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Calcutta 2006
100.000
Irak
Irak
1 child
Soldier
1 child
Soldier
WW2
100.000
1 child
1 child
WW2
About Me
Gaza
Gaza
Children 2006
Soldier
50
640.000 (Irak)
Darfur
Last food
Darfur 2
Baby
Holocaust
children 1945
Dafur
Baby 2006
Saddam
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darfur the situation
Last Updated: Thursday, 16 November 2006, 23:04 GMT   |
| Q&A: Sudan's Darfur conflict | |||
More than two million people are living in camps after fleeing three years of fighting in the region and they would be even more vulnerable without any peacekeepers. Sudan's government and the pro-government Arab militias are accused of war crimes against the region's black African population, although the UN has stopped short of calling it genocide.
How did the conflict start? The conflict began in the arid and impoverished region early in 2003 after a rebel group began attacking government targets, saying the region was being neglected by Khartoum. The rebels say the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. Darfur, which means land of the Fur, has faced many years of tension over land and grazing rights between the mostly nomadic Arabs, and farmers from the Fur, Massaleet and Zagawa communities. There are two main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem), although the peace talks were complicated by splits in both groups, some along ethnic lines. The groups opposed to a May peace deal with the government have now merged into the National Redemption Front led by former Darfur governor Ahmed Diraige. What is the government doing? It admits mobilising "self-defence militias" following rebel attacks but denies any links to the Janjaweed, accused of trying to "cleanse" black Africans from large swathes of territory. Refugees from Darfur say that following air raids by government aircraft, the Janjaweed ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering men, raping women and stealing whatever they can find. Human rights groups, the US Congress and the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell all said that genocide was taking place - though a UN investigation team sent to Sudan said that while war crimes had been committed, there had been no intent to commit genocide. Sudan's government denies being in control of the Janjaweed and President Omar al-Bashir has called them "thieves and gangsters". After strong international pressure and the threat of sanctions, the government promised to disarm the Janjaweed. But so far there is little evidence this has happened. Trials have been announced in Khartoum of some members of the security forces suspected of abuses - but this is viewed as part of a campaign against UN-backed attempts to get some 50 key suspects tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. What has happened to the civilians? Millions have fled their destroyed villages, with many heading for camps near Darfur's main towns. But there is not enough food, water or medicine. The Janjaweed patrol outside the camps and Darfurians say the men are killed and the women raped if they venture too far in search of firewood or water. The refugees are also threatened by the diplomatic fallout between Chad and Sudan as the neighbours accuse one another of supporting each other's rebel groups.
Chad's eastern areas have a similar ethnic make-up to Darfur. Many aid agencies are working in Darfur but they are unable to get access to vast areas because of the fighting.
How many have died? With much of Darfur inaccessible to aid workers and researchers, calculating how many deaths there have been in the past three years is impossible.
What researchers have done is to estimate the deaths based on surveys in areas they can reach. The latest research published in September 2006 in the journal Science puts the numbers of deaths above and beyond those that would normally die in this inhospitable area at "no fewer than 200,000". The US researchers say that their figures are the most compelling and persuasive estimate to date. They have made no distinction between those dying as a result of violence and those dying as a result of starvation or disease in refugee camps. Accurate figures are crucial in determining whether the deaths in Darfur are genocide or - as the Sudanese government says - the situation is being exaggerated.
What happened to the peace deal? SLA leader Minni Minawi, who signed the May peace deal, was given a large budget, but his fighters have already been accused by Amnesty International of abuses against people in areas opposed to the peace deal. The smaller SLA faction and Jem did not sign the deal.
The government again promised to disarm the Janjaweed but there appears no evidence of this. The UN's Jan Egeland says that there has been a dramatic increase in violence and displacement since the deal was signed. With the peace deal looking unworkable and amid fears of renewed "all-out war", there appears little prospect of people returning to their villages for some time yet.
Is anyone trying to stop the fighting? About 7,000 African Union troops have slowly been deployed in Darfur on a very limited mandate. Experts say the soldiers are too few to cover an area the size of France, and the African Union says it does not have the money to fund the operation for much longer. Sudan has resisted strong western diplomatic pressure for the UN to take control of the peacekeeping mission. The latest plan envisages 17,000 troops and 3,000 UN policemen but at present there is deadlock. However, UN chief Kofi Annan has said Sudan has agreed in principle to allow a joint peacekeeping force into Darfur.
In April 2006, the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions against four Sudanese nationals accused of war crimes in Darfur that include two rebel leaders, a former air force chief, and a Janjaweed militia leader. A dossier of evidence compiled by a UN commission has also been passed to the ICC in The Hague, along with the names of top war crimes suspects.
