Life as a female Tamil Tiger guerilla relived by one of first female soldiers

Photo: REUTERS

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In 1987, aged 17, Niromi de Soyza shocked her middle-class Sri Lankan family by joining the Tamil Tigers. One of the rebels' first female soldiers, equipped with rifle and cyanide capsule, she was engaged in fierce combat.

May 08, 2009 - Telegraph.co.UK
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December 23 1987 was a warm, clear day, and I was hiding under a lantana bush with eight of my comrades in a village north of Jaffna. With our rifles cocked and our cyanide capsules clenched between our teeth, we awaited the soldiers who had been scouring the area for us for several hours. Our orders were to empty our magazines into them before biting into the glass capsules we called 'kuppies' that hung on a thread around our necks. As a Tamil Tiger guerrilla, there was no honour in being caught alive.

There had been 22 of us that morning – nine boys and 13 girls, aged between 15 and 26 (I was 17). Now, four of my comrades were missing, two were wounded. Ten were dead.

At dawn that day, Indian soldiers had surrounded our hideout, an abandoned house in Urumpiraay, a village in Sri Lanka's far north. As the war had intensified, our units were being squeezed out of Jaffna peninsula. We slept in different places each night: in open fields or houses taken by force.

Our sentry had spotted the enemy soldiers beyond a distant line of trees to the south, and Muralie, our unit's second in command, decided that we should flee north across an arterial road. The morning chill was still in the air and the dew dripped from banana leaves as we ran though fields and approached the road. As we attempted to cross it, we were ambushed from both sides in a barrage of automatic gunfire, grenades and mortars.

'Get on the ground!' Muralie commanded. 'Fire and break through!'

Everyone was screaming. We crashed to the earth as the gunfire grew heavier, now coming from behind as well. A helicopter gunship hovered above, strafing. We were surrounded. There was no cover other than a few palmyra and banana trees that dotted the landscape.

Lying on my stomach, I shuffled forward, following another girl, Ajanthi. My heart was pounding and thick smoke stung my eyes. In a state of panic, a few of my comrades attempted to cross the road. One by one, they fell. One was on her back, screaming, 'My leg, someone help me!'

A grenade flew over from my left. As I scrambled to my hands and knees, I realised Gandhi, our area leader, was in its path. 'Gandhi anna, duck!' I screamed. The grenade hit his head and exploded, ripping his skull apart and covering me with blood and tissue.

Ajanthi got to her knees, ready to dash across the road, then abruptly fell backwards, her arms and legs splayed awkwardly. Blood spurted from the centre of her forehead, soaking her auburn hair. In shock, the air left my lungs and I could not inhale it back. Ajanthi had been my friend since primary school and we had joined the Tigers together. She had been hit by a sniper.

I crawled forward holding my AK-47 with both hands, desperate to reach Ajanthi and drag her to safety. To my right, two comrades were trying to drag Muralie, who had also been hit, through the wet grass. His blood-soaked body kept slipping through their hands. As I reached Ajanthi our unit commander, Sudharshan, yanked me by the collar, dragging me with him.

'But Sudharshan anna,' I said, stumbling to my feet. 'We have to get Ajanthi, Muralie and the others.' 'They will follow us,' he said.

We ran through the fields and scrambled over a concrete parapet as rifle rounds flew from behind us, gouging holes in the wall. On the other side, we kept running and found five comrades. Seeing no means of escape, we took shelter under a large lantana bush.

At sunset, confident that the soldiers had moved on, we set out through fields, supporting the injured, eventually reaching a gathering of huts on a narrow lane. News of our arrival spread quickly, and a curious crowd assembled along the sides of the lane. Most had never seen female Tigers before. An old woman flung her bony arms around me: 'Ayyo, my poor child! Wouldn't your mother's heart break if she saw you like this?' I didn't realise then how I must have looked – a starved teenage girl with torn clothes, caked in blood, barefoot and carrying an automatic rifle. Most villagers wanted us gone. If the enemy soldiers knew we were still around, they were sure to attack the village.

On Christmas Day we arrived at a hideout occupied by another Tigers unit. I sat outside on the mud veranda, thinking about the ambush. Since joining the Tigers, Ajanthi and I – and another girl, Akila – had been inseparable. The last time I had seen Akila she had been firing her M16 rifle from behind a water tank during the ambush. Sengamalam, one of the boys, told me that more than 2,000 soldiers had been involved in the round-up of our 22-strong unit, and had dumped the bodies of those who died in the open air. My mind swum with images of Ajanthi and Muralie, their bodies being scavenged by dogs.

I heard footsteps and looked up to see the silhouette of three figures approaching our hut. I recognised the tall Akila, her hair in plaits, and ran towards her. As we embraced she told me that, after the ambush, she had survived by hiding in the water tank for two days. 'I wish I was dead, like Ajanthi,' I spluttered. 'How will I face her family again?'

'We have to keep their dream of Tamil Eelam alive,' Akila said. For me, the dream felt far from reach.

I was born in 1969 in Kandy, a Sinhala-majority town in Sri Lanka's hill country, where I spent the first seven years of my childhood. Although I had Tamil ancestry – Tamils make up 18 per cent of Sri Lanka's population – my extended family included Sinhalese, Sri Lanka's main ethnic group. In 1978 I was packed off to the northern Tamil city of Jaffna to live with my grandmother, whom I hardly knew. 'So that you can become a doctor like your aunts and uncles,' my father reasoned. 'Education in Jaffna is far superior.' I was a confident, independent girl, and my parents believed that I would cope well in a new environment without them.

Though I was unsure about becoming a doctor, life in Jaffna was idyllic. Not knowing when I would see my family again, I began to distance myself from them and focused on shaping my own life, making new friends and working hard at school. My weekends were busy with music, art and drama lessons.

Soon after, my father, an engineer, went to work in Dubai (it was becoming difficult for Tamils to get good jobs at home). My mother, a teacher, and sister, who was three years my junior, joined me in Jaffna. I had been oblivious to the deep-rooted tensions that were simmering between the Tamils and Sinhalese, and knew nothing of the anti-Tamil riots that had killed more than 250 Tamils in the country the year before. But before long the growing unrest outside my sheltered world was hard to ignore.

Tamil pressure groups were becoming more vocal in their calls for equal rights between Tamils and Sinhalese, and an end to what many Tamils felt were the government's discriminatory policies. Meanwhile, Sinhala extremism in the south was growing. There were boycotts, strikes and skirmishes. There were reports of Tamil politicians being shot dead, Tamil students being kidnapped.

The quest for equality had spawned a number of militant groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as Tamil Tigers outside Sri Lanka. In the late 1970s they had taken up an armed struggle for an autonomous Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam – in the north and north-east of the country. To begin with, they carried out minor attacks on government targets, but on July 23 1983, when I was 14, they ambushed an army patrol in Jaffna, which brought them into the national spotlight.

Thirteen soldiers died that day, but about 1,000 Tamils were said to have lost their lives in an anti-Tamil pogrom in the south that followed. Large numbers of Tamil men, mostly teenagers, reacted to what they saw as the Sri Lankan government's indiscriminate persecution of innocent Tamils and joined the insurgency, which was rapidly gathering support.

By 1985 the situation had escalated into full-scale war in the north and east, with the government launching a military offensive on Jaffna to wipe out the rebellion. From a normal happy upbringing, I now found myself living in constant fear. Jaffna's library, where I spent much of my free time, was burnt down by government forces.

We lived under indiscriminate aerial bombing and artillery shelling, day and night; our movements were restricted by long curfews. We spent many days in our home-built bunker where I studied, listening to gunshots and explosions, still hopeful that my exams would go ahead as scheduled. The Tigers' television station broadcast images of war: militant training camps, dead bodies, Tamil funerals. The images began to haunt me, and I felt outraged that no one was being held to account, and that the outside world was doing nothing.

The government launched further offensives and air raids became commonplace. Bodies were sometimes strewn by the roadside on my way to school, or hanging from lampposts. I was dismayed by the attitude of family and friends who believed that they had no power to change the situation, but didn't support the militant groups either. 'These movements are run mostly by uneducated, low-caste youth,' they said. 'They are not capable of solving the Tamil problem.' But at least they were trying, I thought.

The more I listened to the militants, the more I sympathised with the idea of an armed struggle, the more it seemed like the only response. There had never been any military connections in my family but I felt that if we were going to be killed or driven from our homes, then shouldn't we at least put up a fight? With friends, I talked about joining the insurgency, though few felt the same, believing that such actions would bring disgrace to our families. Middle-class girls didn't do such things.

In May 1987, when I was 17, the Sinhala government launched Operation Liberation, declaring all-out war against the Tamil militants on the Jaffna peninsula. By now, the Tigers had gained administrative control of the region, restricting government forces to their barracks. My mother decided that we would return to Kandy until the war was over. As we prepared to leave, I made up my mind to run away to join the Tigers. I told my mother that I was going to Ajanthi's to say goodbye.

