Cables, dispatches and memoranda
A brief world news roundup for 26 November 2008.
United States & the Americas
- State Dept – Well, we don’t comment on transfers from Guantanamo until they actually take place, so – but you’re aware of the Administration’s policy. The President has said, you know, time and again, we’d like to close Guantanamo. So we’ll do that as quickly as we can.
- Thomas Joscelyn – Clear and Present Danger; The Obama administration is about to discover that the terrorists detained at Guantánamo are there for good reason.
- Treasury Dept – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated four Mugabe regime cronies and a number of entities owned or controlled by two of them. The financial and logistical support they have provided to the regime has enabled Robert Mugabe to pursue policies that seriously undermine democratic processes and institutions in Zimbabwe.
- Mike Allen – Defense Secretary Robert Gates has agreed to stay on under President-elect Barack Obama, according to officials in both parties. Obama plans to announce a national-security team early next week that includes Gates at the Pentagon and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as secretary of state, officials said.
- Nosint – A Northrop Grumman Corp U.S. military satellite used to track enemy missiles stopped working in mid-September, underscoring the urgent need to keep a program for replacement satellites on track, a defense official and several analysts said on Monday.
- Marketa Geislerova – The Role of Diasporas in Foreign Policy: The Case of Canada (from 2007)
- ITAR-TASS – The heavy nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser Pyotr Veliki, in the lead of a group of ships of the Northern Fleet of Russia’s Navy, arrived on Tuesday in the port of La Guaira, Venezuela, situated on the Caribbean coast at a distance of 30 kilometres from the capital, Caracas. Frigates of the Venezuelan Navy accompanied the unit of Russian ships in the Venezuelan territorial waters.
- Jerusalem Post – Israeli concern about Teheran’s inroads into Latin America emerged at a meeting Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni held with her visiting El Salvadoran counterpart on Tuesday, during which she warned that South America was fast becoming a platform for spreading Iranian ideology.
- AFP – At least 84 people have been killed and more than 54,000 forced to flee by flooding from heavy rain that has pounded southern Brazil for nearly two months, regional Civil Defense officials said Tuesday.
- ABC – Seven bodies were dumped before dawn Tuesday at a school soccer field in the Mexican border city of Juarez. Neighbors in an upscale neighborhood found the bodies lined up along the field’s fence, along with three banners allegedly signed by a Mexican drug gang.
- NPR – Mexicans working in the U.S. are being hit hard by the economic slowdown. That is hurting their home country, as remittances are Mexico’s second-largest source of foreign currency. Officials are planning for a wave of reverse migration that could be in the millions, as U.S. jobs are slashed.
- Latin American Herald Tribune – A riot early Tuesday in a prison in the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco injured at least 18 people, including six federal police officers, authorities said. The incident began about 6:30 a.m., moments after federal agents began a routine search for weapons and drugs in the cells.
- Miami Herald – This sweltering market town on Venezuela’s southwestern frontier has its own mayor, council and police force. It also has a parallel government of sorts – a group of Communist guerrillas from the neighboring country of Colombia.
Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia
- BBC – Prosecutors in the trial of three men charged over the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya have demanded the dismissal of the judge. Judge Yevgeny Zubov has reportedly been accused of bias and failing to follow correct procedures in the case.
- Nikolai Petrov – One of the most important, but little-noticed, events last week was the heated exchange between President Dmitry Medvedev and Mayor Yury Luzhkov. The mayor fired the first volley on television when he called for the return of direct gubernatorial elections, which the State Duma abolished in 2004 after then-President Vladimir Putin proposed the idea in 2003.
- Intellibriefs – The Russian Defense Ministry is moving to disband the Moscow Military District’s 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motorized Rifle Division and 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division, and to convert them into four brigades.
- Bronwen Maddox – In a week’s time, Nato is going to rebuff Georgia and Ukraine’s hopes of joining the alliance. How should its 26 members handle this to avoid giving Russia the appearance of victory?