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Dafur 3
Rebel
Sudan
George clooney in Sudan
RWANDA
RWANDA
(lost all off his family)
RWANDA
Taliban
Winter 1996 frontline
Kabul
Mother and child 2004
Taliban
Travelling with the Taleban
The BBC's David Loyn has had exclusive access to Taleban forces mobilised against the British army in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.
There is no army on earth as mobile as the Taleban.
I remember it as their secret weapon when I travelled with them in the mid-1990s, as they swept aside rival mujahideen to take most of the country.
Piled into the back of open Toyota trucks, their vehicle of choice, and carrying no possessions other than their weapons, they can move nimbly.
The bare arid landscape of northern Helmand suits them well.
After one hair-raising race across the desert last week, patrolling the large area where they can move at will, they screamed to a stop at a river bank.
Hardy
It was sunset, and time to pray before breaking the Ramadan fast they had kept since sunrise.
Before praying, they washed in a dank-looking pool at the side of the almost-dry river bed.
Afghanistan has been in the grip of a severe drought for several years, but the lack of clean water does not seem to concern these hardy men.
They clean their teeth with sharpened sticks taken from trees, and sleep with only the thinnest shawls to cover them.
They have surprised the British by the ferocity of their fighting and their willingness to take casualties.
Their belief in the imminence of paradise means that few exhibit fear.
When we stopped for the night, they would break into groups to eat in different houses in a village.
They demand and get food and shelter from places where they stop, but it is impossible to say how enthusiastic the villagers really are.
Power base
These remote villages, scattered across the huge expanse of the northern Helmand desert, are very poor, and made poorer by the drought.
The food we shared was just a bowl of rice, a vegetable stew made only of okra, and flat roughly-ground country bread.
The failure of aid policies to make a difference in southern Afghanistan and increasing corruption in the government and the national army, are spreading the power base of the Taleban.
The trucking companies, who backed them first in 1994 when they emerged to clear illegal checkpoints on the roads, are now backing them again.
This time the checkpoints are manned by Afghan government soldiers, who demand money at gunpoint from every driver.
The failure of the international community to stop this makes the military task of the British-led Nato force in the south much harder.
The Taleban official spokesman, Mohammed Anif, explained: "When the Islamic movement of the Taleban started in the first place, the main reason was because of concern among people about corruption.
"People were fed up with having to bribe governors, and other authorities.
"We rose up and saved almost the whole country from the evils of corruption and corrupt commanders. That's why people are supporting the Taleban again now."
Civilian casualties
The intensifying conflict itself also plays into their hands. It is hard for Nato to promote its mission as humanitarian given the inevitable civilian casualties of conflict.
The Taleban deny British claims that hundreds of their soldiers have been killed.
They say that since they wear only the loose long cotton shirts and trousers - shalwar kameez - of any local villager, then the British cannot easily tell them apart.
In a village damaged by a British attack on the night of 7 October, some people were too angry to talk to me because I was British.
One merely pointed to the torn and bloody women's clothing left in the ruins of the house and said bitterly, "Are these the kind of houses they have come to build - the kind where clothing is cut to pieces?".
Nato sources describe this village as being heavily defended by the Taleban, who fired on their forces throughout the operation.
British soldiers landed in helicopters, arrested a suspect and flew away.
But they left six dead in one family, including three young girls, and partially demolished the mosque.
Thousands of people have fled the fighting, many seeking refuge in Kandahar city, where they are putting severe pressure on the ability of the UN's World Food Programme to help.
They fear for the homes and farms they have left behind, and while not active Taleban supporters, it is clear that most blame Nato more for the worsening violence.
Folk memory
One man, Nazar Mohammed, now squatting with his family in a building site in Kandahar, said the Taleban have most to gain in the continuing conflict.
Taleban fighters are highly mobile
"It's very obvious. Right now we see foreigners with tanks driving through our vineyards. They destroy people's orchards.
"They break through the walls and just drive across. When they take up positions in the village like this, nobody can cooperate with them."
There is one other factor that increases Taleban morale.
Few have any education beyond years spent in the madrassas, the fundamentalist religious schools in Pakistan that have produced an endless supply of Taleban for more than a decade.
But all know the story of Afghanistan's past victories over the British.
Engraved in their collective folk memory of Afghanistan's warrior history are tales of the defeat of the British in 1842 and 1880 along with the defeat of the Russians in the 1980s.
The Taleban disappeared to the mountains after their defeat in 2001, and found it hard to recruit.
Five years on they are back, and regrouping against an old enemy.
David Loyn's TV report on Afghanistan can be seen on Newsnight on Wednesday at 2230 (BBC Two). (late okt)
Child
Afganistan
Brothers
2 brothers in Afganistan
Bamiyan
Bamiyan destroyed by Taleban
Hundreds were reportedly killed by the Taleban
The BBC has confirmed that the central Afghan town of Bamiyan was totally destroyed by the Taleban before they fled over the weekend.
