DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles at a militant hide-out in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least six people and wounding nine, intelligence officials said.
The missiles were fired at a compound in South Waziristan, a rugged, lawless region close to the Afghan border, said the two Pakistani officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in South Waziristan in a similar strike on Aug. 5.
The region is now under the control of his close aide, Waliur Rehman.
There were conflicting claims as to the identities of the dead.
One of the intelligence officials said they were believed to be militants from Uzbekistan. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq called the Associated Press soon after the attack and said that women and children were the only victims.
Neither claim could be independently verified. The attack was in a remote area of the tribal region, which is off-limits to journalists and largely under Taliban control. In the past, both the government and Taliban have passed on information that was not true.
The missiles hit in the Kani Guram area of South Waziristan. The same area was targeted in a missile attack on Aug. 11 that killed eight people, intelligence officials said at the time.
The attack came two days after Rehman and another top commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, acknowledged Baitullah was dead, ending weeks of public denials. In the same telephone call to The Associated Press, they announced that Hakimullah was the new leader of the movement, while Rehman was in charge of South Waziristan.
Pakistani officials sought to portray the movement as in disarray since the killing of Baitullah, reporting that Rehman and Hakimullah engaged in a shootout over who should be the next leader. The men denied any split in the movement.
The United States has launched more than 40 missile strikes from unmanned planes on al-Qaida and Taliban targets close to the Afghan border since last year, reportedly killing several top commanders, but also civilians. It does not comment on the attacks.
The missiles are fired from CIA-operated drones believed to be launched from Afghanistan or from secret bases inside Pakistan. They are reported to be piloted by operatives inside the United States.
The Pakistani government publicly protests the attacks, though is assumed to be cooperating with the strikes and providing intelligence for them. It has called on Washington to give the technology for such attacks to Islamabad because its military is capable of using the drones.
August 2009
NEW YORK (Reuters) –
With the U.S. economy mired in recession, workers are finding themselves stuck in bad jobs with such annoyances as managers who berate employees and bosses who hold meetings in bed.
Unable to make a move when jobs are scarce and some 14.5 million workers are unemployed, many employees feel trapped and are seeking ways to cope, experts say.
"They can't move," said Kathi Elster, co-author of "Working for You Isn't Working for Me," due out next month.
"They want to leave their jobs because they can't stand somebody in the office or the politics of the company or they're overworked or underworked or they don't like the culture of the company," she said.
Not only is the economy keeping people from changing jobs, but it's likely to mean fewer employees doing more work and bosses under pressure from above, the experts say.
"It's a perfect storm," said Mitchell Kusy, co-author of "Toxic Workplace." In his research of 400 business leaders, 64 percent were currently working with a "toxic personality" and 94 percent had done so at some point in their career.
Many workers would change jobs if they could, according to a survey this week that said many U.S. workers plan a switch when the economy improves. It said 18 percent plan to change employers, 14 percent plan to change careers, 13 percent plan to change industries and 18 percent plan to work fewer hours.
"The unemployed people we know who really can't find jobs are actually happier than the people that are employed because it's so difficult right now," said Elster.
'EMOTIONAL TOIL'
Unhappy workers can be costly, said Kusy. They are less productive, show less commitment to the organization and volunteer for less work, he said.
"Not only is there emotional toil, there's also this financial burden that occurs in the organization," he said.
Among some vivid cases, one New York worker described a boss who, while not sick, nonetheless holds business meetings in bed, with employees gathered in his bedroom.
"Right now I'm looking for a new job, the market be damned," the worker said, not wanting to be identified.
A senior information technology analyst, who also did not want to be named, said his boss is "a workplace lawsuit waiting to happen." She flaunts employment laws and workplace rules and tries to impress superiors while berating the staff, he said.
"I was looking for another position before the recession hit and working on starting my own business, but that's been put on hold until things improve," he said. "When things do get better, I'm leaving as soon as I can."
A tight job market makes it worse, said Katherine Crowley, co-author of "Working for You Isn't Working for Me."
"One of the challenges of this climate is most employees, they're afraid to say no, they're afraid to set any kind of limits and they're afraid even to take vacation," she said.
Marc Hershon, co-author of "I Hate People: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job," said his advice is "minimize contact."
'LESSEN THE ANGUISH'
"The less time you spend in a situation that's going to create the opportunity for friction, the better you are," he said. "The whole goal is to figure out how to be more productive and how to lessen the anguish."