- Kyiv Post – Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz agreed Tuesday to pay part of its debt to Russian gas monopoly Gazprom by the end of the month, both companies said. Naftogaz agreed to pay for September gas supplies and part of the debt for the October shipments by Monday, the companies said. But Gazprom said it is sticking to its decision not to sign a contract for future gas supplies until Ukraine pays off its entire $2.4 billion debt for September, October and November shipments.
- Russia Today – Three people, including a child, have died in a car blast near a subway station in Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg. The police have ruled out any terrorist involvement. It’s believed the hand grenade went off in a pocket of one of the passengers of a Lada Priora car.
- Timothy Thomas – Russian Tactical Lessons Learned Fighting Chechen Separatists (from 2005)
- EurasiaNet – Uzbekistan’s recent decision to suspend participation in the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) came as both a surprise and a shock. The Uzbek withdrawal came as a surprise because the EAEC has appeared in recent years to be an organization on the rise. With the resurgent influence of Russia, fueled by rising revenues from energy sales and a recovering national economy, the EAEC was viewed by some officials as a means to help the Kremlin achieve its long-held goal of creating and maintaining a “single economic space” in the former Soviet space. Tashkent’s move takes some wind out of the EAEC’s sails.
- RFERL – Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev has sacked Energy Minister Saparbek Balkybekov amid power shortages in the country. Balkybekov was criticized earlier this month by the pro-presidential Ak Jol (Best Path) Party for insufficiently preparing for the winter season.
Middle East
- MNF Iraq – During multiple operations targeting al-Qaeda in Iraq on Monday and Tuesday, Coalition forces dealt significant blows to the terrorist organization by killing two terrorists, capturing one wanted man and detaining eight suspects.
- MNF Iraq – One U.S. Marine and an U.S. Military Transition team Soldier were killed in a small-arms fire attack while conducting a humanitarian assistance operation near Biaj Nov. 25. Two Marines and three civilians were also wounded in the attack. While in the midst of the unit conducting the mission the unit came under fire by two men, one of whom appeared to be wearing an Iraqi uniform.
- Michael Yon – On November 13th I covered a mission in south Baghdad with soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division. General Petraeus once told me during the height of the fighting, back when violence was the lingua franca and victory was very much in question, that this area was the canary in the mineshaft.
- Hurriyet – Six months after US and Iraqi forces drove Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s once-feared Mehdi Army militias off the streets, the influence of Sadrist movement in the war-ravaged country begins to fade. It is now possible to imagine a future for Iraq in which Sadr plays only a limited role.
- Tina Susman – Was he an Iranian arms smuggler or a restorer of religious sites? Was that cocaine he had with him, or salt? And who arrested him: Americans, Iraqis, or someone else? All of those questions surround the brief detention last week of an Iranian man accused by U.S. officials of being a senior officer of Iran’s elite Quds Force paramilitary unit.
- Al Sumaria – Iraq’s Court acquitted MP Mithal Al Alusi prosecuted for visiting Israel. After lawmakers had voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for participating in counter terrorism conference in Israel, an Iraqi court ruled that there was no explicit law against visiting Israel.
- IslamOnline – Lateef Ahmed knew when he started his band that their music will never be the popular mainstream in conservative Iraq. “Metal has been always hated and misunderstood all over the world, but in Iraq it’s something totally weird…especially if we are talking here about death metal,” Ahmed, the drummer in the Dog Faced Corpse band, told IslamOnline.net.
- Jerusalem Post – Jordan signed a civilian nuclear cooperation deal with China on Monday, as part of its efforts to develop its nuclear energy capabilities. Under the protocol, China will help Jordan mine and enrich uranium, as well as assist in training and studies to build a nuclear station, head of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, Khalid Tuqan, said, according to news reports.
