U.S. Embassy in Yemen closes over threats

A counterterror official says the U.S. "won't take any chances," citing threats from the Al Qaeda affiliate linked to the Christmas Day airline bombing plot. The British also close their embassy.

Associated Press

January 3, 2010

SAN'A, Yemen — The U.S. closed its embassy in Yemen today, citing ongoing threats by the Al Qaeda branch that has been linked to the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt of a U.S. airliner headed to Detroit.

President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said the U.S. won't "take any chances" with the lives of American diplomats and others at the embassy. The British Embassy also was closed today.

Brennan told "Fox News Sunday" that there will be an ongoing threat until Yemen's government gets a better handle on the terrorism threat. He said the U.S. isn't opening a new front in Yemen against terrorism.

Brennan estimates there are several hundred members of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

The confrontation with the terrorist group's branch in Yemen has gained new urgency since the 23-year-old Nigerian accused in the attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Obama said Saturday that Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen was behind the attempt.

"The U.S. Embassy in San'a is closed today, January 3, 2010, in response to ongoing threats by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ... to attack American interests in Yemen," the embassy said in a message posted on its website.

An embassy spokesman reached on the phone would not say if there was a specific threat. On Thursday, the embassy sent a warden notice to American citizens in Yemen urging them to be vigilant and practice security awareness.

It was unclear from the statement how long the embassy would be closed.

There have been a spate of assaults on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden and the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. The embassy has closed several times over past threats.

The most deadly in recent history happened in September 2008, when gunmen and two vehicles packed with explosives attacked the embassy, killing 19 people, including an 18-year-old American woman and six militants. None of those killed or wounded were U.S. diplomats or embassy employees.

Al Qaeda later claimed responsibility. In March 2003, two people were shot dead and dozens more are wounded as police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy. In March 2008, three mortars missed the embassy and crashed into a high school for girls nearby, killing a security guard.

Last January, gunmen in a car exchanged fire with police at a checkpoint near the embassy, hours after the embassy received threats of a possible attack by Al Qaeda. Nobody was injured.

As recently as July, security was upgraded in San'a after intelligence reports warned of attacks planned against the embassy.

The embassy's closure follows an announcement of U.S. plans to more than double its counterterrorism aid to the impoverished, fragmented Arab nation in 2010 to boost the fight.

Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and who announced the increased aid, visited Yemen on Saturday and met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Yemeni government official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Yemen has also deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are Al Qaeda's main strongholds in the country and where the suspected would-be Christmas airplane bomber may have visited, security officials said.

U.S. and Yemeni investigators have been trying to track Abdulmutallab's steps in Yemen, which he visited from August until Dec. 7. He was there ostensibly to study Arabic in San'a, but he disappeared for much of that time.

Al Qaeda has also killed a number of top security officials in the provinces in recent months, underscoring the Yemeni government's lack of control of the country. Tribes hold sway in the region, and many of them are discontented with the central government and have given refuge to Al Qaeda fighters, both Yemenis and other Arabs coming from Saudi Arabia or war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yemen has carried out a series of airstrikes and raids against Al Qaeda hideouts in nearby provinces last month. The strikes, Yemen's heaviest in years, targeted what officials said were top leaders in the terror network's branch there. But the intensified campaign has not yet reached into the strongholds of Marib and Jouf.

Britain has joined the U.S. fight against the Yemeni Al Qaeda branch, with the government confirming today that Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed to back a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle the rising terrorist threat from the country in the wake of the failed Detroit-bound plane bombing.

"Amongst the initiatives the PM has agreed with President Obama is U.S.-U.K. funding for a special counterterrorism police unit in Yemen," said an emailed statement from Brown's Downing Street Office. Britain is also to host a high-level international conference Jan. 28 to hammer out an international strategy to counter radicalization in Yemen.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fgw-yemen-embassy4-2009jan04,0,6377872,print.story

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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Wife of slain El Monte civic leader tells how night out with friends morphed into horror

'You never think this kind of thing can happen . . . to innocent people,' Betzy Salcedo says.

by Tracy Wilkinson

January 3, 2010

Reporting from Gomez Palacio, Mexico

They were aware of the dangers. Agustin Roberto "Bobby" Salcedo and his wife, Betzy, knew that this town, like much of Mexico, was no longer the tranquil spot it had been.

"I've been coming regularly," Salcedo's widow said Saturday of her hometown. "We knew how bad it had become."

And yet, the Salcedos ventured out for a few beers the night before New Year's Eve.

"We were just going out with a group of friends," Betzy Salcedo said, speaking slowly and casting her eyes downward. "You are careful, you look around, but you never think this kind of thing can happen . . . to innocent people. We were having a good time. Then we were in the mouth of the wolf."

Hours later, Bobby Salcedo was dead, hauled away from the bar with five other men, their bodies dumped in a dried-grass field on the outskirts of town.

Arrangements were being made Saturday to repatriate Salcedo's body. The 33-year-old, who was born and raised in the Los Angeles area, was an assistant principal and school board member in El Monte.

His slaying underscores the random volatility of the violence in Mexico and the ease with which the pain it causes can seep past the country's borders.

The Salcedos might also have been lulled into a false sense of security by outdated memories and the comfort of old friends.

