IRAQ

Secret Deal Kept British Army Out of Basra Battle - Haynes & Evans, The Times

A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year, The Times has learnt. Four thousand British troops - including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade - watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault. US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts. Hundreds of militiamen were killed or arrested in the fighting. About 60 Iraqis were killed or injured. One US Marine died and seven were wounded.

'Secret Deal with Local Militia' - Damien McElroy, Daily Telegraph

British commanders were accused of turning a blind eye to lawlessness in the city as they forged an IRA-style reconciliation pact with the Madhi army, which controlled swathes of Basra with gangster-like ruthlessness. "Without the support of the Americans we would not have accomplished the mission because the British Forces had done nothing there," said Colonel Imad of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division. "I do not trust the British Forces. They did not want to lose any soldiers for the mission." The Iraqi officer's views were backed up by a senior US advisor to the division, which participated in the March operation. A British colonel in Baghad said at the weekend that Britain had picked a Mahdi army commander in prison as a figure who could stop attacks against UK forces, then based inside the city limits. "We have made some terrible mistakes in Iraq and it is only by talking about them that we will learn from them," said Col Richard Iron. "Last autumn we made a mistake which was understandable but not excusable.

Basra: Six Days on the Sidelines - Deborah Haynes, The Times

A mortar round exploded nearby as the US Marine stepped on to the street in Basra, forcing him to dive back inside his combat vehicle for cover. “That was the first time that I thought, OK, this is serious, we are not playing games any more,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Chuck Western, one of the first Marines to venture into the city in late March to support an Iraqi-led offensive against gangs of well-armed militia. Holed up at an old police station, the 400-strong battalion of Iraqi soldiers was taking a pounding, but the men cheered at the sight of their team of seven military advisers – embedded officers and soldiers who help to train Iraq’s fledgeling forces. The Basra offensive, started unexpectedly by Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, on March 25 to rid the oil-rich port city of armed gangs, was the first real test of the Government’s ability to impose its authority on one of the most lawless parts of the country. It also demonstrated a growing distrust of the British military, which was kept unaware of the plan until the last moment after Mr al-Maliki discovered that Britain had been negotiating with the very militia he was trying to expel.

Iraq Deployment Not Affected, Says MoD - Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian

British defence officials today denied reports that a secret deal between Britain and the Shia militia the Mahdi army prevented UK forces from taking part in a major offensive in Basra earlier this year. Officials in the Ministry of Defence today confirmed the existence of an "accommodation" between British forces and leaders of Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, first reported in the Guardian last year. However, referring to a report in the Times, they dismissed as "absolute nonsense" any link between the deal and the fact that British troops did not take part in the early stages of the Charge of the Knights offensive in March. An official said: "The reason [why UK forces were not deployed initially on the ground] was, we were simply not asked. The reason we were not asked was because [the Iraqi prime minister] Nouri al-Maliki's own credibility was on the line. "The only reason the Americans were involved was because they were with the Iraqi units."

Bad Time, But Basra Safer - Michael Evans, The Times analysis

The repercussions of the decision to withdraw the last 500 British troops from Basra city last September are only now beginning to unfold. While the British Government insists that handing responsibility for security to the Iraqis was right, in retrospect the withdrawal was premature, leaving the military commanders blind to what was going on in the city: in effect a takeover by Iranian-backed Shia militia and criminal groups. “It was a bad day for the British Army,” one senior defence source has admitted to The Times. Worse still was the small print of the deal fixed between the British military and leaders in Basra of the Shia al-Mahdi Army – supporters of the fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - under which it was agreed that Britain’s military would stay out of the city and remain encamped at its base at the airport. When Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, found out about the “accommodation” he was said to be furious. His anger led six months later to the surprise decision to send 30,000 Iraqi troops, backed by more than 900 American Marines and US Apache attack helicopters, into Basra on March 25 in Operation Charge of the Knights to take on the Shia extremists - ignoring the 4,000-strong British contingent at the Basra airfield.

