The “big five” – i.e., the most military powerful states on earth (US, UK, France, Russia and China) have just agreed that it would be about time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy.

Baher Kamal

Before reaching such a conclusion, they waited until 300,000 innocent civilians were killed; tons of bullets shot; 4.5 million humans lost as refugees or homeless at home; hundreds of field testing of state-of-the-art drones made, and daily US, British, French and Russian bombing carried out.

So, with these statistics in hand, they on 18 December 2015 adopted United Nations Resolution 2254 (2015) endorsing a “road map” for peace process in Syria, and even setting a timetable for UN-facilitated talks between the Bashar al Assad regime and “opposition” groups.

They also set the outlines of a “nationwide ceasefire to begin as soon as the parties concerned had taken initial steps towards a political transition.”

“The Syrian people will decide the future of Syria,” the Resolution states.

The UN Security Council also requested that the UN Secretary-General convenes representatives of the Syrian Government and opposition to engage in formal negotiations on a political transition process “on an urgent basis”, with a target of early January for the initiation of talks.

“Free and Fair Elections”

The “big five” then expressed support for a Syrian-led political process facilitated by the United Nations which would establish “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance” within six months and set a schedule and process for the drafting of a new constitution.

Furthermore, the Security Council expressed support for “free and fair elections, pursuant to the new constitution, to be held within 18 months and administered under United Nations supervision,” to the “highest international standards” of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians — including members of the diaspora – eligible to participate.

And they requested that the UN Secretary-General report back on “options” for a ceasefire monitoring, verification and reporting mechanism that it could support within one month. They of course also demanded that “all parties immediately cease attacks against civilians.”

The road-map says that within six months, the process should establish a “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance,” with UN-supervised “free and fair elections” to be held within 18 months.

The whole thing moved so rapidly that the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan di Mestura, has already set the 25 January 2016 as the target date to begin talks between the parties.

All That Is Fine, But…

… But the resolution gives no specific answer to a number of key questions:

To start with, the Syrian National Coalition (SCN) has dismissed the whole idea as “unrealistic,” Deutsch Welle reported. The Coalition objects to a fact that the Security Council’s Resolution carefully “omits”: what future President Assad has.

According to Deutsch Welle, the SNC expressed annoyance that the UN language talked of ISIS terrorism but not of the “terrorism” of the Assad government. Russia has called for the transition to leave the question of governance up to the Syrians, while France and at times the US have demanded Assad’s immediate ousting as a condition of the deal.

If so, which “opposition” should sit to talk with the Syrian regime? While the US, UK and France support what they decided to consider as “rebel” or “opposition” groups, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would have different criteria.

In this regard, it was decided to work out a mechanism for establishing which rebel groups in Syria will be eligible to take part in the peace process. For this purpose, Jordan, which was tasked with listing terrorist organisations in Syria, has reportedly presented a document that includes up to 160 extremist groups.

Even though, would President Bashar al-Assad be able to run for office in new elections?

How will the UN monitor the requested ceasefires, and control so many different sides involved in the armed fighting, including the US, UK, France and Russia? And what if the ceasefires do not work? More Syrian civilians to die, flee, migrate? How to control DAESH and so many diverse terrorist groups operating there? What to do with those millions of Syrian refugees, scattered in the region, mainly in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, while hundreds of thousands of them are being “trafficked” by organised crime bands, reportedly including DAESH itself?

And last but not least, which Syria will exist at the end of the 18 months which has been fixed as a target to hold free, fair elections?

Will it be the current Syria or a new, refurbished one after cutting part of it to establish a brand new “Sunni-stan” that US neo-con, neo-liberal, Republican “hawk” and former George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has recently recommended to create on the territories to be “liberated” from DAESH in Syria and Iraq?

Too many key questions without and clear answers. And too may gaps for this road-map to gain credibility. Unless the idea is to implement a Libyan-style solution, that’s for another Western-led military coalition, under NATO’s umbrella, to attack Syria, let Assad be murdered, and leave the people to their own fate. Exactly what happened in Libya in 2011.

(End)

Palestinian families take shelter at an UNRWA school in Gaza City, after evacuating their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, July 2014. UNRWA has now launched a humanitarian reconstruction programme. Credit: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA Archives

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sep 17 2014 (IPS)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees has launched an ambitious recovery plan for Gaza following the 50-day devastating war between Hamas and Israel which has left the coastal territory decimated.

