FPI Overnight Brief: May 14, 2010

FPI Overnight Brief
May 14, 2010
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Afghanistan/Pakistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the U.S. needs to do a better job of selling the pivotal military operation in Kandahar, known as the birthplace of the Taliban, in order to get the all-important support of the Afghan people. The U.S. military has been building up troops around Kandahar for weeks and is expected to launch its operations in the towns ringing the strategically important southern city as soon as next month. But U.S. military brass have been careful not to describe the operation as an offensive; indeed, the name of the plan—Hamkari Baraye Kandahar—is translated as "Cooperation for Kandahar" and doesn't contain the word "operation," which has been a customary part of the names of nearly all previous military offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan. – Wall Street Journal

U.S. and allied forces will see increased fighting in Afghanistan as their offensive in the southern part of the country unfolds in coming weeks, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said Thursday. "We should expect increased violence as our combined security forces expand into Taliban-controlled areas," Gen. McChrystal told reporters at the Pentagon. He also said the Taliban does not control the strategic southern Afghan city of Kandahar and that the U.S. offensive in that region will focus on winning the support of local people. – Washington Times

As the pink poppy fields of southern Afghanistan yield their sticky harvest, opium production in the country that supplies the world with heroin is set to fall, farmers and officials say. The farmers and other experts cited high rainfall in some areas, drought in others, free seeds for alternatives such as wheat and good prices for food crops, and a mysterious disease withering poppies in some areas. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told the BBC that Afghanistan’s 2010 opium output could fall by up to 25 per cent, thanks to the disease, a fungus that could have infected about half of the total poppy crop. – The National
Hundreds of Taliban fleeing from Pakistan's restive northwest have taken refuge in the teeming commercial hub of Karachi, where a growing nexus with banned militant organizations is a headache for law enforcement. A huge Pashtun population, mostly in the suburbs of the city of 18 million people, provides shelter to these militants, according to security officials. Pakistan's financial capital has largely been spared direct militant attacks. But the man accused in the failed New York bombing, Faisal Shahzad, and his contacts in Karachi have highlighted the militant networks operating here. The arrest of dozens of low-key members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, from the metropolis is evidence of their presence, officials say, and they have developed close ties to banned outfits as well as criminals. A senior security official involved in anti-militant operations said militants are now working in smaller, independent groups, with no direct link to the central command, which makes it tougher to turn small catches into larger successes. "The TTP and most of the jihadi outfits like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Jundullah share the same ideology, and in Karachi we have established that they are working together," said the official, requesting not to be named. - Reuters

Jackson Diehl writes: The countless red carpets rolled out for Hamid Karzai in Washington this week could not disguise an ugly emerging reality: So far, Barack Obama's surge in Afghanistan isn't working…Areas cleared by U.S. troops, such as Marja in Helmand province, are still not free of the Taliban -- because no effective Afghan authority has emerged to take its place. In Kandahar, where a make-or-break offensive is getting underway, the chances of effective non-Taliban governance are being systematically undermined by assassinations as well as by Karzai's refusal to remove his corrupt brother from his perch as a local power broker. At the moment, there appears to be no coherent political plan for the city. Perhaps most disturbing, there is obvious discord among the U.S. and allied generals and diplomats who are supposed to be implementing Obama's strategy. None of the multiple American civilians charged with doing business with Karzai appears to have his trust. Nor are they in sync with the top American military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. – Washington Post
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Iran

Iranian authorities are taking increasingly harsh measures to prevent protests marking the one-year anniversary of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection, opposition leaders and analysts say, exacerbating political tensions. Sunday's execution of five people, four of them members of the Kurdish minority, has sparked anger in and well beyond the Kurdish areas, analysts say. The five were accused in a series of bombings, but many here think that two of the convicted were innocent and were hanged in order to spread fear in advance of the June 12 election anniversary. Analysts also saw a government warning in authorities' decision this week to hand down heavy jail sentences to student leaders in Tehran who were accused of involvement in anti-government demonstrations. – Washington Post

