Rebecca Murray

LIBYA: Hard to stay in Libya, difficult to return

2012-03-01T21:49:00.001-08:00

TRIPOLI, Mar 2, 2012 (IPS) - At the battered terminal of Tripoli’s tiny Mitiga airport, over 150 young men and women jostle to be repatriated home to Nigeria on Libya’s Buraq airlines. This journey to Lagos is one of hundreds the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has facilitated since the start of the uprising against Gaddafi’s regime over a year ago...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106935

LIBYA: Misrata rebuilds, slowly

2012-02-25T04:52:00.005-08:00

MISRATA, Libya, Feb 25, 2012 (IPS) - This week more than half the residents eligible to vote in Libya’s embattled coastal city of Misrata cast their ballots for local council representatives in their first democratic election in decades...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106880

LIBYA: An old Gaddafi town is not all celebrating

2012-02-17T08:18:00.003-08:00

SIRTE, Libya, Feb 17, 2012 (IPS) - On the first anniversary of Libya’s revolution, Sirte brigade members lounge on leather couches in the lobby of the upscale Mahari Hotel, supervising its reconstruction. A base for the Misrata rebels during October’s fierce fighting, the hotel is notorious as the site where 65 alleged Gaddafi loyalists were executed on its seafront grounds...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106790

AFGHANISTAN: 38 attacks a day take their toll

2012-01-26T13:19:00.003-08:00

KANDAHAR, Jan 26, 2012 (IPS) - A red flare lights up the moonless night at a remote military outpost in southern Kandahar, a signal to land for the incoming helicopter. Bordering Pakistan, this desolate strip of desert is deadly, especially during peak ‘fighting season’ every summer between NATO-ISAF military forces and the Taliban...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106556

AFGHANISTAN: Trains face a rough political terrain

2012-01-13T14:35:00.006-08:00

HAIRATAN, Jan 6, 2012 (IPS) - Last month the first cargo train crossed the ‘Friendship Bridge’ from Uzbekistan to the border town Hairatan in northern Afghanistan, and rolled along 75 kilometres of newly laid track to Mazar-e-Sharif...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106378

AFGHANISTAN: Catch 'em young, for prostitution

2012-01-13T14:33:00.003-08:00

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Jan 3, 2012 (IPS) - Soma was a teenager in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when her grandfather arranged her marriage to a husband she had never met...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106357

AFGHANISTAN: Husband, 60, wife, 8

2011-12-29T04:07:00.004-08:00

KABUL, Dec 29, 2011 (IPS) - Activists voice concern that Afghan women’s rights continue to be marginalised, and nowhere is gender inequality more starkly illustrated than in the country’s flawed justice system...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106328

AFGHANISTAN: Death penalty returns to haunt Afghanistan

2011-12-16T21:19:00.003-08:00

KABUL, Dec 17, 2011 (IPS) - While Afghanistan’s violent decades-long war has claimed thousands of lives, the last known state-sanctioned execution was in June under the direct order of President Hamid Karzai.

A lunchtime attack by suicide bombers and gunmen on the Kabul Bank branch in Jalalabad last February was one of this year’s bloodiest...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106246

AFGHANISTAN: Land triggers new conflicts

2011-12-04T04:00:00.003-08:00

NANGARHAR, Afghanistan , Dec 4, 2011 (IPS) - A small plot of urban land has pitted Assadullah, 55, against an unwelcome neighbour in a bitter personal property dispute that has stretched on for almost a decade...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106088

AFGHANISTAN: False intelligence, true tragedies

2011-11-30T02:31:00.004-08:00

JALALABAD, Nov 30, 2011 (IPS) - A night raid in Hakimabad in the heart of eastern Nangarhar province shows the face of U.S.-led presence in Afghanistan, and what it means to local people...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106024

IRAQ: Fight for women’s rights begins all over again

2011-09-13T04:15:00.003-07:00

BAGHDAD, Sep 13 (IPS) - When a middle-aged mother took a taxi alone from Baghdad to Nasiriyah, about 300 kilometres south earlier this year, her 20-year-old driver stopped on the way, pulled her to the side of the road and raped her. And that began a telling legal struggle...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105079

IRAQ: ‘Protection’ law offers little safety

2011-09-02T02:45:00.004-07:00

BAGHDAD, Sep 2, 2011 (IPS) - When Ali Sumerian, an editor for Al-Sabah newspaper, and three local media colleagues sat down for a restaurant meal after reporting on a demonstration in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Feb. 25 this year, security forces detained them.

