Free Syria Faces Tough Times

December 3, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Shelly Kittleson

SARMEEN, Syria, Dic 03 (IPS) – As the death toll in Syria tops 40,000 and some 400,000 have taken refuge beyond the country’s borders, a dearth of funding for civilian projects in areas under Free Syrian control risks undermining efforts to keep inhabitants united and the limited lines of communication flowing.A number of young Syrian activist groups travel between Istanbul and cities under Free Syrian Army (FSA) control to set up local administration councils, racing to provide essential services to the population before another winter arrives amid scant electricity, dwindling access to basic necessities and continued shelling of civilian areas. The groups coordinate with medical workers in the border area and FSA members, and maintain regular contact with embassies, individual donors and local populations.

Abdullah Labwani, 27-year-old nephew of well-known dissident and physician Kamal Labwani works with the Istanbul-based NGO Civil Administration Councils (CAC). In “another life”, as he called the period leading up to the revolution, he worked as an architect and taught at the University of Damascus.

From Istanbul he maintains contact with those inside Syria while trying to convince Western diplomatic representatives to send funds for medical, communications and food needs as managed by the councils.

This IPS correspondent travelled with Labwani to Sarmeen in the northwestern Syrian province Idlib in early November. With just over 20,000 inhabitants before the uprising, several thousand had fled the town amid continuing conflict in the area.

In March of this year, some 318 houses, 87 shops and numerous warehouses, pharmacies and mosques were destroyed in attacks by Syrian government forces on the town.

Human Rights Watch found that regime troops had killed at least 95 civilians, many by summary execution, in the assault on the eastern and southern parts of the province. Three brothers from Sarmeen’s Hajj Hussein family, for example, were taken out of their home, had their hands tied behind their backs and were killed and burned in front of their mother as a “lesson” to the town’s inhabitants.

Sarmeen has been under Free Syrian Army control since late March, but regime shelling near the town can be heard frequently. In the days spent there, helicopters were spotted flying overheard a number of times. The regime has reportedly engaged in extensive dropping of barrel bombs and cluster munitions on towns in the province.

Residents use flashlights, candles, oil lamps and generators, and are fortunate to get an hour or two of power a day – an hour when everyone hastens to turn on television sets to see the news and to recharge phone batteries.

To the background noise of generators whirling, a meeting was held on my first night there in the basement of a building by the members of the community selected to form the council.

The 20 to 25 local men who took part were enthusiastic over the possibility voiced by Labwani of sending some of them to Istanbul for training courses if CAC manages to raise funding. Sugary tea and Turkish-produced cola drinks were brought round whenever attention started to wane.

A few wore the traditional red and white keffiyeh, and an imam and a doctor were in long flowing robes, but most of those in their twenties sported jeans and the older men were dressed in more formal Western-style trousers and shirts. The ruddier, worn expressions of those with walkie-talkies by their sides marked those among them most heavily involved in the FSA.

The major point of contention was whether or not FSA members could be included in such initiatives and their role in the civil administration, as embassies potentially willing to put up the funds require a clear distinction between helping civilian initiatives and aiding military ones. FSA commanders feel they deserve the right to positions of authority in the town administration.

In the following days this correspondent visited the nearby village Ta’um, not far from the military base in Taftanaz. Of some 7,000 inhabitants before the conflict, less than 2,000 are said to remain.

Mostly only FSA members have chosen to stay on in this village filled with rubble, the remains of exploded and unexploded ordnance, and a few stray cats. It continues to be bombed, as do approximately 60 to 200 other towns across Syria every day.

FSA fighters repeatedly call for more weapons, and claim that if they get them soon enough they could “prevent the need for large amounts of food aid and other assistance,” one of them, Abu Yassir, told IPS.

Given the fallout resulting from funneling weapons to non-state actors in recent decades, though, it is unlikely that arms will be supplied in any substantial amounts directly to the FSA by Western nations unless the Syrian National Coalition receives recognition as a government in exile, and until the FSA is seen as being under its command structure.

The Syrian National Coalition was founded in Doha on Nov. 11 to replace the Syrian National Council, and has thus far been recognized as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Syrian people by the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, France, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Whether those doing the fighting will be willing to relinquish control to those who are not remains to be seen. That said, with the exception of the commanders, all of the FSA members IPS spoke to had other hopes for the future – to return to their studies, to open a business, or attend a military academy “to get some real training”, as the fighter and former university student Abu Yahia put it.

In the meantime, civil administration councils seem one of the few ways to keep communities organised, make sure outside funding goes towards providing essential services, and establish a structured channel for communication and coordination between those inside and those outside the conflict area.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Conflict, Featured, Middle East, Politics Tagged With: , ,

First Burning Homes, Now Border Patrols

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Naimul Haq

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Nov 20 (IPS) – In late August, Mohammad Saifuddin (not his real name), together with his wife, three daughters and son, fled the carnage of communal violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine province and headed for the border of neighbouring Bangladesh.Horrified by attacks on the minority Rohingya Muslims by the majority Buddhist community this past summer, the Saifuddin family embarked on what they described as a “horrific” five-day-long journey to reach the nearest border town of Teknaf in the Cox’s Bazar district of southeast Bangladesh, some 200 kilometres away.

Six other families accompanied the Saifuddins on a perilous journey that involved crossing the Mayu River and meandering across hilly forests.

“We moved during the night to evade detection. The journey seemed endless with the children unable to continue walking. At times we had no food or water, and were sometimes completely lost,” Ejaz Ahmed, who brought his wife and family across the border, told IPS.

But instead of arriving on safe soil, as they had hoped, the refugees have met strict border control and a hostile local government, highlighting the precariousness of life for this stateless Muslim population in Southeast Asia.

No rest for refugees

Sparked by reports in late May that three Rohingya Muslim men had allegedly raped a Buddhist Rakhine woman, the violence left thousands of families from the farming and fishing villages of Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Kyauktaw, Rathedaung, Minbya and Mrauk U homeless, with no access to food, water, medical supplies or shelter.

Within a month 83,000 out of a population of about 800,000 Rohingyas had fled their ancestral homes in Rakhine. By June, 95 people had been killed.

Some of the survivors now living around the camps in Bangladesh told IPS they had no choice but to flee.

“I saw my neighbours being dragged out of their homes and beaten to death. We fled to escape being killed,” Rehana Begum told IPS.

Mujibor Rahman, a vegetable shop owner in Kyauktaw village, said “On a dark night in June a dozen men attacked our local market where they picked up young Muslim men and (stabbed them) with rapiers. Many died on the spot while others were left moaning on the ground.”

