After eight years, U.S.-led forces must show progress in Afghanistan by next summer to avoid the public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a sharp critique of the war effort.
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Posts Tagged ‘conflict’
Sudan rivals agree to avert war
July 17th, 2009 |
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Rival parties from north and south Sudan have agreed new plans to prevent conflict ahead of next week’s ruling on their disputed border.
The two sides ended 22 years of conflict in 2005 but tension remains high, especially in the oil-rich region of Abyei, claimed by both sides.
A court in The Hague is due to rule on the border next Thursday and both sides have promised to abide by its ruling.
The agreement in Khartoum was overseen by US envoy Scott Gration.
Last year, clashes in Abyei forced some 50,000 people to flee their homes and reportedly left 100 dead.
Could clashes herald return to war Uneasy peace in Sudan ghost town
Tensions are rising ahead of national elections put back until April 2010 and a referendum on whether the south should secede, due in 2011.
Senior negotiator Malik Aggar, from the south’s former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), told the BBC there was bound to be disappointment from one side or another with the decision from the Permanent Court for Arbitration.
"We expected some violence may be there but both parties are prepared to quell any violence," he said.
He said that the presence of UN peacekeepers would be increased, while both sides would send officials to explain the ruling and try to avert bloodshed.
However, he also said there were up to 14 unresolved issues between the two sides.
Ghazi Salahaldin from President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party also said the two sides were working together to prevent renewed conflict.
The long civil war – separate from the Darfur conflict – between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south ended in 2005, after claiming 1.5 million lives.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Elizabeth Goitein: Detainees in Wonderland
July 16th, 2009 |
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Last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the subject of using military commissions to try detainees in the conflict against Al Qaeda and the…
Call to help Colombia displaced
July 16th, 2009 |
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Amnesty International has denounced what it says is a dramatic rise in the number of people being displaced by Colombia’s armed conflict.
The human rights group notes that 380,000 people were forced to flee in 2008, a rise of nearly 25% on 2007.
Communities in areas of economic, military or strategic importance are being targeted in particular, it says.
Amnesty says Colombia has one of the world’s biggest displaced populations, put at between three and four million.
The latest report by Amnesty says that as many as 380,000 people were forced to leave their homes last year to escape violence arising from the long-running conflict between guerrillas, paramilitary groups and the armed forces.
Their figures are based on information from a local human rights group, the Centre for Human Rights and the Displaced (Codhes), which reported in April that there had been a 25% rise in the number of internally displaced.
"The dire humanitarian situation in Colombia is one of today’s most hidden tragedies"
Marcelo Pollack
Amnesty International
At the time, the government department dedicated to helping the displaced, Accion Social, said there had been an increase but also that some people were falsely claiming to have been forced from their homes in order to qualify from compensation.
According to government figures, 2.9 million people were displaced between 1997 and 2008.
Amnesty says many people have been deliberately targeted by guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and the security forces as part of strategies designed to remove whole communities from areas of military, strategic or economic importance.
The great majority of those affected are from one of three groups – indigenous people, Afro-descendents and campesinos – or farmworkers.
Many of them live in areas which are potentially economically profitable, such as land that could be used for mineral and oil exploration or agro-industrial developments.
Amnesty International’s Americas Deputy Director Marcelo Pollack said: "The dire humanitarian situation in Colombia is one of today’s most hidden tragedies, and belies claims by the Colombian government that the country has overcome its troubled past.
"Until the authorities in Colombia acknowledge the very real effects of the conflict, the human rights of millions of people have little chance of being protected."
Amnesty said much of the wealth accumulated by the paramilitaries and their political and business supporters was based on the misappropriation of land through violence or the threat of violence.
Some estimate that between four and six million hectares (10-15 million acres) of land have been stolen.
The human rights group is urging the Colombian authorities to take action stop forced displacement, improve the protection of civilians and to identify and return all stolen land and other assets to their rightful owners or their families.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Eric Deggans: For this wise African American, Sotomayor hearings reveal the heart of race conflict in America
July 14th, 2009 |
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Never have I wanted more to throw a brick through the screen of my television. Watching Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sit stoically through a…
Polio threat to Pakistan children
July 11th, 2009 |
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By Jill McGivering
BBC News, Islamabad
The continuing conflict in Pakistan has left more than a million children at risk of contracting polio.
Vaccination programmes earlier this year were compromised by opposition from militants and by violence, which has made many areas inaccessible.
Pakistan is one of four countries which still see annual outbreaks of polio.