Kusy and co-author Elizabeth Holloway suggest workplaces establish standards of behavior and promote models of civility to reach what they call "respectful engagement."
Even if job moves were easier, that is rarely an answer, said Elster, adding: "You're going to take it with you."
She and Crowley advocate ways to adjust expectations, find recognition from other sources and assume some control.
Find a mentor, join a support group or start to network "so that you are not focused on the boss but you're focused on yourself and your career," Elster said.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
The early returns from Afghanistan's presidential election had the smell of a decorous massage job. With 10% of districts reporting, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, the former Foreign Minister, were tied, with about 40% each. But few of those votes came from Karzai's Pashtun strongholds in the south, where turnout was light - owing to Taliban threats - but heavily managed. "It's not exactly one man, one vote out in the rural areas," a Western diplomat told me. "The tribal leader gathers everyone together and says, 'We're voting for Candidate X.'" In some cases, apparently, tribal leaders have simply stamped all the ballots themselves; with literacy rates running at less than 10% in many rural areas, that's not considered fraud but business as usual. And so it seems likely that Karzai will "win" re-election. Whether he has won anything worth winning remains to be seen. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)
The absurdity of holding an election in an impoverished country with a central government that barely governs and a guerrilla insurgency that has threatened to kill anyone caught voting is illustrative of our current Afghan dilemma. We have been prodding the Afghans to run, from Kabul, a country that has always been governed from the bottom up, valley by valley, tribe by tribe. Karzai has many attributes, but a desire to provide effective governance is off his radar screen. He is good at the traditional form of Afghan politics, creating alliances among tribal and ethnic factions. The money distributed by the central government - inevitably, money contributed by the international community - is routinely received as tribute by Karzai's local allies, to be disbursed, or not, as they wish; a government job is assumed by many, especially the police, to be a license to collect money for themselves. (An exception appears to be in the effective, if fledgling, Afghan army.) "I have yet to meet an Afghan civilian who has anything positive to say about the central government," a senior U.S. official told me. "They don't like the Taliban very much, but the Taliban at least provide a system of justice, plus some goods and services, and they'll go with that."
That is why Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says the military situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. "Last week I spoke to a couple of Army Rangers who had just engaged the enemy," Mullen told me. "They said it was like fighting the Marines. The Taliban were well trained, better organized, much tougher fighters than they'd been in the past." And that is why it is widely expected that General Stanley McChrystal will be requesting more troops when his review of the situation on the ground is completed in a few weeks. I'm told that President Obama will make a decision about whether to accede to McChrystal's request, in whole or in part, by November. That will probably be about the same time as the health-care-reform debate comes to a head. By the end of November, we should have a much clearer sense of the trajectory of the Obama presidency.
So what should Obama do about Afghanistan? His dilemma isn't as stark as has been posed in recent press accounts, with screamers on the right demanding slavish devotion to the military's wish list and screamers on the left demanding a withdrawal. The U.S. military has become far more ... nuanced when it comes to making requests of Presidents. The negotiations about what McChrystal can officially request will not take place anywhere near the public eye. It is very likely that more troops will be sent - to build and train the Afghan security forces, it will be said. Obama's problems on the left will be mitigated by the fact that most Democrats have also supported this war - as opposed to Iraq's - and have little desire to reverse themselves. They don't want to hurt the President, and they don't want to be perceived as weak on defense come election time.
Which still leaves the nagging question: What is the right thing to do in Afghanistan? It should be remembered that we invaded with cause: the Taliban government was providing safe havens for al-Qaeda, from which the Sept. 11 attacks were launched. Having routed the existing Afghan government, we had a responsibility to restore order. We have bungled that responsibility for eight years, attempting a Western version of order: central governance, the appearance of democracy - but largely ignoring traditional Afghan ways of social organization. The national-security challenge still exists, although its locus has shifted across the border to Pakistan.
Even if we help the Afghans establish a brilliant government in Kabul, that threat will remain - and it's legitimate to ask whether pouring our resources into Afghan nation-building is the best way to confront al-Qaeda. Unless the new Karzai government quickly changes course, the only reasonable answer is no. The question then becomes, What's Plan B? And is anyone working on that?
See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West Frontier Province.
See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan.
