Obama risks losing liberals with talk of cutting budget

Image via WikipediaBy Zachary A. Goldfarb and Peter Wallsten, Wednesday, April 13, 11:00 AM

President Obama faces a growing rebellion on the left as he courts independent voters and Republicans with his vision for reducing the nation’s debt by cutting government spending and restraining the costs of federal health insurance programs.

Key liberal groups, which helped elect Obama in 2008, are raising concerns that he has given up political ground to Republicans, allowing the message of reducing government to trump that of creating jobs and lowering the unemployment rate.

Seizing on Friday’s deal, which would cut $38.5 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget, activists on Tuesday threatened to sit out the 2012 presidential campaign if Obama goes too far with further cuts.

“The fundamental problem in our country right now is unemployment and a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, an advocacy group for the poor. “It appears the president is fighting on the wrong terrain and is conceding that the only thing we should be talking about is how to bring down the deficit.”

The clash over government spending — coming as Obama prepares to make a major speech on fiscal discipline Wednesday — is the latest example of the frayed relations between the president and a broad coalition of union and activist groups.

The dispute also underscores a key question about what will define the coming year for Obama: an attempt to defend longtime Democratic priorities over Republican objections or an effort to seek compromise and control the national debt.

The White House is responding to concerns about spending cuts by saying that the president is working to preserve important programs that help the economy grow — such as investments in education — while taking seriously the need to reduce the debt. The White House also has said that any reductions in government entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid must be accompanied by tax increases on the rich and cuts in defense spending.

“We can take a balanced approach toward reducing our deficit in the long term while protecting the investments which will enable us to grow in the 21st century,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.

The White House on Tuesday dispatched David Plouffe, one of Obama’s senior advisers, to meet with progressive groups at their routine coordinating meeting at the Capital Hilton, according to people knowledgeable about the meeting.

In the past, Obama has expressed exasperation with left-leaning groups because they had not credited him with achieving some of their goals, such as making affordable health care more widely available, under difficult political circumstances.

Since the budget deal was reached Friday, the White House has sounded two competing themes. It has trumpeted the cuts as being among the largest annual spending reductions in history, while arguing that they wouldn’t undermine economic activity.

“[W]hile the level of cuts was high . . . it does not have a negative impact on our economy,” Carney said. “The highest principle the president took into this negotiation was that we must not do anything that harms our recovery.”

But many liberals said Tuesday that they feared Obama had taken steps that would damage the economy. Leading liberal columnists joined with activists to pounce on the White House, questioning why the president is apparently embracing the image of deficit cutter rather than job creator.

Those frustrations have followed dismay on the left over Obama’s health-care law and the tax deal he negotiated with Republicans in December — not to mention elements of the administration’s foreign and trade policies.

The liberal activist group MoveOn.org, whose vast membership mobilized for Obama’s election in 2008, issued an e-mail blast to members Tuesday decrying the president’s deal with the GOP last week and the prospect that he might embrace some of his deficit commission’s ideas on deficit reduction.

Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn, said many of its 5 million members “worked their guts out” to help elect Obama. But, after the recent string of dealmaking with the GOP and the president’s apparent willingness to compromise on entitlements, he said the base could well stay home in 2012.

“If the president and the Democrats don’t stand up to Republicans, I don’t see people coming out and doing the work that it would take to get them elected,” Ruben said. “If they came out to vote, these die-hards might vote for the president, but whether they open their wallets and their hearts and their address books and hit the pavement, that’s a totally different thing.”

A liberal group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said Tuesday that more than 60,000 liberals responded to an e-mail by committing not to donate to Obama’s reelection campaign if he cuts Medicare or Medicaid spending.

Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Obama has apparently “abandoned” his earlier view that increased spending was needed to stimulate the economy. And that suggests he may look for a bargain on entitlements.

“If he feels like the path of least resistance is to cut a deal, even if that means unwinding Medicare and substantial cuts to Social Security, I think he might do that,” Baker said.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)--an avowed liberal who nevertheless is part of a bipartisan group of senators working on deficit reduction--said he understood the frustration of liberal advocates, but believes strongly that Obama has no better choice.

“We’re going through the stages of grief when it comes to our national debt, certainly on the left,” Durbin said at a breakfast with reporters Wednesday morning sponsored by Bloomberg News. “. . .At the end of the day, this is going to be a painful process.”

The near-budget shutdown of last week, Durbin said, and the need to dramatically cut domestic spending, “has been a wake up call to the left: that if you don’t move in a new direction to deal with this, then there’s going to be a re-run of this season opener with regularity.”

Some liberal activists say they recognize that Obama faces difficulties.

“I don’t think the president can be an inactive observer to a debate that is clearly going to be front and center in Washington — and that’s the deficit,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

He said the speech on Wednesday will offer the perfect opportunity for Obama to rebut Republicans’ claims that the best way to cut the deficit is simply by drastically slashing government programs.

goldfarbz@washpost.com

wallstenp@washpost.com

CIA’s brain drain: Since 9/11, some top officials have moved to private sector

Image via Wikipedia

Entrance to CIA HQ

By Julie Tate, Tuesday, April 12, 11:05 PM

In the decade since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, private intelligence firms and security consultants have peeled away veterans from the top reaches of the CIA, hiring scores of longtime officers in large part to gain access to the burgeoning world of intelligence contracting.

At least 91 of the agency’s upper-level managers have left for the private sector in the past 10 years, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. Several of the top positions have turned over multiple times in that period: In addition to three directors, the CIA has lost four of its deputy directors for operations, three directors of its counterterrorism center and all five of the division chiefs who were in place the day of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In many quarters in Washington, government officials decamp for the private sector as a matter of course. Defense consultancies routinely hire generals retiring from the Pentagon; the city’s lobbying firms are stacked with former members of Congress and administration officials.

But the wave of departures from the CIA has marked an end to a decades-old culture of discretion and restraint in which retired officers, by and large, did not join contractors that perform intelligence work for the government. It has also raised questions about the impact of the losses incurred by the agency. Veteran officers leave with a wealth of institutional knowledge, extensive personal contacts and an understanding of world affairs afforded only to those working at the nation’s preeminent repository of intelligence.