"We were accused of encouraging an anti-political process," says Sumerian. It was only after their arrest triggered a media outcry, he says, were they released 12 hours later. The four were just some of the journalists attacked and arrested that day...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104967

IRAQ: Female trafficking soars in Iraq

2011-08-27T19:13:00.004-07:00

BAGHDAD, Aug 27, 2011 (IPS) - Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein’s 1991 crackdown in Iraq’s Shia south. "My bothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body," she says.

Cast out for bringing ‘shame’ to her family, Rania ran away to Baghdad and soon fell into living and working in Baghdad’s red light district...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104911

IRAQ: Trafficked to Baghdad's Green Zone

2011-08-25T12:30:00.004-07:00

BAGHDAD, Aug 25, 2011 (IPS) - Ukrainian and Bulgarian workers are currently camped out on a construction site of half-built luxury villas in Baghdad’s elite "Green Zone" - a vast security enclave housing government offices, embassies and international NGOs - demanding their salaries before being shipped back home...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104893

IRAQ: Refugees tossed between Iraq and Syria

2011-08-25T08:24:00.004-07:00

BAGHDAD, Aug 25, 2011 (IPS) - At the height of Iraq’s sectarian war in 2006, 30-year-old Samer escaped his Baghdad neighbourhood to join a flood of refugees arriving in Syria. A young man of military age, he was at high risk of being targeted by armed forces that roamed the capital’s streets...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104884

SYRIA: Drought hits Middle East farmers, again

2010-12-13T22:04:00.006-08:00

AL-RAQQA, Syria, Dec 14, 2010 (IPS) - Anxious farmers gather in their field on a warm, clear day in Syria’s arid northern region of Al-Raqqa, near the banks of the Euphrates River. The ground in this corner of the ‘fertile crescent’ is barren, save for a small herd of sheep on the ten-hectare farm...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53853

SYRIA: Iraqi refugees face painful wait for artificial limbs

2010-12-13T11:21:00.001-08:00

DAMASCUS, 13 Dec, 2010 (IRIN) - Mohammed, 38, whose right leg is severed above the knee, is one of many Iraqi refugees waiting for prosthetics at the Syrian branch of charity Terre des hommes (Tdh) orthopedic workshop...

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91360

SYRIA: Getting away legally with assaulting women

2010-12-10T08:34:00.001-08:00

DAMASCUS, Dec 10 (IPS) - Iman Wannouss was 21 years old when she was married off to a close relative. For the next two decades she gave up her work and raised three children in a loveless and violent marriage...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53832

Letter from SYRIA: Love affair with a humble carpet

2010-12-01T08:46:00.001-08:00

DAMASCUS, Nov 30 (Guardian Weekly) - Yaser Al Saghrji is emotional about his work. He grew up in his uncle's shop amid piles of bright, textured kilims and carpets in Damascus' ancient souks...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/30/letter-from-syria-carpets-murray

SYRIA: Two sisters bring performance art to Syria

2010-12-01T08:41:00.001-08:00

DAMASCUS, Nov 30 (CSMonitor) - Abir Boukhari is on a roll. An art producer who manages her family’s poultry-equipment business on the side, she has formed the innovative “All Art Now” collaborative with her younger sister, visual artist Nisrine Boukhari. Together they have made a space for multimedia and performance art in Damascus...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/1130/Two-sisters-bring-performance-art-to-Syria

SYRIA: Iraqi kids struggle on dangerous edges

2010-11-07T15:21:00.001-08:00

DAMASCUS, Nov 7 (IPS) - Leila, 17, presses her hijab-clad head against the front door and strains to hear outside. "There's nothing," she says cautiously, turning towards her mother Rawda in their quiet basement apartment. Along the brocade couch sit her two sisters, Mona, 19, Nadja, 15, and 10-year-old brother Khaled.*

