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Afghanistan Appeal for Food
Posted July 10th, 2008 by BLACK CELL
THE REAL WAR FRONT, FIGHTING THE WAR ON TERRORISM, IS AFGHANISTAN. I DO NOT THINK MARKETING THE U.N. IN AMERICA MAKES POLITICAL SENSE FOR DEMOCRATS. BUT, WHEN THERE IS A CONSTANT DRUM BEAT ABOUT WHERE THE REAL WAR FRONT IS, IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, I THINK IT WILL EVENTUALLY BE CLEAR THAT THE WAR ON TERRORISM SHOULD BE FOUGHT IN & AROUND PAKISTAN / AFGHANISTAN. IT IS BECOMING CLEAR THAT MEMBERS OF PAKISTAN'S GOV. & MILITARY ARE, AS BU$H SAID "AGAINST US." : OUR MILITARY LEADERS WILL STAND UP FOR THE RIGHT WAR.
Food shortages grow in rural Nepal
By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Achham district, western Nepal
Rising food prices and destroyed crop harvests are hitting Nepal very hard.
Although few people if any are starving, many are going hungry and the United Nations says several hundred thousand need urgent food assistance.
Most of the hungry are living in remote parts of the mountainous country, inaccessible by road.
In the village of Sokat in what is known as the Far West, I met a destitute family.
'Not enough to eat'
Jamauti Kami blows onto a fire in the dark kitchen of her mud-built house. She is cooking a meagre lunch for her six children: a bit of rice for the first time in three days, with a leaf vegetable.
People can't survive by eating mud
Dharma Singh Saud
Her husband is far away in India, looking for work. He left so there would be more food for the family and to bring money home.
The children were crying this morning, Jamauti said - still hungry from the night before.
"There's not enough to eat," she says starkly, her three-year-old daughter Tara nestled by her legs. That prompts Tara to ask when she can eat.
"Yesterday morning the children shared one roti and in the evening another roti, a leftover," Jamauti said.
"That was all they had. They ate and then slept. I didn't cook for myself because we've only a little flour left, so I'm hungry now."
Once the food is cooked, it doesn't last long. The ravenous children wolf it down.
When the incessant rain finally stops, Jamauti leads me through the crumbling, muddy paths to her tiny terrace of farmland.
In the ever-shifting cloud, she does a bit of weeding and shows me one reason the family are suffering.
Disease
"There was no rain so my winter wheat crop was ruined," she says.
"Later it grew a little but then it was destroyed by hail. I haven't harvested any wheat for two or three years.
She shows me the paddy she is now growing on the same patch.
Some of the blades are yellowish-green and pockmarked, something Jamauti says is caused by a pest spreading a disease.
"I'm afraid it will be ruined too."
In Sokat and much of western Nepal many low-caste people like Jamauti struggle to survive. Children have torn clothes. Some have distended bellies.
The rains beat down, especially at night, and the air cracks to the sound of thunder. Too much rain is as damaging as too little.
The countryside looks lush now - but that is deceptive. This is the hungriest time of year. A long dry spell has just ended and the newly planted crops won't be ready for months.
With centuries of toil, families have still managed to carve out the terraces in these densely populated hills. They have been subdivided many times.
'No control'
So even if the yield is good, home-grown crops will only feed a poor family for one or two months a year.
So they must buy food - but at a price.
The nearest roadside village and market is Chaukhutte, a collection of iron shacks more than four hours' walk from Sokat.
Sacks of rice from the plains are unloaded from trucks and into a store room. The people buying it, mostly women, face a long slog back to their villages carrying the heavy, 50kg bags.
It has rocketed in price.
"Last year it cost me 800 or 900 rupees ($13) says one woman, Jhakri Parki, who has come from Sokat with friends.
"Now it's 1,400 rupees ($20). But we have to buy it to save our own lives and our children's lives. We take it on credit. We'll pay after three or four months, when we have the money."
The price of rice has risen by at least 50% in a year; that of cooking oil by 30% in six months.
Shopkeepers like Dharma Singh Saud say they are sorry but they have no control over it.
"Everyone around here is affected," he says. "People with the right connections can get credit or help from their relatives. But others are selling their pots and pans, or jewelery, just to survive. People can't survive by eating mud."
There are many things that push up the food prices. This year India banned most rice exports. China has for months closed the the Nepal-Tibet border, which has undermined supply networks in the high Himalayas.
And like other countries, Nepal recently had to raise diesel and petrol prices sharply.
The scarcity of fuel here is also caused by the oil corporation's massive debts to its supplier. All this increases food prices and makes the poor poorer.
The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) believes two and a half million Nepalis around the country need immediate food assistance. In certain villages it runs some feeding programmes, including monthly ones to mothers and young babies, extended in conjunction with medical check-ups by doctors.