Proposal May End Elections Stalemate - Campbell Robertson, New York Times

After a third day of intense negotiations, Iraqi political leaders may have come to an agreement that would allow nationwide provincial elections to take place by the end of the year. The disputes that have held up a law to provide for the elections centered on the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by Arabs and Kurds, and heavily populated by Turkmens. The Kurds have been insisting that the law include a clause mandating a referendum on whether Kirkuk will join the Kurdistan regional government or remain under the control of Baghdad. The Arabs and Turkmens have consistently refused to include such a clause. The proposed solution, put forth by a representative of the United Nations late Monday night, is simply to include an article calling for a resolution to the Kirkuk issue sometime before the end of October.

Two US Soldiers Killed in Baghdad - Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post

Roadside bombs killed two American soldiers and wounded a third Monday as their patrol drove through eastern Baghdad, the US military said. The attack occurred at 9:30 a.m. in the mostly Shiite enclave of New Baghdad, police said. Earlier this year, US troops and Shiite militiamen of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought each other in and around the neighborhood. The U.S. military did not provide further details about Monday's attack.

AFGHANISTAN / PAKISTAN TRIBAL AREAS

Pakistani Suspected of Qaeda Ties Is Held - Eric Schmitt, New York Times

An American-trained Pakistani neuroscientist with ties to operatives of Al Qaeda has been charged with trying to kill American soldiers and FBI agents in a police station in Afghanistan last month, the Justice Department said Monday night. The scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, who studied at Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was transferred to New York on Monday, and is to be arraigned Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the department said in a statement. Ms. Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003, leading human rights groups and her family to believe she had been secretly detained. But in interviews Monday and in a criminal complaint made public later Monday, American officials said they had no knowledge of Ms. Siddiqui’s location for the past five years until July 17, when Ms. Siddiqui and a teenage boy were detained in Ghazni, Afghanistan.

US Adds 30 Days to Marines' Tours in Afghanistan - Reuters

About 1,000 Marines deployed to train Afghan security forces will have their tours of duty extended by 30 days, a US defense official said on Monday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon has also decided to send fewer than 200 support troops to enhance the ability of Marine trainers to engage in combat with insurgents while on exercises with Afghan forces. The extension, which has not been officially announced, follows an identical move last month for another group of Marines battling insurgents in southern Afghanistan.

Ninety-four Militants, 14 Troops Killed in NW Pakistan - Reuters

Pakistan's army killed 94 Islamist militants and lost 14 soldiers in fighting in the northwestern Swat valley in the past week and plans a major operation against the insurgents, a senior officer said on Monday. The ferocity of the clashes sounded the death knell for a peace deal between the government and militants seeking to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in the alpine valley that was once one of Pakistan's main tourist destinations. "More troops are coming and we will launch a major operation and we will go after the militants in their strongholds," Brigadier Zia Bodla told journalists in Mingora, the main town in Swat.

Guns and Poppies - New York Times editorial

In the morass that is Afghanistan, not just the Taliban are flourishing. So too is opium production, which increasingly finances the group’s activities. There is no easy way to end this narcotics threat, a symptom of wider instability. Even a wise and coordinated plan of attack would take years to bear real results. But the United States and the rest of the international community are failing to develop one. They must work harder, smarter and more cooperatively to rescue this narco-state. The scope of the problem is mind-numbing. Opium production mushroomed in 2006 and 2007, and Afghanistan now supplies 93 percent of the world’s heroin, with the bulk going to users in Europe and Russia. According to official figures, the narcotics trade rakes in about $4 billion a year, which is about half of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. It strengthens the extremist forces that American and NATO troops are fighting and dying to defeat; it undermines the Afghan state they are trying to build; and it poisons drug users across Europe, where many people do not see Afghanistan as their problem and leaders are shamefully ignoring the connection.

IRAN

Iran Set to Respond to Offer - DeYoung and Lynch, Washington Post

Iran will present a formal response today to an offer of incentives by world powers in exchange for suspending its nuclear enrichment program, US and European officials said. But they expressed little expectation of a positive reply. Chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili told European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in a telephone conversation yesterday that he will provide a written explanation of Iran's position on the two-week-old offer to freeze efforts to impose further economic sanctions and begin substantive talks with Tehran, officials said.