This close knit family is paranoid, and for good reason. They fled Iraq's sectarian violence to Damascus with the children's father in 2006, only to find themselves on the run from him too...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53479

SRI LANKA: Scarred by Sri Lanka's war with Tamil Tigers, female ex-fighters build new lives

2010-10-30T09:46:00.001-07:00

Batticaloa, October 29, 2010 (The CSMonitor) - Pathma, Rasatha, and Jano aren't your average group of friends. These three young Sri Lankan women, veterans of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, represent a hopeful sign for thousands of the country's ex-combatants...

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/1029/Scarred-by-Sri-Lanka-s-war-with-Tamil-Tigers-female-ex-fighters-build-new-lives

SRI LANKA: Female ex-combatants strive for a better life

2010-10-04T13:05:00.001-07:00

BATTICALOA, 29 September 2010 (IRIN) - Lalitha was 23, from Petiva Pullumalai, deep in Sri Lanka's eastern interior, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) came for her.*

At the time, each family living under LTTE control was required to provide a child to the separatist forces fighting for an independent Tamil homeland for three decades. Lalitha joined up to spare her younger sister...

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=90613

CAMBODIA: Communities fight back against land grabbing

2010-09-14T09:06:00.001-07:00

KOH KONG, 13 September 2010 (IRIN) - Forced evictions and land grabbing are nothing new in Cambodia, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), but it is new for communities to fight back.

"If we don't have our land, we cannot live," Yi Kunthear said. In August, she was reportedly beaten unconscious by sugar plantation workers while trying to defend her land. "We will block our land if the company tries to take it again"...

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90453

LIBERIA: New army faces greatest challenge

2010-01-09T22:32:00.001-08:00

MONROVIA, Dec 26 (IPS) - More than a year ago several hundred newly trained Liberian soldiers staged a one-day strike at the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) headquarters.

The strike, just 15 kilometres down the coastal road from the capital, Monrovia, fuelled doubts about the AFL's ability to cope, as the country still faces a number of threats to its stability...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49823

LIBERIA: Poor sanitation killing Liberia's young

2009-11-26T15:18:00.001-08:00

MONROVIA and BOPOLU, Liberia, Nov 23 (IPS) - Nineteen-year-old Beauty Phillips clutches her emaciated baby tightly to her chest. At seven months, Inga suffers from malnutrition...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49382

LIBERIA: The fight against rape a brutal wait

2009-09-14T04:58:00.001-07:00

MONROVIA, Liberia, Sep 14 (IPS) - From Monrovia’s highest hill, the long sliver of Atlantic Ocean shoreline at the mouth of the Mesurado River, with its aqua blue waves, golden sand and wooden fishing boats, looks like paradise.

But this is West Point; one of Monrovia’s most impoverished and polluted slums, and it is not paradise...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48431

LIBERIA: When the mob prevails

2009-09-07T14:26:00.001-07:00

MONROVIA, Sep 4 (IPS) - It was past midnight when Carroll Johnson was woken by angry shouting in his suburban neighbourhood of Fiamah. Around the corner a frenzied crowd with sticks had gathered in the darkness, and now stood menacingly over an armed robber called 'Bush Cat'...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48334

LIBERIA: Controversial mayor is talk of the town

2009-07-02T09:39:00.001-07:00

MONROVIA, Jul 1 (IPS) - Myaha Johnson sits with her family beneath a flimsy shelter of black plastic, looking with despair at the charred remains of what used to be their home. Mary Broh, Monrovia’s controversial mayor-designate, had just swept through the neighbourhood with her task force, vigorously tearing down residential structures along the back road, including their own...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47495

LIBERIA: Liberia's land just for some

2009-06-09T10:49:00.002-07:00

MONROVIA, Jun 9 (IPS) - After watching the murder of her husband and his three wives by Charles Taylor’s rebels, Fatu Bonah and her seven children fled into the dense forest to hide.

