Nguwo village committee chairperson Ibrahim Kachinga on the shores of Lake Malawi. And for the past five years the village committee has been going to local gatherings to educate residents about the need to protect the lake. Credit: Mabvuto Banda/IPS

Lloyd Phiri, a fisherman from Senga Bay on Lake Malawi’s shores in Malawi’s central region, knows that the lake’s water levels are dropping. He can see it in his catch, which has shrunk by more than 80 percent in recent years.

Years ago, it was the norm to catch about 5,000 fish a day, Phiri says. But now, if he is lucky, he brings in one-fifth of that. And if he is not, he catches a mere 300 fish a day.

“My fish catch has gone down in recent years and this has affected my earnings. I now have problems paying school fees for my children,” Phiri tells IPS.

The rapid drop in Lake Malawi’s water levels, driven by population growth, climate change and deforestation, is threatening its floral and fauna species with extinction, says Malawi’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Management. And included among the wildlife threatened are the fish that Phiri depends on for a livelihood.

“Over the last three decades some water balance models have been done on the lake and have shown that the water levels have dropped from 477 metres above sea level in the 1980s to around 474.88 metres currently,” Yanira Mtupanyama, principal secretary in the ministry, tells IPS of the 29,600-square-kilometre lake that straddles the borders of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

“It’s a big deal because studies are showing that the water levels in the lake will keep on dropping in coming years because there are signs that show (that there will be) less rainfall and increased evaporation,” she says.

An estimated 1,000 different fish species rely on the fresh waters of Africa’s third-largest lake for their survival, which also provides 60 percent of this southern African nation’s protein requirement.

The mbuna cichlids species and the famous tilapia fish, locally known as chambo, are facing extinction. Chambo is Malawi’s most popular fish.

The country’s Department of Fisheries says that fish stocks in the lake have dwindled by 90 percent over the last 20 years. It is a huge concern as, according to authorities, about 1.5 million Malawians depend on the lake for food, transportation and other daily needs.

And of even greater concern are the recent Malawian government reports that say the water mass may hold rich oil and gas reserves. Environmentalist Raphael Mweneguwe fears that if oil and gas mining starts on the lake, it can lead to further biodiversity losses.

“The fish stocks have declined in the last two decades from about 30,000 metric tonnes per year to 2,000 per year because of a drop in water levels, overfishing and rapid population growth. But this may get worse if oil is discovered on the lake,” Mwenenguwe tells IPS.

Williman Chadza, executive director of the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy, a local NGO that promotes activism on environmental issues, shares Mwenenguwe’s fears.

“Oil is a resource of paramount importance to a country like Malawi, which is seeking revenue alternatives for its socio-economic development. But its discovery may deepen the country’s biodiversity loss and impact badly on water sources,” Chadza tells IPS.

Mining also poses a threat to the lake. A uranium mine in Karonga, a town situated near Lake Malawi in the north of the country, is one example. The mine, owned and operated by Australian mining giant Paladin (Africa) for the past four years, is regarded as a pollution threat.

“Uranium is a highly radioactive material and therefore there are still threats of polluting the freshwater in Lake Malawi,” Udule Mwakasungura, a human rights activist, tells IPS.

The need to arrest the loss of biodiversity is particularly important in Malawi where people depend on biological resources to a greater extent than other parts of the world.

The 18,000 families of Nguwo fishing village in Senga Bay are an example of this dependency.

“We know that the fish stock has depleted because of unsustainable fishing practices and non-compliance with fishing regulations … we also know that cutting trees unsustainably is ultimately affecting the quality of the water we drink,” says village headman Radson Mdalamkwanda.

Mdalamkwanda tells IPS that fishermen in the village have been working together with local authorities in the district to address the threats and challenges facing the conservation of Lake Malawi. He says that anyone not following the rules or by-laws is banned from fishing on the lake during October and November, when the fish spawn.

And for the past five years the village development committee has been going to local gatherings to educate residents about the by-laws and about the need to protect the lake.

“Apart from protecting the fish, we also want to safeguard the water so that it’s safe for drinking. We do that by creating awareness at gatherings like weddings and funerals,” the chair of the village committee, Ibrahim Kachinga, tells IPS.

Their efforts also complement the Malawi government’s attempts to address the threats challenges to conserving the flora and fauna of the lake.

“There has been a ban for the last few years on the use of high-yield fishing gear in lake Malawi between October and November when the fish are spawning,” Mtupanyama says.

Mtupanyama also says that in 2003 the government launched a 10-year strategic plan, which largely seeks to restore the lake’s fish stocks.

“So for the last 10 years we have been restocking the lake with fish by breeding juveniles outside the lake and then reintroducing them into the lake. We haven’t done badly,” she says.

Mtupanyama could not, however, say if this had significantly increased the lake’s fish stock.

Regardless of what may come of this restocking project, the Nguwo village committee understands that the future of the lake is important. So they are educating those who can do something about it – the village’s future generations.

Kachinga says: “With the help of government, we are also encouraging teachers in nursery and primary schools to teach our children about how to protect the lake.”

Coastal erosion exposes columns for lights leading to the runway of Vance Amory International Airport in Nevis. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The Caribbean does not have the luxury of time for decisive action on climate change and global warming. In fact, it is on the brink of calamity, according to a prominent scientist.

Conrad Douglas, a Jamaican scientist who has published over 350 reports on environmental management and related matters, has warned that “urgent action at all levels [is] required now”, cautioning the region against complacency in dealing with climate change.

Noting that earlier models forecast that an atmosphere of 350 parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide would place the planet at a catastrophic tipping point for climate change, Douglas cited new information which put the new tipping point at 450 PPM.

“There are 445 million PPM of carbon dioxide, which is a mere five PPM of carbon dioxide away from the…limit that was projected for catastrophic global tipping points,” he told IPS.