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:Why a Contested Afghan Election Result Could Help the U.S. What Afghan Election Result is Best for the U.S.? The Taliban Threaten to Disrupt Afghanistan Election Will the U.S. Stick by Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan? Tensions Rise in Afghanistan's Post-Election Standoff
LOS ANGELES – Police are looking for three suspects in the burglary of Lindsay Lohan's home.
The Los Angeles Police Department has released surveillance camera footage of the Sunday break-in at the "Mean Girls" star's house. The footage shows three people, whose faces are covered with scarves, walking through a gate at Lohan's Hollywood Hills home and entering a courtyard at around 1:10 a.m.
LAPD detectives believe the suspects one male and two females, all 18 to 25 years old entered the house through an unlocked door, then ransacked it and took property.
Lohan's spokeswoman, Leslie Sloane-Zelnik, said the break-in happened Sunday while the actress and her younger sister were away. Sloane-Zelnik said many of Lohan's "personal belongings were taken without remorse."
Lohan posted on Twitter she didn't think it was a robbery because "things that a certain old friend knew meant a lot to me" were taken.
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Voters in Afghanistan’s presidential
election may have failed to deliver the increased turnout sought
by Afghan and U.S. officials, hindering efforts to win a broader
mandate for the government as it battles Taliban militants.
As days of ballot-counting began, residents and
international election monitors in several provinces said
yesterday’s election lacked the lengthy voter lines and public
celebrations of the presidential vote five years ago.
The Taliban conducted 73 attacks during the day across 15
of the country’s 34 provinces, President Hamid Karzai told
reporters in Kabul, without giving details. Twenty to 30 people
died in voting day attacks, according to counts by international
and Afghan news organizations.
“The streets were eerily quiet” in the southern city of
Kandahar, where drummers and dancers performed outside polling
places in 2004, said Hardin Lang, a monitor with Democracy
International Inc., a Washington-based elections organization.
“The turnout appeared rather low in comparison to the last
time,” said Lang. “There was no anecdotal evidence of
enthusiasm.”
Din Mohammad, Karzai’s campaign chief, told Agence France-
Presse that the president was decisively leading the count and
that there would be no need for a run-off ballot. A separate AFP
report cited the election authority as saying the turnout was
between 40 percent and 50 percent, compared with 70 percent in
the last election. Counting has been completed and the results
will be released early next week, AFP said.
‘Fair’ at Best
“The early information is that the turnout was very low in
some provinces and at best was fair in others,” said Haroun Mir,
director of Afghanistan’s Center for Research & Policy Studies.
The unenthusiastic turnout raised speculation Karzai would
fail to win 50 percent of the vote, which would put him in a
runoff against his leading challenger, said Abubakar Siddique,
an Afghan political analyst.
Two opinion surveys this month show that his top rival is
his former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, who draws his
main support from the ethnic Tajik regions of north Afghanistan.
Afghan news reports spoke of a higher turnout in many northern
provinces than in the south, which may benefit Abdullah.
While the election showed the Taliban’s ability to disrupt
a nationwide vote, it also was a “a considerable blow to the
Taliban, who were not able” to stop it, Siddique said.
‘Propitious Sign’
Karzai and the Obama administration hailed the vote.
“The successful conduct of elections” is “a propitious
sign for establishing a democratically elected government and
promoting democracy in the country,” the Afghan president told
reporters after the polls closed.
“Lots of people have defied threats of violence and terror
to express their thoughts about the next government,” said
Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman.
As the Obama administration shifts America’s national
security focus -- and U.S. troops -- from Iraq to Afghanistan,
it needs a stronger Afghan government to confront Taliban
militants whose attacks are killing record numbers of foreign
troops and Afghan civilians.
In the 65,000-strong U.S.-led coalition, 283 troops have
been killed this year, a rate 50 percent higher than last year,
and setting a record, according to the monitoring group
iCasualties. The coalition said a U.S. soldier died yesterday in
a mortar attack in the east of the country. More than 1,000
civilians were killed through June, 20 percent more than last
year’s record high, United Nations figures show.
Increased Registration
While Afghan officials set no specific measurements for
success in the vote, they have touted a yearlong increase in
voter registration, from about 10 million to 15 million, as a
sign the election would bring increased participation and a
stronger democratic base to the next government.
Zekria Barakzai, an election commission official, said the
turnout might reach 50 percent, Agence France-Presse reported,
meaning a total of 7 million to 8 million votes cast. That would
be similar in number to the 8 million who voted in 2004, though
it would represent a decline in the percentage of eligible
voters taking part, from 70 percent five years ago.
