Issue: 2 September 2010

Congolese community leaders say they begged local U.N. officials and army commanders to protect villagers days before rebels gang-raped scores of people, from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother.

The rapes occurred in and around Luvungi, a village of about 2,200 people that is a half-hour drive from a U.N. peacekeepers' camp and a 90-minute ride from Walikale, a major mining center and base for hundreds of Congolese troops.

The number of people treated for rape in the July 30 to Aug. 4 attacks now stands at 242 — a high number even for eastern Congo, where rape has become a daily hazard.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened the first direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in two years by pledging the full support of the United States to a process expected to be difficult and with long odds of success.

[...] The U.S.-led talks are the first direct negotiations in almost two years between the two sides, who are at odds over Jewish settlements, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and borders of a two-state solution, among other things.

Both leaders pledged their commitment to finding agreement and erasing a long history of mutual antagonism and suspicion, but each also predicted a difficult road ahead.

Airstrikes by NATO forces that killed 12 people on Thursday in northern Afghanistan have produced sharply conflicting accounts as to whether the attacks hit a team of election campaign workers, including the parliamentary candidate himself, or a group connected with an Uzbek terrorist network.

Officials in Kabul and in Takhar Province, where the deaths occurred, said two NATO jets fired twice on a convoy of campaign workers. The candidate, Abdul Wahid Khurasani, was among three wounded.

But in a contrasting assessment of the dead, international forces said the airstrike singled out a group connected to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, including a senior leader who is believed to be the deputy shadow government in Takhar.

The U.S. government designated the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist group Wednesday and charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, with involvement in a December suicide bombing that killed seven Americans at a remote CIA operating base in Afghanistan.

The coordinated moves by the State and Justice departments marked an effort to expand the campaign against the militant group beyond CIA drone strikes and other lethal means being used to disrupt its operations.

[...] In addition to staging the attack on the CIA operating base, the group asserted responsibility for equipping and training the Pakistani-born suspect in the attempted bombing in Times Square on May 1.

The undefined border between ex-civil war foes in northern and southern Sudan is creating tension in the oil-rich area as the south nears an independence vote, the International Crisis Group warned on Thursday.

The border was meant to be defined six months after the 2005 peace deal that ended Sudan's 22-year civil war, but negotiations by the committee established to demarcate it are in 'deadlock,' the Brussels-based think-tank ICG said.

'As the country's oil resources are concentrated in these areas, the political and economic implications of border demarcation have been amplified, and some border areas remain dangerously militarized,' the report read.

Ismail Haji Noor, a local government official, recently arrived in this notorious pirate den with a simple message: we need your help.

With the Shabab militant group sweeping across Somalia and the American-backed central government teetering on life support, Mr. Noor stood on a beach flanked by dozens of pirate gunmen, two hijacked ships over his shoulder, and announced, 'From now on we’ll be working together.'

He hugged several well-known pirate bosses and called them 'brother' and later explained that while he saw the pirates as criminals and eventually wanted to rehabilitate them, right now the Shabab were a much graver threat. 'Squished between the two, we have to become friends with the pirates,' Mr. Noor said.

President Felipe Calderon tried to rally frustrated Mexicans behind his increasingly bloody drug war Thursday, saying he knows violence has surged under his watch, but arguing that it is the price of confronting powerful and brutal cartels.

Calderon delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address two days after his government brought down the third major kingpin in less than a year. But it also came less than two weeks after the massacre of 72 migrants near the U.S. border, which laid bare how freely drug traffickers operate in pockets of the country, no matter how many capos are captured.

'I am well aware that over the past year, violence has worsened,' Calderon said. 'But we must battle on.'

U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch urged Bahrain on Wednesday to investigate allegations by four opposition activists that they were tortured in detention last month.

Bahrain has banned media from reporting on the case of Abduljalil Singace, head of human rights activities at the mainly Shi'ite Haq movement, and other opposition members.

Their detention on security grounds sparked widespread protests, some violent, in the small Gulf Arab kingdom where parliamentary elections are due on Oct. 23.

[...] He [Singace] and another activist arrested last month, Mohammed Magdad, were held for several months in 2009 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.

The new policy will allow Eritrean refugees to live in urban areas, improving their access to services and helping to build stronger ties with Ethiopians, the legal and protection officer at the agency for the Administration of Refugees and Returnees’ Affairs, Estifanos Gebremedhin, told IRIN.

Under the 'out-of-camp' scheme, Eritrean refugees can live in any part of the country, provided they are able to sustain themselves financially or have a relative or friend who commits to supporting them.

[...] Critics have warned that the move may pose a risk to peace in Ethiopia but the government disagrees. 'We are not worried that the Eritrean government will use the refugees to infiltrate Ethiopia for two reasons. Firstly, we will do proper screening of the refugees before we let them out of the refugee camps.

A dispute over arrangements for the decisive second round of Guinea's September 19 presidential election is raising concern that the outcome of the landmark poll will be challenged and could trigger unrest.

The vote is intended to give military-ruled Guinea its first freely chosen leader and usher in an era of political stability in a country which hosts several billion-dollar mining projects and is a focal point for stability in West Africa.

The independent electoral commission (CENI), backed by cash from international donors including the United States and France, ran the first round in June. Voting was peaceful but the count was delayed by logistical problems and some local results were invalidated after irregularities surfaced.

[...] The stakes extend beyond Guinea's borders.