- The National – Ms Qteish is one of 23 women who graduated from a six-week training course yesterday that marked the creation of the first all-female landmine removal team in the Middle East. The course was led by the Norwegian People’s Aid, an international humanitarian organisation. The NPA, which started operating in Jordan two years ago, was invited by the National Committee for De-mining and Rehabilitation, the kingdom’s leading mine-action authority, to help clear the country’s landmines, in accordance with the Mine Ban Treaty, or Ottawa Treaty, which Jordan ratified in 1998.
- NOW Lebanon – Hezbollah has paid Palestinian “terrorist cells” to avenge the assassination of top party operative Imad Mugniyah, according to the Israeli press. The Jerusalem Post quoted unnamed Israeli officials as saying Hezbollah had paid tens of “thousands of dollars to Palestinian terrorist groups, asking them to carry out large-scale attacks against Israel – including the kidnapping of IDF soldiers,” in retaliation for the February assassination of Mugniyah by a car bomb in Damascus.
- Marc Sirois, managing editor of The Daily Star – The United Nations Charter of 1945 does not just enshrine resistance against occupation – including the use of armed force – as a legal right. With all of the heavyweights out of the game, it has paradoxically fallen to Lebanon, one of the smallest and weakest Arab states, to bear most of the load when it comes to resistance. The great majority of Lebanon’s own occupied land has been recovered, thanks almost exclusively to Hizbullah, but some pockets remain under the boot.
- Asharq Al Awsat – Kuwait was plunged into a new crisis on Tuesday after the cabinet in the oil-rich Gulf state resigned over a standoff with parliament, in a move which could lead to early elections.
- KUNA – Kuwait National Assembly (parliament) Speaker Jassim Al-Kharafi on Tuesday extolled His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah’s wisdom and keenness on democracy and stability in the country. He made it certain that there would be neither constitutional nor unconstitutional dissolution of the National Assembly.
Basij forces stage parade in the presence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (photo from Fars News)
Iran
- Fars – Three spies who worked for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, have been arrested by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), an Iranian judiciary official said here on Tuesday. “Members of this network were in direct contact with Mossad,” Tehran’s prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi said, adding, “These individuals have received training in bombing and assassination in (the Israeli) cities of Herzliya and Caesarea.”
- Israel Matzav – Iran’s IRNA news agency is reporting that at least one of the three alleged Israeli spies arrested on Monday had penetrated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. IRNA quoted Teheran General Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi as saying the network formed after Israel’s Mossad spy agency recruited a man who had “previously been in connection with the Guards.”
- IRNA – Iran’s Embassy in Tokyo categorically denied the claim by Japanese daily, Sunkei, about Iran-North Korea nuclear cooperation. The Japanese daily quoted officials of the Iranian Embassy as denying any military cooperation between Iran and North Korea and other countries to make nuclear arms.
- IRNA – The visiting Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and his entourage Tuesday paid tribute to late Imam Khomeini. In a ceremony held at the mausoleum of the Founder of the Islamic Republic in southern Tehran, he laid a wreath on Imam’s tomb.
- Rooz – Coinciding with the intensification in Iran’s military propaganda during the Basij week and the navy day, which was accompanied with publication of new information and claims about the Islamic Republic’s resources and military capabilities, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Iran’s new plans to expand its missile base during a visit to the annual press exhibition. One week ago, former Revolutionary Guards commander Rahim Safavi told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), “Every few minutes we can launch a Sejjil missile.”
- Press TV – Saudi Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz said in a statement that the Persian Gulf region must be free of a ‘catastrophic conflict and arms race’ and instead work toward ‘huge prospects for development and progress’, Gulf News reported on Tuesday. Prince Abdul Aziz, the chief representative of the Persian Gulf Arab littoral states for the UN Development organization, proposed that the agreement obligate all Persian Gulf states not to allow their soil, territorial waters and airspace to be used for launching an attack on Iran.