"The rebels burned down our home and when I returned my in-laws had taken the land," she says. "I went to the town chief, who tried to resolve it, but the family refused, saying they had already taken over the land..."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47147

LIBERIA: Rural women confront hunger gap, their own way

2009-05-15T08:08:00.001-07:00

ZWEDRU, Liberia, May 15 (IPS) - Three brightly-clothed women walk slowly around the fallen, charred trees strewn haphazardly across the clearing, each carrying seashells filled with indigenous rice seed to bury in the rich soil...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46859

LIBERIA: Justice delayed is...

2009-05-10T08:41:00.001-07:00

Zwedru, LIBERIA, May 6 (IPS) - The rain was falling hard in the early hours of April 17, when forty detainees kicked down the doors to their cells at the national Palace of Corrections, scaled the prison’s barbed wire fence and rear watchtower, and disappeared into the dark, sodden jungle...

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=46743

LIBERIA: Wild West - the Sinoe rubber plantation

2009-04-13T03:39:00.001-07:00

Greenville, LIBERIA, Apr 8 (IPS) - "We organised security throughout the camp. If there was noise in the plantation we would call the person and carry out an investigation," the man known as ‘White Flower’ tells IPS. "Then the superintendent said they should arrest me and my crew..."

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=46440

LIBERIA: Even the devil is subject to the law

2009-04-13T03:35:00.001-07:00

Monrovia and Harper, LIBERIA, Mar 10 (IPS) - Tiny 14-year-old Precious sits on her orphanage bed in the southern port town of Harper, accused of witchcraft six months ago and exiled from her family and nearby community...

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=46042

LIBERIA: Steel town blues for Yekepa

2009-04-13T03:32:00.001-07:00

YEKEPA, Liberia, Feb 28 (IPS) - Three exhausted railroad workers sip beer and talk on the back porch of a makeshift bar in Liberia's rural Nimba County, concealed by nightfall and the deafening din of motorcycles and a generator nearby.

"We raised the alarm two, three times, but they have not come to our aid," says one of the men softly, requesting anonymity for fear of losing his job. "They promised us once in November that they were going to come, and they would raise the salary up, but still nothing has been done..."

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=45932

LIBERIA: Life a struggle for ex-combatants

2009-04-13T03:18:00.001-07:00

VOINJAMA, Liberia, Jan 15 (IPS) - Hajah Kamara's life of violence began when she was not yet a teenager. After rebels butchered her father and pregnant mother in their Voinjama home, they forced her to become a ‘wife’ and a fighter in their warring faction...

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=45431

LIBERIA: We will use our children as human shields

2009-04-13T03:02:00.001-07:00

HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) - "We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that," exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living in the heart of Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, 60 kilometres south of the capital Monrovia...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45043

LEBANON: A devastated town recovers, in a way

2008-04-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

SIDDIQINE, Lebanon, Mar 26 (IPS) - Ali Mohanna lives in a two-room cinderblock structure with his wife and brain-damaged son. By the side is a small, freshly ploughed tobacco field and the plot of rubble he once called home...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41736

LEBANON: Farmers struggle to stay on their land

2008-04-14T15:18:00.001-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Mar 17 (IPS) - "I think the biggest challenge is to stay in the village," says Ibrahim Sayyed, a 28-year-old municipality accountant from the beleaguered farming town of Aitaroun, situated barely a mile from the heavily patrolled Blue Line and Israel beyond...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41620

LEBANON: Political crisis set to worsen

2008-04-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Mar 12 (IPS) - Soon after the U.S. destroyer USS Cole was deployed off Lebanon's shore Feb. 28 to "preserve political stability", a group of young men gathered around in the embattled agricultural town Qana in south Lebanon, and voiced their fears...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41568

LEBANON: This amputation won't be the last

2008-04-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

SARAFAND, Lebanon, Feb 29 (IPS) - Rasha Zayoun sits quietly in the bustling doctor's office, a small figure hunched in her chair, while her mother recounts the terrible accident...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41411

LEBANON: No one helps the fishermen

2008-04-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Feb 28 (IPS) - On the afternoon of his grandfather's funeral, Ismael waded out to the sea rocks near the old Tyre lighthouse and looked out over the choppy water. He greeted his friends passing by in a fluka --- a small, handcrafted wooden fishing vessel -- and lit the dynamite fuse in his hand...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41392

LEBANON: A new struggle for life after war

2008-04-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Feb 12 (IPS) - The solemn black-clad crowd rallied in Tyre's downtown for the Muslim commemoration of Ashoura, which marks the battlefield death of Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, and an enduring symbol of resistance for the Shia in Lebanon. The population here is mostly Shia Muslims.

