AID GROUPS WARN OVER SINDH FLOOD FUND

ISLAMABAD: Aid groups warned on Wednesday that vital relief efforts for five million people affected by floods in Pakistan’s fertile southern belt could be cut back because of a shortfall in foreign donations.

Supplies of clean water, sanitation, food, shelter and healthcare are all under severe threat and impoverished farmers in waterlogged Sindh face losing yet another winter crop, just as the cold weather closes in. The badly affected province was already reeling from floods last year that were the worst ever in Pakistan. Less than a third of the UN’s $357 million floods appeal for 2011 has been met and global aid organizations Oxfam, Save the Children, Care and umbrella group ACTED are urging donors to give more or see aid flows stop.

“Over two months into the crisis, millions of people are still without basics. If relief operations stop, it could lead to an unimaginable catastrophe,” said Neva Khan, Oxfam’s country director in Pakistan. “With winter approaching fast, millions of people who are still without shelter will be left out in the cold. We urgently need to see the same donor generosity and giving that took place last year during the floods.” Save the Children has raised only 35 per cent of its required funds, while Care faces a shortfall of 91 per cent.

The United States and European Commission have given the most money to the United Nations appeal, donating $13.4 million and $20.6 million respectively. Stacey Winston, from the UN, said the 2011 fund “remains distressingly underfunded with a 73 percent shortfall and if more funding is not received relief supplies will run out within weeks.” According to official figures, more than 1.58 million homes in Sindh and 26,000 in neighboring Balochistan province have been damaged in the flood disaster. About 800,000 people remain displaced. Latest estimates suggest that three million people are in urgent need of emergency food supplies.

Farmers badly need help to plant a new season of crops or find other ways to earn a living, while millions of others are at risk of disease from stagnant waters, raising the risk of malaria, dengue and respiratory disease. “We had expected the situation to stabilize by now but conditions are going from bad to worse,” warned Save the Children’s Pakistan country director David Wright. “Malnutrition levels among children under five are among some of our worst-recorded cases.”

PAKISTAN URGES SETTLEMENT OF KASHMIR DISPUTE

UNITED NATIONS: Emphasizing that Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination is recognized by UN Security Council resolutions, Pakistan has called for a peaceful settlement of the decades-old Kashmir dispute that would lead to durable peace and stability in South Asia.

“The decolonization agenda of the United Nations would be incomplete without resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” Raza Bashir Tarar, Pakistan’s deputy permanent Representative to the UN, told the General Assembly’s Fourth (Decolonization) Committee on Monday.

Speaking in a general debate, the Pakistan delegate said decolonization was an objective of such importance that it could not be limited to the ‘Non Self Governing Territories’ alone. The negation of the right to self determination often ignited regional conflicts that threaten peace and security. “Such conflicts cannot be swept under terrorism or religious rivalries,” he added. Tarar reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to finding a peaceful resolution of its dispute with India that was acceptable to all sides, especially the Kashmiri people.

The Pakistani delegate’s remarks on Kashmir, noted by committee delegates as constructive in nature, nevertheless drew a response from the Indian delegate, who said Pakistan’s comments were “unwarranted” and “irrelevant” to the debate. Exercising his right of reply, Indian delegate R. Ravindra, insisted that that Jammu and Kashmir was an “integral part” of India and that the people of Jammu and Kashmir had expressed their free will by participating in elections, a claim which was immediately rejected by Pakistan.

Speaking in his right of reply, Tahir Andrabi, a Pakistani delegate, said the denial of that right of the people of Jammu and Kashmir was very relevant to the work of the Committee. Jammu and Kashmir was not an integral part of India and had never been so, he said. The UN Security Council resolutions had recognized that Jammu and Kashmir was disputed territory and that it was necessary to conduct a free and impartial plebiscite, under United Nations auspices, to determine the will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Those resolutions, Andrabi said, also clearly state that no electoral exercise conducted by Indian authorities in Jammu and Kashmir can substitute a free and impartial plebiscite to be held under UN auspices. “UN Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir were accepted by both India and Pakistan and are binding on both,” he said, adding “These resolutions remain to be implemented.”

JOYSTICKS TRANSFORM US WARFARE IN AFGHANISTAN

COMBAT OUTPOST MONTI: In battle they take out Taliban fighters with joystick-controlled weapons, while back at base American soldiers hook up their Xboxes and kill their way through video games.

In Afghanistan, on and off-duty activities have become strikingly similar for US troops, as 21-year-old Specialist Tyler Sandusky can attest. Out on missions in the rugged northeastern province of Kunar, Sandusky locates distant targets day or night with remarkable clarity on a video screen within a giant armoured truck. “It’s pretty fun watching people. They’re so far away and they don’t know you’re watching,” he told AFP as he demonstrated a system known as the CROWS (Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station).

“It does feel like a game when you’re driving along.”Perched atop the vehicle is a .50 calibre machine gun with a firing range of more than 6.7 kilometres (four miles), which Sandusky operates through his screen and a joystick trigger to the right of his seat. “You see a red mist and then you know they’re down,” he said. Back at Combat Outpost Monti, troops drew parallels between the CROWS system and one of their favourite pastimes.