Iran Delays Nuclear Discussion - Bronwen Maddox, The Times

Iran has achieved, yet again, what it wants: paralysis of the international wrangling over its nuclear programme while avoiding outright confrontation with the US or Europe. It may not be able to escape another round of United Nations sanctions before the US presidential elections in November. Nor can its leaders be relaxed about the recovery of John McCain in the opinion polls, given that the Republican candidate has taken a more belligerent line. The possibility of military action by Israel, while small, still hovers. Its tactics of trying to keep the thermostat on the dispute steady, by issuing equal amounts of provocation and conciliation, may have bought it the time it wants, however.

Iran Issues Warnings After Defying Deadline - Nazila Fathi, New York Times

Iran warned Monday that it could easily close a critical Persian Gulf waterway to oil shipments and said that it had a new long-range naval weapon that could sink enemy ships nearly 200 miles away. The warning, by the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, followed the weekend expiration of an informal deadline for Iran to respond to an offer of incentives from six world powers to stop enriching uranium. The United States, which has warships deployed in the Persian Gulf, has said new sanctions should be imposed on Iran for failing to respond to the deadline.

Tehran Threatens to Cut World Oil Supply - Associated Press

Iran announced yesterday that it has tested a new weapon capable of sinking ships nearly 200 miles away, and reiterated threats to close a strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf if attacked. Up to 40 percent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage along Iran's southern coast. Tehran has warned it could shut down tanker traffic there if attacked, a move likely to send oil prices skyrocketing.

THE LONG WAR

Hamdan Trial to Jury - Jerry Markon, Washington Post

A military jury began deliberations Monday in the war crimes trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver, a case that poses the first test of the Bush administration's controversial military commission system. The six uniformed officers deliberated for 45 minutes after a two-week trial to reach a verdict on whether Salim Ahmed Hamdan conspired with al-Qaeda in terrorist attacks. Hamdan's trial is the first US military commission since World War II. Critics have attacked the long-delayed system as unfair, but the administration calls it a tough-minded way to bring accused terrorists to justice.

Lawyer: Detainee Aided US in Afghanistan - William Glaberson, New York Times

Secret evidence at the war crimes trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, showed that Mr. Hamdan offered “critical details” to American forces “when it mattered most” in the early days of the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Hamdan’s military lawyer said Monday in his closing argument. The defense lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer, suggested that Mr. Hamdan, during interrogations in late 2001 and early 2002, might have helped in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden or in some other vital operation. American forces were in pursuit of Mr. bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, at that time.

US May Have Taped Visits to Detainees - Josh White, Washington Post

The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations between detainees and representatives from nearly three dozen countries. Numerous State Department cables to foreign government delegations in 2002 and 2003 show that each country was subject to rules and regulations "to protect the interests and ensure the safety of all concerned." Condition No. 1 stated that US authorities would closely monitor the interrogations, a practice that the Defense Department confirmed last week was also carried out to gather intelligence.

US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Army Hopes to Keep Arabic Speakers - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor

The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks. Only one other job in the Army, Special Forces, rates such a super-sized retention bonus. Now, as the military makes a fundamental shift toward rewarding the linguistic expertise it needs the most, it is expanding a program to train and retain native Arabic and other speakers from the same regions in which it is fighting. "This is a war not only against the US, but against our way of freedom," says Sergeant Madi, a native interpreter and US citizen who asked to be identified only by his surname due to security concerns for him and his family. "We have been fighting for over 16 years against Islamic extremism. It is also my war."

Anthrax Dryer a Key To Probe - Washington Post

Bruce E. Ivins, the government's leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores, according to sources briefed on the case. Ivins's possession of the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to US senators and news organizations. The device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked as a scientist, employees at the base said.

AFRICA

Ethiopia Faces New Food Crisis - Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

Once again, images of emaciated children are emerging from this Horn of Africa nation, rekindling memories of the 1984 famine that killed nearly 1 million people. This time Ethiopia has been grappling with a double whammy: drought in its traditional breadbasket and a global food crisis that has pushed prices sky high. Although recent rains and an influx of humanitarian aid have experts cautiously predicting the crisis might be stabilizing in parts of the country, nearly 10 million people will need emergency aid to survive until the harvest in September. Green hungers are just one oddity of Ethiopia's long struggle to feed itself. The country, considered the water tower of East Africa because its highlands are the primary source of the Nile, suffers chronic drought. It is Africa's second-largest corn producer, but requires hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid every year.

