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Recent Appearances... Rantburg

Afghanistan
Intl Community Pledges $1 Billion for Afghanistan
2021-09-15
These people are nuts.
[ToloNews] The international community at the UN meeting in Geneva on Monday, which was attended by more than 90 states, pledged over $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, said UN Secretary General António Guterres
...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years...
"This conference has fully met my expectations. There are 156 participants, including 90+ States. This shows how crucial Afghanistan is for the international community. More than 1 billion USD has been pledged," he said.

The meeting was held at the request of Guterres to provide humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan.

The meeting was joined by representatives of many countries and international non-governmental organizations, both physically and virtually.

Guterres at the meeting urged the participants to pledge support for the people of Afghanistan. "The people of Afghanistan need a lifeline. After decades of war, suffering and insecurity, they face perhaps their most perilous hour. Now is the time for the international community to stand with them." He spoke.

Guterres said the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, traveled to Kabul last week and met with the Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
 leadership and the Taliban have said they will cooperate in delivering assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

"The de facto authorities pledged — in person and in a follow-up letter to Under-Secretary General Griffiths — that they will cooperate to ensure assistance is delivered to the people of Afghanistan," Guterres said.

Guterres entreated the participants to provide $606 million to provide urgent assistance to 11 million people in need in Afghanistan, saying that the UN is providing $20 million. "Today we are announcing a $20 million allocation from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund to support the humanitarian operation in Afghanistan," he added.

He also said the United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
 Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS) has established an airbridge from Pakistain to Afghanistan and is transporting assistance to Afghanistan.

He also called on the international community to protect the progress made in the last two decades in Afghanistan.

The meeting participants also called for the preservation of the achievements made in the past two decades, especially for the rights of women, girls and minorities, and for women and girls' access to education and work. They also called on the Taliban to respect humanitarian laws.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said "the Taliban has to respect basic human rights
One man's rights are another man's existential threat.
," and that his country pledges five million euros to provide humanitarian support to Afghanistan.

Dominic Raab, Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs of the United Kingdom, meanwhile raised the UK’s concern over regional instability and said his country will provide aid to Afghanistan via aid organizations. "We will not give aid directly to the Taliban," he said.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thompson-Greenfield, speaking virtually at the meeting, called on the Taliban to uphold the commitments they have made to the United States and the international community. She said the United States continues to provide aid to the people of Afghanistan. She pledged $64 million in new humanitarian assistance, and will assess the on-the-ground situation and consider future assistance, she said.

Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro, secretary-general of CARE International, meanwhile said NGOs can handle delivering aid in complex situations and called for resources and diversity in aid delivery and the participation of Afghan women in the process.
Other participants also said things, none of which is in the least bit interesting.
Khaama Press adds:
Among the countries, UK pledged over 200 million pounds, the US pledged USD$64 million, Japan USD$200 million, La Belle France 100 million euros, Germany 5 million euros, and UN $20 million.
Link


