India Ink: At M.A. Ideal School, Teenage Teachers, Hopeful Parents

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Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesStudents in a classroom at M.A. Ideal School, a private school run by Mohammed Anwar, in Hyderabad.

Second-grade teacher Shaziya Begum paced through the classroom, read a story to her students and managed to hold the attention of the 7-year-olds long enough to ward off anarchy.

But at 17, Ms. Begum could be in school herself.

She, and many others like her, is one of the reasons scores of poor parents scrimp to send their children to private schools that cost about $3 a month in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, although the government offers free schools that include perks such as a free lunch, textbooks and even uniforms.

The method of teaching in these private schools is much the same as elsewhere in India, where rote learning dominates. But the teachers, though younger and far less educated than their government school colleagues, are far more accountable in educating the children.

Most importantly — they show up.

About a quarter of the teachers at India’s government-run primary schools don’t usually show up for work, a World Bank study found, and of those who do show, only half are actually teaching while they are there.

In the mostly-Muslim neighborhood where Ms. Begum teaches, at the M.A. Ideal School, parents, who are often day laborers and rickshaw drivers, praise the school’s convenient location, the teachers’ commitment in educating their children, and the low school fee.

Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesWasim Akhtar with her son Mohammed Ahmed Khan, 7, outside the M.A. Ideal School.

I squeezed myself onto the last bench of a second-grade class, behind a metal desk narrower than my reporter’s notepad, to understand better what these private schools have to offer. M.A. Ideal School, started in 1987 with less than three dozen kids, now has some 2,000 students and 55 teachers. The blackboard was chalked up with English phrases such as, “Can I help you?”

During the class, Ms. Begum paced up and down and read sentences which the students chirped back.

“Clean clothes” (repeat) “make us” (repeat) “look smart” (repeat)

It was a mantra most of the children, or at least their parents, took seriously as they sported neat navy and white uniforms. The girls, who sat on one side of the classroom, and accounted for half the class’s two dozen students, had their hair neatly partitioned into two braided buns knotted immaculately with white ribbon.

Ms. Begum read the students the tale of the tortoise and hare, and had them repeat after her. Then followed another story about a fair.

“What is the meaning of a fair?” the teacher, dressed in salwar kameez – traditional Indian wear – and a blue cotton coat, asked her class.

“Mela,” the kids chorused.

“Do you all know what that means?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Everyone clap for yourselves.”

Enthusiastic applause ensued.

“Now put your fingers on the first line,” instructed Ms. Begum, pointing to some copy in a textbook. The students dutifully traced the lines in their books with their fingers as she read and explained what the words meant, often translating the meaning into Hindi for their comprehension. The exercise was broken when the bell rang and a cry of victory erupted in the classroom.

The teacher flashed the kids an exasperated smile and helped them line up to leave the classroom. Ms. Begum, who joined the school in the summer of 2009, told me she enjoys teaching, but dreams of becoming an accountant one day. She, like other young teachers at private schools, often start working while in high school to make ends meet.

Priyanka Thakur, 17, who teaches Telugu, the state’s local language, to the same class, only finished the 10th grade before she became a teacher. In order to prepare for her classes, she studies the course material at home before getting into school. Despite her young age, kids snap to attention when she walks through the classroom, licks her fingertip, flips a page, and dictates to them. This, often when there’s no electricity, and the dismal tube light needs to be fiddled with at periodic intervals to start working.

Before students head home, they have to jot down their homework assignments in a diary, which teachers sign, so that parents know what their children need to finish before coming into class the next day. (Some who don’t do their homework sneakily finish it in the classroom — during a different class.)

Outside the school, most kids trickle down the narrow lanes to make their way to their nearby homes. The younger children are picked up by their parents. One such parent, Wasim Akhtar, who’s come for her 7-year-old son, Mohammed Ahmed Khan, said she sends her child to a private school because teachers actually turn up.

“We have to think about our kids’ future. We have to send them to a good school,” said Ms. Akhtar. “Here, they look after the kids.”

Ms. Akhtar, whose husband earns about $90 a month doing odd jobs at the local market, said she’ll cut spending elsewhere to keep them in school. “We’ll reduce our household expenses but we won’t skimp on their education.”

“They can do a lot if they study,” said Ms. Akhtar, as she ruffled the hair of her son, who was standing next to her. “If they don’t, they’ll end up with a job like my husband’s.”

Ms. Akhtar is not the only parent who carefully balances her household income to be able to send her kids to a private school.

Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesMohammed Haneef with his son, Nadeem, 8, at M.A. Ideal School.

Mohammed Haneef, 38, sends his 8-year-old son Nadeem to another branch of the same private school that’s located closer to him. Mr. Haneef has three other children: an 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter who go to a government school nearby, and a 13-year-old daughter who goes to a local madrasa. Right now, Nadeem is Mr. Haneef’s only child attending a private school — but he won’t be for long.

“After two or three years, when he gets smart, I’ll remove him and put him in the government school,” said Mr. Haneef. His other kids had all attended private school for about four years before he shifted them to the government schools.

“I couldn’t afford it any longer as they grew older,” said Mr. Haneef, whose income fluctuates as a daily wage construction worker and amounts to about $60 to $80 per month.

He said his kids in the government schools aren’t taught much. “The teachers don’t control them. They just let them go.”

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Opinionator | Borderlines: Fighting over Parsley

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Borderlines explores the global map, one line at a time.

On July 11, 2002, six Moroccan gendarmes occupied Isla de Perejil [1], or Parsley Island, an uninhabited, Spanish-administered rock of about 37 acres, just 220 yards off the Moroccan coast. If the standoff had lasted longer than a few days, and if blood had actually been spilled, we might now know it as the Parsley War. But on July 18, they were overwhelmed and forcibly ejected by Equipo 31, a crack team of Spanish special forces soldiers. No shots were fired.

And that was that. Morocco and Spain agreed to return to the status quo ante [2]: Spain’s claim to the island would remain disputed, but not actively challenged, by Morocco. The island itself would remain unoccupied by either side. Isla de Perejil’s non-occupation is now closely monitored by both the Moroccans and the Spanish (though it’s unclear whether the Moroccan goatherd who occasionally used to graze his flock on the island now has to show his passport).

Apart from that, the case seems closed. But in this part of the world, few things are merely what they seem [3]. Known to the ancients as the Pillars of Hercules, the strategically important gateway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean is laced with mirroring versions of history — a commodity in no short supply here. Those versions of history have even left mirroring border phenomena on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Perejil is one of seven Spanish territories on and off the Moroccan coast, once known collectively as “plazas de soberanía.” The two main ones are Ceuta and Melilla, two cities on the African mainland. Formerly called the “Major Plazas,” they are now each enjoying a separate, autonomous status within Spain. The remaining “Minor Plazas,” apart from Perejil, are all garrisoned with Spanish soldiers: the Islas Chafarinas, a three-island archipelago near the Algerian border; Alboran, a flat and empty fleck of land flanked by tiny Isla de las Nubes; and finally Pe?ón [4] de Alhucemas (which includes the two minuscule islets called Isla de Tierra and Isla de Mar) and Pe?ón de Vélez de la Gomera, both on Morocco’s central Mediterranean coast, not far from the city of El Hoceima. Morocco claims both autonomous cities and all of the plazas, except Alboran, 30 miles out to sea, the only bit of Spanish North Africa not hugging the Moroccan coastline.

Joe Burgess/The New York Times

Opposite Ceuta, across the STROG [5], is Gibraltar (“Gib” in British parlance), captured by the British in 1704 and granted to them “in perpetuity” by the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession in 1713. The Spanish have never accepted the loss of Gibraltar, besieging it on three occasions and most recently blockading it from 1969 to 1985.

It seems illogical, not to mention a bit petty, of the Spanish to demand the return of Gibraltar while they cling to their toeholds on the Moroccan side. But Spain’s position is cherry-picked from two opposing principles: Either occupying strategic bits of another country’s coast is an affront to its territorial integrity, in which case Spain can rightly claim Gibraltar but has to renounce its plazas and autonomous cities in North Africa, or Spain’s historic rights to those places can be maintained forever, in which case the same applies for British sovereignty over Gibraltar.

Naturally, Spain has an internally consistent way out of this conundrum: Ceuta and Melilla were Spanish cities long before present-day Morocco existed [6], so it can’t claim them. But Gibraltar was ripped from the bosom of the Spanish state and has been a British colony ever since — in fact, the last colony on European soil [7]. And what should happen to colonies? Right, they should be decolonized.

Another solution, examined first by the British in 1917 and then proposed independently by Spain’s King Alfonso in 1926, was an exchange between Spain and Britain, with Gibraltar reverting to Spain and Ceuta (and possibly also Melilla) becoming British. The swap would have been an interesting new chapter in the long association of Ceuta and Gibraltar. Both exclaves, barely 14 miles apart, poke into the strait, guarding this chokepoint of naval traffic between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Seen from above, they look like the hinges of a door that can be opened and shut by whomever controls them. Seen from the sea, Gibraltar’s Rock and Ceuta’s Monte Hacho [8] could be mistaken for the northern and southern pillars of a gigantic gate.

