A few weeks ago I spent six hours at the main checkpoint between Israel and Gaza. Here is what I saw.
Six hours at the Israel-Gaza checkpoint
RIP Almigdad Mojalli – a wonderful journalist and friend
UPDATE: A fund has been set up for Almigdad’s family. Anyone who wants to please donate here
This morning I received the devastating news that Almigdad Mojalli, a Yemeni journalist who had written for a whole range of media – both Western and Yemeni – was killed, seemingly by a Saudi airstrike. Continue reading “RIP Almigdad Mojalli – a wonderful journalist and friend”
US ‘will not use’ depleted uranium in Syria or Iraq
UPDATE: February 15 2017. After Airwars and Foreign Policy revealed that in fact the US has started using Depleted Uranium, I was asked by a couple of people for the full quotes where they pledged not to use it. In the interests of transparency I produce them in full below.
Q1: Given that A10s have carried out around 10 percent of attacks on ISIS so far, can you confirm whether any of them have been equipped with PGU 14 Armor Piercing Incendiary?
A1: CJTF can confirm that the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jet has been conducting dynamic strikes in support of Operation Inherent Resolve since late November on a regular basis. They are not equipped with PGU 14 Armor Piercing Incendiary.
Q2: The Iraqi government has called for a global ban on the use of Depleted Uranium munitions. Can you explicitly confirm that no DU has been used in any attacks within Iraq and/or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve?
A2: CJTF can confirm that US. and Coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.
JOHN J. MOORE Captain, U.S. Army CJTF-OIR Public Affairs (Media Relations)
Original article below
In recent weeks there has been growing chatter about fears of the potential use of depleted uranium in Syria and Iraq as the Americans and their allies bomb the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).
In particular, an article (Arabic) in the Syrian publication “Raqqa is being slaughtered” recently claimed that residents in the ISIS-run town of Raqqa were fearful that the Americans would use DU as they seek to knock the Islamist militants back.
While potentially effective militarily depleted uranium has long been criticised for being incendiary and having potentially long-term effects on civilians.
The US allegedly used depleted uranium in civilian areas in the 2003 Iraq war in breach of their own protocols. The country has suffered from high rates of birth defects ever since, with allegations that the depleted uranium was to blame.
The only type of plane with the capacity to deploy depleted uranium is the A10. So far, the Americans confirmed, around 10 percent of the strikes carried out have been by A10s – the vast majority in Iraq. But to do so they must be equipped with PGU 14 Armor Piercing Incendiary.
So I asked the U.S. military whether the A10s had been equipped with PGU 14 and whether they would consider using depleted uranium in ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’ – the name for the campaign against ISIS.
John Moore, a captain in the U.S. army and a media relations guy for Operation Inherent Resolve, was unequivocal in his reply.
He said he could confirm that “U.S. and Coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.”
He also said that none of the A10s had been equipped with PGU 14.
This follows NATO confirming that they did not use DU in Libya. It seems that the pressure by campaigners around use of DU may have convinced militaries to stop its use.
Interactive Maps – Female Genital Mutilation and the ICC’s Dubious Record
A couple of quick interactive maps I have published in recent weeks – one showing rates of female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East and the showing every ICC case globally.
Ones for the data nerds…
http://newirin.irinnews.org/extras/2015/2/5/fgm-female-genital-mutiliation-map
http://newirin.irinnews.org/extras/2015/1/19/palestine-and-the-icc-a-long-way-to-go
A timeline of Syria’s closing borders
I did a brief interactive timeline on how Syria’s neighbours have one by one increased their restrictions on refugees crossing the borders.
See it here
‘This generation of Syrians may be lost if we don’t get help’
This article originally appeared in the Times Education Supplement
Elias Bou Saab, Lebanon’s new minister of education, does not mince his words. “Without more support, the Lebanese education system may collapse. It is that serious,” he says.
The population of the small Middle Eastern country, home to just over 4 million citizens, has swollen by more than a quarter over the past three years. As Syria’s uprising has grown into a vicious civil war, more than a million people have fled across the border into Lebanon. This influx has driven the country’s public education system to the brink. Continue reading “‘This generation of Syrians may be lost if we don’t get help’”
Aid workers adjust to increasing violence in Lebanon
This article was published by IRIN, the UN’s press service, on March 3
BEIRUT, 3 March 2014 (IRIN) – A few weeks ago, the head of security for a charity in Lebanon got the kind of call you never want to get. “One of our staff has been kidnapped,” the voice on the other end said. “She was at a checkpoint an hour ago and no one has heard from her since.”