The statues were priceless pieces of Buddhist heritage
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Evidence has also emerged of Bosnian-style ethnic cleansing in the region involving the execution of hundreds of local ethnic Hazara men.
BBC correspondent David Loyn reached Bamiyan on Tuesday, becoming the first journalist to witness the devastation.
The Taleban caused international outrage earlier this year by destroying two priceless Buddha statues in Bamiyan in an act of wanton desecration.
But it is now not just the ancient treasures that have disappeared.
Ethnic cleansing
Our correspondent said every building, shop and house had been destroyed before the town fell on Sunday after a two-hour gun battle.
Bamiyan finally fell to ethnic Hazara fighters of the Hezb-i-Wahdat faction, who regard Bamiyan as their capital.
| |
Not just in Bamiyan but around the region, it was clear that the Hazaras had suffered horribly at the hands of the Taleban.
Bazaars had been torched in town after town and there have been reports of Bosnian-style ethnic cleansing involving the execution of hundreds of local men.
The Hezb-i-Wahdat was driven out of Bamiyan by the Taleban in 1998.
The city hit the world's headlines in March, when the destruction of the two giant statues provoked widespread international condemnation and criticism from Muslim leaders around the world.
The Taleban dynamited the monuments, carved into the Hindu Kush mountains, claiming that all statues were false idols and contrary to their Islamic beliefs.
Bamiyan
The houses in Bamiyan
Chomsky
e US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon Al-Adab, August 19, 2006 |
| Though there are many interacting factors, the immediate issue that lies behind the latest US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon remains, I believe, what it was in the four preceding invasions: the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the most important case, the devastating US-backed 1982 Israeli invasion was openly described in Israel as a war for the West Bank, undertaken to put an end to annoying PLO calls for a diplomatic settlement (with the secondary goal of imposing a client regime in Lebanon). There are numerous other illustrations. Despite the many differences in circumstances, the July 2006 invasion falls generally into the same pattern. Among mainstream American critics of Bush administration policies, the favored version is that “We had always approached [conflict between Israel and its neighbors] in a balanced way, assuming that we could be the catalyst for an agreement,” but Bush II regrettably abandoned that neutral stance, causing great problems for the United States (Middle East specialist and former diplomat Edward Walker, a leading moderate). The actual record is quite different: For over 30 years, Washington has unilaterally barred a peaceful political settlement, with only slight and brief deviations. The consistent rejectionism can be traced back to the February 1971 Egyptian offer of a full peace treaty with Israel, in the terms of official US policy, offering nothing for the Palestinians. Israel understood that this peace offer would put an end to any security threat, but the government decided to reject security in favor of expansion, then mostly into northeastern Sinai. Washington supported Israel’s stand, adhering to Kissinger’s principle of “stalemate”: force, not diplomacy. It was only 8 years later, after a terrible war and great suffering, that Washington agreed to Egypt’s demand for withdrawal from its territory. Meanwhile the Palestinian issue had entered the international agenda, and a broad international consensus had crystallized in favor of a two-state settlement on the pre-June 1967 border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments. In December 1975, the UN Security Council agreed to consider a resolution proposed by the Arab “confrontation states” with these provisions, also incorporating the basic wording of UN 242. The US vetoed the resolution. Israel’s reaction was to bomb Lebanon, killing over 50 people in Nabatiye, calling the attack “preventive” – presumably to “prevent” the UN session, which Israel boycotted. The only significant exception to consistent US-Israeli rejectionism was in January 2001, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators came close to agreement in Taba. But the negotiations were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Barak four days early, ending that promising effort. Unofficial but high-level negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December 2002, with similar proposals. It was welcomed by most of the world, but rejected by Israel and dismissed by Washington (and, reflexively, the US media and intellectual classes). Meanwhile US-backed Israeli settlement and infrastructure programs have been “creating facts on the ground” in order to undermine potential realization of Palestinian national rights. Throughout the Oslo years, these programs continued steadily, with a sharp peak in 2000: Clinton’s final year, and Barak’s. The current euphemism for these programs is “disengagement” from Gaza and “convergence” in the West Bank – in Western rhetoric, Ehud Olmert’s courageous program of withdrawal from the occupied territories. The reality, as usual, is quite different. The Gaza “disengagement” was openly announced as a West Bank expansion plan. Having turned Gaza into a disaster area, sane Israeli hawks realized that there was no point leaving a few thousand settlers taking the best land and scarce resources, protected by a large part of the IDF. It made more sense to send them to the West Bank and Golan Heights, where new settlement programs were announced, while turning Gaza into “the world’s largest prison,” as Israeli human rights groups accurately call it. West Bank “Convergence” formalizes these programs of annexation, cantonization, and imprisonment. With decisive US support, Israel is annexing valuable lands and the most important resources of the West Bank (primarily water), while carrying out settlement and infrastructure projects that divide the shrinking Palestinian territories into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another and from whatever pitiful corner of Jerusalem will be left to Palestinians. All