After I told Ajanthi my plans, she said, 'I'll come with you for moral support', and we set off together for the office of the Student Organisation of Liberation Tigers, a large house near Jaffna University. We were interviewed. They were hesitant about recruiting middle-class girls, but finally relented. Ajanthi said she would miss me too much if I left without her, and was enlisted, too.

'The life of a freedom fighter is harder than you think,' Thileepan, the leader of the Tigers' political wing, warned us, adjusting his spectacles. 'We gamble with our own lives and bury our friends. There'll be none of the comforts you are used to. I'm not convinced that you are suited to this lifestyle, but no one here is held against their will.'

Knowing my mother and sister were out, I went home and wrote them a note explaining that I had joined the Tigers. The following morning, naturally, my mother and sister and Ajanthi's family came to the Tigers' camp to plead with us to return home. 'You are about to ruin your life. This is not for you,' my mother said, grasping my hands, her eyes filled with tears. Ajanthi's father said we had been brainwashed.

Thileepan sent us to work with members of the Tigers' female political wing, the Freedom Birds, contributing articles to their magazine. At the Freedom Birds' headquarters, we met Akila, who at 17 was already an active member. We immediately became friends.

A few weeks later, Ajanthi and I were selected by Thileepan for military training, and sent to an all-girls' camp in an outer suburb of Jaffna. As we were the first group of female fighters to receive military training in Sri Lanka (at this point, there were fewer than 80 female Tigers), the organisation's enigmatic leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, wanted to talk to us personally. Prabhakaran was seated behind a table in his office as I entered. The flame from a hurricane lamp cast shadows across his round face, and his large brown eyes glistened.

Although he did not ask many questions, it felt like he knew everything about me. 'There's hardly anyone in our movement from your suburb,' he said. 'Most girls here come from rural areas. They are used to hard work, pounding rice and chopping firewood. Be in no doubt: training is going to be harder for you.'

Training, in a village south of Jaffna, was indeed gruelling. The days began with a two-hour exercise regime, followed by commando training. In the afternoons we had firing practice and lessons in explosives and camouflage. Prabhakaran would visit often, and one afternoon expressed his desire to recruit us into the newly formed Black Tigers, the organisation's suicide bomber wing. Only a week earlier the first of the Tigers' suicide bombers, known as Captain Miller, had driven a lorry packed with explosives into an army barracks. Prabhakaran wanted to give women the same 'opportunity', he said. I knew I could never do such a thing because I didn't have the courage.

As the war escalated, civilians were being drawn into the conflict, and a humanitarian crisis was developing in Jaffna. Eventually, the Indian government intervened. It was no secret that India had been fostering Tamil militants and providing them with training and ammunition, and the relationship between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments was strained.

Then the peacekeeping forces arrived, a ceasefire came into effect, and a peace accord was implemented on July 29 1987. The war-weary Tamils welcomed the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) with open arms, and our training came to an abrupt halt. But Prabhakaran informed us that our services would be required in a month or two – he was sure that hostilities would resume by then. Like the Sri Lankan government, he did not appreciate the foreign intrusion.

So it came to pass. In September 1987, while other Tamil militant organisations engaged in the political process, Thileepan went on hunger-strike at the Nallur Hindu Temple near Jaffna in protest against certain aspects of the peace deal. Mass rallies were organised by pro-Tiger Tamils in Jaffna and also by Sinhala extremists in the south, both parties believing the IPKF's intervention served only to assert India's supremacy in the region. Fourteen days later, Thileepan died. The Tigers blamed the Indian government for his death, and for standing aside while Sinhalese forces violated the peace deal by arresting some prominent Tigers despite the amnesty provisions, and organising Sinhala settlement programmes in Tamil areas.

The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too. A few thousand youths suited only for guerrilla warfare, we were no match for the world's second largest army. Fighting the Indians made no sense to me.

I had joined the Tigers to make a stand against my country's oppressive government, but now found myself at war with those who had come to maintain peace. It seemed that we might be destroying our only chance of resolving the situation peacefully.
I expressed my doubts to Akila. Fiercely loyal and single-minded, she argued that, as foot soldiers, we were unaware of the complex politics of the situation, and that our leaders knew exactly what they were doing. 'Believe that Anna Prabhakaran is always right,' she told me. I decided to ignore the growing disquiet inside me and joined the war.

In October 1987 I was sent to the battle front north of Jaffna where, by coincidence, Akila and Ajanthi joined me in a unit of 30 cadres. The first female Tiger had died only a few days earlier, confirming that women were now firmly engaged in frontline fighting. During battles we had been trained to fire in the general direction of the enemy, not at individual targets, and I am not sure whether any of my bullets hit anyone. I'm glad I don't know. I once asked the more experienced Muralie how he had coped with the knowledge that he had shot people. 'After your second victim,' he said, 'you learn to live with it.'

The Tigers had no chance of overpowering the Indian army. Jaffna and many surrounding areas were now under their total control. We were being ambushed on an almost daily basis, becoming accustomed to life on the run. Support among Tamil civilians was waning, too. Whenever we encountered them, they pleaded with us to stop this futile war.

By early 1988 self-preservation was now our main strategy. Forced out of the Jaffna peninsula by the IPKF and following an overnight boat trip, we found ourselves in the jungles of the Vanni in the Northeastern Province, where it was easier to lie low. I was now part of a large unit of nearly 45 girls, with Sengamalam, one of only two boys, in charge. We moved around the jungle constantly, enduring primitive living conditions, while 130,000 Indian troops searched for some 2,000 Tigers on foot and by air.

After five months in the jungle, I contracted malaria; many others were ill with dysentery and typhoid. Akila stayed by my side, taking care of me, bringing medication and rice water in a rusty tin. I felt broken, physically and emotionally, constantly questioning the purpose of a war that could clearly never be won.

I had believed the militant propaganda, convinced that Tamil Eelam could be achieved within a year or two, but it was now clear that an armed conflict would resolve nothing. 'You are free to go home any time,' Thileepan had told me. It was time to walk away while I still could. One morning in June 1988, at a house near the forest where we had taken shelter following an attack on our hideout, I approached Sengamalam as he washed at a well.

'I want to resign.'

He stopped drying his face with a sarong and looked at me with alarm. 'Is someone giving you grief?'

'I just can't cope any more,' I said. 'I am tired of this war. I'm weak.'

Calmly, he said that he was sorry, that he was surprised I had lasted so long. 'I must warn you,' he said, 'your life will be in grave danger – from the Sri Lankan army, Indian forces, even rival organisations. Your name is on their wanted lists.' I didn't care. Surrendering my rifle and kuppie, I severed all ties with the Tigers, unsure of what the future held or whether my family would take me back.

Before I left, I went to say goodbye to Akila. When she saw me wearing a dress, her jaw dropped. 'What's going on? You're leaving?' Consumed with shame, I could hardly speak. 'I can't believe you're leaving me,' she sobbed. 'We have so much to achieve.'

Before I could answer, Sengamalam hurried Akila into the forest and I watched her fade into the bright sun. I never saw her again.

Sengamalam organised for a local boy to take me to an old woman's hut in the nearby town of Kilinochchi. For the next seven days, the old woman and I did not exchange a word or a smile.

One afternoon, while I helped herd her cattle into the shed, I saw my mother running towards me down the dirt lane. The mayor of Kilinochchi, a distant relative of ours, had bumped into the Tamil boy who had taken me to the old woman's hut. The mayor was carrying a photograph of me that my mother had sent him and asked the boy if he had seen me. Once I had been identified, the mayor fetched my mother. The only emotion I felt was relief, as if I was no longer capable of experiencing happiness or sadness. My mother embraced me and sobbed while I stood numb.

'I thought you might have disowned me,' I said, finally.

'You're my daughter,' she replied. 'I'd never give up on you.'

Within two months of being re­united with my family, during which time we never discussed my experiences with the Tigers, I was sent to a boarding school in India, where I completed my studies.

Although now in the country whose army I had fought only months before, I was determined to move on, and make the best of the second chance I had been given. On the surface, normality had returned. My fellow students were girls from affluent families who liked talking about boys, movie stars and make-up. When the lights in our dormitory were turned off at night,
I cried myself to sleep.

In 1990, with help from a relative, I moved to Sydney (my family later moved here, too) and went to university. After my departure from the Tigers, and with a new life opening up to me, I blocked out any news of Sri Lanka as best I could. These days, of course, that is impossible.

The two-year war between the Tigers and the Indian forces came to an end in July 1989, with changes of government in both countries. But the fighting between the Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces continued. The primitive but effective guerrilla organisation that I left behind grew into a sophisticated and formidable fighting force. As its methods became more extreme, the LTTE's notoriety increased – not just within Sri Lanka but all over the world. (In late 2001 it was classified as a terrorist organisation by many countries, including Britain.)

The Tigers have carried out hundreds of suicide attacks over the past two decades – more than all other radical organisations in the world combined – notably the assassination of the former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. The guiding principle of the Tigers, which is so difficult for outsiders to understand, is that the greater the sacrifice, the higher the honour. There are no bravery medals or pompous ceremonies for living Tigers. They are recognised for their efforts, and awarded a rank, only posthumously.