Africa Horn
Parents trade girls for cows as war and climate change hit east Africa
2018-06-30
[AFRICANEWS] Gents, this is your big chance! If you do own a cow and you don't own a nubile young African girl, deals are just waiting to be worked.
Child marriage is increasing in parts of war-torn South Sudan and drought-hit Kenya as parents swap their daughters for cows and goats to survive, campaigners said on Wednesday.
"Okay, Ndebbi! This is our big chance! Get yerself scantily clad! You get a 72-year-old husband and we get a cow!"
"A cow! Oh, mummy, help me get undressed! Do you think these coconut shells..."
"Forget the coconut shells. Leave 'em as hanging fruit!"
Africa accounts for nine out of the 10 countries with the highest rates of underage unions globally, advocacy group Girls Not Brides said, with girls marrying due to tradition, family ties, the stigma of pregnancy out of wedlock and poverty.
"Mom, me and Mbuddi wanta get married."
"Mbuddi? But yer only fourteen!"
"And knocked up."
But long-running wars and climate change are now leading factors too, activists said, highlighting a rise in marriage among girls under the age of 18 in South Sudan to 52 percent from 40 percent in 2010, according to United Nations data.
See, if you taught 'em sex education in the schools like they do in the U.S. that wouldn't happen. Would it?"
“The conflicts just worsened the situation,” Dorcas Acen, a gender protection expert at the charity CARE International in South Sudan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Where do you go to get a Gender Protection Expert's license?
“Majority of the parents wish to give up their girls and marry them off because of the economic hardship. They are looking at how to reduce the number of mouths they need to feed.”
And increase the number of mouths somebody else has to feed. That makes sense. Of a sort.
Despite a global decline in child marriages, there are still some 12 million underage girls married every year, often with devastating consequences for their health and education.
Ah, the joys of the age of exploration! When hormones were rampant and self control wasn't!
South Sudan has been gripped by civil war since 2013, pitting forces loyal to President Salva Kiir against rebels linked to former vice president Riek Machar, and millions are going hungry amind rampant inflation and declining oil output.
The animists and Christians of South Sudan traded the oppression of Khartoum for oppression of their own.
As the conflict drags on and hard currency loses it lustre, parents can now receive up to 300 cows in bride price, or dowry, when their a young girl weds, up from about 30 cows during peacetime, Acen said.
Whoa! 300 cows? A whole herd for one girl? She must have one hell of a body!
“When there is a girl within the family ready to get married, people will come and present the number of cows,” she said on the sidelines of a global conference on child marriage in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
"Back off! You think you own me!"
"Got my receipt right here."
"Oh. Okay then."
“Basically it’s just bidding – whoever bids with the highest number of cows will take the girl,” she said.
The homely ones bring the fewest cows. One girl was so bad she went for a chicken. Mom and Pop thought about her every time they ate an egg.
Across the border in Kenya, many semi-nomadic Maasai and Samburu herders exchanged their daughters for livestock during a severe drought last year that killed large numbers of animals, said Millicent Ondigo of Amref Health Africa.
"Is that a goat?"
"Yeah."
"Trade you my beautiful daughter for it!"
“Since the number of goats has decreased, parents rather sell their daughter for four (or) five goats for marriage,” said Ondigo, a project officer for the Nairobi-based health charity.
"Say! She ain't all that beautiful!"
"That ain't the best lookin' goat I've ever seen either!"
"Throw in a jacknife and you got a deal!"
"Daddy!"
"Bye, Punkin! Write to let us know how you're doin'!"
Families often marry girls off at earlier ages during drought as this earns them dowry and increases the girls’ chances of being fed by wealthier husbands, experts say.
"Say! You sure this girl's been weaned?"
Ondigo is working to convince parents that sending girls to school would bring them longer-term economic benefits.
Makes sense on the surface. But if you have an empty stomach and a taste for cabrito today, the thought of sending the child to school for ten or twelve years, paying for her meals, paying for shoes and school clothes, an instrument for band, the class trip to Nairobi, maybe paying tuition and for school uniforms, just doesn't look cost effective.
“(We told parents) when she is done with schooling, she will get a job and she will be able to buy you more than those four goats,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"Of course, you'll have starved to death by then."
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Rights groups blast U.N. Security Council response to Syria killings
2015-06-27
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] A coalition of some 81 human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
 and aid groups blasted the United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
 Security Council on Thursday for a "woefully inadequate" response to the killing of civilians in Syria, and urged it to ensure that those responsible will be punished.

The 15-member council has been largely deadlocked over how to deal with the four-year war in Syria. Syrian ally Russia, backed by China, has vetoed several resolutions threatening action against Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
's government.

The coalition, which includes Amnesia Amnesty International, CARE International, Human Rights Watch
... During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, HRW received a pledge from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, of which George Soros is Chairman, for general support totaling $100,000,000. The grant is being paid in installments of $10,000,000 over ten years.Through June 30, 2013, HRW had received $30,000,000 towards the fulfillment of the pledge....
, International Rescue Committee and Save the Children, said it was outraged at the unchecked brutality in Syria.

