he said.
Khalsa has reportedly worked out a compromise with his jailers, said Horowitz, adding that prison guards allow him to use a towel over his head for prayers and public appearances. But such a compromise is not sufficient to accommodate Khalsa’s religious requirements, he said. Risher of the ACLU said the 2006 amendments to the California penal code were “a step in the right direction.”
“But they are so focused on precise rules that they don’t provide guidance to CDCR staff about how to accommodate prisoners’ religious requirements in general,” Risher said, adding, “As a result, staff may continue to have an inadequate understanding that prisoners have a right to, for example, wear religious headgear, simply because that topic is not specifically covered by the regulation.”
“It might be more useful to ensure that those charged with enforcing the rules are fully informed of the requirements of RLUIPA so that they can follow those requirements as novel situations arise,” he explained.
“Any sort of accommodation to a religious practice is weakest when you’re incarcerated,” Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, told India-West. “During incarceration, all fundamental rights are effectively ceded. By design, rights are curtailed in the extreme,” he said.
The question is whether your right to practice your religion requires the government to accommodate you, added Scheer, explaining that costs, disruption to the environment, and prevailing laws are factors that can be taken into account when states decide how to determine religious requests.
“It’s never been resolved at a sufficiently high level. Cases are not going to federal court, and they’re avoiding publication, so that there is no precedence,” he said.
“People in prison are very vulnerable to retaliation. They tend to think twice about asking for their rights,” asserted Harsimran Kaur, legal director of the Sikh Coalition.
“We need to advocate and protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of our community,” she told India-West, adding, “It’s a difficult issue to get the community to rally around, because there’s a belief that if they’re in prison, they’re guilty, so why should we care?”
California does not capture data on the religious preferences of its prison population, so there are no numbers about how many Sikhs are incarcerated in its prisons. Anecdotally, the Sikh Coalition believes there are fewer than one dozen Sikhs in California state prisons.
Although H1N1 has proven less deadly than originally anticipated, it has taken a serious toll on American Indians.
According to a recent report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the mortality rate from the virus is four times higher among American Indians and Alaska Natives than any other racial or ethnic group.
Phil Stago and his family were hit particularly hard by the virus.
They live in a tiny house in the tiny town of Winslow, Ariz., just outside the vast Navajo Nation. On a recent morning, his 2-year-old watched cartoons and snuggled with her dad. The baby rocked in a swing.
The mellow day was quite a switch from the drama the household experienced in September, when Stago says swine flu wiped out his family for a whole month.
Stago's son got it first — itchy throat, fever and aches. Then 2-year-old Alicia picked up the virus. She’s feeling much better now, but when her newborn sister, Gabriela, caught swine flu, things got scary.
Stago took her to an Indian Health Service hospital nearby when her fever hit 100 degrees.
"They secluded us from her, and they put her in a little tent of oxygen," Stago says. "[We] had to wear the whole full isolation gowns and gloves and mask. That was pretty scary."
Indigenous People More Vulnerable
When patients require more intensive care than Gabriela did, they're sent to Flagstaff Medical Center, about an hour west of Winslow.
One day during the peak of the second wave of the swine flu virus, the intensive care unit was almost full of American Indians on respiratory ventilators.
The scene reflects a statewide trend. In Arizona, of the more than 1,500 people who have been hospitalized for swine flu, 13 percent have been American Indian. Yet American Indians make up only 5 percent of Arizonans.
Aboriginal Australians and First Nations groups in Canada have reported similar disproportionate findings.
There are plenty of theories as to why indigenous people are more at risk. John Redd, an epidemiologist for the Indian Health Service, says that crowding and poor housing, both risk factors for influenza, are more present in indigenous populations around the world.
In addition to poverty, Redd also points out that American Indians are prone to diabetes and asthma. When you combine swine flu with these pre-existing conditions, the outcomes are worse.
Access to health care is also an issue. There are a dozen Indian health care centers scattered throughout the Navajo Nation, but the reservation is the size of West Virginia.
Cindy Galloway, who works at a family health center that serves American Indians in the Flagstaff area, believes there are other factors contributing to the higher mortality rates.
"They are more stoic people. They don't complain, frankly," Galloway says.
She says it's typical for American Indian patients to wait until their symptoms become severe before they seek treatment.
"People will tolerate feeling bad longer and thinking it's going to go away," Galloway says. "When finally after four or five days they can't even take a deep breath, then they realize that this could be more serious."
Indian Health Service officials say many people have been exposed to swine flu or have been vaccinated now, so there's hope that the next possible wave of the virus, which could come as early as January, won’t be as severe.
LOS ANGELES-- When United American Indian Involvement, Inc., opened its doors in 1974 on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, it was a modest shelter serving downtown’s American Indian community. Today it occupies a larger facility, has centers in Fresno and Bakersfield, and provides an array of social services.
