Peru's Airport Siege: A Bad Omen for the New President (Time.com)

If the past few days are any indication of things to come, Peru's President-elect Ollanta Humala is in for a rough ride when he takes office on July 28. On Saturday, indigenous protesters in the country's southeast radically upped the stakes in their nearly seven-week campaign against the government's mining and oil/gas policies by taking over an airport in Juliaca, the business hub of the Puno department. Five protesters were killed by the police the previous day in an earlier attempt to take the airport. The losses from the series of strikes and shut-downs is estimated at close to $100 million and, apart from the violence, are sending shudders through an economy already nervous about Humala's left-leaning proclivities. Indeed, the controversy has become more than a quarrel about a single project but has come to symbolize a larger debate about development in Peru.

"The government allowed this problem to grow from opposition to a mining project to opposition to mining and hydrocarbons in general," says Rolando Luque, of the Peruvian government's human rights ombudsman's office. (See why Peru is fearful of its new president.)

Luque says such conflicts will likely increase when Humala takes office, with Peruvians expecting him to make good on campaign promises to better distribute the wealth generated by the country's decade-long economic boom. "We are talking about economic growth between 6% and 10% annually for the past few years, which has created expectation in the population," says Luque. "These expectations are likely to increase, forcing the state to be more representative and effective when it comes to how resources are used."

The protests in Puno began in early May in a few towns bordering Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, which Peru's shares with neighboring Bolivia. The initial demand was for the cancellation of a mining concession granted in 2007 to Canada's Bear Creek Mining. Protesters blocked the bordering crossing with Bolivia and other highways. The government of incumbent President Alan GarcIa began responding only after the first flare-up of violence in late May, when protesters set fire to several government buildings and threatened to disrupt the June 5 presidential elections that Humala eventually won. (Humala took Puno department with almost 78% of the vote, his largest margin of victory among Peru's 26 administrative departments.) (See pictures of Peru's sacred glacier.)

The GarcIa government offered to partially meet the demands of the indigenous protesters and environmental activists, announcing that it would suspend mining concessions for 12 months. Protests leaders, however, rejected the offer and re-erected roadblocks on June 7, insisting on the elimination of Bear Creek's permit. The strike then spread from the four provinces around Lake Titicaca to the whole of Puno department, affecting other industries as well. "We have been clear from the start that we want this concession, which was illegally awarded, to be withdrawn," Walter Aduviri, head of the environmental front that led the initial strike, told TIME in a telephone interview prior to the violent incident at the airport.

The government finally decided to rescind the Bear Creek concession on June 24, but the move came just as 4,000 protesters were already marching on the Juliaca airport. Police officers fired on the protesters when they tried to take over the runway. Thousands returned to the airport the following day, taking over the terminal and occupying the runway. Protest leaders have not indicated whether they plan on lifting the strike, but demonstrators had left the Juliaca airport by Sunday morning and there were no reports of protests in other areas of Puno. President GarcIa on Saturday said there were "dark political interests" behind the protests that want to pressure Humala, who is just now beginning to form his Cabinet and the roadmap he will follow in his five-year term.

Humala, for his part, has refused demands from members of GarcIa's APRA party that he get involved in the conflict. "I call on the central government and leaders in Puno to put aside violent actions and look for a peaceful solution," Humala said on Saturday even as he refused to get into the direct negotiations with any party in the Puno conflict. Most analysts agree that any solution reached between the GarcIa government and the protesters will likely be temporary; and that Humala will inherit the mess upon his inauguration, facing intense pressure not only from the protesters but from corporations, both local and global, with huge investments in Peru. (See the Nobel prize winner that didn't become Peru's president.)

The government and mining and oil/gas companies estimate that there will be more than $50 billion in investment in new projects in the coming 10 years. Bear Creek is not the only company to be adversely affected by protests. In April, the government revoked the concession for a $950-million copper project being developed by Southern Copper Corporation. That move came after four people were killed in clashes with police officers. Last week, the GarcIa government also cancelled a $4-billion hydroelectric plant that would have been built in Puno's Carabaya province.

Meanwhile, according to Luque's office, nearly 100 protesters have been killed past three years in clashes with police officers, including 24 police officers and 10 indigenous protesters killed during a clash on June 5, 2009. The ombudsman's office catalogued 227 local protest movements in May, with Puno in second place nationally with 21 such conflicts. Hernando de Soto, Peru's best known economist, told TIME in an interview several weeks earlier that his Democracy and Liberty Institute estimates around 1,000 social conflicts simmering in the country.

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Church siege suspect kills police

More than 70 people were killed at the siege at Our Lady of Salvation Church, Baghdad, above, in October 2010.NEW: Death toll has surged to 17, including six officersOfficial: Another suspect in the church siege is among the woundedThe suspect was being escorted when he opened fire, the interior ministry saysPolice say the suspect, Huthaifa al-Batawi, is dead after a gunfight

Baghdad (CNN) -- An Iraqi man accused in an October siege at a Baghdad church grabbed a police officer's gun while being moved from a detention cell Sunday and opened fire, killing 17 people, a military spokesman said.

The victims included six police officers, said Gen. Qassim Atta of Baghdad Operations Command. Several others were wounded, including another suspect in the church seige.

The shooter was identified as Huthaifa al-Batawi, described by Iraqi officials as the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the "mastermind, direct supervisor and planner" of the October 2010 siege at Our Lady of Salvation Church that left more than 70 people dead and 75 more wounded.

