Is the U.S. repeating Soviet mistakes in Afghanistan?

By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan — Twenty years to the day after the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan, Dastagir Arizad ticked off grievances against President Hamid Karzai and the United States that are disturbingly reminiscent of Moscow's humiliating defeat.

"Day by day, we see the Karzai government failing. The Americans are also failing," said Arizad, 40, as he huddled against the cold in the stall where he sells ropes and plastic hoses. "People are not feeling safe. Their lives are not secure. Their daughters are not safe. Their land is not secure. The Karzai government is corrupt."

"The problems we are having are made by the Americans. The Americans should review their policies," he said Saturday. "They should not support the people who are in power."

As Arizad spoke, Pres. Barack Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, was holding his first talks with Karzai in the presidential palace nearby amid mounting U.S.-Afghan tensions fueled by mutual recriminations over the growing Taliban insurgency.

Some Afghan experts are worried that the United States and its NATO allies are making some of the same mistakes that helped the Taliban's forerunners defeat the Soviet Union after a decade-long occupation that bled the Kremlin treasury, demoralized Moscow's military and contributed to the Soviet Union's collapse.

Among the mistakes, these experts said, are relying too heavily on military force, inflicting too many civilian casualties, concentrating too much power in Kabul and tolerating pervasive government corruption.

Violence and ethnic tensions will worsen, they warned, absent a rapid correction in U.S.-led strategy that improves coordination between military operations and stepped up reconstruction, job-training and local good governance programs.

"We have not justified democracy. We have not justified human rights. We have not justified liberalism," said Azziz Royesh, a political activist, educator and former anti-Soviet guerrilla. "Afghans don't like the Taliban. But we haven't shown them a better option."

"I see a time when again there could be thousands of unorganized insurgencies around the country," he cautioned. "The foreigners are the ones who will be targeted. If we don't bring change here, these kinds of incidents will add to the Taliban insurgency."

A public opinion survey released earlier this month underscored the concerns.

The poll, commissioned by ABC News and the BBC, found that while 90 percent of Afghans oppose the Taliban, less than half view the U.S. favorably, down from 67 percent last year. Twenty-five percent also said they believed that attacks on foreign troops can be justified, up from 17 percent in 2007.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded in a Washington Post opinion article Saturday that the U.S., which is planning to almost double the 32,000-strong U.S. force in Afghanistan over the next 18 months, will lose the war if it can't win Afghans' trust.

"We can send more troops. We can kill or capture all the Taliban and al Qaida leaders we can find — and we should. We can clear out havens and shut down the narcotics trade. But until we prove capable, with the help of our allies and Afghan partners, of safeguarding the population, we will never know a peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan ," Mullen wrote. "Lose the people's trust, and we lose the war."

A senior official of the NATO -led International Security Assistance Force, who requested anonymity in order to speak more candidly, said that many allied governments would find it harder to keep troops in Afghanistan "if we don't see some sort of rise in (Afghans') perception of how things are going . . . within the next 12 months."

Some Western officials and many Afghans appear to be hoping that Obama, who last week criticized Karzai for being "very detached," will abandon the Bush administration's unqualified support for the Afghan leader in hopes that he won't run for re-election or is defeated in an Aug. 20 vote.

Soviet leaders, however, believed in 1986 that a change in Afghan leadership would stem that decade's Islamist insurgency. They were wrong.

Of course, there are major differences between the brutal 10-year Soviet occupation that ended on Feb. 14, 1989 — the date it's marked on the Afghan calendar — and the U.S.-led effort to prevent Afghanistan from reverting to a Taliban -ruled sanctuary for al Qaida.

Moscow invaded to save a dictatorial regime that ignited a rebellion when it tried to force communism on a tribal society that remains rooted in conservative Islam and centuries-old tribal law. Some 1 million Afghans died and more than 5 million fled the country as Soviet and Afghan troops fought U.S.-backed guerrillas based in Pakistan.