But stories of these “genocide-like” conditions have failed to sway the Bangladeshi government, which has tightened border security at all points of entry.

Authorities have given Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) strict instructions to deny entry to any “intruder” from Myanmar, whether travelling by boat or on foot.

As a result, scores of Rohingyas are said to be languishing on the other side of the roughly 270-kilometre land border in makeshift camps.

BGB Commander for Cox’s Bazaar, lieutenant colonel Mohammad Khalequzzaman, told IPS that since August over 1,300 Rohingyas were sent back through the Tumbru and Ghundum border points.

In total, some 2,600 Rohingyas have been sent back since the first wave of refugees arrived about four months ago. The Home Ministry in Dhaka estimates that number could rise to nearly 10,000 by early next year.

“We have intensified our patrols around the Naf River”, which forms one of the borders between the two countries, Coast Guard Station Officer Commander Badrudduza told IPS.

Armed BGB members and coast guards in speedboats are patrolling the Naf, searching for refugees. But the vast Bay of Bengal, which lies to the south of Bangladesh and southwest of Myanmar, still facilitates several points of entry for those who arrive in dilapidated wooden boats, mostly at night.

“It’s very dangerous to take such a coastal route. Coast guard troops from both countries often shoot at us,” Mohammad Kalam Hossain, who recently arrived in Teknaf with a group of 26 men, women and children from Ponnagyun, a coastal fishing village in south Rakhine, told IPS.

“In the last two weeks more people fled, fearing fresh attacks. The only safe place for us is Bangladesh,” Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a fisherman from Myebon village, told IPS.

Those who do manage to enter Bangladesh are in perpetual fear of being caught by the intelligence or being reported to the police.

Since they speak the local dialect and bear a strong resemblance to Bangladeshi people, many refugees are able to slip into village and town life undetected.

But once caught, refugees receive “no mercy”. “The authorities will force you to disclose the whereabouts of others, and send (everyone) back. That’s why we try to avoid exposure during the daytime,” Julekha Banu, who escaped to Bangladesh in September, told IPS.

Legal quagmire

Though the issue is only now receiving front-page coverage in international media, the plight of Rohingya Muslims dates back several decades, ever since the ruling military junta in Myanmar stripped them of their citizenship.

During a 1978 military assault known as the King Dragon Operation, 200,000 Rohingyas were driven from Rakhine State to Bangladesh, where they lived in squalid refugee camps for decades.

A similar purge in 1991-92 sent another 250,000 Myanmar nationals of Rohingya ethnicity streaming across the border.

Though Burmese officials at the time identified those refugees as their own citizens, political leader Aung San Suu Kyi is now referring to the refugees as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh”, a fact the Foreign Ministry here has vehemently denied.

A Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Dhaka, speaking under condition of anonymity, told IPS that Bangladesh is already stretched to its limit, with two refugee camps, Ukhiya and Kutupalong, housing over 30,000 displaced Rohingyas. An additional 200,000 Rohingyas are estimated to be living in Bangladesh as undocumented immigrants.

This legal quagmire has effectively rendered the Rohingya people ‘stateless’, with limited access to employment, education, healthcare and public services in either country.

Speaking to IPS on the phone from Geneva, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, said, “The situation… is very critical. I am concerned about the Rohingyas who have no homes, food, water or medical care… They require immediate humanitarian aid.”

He added, “Bangladesh should fulfill its obligations under international law by respecting and protecting the human rights of all people within (its) borders, regardless of whether they are recognised as citizens.”

In August Quintana was refused entry into Bangladesh to see the situation here.

Meanwhile, refugees continue to live in limbo, unsure whether they will be allowed to stay or forced to return to a nightmare, which took place “under the nose of the Yangon regime”, according to survivors.

“This is our new home,” a refugee woman in Cox’s Bazar told IPS. “Please let us stay here.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Asia, Featured, Human Rights, Unrest Tagged With: , , ,

Unseen Dangers Lurk in Libya

September 14, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Mel Frykberg

TRIPOLI, Sep 14 (IPS) – The revolution might officially be over in Libya but the ground war continues. But one enemy is motionless and often hidden, and Libyans are continuing to pay the price with hundreds maimed and killed. “While the guns may have stopped, landmines, unexploded ordnance (UXO) and discarded or poorly-stored ammunition continue to pose a serious risk to life and limb of the civilian population and to hold potentially serious implications for international security,” according to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

“Two hundred and ten Libyans have been killed or wounded since the end of the war,” Elena Rice from UNMAS told IPS. At least a quarter of that number died, and UNMAS programme manager Max Dyck believes these figures to be conservative.

The country is also awash with small arms. “An estimated 20 million weapons are still freely circulating in Libya today,” Emilie Rolin from Handicap International told IPS. “Three to five victims still arrive in hospital in Tripoli every day.” Handicap International is an independent international aid organisation working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster. The organisation is currently involved in demining projects in Libya.

“The proliferation of all sorts of small arms among the civilian population, who have not been trained to use them, has given rise to accidents which could easily be prevented by specific measures,” Rolin said.

Following the war hundreds of thousands of displaced people have returned to their homes in areas that have been bombed and mined. Families have found explosive remnants of war in their homes, gardens, living rooms, children’s bedrooms, or in their places of work.

Children are often the unwitting targets. “In Misrata (140km east of Tripoli) for example, a third of accidents involve children aged under 14 and nearly 80 percent of recorded victims are civilians under the age of 23. Young people therefore bear the brunt of these accidents,” says Handicap International.

To date the 24 mine clearance and 29 risk education teams comprising 300 personnel currently operating in Libya have destroyed 191,000 landmines and ordnance and cleared 2,650 homes and 75 schools of UXOS. They have also provided 153,000 Libyans with UXO risk education.

But determining the extent of the remaining UXOs is not possible. “There is no way of quantifying this information as accurate records were not kept. Prior to the conflict Libya was contaminated with ‘legacy’ minefields, dating back to World War II. Landmines have been used during various regional conflicts since to protect the border as well as to protect strategic and military assets,” Rice told IPS.

Libya was already littered with UXO before the revolution and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) bombing campaign last year, but the situation has been significantly aggravated by the war.

The first reports of pro-Gaddafi forces placing new mines began to emerge in late March 2011 when the former government employed anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines in at least six separate locations including Misrata and Ajdabiya in the east.

The rebellion against the Gaddafi regime also led to an influx of small arms that now threaten to dramatically increase the number of dead and wounded, with rival militias regularly sorting out their differences with weapons.

