AFGHANISTAN: Marines in, Taliban out, and Afghans have new hope

Marines in, Taliban out, and Afghans have new hope

By CARLOTTA GALL
The International Herald Tribune

For two years British troops staked out a presence in this small district center in southern Afghanistan and fended off attacks from the Taliban. The constant firefights left Garmser a ghost town, its bazaar broken and empty but for one baker, its houses and orchards reduced to rubble and weeds.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Armed bandits force tens of thousands of Central Africans to flee homes

Armed bandits force tens of thousands of Central Africans to flee homes
UN

23 May 2008 –A surge since the start of the year in the number of attacks by armed bandits across the north of the Central African Republic (CAR) is forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and has brought economic activity to a standstill in large parts of the already impoverished and strife-torn country, the United Nations relief wing reports today.

IRAQ: Mental illness in Iraq rises as care falters

Mental illness in Iraq rises as care falters
By Erica Goode
International Herald Tribune

In a different time, in another country, where violence and terror did not stalk the streets, Dr. Amir Hussain could practice psychiatry the way he once hoped to.

He can see it in his mind: the clean, tastefully decorated hospital wards, the well-stocked pharmacies, the gleaming laboratory equipment, the thickly carpeted consulting rooms, the halfway houses and outreach teams that help chronically ill patients reestablish their lives outside the hospital.

AFGHANISTAN: Afghan teenage cluster bomb victim battling for ban

Afghan teenage cluster bomb victim battling for ban

By Robin Millard
Agence France Presse

Afghan teenager Soraj Ghulam Habib, whose legs were blown off by a cluster bomb, is campaigning hard for a ban on such lethal munitions that would spare other children from his tragic fate.

A 10-year-old boy when the unexploded bomblet left him close to death, Habib, now 17 and wheelchair-bound, is in Dublin to press officials from 109 countries who have gathered to thrash out a landmark ban on cluster bombs.

The conference, due to conclude on May 30, is aiming for a wide-ranging international pact that would completely eliminate the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions among signatories.

Habib’s childhood curiosity with a funny-looking object left him a whisker from death, yet another innocent civilian victim of deadly cluster bombs.

UK: Military chiefs urge UK to ban cluster bombs

Military chiefs urge UK to ban cluster bombs

By Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian (London)

Some of the most senior British former generals and Nato commanders urged the government yesterday to agree to a total ban on cluster bombs, describing them as “inaccurate and unreliable”.

Their call came as negotiations began in Dublin for an international treaty outlawing cluster munitions, which scatter large numbers of bomblets over a wide area. Many of these fail to explode at the time, only to kill and maim civilians, often long after the conflict has ended.