With the projected loading rate at 2.5 PPM per year, Douglas said that within two years, the earth would reach a point where even more catastrophic events would wreak havoc on the planet, its societies and its economies.

“We’ve gotten to a juncture at which the entire planet is facing a precarious situation,” Douglas said. “We are heading towards a dangerous place on planet Earth.”

“Potentially irreversible consequences”

Last year was the warmest in recent history, including the highest temperatures since temperatures began to be recorded in 1895.

“We know about Hurricane Sandy…and the destruction which it caused in our region and the eastern seaboard of the United States,” Douglas said, noting that parts of the United States and the Caribbean are still recovering from that storm.

Douglas’ colleague, John Crowley, said that the planet’s nitrogen cycle had been severely thrown out of balance because of the massive overuse of inorganic fertilisers.

“That, according to the specialists, is having catastrophic and potentially irreversible consequences that require a major rethink of agricultural systems, including but not limited to fertiliser use,” he told IPS.

Both scientists are among dozens who gathered here from May 15 to 16 for a UNESCO-sponsored sub-regional meeting on environmental policy formulation and planning in the Caribbean region.

“It was clear already in 2011 when we [first took stock of] these issues that the knowledge about climate change in the Caribbean is insufficient and insufficiently connected to the real dynamics of Caribbean societies,” said Crowley, a UNESCO representative.

In 2009, a group of Jamaican artists launched a national public education campaign on climate change. It was part of a project implemented by Panos Caribbean, a regional organisation that helps journalists cover sustainable development issues, and Jamaica’s National Environment Education Committee (NEEC).

The artists produced a package of information designed to educate the Jamaican public. It consisted of a theme song titled “Global Warning”, a series of public service announcements, a mini album of songs on climate change, and a music video for the theme song.

A global issue

Even as deliberations continue here today, the general assembly of the United Nations in New York is meeting on sustainable development and climate change.

“I think we have finally awakened to the urgency of the situation, that we have tested and exceeded the globe’s capacity for absorbing and assimilating the pollutants that we make and discharge,” Douglas said.

“What we need now is nothing less than a Manhattan type project to rescue the planet.”

Marcus Natta, senior project analyst in the Ministry of Sustainable Development in St. Kitts, told IPS the meeting was very timely.

“What is important about this particular conference is that we are focused on action. I think unlike many other meetings, if we could truly achieve the action part after the planning and get the implementation, then we would have really achieved success,” he said.

The tiny island of Nevis is described as one of the few remaining unspoiled touches of paradise and one of the little-known wonders of the Caribbean. Douglas hoped that actions taken at the meeting would help preserve it as such.

“We hope that in the context of what faces us today – the phenomenon of climate change – that its beauty and charm will be preserved long into the future as we take wise and timely action to protect the habitat of mankind and all living creatures,” he urged his colleagues.

“This we must strive to do as we protect ourselves from ourselves. It’s our attitudes and values, our failure to change our behaviour that has led us to this critical point,” he warned, adding that the current path mankind is treading “threatens at the very least to plunge us into a perpetual cycle of poverty and misery”.

This was the conclusion of the study, ‘Impact of Gender on Care of Type 2 Diabetes in Varkala, Kerala’, which analysed gender roles, norms and values in a household and found women patients to be more vulnerable.

Women in India face disadvantages when it comes to diabetes. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS

And this vulnerability influences all phases of diabetic care, according to the paper by Dr Mini P. Mani at the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies (AMCHSS) in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Even when they themselves suffer from diabetes, women cannot abandon the ‘caretaker role’ in the family and have to continue to prioritise the health of other family members above their own, the study found. Further, inequitable access to resources prevents early diagnosis of the disease in women.

Women pay more attention to the health of the men and children in the family, leaving them with less time to devote to their own wellbeing, said Rosy Raphy, who teaches at a school in Munambam, near the central Kerala town of Kochi.

“As someone who has lived with diabetes for 26 years,” Raphy told IPS, “I can say that I was not aware of the disease and did not take due care because I was preoccupied with matters of the family. As a result, my case got aggravated.”

Of particular concern to women and gynaecologists in the country is Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM), a form of the disease that affects pregnant women.

The incidence of GDM has grown fourfold in the last 10 years, according to Dr B. Rajkumar, a doctor of Indian Systems of Medicine at the Keezhariyoor Government Ayurveda Dispensary in the state’s northern coastal district of Kozhikode.

“Earlier, pregnant women would engage in physical activity while doing housework. Today, the lifestyle of women has changed. Lack of exercise affects the body. And obesity, too, is a cause of gestational diabetes,” he said.

One in five pregnant women in Ahmedabad in the western Indian state of Gujarat were found to be suffering from GDM, according to a study by the Diabetes Care Institute in that city, whose results were reported in February.

“What is alarming,” the report said, “is that of the five women found to have diabetes, two were diagnosed with the silent killer while the other three went undetected.”

And women with GDM were at higher risk of developing diabetes later in life, warned an earlier study in Kerala’s neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, conducted by a group of doctors led by endocrinologist Dr V. Seshiah.

“They are the ideal group to be targeted for lifestyle modification or pharmacologic intervention in order to delay or postpone the onset of overt diabetes. Hence, an important public health priority in the prevention of diabetes is to address maternal health both during the ante- and post-partum period,” the study noted.

Medical researchers believe that the disease, earlier considered an ailment of the rich, is on the rise in India. Close to 70 million people – half of them women – in this country of 1.21 billion are living with diabetes, and the number is predicted to go up to 101.2 million by 2030.

Nearly 60 per cent of diabetics in India have never been screened or diagnosed due to a lack of awareness, according to a 2012 report published by the Brussels-based International Diabetes Federation (IDF), an umbrella organisation of diabetes associations in 160 countries. The study also noted that nearly 63 per cent did not even know the complications that arise from the disease.

Doctors attending the four-day World Congress of Diabetes in April, organised by Diabetes India in Kochi, suggested India-specific treatment guidelines for helping the rapidly growing number of patients in the country.