“Civilians are not used to handling these weapons and know little or nothing about basic safety precautions. These weapons are regularly used during celebrations, even marriages, when guests fire into the air to express their joy,” says Handicap International.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that Nato hasn’t disclosed full details of the UXO it used in Libya. The organisation says that during its air campaign it released 7,700 missiles and bombs. Approximately 303 of these were duds. Most of them were released from warplanes, six from helicopters and four from ships.

Nato recently released a list of its unexploded munitions in Libya, providing the latitude and longitude for each site, the weight of the ordnance and a description of the means of delivery (fixed-wing aircraft, helicopter gunship or naval vessel).

While this has provided demining organisations with vital information necessary to carry out their demining activities, specialists say this falls short of further information required to protect civilians and rid the country of hazards.

Despite Nato’s sophisticated targeting sensors used by aircrews to record infrared video of the impact of a missile or bomb, it has so far refused to provide exactly where weapons struck and when they failed to function properly.

This information would enable governments and mine-clearing organisations to alert the public to places of risk and to focus efforts on removing high-explosive remnants of war. Without this information UXOs, some of them containing toxic propellants, pose a threat to accidental discovery by civilians.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Featured, Middle East, Politics, Unrest Tagged With: , ,

There’s Bride at the End of the Tunnel

August 27, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Sanjay Suri

Aug 27 (IPS) – Mai Ahmed, a 26–year-old from the West Bank fell in love over the Internet with Mohammed Warda from Nussirat refugee camp in Gaza after they ‘met’ on the Internet. The Israeli government refused permission for her to travel to Gaza. Mai travelled to Jordan, flew from there to Egypt, drove across the Sinai, and then crossed through a tunnel into Gaza, where she now lives. “It’s a story I will tell my grandchildren,” she says.Brides and bridegrooms are now being smuggled through the Gaza tunnels, to add to the usual fare of medicine, food, bread, refreshments, car parts, cement, and fish and sheep.

Abu Saleem, a 29-year-old digger at the Gaza tunnels under the border with Egypt says he is seeing an increasing number of brides coming in from Egypt, and grooms being smuggled through the other way. Only last week he received a phone call from his boss asking him to assist a young Egyptian bride on way to her groom in Gaza.

It’s cheaper to find a bride in Egypt than in Gaza.

Adel Al-Ahmed, 37, is happy with his Egyptian wife Shymaa after he found he could not afford the dowry for a Gaza girl. “It is relatively cheaper dowry in some areas in Egypt, and there is more acceptance by some young Egyptian women to live in simple and modest conditions,” he says.

Difficulties obtaining travel permits and visas have made the tunnels a lifeline to cross to and from Egypt. A recent side effect is the increasing number of Gaza youths who leave the 140 square kilometre Gaza strip to search for brides.

Tunnel owners in Rafah would earlier transport women and children like cargo in re-fashioned barrels. Now, people crawl or walk, depending on the structure of the tunnel.

The tunnels are considered illegal in Egypt, but are a vital part in the life and commerce on both the Gazan and the Egyptian side. Palestinians consider the tunnels a legitimate trade and passenger route under the Israeli siege.

The Israeli government says the tunnels facilitate illegal smuggling, and routinely sends F-16 fighter jets to destroy them.

That makes marital unions a risky business. Brides and grooms using tunnel access also require a permit from the de facto government in Gaza, or the tunnel owner can be fined 1,500 dollars.

Adel married a Palestinian girl, but divorce followed due to “family demands”. He has since remarried after finding a new bride through his sister, who married an Egyptian in El-Arish.

“I went to a wedding in Egypt, and was introduced to a wonderful young woman who I later married.” Adel took the tunnel route. Once married the young couple had to crawl to Gaza on their hands and knees for about 200 metres in a tunnel to cross the border.

With the money he saved in paying an Egyptian rather than a Palestinian dowry, Adel could furnish an apartment in Rafah. “I would advise Gaza youth to get married to Egyptian women,” he says.

Adel paid 30,000 Egyptian pounds (about 5,000 dollars) in dowry, but the conditions of marriage are “way easier and less demanding.”

Many have ventured as Adel did. Ahmed, who gave only his first name, crossed into Egypt though a tunnel and met a young Egyptian woman while visiting relatives. A few weeks later he returned and asked his family to propose to her. “Tunnels have made it easier for me to get married outside of Gaza,” he tells IPS.

Ahmed had proposed earlier to young Palestinian women in Gaza, but he was asked for a separate apartment as a condition to marriage. “This demand never happens when I, or my friends, ask for the hand of an Egyptian girl.”

Hadeel, a young Palestinian woman from Rafah in her mid-twenties became friends with an Egyptian girl during an official NGO visit. A few months later Hadeel’s friend informed her that her brother and family would like to visit Gaza through the tunnel.

They came over and Hadeel met her friend’s brother. Several tunnel visits later, he proposed. They are due to get married in October. Hadeel will move to Egypt.

For many Gazans, there is both love, and light, at the end of these tunnels.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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Refugees Dream of Return, Come Home to Nightmare

May 3, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, May 3, 2012 (IPS) – Krishnaveni Nakkeeran has fled the country of her birth twice and returned twice in the last two decades. The 36-year-old mother of four from the northern Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka first fled the bloody civil war to India when she was just 16 years old in 1990.

Her family mistakenly believed it was safe to return five years later and was forced to flee yet again in 1998. She returned again in 2010, barely a year after government forces had defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, accompanied by her family. The war may have ended, but a harsh reality awaits those like Nakkeeran, returning after years spent in India. "Life has been hard, very hard, we probably work double (here) what we did in India," she told IPS.

Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans, almost all of them from the minority Tamil community, fled to neighbouring India during the island’s three decades of civil conflict. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are over 100,000 Sri Lankan refugees in India, out of which roughly 68,000 live in 112 camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Since the war’s end in May 2009, some of these have begun to return. Last year UNHCR facilitated the return of over 1,700 refugees to the island.

This year has seen a drop of around 30 percent in the number of returning citizens; the latest figures released by the U.N. refugee agency said that 408 persons returned during the first quarter of 2012, compared to 597 during the corresponding period in 2011.

The UNHCR office in Sri Lanka has attributed the drop to the suspension of a ferry service between South India and Sri Lanka, which had allowed for cheaper passage and the chance to bring back more household material.

However, rights groups working with returnees and those still remaining in India speculate that the hard grind awaiting exiles in their old homeland might explain the reduced rate of return.

This is especially true of those returning to the Vanni, a vast swath of land in Sri Lanka’s northern province that weathered the worst excesses of the war.