Google Earth

In fact, both rocks are the actual Pillars of Hercules known to the ancients, named after the legendary hero because they marked the westernmost extent of his 12 Labors. To the Greeks and Romans, the Pillars of Hercules were the proverbial end of the world. Tradition has it that the inscription on them warned “Nec Plus Ultra,” or “Beyond this, there’s nothing.”

That changed when Columbus brought back news of lands beyond the ocean, and riches beyond compare. The personal badge of Emperor Charles V, who ruled Spain soon after the discovery of the Americas, showed both pillars interwoven with the slogan: “Plus Ultra” — “There is more out there,” the perfect motto for a nascent transatlantic empire. Charles’s badge is at the origin of Spain’s coat of arms (which still shows both pillars), and possibly also of the dollar sign [9] — the two vertical bars being abstract renderings of Gibraltar and Ceuta, and the curling motto reduced to the S-shape that connects them.

(Nec) Plus Ultra: the pillars as endpoint or gateway. Again, two competing versions of history. And Ceuta and Gibraltar are connected by yet another history with two wildly differing versions. Early in the Eighth Century, Julian [10], a count tasked with “holding Ceuta for Christendom,” switched sides, exhorting and aiding the Muslim invaders of North Africa to cross the strait to Spain. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula began when their general Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Mons Calpe in 711, henceforth renamed Jebel Tariq — i.e. Gibraltar.

Legend has it that Julian wanted revenge for the honor of his daughter Florinda, ravished by Roderic, the last Visigoth king of Spain. Muslim sources later described her as innocence incarnate, while Christian scribes depicted her as a loose woman — respectively maximizing and minimizing Julian’s casus belli. In Spanish history, Julian is the ultimate traitor, opening up the country to seven centuries of Moorish rule. But in his 1970 novel “Count Julian,” the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo takes the alleged traitor’s side, relishing in the destruction of Spain.

Examples of this mutability of allegiance persist across the strait. Spain’s claims to Gibraltar are supported by … Morocco — for surely, a return of Gib to Spain must mean a return of Ceuta to Morocco. Spain’s claims to Perejil are supported by Algeria, Morocco’s unfriendly neighbor, but not by Spain’s fellow European Union member France, Morocco’s former colonial overlord.

Perhaps Gibraltar is the northernmost part of Africa, for its Barbary Macaques are the only monkeys living in the wild in Europe [11]. And maybe Melilla is the southernmost city of Europe, because its Capilla de Santiago (St James’s Chapel) is the only gothic church in Africa.

All the while, the peculiar borders of these exclaves persist, and harden and soften according to circumstance. Spain and Britain’s co-membership of the European Union was instrumental in ending the blockade of Gibraltar, normalizing the border at La Linea — no longer a three-quarter mile strip of no man’s land garnished with barbed wire.

Read previous contributions to this series.

But the persistent disagreement between Spain and Morocco over the plazas, coupled with an increase in undocumented migration from Africa into Europe, has put Spain on the spot. For many thousands of poor Africans seeking a better life in Europe, Ceuta and Melilla are the entry points into the First World. The barbed-wire fence around both territories is hardly an impediment for those daring and hardy enough to trek across the Sahara.

Some in Spain suspect the periodic surges of migrants into its two African cities are co-orchestrated by Morocco, to underscore their untenability as Spanish, and EU, exclaves in Africa. But ironically, the surges more likely result from the improved Spanish surveillance of the strait, which many migrants try to cross. Like the flow of a river, the phenomenon of mass migration simply seeks the most convenient channel for its course. Hence the poor, huddled masses of boat people reaching Italy’s southernmost island Lampedusa, and likewise the Canary Islands, Spain’s archipelago off Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

For them too, the Strait of Gibraltar no longer is the Nec Plus Ultra of their dreams.

Frank Jacobs is a London-based author and blogger. He writes about cartography, but only the interesting bits.

[1] The official Moroccan nomenclature is “Tura,” which in Berber means “uninhabited,” but also used is “Leila,” which probably is a loan from the Spanish “la isla” (“the island”).

[2] In full: status quo ante bellum, “the state of things before the war.” This principle of international law holds that territorial conquest in battle should be nullified after the end of hostilities. The opposite principle, used to justify territorial gains, is uti possidetis — in full, uti possidetis, ita possideatis, “as you possessed [it], you shall possess [it] from now on.”

[3] For starters, how about the intriguing similarities between the Parsley Incident and the Falklands War, fought two decades earlier? Both involve failed attempts by former European colonies to reclaim islands off their coast held by former European superpowers. Kennedy-Lincoln assassination similarity buffs, start your engines!

[4] Literally a crag (a steep rocky outcrop), the Spanish word pe?ón has also come to mean a Spanish military outpost at such a location. Apart from the two mentioned here, other examples include the Pe?ón de Argel (i.e. Algiers), occupied by Spain from 1510 to 1529.

[5] Naval speak for the Strait of Gibraltar.

[6] 1640 and 1497, respectively. Morocco became independent from France in early 1956. Spanish Morocco — a protectorate since 1912 , not to be confused with the plazas — was allowed to join French Morocco in independence a few months later.

[7] Gibraltar had the status of Crown Colony from 1830 to 1981; in 2002, it was re-classified as a British Overseas Territory. Gibraltar has its own elected government, and thus claims no longer to be a colony, but Spain resists attempts to remove it from the UN Special Committee on Decolonization’s list of Non-Self-Governing Territories (16 at present, of which 10 are under British jurisdiction).

[8] Elevations 1,400 and 670 feet respectively; another candidate for the southern pillar is the Jebel Musa (2,800 feet), just beyond Ceuta’s border with Morocco.

[9] The pillars were pictured on the reverse of the Spanish dollar, legal tender in the United States until 1857.

[10] He might also have been called Urbano, or Ulban. He may have been a Berber, a Visigoth or a Byzantine. Perhaps he was the local ruler of Ceuta, or merely its governor. [11] According to tradition, the extinction of the Gibraltar macaques would signal the end of British rule over the Rock. A similar legend requires the Tower of London to house six raven, lest the monarchy should fail.

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Letter From Europe: London's Fog of Olympic Ambivalence

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Both visions of London’s Olympic destiny are true, if unprovable, depending on which cab driver, barroom pundit, holder of tickets for the 100 meters final or failed bidder for those same prized items is expounding on the issue.

If sporting spectaculars mirror the societies that stage them — the regimented opening ceremony of the 2008 Games in Beijing, for instance — then Britain’s first Olympics since 1948 suggests ambivalence: for every muscle-toned, would-be champion, London offers a counterview, a curmudgeon voice to confound the organizers’ attempts to create a myth of undiluted enthusiasm and public support.

The Games, said Sebastian Coe, an Olympic gold medalist and the head of the organizing committee, will be “the biggest thing this nation will have delivered in the living memory of the vast majority of the population” — bigger, thus, than the Falklands war or the Northern Ireland peace, a supporting role in the invasion of Iraq, a lingering commitment in Afghanistan, the boom-to-bust banking crisis, the X-Factor or sundry royal weddings, funerals and divorces.

Stretch the notion of living memory to encompass the witness that binds one generation’s memory to the next, and a few weeks of sporting bonanza will eclipse the D-Day landings or the dismantling of most of the British Empire.

But hype is part of the Olympic run-up, the boosterism discernible already in parts of the British media, cementing the new orthodoxy that holds support for the Games to be laudably British, and indifference to be a poor show, even unpatriotic.

“We’ve got all the stuff in place,” Lord Coe said, likening the Games to Halley’s Comet “which doesn’t come around that often” (every four years for the Games; 75 or so for the comet.) “But people will decide how they respond, and my judgment is that they’re responding in a massive way now.”

Massive, perhaps, in the sense described by Robert Hardman, a journalist and author, in The Daily Mail: “We have been treated like imbeciles by those who believe they have a divine right to squander other people’s money in the name of sport.” Or by the design critic Stephen Bayley, quoted in The Guardian on the subject of the opening ceremony, who suggested that “Sebastian Coe and his army of bureaucrats should be dressed in penitential costumes and chained together, then made to parade slowly around the stadium in muted lighting chanting ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa.”’

Great sporting galas, of course, always offer a contest between democracy and tyranny, between the crowds and competitors in the stadiums, bonded by the passion of the moment, and those less in thrall to balls kicked, javelins lofted, hurdles leaped, batons passed or shots put.

To test the point, try navigating parts of West London when 82,000 rugby union fans are spilling out of Twickenham Stadium; or try crossing the city by road when highways are closed for the annual London Marathon.

Now multiply those tribulations by many degrees and imagine a capital city in July and August committed to the Olympics to the exclusion of its normal crop of tourists, theatergoers or conventioneers.

The West End theater district, said the composer and impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber, is facing “a bloodbath of a summer” because theatergoers can neither find nor afford hotel rooms in a city filled with sports fans. “People who want to go to the theater or concerts are not the same sort of people who really want to go to sport,” he said.

But duality has accompanied the London Games from their beginnings.

For every announcement of stadiums built or rail links upgraded, there have been reports of cost overruns.

London secured the right to host the Games at a time of economic boom when the nation seemed afloat on surging credit. Now, the city is obliged to stage them after the bust of the global economic crisis when jobs are lost and times are hard.

