The Obama administration announced it will not replace two US brigades (12,000 troops) now departing Iraq. The step will leave 128,000 US troops in Iraq through the December 2009, parliamentary elections—ostensibly the last to be conducted under US auspices. By August, 2010, another 80,000 to 100,000 troops will be withdrawn, with all combat forces scheduled to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011.

Leaders of Pakistan's Mamoond tribe, which straddles the Afghan border in the country's Bajaur tribal district, signed an agreement with the government March 9 to end their insurgency, refuse shelter to foreign militants, and respect state authority. The pact commits the Mamoond to turn over key figures of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Bajaur, lay down arms, disband militant groups and shut militant training camps.

Twelve of the 92 videotapes destroyed by the CIA contained evidence of torture, according to redacted documents filed March 6 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) had acknowledged last week that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) destroyed 92 videotapes of high value terrorism suspect interrogations, in response to an August 2008 judicial order that the CIA turn over information regarding the tapes or provide specific justifications on why it could not release the information.

The US March 9 vowed to keep up military surveillance in waters off China and protested what it called harassment one day earlier of a US surveillance ship operated by civilian contractors for the Navy's Military Sealift Command. The Pentagon charged that a Chinese intelligence vessel and four others "shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close" to the USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, then threw obstacles in the water as it tried to leave. During the confrontation, the Impeccable crew sprayed some of the Chinese sailors with a fire hose, causing some of the Chinese sailors to strip to their underwear.

A March 6 headline in the official Chinese news agency Xinhua acknowledged that the declaration of March 28 as "Serfs Emancipation Day" is intended as a "tit-for-tat" against "Dalai clique." The rubber-stamp parliament of Tibet Autonomous Region adopted a motion in January to commemorate the day in 1959 when China officially dissolved the local government of Tibet. (Tibetan Review, March 9)

A 44-day general strike in the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe ended with an agreement signed March 4 by representatives of the French government and the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), which led the strike. In the Jacques Binot Accord—named for a union leader killed the night of Feb. 17—the LKP won its basic demand for a raise of 200 euros a month (now about $253) for low-wage workers. The agreement's 165 articles also cover a wide range of economic demands: reductions in charges for school meals, in bank rates, in the price of water and auto fuel; lower real estate taxes; a 20% reduction in bus fares between towns; a rent freeze; and a freeze on the price of a loaf of bread.

Saying it "has not complied with the aims for which it was created" in 1998, Ecuador's government withdrew the legal charter of the Quito-based non-governmental organization Acción Ecológica, effectively ordering the group closed. The order, issued March 2 by Health Minister Caroline Chang and made public a week later, was protested by Acción Ecológica as "unconstitutional."

Ecuador's trans-Andean Heavy Crude Pipeline (OCP) is back on line following a rupture that spilled 14,000 barrels in the Amazon region. The pipeline was shut for seven days following the Feb. 24 leak near the rainforest community of Santa Rosa, Napo province. Specialists were mobilized to the region to contain the oil slick that contaminated local waterways. But Marlon Santi, leader of Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), said, "There are 47 communities affected, the situation is grave."