Sunday, November 21, 2004

New Posts on Global Guerrillas  Two Journal entries on GG today: Ongoing Disruption of Iraq's Electricity Manufacturing Suicide Bombers 7:52:08 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Afghan Journal.  Innovation in Afghanistan in the search for the three UN election monitors:  The mobile telephone companies are still sending out SMS messages appealing to subscribers to help with any information they might have regarding the kidnappings. You simply ring back the number given or send an SMS in return, so this is inter-active public information at its finest.  Another potential innovation given the large number of cell phone triggered IEDs in Iraq:  random or system wide calls to cell phones to prematurely trigger the devices. Also, more attempts to start a bazaar in Kabul:  For its part, a US embassy warden message earlier this week is warning that a Pakistani-based Islamic extremist group has been seeking to infiltrate western aid agencies and missions since the end of September in order to perpetrate kidnappings or other forms of attack. All the aid groups and missions are urging their people to be careful and to be on the lookout for unusual activity. 10:37:04 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

AP.  Here's an interesting metric.  Actually, I think elections, even if there is a high voter turn-out, can undermine legitimacy.  One reason (out of many): unreasonable expectations. But a low voter turnout, especially in Sunni strongholds now plagued by insurgency, would be worse than having no election at all, according to Peter Khalil, a national security research fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution.  "You need at least 70 percent of the voters to take place to accord legitimacy to the next government. If not, it will fuel the insurgency and give it a new political dimension," said Khalil, who served for nearly a year with the U.S.-led occupation authorities in Iraq. 9:02:56 AM    Comment_ Trackback []