“You can say: These are times of austerity, and therefore we should pare them down as much as possible,” said Jeremy Hunt, the British culture secretary. “Or, you can say: Because these are times of austerity, we need to do everything we possibly can to harness the opportunity of the Olympics.”

Britain has chosen the latter course. That is not really surprising: official enthusiasm has rarely seemed to wane or falter.

On July 6, 2005, when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 event to London, Prime Minister Tony Blair declared, “It’s not often in this job that you punch the air and do a little dance and embrace the person next to you.”

Less than 24 hours later — by apparent coincidence — the hop-skip-and-jump fizzled when four homegrown suicide bombers killed 52 travelers next to them on the London transport network, confronting Britons with the unsettling notion that their land had spawned a nexus of Islamic terrorists bent on mayhem.

The authorities spent successive years confronting waves of conspiracies, including the foiled plot in 2006 to bomb at least seven airliners over the Atlantic.

That accomplishment by the security agencies, too, might have fallen within Mr. Coe’s pantheon of achievement delivered in Britain’s living memory.

And it might help explain why, for all the exuberant anticipation, Britain plans to commit 13,000 troops in addition to the police to shield crowds and competitors, not just, presumably, from the curmudgeons, but also from those of far more sinister intent.

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India Ink: Islamic Center, Hindu Priest's Home Targeted in New York

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Four sites in Jamaica, Queens, were firebombed Sunday night by an attacker who favored Starbucks Frappucino bottles filled with flammable liquid. The attacker, who has not been captured, targeted an Islamic center, a bodega owned by a Muslim man, the home of a Hindu priest which had a shrine in its window and the home of residents who said they were Christian.

The imam at the Islamic center said he had heard about the attack on the Hindu temple, and added, “Some people confuse Hindus and Muslims.” Read more ?

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India Ink: Hello, How Are You? Hello, How Are You?

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Private schools in India are often attractive to parents because they offer English language instruction.

English has long been considered a passport to white collar jobs in India. Here, kindergarten students at the M.A. Ideal School, Phadi Branch, which is located in a Hyderabad slum, are taught phrases and gestures in English to build basic conversational skills and confidence.

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World Briefing | Middle East: Saudi Arabia: Help Wanted

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Relatives of 9/11 Victims, Suspecting Hacking, Await Answers

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Some heard mysterious clicking sounds on their home and mobile phones. The fiancée of one man who died at the World Trade Center remembers listening to snippets of someone else’s conversation on her line. A husband of another victim recalls hearing somebody remotely accessing his home answering machine, which still held the final, reassuring message left by his wife shortly before the crash of Flight 93. Others say they are baffled as to how details about their loved ones appeared in British tabloids within days of the attacks.

Ten years later, their long-held suspicions aroused by The News of the World phone-hacking scandal in London, dozens of relatives of victims contacted the Justice Department. On Aug. 24, eight of them met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and asked him to determine whether their privacy had been violated. As a first step, they asked him to see whether Scotland Yard had a record of their names or phone numbers among the material seized from a private investigator who hacked cellphone messages for the tabloid.

Four months later, they are still waiting to hear back and are frustrated by the Justice Department’s silence.

“It’s not that hard to find out — it’s quite a simple thing, really, isn’t it?” said Patricia Bingley, a British citizen whose son, Kevin Dennis, a 43-year-old trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, worked on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower.

Ms. Bingley said she was stunned to see, in the Sept. 18, 2001, issue of The Sun, a photograph of her son reading a bedtime story to his two sons, which she did not give to the paper. The story also contained details about her son that she said no one from her family had provided to The Sun. “It never made sense to me,” she said, adding that she suspects hacking or worse by the paper. “I’d like very much for the government to tell us whether this happened or not. Celebrities seem to have no trouble finding out.”

In July, as revelations about widespread phone hacking by the tabloid were spilling out, another British newspaper, The Daily Mirror, reported that a private investigator said that News of the World reporters had offered to pay him to retrieve phone records of Sept. 11 victims. After the report, which was not confirmed by other news organizations, the Justice Department opened an investigation. To date, no evidence has emerged publicly that Sept. 11 victims were hacking targets.

Jodi Westbrook Flowers, a lawyer at a South Carolina firm that represents more than 6,700 relatives of Sept. 11 victims, said she and her colleagues had scoured the British tabloids and found scores of details about the victims. Relatives were not certain how the tabloids found out so much so quickly after the attacks.

One of the relatives, whom she declined to identify, said that five days after Sept. 11, The Sun published the words from a voice mail message left on his cellphone by his son, who was aboard one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. (British authorities are also investigating whether hacking occurred at The Sun, which, like The News of the World, is owned by News Corporation.)

In late September, Ms. Flowers, of the Motley Rice law firm, sent Mr. Holder phone numbers of two dozen relatives of victims and asked that Scotland Yard run them through the 12,000 pages of documents seized from the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator responsible for most of the hacking by the now-shuttered News of the World. She said at least 100 of her clients, in both the United States and Britain, now want similar information.

On Nov. 3, Vida G. Bottom, chief of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit, wrote to the lawyers, saying, “The F.B.I. has undertaken a preliminary review to assess the veracity of those allegations.”

Ms. Flowers said she was disappointed by the vagueness of the response. “We asked a simple threshold question, and we basically received a nonanswer,” she said.

Ms. Flowers added, “If there was no hacking, it is wildly coincidental that so many people describe similar experiences.”

Even so, two Justice Department officials with knowledge of the inquiry said they did not expect much to come of the investigation. The officials, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss a continuing criminal inquiry, said the investigation remained open in case Scotland Yard discovered evidence confirming the suspicions of the Sept. 11 relatives. They both said they were doubtful such evidence would emerge.

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said only, “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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World Briefing | Asia: Kashmir: Protesters Fired On

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Piñera Defends Response to Chile Wildfires

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The wildfires are believed to have begun in the majestic Torres del Paine National Park last Tuesday, and they broke out in other areas over the weekend. An elderly man who refused to leave one area was the only reported death, but altogether 90 square miles of forest have been destroyed, some 100 homes burned, hundreds of people evacuated, and a plywood plant owned by Arauco, a major lumber producer, ruined.

Still, the fires remain less destructive than some blazes in other countries. For instance, Australia’s bushfires of 2009 claimed more than 170 lives.

The government of Mr. Pi?era rejected accusations that it was slow in responding. Protests demanding changes in transportation, energy and above all education have driven his approval ratings down to 23 percent, the lowest for any Chilean leader since Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship ended in 1990.

Mr. Pi?era said a red alert was declared just two hours after the Torres del Paine fire started on Dec. 27, and measures were quickly taken to combat the blaze. Still, Mr. Pi?era said the fire began in a zone of “very difficult access, with very difficult topography and additionally with conditions of intense winds.”

Neighboring Argentina and Uruguay have contributed to a force of more than 750 firefighters deployed in the country’s south, and Mr. Pi?era said that Chile had the helicopters and aircraft it needed to fight the blazes.

So far, the fires have burned more than 7 percent of Torres del Paine, a tourism draw known for its soaring granite peaks, and areas of two other regions, Bio Bio and Maule. Mr. Pi?era said four of six focal areas in Torres del Paine were coming under control, and that the park could partially reopen by Wednesday.

Fires have whipped through Torres del Paine before. In 2005 a 31-year-old Czech tourist accidentally started a fire in the park that caused more than $5 million in damage. The government of the Czech Republic subsequently issued a letter of apology and offered to send forestry experts to assist in the recuperation.

In the latest fires, an Israeli tourist, Rotem Singer, 23, has been arrested and charged with starting the park blaze. By the account of a prosecutor, Ivan Vidal, people traveling with Mr. Singer said he set fire to toilet paper after going to the bathroom, and then failed to put it out completely. But he strongly denied the accusation, saying his translator may have contributed to misunderstandings.

Yediot Aharonot, a leading Israeli newspaper, said it interviewed Mr. Singer by telephone. It quoted him as saying: “I did not cause the blaze. I have been framed and turned into a scapegoat.”

The newspaper said Mr. Singer was met at court with angry shouts and anti-Semitic curses like “stinking Jew.” He said he feared for his safety. Mr. Singer denied that he had confessed to anything. “I am not guilty of anything, and I don’t know how this story landed on me,” he said.

The Israeli Embassy in Chile said in a statement Monday that it would not take part in the “judicial procedure” involving Mr. Singer. “We understand his family will hire an attorney for his defense,” the embassy said. In the statement, the embassy added that it shared Chileans’ “distress over the environmental damage in Torres del Paine.”

The embassy “trusts the Chilean authorities will determine the circumstances in which it was produced,” the statement said.

Simon Romero reported from Rio de Janeiro, and Pascale Bonnefoy from Santiago, Chile. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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World Briefing | Africa: South Sudan: Civilians Flee

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Workers Locked Out at Caterpillar Locomotive Plant in Canada

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The action came after the employees in London, Ontario, rejected a contract proposed by Electro-Motive Canada. The Canadian Auto Workers union said the proposal would cut wages in half, substantially reduce benefits and end the current pension plan.