The 2001 U.S.-led intervention came after the former Taliban regime refused to surrender Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. More than 40 nations have deployed a total of 70,000 troops and are spending billions on schools, clinics and roads, while the United Nations is helping to prepare for Afghanistan's second-ever presidential election.

The effort, however, faces grave uncertainties because the Bush administration, fixated on Iraq, never committed enough troops or developed a comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy for Afghanistan.

Previously secret Soviet documents made public in English for the first time on Saturday reveal that Obama is facing some of the same problems that compelled former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to order a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The documents, posted on the George Washington University's National Security Archive Web site, show that Gorbachev decided in 1985 to end the Soviet occupation after realizing that Moscow couldn't win a military victory, a point that Obama and senior U.S. commanders repeatedly stress.

Soviet leaders also saw that Afghanistan's ruling communists had failed to earn legitimacy, become self-reliant or improve most Afghans' lives, problems that also afflict Karzai's U.S.-backed government.

"After seven years in Afghanistan, there is not one square kilometer left untouched by a boot of a Soviet soldier. But as soon as they leave a place, the enemy returns and restores it all back the way it used to be," the late Soviet Army chief Sergei Akhromeyev is quoted as saying in notes from a Nov. 13, 1986, Politburo meeting.

Moreover, the documents indicate, Soviet troops were unable to stop U.S.-backed guerrillas infiltrating from sanctuaries in Pakistan, and they fueled support for the insurgents by killing civilians, factors that are aiding the Taliban today.

"Very little is left of the friendly feelings toward the Soviet people, which existed for decades. Very many people have died, and not all of them were bandits (guerrillas). Not a single problem was solved in favor of the peasants," then-Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze reported to the Politburo on Jan. 21, 1987, according to minutes of the meeting. "In essence, (we) waged war against the peasants."

Iraqi election commission acknowledges fraud

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – Iraqi officials acknowledged Sunday that there was some fraud in last month's provincial elections but not enough to force a new vote in any province.

Faraj al-Haidari, chairman of the election commission, said final results of the Jan. 31 voting would be certified and announced this week. Voters chose members of ruling provincial councils in an election seen as a dress rehearsal for parliamentary balloting by the end of the year.

The U.S. hailed the absence of major violence during the elections, expressing hope they would help cement security gains of the past year.

Despite the drop in violence, a U.S. soldier was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in southern Iraq, the U.S. announced. At least three other people were killed by attacks Sunday in other parts of the country, according to police.

Preliminary election results from last month's balloting were announced Feb. 5 and showed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ticket swept to victory over Shiite religious parties in Baghdad and southern Iraq — a strong endorsement of his security efforts.

Al-Haidari told The Associated Press that ballots in more than 30 polling stations nationwide were nullified because of fraud but that was not enough to declare the election a failure.

He gave no further details. But one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about the vote to media, said the most widespread fraud appeared to have occurred in Diyala province, which has large Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities and an ongoing insurgency.

A coalition including the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political group, led in Diyala with 21.1 percent of the vote followed by a Kurdish alliance with 17.2 percent, according to preliminary results.

Al-Maliki's coalition finished fourth in Diyala with 9.5 percent.

U.S. officials have been closely watching the Diyala results for signs of friction between Arabs and Kurds, who are the biggest community in the far north of the province.

The Kurds were hoping that a strong Kurdish showing in those areas would bolster their case for incorporating parts of the province into the Kurdish self-ruled region.

In the south, al-Maliki's Dawa party and its coalition allies prevailed over their main Shiite rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has close links to Iran.

That victory was partly driven by public backlash against what many Iraqis see as undue Iranian influence in their country.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf on Sunday announced a ban against non-Arabic signs in the country's holy cities, saying the measure was intended to counter ones appearing in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran.

"Due to our constitution, the formal language in Iraq is Arabic as well as Kurdish," Khalaf said in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. "Therefore, the use of another language defames the faces of the holy cities."

Signs at stores in Shiite holy cities are sometimes written in Farsi as well as Arabic to attract business from the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visit each year from Iran, which like Iraq is a predominantly Shiite country.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims converged on Karbala in recent days to celebrate the end of 40 days of mourning that follow the anniversary of the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered saints.

