Baghdad
Government formed: Iraq���s parliament voted to confirm an agreement for a coalition government last weekend, after months of deadlock in the wake of March’s general election. All major political groups are set to have a role in the new government, which retains Shiite Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister. However, al-Maliki’s chief rival, Sunni leader Ayad Allawi, whose al-Iraqiya party holds the largest bloc of seats in parliament, has suggested his support for the coalition is slight. “We think the concept of power-sharing is dead now,” Allawi said. “It’s finished.” The coalition will likely be subject to repeated strains as the sometimes vague language of the deal is put into practice. Al-Maliki’s re-election was effectively assured when Iran endorsed him and convinced rival Shiite blocs to do the same.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Anger over women’s panel: Human-rights activists expressed outrage this week over the election of Saudi Arabia to a new United Nations panel intended to promote women’s rights. A dozen nations—including Iran, which was rebuffed—vied for 10 seats on UN Women, the panel slated to begin work in January. Saudi Arabia does not permit women to drive or to use many public facilities. In 2007 a Saudi court imposed a sentence, later withdrawn, of 200 lashes on a 19-year-old woman who had been gang-raped. Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said the inclusion of Saudi Arabia was a “joke,” adding that the status of women in the kingdom is “even worse” than in Iran.
Bangkok
‘Merchant of Death’ extradited: After more than two years of diplomatic maneuvering, Thailand this week extradited alleged Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges. Bout was arrested in 2008 after a sting operation in which U.S. agents posed as members of a Colombian rebel group seeking to buy arms. A former Soviet air force officer, Bout, 43, is reputed to have extensive knowledge of Russian intelligence operations and arms sales. Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement denouncing the “illegal extradition” and condemning Thailand for succumbing to “unprecedented political pressure exerted by the U.S.” Bout’s wife and lawyer said they were not informed of the extradition in advance. Bout was flown to New York on a chartered plane and incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan.
Manila
More atrocity claims: While members of the powerful Ampatuan clan await trial for ordering the massacre of 57 unarmed civilians last year, a report by Human Rights Watch claims the clan is responsible for dozens of other gruesome crimes going back decades. “They killed one of my brothers with a chain saw,” one local man told the BBC. Asked why he had never reported the alleged 2002 incident, he said, “Because while the Ampatuans were still in power, you couldn’t complain when they abused you, because otherwise you would be killed.” Last year, 57 civilians traveling to a political event were ambushed and murdered. The Ampatuans, a dominant clan in the southern Philippines, deny all allegations. Human Rights Watch says the clan is linked to more than 50 incidents of killings, torture, and sexual violence.
Seoul
Defections surge: The number of North Koreans who have braved defection to South Korea passed the 20,000 mark last week, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. Fewer than 1,000 refugees had made it to the South between 1949, shortly after the republic’s creation, and 2000. But the flow has grown steadily since famine killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans in the 1990s. The border between the two Koreas is heavily fortified, forcing refugees to make a long, arduous journey via China, sometimes traveling as far as Thailand. “Many defectors are unemployed and having a problem adapting to South Korea,” says Kim Sung-min, a North Korean defector who heads Free North Korea Radio. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to be hiding in China, which repatriates the North Koreans it finds.
Moscow
Russian revenge: Russia has dispatched a hit squad to assassinate a renegade intelligence officer who blew the cover of the glamorous Anna Chapman and nine other deep-cover spies in the U.S., according to Russian intelligence sources quoted in the Moscow Kommersant last week. The officer of the foreign intelligence service SVR, whom the paper identifies as Col. Shcherbakov, fled to the U.S. in June just days before the FBI rounded up the 10 spies, who were later swapped for four men convicted in Russia of being U.S. or British spies. But sources told the newspaper he should not rest easy. “You can have no doubt, a Mercader has already been sent after him,” a Kremlin source said, referring to Ramón Mercader, who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940 on Stalin’s orders.
