While we certainly don't put it past the Taliban to blow up a bunch of schoolchildren to take out a couple of politicians, we note that this attack comes in the normally (relatively) peaceful north of the country, where the Taliban were never popular and still have little following. News accounts frequently forget that the real power in Afghanistan's hinterlands remain the warlords who terrorized the country in a decade and more of internecine ethnic and sectarian bloodshed after the Soviets pulled out, and still have their deep personal grudges—despite the best efforts of Karzai and the US to broker peace (and maintain the fiction of a centralized Afghan state). Baghlan, the scene of today's horrific attack, lies within the domain of regional warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who (as we have noted) has long been in an oft-bloody power struggle with local rivals. We'd like to know where the apparent targets of this blast stood vis-à-vis this conflict. Note that the Taliban explicitly deny responsibility this time, and raise the possibility of Mujahedeen accounts-settling. From Reuters Nov. 6, emphasis added:

Days after a car bomb in the normally (relatively) peaceful northern city of Kirkuk left eight dead in a Kurdish neighborhood (Reuters, Oct. 28), comes this ominous news from AlJazeera Nov. 6:

Kirkuk's Arabs paid to pack up
It is a volatile city, but one that is vital to Iraq's future, and Kirkuk is now facing its toughest test yet. Just weeks before a scheduled referendum on the city's future, Arab residents are being paid to pack up and leave.

A fascinating story from the New York Times Nov. 5. The Vatican seems to be sending an explicit message here about the need to protect Christians in Muslim lands. But note that the situation for Iraq's Christians has dramatically worsened under the US occupation. And it is very refreshing that Emmanuel III Delly refuses to cast collective guilt on his Muslim neighbors, and explicitly repudiates the logic of sectarian cleansing:

2,000-Year-Old Christian Community in Iraq Gains a Spiritual First in Baghdad
BAGHDAD — There is neither a cross nor a sign on the heavy metal gate to indicate that this is the official residence of one of the country’s most prominent Christians, the first in Iraq in modern times to be elevated to cardinal by the Roman Catholic Church.

The New York Times reports Nov. 5 on an initiative to win justice for Jews who fled Arab countries after 1948, and their descendants. But the first paragraph makes nearly explicitly clear that they are being exploited as bargaining chips against the claims of Palestinian refugees:

State and municipal police arrested some 20 people on Nov. 2 in Oaxaca city, the capital of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, during protests marking one year since federal security forces ended militant strikes and occupations there. In 2006 strikers from Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) and community activists in the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) occupied most of downtown Oaxaca and paralyzed the state government for five months. Thousands of Federal Preventive Police (PFP) agents took control of the city on Oct. 29, 2006, two days after an outbreak of violence that left three people dead, including US independent journalist Brad Will.

On Oct. 29 some 300,000 campesinos who cultivate coca in 18 of Peru's valleys began an open-ended strike to protest the failure of the government of President Alan Garcia to comply with the Tocache Document, in which it promised to register coca growers (cocaleros) and to end the destruction of coca crops. The strikers were members of the National Confederation of Farm and Livestock Producers of the Cocalero Basins of Peru. Campesinos blocked the Federico Basadre highway, in Ucayali department, and several sections of the Marginal highway in the Pucallpa region northeast of Lima.

Immigrant rights groups and the ACLU say authorities have created a climate of intimidation at evacuation centers set up to help people displaced by wildfires in southern California. As wildfires forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, more than 100 Border Patrol agents were deployed to help evacuate homes, operate checkpoints, guard against looters and assist at evacuation shelters. At an assistance center set up at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, a Border Patrol communications vehicle provided key logistics support and uniformed Border Patrol agents were visibly present. "Having people at evacuation sites in Border Patrol uniforms is asinine," said Enrique Morones, president of the Border Angels, an immigrant rights group. The ACLU and other rights groups say immigrants were subjected to racial profiling at Qualcomm and were abused by some volunteers who questioned their legal status. They have also said the city did not go out to migrant camps to tell people to evacuate. (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 28)

In El Paso, Texas, about 30 activists marked Day of the Dead on Nov. 1 by hanging 450 white wooden crosses on the border fence along the American Canal, where at least 15 people drowned this year trying to enter the US. Some crosses held the names of dead migrants, while others were blank to represent those who have not been identified. The event was organized by the Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based grassroots group that keeps track of migrant deaths. According to the Border Network, 371 migrants died this year on the US-Mexico border, including 25 in El Paso and New Mexico. Border Patrol officials in El Paso recorded 27 deaths in this sector.