A series of bombings targeting pilgrims on their way to Karbala killed 60 people and wounded 170 last week. Sunni militants have kept up their attacks against Shiites, hoping to re-ignite the kind of sectarian conflict that engulfed the country two years ago.

Police arrested a would-be suicide bomber south of Baghdad on Sunday who had explosives under his clothes and said he was planning to target pilgrims headed to Karbala, said a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The Karbala ceremonies culminate before dawn Monday.

Also Sunday, a bomb hidden in a garbage pile killed one person and injured 18 others in Baghdad's Sadr City district.

In the northern city of Mosul, one civilian and one police officer were killed in two separate attacks on police patrols, an Iraqi police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

The Shiite-led government has continued its crackdown against Sunni militants. Iraqi police on Sunday announced the arrests of two senior al-Qaida in Iraq members.

Also Sunday, an Iraqi police official said authorities found 10 decomposing bodies in a mass grave near Taji, a former Sunni insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Rohingya are Muslim outcasts, not welcome anywhere

BANGKOK — For generations, the ethnic Muslim Rohingya have endured persecution by the ruling junta of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country.

The plight of the Rohingya, descendants of Arab traders from the 7th century, gained international attention over the past month after five boatloads of haggard migrants were found in the waters around Indonesia and the Andaman Islands.

But unlike the Kurds or the Palestinians, no one has championed the cause of the Rohingya. Most countries, from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia, see them as little more than a source of cheap labor for the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs.

"The Rohingya are probably the most friendless people in the world. They just have no one advocating for them at all," said Kitty McKinsey, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "Hardly any of them have legal status anywhere in the world."

There are an estimated 750,000 Rohingya living in Myanmar's mountainous northern state of Rakhine, which borders Bangladesh. Thousands flee every year, trying to escape a life of abuse that was codified in 1982 with a law that virtually bars them from becoming citizens.

A spokesman for Myanmar's military government did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. It has repeatedly denied abusing the Rohingya, though Amnesty International said the junta has described them as less than human. Rights groups have documented widespread abuses, including forced labor, land seizures and rape.

"It was like living in hell," said Mohamad Zagit, who left after soldiers confiscated his family's rice farm and then threw him in jail for praying at a local mosque. The 23-year-old spoke from his hospital bed in Thailand, where he had been detained after fleeing Myanmar.

"We have no rights," said Muhamad Shafirullah, who was among 200 migrants rescued by the Indonesian navy last week. He recalled how he was jailed in Myanmar, his family's land stolen and a cousin dragged into the jungle and shot dead. "They rape and kill our women. We can't practice our religion. We aren't allowed to travel from village to village ... It's almost impossible, even, to get married or go to school."

Twice since the 1970s, waves of attacks by the military and Buddhist villagers forced hundred of thousands of Rohingya to flee over the border to Bangladesh, a Muslim country whose people speak a similar language. Many have since been repatriated, but 200,000 still work there as illegal migrants and another 28,000 live in squalid refugee camps.

Violence against Rohingya women is common, and they face the threat of prison because of their illegal status, said Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Bangkok-based Arakan Project, an advocacy group for the Rohingya. Thousands of Rohingya have taken to the seas from Bangladesh in search of better jobs, but ended up drowning or at the mercy of traffickers.

For years, the Rohingya traveled to the Middle East for work, with nearly a half million ending up in Saudi Arabia.

But in recent years — partly because of bureaucratic hurdles faced by Muslims following 9/11 — many now try to go instead by boat to Thailand and then overland to Malaysia, another Islamic nation.

But even those who make it to Malaysia then struggle find good jobs and quickly discover that, there too, intolerance is growing. Many of the 14,300 Rohingya in Malaysia live in cramped, rundown apartments in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and face the constant threat of deportation, community leaders said. If caught, the migrants can be caned and imprisoned for up to five years.

Yet most refugee advocates expect Rohingya migrants will keep coming.