These have helped reduce malnutrition. But the ruggedness of the terrain means the WFP is constantly having to assess the places of greatest need - laborious and time-consuming work.
The people of these remote terraces and hills are suffering. They are getting hungrier.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7498300.stm
Published: 2008/07/10 09:05:27 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
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Misery of Afghan refugees | Video | Reuters.comInternational donors meeting in Paris on Thursday are to be asked to fund a 50 billion dollar development plan for Afghanistan in what is seen as a test of ...
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Food crisis adds to Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions
June 5th, 2008
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Posted by: Myra MacDonald
Tags: Pakistan: Now or Never, Afghanistan, food, Hamid Karzai, Pakistan, Qaeda, Taliban, Wheat
April photo of man at Kabul flour marketIt would be hard to think of a more complex web of problems. Pakistan and Afghanistan face, in very different ways, severe domestic political crises which are being exacerbated by soaring prices and food shortages. Both blame each other for failing to crack down on the Taliban and al Qaeda. And now tensions are rising over attempts by Pakistan, the traditional supplier of food to Afghanistan, to curb its wheat exports to make sure it can feed its own hungry population.
For an idea of how significant this is in Afghanistan, it’s worth reading this piece in the Chicago Tribune. “Western officials - including officers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force - say the food crisis is potentially more destabilizing to the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai than the insurgency itself,” it says.
The website Registan.net followed this up by saying that the food crisis will drive more people into the arms of the Taliban. “Hungry, disenfranchised people are angry people,” it says. ”… every time someone can’t afford to buy bread for his family, he’ll have one more reason to … blow up some Humvees.
The World Food Programme says that emergency food aid meant to help 2.55 million Afghans affected by soaring food prices has reached only about 38 percent of the targeted population, according to IRIN, largely due to curbs on Pakistani food exports.
“One of the main reasons why food aid has not yet reached even half the targeted communities is procurement and logistical hurdles,” IRIN reports. “Initially it was decided that wheat and other food items would be procured from markets in neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan, which traditionally supplies Afghan food markets. However, rising prices have prompted Pakistani authorities to impose a strict ban on food exports, hitting WFP’s operation in Afghanistan.”
Yet look at it from Pakistan’s point of view. It has a shaky coalition government which will become all the more vulnerable if it doesn’t make sure its people have enough food to eat. For all its interference in Afghanistan, it has also felt the burden of supporting three million Afghan refugees.
File photo of girl in Lahore/Jerry Lampen“The priority must be on feeding the people of Pakistan, not excluding the three million Afghan refugees who still enjoy our hospitality, Hamid Karzai and company’s ingratitude notwithstanding,” wrote Ikram Seghal in The News last month. “Find me another nation in the world having so many refugees.”
Can someone see a way out of this morass? Or are Pakistan and Afghanistan condemned to stumble from crisis to crisis until historians write, with 20/20 hindsight, that whatever happens next was inevitable?
Here is a link to my blog called, "The Politico Insider."
http://thepoliticolinsider.blogspot.com/
Afghanistan's 'sons of the soil' rise up
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The resilient Taliban have proved unshakeable across Afghanistan over the past few months, making the chances of a coalition military victory against the popular tide of the insurgency in the majority Pashtun belt increasingly slim.
The alternative, though, of negotiating with radical Taliban leaders is not acceptable to the Western political leadership.
This stalemate suits Pakistan perfectly as it gives Islamabad the opportunity to once again step in to take a leading role in shaping the course of events in its neighboring country.
Pakistan's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi are thrilled with
the Taliban's sweeping military successes which have reduced President Hamid Karzai's American-backed government to a figurehead decorating the presidential palace of Kabul; he and his functionaries dare not even cross the street to take evening tea at the Serena Hotel.
June (28 US combat deaths) was the deadliest month for coalition troops since they invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and fatalities have increased steadily since 2004, when 58 soldiers were killed that year. The total more than doubled to 130 killed in 2005, 191 in 2006 and 232 in 2007. One hundred and twenty-seven have died so far this year.
Pakistan's planners now see their objective as isolating radicals within the Taliban and cultivating tribal, rustic, even simplistic, "Taliban boys" - just as they did in the mid-1990s in the leadup to the Taliban taking control of the country in 1996. It is envisaged that this new "acceptable" tribal-inspired Taliban leadership will displace Taliban and al-Qaeda radicalism.
This process has already begun in Pakistan's tribal areas.
A leading Pakistani Taliban leader, Haji Nazeer from South Waziristan, who runs the largest Pakistani Taliban network against coalition troops in Afghanistan, recently convened a large meeting at which it was resolved to once again drive out radical Uzbeks from South Waziristan. This happened once before, early last year.