The United Nations says some 220,000 people have been killed in Syria and 12.2 million people need help, including more than 5 million children. About 7.6 million are internally displaced and more than 4 million have fled Syria.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Miserable Syrians in Jordan say they’d rather go home
2014-04-19
Syrian refugees in Jordan say they are so miserable that they would rather face “inevitable death” in their war-torn country than live in conditions that have sparked riots. With Syria’s war now in its fourth year, many of the 100,000 refugees in the sprawling desert Zaatari camp in northern Jordan feel the world has forgotten their struggle to survive.

“Syrian refugees would rather go home and face inevitable death than swallow the bitterness of displacement,” Abu Isam, 52, told AFP before his cousins and other refugees boarded a bus back to Syria. “Nobody cares about Syrian refugees — the world has fooled us. They said our crisis will not last long. Now I feel a solution to our dilemma is impossible."
It could be worse -- you could end up like the Palestinians...
Rioting and protests over poor living conditions have erupted periodically since Zaatari, near the border with Syria, opened two years ago. Early this month rioting killed one refugee and wounded dozens, mostly policemen. It was the first time a refugee has been killed.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR and Jordanian authorities said the rioting was over the detention of a refugee family and a driver who tried to smuggle them out.

“People are fed up with conditions at the camp. Many people are going home despite the destruction and war,” said Hasan Zubi, adding that his wife and children had recently returned to Syria because of “inhuman conditions” at Zaatari. Zubi, 68, and other refugees said the riots erupted after police prevented three Syrian women from leaving the densely populated, seven-square-kilometre (2.8-square-mile) camp without permission.

“One of them started shouting and calling for help, claiming a policeman attacked her and the rioting started. We sought refuge in this country and we need to respect it and respect its laws,” added the former bus driver from Daraa.

Around 100 refugees leave Zaatari daily to go back to Syria, and more than 100,000 have returned since the conflict in their country began in 2011, government figures show. But every day some 500 Syrians also seek refuge in Jordan, which now houses more than 500,000 refugees — 80 percent of them in urban areas.

“We fled a big prison in Syria to a small prison in Jordan and it looks like we are going to die here,” said Alaa, 37, from Syria’s central city of Homs. “We want a normal life... to eat, drink and live normally. Is that too much to wish for?”

The refugees complain about the dust and electricity shortages at Zaatari, where summer temperatures rise to around 40ÂşC (104 Fahrenheit) and in winter plunge below freezing. Last year, the worst winter storm in a decade turned Zaatari into a muddy swamp, blowing away at least 500 tents. Most have since been replaced with caravans.

Global relief agency CARE International said in a study released Wednesday Syrian refugees in urban areas of Jordan are struggling to cope. It said a household assessment of more than 2,200 Syrian refugees showed 90 percent living in debt to relatives, landlords, shopkeepers and neighbors.

“Many refugees live under tremendous phycological pressure and they want to vent. We are doing what we can to contain them,” Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Rahman, head of Zaatari, told AFP. “It is very difficult to run a place where more than 100,000 people of different backgrounds live. There are negative aspects of course, but things are generally under control.”

The refugees see things differently. “We live like animals here,” said Ziad Shehadat, 32. His father Yussef was even more outspoken. “Honestly, death in my country is better than humiliation here. I feel as if we don’t exist at all."
Link


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Syria Refugees Face Growing Challenges in Jordan Urban Areas
2014-04-17
[AnNahar] Syrian refugees in urban areas of Jordan are struggling to cope with inadequate housing, high debts, rising costs and educational challenges for their children, a global relief agency said Wednesday.

CARE International said a household assessment of more than 2,200 Syrian refugees showed 90 percent of them were living in debt to relatives, landlords, shopkeepers and neighbors.

The cost of rent for the refugees from the devastating three-year war in Syria had increased by almost a third in the past year, according to the CARE study.

