As Taliban militants raided a house used by UN personnel in the Afghan capital, reports were circulating that the Obama administration plans to secure 10 major population centers in Afghanistan as part of its shift in strategy in the eight-year war. President Barack Obama will make his final decision “in the coming weeks,” according to a White House spokesman, which could entail more troops in the country’s largest cities, but not necessarily more soldiers overall. October has become the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. With just a month before the presidential runoff between President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah, the Taliban again attacked Western officials, this time a guest house where about 20 UN election workers were staying. Six were killed. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying three militants wearing suicide vests carried out the assault. “This is our first attack,” a Taliban spokesman told the Associated Press. In a related story, The New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Karzai, has been paid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for most of the past eight years for services such as fielding recruits for a paramilitary force operated by the CIA. Ahmed Karzai denied any involvement.
The systematic killing and raping of protesters in Guinea in September was “premeditated and pre-planned at the highest level,” the U.S.-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch reported on Tuesday. Last month, thousands of demonstrators gathered at a large sports stadium in Conakry, Guinea, to protest the expected presidential candidacy of junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. Activists say 157 people were killed and over 1,000 were injured when soldiers opened fire on the crowd, though government officials put the toll at 57. Following an in-depth investigation, Human Rights Watch concluded that the killings, as well as widespread sexual violence that included the brutal public raping of dozens of women, were organized and committed by the elite Presidential Guard, known commonly as “red berets.” The group also found evidence that the armed forces attempted to hide evidence of these acts by seizing the bodies and burying them in mass graves. “There is no way the government can continue to imply the deaths were somehow accidental,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This was clearly a premeditated attempt to silence opposition voices.” Human Rights Watch reiterated its call for an international United Nations-led inquiry into the violence, with which Captain Camara has promised to cooperate. Workers in Guinea are now holding a nationwide strike to commemorate the victims of the violence.
Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, on trial for war crimes in the Hague, is being accused of directing an ethnic cleansing campaign to rid his state of Muslims. In its opening remarks, the prosecution portrayed Karadzic as a man “who harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement his vision of an ethnically separated Bosnia” and had direct contact with those carrying out the killings. Karadzic is facing two charges of genocide and nine charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He is refusing to cooperate with the trial, however, saying he needs nine months to prepare his defense. But though Karadzic was not present at the trial’s opening, his chilling words recorded on phone taps during the conflict were entered into evidence by the prosecution. “They have to know that there are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo…it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die,” read the transcripts. “They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth.” Karadzic was indicted in 1995 for crimes committed during the 1992-95 war, which left more than 100,000 people dead. Among other incidents, he is accused of masterminding the killing of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995. Officials are worried that Karadzic is attempting to draw out the proceedings, much like former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic did during his trial, which ended without a verdict after four years. Milosevic died in custody.
Senior U.S. officials will travel to Honduras Wednesday to try to salvage negotiations between ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti, which collapsed just days ago over the issue of Zelaya’s return to power. The Micheletti administration had said they were open to talks and would consider withdrawing from the presidency—but only if Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup in June, gave up his claim to the nation’s highest office. Zelaya flatly rejected this, saying “it would be unseemly, indecent for the Honduran people if I was to negotiate on the position which they elected me to.” Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon; his deputy, Craig Kelly; and Dan Restrepo, the White House’s special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs; were expected to meet with each leader individually in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa to try to facilitate a solution. “It is important that it be a Honduran solution,” a spokeswoman for the State Department told the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the talks. “Everything is on the table.”
Hamas has instructed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to refrain from voting in the upcoming January elections. President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the rival Fatah movement (which governs the West Bank), has called for parliamentary and presidential voting, and is reportedly attempting to unite rival Palestinian factions against Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules Gaza. The Interior Ministry in Gaza said it “rejects the holding of elections in the Gaza Strip because they were announced by someone who has no right to make such an announcement and because it came without national agreement.” According to a report in the Arabic newspaper al-Ayyam, Abbas wants all Palestinian factions and some independents to appear in one electoral list to show unity against Hamas. The latest dispute between the two rival factions threatens to further sour relations, which have been testy since Hamas routed Fatah from Gaza in 2007. Egypt has made attempts at reconciling the two parties via a pact that would have set June 28, 2010, as the next date for elections. Though Abbas has called for a January ballot, he may consider delaying the elections. In the past, Abbas has said he would agree to a summer vote if Hamas agreed to reconcile, and Hamas has also hinted that it would participate then. But with tensions rising, some Hamas leaders have countered that the group may hold a separate election of its own in Gaza this coming January.