Dr Jothydev Kesavadev, the organising secretary for the fifth edition of the congress and the moderator for glucose monitoring consensus guidelines, told IPS that low-income patients suffer the most as they lack medical insurance.

“Though there are international guidelines for the treatment of diabetes, there is an urgent need for country-oriented guidelines,” he said, “especially in areas of glucose monitoring and use of insulin in hospitals, besides taking into consideration the socioeconomic status of a patient and the country.”

Healthcare experts say that a combination of dietary pattern, sedentary lifestyle, obesity, and genetic predisposition puts Indians at a unique risk of acquiring diabetes.

Analysing the increasing percentage of diabetic patients in the country, Dr Meenu Hariharan, director of the Indian Institute of Diabetes in Thiruvananthapuram, told IPS that Indians were more prone genetically to diabetes than Europeans.

“Reduced physical activity and obesity accelerate the onset of diabetes in genetically predisposed people,” she said. Starch-rich diets and increased intake of tinned foods with a high content of preservatives are other culprits.

A host of studies and screening programmes have highlighted the fact that diabetes is spreading fast across the country.

Cases of diabetes are higher in the four southern states – Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala – than in other states, according to the results of a countrywide blood testing campaign conducted under the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Strokes by the country’s health ministry.

In Tamil Nadu, 11.76 per cent of people tested positive for diabetes, 10.2 percent in Karnataka, 8.83 per cent in Kerala, and 8.72 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, compared to just 2.95 percent in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, which reported the lowest incidence of the disease.

Alarmingly, rural areas are also seeing a rise in diabetes rates, as a fall-out of rapid urbanisation. However, the incidence of the disease remains higher in cities than in villages, according to Dr V. Ramankutty, a well-known health activist and professor at Thiruvananthapuram’s AMCHSS.

Talking to IPS, he charted the rise in the incidence of the disease. A survey in the early 1970s, he said, found only 2.3 per cent of the urban population and 1.5 per cent of the rural population to be suffering from diabetes. But by 1992, the proportion had gone up to 8.2 per cent and 2.4 per cent for urban and rural areas, respectively. A repeat survey after five years found an even higher prevalence of the disease in urban areas, at 11.6 per cent.

But if it’s any consolation, insulin-deficient diabetes in children is less common in India than in Western countries, said Dr G.D. Thapar, former director of the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi. In his book ‘How to Lead a Healthy Life despite Diabetes’, he emphasised how crucial breast-feeding is to prevent the disease in children.

A mother and her child from West Point, a low-income neighbourhood of Monrovia, Liberia. The 10-worst countries to be a mother in are all in sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

Victoria J. married in 2009 at age 14, and became pregnant shortly after. “I started labour in the morning on a Friday …. The nurse kept checking and saying I would deliver safely. On Monday she said I was weak.

“The doctor decided to operate on me. (During the) operation they found the baby was dead. The doctor said the baby had died due to the long labour. After that, I found out that urine was coming out all the time,” she said.

Women and girls like Victoria in Kenya, South Africa and South Sudan also spoke to us about pregnancy and childbirth. Sadly, too many of their stories were not about the joy of having a child, but about abuse, neglect and pain.

In interviews and reporting across Africa, Human Rights Watch heard from girls who knew too little about sexuality and family planning when they were forced into marriage and pregnancy.

We spoke to girls who were married and conceived when their bodies were not mature enough to go safely through pregnancy and delivery. Women and girls also told of health centres that were poorly staffed and ill-equipped to handle obstetric complications.

They described not having enough money for transportation to government health facilities or to pay the high cost of giving birth there. Women described the shortage of ambulances to transport them when they needed specialised care, abuse and negligence by health workers, and the absence of a complaints process to notify the facilities of mistreatment and other problems.

Sadly, we spoke with the families of those women and girls who did not survive pregnancy and could not tell their own stories.

Significant global and regional progress has been made to reduce the number of preventable maternal deaths: data released in 2012 by the United Nations shows that the number of women worldwide dying of pregnancy and childbirth-related complications has almost halved in the last 20 years.

Human Rights Watch researcher Agnes Odhiambo. Courtesy: Human Rights Watch.

The report, “Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2010”, shows that sub-Saharan Africa saw a 41 percent reduction in maternal death. Despite these promising results — in a region that bears a disproportionate burden of maternal mortality — the progress is still too slow and uneven.

The 10-worst countries to be a mother in, according to Plan International’s “State of the world’s mothers report”, are all in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the unacceptably high numbers of women who die, African women also suffer disproportionately from childbirth injuries.

One of the most devastating is the obstetric fistula that Victoria suffered from, which leads to constant leakage of urine and stool. Fistula can be prevented or treated and hardly exists in the developed world.

As the African Union (AU) celebrates 50 years of existence on May 25, it should put a spotlight on the human rights of African women and girls.

The AU adopted the Maputo Protocol in 2003. Of the 54 AU member countries, 36 have ratified it. The protocol is unique in that it focuses on issues that affect women in Africa the most and covers topics that are not included in international treaties, including CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women), the women’s rights convention.

It is in the area of reproductive rights that the protocol is most ground-breaking. Article 14 calls on governments to provide adequate, affordable and accessible health services and to establish and strengthen existing health and nutritional services for women during pregnancy and while they are breast-feeding.

Importantly, it calls on governments to protect the reproductive rights of women by authorising medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where there is a risk to the health or life of the mother or the foetus.

There are many other commitments and declarations, at least on paper, promoting maternal health in Africa. In 2008, the AU passed a resolution on maternal mortality in Africa, well before the U.N. Human Rights Council did so, that recognised that preventable maternal mortality is a violation of women’s right to life, health and dignity. It included recommendations to improve health financing and accountability.

The AU’s campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa features the theme “Africa Cares: No Woman Should Die While Giving Life,” to mobilise political commitment and resources to help reduce maternal deaths.