Kenya Charges 3 in al Qaeda Suspect's Reported Escape - Reuters

Kenya charged three people on Monday with helping a top al Qaeda operative escape over the weekend, nearly 10 years after two US embassy blasts he is accused of planning put the militant group on the world stage. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed has evaded capture ever since his indictment by the United States for the twin attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 240 people on August 7, 1998. Police arrested three Kenyans after a raid late on Saturday on a private villa in the resort town of Malindi, and charged them in a Mombasa court on Monday. They seized mobile phones, documents and a camera.

AMERICAS

Mexican Police Linked to Kidnappings - Dickerson and Sanchez, LA Times

Fernando Marti's decomposed, bullet-riddled body was found Friday in the trunk of a stolen Chevy that had been abandoned in a working-class Mexico City neighborhood. For many, Monday's news was equally bad: Authorities said they had arrested at least one city police commander in connection with the crime, and that other cops might be involved. The possibility of police involvement comes at an awkward time for President Felipe Calderon, who has been waging a high-stakes war against violent drug cartels since taking office in December 2006. The campaign against drug gangs as well as other violent criminals has been repeatedly compromised by corrupt police officers, pushing Calderon to turn to the army. As of June, 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police were deployed nationwide. The administration last week also launched a shake-up at the federal attorney general's office in response to the agency's ineffectiveness. Officials said Monday that a prosecutor who oversaw extradition of drug traffickers had resigned, the second high-ranking official to leave the attorney general's office in a week.

Chávez Makes a Dialogue a Conference - Agence France-Presse

The presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela held an impromptu summit meeting late Monday in Buenos Aires to bolster what the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, said was “the main axis of South America.” Mr. Chávez was an unexpected addition to what was meant to be a bilateral meeting scheduled between Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After the brief meeting, Mr. Chávez said at a news conference that he had suggested to his counterparts that a plan to build a gas pipeline across South America be revived.

Venezuela's Chavez Pushes Through 26 Decrees - Associated Press

President Hugo Chavez is aiming to set up neighborhood-based militias, move toward a socialist economy in Venezuela and increase state control over agriculture under a package of laws enacted by presidential decree. Changes in areas from the military to small business loans were pushed through by the president in 26 laws released Monday in the official gazette. Chavez approved them on the final day of an 18-month period during which lawmakers had granted him special legislative powers. Critics fumed that Chavez did not consult with major business groups before approving the decrees, and some warned the laws would scare off private investment and further weaken private enterprise.

Colombia Nixes Ortega Offer - Martin Arostegui, Washington Times

Nicaragua's leftist president, Daniel Ortega, who led Latin America's last successful armed Marxist revolution, is billing himself as peacemaker between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Colombia says Mr. Ortega's help is not needed, nor is it welcome. "I tell our brothers in FARC that I am willing to offer my support for a serious peace initiative in Colombia," Mr. Ortega told a political rally last month, in which he proposed himself as a mediator in the 44-year-old conflict. Mr. Ortega made the offer despite strong objections from Mr. Uribe's government, which has scored a string of victories against the Marxist-inspired FARC.

Aussie FARC Suspect Probed - Bernard Lane, The Australian

Colombian authorities are investigating an Australian and five other suspected members of an international support network for guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC. Colombian intelligence was working through Interpol to confirm the identity and activity of an Australian supporter referred to by the nickname "Carlos Vlaudin" in computers captured from FARC, according to a weekend report in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. In June, a Chilean-born candidate for the Australian Greens, Vlaudin Vega, told The Australian he was a FARC supporter. Mr Vega said if his unusual first name were mentioned in the "alleged document" on a FARC computer, it would be him. In March, Colombian forces killed the No2 FARC leader Raul Reyes and seized his computers. Reyes was responsible for FARC's International Commission, which ran propaganda campaigns and raised money. FARC is listed as a terrorist organisation in Europe and the US, but not in Australia.

ASIA PACIFIC

Terror Strike Puts China on Alert - Rowan Callick, The Australian

The lead-up to the Beijing Olympic Games exploded into violence yesterday when two suspected terrorists killed 16 police in China's northwest. In the country's worst terrorist incident in a decade, the attack on a border police office in the city of Kashgar in Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region was a grave blow against the Chinese security forces four days before the opening of the Games. There was also violence in Beijing when two dozen people evicted from their homes to make way for upmarket developments clashed with police.