"My 14 children rely on me. They have no safety, no food, nothing," said Mohamad Salim, a 35-year-old, bearded fisherman who also was detained and hospitalized in Thailand and begged to be allowed to continue onto Malaysia.

"What will they eat? How will they live if I don't find work?" he said, his voice trembling.

Source: Newsvine.
Link: http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/02/14/2435012-rohingya-are-muslim-outcasts-not-welcome-anywhere.

Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi welcomes Algeria's accession to Arab Free Trade Zone

UAE Minister of Foreign Trade H.E. Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi welcomed the recent accession of the Democratic People's Republic of Algeria to the Greater Arab Free Trade Zone.

The executive program of the Zone commenced in Algeria at the beginning of this year.

H.E. considered the development an important step in promoting Arab economic integration as a key objective to be achieved by all the region's countries, and a foundation for boosting joint Arab economic activities, in order to achieve the Middle East's desired economic development.

She explained that stronger regional economic relations would help Arab countries integrate with the global economy and deal with international political and economic unity.

The Minister also emphasized the need for concerted efforts among all member States to remove non-tariff barriers and other restrictions on the efficient flow of goods in conjunction with the current Tariff Exemption to complement the Greater Arab Free Trade Zone.

The Minister invited the UAE private sector to benefit from the advantages offered by the accession of Algeria to the Arab Free Trade Zone, which she said would enable products and goods originating from the UAE to enter the Algerian market without payment of any customs duties.

H.E. Sheikha Lubna explained that the Arab Free Trade Zone is the first practical step towards the establishment of an Arab economic bloc that will take a favorable place among the world's economies.

She added that the Zone is in line with global guidelines to establish or join economic blocs with the capability to manage international developments related to the opening of global markets to each other.

H.E. commended the high level of cooperation between Algeria and the UAE under the excellent leadership of the two countries, which broadens prospects of joint cooperation complementing their aspirations and potential.

She emphasized the need to further strengthen trade between the two countries in all fields to achieve common interests and open new horizons for further integration, partnership and investment.

The volume of foreign trade between the UAE and Algeria reached Dhs1.62bn in 2007, a 6.7% increase over 2006. UAE investments into Algeria involved the fields of tourism, agriculture, industry, construction, infrastructure and banking. UAE companies are very interested in the Algerian market due to the existence of a free trade agreement between Algeria and the European Union, which provides substantial access to the European markets.

The Arab Free Trade Zone entered the implementation phase in early 1998 via the activation of a trade-facilitating agreement among Arab countries. The completion of the implementation of the terms of this agreement and the establishment of the Zone were announced in the beginning of 2005; this signaled the start of liberal trade between the signatories and their exemption from taxes, customs duties and barriers under the terms of the deal.

The 18 countries covered by the agreement include the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, and Algeria.

Guantanamo detainee 'fit to travel to UK'

By Joe Sinclair, Press Association

Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed is fit enough to travel to the UK should the US government agree to his release, the Foreign Office said today.

A team of British officials, including a doctor, met yesterday with Ethiopian-born Mohamed, who has refugee status in the UK.

Legal representatives hope he will be cleared for release and return to Britain within days by a review ordered by President Barack Obama.

An FCO spokesman said: "A team of British officials, including a doctor, met with Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed yesterday. They also met with medical staff at the facility.

"There are no immediate medical concerns that would prevent him from traveling to the UK, should the United States government agree to the UK's request for release and return.

"We hope this brings Mr Mohamed's release and return to the UK one step closer."

The officials left Miami Airport yesterday to visit the US prison camp on Cuba to make preparations for Mohamed's return.

Mohamed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said earlier this week that he believed their trip was to check that the detainee was fit to fly after the hunger strike he has maintained for more than a month.

He said no date for his client's release has been fixed but he hoped it would be in about a week.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order on January 22 establishing a review of all those held at Guantanamo.

Mr Mohamed, 30, is an Ethiopian Muslim convert who came to Britain in 1994 and was granted asylum.

He was arrested by American forces in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

He claims he was secretly flown to Morocco and tortured before being moved to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in September 2004.

