Category Archives: Lands

The new Dust Bowl: ‘epochal’ drought hits California’s Central Valley

f13-iconThe Telegraph reports: On the road into the small California farming community of Mendota the signs read “Stop – dust bowl!” and “Save Water” as farmers in orchards are busy bulldozing withered almond trees.

It didn’t used to be like this here. Until recently this town of 11,000 people was proudly known as the “Cantaloupe Capital of the World”. Of all the many local crops its melons were most prized. Mendota’s farmers have been growing them since the 1920s, when Greek immigrants arrived and found the soil was perfect. The lush fields used to provide 70 per cent of America’s cantaloupes.

But today Mendota is becoming known for another reason. It sits at ground zero in an unfolding, slow motion billion dollar disaster, what climatologists are calling an “epochal” drought. Analysis of the rings in ancient sequoia trees suggests the region is experiencing a lack of rain not seen since 1580, around the time Sir Francis Drake reached the California coast and claimed it for Elizabeth I.

In a neat and modern town hall, built in the good times, Mendota Mayor Robert Silva shakes his head ruefully as he looks at the latest unemployment figures. It stands at 34 per cent and is likely to top 50 per cent as farmers leave more fields fallow in the next few months.

“We will soon have the highest unemployment in the nation. Things are really not good,” Mr Silva says understatedly. “There’s going to be a lot of dust flying around all over the place here.” On the streets outside workers in cowboy hats loll on benches under a baking sun, not a cloud or a job in sight. Times are so bad the 99 Cents store has competition from a 98 Cents store, and people are queuing for donated clothes at the youth centre.

Similar scenes are evident in towns up and down California’s Central Valley. The scale of the drought is staggering. The Central Valley is known as the “breadbasket of America” and covers a vast area half the size of England. It produces 50 per cent of the fruit and vegetables in the United Sates. For several years the resolute Mr Silva has been writing to the White House pleading for help. In December he wrote: “Dear President Obama. Our cities, businesses and residents desperately seek immediate relief.”

It now appears someone finally read one of his missives. Mr Obama was due to helicopter in on Marine One to a farm near Mendota yesterday. At the customary photo opportunity he was due to propose a major new $1 billion (£600m) fund to mitigate the impact of climate change, including $100 million aid for stricken livestock farmers, $60 million for food banks to supply hungry families, and 600 sites that will give out free meals this summer in drought-hit areas.

For farmers there was relief that their plight has been noticed, and gratitude that Mr Obama was prepared to stand in a field on Valentine’s Day. But there was also, among some, a feeling that the president has been slow to address this crisis. He has visited Los Angeles countless times to glad-hand movie stars and political donors, but it was his first ever trip to California’s farming heartland. Mendota is four hours’ drive, and a world apart, from Hollywood. [Continue reading…]

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Lessons for America: Think you can’t live without plastic bags? Rwanda did it

o13-iconÉmilie Clavel writes: On a recent trip to Rwanda, my luggage was searched at the border, and the authorities confiscated some of my belongings. No, I wasn’t trying to smuggle drugs or weapons. The offenders? Three plastic bags I’d use to carry my shampoo and dirty laundry.

You see, non-biodegradable polythene bags are illegal in Rwanda. In 2008, while the rest of the world was barely starting to consider a tax on single-use plastic bags, the small East African nation decided to ban them completely.

At Kigali International Airport, a sign warns visitors that plastic bags will be confiscated. Agents from the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) cut the plastic wrapping off negligent travellers’ suitcases. Throughout the country, businesses have been forced to replace plastic carrier bags with paper ones.

The ban was a bold move. It paid off. As soon as I set foot in Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, it struck me. It’s clean. Looking out the window of the bus that was taking me to Kigali, the capital, I could see none of the mountains of rubbish I’d grown accustomed to in other African countries. No plastic carrier bags floating in the wind or stranded on a tree branch.

Upon arrival in Kigali the contrast is even more evident. With its lovely green squares and wide boulevards, the Rwandan capital is one of the most beautiful cities in Africa. And it’s immaculate. Enough to teach a lesson to scruffy – albeit beloved – Western metropolises like New York or London. And the ban on plastic bags is just the start for Rwanda. It’s all part of the Vision 2020 plan to transform the country into a sustainable middle-income nation. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian activist group says 140,000 killed so far

n13-iconThe Associated Press reports: A Syrian activist group says the death toll in that country’s conflict has reached 140,000.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday the dead from three years of political violence include civilians, rebels, members of the military, pro-government militiamen and foreign fighters.