A few blocks away along the Mediterranean shore, a small, rapt audience watched Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah sermonise on a café television. On a veranda next door, bar worker Hussein and his friends drank beer and soaked in the sun...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41163

LEBANON: Crises in Lebanon casts pall on WSF

2008-04-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

BEIRUT, Jan 26 (TerraViva) – A small group of angry demonstrators protesting heavy electricity cuts took to the streets in an increasingly volatile Beirut the night of January 21, setting fire to tires and Dumpsters and blocking main roads.

Although the Lebanese army moved swiftly to quash the violence, anxiety around Lebanon’s mounting political crisis and spiralling violence spilt over into the next morning at the small civil society press conference here marking the World Social Forum...

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/TV/wsf2008/currentNew.aspx?new=1035

LEBANON: Palestinians in Lebanon seek right of return

2008-04-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Jan 25 (TerraViva/IPS) - "We know when we start a campaign we work for an achievable goal," declares Wafa Yassir, the energetic head of Norwegian People's Aid (NPA), which runs programmes for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40926

LEBANON: For Iraqis, treatment for trauma a luxury

2008-04-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

BEIRUT, Jan 18 (IPS) - The young woman was walking with her husband along a Baghdad street when she was abducted, held captive and raped repeatedly by five militia men for several days...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40841

LEBANON: Palestinians brave a hazardous profession

2008-04-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Dec 18 (IPS) - Kamel Mohammed was pruning lemon trees last winter when his red electric saw detonated an unexploded cluster bomb, blasting shrapnel all over his body.

After an operation to remove the metal shards from his chest, Mohammed, a 44-year-old father from the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidieh in south Lebanon, went straight back to work cultivating fields and chopping wood for coal...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40509

LEBANON: Peacekeepers tread lightly In a wounded land

2008-04-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Nov 30 (IPS) - "We have to put boots on the ground, but at the same time we want to conquer hearts and minds," exclaims Lt. Col. Nicola Tereano, the young, charismatic base commander for the Italian peacekeepers in Zibqin, south Lebanon...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40303

LEBANON: Abolition linked to political stability

2008-04-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Nov 14 (IPS) - Sonele Daas sits on death row in Lebanon's central Roumieh prison, found guilty of murder almost one decade ago. The 60-year-old Bangladeshi had travelled to Lebanon to work and send wages home to his family. However, after a dispute with a fellow compatriot, Daas was arrested, tried and convicted by a Lebanese court for his friend's subsequent death...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40057

LEBANON: What a 'safe' cluster bomb did

2008-04-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Oct 15 (IPS) - The explosion ripped through the tiny garden in rural south Lebanon, hurling Naemah Ghazi to the ground. The shrapnel from the bomb sliced through her legs, and she rapidly lost consciousness. "There was a lot of blood," her mother Khadija recalls. "All her body was bleeding"...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39652

LEBANON: Women in the frontline for clearing cluster bombs

2008-04-14T14:23:00.001-07:00

TYRE, Lebanon, Aug 8 (IPS) - "Mine action is a male dominated sector, but it doesn't have to be," declares Christina Bennike, the dynamic head of Danish charity Dan Church Aid (DCA) in south Lebanon. "I really felt it would be important to address this from the beginning, then it would be natural instead of something different or unique"...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38826

LEBANON: Bombs away

2008-04-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

A cluster bomb explosion shatters the early morning quiet deep in rural south Lebanon, scattering the orderly line of searchers in the small dirt field. Two people are down. Kosovar team leader Leoparda Zhubei rapidly shepherds their evacuation while an ambulance wails to a stop nearby...

http://www.skin-online.com/insideSkin/july07/bombsfeature.html

LEBANON: Oslo leads global efforts to ban cluster bombs

2008-04-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Conference aims to shape practices of defiant states

By Rebecca Murray
Special to The Daily Star

TYRE: Eero Oijala, the young manager of Norwegian People's Aid supervising the non-governmental organization's cluster munitions clearance effort in South Lebanon, displays a picture of an airport runway covered with exploding cluster bombs on his computer screen.