However, the successful implementation of this plan requires enormous international funding as well as a long-term ceasefire to enable the lifting of the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the territory.

“We are working on a 24-month plan aimed at 70 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees but this will only be possible if the blockade is lifted and construction materials and other goods are allowed into Gaza,” Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA), told IPS.

“Taxpayers are being asked once again to fund the reconstruction of Gaza and at this point there are no security guarantees, so a permanent ceasefire is essential if we are not to return to the repetitive cycle of destruction and then reconstruction,” Gunness said.“If Gaza is to recover and Gazans are to have any hope for the future, it is vital that the international community intervenes to help those Gazan civilians who have and continue to pay the highest price” – Chris Gunness, UNRWA spokesman

The attack on Gaza, euphemistically code-named “Operation Protective Edge” by the Israelis, now stands as the most severe military campaign against Gaza since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967.

“The devastation caused this time is unprecedented in recent memory. Parts of Gaza resemble an earthquake zone with 29 km of damaged infrastructure,” said Gunness.

Following the ceasefire, the Palestinian death toll stood at 2,130 and more than 11,000 injured.

Over 18,000 housing units were destroyed, four hospitals and five clinics were closed due to severe damage, while 17 of Gaza’s 32 hospitals and 45 of 97 its primary health clinics were substantially damaged. Reconstruction is estimated to cost over 7 billion dollars.

According to UNRWA, 22 schools were completely destroyed and 118 damaged during Israeli bombardments, while many higher education facilities were damaged.

Some 110,000 displaced Gazans remain in UN emergency shelters or with host families, according to UNRWA.

The reconstruction of shelters alone will cost over 380 million dollars, 270 million of which relates to Palestinian refugees.

According to the Palestinian Federation of Industries, 419 businesses and workshops were damaged, with 129 completely destroyed.

“We have a two-year plan in place which addresses the spectrum of Palestinian needs. Currently we have 300 engineers on the ground in Gaza assessing reconstruction needs,” Gunness told IPS.

Palestinian boy inspecting the remains of a house which was destroyed during an air strike in Central Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, July 2014. Credit: Shareef Sarhan/UNRWA Archives

UNRWA’s strategic approach has been divided into the relief period, the early recovery period and the recovery period of up to four months following the cessation of hostilities.

“The relief period, which will continue for the next four months, involves urgent humanitarian intervention including providing shelter, food and medical needs for displaced Gazans,” said the UNTWA spokesman.

“The early recovery period will continue for the next year and will address the critical needs of the population such as repairing damage to environmental infrastructure, restoring UNRWA facilities and supplementary assistance for livelihood provisioning.

“The recovery period will last for two years and will focus on the impact of the conflict through a sustainable livelihoods programme promoting self-sufficiency and completing the transition of UNRWA emergency and extended-stay shelters back to intended use and full operational capacity.”

One thrust of UNRWA’s programme will focus on protection, gender and disability. The increased numbers of female-headed households and households with disabled men is having an impact on unemployment patterns.

“Women are the primary caregivers and are closely linked to homes and the psychological trauma being exhibited by children. Furthermore, there have already been signs of increased gender-based violence,” explained Gunness.

“We want to focus on raising awareness of domestic violence, how to deal with violence in the home and building healthy and equal relationships through our gender empowerment programme.”

The UN agency will also address food distribution by providing minimum caloric requirements through basic food commodities, including bread, corned beef or tuna, dairy products and fresh vegetables. Non-food items provided include hygiene kits and water tanks for 42,000 families.

Emergency repairs to shelters are also being undertaken with 70 percent more homes destroyed or damaged than during the 2008-2009 hostilities. Emergency cash assistance for refugee families to meet a range of basic needs is also being distributed.

“Due to the enormous damage done to hospitals and health facilities, UNRWA has so far established 22 health points to provide basic health services to the sick and wounded, and health teams have been deployed to monitor key health issues,” noted Gunness.

The psychological impact of the war is another area that concerns UNRWA.  “There isn’t a person in Gaza who hasn’t been affected by the war. In consultation with UNRWA’s Community Health Programme, we have hired additional counsellors and youth coordinators who will provide a range of services to groups and individuals.”