The group bases its count on a network of informants on the ground.

The group says more than 3,400 people have been killed so far this month, an escalation in the violence even as the government and opposition hold peace talks in Geneva.

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Saudis agree to provide Syrian rebels with mobile antiaircraft missiles

n13-iconThe Wall Street Journal reports: Washington’s Arab allies, disappointed with Syria peace talks, have agreed to provide rebels there with more sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired missiles that can take down jets, according to Western and Arab diplomats and opposition figures.

Saudi Arabia has offered to give the opposition for the first time Chinese man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads, and antitank guided missiles from Russia, according to an Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of the efforts. Saudi officials couldn’t be reached to comment.

The U.S. has long opposed arming rebels with antiaircraft missiles for fear they could fall into the hands of extremists who might use them against the West or commercial airlines. The Saudis have held off supplying them in the past because of U.S. opposition. There was no indication of a change in U.S. policy and officials in Washington declined to comment on the plan.

The U.S. for its part has stepped up financial support, handing over millions of dollars in new aid to pay fighters’ salaries, said rebel commanders who received some of the money. The U.S. wouldn’t comment on any payments.

The focus of the new rebel military push is to retake the southern suburbs of Damascus in hopes of forcing the regime to accept a political resolution to the war by agreeing to a transitional government without President Bashar al-Assad.

But if the Manpads are supplied in the quantities needed, rebels said it could tip the balance in the stalemated war in favor of the opposition. The antiaircraft and Russian Konkurs antitank weapons would help them chip away at the regime’s two big advantages on the battlefield—air power and heavy armor. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian peace talks pedal backwards

a13-iconThe BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Bridget Kendall, writes: The second round of Syrian peace talks in Geneva is drawing to a close. But apart from the truce to let UN aid convoys into Homs – a deal done on the ground between the UN and Damascus – it’s hard to point to any concrete achievement.

No common ground has been established between the two rival delegations. And now the US and Russia are at loggerheads too, over a possible UN resolution to press for humanitarian access across Syria.

It feels as though the diplomacy over Syria is going backwards. At the Geneva talks, the two sides have been so deadlocked that they are not even sitting in the same room any more.

Two weeks ago they were at least airing opposing views across a table, and discussing concrete steps like possible ceasefires and prisoner exchanges. Now they can’t even agree on an agenda. Damascus insists talks must first tackle terrorism. The opposition says only in conjunction with political talks.

Both sides claim they want to keep going – neither wants to be blamed for the talks’ collapse. [Continue reading…]

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Inter-rebel fighting enters a new phase as Salafists declare open war on ISIS

f13-iconDaniel Abdallah writes: Three days ago, the inter-rebel fighting entered a new phase. For the first time, Salafist factions have openly publicised their attack on the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and the feircest battles have moved from the Northwest to the East of Syria. Ahrar ash-Sham (AS) and Jabhat an-Nusra (JN) – al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria – are officially at war with ISIS. The recent fighting spans many governorates, but two – Deir az-Zour and al-Hasakah – have seen the most intense fighting between ISIS and JN/AS. Concurrent attacks on ISIS have taken place in rural Aleppo and Raqqa on a smaller scale, perhaps to take advantage of ISIS’s vulnerability because it was preoccupied in the East.

Although there were previous direct engagements between AS and JN, on the one hand, and ISIS, on the other, they were never at such scale, never so exacerbated, at least, as will be shortly explained, from the AS and JN side. The most well-known precedent took place in the days leading to 12th January 2014 – the date on which Raqqa fell into the sole control of ISIS. ISIS had been surrounded in the gubernatorial palace by AS from the West and by JN from the East, and the outcome of the battle looked all but certain. Quite unexpectedly, JN fighters were informed on their radios by ISIS to ‘surrender or withdraw because AS have left the battle field and you are on your own’. For ideological reasons, AS fighters had decided not to participate in the fitna (civil discord among Muslims) and to avoid having the blood of their ‘brothers’ on their hands. They, however, were not rewarded for their attempt to remain neutral. They were captured and executed by a different ISIS force outside Raqqa, although ISIS had initially agreed to grant them safe passage. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s security forces once again using virginity tests on female detainees

n13-iconSheera Frenkel reports: Jehad Safwat pulls her headscarf tight and presses her hands deep into her belly when she talks about the virginity tests she underwent last month in Egyptian detention.