- UNHCR – Visiting what he termed one of the world’s best refugee camps, High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Friday noted Iran’s long record of generosity to uprooted Afghans and called on the international community to do more to ensure they can finally go home and rebuild their lives. Nearly 3 million refugees remain outside their country, including almost a million in Iran.
- RIA Novosti – The UN World Food Program is to send deliveries of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan via neighboring Iran, a UN official said on Tuesday. The head of the program’s Asian department said that this year convoys carrying humanitarian cargo were attacked 25 times in Afghanistan, and that food supplies worth $850,000 were stolen. He said the food would now be delivered via Iran and other bordering states, thereby avoiding the most dangerous parts of the war-hit country.
South Asia
- UK Parliament, reply from Secretary of State for Defence John Hutton – The number of direct engagements (regardless of the instigator) involving the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and insurgents in Helmand province in each of the last 12 complete months are as follows: 247 in September, 219 in October…
- UK MoD – IN PICTURES: Gurkhas fight for security in Musa Qaleh
- David Milband – Kabul now has blackberry coverage. This is written on the way to Kabul airport. I am travelling to Lashkar Gar with Foreign Minister Spanta – to meet British diplomats and military personnel as well as units of the Afghan National Army. I tried to use an interview with the Today programme to set out in an open way the dilemmas and difficulties but also the forward strategy.
- AFPS – Coalition forces killed six armed militants and captured 12 suspected militants yesterday during operations to disrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan’s Kapisa and Paktika provinces.
- US News – Why NATO Allies May Not Be the Answer to the Military Challenges in Afghanistan
- Stars and Stripes – Along a corridor in the Strike Eagle Complex here, a series of plywood plaques marked with rows of small black bullets and bombs symbolizes the weapons employed by the 492nd Fighter Squadron in Afghanistan during the summer of 2007. “It was a busy deployment,” said commander Lt. Col. Dave Iverson, referring to the boards and the 915 bombs and 25,000 rounds of ammunition they represent. Eight of those bombs and about 150 of those rounds were launched by Iverson and weapons system officer Capt. Rob Bird during a mission that earned them the Distinguished Flying Cross with valor recently.
- Radio Netherlands – President Hamid Karzai has demanded at a meeting with a delegation from the United Nations Security Council that the international community set a timeline for ending military intervention in Afghanistan. President Karzai told the delegation which is visiting his country that he needed to know how long the United States-led war against terrorism is going to be fought or it would have to seek a political solution to the Taliban-led insurgency.
- Shaun Gregory – Pakistan’s internal turmoil and conflict continues, even if much current external media coverage of the country is filtered through the lens of the transfixing global financial crisis and United States election. Both these events indeed reverberate in a Pakistan desperately short of funds and more hesitant than much of the rest of the world about its prospects under a Barack Obama presidency. But the country’s crisis will not be salved by an emergency loan or a new figure in the White House: indeed, it is being reinforced under the influence of Pakistan’s key institutional actors.
- Dawn – At least six Taliban militants were killed overnight as the Pakistani army moved close to rebel hideouts in the Bajaur tribal region, an official said Tuesday.
- Daily Times - NWFP Labour Minister Sher Azam Wazir survived an assassination bid in Bannu district on Tuesday morning, as a police pilot vehicle escorting him was blown up by a remote-controlled explosive device, APP reported.
- Geo – Sources said that some unknown gunmen shot dead naib nazim of Matta tehsil, Liaquat Ali and wounded his aide that was shifted to hospital for medical treatment. Besides, three other people, including a local currency dealer, sustained injuries after unknown assailant opened fire on them near Green Chowk area in Mangora. Security forces targeted militants’ positions with artillery shelling in Matta and Kabbal tehsils. Kanju-Kabbal road is still closed to general traffic for the 15th straight day.