The campaign includes a focus on improving monitoring of health systems. Since its launch in 2009, 37 countries have joined the campaign and signed on to its pledge.

While these commitments are important, it is time African governments be held accountable for failing to meet them.

To date, accountability has not been one of the AU’s strong points — but that can change. While the AU recognises that member states have not done enough to reduce maternal deaths, there is no effective monitoring and reporting mechanism at the regional level on what countries are doing to fulfil their promises, and where they are lacking. Establishing such a mechanism could enable countries to identify failings and needs, and to learn from each other’s best practices.

It is time for the governments and leaders of Africa to honour their commitments to women. It is time for Africa and the AU to ensure that no woman should die while giving life.

* Agnes Odhiambo and Gauri Van Gulik are researchers with the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

Despite the staggering human cost of the war, however, the international community is very close to failing these refugees, warns Panos Moumtzis, UNHCR regional coordinator for Syrian refugees.

Panos Moumtzis, UNHCR regional coordinator for Syrian refugees. Photo courtesy of UNHCR.

All sides “appear to be committed only to military means for resolving the conflict”, Moumtzis told IPS, a decision that is leading to what he called “a massive exodus of people”.

Moumtzis has extensive experience in crisis management, having worked in Gaza, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, and other countries with humanitarian emergencies. He describes the Syrian crisis as one of the most acute crises he has ever seen.

IPS correspondent Apostolis Fotiadis spoke with Moumtzis about the situation in and surrounding Syria and the role of the international community in this crisis.

Q: What are the characteristics of the Syrian refugee population?

A: Most of the refugees are Sunni Muslim. Three quarters of those crossing the border are women and children. More than half are children. A large percentage of the men you see in Iraq are mainly Kurdish and wanted to escape conscription, which is a concern of many Syrians as well.

The father in one family I met told me, “In a few months my son will be 18, so we decided to take him out of school and leave the country, before it is too late and he is called to serve.”

Tens of thousands of soldiers have also left the Syrian army. A camp in Jordan, specially assigned for them, holds 20 to 30 thousand of them. But these are not refugees. Anyone who crosses the border with a gun needs to pass a period of six months without a gun or uniform before we accept him as a refugee.

Q: How many people have moved out of Syria so far, and what is the size of your regional operation?

A: Out of approximately 1.25 million refugees, 25 percent of them are in camps. This means another 75 percent is in cities and villages.

There are 17 camps in Turkey with 196,000 people, with three more being built now. Each of those is to host another 10 to 20,000. There, UNHCR advises the government, and we also try to monitor legal issues that occur for refugees and monitor registration in order to keep track of people’s special needs.

We also try to ensure that no recruitment of guerillas takes place in the camp or any kind of military activity happens there.

We run two camps in Iraq and another three in Jordan. Turkey provides things we are unable to offer in our camps, like hot water, three meals per day, and whoever gets married goes on a month holiday. It is very important that camps strictly maintain a civilian character.

Q: How fluid is population movement? Do people return to Syria while others escape the country?

A: We have had spontaneous returns in the last three months. Very often people want to go back and see their houses. Men bring the family out of Syria and then return to check on their property.

Q: If the situation in Syria calms down, how easy would be for refugees to return there?

A: We would suggest that people stay outside Syria for some time until we know an agreement or deal is implemented.

The ones close to the borders whose houses have not been destroyed would return first, whereas people living in Baba Amr at Homs would be the last to return, since the area is devastated.

We are interested in that returns are voluntary, that no one pressures people to return, and that people know what they will face when they return.

Still, in every conflict there are people that cannot return. If the regime changes, for instance, we would see Sunnis going back and ethnic minorities leaving the country.

Q: Has the international community stood up to the task of dealing with the humanitarian disaster in Syria?

A: U.N. agencies estimate that meeting these refugees’ needs requires 1 billion dollars for surrounding countries and another 500 million for those inside Syria. We now have 30 percent of this budget, so we must assess the most urgent needs.

One should also consider the failure of the international community to give a political solution to the Syrian civil war.

Q: Has the international community failed Syria because of the many different geopolitical interests involved in this crisis?

A: It is better to say that the international community has failed politically until now. Humanitarian assistance is an alternative, so we can say they are offering something for this failure.

But there are so many forces inside Syria right now that make the resolution of this conflict a very complicated task. The uprising against a family regime has turned into a war that increasingly resembles a fight between Sunni and Shia, a fight of Hezbollah and Iran against Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States, as well as a war in which Al Qaeda has intervened.

Q: Many voices warn about a domino effect, with the war spreading into Lebanon. Are these warnings valid?

A: This is not a theoretical danger. It’s a real threat. Overall, Lebanon seems very unstable at the moment, and the bad economic situation in the country does not help. Many times we have to ask our personnel not to do certain things because of the uncertainty.

In Tripoli, people have been killed in armed incidents. A bomb was placed in Beirut three months ago. There is also tension at Sirte, in the south, due to the Hezbollah presence there and in the Beqaa valley as well.

Qadir Sheikh, a landmine victim from Warsun, laments that his handicap will mean no education for his two daughters. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Aadil Khan and his two siblings had been playing as usual behind their house in the village of Diver, 110 kilometres north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, when they came across what they thought was a “plaything” laying on the ground. But no sooner had they picked the object up than it literally shattered their innocent lives into pieces.

Stunned by the explosion from the shell, which the children had mistaken for a toy, they cannot remember much about the aftermath of that incident on Dec. 17. But the medics who treated them said they were “lucky” to have escaped with their lives.

“Aadil and Mashoq received severe injuries while their sister Naza escaped any major damage,” Sharief Khan, the children’s father, told IPS.

Khan, who supports a family of seven and earns his livelihood through manual labour, had to make a “tough decision” to ensure his children received proper medical treatment: he had to sell off a portion of his land.