Betzy Salcedo cited an old Mexican saying: He who doesn't owe anything has nothing to fear. She always figured that people who had nothing to do with drug trafficking would not be targets in the country they loved.

One can follow the gruesome news out of Mexico, much of it involving the government's ongoing war against powerful drug cartels, yet still feel a sense of immunity -- that "it can't happen to me," that the dangers are remote. It is a common thought among many Mexicans, a defense mechanism, perhaps.

But now Betzy Salcedo and her family are bitter. Mexico has become a poison to them.

The Salcedos and their companions had ended up at the Iguanas Ranas bar on Miguel Aleman Boulevard in Gomez Palacio on Wednesday night.

By day and to the uninitiated, the strip may seem harmless enough. There are dives with names like Mens Club-Boomerang, but also taco stands and convenience stores. The Iguanas Ranas is painted almost whimsically with, as its name suggests, bright yellow and green frogs and iguanas.

At night, however, the environment shifts. "We don't even go out at night anymore. We are exposed to everything," said Gerardo Gonzalez, the bar's accountant.

Routinely, he said, gunmen commandeer cars from passing motorists, demand bribes, enter bars to lord over the patrons. "We are living in times of terrible, daily crime," said the lifelong Gomez Palacio resident, whose nephew was kidnapped and shot to death on Christmas Eve.

It didn't used to be like this. Until about two years ago, the Iguanas Ranas admitted families -- parents with their children. But then the violence started. About that time, several men were kidnapped from the place and killed.

This year the bar has endured a bomb threat, an extortion threat and robbery. Things have gotten so rough that the owner is considering shutting it down, Gonzalez said.

Betzy Salcedo, 26, remembers the days of her youth, when she and friends could go out at any time of day or night without thinking twice. "That's all completely gone," she said.

Bobby Salcedo's brother Juan, a banker in the Los Angeles area, added: "I've read all the stories. Sixteen bodies found here, bodies there. But I always thought it was [happening to] bad people. You mind your own business and you'll be fine."

Gomez Palacio is an industrial city in the northern part of Durango, one of the deadliest states in Mexico last year as two drug gangs battled for territory. That battle is part of the nationwide fight involving drug traffickers and the government that has claimed more than 15,000 lives in three years.

In December federal police intercepted a shipment of more than 400 pounds of crystal meth, a few days after intercepting a similar amount of cocaine, both being transported through Gomez Palacio toward the U.S. border.

Police stations in Durango state came under grenade attack Dec. 14. The former mayor of Gomez Palacio was kidnapped Dec. 6 (and eventually released) and the local police chief, Roberto de Jesus Torres, was gunned down the evening of Dec. 2 as he left his home.

On New Year's Eve, a few hours after Salcedo's body was found, two detectives were kidnapped in the middle of the day. Their bodies were left in the bed of a pickup on a major highway on the outskirts of Gomez Palacio.

Investigators reported no new developments in the Salcedo case Saturday. They repeated that they were looking into whether any of the people killed with Salcedo had criminal ties, but had found none.

Betzy Salcedo said none of her group was involved in drug trafficking; the victims included one of her oldest friends, Luis Fernando Santillan Hernandez, 27, a lawyer, and his two younger brothers. Another victim, Javier Gerardo Garcia Camargo, 28, was married to her best friend.

Gunmen armed with rifles burst into the bar about 2 a.m. Thursday; there were conflicting accounts of what they were looking for, investigators said Saturday. Some witnesses said the men asked for the owner of a truck parked outside. Others said they demanded to know who was a cop.

The patrons were forced to the floor and ordered not to look as the gunmen hauled off Salcedo and the five others, who had been crowded around a pool table. They were shot to death and the bodies dumped along a canal in a poor neighborhood called September 11.

Although there were calls in the Los Angeles area to solve Salcedo's killing and bring the guilty to justice, the norm in Mexico is impunity. Most crimes go unresolved.

Manuel Acosta, the lead investigator with the state prosecutor's office, vowed in an interview Saturday to get to the bottom of the Salcedo slaying. Sometime next week, he said, investigators will begin pulling together testimony from various witnesses.

Betzy Salcedo said she hoped some good would come out of "all these horrors" -- that a serious investigation would be launched and "this will not keep happening to innocent people."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-elmonte3-2010jan03,0,3939243,print.story

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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Beltran Leyva brother is held

The capture of Carlos, so soon after the death of his brother, cartel chief Arturo, is a blow to the Sinaloa drug trafficking gang.

by Tracy Wilkinson

January 3, 2010

Reporting from Torreon, Mexico

Mexican federal police Saturday announced the capture of Carlos Beltran Leyva, an alleged major drug trafficker whose brother, cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines last month.

The capture of Carlos Beltran Leyva is a potentially significant gain for authorities because of the intelligence he could provide and because it further weakens one of Mexico's leading and most violent drug-smuggling organizations.

Beltran Leyva was captured Wednesday in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, which is an illicit drug center and birthplace of the Beltran Leyvas, along with many of Mexico's top traffickers. Police said he was located through "intelligence work" but did not provide details. He presented a false driver's license when confronted, police said, but eventually acknowledged his true identity.

