Most Popular War and Peace Posts
Save the Children Warns of New Displacement Along Israel's Divider Wall
Published November 17, 2009 @ 04:47AM PT
There is a growing channel of research exploring whether there's a relationship between border security and hunger. Nowhere is this question so critical as in Gaza and the West Bank where Israel constructed a security wall to separate Israeli Jewish communities from Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian communities. Save the Children, a humanitarian aid agency with a strong record of political impartiality, has just released a new report showing how the divider wall, which was constructed not only along the dividing line, but in a winding meandering pattern often cutting off some Palestinian villages from markets, is directly related to food insecurity and unemployment for Palestinians living along its length. And this has forced some to leave their homes.
If you have not already, please open this Israeli divider wall map from the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Zoom in on the northwest part of the West Bank around Qalkiliya. You'll see the bluish areas are settled by Jewish families and the brownish areas are Palestinian. The bold green line is where the UN-brokered agreement stated that the dividing line should be. The bold red line is where Israel built the wall. Having traveled there or at least considered the economic, if not political, impact of this wall according to the map, the findings of the Save the Children report will make a lot of sense.
The Great Afghan Corruption Crackdown?
Published November 17, 2009 @ 01:47AM PT
In recent months, the Afghan government has faced steadily intensifying pressure from its own public and from NATO governments to take meaningful action to curb official corruption. With the announcement on Monday of a new anti-corruption unit under the Interior Ministry, it may finally be about to do just that.
According to Afghan Attorney General Eshaq Aleko, a major investigation is already underway into corruption at the highest levels of the Afghan government. The individuals under investigation reportedly may include some members of president Hamid Karzai's cabinet.
"Big mistakes have been made in signing contracts, procurements, and providing logistics and other supplies for the government," Aleko told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "According to the law, I can not name them, because they are still considered to be suspects and we've not received the ruling of the court yet."
Ershad Ahmadi, the deputy head of the newly established High Office of Oversight & Anti-Corruption in Afghanistan, said his agency is ready to get tough on corrupt officials.
What's Your Favorite Music from the Frontlines of Crisis Zones?
Published November 15, 2009 @ 02:25PM PT
Tumultuous political times often breed a prolonged and painful tension. For many, it is a time to escape, to descend to the bunkers, or to fight. And yet for others, it's a time to dance.
There were the rock clubs on Marsala Tita during the siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia. Three years of isolation and bombardment produced only so much suffering; one sometimes needed to wind down, deny the fear. There was even a Miss Sarajevo contest. After the recent West African civil wars, Sierra Leonean and Liberian survivors crafted new forms of Afrobeat and Dancehall, some also linked up to Caribbean reggae stars. In Congo DR, there were herders who developed a hybrid style of Congo folk rap which persisted and evolved even after they took up arms and joined the militia.
Let's hear from you the readers, which local musicians really bring out the vitality and resilience of people surviving on the frontlines of crisis zones? Can you recommend specific local groups or songs, ideally with links? For an example, see my colleague Frank's blog and collection of West African Voodoo Funk. Tell a personal story about how you found it, if you can. What a better way to bring out the melodious nature of a culture otherwise shrouded in bad press?
[Photo: Photo Frank found among friends in West Africa, Frank'03net.]
Re-arming Afghanistan's Militias
Published November 14, 2009 @ 03:31PM PT
In an attempt to recreate the movement that peeled Iraqi Sunnis away from the insurgency in the most embattled areas that country, the United States is arming and paying local militias in Afghanistan in the hope these groups will keep the Taliban at bay where Afghan security forces cannot. No one is sure exactly how many militias have formed or regenerated over the last year, but the number is at least in the hundreds. The official name for the support-the-militias program is the Community Defense Initiative, and it is being touted by NATO as a way to, "assist the local population to provide their own security with defensive 'neighborhood watch'-type programs." You know, just with fewer nosy grandmothers and more bossy guys with Kalashnikovs.
Militias have a long and bloody history in Afghanistan, and were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths during the long-running civil war. A major survey conducted in 2004, ahead of the first parliamentary elections, showed that a large majority of Afghans wanted local militias disarmed and local commanders sidelined politically.
A Chechen Girl's War Diary: A Glimpse of the Past, and Maybe the Future
Published November 14, 2009 @ 01:50PM PT
With violence rising in the North Caucasus, and Ingushetia poised, tragically and preventably, to become the next Caucasian hot zone, I've been thinking about Chechnya's two recent wars more. Between 1994 and 2009, at least 100 thousand Chechens died as Chechen separatists and militant Islamists fought the Russian army in the tiny republic. The violence leveled Chechnya's towns and cities, and triggered refugee outflows to other parts of southern Russia and into Caucasian former Soviet republics.
In April 2009, Russia declared the war in Chechnya won, but violence had already spilled over into neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia, and Chechnya's insurgency is growing once again, largely in response to the repressive tactics used by the government of Moscow-backed former warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. Chechnya never grabbed headlines the way the wars of the former Yugoslavia did. A million Chechens suffered out of the spotlight because Chechnya's conflict was seen as far away and inconsequential, unlike the very European Balkan wars, and the Russian government severely curtailed media access to areas affected by fighting.
Today, as the Caucasus region braces for the possibility of renewed large-scale conflict, more and more narratives of the Chechen wars are appearing in the media. One such narrative comes from Polina Zherebtsova, a teenager who kept a diary of her life in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, through the second Chechen war. Polina's diary entries, published by a Russian literary journal and translated in pieces by the blog Tangentialia, lend a child's words to the shattering of civilian life under a rain of bombs. In one entry, dated 27 Sept. 1999, Zherebtsova writes:
The Latest Views on PTSD and War Video Games
Published November 14, 2009 @ 01:31PM PT
After my previous post "Coming Soon: War Video Game Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?" started some discussions, I reviewed the questions with childhood & adolescence social worker Anna Fewell of Green Chimneys, as well as a few other sources, to consider the latest views on this potential intersection between varieties of trauma and war video games.
There are several questions to consider, some of which are top priorities at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) which is hard at work on its fifth edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Psychological Disorders. The current one is known by your friendly neighborhood therapist as the DSM-IV-TR. Please join the discussion on any of these questions below. I've linked each one to some further reading on the issue. And please if you encounter them submit any studies which show opposing results as well...
Protect Displaced Families on the Northern Yemen Front
Published November 13, 2009 @ 09:00PM PT
Yemeni rebels, Zaidi Shiites known for their allegiance to the Houthi clan, continue battling the Yemen government over a dispute which began about what level of power Zaidi Shiite clerics were to have in government. After weeks of fighting which caused at least 150,000 people to flee for their safety in and around Saada, northern Yemen, the conflict then spilled over into Saudi Arabia last week.
Recently I got a note from an aid agency representative working there illuminating how desperate the situation has become. With the rapid Saudi military response, the Houthu rebels apparently have retreated back into Yemen. But now Saudi defense asserts its right to continue fighting against the Houthi militia, into Yemen in alliance with the Yemeni government, until the rebels remain outside of a border buffer region...
