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INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Quiet middleman retrieves Taliban’s dead BY KEVIN SIEFF
Washington Post Service
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Abdul Hakim gets the first calls just after the bombs explode and the firefights end, when all that is left are the remains of the dead. The voices on the other end belong to Taliban commanders whom Hakim has come to know well. The first sentence is almost always the same: “We’re looking for a body.” In the southern province that has borne more violence and death than any other since the war began, the Taliban knows Hakim as the man who can retrieve insurgents’ bodies from U.S. and Afghan authorities and return them to their families and comrades. In the past six years, he has done it 127 times, carrying letters of permission from both the Afghan government and the Taliban as he weaves through Kandahar in a beat-up yellow taxicab, with dead insurgents in the trunk. Black bags for those killed in firefights. Small wooden boxes for what’s left of suicide bombers. “It doesn’t matter who the dead are or who they belong to,” Hakim said. “They deserve a proper Islamic burial.” The U.S. military follows a regimented procedure for retrieving and repatriating its war dead, one that is exacting in detail and rich with ceremony. In this most asymmetric of wars, the Taliban has constructed a parallel process, as shadowy and unpolished as it is effective. Taliban militants are known to fight ferociously to recover their fallen, and efforts to bury their own do not fade after insurgents leave the battlefield. When militants’ bodies are recovered by foreign troops, a choreography unfolds: Several times a month, a NATO helicopter deposits insurgents’ bodies at a mortuary next to Kandahar Airfield, where they are checked for unexploded bombs and placed in the same room as U.S. war dead. A flagwrapped coffin for the U.S. forces and a plywood box for the insurgents sit side by side. The International Committee of the Red Cross then takes the remains of the insurgents, along with a file of information about them — photographs, a description of how each was
Europe agrees on $172B bailout for Greece New York Times Service
Greece’s debt to be reduced. Under the bailout terms, which were not finalized until after 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Greece will reduce its debt to about 120.5 percent of its gross domestic product by 2020, from about 160 percent now. Achieving a deal with that goal proved difficult because the steady deterioration of public finances in Athens has left the country’s creditors with problems in making the figures for the new bailout add up. After several rounds of tough talks, representatives of banks that hold Greek bonds, who had agreed in October to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their bonds, agreed to take a 53.5 percent loss, the equivalent to an overall loss of around 75 percent. Meanwhile Greece will pay lower interest rates on its bailout loans, and the European Central Bank agreed to give up profits from Greek bonds bought at a discount and to pass those gains back to the government in Athens. This will be done via eurozone member countries because of the Central Bank’s regulations. Stricter rules on eurozone debt
BRUSSELS — Greece finally secured its second giant bailout early Tuesday after eurozone finance ministers agreed to save it from bankruptcy in exchange for severe austerity measures and strict conditions. After more than 13 hours of talks, the ministers approved a new bailout of ¤130 billion, or $172 billion, under which private investors in Greek debt will take even steeper losses than expected to help stave off the country’s imminent default. “We have reached a far-reaching agreement on Greece’s new program and private-sector involvement,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, announced Tuesday morning. The agreement could be a new turning point in the European debt crisis, which has raised questions about the viability of the euro itself. Though the outcome had been predicted, the meeting in Brussels proved more grueling than expected as eurozone countries, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund wrestled through the night over a discrepancy in the amount of • TURN TO GREECE, 2A
PHOTOS BY KEVIN SIEFF/WASHINGTON POST SERVICE
Abdul Hakim retrieves the bodies of suicide bombers and other members of the Taliban from U.S. and Afghan authorities. Below, the mortuary at NATO’s Kandahar airfield.