In particular, Nazeer will take action against the Uzbeks' main backer, Pakistani Taliban hardliner Baitullah Mehsud, if he tries to intervene. Nazeer openly shows his loyalty towards the Pakistani security forces and has reached out to other powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, including Moulvi Faqir from Bajaur Agency, Shah Khalid from Mohmand Agency and Haji Namdar in Khyber Agency. Nazeer also announced the appointment of the powerful commander of North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, as the head of the Pakistani Taliban for all Pakistan.
The bulk of the Pakistani Taliban has always been pro-Pakistan and opposed to radical forces like Baitullah Mehsud and his foreign allies, but this is the first time they have set up a formal organization and appointed an amir (chief) as a direct challenge to the radicals.
At the core of their beliefs is a stress on traditional tribal values and following the tribal agenda of supporting the Afghan resistance against Western troops, rather than any global agenda such as attacks on Europe or the United States.
Soon after the announcement of the amir, two prominent Afghan Taliban commanders from eastern Afghanistan gave their support to the new Pakistani Taliban network. They are Moulvi Abdul Kabeer, a former Taliban governor in the province of Nangarhar before the US invasion in 2001, and commander Sadr-uddin. To date, the most important Afghan commander in the eastern region, Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, has remained neutral, perhaps because of his close ties with Pakistan and also with the radical camp.
Earlier, the Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another pro-Pakistan commander in Afghanistan, claimed several successful operations in the northeastern Kapisa and Wardak provinces - just a few score kilometers from Kabul. This is another significant development as it gives a boost to that segment of the insurgency which is more local than global.
This is the new picture emerging in eastern Afghanistan. If these groups, with Pakistan's support, can join hands with the Kandahari clans of the Taliban from the southwest, which already form a non-radical tribal resistance, it would give Islamabad the opportunity to make a proposal to Washington.
That is, the process of jirgas (tribal councils) should be restarted, this time only with the sons-of the-soil Taliban, to get them to lay down their arms and negotiate a new political role before the Afghan presidential elections next year.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Here is a link to my blog called, "The Politico Insider."
http://thepoliticolinsider.blogspot.com/
Afghanistan crisis worse than Iraq TheStar.com - Opinion - Afgh
June 19, 2008
Haroon Siddiqui
There's a lot we know about Afghanistan and a lot more we don't. An expert who knows much more than most of us – whose prescient insights I have benefited from for a decade and whom the John Manley commission consulted last year – says Afghanistan will get worse in the coming months.
Last week's dramatic jailbreak in Kandahar by the Taliban – an embarrassment for which the Canadians blamed the Afghans who blamed the Pakistanis – is a symptom of a bigger problem. The insurgency is getting stronger, notwithstanding steady official assurances that the Taliban have "lost momentum," are "desperate," "worn out," "on the run" and being "hunted down."
Ahmed Rashid, a veteran journalist based in Lahore, is an authority on the region and author of the best-seller Taliban (2001), which, within days of 9/11, became a must-read for world leaders, military commanders and journalists. He now has a new book, Descent into Chaos.
It says that Afghanistan constitutes a worse crisis than Iraq. Not just because of the escalating violence (8,000 Afghans killed last year, and 1,800 so far this year; more NATO troops killed in May in Afghanistan than in Iraq) or the opium that finances the insurgency. Or the ineffective Hamid Karzai who presides over corruption, warlords and drug barons. Or the frightening rise of Taliban sanctuaries and sympathizers across the border in Pakistan.
Afghanistan affects the entire region. The turmoil in Pakistan is well-known. Problems are also brewing in the five Central Asian states, especially Uzbekistan, where a repressive dictatorship is battling (and feeding) a rising Islamic militancy, whose tentacles reach back into Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Central Asia is the new frontier for Al Qaeda."
Rashid, on a book tour of North America, spoke to me by phone on Tuesday from Seattle.
He expects a major Taliban offensive, especially but not exclusively because of support from across the border in Pakistan.
"NATO nations remain divided and weak in their commitment. The American president is a lame duck. The next president won't get around to dealing with Afghanistan until the middle of next year.
"There's a vacuum. The Taliban are going to be taking full strategic advantage in the coming months.
"So long as there are Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, they will remain a potent military force. The Taliban are expanding in Pakistan much faster than anyone could've imagined."
There's the porous border. And there's the Pakistan military's "double game" of cracking down on militants while keeping some as a proxy for influence in Afghanistan.
However, "Pakistan is not the only one playing a double game. So is the U.S. All it cared about was to get Al Qaeda. It didn't (initially) care about the Taliban."
It nearly abandoned Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban in 2001, making the same mistake it had once before after helping to end the Soviet occupation in 1989, leaving a vacuum in which rose the Taliban, a failed state and the perpetrators of 9/11.
What to do?
"You cannot deal with one country without dealing with the region.
"You cannot deal with Afghanistan without dealing with Pakistan.