The past decade has seen several attempts to form a lasting peace agreement between the Tigers and the government, all unsuccessful, with the most recent deal being torn up in early 2008. Since 2006 the LTTE's numbers have fallen sharply, funding from the Tamil diaspora has dwindled while government forces stepped up their campaign.

At the beginning of this year, a number of crucial Tiger strongholds were recaptured, and the government was confident it would annihilate the remaining 1,000 or so Tigers within months. After three decades, the civil war – which has claimed more than 70,000 lives, including at least 23,000 Tigers – appears to have reached its endgame, the Tigers on the verge of a final, crushing defeat. The Tamils are, it seems, back at square one.

In fact, the situation may be worse than ever, with the UN estimating last month that 150,000 civilians were trapped in the eight-square-mile battle zone, under constant threat of bombing from government forces and being used as human shields by the increasingly desperate Tigers. Some human rights groups have condemned the Sri Lankan government for practising ethnic cleansing against them under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Although the Tigers have staged many comebacks in history, the latest government offensive may prove fatal. But the scars of this war will remain and until a political solution that recognises and respects the rights of the Tamil people is reached, I am certain that the Tamil fight will continue in one form or another.

More and more these days, my thoughts turn to the friends I have lost. Recently, for the first time, I typed Akila's name into Google and found several archived reports and court documents. Akila died on November 1 1995, in a battle against the Sri Lankan army in Neervaeli, a town for which we had fought side by side. With defeat imminent, she ordered the members of her unit to bite into their cyanide capsules, and then did the same herself. She was 24. After her death, she was awarded the highest rank achievable in the Tigers at that time: lieutenant colonel.

The most shocking detail was that she had been wanted for masterminding, along with Prabhakaran, the killing of Rajiv Gandhi. The suicide bomber and her collaborators had been members of Akila's unit, as I might have been if I had not walked away from the Tigers.

On the surface, my life goes on as a happily married mother in an affluent Sydney suburb who enjoys reading, travelling and gardening. But often, in my dreams, I am being chased by soldiers or hanging off the side of a cliff, unable to save myself. It has taken me a long time not to panic when I hear a helicopter overhead.

I rarely discuss my past. Some people cannot believe that someone with my grounded life could have done such things. Others probe deeper, asking if I regret picking up a gun with the intention of killing others. Of course, some will never understand; others may consider me a former terrorist.

The world has changed since I left the Tigers, just as the Tigers themselves have changed. In this age of terrorism it is easy to dismiss all rebel groups as evil extremists, without considering the desperate circumstances that drive people to align themselves to such organisations.

I tell people that the only reason I joined the war was to defend my people, because I felt there was no other choice. I was not coerced to join the insurgency. As an idealistic 17-year-old, I believed in the power of the individual to make a difference.

Looking back, I recognise the elements of reckless, selfish teenage rebellion in my behaviour. Naively, I had not anticipated how much my family would suffer as a consequence of my actions, and for that, above all else, I am deeply sorry. To this day, my parents have never asked me about my time as a guerrilla. As a mother myself, I understand why: that they must somehow have felt that they had failed in their duty as parents.

I hope that my own children will grow up with firm, positive views, but without the blind idealism I had all those years ago. I will try to teach them tolerance and empathy, that the end doesn't always justify the means, and that violence always breeds more violence. I learnt that lesson the hard way. Sadly, I don't think Sri Lanka has learnt it at all.

The Iraq War's Other Contractors

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Carol Burke
May 4, 2009 - Consortiumnews

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Consortiumnews Editor's Note: Over the past two years, a favorite piece of Washington's conventional wisdom was the myth of the "successful surge," President George W. Bush's supposedly "courageous" decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq and thus to bring down levels of violence.

But a far more important factor was the pre-surge strategy of paying Iraq's Sunni insurgents not to shoot at U.S. troops and to maintain some order in formerly turbulent areas, as Carol Burke writes in this guest essay from afterdowningstreet.org:

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The most impressive contracting effort of the Iraq War to date is not the shoveling of treasure to Halliburton, but rather the low-profile hiring of over 100,000 Sons of Iraq over the last two years to guard the towns, neighborhoods and highways of Iraq.

The future of Iraq rests on what happens to these insurgents we turned into peacekeepers.

The Pentagon and most in the U.S. media give full credit to "the surge," the addition of 30,000 American forces (including support staff), for the dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq since 2007. Consider the relative effects. The majority of the 30,000 American troops who came as a result of the surge spend their time on base. On many bases in Iraq no more than 5 percent of the U.S. personnel goes "outside the wire" on a given day.

This protracted war of counterinsurgency has even given rise to a new slang term in military speech. The soldier who rarely gets off the FOB (Forward Operating Base) is called a "Fobbit." He eats five meals a day, grows round in the middle and even, as legend has it, starts growing hair between his toes.

In contrast, the Sons of Iraq make their armed presence known 24 hours a day. Although the Americans refer to the "Sons of Iraq" or "SOI," the Iraqis call them "Sahwa," a word that translates as "Awakening."

In a rural area in northwestern Iraq known as "the Arab West," a region west of Kirkuk and south of Mosul, these young armed men work for 24 hours at a stretch checking every car and truck that passes their way. They are not new to weapons.

Like their predecessors, members of the League of Islamic Awakening, who formed in 1919 to oppose the British-installed interim Iraqi government and to eliminate British rule all together, many Sons of Iraq are former insurgents who fought against the occupying forces.

Many said they had become fed up with the violence that killed and wounded the innocent of their villages. A neighbor driving to the next village might inadvertently set off an IED intended for the Americans. American retaliation might take out bystanders as well as insurgents.

These Sunni men were desperate to protect their families and to feed them. The Americans made an offer they couldn't refuse: a modest but steady monthly salary to secure their villages.

"We out-hired the enemy," said Lt Col David Snodgrass, 3-25 infantry commander previously stationed at Forward Operating Base Warrior in Kirkuk, now stationed in Mosul.

* Major Employer

In many parts of Iraq the paramilitary SOI organization now serves as the major employer. In Kirkuk Province alone, the United States military has funded 9,000 Sons of Iraq. The local contractors, the tribal leaders, who until recently doled out the monthly cash, sweetened their own salaries as well.

One Army captain, who requested that his name not be used, alleged widespread corruption in the system, "You ask any SOI what they are paid a month, and he'll tell you $190. They're supposed to be paid $240, so where does the other $50 go — to the contractor."

The American forces, in cooperation with the Iraqi Army, recently eliminated these middlemen. As of April 1, the government in Baghdad formally assumed responsibility for the program, administering the payments and absorbing its cost.

In preparation for that turnover, the Americans, in collaboration with the Iraqis, waged an extensive effort to collect fingerprints and iris scans from all SOI members. It was a condition of their continued employment, and it gave to the Government of Iraq vital information that could, in the future, be used to track these Sunni men should they return to armed resistance.

The Shia-dominated government's recent detentions of SOI in Baghdad and Baqubah suggest that it may view these former insurgents less as a security force and more as a threat. The failure to pay some Sons of Iraq in the south of the country suggests either an inefficient bureaucracy or the Government of Iraq's reluctance to take over what the Americans started.

Many American commanders trust that the Government of Iraq (GOI) will deliver on its promise to absorb 20 percent of these predominantly Sunni men into the Iraqi Security Forces, but recent incidents of Iraqi police turning their weapons on American soldiers can only raise questions about this plan.

Some American commanders doubt that the Government of Iraq will support the remaining 80 percent for more than a short period. Responding to questions about the faltering transition and the reemergence of insurgency, Lt Col Snodgrass said, "In the event that anything does goes wrong, the U.S. is prepared to pay for a period during the transition while things get worked out."

If the Shia dominated government does fulfill its promise to find positions in the army and police force for 20 percent of the Sons of Iraq, 1,800 SOI in Kirkuk Province will receive jobs.

If the government fails to support the remaining 80 percent of these former insurgents, roughly 7,000 SOI in Kirkuk Province alone will find themselves unemployed at a time when the civilian unemployment rate among males in their age group is already a whopping 28 percent.

The revived oil fields might offer a glimmer of hope for the jobless. The dramatic increase in oil production in the fields near Kirkuk (from 48.6 million barrels in 2007 to 133.6 million barrels in 2008) may open a few hundred more security jobs, but in volatile times, who wants former insurgents guarding Iraqi oil fields?

The Government of Iraq has promised training programs, but after the decline in oil prices in the last year, the country's available reserves had plummeted by the end of 2008 from an estimated $80 billion to $39 billion. And a training program is not the same thing as a steady job.

In this sparsely populated northern region, the war closed down what employment opportunities there were. A once thriving poultry slaughtering house, one of the chief employers in the area, stands vacant today. Much of the seed stock for this farming region is so depleted and old that the crops it produces are of poor quality, the wheat mostly chaff.

A long drought, clogged irrigation ditches, and shallow wells produce water with high salinity. Children suffer from dehydration and dysentery.

* Near Danger

It wasn't very long ago when every soldier on FOB McHenry, a base 35 miles southwest of Kirkuk, knew that even the area immediately adjacent to the base promised certain danger.