“It’s not really a proposal, it’s an ultimatum,” said Tim Carrie, president of the union local that represents the factory’s workers. “This is an attack on middle-class jobs.”

On a Web site with updates about the dispute, Electro-Motive, which Caterpillar acquired in 2010, said the lockout would remain in effect “until a ratified contract is in place.”

The company said the union’s decision not to strike constituted “acceptance of the new wages and benefits as represented in EMC’s final offer.” The company said it was “hopeful of a speedy ratification allowing union members to return to work.”

But some of the union’s executive members have suggested that Caterpillar’s contract demands were intended to provoke a shutdown of the Canadian factory as a prelude to moving all production to the United States.

Caterpillar has a long history of tough labor negotiations and bitter labor disputes. In 1995, workers at the company’s unionized operations in the United States returned to work after declaring a 17-month strike a failure. In 2009, workers took executives at Caterpillar France hostage during a dispute over the restructuring of operations in Grenoble.

Electro-Motive is the second-largest maker of locomotives in North America, after General Electric, and for most of its history was a unit of General Motors. While the parent company, Electro-Motive Diesel, is based in LaGrange, Ill., its only assembly plant in recent years has been the Canadian operation.

But last October, Progress Rail, Caterpillar’s rail operations holding company, opened a new locomotive assembly plant in Muncie, Ind.

The Canadian Auto Workers say that wages and benefits are substantially lower at the new American factory.

The union has suggested that, in addition to reducing labor costs, the company may also want to end Canadian production to avoid potential problems with “Buy American” provisions of United States government procurement rules. While the United States government has said that Canada is exempt from any such measures, labor leaders say that has not always been the case in practice.

The purchase of Electro-Motive Canada was reviewed by the Canadian government under the nation’s foreign investment laws. The union has asked the government to release what conditions, if any, were attached to the subsequent approval. The Canadian government recently settled a dispute with United States Steel under those laws after the company shut down a Canadian steel maker shortly after acquiring it.

“When a foreign company comes in and purchases an existing facility, there has to be a benefit to Canadians,” said Mr. Carrie, the union executive. “Americans coming in and trying to slash wages in half is not a benefit to Canadians.”

Industry Canada, the government department that handles investment reviews, was closed for the New Year holiday on Monday and did not respond to requests for comment.

Anne Marie Quinn, a spokeswoman for Electro-Motive Canada, declined to answer questions about the company’s contract demands, its long-term production plans or any commitments made to the Canadian government.

The company’s Web site about the labor dispute, though, said that the cost of wages and benefits for its workers in Illinois, who are represented by the United Automobile Workers, is about half that for the London plant.

The site says that the now-expired contract at the Canadian factory “also has?antiquated work rules that make the London operation inefficient.”

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U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Bob Anderson, Sword-Fight Choreographer, Dies at 89

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Philip Bruce, president of the British Academy of Fencing, confirmed the death.

Mr. Anderson was a superior and versatile athlete who as a sailor in the Royal Marines in the 1940s won interservice fencing championships with all three of the sport’s weapons — foil, épée and saber. Saber, a flat-bladed weapon with which points are scored by striking with the side of the blade, was his specialty. (In foil and épée only the tip of the swords are used to score.) Mr. Anderson represented Great Britain at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and twice in the world championships in the saber competition.

Just before the Olympics, Mr. Anderson was asked to be a fight choreographer and stunt double for the film “Master of Ballantrae,” an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckling tale of an 18th-century Scottish lord who takes up piracy, Mr. Anderson and the film’s star, Errol Flynn, became great pals in spite of a mishap during which, as the two men were being filmed in a sword fight, Flynn was wounded in the thigh. Flynn immediately took responsibility for the accident, though Mr. Anderson was thereafter known as the man who stabbed Errol Flynn.

Over the next several decades Mr. Anderson became well-known in Hollywood as a sword master — part instructor, part stuntman, part fight choreographer. With a reputation as a perfectionist, he earned the nickname “Grumpy Bob.”

Among many other projects, he worked with James Bond (a k a Sean Connery) on “From Russia with Love” (1963); with Ryan O’Neal in Stanley Kubrick’s picaresque 19th-century drama based on a novel by Thackeray, “Barry Lyndon” (1975); with Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin, who played ambidextrous combatants in “The Princess Bride” (1987); with Aramis, Athos, Porthos and D’Artagnan (Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt and Chris O’Donnell) in “The Three Musketeers” (1993); with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones in “The Mask of Zorro” (1998) and “The Legend of Zorro” (2005); and with the director Peter Jackson on the epic Medieval fantasy “The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring” (2001).

Most famously, Mr. Anderson worked on George Lucas’s original “Star Wars” trilogy. He played a behind-the-scenes role in the first film, “Star Wars” (1977), but in the next two, “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “The Return of the Jedi” (1983), he appeared on-screen as the evil, black-helmeted Darth Vader in the scenes in which he battles the young hero, Luke, who is secretly his son, with sabers whose blades are laserlike lights.

He was uncredited in the part; the role was voiced by James Earl Jones and played by David Prowse, a hulking actor, 6 feet 7 inches tall, who was simply not good with a saber. Mr. Anderson stepped in, and though he was six inches shorter than Mr. Prowse, his identity was a secret until Mark Hamill disclosed it in an interview.

“I finally told George I didn’t think it was fair any more,” Mr. Hamill told Starlog, a science fiction magazine. “Bob worked so bloody hard that he deserves some recognition.” Robert James Gilbert Anderson was born on Sept. 15, 1922, in Hampshire, England, southwest of London. Survivors include his wife, Pearl, three children and several grandchildren.

In addition to his film work, Mr. Anderson was for many years the coach of Great Britain’s national fencing team, and he was also, in the 1960s and 1970s, president of the British Academy of Fencing, which oversees the training of fencing coaches in the United Kingdom. A statement by the academy on Monday said, in part: “It is true to say that nearly 100 percent of fencing in Britain today is directly or indirectly attributable to the work of this man.”

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American Awaits Verdict After Iran Spy Trial, Report Says

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Amir Mirza Hekmati, a 28-year-old of Iranian descent, could face the death penalty if found guilty of cooperating with a hostile government and spying for the CIA. He was arrested in December.

Iran's Intelligence Ministry accused Hekmati of receiving training at U.S. bases in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shortly after his detention, state television showed a taped interview of him confessing to being a spy. At his trial he admitted to having links with the CIA but said he had no intention of harming Iran.

The trial comes at a time of heightened tension between Iran and the United States, which is leading efforts to tighten sanctions on Tehran because of its controversial nuclear program.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner last week urged Tehran to release Hekmati immediately.

He said that Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, had formally requested permission for consular access to Hekmati on December 24 but Iran had refused.

"America's request for the return of the accused, indicates their utmost impudence and he should be tried based on the country's laws," justice ministry spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said.

Iran said in May it had arrested 30 people on suspicion of spying for the United States, and 15 people were later indicted for spying for Washington and Israel.

(Writing by Mitra Amiri; Editing by Ben Harding)

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Global Update: New H.I.V. Cases and AIDS Deaths Plummet in British Columbia

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New H.I.V. cases and AIDS deaths are both going steadily down in British Columbia, according to data released last week.

“We’re particularly pleased to see that our treatment-as-prevention strategy has taken off big-time,” said Dr. Julio S. G. Montaner, director of the British Columbia Center for Excellence in H.I.V./AIDS. His center was a pioneer in the strategy, which involves searching aggressively for people at risk of H.I.V. infection, talking them into being tested and putting those who are infected on antiretroviral drugs immediately, which lowers by 96 percent the chances that they will infect others.

In Vancouver, where he works, AIDS is concentrated in two largely separate groups: gay men and drug addicts. To reach the addicts, the city opened a center where they can inject under a nurse’s supervision without fear of arrest; the nurses also offer medical care, including tests.

Testing is increasing, and syphilis rates are holding steady, Dr. Montaner said, so the drop in new cases is not a result of fewer tests or greater condom use.

AIDS cases remain steady in Canada’s other provinces, except for those in the Prairies region, where they tripled, mostly among Indian addicts in Saskatchewan, which has no safe-injection center.

Last week, Science magazine named the treatment-as-prevention strategy, with the clinical trial of 1,763 couples on four continents that proved it worked, as its 2011 “Breakthrough of the Year.”

Dr. Montaner said he is frustrated that rich countries will not donate enough money to roll out the strategy in poor countries with huge H.I.V. epidemics.

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WORLD: A Date With the Censors

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Reality TV shows have become common on Chinese television but the sometimes racy and materialistic content has attracted the attention of China’s censors.

Produced by Jonah M. Kessel and Edward Wong

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World Briefing | The Americas: Peru: Mine Protest Resumes

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Kiro Gligorov, Macedonia President in 1990s, Dies at 94

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His death was confirmed by an aide, Zivko Kondev.

Mr. Gligorov became president of Macedonia in January 1991 when it was still a Yugoslav republic. He led his countrymen through a referendum in which they voted for independence, and the territory of 2.1 million people became the only republic to secede from Yugoslavia without a war. He served two consecutive terms, leaving office in November 1999.

