Press, Police, and the People: A World Report

[mgc1961]

The delegation of police trainers and soldiers from Germany, Hungary and the United States had come prepared for a work meeting. They had expected it to be somewhat formal at first, but that it would become more relaxed as the meeting progressed.

Abdul Rahman Khaili, the police chief of Baghlan province in Afghanistan, had invited the group to a reception. But when the guests arrived at the police headquarters building, there was no one there to greet them -- only a strange, eerie silence.

Until a man in an Afghan uniform appeared, approached the delegation with measured steps and, when he was close enough, blew himself up.

More at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,687416,00.html


Here’s a measure of how President Robert Mugabe is destroying this once lush nation of Zimbabwe:

In a week of surreptitious reporting here (committing journalism can be a criminal offense in Zimbabwe), ordinary people said time and again that life had been better under the old, racist, white regime of what was then called Rhodesia.

“When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put in power would oppress us.”

“It would have been better if whites had continued to rule because the money would have continued to come,” added a neighbor, a 58-year-old farmer named Isaac. “It was better under Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no money, no food.”

Over and over, I cringed as I heard Africans wax nostalgic about a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny white elite. Black Zimbabweans responded that at least that regime was more competent than today’s nasty, oppressive regime run by the tiny black elite that surrounds Mr. Mugabe.

More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/opinion/08kristof.html?hp


Poster's comment: Suicide bombers killing police officers. Criminal attempts to silence political opponents and the press through intimidation or outright violence. Sometimes it's hard to tell us from them. Perhaps I should take some solace from the fact that I've surpassed the current life expectancy of Zimbabwe.