Maj. Joe West, who was until recently stationed at McHenry, explains, "As soon as you drove out of the FOB you would get IED'd."

But now security has dramatically improved. A withdrawal of support for the Sons of Iraq, however, could rapidly destabilize the region turning insurgents-turned-peacekeepers back into insurgents.

Any commander in this rural area of Iraq knows that the pullout of American forces must be accompanied by the careful transition of the Sons of Iraq from military contractors to civilian jobs. The programs designed to train SOI in carpentry, concrete, plumbing and the building of water towers have attracted disappointing numbers.

According to the recent commander at McHenry, Lt. Col. Kenneth Casey, the programs run by locals offer the notable exceptions.

To find out what might work, Maj. West, the head officer in charge of operations at McHenry, recruited the help of a human terrain team. The Army began embedding civilian contractors called "human terrain teams" with combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006.

These five to nine person teams, comprised of at least one social scientist and at least one person fluent in the local language, conduct what one former team member called "combat ethnography."

Before deploying, they enrolled in a four-month training program at Fort Leavenworth that trained them to collect perceptions of the local population through interview and observation, to analyze those perceptions in relation to research available from both open source and classified material, and to present their findings to a military commander.

West instructed the McHenry human terrain team to gather data to answer the question: "Where should we be investing money?"

* Outside the Wire

Clipboards in hand, the five-person human terrain team and a platoon from a tank company that calls itself "The Assassins," leave their base 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk in search of the Sons of Iraq.

Why the Assassins, the brigade's alpha company? Because anyone on base will tell you that Capt Larry Brown, the commander of the Assassins and the guy with "Bossman" written on the stock of his rifle, "owns" the territory whose security he maintains.

In a war zone, the army divvies up the Area of Operation (AO) to captains or "the landowners" as they are called. The human terrain team came to stake out their claims on the AO by mapping its culture. In the intricate division of duties in the brigade of 4,000, the human terrain team owns culture.

The Assassins belong to 1-67th armor group which, until recently, was stationed at Forward Operating Base McHenry. The soldiers of the regiment refer to themselves as "Death Dealers" and proudly display their slogan on black baseball caps worn on base.

Even their chaplain sports a Death Dealer cap. Each cold January morning the Assassins rev up their MRAPS, the $800,000 "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected" vehicles whose designers sacrificed the maneuverability of the $140,000 up-armored Humvees for strength and a v-shaped hull resistant to IED's, and ferry the members of the human terrain team outside the wire to track down the Sons of Iraq.

Throughout January, the human terrain team members survey the SOI. Although the team collects no names, they solicit information about age, marital status, level of education, and tribal affiliation. They ask the SOI what kinds of work they consider honorable and solicit responses to three questions designed to elicit remarks about the importance of weapons.

They are trying to find out why the SOI have not taken advantage of the training programs designed to transition them from militia members dependent on U.S. funding into tradesmen employed in the private sector.

For most in the brigade, the answer to that question is simple: these poorly educated lazy guys simply want to look cool standing beside the road toting a weapon. This is a region of Iraq, after all, known as "The Arab West."

Even Lt. Col. Casey shares the popular view of this "cowboy culture": "People would rather stand on the street corner with guns," he said, than opt for "the nobility of work."

The responses that the team collects challenge the received opinions in the brigade. The Sons of Iraq, they find, have a more mature perception of what they do than the Americans give them credit for. It is easy for the Americans soldiers, who speed by in their convoys, to regard these ragtag locals as childlike, as if they were playing at war.

It's one of the oldest prejudices of an occupying force. Without uniforms, without body armor, without heat other than a wood fire to take the chill off winter nights that can get down into the 20's, the SOI sometimes look like bystanders in the war.

As the team has learned, however, the SOI don't just stand around looking like poster boys for a revolution gone bad; they perform community service for their local area.

Since the highways are dangerous places, ill villagers have come to rely on the SOI to drive them to the hospital in the nearby city.

An Iraqi woman who lives outside of Zaab and earns her living selling used clothing from a small shop that looks more like an open one-car garage says, "You don't know how much we have been suffering. We have to risk our lives to get medical care by driving on dangerous roads to the next city."

Making the journey from Zaab to Sharqat, a 15-mile trip, with SOI protection mitigates that risk. The new women's clinic, built with American funds would ease the burden even more, but it is difficult to lure doctors and nurses to the area.

* Safety for Communities

In its survey of the Sons of Iraq, the human terrain team discovers that these men prefer their work as Sons of Iraq not because of how they look but because of what they do: providing a measure of safety for their communities.

Should it be any surprise that protecting one's community in a time of war would be considered the most highly valued form of work?

Refuting the assumption that the men thought farming menial, these farmers and sons of farmers resoundingly affirmed that they had no aversion to manual labor. In fact, many of them work as subsistence farmers in addition to their SOI jobs to help feed their families.

Farming may not be respectable work in the eyes of American soldiers, but it is respected work to the Sons of Iraq, labor that their tribe has done for generations.

The Human Terrain Team only arrived in the fall. Had their survey been conducted a year earlier, American dollars spent on rehabilitation might have been deployed to address the real needs of the former insurgents so that they could transition from militia forces back to farmers.

These men need education. Fifty-nine percent, according to the human terrain team's report, lack more than a sixth-grade education, a fact not hard to understand when one considers how war dismantles education.

In the last couple of years, Americans have begun building schools in this part of Iraq. Fifteen schools were either built or refurbished. Although the schools were ready for students, there were few teachers to teach them.

This region alone faced a shortage of 700 teachers, according to Hawija City Manager Sabhan Ali Aljabora, To address the problem, teacher training in Kirkuk began in earnest, but when the newly trained teachers were told that they would be assigned to schools in this recently turbulent part of the country, many refused to relocate.

With the increase in security that the SOI have brought to the area, schools are starting to reopen again, but still some nicely refurbished schools remain empty of pupils because no teachers have yet arrived.

The future of these Sons of Iraq, America's other military contractors, will determine Iraq's future. If the members of this Sunni militia can reenter civilian life and support their families without threat from a Shia-dominated central government, peace may have a chance.

If, however, the Government of Iraq leaves them without hope, these Sons of Iraq may resort again to armed resistance. If that happens, the Arab West could turn wild again.

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Carol Burke is the author of Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight. She was embedded with the Human Terrain Team attached to the 3-25 Infantry Division in Northern Iraq.

The Missing Exit Strategy for Afghanistan

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Tom Andrews
May 7, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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President Obama said it best when he talked about U.S. policy in Afghanistan on the CBS news program 60 Minutes last month: "There's got to be an exit strategy".

Well, there isn't one. There is an escalation of 21,000 US forces and there is a wartime spending bill requesting $94.2 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as of today, there isn't even a hint of what the President believes we need-an exit strategy. The Appropriations Committee is expected to dutifully vote out their bill Thursday and send it to the floor of the House for a vote next week.

I realize how hard it would be for Congressional Democrats to require the Obama administration to develop an exit strategy as a condition for continued war funding. After all, this is our guy, right? The last thing our guy needs is a Democratic Congress second guessing, making demands, and putting conditions on the war funding.

But this is exactly what we and the administration need precisely because he is our guy.

Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, we want and need President Obama to succeed. The very real prospect of the United States embedded in an endless war in Afghanistan would undermine everything this administration is trying to do while imperiling the very Congressional Democrats President Obama needs to move his agenda. This is exactly the right time to engage the administration in a respectful but critical discussion about where this military escalation is leading us.

Sending tens of thousands of more U.S. troops into Afghanistan-without a plan to get them out-is a bad idea for many reasons.

First off, the ink on the President's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan wasn't even dry before the Pentagon acknowledged that it already has a request in to the administration for an additional 10,000 troops. What's worse, there are indications the Pentagon has even more requests waiting in the wings.

The fact is, there are simply not enough U.S. soldiers to secure Afghanistan. Estimates as to what would be required range for 200,000 to 600,000 troops. And, don't look to our NATO allies to be of any help. The leader of Canada's Liberal Party told me last week that the only way Canada citizens would support sending any troops was if there was a clear exit strategy with a date certain for their withdrawal. As a result, all Canadian soldiers will be on their way home by 2011.

Those of us who live on this side of the border should be demanding the same from our political leaders.

The lack of an exit strategy is already making things worse in Afghanistan. Failing to say when and how we will remove our forces is playing into the hands of Taliban leaders who are using the presence of our troops on Afghanistan soil-and the announced escalation-as their most powerful recruitment tool. The New York Times reports that the escalation has mended fences between the otherwise fractious leadership of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban who announced that they are joining forces to fight the new troops as they arrive.

A BBC/ABC public opinion poll of Afghans reveals that fully 80% of the population is opposed to an escalation of American troops. Many of those who are shooting at our soldiers are not jihadists; they are proud Afghans who are famously sensitive to the presence of foreign forces on their soil.

The lack of an exit strategy also works against President Obama's regional strategy-outreach to the neighboring nations who have zero interest in a Taliban dominated Afghanistan because it would threaten their national security as much, if not more, than our own. How likely will China, Russia and particularly Iran be to join the U.S. if the outcome might be tens of thousands of U.S. troops on their border?