- The News – Four people were killed and eight others wounded when unidentified gunmen opened indiscriminate fire at a hotel in Raisan area of district Hangu. Similarly, three people, including a minor child, were shot dead and two others injured when unidentified gunmen opened indiscriminate fire on a passenger pick-up near Mir Asghar Mela in the limits of Kachai union council in district Kohat.
- MEMRI – In Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), a bomb blast in a Shia mosque has wounded nine people, including a woman.
- Times of India – Suspected Maoist rebels blew up a bridge in Bastar district in Chhattisgarh on Tuesday, killing five police officers who were escorting election officials, police said.
- Siber News – The Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) on Tuesday released photos from the pitched battle reported on Sunday between Uruththirapuram and Kugnchup-paranthan.
- Colombo Page – Sri Lanka defense sources say that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are fleeing northward from their forward defense line at Omanthai in the Vavuniya district of Northern Province. LTTE has shifted the entry/exit point to their territory from Vavuniya to Oddusudan situated on A-34 highway. Meanwhile Troops of Task Force 3 moving further into the rebel-held territory from southeastern fronts captured Mankulam and Olumadu towns, Defense Ministry announced.
Far East & Pacific
- World Bank – The report forecasts that China’s GDP growth rate will be around 7.5 percent in 2009 – down from 9.4 percent in 2008. It also forecasts that China’s export growth is likely to be low in 2009 – around 3.5 percent (in real terms) compared to 11 percent in 2008.
- Radio Free Asia – Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hubei are scrambling to mediate a strike by taxi drivers, the latest in a string of industrial disputes to sweep China amid the global financial crisis. Hundreds of taxi drivers entered the second day of a strike in Suizhou city over increased business costs.
- Straits Times – China’s top court has approved the death sentence of a scientist accused of passing information to Taiwan, making his execution imminent, his daughter said on Wednesday as she appealed for mercy.
- Al Arabiya – In a recent tug of war over power pro and anti-government groups clashed in the Thai capital, as anti-government supporters seized Bangkok’s main International airport lateTuesday, forcing officials to cancel all flights for the day. Prior to the airport seizure, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protestors exchanged fire with pro-government supporters on a road leading to the old airport of Bangkok. At least 11 people were seriously injured according to the emergency officials in the city.
- Simon Roughneen – Perhaps a counter-protest would be launched by pro-Thaksin factions, but how this would fare, again, depends on the attitude of the army, which perhaps is more likely to back a managed government along the lines PAD wants. Conclusion? Maybe not. Thailand would be left split along regional, economic and social lines, with those divides sharpened by a new political system that would keep certain groups from power, perhaps indefinitely.
- Reuters – North and South Korea were negotiating on Tuesday how many South Koreans would be pulled out of an industrial enclave in the North once hailed as a model of cooperation between the rival states.
- DID – Australia’s Hazard(ous) Frigate Upgrade; The FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry Class frigates make for a fascinating defense procurement case study.
- Phnom Penh Post – Prime Minister Hun Sen left Phnom Penh Monday morning for Vientiane, where he will attend the fifth Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam summit, slated to open on Wednesday.
- Pacific Magazine – It appears unlikely that the U.S. government will allow continued visa-free entry to the Northern Marianas for tourists from Russia and China, the Saipan Tribune reports. Visitors from both countries can now enter the U.S. commonwealth without a normal U.S. visa. But the U.S. government will assume control of the island group’s immigration department next June, and the future of the visa-waiver program is in doubt.
Europe
- IHT – The European Union on Tuesday took the unprecedented step of depriving Bulgaria of €220 million in funds, effectively declaring that the Balkan country was too corrupt and prone to fraud to receive the subsidies. For the first time, a member of the 27-union bloc will completely forfeit money that it cannot be trusted to spend properly, reflecting concern among officials, diplomats and fraud investigators over the ability of the Bulgarian authorities to prevent billions of euros in European grants being siphoned off by organized crime.