“If Gaza is to recover and Gazans are to have any hope for the future,” said Gunness, “it is vital that the international community intervenes to help those Gazan civilians who have and continue to pay the highest price.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Thousands of displaced people camping under trees in Minkaman, northeastern South Sudan. They are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled during five months of fighting in the country. Credit: Andrew Green/IPS

By Andrew Green
JUBA, May 15 2014 (IPS)

It has not yet been a week, but South Sudan’s most recent ceasefire appears set to collapse, along with hopes that – after five months of fighting – the country might finally be on the path to recovery.

Late Friday, President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar met briefly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to recommit to the cessation of hostilities agreement their representatives originally reached in late January.

That earlier deal also fell apart within days and the fighting continued across much of the country’s northeast. Thousands of people have since been killed and hundreds of thousands scattered.

In the days before the Addis Ababa meeting, Deng Chioh was one of the many people in Juba unconvinced a new ceasefire agreement would work. He said the anger in the country runs too deep.

“If peace is to come to South Sudan, it’s going to take a very long time. It cannot be done while the current leader is the head of the state,” he told IPS.

South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir Mayardit (in black hat), and former vice-president Riek Machar (right), before the conflict began. Credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

Last week’s signing ceremony was the first time Kiir and Machar have met since their latent political rivalry broke wide open on Dec. 15 when the former vice president walked out on a meeting of the ruling party.

Hours later fighting broke out in a Juba military barracks and Kiir quickly accused his former vice president of mounting a coup. The veracity of the accusation was inconsequential as fighting spread rapidly – first across the capital, and then much of the country.

On the first two nights of the December fighting, Chioh suffered through frantic phone calls from relatives and neighbours as they attempted to triangulate where the killings were happening.

By the third day, exhausted with worry, he and nine family members moved to a the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) base.

The site, known as U.N. House, is on the outskirts of Juba, in the shadow of Jebel Mountain – one of the few interruptions to the capital’s dully flat landscape.

Chioh said that soon after they stopped hearing from a handful of relatives who decided to remain in their homes, and he can only assume they were killed.

The Addis Ababa reunion followed increased pressure from regional and international actors to end the violence. Last week, the United States issued sanctions against a military leader on each side of the conflict and warned more could be in the offing.

Under the revived deal, the two sides agreed not only to freeze their troops within 24 hours, but to give humanitarian groups access to thousands of civilians caught in combat zones. UNMISS announced within hours of the signing that they were standing by to begin deliveries of “life-saving aid” if the ceasefire took hold.

There was suddenly cause to consider, not whether South Sudan could be saved, but how this deeply-divided country could be repaired.

The depths of these divisions were revealed in the days before the meeting, when UNMISS released a report documenting “gross violations of human rights” by both sides during the ongoing clashes, including the targeted killing, rape and kidnapping of innocent civilians.

There has been an ethnic cast to the fighting from the start, pitting Kiir’s Dinka community against Machar’s Nuer, and the violence against civilians has deepened distrust between the country’s different groups.

In one of the many horrific episodes, the rebels stand accused of murdering more than 200 civilians hiding in a mosque in the northern town of Bentiu, capital of Unity state. Nearly 80,000 people have now taken refuge at UNMISS bases, behind the protection of U.N. peacekeepers.

More than 10,000 people have crowded into U.N. House, which also hosts blocks of U.N. offices. From their windows, U.N. staffers can now peer out over a vast makeshift campsite, built mostly of plastic sheets, scrap metal and wooden planks.

U.N. House holds some of the earliest victims of the crisis, mostly Nuer from the surrounding neighbourhoods. They fled to the base as security forces conducted house-to-house searches during the height of the Juba clashes.

A boat of women and children arrives in Mingkaman, Awerial County, Lakes State, South Sudan. In less than a month close to 84,000 fleeing the fighting in Bor have crossed the river Nile to Awerial. Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

Among the testimonies UNMISS collected are stories of uniformed men storming through those communities, capturing and interrogating civilians in the Dinka language. “If a person questioned in this way admitted to being Nuer, could not speak Dinka or was able to speak Nuer, that person would be shot,” according to the report.