We need Congress to step up now and help prevent what has now become "Obama's War" from turning into a quagmire that undermines, if not destroys, the critically important agenda the President is fighting to pass here at home.

We need to step up too. We can start by contacting Members of Congress and urging them not to succumb to a vote-now, ask questions later approach to war funding even if it is our guy who is asking for it. We need a critical check-and-balance before it is too late to stop an endless war in Afghanistan.

The war spending bill is on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.

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Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty-two national membership organizations including the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the National Organization of Women, the Sierra Club, and MoveOn.

Stressing the Positive

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Paul Krugman
May 7, 2009 - The New York Times

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Hooray! The banking crisis is over! Let's party! O.K., maybe not.

In the end, the actual release of the much-hyped bank stress tests on Thursday came as an anticlimax. Everyone knew more or less what the results would say: some big players need to raise more capital, but over all, the kids, I mean the banks, are all right. Even before the results were announced, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, told us they would be "reassuring."

But whether you actually should feel reassured depends on who you are: a banker, or someone trying to make a living in another profession.

I won't weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators didn't have the resources to make a really careful assessment of the banks' assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A rigorous audit it wasn't.

But focusing on the process can distract from the larger picture. What we're really seeing here is a decision on the part of President Obama and his officials to muddle through the financial crisis, hoping that the banks can earn their way back to health.

It's a strategy that might work. After all, right now the banks are lending at high interest rates, while paying virtually no interest on their (government-insured) deposits. Given enough time, the banks could be flush again.

But it's important to see the strategy for what it is and to understand the risks.

Remember, it was the markets, not the government, that in effect declared the banks undercapitalized. And while market indicators of distrust in banks, like the interest rates on bank bonds and the prices of bank credit-default swaps, have fallen somewhat in recent weeks, they're still at levels that would have been considered inconceivable before the crisis.

As a result, the odds are that the financial system won't function normally until the crucial players get much stronger financially than they are now. Yet the Obama administration has decided not to do anything dramatic to recapitalize the banks.

Can the economy recover even with weak banks? Maybe. Banks won't be expanding credit any time soon, but government-backed lenders have stepped in to fill the gap. The Federal Reserve has expanded its credit by $1.2 trillion over the past year; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become the principal sources of mortgage finance. So maybe we can let the economy fix the banks instead of the other way around.

But there are many things that could go wrong.

It's not at all clear that credit from the Fed, Fannie and Freddie can fully substitute for a healthy banking system. If it can't, the muddle-through strategy will turn out to be a recipe for a prolonged, Japanese-style era of high unemployment and weak growth.

Actually, a multiyear period of economic weakness looks likely in any case. The economy may no longer be plunging, but it's very hard to see where a real recovery will come from. And if the economy does stay depressed for a long time, banks will be in much bigger trouble than the stress tests — which looked only two years ahead — are able to capture.

Finally, given the possibility of bigger losses in the future, the government's evident unwillingness either to own banks or let them fail creates a heads-they-win-tails-we-lose situation. If all goes well, the bankers will win big. If the current strategy fails, taxpayers will be forced to pay for another bailout.

But what worries me most about the way policy is going isn't any of these things. It's my sense that the prospects for fundamental financial reform are fading.

Does anyone remember the case of H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent New York lawyer whom The Times has described as a "Wall Street éminence grise"? He briefly made the news in March when he reportedly withdrew his name after being considered a top pick for deputy Treasury secretary.

Well, earlier this week, Mr. Cohen told an audience that the future of Wall Street won't be very different from its recent past, declaring, "I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system." Hey, that little thing about causing the worst global slump since the Great Depression? Never mind.

Those are frightening words. They suggest that while the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration continue to insist that they're committed to tighter financial regulation and greater oversight, Wall Street insiders are taking the mildness of bank policy so far as a sign that they'll soon be able to go back to playing the same games as before.

So as I said, while bankers may find the results of the stress tests "reassuring," the rest of us should be very, very afraid.

Civilians Pay Price of War from Above

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Robert Fisk
May 7, 2009 - The Independent/UK

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Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as "human shields" by the Taliban and we shall say that we "deeply regret" innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it's all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.

When the Americans destroy Iraqi homes, there is an inquiry. And oh how the Israelis love inquiries (though they rarely reveal anything). It's the history of the modern Middle East. We are always right and when we are not, we (sometimes) apologise and then we blame it all on the "terrorists". Yes, we know the throat-cutters and beheaders and suicide bombers are quite prepared to slaughter the innocent.

But it was a sign of just how terrible the Afghan slaughter was that the powerless President Hamid Karzai sounded like a beacon of goodness yesterday appealing for "a higher platform of morality" in waging war, that we should conduct war as "better human beings".

And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don't risk our brave lads on the ground - not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent. Israel does exactly the same. It said the same after its allies massacred 1,700 at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and after the death of more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza this year.

And if we kill some gunmen at the same time - "terrorists", of course - then it is the same old "human shield" tactic and ultimately the "terrorists" are to blame. Our military tactics are now fully aligned with Israel.

The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages - even when enemy forces are present - but that went by the board in our 1991 bombing of Iraq and in Bosnia and in Nato's Serbia war and in our 2001 Afghan adventure and in 2003 in Iraq. Let's have that inquiry. And "human shields". And terror, terror, terror.

Something else I notice. Innocent or "terrorists", civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.

Florida's GOP Governor to Be Outed in Explosive Documentary Released Today

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"Outrage" film goes after closeted hypocritical Republicans who push anti-gay legislation.

John Byrne
May 8, 2009 - Raw Story

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The Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, who is strongly considering a run for Senate, will be outed in a independent film being released today.

The film, Outrage, tracks the outings of prominent gay political figures, such as Crist and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. It's being produced by Magnolia Pictures and will appear in Landmark Theaters across the country.

"Using some firsthand accounts of former sexual partners, old campaign footage (to occasionally humorous effect) and commentary from gay political media watchdogs, the film makes the case for each man's homosexuality, and presents his lifetime gay rights voting record," according to one reviewer. "In each instance, the disconnect is staggering.

"The usual suspects are all there: Craig, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former New York mayor Ed Koch, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, former Rep. Ed Schrock, even dusty McCarthy relic Roy Cohn."

A top Republican leader signaled Wednesday that Crist will likely enter the Senate race for the seat being vacated by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who is quitting.

"All the signals I've been getting is that he probably will [get into the race], but I don't want to make any announcements for him, because he's the one who will ultimately decide whether to pull the trigger or not," Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senator John Cornyn told Politico for Thursday editions.

Cornyn told the site that if another conservative ran, he wouldn't pick sides — also eyeing the post is former Florida House Speaker Mario Rubio, who announced his candidacy Tuesday.

But Crist's only contender wouldn't be Rubio. It would also be himself.

Crist was "first" outed in a 2006 Palm Beach Post article by Bob Norman, prior to his election as governor.

A young rising star in the Republican Party has boasted to witnesses of his sexual relationship with Charlie Crist, the frontrunner in the Florida governor's race who has repeatedly denied that he is gay.

The GOP staffer, 21-year-old Jason Wetherington, told friends at separate social functions in August that he had sex with Crist, according to two credible and independent sources who heard Wetherington make the claim first-hand.

Wetherington, who recently worked as a field director for U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris and currently works for state representative Ellyn Bodganoff's reelection campaign, also named a man whom he said is Crist's long-term partner, a convicted thief named Bruce Carlton Jordan who also recently worked for Harris in her long-shot Senate bid.

Salon notes that Crist is the biggest fish in the film for critics.

"The person most reviewers have been focusing on is Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who was recently married -- his engagement was announced right around the time when speculation was mounting that he could be chosen as John McCain's running mate," Salon's Alex Koppelman writes. "He was actually first outed back in 2006, by Bob Norman, a reporter for the New Times Broward-Palm Beach, who was also the first reporter to the story of former Rep. Mark Foley's sexuality, in 2003.

"And, in cases like Crist's, it means that the media knows something its audience doesn't, and is holding back information about people who are running for public office," Koppelman added. "When his engagement was announced, there was largely no discussion of what most every national political reporter was probably thinking. What there was instead was a sort of inside joke, which was easy to catch if you were in on the secret, but not obvious to most readers and viewers. MSNBC's Chris Matthews, for example, could barely suppress an impish smile when talking about the news. It's time to move past that in some form or another, and if the movie helps in that respect, then that's a good thing -- even if it's not actually outing anyone itself."

Crist was recently engaged, and then married -- quietly.

"A Republican operative close to Crist" told Politico "he expects the governor to announce his future political plans 'very soon,' perhaps as early as Monday. Crist has said he will decide after the state legislature wraps up its session, which ends on Friday."