"They have to start life all over again. During the years of absence, so much has changed in Sri Lanka that it is a new life in a new country that they come back to," Sinnathambi Suriyakumari, Sri Lanka’s head of the Organisation for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (OfERR), that has worked in India and Sri Lanka since 1983, told IPS.

She added that the biggest problem for the returnees is starting from scratch. While there are programmes aimed at assisting internally displaced persons (IDPs) returning to their homes in the former war zone, there is no special programme for those returning from India.

"This is where the problem starts, these people feel as if they are returning to an alien land, especially those without extended family here," Suriyakumari said.

UNHCR’s representative in Sri Lanka, Michael Zwack, told IPS that returning refugees lacked proper documentation like identity cards, land deeds and birth certificates that they lost during their flight from the country decades ago. The lack of such documentation is a serious bureaucratic hassle.

The returnees, who are given a standard reintegration grant, are faced with multiple other problems that need special attention.

"Shelter is another key challenge facing refugees returning to former conflict areas, as they need assistance with carrying out repairs or rebuilding homes that were damaged," Zwack said.

Of the roughly 100,000 houses that were destroyed during the final phase of the war, only 16,000 had been built as of February 2012 according to the latest U.N. figures, which also revealed that reconstruction commitments only extend to the building or repair of 35,000 homes.

Meanwhile, the Indian government is expected to commence building 40,000 houses in the region by mid-2012.

The displacement of thousands of families, be they IDPs or exiles in India, has created a serious land issue in the Vanni. "Many land owners in the Vanni still find it difficult to claim ownership over their property, and land issues have become a serious problem," Saroja Sivachandran, head of the Jaffna- based Centre for Women and Development, told IPS.

The problem of land and housing is worse for those returning from India, since people who fled as individuals tend to return with families in tow, according to Suriyakumari.

She said one returnee from the Jaffna district who left in the mid 1980s with five children has now returned with five full families. "All the children have their own families, and now all of them live on this tiny plot of land."

Returnees like Nakkeeran are also forced to confront the phenomenon of squatters, people who have lived on others’ land for decades.

"We don’t have our land now, we (are forced) to live with someone else on our own land," she said.

Jobs, scarce even among the 434,559 IDPs who are slowly trickling back into the Northern province, is even more pronounced among those who return from overseas.

Most of the returning refugees use a 200-dollar UNHCR resettlement grant to make ends meet. "They are free to use the money according to their own priorities to help them restart their lives, for example by purchasing household goods, a bicycle, seeds, or repairing damaged housing," Zwack said.

Despite all the obstacles, many of those who have returned and others planning to make the journey feel they have made the right choice.

"It is a land of opportunity and hope for them, that is why they come back," Suriyakumari said.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Asia, Human Rights, Peace, Report Tagged With: ,

KARACHI, BEIRUT OF SOUTH ASIA

July 12, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy

B.RAMAN

Karachi stands in danger  of turning into another Beirut of the 1970s and 1980s if the Government of Pakistan does not wake up in time to the implications of the unending clashes between the Mohajirs and the Pashtuns, between the Barelvis and the Deobandis and between the Shias and the Sunnis.

2. Since the late 1980s, these animosities have led to periodic spells of ethnic and sectarian violence—almost amounting to a civil war. In the past, the situation was further aggravated by the ethnic animosity between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis. This animosity has since died down after the Pakistan People’s Party, which is largely of mainstream Sindhis, took the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the party of the Mohajirs, into the ruling federal  coalition in Islamabad and the provincial coalition in Karachi after the elections of  2008.

3. The ethnic animosities have been compounded by sectarian animosities arising from the fact that the Mohajirs and the Sindhis largely belong to the more tolerant Barelvi sect of sub-continental Sunni Islam whereas the Pashtuns are largely the followers of the more intolerant Deobandi-Wahabi sects. The fact that many of the Mohajirs, who are the migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Gujarat provinces of India, have a large number of highly educated and prosperous Shias in their community has made the problem more complex by making them frequent targets of the extremist Sunni elements belonging to organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Lashkar-eJhangvi.

4. The animosities of the past arising from ethnic and sectarian factors have been aggravated by fears of a change in the demographic composition of Karachi. Before 1947, Karachi was a Sindhi city. After Pakistan was formed in 1947, it turned into a Mohajir city, due to the large influx of Barelvis and Shias from India. Mohajir means refugees. These are the refugees from India.

5. Since 1947, Karachi has been a city of refugees. Initially, it is the refugees from India (the Mohajirs) who dominated the politics and economy of the city, gradually reducing the Sindhis to an urban minority.

6. Since the trouble erupted in Afghanistan in the 1980s, there has been a continuous influx of Pashtun  refugees into Karachi— initially from Afghanistan as the fighting between the Afghan Mujahideen and the Soviet troops gathered momentum and subsequently after 9/11 from Pakistan’s Pashtun belt in the Khyber-Pakhtoonkwa (KP) Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) as Al Qaeda and Taliban set up their safehaven in the Pashtun belt.

7. As a result of this steady Pashtun influx, there is a danger of Karachi one day turning into a Pashtun city. There has been no official census of the different ethnic groups in Karachi. It is believed that the Mohajirs are still the largest single ethnic group in the city, but as the number of Pashtun refugees increases, the Mohajirs fear they may be reduced to a minority in the years to come. Karachi is already the largest Pashtun city in Pakistan, with even more Pashtun population than Peshawar, the capital of the KP province.

8. It is the fear of an eventual Pashtunisation and Wahabisation of Karachi that has made the Mohajirs  take to violence to stop the flow of more Pashtuns from the Pashtun belt and to counter their growing hold on the Karachi economy. The Pashtuns, who migrated before 9/11, are largely the supporters of the moderate Awami National Party (ANP), which is in power in the KP province and is a member of the ruling coalition in Islamabad. The MQM alleges that many of the Pashtuns, who have been migrating since 9/11, have sympathies with the Afghan and Pakistani Talibans. Despite this, the ANP has been taking up their cause because of the ethnic affinity.

9. This has added a political dimension to the violence with the MQM trying to counter the presence and influence of the ANP in Karachi, despite its reputation as a party of moderate Pashtuns.

10. Karachi has been seeing eruptions of ethnic and sectarian violence from time to time for over two decades now. It has taken a disturbingly virulent form since last year.