Among the CIA’s losses to the private sector have been top subject-matter experts including Stephen Kappes, who served as the agency’s top spy in Moscow and who helped negotiate Libya’s disarmament in 2003; Henry Crumpton, who was one of the CIA’s first officers in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks; and Cofer Black, the director of the agency’s counterterrorism center on Sept. 11.

The exodus into the private sector has been driven by an explosion in intelligence contracting. As part of its Top Secret America investigation, The Post estimated that of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. Thirty percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies is made up of contractors.

Those contractors perform a wide range of tasks, among them assessing security risks, analyzing intelligence and providing “risk mitigation” services in foreign countries.

“Since 9/11, the demographics of the agency have been out of whack. A number of people left the agency earlier than you would think, and you had a large influx of younger people,” said Robert Grenier, a 27-year agency veteran who is now chairman of ERG Partners, a boutique investment bank specializing in the intelligence industry. “The average experience of an officer now is much lower than it has been traditionally, and that has its effects on the agency.”

For private firms seeking to tap into the lucrative industry of intelligence contracting, the value of having agency officers on the payroll is hard to overstate. And although the agency pays its top managers large salaries — the most senior officers make nearly $180,000 a year — private firms are generally able to offer more.

This report is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former CIA officials. The Post compiled its list of more than 90 upper-level managers
by identifying agency personnel who left for the private sector after serving as directors, deputy directors or chiefs of the CIA’s various divisions, as well as other members of the leadership of the Directorate of Operations, now known as the National Clandestine Service.

CIA spokesman George Little said that “any suggestion that there isn’t world-class, senior expertise at the CIA is flat wrong.”

“Retirement is a fact of professional life,” Little said, “and the CIA has created strong mechanisms to assist our officers as they explore opportunities after retirement and to retain their knowledge before they go.”

The bulk of the agency’s losses to the private sector came roughly from 2002 through 2007, as business with intelligence contractors spiked. In fiscal 2010, a senior U.S. official said, attrition rates at the CIA were at an all-time low.

Some of the officials quoted for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities involved in discussing the agency’s inner workings.

Few of them cited problems at the agency as their reason for leaving. Rather, they said, the choice was often financially driven.

One former senior official who had worked in government service for more than 25 years said he looked at the opportunities for advancement at the agency on the one hand and at the looming costs of college tuition for his children on the other. He chose the private sector.

“It was a practical matter,” he said.

Contractors calling

Years of intelligence reforms found the CIA unprepared for the events that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. From 1990 through 1996, Congress had slashed the intelligence community’s budget every year, and from 1996 through 2000, it effectively left the budget flat.

Suddenly, with a demand for better intelligence, the agency needed more bodies. It needed people to deploy to Afghanistan. It needed top-level linguists. It needed interrogators. Insiders and outsiders quickly concluded that the CIA needed contractors.

Richard “Hollis” Helms, a longtime overseas officer and former head of the agency’s European division, founded Abraxas Corp. in the days after the attacks. Helms identified the areas in which the agency needed the most help and began aggressively recruiting current and former intelligence professionals.

Those professionals included mid-level analysts from the Directorate of Intelligence. But they also included top brass such as Rod Smith, a former chief of the agency’s Special Activities Division, and Fred Turco, one of the original architects of the CIA’s counterterrorism center and the former chief of external operations. Meredith Woodruff, one of the agency’s most senior female operatives, signed on to Abraxas in 2006.

“Hollis is brilliant; he realized there was a huge market out there to exploit. He printed money for a while — hired tons of CIA staffers and doubled their salary. He was the first agency guy to figure it all out,” said one former chief of station, the term for the top CIA officer at a U.S. embassy. “You would see people leave the CIA on a Friday and come back on Monday in the same job but working for Abraxas.”

Barry McManus, an agency veteran, was among those who saw the promise of Abraxas.

McManus had worked for the CIA his entire career, with the exception of a few years on the D.C. police force. He started out as a bodyguard for CIA Director William J. Casey, then climbed through the ranks, eventually doing work in more than 130 countries. By 1993, he had become the CIA’s chief operations polygraph examiner and interrogator, responsible for interviewing high-level terrorism suspects and others in the process of interrogation.

But when he turned 50 in 2003 and found himself eligible for retirement, McManus said, he realized he wanted to do something else.

Now, as vice president of training and education at Abraxas, he spends much of his time training others in the law enforcement and intelligence world. Among his contracts is one with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which hired him to lead a four-day class that covers an introduction to terrorism.

According to government contracting documents, in a separate four-day period in 2006, McManus made nearly $40,000 for leading a seminar for immigration officers in “detecting deception and eliciting responses.” A year later, he secured a $238,000 contract to perform guest lectures. Pretty soon, more contracts began rolling in.

McManus said he is well compensated for his work at Abraxas. One of his first big purchases in post-agency life: a black Maserati GranTurismo, which retails for $160,000.

Helms, Abraxas’s founder, declined to be interviewed. In 2009, the privately held firm had an estimated 470 employees and annual revenue of $90 million. Late last year, Cubic, another defense contractor, acquired Abraxas for $124 million.

Growing demand

Many former CIA officers say they are surprised at their worth in the private sector. Some are surprised the private sector wants them at all.

At a 2009 conference hosted by the Digital Government Institute, John Sano, former deputy director of the National Clandestine Service and now a director of business development at Cisco, cracked a joke about his background.

“Let me tell you about my technological expertise: I have none,” Sano told conference attendees at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. “I just figured out how the spring on this pen works. That is the limit to my expertise.”

If he didn’t bring technical expertise to Cisco, Sano, a 28-year vet­eran of the agency, did bring something else: the ability to help the firm navigate the sometimes mystifying layers of bureaucracy in Washington.

The same can be said of countless other CIA veterans. A top-level official with experience at the agency might know the right people on the right committees or be able to help identify federal employees who play a key role in awarding a lucrative intelligence contract. They also know how the intelligence world works.

“If you worked on the seventh floor of the agency, you have a view of everything that’s going on in the world from Marrakesh to Bangladesh,” one former operations officer said. “That knowledge is invaluable to companies working internationally.”