The insurgents often share killed — to Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar city. In the morgue’s space in the Mirwais morgue their victims, also register, they are identified by with their job title, written simply as “Talib.” • TURN TO MIDDLEMAN, 6A
other. But his campaign is, improbNew York Times Service ably, gaining momentum in a way SOCHI, Russia — The scene that speaks to the state of Russian at a hotel conference room here politics — in particular, the excould have sprung whole from a traordinary hunger for a fresh face daydream by Donald Trump. Hun- in a small but distinct part of the dreds of young people milled about, electorate. Still, Russia poses particular challenges for buzzing with praise and his candidacy. It does admiration for a billionnot help, for example, aire who decided to run that Prokhorov’s wealth, for president. from running a mining “Oh, he is such a company, is directly successful man,” Alyotied to the natural rena Rudakov, 22, gushed sources that a large part about the Russian busiof the electorate benessman Mikhail Proklieves were stolen from horov, who this winter them in the 1990s. became the first of the Or that in Russia’s post-Soviet set of ultrastill tightly controlled wealthy financiers to PROKHOROV political system, much run for president. Latching on to one of the debate takes place over whether themes of Prokhorov’s campaign, he is or is not in the pocket of the she asked, “Why shouldn’t we let very autocrat he is running against, him try, on a larger scale, what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Being a billionaire in itself — he has already achieved at his Prokhorov owns 20 Jet Skis, a corporation?” In another country, Prokhorov’s 200-foot yacht and a mansion presidential campaign might ap- outside Moscow — might seem a pear little more than a lark, one of fatal handicap in an era of anger the periodic efforts by rich people at the rich that is as prevalent in with political aspirations to translate one kind of success into an- • TURN TO BILLIONAIRE, 2A BY ANDREW KRAMER
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109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD
BY STEPHEN CASTLE
In Russia, a new kind of presidential candidate
NATO APOLOGIZES OVER HANDLING OF KORANS, 3A
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012
YEMENIS VOTE TO RUBBER-STAMP NEW PRESIDENT, 6A
U.S. court agrees to hear affirmative action case BY ADAM LIPTAK
New York Times Service
pointment of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who replaced O’Connor in 2006. Alito has voted with the court’s more conservative justices in decisions hostile to the use of racial classifications by the government. “There thus seem five votes — Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito — to overrule Grutter and hold that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a recent book, The Conservative Assault on the Constitution. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been particularly skeptical of government programs that take account of race. “Racial balancing is not transformed from ‘patently unconstitutional’ to a compelling
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a major case on affirmative action in higher education, adding another potential blockbuster to a docket already studded with them. The court’s decision in the new case holds the potential to undo an accommodation reached in the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger: that public colleges and universities could not use a point system to boost minority enrollment but could take race into account in a vaguer way to ensure academic diversity. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion in Grutter, said the accommodation was meant to last 25 years. The court’s membership has changed since 2003, most notably for these purposes with the ap- • TURN TO COURT, 2A
Israelis flock to sages’ tombs seeking miracles BY TIA GOLDENBERG Associated Press
NETIVOT, Israel — One man prays to heal the legs he broke in a car accident. An older woman pleads for grandchildren. Another visitor has come to see “God’s secretary.” These believers are part of a growing phenomenon in Israel, where hundreds of thousands of people from starkly different backgrounds flock to the tombs of ancient Biblical figures or modern-day rabbis, seeking blessings and claiming they’ve witnessed miracles. At many of these sites there is scant proof that any sage is actually buried there. Some are even believed to be co-opted Ottoman or Muslim burial places. But to the faithful, the lack of hard evidence is irrelevant. It’s the deep spiritual experience or, for some, the desperate desire to be blessed, that matters. “Coming here is being able to speak to God’s secretary. It’s the closest you can get,” said Suzy Shaked, a 55-year-old teacher from central Israel who visited the tomb of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, one of the most popular pilgrimage sites. Shaked said she sees Abuhatzei-
ARIEL SCHALIT/AP
An Israeli woman and her daughter pray at the tomb of Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira in Netivot, southern Israel. ra, better known as the Baba Sali, as God’s envoy. A visit to his tomb puts her requests in God’s earshot. She was praying at the Baba Sali’s tomb for her son to marry. While there are no firm statistics on how many Israelis visit sites like the Baba Sali’s tomb, researchers say the number is growing. They cite the rising power of religious political parties, the in-
PARTIES FIND FAULTS IN U.S. TRANSPORTATION BILL, BUSINESS FRONT
fluence of Israelis of north African descent who traditionally practiced these kinds of pilgrimages, and a growing desire by even secular Jews to find meaning in their lives through a spiritual act. Prominent businessmen and politicians are known to make appearances at the sites. • TURN TO ISRAEL, 2A
NAPOLI DOWNS CHELSEA IN CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, SPORTS FRONT
INDEX THE AMERICAS...........4A U.S. NEWS ...................5A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ..6B
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