BLOODBATH AT SAMARRA
It may [EM] or may not [EM] have been the bloodiest firefight of the war, but there's no question that Sunday's clash between U.S. forces and insurgents in the town of Samarra was the strangest clash between the two sides thus far. While the U.S. military insist it killed 54 uniformed insurgents in the clash, the locals say the death toll amounted to around a dozen, and most of those were civilian bystanders. Even more strange was the statement by an insurgent "spokesman" in the town who insisted that only 12 fightersr had participated in the attack, two of whom had been killed. Fog of war aside, the Post's Anthony Shadid interviews the locals and paints a picture of ferocious firefight lasting hours, drawing in some of Samarra's civilian population on the side of the insurgents. He quotes U.S. military personnel present to the effect that the brazenness of the attack by insurgents who stood and fought rather than hitting and running may portend a new phase in the insurgency.
(Washington Post, December 2, 2003)

ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS ACHIEVE A HYPOTHETICAL PEACE
Former Israeli cabinet ministers and current members of Yasser Arafat's government have concluded a blueprint for a peace deal in Geneva, that looks rather a lot like the the agreement left on the table at Taba in January 2001 by representatives of the Palestinian Authority and the doomed Israeli government of Ehud Barak. It's essentially a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with Israel withdrawing most of its settlements and the Palestinians reinterpreting their demand for a "right of return" by Palestinian refugees to mean return to the new Palestinian state, rather than to their former homes in what is now Israel. The problem, of course, is that the parameters agreed in Geneva has always been ferociously rejected by Ariel Sharon, while Yasser Arafat, for his part, tried once again to have it both ways by sending a congratulatory note acclaiming the agreement but stopping short of directly endorsing it for fear of antagonizing Palestinians over its renunciation of their "right of return" demand. Still, Geneva is a lot more than an exercise in gaming a future -- it's an attempt by the Israeli peace camp to turn up the heat on Sharon by showing Israelis and Americans that there is an alternative, and that Sharon is not the "man of peace" that President Bush once proclaimed him.
(The Economist, December 2, 2003)

DOUBTS OVER AFGHANISTAN ELECTIONS
Afghanistan is often cited as a model for the U.S. to follow in Iraq, and, indeed, the battered Central Asian country is due to cement its transition to democracy by holding an historic presidential election next June. But despite the determination of interim president Hamid Karzai to proceed with the poll, the growing Taliban insurgency is clouding prospects for holding the elections. Although some 10,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan to conduct operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the country's security is primarily in the hands of a NATO force numbering 5,500, which has only three helicopters at its disposal.
(LA Times, December 2, 2003)

U.S. INTEL POST-MORTEM
While much of the political wrangling over Iraq has focused on questions of the misuse or manipulation of intelligence, the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq plunged the U.S. intelligence community into a deeper crisis: So much of what it assumed to be correct turned out to be wrong. David Isenberg takes a look at the internal review process currently underway in Washington.
(Asia Times, December 2, 2003)

IVORY COAST THREATENS TO ERUPT
The tense calm that followed the arrival of French peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast is fast fading, as government supporters begin to directly challenge French troops over their perceived support for anti-government rebels. The International Crisis Group warns that a new outbreak of fighting could plunge the whole region into chaos, sparking new violence in neighboring Liberia and elsewhere.
(International Crisis Group, December 1, 2003)

NORTHERN IRELAND'S VOTERS PLUNGE PEACE INTO CRISIS
By choosing the Reverend Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionists, the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland have given a thumbs down at the ballot box to the power-sharing peace agreement for the territory. And the Catholic minority, meanwhile, has chosen the IRA-aligned Sinn Fein over the more moderate Social Democratic Labor Party. Under the current agreement, that requires a government pairing Paisley and Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams -- an unlikely prospect, to say the least. So it may be back to the drawing board for London.
(The Economist, December 1, 2003)