The 21-year-old medical student was arrested at a Dec. 28 rally organized by Muslim Brotherhood supporters at Cairo University. For nearly two weeks she was held in detention, mostly at Cairo’s Azkabia police station, where she says she was forced to submit to virginity and pregnancy tests that police conducted at a medical facility nearby. When she was finally released, police filed no formal charges against her — and handed her the bill for her “treatments.” Safwat was one of four women who spoke with BuzzFeed about undergoing forced virginity and pregnancy tests at the hands of the Egyptian security services.

The Egyptian army, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood-led government last year and has effectively ruled the country since, promised to ban the tests after it emerged that more than a dozen women arrested during the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square had been forced to submit to them. It hasn’t, and the doctors arrested for performing the tests were acquitted when they brought to trial a year later.

Now, the tests are back. After more than a year in which human rights activists say that police refrained from carrying out virginity tests, or employing the types of harsh interrogation methods regularly associated with the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak, reports have resurfaced of police brutality against both men and women. It’s the final sign, activists say, that the police state is fully back. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s disintegration alarms Israel

a13-iconIan Black writes: Nearly three years into the war in Syria, the Israeli government is getting used to the idea that its northern neighbour is changing beyond recognition as the bloodiest chapter of the Arab spring takes its bloody course with no end in sight.

Unlike Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, Israel – Syria’s enemy for 65 years – has not been inundated with hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing the conflict. But it is increasingly alarmed about the disintegration of the country and the rise of Jihadi-type groups in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad. Eventually, the fear is, they will turn their attention to Israel.

On the occupied side of the Golan Heights, wounded Syrians are being treated by the Israeli military – which has allowed limited media coverage to advertise its humanitarian activities. Outside Israel, it was reported this week that injured fighters are being questioned about the strength, weaponry and structure of Islamist brigades – indispensable detail on these little-known “new players” in the region.

Israeli officials, including the head of military intelligence, have been warning for months of the growing strength of groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. This has fed into European fears of “blowback” from Islamist fighters returning home after being bloodied in Syria. Israel is also talking up the risk from “Global Jihad” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – a local “war on terror” narrative that frames its view of the region and deflects pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. [Continue reading…]

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Syria: Top ISIS leaders revealed

n13-iconAl Arabiya reports: Exclusive information obtained by Al Arabiya News Channel has revealed the identities of the top field commanders running the Islamist militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The six individuals who have been at the helm of the terror group are from Iraq, Deputy Minister of Iraq’s Interior Ministry Adnan al-Asadi told Al Arabiya in an exclusive interview to be aired on Friday.

At least three of them served in Saddam Hussein’s army while others were previously detained in Iraq and upon their release they joined the war in Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Star Wars-style laser shield aims to protect all of Israel from short-range rockets

n13-iconThe Associated Press reports: An Israeli state-owned arms company developing a laser-based missile shield that evokes “Star Wars” style technology says its deployment over the country is closer to becoming a reality.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems said development of the system was advanced enough for the company to be comfortable with publicizing it at this week’s Singapore Airshow, which is Asia’s largest aerospace and defense exhibition.

The laser technology behind the missile shield called Iron Beam is not that far removed from fiction.

“It’s exactly like what you see in Star Wars,” said company spokesman Amit Zimmer. “You see the lasers go up so quickly like a flash and the target is finished.” [Continue reading…]

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The Assad regime and jihadis: collaborators and allies?

f13-iconAymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi writes: Almost every day on my Twitter feed, I come across allegations that the jihadis operating in Syria- in particular, the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) or “al-Qa’ida” more generally (by which Jabhat al-Nusra is meant as well)- are somehow in secret collaboration with the Assad regime, if not agents and creations of the regime.

Indeed, this theme appears to have been prominent at a Chicago Council event held yesterday. “For the first time in 3 years I hear something that makes sense from experts about Syria. Assad regime is helping al-Qa’ida. We might discover very soon Assad regime coordinating and supporting al-Qa’ida fighters,” tweeted Diana Rudha al-Shammary, covering the event live yesterday.