Outside the intelligence world, corporations have found reasons to turn to CIA vet­erans in the post-9/11 era. Many former officers now head security for multinational firms. Among others, Robert Dannenberg, a former Central Eurasia division chief, left the CIA to run BP’s international security affairs division and now is the director for global security at Goldman Sachs.

When Mel Gamble, a 40-year veteran of the agency, retired in 2008, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He was retiring as the chief of recruitment for the National Clandestine Service, after serving in jobs that included being operations officer and eventually a chief of station in Africa.

In the old days, through the 1990s, there had been an “unwritten rule,” Gamble recalled: “You would retire and go away. Go raise tulips or dogs.”

But some officials with the agency now have concluded that their retirement income is not enough, and they don’t want to stay at the agency working as “instructors or doing task-specific duties,” Gamble said.

“I didn’t just want to go back to the agency [as a contractor] as so many people do,” said Gamble, who ultimately settled on a position at Electronic Warfare Associates, a defense contractor based in Herndon that advertises services including network penetration testing and computer forensics analysis.

“They knew the ins and outs of how to deal with [the Defense Department], but they didn’t understand other agencies at all and how they were structured,” said Gamble, who has since left EWA for another company. “I tell them, you need to talk to people at this level, or it’s actually this person at the National Security Council who would make a decision on this project.”

A loss of experience

At the agency, some say the wave of departures has led to a sense of unease.

In 2009, after a double agent blew himself up at a CIA base in Afghanistan, killing seven of the agency’s officers, many former officials suggested that the tragedy might have been prevented had the CIA retained more senior personnel at the outpost.

Some officials questioned why the agency had given one of the top assignments there to an officer who had never served in a war zone. Other former officials raised concerns about how intelligence assets were being handled in the field.

“The tradecraft that was developed over many years is passe,” a recently retired senior intelligence official said at the time. “Now it’s a military tempo, where you don’t have time for validating and vetting sources. . . . All that seems to have gone by the board. It shows there are not a lot of people with a great deal of experience in this field.”

Only a year before the bombing, the agency had instituted a new program to mitigate the loss of institutional memory. The program required officers heading out the door to train their successors or participate in oral histories about their own careers. Some officers even make manuals describing specialized work.

At times, though, a transfer of knowledge has not been enough.

In 2010, after the CIA lost Michael Sulick, the head of its clandestine service, to retirement, it chose not to replace him from within its current ranks. Rather, the agency tapped John D. Bennett, a CIA veteran who had served as station chief in Pakistan and who had retired only two months before.

Back from retirement

As far back as 1989, the agency established a retirement program to help former employees adjust to life outside the bubble of the agency. The program, now three months long, teaches agency officials about their benefits and financial management skills.

But these days, it also functions as a recruitment space.

When the retirement program was conceived, fewer than 20 firms came to speak to the retiring classes about opportunities in the workforce outside the agency. Today, 40 to 50 companies vie to attend an agency-sponsored job fair held 10 times a year at the CIA’s retirement center in Reston. Major contractors — including SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton and CACI — are regular participants.

One agency participant who interviewed with top defense contractors described the conversations as an exercise in figuring out whom he knew in the intelligence world.

“With a couple of firms, it was sort of a blatant, how-can-we-
exploit-your-Rolodex conversation,” said one former intelligence officer. The chief executive of the company he ended up working for told him: “We want to know how the intelligence world works and how we can provide services to them.”

At the agency, Director Leon Panetta has helped slow the exit of talent. But this year he has seen his top three leaders leave the agency. Collectively, they represented more than 75 years of institutional knowledge and operations talent.

One former official said the loss of so many insiders has taken a toll on those connected to the agency.

“Honestly, it’s painful to see, and it’s not in the national interest to see so many men and women at the peak of their experience walk out of the agency at the age of 52 or 53,” the former official said. “The agency would be well served to implement stronger incentives to encourage people to stay.”

Bob Wallace, a 32-year agency veteran who now runs Artemus Consulting Group in Herndon, suggested that the departures from the agency reflect more than the draw of a big salary outside government. Rather, he said, some veterans who have risen to the management level are leaving for a much more mundane reason: bureaucracy.

“People tire of meetings,” Wallace said. “Eventually, they decide they want to jump to the private sector so they can be back on the street again — doing what they love.”

tatej@washpost.com

Chinese Troops Surround Tibetan Monastery

VOA News April 12, 2011

Photo: AP

Tibet flag

Exiled Tibetan groups say Chinese security forces have surrounded a Buddhist monastery in Sichuan province, following the self-immolation of a young Tibetan monk last month.

Phuntsok died March 16 after setting himself on fire to protest Chinese rule in Tibet.

His self-immolation coincided with the third anniversary of violent protests against Chinese rule in Tibet.

The Indian-based Tibet Post newspaper says Chinese security forces have cordoned the monastery in Ngaba prefecture, restricting the movement of the monks and visits to the monastery.

The report says the monks are now facing food shortages because they depend on offerings by local residents through the monastery administration.

Exiled Tibetan sources say a group of people tried to approach the monastery around noon Monday, but were blocked by Chinese troops.

Reports say that in the aftermath of Phuntsok's protest and the subsequent show of solidarity by the monks at Kirti monastery, authorities have taken drastic measures to bring them under control.

More than 2,500 monks reportedly live in the monastery.

Tibetan groups are calling on the international community and human rights groups to intervene and stop China's security clampdown.

Daughter of Prominent Bahraini Activist Challenges Obama

Cecily Hilleary April 12, 2011

Photo: Photo: courtesy - Zainab Alkhawaja

A screen shot of Zainab Alkhawaja's Twitter feed the night of her father's and other relatives' arrests. On Twitter and in the blogosphere Zainab is known as AngryArabiya.

Zainab Alkhawaja, the daughter of a prominent Bahraini human rights activist, has written a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama calling upon him to stand up for freedom and speak up on behalf of her father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja. He, along with other relatives, was arrested Saturday by security forces.

Zainab, who has been sharing her story on her blog and via Twitter, where she is known as “AngryArabiya,” has also started a hunger strike to draw attention to her cause.