Iranian Kurds staged one of their largest strikes in recent years, closing shops and bazaars in nearly all Sunni Kurdish cities and towns in eastern Iran to protest the executions of five people, including four Kurdish activists, on Sunday, according to opposition Web sites and witnesses. The strike was the largest in Kurdish areas since 2005, when another Kurdish activist was shot and killed by security forces. Iran’s Kurds have long presented a delicate subject for the government, which fears that the restive population will join Kurds in Iraq and Turkey to try to form a Kurdish nation. Iran’s leadership has faced opposition from at least one armed separatist group. – New York Times

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday called for the speeding up of six-nation negotiations on a U.N. sanctions resolution against Iran over its nuclear program. A White House statement said the two leaders discussed by phone the "good progress" being made by the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France and Germany toward agreeing on a fourth round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment. They "agreed to instruct their negotiators to intensify their efforts to reach conclusion as soon as possible," the statement said. - Reuters

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's visit to Iran this weekend may be the last chance to engage Iran over its nuclear program before fresh U.N. sanctions, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday. The official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said President Barack Obama has not given up on seeking a diplomatic solution but Washington has concluded Tehran will not curb its nuclear ambitions without further sanctions…Brazil and Turkey, which hold rotating seats on the U.N. Security Council, have talked to Iran to try to revive a moribund agreement under which it would send low-enriched uranium abroad and receive a higher grade uranium in return. "I think we would view the Lula visit as perhaps the last big shot at engagement," the senior U.S. State Department official told reporters. U.S. officials stress in public that they support Brazil and Turkey's efforts while saying in private that should these fail, they hope countries will be more disposed to imposing a fourth round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran. - Reuters

Josh Rogin reports: As the sanctions drama at the U.N. moves into what the Obama administration hopes are its final stages, the Iranian government is busily trying to conduct its own diplomatic outreach, including an attempt to convene an international meeting of some Security Council members in Tehran. U.S. officials are arguing that after hearing Iran's pitch, those council members still resisting sanctions -- a group that includes nonpermanent members Turkey and Brazil -- will have no more excuse to hold up the process. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to make that case Thursday morning. "During the call, the secretary stressed that in our view, Iran's recent diplomacy was attempt to stop Security Council action without actually taking steps to address international concerns about its nuclear program," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "There's nothing new and nothing encouraging in Iran's recent statements." – The Cable

Christian Whiton writes: [Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons,] a regime that has been viewed as a regional menace to security and freedom will emerge as a much stronger, more consequential power. In addition to its new nuclear capability, Tehran will gain impunity to wage war and spread terror through its proxy networks throughout the Middle East and beyond. President Obama’s dream of a nuclear-free world will be further laid bare as a naive fantasy. The event will mark the beginning—not the end—of a nuclear proliferation cycle. In the U.S., amid copious finger-pointing in Washington, the American people will see they have been betrayed by a foreign policy and intelligence elite that maintained obviously ineffective policies as mortal threats drew ever nearer. Is it too late to stop this scenario? From a military perspective, it almost certainly is not. From a political perspective, it almost certainly is. – Fox Forum

Ali Alfoneh writes: The civilian leadership of the Islamic Republic has allowed the IRGC to intervene in the Iranian economy as a means of bribing the Guards to support the regime. But as the IRGC gets increasingly involved in the economy, it also develops added incentives to intervene in the political process in defense of those economic interests. Separately, increasing wealth of the IRGC also makes it almost independent of the state budget and reduces the economic levers of the civilian leadership to control the IRGC. However, visible IRGC seizure of economic assets in the Iranian economy also make the Guards vulnerable to allegations of economic corruption inside Iran and also make the IRGC-owned enterprises visible targets for international sanctions regimes trying to change the Islamic Republic’s behavior on the nuclear issue. This of course requires awareness of those designing sanctions against the Islamic Republic about how the strength of the IRGC, specially the IRGC credit and banking sector, can be turned into a weakness. – The Enterprise