UAII’s growth reflects the explosive surge in American Indians moving from tribal reservations to urban centers, like Los Angeles County. According to U.S. Census data, more than 90 percent of the state’s American Indian population now lives off tribal reservations. That demographic shift requires targeted strategies by the Census Bureau in getting an accurate count of American Indians in the upcoming 2010 census count.
“We’re looking at a huge challenge, due to the federal policies of relocation of our people over the years, and then just the outright economic conditions that were present and are still present, causing people to go off the reservation for work, to make a living,” said Tim Harjo, the American Indian partnership specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau in Los Angeles. “And then they get to these places [like Los Angeles], and it’s not easy. They find themselves in bad situations.”
Harjo’s job is to encourage participation in the 2010 Census by more than 300,000 American Indians in his region, which includes Southern California and Hawaii.
While Harjo and his colleagues have been outreaching directly to tribal governments across California, he says the tougher test in 2010 will be to count the American Indian majority who are increasingly leaving the reservations and moving into the urban areas. They are most likely not members of local or regional tribes but in fact may have migrated from elsewhere in the state or country.
According to 2000 Census data, more than 90 percent of California’s American Indian population now lives off tribal reservations. In fact, the bureau’s most recent population estimates show there are now more than 155,000 American Indian and Alaska Natives residing in Los Angeles county alone, making it the most populous county in the nation for that racial category.
Placed in historical context, the numbers are extraordinary.
When the federal government first recognized American Indians on the 1860 census, their official population nationwide stood at roughly 44,000. By 1950, they numbered 343,000, and in the 2000 census, the American Indian population was 4 million. It is a trend that the bureau expects to continue. By 2050, the nation’s native population could surpass 8.6 million, or 2 percent of the U.S. population.
“To some people those numbers may not seem like a lot, but it is huge for us,” said [explained] Harjo.
Which is why community organizations like UAII are paying close attention to the 2010 Census and becoming active participants in spreading the message of being counted to community members.
“We’ve already sent out fliers [encouraging census participation] to thousands of names on our mailing list,” said Jerimy Billy, associate director of UAII. “We took it upon ourselves to promote it using our own funds because we want to see an accurate count.”
Many UAII programs are funded through government contracts. And with an annual $400 billion in federal allocations based on 2010 Census numbers, UAII and other organizations have a vested interest in making sure their communities get a fair share of that funding.
“The census does play a part, because it allows us to have a number to work with,” said Billy. “Our funders want to get the most bang for their buck. They want to give where they think we can serve the most. And without that concrete data, it’s really hard to convince them we have a large population.”
Changing public perceptions of where American Indians reside, explained Billy, will be helpful for both funders and tribal governments alike in the years to come.
“Sometimes what happens is, people from the reservation come through LA, and they may need to access our health services, but the people from those other tribes or reservations may not really be aware of what we do,” he said. “They might say, ‘Well, urban organizations are serving non-Indians.’ No. For example, there is a huge Lakota population living in LA. Or we can go back to the Navajo tribe and say, ‘We’ve got a huge population here that we’re trying to serve.’”
Specifying tribal affiliation on the 2010 Census questionnaire will have huge ramifications for American Indian communities because there is a direct correlation between how many people identify with a particular tribe and how much money that tribe receives from the government for services.
Harjo points to tribal numbers from the 2000 census as proof that American Indians lost out on funding for their communities 10 years ago.
Of the 4.1 million American Indian and Alaskan Natives identified on the 2000 census, the tribal affiliations of over 1 million were “not specified.” While lack of education on how to fill out the form is part of the problem, Harjo says there are also structural problems with the census questionnaire that led to the missing information.
“Question number 9 [on the census questionnaire] is the race question, and that’s the biggest issue,” he said. “There are only 19 boxes to write in the name of your tribe. But many tribe names require more than 19 boxes. And then there are people who write-in their tribe, but it’s a traditional name that the data processors don’t recognize, so that doesn’t get counted. That’s a lot of money that was lost.”
In California, there are over 100 federally recognized tribal groups, as well as dozens of smaller tribes that are still unrecognized by the government.
Further complicating the census outreach efforts of organizations like UAII and census officials like Harjo, are deep-seated – and well-founded - feelings of distrust toward government.
“Confidentiality is always a big concern,” said Harjo, “but perhaps more so, there are quite simply a lot of people who are saying, ‘it doesn’t matter to me.’”
Between now and National Census Day on April 1, Harjo and his allies in the Los Angeles region will be putting their all into making sure the growing community of urban American Indians understand that it does matter.
“We don’t have the resources to get out and be everywhere,” said Billy. “Our staff is still not big enough to meet everybody’s needs. At least to capture that, and show there is a need… I think that’s the most important thing.”