11. According to the “Daily Times” of Lahore of January 1,2011, during 2010, at least 705 people, including 488 political and religious leaders and activists, fell prey to targeted killings in Karachi. In addition,74 others died in explosions all over Karachi during the year. As against 779 people who died due to ethnic and sectarian violence in Karachi during 2010, only 427 people died due to the acts of suicide terrorism by the Pakistani Taliban in the entire non-Pashtun belt of Pakistan and 797 in the Pashtun belt. This would give an indication of the seriousness of the situation in Karachi, which is considered the economic capital of Pakistan. The situation in Karachi has been as serious as that in the Pashtun belt and much more serious than that in the non-Pashtun belt.

12.This virulence has aggravated further this year resulting in over 1000 deaths since the beginning of this year, with over 100 deaths in the last five days. From targeted killings of each other by different ethnic and sectarian groups, it has degenerated into a Beirut-like situation with the use of more and more sophisticated weapons by the fighting groups and attacks on infrastructure such as electric transformers and electricity supply lines. Whereas in the past, mainly individuals were targeted and killed, now there are group clashes in different areas which have resulted in many internally displaced persons moving from one area to another seeking protection.

13. The situation has serious implications because of the fact that Karachi is the economic capital of Pakistan and has the only satisfactorily functioning major  international port catering to the external trade of Pakistan. The continued flow of logistic supplies, which come by sea, to the NATO forces in Afghanistan, would depend on a satisfactory internal security situation in this city. Moreover, Karachi has the only major naval base of Pakistan.

14. Despite these factors, the Government of Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani has been ineffective in restoring law and order despite the fact that the MQM and the ANP were its coalition partners till now. Recently, there have been unconfirmed reports of the MQM having  left the coalition due to the postponement of elections to the Assembly of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir from the Kashmiri refugee constituency in Karachi. Mr.Gilani has, however, denied that the MQM has carried out its threat to leave the coalition.

15. Some analysts in Pakistan look upon the recent spurt in violence in Karachi as an attempt by the MQM to intimidate the Federal Government into conceding its demands. Whatever may be the truth, the fact is that the situation in Karachi has been going from bad to worse. If this continues unchecked and unattended, the two Talibans may be the ultimate beneficiaries. ( 6-7-11)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

Copyright © 2011 B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

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Filed Under: Asia, Commentary, Politics, Unrest Tagged With: ,

SUDAN: Starting from Scratch

July 8, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Danielle Batist*

JUBA, Jul 7, 2011 (IPS/Street News Service) – In their hundreds of thousands they have crossed the border, arriving by boat, bus or on foot. After decades of civil war with the north, South Sudanese have come back home to witness the birth of their new nation on Jul. 9. The fight for independence has come to an end, but for many returnees, the struggle is far from over.

On the western outskirts of the South Sudanese capital of Juba some two dozen people have gathered in the local chief’s compound. It is a very hot day, the sun is unforgiving and people crowd around the one big tree in the yard to get some shade. Plastic chairs are brought in for the men, while most of the women and children sit down on a large, woven mat on the floor.

They come together regularly, to support each other and discuss their future. Some came back months ago, others have just arrived. Wherever they have come from, one thing is the same for all of them: they have to rebuild their lives.

Even before the referendum in January, in which 99.7 percent of Christian and animist southerners voted for separation from the Islamic north, hundreds of families came back to the south each day. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 by the Khartoum government and the southern forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) had convinced many that freedom was near.

Decades of bloody civil war cost two million lives and left millions more displaced. With the signing of the CPA, the desire to go back to the land they fled became too strong to ignore for many.

Recognising the huge logistical task ahead, the U.N. refugee agency set up a support system for South Sudanese wishing to return home. Registration offices were opened and ships, trucks and buses put in place to move people and luggage.

At the receiving end, in Juba and other towns across the south, a massive emergency programme was rolled out by the World Food Programme and other non-government organisations to supply returnees with basic items like food, cooking utensils and soap.

Many of the early returnees belonged to families who had been away for decades. Like Richard Luka, 32, who came back in 2006. His father had left Juba in the 1970s as a bachelor, to find work in the northern capital Khartoum. He got married and had children, whom he managed to send to school with money he earned as a tailor. When the second civil war broke out in 1983 he lost hope that his offspring would ever be able to see their homeland.

For young Richard, life in the north was marked by the desire for a place he had never seen. Growing up in Khartoum, he lived between two worlds. In school, he spoke Arabic like the other children and tried to blend in. At home, the family spoke their mother tongue, Bari, to keep their southern spirit alive.

"My parents used to tell us all about Juba," says Luka. "Whenever they saw it on television, they would call us over. It looked so beautiful to me. My dream was always to go back there. I knew it was my home."

In 1995, there was intense fighting in the area around Juba. Images of soldiers in battle were shown on the military programme the family always watched on TV. Seeing his home town being attacked sparked a form of patriotism inside Luka that he had not felt so strongly before. "Me and my brother said to my father: Dad, can we go fight? But he refused to let us go. He said: Finish school first. Then you can go and fight for your country."

When SPLM leader John Garang died in a helicopter crash in 2005 – just months after the peace agreement – the mood in the Luka household became tense. "We were worried. We had a chief who looked after us, but who would protect the south now that he was dead?"

In the following months, Luka’s father prepared his family to return to their home land. After a three-week wait in the harbour town of Kosti, they were allowed to board a U.N.-chartered steamship that would take them to Juba. Luka remembers the departure vividly: "As soon as we got on board and left the harbour, all of us went on deck and waved. We sang: ‘Bye, bye, Arabs, we leave you now’. We were so happy it was finally happening."

The journey took one month. The ship was crowded and mosquitoes pestered the passengers on board. The U.N. had put people from different tribes together, which caused unrest at first. But soon, they started to interact. "We all had the same experiences, so we shared them," Luka recalls. "By the time we arrived in Juba, we were like a big family."

Life back in the south has not been easy for the Lukas. After three decades away, the family has had to start all over again and help to pick up the pieces of their destroyed country. Luka’s father struggles to make ends meet as a tailor and Luka’s work as a small farmer barely brings in enough to feed his family. He met his wife Nora Joan in Juba and married her soon after. She is nine months pregnant and about to deliver the couple’s first child.

"It gives me sleepless nights thinking about how we will cope when the baby is born. How will I feed three if I already struggle to feed two? It worries me a lot." Luka’s dream is to finish his university degree, which he started in Khartoum but abandoned because of financial constraints. He knows he is capable of doing it, but the costs and the responsibility for his new family hold him back.

With independence now around the corner, Luka’s views on the future of his country are clear. "Our politicians need to make their promises a reality. We need quick development on all fronts- education, food supply and jobs for the poor, so that my child won’t have to struggle like I have struggled."