The value of land in his village is so low that he only received 800 dollars for the entire plot, which is less than two-eighths of an acre, but Khan had few options. “Who could have lent such a huge amount to a poor man like me?” he asked.

Nearly six months later, Khan is still feeling the crunch of that sacrifice, forced to buy extra rice in the market because his remaining land does not yield enough grain to feed his large family. Already accustomed to the pangs of hunger, the Khan family now almost never has enough to eat.

Such are the stories of the nearly 700 victims of shells and mines here in Kashmir, a valley tucked between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, whose scenic beauty conceals a bloody history that has its roots in the 1947 partition of India.

As the latter celebrated its independence from British colonial rule, and the newly created state of Pakistan struggled to find its feet, Kashmir found itself claimed by both sides.

While the two countries jostled for power over the resource-rich region, a United Nations resolution offered the valley’s residents three possibilities: either join Hindu-dominated India, Muslim-majority Pakistan, or vote for independence. But this last option was never made a reality, leaving Pakistan to seize a third of the territory and India to administer what was left.

For decades Kashmiris have resisted this arrangement, enforced by India and Pakistan. The “pro-freedom” uprising of 1989 morphed into a resistance movement that continues to simmer today and has resulted in at least 60,000 deaths to date.

Those whose lives have been spared have not been left untouched by the conflict, with hundreds maimed by landmines and unexploded shells months, even years, after they were planted. Most of the victims are children or farmers, who stumble across unexploded shells in fields where encounters between insurgents and the Indian army once took place.

Though no exact figures are available, experts believe thousands of unexploded shells and mines are scattered around frontier areas like the northeastern administrative unit of Karnah; the western town of Poonch; the Rajouri district, also known as the Vale of Lakes; Uri, a town located on the banks of the river Jhelum; and in various remote villages.

Earlier this year, four children were injured when a shell exploded in Chattabandy, a village in Kashmir’s Bandipora district.

“The children were playing in an open paddy field when they found an unexploded shell and started fiddling with it,” a villager named Mohammad Ramzan, who witnessed the scene on Feb. 3, told IPS, adding that such incidents have become a matter of “routine.”

“A number of people, mostly kids, have either been killed or sustained injuries in such explosions in and around our village alone,” he said.

For nine-year-old Aadil Khan, memories of the blast are too painful to recall. Though he is now recovering, he is plagued by the hardships his family has endured as a result of his injury.

But activists lament that the Khan family’s situation is not unique. Those maimed by stray explosives receive standard government compensation of about 1,500 dollars, a sum that does not even cover the most basic treatment and fails to take into account the fact that most victims end up disabled for life, according to Dr. Hameeda Nayeem, a civil rights activist and professor at Kashmir University.

She told IPS nearly 100 percent of the victims come from poor socio-economic backgrounds and belong to families who earn less than 95 dollars a month.

A technician at the the Hope Disability Centre in Kashmir preparing prosthetic limbs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Qalandar Khan, a farm worker who was handicapped by a shell in 2012, is one such example. In the last year his family has spent 1,900 dollars on his treatment by selling off their cattle. The medical expenses have devoured their savings, and the loss of their animals has left them with almost no income since Qalandar was the family’s sole breadwinner.

“Now, the onus is on me and the kids,” his wife Reshma tells IPS. “Sometimes we don’t have enough to eat.”

Clinics providing free services are few and far between. One of them, the Hope Disability Centre, is currently treating 150 of the roughly 700 landmine victims, according to Director Sami Wani.

Working in collaboration with the Paris-based Handicap International, the NGO sends its coordinators into affected areas to identify families or victims in need of support, and even “provides prosthetics free of charge,” Wani told IPS.

Zahid Ahmad, coordinator of the northwestern Kupwara district for the Hope Disability Centre, says he found Qadir Sheikh in the village of Dardsun during one of his routine searches for victims.

“Had he not come, I would not have got my prosthesis,” Sheikh told IPS. He received basic training at the Centre and is now able to walk, but still cannot find a job. “I am worried about my two daughters, as I am not in a position to earn enough money to educate them.”

Rights activists say that the government should offer better compensation to those who have lost body parts and been rendered disabled.

“Most of these victims are now dependent on others,” Khurram Parvez, convener of the Srinagar-based Coalition of Civil Society (CCS), told IPS. “They should be compensated in a manner that allows them to lead dignified lives.”

Caregivers of victims who are bedridden, immobile, or otherwise unable to perform the most basic life functions are under enourmous pressure. In the village of Marhama, Habeed Lone sits by the side of his disabled wife Fata, who had both legs amputated after stepping on a mine on her way home from the family farm.

“We have six children and I have to take care of them and my wife single-handedly,” Lone tells IPS.

According to experts like Parvez, “It is the duty of security agencies to sanitise the surroundings of a place where they carry out combat operations,” adding that no effort has so far been made to raise awareness among the general public about the hazards involved in coming across these destructive shells.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Dookeran, speaking, with CARICOM Secretary General Irwin La Roque (seated right).

Whether by accident or coincidence, recent days have seen a variety of Caribbean leaders and journalists question whether the region is failing to pursue leadership roles within international organisations – and thus losing its voice in global issues like trade, climate change, and peace and security.

“These days, it is difficult to find CARICOM citizens in top positions, except for Dr. Carissa F. Etienne of Dominica who is director general of PAHO [the Pan American Health Organisation]; Albert Ramdin of Suriname, who is assistant secretary general at the OAS [Organisation of American States]; and Judge Patrick Robinson of Jamaica, who is president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia,” the Jamaica Observer said in an editorial this week.

The paper went on to blame “the complete lack of strategic planning by the political leadership and Caricom Secretariat in positioning our regional citizens for top jobs.”

Earlier in the week, the country’s former prime minister P.J. Patterson, speaking at the launch of the book “Multilateral Diplomacy for Small States” by former Guyanese foreign affairs minister Rudy Insanally, also lamented the fact that few from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) were occupying high-profile positions outside the region itself.