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Secretive branches of the military’s Special Operations forces have increased counterterrorism missions against some of the most lethal groups in Afghanistan and, because of their success, plan an even bigger expansion next year, according to American commanders.
The commandos, from the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s classified Seals units, have had success weakening the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the strongest Taliban warrior in eastern Afghanistan, the officers said. Mr. Haqqani’s group has used its bases in neighboring Pakistan to carry out deadly strikes in and around Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Guided by intercepted cellphone communications, the American commandos have also killed some important Taliban operatives in Marja, the most fearsome Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province in the south, the officers said. Marine commanders say they believe that there are some 1,000 fighters holed up in the town.
Although President Obama and his top aides have not publicly discussed these highly classified missions as part of the administration’s revamped strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the counterterrorism operations are expected to increase, along with the deployment of 30,000 more American forces in the next year.
The increased counterterrorism operations over the past three or four months reflect growth in every part of the Afghanistan campaign, including conventional forces securing the population, other troops training and partnering with Afghan security forces, and more civilians to complement and capitalize on security gains.
American commanders in Afghanistan rely on the commando units to carry out some of the most complicated operations against militant leaders, and the missions are never publicly acknowledged. The commandos are the same elite forces that have been pursuing Osama bin Laden, captured Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and led the hunt that ended in 2006 in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader in Iraq of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
In recent interviews here, commanders explained that the special-mission units from the Joint Special Operations Command were playing a pivotal role in degrading some of the toughest militant groups, and buying some time before American reinforcements arrived and more Afghan security forces could be trained.
“They are extremely effective in the areas where we are focused,” said one American general in Afghanistan about the commandos, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified status of the missions.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is in charge of the military’s Central Command, mentioned the increased focus on counterterrorism operations in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Dec. 9. But he spoke more obliquely about the teams actually conducting attacks against hard-core Taliban extremists, particularly those in rural areas outside the reach of population centers that conventional forces will focus on.
“We actually will be increasing our counterterrorist component of the overall strategy,” General Petraeus told lawmakers. “There’s no question you’ve got to kill or capture those bad guys that are not reconcilable. And we are intending to do that, and we will have additional national mission force elements to do that when the spring rolls around.”
Senior military officials say it is not surprising that the commandos are playing such an important role in the fight, particularly because Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior American and NATO officer in Afghanistan, led the Joint Special Operations Command for five years.
In addition to the classified American commando missions, military officials say that other NATO special operations forces have teamed up with Afghan counterparts to attack Taliban bomb-making networks and other militant cells.
About six weeks ago, allied and Afghan special operations forces killed about 150 Taliban fighters in several villages near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, a senior NATO military official said.
Some missions have killed Taliban fighters while searching for Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, who was reported missing on June 30 in eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban in July posted a video on jihadist Web sites in which the soldier identified himself and said that he had been captured when he lagged behind on a patrol. A second video was released on Friday.
“We’ve been hitting them hard, but I want to be careful not to overstate our progress,” said the NATO official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the operations in detail. “It has not yet been decisive.”
In Helmand, more than 10,000 Marines, as well as Afghan and British forces, are gearing up for a major confrontation in Marja early next year. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the senior Marine commander in the south, said in a recent interview, “The overt message we’re putting out is, Marja is next.”
General Nicholson said that in addition to covert operations, including stealthy commando raids against specific targets, the military was also conducting an overt propaganda campaign intended to persuade some Taliban fighters to defect.
Military officials say the commandos are mindful of General McChrystal’s directive earlier this year to take additional steps to prevent civilian casualties.
In February, before General McChrystal was named to his current position, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, ordered a halt to most commando missions in Afghanistan, reflecting a growing concern that civilian deaths caused by American firepower were jeopardizing broader goals there.
The halt, which lasted about two weeks, came after a series of nighttime raids by Special Operations troops killed women and children, and after months of mounting outrage in Afghanistan about civilians killed in air and ground attacks. The order covered all commando missions except those against the highest-ranking leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, military officials said.
Across the border in Pakistan, where American commandos are not permitted to operate, the Central Intelligence Agency has stepped up its missile strikes by Predator and Reaper drones on groups like the Haqqani network.
But an official with Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or I.S.I., said there had also been more than 60 joint operations involving the I.S.I. and the C.I.A. in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan in the past year.
The official said the missions included “snatch and grabs” — the abduction of important militants — as well as efforts to kill leaders. These operations were based on intelligence provided by either the United States or Pakistan to be used against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the official said.
“We can expect to see more U.S. action against Haqqani,” a senior American diplomat in Pakistan said in a recent interview.
The increasing tempo of commando operations in Afghanistan has caused some strains with other American commanders. Many of the top Special Operations forces, as well as intelligence analysts and surveillance aircraft, are being moved to Afghanistan from Iraq, as the Iraq war begins to wind down.