Severely injured in an assassination attempt in October 1995, Mr. Gligorov emerged from a roughly four-month hospital stay with deep facial scars. A bomb, which targeted his car as he headed to work in the capital, Skopje, cost him an eye and killed his driver and a bystander. No suspects were ever arrested.

The early days of Mr. Gligorov’s presidency were overshadowed by a bitter dispute with Greece over the newly independent nation’s name — a dispute that continues to this day.

Greece objected to the use of the name Macedonia, saying it implied territorial ambitions on its own northern province of the same name. It also objected to a symbol on the new country’s flag and articles of the Macedonian Constitution that Greece believed suggested territorial claims.

Greece imposed a crippling 19-month embargo on its northern neighbor. In 1995, the Macedonian government signed an accord with Greece agreeing to remove the symbol from its flag and revising some articles of the Constitution, but talks on the country’s name have made little progress. In official bodies such as the United Nations, the country is known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Mr. Gligorov also faced domestic unrest, with the country’s large ethnic Albanian minority pressing for greater cultural and political autonomy.

The demands eventually boiled over into armed conflict in early 2001, about a year and a half after Mr. Gligorov left office. The two sides eventually signed a peace accord under which minorities were guaranteed greater rights, and NATO peacekeepers were sent to the country.

Born in the central Macedonian town of Stip on May 3, 1917, Mr. Gligorov graduated from law school in Belgrade and was working as a lawyer for a private bank in Skopje when World War II broke out. He joined the partisan movement fighting against the Nazi occupation from its early days.

He is survived by two daughters and a son. His wife, Nada, died in 2009.

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Lens Blog: Photos of an Isolated Region in Tajikistan

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Along a nearly inaccessible road in Tajikistan, the Greek photographer Myrto Papadopoulos is pursuing a quiet story of growth and change in a small, isolated society.

Ms. Papadopoulos’s project, “The New Plastic Road,” follows Liu Xin Jun, a Chinese truck driver, and Davlat, a Tajik merchandiser, along a trade route in the Pamir Mountains. From the town of Khorog, the most developed in the region, east to Murghab, a former Russian military post at high altitude close to the Chinese border, she sought to explore socioeconomic and political development in an area known as Badakhshan. Basic necessities?— food, water and electricity — are lacking in the area, in part because it is so far from the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe.

Ms. Papadopoulos sought images of the road, and life on the road.

“What we wanted to see is how this road really affects the society,” Ms. Papadopoulos said. “And do people receive what they want now with this opening of trade.”

Myrto Papadopoulos A mother and her children pass in front of a gas station in Murghab, Tajikistan.

Tajikistan is a very poor former Soviet state. Its nearly inaccessible roads have hurt development. To reach Khorog, Ms. Padadopoulos endured a long and difficult drive through the mountains. “That’s how the region is,” she said. “There are very difficult places to reach.”

Virtually unreachable in the winter months, it is anything but a haven for tourism. Aside from a group of bikers and one or two mountaineers, Ms. Papadopoulos met few other travelers. “If something happens to you there,” she said, “it just happens.”

The road, which was reconstructed by China and opened in 2004, has also been a haven for drug-trafficking.

With China’s trade increase in central Asia, though, the situation has been changing. “All these things are suddenly moving,” Ms. Papadopoulos said.

Ms. Padadopoulos was featured on Lens in September 2011 (“In the Grecian Caves Where Time Slows Down,” Sept. 22). This was her first trip to central Asia. She plans to go to China and find the source of the trade, “where all these things are and where do they go.” The project will ultimately become a film about China’s investments in central Asia, which she is working on with her partner, Angelos Tsaousis.

The first trip was, for the most part, exploratory. “I tried to photograph what I saw,” Ms. Padadopoulos said.

In a way, she said, the environment — always very dark at night — felt peaceful. She especially felt that peace when photographing women.

“I really enjoyed sharing moments with the women. I felt very strong.”

And yet she felt a sense of melancholy, which comes out in the pictures — painterly, almost mystical. “I felt there was a sadness to them,” she said.

Myrto Papadopoulos Washing clothes in Khorog, Tajikistan, which has a shortage of drinking water.

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Yaffa Yarkoni, 86, Who Sang for Israeli Wartime Troops, Is Dead

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Ms. Yarkoni died of pneumonia after a years-long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter Ruth Yarkoni-Suissa told Israel’s Army Radio.

Ms. Yarkoni’s career largely echoed Israel’s own history, and she became a symbol of the generation that built the state, her classic ballads harking back to a time Israelis remember as more heroic and less complicated.

One of her most beloved songs, “Bab el Wad,” is an ode to the Israeli fighters who died in ambushes while driving convoys to Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The lyrics were written by Haim Gouri, who later became one of Israel’s national poets.

Yitzhak Rabin, who went on to become prime minister, commanded the brigade that captured the area where the ambushes occurred. In a television interview shortly before his assassination in 1995, Mr. Rabin said “Bab el Wad” was one of his favorite songs.

That and other vintage songs sung by Ms. Yarkoni became anthems of Israeli memorial days.

Though she was renowned for performing for the troops on the front lines, Ms. Yarkoni told interviewers in her later years that she did not like being known as “the songstress of the wars” — and that she was hurt by critics who said she had built a career on the back of military conflict.

In 2002, she caused an uproar at the height of Israel’s military offensive in the West Bank meant to quell the violent second Palestinian uprising. She criticized the military and expressed empathy for the Palestinians, telling Army Radio: “We are a nation that went through the Holocaust. How can we do things like this to another nation?” She described Israel as “leaderless.”

Coming after months of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli cities, her comments touched a nerve in Israeli society, which is particularly sensitive to any comparisons made between its actions and those of Nazi Germany.

Ms. Yarkoni was branded a traitor by some. An organization of Israeli patriots canceled a gala concert that had been planned in her honor.

Still, Ms. Yarkoni’s death prompted an outpouring of popular affection.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that her songs “were the soundtrack of Israel from its pre-state days, through the establishment of the state until our time.” President Shimon Peres said that while the Israeli military “conquered enemy positions, she conquered the hearts of the soldiers.” He called her the “nightingale” of the army and the entire nation.

Yaffa Abramov was born on Dec. 25, 1925, in Tel Aviv, to parents who had immigrated from the Caucasus. She began performing as a child with her siblings in a cafe run by their mother that became popular with artists.

She joined a local ballet company and married in 1944. Her husband, Joseph Gustin, joined the Jewish Brigade of the British Army and was killed in action in Italy in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II.

In 1948, she married Shaike Yarkoni, and together they had three daughters, Orit, Tamar and Ruth. Mr. Yarkoni died in 1983. Ms. Yarkoni is survived by her daughters, eight grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

She initially served as a wireless operator during the 1948 war, but soon joined an army entertainment unit.

As her career progressed, Ms. Yarkoni moved from singing mostly nationalistic songs to ballroom dance music, being a fan of swing, jazz and blues.

She was surprised and upset by the furor over her Army Radio interview in 2002. “How can anybody call me a villain?” Ms. Yarkoni said in an interview at the time with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. She added, “Every time I see an Israeli flag, I cry.”

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Libya Sets Plan for Assembly on Constitution

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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In Iran, Election Fears and Economic Woes Test Leaders

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But a likely boycott by Iran’s harshly silenced reformists and fears of election-related violence, combined with dire economic problems arising from Iran’s isolation over its suspect nuclear program, are creating new challenges for Iranian leaders as they face their first domestic legitimacy test since the disputed presidential election of 2009.

Despite assertions by the leaders that reformist candidates will be allowed to participate in the parliamentary elections, to be held in March, the two principal reformist opposition figures in Iran, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both former presidential candidates, remained under house arrest for most of 2011, their supporters say, and both are urging followers to stay away from the polls.

Even Iran’s mildly reform-minded former president, Mohammad Khatami, who has not been treated as harshly by the government, said in December that reformist candidates would not run in the March elections. That would create a glaring gap that could prove worrisome in providing the appearance of a choice of candidates, and undermine the quest for legitimacy.

“It was expected that the conditions would be granted so that the reformists could participate in the elections, but the conditions were not met,” Mr. Khatami was quoted as saying in Iranian news accounts.

The issue is important because Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his hard-line subordinates have sought to portray their country as the true genesis of the Arab Spring political uprisings that have convulsed many of Iran’s neighbors. For Iran’s reformists to publicly reject the vote, even before it happens, carries credibility risks that Iran’s conservative leadership did not face in previous elections, analysts said.

“The reformists have categorically denounced the legitimacy of the election,” said Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University. “The issue that Khamenei now faces is the legitimacy of the regime. How is he going to manufacture a parliamentary election?”

The election has been further complicated by the severe economic pressure from the West over Iran’s nuclear energy program, which Western powers suspect is masking Iranian plans to make nuclear weapons.

While Iran’s nuclear independence is a popular domestic position that cuts across political lines, the painful economic results of Western sanctions are hurting Iranians — and risk widespread voter discontent — by causing increased shortages, unemployment and inflation. Iran’s currency, the rial, has plunged in value against the dollar in recent months and on Monday hit a new all-time low.

“This is not a good time for the Iran government to lack popularity,” said Alireza Nader, an expert on Iran in the Washington office of the RAND Corporation, a research group.