All terror charges against him were dropped last year but he remains in detention.

Announcing plans on Wednesday for the visit by UK officials, Foreign Secretary David Miliband stressed that his return to Britain was dependent on the outcome of the review process, but said the US administration had agreed to treat his case as a "priority".

Mohamed has said that he falsely confessed to a radioactive "dirty bomb" plot while being tortured in Morocco, and has claimed that Britain was complicit in his rendition and torture.

The torture allegations are at the heart of a continuing legal row after High Court judges complained that Mr Miliband had blocked them, for national security reasons, from making documents relating to his case public.

The Observer today reported that the Foreign Office solicited a letter from the US State Department which forced British judges to block publication of torture evidence.

The newspaper quoted a former senior State Department official as saying the letter was requested by the Foreign Office so it could be introduced in court proceedings.

The letter said the release of papers relating to Mohamed would damage future intelligence-sharing between the two countries.

In response, Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary Edward Davey said: "This could represent one of the most outrageous deceptions of Parliament, the judiciary and the British people.

"There must be an immediate investigation, with all related correspondence made public.

"The Foreign Secretary must not block publication this time."

Viva Gaza!

by Adrian Roberts

A MASSIVE convoy of vehicles snaked its way out of London on Saturday bearing more than £1 million worth of aid for Gaza.

The Viva Palestina mission will travel 5,000 miles through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, attempting to cross at Rafah in early March.

Hundreds of volunteers have signed up to deliver the aid, which includes 12 ambulances, a fire engine, a boat and lorries full of medicines, tools, clothes, blankets and shoes as well as gifts for children.

Respect MP George Galloway, who will join the convoy at points along the route, said that an "intifada" was sweeping Britain.

"It is a massive and peaceful movement in support of the beleaguered population of Gaza and Palestine," he said.

"It is happening everywhere but is especially strong in the north of England and especially among young Muslims."

Both the size of the convoy and the amount of aid it is carrying exceeded organizers' expectations.

"In barely a month, it has metamorphosed from an aspiration I threw out at the 100,000 strong pro-Palestine demonstration on January 10 to more than 100 vehicles and nearly 300 people from across Britain," said Mr Galloway.

"We will lead the biggest convoy of British vehicles across north Africa since Montgomery."

From London, it made for Ramsgate, Kent, to catch a ferry to Ostend in Belgium. The convoy then traveled down to Bordeaux, south-west France, for its first major stop.

A spokeswoman for Viva Palestina said that everyone was still in good spirits and there was an air of excitement around the convoy.

However, the convoy lost two of its vehicles on Friday night after they were stopped by armed police on the M65 near Preston as they headed from Burnley to London.

Three men were still being detained on Sunday after police were granted extra time to question them. Another six were released without charge. Police claimed the swoop was linked to an overseas terror threat.

A spokesman for Mr Galloway said: "Although they have been arrested under the Terrorism Act, we don't know why or what grounds or what evidence there is and they haven't been charged yet."

Police searched homes in the constituency of Burnley Labour councillor Wajid Khan, who said local people were "shocked" by the arrests as some of the individuals were well respected and had been working in the community for a number of years.

"They're seen in a positive light in their community," he said.

"I think the biggest frustration within the community is that a lot of money's been raised for Gaza, you're trying to help people in a humanitarian crisis.

"Some people might be thinking, is all this because this aid is going to Gaza or is it police conducting a counterterrorism operation?

"If this was because the aid was going to Gaza then it would be a very devastating consequence for community spirit."

U.S. urges Nigeria to deploy peacekeepers to Somalia

Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations Susan Rice has called on Nigeria to hasten efforts in deploying its peacekeepers to strife-torn Somalia, according to the News Agency of Nigeria reports on Saturday.

Nigeria has recently pledged to send a battalion to Somalia as part of an AU peacekeeping force.

The U.S. envoy stated this when she visited Nigeria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Joy Ogwu on Friday at the Nigerian House in New York.

The U.S. representative said that the United States is currently pursuing a UN peacekeeping commitment in Somalia.

