From the December 2007, Eartheasy newsletter, a lovely greeting from one friend to another of peace and joy for the holiday season:
I SALUTE YOU
There is nothing I can give which you have not;
but there is much that, while I
Can not give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts
Find rest in it today.
Take happiness.
No peace lies in the future,
which is not somewhere hidden in this present instant.
Take Peace
The sometime gloom of the world is but a shadow;
Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
Take joy
And so, at this holiday time, I greet you,
With the prayer that for you, now and forever
The days break with peace,
and all shadows flee from your path.
Fra Giovanni
A salutation written to a friend in 1513
Friday, December 21, 2007
Destructive of the American War
It is unfortunate that instead of stories about finding peace, there are so many stories about the destructive nature of war.
From the Saturday, November 17, 2007, World & Comment section, pages AA, AA2:
JOURNAL: HO CHI MINH CITY
Beautiful, bustling Saigon haunted by ghosts of 'the American war'
Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau
Ho Chi Minh City - The Saigon River comes alive at night. From the fifth-floor terrace of the Majestic Hotel, it's a torrent of tugboats, and barges and groaning ferries filled with a million motorcyclists on the move.
Everyone seems to be beeping a horn, anxious to get to the other side, to go home, leave home, visit friends, have a drink - do whatever the upwardly mobile do on a Saturday night in Saigon - as the locals continue to call it, despite the official "Ho Chi Minh City."
Out on the water, the glow of neon billboards casts bands of electric colour across the surface: brilliant purples and blues and gold, and intermittently, as big bunches of water hibiscus come sliding down stream, fishermen in thin dugouts - as though from another era - navigate their way silently upriver, through the coloured bands and back into darkness.
The air is soft. It's 29 Celsius. And the moon is swept with clouds.
I went down into the street and bought a copy of Graham Greene's The Quiet American from a hawker, and over the next few days read it aloud to my wife, Mary - which I still think is a great way to read a book so beautifully written.
You can't come here as a Westerner, especially as a baby boomer, and not be consumed by memories of "the Vietnam War."
The Vietnamese, by the way, call it "the American War."
Published in Britain in 1955, Greene's novel was the anti-clarion call to arms: a grim warning of what lay ahead for America if it stumbled its way into an all-out war, which it did of course, and at great cost.
When the U.S. edition was printed in 1956, it was dismissed in the United States as "anti-American."
How haunting that book is today. How stinging.
"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," says the book's protagonist, British journalist Thomas Fowler, of CIA agent Alden Pyle, the "quiet American" of the title.
The late American war correspondent and author David Halberstam once said he and his generation of reporters in Vietnam all carried dog-eared copies of Greene's book.
"It was our Bible," he said.
For two days and a night, we hired a boat and a guide and travelled the Mekong Delta, a web of waterways so intricate and complex it left you puzzled and humbled - and wondering how any foreign force could believe it could fight and win here.
And I wondered, too, how after everything, small children still come charging out of the bush to the riverbank, dragging their mothers with them, to smile and wave at foreign people moving slowly upriver in a boat.
How does that happen?
Back in Saigon, I went to the War Remnants Museum and was reminded that Graham Greene's eloquent book was by no means the only warning issued.
There, starkly displayed, was Life magazine's first great cover story on the war in Vietnam by legendary photographer Larry Burrows, "Mekong Delta Sweep."
The article began: "The fighting in South Vietnam, where each hour deepens U.S. commitment..."
The date was Jan. 25, 1963.
The article noted that only 53 Americans had died.
By war's end that number would be 58,000. At least 1.7 million Vietnamese would also die.
It was at the museum - in the final room where visitors can write impressions in a guest book - that I stumbled upon one man's sombre reflection on the "powerlessness" of the American majority:
It is my deep hope that the people of the world will be able to separate 'America' from 'Americans' and know how sorry, remorseful, ashamed and disgusted the vast majority of Americans are - both in regards to this war and that in Iraq. We want peace, but just like everywhere, we are largely powerless over the actions of our government."
Joshua, Tucson, AZ
And it reminded me, that 38 years ago this week, more than a quarter of a million Americans took to the streets of Washington, D.C., to demand a U.S. pullout from Vietnam.
But America was very different then.
Bill Schiller is the Star's Asia Bureau Chief. Contact him at bschiller@thestar.ca
From the Saturday, November 17, 2007, World & Comment section, pages AA, AA2:
JOURNAL: HO CHI MINH CITY
Beautiful, bustling Saigon haunted by ghosts of 'the American war'
Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau
Ho Chi Minh City - The Saigon River comes alive at night. From the fifth-floor terrace of the Majestic Hotel, it's a torrent of tugboats, and barges and groaning ferries filled with a million motorcyclists on the move.
Everyone seems to be beeping a horn, anxious to get to the other side, to go home, leave home, visit friends, have a drink - do whatever the upwardly mobile do on a Saturday night in Saigon - as the locals continue to call it, despite the official "Ho Chi Minh City."
Out on the water, the glow of neon billboards casts bands of electric colour across the surface: brilliant purples and blues and gold, and intermittently, as big bunches of water hibiscus come sliding down stream, fishermen in thin dugouts - as though from another era - navigate their way silently upriver, through the coloured bands and back into darkness.
The air is soft. It's 29 Celsius. And the moon is swept with clouds.