The government has responded to the sanctions with a combination of military muscle-flexing, defiance and diplomatic overtures. In recent days, the Iranians have held naval war games, threatened to close vital Persian Gulf oil shipping lanes, test-fired two new missiles and announced the production of their first nuclear-fuel rod. At the same time, confronting a new punitive measure signed into law over the weekend by President Obama that could effectively choke Iranian oil sales, the Tehran leadership has said it wants to reopen talks on the nuclear issue.

Iran’s top police commander, mindful of the mayhem that shook the country after the 2009 presidential election, which the defeated reformists thought they had won, has warned that security forces will crush any effort by “the enemy and their domestic lines” to cause trouble.

The commander, Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam, a confidant of Ayatollah Khamenei, has also expressed his expectation that the only winners would, by definition, be “those who believe in the regime and have the trust of the public.”

Ayatollah Khamenei lost considerable credibility in the 2009 presidential election when he declared it a crime to challenge the suspiciously lopsided results that re-elected his choice, the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For the ayatollah, the March election must show — or be made to show — that he is still a revered and unchallenged authority, Iranian political historians and analysts said.

“The regime is very concerned that the election will not appear legitimate,” Mr. Nader said. “There is a good chance that the upcoming parliamentary election can become another occasion for a mass demonstration, or that lots of Iranians will choose not to participate.”

For many disaffected Iranians, the electoral system is already stacked against a significant choice of candidates for the 275-seat Majlis, or Parliament. Those who wish to run for office must register with a religious oversight authority known as the Guardian Council, which decides who is eligible. The registration phase, which began Dec. 24, ended Friday, and the Guardian Council is expected to release its final list of approved candidates in late January or early February. The government announced Friday that more than 3,000 applicants had asked to be considered.

“The regime wants to pretend it’s business as usual and everyone is taking part,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse University. “The game plan is to entice some of the more conservative elements of the reformists to take part, so they can say, ‘You see?’?”

Mr. Boroujerdi also said that the election could serve as a dress rehearsal for the next presidential election, scheduled to be held in 2013, and that it will offer insights into how Iranians feel by whether they even bother to vote. “This is going to speak volumes about the configurations of various forces,” he said. “That makes it quite important.”

Others said the candidate vetting process and March vote would offer insights into whether supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has had a falling-out with Ayatollah Khamenei since the 2009 election, will be denied eligibility to run, a move that would give the ayatollah unquestioned control of the final makeup of Parliament.

There has been speculation that Ayatollah Khamenei may propose to the next Parliament that the office of the president be abolished, to be replaced by a system in which lawmakers select a prime minister — a suggestion that the ayatollah made last year. “They are playing with the idea of doing away with the whole game of a presidential election,” Mr. Dabashi said. “Khamenei may use this occasion to implement that possibility.”

Artin Afkhami contributed reporting.

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Egyptians Vote in Final Round of Parliamentary Elections

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The roughly nine governorates voting on Tuesday included the historic Brotherhood strongholds of Gharbiya and Daqahliyya in the Delta, where a number of the group’s best known candidates are running, including Mohamed Beltaggi, a former member of Parliament. And according to many estimates, its Freedom and Justice Party started the day with roughly 50 percent of the seats awarded in the first two rounds of the vote, having won roughly 40 percent of the seats allocated by party voting and a higher percentage of the seats contested by individual candidates.

Before Tuesday, the Brotherhood’s party had been forecast to win a plurality but not a majority. Winning a clear majority would enable the Brotherhood’s party to govern without forming a coalition, if it chose.

The Brotherhood has said repeatedly that it intends to form a coalition or unity government, in part to avoid unnerving Egyptian liberals or Westerners who may fear an Islamist takeover. It may also wish to share the responsibility for what is expected to be a difficult period of adjustment for the Egyptian state and economy.

But a majority that removed the necessity of forming a coalition government would diminish the power of the partners in any alliance as well as any other parties outside the coalition. That would reduce the clout of the ultraconservative Islamists who have so far trailed in second place in the first two rounds of the voting, winning as much as 25 percent of the seats by most estimates. And it would also reduce the voice of the various liberal parties, led by the business-friendly Free Egyptians and the left-leaning Social Democrats, who have won most of the remainder of the seats.

The Brotherhood has so far sought to ally itself with the liberals rather than the most conservative Islamists and it has reiterated that it has no plans to form an all-Islamist government. The strength of the ultra-conservatives, known as Salafis, has been the biggest surprise of the voting so far. Many espouse hard-line views seeking sharp reductions in the sale of alcohol, opposing women’s participation in political leadership or public life, and potentially restricting arts and popular culture deemed profane or sacrilegious.

Tuesday’s voting also sets up an potential confrontation between the new Parliament and Egypt’s military rulers. Brotherhood leaders have said they expect the Parliament to take authority over the hiring and firing of a prime minister to run the interim government. The military rulers have said they intend to retain that authority and allocate very little power to the Parliament.

The lower house is Egypt’s primarily legislative body, and Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the top military officer who is now acting as de facto chief executive, has scheduled its first session for January 23, two days before the anniversary of the outbreak of protests that ousted Mr. Mubarak.

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Conflicting Reports of Attack on Iraq’s Finance Minister, Rafe al-Essawi

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But on Monday, no one seemed to be able to agree on any of the details of the attack against the official, Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi, or even whether it had happened at all. Not for the first time, the facts seemed to be scrambled by Iraq’s growing political and sectarian discord.

Security forces from the Salahuddin Operations Command, which answers to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, denied that there had been any attack in Salahuddin Province, a largely Sunni area that is home to a renowned Shiite shrine and includes Saddam Hussein’s hometown. A security official at the command said officials “didn’t witness any security breach.”

But two hours later, the local police in Salahuddin contradicted that account, and accused the operations command of “hiding” the incident.

Mr. Essawi himself was in no doubt. He said in a telephone interview that he and a few other Iraqi politicians were returning to Baghdad from a funeral when a blast slammed their convoy outside the holy city of Samarra. Mr. Essawi, who has been an outspoken critic of Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, said he did not know whether the bombing was an assassination attempt aimed specifically at him. But he quickly laid blame for the bombing on the government, which is struggling to keep a lid on terrorist attacks and politically motivated violence in the country.

“With such a violated security situation, it could happen to everyone,” Mr. Essawi said.

The contradictory accounts were reminiscent of late November, when news of a suicide car bombing just outside Iraq’s Parliament was swamped by competing narratives. Immediately after the blast, a spokesman for the Sunni speaker of Parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, said the attack appeared to be an attempt to assassinate Mr. Nujaifi. A few days later, a security spokesman said on television that the true target was Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite.

Within weeks of that disputed attack, a long-running feud between Mr. Maliki and his political opponents erupted into one of the country’s worst political crises in years, one that has exposed sectarian tensions and raised worries that Mr. Maliki was consolidating power against his rivals now that American military forces have withdrawn from Iraq.

The Sunni vice president has fled to the Kurdish north to avoid arrest on terrorism charges, and Mr. Maliki is trying to oust the deputy prime minister, another Sunni. Iraqiya, a political coalition with wide Sunni support, is boycotting Parliament, and so far Mr. Maliki and the Iraqiya bloc’s leaders have been unable to even agree to talk about the crisis.

Mr. Essawi, a former hospital director from Anbar Province in the western Sunni heartland, has been a central figure in the political furor. He has called for Mr. Maliki to be replaced and is refusing to attend meetings of Iraq’s cabinet — moves that have prompted the prime minister to try to push him aside.

On Monday, Mr. Nujaifi, another Iraqiya leader, made a televised speech warning of the deteriorating human rights picture in Iraq, marked by arbitrary arrests and abuses, and accused Mr. Maliki of using the security forces to advance his political interests.

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Samarra, Iraq.

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France’s Treasury Chief Works to Guard Credit Rating

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Mr. Fernandez, the head of the Treasury within the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry, has already been through a similar crisis-management exercise. That came in early August, when Standard & Poor’s cut the top credit rating of the United States government while most of the French elite was on vacation.

Within hours on a summer Saturday morning, Mr. Fernandez helped organize a series of emergency calls with his boss, Finance Minister Fran?ois Baroin, and others in Paris’s circle of policy makers, to prevent the American crisis from sending a financial tsunami across the Atlantic.

Later that day, Mr. Baroin appeared on French television to question the validity of the United States downgrade. President Sarkozy interrupted his vacation in a show of engagement. But behind the scenes, Mr. Fernandez did much of the heavy lifting.

It was not the first time in the two-year-long European crisis that Mr. Fernandez has quietly kept things moving. And it probably will not be the last.

As France and Germany take the lead in trying to hold the euro currency union together, Mr. Fernandez has emerged as one of Paris’s top power brokers — whether in promoting the French position on the banking sector’s participation in a Greek bailout, or the creation of a rescue fund for troubled countries, or the recent deal by most European Union governments to shore up the foundations of the euro zone.

So much confidence has been placed in Mr. Fernandez that the French news media have started calling him the “guardian of the triple-A.”

But Mr. Fernandez, at 44 a youthful technocrat whose soft blue eyes belie an inner sang-froid, chuckles about the moniker with an almost embarrassed air.