Full disclosure: I appear in the film, speaking in favor of outing hypocritical gay politicians. Raw Story has "outed" closeted politicians before, including Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) and the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman

Pirates vs. Emperors

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Joseph Nevins
May 7, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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History shows that when a powerful empire sets sail overseas its spokespeople often depict the undertaking as an effort to create order and bring peace. When a pirate ship ventures into the open seas, by contrast, the empire portrays the endeavor as a crime against humanity. The difference is not so much what emperors and pirates do—both pillage and plunder, albeit to vastly different degrees. What matters most is which of the two is in a position to effectively define right and wrong.

This history seemed to repeat itself on April 20—only days after Barack Obama called the United States a "nation of laws" and said that his administration would not prosecute Americans for torture. On that night, police and FBI agents led a shackled Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, a teenager from war-ravaged, poverty-stricken Somalia accused of piracy, into federal detention for his role in an American ship captain's kidnapping. While presented as a step toward law-based accountability, the scene evokes images of an old story—the reigning double standards of what passes for international justice.

About 16 centuries ago the renowned theologian St. Augustine related a tale about a pirate captured by Alexander the Great who asked his prisoner "how he dares molest the sea." "How dare you molest the whole world?" responded the pirate. "Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor."

Centuries later, this unjust dynamic became widespread as Western powers carved up the globe. Throughout their colonies they established courts that prosecuted crimes defined by the occupying power. Not surprisingly, the courts typically focused their efforts on the alleged crimes of imperial subjects, while upholding the institutionalized injustices and the acts of physical violence needed to sustain it.

The creation of the United Nations was, among other things, an attempt to overcome the resulting impunity for the relatively powerful. But while the U.N. has had much success in setting international legal and human rights standards, it has been largely ineffective in enforcing them, especially when doing so would challenge the interests of powerful member-states.

This failure is principally one of design, one embedded in the United Nations' very structure due to the World War II victors' efforts to ensure that the new international body would allow them to pursue their interests on the global stage. As the Mexican delegate to the founding convention in San Francisco in 1945 noted, the U.N. Charter assured that "the mice would be disciplined, but the lions would be free."

More than 60 years later, his words have proven to be prophetic. Accountability for "mice" and impunity for "lions" — and the mice with whom they are on good terms — has become the rule, not the exception in international affairs.

Among many examples, witness the current international tribunal in Cambodia. Between 1969 and 1973, the U.S. military carpet-bombed Cambodia, causing the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of civilians, while indirectly contributing to the Khmer Rouge's seizure of power. Yet the U.N.-backed court will not try any U.S. officials for committing serious crimes.

As Marlon Brando, in his role as a human rights lawyer in apartheid-era South Africa in the 1989 film, A Dry White Season, explained, "Justice and law could be described as distant cousins, and here … they're not even on speaking terms."

Bridging the gap between law and justice requires that we in the United States acknowledge the double standards that effectively allow a small number of powerful countries to determine who should face international justice, while exempting themselves from scrutiny. We must reject President Obama's statement upon the recent release of the torture memos that "nothing will be gained by … laying blame for the past" —words that seem to apply only to some crimes and wrongdoers.

It requires that we imagine the possibility that people like "us," and the officials from countries with which we ally ourselves, might also be held legally accountable for actions abroad, and to endeavor to make the possibility real.

Until we do so, let us not pretend that law and justice are one and the same, or that emperors and pirates are compelled to live by the same standards.

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Joseph Nevins is an associate professor of geography at Vassar College. His latest book is Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30610029

Can the Neocons Jump to the Dems?

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Ivan Eland
May 4, 2009 - Consortiumnews

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Consortiumnews Editor's Note: Just a few years ago, the acolytes of George W. Bush were dreaming about transforming the United States into essentially a one-party state with the Republicans as the permanent majority, the neoconservatives as the party's intellectual core, and the Democrats kept around for show.

However, a series of policy disasters – many caused by the neocons, like the Iraq War – have left the Republicans foundering as a national party, which may mean the neocons will attempt to jump ship to the Democrats, as the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland notes:

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Neoconservatives used the Republican Party as a vehicle to promote and employ their policies of muscular nation-building overseas.

But like the parasite that eventually kills its host, the Republican Party's virtual collapse, in large part because of the failed nation-building adventure in Iraq, has left neoconservatives discredited and facing policy extinction. Unfortunately, neoconservatism will probably live on by changing hosts.

Throughout American history, the structure of the political systems has ensured that only two major parties would be viable at any one time. They haven't always been the Democrats and Republicans. They have always been the Democrats and one other party. First, it was the Federalists, then the Whigs, and finally, from just prior to the Civil War to the present, the Republicans.

The Republicans started out as a regional party of the Northeast. The only reason they ever took power away from the Democrats, the only true national party at the time of the Civil War, was because the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings over the slavery issue.

Thus, the Civil War was essentially caused by the fracture of the Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 39.8 percent of the national popular vote, beating two Democrats and one minor party candidate. Southern states, fearing a Republican's potential policies on slavery, didn't even wait until Lincoln's inauguration before they began to secede from the union.

Ironically, today, the Republican Party, which once had hopes of becoming the majority party in the country, has followed George W. Bush over a cliff and has once again been reduced to largely a regional party of the old South and a few other conservative states.

As long as Democrats in more libertarian mountain states stand up for gun rights, most states in that entire region are ripe for permanent status in the Democratic column. The most telling moment in the 2008 election was when Arizona, the Republican nominee's home state, was too close to call. It would have gone Democratic had a native son not been running.

If the Republican Party doesn't now move to extinction like its Federalist and Whig predecessors, it is likely to remain only a regional party for a long while.
It's intolerant conservative social views scare most other Americans. More important, the one issue on which many Republican conservatives differed from President Bush — immigration — could be the death knell of the party.

When the party alienated Hispanics (including even some Cubans, who were previously one of the most loyal Republican constituencies), the fastest growing minority in the United States, with nativist diatribes on immigration, other minorities, such as Asians and Native Americans realized that they could be victimized too.

In the 1990s, Republican Governor Pete Wilson made California overwhelmingly Democratic with his immigration policies. The same has just happened at the national level. After the immigration debate in the late Bush years, it will be hard for the Republican Party to ever woo back Hispanics.
Does the long-term demise (and maybe extinction) of the GOP leave the neoconservatives up the creek without a paddle? Not necessarily.

The neoconservatives started out as liberals and socialists in the Democratic Party. They were never really that conservative on economic policy, only belligerent in foreign and defense policies. And in those two latter policy areas, the Democratic Party is still dominated by their close cousins, the liberal Wilsonian interventionists.

Although the liberal Wilsonians — such as Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright — are less unilateralist than the neoconservatives and are much more in love with international organizations, they share the neoconservatives' passion for armed social work and nation-building.

Besides, when you're deep in the wilderness and your horse is dying, you can't be too concerned with pimples on your new steed.

The neoconservatives will probably eventually realize that the Republican Party is dying, and will seamlessly re-infest the Democratic mother ship to preserve themselves. And again, they will probably severely debilitate their host.

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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

US Security Firm Blackwater Ends Iraq Operation

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May 07, 2009 - Agence France Presse

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US security firm Blackwater ended its operations in Iraq on Thursday closing a controversial era for the company whose guards shot dead 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

"The task order for security protection operations held by Blackwater comes to an end today in Baghdad," American embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said, adding that Triple Canopy will replace it.

Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based firm, was appointed at the end of March by the US State Deparment to take over the multi-million-dollar contract to protect US government personnel working in Iraq.

Linked agreements such as that for Presidential Airways, part of Blackwater that operates helicopter escorts throughout the country for secure air travel, will expire soon, Ziadeh added.

The State Department refused to renew annual contracts for Blackwater which renamed itself Xe after the Iraq government banned it in January over the killings in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007.

An Iraqi investigation found that 17 civilians died and 20 were wounded when Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through the square.

US prosecutors say 14 civilians were killed in the incident. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty at a federal court in Washington in January to manslaughter charges.

The shooting focused a spotlight on the shadowy and highly lucrative operations of private security operations. Blackwater guards were reported to earn as much as 1,000 dollars a day each in Iraq.

Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Xe, said the firm remains proud of its work in Iraq.

"When the US Government initially asked for our help to assist with an immediate need to protect Americans in Iraq, we answered that call and performed well," she said in comments emailed to AFP.

"We are honored to have provided this service for five years and are proud of our success - no one under our protection has been killed or even seriously injured."

"We always knew that, at some point, that work would come to a close."

Foreign security teams in Iraq have long operated in a legal grey area, but under a military accord signed with Washington last November, Iraq won a concession to lift the immunity to prosecution previously extended to US security contractors.

Blackwater first came under scrutiny on March 31, 2004, when four of its employees were killed by an angry mob in Fallujah, then a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold.

The crowd mutilated their bodies and strung them from a bridge, shocking images that were broadcast worldwide and led to a month-long assault on Fallujah that left 36 US soldiers, 200 insurgents and 600 civilians dead.

North Carolina-based Blackwater has been protecting US government personnel in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and has had around 1,000 staff in the violence-wracked country, making it among the largest security firms operating there.

In the wake of the scandal over civilian deaths in Iraq, its founder Erik Prince announced in March that he was stepping down as chief executive, but would stay on as chairman.