Al-Batawi, who was handcuffed, was being moved from a detention cell inside the interior ministry compound to an office where he was to be questioned in the investigation when he grabbed the gun, the ministry said.

Al-Batawi was subsequently killed in a gunfight inside the ministry compound.

An investigation is under way to determine whether al-Batawi acted alone, the ministry said.

Interior ministry officials said al-Batawi had confessed after his November 2010 arrest to his role in the church siege. He told Iraqi authorities he was the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes a number of Sunni extremist organizations and has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for the Baghdad church siege.

As many as 120 people were taken hostage inside the church. Gunmen held them for hours before security forces stormed in to end the standoff, arresting eight suspects.

Most of the hostages were killed or wounded when the attackers set off explosives inside the church, defense ministry officials said at the time.

Al-Batawi and the other gunmen were demanding that the Iraqi government release a number of prisoners, saying the Christian hostages would be freed in return, according to officials at the time.

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Despite siege, Syrians vow to keep protesting

CAIRO (AP) — The Syrian military intensified its vigorous assault on the besieged city at the center of the country's uprising Sunday as defiant residents who have been pinned down in their homes for nearly a week struggled to find food, pass along information and bury their dead.

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In this citizen journalism image acquired by the AP, Syrian anti-government protesters carry candles during a night gathering in the coastal city of Banias, Syria.

AP

In this citizen journalism image acquired by the AP, Syrian anti-government protesters carry candles during a night gathering in the coastal city of Banias, Syria.

President Bashar Assad is determined to crush the six-week-old revolt, which began in the southern city of Daraa but quickly spread across the nation of some 23 million people.

Now, the once-unthinkable protests are posing the most serious challenge to four decades of rule by the Assad family in one of the most repressive and tightly controlled countries in the Middle East.

"The security solution isn't working. People are still demonstrating," Damascus-based human rights activist Razan Zaitouneh told The Associated Press by telephone. "They can't stop these (protests) now."

A drought-plagued city near the Jordanian border, Daraa has been without water, fuel or electricity since Monday, when the regime sent in troops backed by tanks and snipers to crush protests seeking the ouster of Assad. The 45-year-old, British-trained eye doctor inherited power from his father 11 years ago but failed to fulfill early promises of reform.

He has portrayed the unrest as a foreign conspiracy by extremists and armed thugs, not true reform-seekers.

The death toll has soared to 545 nationwide from government forces firing on demonstrators ? action that has drawn international condemnation and U.S. financial penalties on top figures in his regime.

Syrian army tanks shelled the old quarter of Daraa on Sunday and rolled in six armored vehicles, flanked on either side by two buses packed with more security forces, residents said. Snipers nesting on rooftops and hiding in high mosque minarets have kept people cowering in fear inside their homes.

But residents remained defiant and resourceful, using battery-powered computers and satellite telephones to communicate with the outside world, and sneaking through alleyways to share information. With soldiers stationed at cemeteries ? apparently an attempt to pinpoint the families of protesters ? many were hiding corpses in refrigerated trucks.

Unable to leave their homes, Daraa residents chant "God is Great!" to each other from their windows in the evenings, infuriating security forces and raising each other's spirits.

"Our houses are close to each other, so even though we can't go outside, we stand by the windows and chant," said a Daraa resident, speaking to the AP by satellite phone. "Our neighbors can hear us and they respond."

Syrian troops opened fire above their heads to silence them, the resident said.

Other areas of the country also have come under military control, but Daraa has faced the most serious stranglehold. It was in Daraa that the protest movement kicked off six weeks ago, sparked by the arrest of a group of teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall in Daraa. Now, the city has become a symbol of the uprising.

The witness' accounts of the siege on Daraa could not be independently verified. Syria has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted access to trouble spots, making it almost impossible to confirm the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.

In a posting on a Syrian revolution website, one activist joked that if the newly married royals Prince William and Kate Middleton wanted to honeymoon somewhere away from media attention, Syria would be an excellent location.

The Obama administration hit three top Syrian officials as well as Syria's intelligence agency and Iran's Revolutionary Guard with sanctions over the crackdown.

"I think it's clear that (Assad) is willing to slaughter his own people," Arizona Sen. John McCain told the CBS show "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "The question is, what can we do to affect the outcome? And frankly, I don't see a military option. Libya, they had a group of people who at least were semi-organized that we could support."

The unrest in Syria has international repercussions because of the country's alliances with militant groups like Lebanon's Hezbollah and with Shiite powerhouse Iran. If the regime in Syria falls, the instability has the potential to upend the regional power balance in a part of the world that already is riven with strife.

In recent weeks, there have been small signs that cracks are developing in the regime.

Hundreds of members of Assad's ruling Baath Party have resigned over the crackdown.

Human rights activists uploaded a video to YouTube on Sunday that they say showed another 200 party members publicly stepping down in Rasten, where protests turned violent on Friday.

"Our martyrs don't just deserve that we resign from the party. They deserve that we step on this party!" said one man speaking into a microphone as a few thousand residents crowded before an open stage.

The president has responded with overtures of reform coupled with a crackdown, but the rising death toll has enraged protesters to the extent that they are now demanding nothing less than the downfall of the regime.

On Saturday, Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar said the government is preparing a "comprehensive plan for the aspired reforms" in the coming weeks "in response to the citizens' demands and needs."

But previous overtures have failed to dampen the protests, and Safar's announcement ? which once would have been considered a leap forward for reform ? barely registered with those at the heart of the rebellion.

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