For the second time in less than 24 hours, the US military March 5 acknowledged involvement in an incident that caused multiple civilian deaths in Afghanistan—this time, an air strike that killed nine people from the same family. Afghan authorities say suspected Taliban insurgents targeted a NATO base late March 4 in Kapisa province, just north of Kabul. When the US forces returned fire, they apparently hit a civilian house killing at least five women and several young children. NATO will only say the matter is under investigation. The UN's Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also said it would be issuing its own report on the incident. US officials blamed insurgents for placing civilians in harm's way by deliberately staging attacks certain to draw retaliation. Some 20 Afghan civilians have died since March 4 as a result of attacks from US and NATO forces, and this is provoking anger in Afghanistan. A large protest was held March 5 in Jalalabad, where hundreds of students took to the streets chanting anti-American slogans following the previous day's incident which left at least 10 civilians dead following an attack on a convoy of Marines. Witnesses say US forces kept firing after the insurgents had fled. (Pakistan Tribune, March 7; Radio Free Afghanistan, Toronto Star, March 6)

Another appalling op-ed in the New York Times March 5, this one arguing that an amnesty for war criminals is "good for Afghan democracy." This Orwellian exercise, "New Justice, No Peace," is by Richard May, a fellow with the World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information, and a former captain with the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan's parliament has approved the amnesty law letting all the warlords from all the factions that tore the country apart for a generation totally off the hook. International human rights groups are petitioning President Hamid Karzai not to sign it. While paying patronizing lip service to critics' "humanitarian feelings," May writes that "President Karzai should sign the law—for four good reasons." A very dangerous historical revisionism is clear in May's reasons—portraying the warlords as Cold War heroes.

From CNW Telbec, Canada, March 5:

Reporters Without Borders called for an explanation from the US Army for threats and censorship against Afghan journalists, two of them working for the Associated Press (AP), while covering civilian deaths in shooting by US special forces on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad in the east.

Hmmm, didn't the Brits just invoke "progress" in Basra to justify their planned withdrawal? From Arab Monitor, March 5:

BAGHDAD - In a move to end their Iraqi allies' uncontrolled violence, US and British troops began yesterday to venture into Shiite militia strongholds in Baghdad and Basra. In Basra, British troops are reported to have found some 30 prisoners held in an unaccounted-for prison. Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki hurried to condemn the raid on what he called the Basra security compound and ordered an immediate investigation "to punish those who carried out this illegal and irresponsible act", as voiced out by an official statement released by his office. A woman and her two children are reported to have been found among the prisoners discovered in the Basra facility. The British military command declined to give information about the fate of these captives.

For the second time in eight days Feb. 26, teachers from Sections 22 and 59 of the National Education Workers Syndicate (SNTE) clashed over control of Technical Secondary School 172 at Benito Juárez, San Pedro Pochutla municipality, on the coast of southern Mexico's conflicted Oaxaca state. Eleven were injured on both sides, two seriously. Despite an accord to allow the same teachers from the last semester back in regardless of their union affiliation, Section 59 teachers attemped to impede access to Section 22 teachers, sparking the clash. Some 275 schools around the state are said to be similarly divided. (La Jornada, Feb. 27)

Diego Arcos Meneses, an indigenous Chol Maya campesino, has been arrested by Chiapas state police and charged with murder in connection with November's massacre at the rainforest settlement of Viejo Velasco. The Chol campesino organization Xinich protests his innocence. The Xinich statement says Arcos Meneses, 42, is a health promoter and Jesuit "catechist" (lay worker) at the settlement of Nuevo Tila, Ocosingo municipality. "Regrettably in our country such human gestures can be dangerous: solidarity is criminalized while repression walks with impunity," says Xinich, the group believed by rights observers to have actually been targeted in the attack. (Xinich statement, March 4)

Frederick Vreeland, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asia affairs and former US ambassador to Morocco, has an op-ed in the March 3 New York Times on the usually obscure crisis in Western Sahara, optimistically entitled "Will Freedom Bloom in the Desert?" Its nice to see the "newspaper of record" finally paying some note to the long struggle in Africa's last colony, but the paucity of coverage makes it all the more frustrating that this lead op-ed is a piece of dishonest propaganda for Morocco's pseudo-solution of an "autonomy" plan, which Vreeland writes "it behooves all members of the United Nations Security Council to support."

Twelve Islamic militants were convicted of terrorism-related charges in Morocco March 2, including eight with alleged ties to al-Qaeda who supposedly had volunteered to fight in Iraq. The appeals court in Sale handed down prison terms of two to 15 years in the separate cases, the stiffest being for a Tunisian, Mohamed Ben el Hadi Messahel, a former restaurant worker in Milan, Italy. The seven others, all Moroccan, were convicted on charges of "organizing a criminal group preparing and committing terror acts" and lesser counts, receiving sentences of up to 10 years. One defendant was acquitted. Authorities said the faction also had ties elsewhere in North Africa and Europe, and links to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which recently merged with al-Qaeda. Two defendants, Ayoub Zanm and Abdelhak Kouani, got two years each for organizing a criminal gang and "membership in a group of fighters in Iraq." Proceedings in four other terrorism cases involving 10 defendants were postponed until the spring. (AP, March 3)