This, he explains, is a military test of the popular Israeli-made M85 cluster bomb, which is equipped with a self-destruct mechanism and touts an official 1 percent failure rate. Oslo leads global efforts to ban cluster bombs

The M85 makes up nearly half of Norway's inventory of cluster bombs, as well as those stockpiled by such countries as the US, the UK and Germany.

Its technology has been lauded by visiting dignitaries like British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett to justify the use of cluster bombs. But as Oijala points out: "The testing has been done in laboratory conditions - it's on flat, hard ground. Here we have the reality."

Since Israel's war with Lebanon last summer, during which nearly 4 million cluster bombs were dropped in the final hours before a cease-fire came into effect, one-quarter are estimated to remain unexploded, scattered throughout soft, fertile agricultural land and civilian communities. The M85 represents a substantial number of the unexploded ordnance - particularly in areas along the Blue Line - proving that its failure rate is far higher than the manufacturer's estimates let on.

Oijala has recently been contracted by the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI), a government arm dedicated to military research and development, to spend much of his time investigating the M85's failure rate in South Lebanon. He predicts initial results will be published in April.

In the meantime, the Norwegian government declared an official moratorium on its use of cluster bombs last year, and has taken the lead by hosting 45 nations at the groundbreaking Oslo Conference on Cluster Munitions, which is taking place this week.

The conference was conceived when states at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons conference failed to agree on a cluster-bomb ban last November. Thomas Nash, coordinator of the UK-based Cluster Munitions Coalition which is hosting a parallel set of civil society forums in Oslo with Norwegian People's Aid, explains: "They aim to develop, negotiate and conclude a cluster munitions treaty by the end of 2008. This conference is the first step."

Those not attending the conference are the US, China and Russia, which oppose any ban on the use of cluster bombs. "It may not be realistic for them to change, but we can shape their practices," says Nash. "Like the land-mine ban in 1997 shaped Russia's [actions]." Although the Russians did not sign on to the ban, he explains, "they have not used anti-personnel mines since."

The UK, however, while adamant about its right to use M85 cluster bombs, is a participant this time around.

"It is hoped the UK will play a positive role and take the issue seriously, that they will declare a moratorium on all cluster munitions while in treaty negotiations, and commit to the ban. Hopefully they will not derail this process," Nash says.

Nash believes the road to banning the cluster bomb will become clearer at the conference's end on Friday.

Meanwhile, in South Lebanon, Norwegian People's Aid reported that two men cutting down trees near their worksite at Deir Qanoun were seriously hurt by a cluster-bomb explosion last month, and were cared for and transported to hospital by medics already on the scene.

But many civilians are not so lucky, with the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in Tyre (UNMACC) reporting 217 casualties to date since last summer's cease-fire, 187 of them civilian, and 30 out of the total fatal.

While the UNMACC and demining teams continue their race toward a December 2007 clearance deadline - with 847 strike areas identified and around 100,000 cluster bombs disposed of so far - some of the world's most advanced nations, with Norway in the lead, seem to be genuinely re-evaluating the use of their weaponry.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=79740#axzz17kBXmcLs

LEBANON: Watchdogs question sincerity of British foreign secretary's diatribe against cluster bombs

2008-04-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

By Rebecca Murray
Special to The Daily Star

TYRE: In a visit to South Lebanon on Saturday, British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett walked though hilltop citrus groves and herds of grazing goats around the town of al-Samyla, inspected a site contaminated with cluster bombs from the July-August war with Israel and expressed London's disapproval of the damage she saw.