While the election commission said earlier this month that
it hoped to open as many as 7,000 polling stations, it said
yesterday only 6,200 had actually operated. Many of the closures
of planned polling stations came in the ethnic Pashtun south,
where the Taliban are most active, said reports from
Afghanistan’s Pajhwok news agency.
Taliban Warning
Guerrillas patrolled the highway between Kabul and Kandahar,
stopping traffic in Ghazni province to warn people not to vote,
Pajhwok reported. The Taliban warned in leaflets distributed in
southern Afghanistan that it would cut off people’s index
fingers if they were marked by the ink used by polling officials
to show they had voted, according to local residents.
Two voters were hanged in Kandahar, the New York Times
reported, citing unidentified witnesses.
For the past eight years, Karzai and his international
backers have failed to contain the fighting or fulfill Afghans’
aspirations for an economic recovery from three decades of war.
Measured by income, life expectancy and literacy, Afghanistan is
the world’s fifth-poorest country, according to a 2007 report by
the Afghan government and the United Nations.
An April security map prepared by the Afghan government and
UN agencies showed that the Taliban either control or pose a
“high risk” of attack in 40 percent of Afghanistan, according
to Peter Bergen, a senior fellow at the Washington-based New
America Foundation.
To contact the reporter on this story:
James Rupert in Kabul at
jrupert3@ bloomberg.net.
The Nation -- Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine!
Well, he didn't use those exact words, but Joe did seem to finally get that America has granted insurance companies the right to create bottlenecks in the financing of health care in order to extract profits out of the suffering of ordinary people--without providing any actual health care whatsoever.
"Why are we paying profits for insurance companies?" Weiner asked Scarborough. "Why are we paying overhead for insurance companies? Why," he asked, bringing it all home, "are we paying for their TV commercials?"
Weiner, who recently warned that President Obama could lose as many as 100 votes on a health bill if a public option is not included, really wants single payer--Medicare for all Americans is his goal. What a crazy, way-out, reckless notion, Joe went into their encounter believing. But Weiner asked some simple, direct questions that no politician, much less Obama or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has managed to pose:
What is an insurance company? They don't do a single check-up. They don't do a single exam, they don't perform an operation. Medicare has a 4 percent overhead rate. The real question is why do we have a private plan?
"It sounds like you're saying you think there is no need for us to have private insurance in health care," Joe asked at one point.
Weiner replied: "I've asked you three times. What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?"
Scraping the bottom of a seemingly bottomless pit of spin, Joe is repeatedly left speechless, "stunned" and "astounded," he said, by the questions themselves. Indeed, when confronted with unfettered capitalism's massive failures, the right usually has nothing to say. The "free market" is supposed to eternally grow, not crash under its own greed. They're left ideologically crippled.
But unlike, say, Lou Dobbs, who began dobbering when confronted with similarly direct argument for single-payer, Joe was able to take a deep breath and return from a break with his eyes opened.
He even repeated Weiner's points clearly: The goverment would take over only the "paying mechanism" of health care, not the doctors or their medical decisions themselves. His ears perked up every time Weiner mentioned that the nonprofit Medicare spends 4 percent on overhead, while private insurers spend 30 percent.
And Joe, who has been criticizing mob rule at town halls, seemed to appreciate the way Weiner counters the fearmongering over Medicare: After decades of railing against the program's wasteful, "runaway" spending, Republicans have done a 180 and are now trying to scare seniors that the Democrats' proposed Medicare cuts will come directly from their medical care and not, as is actually proposed, from wasteful, stupid practices in the system--like, as Weiner mentions, putting people into a $700-a-night hospital bed when all they really need, and often prefer, is a visit by a homecare attendant in the two-digit-a-day range.
Maybe the real turning point came when Weiner asked, "How does Wal-mart offer $4 prescriptions?" Joe and co-host Mika Brzezinski looked as if they'd been thwacked by a hardback copy of Atlas Shrugged, and sat back to let the congressman explain it all to them:
They go to the pharmaceutical companies and say, "Listen, we have a giant buying pool here. You're going to give us a great deal."
Who's bigger than Wal-Mart? We are, the taxpayers. Do we do that? No. Because we have outsourced this to insurance companies who don't have necessarily as much incentive to keep those costs down because, frankly, they are getting a piece of the action.
