Iraq's armed guerillas are usually portrayed in vague and shadowy terms, allowing political commentators to cast them in whatever image is deemed convenient. Even the correct word to designate them says more about the commentator than the militants themselves. Those who wish to demonize them call them "terrorists"; those who wish to cheer them on call them the "resistance"; while the majority of the mainstream media cut it down the middle by calling them "insurgents"—while still providing little detail about who they actually are.

Now a front-page Dec. 2 New York Times story (online at the International Herald Tribune) actually provides a breakdown of the insurgency's major constituent entities, and an analysis of its strategies and structure, drawing on the research of the SITE Institute (for Seach for International Terrorist Entities).

The SITE Institute identifies five major groupings, each made up of numerous small, largely autonomous cells that operate under its umbrella. From largest to smallest: al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Ansar al-Sunna, the Victorious Army Group, the 20th of July Revolution Brigade and al-Rashideen Army.

The case of Chad's former president Hissène Habré, now fighting a Belgian extradition request on atrocity charges, will be handed over to African Union leaders to decide next month, Senegal's government announced. Senegal's Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio said Nov. 27 that Habré may remain in Senegal until AU leaders decide where he should be tried. Gadio recognized that Habré was accused of "odious crimes, even crimes against humanity," and promised that Senegal would "abstain from any act which would permit Hissène Habré not to face justice." He said that it was "up to the African Union summit to indicate the jurisdiction which is competent to hear the case."

The Bush administration decided to charge designated "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, a US citizen who was initially said to have been preparing a radioactive "dirty bomb" attack on US soil, with less serious crimes because it was unwilling to allow testimony from two senior al-Qaeda members, government officials said.

On Nov. 16, Brazilian landless workers Vanderlei Macena Cruz and Mauro Gomes Duarte, residents of Accampamento Renascer (Rebirth Encampment), were assassinated while riding a motorcycle to work near Gleba Gama, in the Nova Guarita region of Brazil's Mato Grosso state. According to information released by the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the two men were found dead on a road that divides the properties falsely claimed by local landowners Silmar Kessler and Sebastiao Neves de Almeida known by the nickname Chapeu Preto (Black Hat). Another rural worker heard the shots and quickly gathered other residents to find the bodies on the road; the Military Police did not arrive at the scene until late in the evening.

On Nov. 19 and 20, some 19,000 people gathered outside the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia to demand a dramatic shift in US foreign policy and the closure of the US Defense Department's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly called the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), a combat- training school for Latin American soldiers. The protest, organized by SOA Watch, is held each November at Fort Benning to commemorate the 1989 murders in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter; some of the killers were SOA graduates. Last year 16,000 people attended. Organizers cited reports of torture by US soldiers and the ongoing war on Iraq as motivating factors for this year's record turnout.

A Saudi secondary school teacher has been ordered imprisoned for three years for blasphemy, and sentenced to 750 lashes, to be delivered—50 a week—in the public market of the town of al-Bikeriya. Chemistry teacher Muhammad al-Harbi of Qassim province was charged with mocking Islam, favoring Jews and Christians, promoting "dubious ideologies," and studying witchcraft. The judge in the case, Abdullah Dakhil, reportedly accused the teacher of "trying to sow doubt in a student's creed." The charges were filed against him by a group of students and teachers from his school.

More arrests in Italy--but note that this time they are being held under a new post-9-11 law that considerably dumbs down the standards for detaining suspects. These standards were weakened still further following the London attacks this summer, as the BBC noted. From the AP, Nov. 17:

Guatemala's anti-drug chief and two of his senior officials were arrested Nov. 16 on charges of conspiring to import and distribute cocaine in the United States. The Guatemalan government assisted in the investigation but the arrests were an embarrassment for President Oscar Berger, who has tried to clean up the country's image as corrupt.