Members of the Dinka community harbour concerns about peace should Machar be invited back into any future government. There is no political solution that will salve all of the country’s wounds.

The only option is forgiveness, Reverend Bernard Oliya Suwa told IPS. And as soon as a ceasefire takes hold, it will be his task to convince Chioh – and countless others – to choose that path and attempt to reconstruct South Sudan. Suwa is the secretary general of the Committee for National Peace, Reconciliation and Healing.

The Committee pre-dates the conflict. Kiir created the body in April of last year and directed its five heads, culled from the country’s religious leadership, to address injustices committed during the southern rebels’ decades-long fight for independence from Khartoum.

Their plan, arrived at in early December, was to recruit county-level “peace mobilisers” to spend months in their communities gathering testimony and presenting it to local mediators. Grievances “of higher concern,” Suwa said, including complaints over resource allocation or large-scale atrocities, would be referred to state or national committees.

A mother and children walk amongst flooded shelters at the Tomping IDP camp. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

The committee’s plans have already been adapted to the recent violence. They would work with two other bodies, including a Parliamentary commission, to form a broader National Platform for Peace and Reconciliation. He acknowledges that after the recent fighting, “the level of mistrust in this country runs so deep,” but told IPS he believes the Committee members can help allay it. But only if there is peace. Which is why the renewed cessation of hostilities agreement “is a huge, huge relief. Knowing that we can go ahead and roll out our programmes.”

The ceasefire officially went into effect late Saturday night. It held less than seven hours. U.N. officials confirmed both sides spent Sunday morning trading fire in and around Bentiu.

By the time Kiir’s plane touched down in Juba later that afternoon to a crowd of people gathered to celebrate the peace deal, each camp was accusing the other of provoking the fighting. Those accusations have continued every day since.

A young boy looks through a monocle in the teaching hospital in Malakal, Upper Nile State, South Sudan. Fighting continues here despite a ceasefire agreement. Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

By Andrew Green
JUBA, Feb 3 2014 (IPS)

South Sudan is taking the first steps in what promises to be a long process of healing the fractures that prompted more than five weeks of fighting, potentially leaving thousands of people dead and wounded and displacing 863,000 others.

But tensions remain high, following reports of continued fighting in some areas of the country and the government’s decision to move forward with treason charges against four remaining political detainees. And the longer the process stretches on, the worse the situation will become for the hundreds of thousands of displaced across the country.As the numbers of internally displaced continue to grow, the U.N. and humanitarian partners are struggling to provide enough food, clean drinking water and shelter for all of them.

Upper Nile State Information Minister Philip Jiben Ogal told IPS there was gunfire last week outside of Malakal, the state capital. The fighting is in contravention of an almost two-week-old ceasefire agreement between the government and rebels.

Martin Ojok Karial lives in Malakal, working in the Ministry of Finance’s taxation office. Malakal suffered two waves of fighting and was temporarily held by government forces. The town’s central market is destroyed and at least 27,000 people have sought refuge at the United Nations base on the outskirts of town. Karial is one of them.

The humanitarian medical group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also announced Jan. 31 that ongoing insecurity had forced thousands of people to flee into the bush in Unity State.

Karial sees the fighting as a political feud that was allowed to get out of control.

“A lot of people were dying without any reason,” Karial told IPS. “Because the clashes are between two people. The president of South Sudan and the vice president. This is no reason for people to fight and kill themselves.”

The fighting here first broke out in a Juba military barracks on Dec.15 and spread quickly – first throughout the capital and then across central and eastern South Sudan. President Salva Kiir accused his political rival and former deputy Riek Machar of launching a coup against the government. Machar has repeatedly denied the charges, though he acknowledges he is now in open rebellion against the government.

Following weeks of negotiations in Addis Ababa, the two sides inked a cessation of hostilities agreement Jan. 23. Just hours after signing the document, they began accusing each other of violations.

Karial said people have now lost faith in their political leaders. Even if the two sides strike a peace deal, he said, they would be hard-pressed to convince people like him that it will last.

The government released seven of the 11 political prisoners it had held since mid-December, flying them to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, late last week. And on Saturday Feb. 2, an advance wave of regional observers arrived to begin monitoring a ceasefire agreement signed between rebels and the government.