I went down into the street and bought a copy of Graham Greene's The Quiet American from a hawker, and over the next few days read it aloud to my wife, Mary - which I still think is a great way to read a book so beautifully written.
You can't come here as a Westerner, especially as a baby boomer, and not be consumed by memories of "the Vietnam War."
The Vietnamese, by the way, call it "the American War."
Published in Britain in 1955, Greene's novel was the anti-clarion call to arms: a grim warning of what lay ahead for America if it stumbled its way into an all-out war, which it did of course, and at great cost.
When the U.S. edition was printed in 1956, it was dismissed in the United States as "anti-American."
How haunting that book is today. How stinging.
"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," says the book's protagonist, British journalist Thomas Fowler, of CIA agent Alden Pyle, the "quiet American" of the title.
The late American war correspondent and author David Halberstam once said he and his generation of reporters in Vietnam all carried dog-eared copies of Greene's book.
"It was our Bible," he said.
For two days and a night, we hired a boat and a guide and travelled the Mekong Delta, a web of waterways so intricate and complex it left you puzzled and humbled - and wondering how any foreign force could believe it could fight and win here.
And I wondered, too, how after everything, small children still come charging out of the bush to the riverbank, dragging their mothers with them, to smile and wave at foreign people moving slowly upriver in a boat.
How does that happen?
Back in Saigon, I went to the War Remnants Museum and was reminded that Graham Greene's eloquent book was by no means the only warning issued.
There, starkly displayed, was Life magazine's first great cover story on the war in Vietnam by legendary photographer Larry Burrows, "Mekong Delta Sweep."
The article began: "The fighting in South Vietnam, where each hour deepens U.S. commitment..."
The date was Jan. 25, 1963.
The article noted that only 53 Americans had died.
By war's end that number would be 58,000. At least 1.7 million Vietnamese would also die.
It was at the museum - in the final room where visitors can write impressions in a guest book - that I stumbled upon one man's sombre reflection on the "powerlessness" of the American majority:
It is my deep hope that the people of the world will be able to separate 'America' from 'Americans' and know how sorry, remorseful, ashamed and disgusted the vast majority of Americans are - both in regards to this war and that in Iraq. We want peace, but just like everywhere, we are largely powerless over the actions of our government."
Joshua, Tucson, AZ
And it reminded me, that 38 years ago this week, more than a quarter of a million Americans took to the streets of Washington, D.C., to demand a U.S. pullout from Vietnam.
But America was very different then.
Bill Schiller is the Star's Asia Bureau Chief. Contact him at bschiller@thestar.ca
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Peace Talks Versus Daily Strife: Israelis & Palestinians
From the World & Comment section of the Toronto Star, Tuesday, December 18, 2007, pages AA, AA5, an article about the irony of Israeli-Palestinian skirmishes while there are international efforts for peace:
TALK OF PEACE DOES NOTHING TO BRING END TO DAILY STRIFE
Israeli-Palestinian tit-for-tat skirmishes remain out of sight and mind for many
Oakland Ross
Middle East Bureau
Jerusalem - It was another autumn morning in the Holy Land, and it began in the usual way, with a mixture of sunshine and clouds, mild temperatures, and a deadly strike by the Israeli air force.
The target was a group of suspected Hamas militants gathered in the town of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Completed almost as soon as it began, the aerial attack left three Palestinians dead and four others wounded.
It was 8:34 a.m. on Wednesday Dec. 5 and the war had resumed for another day.
It's a strange kind of war, at once distant and familiar, a deadly battle that is oddly unobtrusive for most people here, most Israelis anyway. The conflict barely gets covered in the local media and instead persists, like an annoying background drone, something that's unpleasant but bearable and that won't go away.
Lately, the air waves have been filled with talk of peace - skeptical talk, for the most part - but nontheless the subject has been harmony, or the hope of harmony, and the focus has been the recent resumption of international efforts to put an end to six decades of armed strife between Israelis and Palestinians.
But words are one thing. Weapons are another.
The harsh daily reality lived by many people here - mostly Palestinians but some Israelis, too - has not changed much, if at all, and it feels a lot less like peace than it does like war.
"There are incursions every day," said Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, equivalent to the Red Cross. "Perhaps you have heard that, in Bethlehem, one man was killed today, and three were killed in Gaza."
He was speaking to a reporter near the end of another day of life and death in this realm of prophets, miracles, and saints, a day marred instead by rocket salvoes and mortar attacks, by rifle-fire exchanges and attempted bombings - a litany of hostilities that left approximately eight people dead, all of them Palestinian.
Yesterday, Israel killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander and at least four other militants in the Gaza Strip, prompting the group to threaten suicide bombings within the Jewish state.
Many terms are used to describe these daily clashes, and they vary according to which side is doing the talking - "resistance struggle," "security operations," assassinations," "jihad," "terrorism."
Unlike the many other conflagrations that have inflamed the Middle East in recent decades, this particular conflict does not really have a name, and it takes place largely out of sight and mind of most people here.
It's a low-intensity confrontation between asymmetrical sides, and it is typically fought in locations where few Israeli civilians would dare to venture.
But, invisible or not, a war is being waged in the Holy Land, under cover of darkness or by the light of day, splintering wooden doors, smashing cinderblock walls, puncturing steel panels, zinc roofs, and human flesh. Its chief characteristic - apart from bloodshed and woe - is its remarkable obduracy.
It just won't quit.