“I’m a civil servant,” he said demurely. “I do what I have to do.”

What he must do now could prove crucial to how well France weathers the country’s seemingly inevitable debt downgrade. Because the demotion has been widely telegraphed by the three major credit rating agencies, Mr. Fernandez and other officials do not expect the impact to be devastating.

Still, a lower credit rating will probably make it more expensive for France to service its debt, and more difficult for the Europewide rescue fund — of which France is a major backer — to operate. That, in turn, could renew tensions between France and Germany over how to manage the euro crisis.

For every photo op in which Mr. Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany trumpet a new step forward, Mr. Fernandez has spent countless hours behind the scenes with an influential man in the presidential cabinet, Xavier Musca, Mr. Sarkozy’s powerful chief of staff, and Berlin’s point man, J?rg Asmussen, to smooth and soothe the sometimes testy French-German relationship.

Mr. Fernandez also exchanges e-mails frequently with officials at the Treasury Department to keep up on developments across the Atlantic. And his ability to parse mind-numbing financial issues better than nearly any other French civil servant helped French leaders look smart during the Group of 20 meetings to which France played host in 2011.

Doing all this largely below the public radar is apparently the way Mr. Fernandez prefers to work. In a country where discretion is a highly prized commodity, his effectiveness comes from operating in the shadows.

“Ramon is the right man in the right place,” said Christine Lagarde, who worked with Mr. Fernandez until last summer, when she resigned as France’s finance minister to become the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

“He is smart, experienced, a good negotiator, but also a critical part of a close-knit network of advisers to the leading political figures,” Ms. Lagarde said.

For Mr. Fernandez’s efforts, he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in December, in a ceremony under the gilded ceilings of the élysée Palace. Mr. Sarkozy cited Mr. Fernandez as a pillar in the management of France’s future.

Yet such moments are rare. Mr. Fernandez generally eschews the elitist trappings embraced by most other government dignitaries.

He rides a motor scooter to work, for example. The idea of being chauffeured around “gives me a headache,” he said. On the scooter, “you take some fresh air, and you are forced to focus on just one thing.”

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As European Union Expands, Unanimity Breaks Down

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AppId is over the quota

But, as the union expands, the notion of universal consent is seen as increasingly unworkable and could be starting to break down. Legislators here are devising new approaches that will enable smaller groups of countries to adopt laws among themselves — without the threat of a veto if all 27 member nations fail to agree.

The move toward smaller groupings reflects a growing fragmentation of the European Union and has been developing for some time. But it took on added significance after a spectacular dispute at the European summit meeting in December, when Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain failed to achieve new safeguards from European Union laws for his nation’s financial-services sector. In retaliation, he blocked a proposed treaty change aimed at helping to strengthen the euro.

Under current rules, groups of at least nine nations may go ahead with legislation if an agreement has stalled. However, they can do so only after all 27 countries have been through the time-consuming process of trying and failing to agree. So far, that has happened in only two cases, but others in which this principle may apply are working their way slowly through the system.

Most prominent are two pieces of draft tax legislation that have been drawn up in a way that ensures that they could work without the cooperation of the British if necessary. Moreover, they seem intended to operate in a way that could prevent Britain from gaining a big competitive advantage from staying outside the plan and undercutting other nations that adopt it.

The most diplomatically fragile proposal involves a financial transaction tax, which has been proposed by the European Commission and could raise about $74 billion a year, starting in 2014. Under the plan, the tax would be levied at a rate of one-tenth of 1 percent on all transactions between institutions. Derivatives contracts would be taxed at the rate of one-hundredth of 1 percent.

French and German policy makers see this as a “Robin Hood tax,” a way of discouraging speculative transactions and raising cash from the bankers who provoked the financial crisis.

Financial analysts say that it was Britain’s concern over this impending legislation — and the potential damage it could do to its banking industry — that was at least partly responsible for its unyielding stance at the December meeting. British leaders feared that in the absence of global regulations, banks would simply relocate from London to New York, Singapore or other lower-tax domains. The British government points out that even a study by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, suggests that the tax could reduce European gross domestic product by 1.76 percent.

Under the proposed legislation, a British veto would no longer prevent nine or more nations that wanted to go ahead from doing so. In principle, this would allow Britain to continue as a partial tax haven. But a clause in the law would require banks in the smaller group of nations to pay the tax on some transactions, even if they operate in London.

Similarly, moves to harmonize the base on which corporate taxes are assessed in Europe could work among a smaller number of nations even if Britain did not take part. Large corporations operating across borders would be able to opt for a unified tax system in the countries that sign up for the plan. That would simplify tax issues for companies operating in the participating nations and might even tempt some to relocate to them at the expense of Britain, which is likely to stay out.

“Obviously, these proposals are both on the table for 27 member states, and we would like to see them agreed by the 27,” said Emer Traynor, spokeswoman on taxation for the European Commission. “However, if that is not possible, these proposals are also workable if done by a smaller group. It is still completely feasible for a smaller group of member states to go ahead with them and deliver big benefits.”

Despite Britain’s December veto of the treaty change on the euro, no additional protection for financial services was secured by the British. Neither of the two tax plans has yet been discussed fully by the 27 member nations, and smaller groups of countries could not contemplate forging ahead unless they were rejected.

The new way of devising laws is not always aimed against Britain. The British have, in fact, joined one plan, which aims to build a European system for patent protection. But the shift in the way the union is legislating is significant because it changes the rules of the game.

Some European officials argue that Britain, which has long promoted the idea of a more variable model of European integration, with countries free to pick and choose the degree of cooperation, is now experiencing the downside. Laws are being drafted in the knowledge that Britain may not take part and so are intended to prevent it from reaping a competitive advantage by staying out.

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Ismail Haniya of Gaza Visits Turkey

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AppId is over the quota

Here in Turkey, where Mr. Haniya arrived after visiting Egypt and Sudan, he was quoted by the semiofficial Anatolian Agency on Monday as saying that “the Arab Spring is turning into an Islamic spring.”

Turkey, ruled by the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party, has grown close to Hamas and has downgraded its relations with Israel. In 2010, a group of ships and boats sailed from Turkey in an effort to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, and Israeli commandos boarded the vessels to stop them. When they met with resistance, the commandos killed nine activists on board. Turkey has demanded an apology and compensation; Israel has refused.

Mr. Haniya visited the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship of the flotilla, on Monday and said, “The blood of Mavi Marmara martyrs and that of Palestinian martyrs is joined for a hopeful future.”

While Mr. Haniya tours the region seeking financial and political support — he is heading to Iran, a major backer, in the coming days, according to the semiofficial Iranian news agency FARS — his rivals in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority were due to meet with Israeli officials on Tuesday for the first time in 15 months.

The meeting, organized in Amman, the Jordanian capital, by King Abdullah II of Jordan, is viewed as an effort to revive peace negotiations aimed at establishing a Palestinian state, but both Palestinian and Israeli officials were keeping expectations for the meeting low. Hamas opposes negotiations with Israel as a waste of time, and it urged the Palestinian Authority not to attend.

By calling the meeting, King Abdullah is, in part, seeking to parry the rise of Islamism, especially that of Hamas within the Palestinian movement. Though Israeli officials want to help him in that task, it was not clear whether they would arrive in Jordan with proposals that could lure the Palestinians back into direct talks.

Hamas has long maintained its political headquarters in Syria, where an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has shaken the country for nearly a year. Mr. Haniya declined Monday to comment on the situation in Syria, or to directly address numerous reports that the group is seeking another base.

“The Hamas leadership currently lives in Damascus,” Mr. Haniya said on NTV, a private television news channel, declining to elaborate on a possible move. “Everything, however, remains open to discussion.”

In a meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Sunday, Mr. Haniya thanked him for Turkey’s continuing support for the lifting of the Israeli embargo on Gaza, and he briefed senior Turkish officials on civilian hardships in Gaza. Mr. Haniya also praised Turkey’s acceptance of 11 Palestinians, former prisoners who were released last year as part of the exchange that led to release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Omer Celik, a senior party official in Turkey, called the Gaza conflict Turkey’s “national issue” and urged Israel to recognize Hamas as a legitimate political organization; Israel, the United States and European nations regard it as a terrorist group.

“If Israel is sincere about the peace process,” Mr. Celik said on NTV, standing next to Mr. Haniya, “it should quit declaring organizations like Hamas that support the peace process illegal, and stop building settlements.”

Turkey backs Egyptian-led reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah that began in May but are moving slowly. Israel says that if Hamas joins the Palestinian Authority, there can be no peace talks. At the moment, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and head of Fatah, is caught between reconciling with Israel and reconciling with Hamas.

Mr. Haniya’s tour is expected to take him to Qatar, Tunisia and Bahrain in addition to Iran.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

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Pawnbrokers Prosper as Greece Struggles With Hard Times

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But the stores — pawnshops and gold dealers — are thriving as Greeks who are short of cash give up jewelry and other valuables to make ends meet and pay new taxes. The authorities reported a veritable explosion in the sector, with 90 percent of the nation’s 224 officially registered pawnshops having opened in the past year.

