This an Open Thread: Please Come In
US says the flow of jihadists into Iraq has been staunched
· Country’s neighbours have taken action, Petraeus says
· Insurgent attacks at 2005 levels since October
Michael Howard in Baghdad
Friday December 7, 2007
The Guardian
The number of foreign jihadists entering Iraq has fallen by nearly half in recent months as a result of tougher action by the country’s neighbours and the rejection of the “al-Qaida brand” by ordinary Iraqis, the commander of US forces in Iraq said yesterday.
General David Petraeus told the Guardian in an interview that attacks in Iraq had fallen to levels not seen since early 2005, and that “ethno-sectarian violence” which had “surged off the charts” following the bombing of the Samara mosque in February 2006 had now “fallen dramatically”.
USA
The Army’s $200 Billion Makeover
March to Modernize Proves Ambitious and Controversial
By Alec Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2007; Page A01
EL PASO — A $200 billion plan to remake the largest war machine in history unfolds in one small way on a quiet country road in the Chihuahuan Desert.
Jack Hensley, one of a legion of contractors on the project, is hunkered in a slowly moving SUV, serving as target practice for a baby-faced soldier in a Humvee aiming a laser about 700 yards away. A moment later, another soldier in the Humvee punches commands into a computer transmitting data across an expanse of sand and mesquite to a site 2 1/2 miles away. On an actual battlefield, this is when a precision attack missile would be launched, killing Hensley almost instantly.
C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 – The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects – including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody – to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.
Smugglers Build an Underground World
TECATE, Calif., Dec. 6 – The tunnel opening cut into the floor of a shipping container here drops three levels, each accessible by ladders, first a metal one and then two others fashioned from wood pallets. The tunnel stretches 1,300 feet to the south, crossing the Mexican border some 50 feet below ground and proceeding to a sky-blue office building in sight of the steel-plated border fence.
Three or four feet wide and six feet high, the passageway is illuminated by compact fluorescent bulbs (wired to the Mexican side), supported by carefully placed wooden beams and kept dry by two pumps. The neatly squared walls, carved through solid rock, bear the signs of engineering skill and professional drilling tools.
Asia
Three prisoners executed in Japan
Japanese authorities have hanged three men, bringing the number of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, ahead of this weekend’s EU-Africa summit.
He is banned from the EU, but was let in after African leaders threatened to stay away if he was not invited.
UK PM Gordon Brown, who is critical of Mr Mugabe’s human rights record, is boycotting the summit in protest.
EU President Jose Manuel Barroso has criticised Mr Brown’s decision, saying that leaders sometimes have to meet people they disapprove of.executions in the country this year to nine.
For the first time, the names of the hanged men were made public.
Previously, authorities would not release any details about executed men, in order to reduce the psychological damage to their families.
Human rights groups have been critical of the secrecy surrounding executions in Japan, one of the few industrialised countries to retain the death penalty.
China bans Hollywood movies to protect its own film industry
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing
Published: 07 December 2007
China has banned Hollywood films, at least until February and possibly until May, over a trade row with the United States and because American movies are proving too successful and hitting box office for local films. Chinese authorities are also said to be miffed over the US’s continued arms sales to Taiwan.
Hollywood movies are submitted to the all-powerful Sarft (State Administration of Radio Film & Television), China’s main film bureau and censor, before approval.
Middle East
Stay of execution fails to save Iranian man
· Accusers had withdrawn allegations of rape
· Rights group highlights punishment of minors
Robert Tait in Tehran
Friday December 7, 2007
The Guardian
Iran faced criticism over its use of the death penalty yesterday after a man was hanged for rape – despite a retraction from his accusers and the fact that he would have been 13 at the time of the crimes.
Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, was executed in the western city of Kermanshah, after being convicted for raping three boys in 2000. He was put to death in apparent violation of a stay of execution ordered by Iran’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who had requested a review last month after questioning whether the sentence conformed to sharia law.
Suicide bomber kills 15 in Iraq
BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt outside the offices of a local anti-al-Qaida group Friday, killing 15 people, police officials said.
The explosion went off about 9:30 a.m. on the outskirts of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, on a road leading to the town market, said local police Brig. Mohammed al-Tamimi.
Ten of those killed were members of the group, a mix of Sunni and Shiite tribesmen who have partnered with U.S. and Iraqi forces to rid their neighborhood of militants, al-Tamimi said.
At least one among the dead was a woman, and 20 people were injured, he said.
Europe
Kosovo: A declaration of independence – or war?
Balkans on the brink over future of Kosovo
By Daniel McLaughlin in Mitrovica
Published: 07 December 2007
In the offices of the newly elected Kosovo government in Pristina a momentous declaration is being prepared. A new state is about to be born on Europe’s borders.
The historic declaration of Kosovo’s independence will be contained in a “We the People” speech delivered to the Serbian province’s mainly ethnic Albanian majority who have yearned for this moment since the departure of Slobodan Milosevic’s forces in 1999. The declaration could either lead to war or a peaceful route to future EU membership for both Kosovo and Serbia. And the question for Britain is: Will Kosovo prove to be a successful example of the Blair doctrine of humanitarian intervention?
How could this happen here, asks Germany after mother kills five sons
A German mother is believed to have drugged and suffocated her five children before confessing the crime to her doctor, police said yesterday.
The bodies of the children, all boys aged between 3 and 9, were found by police at their home in a northern village, sprawled among scattered toys and rusks of bread.
The discovery of the dead brothers happened only 24 hours after authorities in eastern German found the bodies of three infant girls. Their mother has been taken into custody on manslaughter charges.
The grim findings have sparked an anguished debate in Germany, a country once proud of its elaborate social welfare network.
Latin America
FBI: Gitmo detainee was with bin Laden
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – A Yemeni admitted he was a driver for Osama bin Laden and knew of the al-Qaida leader’s role in the Sept. 11 attack, an FBI agent testified Thursday, countering defense assertions that the detainee was a minor employee with no role in terrorism.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan told FBI agents that he had chauffeured bin Laden around Afghanistan in an al-Qaida convoy after Sept. 11 and overheard the leader say he had expected only up to 1,500 people to be killed in the attack, Special Agent George Crouch said.
“When Osama bin Laden learned it was much larger than that he was very pleased,” Crouch recalled Hamdan telling him and two other FBI agents during one of a dozen interrogation sessions at Guantanamo in the summer of 2002.
Africa
Mugabe arrives at EU-Africa talks
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, ahead of this weekend’s EU-Africa summit.
He is banned from the EU, but was let in after African leaders threatened to stay away if he was not invited.
UK PM Gordon Brown, who is critical of Mr Mugabe’s human rights record, is boycotting the summit in protest.
EU President Jose Manuel Barroso has criticised Mr Brown’s decision, saying that leaders sometimes have to meet people they disapprove of.
No money, not enough food, rampant sickness, night-time raids. Darfur today
A dust cloud blew across the market of the Abu Chok refugee camp in Darfur as Ahmed Abdullah Ibrahim summed up his desperate situation. “It is unsafe for me to go back home and it’s not safe here,” he said, his face wrapped up against the desert winds in a white headscarf. “Even yesterday, we had people in the camp come to attack us. They came in and fired shots.”
Ibrahim’s dilemma is repeated at more than 100 similar camps across Darfur – a region of western Sudan as big as France – and it is one that is focusing renewed scrutiny of the international response to a crisis that has already claimed at least 200,000 lives and forced an estimated 2.5 million people to flee their homes.