"Every night, Israeli troops go into Ramallah or Hebron to catch some of the activists," said a Palestinian woman who did not wish her name to be published. She was referring to several Palestinian cities in the West Bank which, unlike Gaza, is still under formal Israeli military occupation. "In Nablus, every night, the Israelis are in the old city to arrest some people."
But the conflict cuts both ways, and not all of the victims are Palestinian, although the majority are.
Since the Islamist militants of Hamas took power by force in Gaza in mid-June, paramilitary organizations there have fired more than 353 rockets and 554 mortar shells at Israeli targets, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose figures were last updated on Nov. 30.
During this period, the Palestinian rockets - home-made contraptions, known as Qassams - have killed two Israelis, injured many others and drive thousands more to flee the southern town of Sderot, target of most of these attacks. The mortars, by contrast, are aimed mainly at Israeli military sites.
"I think they would like to kill more people if they could," said Ephraim Kam, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has written extensively about the Palestinian conflict.
For its part, Hamas insists the not-very-accurate, short-range rockets that soar daily out of Gaza "do little damage compared to Israeli firepower" and "have turned out to be a more acceptable tactic in the West than martyrdom operations," according to a brief penned by Ahmed Yusef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
"Martyrdom operations" is a term some Palestinians use to describe a form of attack better known in the West as "suicide bombings," a tactic now largely abandoned by Palestinian militant organizations.
Following its eruption in September 2000, a Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada caused shocking levels of violence that affected both sides, killing combatants and innocents alike.
In April 2002 alone, Palestinians suffered 245 fatalities, their worst single month. That same year, 451 Israelis were killed.
The carnage has subsided dramatically since then. Last year, 30 Israelis were killed in political violence. So far this year, eight have lost their lives.
Palestinian deaths are far higher than this but still vastly reduced from the early years of the intifada. This past May, for example, 53 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. In June, 27 Palestinians died.
In all, more than 4,500 Palestinians have perished in fighting since the intifada began a little more than 1,100 lives in the same period.
For all practical purposes,the intifada is over now. But an intractable and bloody war of attrition grinds on in its place. Almost daily, more attacks are carried out or attempted, triggering reprisals, leading to further attacks.
Every day, more people die.
Now many worry that this low-intensity conflict may soon explode again into a high-octane war should Israeli forces launch a large-scale invasion of Gaza to halt suspected arms smuggling form Egypt and to cripple the territory's military infrastructure.
"Violence," said Sari Bashi,a Palestinian human-rights activist, "does not help the peace process."
TALK OF PEACE DOES NOTHING TO BRING END TO DAILY STRIFE
Israeli-Palestinian tit-for-tat skirmishes remain out of sight and mind for many
Oakland Ross
Middle East Bureau
Jerusalem - It was another autumn morning in the Holy Land, and it began in the usual way, with a mixture of sunshine and clouds, mild temperatures, and a deadly strike by the Israeli air force.
The target was a group of suspected Hamas militants gathered in the town of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Completed almost as soon as it began, the aerial attack left three Palestinians dead and four others wounded.
It was 8:34 a.m. on Wednesday Dec. 5 and the war had resumed for another day.
It's a strange kind of war, at once distant and familiar, a deadly battle that is oddly unobtrusive for most people here, most Israelis anyway. The conflict barely gets covered in the local media and instead persists, like an annoying background drone, something that's unpleasant but bearable and that won't go away.
Lately, the air waves have been filled with talk of peace - skeptical talk, for the most part - but nontheless the subject has been harmony, or the hope of harmony, and the focus has been the recent resumption of international efforts to put an end to six decades of armed strife between Israelis and Palestinians.
But words are one thing. Weapons are another.
The harsh daily reality lived by many people here - mostly Palestinians but some Israelis, too - has not changed much, if at all, and it feels a lot less like peace than it does like war.
"There are incursions every day," said Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, equivalent to the Red Cross. "Perhaps you have heard that, in Bethlehem, one man was killed today, and three were killed in Gaza."
He was speaking to a reporter near the end of another day of life and death in this realm of prophets, miracles, and saints, a day marred instead by rocket salvoes and mortar attacks, by rifle-fire exchanges and attempted bombings - a litany of hostilities that left approximately eight people dead, all of them Palestinian.
Yesterday, Israel killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander and at least four other militants in the Gaza Strip, prompting the group to threaten suicide bombings within the Jewish state.
Many terms are used to describe these daily clashes, and they vary according to which side is doing the talking - "resistance struggle," "security operations," assassinations," "jihad," "terrorism."
Unlike the many other conflagrations that have inflamed the Middle East in recent decades, this particular conflict does not really have a name, and it takes place largely out of sight and mind of most people here.
It's a low-intensity confrontation between asymmetrical sides, and it is typically fought in locations where few Israeli civilians would dare to venture.
But, invisible or not, a war is being waged in the Holy Land, under cover of darkness or by the light of day, splintering wooden doors, smashing cinderblock walls, puncturing steel panels, zinc roofs, and human flesh. Its chief characteristic - apart from bloodshed and woe - is its remarkable obduracy.
It just won't quit.
"Every night, Israeli troops go into Ramallah or Hebron to catch some of the activists," said a Palestinian woman who did not wish her name to be published. She was referring to several Palestinian cities in the West Bank which, unlike Gaza, is still under formal Israeli military occupation. "In Nablus, every night, the Israelis are in the old city to arrest some people."
But the conflict cuts both ways, and not all of the victims are Palestinian, although the majority are.