“It’s caused some tensions over resources,” said Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., the second-ranking American commander in Iraq.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 26, 2009; A16
This booming little border town in China's southwestern Yunnan province, where the economic prosperity of China is separated from the destitution of Burma by nothing more than a flimsy, rusted metal fence, has emerged as the new front line in the worldwide fight against human trafficking.
On any given afternoon, a steady stream of people scale the six-foot-high fence, unperturbed by the Chinese border guards posted just a hundred yards away. Amid the Burmese men looking for day labor, or women coming to sell their vegetables in the wealthier Chinese markets, is traffic far less benign:
Burmese women being brought over for marriages with Chinese men -- some forced, some voluntarily arranged through "matchmakers." Babies being brought into China to be sold. And Chinese women from poorer inland areas being moved in the opposite direction, often ending up in Southeast Asia's sex industry.
In the shadowy world of human trafficking, say government officials and advisers with foreign aid agencies, China has become a source country, a destination country and a transit country all at once.
"Some of the Yunnan women and girls think they'll get a better job in Thailand," said Kathleen Speake, chief technical adviser for the United Nations' International Labor Office in Beijing. Burmese "are coming into China. We're looking at being trafficked for adoption, and women being trafficked for marriage."
No firm numbers are available on the extent of trafficking. Kirsten di Martino, a project officer in Beijing for UNICEF, said that from 2000 to 2007, China's public security bureau investigated 44,000 cases of trafficking, rescuing about 130,000 women and children. But, she added, "this is just the tip of the iceberg."
China, she said, "is very big, and has a lot of border -- and has a whole lot of problems."
Here in Ruili, two criminal gangs were cracked and 14 women rescued in the first half of the year, said Meng Yilian, who works for the newly formed group China-Myanmar Cooperation Against Human Trafficking. Burma is also known as Myanmar.
A legally suspect vocation
"In the villages bordering Myanmar, there are some people working as matchmakers, " she said. "And some of them are human traffickers. It's hard to tell who are the matchmakers and who are the traffickers."
Matchmaking, which falls into a legally murky terrain, is rooted in Chinese tradition, which allows a man to make a gift to a woman's family in exchange for marriage.
In this border area, matchmakers are not hard to find. From Ruili, a gravel road leads west, running parallel to the Burmese border and past ethnic Dai villagers working in paddy fields. In Mang Sai village, the matchmaker is a heavy-set 28-year-old woman who said she has been in the business seven or eight years and had "successfully made 20 matches," including two involving Chinese buyers and Burmese girls.
The matchmaker -- she requested that her name be withheld because her profession is legally suspect -- said a local Chinese girl will cost as much as 50,000 renminbi, about $7,300. But a girl from Burma, she said, costs just 20,000 renminbi, or just under $3,000.
She said her matchmaking fee is 3000 renminbi, or about $440.
"I follow the principle: Only if the two people like each other is it a match," she said.
Further south, in Jie Xiang town, a pharmacist said it was often difficult to tell which Burmese girls come here voluntarily to marry Chinese men and escape poverty and which ones are the victims of traffickers.
The pharmacist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals from traffickers, said, "For the woman 25 to 30 years old, they come voluntarily. For those 25 and younger, it's hard to tell if they come voluntarily or were forced."
The pharmacist, 43, said he often speaks with the Burmese women because they come to his shop for carsickness medicine before they set out for long drives with their new husbands.
"They are forced by their economic situation at home," the pharmacist said. "They have no other choice."
He said he knows one trafficker in the town who is trying to find a buyer for an 8-year-old Burmese girl after selling the mother.
"The border is so long, and there are a lot of channels," the pharmacist said. "You can't watch every path. It's really easy for people to come across. There's no strict border here at all."
A long, porous border
A few hours at the border confirmed what the pharmacist said. While the official border crossing point at Jie Gao was relatively quiet -- just a few cars passing by and two pedestrians -- there was a steady flow over the rickety metal fence nearby, just out of eyeshot of the green-uniformed border policemen.
A woman from Burma, Zei Nan, 51, climbed over the fence carrying a sack filled with vegetables she was hoping to sell. A young man, Zaw Aung, 29, said he crosses over from Burma almost every day, looking for day labor. Another woman, Huang Shuguo, 30, came to the fence to bring a change of clothes for her husband, who drives a motorcycle taxi on the Chinese side.
The spot is so well-known as a border crossing point that it could hardly be called secret. Red taxis and motorcycles cruised up and down the narrow street, hoping to pick up Burmese migrants. Others stopped to discharge their passengers at the fence.
Several people crossing said that on the rare occasions when the police intervene to stop people, the penalty is a fine and a day in jail. But Zaw Aung said, "We are seldom caught. Even the police know we are climbing over."
The government, however, recently launched a crackdown on the "matchmakers" as one step in the effort to combat trafficking. And there is evidence that the move has had some effect.
