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Four at Four by: Magnifico Thu Jul 02, 2009 at 13:00:00 PDT         | More

Well that was quick. A day after the U.S. announced a massive military operation in Afghanistan, the LA Times reports an American soldier is believed to have been captured in Afghanistan. Missing since Tuesday, a U.S. "soldier is believed to have been captured by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan". Mullah Sangeen, a senior Taliban commander, claims the soldier "was captured this week as he left a base in Paktika province on patrol. If the reports are borne out and an American soldier was seized alive, it would be an unprecedented coup for the insurgents. They could exploit a capture for propaganda purposes or demand concessions such as a prisoner exchange." The Guardian adds the U.S. soldier is first to be captured since the invasion began in 2001, adding that American forces are "frantically hunting" for the missing soldier. "The soldier, whose unit is based in eastern Paktika province, was not involved in the ongoing operation in the south of the country." While in southern Afghanistan, the NY Times reports on Operation Khanjar where U.S. Marines try to retake an Afghan valley from the Taliban. "Almost 4,000 United States Marines, backed by helicopter gunships, pushed into the volatile Helmand River valley in southwestern Afghanistan on Thursday morning, reporting little resistance from Taliban fighters, whose control of poppy harvests and opium smuggling in the area provides major financing for the Afghan insurgency." The Taliban is withdrawing rather than fighting. Back in eastern Afghanistan, the LA Times reports Change may be at hand on the Afghanistan frontier with Pakistan. At Forward Operating Base Salerno, the Taliban fires rockets at the Ameircans and then slip away to Pakistan just 20 miles away. "American commanders, however, believe a greater concentration of U.S. and Afghan troops in the border region is beginning to change the equation." However, their "mandate to give chase to the insurgents, at least using Western ground troops, stops at the rugged, mountainous border." Four at Four continues with secret CIA jails an issue in Guantánamo detainee trial, Iraq has highest civilian death toll in 11 months, and global overfishing despite promises.

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The NY Times reports Secret CIA jails are an issue in case against a former Guantánamo detainee. Lawyers for defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, "who was ordered by President Obama to face trial in a civilian court have told a judge in Manhattan that they want to visit the 'black sites' run overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency where their client was held for about two years after he was captured in 2004." His lawyers also said they would ask the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, to order the government to preserve any sites where their client was held. They noted that the C.I.A. has said that it no longer operates detention facilities or black sites, and is planning to decommission them... Mr. Ghailani's lawyers have indicated that they intend to dig deeply into what happened to their client during his years in detention and to determine how his treatment might affect the federal case against him. "It appears undeniable," they wrote, that he "was subjected to harsh conditions and harsh interrogation techniques" while detained in the black sites. The LA Times reports the June death toll of Iraqis was highest in 11 months. In the month before U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, "the death toll in June among Iraqis was the highest in 11 months, the nation's Health Ministry reported Wednesday. A total of 438 Iraqis died in June in shootings, bombings and assassinations, 68 of them members of the security forces. That's the highest number since July 2008". Meanwhile, Reuters reports Vice President Biden makes an unannounced visit to Baghdad. He is there to meet with Iraqi leaders and members of the U.S. occupational force. "This is a moment when we have to make sure that the Iraqis don't take their eye off the ultimate prize," Biden said. Salon reports Overfishing continues at a shocking rate, as countries break one environmental promise after another. When it comes to stopping overfishing in coastal ocean waters, there's a whale of a gap between what nations pledge to do and what happens at sea. That's the grim conclusion of a new study published in PLoS Biology, the first global assessment of human management of fisheries -- designated areas where fish and aquatic animals are caught -- whose coauthors include renowned marine biologists such as the late Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. It's well documented that many of the world's major fisheries are in shocking decline. Some 90 percent of the world's big fish, such as bluefin tuna, blue marlin and Antarctic cod, have almost disappeared from the oceans since the advent of industrial fishing in the 1950s, according to a groundbreaking paper published in Nature in 2003 by Myers and Worm. And by 2048 the world's supply of seafood will likely simply run out, Worm and other marine biologists warned in the pages of Science in 2006. As of 2008, 80 percent of the world's fish stocks were considered either vulnerable to collapse or already collapsed. This sorry state of affairs has inspired numerous international efforts, such as the United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and the Convention on Biological Diversity, in hopes of making more of the world's fisheries sustainable. These initiatives have gained broad acceptance on the world stage, with many countries pledging to adhere to their principles. But where the trawler meets the sea, it's a different story. "Unfortunately, our study shows that there is a marked difference between the endorsement of such initiatives and the actual implementation of corrective measures," observe the authors of the report "Management Effectiveness of the World's Marine Fisheries."

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