In a somewhat similar vein, Syria Report tweeted on February 3, commenting on the official al-Qa’ida Central (AQC) statement clarifying that ISIS has no links with AQC: “Their [ISIS’] leaders take orders from Assad’s intelligence.” On January 12, @TaziMorocco, a person who regularly interacts with me on Twitter, commented: “Assad Air Force Intelligence officers in Damascus decided in 2012 to create and supply ISIS thugs in order to destroy the rebellion.”

Given the widespread nature of these allegations, culminating in the recent opposition-in-exile’s report claiming Assad-ISIS collaboration, I believe it to be worth addressing the claims. I will deal with each of the main lines of argument used to advance the thesis.

It is appropriate to state the following as a virtual preface. There is no doubt that the jihadi presence in Syria- whether in the form of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, or the multiple muhajireen-led battalions- is useful to the Assad’s narrative on the rebellion as a foreign-backed “takfiri/Wahhabi” conspiracy against Syria.

It is also clear that the regime has tried to exploit this presence to compel the opposition-in-exile at the Geneva talks into accepting that Assad should stay in power, and that the regime and opposition should instead work together to crush ISIS et al.- an opportunity that Assad hopes could quell the entire rebellion and reassert control over the whole country, which has been and remains his goal.

However, it must be noted that it is not only these groups with global jihadi visions that serve his narrative, but also the Islamic Front (IF), which may well be the largest single rebel coalition on the ground, with some blurring between the national/transnational distinction. The IF’s main leaders, backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, all engage in virulently sectarian rhetoric, labeling Alawites as “Nusayris” and Shi’a as “Rafidites” (e.g. see these remarks by Jaysh al-Islam leader Zahran Alloush).

The mere existence of such rhetoric and the IF’s prominence- regardless of what happens on the ground- are enough to provide considerable credence to the regime’s characterization of the opposition as sectarian. Further, the sectarian rhetoric of the IF has translated to results on the ground, most recently with reports of a massacre of Alawites in the Hama village of Ma’an after it was taken over by Ahrar ash-Sham in coordination with Jund al-Aqsa- a battalion with an ideology identical to that of ISIS but maintaining better relations overall than ISIS maintains with other rebel groups. [Continue reading…]

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Syria killing accelerates as peace talks falter

n13-iconReuters reports: More Syrians have been killed in the three weeks since peace talks began than at any other time in the civil war, activists said on Wednesday, as troops pounded rebel towns on the Lebanese border and negotiations faltered in Geneva.

More than 230 people have been killed every day in Syria since January 22, when international mediators brought President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its opponents together, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. That is more than in any other three weeks since the war began in 2011.

It is unclear how far the bloodshed is a consequence of the talks, as both sides seek to improve their bargaining positions by gaining territory. On Wednesday, Assad’s army and fighters from Lebanese ally Hezbollah pounded the strategic border town of Yabroud where rebels prepared to resist a ground offensive.

The United Nations says more than 130,000 Syrians have been killed in nearly three years of fighting. Totalling at least 4,959, the three-week death toll compiled by the Observatory included 515 women and children. The group estimated about a third of all the dead were civilians. [Continue reading…]

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Judge orders Pakistani intelligence services to produce missing drone victim

n13-iconReprieve: A Pakistani judge today ordered the country’s intelligence services to produce a victim of CIA drone strikes who has been missing since being seized from his Rawalpindi home a week ago.

Kareem Khan, who lost his son and brother to a 2009 CIA drone strike in North Waziristan, had been due to travel to Europe to discuss his experience with parliamentarians in a number of countries later this month. However, he has not been heard from since being detained by a group of men in police uniforms and plain clothes in the early hours of February 5.

The Rawalpindi Bench of the Lahore High Court was today hearing a Habeas petition brought by Mr Khan’s lawyer and Reprieve fellow, Shahzad Akbar. Mr Akbar argued that the intelligence services must have been responsible for Mr Khan’s arrest, as responses filed by the police indicated that they were unaware of the incident. As a result, the judge ordered the various intelligence services overseen by Pakistan’s Ministry of the Interior to produce Mr Khan by Thursday February 20.

Mr. Khan was due to travel to Europe this Saturday (February 15), where he was scheduled to speak with German, Dutch and British parliamentarians about his personal experience with drone strikes and and his work as a freelance journalist investigating other strikes in the region. [Continue reading…]

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Is Iranian support for ‘al Qaeda’ in Syria unimaginable?

UPI reports: U.S. officials allege Iranian intelligence is actively helping al-Qaida fighters in Syria, even though the jihadists are battling to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad, Tehran’s key Arab ally.

