Must Reads: A 'Red Era' museum, Obama and mothers of the missing

From attacks in Afghanistan to the missing in Mexico, here are five stories you shouldn't miss from the past week in global news:

China museum builder lets history speak

Obama faces new Mideast challenges in his second term

As 'insider attacks' grow, so does U.S.-Afghanistan divide

Mothers from Central America search for missing kin in Mexico

Britain's crackdown on Web comments sparks free-speech debate

-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: Marta Elena Perez of from Nicaragua attends Mass at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City on Oct. 28, 2012, with a photograph of her daughter, Karla Patricia Perez, who went missing in 2005. Credit: Marco Ugarte / Associated Press

Attacks in Afghanistan leave at least 20 people dead

KABUL, Afghanistan — Bombings killed at least 20 people in Afghanistan on Thursday as insurgents targeted Afghan security forces but left a number of civilians dead.

The deadliest incident was in southern Helmand province when a van struck a roadside bomb, killing 10 people, including five women and a child, said Helmand government spokesman Abdul Zeki.

Two teenage boys died when a bomb exploded in Zabul province as police tried to defuse it, said police spokesman Assadullah Shirza. Three police officers were wounded in the blast, he added. The boys had been scavenging for items in a trash pile when the explosion occurred, Shirza added.

The bombing elicited a strong condemnation from the NATO-led military coalition in Afghanistan. “These attacks are the most recent examples of how insurgents intentionally target, kill and injure those who want a brighter future for Afghanistan,” said Gen. John R. Allen, the force’s commander.

Meat cutters of Kabul hack at carcasses and praise Obama

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The late Illinois poet Carl Sandburg once called President Obama’s town, Chicago, the “hog butcher of the world.” Here in Kabul, the former Midwest capital of slaughterhouses has a kindred spirit in Butcher Street, a small road lined with lamb and cow carcasses and blood-splattered walls.

Here the thick-armed butchers, clad in smocks and hands wet from raw meat, offer praise to Obama in between hacking up ribs on huge tree stumps that serve as butcher blocks. They have quartered chickens, sheep and cattle for years on Butcher Street.

They frown at the mention of the Taliban and other fighters who have floated through their lives over the last three decades. They remember how the Taliban would buy meat one day and then haul someone away to detention the next. In the early 1990s, the Tajik and Uzbek mujahedin would have shootouts on the adjoining avenue.

But the mention of the American president brings smiles to their face and turns the older men to softies as they forget the stink of rotting chicken and the giant cow hooves on tables. Somehow, despite Afghanistan’s woes and all the literal blood and guts of the animals they cut apart, Obama makes them hopeful.

Pakistanis expect ties with U.S. to remain tense after Obama win

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Like the rest of the world, Pakistan watched keenly the electrifying finish to the U.S. presidential election that culminated in President Obama’s victory. But for most Pakistanis, the enthusiasm stops there.

Any change in Pakistan’s caustic relationship with the U.S. in the next four years is likely to be viewed through the prism of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal region -- two war-ravaged places where Washington and Islamabad desperately want lasting stability but disagree sharply about how to achieve it.

Both Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney touted similar Afghanistan-Pakistan game plans that involve commitments to a U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and a continued reliance on drone missile strikes to cripple Al Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups ensconced in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Pakistanis remain deeply skeptical of Washington’s withdrawal strategy in Afghanistan. They worry the U.S. will maintain a strong presence in Afghanistan long after 2014, principally as a perch from which to ensure extremist groups do not gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal. And a continuation, at least for now, of the drone campaign — seen by most Pakistanis as a blatant encroachment of their country’s sovereignty — will perpetuate the intense animosity many Pakistanis have for Washington’s policies.

“The perception here is that U.S. policy is not going to undergo a major change, in terms of the Af-Pak region,” said Raza Rumi, an analyst with the Jinnah Institute, an Islamabad think tank. “U.S. troops will withdraw in 2014. ... But the security establishment—the military, intelligence agencies, defense analysts—feels the U.S. won’t disappear from the region. It will be watching Pakistan closely. More importantly, it will keep Pakistan’s nuclear assets under scrutiny.

“So the Pakistani state is slightly edgy as to what the U.S. wants once Afghanistan is over,” Rumi added. “How will the U.S. observe Pakistan, and what steps will it take?”

Two international soldiers killed by Afghan in uniform

This post has been updated. See the note below for details.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two international soldiers were slain in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday by a gunman in an Afghan police uniform, the NATO-led military coalition said.

The attack had the hallmarks of a series of insider attacks, in which Afghan security forces have turned their guns on their international partners. At least 53 troops have been slain in such attacks this year, according to the NATO-led alliance.

Tuesday's attack was still under investigation and the slain soldiers’ nationalities were not immediately disclosed.  But Afghan officials and the Taliban said the attack occurred in Helmand province, a front line in the war between the Afghan government and the Taliban-led Pashtun insurgency.