In defence of the 15-member bloc, Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Dookeran, who chairs the CARICOM Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR), said the issue was among “strategic matters” discussed during the two-day meeting of Caribbean foreign ministers that ended here Wednesday.

“At the level of Caribbean personalities in international organisations we are conscious of it and we had a long discussion on that and we are devising a process by which we are trying to improve that presence,” he told IPS.

Dookeran, who in his own address to the foreign ministers had also questioned whether “diplomacy in the Caribbean has lost its magic”, said that Caribbean countries need to make “the political statement as necessary in the councils of those bodies that we need to have a higher presence”.

CARICOM Secretary General Irwin La Rocque told IPS that Caribbean countries, despite their seemingly low profile, are still viewed as “prized assets” globally, and points to the presence at the meeting here of delegations from as far away as Japan and New Zealand.

“I am not so sure we have lost our charm, I think it is there. A number of political personalities have expressed an interest in coming to the heads of government meeting in Trinidad in July and I think that in itself speaks volumes,” La Roque said.

He added that there have been recent bilateral discussions with the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Chile, arguing “the outside world seems to recognise the ability of the CARICOM countries to punch above its weight.

“I don’t think we have lost the charm, I think what we have to do is to be a little certain in terms of harnessing and leveraging our collective voices in the international forum,” he told IPS.

Caribbean diplomacy is expected to benefit from the decision of the Trinidad and Tobago government to fund a diplomatic academy at the University of the West Indies (UWI) that “would provide current and future diplomats, government officials, non-state actors with training and learning facilities on issues and processes that are relevant to the discharge of our diplomacy and the conduct of our foreign relations”.

Dookeran, who has been calling for a “new frontier for Caribbean convergence”, said the academy, which opens in September with an international conference, “will establish a network of cooperation with similar training and learning institutions to benefit from the benefits and offerings from other countries,” and that interest has been shown by countries in North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

“We are realising the limitations of being a one-language country,” he conceded. “It will take time to change that…this is part of our British inheritance.”

The CARICOM foreign ministers have also vowed to pursue reforms in the United Nations Security Council to better take into consideration the positions of developing countries.

“Clearly that’s an issue that is very troubling,” Dookeran said, adding that the membership should be “placed on the agenda squarely and frontally at the next [General] Assembly”.

“We have in fact begun to talk with some major countries in the world in order to make sure we have the necessary political clout to make a start,” he said.

The communiqué issued at the end of the meeting here said Japan’s candidature for a 2016-2017 non-permanent seat and reform of the Security Council had been discussed with Minoru Kiuchi, the parliamentary vice-minister for foreign policy, and “welcomed the commitment expressed by Japan to drastically increase assistance” to the region.

Nonetheless, Dookeran insists that small states “should have a political presence in the Security Council”.

“We are not saying in what ways it should be done at this stage, and we are saying that the continent of Africa should definitely be part of that process,” he said. Such changes would be a reflection “of the return to political and moral legitimacy of the body and therefore there is need to establish that so that its views cannot be ignored.

“There is [also] need to have more diplomatic dialogue with international financial institutions” such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) so as to get them to change their lending policies to small island developing states (SIDS), he said.

In this vein, the Caribbean is working on developing new strategic partnerships with other SIDS “so that we can improve the strength of the voice of the small economies of the world.”

Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave?“, the report asserts that the acquisition by Tehran of nuclear weapons  would above all be intended to deter an attack by hostile powers, presumably including Israel and the United States, rather than for aggressive purposes.

And while its acquisition may indeed lead to greater tension between Iran and its Sunni-led neighbours, the 50-page report concludes that Tehran would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries. Nor would it be able to halt its diminishing influence in the region resulting from the Arab Spring and its support for the Syrian government, according to the author, Alireza Nader.

“Iran’s development of nuclear weapons will enhance its ability to deter an external attack, but it will not enable it to change the Middle East’s geopolitical order in its own favour,” Nader, an international policy analyst at RAND, told IPS. “The Islamic Republic’s challenge to the region is constrained by its declining popularity, a weak economy, and a limited conventional military capability. An Iran with nukes will still be a declining power.”

The report reaches several conclusions all of which generally portray Iran as a rational actor in its international relations.

While Nader calls it a “revisionist state” that tries to undermine what it sees as a U.S.-dominated order in the Middle East, his report stresses that “it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations.”

Further, the report identifies the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine as defensive in nature.  This posture is presumably a result of the volatile and unstable region in which it exists and is exacerbated by its status as a Shi’a and Persian-majority nation in a Sunni and Arab-majority region.

Iran is also scarred by its traumatic eight-year war with Iraq in which as many as one million Iranians lost their lives.

The new report comes amidst a growing controversy here over whether a nuclear-armed Iran could itself be successfully “contained” by the U.S. and its allies and deterred both from pursuing a more aggressive policy in the region and actually using nuclear weapons against its foes.

Iran itself has vehemently denied it intends to build a weapon, and the U.S. intelligence community has reported consistently over the last six years that Tehran’s leadership has not yet decided to do so, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made.

Official U.S. policy, as enunciated repeatedly by top officials, including President Barack Obama, is to “prevent” Iran from obtaining a weapon, even by military means if ongoing diplomatic efforts and “crippling” economic sanctions fail to persuade Iran to substantially curb its nuclear programme.

A nuclear-armed Iran, in the administration’s view – which is held even more fervently by the U.S. Congress where the Israel lobby exerts its greatest influence – represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

In addition, according to the administration, Iran’s acquisition of a weapon would likely embolden it and its allies – notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah – to pursue more aggressive actions against their foes and could well set off a regional “cascade effect” in which other powers, particulary Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, would feel obliged to launch nuclear-weapons programmes of their own.

But a growing number of critics of the prevention strategy – particularly that part of it that would resort to military action against Iran – argue that a nuclear Iran will not be nearly as dangerous as the reigning orthodoxy assumes.