Chinese Separatists Blamed for Massacre - Richard Parry, The Times

The two men who killed 16 policemen in the Kashgar massacre were today identified as members of an ethic group engaged in a shadowy insurgency in China’s north-western Xinjiang region. The attackers, aged 28 and 33, were overcome and arrested at the scene and have been confirmed as Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic people, who make up the majority of Xinjiang’s 20 million population. Although the official media did not spell it out there appears to be little doubt that they were members of the insurgency seeking to break Xinjiang away from China and establish an independent Islamic state of “East Turkistan”. The separatist link emerged as the crude audacity of the attack became clear.

Ambush in China Raises Concerns - Andrew Jabobs, New York Times

Two men armed with knives and explosives ambushed a military police unit in China’s majority Muslim northwest on Monday. State media reported the attackers killed 16 officers and wounded 16 others, likely making it the deadliest outburst of ethnic violence in China since at least the early 1990s. The assault took place 2,100 miles from Beijing, but it added to security concerns in the capital as tens of thousands of foreign athletes, journalists and spectators begin to arrive for the opening of the Olympic Games on Friday. Chinese security officials have claimed for months that extremists in the Xinjiang region, where the dominant ethnic Uighur population is mainly Muslim, pose a terrorist threat to the Olympics.

Border Attack Draws Focus on Uighurs - David Sands, Washington Times

An attack Monday that Chinese authorities called the deadliest terrorist act in more than a decade focused an international spotlight on China's Muslim Uighur minority, who share with their Tibetan neighbors many of the same ethnic and economic grievances against Beijing's Communist leadership. Authorities did not identify the perpetrators of the attack, which left 16 soldiers dead. But a Chinese security spokesmen attributed the strike to the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement, which Beijing has called the most serious threat to the Olympic Games that begin this week. The movement is based among the nearly 10 million ethnic Uighurs in China's vast western Xinjiang province, a native Muslim Turkic people who have long resented Beijing's rule. An extremist Uighur group thought to be based in Pakistan's tribal border areas threatened in a videotape last month to target the Olympics.

China Strengthens Ties With Neighbors - Edward Wong, New York Times

After two years of intensive and often secretive overtures, Taiwan and Japan, two neighbors long viewed as the most likely to face a military threat from a rising China have been drawn closer into its orbit. Improved relations have not only reduced the chances of a flare-up that could disrupt China’s turn as an Olympic host, but also helped showcase China’s frequent claims to be a new kind of global power that intends to rise on the world stage without engaging in military conflict. “China wants to use the Olympics as a turning point,” said Yang Bojiang, a Japan scholar at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a semiofficial research organization that advises on foreign policy. “It wants to make its society turn into a more mature society, increase the comprehensive power of the nation further in the world and improve its international image.”

Has China Got a Terrorist Problem? - Rosemary Righter, The Times opinion

The Olympics will open on Friday inside a triple ring of steel. Anti-terrorism precautions have been an unavoidable feature of the Games since the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, but China has taken things to extremes. It has mobilised 110,000 police and other security forces in Beijing itself, plus 1.4 million security “volunteers” with Red Guard-style armbands and no fewer than 300,000 spy cameras. The security bill for Beijing alone exceeds £3 billion. Outside the capital, cities hosting Olympic events will be patrolled by 34,000 troops, surface-to-air missiles guard key sites, and 74 military aircraft, 48 helicopters and 33 naval vessels have been placed on high alert. While insisting that none of this will dampen the “festive atmosphere”, the Chinese official in charge dourly insists that “safety is the main symbol for success of the Games”.

Beijing Byproducts - Richard Halloran, Washington Times opinion

To most people outside of China and Taiwan, a dispute over the name of Taiwan's Olympic team might seem petty, but the argument has underscored an elemental point: The games that open Friday in Beijing may be the most politicized since the Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler sought to enlist the Berlin Olympics of 1936 as evidence of Aryan racial superiority. Moreover, President George W. Bush, who plans to attend the opening ceremony, will be part of that highly charged political event as the first US president ever to go abroad to the Olympics. His decision has been mildly controversial: On one hand, it gives the president an opportunity to engage Chinese leaders; on the other, it may be seen as reinforcing the oppressive rule of China's communist regime.