Contacted by phone, Zainab read for us some passages from her letter to Obama.
“Mr. President,… when you were sworn in as President of the United States, I had high hopes.  I thought, ‘Here is a person who would never have become president if it were not for the African-American fight for civil liberties. He will understand our fight for freedom.’

courtesy - Zainab Alkhawaja

Zainab Alkhawaja

What was it you meant, Mr. President? YES WE CAN…support dictators? YES WE CAN…help oppress pro-democracy protesters? YES WE CAN…turn a blind eye to a people suffering?”

Zinaib also recounted for us in her own words the events surrounding the arrest of her father and other relatives Saturday.

“I have a one-year-old daughter. When I heard that they were going to come for my father, I took her out and left her with some friends. Just in case something would happen, I didn’t want her to be part of this, I didn’t want her to get scared.

At about 2 a.m., they did arrive. The first thing that we heard, knowing that they had arrived, was the banging with a sledgehammer on the building door. They were breaking it. Then we heard them running up to the apartment, and in about 30 seconds, they broke the door to the apartment as well.

Five minutes before they had arrived, my father was telling all of us to be calm and to be patient, and if they do come, he did not want to see anyone crying or shouting. He said he would go with them voluntarily, and he said, “Let’s keep our dignity and respect.”  And just as he was going to speak with them, and I expected he was going to say, “Calm down, I will come with you, please don’t hurt my family,” just as he opened his mouth to speak, the man started saying, “Down on the ground” in very broken Arabic - he was not an Arab - and then he held my father from his neck, from his throat. And he started pulling him away. He pulled him on the stairs, he was dragging him on the stairs while other security forces were hitting him and kicking him and punching him.

courtesy - Zainab Alkhawaja

Abdulhadi Alkhawaja

They were all wearing black uniforms and they were all masked and they were all armed. And they were beating him. And I heard him gasping for air and saying, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

And that’s when I decided that was enough. I wasn’t just going to stand and watch this happen. I ran down the stairs and I was telling them, “Please don’t hurt him, don’t beat him, he’s willing to go with you voluntarily, why are you hitting him?”

One of them started saying, “Beat her up too and arrest her, we’ll take her as well.”

But instead of that, one of the masked men, he grabbed me from my shirt and he started dragging me up the stairs… I saw my father fallen on the stairs as they were dragging him, but he wasn’t moving at all.

And then I saw them take my husband and my two brothers-in-law. They were taking them away like they were two prisoners of war, with their heads forced down. And I saw drops of blood on the stairs. And I knew that my father had been really hurt. Even though my father was unconscious, they were still beating him and kicking him and cursing him and saying that they were going to kill him.

We have no idea where they are. We haven’t even gotten a phone call from them saying that they’re okay.

And that’s why the last thing that I could think of doing is to just go on hunger strike. I don’t like the feeling of being helpless, of sitting here wondering how they are torturing my father, my husband, my brother-in-law and my uncle. This is my way of trying to do something, of trying to help them, of trying to get the world to realize what’s happening here and what’s happening to my people, what’s happening to my family.”

After sharing her story, Zinaib ended with another passage to her letter to President Obama.

“I ask of you to look into your beautiful daughters' eyes tonight and think to yourself what you are personally willing to sacrifice in order to make sure they can sleep safe at night, that they can grow up with hope rather than fear and heartache, that they can have their father and grandfather's embrace to run to when they are hurt or in need of support. Last night my one-year-old daughter went knocking on our bedroom door calling for her father, the first word she ever learnt. It tore my heart to pieces. How do you explain to a one-year-old that her father is imprisoned? I need to look into my daughter's eyes tomorrow, next week, in the years to come, and tell her I did all that I could to protect her family and future.

For my daughter's sake, for her future, for my father's life, for the life of my husband, to unite my family again, I will begin my hunger strike," writes Zinaib.

Bahraini officials have rejected claims of a targeted campaign against opposition activists, insisting authorities are only doing what was necessary to ensure law and order.

Critics suspect many countries have been reluctant to take a firm stance on Bahrain because of the emirate’s strategic importance as a Western ally in the oil-producing Persian Gulf region. Bahrain is also home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

More Horn of Africa immigrants in Yemen despite unrest

Photo: Contributor/IRIN

Ethiopian immigrants sitting outside the offices of the Charitable Society for Social Welfare in Haradh, Yemen

SANAA, 13 April 2011 (IRIN) - The number of immigrants arriving in Yemen from the Horn of Africa since the beginning of 2011 has increased despite the current political turmoil, raising fears that the government may find it hard to provide for them.

Some 21,577 arrivals were recorded by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the first quarter of 2011, compared to 9,439 during the same period in 2010, and 16,932 in 2009. This year's figures are the highest since 2008.

Yemen has, since February, been in the grip of nationwide protests against long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and more than 100 people have been killed.

"I don't know how the government can provide protection for this increasing number of illegal immigrants and refugees coming from the Horn of Africa while it is struggling to protect its own citizens," said Mohammed al-Fuqmi, rapporteur for the government-run National Committee for Refugee Affairs.

The data shows that while the number of Somalis has decreased, the number of Ethiopians has increased.

Unlike the Somalis, who tend to take the perilous 35-hour voyage from the northern Somali port of Bosasso to Yemen's southern coast, most Ethiopians reach Yemen via Djibouti - a much shorter journey of up to 10 hours, according to Ahmad Akam, a Yemeni coastguard official at the port city of Mukha.

"Their sea voyages are less risky, compared to the more adventurous voyages made by those coming from Bosasso," he told IRIN said.

Why the influx?

Ame Abdu Shabo, chairman of the Oromo Refugee Community in Yemen, attributed the increasing influx of Ethiopians to conflict in the Oromo region. Some of the new arrivals, he added, had been harassed by armed Yemenis demanding money in Dabab village near the southwestern coast in Taiz Governorate.

“We found out that four Oromo women and a man [were] being held captive for more than one week by armed men in Dabab,” he said. “Each one of them was asked to pay a ransom of US$300. The four complained of being tortured and beaten by their captors daily because they couldn’t pay.”

Jamal al-Najjar, an information assistant with UNHCR, said the agency was following up the matter with the authorities in Taiz.