- Islam in Europe – Spokesperson Martin Bernsen of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) confirms to Dagbladet that the security police is aware with what he describes as special religious activity at asylum shelters. PST has no evidence that the recruiting attempts succeeded. “The asylum seeker said that an imam from Oslo attempted to talk about Jihad – holy war. He wanted to recruit the asylum seeker so that he would go back to Afghanistan. There he would participate in a suicide attack and blow himself up,” says Dagbladet’s source.
- Javno – German police have arrested three men suspected of distributing propaganda on websites on behalf of al Qaeda after raiding a dozen locations across Germany, the federal prosecutors office said on Tuesday.
- Helsingin Sanomat – The planned gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea will run through old sea mine defence lines. During World War II in excess of 100,000 sea mines were placed into the Gulf of Finland. It is considered one of the most heavily mined sea areas in the world. After the war the mines were cleared by cutting their attachment wires so that the mines would not surface. The explosive devices then sank to the seabed. From the planned route of the gas pipeline such sunken mines have been found. Primarily they are in international waters at a depth of more than 70 metres
- VOA – Poland has exhumed the remains of the country’s World War II leader General W?adys?aw Sikorski for testing aimed at determining whether or not his 1943 death was the result of a foreign conspiracy. Many Poles suspect the general, who led a London-based government-in-exile, was killed on orders from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
- BBC – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has warned of a “severe” economic downturn in the UK in 2009. The Paris-based body has predicted that economic output in the UK will fall by 1.1% next year, more than any other major G7 country.
- Spiegel – More than 1.5 million workers in Germany depend on the automobile industry for their jobs. But that industry is now facing one of its worst crises ever. Respected giants BMW and Mercedes are particularly exposed as sales plummet.
- EU Observer – Austria’s pro-European foreign minister Ursula Plassnik has refused to be part of the country’s new governing coalition because it did not rule out future referendums on EU treaties.
Africa
- Middle East Star – Somali pirates have hijacked a Yemeni cargo ship in the Arabian Sea and demanded $2 million as ransom for its release, maritime sources said Tuesday.
- Times of India – A Thai ship-owner on Tuesday complained that one of his fishing trawlers was missing along with 14 sailors. He claimed it was the ship that Indian Navy’s INS Tabar sunk last week as a suspected pirate ship.
- Tony Karon – Battling the Somali Pirates: The Return of the Islamists
- UK Parliament – The UK is currently supporting two international efforts to counter piracy off the Horn of Africa and is involved in planning a third. Currently HMS Cumberland is deployed as part of Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 which has a mandate that includes counter-piracy operations and World Food Programme escort. HMS Kent and RFA Wave Knight are deployed with Combined Task Force 150 which is conducting operations to counter destabilising activity in the Gulf of Aden. HMS Northumberland is currently attached to CTF 150 pending attachment to the planned EU counter-piracy mission which is anticipated to start in December.
- IRIN – Somalia’s first medical doctors in 18 years officially graduated in Mogadishu on 20 November. Twelve men and eight women completed their studies at the Benadir University Medical College (BUMC) and are now working at various hospitals in Mogadishu.
- Mareeg – The commander of Somali military troops trained in Ethiopia has been shot dead in the governments stronghold town of Baidoa on Monday night, residents said. The commander whose name Abdi Ibrahim Afgub was killed as he was heading to his house in Howlwadag village in the town.
- Reuters - Congo’s government ruled out direct talks with Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, saying on Tuesday any meeting was “impossible” outside the framework of a January peace deal the rebels have already rejected.
- HRW – This report focuses on some of the most violent episodes of political repression in Kinshasa and the western province of Bas Congo during the two years following the 2006 elections. The brutal and repressive tactics used by President Kabila and his advisors are emblematic of the resort to violence to stifle opponents.
- Newsweek – Congo: The Bloodiest War; Civilians from the eastern Congo tell their stories
- NATO – From Wednesday 19 to Friday 21 November, the Secretary General, accompanied by Mrs de Hoop Scheffer, paid a visit to Ghana, on the invitation of President Kufuor.