The first few months of the year are crucial for vaccination teams who try to reach children before the polio virus starts to circulate.
This year, their campaigns have been badly disrupted.
‘Challenge’
In some places, Taliban extremists have intervened and stopped programmes, calling them un-Islamic.
"The conflict will create a cluster of children, a cohort, who are susceptible to the virus"
Dr Khalif Bile Mohamud,
World Health Organisation
Some militants have opposed the vaccine, describing it as dangerous and part of a Western plot to harm Muslim children.
But perhaps the biggest obstacle has been the fighting.
Since the start of the military offensive against the insurgents, many areas, including much of Swat and parts of the tribal areas, have become inaccessible to health teams.
Dr Khalif Bile Mohamud, the World Health Organisation representative in Pakistan, says more than a million children, trapped inside the conflict zone, have been missed.
"Pakistan was the country closest to interrupting the virus. Now we have a challenge – the conflict will create a cluster of children, a cohort, who are susceptible to the virus," he said.
Health teams are trying to vaccinate as many children as possible who have emerged from the conflict zone because their families fled the violence.
They have already treated about half a million. The aim is to create a firewall of immunity – so, if there are outbreaks they can be contained.
So far this year 20 cases have been confirmed – seven of them from north-west Pakistan.
But this is just the start of the polio season. Most cases are usually reported in late summer and autumn.
And accurate information may be hard to come by. The surveillance system is also being compromised by the insecurity. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Eight British soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a day
July 11th, 2009 |
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• Eight UK soldiers killed in 24 hours
• Afghan death toll eclipses that in Iraq
• Brown warns of ‘very hard summer’
Ministers were bracing themselves for an increasingly bloody conflict in Afghanistan as it became clear that a further eight British soldiers have been killed in 24 hours, the worst combat death toll since the war began.
Five troops were killed in a single incident after they were caught in a bomb blast while on foot patrol. Officials confirmed that 15 troops have been killed in the last 10 days. With the government’s handling of the conflict under increasing scrutiny, Gordon Brown was forced to defend the Afghan mission as he left the G8 summit in Italy. Before heading directly to a private briefing at the military’s operational headquarters at Northwood, Middlesex, he warned of a “very hard summer … It’s not over”.
Speaking at a press conference at L’Aquila before the latest deaths had been announced, with his voice faltering Brown voiced his sympathy for the families of those who have died.
He said: “There is a chain of terror that runs from the mountains and towns of Afghanistan to the streets of Britain. Our resolution to complete the work we have started is undiminished.
“It is in tribute to the members of our forces who have given their lives that we should succeed in the efforts we have begun.”
Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, said the conflict was “winnable” but warned there would be no early end to the fighting. “I do believe that we are making progress and I do believe that this is winnable, but it is not winnable in the short term,” he told the BBC. “We are going to have to … get behind our armed forces who are doing the brave fighting.”
The daybegan with the confirmation of two deaths in Helmand province the previous day: one from 4th Battalion The Rifles by an explosion while on foot patrol; the second from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, during a battle with insurgents near Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Later, a third soldier from the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment was confirmed as having been killed when the Viking armoured vehicle in which he was travelling was hit.
Then there was worse news as it was confirmed that five troops had died and others were injured in a bomb blast. The deaths took the total number of fatalities in Afghanistan to 184, five more than the total lost in the Iraq conflict.
As the death toll grew, there were poignant scenes at Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire as five coffins draped with the union flag arrived at RAF Lyneham and were met by sombre crowds on the town’s streets.
Relatives of lance corporal Dane Elson, 22, from Bridgend, south Wales, of The 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, wept as the hearse carrying his body passed.
His girlfriend, Claire Wells, 23, was ushered forward and placed two roses on the hearse carrying his coffin. Wells said she had planned to live the rest of her life with Elson. “Now I’ll never see him again, I can’t bear it,” she said. Wells added that she did not believe the troops ought to be in Afghanistan. “They are fighting a war that we cannot win,” she said. “There are too many of our lads dying.”
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, who broke the consensus among party leaders this week when he criticised the government’s strategy in Afghanistan, said: “This tragic milestone must be a reminder to all of us of the huge sacrifices made day after day by our brave service men and women and their families. The courage and professionalism of our armed forces are second to none.”
Bernard Jenkin MP, a member of the Commons defence select committee, said: “It is astonishing that we are fighting high intensity operations the scale of Afghanistan on a peacetime budget without enough protection mobility and with fewer helicopters per head for armed forces than we had three years ago.”
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