are to be imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley, and of course any other access to the outside world. All of these programs are recognized to be illegal, in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and the unanimous decision of the World Court any part of the "separation wall" that is built to “defend” the settlements is “ipso facto” illegal (U.S. Justice Buergenthal, in a separate declaration). Hence about 80-85% of the wall is illegal, as is the entire “convergence” program. But for a self-designated outlaw state and its clients, such facts are minor irrelevancies. Currently, the US and Israel demand that Hamas accept the 2002 Arab League Beirut proposal for full normalization of relations with Israel after withdrawal in accord with the international consensus. The proposal has long been accepted by the PLO, and it has also been formally accepted by the “supreme leader” of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that Hezbollah would not disrupt such an agreement if it is accepted by Palestinians. Hamas has repeatedly indicated its willingness to negotiate in these terms. The facts are doctrinally unacceptable, hence mostly suppressed. What we see, instead, is the stern warning to Hamas by the editors of the New York Times that their formal agreement to the Beirut peace plan is “an admission ticket to the real world, a necessary rite of passage in the progression from a lawless opposition to a lawful government.” Like others, the NYT editors fail to mention that the US and Israel forcefully reject this proposal, and are alone in doing so among relevant actors. Furthermore, they reject it not merely in rhetoric, but far more importantly, in deeds. We see at once who constitutes the “lawless opposition” and who speaks for them. But that conclusion cannot be expressed, even entertained, in respectable circles. The only meaningful support for Palestinians facing national destruction is from Hezbollah. For this reason alone it follows that Hezbollah must be severely weakened or destroyed, just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hezbollah is too deeply embedded within Lebanese society to be eradicated, so Lebanon too must be largely destroyed. An expected benefit for the US and Israel was to enhance the credibility of threats against Iran by eliminating a Lebanese-based deterrent to a possible attack. But none of this turned out as planned. Much as in Iraq, and elsewhere, Bush administration planners have created catastrophes, even for the interests they represent. That is the primary reason for the unprecedented criticism of the administration among the foreign policy elite, even before the invasion of Iraq. In the background lie more far-reaching and lasting concerns: to ensure what is called “stability” in the reigning ideology. “Stability,” in simple words, means obedience. “Stability” is undermined by states that do not strictly follow orders, secular nationalists, Islamists who are not under control (in contrast, the Saudi monarchy, the oldest and most valuable US ally, is fine), etc. Such “destabilizing” forces are particularly dangerous when their programs are attractive to others, in which case they are called “viruses” that must be destroyed. “Stability” is enhanced by loyal client states. Since 1967, it has been assumed that Israel can play this role, along with other “peripheral” states. Israel has become virtually an off-shore US military base and high-tech center, the natural consequence of its rejection of security in favor of expansion in 1971, and repeatedly since. These policies are subject to little internal debate, whoever holds state power. The policies extend world-wide, and in the Middle East, their significance is enhanced by one of the leading principles of foreign policy since World War II (and for Britain before that): to ensure control over Middle East energy resources, recognized for 60 years to be “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” The standard Western version is that the July 2006 invasion was justified by legitimate outrage over capture of two Israeli soldiers at the border. The posture is cynical fraud. The US and Israel, and the West generally, have little objection to capture of soldiers, or even to the far more severe crime of kidnapping civilians (or of course to killing civilians). That had been Israeli practice in Lebanon for many years, and no one ever suggested that Israel should therefore be invaded and largely destroyed. Western cynicism was revealed with even more dramatic clarity as the current upsurge of violence erupted after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, on June 25. That too elicited huge outrage, and support for Israel's sharp escalation of its murderous assault on Gaza. The scale is reflected in casualties: in June, 36 Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza; in July, the numbers more than quadrupled to over 170, dozens of them children. The posture of outrage was, again, cynical fraud, as demonstrated dramatically, and conclusively, by the reaction to Israel's kidnapping of two Gaza civilians, the Muamar brothers, one day before, on June 24. They disappeared into Israel's prison system, joining the hundreds of others imprisoned without charge -- hence kidnapped, as are many of those sentenced on dubious charges. There was some brief and dismissive mention of the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers, but no reaction, because such crimes are considered legitimate when carried out by “our side.” The idea that this crime would justify a murderous assault on Israel would have been regarded as a reversion to Nazism.
The distinction is clear, and familiar throughout history: to paraphrase Thucydides, the powerful are entitled to do as they wish, while the weak suffer as they must. We should not overlook the progress that has been made in undermining the imperial mentality that is so deeply rooted in Western moral and intellectual culture as to be beyond awareness. Nor should we forget the scale of what remains to be achieved, tasks that must be undertaken in solidarity and cooperation by people in North and South who hope to see a more decent and civilized world. |
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srebrenica