Luka’s baby will be one of the first children of the new Republic of South Sudan. When asked how he feels about the fact that his first child will be born on South Sudanese ground, his eyes light up: "It is very special. I will be the proudest father in the world." He has already decided on the baby’s name. He or she will be called Hora – the Juba-Arabic for Freedom.

Following the ‘yes’ vote for independence in January, the government of Southern Sudan called upon its remaining exiled citizens to come home and help rebuild their nation. As an incentive, it promised each returning family a piece of land.

Although plans are being put in place to deal with the assignment of allotments, most returnees are still officially homeless. Some have tried to get back to their family farms, but after years or even decades away, most land is now occupied by others and claiming ancestry without paperwork often proves difficult, if not impossible.

The number of returnees continues to grow, with many more expected to come back after Jul. 9, the date set for South Sudan to become an independent state.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), over 300,000 people have returned to the south in the past seven months alone. From November 2010 to June 2011, just over 140,000 returnees came back with support from the southern government and the U.N. The other half made the journey back themselves.

Despite support from the international community, the influx of returnees is putting enormous pressure on the nation-to-be. In a country where nine out of 10 people live on less than a dollar a day, according to U.N. statistics, shortages of food, drinking water, sanitation and health care are already huge.

The infrastructure to meet the increasing demands is fragile. The new Republic of South Sudan covers 650,000 square kilometres – bigger than the United Kingdom and Germany combined – yet there are only 30 miles of paved roads.

In Western Juba, Agnes Wosuk from the Catholic international aid collective Caritas updates her list of new arrivals. Together with local charities Sudanaid and Catholic Relief Services, she works to provide humanitarian assistance to 100,000 people in most urgent need of shelter, food and sanitation.

Not all people she speaks to today are returnees from the north. Many have also fled to Juba as a result of the ongoing tribal conflicts within the south. IOM estimates that from January 2007 to July 2010, more than half of four million people displaced from or within Sudan have returned to their places of origin. Despite this, Sudan is still the country with the highest number of internally displaced people in the world.

Sabia Leot, 21, is one of these people. Orphaned at age seven, she grew up with an aunt in a small village near the southern town of Yei. The family arranged her marriage to an SPLA soldier when she was fourteen years old. He was based in Juba, where Leot gave birth to their first baby, a boy, in 2005. Two years later she had her second child, this time a girl, followed by another girl in 2008.

Soon after that, Leot’s husband was transferred to an army base in the town of Bantu and the family moved with him. Life was peaceful for a while, until violence broke out at the end of last year. An ongoing dispute between two local tribes had escalated and armed conflict caused chaos in the area. Leot was three months pregnant with her fourth child.

On Dec. 18 Leot’s husband decided that it was time for his wife and children to flee the area. By now, the army was involved in the conflict and fighting had intensified. He gave her some money and a cell phone and told her to take the children to Juba.

"As soon as I rented a small room for me and the children to live in, I rang him," recalls Leot. "He said not to worry and that he would send us money every month, until it was safe for us to come back. He told me to look after the children and phone him if there were any problems. I thought we were going to be fine."

Trouble started after the first month, when Leot did not receive any money. She tried to phone her husband, but the phone number she had used earlier did not work any more. She asked her landlord to be patient, as she believed the money would arrive any day. After two weeks, the house owner had had enough and told the family to leave.

Pregnant and with three small children, Leot was sent onto the streets, carrying nothing but the few belongings she brought. With no family to go back to and no money to feed her children, she has been wondering around the plots of land in Western Juba ever since.

She has found a few old relatives, who sometimes offer her shelter and food for a few nights. When she feels like she has outstayed her welcome, she takes the children by the hand and moves on. "The eldest ones keep asking me why we can’t go back to our rented room. I tell them: ‘That room is not our home. Our home is with Daddy.’ It is hard for them to understand."

Leot has been homeless for five months now, and the situation is getting more pressing each day. The start of the rainy season has made matters worse.

"When it is dry, we sleep under a tree. But when the rains come, we have to run and hope someone will give us shelter for the night. During the day, I go around to people’s houses and ask if I can do small jobs for them. It is getting harder because my belly has grown so much. Sometimes they give me some food or a few (Sudanese) pounds. But often, we go hungry. I say to the little ones: ‘Don’t worry, let us sleep. Tomorrow, we will eat."

Since that one phone call upon her arrival in Juba, Leot has not heard from her husband. She says it is unlike him not to contact her. "I pray every day that no one will come and bring me bad news."

Some nights, when the children are asleep, Leot thinks about taking her own life. With the pregnancy coming to an end, she worries about the health of her family and unborn baby. In a country were one in seven pregnant women die of complications, the dangers are horribly real.

She holds her baby bump as she speaks: "I can’t think about what is happening to me. I don’t know where I will deliver my child and how we will cope. I try not to think at all. Every night, I thank God that another day has passed."

* Published under an agreement with Street News Service.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

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Filed Under: Africa, Development, Featured, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Real Estate Boom as Displaced Pakistanis Seek Housing

June 26, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Jun 25, 2011 (IPS) – Real estate prices have shot up in areas adjacent to the tribal districts of northwest Pakistan where violence continues to displace local residents.

The prices of homes as well as rentals have risen as families from some parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have fled the violence and scrambled for housing in places like Peshawar, the capital of neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"The ongoing military operations against the Taliban in six of the seven agencies in the FATA have forced thousands of families to sell their properties at throwaway prices and buy homes in safer places," Wakil Durrani, president of the Peshawar Property Dealers Association, told IPS. Those who cannot afford to buy opt to rent houses, he said.

A majority of the 25,000 housing units in upscale Hayatabad Township in Peshawar have either been leased or purchased by people from the violence-hit zones of the FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The same is true for slum areas where poor families from the troubled areas have found sanctuary from the wrath of the Taliban and the Pakistani army.

Before 2007, a 1,300-sq ft house in Hayatabad was available for a monthly rent of 70 dollars; now it goes for 250. "The house owners prefer to offer their houses for rent to displaced people from the FATA because they pay more," Durrani said.

Similarly, the same size home can be bought now for 70,000 dollars, up from only 30,000 before 2007.

Rahim Shah, a transporter from South Waziristan Agency who had been residing in Peshawar since 2005, said his family shuttled between South Waziristan and Peshawar since the military operation began in his native town. "Then, I sold all my property and bought a house in Peshawar for my family’s safety," Shah told IPS.

Taliban forces have been holed up in the FATA since the U.S. launched a campaign against them in 2001, forcing them out of Afghanistan and into sanctuaries in the sprawling FATA, crossing over the long and porous Pakistan-Afghan border. The FATA is composed of seven "agencies" or tribal units spread out over 47,000 sq km with a population of five million.

