Mostly Bad News

• The first, most general, bit is that the Freedom House is reporting that the world is less free now than it was a year ago:

“This year’s results show a profoundly disturbing deterioration of freedom worldwide,” said Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House. “A number of countries that had previously shown progress toward democracy  have regressed, while none of the most influential Not Free states showed signs of improvement. As the second consecutive year that the survey has registered a global decline in political rights and civil liberties, friends of freedom worldwide have real cause for concern.” 

While the profile of world freedom as measured by the number of countries designated in Freedom in the World as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free changed little during the past year, there were many negative changes within these broad categories. In all, nearly four times as many countries showed declines during the year as registered improvement. 

• Pakistan had one of its forts (run by militias, not the Pakistan military) overrun by Islamic militants:

Hundreds of Islamic militants attacked a paramilitary fort in Sararogha in the restive South Waziristan tribal region in north-west Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 22 soldiers and taking several others hostage in a nearly six-hour-long battle, government intelligence agency officials and local officials said Wednesday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the attack, said that 600 to 700 militants attacked the Sararogha fort firing rockets and mortars in a region where local and foreign militants have battled the Pakistani military.

Wow, that’s a pretty big attack. There’s a bit more here–I like this quote:

“Around midnight 400 miscreants attacked the Frontier Corps at Sararogha. The fort was captured by militants, we are taking stock of the situation,” chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

“There are reports of 40 to 50 dead miscreants, while seven personnel embraced martyrdom.”

Now me, I think of a miscreants as people who do mischief not a group of hundreds who attack and take a fort using rockets, mortars, and automatic weapons. I guess Pakistan has a different definition of miscreant.

• Sri Lanka has been tense or in a civil war for decades and the civil war seems to be back on:

A roadside bomb ripped through a Sri Lankan bus killing 26 people and wounding dozens on Wednesday, officials said, as a six-year ceasefire between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels officially expired.

There was hope that there might be reconciliation after the Tsunami, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

• The news is a bit better in Nepal where they have gotten rid of the monarchy and will have an election in April. There are some problems, violence is increasing and the vote has already been delayed twice, but it is better than it was during the Maoist insurgency. I like the reason (well, ok ‘like’ isn’t really the right word), the people turned against the monarchy:

Disenchantment with the king began in 2001, when crown prince Dipendra shot dead 10 members of the royal family, including his parents, before killing himself. His uncle Gyanendra inherited the crown.

Something like that would disenchant me also.

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