Philippine Court Blocks Accord - Associated Press

The Philippine Supreme Court, acting on a petition by Christian politicians, on Monday blocked the signing of a key accord granting an expanded southern homeland to minority Muslims as part of a deal to end decades of bloody Islamist rebellion. The Philippine government and the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front were to sign the agreement Tuesday in Malaysia, which has been brokering the negotiations.

EUROPE

Mladic Hero to Some, Butcher to Others - William Bilefsky, New York Times

Ratko Mladic, accused in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II and now the most wanted fugitive for the atrocities in the Balkan wars, grew up in this poor, remote mountain village that is blanketed with crows. Here, as in many places where Serbs live, his military prowess, his undeniable suffering and the imponderable scale of the crimes he is accused of have made him as much a national myth as a man. Now that Serbia has extradited the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, intense pressure is building on Serbia to arrest Mr. Mladic, Mr. Karadzic’s stern-faced, chess-playing general, who waged the siege of Sarajevo and is accused of engineering the massacre at Srebrenica.

Russia's Heroic Literary Curmudgeon - Peter Finn, Washington Post

In the last years of his long and stubbornly contrarian life, Alexander Solzhenitsyn finally found a political system he could embrace: Vladimir Putin's Russia. That Putin, a former KGB officer, should find an ardent champion among the most prominent victims of the agency he once served might seem bizarre. But Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday at age 89, was always a very Russian puzzle: a brilliant curmudgeon, wrapped in heroism, inside a whopping ego. He was a man who exposed the murderous brutality of the Soviet Union but also lambasted what he saw as the spiritual vacuity of the West.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Washington Times editorial

On Sunday, the great Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, died of heart failure at the age of 89. Mr. Solzhenitsyn transcended the usual designations: novelist, social critic, historian, spiritual and moral giant. He was renowned for his moving portrait of the gulags, or the Siberian labor camps during the Soviet empire that annihilated millions of people. With tremendous courage and moral clarity, he bore witness to the plight of the victims of communism; he depicted the evil of totalitarianism. In his masterpiece works such as "The Gulag Archipelago" and "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," Mr. Solzhenitsyn awakened the West to the horrors of "utopia" gone awry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.

Evils of Communism - Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times opinion

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is dead. Peter Rodman is dead. And memory is dying with them. Over the weekend, Solzhenitsyn, the 89-year-old literary titan, and Rodman, the American foreign policy intellectual, passed away. I knew Rodman and liked him very much. We were partners in a debate at Oxford University last year. He provided the gravitas. A former protege of Henry Kissinger and high-ranking official in two Republican administrations, Rodman was one of the wisest of the wise men of the conservative foreign policy establishment. Calm, elegant, dryly funny, brilliant, but most of all gentlemanly. He died too young, at 64, of leukemia. Solzhenitsyn was, of course, a landmark of the 20th century, one of the few authors capable of elevating literature to the stuff of world affairs. What I admired most in both men was their memory. They remembered important things, specifically the evil of communism. And, perhaps nearly as important, they remembered who recognized that evil and who did not.

On a Mission For Russia - Marsha Lipman, Washington Post opinion

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a premodern giant who defied the limits of human ability and the forces of nature. His world was that of ethical absolutes, unshakable values, spiritual discipline and self-sacrificial commitment. His life was a succession of feats, the main among them being his book "The Gulag Archipelago," in which Solzhenitsyn detailed in step by gruesome step the ordeal of an innocent man going through the circles of the hellish repressive machine. This book, an epic account of human suffering under communism, shook and changed the world.

Italy Begins Military Effort to Quell Crime - Elisabetta Povoledo, New York Times

Soldiers were deployed throughout Italy on Monday to embassies, subway and railway stations, as part of broader government measures to fight violent crime here for which illegal immigrants are broadly blamed. By the time it is fully effective next week, the effort will flank regular police officers and the military police with 3,000 troops, a visible signal to citizens that the government “has responded to their demands for greater security,” Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said in an interview on the Italian Sky News channel.