The panic turned out to be misplaced – the woman had taken an unexpected turn and had forgotten to radio in – but it indicates the difficulties of working in an increasingly violent country.
Lebanon has averaged over a car bomb per week so far in 2014, with the majority on the outskirts of the capital, Beirut. The alleged culprits have largely been al-Qaeda-affiliated groups often targeting areas traditionally run by the Shiite political party Hezbollah, which is fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad. On top of this, there have been a string of kidnappings in recent years, while the country’s second city Tripoli is trapped in a low-level civil war.
For a country that underwent a relative period of peace from 2007 until late 2012, the uptick in violence over the past 18 months has been severe, with fears of a return to the civil war that tore the country apart from 1975 until 1990.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled the civil war next door (UNHCR has registered over 935,000 in Lebanon). To adjust to this, most charities in the country have scaled up their operations rapidly. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the largest NGO in the country, had 15 Lebanon staff when the Syria crisis started in early 2011. Currently they have more than 500.
Trying to manage these huge increases in operations while ensuring staff are kept safe has been a challenge that requires increasingly complicated responses. The primary move has been to scale up their security teams: until 2012 almost no NGOs had dedicated international security experts, now the bulk of major NGOs do.
Read more here
Continue reading “Aid workers adjust to increasing violence in Lebanon”
Child labor climbs among Iraqi refugees in Lebanon
This article was published by IRIN, the UN’s press service, on February 4
BEIRUT, 3 February 2014 (IRIN) – Ali Al Wasate may only be 13, but he has been forced to grow up. No longer in school, he has begun the painstaking search for work to help his family pay the bills in Beirut, Lebanon.
It was not always this way. When he was younger, living in Baghdad, his stepfather Ahmed had a well-paid government job, and Ali attended a good school. Nine years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, they felt that they had survived the worst of the situation. Then one day, everything changed.
“I was coming home from work one day, and two men with beards were waiting,” Ahmed said. “They accused me of being a spy and told me to leave the neighbourhood before it was too late. I asked them who sent them, but they told me it was dangerous to ask those kinds of questions.”
Convinced their lives were at risk, the Wasates packed up and fled to Lebanon. There, they became part of a small community of between 6,000 and 7,000 Iraqi refugees awaiting resettlement in a third country.
The family wanted Ali to continue studying, but when they started looking for a place to enrol him they were struck by the country’s high prices. Basics in Lebanon, such as rent, are often more than double the cost of those in Iraq. “We brought money that we thought would last two years. It was gone in six months,” Ahmed said.
Read the rest of the article here
Continue reading “Child labor climbs among Iraqi refugees in Lebanon”
Lebanon wary as Hague trial begins
This article was published by IRIN on 15 January
These are worrying times for Lebanon; in late December a bomb exploded in the capital, Beirut, killing a former finance minister as well as at least four others. Days later, on 2 January, a car bomb in a southern suburb of the city killed five.
Though the attacks were far from the first to afflict the country, they did suggest that 2014 could be another difficult year as the small Mediterranean state seeks to maintain a fragile peace.
The country is in many ways a prisoner to wider regional trends; the civil war next door in Syria is increasing tension at home, while the political and sectarian polarization seen across the Middle East is playing out in the religiously diverse state. The country is also approaching political paralysis; it has gone without a government since March 2013, as the two rival factions, 14 March and 8 March, engage in seemingly fruitless negotiations.
In this context, one could forgive Lebanese for not wanting anything else that might cause further dispute. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), due to finally start on Thursday, is just that.
Read the rest of the article here
‘These kids have nothing. They come here to forget’
This article was originally featured in The Times Education Supplement
The clouds in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region may be darkening as the winter storms set in, but Ahmed Saab shows few signs of negativity.
Gesticulating widely, he swings open a door to a room full of smiling children, who promptly stand to greet their headteacher. “These are the second years,” he says, eliciting a sharp communal rebuke. “Sorry, third years,” he laughs.
The leader of the informally named Syrian School of Baalbek has a new spring in his step. Only a few months ago, he had been resigned to losing the institution he founded and that for a year had provided 200 refugee children with their only education. Now an innovative campaign – which crowdsourced the school’s first proper funding – has given him and his students fresh hope.
The story goes back 18 months to when Mr Saab, a newly arrived refugee who had been a headteacher in the central Syrian city of Homs, first noticed dozens of aimless young Syrian refugees on Baalbek’s streets. He started to ask the children why they were not in school.
Read the rest of the article here
Joe Dyke 