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Asia Times Online :: Video : "Qari Ziaur Rahman, commander of the Taliban in Afghanistan's Nooristan and Kunar provinces, which border Pakistan, represents the new generation of anti-US resistance leaders and is tipped to become one of the most important Taliban commanders in the region. He spoke to Syed Saleem Shahzad in the Kunar Valley. (English subtitles.) (May '08)"

allAfrica.com: Somalia: Somaliland Detains Puntland Officials in Sool Region (Page 1 of 1) : "LAS Police authorities in Somalia's separatist enclave of Somaliland arrested four men for allegedly having ties with the administration of neighboring Puntland regional autonomy, Radio Garowe reported Sunday. Somaliland police in the town of Las Anod raided homes last night and arrested the four men, including an individual identified as Ahmed Sakin, a court judge in Puntland."

allAfrica.com: Somalia: Thousands Flee Beletweyne as Clash Fears Mount (Page 1 of 1) : "Fears of major clashes in the town of Beletweyne in central Somalia's Hiiraan Region have sparked a mass exodus from the town, sources there told IRIN on 14 July. 'Thousands of people have already left the town and many others are still leaving,' Ga'al Hirsi Hooshow, the chairman of the Beletweyne Elders' Council, said. He said forces of the ousted Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Beletweyne and Ethiopian troops now based at Janta Kundishe, 5km east of the town, 'are both gearing up for a major battle'."

allAfrica.com: Somalia: Islamist Guerrillas Capture Burhakaba, Bardhere Towns (Page 1 of 1) : "Islamist rebels in southern Somalia seized two more towns Sunday, as the Ethiopian-backed interim government's defense minister disclosed that newly-trained Somali soldiers had arrived in the country. Heavily-armed rebels peacefully entered the town of Bardhere, in the southwestern region of Gedo, on Saturday afternoon and immediately disbanded a recently established police force. Sheikh Abdulkadir Yusuf, who spoke for the fighters, accused the Bardhere police force of 'having links' to the interim government in Mogadishu, Somalia's national capital. Locals expressed their dismay at the Islamists' takeover of Bardhere, with one clan elder telling reporters: 'It is surprising that in Bardhere where the people established self-rule and there is no presence of the [Federal] Government, who is it [Bardhere] captured from and who is capturing it [Bardhere]?' Town e...

New film tells tale of Palestinian killed in error by IDF who went on to save Israeli lives - Haaretz - Israel News : "Of the hundreds of tragic tales of children killed during decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ahmed Khatib's must rank among the most remarkable. Khatib was shot dead in 2005 by Israeli soldiers who mistook him for a gunman in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. Still grieving, his father agreed to donate Ahmed's heart, liver, lungs and kidneys to save the lives of Israeli children."

American Civil Liberties Union : Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names : "WASHINGTON, DC - The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list. 'Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,' said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. 'Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon.' Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division who fl...

Uyghurs Jailed From Guantanamo to Beijing - by William Fisher : "As a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. military improperly labeled a Chinese Muslim held at Guantanamo Bay an 'enemy combatant' and ordered that he be released, transferred, or granted a new hearing, an influential congressional committee delivered a scathing criticism of China's closed trial of 15 men on terrorism charges – resulting in the immediate execution of two defendants, three suspended death sentences, and 10 sentences of life imprisonment. The men were members of the Uyghur Muslim minority in western China. They have been reliably reported to have been systematically persecuted by Chinese authorities. The legislators' charges came from leaders of the Congressional Human Rights Committee (CHRC), co-chairs Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf. The two lawmakers condemned 'the harsh pre-Olympic crackdown' in the Xinjiang Uyghur Au...

BBC NEWS | Americas | First Guantanamo video released : "A videotape of a detainee being questioned at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay has been released for the first time. It shows 16-year-old Omar Khadr being asked by Canadian officials in 2003 about events leading up to his capture by US forces, Canadian media have said. The Canadian citizen is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. He is seen in a distressed state and complaining about the medical care. The footage was made public by Mr Khadr's lawyers following a Supreme Court ruling in May that the Canadian authorities had to hand over key evidence against him to allow a full defence of the charges he is facing."

Afghan Assault Could Alter Campaign Dynamics - by Jim Lobe : "If nothing else, the deaths Sunday of nine U.S. soldiers at a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border are likely to bring home to the U.S. electorate what top national security officials have been saying for much of the past year – that the central front in Washington's 'global war on terrorism' has moved eastward about 1,100 mi. from Iraq. That realization could have a major impact on the U.S. presidential elections, despite the fact that the economy has replaced the Iraq War as the issue that voters are most concerned about. While Republican Sen. John McCain, like the White House itself, has insisted that victory in Iraq must be priority number one for U.S. foreign policy, his presumptive Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, and his top advisers have repeatedly warned that the situation in Afghanistan and the frontier regions of Pakistan required much more attention and resources...

What's NOT in the IAEA Iran Reports - by Peter Casey : "Zimmerman's piece is seriously misleading in other important respects. He claims that Iran 'has 320 tons of uranium hexafluoride [UF6] gas to feed its centrifuges, enough for almost 100 bombs, but not for even a fraction of one reactor refueling operation.' What he does not mention is that 'all of [the UF6] remains under [IAEA] containment and surveillance' (IAEA Gov/2008/15 at paragraph 9). He also fails to inform readers that: * Without enrichment, 320 'tons' of UF6 is no more dangerous than 320 tons of silly putty. * Since it began to enrich uranium, in February 2007, Iran has fed 3,970 kilograms, or less than four metric tons, into enrichment cascades (IAEA Gov/2008/15 at paragraph 2). * To get fissile material, uranium must be enriched to consist of 90 percent U-235. Iran's enrichment levels, however, have never exceeded 4.7 percent U-235, a level that could only be consist...

Iraqis demand end to ‘occupation’ - The National Newspaper DAMASCUS // Iraqi opposition and resistance groups have renewed their demands for an end to all negotiations with the United States while US troops remain on Iraqi soil. “We reject any kind of agreement that prolongs the occupation for so much as a day,” said Shamil Rassam, chairman of the Iraqi Popular Forces, an anti-occupation group with offices in Syria. “The occupation must be ended immediately and there can be no compromises until the last American soldier has left the country.” Talks continue between the government in Baghdad and the Bush administration over a controversial status of forces agreement, a treaty that would lay out US military legal rights to remain in Iraq.