Progressives tend to understand this stuff, but many conservatives won't trust such logic, especially in the abstract, which is how most Dems have been communicating. But Weiner, aware that if you can't visualize something it ain't going to stick, argued with a specific, familiar visual--that of a successful, supercapitalist, and, as Mika might say, "real American" company. And suddenly, as the mote dropped from the MJ crew's eyes, Weiner went from "scaring American citizens," in Joe's words, to instant celeb.
"That was SO great!" said Mika, as she and Joe asked Anthony to please, please come back soon, this week if possible!
"You have succeeded in doing something that no one else has done on this show in two years," said Joe, his fists rapidly knocking the table in excitement. "You made me speechless. And you made me speechless because you so clearly came here and stated your position."
While maintaining that he and Weiner have "different worldviews," Joe nevertheless raved, "This is fascinating, and one of the problems with the president's message is that it's muddled." And, damn, that's true.
Could this episode herald a Single-Payer Awakening? Or is this just the thrill of logic running up Joe's leg, soon to be forgotten as corporate media try to undermine real reform of a system that feeds the nets millions in ad revenue? When the big mainstream players shouted in unison to prematurely declare the public option dead, I couldn't help but think: In the corporate media's total takeover of ideas, they, too, have a death panel--made up of three or four conglomerate owners and chaired by Rupert Murdoch--that will determine whether an idea lives or gets its plug pulled.
On Thursday, Morning Joe replayed Weiner's best hits, but Joe was occasionally dobbering himself, complaining that our health care problems come down to costs, costs, costs but "now all the President is talking about is a moral imperative." (Of course, Obama put morality on the table only yesterday; until then, he focused on costs, costs, costs.)
We'll see how far this relative openness to single-payer goes. In the meantime, though, the education of Joe Scarborough is, as always, a sight to behold:
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LUANDA (AFP) –
South Africa and Angola Thursday signed a number of trade agreements including cooperation in the oil sector, following major bilateral talks aimed at strengthening economic relations.
The oil cooperation pact will allow South Africa's Petro SA and Angola's Sonangol to work together in oil projects, said Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
"Energy security is one of the most important aspects for peace and stability," Dos Santos told journalists.
Managers for both companies will soon meet to discuss all possible forms of cooperation, he said.
The state-owned oil companies will work together in the areas of exploration, refining and distribution of oil, said Dos Santos.
A raft of bilateral agreements were also signed in the areas of energy, industry, trade and transport.
Jacob Zuma who is accompanied by 11 ministers and more than 100 business leaders, said the agreement will change the economic landscape of Southern Africa.
"These relations will strategically change the economic landscape of southern Africa, there is no doubt about it," Zuma said.
Both leaders highlighted the importance of strengthening business relations between Angola and South Africa, the continent's largest economy.
"This indeed is one of the historic visits and indeed out of this visit we believe that the people of Angola and South Africa will benefit greatly," Zuma said after signing the agreements.
With Angola now leading Nigeria as Africa's largest producer of crude oil and with its enormous hydro-electricity potential, energy was a key area of discussion.
Much of Angola's infrastructure was destroyed during its 27-year civil war which only ended in 2002 and the country is undergoing a major reconstruction including roads, schools, hospitals and houses.
Portuguese, Brazilian and Chinese firms are already key players in Angola's reconstruction, and Zuma is expected to use his visit to broker deals for South African firms seeking their slice of the pie.
Dos Santos's ruling MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) has long been a supporter of Zuma's African National Congress party, with ties dating back to respective anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles.
Apartheid South Africa supported the rebel-turned-opposition party UNITA (Total Union for the Independence of Angola). Despite the democratic transition in South Africa, ties cooled significantly during Thabo Mbeki's presidency.
Dos Santos appears to enjoy a good personal relationship with Zuma.
He attended Zuma's inauguration in May, and Zuma visited Angola in March last year as leader of the ruling ANC, in what was seen as a snub to Mbeki.
South Africa is touting the trip as part of its efforts to strengthen its relationships within southern Africa, while the choice of Angola highlights the country's growing importance in the region.
Zuma arrived in Luanda on Wednesday evening, and early Thursday laid wreaths to commemorate Angola's first president Agostinho Neto and soldiers who died in the liberation struggle against the Portuguese.
After an address to the National Assembly, Zuma attended a lunch at Luanda's pink presidential palace before meeting Angolan Prime Minister Paulo Kassoma.
