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27. desember 2006
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Russia has a convenient suspect in the poisoning murder of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko:
Russia's prosecutor's office said it is probing links between the death of Litvinenko, the attempted murder of businessman Dmitry Kovtun and ``criminal cases against a range of leading employees of Yukos for carrying out crimes against the lives and health of citizens.''
``We are checking the possibility that the people who ordered these crimes may be the same people who are the subject of an international search for carrying out serious and especially serious crimes, one of whom is the co-head of Yukos, Leonid Nevzlin,'' the office said on its Web site today.
Russia demanded the U.S. extradite Nevzlin to face charges of tax evasion and conspiracy to murder, Moscow-based news agency Interfax reported today. It said U.S. officials detained Nevzlin briefly on Dec. 24 when he entered the country and added that the Prosecutor General's office had sent confirmation to the U.S. branch of Interpol that Nevzlin is wanted internationally.
Nevzlin is today living in Israel. Former Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky is imprisoned in Russia on fraud and tax charges.
This sounds like a ridiculously transparent attempt at using Litvinenko's death to get at another enemy of Putin and the rest of Russia's KGB government.
Link: Did Putin have Alexander Litvinenko murdered? (also here, here and here)
8:29:11 PM 
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Amir Taheri points out that Iraq is more than death and destruction.
The boom in Um Qasr is part of a broader picture that also includes Basra (the sprawling metropolis of southern Iraq), the Shi'ite "holy" cities of Najaf and Karbala, Mandali on the Iranian border and much of Baghdad.
When the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank reported two years ago that the Iraqi economy was heading for a boom, skeptics dismissed it as misplaced optimism. Now, however, even some of those who opposed the toppling of Saddam Hussein admit that many Iraqis share that optimism.
Newsweek has just hailed the emergence of a booming market economy in Iraq as "the mother of all surprises," noting that "Iraqis are more optimistic about the future than most Americans are." The reason, of course, is that Iraqis know what is going on in their country while Americans are fed a diet of exclusively negative reporting from Iraq.
The growing dynamism of the Iraqi economy is reflected in the steady increase in the value of the national currency, the dinar, against the three currencies in direct competition with it in the Iraqi marketplace: the Iranian rial, the Kuwaiti dinar and the U.S. dollar, since January 2006.
There is also the Kurdish parts of Iraq, which has mostly avoided the bloodshed of the Baghdad region.
1:56:41 PM
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Unsurprisingly, Ethiopian forces are beating back the technically inferior Islamic Courts militias.
Islamist forces in Somalia beat a hasty retreat today to their stronghold in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battle-scared capital, crumbling faster than anyone expected after a week of attacks by Ethiopian forces.
Burhakaba, a large inland city, fell first, followed by Dinsoor, not far away, and then Bulo Burto, where just a few weeks ago the Islamists in charge were threatening to behead people who did not pray.
The Islamist fighters, who had seemed invincible after taking Mogadishu in June, now seem powerless to stop the steady advance of the Ethiopian-backed forces of the transitional government.
By this afternoon, the transitional government troops were within 60 miles of Mogadishu and calling for the Islamists to surrender. The Islamist leaders refused, saying they would take their fight “everywhere,” which some people viewed as a veiled threat to expand the guerilla tactics and suicide bombs they have already used.
The fast-moving developments seem to confirm what United Nations officials and witnesses in Somalia have been saying since the fighting erupted a week ago: that the young forces of the Islamists, however religiously inspired, were no match for the better trained, better equipped Ethiopian-backed troops who have tanks and fighter jets.
It would be horribly naive to believe that this really means that much. Coalition forces famously crushed the Iraqi army in one of the fastest military operations in human history, but, well, they are still there.
Hopefully, the beating will politically destabilise the courts militia, but I wouldn't bet on it. Ethiopian forces may take and hold any position, but will encounter a nightmare trying to hold ground in the face of guerrilla tactics. Unless the Islamists lose popular support after this setback, which is always a possibility in a country with such fickle loyalties, the Ethiopian attack will do little to help to power the UN-backed transitional government (which, we have to remember, consists of former warlords it's really difficult to wish anything good).
4:21:43 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.01.2007; 08:22:55.
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