Since the Islamist militants of Hamas took power by force in Gaza in mid-June, paramilitary organizations there have fired more than 353 rockets and 554 mortar shells at Israeli targets, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose figures were last updated on Nov. 30.
During this period, the Palestinian rockets - home-made contraptions, known as Qassams - have killed two Israelis, injured many others and drive thousands more to flee the southern town of Sderot, target of most of these attacks. The mortars, by contrast, are aimed mainly at Israeli military sites.
"I think they would like to kill more people if they could," said Ephraim Kam, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has written extensively about the Palestinian conflict.
For its part, Hamas insists the not-very-accurate, short-range rockets that soar daily out of Gaza "do little damage compared to Israeli firepower" and "have turned out to be a more acceptable tactic in the West than martyrdom operations," according to a brief penned by Ahmed Yusef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
"Martyrdom operations" is a term some Palestinians use to describe a form of attack better known in the West as "suicide bombings," a tactic now largely abandoned by Palestinian militant organizations.
Following its eruption in September 2000, a Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada caused shocking levels of violence that affected both sides, killing combatants and innocents alike.
In April 2002 alone, Palestinians suffered 245 fatalities, their worst single month. That same year, 451 Israelis were killed.
The carnage has subsided dramatically since then. Last year, 30 Israelis were killed in political violence. So far this year, eight have lost their lives.
Palestinian deaths are far higher than this but still vastly reduced from the early years of the intifada. This past May, for example, 53 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. In June, 27 Palestinians died.
In all, more than 4,500 Palestinians have perished in fighting since the intifada began a little more than 1,100 lives in the same period.
For all practical purposes,the intifada is over now. But an intractable and bloody war of attrition grinds on in its place. Almost daily, more attacks are carried out or attempted, triggering reprisals, leading to further attacks.
Every day, more people die.
Now many worry that this low-intensity conflict may soon explode again into a high-octane war should Israeli forces launch a large-scale invasion of Gaza to halt suspected arms smuggling form Egypt and to cripple the territory's military infrastructure.
"Violence," said Sari Bashi,a Palestinian human-rights activist, "does not help the peace process."
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Refugees: By-Product of War
Another reason the Iraqi war, started on the basis of bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, is a human rights travesty. As if it is not enough that there are internally displaced persons in Iraq because of the fighting, hundreds of thousands of other Iraqi civilians have fled to Syria.
From the Middle East and Africa section of The Economist, www.economist.com, September 22-28, 2007, page 55:
Iraq and Syria
THE PLIGHT OF THE REFUGEES
Damascus
Syria is finding it hard to cope with the flood of refugees from Iraq
"Do you have a job?" and "What are you doing at the moment?" are leading questions on the whiteboard in an English lesson at an Iraqi refugee community centre in Sayyida Zaynab, a suburb on the edge of Syria's capital, Damascus. The students can expect more such requests for personal data in the coming weeks as the Syrian government and the UN carry out a census to count those who have fled from neighbouring Iraq.
Syria has taken in the lion's share of Iraq's refugees, almost 1.5m of them, of whom well over half are probably Sunni some 15% Shia and maybe 10% Christian. Jordan is thought to account for another 600,000 or so, but no one knows exactly. The Syrian survey will assess the needs of the refugees - and their effect on the host country, which has 19m of its own citizens. Many refugees are running out of savings, slipping into poverty, sometimes into crime and prostitution.
The count will be difficult. If they were all in camps, it would be easier, says Kristele Younes of Refugees International. "It's the first time in the UN's history that there's been an urban crisis of such huge proportions," she says. "They are people who are very difficult to 'see'. They speak Arabic and look pretty similar [to Syrians]. It's almost a ghost population."
In Sayyida Zaynab, near a Shia shrine to Zaynah, the prophet Muhammad's granddaughter, the streets teem with Iraqis. Shops have been taken over by Iraqis, restaurants such as the Bakery Bagdady [sic] sell Iraqi specialities unknown to Syrians, and travel agents offer trips to the border for 500 Syrian pounds ($10). Some 350,000 Iraqis may have moved into this area alone, putting a strain on water and electricity supplies as well as on schools.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, together with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has opened a clinic to cope with the influx of sick Iraqis. Inside, the waiting area is packed. Dr. Akram al-Hasani, a Syrian orthopaedic surgeon, is examining a Basra man still suffering from an arm wound after being shot four years ago. "We have many trauma victims," he says. "And a large proportion of children with congenital problems, more than among Syrians."
In the mainly Christian district of Jaramana, clinic at the Deir Ibrahim Khalil convent has an equally wide range of problems. "Depression, depression, depression," says Sister Malekeh, a Greek Catholic nun. "It's very sad. Now we have a psychiatrist who started two months ago. Before they didn't accept it and wouldn't come to the clinic, but now they have started to come."
In a census in 1987, there were said to be 1.4m Christians in Iraq. In the 1990s, the figure shrank to 1m or so. After Saddam Hussein's demise, they began to be targeted, mainly by Sunni groups linked to al-Qaeda, so most have now fled. An Anglican churchman says that some 1.25m Iraqi Christians now live outside Iraq, with about 250,000 left behind.