Meir Javedanfar writes: The idea that nuclear weapons will usher in an era of peace and security for the Islamic Republic is likely to prove to be nothing short of an illusion—even if Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime succeeds in averting a military strike against its nuclear installations before it reaches its military goals for its nuclear programme. – The Diplomat

Meir Javedanfar also writes: By getting close to Iran, the Brazilian president may in fact find that he will in the long term increase the political costs of his own country's nuclear programme, thus increasing the chances that this trip may turn out to be an own goal against his own nuclear ambitions. - Guardian
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The War

The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism. The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy. – New York Times

Stressing that the U.S. military "can't kill our way out of this struggle with violent extremists," House lawmakers added $20 million to the 2011 defense budget so the Defense Department can develop new strategies for use in irregular warfare. The money would pay for "emerging areas of research" into better ways to deal with radicalization and new ways to fight irregular warfare, said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, chairwoman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities. One particular aim of the research is "to help us understand how better to counter adversarial and extremists' use of the Internet," Sanchez said during a May 13 markup of sections of the 2011 Defense Authorization Act. – Defense News

Charles Krauthammer writes: It is remarkable how base-pleasing civil-libertarian rhetoric, so easily deployed when in opposition, becomes chastened when one is entrusted with the safety of the American people. The fact that the Times Square bomber did talk after he was Mirandized is blind luck. Holder is undoubtedly aware of just how much information about the Pakistani Taliban, which he now tells us funded and directed Shahzad's attack, would have been lost to us had Shahzad stopped talking -- and therefore how important it is to make sure the next guy we nab trying to blow something up is not Mirandized until a full interrogation regarding that plot and others is completed. – Washington Post

Benjamin Wittes writes: The core of the problem, in short, is that the executive branch lacks the ability in a crisis moment to detain a suspect and interrogate him for intelligence without potentially risking significant interests on the criminal side. The result is that there is very little time in which to conduct the initial interrogation, and the executive sometimes has to make precipitous decisions regarding how to treat suspects. The attorney general has said that he wants to work with Congress to give authorities more flexibility on Miranda, but what authorities really need is broader: greater flexibility in the rules that govern the first several days of these crisis cases -- rules that give the executive some time and room to maneuver before it has to make fateful decisions. This would require congressional action and judicial tolerance – Washington Post
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Iraq

The U.S. military is on track to draw down to 50,000 troops in Iraq by the end of the summer, but it now faces the long-dreaded prospect that its exit could coincide with a power vacuum similar to the one that drove the country to civil war in 2006. Approaching what it calls the end of its combat mission in Iraq, the U.S. military will maintain substantial firepower here for the near future. But it will have to adjust to waning resources, influence, mobility and money like never before. And it will be drawing down amid a political standoff in the wake of the March 7 parliamentary elections that has no end in sight. American commanders are watching the sluggish government formation process closely and warily. The risks are high, with U.S. and Iraqi military commanders expressing fears ranging from a possible resurgence of Shiite militias to the splintering of security forces along sectarian lines. – Washington Post

Sheikh Alman was a leader of the Sons of Iraq, the lauded band of rebels who helped turn the tide of the insurgency from 2006, in many eyes saving Iraq from the abyss. His killers had tried to slay him six times before they finally succeeded. His cousin, Jassem, is also a member. He says he has been the target of 13 would-be hits. All around the country, Sons of Iraq leaders, also known as members of the Awakening Council, or al-Sahwa, rattle off similar numbers of attempts on their lives with a fatalistic calm. It is hard to find any member operating on the frontlines against Iraq's rejuvenated insurgency who isn't still being regularly threatened by hit squads. Most of their persecutors they claim to know. Many they believe have recently been freed from the now defunct US prison system in Iraq, which at its peak held almost 30,000 detainees. Many others had been rotated through the system during the blood-soaked years of 2006-07. Earlier this year, 15 Awakening members were killed in one night in Abu Ghraib. Things have got a lot worse since. - Guardian