"In this regard, we want to know what is holding back Nigeria's pledge to send a battalion of peacekeepers to Somalia," she said.

The U.S. representative said the UN Security Council has already discussed a support package for the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)," she added.

"A firm response from Nigeria on the deployment of its troops will facilitate the (UN) Security Council's planning process and decision by June 1," the ambassador said.

Rice commended Nigeria for its role in global peacekeeping, noting that Nigeria is not just an important African country, but a major contributor to international peace and security.

She also called for the strengthening of the existing cordial relations between the United States and Nigeria and between their two missions at the United Nations.

Responding, Ogwu expressed gratitude to Rice for the visit and her interest for peace and stability in Somalia and other parts of Africa.

She described the U.S. envoy as a versatile diplomat, noting that her wealth of experience in diplomacy and government would help in her new role at the UN.

Ogwu reaffirmed Nigeria's commitment to international peace and security, particularly through peacekeeping missions.

The Nigerian diplomat further reiterated Nigeria's commitment to its earlier pledge to deploy peacekeepers to Somalia to boost AU mission.

She noted that the deployment is being hindered by logistics shortfall and called for support for the effective deployment of the peacekeepers.

Source: People's Daily.
Link: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90855/6593027.html.

Chavez wins vote to scrap term limits in Venezuela

By NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez won a referendum to eliminate term limits Sunday and vowed to remain in power for at least another decade to complete his socialist revolution. Opponents accepted defeat but said Chavez is becoming a dictator.

Fireworks exploded in the sky and caravans of supporters celebrated in the streets, waving red flags and honking horns. Thousands of people gathered outside Miraflores Palace, where the former paratroop commander appeared on a balcony to sing the national anthem and address the crowd.

"Those who voted 'yes' today voted for socialism, for revolution," Chavez said. He called the victory — which allows all public officials to run for re-election indefinitely — a mandate to speed his transformation of Venezuela into a socialist state.

"Today we opened wide the gates of the future," he said. "In 2012 there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate."

With 94 percent of the vote counted, 54 percent had voted for the constitutional amendment, National Electoral Council chief Tibisay Lucena said. Forty-six percent had voted against it, a trend she called irreversible. She said turnout was 67 percent.

At their campaign headquarters, Chavez opponents hugged one another, and some cried. Several opposition leaders said they wouldn't contest the vote.

"We're democrats. We accept the results," said opposition leader Omar Barboza.

But they said the results were skewed by Chavez's broad use of state resources to get out the vote, through a battery of state-run news media, pressure on 2 million public employees and frequent presidential speeches which all television stations are required to air.

Opponents say Chavez already has far too much power, with the courts, the legislature and the election council all under his influence. Removing the 12-year presidential term limit, they say, makes him unstoppable.

"Effectively this will become a dictatorship," Barboza told The Associated Press. "It's control of all the powers, lack of separation of powers, unscrupulous use of state resources, persecution of adversaries."

Voters on both sides said the referendum was crucial to the future of Venezuela, a deeply polarized country where Chavez has spent a tumultuous decade in power channeling tremendous oil wealth into combating gaping social inequality.

Chavez supporters say their president has given poor Venezuelans cheap food, free education and quality health care, and empowered them with a discourse of class struggle after decades of U.S.-backed governments that favored the rich.

"This victory saved the revolution," said Gonzalo Mosqueda, a 60-year-old shopkeeper, sipping rum from a plastic cup outside the palace. "Without it everything would be at risk — all the social programs, and everything he has done for the poor."

Chavez took office in 1999 and won support for a new constitution the same year that allowed the president to serve two six-year terms, barring him from the 2012 elections. Sunday's vote was his second attempt to change that; voters rejected a broader referendum in December 2007.

Venezuela's leftist allies in Latin America have followed the model. Ecuador pushed through a new constitution in September and Bolivia did so in January. Both loosened rules on presidential re-election. Nicaragua's ruling Sandinistas also plan to propose an amendment that would let Daniel Ortega run for another consecutive term.