International aid workers are queuing up to work in Syria, to relieve the burden on the UN agencies and on the Red Crescent. Eight charities, including Islamic Relief and the Norwegian and Danish Refugee Councils, have been negotiating for months to start projects. The foreign ministry has given its approval, but they must work under the umbrella of the local Red Crescent, which has been slow to reach agreement with the various groups. The Ministry for Social Affairs and Labour, which oversees local NGOs, says that Syrian ones should work mainly for Syrians.
Moreover, Syrian attitudes to Iraqis are hardening, as the numbers overwhelm local services. The government also worries about the cost of providing the extra population with heavily subsidised bread, fuel and other goods.
The UNHCR has managed to register only 135,000 refugees, a fraction of those who have arrived. And they are still trickling in, despite new rules that have in effect closed the border. Only certain favoured categories of applicants, such as lorry drivers, businessmen, academics and engineers, are now being allowed in, with occasional exceptions for the sick.
From the Middle East and Africa section of The Economist, www.economist.com, September 22-28, 2007, page 55:
Iraq and Syria
THE PLIGHT OF THE REFUGEES
Damascus
Syria is finding it hard to cope with the flood of refugees from Iraq
"Do you have a job?" and "What are you doing at the moment?" are leading questions on the whiteboard in an English lesson at an Iraqi refugee community centre in Sayyida Zaynab, a suburb on the edge of Syria's capital, Damascus. The students can expect more such requests for personal data in the coming weeks as the Syrian government and the UN carry out a census to count those who have fled from neighbouring Iraq.
Syria has taken in the lion's share of Iraq's refugees, almost 1.5m of them, of whom well over half are probably Sunni some 15% Shia and maybe 10% Christian. Jordan is thought to account for another 600,000 or so, but no one knows exactly. The Syrian survey will assess the needs of the refugees - and their effect on the host country, which has 19m of its own citizens. Many refugees are running out of savings, slipping into poverty, sometimes into crime and prostitution.
The count will be difficult. If they were all in camps, it would be easier, says Kristele Younes of Refugees International. "It's the first time in the UN's history that there's been an urban crisis of such huge proportions," she says. "They are people who are very difficult to 'see'. They speak Arabic and look pretty similar [to Syrians]. It's almost a ghost population."
In Sayyida Zaynab, near a Shia shrine to Zaynah, the prophet Muhammad's granddaughter, the streets teem with Iraqis. Shops have been taken over by Iraqis, restaurants such as the Bakery Bagdady [sic] sell Iraqi specialities unknown to Syrians, and travel agents offer trips to the border for 500 Syrian pounds ($10). Some 350,000 Iraqis may have moved into this area alone, putting a strain on water and electricity supplies as well as on schools.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, together with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has opened a clinic to cope with the influx of sick Iraqis. Inside, the waiting area is packed. Dr. Akram al-Hasani, a Syrian orthopaedic surgeon, is examining a Basra man still suffering from an arm wound after being shot four years ago. "We have many trauma victims," he says. "And a large proportion of children with congenital problems, more than among Syrians."
In the mainly Christian district of Jaramana, clinic at the Deir Ibrahim Khalil convent has an equally wide range of problems. "Depression, depression, depression," says Sister Malekeh, a Greek Catholic nun. "It's very sad. Now we have a psychiatrist who started two months ago. Before they didn't accept it and wouldn't come to the clinic, but now they have started to come."
In a census in 1987, there were said to be 1.4m Christians in Iraq. In the 1990s, the figure shrank to 1m or so. After Saddam Hussein's demise, they began to be targeted, mainly by Sunni groups linked to al-Qaeda, so most have now fled. An Anglican churchman says that some 1.25m Iraqi Christians now live outside Iraq, with about 250,000 left behind.
International aid workers are queuing up to work in Syria, to relieve the burden on the UN agencies and on the Red Crescent. Eight charities, including Islamic Relief and the Norwegian and Danish Refugee Councils, have been negotiating for months to start projects. The foreign ministry has given its approval, but they must work under the umbrella of the local Red Crescent, which has been slow to reach agreement with the various groups. The Ministry for Social Affairs and Labour, which oversees local NGOs, says that Syrian ones should work mainly for Syrians.
Moreover, Syrian attitudes to Iraqis are hardening, as the numbers overwhelm local services. The government also worries about the cost of providing the extra population with heavily subsidised bread, fuel and other goods.
The UNHCR has managed to register only 135,000 refugees, a fraction of those who have arrived. And they are still trickling in, despite new rules that have in effect closed the border. Only certain favoured categories of applicants, such as lorry drivers, businessmen, academics and engineers, are now being allowed in, with occasional exceptions for the sick.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Urging a Diplomatic Resolution to U.S./Iran Nuclear Dispute
An editorial in the Sunday, October 28, 2007, Toronto Star, Comment section, page 22, urges a diplomatic resolution of the American/Iranian showdown over Iran's nuclear capabilities:
PRESSING IRAN TO DISARM
Having branded Iran an "axis of evil" soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, U.S. President George Bush seems determined not to lave the White House without taking one last kick at his nemesis.
His recent dire warning that Iran might trigger "World War III" if it acquires nuclear weapons has many wondering whether the United States or a proxy is preparing to bomb Iran's reactors. And the economic sanctions Bush has just imposed on Iran's Revolutionary Guards, defence ministry and banks are being read by some as a ploy to give Washington political cover for such an attack.
Yet while Iran's two-decade-old nuclear ambitions, support for terror and hostility to Israel are hugely worrying, Bush cannot realistically expect to turn all this around before he quits office, with or without a military strike. Reining in Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who think like him is a huge challenge best tackled by the United Nations Security Council, acting collectively.