At first glance, this would seem to fly in the face of a high-profile effort by U.S. President Barack Obama to achieve detente with Iran, America’s longtime adversary, which — if it comes off — would dramatically alter the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.

At a deeper level, analysts say it makes sense, inasmuch as Tehran helping al-Qaida reinforce jihadist fighters engaged in vicious infighting with other Syrian rebel forces, including Islamists, means the divided insurgents are weakening themselves and not Assad’s beleaguered regime in Damascus.

The U.S. Treasury Department, targeting a diverse group of entities and individuals for allegedly evading international sanctions against Iran, aiding missile proliferation and supporting terrorism, said last week Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, or MOIS, was working with al-Qaida operatives directing jihadists to Syria.

Treasury has made this claim before. In February 2012, it cited the MOIS, Iran’s principal intelligence service, for supporting terrorist groups, “including al-Qaida and al-Qaida in Iraq … again exposing the extent of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism as a matter of Iranian state policy.”

A year earlier, it singled out a senior al-Qaida operative it identified as a Syrian named Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, aka Yasin al-Suri, as the group’s chief facilitator in Iran.

He allegedly is still operating there. Al-Jazeera reported in January al-Suri “is more active than ever.”

Analyst Thomas Joscelyn of the Long War Journal, which tracks global terrorism, says: “Al-Suri operates under an agreement that was struck between the Iranian regime and al-Qaida years ago. He first began operating inside Iran in 2005.

“It’s not clear why the Iranian government would allow al-Suri to act as a facilitator for al-Qaida’s operations in Syria. … The Iranian regime, however, has mastered duplicity and may have unknown reasons for keeping tabs on al-Qaida’s operations.”

Jason Ditz writes:

That the Assad government is literally Iran’s closest ally on the planet and that al-Qaeda is openly hostile to Iran’s Shi’ite government are both unchanged, and of course that means Iran backing al-Qaeda against Syria is literally the last thing they’d do.

Actually, the idea that Iran might provide some kind of support to a group fighting its closest ally does not require a great leap of imagination. I’ll explain why, but first note that I chose the term group.

Now more than ever, the term al Qaeda begs more questions than it answers.

There are in Syria two groups both being referred to as al Qaeda affiliates: Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS aka ISIL, the successor of al Qaeda in Iraq). Yet al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently made it clear that the organization’s central command neither authorized the creation of ISIS nor views it as part of al Qaeda.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi writes:

[T]he media’s constant descriptions of ISIS as an “al-Qaeda affiliate” until this recent statement have been deeply misguided and reflect a misunderstanding of how ISIS has seen itself.

According to ISIS supporters and fighters I know, ISIS and its predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), have been independent of al-Qaeda since the inception of ISI in October 2006. This line of narrative — articulated by them long before this statement — argues that when ISI was formed, it absorbed what was then al-Qaeda in Iraq (which was certainly the main component of the ISI umbrella coalition), as the pledge of allegiance was switched from al-Qaeda to the emir of ISI.

ISIS’ supporters and fighters further point to Zawahri’s statement in 2007 explicitly stating that there is no “al-Qaeda in Iraq” anymore, as it had joined other jihadist groups in the ISI.

Regardless of whether one wishes to accept this narrative of independence from al-Qaeda from the very beginning, there is no doubt that the ISI quickly became an organization capable of supporting itself financially and supplying its own manpower.

The recent Treasury Department statement made no reference to ISIS and announced:

…the designation of a key Iran-based al-Qa’ida facilitator [Olimzhon Adkhamovich Sadikov] who supports al-Qa’ida’s vital facilitation network in Iran, that operates there with the knowledge of Iranian authorities. The network also uses Iran as a transit point for moving funding and foreign fighters through Turkey to support al-Qa’ida-affiliated elements in Syria, including the al-Nusrah Front.

So let’s assume that Iran welcomes support flowing towards al Nusra and this story isn’t anti-Iranian propaganda manufactured in Washington, how might this serve Iranian interests?

Since al Nusra is now in conflict with ISIS and since ISIS poses a threat to the Maliki government in Iraq (which is itself closely aligned with Iran), strengthening Nusra at ISIS’s expense may help Iran. Moreover, Iran may view the fight between the two groups in a similar way that Edward N. Luttwak last year characterized the whole war in Syria: “There is only one outcome that the United States can possibly favor: an indefinite draw.”