Official Yemeni government estimates put the total number of African refugees and illegal immigrants in the country at more than 700,000.

ay/cb

Timeline of key events in Syria since mid-March

Photo: Hugh Macleod/IRIN

Syrians at a previous protest. About 200 people have died in recent clashes between security forces and protestors (file photo)

DUBAI, 13 April 2011 (IRIN) - Syria has been under emergency law since the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1963 and banned all opposition parties. Since early March 2011, there have been regular protests in a number of towns and cities, with the southern town of Dera’a a focal point. About 200 people have died in recent clashes. Below is a timeline of some key developments since 16 March:

16 March - “Silent” protest in Damascus by 150 members of imprisoned families and friends. Four protesters killed and dozens wounded by security forces in Dera’a, near the border with Jordan.

18 March - Demonstrations in Dera’a demanding political freedom and an end to corruption in Syria.

20 March - People continue to demand an end to Syria’s long-running emergency law banning political opposition. Crowds set fire to headquarters of the Ba’ath Party in Dera’a.

21 March - Hundreds of security forces line the streets of Dera’a, but do not confront thousands of mourners marching at the funeral of a protester killed in the town.

22 March - In a fifth consecutive day of demonstrations against the government, hundreds of people march in the southern cities of Dera’a and Nawa.

23 March - Reports of Syrian forces killing six people in an attack on protesters in Dera’a, and later the same day opening fire on hundreds of youths marching in solidarity. Faysal Kalthum, regional governor of Dera’a, sacked by President Assad.

24 March - President Assad’s advisers say the president has ordered the formation of a committee to raise living standards and study scrapping the emergency law.

25 March - At least 200 people march in Damascus and hundreds also on the streets of Hama. Amnesty International says at least 55 people have been killed in Dera’a in the last week and there are reports of at least 23 dead around the country, including for the first time in Damascus. Thousands march in funerals for some of the dead; witnesses say protesters in Dera’a toppled a statue of Assad's father, former President Hafez al-Assad. Security forces open fire from buildings. According to Syrian human rights organizations, there are indications that almost all of those who had been arrested in and around Dera'a since 18 March have been released.

26 March - Clashes between security forces and protesters in the coastal city of Latakia kill another 12, according to Syria's state news agency. President Assad deploys the army there the next day. In an attempt to placate protesters, Assad frees 260 prisoners, and 16 more the next day.

27 March - Army increases its presence in Dera’a.

28 March - Security forces fire into the air to disperse hundreds of protesters in Dera’a. Reports of pro-government rallies taking place across the country. Amnesty International cites unconfirmed reports saying 37 more people had been killed since 25 March in protests in Damascus, Latakia, Dera’a and elsewhere.

29 March - Resignation of government following weeks of protests. President Assad appoints former government head Naji al-Otari as the new caretaker prime minister.

30 March - President Assad delivers a speech for the first time since the protests began, but does not announce any major reforms.

31 March - Assad orders an investigation into protest deaths in Dera’a and Latakia. The Syrian state news agency says a panel will study and prepare "legislation, including protecting the nation's security and the citizen's dignity… paving the way for lifting the emergency law" by 25 April.

1 April - Up to eight people are killed after government forces use live ammunition against protesters in the Damascus suburb of Douma.

3 April - President Assad appoints Adel Safar, minister of agriculture in the last cabinet, to form a new government.

4 April - Mohammad Khaled al-Hannus appointed governor of Dera’a.

8 April - Security forces open fire on protesters across Syria killing as many as 26 people, mostly in Dera’a.

10 April - Reports of shooting, many injuries and 200 arrests in the coastal town of Baniyas, 300km northwest of Damascus, following clashes in the area.

11 April - Some 500 Damascus university students call for more political freedom. According to the Syrian Human Rights League, opposition figure, writer and journalist Fayez Sara, was arrested, as well as bloggers, activists and young opposition supporters. According to Human Rights Watch, there are reports of beatings and torture inside prisons.

Sources: Alertnet, Al-Jazeera, Amnesty International, BBC, Montreal Gazette, Reuters, Syrian news agency SANA

Benghazi hospitals struggle to treat war-wounded

Photo: Kate Thomas/IRIN

An injured man waits to be operated on in a Benghazi hospital. He was shot by pro-Gaddafi forces while fighting on the frontline at the beginning of March

BENGHAZI, 13 April 2011 (IRIN) - Al Hawari hospital may be the most modern medical centre in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, but the large number of war wounded it has received in the last two months has stretched its limited resources.

"When the fighting began, most of the injured - both civilians and soldiers - were transferred here," said the hospital's senior medical officer Fabri El Jroshi. "We were missing a lot of important equipment to treat them, and we still are. We need material for fractures and fixtures and we badly need more nursing staff.

"Sometimes patients will find a doctor here, but no equipment for fixing a broken bone."

The 500-bed hospital has received 800-1,000 patients with war-related problems, El Jroshi told IRIN. "Providing physical therapy is also difficult. Again, we just don't have the equipment. Even before the conflict we had problems treating certain groups of patients, especially in the orthopaedic field."

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency coordinator for Libya Simon Burroughs said: "All the doctors and medical staff that we've met in Benghazi, Brega and Ajdabya are incredibly skilled and dedicated. Although doctors are coping, many foreign nurses working in eastern Libya have now fled, leaving gaps in many health facilities. Medical students are doing their best to fill some of the gaps."

At one point, MSF left Benghazi after the security situation deteriorated. It is now back and has so far provided more than 30 tons of medical supplies to different hospitals, including surgical kits and equipment required for the treatment of gunshot wounds.

“On a more global level, we are struggling to get a clear picture of the needs as the security situation does not allow us to undertake even some basic assessments," Burroughs added. "When we tried to reach the town of Ras Lanuf - 300km west of Benghazi - we had to turn back twice because of fighting and insecurity.”

Transferred to Qatar

The most severely war-wounded patients have been transferred from Benghazi's hospitals to medical facilities in Qatar. Benghazi doctors are also having to deal with cases which were rare previously, like rape and paralysis.

Twenty-six-year-old Abdusalam* was admitted to the hospital last week, after being hit by a NATO strike that unintentionally targeted a group of rebel fighters heading for the frontline near Ajdabiya. He fractured his thigh and sustained bullet wounds to the lower chest. His mother and sister were not aware he was a rebel fighter, he said.

