Land conflicts between communities loyal to the Zapatista rebel movement and the state's traditional political machine continue to generate violence in Chiapas, Mexico. The Zapatista Good Government Junta (JBG) Corazón del Arcoiris de la Esperanza announced that on Nov. 24, the community of Bolom Ajaw, Autonomous Municipality Olga Isabel, was attacked by members of the OPDDIC paramilitary group. The force of some 80 men armed with pistols, rifles, clubs and machetes arrived when the community's men were working in the fields, with only women, children and elders at home. They briefly held the community hostage, beating one ill resident unconscious with clubs. (La Jornada, Nov, 26)

Antonio Vázquez Secum, named by Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) as the author of the December 1997 Acteal massacre, died Nov. 17 at his home in the village of Quextic, Chiapas. Secum, who was over 70 years old, was freed from Cerro Hueco prison last year when he contracted pneumonia. The PGR's "white book" on the affair said he led a group of eight men from Miguel Utrilla Los Chorros hamlet in the attack on nearby Acteal (both in Chenahló municipality) in retaliation for the slaying of his son, Agustín Vázquez. He was among the first arrested for the massacre early in 1998. (La Jornada, Nov. 20)

A fire erupted Dec. 7 on the pipeline carrying oil from the Kirkuk fields to the Baiji refinery north of Baghdad. The state-run Northern Oil Company said the reason was unclear. In September, the pipeline burst in a suspected bomb attack. (Gulf News via Iraq Updates, Dec. 7) There have been 576 pipeline attacks in Iraq since March 2003, along with 69 attacks on refineries, 508 attacks on tanker trucks, six on maritime tankers and one on a train tanker car. At least 635 oil workers have been attacked—killed, wounded, kidnapped or subject to an attempted kidnapped. At least 1,211 workers in Iraq's power sector have also been targeted, and there have been 651 attacks on distribution and transmission lines and towers, 66 attacks on thermal power stations and five on hydroelectric power stations and 13 on power substations. Iraq's northern pipeline has been the major target. It was built with a total capacity of around 1.7 million barrels per day, but frequent attacks since the war have kept is largely out of commission. Recent repairs and a new security plan have allowed it to resume working, part of the reason Iraq has increased production from a little more than 2 million bpd to nearly 2.4 million. (UPI, Dec. 6)

However naive she may be about Western intentions, Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves creds for asking the tough questions about the Muslim establishment. Why—with rare exception—are no voices on the anti-imperialist left asking these questions? From the New York Times op-ed page, Dec. 7 (links added):

Pakistani security forces dynamited the homes of Maulana Fazlullah and his spokesman Maulana Sirajuddin Dec. 6 in the Swat Valley village of Imam Dehri, North-West Frontier Province. The Maulana's madrassa was left intact. "The fate of the controversial seminary of Maulana Fazlullah will be decided by local people," an official said. Military authorities said soldiers seized machine-guns, pistols, hand-grenades, rocket-launchers, computers and—surprisingly—some liquor bottles. Clean-up operations are said to be underway. "The forces will chase militants out of the area," Maj-Gen Naseer Janjua told journalists in the village. (Dawn, Pakistan, Dec. 6)

More than nine months and countless African lives ago, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued what critics dismissed as toothless "pseudo-indictments" against two men identified as masterminds of the Darfur genocide—Janjaweed militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd al-Rahman (nom de guerre Ali Kushayb) and Sudan's ironically named "Humanitarian Affairs Minister" Ahmed Harun. Then, in a fairly obvious charade, the Khartoum regime announced it was putting Ali Kushayb on trial itself. A few months later, the Bush administration announced it was placing sanctions on Harun—but also on Khalil Ibrahim, one of the guerilla leaders resisting the genocide! Now, predictably, Kushayb has been freed by Khartoum for supposed "lack of evidence," while Harun continues on in his Orwellian position. The ICC issues a new report protesting Sudan's failure to turn over the two suspects—leaving rights groups to wonder if the charade will not continue interminably, as Darfurians continue to die. From Human Rights First, Dec. 6:

All the talk about how calm Iraq is now thanks to the surge only indicates how dumbed-down our definition of "calm" has become. A suicide bomber blew himself up near a police station northeast of Baghdad Dec. 4, killing at least eight and wounding 30. The attack occurred as police were gathered at the station in Jalula, Diyala province, with Kurdish peshmerga troops who came to the area as part of a security crackdown. The dead included four Iraqi police, two Kurdish troops and two civilians, police said. (AP, Dec. 4) On Dec. 5, car bombs killed at least four across northern Iraq. The most deadly was in Kirkuk, where explosives hidden in a parked car killed three Kurdish troops in a passing convoy. (AP, Dec. 5) On Dec. 6, eight peshmerga troops and three gunmen from an unknown militant group were killed in a battle at Khanaqin, Diyala. (Reuters, Dec. 6)

An unpublished UN map leaked to the London Times in Kabul illustrates risk levels across the country for staff and aid workers with color shadings, revealing a sharp deterioration in security over the last two years. A similar map from March 2005 indicated only a strip along the Pakistan border and areas of mountainous Zabul and Uruzgan provinces in the south as too dangerous for aid workers. Now nearly all the ethnic Pashtun south and east is a no-go zone deemed "high" or "extreme" risk, and such pockets are also emerging in the north. (London Times, Dec. 5)