Learn more at our website
twitter.com/PDTglobal:
Internally displaced Afghan children wait for winter relief assistance from the UN refugee agency at a camp in Kabul. Photograph: Musadeq Sadeq/AP
UN appeals for Afghan refugee aid as harsh winter proves deadly
The deadly struggle with Afghanistan’s bitter winter is only likely to get worse in the coming years, a top UN official warned, as he called for more aid money to be dedicated to emergency relief.
At least two children are already reported to have died from the cold this year in Kabul’s makeshift refugee camps, crammed with tens of thousands of Afghans who have fled violence or desperate poverty, despite a drive by aid groups to prepare for sub-zero temperatures.
“Each family already has two or three people who are sick,” said 77-year-old Shah Ghasi, who has squatted in the Bagh Dawood camp on the outskirts of Kabul for nearly a decade. “We only have hot water to try and keep warm – no stoves, no fuel.”
Last year the bitterest winter in decades caught the country by surprise, and more than 100 children died in the cramped and squalid camps around Kabul. This year there has been a more organised effort to get food, blankets, fuel and medicine to people who sometimes have little more than a sheet of plastic to shelter them from snow and ice.(more…)
Winter cold is setting in in Afghanistan - not good news for IDPs and refugees without access to heat and other services.
(via peacefulwarriors)
Women, War & Peace, a 5-part series on war’s impact on women, begins tonight on PBS. The first of them is “I Came to Testify,” about 16 women who experienced great trauma in Bosnia in the late 90s and then took to the stands as witnesses in international court.
Check your local listings. The episode will hopefully also be viewable online after airing.
Highly recommended! Our whole twitter stream is watching (or talking about watching) this.
A beautiful moment of serenity.
‘Given the images people see on TV, many conclude Afghanistan never made it out of the Middle Ages. But that is not the Afghanistan I remember. I grew up in Kabul in the 1950s and ’60s. Stirred by the fact that news portrayals of the country’s history didn’t mesh with my own memories, I wanted to discover the truth.
‘Remembering Afghanistan’s hopeful past only makes its present misery seem more tragic. But it is important to know that disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable. I want to show Afghanistan’s youth of today how their parents and grandparents really lived.’
Some amazing good news was wrapped up in what appeared to be some shocking bad news.
Politico, AP, ABC, and others are reporting that a jaw dropping $360m of US govt money was lost to insurgents in Afghanistan through graft, theft, and intimidation. Only deeper in the article is it noted that the seemingly stunning sum is only 1.1% of total spending. And deeper still, a senior U.S. military official in Kabul is quoted as saying “Only a small percentage of the $360 million has been garnered by the Taliban and insurgent groups”. So, in fact, the story is the US government is involved in an expensive land war in the most politically complex and corrupt country in Asia, and manages to lose only “a small percentage” of 1.1% of its money to the insurgents. That, I would argue, is a remarkable success. In fact, I suspect a larger percentage of USG money is lost to domestic graft and criminal activity stateside. And if you’ll forgive me for being self serving for a moment, this success is due, in a small part, to the work of the PDT staff in Afghanistan who have built a database of over 7000 legit, registered, and tax paying SMEs through our Peace Dividend Marketplace project. Our team works closely with the US government and other donors to help them source their goods and services with honest and capable Afghan entrepreneurs. I’d argue that the US government should be given credit here for protecting its money in difficult and often impossible circumstances. What’s more, their “Afghan First” policy of buying local has created tens of thousands of jobs and generated hundreds of millions in tax revenues. Far more good has been done than the small amount of damage trumped up and trumpeted by this article. 