Beltran Leyva was reportedly discovered in one of the high-walled neighborhoods where the super-rich live and was immediately transferred to Mexico City.

Things turned out very differently for his brother Arturo, the reputed leader of the cartel founded by the five Beltran Leyva brothers. On Dec. 16, Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed along with six of his bodyguards in a fierce shootout with Mexican marines in the town of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City. Beltran Leyva and his crew were tracked to a luxury apartment tower where they were cornered.

One marine was also killed in the raid. In a chilling coda to the episode, gunmen thought to be working for the Beltran Leyva gang executed the dead marine's mother, two siblings and aunt in an act of revenge that outraged the country.

On Saturday, authorities said they had arrested a purported member of the Zetas gang allied with the Beltran Leyva cartel who confessed to killing the marine's family.

In the arrest of Carlos Beltran Leyva, police said they confiscated two guns, ammunition and cocaine.

Since Arturo Beltran Leyva's death , speculation has centered on whether there would be a violent power struggle within the organization.

Once allies with the powerful Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Beltran Leyva group broke off ties last year and has been locked in a ferocious territorial war since. Arturo Beltran Leyva held Guzman responsible for a tip that led authorities to the capture of another brother, Alfredo, in January 2008.

Authorities say the Beltran Leyva organization has been responsible for numerous killings and bought off top government officials who alerted traffickers ahead of military raids.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-beltran3-2010jan03,0,6606649,print.story

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Black activists launch rare attack on Cuba about racism

Onetime supporters of the Castro revolution now question the regime's civil and human rights record.

by Richard Fausset

January 3, 2010

Reporting from Atlanta

President Obama has loosened travel restrictions to Cuba. His critics accuse him of harboring socialist sentiments. And he is, of course, a member of the African American intelligentsia -- a group that has tended, for the last half-century, to have a soft spot for the Cuban revolution.

It sounds like the perfect atmosphere for the love affair between black American liberals and the regime of the Castros to fully flourish.

Except that it's not.

A group of 60 African American artists and thinkers have launched a rare -- and some say unprecedented -- attack on Cuba's human rights record, with a particular focus on the treatment of black political dissidents.

In a statement issued in November, luminaries including Princeton professor Cornel West, actress Ruby Dee and director Melvin Van Peebles criticized the Communist government for its "increased violations of civil and human rights for those black activists in Cuba who dare raise their voices against the island's racial system."

The statement, " Acting on Our Conscience ," was denounced by the Cuban government.

It was a far cry from those heady moments in 1960 and 1995 when Fidel Castro visited Harlem, receiving on both occasions a kind of hero's welcome as liberator of the oppressed.

Over the decades, many black intellectuals have spoken favorably about the regime's ability to bring better healthcare and education to some of the island's poorest residents. A number of prominent figures, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and actor Danny Glover, have visited the island.

What has changed, some of the statement's signers say, is a heightened understanding outside Cuba of the plight of the island's large black population, which remains increasingly marginalized economically and underrepresented in the highest echelons of government.

But Obama may also be a factor. Suddenly, Cuba's great enemy -- long denounced as hopelessly racist by the Castros -- has a black president, one who has toned down the U.S. rhetoric toward Cuba.

Some observers say that Obama's rise has created a space for American liberals to take issue with Cuban policies.

Before Obama, "no human rights groups, which largely come from the left, wanted to be seen as lackeys for George W. Bush," said Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy for the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. The "Conscience" statement comes as Havana and Washington continue to battle for the hearts and minds of citizens throughout Latin America.

In recent years, voters in some countries, such as Venezuela and Bolivia, have elected left-leaning governments that evince, to varying degrees, goals and rhetoric of the Cuban revolution. At the same time, questions of race have taken a larger role in public discourse as the region moves away from right-wing authoritarianism.

Sabatini said it was likely that Castro and his brother, Raul, who permanently took over as president in 2008, might think that Obama posed a threat to their moral standing -- and thus their persuasive power -- in the region.

Meanwhile, Obama has also had an effect on the Cuban streets, said Carlos Moore, a left-wing Afro-Cuban scholar and Castro critic.

With Obama's election, "it's not that black Cubans became pro-U.S. or pro-Washington, but they said, 'A black man can become elected head of state in a country that we were always told was racist -- but here we are with [a majority] and we cannot come into power,' " said Moore, a Brazilian resident who supported, but did not sign, the Americans' statement.

The CIA World Factbook says that blacks are 35% of the Cuban population, but many observers say that figure is probably above 60%. (The discrepancies arise from the way the Cuban government counts and classifies race.) The ratio of people of color has grown since the Castros took power, as wealthier whites fled for Miami and elsewhere.

The remittances whites sent to families on the island have widened the income gap between Cuba's blacks and whites, said Mark Sawyer, a UCLA political science professor and Cuba expert who signed the document. So has a preference for hiring whites in a tourist industry that has become more important with the collapse of the government-regulated economy, he said.

The Castro government has long treated racism as an issue solved by the revolution, which promised equality for all. But despite the Castros' early and overt denunciation of racism, it continues to be a pernicious presence in Cuban daily life. Sawyer offered one example, noting that kinky black hair is commonly referred to as pelo malo , or "bad hair."

