Bowen’s Afghan memorandum

The announcement on Monday that Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Afghan Minister for Refugees and Repatriation Jamahir Anwary had signed a memorandum of understanding providing for the involuntary return to Afghan asylum seekers has prompted predictable responses from both sides of the asylum seeker debate.

Immigration minister Chris Bowen has been playing the tough guy this week on Sydney and Melbourne talk radio — saying the new agreement will deter Afghan asylum seeks from travelling to Australia — while refugee advocates slammed the government for even thinking about coercing asylum seekers back to Afghanistan.

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Source: Crikey.com

Call for help for IDPs, deportees in Helmand

(IRIN) – Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from insurgency-hit Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, need food assistance urgently, officials told IRIN.

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Unpaid volunteers prop up health system

(IRIN) – Some 22,000 community health volunteers in Afghanistan are vital to the country’s health system but some are beginning to wonder if they might provide a more effective service if they were paid, and had formal work contracts.

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Top Ten Myths about Afghanistan, 2010

Source: Informed Comment (First Published 27/12/10)

10. “There has been significant progress in tamping down the insurgency in Afghanistan.”

• Fact: A recent National Intelligence Estimate by 16 intelligence agencies found no progress. It warned that large swathes of the country were at risk of falling to the Taliban and that they still had safe havens in Pakistan, with the Pakistani government complicit. The UN says there were over 6000 civilian casualties of war in Afghanistan in the first 10 months of 2010, a 20% increase over the same period in 2009. Also, 701 US and NATO troops have been killed this year, compared to 521 last year, a 25% increase. There were typically over 1000 insurgent attacks per month in Afghanistan this year, often twice as many per month as in 2009, recalling the guerrilla war in Iraq in 2005.

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Humanitarian situation likely to worsen in 2011 – aid agencies

(IRIN) – The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR FULL REPORT
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91381

Asylum seekers face challenges abroad

As the Obama administration escalates the military presence in Afghanistan, the future of 30,000 Afghan asylum seekers has become increasingly uncertain. As they face repeated displacement from their country of origin and continual rejection of political asylum, more and more Afghan immigrants find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Despite the withdrawal of troops in Iraq and the supposed stability of Afghanistan, the Secretary General of the Security Council of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report in June, 2010, with some alarming facts. According to the World Press, the report stated that the number of security incidences in Afghanistan have markedly increased since 2005.

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Source: THE GUILFORDIAN

Marriage, ill health makes you poorer

(IRIN) – Uncertain harvests are a perennial risk for rural Afghans, but two events stand out as exacerbating poverty – ill health, and the high cost of getting married, according to a new report.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR FULL REPORT
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91254

UNHCR worried about growing number of conflict IDPs

(IRIN) – The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says it is concerned about the growing number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) caused by conflict in Afghanistan, and the fact that it is often too dangerous to assist them.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR FULL REPORT
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=90957

Film on women in Afghanistan wins global Christian human rights award

he WACC-SIGNIS Human Rights Award 2010 has been given to the documentary ‘The Garden at the End of the World’, directed by Australian film-maker Gary Caganoff.

The film explores the legacy of devastation and trauma in Afghanistan and illustrates the tragic consequences of war and the widespread hunger, homelessness and lawlessness that it causes. In particular, it shows the impact on the lives of widows and orphans, who now number tens of thousands.

‘The Garden at the End of the World’ follows the work of two remarkable women, humanitarian Mahboba Rawi, and internationally recognised permaculturalist Rosemary Morrow, who offer alternatives to international ‘reconstruction’ efforts that have patently not worked.

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Doubts over new Afghan security strategy

(IRIN) – Jobless rural youth are the focus of a new Afghan security plan designed to help defeat Taliban insurgents mostly in the south, east and southeast of the country.

The government, which already has about 200,000 national police (ANP) and army personnel at its disposal, says it also needs local combatants to help fight Taliban insurgency.

In a donor-funded project, which has already started in some provinces, about 10,000 men will be paid to fight Taliban insurgents in their villages, officials said.

“It’s not a militia force. It’s a community police [force] which will defend its homes and villages from the enemy,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Zamary Bashari.

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