Michael Moore Takes On The "Beast" Of Capitalism

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Bill Gallagher
May 6, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Michael Moore, the Academy Award winning filmmaker and disturber of the peace for the powerful, is preparing a scathing assault on America's economic system with his new film set for release in October. As usual, Moore pulls no punches proclaiming the three things wrong with capitalism: "It's anti-Jesus, it's anti-democratic and it just doesn't work."

Moore previewed the themes in the film during a speech last Saturday at a Michigan Peace Team dinner and fundraiser. The MPT trains ordinary citizens in the creative use of nonviolent conflict interventions and the origination has built an admirable record working in troubled spots of the world such as Bosnia, Palestine and along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Father Peter Dougherty, a Catholic priest and a founder of MPT, is a long time friend of Moore's who introduced him as a man with "a passion for justice" and reminded the audience that the Flint, Michigan native - who is a lightning rod for right wing rage - is "very real" and "what you see is what you get."

I can vouch for that. I met Michael when he was poor and obscure and we've been friends for nearly 25 years. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Moore's first film, "Roger and Me." I had the privilege of helping to collect some of the video used in the film and made my silver screen debut in an excerpt from a news report where I stood in Flint describing the devastating impact General Motors' plant closings were having on the town where the giant corporation began.

"Roger and Me" was a seminal piece of filmmaking, revolutionizing the documentary genre. As Moore said in his remarks, the film was not really about Roger Smith, the late GM chairman who squandered billions of dollars in non-auto business fiascos, nor was it about Michael and his zany quest to confront the isolated and aloof executive. The film was about "an economic system that is unfair, unjust and not democratic," Moore said.

"Roger and Me" was prescient and prophetic and, had General Motors and the other domestic automakers paid attention to its message instead of denouncing Moore as a grandstanding trouble maker, they might be in better shape today.

As Chrysler plunges into bankruptcy and General Motors could soon follow, Moore reminded us that GM "has brought about its own demise." He recited the corporate legacy where "They have fought everything good for the planet and good for people." At one time GM opposed rear view mirrors and turn signals and "dragged every step of the way to build safe and fuel efficient vehicles."

Moore blasted the years of planned obsolescence in U.S. auto making where the martini sippers who ran the companies decided, "Let's build a piece-of-shit vehicle that will last three years." In the short term, that strategy lined the pockets of the executives that forged it, but long term it perversely branded American products as poor in quality even when they had improved. That "arrogance and greed drove Detroit where we are," Moore sadly noted.

Moore's films are timely, poignant and pointed - made for people to understand what's really happening in the world rather than the bland, sanitized and ultimately distorted messages the mainstream media feeds to the uninformed.

"Bowling for Columbine" showed how a gun-worshiping society spawns promiscuous violence and human degradation. Moore's microphone was shut-off and he was booed off the stage as he used his Academy Award acceptance speech for "Bowling" to denounce the war in Iraq which began five days earlier. The blood still flows in Iraq six years later; the war is a recruitment gift for Islamic revolutionaries. Moore had the guts to speak the truth and those who booed him should feel shame today.

"The president lied to invade another country," Moore said. "Is there a greater crime than that?" He called the war a "black mark on the American soul" and asked, "What do we have to do to redeem ourselves?"

"Fahrenheit 911," Moore's brilliant film about George W. Bush, his exploitation of the Sept. 11th attacks, and the rush to war in Iraq, will become a standard in high school American History classes used to help students understand the madness that gripped this nation.

"Sicko" exposed the failures of a greed-driven health care system where even those with insurance suffer and are denied basic coverage. Moore dissected a failed system that costs twice as much as anywhere in the industrialized world while falling behind "Third World" nations in basic health measurements such as life expectancy and infant mortality rates.

Moore's newest film project pits him against American "banksters", the crooks in suits responsible for "The largest robbery in the history of the world." That's not hyperbole. Look at the numbers.

Moore calls the evolution of unbridled capitalism in America, "The beast." He sees these money-addicted bastards - with their indispensable allies in politics - coming up with trick after trick to lure and push working-class people into economic slavery locked in "the chains of debt."

The banks are the "new conquistadors", who brought slavery to the Western Hemisphere and committed genocide on many of the native peoples to accelerate a rapacious and bloody capitalism aimed at amassing unrivaled wealth. The methods are different, less openly brutal, but the enslavement is similar.

Moore argues that wildly expanded credit offered to those unable to afford it, usurious interest rates for credit cards, costly student loans that force recent graduates into low-paying jobs to pay back the banks, home equity loans, mortgage refinancing, and the whole sub-prime scam suck up the limited resources of working people and pump the proceeds into the pockets of the already filthy rich.

Moore sees the dream world of George W. Bush's "ownership" society - where Americans rely on 401 k accounts as a substitute for employer-employee supported fixed pension benefits - as a disaster, that would have been devastating had Bush succeeded in his mad quest to funnel Social Security payroll taxes into the stock market.

"Enough" is the dirtiest word among the rich capitalists who've been gaining a greater share of our total national wealth since 1980, when Ronald Reagan first came into office, while their tax burden has been reduced significantly. The debt-financed tax cuts were passed out to wage earners who accepted Reaganomics, as Moore contends, in a bizarre social contract where "the oppressed believe the oppressor is their friend."

Moore showed a snip of the trailer for his new film (rumor is it's titled "Bailout" but he's not saying) where he's looking into the camera wearing his signature baseball cap, making what sounds, at first, to be a sincere appeal to help those suffering in the economic melt-down.

He's holding a coffee can, asking for donations. Then - with a straight face - he pleads for money for Bank of America, Citi Group and the other suffering banks. The label on the can reads: "Save Our CEOs."

The film is being shot in Michigan and Michael is secretive about the project because, he said, "I want to live to finish it." He quipped the Bush people he took on were "pretty dumb" but the "banksters" are smarter, and even more ruthless than his earlier adversaries.

Reporter Amy Lange and her husband, photographer Michael Shore, are friends and colleagues and vigilant voices for the suffering in our society. Amy ably served as emcee for the packed crowd at MPT's "Evening with Michael Moore."

Amy and Mike are preparing a visual and narrative display for Marygrove College in Detroit called "Portraits in Social Justice," Michael Moore among them. Shore's compelling photographs of these committed people present faces etched in high purpose.

After his speech, we ushered Moore into an adjoining room where Shore had to shoot some photographs of him for the display. Moore already had a long day shooting his own interviews for his upcoming film.

As Shore got him to pose, he hoped for a serious expression and asked Moore to think of Dick Cheney. Moore obliged, looking somewhat severe, while never fully suppressing the ever-present twinkle in his eyes.

He is an extraordinarily creative communicator who breaks down complex issues into understandable human stories. He is an exceptional filmmaker and the most effective social critic of our times.

Like Mark Twain, his predecessor on this American stage, his wonderful wit usually wins the day. And also like Twain, my old friend Michael Moore's greatest gift is that he knows and shares the awful truth.

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Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.

Justice Dept. Finds Many Flaws in FBI Terror Watch List

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Eric Lichtblau
May 6, 2009 - The New York Times

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has improperly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list based on outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while it missed others with legitimate terror ties who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday.

The report said the mistakes posed a risk to national security, because of the failure to flag actual suspected terrorists, as well as an unnecessary nuisance for non-suspects who may be questioned at a traffic stops or stopped from boarding an airplane.

By the beginning of 2009, the report said, the government's terrorist watch lists included about 400,000 people, listed as 1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when it included fewer than two dozen people.

Intelligence officials say the watch lists have allowed different agencies to work together in an effort to prevent the type of breakdown that allowed two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to enter the United States even though they were known to the Central Intelligence Agencies for their terrorist ties.

The new Justice Department report provided the most authoritative statistical account to date of the problems connected with the watch lists and confirmed some assertions made by critics of the process. An earlier report by the inspector general, released in March 2008, looked mainly at flaws in the system.

The list has long been a target of public criticism, particularly after well-publicized incidents in which politicians including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative John Lewis of Georgia accidentally showed up on the lists. People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to remove their names from the list, and civil rights advocates charge that anti-war protesters, Muslim activists and others have been put on the lists and stopped at airports for political reasons.

The report, by the Justice Department inspector general's office, looked mainly at the F.B.I., which took the lead in 2004 for maintaining a consolidated terrorist watch list for all agencies throughout the federal government.

One of the biggest problems identified in the report was the use of outdated information, or material unconnected to terrorism, to keep people on the F.B.I.'s own terror watch list. The report examined nearly 69,000 watch lists referrals brought or processed by the F.B.I. and found that 35 percent of the people, both Americans and foreigners, remained on the list despite inadequate justification.

"Many of these watch-listed records were associated with outdated terrorism case classifications or case classifications unrelated to terrorism," the report said. In some cases, the people on the watch lists were the subjects of F.B.I. investigations that had been closed years earlier without action, yet their names had either never been removed, or not in a timely fashion.

Potentially even more problematic were the cases of people who were not on the watch lists despite evidence of terrorist ties.

The inspector general looked at a sampling of 216 F.B.I. terrorism investigations, and found that in 15 percent of those cases, a total of 35 subjects were not referred to the terror watch list even though they should have been.