However, Sabatini said, civil rights-style groups have been cropping up on the island to address racial issues. A number of black Cubans have also been at the forefront of the broader social movements critical of the government.

The "Conscience" statement called for the release of one black activist in particular, Darsi Ferrer, a physician who the group contends is a political prisoner. The Miami-based anti-communist group Plantados said Ferrer was arrested last year on trumped-up charges of illegally possessing a few bags of concrete, and is awaiting trial in prison.

Sawyer and other signers of the statement said they acknowledged the advances the revolution brought to black Cubans. But they also believe the issue is more complicated.

"Racism in Cuba has been sort of under the radar screen for, what, 50 years? And many of us who have supported the revolution and the gains it has made have kind of kept quite about it," said Ron Walters, a political scientist and campaign manager for Jackson's 1980s presidential bids.

Black activists were long silent, Walters said, because they were worried that "those people who were opposed to the Cuban revolution, such as white Cubans in Miami and their organizations, would take advantage of it."

The Castros' Miami critics have indeed taken notice. In an interview, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) called the statement "critically important" for highlighting the "lie and the myth" of the egalitarian promises of the Communist government.

To others on the right, the statement was a farce that only betrayed the black left's fundamentally flawed thinking about the Castro government.

"Murderous totalitarians failing to provide affirmative action? Oh noooo," wrote one anonymous commentator on the conservative website Free Republic. "They seemed so nice."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-cuba-blacks3-2010jan03,0,691219,print.story

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Flight crews have latitude in pegging threatening behavior

Actions that pose a safety risk can land a passenger in big trouble. But the definition is open to interpretation.

by Hugo Martín

January 2, 2010

After an attempted terrorist attack on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration gave airline crews new discretion to deal with threats on U.S.-bound planes.

But a recent in-flight clash over a glass of orange juice shows that not everyone agrees about what constitutes an onboard threat.

The TSA issued a directive Dec. 28 saying airline crews could decide whether to prohibit passengers from having blankets, pillows and other personal items on their laps beginning one hour before landing. The airline staff can also decide to keep passengers from getting to their carry-on baggage one hour before landing, if the crew considers it a threat to safety.

But long before the latest terrorist incident, flight crews and passengers have differed over what is acceptable behavior on a plane.

Take the orange juice incident on a Dec. 6 American Airlines flight from Sacramento to Dallas. During the flight, first-class passenger John Reed said, a flight attendant gave him a written warning that his behavior could pose a threat because he ordered a glass of orange juice.

Reed took his case to several television news shows, where he described how his request for orange juice during breakfast service prompted a loud tirade from the flight attendant.

He said the attendant told him the request was inappropriate and suggested that he must be new to first-class seating. Reed said he called her comment "condescending." She responded by issuing him a formal warning that he may face prosecution for interfering with a crew member.

Reed said his version of events was corroborated by several other passengers.

A few days later, an American Airlines spokesman issued a statement saying the carrier had launched a "thorough investigation of the incident." The airline has since said the investigation continues and would not discuss any potential disciplinary action that the flight attendant may face. Reed has not been charged with a crime.

But a Federal Aviation Administration definition of in-flight threatening behavior leaves the matter open to some interpretation.

In a 2006 memo, the FAA listed four "distinct threat levels" that flight crews should report to aviation officials. The threats range from "disruptive behavior" to "attempted or actual breach of the flight deck."

In the memo, disruptive behavior was described as "irrational behavior that creates the potential for physical conflict, nonviolent threatening behavior, verbal harassment, inebriation and threats (both verbal and written)."

The memo goes on to say that it is impossible to describe every behavior that could be seen as a threat. So, the advisory suggested airline staff members "use their core concepts for response to security events."

Passengers can disagree with flight crews over what constitutes a threat, but ultimately, FAA rules give flight crews the final say.

Under FAA regulations, "the pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to the operation of that aircraft."

Because the flight crew acts on the pilot's behalf, it shares that authority.

Said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor: "If they give you a safety-related request, you have to comply."

Ready for a full-body scan?

The botched airline attack also prompted the TSA to require more thorough screening of passengers.

After the incident, the TSA announced it planned to order 300 full-body image screening machines, in addition to 150 units that the TSA had already scheduled to install at airports nationwide early this year.

Airline trade groups and business travel associations complained that airport security hassles could damp demand for air travel, just as the travel industry was showing signs of recovering from a yearlong slump.

"We must find new screening techniques that strengthen security, protect privacy and reduce wait times and other hassles for travelers," said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Assn., a nonprofit group that promotes travel in the U.S.

The length of delays, TSA officials said, might ultimately depend on how many passengers must go through the full body scan, and how many opt instead for the manual pat-down search.

Currently, it takes about 10 seconds for the average person to walk through a metal-detector scanner, the TSA said. (This does not include the time it takes passengers to remove shoes, belts, etc., run carry-on baggage through an X-ray screening unit, collect their belongings and get redressed.)

Security screeners and airline officials can then decide whether a passenger needs to go through one of the full-body screening units, which are capable of scanning one person every 12 to 15 seconds, according to the TSA.