Beckett's large convoy of security, embassy staff and accompanying journalists was hosted by the Mine Advisory Group (MAG) - a British NGO tasked with clearing this area of US-manufactured BLU63 submunitions, or "bomblets," - together with the Tyre-based UN Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC).

Cluster bombs have been a hot topic since the summer's conflict in Lebanon, when Israel dropped an estimated 4 million over the country a few days before the cessation of hostilities took hold. An estimated 1 million remain unexploded. The UNMACC says 23 have been killed and 177 wounded by cluster bombs in South Lebanon as of November 29.

"As any military person would tell you," Beckett told the press afterward, "[cluster bombs] are unfortunately a useful tool, which is why they are so widely used.

"There are two kinds," she explained. "There are the kinds that are better at detecting their target and either self-destruct or deactivate if they don't get to the right target. And then there are the ones that don't do that ... that you see around here, and they are the ones that pose a risk to civilians."

It was these weapons, Beckett said, that Britain had decided to phase out. "We have got the international community through the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons to agree to start some expert work to try and draw up a legal treaty that we could have the use of these kinds of cluster bombs banned by the whole international community," she said.

A highly regarded expert on cluster bombs with the London-based Cluster Munitions Coalition said Beckett's comments should be placed in context.

"It is very interesting that the British foreign minister was there since the UK is one of the largest users of cluster bombs in the past 10 years," said the expert, Thomas Nash, in a telephone interview Saturday. "They dropped 98,000 in Iraq in 2003 and several thousand in Kosovo in 1999."

The UK is known to have stockpiles of the Israeli-manufactured M85 cluster munitions. Although these have the self-destruct mechanism cited favorably by Beckett, many of the same munition are among the unexploded ordnance littering South Lebanon today.

"The number of M85 duds is most striking, since that submunition has a self-destruct feature that is claimed to reduce dramatically the failure rate," according to Human Rights Watch.

"In the past few days the UK has said it is in favor of a ban on 'dumb' cluster munitions, but says the M85 is not 'dumb'," says Nash. "They have shockingly kept the M85."

Beckett's version of UK policy is also contradicted by recent experience. When 24 countries - including Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden - sought to negotiate a comprehensive treaty to curb cluster bomb use, the UK was among the bloc of states (including the US, Russia and China) that killed the initiative.

Norway, however, has now stepped in to spearhead high-profile international efforts to ban the weapons at an Oslo conference in February, after declaring a moratorium on its own M85 submunitions stockpile.

With international effort gathering steam and casualties mounting – victims include employees from the British mine-clearing companies Armor Group, Bactec, and NGO MAG - the UK finds itself under heavy pressure to join its EU allies.

"The UK-proposed talks are highly disingenuous," concludes Nash. "If the UK was serious about humanitarian harm it would sign up for the negotiations and declare a moratorium on cluster munitions."

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=77425#axzz17kB3lAPB

LEBANON: The deadly minefield of Deir Mimas

2008-04-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

British deminers tell harrowing tale of encounter with newly laid Israeli weapons

By Rebecca Murray
Special to The Daily Star

TYRE: The village of Deir Mimas, with its 600-year-old graveyard, sits along a breathtaking ridge strewn with ancient olive groves located a few kilometers from the Israeli border. It faces South Lebanon's historic, craggy Beaufort Castle - a focal point for fierce fighting through the ages - while the Litani River flows through the valley between them.

Occupied by Israel until 2000, it is Deir Mimas' hilltop vantage point that has again brought a deadly conflict to its doorstep, with cluster bombs and a newly discovered Israeli minefield contaminating its fertile land.

"The next thing I know I hear ringing in my ears and I think to myself, I've been hit," says David Alderson, formerly of the British Royal Engineers, from his hospital bed in Sidon. "I scream to [my colleague] Damir [Paradzik] that I've been hit and that I was down and then I tried to get [my supervisor] Tony [Thompson] on the phone. And as I'm on the phone to Tony within seconds Damir was hit."

Alderson is a supervisor for the Armor Group - a British commercial company contracted by the UAE to clear cluster munitions in the area. He looks across to Paradzik, his young Bosnian co-worker lying in the bed next to his, and to Thompson, their concerned manager hovering close by. Alderson's face and Paradzik's hand are sliced up by shrapnel, and both just had their right legs amputated.