Pakistan truce includes enforcement of Islamic law

By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD – Pakistani officials closed in on a peace deal with a Taliban-linked group Sunday that could lead to enforcement of Islamic law in a part of the country that is supposed to be fully under government control. Militants in the Swat Valley responded by declaring a 10-day cease-fire as a goodwill gesture.

The agreement is expected to be formally announced Monday — and draw criticism from the United States, which has said such deals merely give insurgents time to regroup.

Several past deals with militants have failed, but Pakistan says force alone cannot defeat al-Qaida and Taliban fighters wreaking havoc in its northwest and attacking U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Regaining the Swat Valley from militants is a major test for Pakistan's shaky civilian leadership. Unlike the semiautonomous tribal regions where al-Qaida and Taliban have long thrived, the former tourist haven is supposed to be under full government control.

But militants have gained power since a peace deal last year collapsed within months, and violence has increased.

Provincial government leaders confirmed they were talking to a pro-Taliban group about ways to impose Islamic judicial practices in the Malakand division, which includes Swat.

The Swat Taliban's version of Islamic law is especially harsh. They have declared a ban on female education, forced women to stay mostly indoors and clamped down on many forms of entertainment.

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said the militants would adhere to any deal reached with the group if Islamic law is implemented in the region.

He also announced the 10-day cease-fire.

"We reserve the right to retaliate if we are fired upon," he said. "Once Islamic law is imposed, there will be no problems in Swat. The Taliban will lay down their arms."

Khan also said the militants had freed a Chinese engineer held captive for nearly six months. Long Xiaowei was freed Saturday, days before a planned visit to China by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

Provincial law minister Arshad Abdullah said the deal would require the pro-Taliban group to convince the militants to first give up violence. Then existing laws governing the justice system can be amended or enforced, he said.

"They have to succumb to law," Abdullah said. "They have to put down their arms."

Past deals required militants to stop fighting but eventually unraveled amid militant complaints that the government was not meeting their demands.

The pro-Taliban group — known as the Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammedi, or the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law — is led by Sufi Muhammad, who Pakistan freed from custody last year after he renounced violence.

Muhammad is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the Swat Taliban. Muhammad, who has long agitated for Islamic law in the region, said that after the formal announcement he will go to Swat and ask Fazlullah and his men to lay down their arms.

A broad peace deal reached last year with Fazlullah's militants effectively collapsed within a few months, and Pakistani security officials blame that agreement for the militants' gains in Swat since then. The deal was supposed to let religious scholars advise judges in the courts, but the agreement encountered obstacles, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for North West Frontier Province.

An Islamic judicial system is a concession to the insurgents, but it is also a long-standing demand of many civilians in the conservative region who are dissatisfied with the inefficient secular justice system.

Hussain noted that the Swat Taliban had responded well to the talks, but he warned that if "someone does not agree and does not adopt the way of dialogue, the government would be compelled to use force to establish its authority."

Pakistan has tried to avoid negotiating directly with militants, often using tribal elders as intermediaries.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi deflected concerns about a negative U.S. reaction to the talks, insisting the country was reaching out to peaceful groups.

"We are not compromising with militants, instead trying to isolate the militants, and for that I do not think America will have any objection," he said.

Deteriorating security in the nuclear-armed country has included a string of attacks on foreigners.

U.N. officials said Sunday they were still trying to establish contact with the kidnappers of an American employee seized Feb. 2 in the southwest city of Quetta. On Friday, John Solecki's kidnappers threatened to kill him within 72 hours and issued a 20-second video of the blindfolded captive.

It was unclear exactly when the deadline would expire, and U.N. officials said Sunday they were still trying to establish contact with the kidnappers, who identify themselves as the previously unknown Baluchistan Liberation United Front. The name indicates the group is more likely linked to separatists than to Islamists.

Drilling in the dust changes lives in south Sudan

by Peter Martell

MIRINDANYI, Sudan (AFP) – It seems such a simple task: pumping the handle of a water borehole up and down until the clear and cool liquid splashes into the plastic container.