The two leaders then addressed a business symposium which is running alongside the ministerial meetings, giving South African companies the chance to explore investment opportunities in the country.
NEW YORK (Reuters) –
U.S. authorities announced what they believed to be the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted on Monday in a scheme in which more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen.
Three men were indicted on charges of being responsible for five corporate data breaches in a scheme in which the card numbers were stolen from Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven Inc and Hannaford Brothers Co, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
The suspects also hacked two unidentified corporate victims, the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey said in the statement.
Prosecutors allege Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, and two unnamed Russian coconspirators targeted large corporations by scanning the list of Fortune 500 companies and exploring corporate websites before setting out to identify vulnerabilities.
The suspects would seek to sell the data to others who would use it to make fraudulent purchases, the statement said.
In one example, the suspects went to retail locations to identify the type of checkout machines, and after further investigation into the computer systems they uploaded information onto servers that worked as hacking platforms, the statement said.
"These servers, located in New Jersey and around the world, were used by the coconspirators to store information critical to the hacking schemes and subsequently to launch the hacking attacks," prosecutors said.
"The scheme is believed to constitute the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice," the statement said.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
BAGHDAD – Militiamen are torturing and killing gay Iraqi men with impunity in a systematic campaign that has spread from Baghdad to several other cities, a prominent human rights group said in a report.
Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government to act urgently to stop the abuses, warning that so-called social cleansing poses a new threat to security even as other violence recedes.
The bodies of several gay men were found in Baghdad's main Shiite district of Sadr City earlier this year with the Arabic words for "pervert" and "puppy" considered derogatory terms for homosexuals in Iraq written on their chests.
The New York-based advocacy group said the threats and abuses have since spread to the cities of Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although the practice remains concentrated in the capital.
"Murders are committed with impunity, admonitory in intent, with corpses dumped in garbage or hung as warnings on the street," the 67-page report said.
Reliable numbers weren't available, Human Rights Watch said, blaming a combination of the failure of authorities to investigate such crimes and the stigma preventing families from reporting the deaths. But it cited a well-informed U.N. official as saying in April that the death toll was probably "in the hundreds."
The campaign has been largely blamed on Shiite extremists who have long targeted behavior deemed un-Islamic, beating and even killing women for not wearing veils and bombing liquor stores.
Shiite militiamen have for the most part stopped their violence against rival Sunnis after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's forces were routed by U.S. and Iraqi forces last year and declared a cease-fire. But the report indicated they were conducting a less publicized campaign of social cleansing.
"The same thing that used to happen to Sunnis and Shiites is now happening to gays," said a doctor who had fled Baghdad and was interviewed for the report. The doctor, who described himself as gay, said several of his friends had been killed.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue with the media, acknowledged there has been a sharp escalation in attacks against gay men this year by suspected Shiite extremists. But he told The Associated Press that the ministry does not have numbers "because in most cases the family members themselves are either involved in the killing or prefer to keep silent, fearing shame."
The former No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, Patricia Butenis, wrote in a letter to a U.S. congressman that reports from contacts familiar with the areas where some of the bodies were found "suggest the killings are the work of militias who believe homosexuality is a form of Western deviance that cannot be tolerated."
The letter was in response to concerns raised by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who is openly gay. Polis had brought up the issue during a visit to Iraq.
Homosexuals have been targeted throughout the Iraq war, but the killings appear to have intensified as improvements in overall security led gay men to begin going out to cafes in groups and socializing in public, according to the report.
Human Rights Watch accused authorities of doing nothing to stop the killings and warned that reflected an overall inability to protect the people.
"These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq's post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens," said Rasha Moumneh, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The Human Rights Watch report was based on interviews with more than 50 Iraqi men who identified themselves as gay as well as Iraqi human rights activists, journalists and doctors.
The Iraqi government's Human Rights Ministry has condemned the killings of gay men.
"We are against any violation of their rights because they are after all Iraqi citizens," said ministry spokesman, Kalim Amin. "The government should not allow any armed group to launch random killings against people, sometimes only for mere suspicion."
Sadr City, a teeming slum district, is a stronghold of al-Sadr's militia, which launched several uprisings against American forces after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 before U.S.-Iraqi forces seized control last year.
Iraqi police said homosexuals were afraid of being seen in public while the militiamen were in charge of Sadr City but began going out more as violence declined.