Dental surgeon Akbar Ali from Mohmand Agency took up residence in Peshawar to escape the violence. Nearly half of the 790,000 population of Mohmand, which has been facing military action since 2009, have become permanently displaced.

"The situation there is very bad and those who could afford to buy or rent houses in safer places have left, while the poor stay there because they have no choice," said Ali, who now lives in Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Mohmand Agency.

According to the Disaster Management Authority of FATA, some one million people have been living outside their hometowns due to the fighting between the Taliban and the army. "They were sandwiched (between opposing forces) and desperate to get to safer places," DMA official Irfan Ali told IPS. Ali said residents who have been living in their ancestral villages were concerned about the safety and future of their children.

"We sold precious agricultural land in Swat and bought three houses in Peshawar," said Waheedullah Shah of Swat, where the army launched a full-scale operation against militants in 2007. Swat is one of the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province adjoining the FATA.

Military operations in Swat have ended but militants are still active there, Shah said. "Still, we visit our relatives in Swat on festive occasions, but the conditions there are not good to live in," he concluded.

Poor families from the FATA are forced to stay in dilapidated houses for which they pay exorbitant rent. "We got a two-room mud house for 54 dollars a month that’s not even fit for animals," said Abdul Latif, a daily wage earner from Bajaur Agency, who now resides in the Afghan Colony in Peshawar.

About 200,000 displaced people from Bajaur Agency, a hub of militants, have been facing housing problems because of the skyrocketing rent.

The demand for housing has primarily benefited real estate businesses and property owners in the Tank and Dera Ismail Khan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which are closest to South Waziristan Agency.

"The local landowners have been building housing units to be offered for higher rents to displaced people who come in droves. The affluent classes from Waziristan are migrating to urban areas while the poor seek shelter in rural parts," Sufaid Khan, a property dealer in Tank district, told IPS by telephone.

The real estate boom has affected even people buying plots of land in cemeteries in Tank despite the centuries-old tradition of burying the dead in their hometowns.

"My children used to weep and had to endure sleepless nights from the deafening gun and artillery fires which compelled us to say goodbye to a sprawling mud and brick home where our forefathers had lived," said 50-year-old Muhammad Tahir.

He had a thriving flour shop in Angoor Adda, a locality of South Waziristan’s headquarters Wana, and still regrets moving away. But he was helpless in the face of his family’s insistence that they settle in adjacent Dera Ismail Khan.

Populations from the tribal areas currently undergoing military operations have sought houses in safer districts in nearby KP province so they could be close to their relatives. For instance, the family of Hasan Jan from Khyber Agency lives in Canal Town in adjacent Peshawar.

"We can easily attend weddings and funerals in our native village which is just a stone’s throw from here," he said. "We visit our relatives who live in militancy-plagued Tirah Tehsil of Khyber Agency." (

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

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Poor Countries Host Largest Share of Refugees

June 23, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

Poor Countries Host Largest Share of Refugees Credit: UN
 
By Jerome Mwanda

IDN-InDepth NewsReport      
     
NAIROBI (IDN) – The United Nations has taken the wind out of the sails of world’s rich countries that never tire of complaining about the citizens of developing lands burdening their rather stressed economies, by pointing out that about 80 per cent of refugees around the world live in poor countries.

"In absolute terms and in relation to the size of their economies, poor countries shoulder a disproportionate refugee burden," informs the 2010 Global Trends report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), released on June 20, marking the annual World Refugee Day.

The report comes within three months of the UNHCR unveiling that "the number of asylum-seekers seeking to live in the industrialized world continues to fall and is now almost half the level it was a decade ago." The report found that 358,800 applications for asylum were lodged 2010 in 44 developed countries – a drop of 5 per cent on the 2009 figures and about 42 per cent below the levels of 2001, when nearly 620,000 applications were made.

Unveiling that report on March 28, 2011, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said the global dynamics of asylum had changed in recent years.

Serbia – including Kosovo – provided the biggest number of asylum-seekers in 2010, with 28,900 claims lodged, compared to only 18,800 the previous year. "The sharp rise was probably due to the European Union’s December 2009 decision to grant visa-free entry to holders of Serbian passports," UNHCR said.

The other leading countries of origin of asylum-seekers were: Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Russia, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka.

Guterres noted that the developing world is still "carrying the lion’s share of responsibility for hosting refugees," with countries such as Liberia and Tunisia playing host to asylum-seekers despite their own problems and challenges.

Within the developed world, the United States was the biggest recipient of asylum claims, with 55,500 lodged in 2010 due in part to an increase in applications from Chinese and Mexicans. France was second, with 47,800 claims, drawn largely from Serbian, Russian and Congolese asylum-seekers. Germany, Sweden and Canada rounded out the top five recipient nations.

UNHCR defines an asylum-seeker as an individual who has sought international protection and whose claim for refugee status has not been determined. A person is considered a refugee if he or she fulfils criteria set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The 44 recipient countries used for the UNHCR report were the 27 members of the European Union, as well as Albania, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Iceland, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Liechtenstein, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

According to the new report published on June 20, Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.07 million, and 1.005 million respectively. Pakistan also feels the biggest economic impact with 710 refugees for each dollar of its per capita gross domestic product (GDP), followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Kenya, with 475 and 247 refugees per dollar of their per capita GDP respectively.

"What we’re seeing is worrying unfairness in the international protection paradigm," said Guterres. "Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration. Meanwhile it’s poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden," he added.

On the whole, the report portrays a drastically changed protection environment to that of 60 years ago when the UN refugee agency was founded. At that time UNHCR’s caseload of refugees was 2.1 million Europeans uprooted by the Second World War.

Today, UNHCR’s work extends to more than 120 countries and encompasses people forced to flee across borders as well as those in flight within their own countries.

Some 43.7 million people are currently displaced worldwide – roughly equalling the entire populations of Colombia or the Republic of Korea or of all Scandinavian countries and Sri Lanka combined.

Of the total, 15.4 million are refugees – 10.55 million under UNHCR’s care and 4.82 million registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Some 27.5 million people displaced internally by conflict and 837,500 are asylum-seekers. The report does not include this year’s internal displacements in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire.

Reflecting the prolonged nature of several of the current major international conflicts, the report finds that the refugee experience is becoming increasingly drawn out for millions of people worldwide. UNHCR defines a protracted refugee situation as one in which a large number of people are stuck in exile for five years or longer. Last year, 7.2 million people under UNHCR mandate found themselves in such a situation, the highest number since 2001.