That's something Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to understand. Reacting to Bush's sanctions, an Ottawa official noted Canada has not followed the U.S. in designating the Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, and looks to the Security Council for its cues. That is a prudent approach, with Canada backing UN efforts to defuse tension.
Realistically, if Iran's nuclear ambitions are to be reined in, it will be through a complex grand bargain" involving the Security Council, the U.S. and Iran. Tehran will want guarantees that Washington will stop threatening military action and will lift sanctions that have been in place since the Islamic revolution of 1979. As well, Iran will seek approval to retain civilian reactors, if it suspends or scraps military ones.
Ottawa should support UN efforts, including progressively harsher sanctions, to prod Tehran to that bargain. We should also urge the U.S. to negotiate, not threaten. It will be hard to make much progress before Bush and Ahmadinejad bow out. But we needn't provoke a crisis.
PRESSING IRAN TO DISARM
Having branded Iran an "axis of evil" soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, U.S. President George Bush seems determined not to lave the White House without taking one last kick at his nemesis.
His recent dire warning that Iran might trigger "World War III" if it acquires nuclear weapons has many wondering whether the United States or a proxy is preparing to bomb Iran's reactors. And the economic sanctions Bush has just imposed on Iran's Revolutionary Guards, defence ministry and banks are being read by some as a ploy to give Washington political cover for such an attack.
Yet while Iran's two-decade-old nuclear ambitions, support for terror and hostility to Israel are hugely worrying, Bush cannot realistically expect to turn all this around before he quits office, with or without a military strike. Reining in Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who think like him is a huge challenge best tackled by the United Nations Security Council, acting collectively.
That's something Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to understand. Reacting to Bush's sanctions, an Ottawa official noted Canada has not followed the U.S. in designating the Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, and looks to the Security Council for its cues. That is a prudent approach, with Canada backing UN efforts to defuse tension.
Realistically, if Iran's nuclear ambitions are to be reined in, it will be through a complex grand bargain" involving the Security Council, the U.S. and Iran. Tehran will want guarantees that Washington will stop threatening military action and will lift sanctions that have been in place since the Islamic revolution of 1979. As well, Iran will seek approval to retain civilian reactors, if it suspends or scraps military ones.
Ottawa should support UN efforts, including progressively harsher sanctions, to prod Tehran to that bargain. We should also urge the U.S. to negotiate, not threaten. It will be hard to make much progress before Bush and Ahmadinejad bow out. But we needn't provoke a crisis.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Darfur: Keeping Hope for the Future Alive
From the Wednesday, September 12, 2007, Toronto Star, Comments section, page AA6:
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE IN DARFUR
Pablo Recalde
It's not difficult to picture the misery caused by war. You probably see it every day on the news: thousands of people crammed together in makeshift camps, waiting under the beating sun for help from the international community.
I live in Darfur, and that's an image I know well. The town of El Geneina, from where I run the UN World Food Program's operation in West Darfur, is swollen with "internally displaced people" (IDP) who have lost family, their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods.
But there's another thing I see every day that rarely makes it into the media: I see children smiling. I see people producing, creating, selling and buying things inside the camps - keeping a semblance of normality within the conflict. It doesn't match the popular image of the victims of violence, but it's the face of Darfur that I remember when I go to bed at night. And it is what I see when I wake up.
Thanks to the efforts of thousands of dedicated humanitarian workers - many of them so young - children all over Darfur are alive. They're fed. Many are going to school, and hopefully, when peace comes to Darfur, they will ready to help rebuild their communities.
Since 2004, when the international community flooded into Darfur, 12,000 humanitarian workers have been on the ground there, providing food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation, agricultural tools and seeds and other necessities of life.
[The UN World Food Program is the] largest humanitarian agency working in Darfur. Our main job is to feed people. And against all odds we get the job done.
In July, 3.1 million people received food rations from WFP, distributed with the assistance of the many charities and non-governmental organizations working in Darfur. This is the biggest WFP operation in the world, with a budget of $684 million this year. It wouldn't be possible without the generosity of the citizens of Canada - the third largest donor to WFP Sudan, with a contribution of $22 million (U.S.) in 2007.
I'm not writing to tell you the crisis is over. Far from it. Violence has continued - in fact, it has increased. We truck food across the length of Sudan - 3,000 kilometres from the Red Sea coast to the little town where I live. Once the food is out in the field, our staff and their colleagues from other agencies often travel by helicopter to the distribution sites because the roads are just too dangerous.
And unfortunately, every month, there are pockets of Darfur where we are unable to reach people, and malnutrition can quickly set in. In July, 60,000 went without a ration because we couldn't get to them. Often, it is many more.
The people of Darfur are frustrated. They're demoralized by a crisis that seems to have no end. They are angry to see their children born and growing up in camps, rather than at home, in peaceful villages. Still, they keep on struggling to regain their dignity. Life has always been hard in the tough climate of Darfur, but surviving in war is much worse.
Now, more than ever, it is the support of average citizen[s] and their governments that is making the difference between survival and complete disaster. Your support is literally making the difference between life and death. It is helping us to hold the line.
People often ask me whether I think the international efforts will work. Put simply: they must. But regardless of how or when, my colleagues and I will be here, doing the job of holding the line.
No one would wish for their children to be born and to grow up inside the confines of an IDP camp.