While acknowledging there was not enough evidence to charge seven of the detainees, Justice Minister Paulino Wanawilla announced treason charges against the remaining four.

Wanawilla accused them of helping Machar and two others – all of whom are still at large – orchestrate a coup against the government, prompting the outbreak of fighting.

“I think there is enough [of a] case to take them before the court,” Wanawilla said.

Despite the government’s latest refusal to accede to the rebel demand, neither side has backed out of peace talks, which are scheduled to resume this week in Ethiopia.

“The parties are committed and they are ready to resolve the conflict in a peaceful way,” Ethiopian major general Gebreegzabher Mebrahtu said after arriving in Juba. Mebrahtu heads the monitoring efforts organised by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, a regional bloc.

It is unclear whether the two sides can strike a bargain that will bring the divided country back together again.

In a pastoral exhortation released late last week, Cardinal Zubeir Wako called for “better governance across the nation and an end to the personalised political power.”

Until people feel safe and they have some control over their political leaders and the events in the country, they will not leave the U.N. bases, the churches and the mosques where they sought shelter from the fighting.

Valerie Amos, U.N. Humanitarian Affairs chief, visited Malakal last week and talked to a handful of the more than 64,000 people displaced in the county.

“Even when I said, ‘We need to work on reconciliation, we need all the communities to come together, the leadership to come together. We need to make sure that people’s safety and security is guaranteed.’ Even then, people were not convinced,” she said. Instead, they asked to be moved to other parts of the country or to leave entirely.

It is a tenuous situation. As the numbers of internally displaced continue to grow, the U.N. and humanitarian partners are struggling to provide enough food, clean drinking water and shelter for all of them. They are also contending with the risk of disease outbreaks.

Aid workers are also starting to draw attention to the long-term implications of the situation.

“We’re coming up to the hunger gap and it is very likely because people have been forced to move as a result of the insecurity, that they won’t have the same food reserves that they had before,” MSF general director Arjan Hehenkamp told IPS.

The U.N. has announced that while 3.2 million people are at risk of immediate food insecurity, more than seven million people may become food insecure this year.

And as the two sides continue discussions, the situation is only going to get worse.

Two mothers and their children look to shore after arriving by boat to Mingkaman, Awerial County, Lakes State, South Sudan. In less than a month close to 84,000 fleeing the fighting in Bor have crossed the river Nile. Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

By Jacey Fortin
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 26 2014 (IPS)

When representatives of the warring factions of South Sudan signed an agreement to end hostilities at a luxury hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Thursday, Jan, 23, fervent applause and some high-pitched ululations erupted from the audience.

The cessation of hostilities called for both sides to lay down arms within 24 hours. But on Friday evening, at around the time the truce was supposed to take effect, Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang, a spokesman for the opposition army, told IPS that the situation was far from calm.

“We are fighting almost everywhere,” he said, pointing to clashes that erupted in the Unity State towns of Dangdok and Duar, in Dolieb Hill of Upper Nile State, and Mathiang in Jonglei State. “The government violated the cessation of hostilities before it began. We have the right to defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal,” Koang added.A disconnect between the delegates and their compatriots on the ground could render the cessation of hostilities agreement ineffectual.

Political rivalries and ethnic tensions have long threatened stability in South Sudan, but the current conflict kicked off on Dec. 15 when animosity between President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar, who was sacked by the president in July, sparked a clash inside of a military barracks in Juba.

The ripple effect was devastating. Divisions between the country’s two largest ethnic groups – the Dinka, of which Kiir is a member; and the Nuer, largely loyal to Machar – spurred a worsening cycle of retaliatory attacks, murders, rapes, and looting.

The three-week negotiating phase that just wrapped up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, has been subject to cynicism. The talks were slow, held up first by matters of protocol – agreeing on terms of reference and setting the agenda – and then by mediators’ trips to South Sudan.

The talks were mediated by members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a bloc of eight East African countries. IGAD Envoy Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s former foreign minister, said during the ceremony that the signing was an “auspicious occasion,” but cautioned that “some settlements may only provide a temporary reprieve before violence escalates again.”

The final agreement is far from conclusive. The opposition was unable to secure a key concession from their counterparts: the release of 11 people who were detained by the government on allegations of attempting a coup. The prisoners include several high-ranking former officials who were instrumental in facilitating South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011, including former Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) secretary-general Pagan Amum.