An al Qaeda-linked militant group named a new "war minister" in Iraq and threatened majority Shi'ites with "dark days colored in blood", after two of its commanders were killed by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Attacks that have left dozens dead in the past weeks were seen as al Qaeda in Iraq's response to the killing in May of its leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The al Qaeda statement, posted on Islamist Internet forums on Friday and translated by SITE Intelligence Group, identified the new ISI war minister as al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman, who replaced Masri. Abu Suleiman declared the launch of a new campaign against Iraq's military and police as well as the country's majority Shi'ites in revenge for the death of al Qaeda in Iraq's leaders and what he called abuse of Sunni Muslims in Iraqi prisons. - Reuters
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Middle East

Josh Rogin reports: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a mildly worded statement Tuesday criticizing the Egyptian government's decision to extend its "state of emergency" another two years and urged Egypt to adhere to "legal principles that protect the rights of all citizens." Meanwhile, her department was preparing to enter into negotiations with Egypt over Cairo's proposal for a new $4 billion aid endowment that critics say would unfairly reward an authoritarian regime that has jailed or marginalized its opponents, rigged elections, and censored or manipulated the press for the nearly three decades that President Hosni Mubarak has been in power. – The Cable

Michael Young writes: [I]f Barack Obama decides next year that it is time to wind down his Afghan adventure, the implications for America’s view of itself, and the world’s view of America, could be dramatic, particularly if Iran uses that opening to finalize a nuclear weapon. Obama will have presided over two major military withdrawals while allowing Iran to become a major adversary in the Middle East. But there is another possible scenario. Obama may realize that he’s been cornered by Tehran, and resort to the one thing he can still call upon with some sense of superiority, military power. Having stood down in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and in all probability on the Palestinian track; having seen his major allies becoming steadily more marginal; having seen all this, the president may finally decide that enough is enough, and go to war. Whatever happens, Obama’s bad choices today are pushing him in the direction he most dreads. – Daily Star
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Nuclear Weapons

President Obama promised Thursday to spend $80 billion over 10 years to maintain and modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal, a commitment that could help win Republican support for his new arms control treaty with Russia. The plan expands a previous proposal by Mr. Obama to upgrade nuclear infrastructure and was sent to the Senate along with the treaty and accompanying protocol and annexes. Mr. Obama called President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia as he kicked off his campaign to win Senate consent for the treaty. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin hearings next week, starting Tuesday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The White House wants the treaty approved by summer, but it remains uncertain whether ratification could happen that soon. – New York Times

Laura Rozen reports: As it submits START treaty documents to Congress and pushes for Senate ratification this year, the Obama administration is turning to Republican national security heavyweights to argue the merits of the agreement that would reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by a third over seven years. Obama’s holdover Republican Defense Secretary Bob Gates took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal today to argue "the U.S. is far better off with this treaty" than without it. Meantime, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has lined up Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to Nixon and Ford, to testify on the “history and lessons of START” next week. Later this month, Jim Baker, George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State, is scheduled to testify before the committee on "the role of strategic arms control in a post-Cold War world.” - Politico
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Democracy and Human Rights

Libya and Thailand were among 14 countries elected as new members of the UN Human Rights Council today in a vote that rights advocates criticized as uncompetitive and "pre-cooked." Angola, Mauritania, Uganda, Maldives, Malaysia, Qatar, Moldova, Poland, Ecuador, Guatemala, Spain, and Switzerland were also elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms on the 47-nation council, which is based in Geneva. Both Libya and Thailand have been criticized by rights groups for their human rights records. - Reuters

Bernard Kouchner writes: The Internet is above all the most fantastic means of breaking down the walls that close us off from one another. For the oppressed peoples of the world, the Internet provides power beyond their wildest hopes. It is increasingly difficult to hide a public protest, an act of repression or a violation of human rights. In authoritarian and repressive countries, mobile telephones and the Internet have given citizens a critical means of expression, despite all the restrictions. However, the number of countries that censor the Internet and monitor Web users is increasing at an alarming rate. The Internet can be a formidable intelligence-gathering tool for spotting potential dissidents. Some regimes are already acquiring increasingly sophisticated surveillance technology. If all of those who are attached to human rights and democracy refused to compromise their principles and used the Internet to defend freedom of expression, this kind of repression would be much more difficult. – International Herald Tribune
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Defense