MIDDLE EAST

Syrian General Assassinated - Knickmeyer and Sockol, Washington Post

A Syrian general shot to death at a beach resort over the weekend was a top overseer of his country's weapons shipments to Hezbollah, according to opposition Web sites and Arab and Israeli news media. Syria by late Monday had issued no reaction to widespread reports of the assassination of Brig. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman near the Syrian port city of Tartous on Friday night. Maher al-Assad, head of Syria's Republican Guards and a brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, attended Suleiman's funeral Sunday, the Reuters news agency said, citing unidentified sources.

Blurry Line Between Enemies and Friends - Ethan Bronner, New York Times

The events of the past few days in and around Gaza - mortar and grenade battles, negotiations drawing in Israel and Egypt, and the bizarre denouement in which Israel both saved and interrogated scores of Palestinian fighters - offer a glimpse of the byzantine nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While broadly presented to the world as a fight between the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, the developments in fact mirror a more complex set of relationships and shifting alliances that help explain why this conflict remains so difficult to resolve. Any fight here has its origins in earlier violence, so where to begin is problematic.

SOUTH ASIA

Sharif Sees Decisive Talks for Pakistan Coalition - Reuters

Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif said a meeting set for Tuesday with the head of the ruling party, Asif Ali Zardari, should be decisive for the future of their fractured four month-old coalition. Sharif withdrew his party's ministers from Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's cabinet in May, after Zardari backtracked on a commitment to restore judges dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf last November during six weeks of emergency rule.

New Sri Lankan Fighting Kills 40 Combatants - Associated Press

Sri Lankan troops repulsed an attempt by Tamil rebels to retake a recently captured guerrilla stronghold in heavy fighting that killed 21 rebels and three soldiers, the military said Monday. Thirteen rebels and three soldiers were killed in other clashes Sunday in the Mannar, Vavuniya and Welioya regions, bordering the rebels' de facto state in the north, said Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, the military spokesman. The new fighting occurred despite a cease-fire offered by rebels while leaders from eight South Asian countries met over the weekend in the tightly guarded capital, Colombo.

EVENTS OF INTEREST

11-15 August - Counterinsurgency Leaders Workshop (Official Event - Workshop). Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency (COIN) Center is hosting a five-day program for prospective counterinsurgency leaders, 11-15 August 2008, at the Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The program is focused on equipping leaders with an understanding of the insurgency and counterinsurgency environments, as well as close consideration of the kinds of persons and organizations that usually emerge from insurgencies in contrast to those of conventional conflicts. This event will be held at the Battle Command Training Center (BCTC) Training Facility on Fort Leavenworth. Seating is limited. However, registration is open to any person who serves in any official capacity with regard to dealing with insurgencies, with priority is given to those applying from invited organizations. Other applicants will be reviewed for eligibility on a space-available, case-by-case basis. The duty is uniform/business casual. Application must completed on-line at the link above. The deadline for application is 1 August 2008. For more information, contact the COIN Center at 913-684-5196.

11-12 September - DNI Open Source Conferece 2008 (Public Event - Conference). Washington, DC. Sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Office of the DNI is pleased to announce the "DNI Open Source Conference 2008" to be held on Thursday, 11 September and Friday, 12 September, 2008 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington DC. The conference is free; however, all who wish to attend must register online in advance (deadline 31 July). The two-day conference will explore a wide range of open source issues and open source best practices for the Intelligence Community and its partners. We invite participants from the broader open source community of interest including academia, think tanks, private industry, federal, state, local and tribal entities, international partners, and the media to attend. The conference will include speakers from across the broader open source community participating in panel discussions and focus group sessions. Information about the agenda and break-out sessions is now available. The DNI Open Source Conference 2007 was held 16-17 July 2007 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. More than 900 registered participants and speakers attended. Presentations made at the conference break-out sessions are available on the DNI Open Source Conference 2007 website.

16-18 September 2008 - The U.S. Army and the Interagency Process: A Historical Perspective (Public Event - Conference / Call for Papers). Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Sponsored by the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute. The symposium will include a variety of guest speakers, panel sessions, and general discussions. This symposium will explore the partnership between the U.S. Army and government agencies in attaining national goals and objectives in peace and war within a historical context. Separate international topics may be presented. The symposium will also examine current issues, dilemmas, problems, trends, and practices associated with U.S. Army operations requiring close interagency cooperation.