"My mother is sick and I didn't want to worry her. My father and brothers are proud of me though… We saw NATO planes flying above us and then suddenly, for no reason, they started to strike us… Before the revolution began, I was sitting behind a desk. I was an employee in an office. Once my body heals, I hope to go back to the frontline," he told IRIN.

Photo: Kate Thomas/IRIN

The mood in Benghazi remains defiant, despite little progress by the rebel fighters

"I would like to go to the frontline too, but I have a job. And treating the injured is just as important," El Jroshi said.

Shortage of nurses

Nursing resources are stretched. According to the International Organization for Migration, several hundred Filipino nurses have left eastern Libya since the unrest began.

Jeanette Calo is one of those who decided to stay. A Filipino nurse who left Manila for Benghazi a year ago, she said there was a shortage of nurses. Seventy of her colleagues at the Al Hawiya hospital have returned to the Philippines.

"I decided to stay because it is my job to be here to care for the patients, especially the rebel fighters injured on the frontline. I had no experience treating gunshot wounds previously, so I had to learn quickly."

For two weeks, at the worst point, the nurses slept at the hospital. "We worked 24-hour shifts, waiting for the injured to arrive," she told IRIN. "Things are better now but we are still lacking some equipment, and we have to work extra hard to make up for the loss of so many nurses."

Calo added that some of her Filipino colleagues were visiting Tripoli when the unrest began. Unable to return home to Benghazi, they were instead recruited by a Tripoli hospital that paid higher wages, she said.

One stethoscope

At the El Jalaa hospital on the other side of Benghazi, the situation is worse. Dr Nishal El Fayah said that although stocks of medicine are sufficient, there was a severe shortage of some medical supplies.

On one of the wards, which has 38 beds, there is only one stethoscope and one blood pressure monitor…Recently we received a patient who had hepatitis. In order to ensure that the equipment was not contaminated, we decided not to monitor his vital signs.

"On one of the wards, which has 38 beds, there is only one stethoscope and one blood pressure monitor," he said. "Recently we received a patient who had hepatitis. In order to ensure that the equipment was not contaminated, we decided not to monitor his vital signs."

Medical students, many of whom have been working unpaid at the hospital since the conflict began, have not been able to buy uniforms or appropriate footwear. "The shops are closed, so they have to go around in their old shoes," he said.

Occupying one bed was Younis Abdousalam Edbeshi who was shot by pro-Gaddafi forces while fighting at the beginning of March.

Another patient, Ed Beshi, who fractured his left thigh, was being treated for gunshot wounds, but could not be operated on due to a shortage of medical supplies.

"I was told to go home and return in a few weeks… The hospital didn't have the supplies to help me. I was hoping to be back on the frontline supporting the other rebels, but I'm still here, waiting for an operation… It is frustrating, but the hospitals here were just not ready for war casualties."

Misrata

Although Benghazi's hospitals lack supplies, aid workers say needs are greater in the city of Misrata, where doctors at the polyclinic there have recorded 257 deaths since 19 February, mostly civilians killed by snipers or gunfire. The polyclinic said 949 people had been treated for wounds.

According to Human Rights Watch, Misrata's main hospital had been under construction for the last two years, meaning that the seriously injured have been treated at the polyclinic instead.

"All over Libya, hospitals close for construction, often for several years," Fouad El Mabrouk, a doctor at Benghazi's El Jawaa hospital, said. "Under the Gaddafi regime, construction would begin and then the funds would dry up. Libya has many hospitals that could have been excellent centres for medical treatment, if only construction had been completed.”

Some of those injured at Misrata are being brought by ship to Benghazi.

"We never know who or what to expect," said paramedic Mohammed Nour. "So we have to be prepared for the worst. All we receive is a call saying that a vessel is about to dock at the port, and we get straight down there. Sometimes we have to deal with complicated injuries. Other times, fortunately, cases are much less serious."

*not a real name

kt/eo/cb

Winds of change in Sarawak?

Image via Wikipedia

Taib

April 13th, 2011 by Greg Lopez · 1 Comment

While the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition has dominated politics in Sarawak over the last four decades, significant changes have been taking place in the state that could weaken BN’s control. A key development in recent years is the ascendancy of nationally based parties such as the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) within the opposition forces in Sarawak. Another significant change is the swing in Chinese support from the ruling party to the opposition. These developments together with the emergence of a Dayak intelligentsia sharply critical of the ruling elite will enable opposition forces to provide a credible challenge to the BN in the forthcoming Sarawak state assembly elections. This paper details how opposition forces will fare in the elections. It also discusses the issue of succession to Taib, who has been Chief Minister for thirty years, and outlines key developments in the ruling state coalition since the 1960s that led to the rise of Parti Pesaka Bumiputra (PBB) as the dominant party in the BN coalition.

- Extracted from Faisal S. Hazis, “Winds of change in Sarawak politics?”,   S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 24 March 2011.

Tags: Malaysia · Sabah and Sarawak · Social movements · Social unrest

Timor-Leste security handover on track, says UN

Photo: Martine Perret/UNMIT

Policing responsibility was handed over to the Timorese in March 2011

BANGKOK, 12 April 2011 (IRIN) - Timor-Leste is on course to take on full security responsibilities after national forces officially assumed policing at end-March, according to the UN.

The situation is now stable, Gyorgy Kakuk, a spokesman for the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), told IRIN. Presidential elections are expected to be held in May 2012, following which the UN is scheduled to depart.

"The UN and the government are working closely together to plan UNMIT's withdrawal from Timor-Leste at the end of 2012," Kakuk said.

The process is being led by a high-level committee, including President Jose Ramos-Horta, Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Ameerah Haq.

More than 1,400 uniformed personnel in the UN police have been working in Timor-Leste since the government requested help during the 2006 political crisis, when civil conflict broke out in the former Indonesian colony, displacing 155,000 people and destroying 3,000 homes, according to the UN.

Crime rates have fallen by 20 percent in the past year, Kakuk said. At present, 80 percent of all crimes against people are domestic violence-related, and the most pervasive petty crimes are those of opportunity, such as pick-pocketing and theft, which are attributed to high poverty levels, the Overseas Security Advisory Council of the US stated in a 2011 report. 