Roger Dunham writes: Should women sailors be allowed on submarines? The United States is poised to repeal the ban, and the first women are scheduled to serve aboard subs by 2012. But we must ask some serious questions before changing the policy…It is the matter of exposure to radiation that is most unsettling to me. It is the genetically sensitive tissue in women that is intimately involved in the process of childbearing that needs to be addressed, researched and commented on by our Navy's leaders before they change the policy. – Los Angeles Times
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Russia/Europe

The Conservative-led government that got down to the business of running Britain on Thursday is the latest manifestation of a rightward tilt of politics across Europe. With David Cameron ensconced as prime minister here after 13 years of Labor rule, center-right parties or coalitions now have the upper hand in Western Europe's most populous countries: Germany, France, Britain and Italy. They also rule several Eastern European nations, such as Poland and Hungary, while on the Iberian Peninsula, the Socialist governments of Spain and Portugal are struggling to fend off gains by conservative opponents. – Los Angeles Times

Members of a gang who sent two “black widow” suicide bombers into the Moscow Metro have been killed by secret agents, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said yesterday. Three people believed to have organised the terror attack were killed after refusing to surrender, Aleksandr Bortnikov, the FSB chief, told President Medvedev. Forty people died in the rush-hour attacks on two stations in March. One of those killed by the FSB had escorted the women suicide bombers to Moscow from the North Caucasus region of Russia and another had led the women to the underground network on the day of the attacks, Mr Bortnikov said. “To our great regret, we did not manage to seize them alive. They offered bitter armed resistance and were destroyed,” he added. Mr Medvedev said that “there was nothing to be sorry about” in eliminating those responsible for the terrorist attack. – Times of London

Russia's foreign policy should become much friendlier in order to attract more investment, especially from the West, according to a leaked Foreign Ministry paper. The document, titled "Program for Effective Use of Foreign Policy in the Long-Term Development of Russia," amounts to a new, softer foreign policy after years of hostile relations with the West, according to Russian Newsweek, which first published the document. Officials at the Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin confirmed the document's existence Wednesday, but they rejected the notion that it amounted to a new doctrine. The text is simply a response to President Dmitry Medvedev's call to make foreign policy a driving force for foreign investment, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The Moscow Times, requesting anonymity because the document has not been officially released. - Moscow Times

Alexander Motyl writes: For five years Viktor Yanukovych claimed to be a democratic, moderate, and unifier—everything that the Orange elites presumably were not. In the two months that he has occupied the president’s seat, Yanukovych has shown that he is an authoritarian, radical, and disunifier—everything that the Orange revolutionaries had accused him of being in 2004. – New Atlanticist
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China

Japan's foreign minister expressed concern about China's growing military muscle—a development he said raised the urgency for Washington and Tokyo to resolve their standoff over where to station U.S. troops in Japan. "I wouldn't use the word 'threat'—but we certainly will need to watch very carefully the nuclear arsenal and naval capabilities of China," Katsuya Okada said in an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal. "And it is because of this that, all the more, the Japan-U.S. alliance would be important." Mr. Okada's comments highlight Tokyo's delicate position in its relationships with its longtime ally the U.S.—which Mr. Okada emphasized helps maintain peace and stability in East Asia—and with its growing regional neighbor, China. – Wall Street Journal

The Obama administration faces a delicate balancing act in human rights talks with China that began Thursday: It looks to pressure China to improve treatment of its citizens while not angering a country that is crucial to U.S. international interests. The two-day meeting in Washington also gives the administration a chance to answer criticism that it ignores rights abuses while pushing for Chinese support on Iranian and North Korean nuclear standoffs, climate change and other difficult issues. This may be a difficult time, however, for the United States to take a tough position in the private meeting. The talks, which have resumed after two years, come ahead of a major gathering of top-level U.S. and Chinese officials this month in Beijing that will focus on the countries' intertwined economic and security interests. – Associated Press

