Arab Monitor calls the brief detainment by US forces of a son of Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim "a message to SCIRI," the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Washington has got to be uneasy that its allies in Iraq are the faction traditionallly backed by Iran. Maybe this was an intentional ritual humiliation to show who's really boss. Feb. 23:

The US denies it, of course, but the evidence seems pretty convincing. From AP, Feb. 23:

BAGHDAD - U.S. troops battled insurgents in fierce fighting that killed at least 12 people in the volatile Sunni city of Ramadi, the military said yesterday. Iraqi authorities said the dead included women and children.

The Taliban is prepared for an ambitious spring offensive, the military leader of the Islamist milita boasted in a new interview with AlJazeera TV. "The attack is imminent," said Mullah Dadullah. "The number of Taliban mujahedin who are ready to launch the spring battle has reached 6,000." He added that the Taliban have prepared tunnels where their fighters are hiding as they wait for the opening of the offensive. He also said the Taliban force wold grow as NATO sends more troops to Afghanistan, predicting it will reach 10,000 fighters. "The more the number of Jewish and Christian soldiers who fight us increases, the more the Afghan people will be encouraged to join us." (DPA, Feb. 22 via Qatar's Gulf Times, Feb. 23)

The New York Times' increasingly questionable Michael R. Gordon has yet another report Feb. 23 (with Mark Mazzetti) based largely on anonymous sources. But this one, "U.S. Used Bases in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa," is just telling us what an astute reading-between-the-lines could have gleaned from previous reportage from the Horn of Africa. It does, however, have some vindicating tidbits for those of us who were prematurely correct in warning of a US proxy war in the Horn. Here are the relevant parts, emphasis and interjections added:

We noted that the current (Feb. 22) issue of The Economist has an uncharacteristically favorable article on Eritrea, saying it can "help or hinder progress in the Horn." The same issue has an equally uncharacteristic slap at the rival Ethiopian regime, asking "Should the West go on helping a repressive Ethiopia?" It starts out with an outline of aid projects in Ethiopia, as if "the West's" only interest in Africa was fighting poverty. Only at the very end does it mention the strategic struggle in Somalia which is driving the West's alliance with Addis Ababa. This is pretty indicting, but we smell empty hand-wringing—or, at best, a warning that Meles Zenawi may not prove to be a stable proxy in the long run... An excerpt from The Economist:

Hmmm, Eritrea got a flurry of headlines when Somalia was heating up a couple of months ago—then disappeared. What happened? This telling Feb. 22 story from The Economist, "Eritrea: Still in the Regional Game?," is reprinted in New Jersey's Eritrea Daily:

When Ethiopia invaded Somalia at the same time as Somalia's Islamists were getting arms from (among others) Eritrea, there were fears that the war in the Horn of Africa might spread. Eritrea has long been at daggers drawn with Ethiopia, and fought a bitter war with it between 1998 and 2000 over a disputed border. But so far the latest war in the region has been contained. This week the UN Security Council authorised the African Union to send peacekeepers to Somalia for at least six months. Ethiopia, meanwhile, has emerged as the Horn's top dog.

As we noted in a related post on Egypt, Compass Direct News, which monitors global persecution of Christians, likely has its own evangelical axes to grind. But this still doesn't smell very good. From a Feb. 22 report:

An Eritrean Christian died in prison last week, four and a half years after the Eritrean regime jailed him for worshipping in a banned Protestant church.

From Compass Direct News, Feb. 22. Compass Direct monitors global persecution of Christians, and likely has its own evangelical axes to grind. But nobody else is covering this.

Police detained Christian families in Upper Egypt and forced them to deny arson attacks on their homes during a spate of anti-Christian violence last week, the families said.