Abu Mansur Robow, ex-deputy defense secretary with Somalia's ousted Islamic Courts movement, told Mogadishu radio Oct. 3 that his Shabaab resistance group has "nothing to do" with the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), recently founded by Somali opposition leaders in the Eritrean capital Asmara. Robow said al-Shabaab was "not satisfied" with the Asmara conference.

Over at the CIA, they must really be scratching their heads over Eritrea. It is hosting the exiled Islamist leaders of Somalia and is accused by Washington of backing Islamist insurgents there. But the New York Times reports Oct. 5 that it also hosts "more than half a dozen Darfur rebel groups" fighting the Islamist government of Sudan—including the United Front for Liberation and Development, which has been provided with its own offices by the Asmara regime, free of charge. The Times also points out that last year Eritrea's President Isaias Afewerki "brokered a peace deal between the Sudanese government and rebels in a separate conflict in eastern Sudan that had ground on for 15 years and that cost thousands of lives." (This is a reference to the Beja region, although the Times, in its maddening way, does not mention it by name.) Is this a schizophrenic policy, or is there some consistency here that we're missing?

From the New York Times, Oct. 5:

3 Youths Die in Connecticut Car Crash
WOLCOTT, Conn. — Anthony Apruzzese, a 17-year-old high school senior, used to joke on Facebook about his history of reckless driving. But on Thursday the kidding turned to horror as the car he was driving clipped a boat being towed, hurtling his car into an oncoming truck and taking his life as well as that of his 14-year-old sister and a 15-year-old friend of hers.

Four clandestine armed groups in Mexico issued a communique Sept. 27 calling for a "common front" to "recuperate the fatherland," which they say has been hijacked by a "rightist usurping minority." The statement also called for the reappearance alive of the two "disappeared" presumed followers of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya. The statement was jointly issued by the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency-Army of the People (TDR-EP), the Lucio Cabañas Barrientos Revolutionary Movement (MR-LCB), the May 1 Insurgent Organization (OI-1M) and the December 2 Execution Brigade (BA-2D). Among the presumed authors of the statement is Comandante José Arturo, one of the founders of the EPR.

Democratic Voice of Burma Oct. 2 reports claims from members of the Burmese junta's Swan Arr Shin militia that thousands of detained monks could be headed for labor camps:

Monks currently detained at the government technical college compound in Insein township may be sent to a hard labour prison camp, according to a source at the college compound.

While the Burmese regime still touts an official count of 10 dead in five days of repression, the UK's Daily Mail reports Oct. 2 claims of a "a former intelligence officer in Burma's ruling junta that thousands of protesters have been killed and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle." The official, whose rank or title are not given, is named as Hla Win, and is said to have defected when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He told the Daily Mail: "Many more people have been killed in recent days than you've heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand." A more cautious report in The Scotsman cites the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) saying the death toll stands at a minimum of 138. DVB's Aye Chan Naing also said 6,000 people have been detained, including about 2,400 monks.

For all the opprobrium being directed at China over its support for the repressive Burma regime, the US corporate presence is going unexamined. As we recently noted, the new Burma sanctions announced by Bush mean no more than a visa ban on some members of the junta, and the freezing of assets of some figures linked to the regime. (DPA, Sept. 24) None of the US sanctions enacted since the bloody junta took power in 1988 have interfered with Unocal's operations in Burma—which continue to this day.

A suicide bomber in burqa killed 13 people at a police checkpoint Oct. 1 at Bannu in northwest Pakistan on the Afghan border. (AGI, Oct. 1) The following day, a suicide bomber killed 12 Afghan police on a bus in Kabul—the second such attack in the capital in four days. Twenty-eight soldiers and two civilians were killed in a similar attack on a bus on Sept. 29. (Reuters, Oct. 2)