Marlise Simons
NYT 07.10.2010
For their latest raid on the Belgrade home of Gen. Ratko Mladic... investigators found a false wall, missed by earlier searches, hiding a cache so rich that it is still resonating in the Balkans and in the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague that wants to prosecute the fugitive Bosnian Serb commander for genocide. The find — 18 notebooks of General Mladic’s wartime military diaries, 120 sound recordings, cellphone cards, computer memory sticks and a pile of documents — provides some of the most compelling evidence yet of the close, top-level coordination of the Bosnian Serb Army and Serbia, a connection both parties always denied.
Associated Press
Guardian 06.17.2010
Kyrgyzstan's interim government has accused the country's deposed president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, of igniting longstanding ethnic tensions by sending gunmen in ski masks to shoot members of both groups. The government, which overthrew Bakiyev in April, also accuses the leader of corruption and says he and his supporters were attempting to damage official control of the south and reassert their control of the Afghan heroin trade in the area. The official death toll on both sides is 189 but the true number appears to be far higher. Many Kyrgyz have been killed but the victims appear to have been predominantly Uzbeks, traditional farmers and traders who speak a distinct but separate Turkic language and have traditionally been more prosperous than the Kyrgyz, who come from a nomadic tradition...A few parts of the south have been all but purged of ethnic Uzbeks. In other areas hundreds who had not fled piled up old cars on the streets, barricading themselves into their neighbourhoods.
Luke Harding
Guardian 06.27.2010
Kyrgyzstan's interim government tonight claimed victory in a controversial referendum, held just two weeks after 2,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless in ethnic violence. Rosa Otunbayeva, the country's acting leader, said she had won overwhelming support for her plan to create a new parliamentary system... Today's ballot was designed to legitimise the current government and to replace the country's abuse-prone presidential system. The new European-style model is a first in central Asia, which is run by authoritarian "super-presidents". A new government would be formed on 10 July, Otunbayeva said, without a "temporary" tag. But international observers and human rights groups today criticised the timing of the poll, which took place against a backdrop of the worst ethnic violence in central Asia for two decades. They also warned that the vote could exacerbate divisions between the north and south of the country and hasten its break-up, or lead to civil war.
NYT 5.3.2010
One year after the International Criminal Court accused Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, of war crimes for the genocidal rampage in Darfur, he was re-elected in a blatantly manipulated election. Mr. Bashir has no legitimacy and he must stand trial for his crimes. But those facts must not divert the world's attention from another potential crisis: the very real danger of renewed civil war between Arab Muslim northern Sudan and the south, which is largely Christian and animist. The last conflict — from 1983 to 2005 — left about two million people dead. Under a United States-backed peace agreement, the semi-autonomous southern region will hold a referendum in January to decide its future. Voters are expected to choose independence. Leaders in both the north and the south pledged to respect the results. But there is so much oil involved that they can't be depended on to keep their word — without strong encouragement from the United States and other major players.