In Huo Sai village -- a place identified by area residents as a key transit point for trafficked Burmese women -- the matchmaker was nowhere to be found. Residents said the matchmaker had gone underground because of the increased police monitoring.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 26, 2009; A01
Two days before announcing the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, President Obama informed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal that he was not granting McChrystal's request to double the size of the Afghan army and police.
Cost was a factor, as were questions about whether the capacity exists to train 400,000 personnel. The president told McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to focus for now on fielding a little more than half that number by next October.
Ten days after Obama's speech, the U.S. command responsible for training the Afghans circulated a chart detailing the combined personnel targets for the army and police. McChrystal's goal of 400,000 remained unchanged.
"It's an open issue," a senior Pentagon official said last week.
Nearly a month after Obama unveiled his revised Afghanistan strategy, military and civilian leaders have come away with differing views of several fundamental aspects of the president's new approach, according to more than a dozen senior administration and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Members of Obama's war cabinet disagree over the meaning of his pledge to begin drawing down forces in July 2011 and whether the mission has been narrowed from a proposal advanced by McChrystal in his August assessment of the war. The disagreements have opened a fault line between a desire for an early exit among several senior officials at the White House and a conviction among military commanders that victory is still achievable on their terms.
The differences are complicating implementation of the new strategy. Some officers have responded to the July 2011 date by seeking to accelerate the pace of operations, instead of narrowing them. At the White House, a senior administration official said, the National Security Council is discussing ways to increase monitoring of military and State Department activities in Afghanistan to prevent "overreaching."
The NSC's strategic guidance, a classified document that outlines the president's new approach, was described by the senior administration official as limiting military operations "in scale and scope to the minimum required to achieve two goals -- to prevent al-Qaeda safe havens and to prevent the Taliban from toppling the government." The use of resource-intensive counterinsurgency tactics -- employing U.S. forces to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban -- is supposed to be restricted to key cities and towns in southern and eastern parts of the country, the official said.
"The strategy has fundamentally changed. This is not a COIN strategy," Vice President Biden said on MSNBC last week, using the military's shorthand for counterinsurgency. "This is not 'go out and occupy the whole country.' "
Setting limits
During a videoconference two days before the speech, Obama made it clear to McChrystal and U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry that he did not want the additional troops to fuel a broader mission. Speaking to both men from the White House Situation Room, the president told them not to deploy the forces to areas they would not be able to transfer to Afghan security forces by July 2011, according to two senior officials with knowledge of the conversation.
Obama's essential instruction was, according to one of the officials, "Don't bite off more than you can chew."
White House officials said the president opposes using the forces he has authorized to duplicate an expansive, Iraq-style counterinsurgency operation -- in part because he questions whether it will be possible to achieve a similar outcome in Afghanistan, which is less developed, and because he wants to start reducing troops in 18 months. The White House's desired end state in Afghanistan, officials said, envisions more informal local security arrangements than in Iraq, a less-capable national government and a greater tolerance of insurgent violence.
Senior military officials still think they can achieve a better outcome than envisaged by civilian skeptics in the administration by using the new forces to mount more comprehensive counterinsurgency operations. Although Pentagon strategists and McChrystal's advisers in Kabul are looking at how they can fulfill the White House desire for a less extensive mission, military officials said they are reluctant to strip too much away and weaken an approach that has come to be revered within the ranks as the only way to suppress guerrilla movements.
Military officials contend that McChrystal does not harbor expansionist aims. They note that he has begun removing troops from remote mountain valleys and concentrating resources on a modest number of key population centers. But the approach in those areas will involve counterinsurgency tactics: Troops will focus on restoring normal patterns of life by trying to keep the Taliban at bay, helping the Afghan government provide basic services to the population and training local security forces.
McChrystal's plan, the senior Pentagon official said, "is still counterinsurgency, regardless of the various agendas people are trying to spin."
Dissent over drawdown
During strategy discussions at the White House, differences between the White House and the military came into sharp relief over Obama's decision to announce his intention to begin drawing down troops in July 2011.
McChrystal argued against it, according to three officials familiar with the process. The head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus, also expressed concerns. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urged Obama to make the drawdown "conditions-based."
"There was a lot of pushback" from the Defense Department, one of the officials said.
The president received cover from one uniformed general at the table, James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cartwright had adopted a more skeptical view of the mission than many of his military colleagues, one that resonated with Obama and Biden.
Cartwright effectively endorsed the July 2011 date, arguing that increasing forces and engaging in limited counterinsurgency made sense, the senior administration official said, "but given the risk factors -- Pakistan, the Karzai government, the whole notion of sub-national governance and our track record with the [Afghan security forces], which is not prestigious -- that it made sense to demonstrate that we could actually do this."