On the other hand, only 197,600 people were able to return home, the lowest number since 1990, according to the UNHCR report.

Afghans, who first fled in significant numbers after the Soviet invasion in 1979, accounted for a third of the world’s refugees in both 2001 and in 2010. Iraqis, Somalis, citizens of DRC and Sudanese were also among the top 10 nationalities of refugees at both the start and end of the decade.

"One refugee without hope is too many," said Mr. Guterres. "The world is failing these people, leaving them to wait out the instability back home and put their lives on hold indefinitely. Developing countries cannot continue to bear this burden alone and the industrialized world must address this imbalance."

“We need to see increased resettlement quotas. We need accelerated peace initiatives in long-standing conflicts so that refugees can go home," he added.

According to the report, more than 2.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) returned home in Pakistan, the DRC, Uganda and Kyrgyzstan. While the global number of IDPs remained high and instability persisted, that was nonetheless the highest number of IDP returns since UNHCR started monitoring internal displacement trends in 1997.

The number of countries reporting stateless populations has risen steadily since 2004, but differences in definitions and methodologies still prevent reliable measurement of the problem, UNHR said. The reported number of stateless people last year – 3.5 million – was nearly half of the 2009 figure, but this was mainly the result of methodological changes in some countries that supplied data. Unofficial estimates put the global figure closer to 12 million. (IDN-InDepthNews/20.06.2011)

2011 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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ITALY: Refugees Find Easier Reception, For Now

June 21, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Matt Carr

LAMPEDUSA, Italy, Jun 21, 2011 (IPS) – It’s 4.30 in the morning and the full moon is low in the sky above Lampedusa harbour as the Guardia di Finanza patrol boat escorts a fishing boat containing 19 Tunisian migrants into the closed military port. They include six women, one child and – to the amusement of the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) team – one sheep. The migrants are driven away in a coach to one of the two holding centres, some of them wrapped in silver emergency blankets. But the sheep remains in the port.

Tunisians are something of a rarity amongst the migrants who now come here on an almost daily basis, most of whom are sub-Saharan Africans fleeing the Libyan war. Just over a week ago on Saturday 1,500 migrants arrived in seven boats at the commercial harbour.

"We were working continuously from two in the morning till four in the afternoon," says Ennio Ciuffi, commander of the Red Cross, which maintains a permanent triage centre on the wharf. Four days later another 280 migrants arrived at six in the morning.

Reception procedures for incoming migrants have improved dramatically since the arrival of 12,000 Tunisians in the space of a few days overwhelmed this tiny volcanic island of 6,000 inhabitants in early March. Today all migrants receive immediate medical assessment and treatment from the Red Cross and MSF. A phalanx of NGOs is present to ensure that those who want refugee protection can apply for it.

Asylum seekers are taken to the two temporary holding centres on the island, from where they are then transported by cruise ships to one of various reception centres on the Italian mainland, many of which have been especially created for the purpose under the auspices of the Ministry of Civil Protection.

Tunisians, on the other hand, are routinely repatriated by the Ministry of Interior as ‘economic migrants’ via Sicily, as the result of a recent agreement between Italy and the Tunisian transitional government.

This conveyor belt system represents a remarkable turnaround from the dysfunctional institutional response to the Tunisian influx earlier this year, when the paralysis of Berlusconi government turned a humanitarian crisis into a near-disaster.

For more than two weeks thousands of Tunisians slept amongst the rocky slope and disused pillboxes next to the airport or on the streets of the town below, while the efforts of Berlusconi and his Northern League partners were directed primarily towards whipping up fears in Europe of an imminent ‘Biblical exodus’ of North African migrants than doing anything to alleviate their plight.

Now Italy’s institutions are working well in Lampedusa. Every day helicopters fly out from the island in response to reports of migrant sightings. The orange-rimmed coastguard vessels and militarised patrol boats of the Guardia di Finanza plough back and forth through the aquamarine seas in search and rescue operations or escorting migrant boats into the harbour.

Some 50-odd of these migrant boats are piled opposite the harbour – a grim monument to Lampedusa’s transformation into Europe’s southernmost migrant gateway. Some were wrecked en route, others were clearly unseaworthy to begin with. Not all those who set out on these journeys have made it to the island. According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNCHR, 1,500 migrants who left North Africa since March have never been accounted for – the single most lethal period in the history of Europe’s Mediterranean migratory frontiers.

Some of these boats are so overcrowded that any extraneous movements can tip them over. Two months ago, according to its commander Captain Antonio Morana, the coastguard rescued 53 people from a capsized boat in which between 100 to 200 people died. The coastguard found only 20 bodies, but it was unable to retrieve them because of the weather. Others have never been accounted for.

The belated response of the Italian government to the crisis in Lampedusa does not indicate a new spirit of humanitarianism from the beleaguered Italian prime minister and his notoriously xenophobic Northern League allies.

Before last week’s mass transfer of 800 migrants to the mainland on Wednesday morning, there were close to 800 people in the largest of the two holding centres – just within its capacity, and another 300 in the smaller centre. Some of their residents had been there for longer than 30 days. Last month there was an attempt to set fire to the main centre, that echoed the disturbances that preceded the centre’s closure in 2009.

The flow of migrants to the island this year was partly a consequence of the breakdown of the 2009 ‘friendship agreement’ between Italy and Libya, which enabled Italian and Maltese vessels to ‘push back’ migrant boats into Libyan territorial waters where the migrants would be detained by Colonel Gaddafi’s security forces.

"Seventy-five percent of the people that entered Lampedusa from Libya were asylum seekers, and of these some 50 percent were in need of some form of protection," says Barbara Molinario, UNHCR field officer on the island. "So when these governments made this agreement with Libya what they did was to stop the main asylum route to Europe."

Neither Italy nor Europe are enthusiastic about the renewed flows. UNHCR has urged NATO to do more to assist migrant boats coming from Libya, but last week Berlusconi’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni urged NATO to stop migrants leaving Libya – a policy that would leave them stranded in a warzone.

On Friday Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini signed a new agreement in Naples with the Libyan National Transitional Council, which will commit Gaddafi’s successors to a similar role in Europe’s migratory controls.

On Sunday the UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres visited the island, accompanied by UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie, and appealed for Italy and Europe to show more solidarity towards the refugees coming to the island.

Gutteres described the 40,000 migrants who have come to Lampedusa as a ‘drop in the ocean’ for Europe as a whole. But the agreement with the Libyan rebels suggests once again that for the Italian government – and for many other European countries – closing Europe’s ‘asylum route’ to Lampedusa remains more important than keeping it open.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

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