But some passengers are likely to balk at entering these units, which create what looks like a nude image of their bodies. For those who object, the alternative is to submit to a pat-down search by security agents, which takes an average of three to five minutes, the TSA said.

Now do the math.

Assume you are flying on a jet that seats 300 passengers. In the best-case scenario, screening all 300 through a typical metal detector, barring any snafus, should take as little as 50 minutes. That is assuming no passengers set off an alarm because they forgot to remove belt buckles or rings of keys.

In the worst-case scenario, TSA screeners could require all 300 passengers to pass through a full-body image screener and every passenger could opt for a pat-down search. Under this scenario, the screening process for the flight should take up to, ugh, 25 hours.

Far-fetched? Yes. Still, is it any wonder the airlines always remind passengers to get to the airport early?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-briefcase2-2010jan02,0,5592600,print.story

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OPINION

'I am for sale'

A passionate young Afghan has dreams for her life, but her three brothers have another plan: Marry her off to an older cousin for $20,000. The scenario is not uncommon.

by Masha Hamilton

January 3, 2010

American thinking about Afghanistan these days is largely focused on figures: troop numbers, casualty tolls, war chests, withdrawal dates. It can be difficult to see individual Afghans standing in the shadows. This is the story of one of them, a woman whose narrative is both uniquely her own, and emblematic.

She's a wonderful writer, and she should be telling her own story. But she cannot risk it.

I came to know her through the Afghan Women's Writing Project, which I founded last year. Working in three secure online classrooms, the project pairs Afghan women with American women novelists, poets, memoirists, screenwriters and journalists. Through writing assignments and a revision process, the women tell their stories, which then go on a blog using first names only for security reasons. Sometimes, even that much identification is too precarious. This is one of those cases.

The young woman I'm writing about is determined, passionate and full of dreams. Unlike most young women in Afghanistan, she had a rare early advantage: a father who encouraged her to achieve academically, even during the years when the Taliban barred her from attending school. Here's how she described her early life in an essay she wrote as part of the writing project:

"During the Taliban's black government . . . my father bought me school supplies, and told me: 'Be patient. One day you will finish your studies.' He was right. I waited five years, but after that, I could go to school. . . . When I was sixteen years old, one of my neighbors came to our house and proposed that his son marry me. My father was angry and told him: 'Do you know my daughter is sixteen? It is time for her to study. If the king comes and knocks at the door of my house and proposes that my daughter marry his son, I won't accept it. Please, leave my house and never come back again.' "

But then, as she was finishing high school, her father died. "When I lost him, I lost my shadow," she wrote. In keeping with Afghan cultural practices, her three Taliban-influenced brothers became responsible for her. For several years, in exchange for her turning over much of her salary, they allowed her to continue her education and be employed outside the house.

But now they've decided -- over her strong objections -- to marry her off to a first cousin, a man of about 40. This situation is not uncommon. According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, up to 80% of all women in the country face forced marriages. In February, she is to be engaged in return for a $20,000 dowry that will go to her brothers. "This money," she writes, "might possibly keep my family alive."

Yet for her, the marriage will mean the opposite of life: an end to her studies, her work outside the home, her connections to non-Afghans. Her uncle's family lives in a conservative, Taliban-held province. Women there "are required to wear burkas and are responsible for cooking, cleaning and caring for the animals," she wrote in her essay. "Most have eight or nine children. They can't go outside the house."

Even as her brothers make their plans, she is seeking a way to oppose them. But as an Afghan woman, her options are limited.

"I told my mom: 'Please give me a chance. I don't like this man. I can't marry him. If you want to sell me, then I am ready to buy myself. I have a plan for my life. Please give me a chance, please, please.' She didn't reply, but cried silently with me. . . . Running away is not an option, because girls who run away here are raped by men and spend years in jail, and I am not such a girl. I can't leave my mom because my brothers believe anything 'wrong' I do is the fault of my mother, and they will kill her. . . . I am like a piece of cloth. I cost little. Who will buy me?"

If she can't avoid the marriage, she says, "I won't stay in this world." The threat is not simply dramatic: In recent years, suicide has become increasingly common among Afghan women trapped in unions they opposed, a disturbing trend noted by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Human Rights Watch and others.

There is risk involved in sharing this story here, even though I have withheld the woman's name and location. But she allowed me to do so because there is also danger in not sharing it. If we don't ask these women to speak, and then listen to their stories, we are gagging them as surely as the Taliban did. And when we stop sharing these stories with each other, our understanding of what we are doing in Afghanistan, and why, will necessarily become more narrow.

Masha Hamilton has written four novels, most recently "31 Hours," and is founder of the Afghan Women's Writing Project and the Camel Book Drive.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hamilton3-2010jan03,0,372826,print.story

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OPINION

Another failure to communicate

9/11 was supposed to be a wake-up call for U.S. intelligence agencies. Nope.

by Doyle McManus

January 3, 2010

Never again.

That's what Congress and the Bush administration promised seven years ago after revelations that the CIA didn't warn the FBI about two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in time to keep the men from entering the United States. In the future, the government pledged, intelligence agencies would share information seamlessly with each other.