"The insecurity to provide for their families causes increasing levels of stress and sets women at risk of sexual exploitation. In many cases, young sons become the family's breadwinner to make ends meet," the organization said.

The study showed that only 52 percent of Syrian refugee boys were attending school, compared with 62 percent of girls.

"Three years after the Syria crisis started, refugee families are becoming more and more destitute," said Salam Kanaan, CARE's director for Jordan.

"The longer they live in neighboring countries, the more financially vulnerable they become. Families have fled months or years ago, they do not have any savings anymore."

Jordan is home to more than 500,000 Syrian refugees.

More than 80 percent of them live in poor urban areas or on the outskirts of cities, often in inadequate dwellings, informal tented settlements and makeshift shelters, CARE said.

The refugee families have to spend an average of $260 (188 euros) per month for rent.

CARE said 36 percent of the families registered with the organization were headed by women.

"They have fled without their husbands who are either still in Syria, injured or have been killed. They have to take care of their young children and older relatives, but have difficulties to generate income," it said.

CARE said the social and psychological impact of the war on families is increasingly worrying.

"Especially refugees who have been displaced for years and have no more assets worry about how they can cover their monthly expenses and deal with medical emergencies," said Kanaan.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Boston's Jihadist Past
2013-04-30
BP: Added text here as site was not readable using my browser

The location was once home to an international support network that raised funds
and recruited fighters for a jihadist insurgency against Russian rule over
Chechnya, a region and a conflict that few of the runners had likely ever given
any serious thought.


One mile farther, life in Boston was transformed in an act of horror that killed three and injured
scores. And one week later, everyone in Boston and around the United States is
thinking and talking and asking about Chechnya.


The investigation into alleged marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is
still in its infancy, but a press release issued by the FBI late Friday suggested that at
least one of the brothers may have had some kind of connection to Chechen
Islamist militant networks, a suspicion heightened by the fact that elder
brother Tamerlan spent about six months in Russia in 2012. (The most important
Chechen jihadist group has disavowed the attack, but has not unequivocally ruled
out the possibility of some kind of contact with Tamerlan.)


It will take time to discover whether there was a militant connection and, if there
was, to what extent it is pertinent to the Tsarnaevs' decision to bomb the
marathon.


But if the lead pans out, it won't be Boston's first brush with that faraway war. During the 1980s and into the
1990s, Islamist foreign fighters operated robust recruiting and financing
networks that supported Chechen jihadists from the United States, and Boston
was home to one of the most significant centers: a branch of the Al Kifah
Center based in Brooklyn, which would later be rechristened CARE International.


Al Kifah sprang from the military jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Through the end of the occupation, a network of centers in the United States
helped support the efforts of Afghan and Arab mujahedeen, soliciting donations
and recruiting fighters, including at least four from Boston who died in action
(one of them a former Dunkin Donuts employee). When the war ended, those
networks did not disappear; they refocused on other activities.


In Brooklyn, that network turned against the United States. The center's leaders
and many of its members helped facilitate the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,
and they actively planned and attempted to execute a subsequent plot that
summer to blow up the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in New York, which would have
killed thousands.


When the FBI thwarted the tunnels plot, the Brooklyn Al Kifah office and most of the
other satellite locations were shuttered. But in Boston, the work continued
under a new name and with a new focus: supporting foreign-fighter efforts in
Bosnia and Chechnya.


The following narrative is derived from interviews and thousands of pages of court
exhibits, including correspondence, Al Kifah and CARE International
publications, and telephone intercepts developed over a years-long series of
FBI investigations into the charity that were made public as part of multiple terrorism-related prosecutions.


Established in the early 1990s, the Boston branch had emerged from the World Trade Center investigation
relatively unscathed. Little more than two weeks after the bombing, the head of
the Boston office, Emad Muntasser, changed his operation's name from Al Kifah
to CARE International (not to be confused with the legitimate charity of the same name).

