While Shiite-Sunni tensions in Iraq have long been a top concern for U.S. and Coalition forces, a senior American general said that Arab-Kurdish disputes in northern and eastern stretches of the country are now the top driver of instability. Brigadier General Steve Lanza said he has seen Iranian and Syrian influence wane in Iraq recently, but added that disagreements over land and Kurdish autonomy are a top concern. “We are working very hard to reduce tensions in northern Iraq,” he said. U.S. military leaders have been discussing arrangements where American troops would work alongside Iraqi and Kurdish forces in those areas. Gen. Lanza cited statistics that pointed to a drop in the number of large-scale attacks, saying they had decreased by 51 percent so far in 2009. However, he made his comments one day after 25 people were killed in three car bombs in Anbar province. Kurds have been demanding their own autonomous region in Nineveh, Diyala and Kirkuk, which are historically Kurdish.
The president of Armenia will visit Turkey this week after accords were signed over the weekend to establish diplomatic relations and open the border between the nations. The two neighbors are attempting to end a century of hostility, dating back to the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Armenians refer to the killings as genocide, but Turkey refuses to use that term and the accords call for historians to research the issue. The Turkish government will submit the accords to parliament next week, but Armenia’s president Serzh Sarksyan said he would attend a World Cup qualifying match between the two countries on Wednesday, even though the accords have yet to be finalized. The Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, has said parliamentary ratification would require Armenian concessions over its conflict with Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally, and Nagorno-Karabakh, a land-locked, semi-autonomous region within Azerbaijan.
Guineans are observing a strike to protest Captain Moussa Dadis Camara’s military junta assault of protesters at a stadium in Conakry on September 28 and are commemorating the victims, who include an untold number of women who were raped and more than 150 who were killed. Captain Camara led a coup after President Conte died in December, wresting power from Conte’s constitutional successor and imposing military rule. Camara promised to bring order, stability, and even prosperity to Guinea, and promised democratic elections in January in which he would not be a candidate. Over the last several weeks, however, Camara has overseen the September 28 assault and indicated he may retain power past January. Camara has elicited international condemnation. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the September 28 atrocities, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner has called for international intervention, and the African Union has threatened sanctions if Camara stands for election. Peace talks through Burkina Faso’s president Balise Compaore have barely begun. Meanwhile, Guinea has begun economic negotiations with China, which is interested in access to Guinean infrastructure, minerals, and potential oil reserves in projects worth an estimated $7 billion. Guinea’s large deposits of bauxite, gold, diamonds, uranium, iron ore, and perhaps oil, helped sustain President Conte during international isolation, and analysts worry that China’s emerging interests in Guinea could sustain Captain Camara in the same fashion.
Mexico’s interior minister Fernando Gomez Mont announced the liquidation of Luz y Fuerza del Centro (Central Light and Power), the smaller of Mexico’s two state-run energy firms, citing unsustainable financial inefficiencies. Between 2003 and 2008, Central Light and Power earned approximately $17 million but amassed outlays of more than $32 million, and Mexico’s finance minister suggested the government could save $1.5 billion by liquidating the plant, which is heavily subsidized. “Almost no other power company in the world shows a percentage of power loss registered by Luz y Fuerza,” the formal decree reads. Gomez Mont added, “This is a measure to preserve responsibility for the fiscal resources of all Mexicans.” The liquidation is part of President Felipe Calderon’s economic adjustment proposals designed to stabilize Mexico’s appeal to international investment. Labor Minister Javier Lozano offered two and a half year’s salary to those workers who accepted a buyout, but the workers’ union, representing 44,000 active workers and 20,000 retirees, refused to accept the liquidation and threatened to challenge it in court. Indeed, union members have begun protesting by the thousands outside the Labor Ministry. “The best way resolve this problem, which we workers did not cause, is to maintain the source of jobs,” responded union leader Martin Esparza. Some 1,000 Mexican police officers are now stationed at the plant, but so far, no violent incidents have been reported. Central Light and Power supplied 20 million people with power, representing 30 percent of Mexico’s electricity output. All of these needs will now be supplied by Mexico’s larger state-owned energy supplier, the Federal Electricity Commission, which will hire “an undefined number” of Central Light and Power employees, said Mexico’s labor minister.
A bomb attack on a military convoy traveling through a marketplace in northwest Pakistan killed 41 people a day after the army ended a siege by a group of eight men from terrorist organizations affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban. They had infiltrated Pakistan’s Army Headquarters a few miles from Islamabad, holding 42 officials hostage over 18 hours. The crisis ended when seven of the eight terrorists were killed and the other was arrested; most of the hostages were freed safely. Monday’s bomb attack was the fourth major Taliban attack in Pakistan in recent weeks, leaving a total of nearly 100 dead. Earlier, one bomb killed 48 at a Peshawar bazaar and another killed five at the offices of the U.N. World Food Program. Hakimullah Mehsud, the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has publicly vowed revenge for army attacks in Swat and impending attacks in Waziristan, a region of the North West Frontier Province where many terrorists have holed up. Moreover, the infiltration into Pakistani military facilities raised fresh concerns about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, which has been a serious concern for the international community, and especially the United States, as Pakistan has further destabilized in recent years. The U.S. Congress recently passed the Kerry-Lugar bill, providing $1.5 billion annually to help secure Pakistan’s military, especially its nuclear facilities, but the bill has been denounced in Pakistan, including by General Ashfaq Kiyani, the chief of the Army, who rejects certain conditions in the bill that many Pakistanis believe violate their national sovereignty, such as the requirements of the Army to refrain from interfering in the political process, to sever its support for various jihadist organizations, and to not engage in any nuclear proliferation activities. For more on Pakistan and its fight against the Taliban, see “Showdown on the Subcontinent” by Megha Bahree in the Fall 2009 issue of World Policy Journal.