Last Friday Alderson and Paradzik were steadily working through an area that is filled with cluster bombs and cuts a swathe through the tall olive groves, just as they had all month. Their 10-person teams had destroyed over 400 munitions between them, and they were reaching the end of their difficult task.

Hizbullah had occupied positions below the town during the summer's 34-day-war, and the citizens of Deir Mimas had borne the brunt of Israel's wrath.

Mikhael Bishara, the local mukhtar, says most residents left halfway though the conflict, just as they had when Israel previously occupied the town for 18 years. Now, olive harvesters are reclaiming access to their land, critical during this two-month season. And funerals have been held again in the antiquated graveyard, the scene of numerous Israeli artillery rocket strikes.

It was just after 11 a.m. under a hot morning sun when the men heard the explosion and Sabah, the local goat farmer, crying for help. Confirming an accident, Alderson dashed down the rocky slope, with Paradzik following cautiously toward what they assumed was another cluster strike area.

"We were looking [for cluster bombs] all the time, that's our job," says Alderson. "Scanning the ground, looking at the bushes, looking at the trees."

What happened next was a tragedy. Alderson reached the agitated Sabah surrounded by four dead goats. Looking for a safe passage out, Alderson stepped on a mine. Paradzik, 15 meters up the slope, remembers the horror of seeing Alderson "leaning on a tree with his face covered in blood." Instinctively moving to rescue him, Paradzik too hit a mine.

Thompson says Alderson called him at the office on his mobile phone seconds after his accident, and that he heard Paradzik's explosion:
"'I'm down, I've lost my foot, I'm down,' Dave said, then [the line] went dead. Then the office got a call from him, and he said exactly the same thing before it went dead. Then I got another call from him, and I heard another bang, and realized we had a serious problem," Thompson recalls.

Warning their teams to stay back, Alderson attributes their crawl back up the steep hill to "instinct and sheer adrenaline."

Meanwhile Sabah apparently escaped the deadly site in another direction, unscathed. Reaching the top, both deminers were grabbed by medics Fadi Qayal and Nabil Hammoud - who lost two teeth in Paradzik's blast - and strapped on spine boards. The medics hoisted the wounded men uphill toward the ambulance and then to the surgery suite of Marjayoun hospital 10 kilometers away. The doctors' decision to amputate their limbs was decisive and quick; the men had lost a lot of blood and the critical threat of infection was real.

The United Nations Mine Action Center (UNMACC) based in Tyre has confirmed the mines were Israeli anti-personnel mines No. 4, recently laid during the summer conflict. The land had previously been cleared of mines under a UAE contract between 2002 to 2004.

"This area was safe until this war happened, and now we have to re-clear it," announced Dalya Farran, the center's media spokeswomen. However, sending in another British commercial firm, Bactec International - who have a UAE demining contract - to investigate the area a day later also proved dangerous.

Operations manager Anthony Wyles' foot landed on a mine, and in similar fashion, he was rushed first to Nabatiyeh Hospital and then to Hammoud Hospital in Sidon, where he too had his right leg amputated. His room is next to Alderson and Paradzik's. During visiting hours on Sunday, when the corridors were crowded with well-wishers - including team supervisors, researchers and medics - Alderson mused whether they could move Wyles, who is also British, into their cramped room to help his morale. All men are heading home in a couple of days, but their jobs have been promised to them after rehabilitation. Alderson says with certainty: "I'll be back."

Meanwhile the land around Deir Mimas remains contaminated like most other towns, villages, groves and agricultural fields across South Lebanon, where Israel dropped an estimated 4 million cluster bombs during the last days of the war, with 1 million still unexploded.

The UNMACC has recorded 168 casualties from August 14, 2006, until November 21, 2006, with 23 of them dead. And now that the first new minefield has been discovered, spawning the first casualties among the demining teams here, the difficult work has just gotten worse.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp edition_id=1&categ_id=4&Article_id=77205#axzz17kAAGWdT