While these entrepreneurs insist that their services are legitimate, the Greek authorities contend that many of the shops are concealing a rapidly expanding illicit trade in gold, and that much of it is being smuggled out of the debt-racked country, confounding efforts to curb rampant tax evasion.

Similar trends have been reported in other countries that were hit by recession. In the United States and Britain, weakening economies and turmoil in credit markets have helped gold dealers thrive. A decade ago, the same happened in Argentina, after its economic meltdown.

In Greece, new outlets are springing up on streets where bankrupt stores have been boarded up. Competing with old-school pawnbrokers who work out of tiny stores on side streets, the new professionals lease central locations, taking advantage of falling rents. They advertise in newspapers and on television, and slip promotional leaflets under doors and on car windshields. Many also accept cars, yachts and real estate from Greeks no longer able to finance affluent lifestyles.

Many jewelers have joined in, putting placards in their windows reading “I buy gold.” And there are signs of foreign interest. One Italian jewelry wholesaler, which has opened several franchises in Greece, accepts gold teeth as well as jewelry in exchange for cash.

Although most traders are reluctant to talk, those who do say they are just seizing an opportunity created by hard times and the high price of gold, roughly $1,600 an ounce.

“Gold is strong — so there’s a lot of interest in selling,” said Yiannis Spiratos, manager of a pawnshop in central Athens. “We’re just serving that interest.”

He said that 8 in 10 customers sold their goods outright, rather than pawning them. “Some sell their jewelry because they never wear it; many say they need the money to pay the emergency tax,” he said, referring to a new tax on property owners.

Outside his shop, a smartly dressed middle-aged woman said she had just sold some earrings and her husband’s gold watch. “He couldn’t do it; he was too embarrassed,” said the woman, who gave her name only as Anna. She said she had made around $1,500 from the sale, after visiting four other shops for quotes.

With an increasing number of Greeks considering cashing in their jewelry or family heirlooms, the country’s consumer protection agency recently published guidelines to protect people from unscrupulous dealers. It warns against traders promising particularly high prices and advises consumers to weigh their jewelry at home or to have it assayed at a laboratory run by the national association of goldsmiths. The warning followed a government order for stricter inspections of gold dealers to ensure they are licensed and operating legally.

“The crisis is an opportunity for many, and that’s O.K. as long as it’s legal,” said Nikos Lekkas, the head of inspections at the Financial and Economic Crime Unit of the Ministry of Finance.

But although most gold dealers obtain the required operating license from the police, few keep a log of their transactions, as the law dictates. Inspections of pawnshops and gold dealers in Athens indicated that 80 percent were guilty of tax evasion, depriving the government of millions, and possibly billions, of euros in lost revenue, according to the financial crime unit.

Tax evasion remains one of the biggest drains on the Greek state, accounting for about $58 billion annually, or 13 percent of gross domestic product. That remains a sore point with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which have lent Greece billions of euros to avert a default that could be catastrophic for the euro zone.

Inspections by the financial crime unit suggest that some shops are fronts for illegitimate businesses shipping large quantities of gold out of the country illegally. In one recent raid, the police stopped a car near the western port of Patra that was carrying a half ton of silver bars, but no official documents.

The authorities traced the cargo to a pawnshop near Syntagma Square, in the heart of Athens. They said the shop had shipped, in a separate delivery, an eighth of a ton of gold bars to Germany, worth an estimated $8.72 million, again without documents. Investigators said they also traced six Cypriot and German offshore companies to pawnshops and gold dealers in Greece.

There are also signs that some pawnshops are receiving stolen goods, particularly jewelry, which is hard to trace because it is quickly sold or melted down in foundries.

Most pawnshops deny working with foundries. The foundries themselves — whose number tripled during the last year, with 10 now operating in the Athens area — were tight-lipped. Several denied that they worked with gold and none were listed as doing so in Greek directories.

Some financial experts say the trade is much like any other, some of it legal and some not, with the only difference being the higher value of gold.

“Since the beginning of time, people have melted down or sold their jewelry when the need arises,” said Babis Papadimitriou, an economics commentator. “This is what Greeks are doing now.”

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Russian Art Group, Voina, Claims Attack on Police Van

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MOSCOW — A spokesman for the radical art collective Voina on Monday announced that its members had broken into a St. Petersburg police station on New Year’s Eve and used gasoline bombs to incinerate a police vehicle used to transport prisoners as “a gift to all political prisoners of Russia.” Amateur video posted online showed a figure tossing lighted objects under a large vehicle, which was then engulfed in flames and spewed smoke into the night sky.

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The St. Petersburg police responded skeptically to the Voina claims, releasing a statement that described the fire damage to the vehicle as “insignificant” and noting that there were similar rumors of arson after a fire in August that forensics specialists determined had been caused by a short circuit.

Voina, which was founded by a Moscow philosophy student in 2005, won a contemporary art award sponsored by Russia’s Ministry of Culture for a 2010 work that consisted of a 210-foot penis painted on the roadway of a St. Petersburg drawbridge, which rose to point at the offices of the F.S.B., the state security service. Its members went on to a project they called “Palace Revolution,” in which teams of men ran up to parked police cars and flipped them over, in what they described as a protest against police corruption.

The group’s activities dropped off in 2010 after two of its leaders were arrested on serious hooliganism charges; both men were released last spring on bail, with the assistance of $20,000 donated by the British street artist known as Banksy. The charges, which could bring seven-year sentences, still stand. A third member has been in detention on vandalism charges since taking part in a protest on Dec. 6 and is on a hunger strike, Aleksei Plutser-Sarno, the group’s spokesman, said by e-mail.

All day, liberals bickered online over whether the arson attack on the police vehicle constituted “pure art,” as one commentator put it, or, as another maintained, “an act as idiotic as voting for United Russia,” the ruling party.

Andrei V. Yerofeyev, a prominent intellectual who has championed Voina in the past, said he thought that the group had helped awaken a more activist spirit in the Russian populace, and that it should move away from radical political acts like the burning of the police vehicle.

“The goal of art is deeper than activism,” he said. “They have carried out their assignment.”

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Arab League Criticized Over Syria Observer Mission

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AppId is over the quota

But the killings have continued, and the mission has been mired in controversy, much of it focused on its leader: a Sudanese general who, rights activists say, presided over the same kind of deadly and heavy-handed tactics in Sudan that the Arab League mission is seeking to curb in Syria.

Lt. Gen. Muhammad Ahmed al-Dabi, who once ran Sudan’s notorious military intelligence agency, has only compounded the criticism with his recent statements.

Last week, he spoke dismissively about the damage in Homs, a rebellious city that was shelled by government tanks and where dozens of people were killed. “Some places looked a bit of a mess, but there was nothing frightening,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

On Sunday, he publicly contradicted an Arab League observer who told residents in the city of Dara’a that he had seen government snipers and would tell Syrian officials to remove them.

“But he didn’t see,” General Dabi told the BBC, asserting that the observer was referring to a hypothetical case.

In interviews, several people who have dealt with the general said he was a likable and efficient administrator, and some said it was conceivable that he could run the observer mission with fairness.

Others, though, called him exactly the wrong kind of person to lead such a mission: a career enforcer for an authoritarian government who had shown a harsh hand in dealing with opponents.

“I don’t know if they looked into his background,” said Faisal Mohammed Salih, a columnist with the Sudanese newspaper Al Akhbar. “This is a human rights mission. They should have chosen someone who is sensitive to human rights issues. Military men in the Arab world should be the last choice for such missions.”

Several attempts to reach General Dabi on his cellphone or through the observer delegation’s office in Damascus were unsuccessful.

On Monday, the Arab League came to his defense. At a news conference in Cairo, the league’s director, Nabil al-Araby, called General Dabi a “capable military man with a clean reputation,” The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Araby addressed criticism that the observer mission was weak, understaffed and easily manipulated by the government, saying the observers were trying to be less reliant on the government’s planning, The A.P. said.

But he conceded the main criticism of Syrian activists, that the mission has been powerless to stop the bloodshed. Although the tanks had been withdrawn, he said, snipers persisted.

Syrian activists say more than 150 people have been killed since the monitors arrived last week. On Sunday, an Arab League advisory body, the 88-member Arab Parliament, called for the group to leave because the government was continuing to kill its opponents.

Given General Dabi’s biography, the activists have been skeptical of the mission from the start.

Originally from the town of Berber in northern Sudan, General Dabi, 63, graduated from military college in Sudan in 1969, according to a résumé he provided to journalists after his selection.

For decades, he played a forceful if quiet role in the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. He was a member of a trusted inner circle who rose to power immediately after the 1989 coup that brought Mr. Bashir to power. Time and again, the president picked General Dabi for important security posts, often overseeing counterinsurgency campaigns or clampdowns on dissidents.

His first post in the Bashir government was as head of military intelligence. His name was rarely in the news, but reports by Amnesty International from the early 1990s document the role that military intelligence agents played in executions, torture and disappearances as the government fought insurgents in southern Sudan. The rebels were also accused of atrocities, including executions and indiscriminate shelling of cities.

Erwin van der Borght, the director of the Africa Program for Amnesty International, said General Dabi never investigated the “widespread” allegations of atrocities.

Isma’il Kushkush contributed reporting from Khartoum, Sudan, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.

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