Link


Iraq
Task Force 88 Scores Big In Iraq
2008-08-25
By Bill Roggio
Coalition and Iraq forces captured Three Senior al Qaeda Killers in Iraq; These Big Shot Murderers were behind some of the deadliest violence over the past several years.

Two of the men were detained during the past two weeks in raids by Task Force 88, the hunter-killer special operations teams assigned to dismantle al Qaeda's networks in Iraq.

First The special operations teams captured Salim 'Abdallah Ashur al Shujayri during an operation on Aug. 11. Six days later, Ali Rash Nasir Jiyad al Shammari was captured.

The locations of the raids were not disclosed by Multinational Forces-Iraq. Today, Iraqi forces announced the capture of Mahdi Mosleh al Djeheishi.

[remember all 3 names as there will be a flash test later this semester]

Shujayri and Shammari are senior al Qaeda in Iraq leaders and have been "assessed to be longtime members" of the group. Both men are Iraqi citizens, a senior US military intelligence official who wishes to remain anonymous told The Long War Journal.

Shammari, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Tiba, was al Qaeda in Iraq's "senior advisor in Baghdad, providing guidance and targeting assistance to subordinates throughout the city," Multinational Forces-Iraq reported in a press release. He served as al Qaeda's leader in the Karkh district before being promoted to manage al Qaeda's overall terror campaign in Baghdad in early 2007.

He provided operational and financial support to 15 terror groups operating in Baghdad. "He is alleged to have personally approved targets for car and suicide bombings targeting Iraqi civilians, intended to incite sectarian violence," the press release stated.

[I hope the Iraqis use pliers on him!]

In this capacity, Shammari directed the siege of Baghdad, which was facilitated by al Qaeda's control of critical regions in the outlying areas of Baghdad and neighboring provinces. Al Qaeda used attacks against civilian and sectarian targets as part of its strategy to fragment the military and government and draw the country in a wider civil war.

Shujayri, who is also know as Abu Uthman, served under Shammari as the emir, or leader in Baghdad's Rusafa district. He had close connections to Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda in Iraq's emir, and other senior terror leaders. Shujayri directed suicide and car-bomb attacks against Iraqi civilians. [[Pleasant A$$HOLE]

Shujayri was a member of an indigenous Iraqi Salafist terror group prior to joining al Qaeda in Iraq, the senior US intelligence official said. Osama bin Laden's sanctioning of Abu Musab al Zarqawi as the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq was crucial in bring Shujayri and other Iraqi Salafists into the ranks of al Qaeda.
............

Margaret Hassan was the Baghdad director of CARE International, a nongovernmental aide group. She was kidnapped in October 2004. Her body was discovered four week later in Fallujah, brutally butchered, with her throat slit and her arms and legs hacked off. In spite of the fact that these three al-Qaeda leaders could have safely released her in Baghdad.
Link


Africa Subsaharan
Zimbabwe: Spate of Arrests Ahead of Elections
2008-06-06
The detention of presidential contender Morgan Tsvangirai by Zimbabwean police for nearly 12 hours on 4 June is another instance of the orchestrated harassment of opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters and other organisations regarded as out of step with the 28-year rule of President Robert Mugabe, according to analysts.

CARE International, one of the largest non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in Zimbabwe, has been ordered to suspend its operations for alleged political activity, as have others.

Media reports on 5 June said a convoy of British and US diplomatic staff investigating reports of election violence north of the capital were stopped by a police roadblock at Bindura, 80km from Harare, where the tyres of their vehicles were slashed and a Zimbabwean driver was hauled from one of the diplomatic cars and beaten by police.

Sean McCormack, the US State Department spokesman, said in a televised briefing from Washington that the incident was "unacceptable", had caused "deep distress" and was the action of a government that "does not know any bounds"; the US would take up the incident in the Security Council.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told IRIN that party leader Tsvangirai, his deputy, Thokozani Khupe, party chairperson Lovemore Moyo, as well as other senior party officials and their security detail were stopped at a roadblock, and then held at Lupane police station, north of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city.