Only it didn't happen. Last month, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded an airplane bound for the United States the same way Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi did in 2001. He had a valid visa, and his name wasn't on the no-fly list -- even though his father had warned the CIA weeks earlier that the young Nigerian had fallen in with Islamic radicals.

You'd think the United States, the nation that invented the supercomputer and the database, could have found a way to connect those dots.

"If my credit card company can figure out that I didn't buy a pair of tennis shoes in Columbus, Ohio, the intelligence community ought to be able to figure out that something was wrong with this picture," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), who has spent years pressing the intelligence agencies to fix their information flow.

It probably won't be clear for a while exactly what lapses in the system allowed Abdulmutallab to board a Detroit-bound plane wearing underwear packed with explosives -- whether the fault lies with the CIA, the separate National Counterterrorism Center or some combination of agencies. (As another congressman said, inartfully but accurately, "There are plenty of fingers to go around.")

But the underlying problem is already clear. Eight years after 9/11, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are still a collection of competing entities that often cooperate but sometimes conflict. Two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have pushed them to work seamlessly together, but fractures still abound.

"It's still hard to get different agencies to work well together," said an intelligence professional who wouldn't be quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak. "That was the weak link before, and it's the weak link now. It may take another generation to get it right."

Institutional culture is part of the problem. The CIA exists mainly to collect secret information; the FBI, to catch and prosecute criminals; the State Department, to promote U.S. interests overseas. Their missions are different, so their cultures are different; some friction is unavoidable.

After 9/11, though, Congress and the Bush administration created a new set of institutions to overcome those differences when it came to fighting terrorism: a National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, working for a new director of national intelligence with the power to oversee all 16 of the nation's intelligence agencies.

But the national intelligence director never got complete power over the other agencies. He doesn't control their budgets, and he can't hire or fire their heads. As a result, he became yet another layer of bureaucracy, trying to coordinate agencies that weren't always inclined to cooperate.

Obama's director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair, began his tenure last year by launching a bureaucratic offensive against the CIA. Blair announced that he intended to take over the CIA's job of appointing station chiefs to head U.S. intelligence missions in foreign capitals. Obama's CIA director, Leon Panetta, a wily veteran of Washington infights, objected -- and in the end, Panetta won.

One result of that dust-up was that many in the CIA concluded that Blair was not their friend. But a more serious consequence was that Blair came out looking weaker than Panetta, his subordinate (at least on paper). For a director of national intelligence to wield authority across the entire intelligence community, he needs the visible backing of the president on major decisions -- and Blair didn't have it.

Last week, when finger-pointing broke out all over Washington, Blair's critics were quick to strike. Sources who refused to speak on the record pointedly told reporters that the CIA's job was merely to provide information to Blair's NCTC. If information didn't get where it was supposed to, that was the NCTC's fault, not the CIA's. Some even began to whisper that Blair's head would be the one to roll.

The organization chart isn't the only issue. Technology exists that could connect all the intelligence the government collects. But, amazingly, it hasn't been put in place.

A succession of government reports over the last five years have warned that the work of linking the intelligence agencies' databases and creating a system that would automatically detect connections -- for example, between a Nigerian radical's name, his U.S. visa and his airline reservations -- has lagged. An independent task force funded by the nonprofit Markle Foundation has publicly urged both presidents Bush and Obama to make the issue a higher priority.

"The fervor to achieve information-sharing has flagged," said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA official in the Clinton administration who worked on the Markle Foundation project. "There has been a lack of emphasis. As time went on and there was no attack [after 9/11], it just didn't have the same sense of urgency.

"There are hard issues here, but they are soluble," he said. "You need someone with horsepower and a presidential imprimatur to bang heads and make this happen."

The Obama administration agrees in principle, he added -- but hasn't been forced, until now, to give the problem its full attention. In that sense, the failed Christmas plot was a good thing. By shining light on organizational dysfunction that's hard to dramatize, the attempted bombing has highlighted a problem that desperately needs to be solved. It might even generate the political will to come up with a fix -- and, this time, to make it stick.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus3-2010jan03,0,5981325,print.column

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Britain, US to fund Yemen anti-terror unit

by Meera Selva

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON (AP) -- The British government said Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama had agreed to fund a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle the rising terrorist threat from the country.

Brown's Downing Street Office said the U.K. and the U.S. had also agreed to increase support for Yemen's coast guard operation. Pirates operating in the waters between Somalia and Yemen have seized four ships in the last week.

Downing Street said Brown and Obama will push the U.N. Security Council to create a larger peacekeeping force for Somalia.

The British government unveiled its plans in the wake of the thwarted Christmas Day bombing of a passenger plane bound for Detroit.

RELATED STORIES: - Yemen sends more troops to terror strongholds

Brown called last week for a high-level international meeting later this month to devise ways to counter radicalization in Yemen. He said an international approach is needed to combat the increasing influence of al-Qaida in Yemen. The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the failed attack.

Downing Street said the government of Yemen had been consulted over the decision to boost the country's coast guard and police operations.

The White House had no immediate comment on the specific joint police unit but broadly said Washington stood ready to work with allies to fight extremism. An official in Obama's government welcomed Brown's move earlier to lead an international conference on Jan. 28 to devise ways to counter radicalization in the country, the poorest in the Arab world.