But it's important to realize that until a solution to the crisis is found, the humanitarian community is working in Darfur amid challenges and severe risks, to help keep the hope of a future alive.
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE IN DARFUR
Pablo Recalde
It's not difficult to picture the misery caused by war. You probably see it every day on the news: thousands of people crammed together in makeshift camps, waiting under the beating sun for help from the international community.
I live in Darfur, and that's an image I know well. The town of El Geneina, from where I run the UN World Food Program's operation in West Darfur, is swollen with "internally displaced people" (IDP) who have lost family, their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods.
But there's another thing I see every day that rarely makes it into the media: I see children smiling. I see people producing, creating, selling and buying things inside the camps - keeping a semblance of normality within the conflict. It doesn't match the popular image of the victims of violence, but it's the face of Darfur that I remember when I go to bed at night. And it is what I see when I wake up.
Thanks to the efforts of thousands of dedicated humanitarian workers - many of them so young - children all over Darfur are alive. They're fed. Many are going to school, and hopefully, when peace comes to Darfur, they will ready to help rebuild their communities.
Since 2004, when the international community flooded into Darfur, 12,000 humanitarian workers have been on the ground there, providing food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation, agricultural tools and seeds and other necessities of life.
[The UN World Food Program is the] largest humanitarian agency working in Darfur. Our main job is to feed people. And against all odds we get the job done.
In July, 3.1 million people received food rations from WFP, distributed with the assistance of the many charities and non-governmental organizations working in Darfur. This is the biggest WFP operation in the world, with a budget of $684 million this year. It wouldn't be possible without the generosity of the citizens of Canada - the third largest donor to WFP Sudan, with a contribution of $22 million (U.S.) in 2007.
I'm not writing to tell you the crisis is over. Far from it. Violence has continued - in fact, it has increased. We truck food across the length of Sudan - 3,000 kilometres from the Red Sea coast to the little town where I live. Once the food is out in the field, our staff and their colleagues from other agencies often travel by helicopter to the distribution sites because the roads are just too dangerous.
And unfortunately, every month, there are pockets of Darfur where we are unable to reach people, and malnutrition can quickly set in. In July, 60,000 went without a ration because we couldn't get to them. Often, it is many more.
The people of Darfur are frustrated. They're demoralized by a crisis that seems to have no end. They are angry to see their children born and growing up in camps, rather than at home, in peaceful villages. Still, they keep on struggling to regain their dignity. Life has always been hard in the tough climate of Darfur, but surviving in war is much worse.
Now, more than ever, it is the support of average citizen[s] and their governments that is making the difference between survival and complete disaster. Your support is literally making the difference between life and death. It is helping us to hold the line.
People often ask me whether I think the international efforts will work. Put simply: they must. But regardless of how or when, my colleagues and I will be here, doing the job of holding the line.
No one would wish for their children to be born and to grow up inside the confines of an IDP camp.
But it's important to realize that until a solution to the crisis is found, the humanitarian community is working in Darfur amid challenges and severe risks, to help keep the hope of a future alive.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Iraq, Now Iran? There is Another Option: Peace
There was an article in the World & Comment section of the Monday, November 5, 2007, Toronto Star, about how the U.S. administration is ratcheting up its rhetoric about Iran, as if there was no other choice in the world available to the U.S., but to lay siege to yet another country (which keeps arms manufacturers happy and the oil corporations happy, but not the families of those soldiers and civilians who are killed and wounded.
Why are Americans and the Democratic contenders standing behind yet another war, after the last and still current disaster - the war in Iraq. Another war, more human rights abuses - just what the U.S. needs. (See Amnesty International's Country Report on the U.S.: http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-America.)
The Iraq war and all the other hundreds of military installations around the world are bankrupting the country. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The environmental legislation has been pushed back 30 years and nothing is being done about climate change and the Kyoto agreement. Corporations at home and abroad are doing whatever they like, because of massive campaign donations to each American party, and their lawyers and lobbyists and PR army are doing the rest. It is a great time to be a millionaire and billionaire and not very good to be a poor working stiff whose children are not covered for medical care.
Is Iran supposed to take the country's mind off the hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqi's, many of them refugees?
Is it supposed to take everyone's mind off the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the several thousand deaths of American soldiers?
Why is everyone supporting the very administration that lied about having evidence to support the reason behind the Iraqi war. They knew very well before the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction. And yet they still sent American soldiers to die there in the thousands and other soldiers to kill thousands of civilians and displace tens of thousands more.
So how does it make sense to leave troops fighting there and starting a new war somewhere else?
Are the sanctions against the Iranian people going to take our minds off the terrible sanctions against the Iraqi people, which caused countless civilian deaths, most of whom were young children?
There is no requirement for the U.S. (except empire building, oil, supporting arms and rebuilding corporations)to feel it must intervene everywhere, making enemies of selective Middle East countries. Wasn't Osama a Saudi? And the U.S. protected the extended Bin Laden family in the U.S. in the days after September 11th, and sent the entire family out of the U.S. on an American military plane? The Saudi Royal princes are dictatorships and Saudi Arabia has a horrible record of human rights abuses - look up their Amnesty International country report. The U.S. is fast friends with the Saudis; therefore supporting an extremely repressive regime. http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Saudi-Arabia
Who died and made George W. king of the world? Or for that matter, who died and made previous presidents kings of the world? There is no need for an aggressive successor, someone else who can only see the way to peace through waging war. See the Amnesty International's report on the human rights abuses and the United States. There is no moral authority behind a country with such a human rights record.