In one case, for instance, a United States Army Special Forces soldier was investigated and ultimately convicted for stealing some 16,500 round of ammunition, C-4 explosives and other material from Afghanistan and shipping them to the United States in what investigators suspected might be the makings of a domestic terror plot. Yet the suspect was not placed on the watch list for nearly five months after the investigation was opened against him.

"We believe that the FBI's failure to consistently nominate subjects of international and domestic terrorism investigations to the terrorist watch list could pose a risk to national security," the inspector general said. The director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, Caroline Fredrickson, said her group's monitoring of the watch lists indicates that the problems identified at the F.B.I. are endemic to entire system.

"What this report really shows is that on both ends, the lists are really over-inclusive and under-inclusive," she said in an interview. "With 1.1 million names, there's all sorts of problems that have larded it up, and the whole thing just really needs to be torn down and start a new system."

The F.B.I. adopted all 16 of the inspector general's recommendations for improving watch list operations, including better training and faster processing of referrals. The agency said in a statement that "we remain committed to improving our watch list policy and practices to ensure the proper balance between national security protection and the need for accurate, efficient and streamlined watch-listing processes."

Young Americans Losing Their Religion

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New Research Finds Number Who Claim No Church Has Risen Sharply

Dan Harris
May 6, 2009 - ABC News

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New research shows young Americans are dramatically less likely to go to church -- or to participate in any form of organized religion -- than their parents and grandparents.

"It's a huge change," says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam, who conducted the research.

Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However, Putnam says the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.

Putnam calls this a "stunning development." He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.

The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called "American Grace."

US center names 25 lenders blamed for financial crisis

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Jitendra Joshi
May 6, 2009 - AFP

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US and foreign banks were not unwitting victims of circumstance but deliberately culpable in the financial meltdown that engulfed the United States last year, a campaign group said Wednesday.

The Center for Public Integrity named 25 "subprime" mortgage companies whose risky lending was blamed for the US property market collapse and the subsequent global economic crisis.

Many of the lenders were either controlled by US and European banks, or could not have indulged in their high-risk lending spree without the connivance of banks, the investigative journalism group said in a new study.

"The mega-banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves," the center's executive director Bill Buzenberg said.

"These banks were deliberate enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that's now threatening the financial system," he said.

The study was released as the US House of Representatives was set Wednesday to vote on a Senate-approved bill that would set up a 9/11-style commission of experts to probe the root causes of the financial crisis.

The purpose is not "to point fingers and place blame," Republican Representative Darrell Issa said, "but rather to identify mistakes" to prevent a future recurrence.

The Center for Public Integrity said it had forwarded its report to leading members of Congress.

Lead author John Dunbar said the study highlighted "a catastrophic regulatory failure" that had required trillions of taxpayer dollars to rescue the banking industry.

"There was nobody watching the store all the way through this process," he told reporters.

The center analyzed US government data on more than seven million subprime loans made from 2005 to 2007, when the real estate bubble was at its peak.

It said the "Subprime 25" accounted for nearly one trillion dollars or about 72 percent of industry-reported loans extended to risky borrowers who would not normally have qualified for a mortgage.

At least 21 of the 25 were financed by banks that received US government bailout money, and 11 of them have made hefty payments to settle prosecution claims of widespread lending abuses, it said.

Four of them have received bailout funds, including collapsed insurer American International Group and banking behemoth Citigroup.

Top of the list with at least 97.2 billion dollars in subprime loans was Countrywide Financial, which was bought by Bank of America last year to avert bankruptcy for the giant mortgage company.

Second with 80.6 billion dollars in loans was Ameriquest Mortgage, now part of the Citigroup family. Third with 75.9 billion was New Century Financial Corp, which went bust in 2007 and now faces a federal investigation.

"The center found that US and European investment banks invested enormous sums in subprime lending due to unceasing demand for high-yield, high-risk bonds backed by home mortgages," Dunbar said.

"The banks made huge profits while their executives collected handsome bonuses until the bottom fell out of the real estate market."

Two of the subprime lenders have been seized by the US government: Washington Mutual, owner of Long Beach Mortgage (fifth on the list), and IndyMac Bank (number 14).

The top foreign-owned lender at number nine was HSBC Finance, part of the British-based banking giant HSBC. EquiFirst (16th on the list) was shut down by its British owner Barclays Bank in February.

Others such as RBS Greenwich Capital Investments -- part of the Royal Bank of Scotland -- and Swiss bank Credit Suisse First Boston were major backers of subprime lenders, the study said.

There are no geniuses in the outhouse

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Joe Bageant
May 5, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Sometimes you overhear a remark so wonderfully prescient you wish you'd said it yourself. Especially if you are a writer. Sitting in back of the Troubadour Club, a West Virginia honky tonk high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I'm listening to Petie Yost, an auctioneer, talk to Bud Shanholtz, who lives on Social Security and drives a snowplow occasionally during the winter.

Now ole Petie uses exotic economic terms such as "investment return" and "percentage." He says things like, "I don't do household auctions 'cause there ain't no real percentage in it." Which makes him an economic expert in these beery circles. And right now he is telling Bud why our Social Security and the FDIC do not exist.

"Whadaya mean they don't exist?" asks Bud.

"Because they are both absolutely broke," replies Petie. "Tits up. Nada."
"How do ya mean?"

"Well, it's like this. If you only have $100, and no job, but you owe $15 on your phone bill, and $700 for your rent and $400 on your credit card, you're in deep shit. Right? You can't just pay one of those bills and figure you're OK. Right?"

"I'd say so" agrees Bud.

"Well, that's the fix the U.S. Government is in. If you ask if the government has enough money to fund the FDIC during a bank run, and sure as Nellie's goat eats cans there's gonna be one, the government says yes. And if you ask if the Social Security checks will keep coming and never bounce, it says yes. But it's one set of bills that comes out of one government pocket. Ain't no special safe in Fort Knox where they keep the Social Security money or the FDIC money. So the government pays the $15 light bill and hope people never ask for their bank savings to be covered by the FDIC. Lucky for them, ain't many people even got savings anyway."

Bud nods and Petie continues.

"Meanwhile, they pay out the Social Security money as it dribbles in from kids flippimg hamburgers, and pay the $15 light bill, and pray to hell the Ay-rabs keep loaning them some dough now and then, until they can pawn off the rest of the country and maybe break even in the long haul. That is, if the bailouts keep the bankers' shell game going long enough so nobody can figure out what's up. Of course the bankers ain't gonna squeal on the whole deal because they're the only ones getting richer in this thing. But still the government is working out of one pocket where the hundred bucks used to be."

Bud makes a sour face, and says, "Well, that stinks like a country outhouse in July, don't it?"

"Worse, I'd say. Nobody expects a whole country to be run out of a shithouse. But everybody figures the shithouse in Washington is full of geniuses."

I bought them both a round just for the pleasure of hearing some common sense for a change.

More than one in five homeowners underwater: Zillow

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May 6, 2009 - Reuters

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Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow's first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold.

U.S. homes lost $704 billion in value during the first quarter and have depreciated $3.8 trillion in the past 12 months, according to analysis of the reports.

Declining home values left 21.9 percent of all American homeowners with negative equity by the end of the first quarter, Zillow said.

By comparison, 17.6 percent of all homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their property was worth in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 14.3 percent were underwater in the third quarter of last year, the reports showed.

Nine consecutive quarters of declines have left eight regions -- including the Modesto, California, Stockton, California, and Fort Myers, Florida regions -- with median value declines of more than 50 percent since those markets peaked.

In 85 of the 161 markets covered in the report, the annualized change over the past five years is negative or flat, the reports showed.

But in an early sign of improvement, 17 metropolitan areas across the country -- notably several hard-hit markets in California, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Modesto -- have seen two or more consecutive quarters of smaller year-over-year declines in home values, the reports showed.

Meanwhile, potential sellers appear to be holding back until evidence of an improved housing market. In a separate survey of homeowner sentiment, nearly one-third, or 31 percent, of homeowners said they would be at least somewhat likely to put their homes on the market in the next 12 months if they saw signs of a recovering real estate market, the reports showed.

"Slowing declines in select markets are a bright spot or, at least, what passes for one given current market conditions," Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics, said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, given the magnitude of the current rates of decline, we're still many months away from a bottom even as depreciation slows," he said. "Moreover, the additional information we have this quarter on 'shadow inventory,' with one-third of homeowners indicating they would like to put their home on the market if conditions improve, confirms our earlier fears that a bottom in home values could be quite protracted."

"By our calculations, this could translate into as many as 20 million homes that could seep into the market as prices stabilize, maintaining a constant stream of supply that far outpaces demand, thus keeping prices flat. I'm doubtful that we'll see the bottom until 2010, and thereafter it's increasingly clear that we're likely to have a long bottom before we see meaningful recovery in home values," Humphries said.

Of all transactions is the past 12 months, 20.4 percent were foreclosures, up slightly from 19.9 percent in the fourth quarter, while 11.9 percent of homes sold were short sales, also up slightly from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, the reports showed.