Obscura

24. Xiao Xiao

http://www.it-reality.co.uk/ProgramFiles/fight.swf

posted by Cobb @ 10:25 AM

23. Jalozai

Three guesses which country the United Nations now reckons to contain the world's worst humanitarian crisis. No, not Somalia; not Rwanda; not Mozambique. In fact, because of war, displacement, and two decades of chaos, the poverty of Afghanistan is so difficult to measure that the Afghan GNP frequently appears on lists as "not available." The World Bank has no operations there; the U.N. High Commission for Refugees considers Afghans to be the largest group of refugees in the world—for the 19th year running. It counts 1.2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, 1.3 million in Iran, and many thousands more around the world, (including, oddly, Washington D.C., where large numbers of sad-eyed Afghans drive taxis out to Dulles Airport). More refugees, perhaps another half-million, are pouring into new camps within the country: One U.N. camp near Herat is said to be receiving 1,500 people every day. Having abandoned their farms, eaten what remained of their resources, and watched their sheep and cattle die for lack of water, they have nothing to return to either.


War and politics have compounded a natural crisis: Afghanistan is now experiencing a second year of drought and may be on the brink of a terrible famine. The World Food Program thinks the drought has severely hit 4 million people in the country: Kenzo Oshima, the U.N. undersecretary-general in charge of humanitarian affairs, has said that 1 million are at risk. The numbers vary widely because no one actually knows what is happening in the interior of the country, where refugees report that they were surviving on boiled grass.


Now, it is not quite fair to say that this crisis has gone unreported: Yesterday, as the new U.N. commissioner for refugees began his first visit there, the story appeared, among other places, on the BBC world news Web site http://go.msn.com/newsletter3817/25942.asp . Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have written recently about aspects of the crisis, including the state of the infamous Jalozai refugee camp, where 80,000 Afghans, many opponents of the fundamentalist Taliban, are crammed into a dried-out Pakistani riverbed without much food or sympathy from the Pakistani government.

posted by Cobb @ 9:10 AM