What does the world need? Peace. Ethical and moral leaders who will deal with problems involving people and the environment - the most pressing problems the world faces. Developed countries need to provide at least the amount of foreign aid they have committed to but not paid, for poverty, AIDS, malaria, and the Millenium goals.
Developed countries need to show leadership where climate change is concerned not only at home, but in assisting developing nations to deal with the challenges of adapation and mitigation.
The world does not need any more wars right now. Instead of showing up for wars, how about withdrawing soldiers from all the military installations worldwide, and helping the United Nations deal with food collection and distribution to take care of the starving, getting drugs to those suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDs, and building or providing training for others to build infrastructure for clean drinking water, latrines, schools and providing small loans so the extreme poor can work their way out of poverty.
See Jeffrey D. Sach's book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Jeff Sachs is an American-born economist and internationally renowned for his work as economic advisor to governments around the world. He was a Special Advisor ton the Millenium Development Goals to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2002 to 2006 and is a Special Advisor to the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. He is a professor and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation and disease control, especially HIV/AIDS, in the developing world.
It is not naive to turn from war to doing what is right in the world. It is the only thing to do. Thousands are dying every day from starvation and diseases that are easily curable. We don't need to arm soldiers to kill anybody else.
I hope, as most Americans in polls, want peace, that they will not be drawn in to yet another war. You cannot get peace and security by going to war (as Afghanistan and Iraq should demonstrate clearly).
As Gandhi said: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Now, where is the American leader with enough independence, courage, conviction and true moral authority to choose peace for Americans and the rest of the world?
Why are Americans and the Democratic contenders standing behind yet another war, after the last and still current disaster - the war in Iraq. Another war, more human rights abuses - just what the U.S. needs. (See Amnesty International's Country Report on the U.S.: http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-America.)
The Iraq war and all the other hundreds of military installations around the world are bankrupting the country. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The environmental legislation has been pushed back 30 years and nothing is being done about climate change and the Kyoto agreement. Corporations at home and abroad are doing whatever they like, because of massive campaign donations to each American party, and their lawyers and lobbyists and PR army are doing the rest. It is a great time to be a millionaire and billionaire and not very good to be a poor working stiff whose children are not covered for medical care.
Is Iran supposed to take the country's mind off the hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqi's, many of them refugees?
Is it supposed to take everyone's mind off the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the several thousand deaths of American soldiers?
Why is everyone supporting the very administration that lied about having evidence to support the reason behind the Iraqi war. They knew very well before the war that there were no weapons of mass destruction. And yet they still sent American soldiers to die there in the thousands and other soldiers to kill thousands of civilians and displace tens of thousands more.
So how does it make sense to leave troops fighting there and starting a new war somewhere else?
Are the sanctions against the Iranian people going to take our minds off the terrible sanctions against the Iraqi people, which caused countless civilian deaths, most of whom were young children?
There is no requirement for the U.S. (except empire building, oil, supporting arms and rebuilding corporations)to feel it must intervene everywhere, making enemies of selective Middle East countries. Wasn't Osama a Saudi? And the U.S. protected the extended Bin Laden family in the U.S. in the days after September 11th, and sent the entire family out of the U.S. on an American military plane? The Saudi Royal princes are dictatorships and Saudi Arabia has a horrible record of human rights abuses - look up their Amnesty International country report. The U.S. is fast friends with the Saudis; therefore supporting an extremely repressive regime. http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Saudi-Arabia
Who died and made George W. king of the world? Or for that matter, who died and made previous presidents kings of the world? There is no need for an aggressive successor, someone else who can only see the way to peace through waging war. See the Amnesty International's report on the human rights abuses and the United States. There is no moral authority behind a country with such a human rights record.
What does the world need? Peace. Ethical and moral leaders who will deal with problems involving people and the environment - the most pressing problems the world faces. Developed countries need to provide at least the amount of foreign aid they have committed to but not paid, for poverty, AIDS, malaria, and the Millenium goals.
Developed countries need to show leadership where climate change is concerned not only at home, but in assisting developing nations to deal with the challenges of adapation and mitigation.
The world does not need any more wars right now. Instead of showing up for wars, how about withdrawing soldiers from all the military installations worldwide, and helping the United Nations deal with food collection and distribution to take care of the starving, getting drugs to those suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDs, and building or providing training for others to build infrastructure for clean drinking water, latrines, schools and providing small loans so the extreme poor can work their way out of poverty.
See Jeffrey D. Sach's book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Jeff Sachs is an American-born economist and internationally renowned for his work as economic advisor to governments around the world. He was a Special Advisor ton the Millenium Development Goals to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2002 to 2006 and is a Special Advisor to the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. He is a professor and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation and disease control, especially HIV/AIDS, in the developing world.
It is not naive to turn from war to doing what is right in the world. It is the only thing to do. Thousands are dying every day from starvation and diseases that are easily curable. We don't need to arm soldiers to kill anybody else.
I hope, as most Americans in polls, want peace, that they will not be drawn in to yet another war. You cannot get peace and security by going to war (as Afghanistan and Iraq should demonstrate clearly).
As Gandhi said: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Now, where is the American leader with enough independence, courage, conviction and true moral authority to choose peace for Americans and the rest of the world?
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