It also helped Obama that the principal troop-increase proposal being discussed at the time -- a recommendation that McChrystal receive 30,000 forces for 18 to 24 months -- had been developed by Gates. The Defense Department paperwork detailing the proposal identified the increase as starting in the summer of 2009, when the first troops deployed by the president this year began conducting operations in Afghanistan, but it did not specify an end date.
"Rather than leaving this indefinite and hypothetical, the president's intervention was to say, 'Okay, if we're starting in July of '09, then we're really talking about July of '11," said the senior administration official who described the NSC guidance.
Obama eventually told his war cabinet that he would announce the July 2011 deadline but that the pace of withdrawals would be determined, as Gates had sought, by conditions on the ground. Obama said he would conduct a thorough review of progress in a year's time. Although he did not endorse McChrystal's request to increase the Afghan security forces to 400,000, he said he would reevaluate the issue once the 2010 goal of training 230,000 forces is achieved.
The president avoided details in his Dec. 1 address, leaving it up to members of his Cabinet and to his advisers to explain the specifics. The result has been a wide divergence of expectations. Gates, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" the Sunday after the speech, said that perhaps only "some handful or some small number" would be withdrawn. Biden, during his MSNBC appearance last week, said a chart showing an increase in U.S. deployments this year would be "coming down as rapidly over the next two years."
The ambiguity over the meaning of the July 2011 deadline has generated uncertainty over the president's intent. "Is the surge a way of helping us leave more quickly, or is the timeline a way to help win support for the surge?" asked a senior Democratic staff member in Congress. "Which is the strategy and which is the head-fake? Nobody knows."
One senior military officer in Afghanistan said he and his fellow soldiers "don't know if this is all over in 18 months, or whether this is just a progress report that leads to minor changes."
"Until they tell us otherwise," the officer said, "we're operating as if the latter is the policy."
A 'dramatic change'?
Although senior-level civilians in the administration emerged from the review process thinking the mission had been circumscribed, senior military officials continue to have a different view. The result, as they see it, is that the White House has embraced McChrystal's original plan.
"We had already been pretty focused that we wouldn't try to clear and hold things more than we needed to," said a senior commander involved in the war. "It wasn't a dramatic change by any means."
White House officials have cited a meeting among NSC staff members and McChrystal in which the general displayed a slide stating that his mission was to "Defeat the Taliban," which some civilians deemed overly ambitious because it suggested that every last member of the Taliban would have to be killed or captured. The officials said the mission was redefined to avoid the term.
But to military officers, defeat "doesn't mean wipe everyone out," the commander said. "It means after Waterloo, Napoleon still had an army but he wasn't going to threaten Europe. We used that view when we worked defeat."
Even before the White House review had finished, the commander in charge of day-to-day operations, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, had developed a plan to concentrate U.S. and NATO efforts in 80 of the country's nearly 400 districts.
"They're taking credit for some of the things that McChrystal was already doing and calling it a narrowed focus," a senior military official said.
White House advisers maintain that the review process did refine the mission beyond what McChrystal had proposed over the summer.
"There was a real narrowing here," the senior administration official said. "Stan has a big leadership task to adapt his original concept to the new strategic guidance."
The official said NSC officials recognize it will take time for the new orders to filter through the ranks. "This doesn't turn around with a speech," the official said. "But I hope we don't see slides a month from now that continue to state that our goal is 400,000" Afghan security forces.
The challenge, said that official and another senior administration official, is to recalibrate military operations over the next 18 months in accordance with the new goal.
"The guidance they have is that we're not doing everything, and we're not doing it forever," the second official said. "The hardest intellectual exercise will be settling on how much is enough."
For now, however, top military officers speak more expansively than White House advisers.
"Winning means we hand off to a security force that can secure the country," the senior Pentagon official said. "We've separated the enemy, we've connected the people to the government, and we're helping them to rebuild their economy. It's at that point that we begin to transition it over to them."
Terms such as "winning" and "victory" have been eschewed by the White House. Obama did not use either in his Dec. 1 address, and he said in an interview earlier this year that he was uncomfortable using the term "victory" when fighting "a non-state actor, a shadowy operation like al-Qaeda."
But when Gates visited Kabul a week after Obama's speech, he made a point of telling military personnel there that "we are in this thing to win."
"From a moral perspective, when you ask soldiers and families to sacrifice, we do that to win," the Pentagon official said. "We need to be able to articulate winning."
By Michael D. Shear, Michael Leahy and Spencer S. Hsu Saturday, December 26, 2009; 12:31 PM
Airports around the world intensified their security for U.S. bound passengers Saturday as American officials sought more information about the motives of a Nigerian man who tried to light an incendiary device aboard a flight as it descended into Detroit on Christmas Day.
Federal investigators are continuing to gather information about the suspect, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, including claims that he is linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. But authorities are operating on the theory that he acted alone, according to an American law enforcement source.