Tsvangirai, who claims that election rigging cost him victory in the 29 March presidential vote, will contest the run-off ballot on 27 June. He left Zimbabwe soon after the March elections, in which ZANU-PF lost control of parliament for the first time since independence in 1980, and very recently returned to Zimbabwe. He sustained head injuries last year from a beating in police custody and has twice been charged with treason.

Chamisa said the party had confirmed the killings of 60 MDC supporters since the March ballot, but this was "a conservative figure", as ZANU-PF had established "no-go" areas where people were "being killed, buried and forgotten".

One of the people killed was a local MDC organiser, Tonderai Ndira, who had been arrested 35 times and was taken from his house on 14 May by six armed, masked men. His decomposing body was found a few weeks later. According to reports, a preliminary autopsy by an independent South African pathologist said "it was clear that he died very soon after he was abducted."
Link


India-Pakistan
Foreign charities wary after extremists target quake aid group
2008-03-20
Manshera: Longhaired gunmen burst into the white stone building and killed four charity workers helping earthquake victims, then wrecked the office with grenades and set it on fire. Police came, but did not intervene.

In a tactic reminiscent of Ghengis Khan neighboring Afghanistan, militants are attacking aid groups in Pakistan’s volatile northwest, and local authorities appear incapable - or unwilling - to stop them. The threat has forced several foreign agencies to scale back assistance to survivors of the October 2005 earthquake, risking the region’s recovery from the worst natural disaster in the country’s history.

The February 25 attack on employees of Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children, was the worst in a series of threats and assaults on aid workers in the northern mountains where Taliban-style militants have expanded their reach in the past year. Nearly a month later, menacing letters are still being sent to aid organisations. Although all four victims in Mansehra were Pakistani men, extremists despise the aid groups because they employ women and work for women’s rights.

Local officials in Mansehra, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said letters from extremists distributed March 13 and 14 also warned schools to make sure girls are covered from head to toe and to avoid coeducation. Police accuse a local militant, Mohiuddin Shakir, who goes by the alias Mujahid, of masterminding the attack last month on the aid office in Mansehra. He has not been arrested. Shakir, a former member of an Al Qaeda-linked group, has criminal charges against him in Pakistan dating back to 2002, including for murder, according to police records obtained by The Associated Press. Shakir now leads a militant group called Lashkar-e-Ababeel. Last summer, Shakir wrote a letter to newspapers warning international aid groups about hiring women and warning women to wear an all-encompassing veil.

Yet Abdul Ershad, an officer investigating the attack, said that as recently as late 2007, Shakir had a working arrangement with police in his hometown of Phulra not far from Mansehra. To advance his agenda, he would tell police about residents involved in “un-Islamic” activities - like men selling pornographic videos and socialising with women - and police would arrest them, Ershad said. Brig Waqas Iqbal Raja, the chief security official for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, acknowledged a growing presence of extremists in the quake zone, including some militants displaced by an army offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in neighboring Swat district.

He could not explain why Shakir was still at large. Distrustful residents did not alert police when six or seven militants with long hair and their faces hidden behind scarves descended in broad daylight on the Plan International compound. The militants ordered the security guard to leave. Sajjad Mahmood, a clerk working next door, said police arrived after 30 minutes and just stood outside the gate while the assailants were inside. When the gunmen emerged, police did not try to stop them, he said. “It was a real act of brutality and you feel very worried, and still there is no real arrangements from the police for security,” said Aneela Tobassam, a Pakistani worker for US-based Mercy Corps who provides vocational training to women. Even inside her office, Tobassam, an ethnic Pashtun, wears a large shawl covering her head. “I don’t feel safe outside right now, but I won’t leave. I will stay here and I will do my work even if for now it is inside the office,” she said.

There was a bombing outside the office of a local charity, Strengthening Participatory Organisation, which wounded eight people. Attackers also sprayed the compound of CARE International with automatic gunfire, but no one was hurt.