Where the money is

But while UNMIT remains confident in its gradual phase-out, others worry about the possible economic implications.

In a 2010 country report, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said after the departure of UN forces when Timor-Leste became a sovereign nation in 2002, there was "a sharp contraction in the local economy".

The UN pumps roughly US$20 million in annual salaries into Timor, according to a 2010 International Crisis Group (ICG) report. 

In addition, UN staff spending contributes to approximately 10 percent of the economy, reports the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the 2011 Asian Development Outlook.

While the ADB says the phase-out will potentially exacerbate the poverty of the estimated 41 percent of Timorese who live on less than $1 per day, other sources say the half-island nation is well supported by oil money and the UN presence has had an inflationary impact on local wages and distorted local salaries.

Photo: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

UNMIT is expected to leave at the end of 2012

"Our petroleum wealth provides more than we need. The UN, if anything, has had a negative distorting influence on our economy and society. Its highly paid international staff pushes up the prices of everything from accommodation to everyday consumables," Jose Texeira, a member of parliament with the main opposition party Fretilin, told IRIN.

At the end of 2010, Timor-Leste's Petroleum Fund, set up in 2005, had $6.9 billion in offshore investments, a figure that is expected to exceed $14 billion by 2015, with an annual income of more than $2 billion, the ADB reported.

However, Jim Della-Giacoma, ICG's Southeast Asia project director, says the country's economy should not factor into the UN's withdrawal.

"The handover is long overdue, it should have happened a year ago. It is a positive step now putting the responsibility and ownership on Timorese to maintain their own security," Della-Giacoma said.

Upcoming elections

Confidence has grown in electoral bodies locally and internationally because of the lack of political violence since 2006, despite strong opposing groups in parliament.

"By the time 2012 comes around, we would have had two full parliamentary terms run from election to election, without a coup or irretrievable breakdown in democratic or constitutional rule," Teixeira said.

Timor's politics remains relatively peaceful, despite differences between the leading Alliance of the Parliamentary Majority, a four-party coalition, and opposing parties.

"They continue to channel these differences through established democratic institutions and processes," said Haq in a briefing to the UN Security Council on 22 February.

No social or political instability associated with the upcoming elections is expected, but more UN volunteers will be brought in "to support the electoral management bodies", Kakuk said.

"We believe that the institutional problems and political tensions that existed to create the 2006 crisis no longer exist," said Teixeira.

dm/nb/ds/mw

Japan rates nuclear crisis at highest severity level

Image via Wikipedia

Chernobyl nuclear power plant

By Chico Harlan, Tuesday, April 12, 6:42 AM

TOKYO — Japanese authorities on Tuesday raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to the highest level on an international scale, on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Officials from Japan’s nuclear agency reclassified the ongoing emergency from Level 5, an “accident with off-site risk,” to Level 7, a “major accident.” The reassessment comes at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency says the plant is showing “early signs of recovery” but is still in critical condition.

At a news conference in Tokyo, Hidehiko Nishiyama, the chief of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, emphasized that radiation released from Fukushima amounted to one-tenth the total released from Chernobyl. But the plant continues to spew radiation, and at a separate news conference, an official from the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that “our concern is that the amount of leakage could eventually reach that of Chernobyl or exceed it.”

The stark assessment reinforced the sense that this nuclear emergency ultimately will cause problems that exceed those first predicted by the government, which has downplayed long-term safety concerns and only Monday expanded its mandated 12-mile radius evacuation zone.

Still, the upgraded severity reading does not reflect a recent deterioration at the plant. Rather, it suggests Japan’s evolving understanding of the damage that occurred there one month ago — and the contamination that has been leaking ever since.

“We are taking this extremely seriously,” Tokyo Electric said in a statement signed by its president, Masataka Shimizu. “We deeply apologize for tremendous concerns and inconvenience we are causing the residents in the neighboring areas of the power plant as well as people of [Fukushima] prefecture, and further, to the people of” Japan.

A Level 7 accident, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), is typified by a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects.” That measuring scale was established by the IAEA some 21 years ago, but its guidelines leave plenty of room for interpretations, nuclear experts say.

According to the Kyodo News agency, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission issued a recent report claiming that the Fukushima plant, at one unspecified point after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, had been releasing 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity per hour. A release of tens of thousands of terabecquerels per hour corresponds with the leakage level that the IAEA recommends as a minimum benchmark for a Level 7 accident.

“This corresponds to a large fraction of the core inventory of a power reactor, typically involving a mixture of short- and long-lived radionuclides,” an IAEA document says. “With such a release, stochastic health effects over a wide area, perhaps involving more than one country, are expected.”

Most radiation readings around Fukushima have been decreasing for several weeks now, but the plant still faces numerous risks. Thousands of tons of contaminated water has flooded key buildings adjacent to the reactors. Nitrogen gas is being injected into one unit to prevent another explosion.

In the meantime, the plant faces the constant threat of aftershocks, and on Tuesday a 6.2-magnitude temblor caused a brief fire at a building near Daiichi’s No. 4 reactor. Tokyo Electric said the aftershock did not interrupt the critical injection process used to cool hot fuel rods -- but there had been a 50-minute interruption one day earlier, the result of a 6.6-magntiude quake with an epicenter just 42 miles from the plant.

“Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in a televised address to the nation. “The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline. But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guards down.”

Though the Fukushima crisis now stands alongside Chernobyl on the INES event rating, experts note several important distinctions. No deaths have yet resulted from radiation leaked at Fukushima. At Chernobyl, a single reactor exploded, and a massive cloud of cesium, plutonium and strontium spread across Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Europe. At Fukushima, workers have struggled to stabilize seven reactors and spent fuel pools, but so far the radioactive releases have come as byproduct of emergency cooling efforts, with the venting of radioactive steam and the leaking of contaminated water.

Technically, Japan’s reassessed severity rating applies to only three of Fukushima’s six units — Nos. 1, 2 and 3, which have all sustained core damage. Each of those units, on March 18, had been initially given a Level 5 rating. At the same time last month Japan gave a Level 3 rating to unit 4; that remains unchanged. The IAEA cautioned that Japan could still change its ratings as more information becomes available.