Christina Larson writes: If China's real estate is a bubble scenario, it won't necessarily pop in the same way as the U.S. housing market, or as immediately -- residential borrowers aren't as highly leveraged (down-payment requirements are relatively higher), and state-run banks won't call in bad loans as quickly. Some observers, such as hedge-fund guru Jim Chanos, see an immediate danger ("What we're talking about is a world-class -- if not the world-class -- property bubble," he recently told PBS host Charlie Rose, adding that he expects a dramatic slowdown in China within a year). Some argue the danger is overstated; others think the day of reckoning may be 5 or 10 years off. But one thing is clear now: The political frictions are already evident -- and both China's haves and its have-nots are fuming. – Foreign Policy
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Koreas

North Korea has pushed one of its highest-ranking military officers into retirement, its media said on Friday, in a rare announcement that experts said may indicate frustration with yet another policy blunder. "Kim Il-chol was relieved of the posts as member of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and first vice-minister of the People's Armed Forces for his advanced age of 80," the North's official KCNA news agency said, without offering further details. Kim, 80, was a close confidant of leader Kim Jong-il who served since 1998 as a vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, the center of power in the secretive state. Kim Il-chol appeared to fall out of favor when he was ousted from another post as Defense minister in a cabinet reshuffle last year. Experts said the retirement could be because of old age and ill health as the KCNA dispatch said. What is unusual is the report itself announcing an official's retirement, when normally only deaths are reported in the North's media. - Reuters

Editorial: The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement knocks down many of the lingering barriers to trade between the two countries. Congressional approval of the pact would bolster American exports while shoring up a key Asian ally. Yet Democrats in Congress, urged on by their labor union allies, have been holding up the legislation for almost three years, ostensibly because it does not achieve enough market access for two U.S. products, autos and beef. Never mind that these concerns can be readily resolved -- or that basically every other sector of American business favors the pact. President Obama, meanwhile, has been content to temporize. Now comes a welcome nudge from a key Democrat on the Hill, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) who, together with the committee's senior Republican, Richard Lugar of Indiana, has written the Obama administration urging officials to get behind the pact more forcefully. – Washington Post
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Venezuela

Jaime Daremblum writes: Recent weeks have brought more depressing economic news from Venezuela, where populist leader Hugo Chávez seems intent on destroying not only democracy but also the last remaining vestiges of private enterprise. – Weekly Standard Blog
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Southeast Asia

Sporadic violence continued in the Thai capital on Friday as protesters challenged soldiers deployed around their encampment and fired homemade rockets at hovering helicopters. Troops and the protesters — the so-called red shirts — confronted each other Friday near the spot where the shooting of an anti-government major general by a sniper on Thursday night touched off an evening of violence. Gunshots were heard on Friday morning, and according to one witness, men with firebombs attempted to set fire to military vehicles around noon. The renegade general, Khattiya Sawatdiphol, 58, had become a symbol of the lawlessness and impunity that have torn Thailand apart as the protests have pitted the nation’s poor against its establishment. He was shot during an interview with a reporter for The New York Times about 7 p.m., one hour after the military announced the start of a blockade and cut off electricity and water to a tent city of thousands of protesters. – New York Times

A year after government troops crushed Tamil separatist guerrillas and ended 26 years of civil war, a political solution addressing the root causes of the ethnic conflict still eludes Sri Lanka, analysts say. The slow progress in addressing Tamil grievances has already opened dangerous political space to pro-separatist Tamils living abroad. Earlier this month, members of the million-strong Tamil diaspora in the West, mostly in Canada, the UK, the US, Germany, France and Switzerland, where there are large Tamil communities, conducted unofficial polls and elected a “government-in-exile”. – The National

Simon Tisdall writes: Barack Obama's policy of "pragmatic engagement" with the Burmese military junta is in danger of falling apart as the generals press ahead with plans for elections later this year from which the country's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, has been effectively excluded. Pressure is now growing for a tougher approach – though it's unclear what, if anything, can make the regime change its mind. - Guardian

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