[Updated at 12:40 p.m. Oct. 30: The two slain soldiers were later identified by the British Defense Ministry as members of the Royal Gurkha Rifles regiment. A spokesman declined to disclose whether the soldiers were British or Nepalese nationals. The regiment is staffed by Nepalese and commanded by British officers.]

The Taliban described the fighter in a statement as “an infiltrating soldier” who opened fire on British troops in Helmand province. The militants put the number of dead at three.

Suicide bomber kills 40 at Afghanistan mosque

A suicide bomber killed at least 40 people in northern Afghanistan as he attacked prayer goers leaving mosque on one of the holiest days in the Muslim calendar, according to a security official.

The attack on Eid al-Adha in Maimana, the capital of Faryab province,  highlighted the volatile security situation in the country as the U.S.-led NATO forces shrink ahead of their scheduled departure at the end of 2014. 

 “A suicide bomber on foot detonated his explosives among the people as they were coming out of the Eid prayer,” said Lal Mohammed Ahmadzai, a police spokesman in northern Afghanistan.  “The people were wishing Eid prayer messages to each other.”

At least 40 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 25 were wounded, Ahmadzai added.  Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice, is a day of prayer and celebration across the Muslim world.

There was no immediate claim for the attack, but it played into fears that the country’s Pashtun insurgency in the south and east could gradually overwhelm the government in Kabul, with the absence of strong international backing.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force denounced the attack. "I condemn this heinous act, which is an affront to human life, to religious devotion and to the peaceful aspirations of the Afghan people," said General John R. Allen, ISAF’s commander.  “This violence undertaken at a place of worship, and during Eid, once again shows the insurgency's callous hypocrisy and disregard for religion and faith."

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Photo: Relatives grieve beside the bodies of victims after a suicide bomb attack at a mosque in Maimana, Afghanistan. Credit: EPA / Stringer  

Two U.S. soldiers slain by gunman in Afghan uniform

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two U.S. soldiers were killed on patrol Thursday in southern Afghanistan when a man in an Afghan national police uniform opened fire on them, a spokesman for the NATO-led force said.

The shooter escaped and the military was not sure if he was a member of the Afghan security forces or an insurgent in disguise. “It’s under investigation,” Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said of the attack in Oruzgan province.

Separately, a third soldier from the international coalition was killed and three others wounded by insurgents in western Afghanistan’s Farah province, the NATO-led force said in a statement. The force  provided no further information, but the Italian Defense Ministry later reported that the slain soldier was one of theirs.

The deaths in Oruzgan were almost certain to heighten tensions among the U.S. and Afghan forces, whose relationship has been tested this year by the wave of killings of Western soldiers by their Afghan colleagues. The NATO-led force has counted 53 deaths of coalition members this year at the hands of Afghan army or police counterparts.

U.S. military commanders are still seeking to understand the reason for the epidemic. While the Taliban has claimed many of the deaths, the killings also reflect real resentment and anger on the part of Afghans toward their Western allies.

Western troops are meant to train and mentor the Afghan forces so they can take over the country’s security by the end of 2014, when international forces will largely leave Afghanistan.

Such shootings make it harder to plan the seamless transition sought by the United States. They also complicate the diplomatic relationship between Western nations and Afghanistan as the international community focuses on ensuring the Afghans’ next presidential election in 2014 is seen as free and fair.

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Insider attack leaves six Afghan police officers dead

Six Afghan policemen were killed in the early morning hours Saturday in an insider attack masterminded by a fellow officer and cook teamed up with insurgents, a police spokesman said.

The officer and cook shot dead two Afghan national police and were then joined by other insurgents, who killed four more officers in the Gereskh district of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, according to Helmand police spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhangi.

However, there were contradictory accounts as a representative of the Helmand governor said the cook and police officer poisoned two officers and then were joined by Taliban fighters, according to the Associated Press.

The police officer was captured, but the cook and the Taliban fighters fled, though some were injured, Farhangi said.

The attack brought new attention to insurgents hiding inside the ranks of the Afghanistan security forces. At least 51 members of U.S.-led NATO forces have died in such attacks this year, raising suspicion about the loyalty of Afghan forces and injecting tension into relationships between Afghan and international troops. The Taliban also regularly attacks Afghan officers and bases as it seeks to undermine the force that will protect the country when international troops leave by the end of 2014.

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-- Ned Parker

Cuban missile crisis myth constrains today's diplomatic standoffs

This post has been corrected.

Fifty years after the superpowers were poised to annihilate each other over nuclear missiles sent to Cuba, the myth prevails that President Kennedy forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to back down by threatening to unleash nuclear war.

It took three decades after October 1962, when the world hovered on the brink of a cataclysm, before  documents were declassified that disclosed the back-channel diplomacy and compromise that led to peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. But even today, hard-liners cling to the narrative that taking a tough, inflexible stance with adversaries is the path to diplomatic triumph.