The quake-hit region has long been a haven for militant groups allegedly linked to the Pakistani military and intelligence service. The Jamaatud Dawa, a successor to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, was among the first to help quake victims after the disaster and worked closely with the Pakistan military. It and banned groups like Harakatul Mujahedeen set up medical camps alongside an extensive, and widely welcomed, international relief effort.

Graham Strong, country director for US-based World Vision, which heads an umbrella group of 20 international aid organisations operating in Pakistan, voiced concern that aid workers here will face the same problem as in Afghanistan. “I hope we are not going down the same road here,” Strong said in Islamabad. “We are generally concerned that things might be changing.”
Link


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Human rights groups: Gaza humanitarian crisis worst in 40 years
2008-03-06
Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip has created the worst humanitarian crisis since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, aid and rights groups said on Thursday.

Food shortages, crumbling health services and a water and sewage system close to collapse are all part of the daily misery facing 1.5 million Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza, a report by a coalition of British relief groups said.
Didn't all those fat, sweaty Gazans blow international funding for an improved sewage system?
"As we speak, sewage is literally pouring into the streets," said Geoffrey Dennis, head of CARE International, one of the eight non-governmental organizations behind the report. "Over the past three weeks we've only been able to send in food and medicine and the aid dependency is rising."
It's a cultural thing. They'll take everything you have to offer until you figure it out. This "crisis" is merely an enabling vehicle, nothing more. They could stop shooting Kassams any moment they so choose.
Israel imposed restrictions on the flow of people and goods and virtually froze economic activity last June when Hamas Islamists seized control of Gaza. It tightened the blockade in January, limiting supplies of fuel and other goods in what it described as a response to cross-border rocket fire by militants.
You mean the fuel that accounts for about 10% of their power generating needs?
The report painted a picture of an enclave held hostage by the embargo, which it said had worsened poverty and unemployment, crippled education services and made 1.1 million people -- 80 percent of the population -- dependent on food aid.
Try looking behind the painting. Of course if you did, there would be no pity and no need for rights groups in Israel.
It said the health system was in tatters, with hospitals facing daily power cuts lasting eight to 12 hours a day due to fuel and electricity restrictions.
Talk to Hamas about that. They could give the fuel they do get to hospitals instead of using it to drive around and sow conflict.
Almost 18 percent of patients seeking emergency treatment outside Gaza last year were refused permits to leave, it said.
Did they try going to Egypt?
Couldn't, ambulances were full of ammunition.
A senior U.N. official warned the dire conditions outlined in the report would be worsened by any escalation of Israeli military action in response to indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza.
Apparently the conditions aren't "dire" enough to warrant Gazans turning in the terrorists. Squeeze harder.
"It would be devastating," John Ging, director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, told Reuters by telephone.
It won't stop them. You watch. I'd say look deeper than the surface because this terrorism is something they do not need to be doing to survive.
"The whole infrastructure is in a state of collapse, whether it's water, sanitation or just the medical services... If there's a further military offensive it will again just add and compound an already desperate situation."
Why? Are Israelis taking out the hospitals or medicine stockpiles?
Aid groups and legal experts have called Israel's blockade illegal under international law because it constitutes "collective punishment" of the entire population.
You'll find legal experts on both sides of the fence. What do the courts have to say about this?
"It's grossly disproportional," Geoffry Binder, an expert on international humanitarian law in London, told Reuters.
Note: Geoffry doesn't live in Israel. Nor will he ever.
"What we're dealing with here is a few rockets coming from presumably one small corner of Gaza. And the response is the blockade and the destruction of hundreds of lives and the impoverishment of the whole area."
Weren't there like 40 in one day? If it's only a few criminals who represent an extreme minority, then why don't they get outed?
Link


Fifth Column
Three On Trial In Boston For Bogus Charity & Jihad Weekly Magazine!
2007-11-13
Three former leaders of a defunct Boston-based Islamic charity are scheduled to go on trial today in federal court, accused of lying to the government to win tax-exempt status for the charity and then using the nonprofit to distribute publications promoting jihad and to support Muslim militants overseas.