Fliers warning homosexuals that they will be killed "unless they come back to their senses" were distributed in Sadr City earlier this year and Shiite clerics have frequently called for the "education and rehabilitation" of gays in their Friday sermons.
Sadrist Sheik Ammar al-Saadi has denied any involvement by the movement in the killings and said the clerics only urged people to stop practicing homosexuality.
One 35-year-old man with the pseudonym Hamid has been unable to speak properly since his partner of 10 years was seized from his parents' home in early April by four gunmen wearing black. His body was found the next day.
"They had thrown his corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat was ripped out," Hamid was quoted as saying.
Human Rights Watch singled out the use of glue to seal men's rectums as a common form of torture.
The report said Iraqi law does not ban consensual homosexual conduct between adults but contains certain provisions that can be exploited, including Saddam Hussein-era provisions that could reduce penalties for so-called honor crimes and crimes against people due to their sexual orientation.
___
Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
http://www.hrw.org/node/85050
SEOUL (AFP) –
North Korea said Monday it would restart family reunions and a stalled tourism programme for South Koreans, in a rare conciliatory gesture after months of bitter hostility.
South Korea cautiously welcomed the announcement, but said the two governments must hold talks before the trips -- a major earner for its sanctions-hit neighbour -- can resume.
In a sign of continuing friction, the hardline communist state also warned of "a merciless and prompt annihilating strike" involving nuclear weapons if a US-South Korean military exercise starting Monday infringes its sovereignty.
The tourism agreement was disclosed a day after a meeting in the North between leader Kim Jong-Il and Hyun Jung-Eun, chairwoman of the South's giant Hyundai Group which operates joint tourism and business ventures.
The North also agreed to lift limitations on border crossings by South Koreans which hampered operations at a Seoul-funded industrial estate.
Hyun travelled to the North last week and won the release of an employee detained since March for allegedly criticising Pyongyang's regime.
Analysts said that cash considerations aside, the North realises it must ease tensions with Seoul if it wants to improve ties with Washington.
The North reportedly indicated it wants better US ties when former president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang this month and held talks with Kim. He won a pardon for two American journalists.
Cross-border relations have soured since a conservative South Korean government took office in February 2008 and scrapped a "sunshine" aid and engagement policy.
International tensions have risen following nuclear and missile tests by the North and a US-led drive to enforce tougher United Nations sanctions.
The North, announcing an agreement with Hyundai, said tours to the scenic Mount Kumgang east coast resort and to Kaesong, a historic city near the west coast, would resume as soon as possible.
It said it would in early October resume reunions of families separated since the 1950-1953 war.
The Seoul government suspended Kumgang tours after North Korean soldiers in July 2008 shot dead a South Korean housewife who strayed into a military zone.
The North had received about 410 million dollars since tours to Kumgang began in late 1998, excluding initial investments and payments.
Pyongyang in December halted day trips to Kaesong and limited access to the industrial estate there, as ties worsened.
Seoul's unification ministry said it "positively evaluates" the statement by Pyongyang and Hyundai, but the two governments must hold talks to reach firm accords before tourist trips can resume.
It repeated calls for a joint probe into the Kumgang shooting.
North Korea is bitterly hostile to South Korea's leaders, terming them traitors and US sycophants. It has cut virtually all official contacts.
Hyundai chief Hyun said on her return Monday afternoon she did not consult the Seoul government before her trip.
Asked about the 2008 Kumgang shooting, she replied: "Chairman Kim said that there would never be such a thing in the future."
Hyun indicated that four crewmen on a South Korean fishing boat, detained on July 30 after an accidental border crossing, could also be freed.
Kim Yong-Hyun, of Seoul's Dongguk University, said the North realised that cross-border hostility was a stumbling block to its desire to improve relations with the United States.
"North Korea, under growing UN sanctions, also has economic reasons to jump-start the cash-generating business with South Korea," he said, predicting that the Seoul and Pyongyang governments would soon resume talks.
"Inter-Korean relations are starting to get back on track but there will be no quick fix," he said.
In a sign of the difficulties, the North's military supreme command described US-South Korean war games starting Monday as a "grave threat" to peace and a prelude to an invasion.
It vowed to respond to "even the slightest military provocation" infringing on its sovereignty with a "merciless and prompt annihilating strike at the aggressors with all offensive and defensive means including nuclear deterrent involved."
The South's defence ministry dismissed the statement as "a routine denunciation."