"At this point, there's nothing to suggest that he was part of a wider conspiracy involving others," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to interfere with an ongoing and active investigation.
British Airlines issued a bulletin on its websites announcing that its customers flying into the United States will be allowed only one carry-on item, and attributing the change in policy to American security officials. British Airways said flights bound for the United States from London's Heathrow Airport were delayed between 30 minutes and an hour.
"Arrangements are being put in place at UK airports to implement the additional US requirements," the British government stated in an industry bulletin obtained by the Post.
Airports across Europe and in other parts of the world have also tightened screening measures for U.S.-bound passengers, and airlines are reporting international flight delays and long lines. United Airlines said it expected flights from Europe to the United States would be delayed 20 to 90 minutes for the extra security measures.
Canada, Belgium and France began physically screening passengers and checked bags at boarding gates for flights bound for the United States, authorities said. The Canadian government said the new screening, in addition to a new limit of one carry-on bag per passenger, "are effective immediately and will remain in effect in parallel" with what sources said will be a forthcoming announcement by the U.S. government.
In the United States, Homeland Security officials have not yet raised the terrorism alert status from its current "orange" level, but have said passengers may notice additional screening and security measures at airports in the coming days.
The spike in concern about airline security comes at the height of the Christmas and New Year's travel season, and renews fears about inadequate security procedures that are aimed at keeping the nation's airplanes safe from terrorists.
FBI scientists in Quantico, Va., are testing the powdery material that Abdulmutallab allegedly mixed with a chemical-laden syringe aboard a flight from Amsterdam on Christmas day, said the federal law enforcement source. Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam landed safely about 1 p.m. Friday.
The Associated Press reported Saturday morning that his father, a prominent Nigerian banker, was cooperating with federal investigators.
Abdulmutallab was treated Friday at a hospital for burns after having been subdued by fellow passengers during what some news reports described as an extended scuffle. CNN broadcast pictures Saturday morning of a man being taken into custody and led off of a plane by officials.
Passengers who witnessed the incident on the plane described a chaotic scene on the widebody jet involving what sounded like firecrackers, the glow of flames, smoke.
"What I heard was a firecracker, like a champagne bottle opening. I thought maybe something happened to a window or something hit the plane," said Veena Saigal, who was sitting six rows in front of the suspect, in Row 13. "Then I smelled the smoke. When I turned around, I could see a fireglow."
Some passengers raced away from the flames, she said, clogging the aisles, while other passengers and the flight attendants called for water or hurried to grab fire extinguishers.
"People were just running and they were scared," Saigal said. "They were running towards the center of the plane, running to get away from the flames." In a minute or so -- "It seemed like a long time," she said -- the fire was out.
A passenger she described as a "strong guy" wrapped an arm around the suspect's neck, Saigal said, and began pushing him up the aisle toward an empty seat at the front of the plane, which pilots were preparing to land at Detroit's principal airport.
"He was holding him from the back, with a strong grip," said Saigal, who was completing a trip home to Ann Arbor from India. "He's kind of a hero, I think. When he went back to his seat, we all clapped."
FBI agents interviewed hundreds of passengers, crew members and Abdulmutallab after the plane landed safely in Detroit, and debriefings of witnesses and subjects continued Saturday. Abdulmutallab told investigators that he traveled to Yemen to pick up the mixture and receive instructions, officials said Friday, but they are treating his claims with skepticism and searching for information that would corroborate the statements.
The next major step in the case may be the unveiling of federal criminal charges against Abdulmutallab, but such charges could take time because of the holidays and the early-stage nature of the case.
A Yemeni government official said they were looking into claims that Abdulmutallab came to Yemen to pick up the explosive device and instructions on how and when to deploy it. But the official cautioned it could take time before Yemeni immigration authorities could determine if he ever entered the country. His name is relatively common and also can be spelt in different ways.
If Abdulmutallab is linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, it wouldn't be the first time that the terrorist group has tried to sneak in explosive material past security checks. In August, Abdullah Hassan Tali Assiri, a suicide bomber sent by the network entered from Yemen into Saudi Arabia with explosives on his body. He was on his way to meet with Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, a senior member of Saudi Arabia's ruling family and head of the kingdom's counterterrorism operations. Assiri, a Saudi national, had informed Nayef that he was going to renounce al-Qaeda.
The prince sent his plane to the southern Saudi border city of Najran to pick up Assiri. He was taken by the prince's personal bodyguards to his heavily guarded house. At some point in the evening, Assiri's explosives were detonated, triggered by a cell phone call. The prince suffered minor injuries.
President Obama, celebrating Christmas in Hawaii, was informed about the incident aboard Flight 253, a spokesman said, and he asked aides to ensure that all measures are in place to provide secure air travel.