"We welcome international efforts to provide security and economic assistance to Yemen as it takes action to confront a serious terrorist threat," said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic and intelligence issues.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/03/britain-us-fund-yemen-anti-terror-unit//print/

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From Fox News

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Suspect in Fla. Thanksgiving Family Killings Nabbed

January 03, 2010

WESTON, Fla.

A Florida man suspected of gunning down four family members at a Thanksgiving dinner was arrested Saturday night in the Florida Keys after a weekslong manhunt, authorities said.

Jupiter Police Sgt. Scott Pascarella said Paul Merhige, 35, was taken into custody without a struggle by U.S. Marshals and Monroe County Sheriff's deputies at a motel on Long Key. Pascarella credited the TV show "America's Most Wanted" for the tip that led to Merhige's capture.

Merhige has been the subject of a massive manhunt that included a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture. He is accused of killing his twin sisters, a 79-year-old aunt and 6-year-old cousin on Thanksgiving Day at a family gathering in Jupiter.

Authorities said Merhige checked into the motel in Dec. 2, using the name "John Baca" and a false Homestead address. He had the same blue 2007 Toyota Camry that had been a key part of the manhunt, but police said it was hidden with a covering at the Keys motel.

U.S. Marshals said Merhige, who had withdrawn $12,000 from bank accounts before the killings, paid for his room in advance in cash. It turned out that the license tag on his car had been registered to a Lexus he owned in 2006. Merhige was on his computer when police made entry to his motel room, according to a Marshals statement.

"I'm elated that the monster is in the cage. We don't have to worry about him killing my wife or coming back for my father-in-law. It doesn't bring my daughter back, but at least this chapter is over," Jim Sitton, the father of 6-year-old victim Makayla Sitton, told The Palm Beach Post on Saturday night.

There was no indication Saturday that Merhige had an attorney. Authorities said he was being taken to the Palm Beach County jail.

Police say Merhige opened fire at a home where 16 relatives had gathered for the holiday in Jupiter, an affluent community about 90 miles north of Miami. He faces four counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the shootings, which also injured two other people.

Police say Merhige shot and killed his 33-year-old twin sisters, Carla Merhige and Lisa Knight, both of Miami, along with his aunt Raymonde Joseph, 76, and his young cousin. Police said Knight was pregnant.

Authorities have said Merhige carefully planned the killings. Sitton has said Merhige was heard saying after the shootings that he had waited 20 years to kill the relatives.

Merhige sat through three hours of dinner and sing-a-longs around the piano before the shootings, Sitton has said. There were no arguments, warnings or red flags before the rampage, he said.

Police said Merhige was taking numerous medications, including Ativan, used to treat anxiety disorders.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,581798,00.html

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Cartoonist Attacker Targeted Clinton

January 03, 2010

Danish media say the man who attacked an artist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad in a cartoon has previously been arrested in Kenya.

The Politiken newspaper reported Sunday that Danish intelligence knew the 28-year-old Somali man was held in Kenya in September for allegedly plotting an attack against U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said he was later released due to lack of evidence.

But Denmark's ambassador to Kenya, Bo Jensen, told the news agency Ritzau the man was arrested in Kenya for incomplete travel documents. He said Kenyan authorities never told the embassy he was suspected in any terror plot.

Denmark's PET intelligence agency would not comment.

The armed suspect was charged with attempted murder Saturday after breaking into artist Kurt Westergaard's home.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,581801,00.html

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Somali Asylum Seekers Look for Way Into U.S.

January 02, 2010

LANCASTER, California

The asylum seeker from Somalia hung his head as an immigration judge grilled him about his treacherous journey from the Horn of Africa. By air, sea and land he finally made it to Mexico, and then a taxi delivered him into the arms of U.S. border agents at San Diego.

Islamic militants had killed his brother, Mohamed Ahmed Kheire testified, and majority clan members had beaten his sister. He had to flee the Somali capital Mogadishu to live.

The voice of the judge, beamed by videoconference from Seattle, crackled loudly over a speaker in the mostly empty courtroom near the detention yard in the desert north of Los Angeles. He wanted to know why Kheire had no family testimony to corroborate his asylum claim.

Kheire, 31, said he didn't have e-mail in detention, and didn't think to ask while writing to family on his perilous trek.

It seemed like the end of Kheire's dream as he waited for the judge's ruling. He clasped his hands, his plastic jail bracelet dangling from his wrist, and looked up at the ceiling, murmuring words of prayer.

Kheire is one of hundreds of desperate Somalis in the last two years to have staked everything on a wild asylum gamble by following immigration routes to the United States traditionally traveled by Latinos.

With the suspension of a U.S. refugee program and stepped-up security in the Gulf of Aden and along Mediterranean smuggling routes, more overseas migrants from Somalia are pursuing asylum through what one expert calls the "back door."

"The U.S. has closed most of the doors for Somalis to come in through the refugee program so they've found alternative ways to get in," said Mark Hetfield, senior vice president for policy and programs at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. "This is their new route."

About 1,500 people from around the world showed up in U.S. airports and on the borders seeking asylum during the 2009 fiscal year, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Somalis were the biggest group to make the journey, with most arriving in San Diego. More than 240 Somalis arrived during that period — more than twice the number from the year before.