The latest reevaluation underscores the difficulty of measuring the amount of contamination released and the danger it poses. Rather than creating a hard “no-go” circle around the plant, the government has instead singled out five particular towns between 12 and 19 miles from the plant for mandatory evacuation. Residents there should leave within a month, the government said.

Those who stay are at risk of receiving more than 20 millisieverts of radiation in a year — the government’s baseline for evacuations. Exposure at that level doesn’t cause immediate sickness, but it raises risk for cancer and other long-term health problems.

Japan’s various nuclear regulatory groups have come up with widely differing numbers regarding the total contamination released into the environment.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, for instance, says that 6,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137 have been released. Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, meanwhile, quotes a number twice that. Much of that contamination, though, was released in the first week after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi’s primary and back-up power supplies, stopping the cooling of the reactors’ cores.

“Monitoring data available shows that, in my view, the government probably knew around March 16, 17 or 18 that it would reach Level 7,” said Hironobu Unesaki, a professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. “I just don’t understand why it took them so long to raise the level to 7. They were completely slow. ... Their response has been extremely regrettable. The government is being very careful not to cause unnecessary panic, but they are being too cautious.”

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

harlanc@washpost.com

Gaddafi hunkers down under sanctions, rebel economy struggles

Image via WikipediaBy Simon Denyer, Monday, April 11, 7:01 PM

TRIPOLI, Libya — Forced on the defensive on the battlefield, Libya’s rebels are also struggling in the economic war of attrition with Moammar Gaddafi, despite the backing of the West.

Global efforts to isolate Gaddafi and cut off his economic lifeline have put significant pressure on his government. But President Obama and other NATO leaders may find that sanctions do not bring Gaddafi to his knees as quickly as they would hope, if at all.

The panic that gripped the Libyan economy at the height of the crisis has substantially abated, and the government has implemented a series of measures to cope with the sanctions and the loss of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.

The economic situation appears more chaotic in the rebel-held east, with the collapse of much of the public sector and the shuttering of oil production.

“In the long run, sanctions will be quite devastating,” said Mustafa Fetouri, MBA program director at the Academy of Graduate Studies in Tripoli. “But we have had this situation before, and we have the experience to deal with it.”

Keeping the economy afloat amid tight international sanctions is costly, and Finance Minister Abdulhafid Zlitni said in an interview that the government’s money might run out “in a few months.”

Nevertheless, the British-educated economist was optimistic that this would buy Gaddafi’s government enough time — to probe for gaps in the international community’s resolve, to find a compromise that keeps Gaddafi in power or just to persuade old friends to help.

“Just go back to history,” Zlitni said. “When sanctions were imposed in the 1990s, Africans just broke them. They came over here with their planes and their presents.”

The current sanctions are considerably tougher than those imposed by the United Nations in 1992 and 1993 because of Libya’s alleged role in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Nevertheless, cracks are appearing in the global coalition to isolate Gaddafi, after the African Union proposed a peace plan this week that called for a cease-fire and dialogue but would seem to leave Gaddafi firmly in power. Gaddafi backed the plan, but the rebels rejected it.

“In the international arena, we are seeing a lot of interventions to find an end to this, and this is what makes me optimistic this is going to end soon,” Zlitni said.

The bite of sanctions

In the meantime, sanctions are clearly having an effect in the areas under Gaddafi’s control, though his government appears to have found a way to manage.

In Tripoli, fuel is being rationed to a tank a week, while cash withdrawals from banks have been capped at the equivalent of $400 a month. Interest rates will be doubled this week to attract money, much of which is traditionally kept at home, back into the banking system.

The government has increased public-sector salaries by 50 percent to encourage Libyans back to work to fill the gaps left by the exodus of a substantial proportion of the workforce.

That exodus left fuel pumps unmanned and bakeries, normally run by Egyptians, shuttered. But Libyans are gradually stepping in. The huge lines of a week ago at gas stations have all but disappeared, and bread shortages have eased after young women were enlisted to help. On the black market, the Libyan dinar shot up to 3 against the dollar, from 1.3 before the crisis, before pulling back to less than 2.

Hospitals are functioning, but many factories and shops remain closed, construction work has stalled, and imported foods are beginning to disappear from the shelves. The price of cooking oil has risen more than fourfold, as has the cost of a packet of spaghetti.

But Libya has more than a decade of experience living with, and subverting, sanctions. And the harder they bite ordinary people, the easier it will be for Gaddafi to blame the West, as he is doing with some success, Fetouri said.

Growing concern in east

In the east, the fighting and the temporary partition of the country have all but destroyed the economy. Most of the country’s oil comes from the east, but Gaddafi’s forces have worked hard to disrupt production, which has halted. Rebels shipped out a tanker of crude last week, with Qatar acting as middleman, but just two tankers worth of oil remain in stock.

The vast majority of Libyans in the east work in the public sector and were paid out of Tripoli before the fighting began. Rebels have managed to keep salaries coming, but money is running out. Electricity is cut off for two hours a day, and unless oil production resumes, the diesel needed to power the generators will run out within two to three months, officials say.

Across the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, city engineers, doctors, lawyers and businessmen sit at home and wait for the violence to end. Lines for bread and gas are lengthening.

Gaddafi loyalists retain control of Ras Lanuf, home to the country’s largest refinery, and there is continued fighting over the oil town of Brega. Rebels still believe they have the stronger hand economically as long as they control the border with Egypt and receive international support.

But for now, securing the oil fields “is our biggest source of concern,” said Ali Tarhouni, finance minister in the Transitional National Council, the self-appointed rebel government.

In Tripoli, Zlitni is trying to make a virtue out of a necessity, arguing that western Libya will just have to live without oil.

“Oil is not always a good thing. It is a depleting asset; one day it will stop,” he said. “If people don’t realize this and pull up their socks, there is going to be a disaster.”

Oil revenue has made many Libyans lazy, he said. “If you have children, sometimes you have to smack them to make them behave themselves. You don’t like to do it, but you have to.”


denyers@washpost.com

Correspondent Leila Fadel contributed to this report from Benghazi.

Related articles

• Gaddafi's finance chief fears regime is running out of cash (guardian.co.uk)
• Is Negotiating with Gaddafi the Only Way Out? (time.com)