And in the dry and dusty southern Sudanese village of Mirindanyi, they have been celebrating doing just that since their pump was installed last year.

But it was not always this way. Beforehand, "it took two hours to the river to collect the water, then two hours back," said Floris Fazir, pausing to heave a 20-litre container on her head.

"In the dry season, we got the water from a scraped well on the river bed, and that was dirty. We would get sick often. But water from the borehole is sweet to drink."

Southern Sudan, an oil-rich but grossly underdeveloped region about the size of Spain and Portugal, is slowly recovering after years of bloody north-south civil war.

Four million people were displaced from or within south Sudan during the 21 years of battle, according to assessments made after the 2005 peace deal which joined the southern rebel leadership with the Arab-led northern government.

Some 1.7 million people have since returned, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but the lack of services remains dire.

Provision of drinking water "remains the top priority in all areas of returns," the IOM said in a January report, warning that almost a quarter of villages surveyed relied on river water as their main source.

But for communities such as Mirindanyi -- a typical farming settlement some 190 kilometers (120 miles) west of Juba, capital of semi-autonomous southern Sudan -- even river water vanishes during the dry season from December to March.

Without a borehole, water was collected from shallow and dirty wells scraped into the river bed.

"Before, the school would close in the dry season because the children would be collecting water all day," mother of eight Grace Justin said of the thatched classroom by the borehole.

She and her family could carry back just 40 liters a day -- for 10 people. Basic World Health Organization sanitation guidelines say people should have at least 20 liters a day each, and that the source should be less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) from the home.

"We had only enough for cooking and drinking, not for washing," Justin said.

Mirindanyi was a frontline zone during the civil war, with rebel and government forces battling back and forth through the remote bush, and villages in the area were abandoned for years.

Development has always been a rarity in the region. Residents say the long and rocky track to the village has been untouched since the British colonial authorities ordered it built before Sudan's independence in 1956.

"We want to provide a good water supply close to every village," said Helen Turkie, area head of the Southern Sudan Refugee and Rehabilitation Commission, the government authority supporting humanitarian development.

"Along with schools and health centers, these are what the people need."

But boreholes do not come cheap.

"Each costs at least 13,000 dollars (10,000 euros) -- more if it is deep," said Augustino Buya, local program manager for the British aid agency Oxfam which funded the Mirindanyi borehole, one of 340 it has drilled in south Sudan since the war ended.

Demand is also heavy, and huge areas remain without clean water supplies. "Each is designed to cater for 500 people, but many are being used by even 3,000," Buya added.

The presence of boreholes has already had an impact on health, reducing sickness including water-borne diseases, officials say.

In the local community health center at Dosho, volunteer worker Godwin Jimma scanned down the neat ruled lines of the register.

"There has been a decrease in diarrhea since we stopped collecting the water from the river," Jimma said.

"Fewer children are dying now," he added, pausing by the baby-weighing scale hanging in the simple tin-roofed building.

Maintenance is a major problem, however. The metal pumps are basic designs, and heavy use in tough conditions puts great strain on them. More than 40 percent of boreholes in villages assessed by the IOM were not working.

In nearby Wanpi, women walked wearily through the dry grass. Their pump was broken, dozens of people had descended on the village for a celebration, and now they faced hours of back-breaking work fetching water.

"I check everything is working fine and do regular maintenance, but I can't do complicated repairs," said Bullen Tio, trained as a "water caretaker" by Oxfam. This time an engineer must be called out to fix the broken Wanpi pump.

Water carrying is women's work, and while the borehole in Mirindanyi has cut down the hours needed for that, there are always other tough tasks they must do such as tending the crops, washing, gathering firewood and cooking.

"It has helped them," said elder Supana Juruba, lay priest of the village's thatched-hut church, nodding towards one woman pumping water. "Now there is more time for them to do other work."

The boreholes are changing lives.

"Carrying water was such hard work. Now I get to lie in the morning in bed -- more time with my husband," said grandmother Monica Elizai with a big wink and a toothless laugh.