That misguided interpretation hampers diplomacy today, say veterans of the perilous Cold War standoff and the historians who study it. The notion that threatening military action can force an opponent's surrender has created dangerously unrealistic expectations, they say, in high-stakes conflicts like the U.S.-led challenge of Iran's purported quest to build nuclear weapons.

Kennedy didn't stare down Khrushchev with vows to bomb Cuban missile sites, although that was the tactic pushed by his military advisors, recently revealed history of the crisis shows. The president sent his brother, then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, to secretly negotiate with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. In the strictest of confidence, RFK offered withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and a promise not to invade vulnerable Cuba in exchange for the Kremlin pulling out the nuclear arms it had deployed to Fidel Castro's island.

"The secrecy that accompanied the resolution of the most dangerous crisis in foreign policy history has distorted the whole process of conflict resolution and diplomacy," said Peter Kornbluh, Cuba analyst for the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "The takeaway from the crisis was that might makes right and that you can force your opponents to back down with a strong, forceful stance."

Documents released sporadically over the last 20 years show that the crisis was resolved through compromise, not coercion, said Kornbluh, who has spent decades pushing for declassification of U.S.-Cuba history documents related to the crisis. Some 2,700 pages from RFK's private papers were released by the National Archives and Kennedy Library just last week.

R. Nicholas Burns, a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service now teaching diplomacy at Harvard's Kennedy School, sees applications for the Iran dispute from the real story of the missile crisis resolution.

The fundamental breakthrough in the confrontation occurred "because Kennedy finally decided, against the wishes of most of his advisors, that rather than risk nuclear war he was going to make a compromise with Khrushchev," Burns said. He pointed to the confidential offer to remove U.S. Jupiter missiles from Europe, a turning point still "not well understood -- people think Khrushchev backed down."

In the real world, Burns said, "it is exceedingly rare that we get everything we want in an international discussion. To get something of value, you have to give up something."

Burns sees the outlines of a negotiated agreement with Iran that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, a plan he believes would be acceptable to Democrats and Republicans once the presidential election is over and the campaign rhetoric that rejects compromise dies down. In exchange for Iran's submitting its nuclear facilities to regular international inspections, Burns said, U.S. and other Western leaders could recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium to the levels needed in civilian arenas, such as energy production and medicine.

Lessons learned in the U.S.-led wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan also argue for exhausting every diplomatic option before engaging in armed conflict, Burns said.

"Sometimes it's necessary to use military force -- I'm not a pacifist," said the retired diplomat, who was an undersecretary of State for political affairs under President George W. Bush. "But more often than not, you have to put your faith in diplomacy. We have the time and space to negotiate with Iran."

Differentiating between national interests and those of allies is an even more important lesson gleaned from the missile crisis, said Robert Pastor, an American University professor of international relations and former National Security Council official in the Carter administration.

"Fidel Castro actually urged Khrushchev to attack the United States because he felt American imperialism would try to destroy both Cuba and the socialist world," said Pastor, who credits Khrushchev with wisely rejecting Castro's adventurism in favor of peace. Pastor sees a similar danger of Israel provoking war with Iran, confronting Washington with the need to decide between trying to restrain Israel or fighting a new Middle East war.

Sergei N. Khrushchev, the late premier's son who is now a U.S. citizen and international affairs analyst at Brown University, has been campaigning for a correction of the Cuban missile history at anniversary events this week.

"Khrushchev didn’t like Kennedy any more than President Obama likes [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," he said in an interview. "But he realized you have to speak to them anyway if you want to resolve problems. We say we will never negotiate with our enemies, only with our friends. But that's not negotiating, that's having a party."

For the record, 8:35 a.m. Oct. 17: This post originally said the RFK papers made public this week were posted on the nongovernmental National Security Archive website. They were released by the National Archives and Kennedy Library.

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Photo: Caroline Kennedy, daughter of late President John F. Kennedy, shows her mother's original copy of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Sergei Khrushchev, son of late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, next to a photograph of their fathers at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston at a commemoration Sunday of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Credit: Michael Dwyer / Associated Press

 

Five British troops charged with murder in Afghan incident

LONDON — Five Royal Marines have been charged with murder in an allegedly unlawful death in Afghanistan last year, defense officials said Sunday, marking what is believed to be the first time that the British military has taken such a step since the conflict began more than a decade ago.

Authorities have disclosed few details of the incident in question, saying only that no civilian was involved and that the death occurred after “an engagement with an insurgent.”

The five marines are being held in Britain as prosecutors pursue a potential court-martial, officials said. Four other service members who were arrested have been released without charge pending further investigation.

British media outlets reported that the arrests stemmed from video found on the laptop of one of the suspects by civilian police in Britain. But the exact nature of the images remains unclear.

The marines reportedly belonged to the 3 Commando Brigade, which was deployed last year in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, an area of intense fighting. British media said that seven members of the brigade were killed in action in Afghanistan during a six-month stretch in 2010.

Defense Secretary Philip Hammond pledged that any abuse would “be dealt with through the normal processes” of military justice.