Like Kheire, they have been shuttled to immigration detention centers in California while legal advocates have scurried to find lawyers and translators to help them navigate U.S. immigration courts.

Many end up defending themselves. Those who lose may remain temporarily. Somalis may be deported, but immigrant advocates say authorities often do not send them back immediately because of difficulties making the trip.

For many, it has become increasingly dangerous to stay in Somalia. The African nation has not had a functional government since 1991 when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other, plunging the country into chaos.

Somali refugees say they are fleeing repression by armed militias defending majority clans and the Islamic militant group al-Shabab, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.

"There are stories about houses being blown up by rocket launchers that you don't hear coming out of other countries as a normal occurrence," said James Duff Lyall, an attorney for the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, who has represented several Somali asylum seekers in Lancaster. "The consistently horrific stories are striking."

In 2007, Kheire's brother was shot in the head in his music store in Mogadishu after refusing to bow to al-Shabab's demands that he shutter the shop. A year later, Kheire's sister was beaten with a stick and left bleeding outside a school.

That night Kheire, whose family belongs to a minority clan, was visited by three men who rammed his chest with a rifle butt and debated whether to kill him.

Once they left, Kheire decided to leave. His wife and then-nearly 4-year old son went to stay with family. He sold his taxi and used the money to go to Kenya, where a smuggler arranged for him to travel to Dubai, then to Cuba, using fake documents.

He then went to Ecuador and Colombia, where he boarded a small boat with about 20 African migrants. It took them a week to reach Costa Rica. They traveled by night, bailing out sea water with plastic bins. During the day, they hid in forests along the shoreline and waited for smugglers to bring them food.

In Nicaragua, Kheire was herded into the back of a sweltering truck container for 18 hours, fearing he would die of suffocation or be caught by police.

In Guatemala, he crossed a river atop two rubber tires bound together to reach Tapachula, Mexico. He spent 12 days in immigration detention before authorities released him with a piece of paper ordering him to leave the country in 30 days. He would carry the paper on a plane to Tijuana and in the taxi to the U.S. border.

Immigration experts say such circuitous paths are routes of last resort.

"I always call it the back door," said Bob Montgomery, director of the San Diego office for the International Rescue Committee.

"When the refugee program is not robust, we see more people trying to come through the asylum system," he said.

Most Somalis have reached the United States — there are some 87,000 here — through U.S.-sponsored refugee resettlement programs. But the State Department in 2008 suspended a family reunification program for refugees over fraud concerns. The number of Somalis admitted by refugee programs dwindled to about 4,000 last year.

Those now traveling through Latin America are taking a path well-worn by asylum seekers from other countries. Immigration attorneys say they have worked with clients from Ethiopia and Iraq who also reached the United States via Mexico.

Ronald Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said most asylum seekers arrive in U.S. airports — not on the southern border. However, asylum experts said more people may now be seeking to come here by land due to tighter travel restrictions.

"To get a flight from Africa to Europe is very hard. The easiest place to go is America," said Yahya Idardon, an asylum seeker who fled Somalia last year after his father and brother were killed. "Africa to Latin America is easy ... when you are going to Latin America, no one is concerned about you, no one is asking, so it is easy to go there and cross all these countries."

Once reaching the U.S. border in San Diego, Somalis are frisked and fingerprinted and screened by an asylum officer to gauge whether they have a credible fear of returning home.

They have then been shuttled to an immigration detention center until their cases go to court.

Roughly 80 Somalis are being held in Lancaster, a detention center 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Los Angeles. Dozens more have been held in San Diego and the remote border town of El Centro, immigration attorneys said.

In Lancaster, Somalis and other asylum seekers wear light green jail jumpsuits. There, Somalis take vegetarian meals, since their Muslim faith prevents them from eating the lunch meat served to other detainees.

Several Somalis said they never expected to be detained — especially since they didn't try to sneak across the border.

"They're coming to the United States, which is a symbol of freedom and democracy around the world," said immigration attorney Lyall, who represented Kheire. "They're not expecting to go to jail and be fed bologna sandwiches."

On Jan. 4, the government plans to start releasing many asylum seekers while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard. It is unclear how many Somalis will be let out as they must prove their identity and many don't have documents. And still others say they have nowhere to go even if they were freed, their attorneys said.

Compared with asylum seekers from other countries, Somalis have been more likely to win their cases, according to immigration court statistics.

But in the courtroom in Lancaster, Kheire spent the last few moments of his asylum hearing in agony, worried the judge would send him back to Mogadishu to face the threat of death — even after he had survived such a harrowing journey.

The attorneys for Kheire and the government sat quietly in the courtroom, listening to the judge read the ruling as Kheire prayed.

A Somali interpreter whispered urgently into Kheire's ear. He broke into a hesitant smile. He would be allowed to stay.

Kheire left the courtroom in his black, laceless sneakers and jail jumpsuit, escorted by sheriff's officials. Later that night, he was dropped off by authorities at a nearby train station. He had five dollars in his pocket.

"They said, 'This is America. Welcome to the United States of America,"' Kheire said.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,581789,00.html

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