Ethnic Groups

For decades, Arab soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas battled by gun, by mortar, by rocket. Now, elections are the latest weapon in the struggle for land and power in Iraq's north. The ballot box has become a battleground in Nineveh province, a high-stakes combat zone where Kurds and Arabs will face off over the future shape of the country -- and confront each other over the past. The outcome could set the stage for another round of violence, which both sides insist that they do not want.

During the last days of Ramadan, Ahmad Chaudhry Nuruddin shut himself inside a small cubicle at the Bait ul Hameed Mosque with only a mattress, a chair and a few religious books. The slightly stooped 79-year-old strung a white sheet over the entrance to perfect his isolation. For the next few days, Nuruddin would follow the Islamic custom of I'tikaf, in which believers become virtual hermits, secluding themselves from the world to focus on the divine. "You spend your time remembering that God Almighty has created the world for the benefit of its people," he said.

Men, women and children gathered before dusk Saturday behind the Portuguese community center in Artesia. They packed the bleachers that circle the dirt ring with its high wood walls painted red. The three-day holiday weekend Festa da Bola would be filled with soccer, laughter, food. But on this evening, the main attraction was a bullfight. It was billed as a "bloodless bullfight" -- in which the animal is not killed in the ring.

In a sun-drenched valley of central Kenya, a few dozen villagers gather each Saturday to sit under the trees and conduct the painstaking work of reconciliation that their government leaders seem happy to avoid. These traumatized victims of Kenya's post-election clashes meet to talk, pray, sing and -- they hope -- heal.

Alice Uchi slowly pushed a near-empty shopping cart down the near-empty aisles flanked by near-empty shelves in what had been the first and largest modern Japanese supermarket in Little Tokyo. "I feel lost. Sad," the retired Los Angeles registered nurse said glumly. Uchi was catching the tail end of Mitsuwa Marketplace's 50% fire sale before it prepares Sunday to shut its doors, marking an emotional transition for many in Little Tokyo.

Seated in the corner of a bustling classroom, school volunteer Hanan Masarwa is barely visible amid a scrum of first-graders. The 18-year-old Masarwa is teaching the children to add as part of an Israeli national service program created in August. The volunteer program is an attempt to provide avenues, other than mandatory military service from which they are exempt, for integrating Arabs and religious Jews more fully into the mainstream Jewish state.

Persistent violence in volatile Diyala province prompted security forces to impose a daylong vehicle ban Friday in the provincial capital, Baqubah, as frictions grew over a U.S.-backed program to recruit Sunnis to fight the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Hundreds of protesters also took to the streets in two other Diyala towns, Muqdadiya and Buhriz, alleging that U.S. forces had detained at least two members of the local Awakening Council, the U.S.

When men with machetes and axes chased Paul Otieno from his home here, they wanted more than his belongings. They wanted to cut off his foreskin. "They were shouting, 'If we don't kill you, we'll cut your private parts,' " Otieno, a 25-year-old mechanic, said of the attack Sunday. "They were just shouting, 'Kill! Chop them all!' " In Kenya, circumcision is a rite of passage for male members of most tribes. The Luos, however, do not practice it.

Laborers living on a tiny coffee farm here in western Kenya awoke in the middle of the night last week to an odd light radiating from their huts. At first it seemed like an early sunrise. Then they realized their homes were on fire. "I told my children, 'Now we are dead,' " recalled Rosemary Nasimiyu, 53, who warned her five youngsters not to scream as they fled, so attackers would not shoot them.

Naivasha, one of Kenya's most popular vacation spots and a onetime playground for British colonialists, on Sunday became the latest city to suffer from ethnic clashes, raising fears that the violence is spreading into previously calm areas. As many as 30 people were killed in the lakeside city, according to opposition leaders, who blamed the attacks on Kikuyu supporters of President Mwai Kibaki.