That is to say, as the UPI reports suggests, Iran may be fueling a fight in which it hopes all the combatants come out weaker.

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Egypt: Reprisals for revolutionaries

o13-iconDavid Wolman writes: During his first two weeks in Cairo’s notorious Tora Prison, Ahmed Maher was able to smuggle out a few letters that he had scribbled on toilet paper. Maher is the soft-spoken 33-year-old civil engineer who co-founded the April 6 Youth Movement and was a crucial behind-the-scenes operator during the 2011 protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak three years ago today. Maher has now been in prison for 72 days. His family is having difficulty getting information about his wellbeing, although he has occasionally dictated letters to visitors, including this one, published last week by the Washington Post, and this one, sent to me yesterday.

In one of his earlier messages, Maher wrote of conditions in the jail, joking that his food, at least, would stay well-preserved. “I don’t think there is a refrigerator anywhere colder than this cell.” For the most part, however, his letters have been scathing indictments of Egypt’s military and warned of catastrophic social unrest if the “police state” continues its campaign to dismantle the groups that came together for the 2011 Revolution.

That dismantling has gone largely unnoticed by the West. Outside of Egypt, news about the country suggests a binary struggle. On one side: the Muslim Brotherhood, angered over the ouster of President Mohammad Morsi and pushing back against oppression, real or perceived. On the other side: The military-led government of Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who appears poised to run for president. [Continue reading…]

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Inside the hellhole of Yarmouk, the refugee camp that shames the world

f13-iconChristopher Gunness, spokesman for the UN relief effort in Syria, writes: The lexicon of man’s inhumanity to man has a new word – Yarmouk. The camp, on the edge of Damascus, was once the bustling, vibrant heart of the Palestine refugee community in Syria, where 160,000 Palestinians lived in harmony with Syrians of all stripes. Over the past six months, it has become synonymous with infant malnutrition, women dying in childbirth for lack of medical care and besieged communities reduced to eating animal feed – all this in the capital city of a UN member state in the 21st century. Yarmouk sums up the tragic, profound suffering of civilians in the Syria conflict. It should not have to.

This tragedy has a human face. Khaled, aged 14 months, is a war child. He was born as Syria’s pitiless conflict engulfed Yarmouk: armed opposition groups entered the camp and government forces responded by encircling it. Trapped with his parents and four siblings, he has seen more suffering in his short life than most of us will experience in a lifetime.

Khaled embodies Syria’s tragic conflict, but also the opportunities that we must grasp. He would probably be dead had it not been for Dr Ibrahim Mohammad of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), who treated him for a severe form of malnutrition known as kwashiorkor, caused by a prolonged lack of protein. He also had symptoms of rickets.

“When I first saw Khaled he looked like a five-month-old,” says Mohammad. “He was about to die. Khaled had survived on water and almost no solid food for two months.”

When asked about life in Yarmouk, Khaled’s mother Noor, 29, becomes agitated. “Hell would be better,” she says. “We boiled spices with water and drank it. We ate grass until all the grass was gone.” [Continue reading…]

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Orwell was hailed a hero for fighting in Spain. Today he’d be guilty of terrorism

o13-iconGeorge Monbiot writes: If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return [to Britain] from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a “political, ideological, religious or racial motive” – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government against a fascist rebellion would have no bearing on the case. They would go down as terrorists.

As it happens, the British government did threaten people leaving the country to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870. In 1937 it warned that anyone volunteering to fight in Spain would be “liable on conviction to imprisonment up to two years”. This was consistent with its policy of non-intervention, which even Winston Churchill, initially a supporter, came to see as “an elaborate system of official humbug”. Britain, whose diplomatic service and military command were riddled with fascist sympathisers, helped to block munitions and support for the Republican government, while ignoring Italian and German deployments on Franco’s side.

But the act was unworkable, and never used – unlike the Crown Prosecution Service’s far graver threat to British citizens fighting in Syria. In January 16 people were arrested on terror charges after returning from Syria. Seven others are already awaiting trial. Sue Hemming, the CPS head of counter-terrorism, explained last week that “potentially it’s an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict, however loathsome you think the people on the other side are … We will apply the law robustly”.

People fighting against forces that run a system of industrialised torture and murder and are systematically destroying entire communities could be banged up for life for their pains. Is this any fairer than imprisoning Orwell would have been? [Continue reading…]

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