"You cannot deal with Pakistan without dealing with India, without making India more amenable to dealing with Pakistani insecurities by dealing with the Kashmir issue or the Indian interference and influence in Afghanistan. The Pakistan military remains fearful of India's involvement in Afghanistan. They fear that Karzai may fall and they need their own proxies in Afghanistan (just as India and Iran have theirs) ...
"You cannot deal with the Iranian role in Afghanistan without dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue."
There is no military solution – not in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan and not in Iran.
"You need a multilateral diplomatic push on several fronts, all going on at the same time, along with a push for democracy, human rights and economic development throughout the region."
Rashid had sounded the alarm bells on Afghanistan long before 9/11 but few listened. One hopes the world heeds him now, well before making many more mistakes.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday.
hsiddiq@thestar.ca
Here is a link to my blog called, "The Politico Insider."
http://thepoliticolinsider.blogspot.com/
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Pentagon, Pakistan Disagree on Airstrike Details
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More foreign fighters moving into Pakistan's tribal areas
More foreign fighters moving into Pakistan's tribal areas
Thu Jul 10, 3:12 AM ET
US intelligence officials say there has been an increase in foreign fighters travelling to Pakistan to join up with Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the country's tribal areas, the New York Times reported Thursday.
US intelligence and military sources told the newspaper that dozens or more Uzbeks, North Africans and Arabs from Gulf states have moved into Pakistan in recent months, shoring up the Al-Qaeda forces which are backing the Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad told the Times that there has been a corresponding drop in the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq, now less than 40 a month compared to up to 110 a month one year ago.
"The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West," the Times wrote, citing the officials.
General David McKiernan, the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, said the situation in Pakistan's northwestern border areas, where Al-Qaeda and other Islamic insurgents are based, has worsened.
"The porous border has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border, as well as a greater freedom to resupply, to allow leadership to sustain stronger sanctuaries, and to provide fighters across that border," McKiernan told the Times.
A US defense official told the Times that the flow of foreign fighters into Pakistan has increased "from a trickle to a steady stream," especially after Pakistan's government cut back tribal area operations in March and launched talks with local leaders in hopes of halting militant activities.
Here is a link to my blog called, "The Politico Insider."
http://thepoliticolinsider.blogspot.com/
Pakistan strikes pact with militants after sweep
Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:01pm IST
By Ibrahim Shinwari
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, July 10 (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities have signed a deal with Islamist militants after they agreed to stop threatening the northwestern city of Peshawar and dismantle training camps, officials said on Thursday.
Militants have been expanding their influence across northwestern Pakistan and violence surged after the army stormed a militant mosque in Islamabad a year ago, raising worries about prospects for the nuclear-armed U.S. ally.
Western allies and Afghanistan have expressed concerns about Pakistan's peace pacts with militants in its ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border.
They have said two deals signed in the Waziristan region since 2005 gave the militants the opportunity to re-group and step up attacks into Afghanistan. Both those deals broke down.
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, in a clear reference to Pakistan, told the United Nations on Wednesday a main factor behind deteriorating Afghan security was pacts in tribal areas beyond the border.
But the latest pact is with a small faction in the Khyber region. The group, while espousing Taliban ways, is not known for sending members into Afghanistan to battle Western forces.
"The agreement has been signed," a senior government official in Peshawar said.
Under the agreement, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, the militants loyal to commander Mangal Bagh agreed to stop forays into Peshawar and to accept the writ of the government.
"There will be no parallel administration and they will not run any training camps," according to the agreement. The militants will also not be allowed to carry weapons openly.
In return, security forces would withdraw from the region and everyone detained during a recent sweep would be released.
HOSTAGES TAKEN
Security forces launched a sweep in Khyber on June 28, the first major military action under a government that came to power after February polls promising to negotiate to end violence.
Supplies for U.S. forces in Afghanistan are trucked through the Khyber Pass and concern has been growing about security along the route.
Peshawar residents had begun to fear that their city could fall into the clutches of the Taliban after militants began appearing in some neighbourhoods, threatening music and video shops and ordering barbers to stop shaving beards in line with hardline Taliban edicts.
There are two other small groups operating in Khyber and it was not immediately clear if authorities were negotiating peace with those factions.
In a separate incident, militants took 11 paramilitary soldiers and government workers hostage after security forces arrested seven insurgents near the town of Doaba, southwest of Peshawar.
Elsewhere, six people were killed in landmine blasts in the Kurram region, and in North Waziristan, residents found the bullet-riddled body of a doctor.
"He was against jihad (holy war)," read a note left with the body. (Additional reporting by Javed Hussain) (Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Here is a link to my blog called, "The Politico Insider."
http://thepoliticolinsider.blogspot.com/
The Prce of War
Don't think the rising prices for gas won't effect the cost of the war.