A year ago, for example, Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, published a lengthy essay in ‘The Washington Monthly’, “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran: Fears of a Bomb in Tehran’s Hands Are Overhyped, and a War to Prevent It Would Be a Disaster.”

More recently, Colin Kahl, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) who also served as the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy adviser for much of Obama’s first term, published two reports – the first questioning the “cascade effect” in the region, and the second, published earlier this week and entitled “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlining a detailed “containment strategy” — including extending Washington’s nuclear umbrella over states that feel threatened by a nuclear Iran — the U.S. could follow to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, like Hezbollah, and persuade regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

In addition, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution whose 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will publish a new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy”, that is also expected to argue for a containment strategy if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.

Because both Brookings and CNAS are regarded as close to the administration, some neo-conservative commentators have expressed alarm that these reports are “trial balloons” designed to set the stage for Obama’s abandonment of the prevention strategy in favour of containment, albeit by another name.

It is likely that Nader’s study – coming as it does from RAND, a think tank with historically close ties to the Pentagon – will be seen in a similar light.

His report concedes that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would lead to greater tension with the Gulf Arab monarchies and thus to greater instability in the region. Moreover, an inadvertent or accidental nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would be a “dangerous possibility”, according to Nader who also notes that the “cascade effect”, while outside the scope of his study, warrants “careful consideration”.

Despite Iran’s strong ideological antipathy toward Israel, the report does not argue that Tehran would attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, as that would almost certainly lead to the regime’s destruction.

Israel, in Nader’s view, fears that Iran’s nuclear capability could serve as an “umbrella” for Tehran’s allies that could significantly hamper Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian territories, the Levant, and the wider region.

But the report concludes that Tehran is unlikely to extend its nuclear deterrent to its allies, including Hezbollah, noting that the interests of those groups do not always – or even often – co-incide with Iran’s.  Iran would also be highly unlikely to transfer nuclear weapons to them in any event, according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Jorge Rafael Videla swears in as the head of the military junta on Mar. 24, 1976. Credit: Public Domain

Thirty-seven years after leading the coup d’etat that ushered in the most brutal dictatorship in the history of Argentina, former army commander Jorge Rafael Videla died in a common prison Friday.

Convicted in several cases for crimes against humanity, the former dictator was found in his cell without a pulse, according to the medical report from the Federal Penitentiary Service. He was 87 years old.

Videla was serving several sentences in the Complejo Penitenciario Federal Número 2 in the city of Marcos Paz in the eastern province of Buenos Aires, in a section of the prison where he was held with dozens of other human rights violators from the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

“I never killed anyone,” Videla stated. In every conviction against him he was found to be the “intellectual author” of crimes against humanity. He himself admitted as much in the book “The Dictator” by journalists María Seoane and Vicente Muleiro. “There was no lack of control. I was above everyone,” he told the writers.

Human rights groups, the families of victims and observers of the fight against impunity for the de facto regime’s crimes said Videla’s death in a common prison was a powerful symbol, but did not represent the end of a cycle and was merely one more landmark in the process.

The executive director of Amnesty International in Argentina, Mariela Belski, told IPS that Videla “will be remembered for the (dictatorship’s) most brutal and appalling excesses.”

“But the most important thing here is that justice was done, Videla was convicted, and he died in prison,” she said, stressing that Argentina “took a major stride forward in bringing these crimes to trial, and became a model for the region and for the global South.”

But Belski warned that the death of the dictator “does not bring the process to a close. This is an ongoing process, which Argentina is spearheading, but which must continue in the country and in the region.”

Videla’s death in prison “is a very important symbolic development,” Víctor Abramovich, executive secretary of the Institute of Public Policies on Human Rights of South America’s Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, told IPS.

“Ten years ago this was unthinkable. Today it is the result of a process of regional scope, a process that is moving forward at different speeds, under different laws, but is generating very interesting debates throughout Latin America,” said the representative of the bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Abramovich, a former vice president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said the fact that the former dictator died in a common jail “reaffirms the principle of equality before the law.”

“This process, which is moving ahead at varying rates, is occurring in Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay, as well as Guatemala, where (former dictator José Efraín) Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison (on May 10),” he said.

In Argentina, 422 human rights violators, mainly members of the military, have been tried since 1983. Of that total, 378 were convicted and 44 acquitted, according to the prosecution unit for the coordination and monitoring of cases involving human rights violations.

In the last two years, trials have picked up speed, thanks to measures such as the accumulation of cases committed in each torture centre. In 2012, 24 trials ended in 134 convictions and 17 acquittals.

As part of the fight against impunity, the organisation Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo has managed to identify more than 100 sons and daughters of political prisoners who had been kidnapped as children along with their parents or were born in captivity.

Some of those stolen children now hold public posts – as national legislators, city councillors or executive branch officials, like the secretary of human rights, Martín Fresneda.

In 1976, then army chief Videla led the junta made up of the commanders of the three military forces after the coup that overthrew the democratic government of Isabel Perón.

Under his leadership (1976-1981), thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured, killed and forcibly disappeared. Government records that are gradually being updated account for more than 11,000 victims of forced disappearance, while human rights organisations put the total number at 30,000.

When the regime collapsed in 1983, the former junta members were tried. In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life in prison for 66 murders, 306 kidnappings, 93 cases of torture and 26 cases of theft.

He spent five years in a military prison along with other officers, enjoying privileges that were denounced by the media and human rights groups. But in 1990 they were pardoned by then president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

However, Videla was arrested again in 1998 in connection with the theft of children born to political prisoners – a crime he had never been convicted of and thus was never pardoned for.

But it was the declaration of the presidential pardon and the two late 1980s amnesty laws as unconstitutional that reactivated a number of human rights cases against him over the last decade. In 2010 he was handed a live sentence for crimes committed in the central province of Córdoba and in 2012 he was sentenced to 50 years for the theft of children.