Officials said they are not prepared to raise the terrorism alert level, currently at orange -- or the second-highest of five levels -- for domestic and international air travel. However, the Homeland Security Department said late Friday that passengers "may notice additional screening measures, put into place to ensure the safety of the traveling public on domestic and international flights."
ABC News and NBC News reported that Abdulmutallab, 23, attends University College London, where he studies engineering.
Although not on the TSA's "no-fly" list, Abdulmutallab's name appears to be included in the government's records of terrorism suspects, according to a preliminary review, authorities said.
Abdulmutallab has told federal investigators that he had ties to al-Qaeda and traveled to Yemen to collect the incendiary device and instructions on how to use it, according to a federal counterterrorism official briefed on the case. Authorities have yet to verify the claim, and they expect to conduct several more interviews before they determine whether he is credible, the official said.
At the airport, the wide-body jet was met by police cars, an ambulance and some trucks, according to a spectator, J.P. Karas, of Wyandotte, Mich. (The Northwest flight was aboard a Delta airplane; the two companies are in the process of merging.) There were 278 passengers and 11 crew members on board the plane.
Officials described the device as incendiary rather than explosive, pending tests by forensics experts at the FBI. Incendiary devices generally deliver less of an impact than explosive devices. The remains of the device used are being sent to an FBI explosives lab in Quantico for analysis, federal law enforcement and airline security sources told CNN.
For many national security analysts, the Christmas Day incident called to mind the bizarre case of Richard C. Reid, a British citizen who trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Reid attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes on a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
Reid was arrested in Boston, subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In August 2006, authorities in the United Kingdom disrupted a plot to blow up several transatlantic airliners using improvised liquid explosives. The discovery that al-Qaeda was developing new methods to bring down aircraft led to the banning of most liquids in carry-on baggage and prompted research into new detection technologies.
The Northwest incident also comes after a hectic six months in domestic terrorism cases, from the arrest of a Colorado shuttle bus driver, Najibullah Zazi, in an alleged plot to target New York with hydrogen-based chemical mixtures to smaller efforts by groups in Minnesota, Northern Virginia and North Carolina to allegedly translate radical beliefs into action on foreign soil.
Obama was alerted to Friday's incident between 9 and 9:30 a.m. in Hawaii, which is five hours behind the East Coast. After being informed by his military aide, the president convened a secure conference call with John O. Brennan, his counterterrorism adviser, and Denis McDonough, chief of staff at the National Security Council. He later received updates from each man, senior officials said.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) announced late Friday night that the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee, which he chairs, would "hold hearings in January to look in to this incident and related security matters."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the incident was "a disturbing reminder that the terrorist threat is still very real and that we must continue to be vigilant and alert."
Staff writers Carrie Johnson, Anne E. Kornblut, Sholnn Freeman and Scott Butterworth contributed to this report.
An estimated 4,200 ethnic Hmong, many of whom fought for the CIA during the Vietnam War or are related to soldiers who worked with the agency, are set to be expelled from Thailand back to Laos, where they could face political persecution.
The State Department said Thursday that it was deeply concerned about the fate of the Hmong, an ethnic minority that battled the communist government of Laos for years with U.S. support.
The Thai military had dispatched more than 30 trucks Thursday evening to a refugee camp in central Thailand containing about 4,000 Hmong and had shut off satellite and cellphone service from the camp, according to human rights officials. The Thai military was also thought to be preparing to expel an additional 158 Hmong from a camp near the border with Laos, even though members of that group have been granted refugee status by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
The forced resettlement, which the Thai government had announced would take place before the end of this year, would mark the second such repatriation of refugees in Southeast Asia in a week. On Saturday, Cambodia sent 20 Uighur refugees back to China for certain punishment because of their links to violent protests over the summer in northwestern China.
The Obama administration sent Eric Schwartz, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, to Thailand this week to present senior Thai officials, including military officers, with a letter committing the United States and other Western countries, such as the Netherlands and Australia, to resettle any Hmong who are deemed to be refugees. As a legacy of the Vietnam War, the United States has accepted 150,000 Hmong.
Despite Schwartz's entreaties, all indications were that Thailand had decided to go ahead with its operation.
"The tragedy of this issue is that this is a solvable problem," Schwartz said in an interview. "We've got the resources; we've got the commitment to get into those camps and work with the Thai to achieve the results the Thai want to achieve."
Thai officials say that if more Hmong are granted refugee status, then more will flood into Thailand. At the same time, Thailand is seeking warmer ties with Laos as it deals with a tense standoff with another neighbor, Cambodia.
Schwartz said the imminent expulsion of the Hmong, along with this week's repatriation of the Uighurs, highlighted concerns about Southeast Asia's commitment to protecting refugees.
"We're concerned about the entire regime of protection breaking down," Schwartz said.
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