“A lot of guys compare it to Call of Duty,” said Sergeant John Henington, referring to the graphic video game franchise set in various battle zones. “We play that game most of the day when we’re not doing anything.”Aside from weaponry, technology has changed the lives of American soldiers immeasurably since the Vietnam War. No matter how remote their deployments, troops can watch TV on laptops, shop online and message their loved ones back home through Facebook and Skype.

The changes may make life more comfortable in a war zone, but the evolution of weapons has brought with it ethical concerns. “It’s the dehumanisation of the enemy,” said Specialist Sean McCabe, 22. “We are the video game generation, so it’s easy with the CROWS system to put it in a video game.”The similarity is no coincidence, according to Deane-Peter Baker, a philosophy professor at the US Naval Academy.

“Manufacturers of systems like this have deliberately sought to make their operation user-friendly” by designing Xbox and PlayStation-like controls familiar to young soldiers, he said. CROWS, in place in a number of US army trucks, significantly boosts troops’ safety by removing the need for a gunner poking out of the vehicle. “Imagine what it must be like to have half of your body sticking out of the top of a Humvee while bullets are flying in every direction,” said Baker.

“Even the coolest head would have difficulty in being as precise and discriminating with his or her fire under those conditions.”The debate over technological advances is fiercest on the subject of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), whose use the Obama administration has escalated dramatically against Taliban and Al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan. While studies vary, public policy institute the New America Foundation says drones have killed between 1,667 and 2,614 people in Pakistan since 2004, 20 percent of whom were civilians.

At least partly because of Pakistan’s official opposition to the attacks, the programme remains covert, and the identities of those targeted and killed are rarely revealed by American officials. Drones can also enhance intelligence-gathering by hovering over a target for up to 24 hours, said Peter Singer, author of a book on robotic weapons, “Wired for War”. Then troops use hundreds of smaller drones for tactical purposes, such as the spying battery-powered Raven, which they can throw in the air like a model airplane to see over a hill.

In February, manufacturer AeroVironment unveiled the Nano Hummingbird, a tiny remote-controlled and camera-equipped prototype that demonstrated 11 miles-per-hour flight and was able to accurately hover, rotate, perch and fly. The use of drones “is something that just a few years ago was seen as science fiction and is now the new ‘normal’ of war and counter-terrorism,” said Singer, adding that 45 countries now operated them. Drones mean there is no risk of a pilot being shot down or taken prisoner. But the United Nations has expressed concern that drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan could be breaking international laws against summary executions.

Singer says drones lower the bar in the decision to use force, but US forces insist they are operated under high-level command and are the best tool for the job. “The other option is putting soldiers out in those areas, which I guarantee will piss people off much, much more, and probably result in much unnecessary bloodshed,” said a US security officer in Kunar.

PAKISTAN HOST TO LARGEST POPULATION OF REFUGEES: UNITED NATION'S REPORT

GENEVA: The United Nations sought Monday to debunk what it called the ‘Worrying Misperceptions’ about movements of displaced people saying that developing Countries hosted 80% of the world’s refugees.

The UNHCR said in a report that the total number of refugees, asylum seekers and displaced persons, had not ceased to grow with the figure reaching nearly 44 million people in the Calendar Year 2010.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said “Today’s in the world, there are worrying misperceptions about refugee movements and the international protection paradigm,” “Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized Countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with the issues of migration.

“Meanwhile it is poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden.” The UNHCR’s annual report on refugee trends found that most of the world’s displaced were seeking sanctuary in developing countries, including those which are among the world’s poorest. Pakistan is host to the largest refugee population of 1.9 million, Iran is host to 1.1 million and Syria to one million.

The cost to these economies is also proportionally large. Pakistan has the biggest impact with 710 refugees for each dollar of its per capita GDP, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo with 475 and Kenya with 247. In comparison, Germany has 17 refugees for every dollar of per capita GDP, the UNHCR pointed out.

Overall, 43.7 million people are displaced worldwide, including 15.6 million refugees. About 27.5 million are displaced internally a 10 year record high and there is another 850,000 asylum seekers.

Total figure, up from 43.3 million in 2009, is the highest in 15 years, the agency said on the occasion of world refugee day. Afghans make up the largest number of refugees at three million, followed by Iraqis (1.6 million), Somalis (770,200), along with people from the Democratic Republic of Congo (476,000) and Myanmar (415,700).

The country of first choice for asylum seekers is South Africa with 180,600 requests registered in 2010, or one fifth of world requests, three times more than the United States (54,300) or France (48,100). The data do not take into account displacements in 2011, such as those in Libya, Ivory Coast and Syria.

Commenting on European worries about a mass influx of refugees from north Africa following the Arab Spring movement, Guterres’ deputy Alexander Aleinikoff told a news conference that the figures seen in Europe early this year “are not figures that cannot be managed equitably”.

 

He added: “The great majority of refugees in north Africa have stayed in the region.” Aleinikoff told journalists: “We need the attention of states, the international community and civil society to help people obtain what many regard as a right a place called home.”