In what is believed to be the first criminal trial in US District Court in Boston that will explore the role of US charities in financing terrorism, Emadeddin Muntasser, Muhamed Mubayyid, and Samir Al-Monla are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, tax violations, and making false statements.

To try to prevent prejudice against the men, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV has barred prosecutors from referring to Osama bin Laden, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, or Al Qaeda.

He has not decided whether references to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing will be allowed.

But when jury selection begins this morning, potential jurors will be told the defendants are Muslims of Arab ancestry and will be asked if they harbor bias based on religion, ethnicity, or national origin that would prevent them from deciding the case fairly.

Potential jurors will be told that Muntasser, 42, of Braintree, was born in Libya; that Mubayyid, 42, of Shrewsbury, is a native of Lebanon; and that Monla, 50, of Boston, was born in Kuwait and is a US citizen.

Defense lawyers and the US attorney's office declined to talk about the case yesterday, because the trial had not begun.

Three years ago, Muntasser sued the government for failing to act on his application for US citizenship. The following year, he was indicted with Mubayyid. They were charged with conspiring to conceal information from the government to win tax-exempt status for their charity, Massachusetts Care International Inc. They also were charged with making false statements. Earlier this year, Monla was added to the indictment.

"This is a tax case, not a terrorism case," defense lawyers contended in a lengthy memorandum filed with the court last month, urging restrictions on what evidence prosecutors may present and on what the government's terrorism specialists can testify about when they take the stand during the trial. "There is no charge that Care International or any of the defendants provided material support to terrorism, or had any connection with Al Qaeda, bin Laden, terrorism, or any terrorist attack or plot," the lawyers wrote.

The government alleges that in the early 1990s, the three men were involved in operating the Boston branch of Al-Kifah Refugee Center - which supported Muslims engaged in violent, religiously based military conflict overseas - and published a pro-jihad newsletter called Al-Hussam, Arabic for The Sword.

After members of the New York office of Al-Kifah were linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, the Boston branch of Al-Kifah was disbanded, and Muntasser founded its successor organization, Massachusetts Care International, the indictment alleges. The group is not affiliated with the global relief organization CARE International.

The indictment alleges that Muntasser and Monla, both former presidents of Massachusetts Care International, and Mubayyid, a former treasurer, won tax-exempt status for Care by hiding its true purpose from the government. The three men asserted that Care, which raised $1.7 million in tax-deductible donations between 1993 and 2003, provided aid to orphans and widows and distributed food. The government alleges that while Care probably provided some humanitarian aid to Muslims who were being persecuted, the three men failed to disclose to the government that it also supported fighters, or mujahideen, in Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Care also used charitable donations to publish articles online about military operations of the Islamic fighters and an English translation of a pro-jihad book, "Join the Caravan," according to the indictment.

Muntasser, owner of the Logan Furniture Co., is also accused of making false statements to the FBI by denying that he had traveled to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.
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India-Pakistan
NGOs stop working in Battagram
2007-11-02
Non-government organisations (NGOs) working in quake-affected Battagram district have suspended their relief operations after attacks on their workers.

On October 30, eight people were injured when an explosive device went off outside the office and residential compound of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), a local NGO running health and education projects. “We’re not sure what happened,” Malik Shahbaz, SPO’s manager of emergency projects, said in Islamabad. “Most of our staff are now in hospital. We were not expecting the blast.”

Shahbaz said the SPO had received threats in the past, and only recently resumed its operations following an earlier suspension.

Also on October 30, a compound of CARE International was attacked with automatic gunfire, but no injuries were reported. CARE International Acting Country Director Daw Mohammad said, “We are suspending our operations for at least a week.”

“We have suspended our operations and evacuated staff,” Michael McGrath, country director of Save the Children US in the NWFP, was quoted as saying by the IRIN, a United Nations information unit.
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