He was also tried for crimes against humanity committed by the regime in the central province of Santa Fe and the northern province of Tucumán.

In the trials, Videla did not recognise the authority of the civilian courts to try him, and complained that he was a “political prisoner.”

He did so once again on Tuesday May 14, in another case related to Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, exchanging and eliminating left-wing opponents.

On his last appearance in court he looked unwell, with difficulty walking and a trembling voice.

But he never repented in public. On the contrary, he said he gave the orders for the crimes committed by his subordinates.

In his last statements to the press, to the Spanish magazine Cambio 16 in March, he urged young officers to rise up against the government of Cristina Fernández “in defence of the institutions of the republic.”

The first launch of a Trident missile on Jan. 18, 1977 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: U.S. Air Force

But Chekhov’s storytelling trope is troubling if applied to the world’s weapons technology today, which include an estimated 17,300 nukes – used primarily by nations as props to leverage international power.

According to the Ploughshares Fund’s World Nuclear Stockpile Report, an estimated 8,500 nukes belong to Russia and 7,700 to the U.S. The seven other nations with a nuclear arsenal trail far behind: they include France (300), China (240), the U.K. (225), Pakistan (90-110), India (60-110), Israel (60-80) and most recently North Korea (<10).

“It’s hard to imagine any military mission that will require the use of one nuclear weapon. The use of 10 weapons would be a catastrophe beyond human experience, and 50 is unthinkable,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation based in the U.S.

“The number you need to actually deter an enemy from attacking the U.S. with or without nuclear weapons is very, very low. To be on the safe side, you might want a couple of hundred,” he told IPS.

“The idea that we need thousands of nuclear weapons… is an outmoded, irrational, expensive legacy of the Cold War,” he said.

While the U.S.’s nuke budget is secret, Cirincione estimates that in the next decade, the U.S. will spend 640 billion dollars on nukes and its related programmes – such as missile defence systems, environmental clean-up of nuclear activity and the technological upgrade of the current nuclear arsenal.

Asked about the U.S.’s role in pushing for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation on the international scale, Cirincione said, “The U.S. is probably the most influential voice in this debate, but it can’t do it alone. Most importantly, it needs Russia to reduce the arsenals with them.”

On Feb. 5, 2011, the U.S. and Russia entered into force a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), in which both nations agreed by 2018 to limit the number of their warheads to 1,550; and the number of their combined intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800.

“If the U.S. and Russia can agree to cut their arsenals in half, for example, as they did in the 1980s and the 1990s… it would be universally applauded, and it would be very difficult for bureaucracies and political opponents to resist that in either country,” said Cirincione.

But U.S. progress for disarmament and non-proliferation has stalled in the past few years. George Perkovich, director of the Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, attributes the U.S.’s balk partly to internal politics in Washington.

In his April 2013 monograph, Do Unto Others: Toward a Defensible Nuclear Doctrine, Perkovich writes, “A relatively small, specialized community of experts and officials shapes U.S. nuclear policy.”

Members of this community often distort nuclear threats to the U.S., as well as the best ways to respond to such threats, argues Perkovich. They do this not in the U.S.’s national security interest, but in their own career interests to prevent “their domestic rivals from attacking them as too weak to hold office”.

Nukes deter U.S.-led regime change

Perkovich also notes in his monograph that Iran, North Korea and Pakistan believe having their own nuclear arsenals deter U.S.-led regime change. They fear the fates of nuclear-free Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.

Asked how the U.S. should respond if future world governments – oppressive or not, who are acting against U.S. interests – continue pursuing nukes to prevent regime change, Perkovich told IPS that would be a difficult problem.

“The one and only thing nuclear weapons are good for is to keep people from invading your country. So, states and leaders that worry about getting invaded tend to find nukes attractive, or alliance with the U.S. attractive,” he said.

“Non-proliferation would be easier to achieve if states didn’t worry they were going to be invaded and/ or overthrown if they didn’t have nuclear weapons.

“The problem, clearly, is that some governments are so brutal and menacing to their own people and neighbours that it is hard to foreswear trying to remove them,” he added.

Perkovich recommended that the U.S. limit pressure against repressive governments to political and moral means, as well as to sanctions; and that the U.S. clarify it won’t act militarily, if the repressive regime does not attack its neighbours or seek nukes.

Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, argued that vying for nukes, in Iran and North Korea’s cases, may actually be counterproductive.

“I don’t think it improves their security, I think it isolates them even further,” he said. “It prevents them from forging the kind of international ties that can really aid their country, build their economies (and) increase their influence.

“That means that in order to stop those countries from getting or keeping nuclear weapons, you have to address their legitimate security concerns. A part of the engagement with those countries has got to be security assurances that guarantees then that you won’t attack them, or that their neighbours won’t attack them.”

Obama’s nuclear legacy

During his December 2012 speech at the National War College in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said, “Missile by missile, warhead by warhead, shell by shell, we’re putting a bygone era behind us.”

Cirincione explained that pursuing nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation has been important to Obama since his youth. Obama’s first foreign policy speech as president – in Prague in April 2009 – and his first foreign policy speech after re-election both focused on nukes.

“The president faces a multitude of pressing issues, but only two of them threaten destruction on a planetary scale: global warming and nuclear weapons,” said Cirincione.

While opposition to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation is prevalent inside Washington, it pales in comparison to opposition facing warming, immigration, or tax reform.

“This is an opportunity for the president to make a major improvement in U.S. and global security with a relatively small investment of his time,” said Cirincione, who explained that Obama’s efforts to curb nukes may conclude a historic arc, which started with President John F. Kennedy’s efforts in the 1960s and was accelerated by President Ronald Reagan’s efforts in the 1980s.

Cirincione said, “(Obama’s) got three and a half years to do it. If he starts now, he can get the job done. He can change U.S. nuclear policy to put it irreversibly on a path to fewer nuclear weapons, and eventually (eliminate) this threat from the face of the earth.”