- Xinhua – Twenty prisoners were reportedly escaped from a prison last Sunday in Ambositra, a town 258 km south of here. The prisoners were taking advantage of hours of visit by their relatives to run towards the exit door and threw bricks against the guards before taking the key and escaped, Les Nouvelles, a French-language daily reported on Tuesday. This is the fourth prisoner escape in less than eight days in the island country.
- BBC – Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebel leader Joseph Kony is on his way to sign a peace deal to end Uganda’s 20-year rebellion, the UN mediator says. “Every indication is that there will be signing on 29th [November],” Joachim Chissano told the BBC.
- Javno – Eight renegade rebel fighters were killed in a failed attack on an armoury in western Ivory Coast, the worst incident of violence since a presidential election was postponed, a rebel officer said on Tuesday. Captain Yacouba Diomande of the New Forces rebels who control the northern half of the world’s No. 1 cocoa grower gave a much higher death toll from Monday’s clash at Seguela than had previously been announced by the rebel high command.
- Sudan Tribune – Special police forces surprised two villages in southwestern Ethiopia on Saturday as the inhabitants slept, launching an attack that burned all the houses, killed nine civilians and wounded 23 others, said an official in Gambella region who requested not to be identified by name. Two attackers were also slain during the events. The regional government was apparently trying to force the villagers of Laare and Puldeng into a new area, but they refused to move out until the dry season, by the end of January or February.
U.S. Navy sailors man the rails on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan as they pass by the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Nov. 17, 2008. Ronald Reagan pulled into Pearl Harbor for a scheduled port visit. (photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua Scott)
The Global War
- SWJ Blog – Commanding General, Combined Arms Center, Response to Small Wars Journal Blog Post, “Afghanistan, What Lessons to Apply from Iraq”
- Khaleej Times – The chief U.N. nuclear inspector said that Syria had a right to his agency’s help in planning a power-producing atomic reactor, in what diplomats described as a rejection of U.S.-led efforts to block the aid. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it was “totally inappropriate, we believe, given the fact that Syria is under investigation by the IAEA for building a nuclear reactor outside the bounds of its international legal commitments.
- Ashley Tellis – Whether the civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India is completed right away or whether the war on terrorism in Pakistan chalks up more successes in the next few months, the recent U.S. approach toward South Asia represents a dramatically successful example of what many believe Washington is congenitally incapable: the capacity to think strategically over the long term and implement complex policies that require diplomatic adroitness and political agility.
- Abe Greenwald – Why aren’t American politicians, activist groups, citizens, celebrities, and op-ed writers perpetually screaming for Europe to throw its inhabitants before the mercy of international bodies? And why is Europe obsessed with pointing out America’s distaste for things like the World Court? Because “international” doesn’t mean international; it means nations other than America, and Europe already fits that description whether or not it heeds this UN mandate or that WTO ruling.
- Telegraph – British and American intelligence officials have rejected claims that they spy on each other’s leaders, following an allegation that the US kept a secret file on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
- Magharebia – Tunisia sentenced an alleged top European operative for al-Qaeda to 11 years in prison, AP quoted his defence attorney as saying on Monday (November 24th). Sami Ben Khemais Essid, known as “the Sabre”, was extradited to his native Tunisia from Italy in June. At the time of his arrest by Italian authorities in April 2001, he allegedly worked as European logistics chief for Osama bin Laden. He is also suspected of planning an attack on the US Embassy in Rome.
- US Army – In 1944, all seven main roads in the Ardennes mountain range converged on the small town of Bastogne, Belgium, making control of that crossroads imperative for a German advance in World War II — a place allied forces had to defend at all cost. It remains the scene of the largest land battle in U.S. Army history. Today monuments commemorate the siege of Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge. The 31st annual Bastogne Historical Walk, scheduled Dec. 13-14, salutes the region’s place in history as well.
