Six In The Morning Sunday January 12

Ariel Sharon: Peacemaker, hero... and butcher

He was respected in his eight years of near-death, with no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker. Thus do we remake history

ROBERT FISK 

Sunday 12 January 2014

Any other Middle Eastern leader who survived eight years in a coma would have been the butt of every cartoonist in the world. Hafez el-Assad would have appeared in his death bed, ordering his son to commit massacres; Khomeini would have been pictured demanding more executions as his life was endlessly prolonged. But of Sharon – the butcher of Sabra and Shatila for almost every Palestinian – there has been an almost sacred silence.

Cursed in life as a killer by quite a few Israeli soldiers as well as by the Arab world – which has proved pretty efficient at slaughtering its own people these past few years – Sharon was respected in his eight years of near-death, no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker.

Thus do we remake history. How speedily did toady journalists in Washington and New York patch up this brutal man's image. After sending his army's pet Lebanese militia into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982, where they massacred up to 1,700 Palestinians, Israel's own official enquiry announced that Sharon bore "personal" responsibility for the bloodbath.

After 12 years, £390bn, and countless dead, we leave poverty, fraud – and the Taliban in Afghanistan

World View: The country is in such a bad way as western troops depart that leaders can only spin, almost to the point of lying

PATRICK COCKBURN

Sunday 12 January 2014

A few years ago in Kabul, I was listening to a spokesman for an Afghan government organisation who was giving me a long, upbeat and not very convincing account of the achievements of the institution for which he worked. To relieve the tedium, and without much expectation of getting an interesting reply, I asked him – with a guarantee of non-attribution – what benefits the Afghan government had brought to its people. Without hesitation the spokesman replied that these benefits were likely to be very limited "so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords".

It was at about this time that I decided that the main problem in Afghanistan was not the strength of the Taliban but the weakness of the government. It does not matter how many Nato troops are in the country because they are there in support of a government detested by much of the population. 

Tragedy in Uganda: Joseph Kony massacre survivors tell their stories

Few warlords are more unpitying than Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army, as the wider world discovered through the film Kony 2012. Now some of the survivors are taking the opportunity to record their horrifying experiences. Will Storr travels to Uganda to listen

• Will Storr
• The Observer, Sunday 12 January 2014

About two hours east of Kitgum, in the distant north of Uganda, there's a village filled with ghosts. The people of Amoko are mostly subsistence farmers and their days are usually the same. They work, they talk, they sleep. Recently, they've been talking about Patrick Okello. Demons have been visiting him in the night; he wakes to see a strange glow in his hut as they surround him, whispering Okello, Okello, Okello. Flies, rats and bats crawl over him. The other day, he stripped off all his clothes and ran up the hill. "That's what makes him run," says elder Martin Olanya. "Because they're calling his name." The villagers have a theory as to what's behind the haunting of Patrick Okello. "Ever since the burials took place," says Martin, "the people in this community have not been settled. We assume it's the work of vengeful spirits."

Bangkok residents warned to stockpile food as Thai crisis continues

January 12, 2014 - 3:17PM

Lindsay Murdoch

South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media

Bangkok: More than 20,000 security forces will be deployed across the Thai capital on Monday as anti-government protesters implement “operation shutdown” aimed at toppling the elected government of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

As the United States embassy in Bangkok recommended residents stockpile two weeks of cash, food and water, army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha said he was concerned about the possibility of violent clashes and admitted he does not see a solution to end the country’s crisis.

But General Prayuth asked the media to stop asking him if the powerful military, which has intervened to overthrow governments in the past, plans to stage a coup.

Zapatista rebels mark 20 years but continue to battle same problems

By Leticia Pineda, Yemeli Ortega

Mexico City (AFP) - When the masked Subcomandante Marcos emerged in Mexico's southern mountains with his band of Zapatista rebels on January 1, 1994, they demanded change for the destitute indigenous people of Chiapas.

But 20 years later, the pipe-smoking revolutionary and his comrades have retreated to remote communities, the media spotlight has dimmed and Chiapas remains Mexico's poorest state.

The Zapatistas will mark their rebellion's anniversary with fiestas in their villages on Wednesday, but not with the same attention they received when they first burst into the scene.

The mysterious Marcos, who used to greet journalists in his jungle hideouts for interviews, has shunned the media, choosing instead to make occasional statements on his movement's website.

12 January 2014 Last updated at 01:04 GMT

The coach who's hoping to transform Mongolian football

By Alison GeeBBC World Service

If you want career in football, Mongolia is perhaps not the obvious place to go - but that's exactly where British coach Paul Watson is setting up a new team entirely from scratch. He is already finding fresh talent and hopes to inspire the country's next generation of players.

In July, Paul Watson got an email from a stranger in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator - Enkhjin Batsumber wanted to know if he was interested in helping him start a new football team, Bayangol FC.