“We claim that on our side that the politicians have been framed, and they are political prisoners. If they were out, it would nullify the government argument that this is a Nuer-Dinka thing,” opposition delegate Mabior Garang, son of the late independence hero John Garang, told IPS. “This is an uprising of the people of South Sudan. Once these people are released it will show the true national character of the uprising.”

Representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and the United States have urged Kiir to release the prisoners as goodwill gesture. But government delegates deferred the issue to South Sudan’s Ministry of Justice, saying that the detainees will be released in accordance with due process.

The agreement notes that “IGAD and the Partners of IGAD are firmly committed to undertake every effort to expedite the release of the detainees,” but does not include any similar commitment from the South Sudanese administration.

The negotiations will now go on hiatus for two weeks, after which point both sides will come together once again to haggle over the thorniest issues: the detainees, long-term mechanisms for monitoring a ceasefire, and sustainable political reconciliation.

As the process drags on, hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan are struggling to cope with a grave humanitarian crisis. But they looked to the talks with a some optimism, Edmund Yakani, a South Sudanese activist who runs a Juba civil society group called the Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation, told IPS.

“There are hopes that the agreement will stop the military confrontation, and that a ceasefire will bring about dialogue. But the citizens have some critical questions. They are concerned about the issue of representation – whether these negotiations are only representative of people in power, who don’t understand the real challenges facing the people of the nation,” he said.

A disconnect between the delegates and their compatriots on the ground could render the cessation of hostilities agreement ineffectual. During the signing ceremony, Nhial Deng Nhial, who led the government delegation on behalf of Kiir, expressed doubts about the opposition’s ability to control the fighting.

“What really worries us in terms of the agreement on the cessation of hostilities is the capacity of the rebel group, given that the bulk of the rebel army is made up of civilians who are not subject to military discipline,” he said. “An order to stop fighting may not be obeyed, and this will certainly make a mockery of the agreement.”

Koang argues that the government is largely to blame for the clashes that took place on Friday, though the conflicts he cited occurred before the cessation was scheduled to begin.

“The government is on the offensive, trying to force us back,” he said. Asked whether the opposition would stick to a defensive role only, he said it depended on the situation. “Sometimes when you are attacked, you resist and you get the momentum, and to keep the momentum sometimes there is a need for us to push back.”

Currently the government is in control of three major towns in conflict zones: the Jonglei capital Bor, Unity capital Bentiu and Upper Nile capital Malakal. But the opposition says it controls most of the surrounding rural areas and maintains positions not far from the government-controlled cities. If the cessation of hostilities is adhered to, both sides will hang on to their territories while delegations work through the major issues.

But some argue that lasting peace will require the factions of South Sudan to dig deeper than the causes of the current crisis.

“I think it will work if they address the question of state-building,” said Yakani, adding that South Sudan has suffered under a one-party system that put ethnicity before democracy.

“Political institutions are based on ethnic backgrounds, and that compromises accountability and transparency. These conflicts are symptoms of a system where ethnicity has been politicised.”

A boat of women and children arrives in Mingkaman, Awerial County, Lakes State, South Sudan. In less than a month close to 84,000 fleeing the fighting in Bor have crossed the river Nile to Awerial. Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

By Andrew Green
JUBA, Jan 24 2014 (IPS)

The overwhelming job of providing relief to the more than half a million displaced and wounded in South Sudan may have gotten a little easier with the signing of a ceasefire agreement last night in Addis Ababa, which is set to go into effect today.

The government and rebel groups, who have been locked in more than five weeks of fighting, agreed to freeze their positions and open corridors to humanitarian groups desperately trying to deliver food and medicine to those in need. Relief workers are warning that the scale of the crisis will prove to be even larger as they gain greater access. Meanwhile, doubts linger about whether the agreement will hold.

The fighting in South Sudan started late on Dec. 15 in military barracks in Juba and then spread quickly around the capital city. President Salva Kiir has accused his political rival and former deputy Riek Machar of launching a coup against the government – a charge Machar has denied. But the former vice president has acknowledged that he is now openly in rebellion against the government.Jonglei’s capital, Bor, which government forces reclaimed late last week, is decimated and bodies are still scattered in the streets.

In the weeks after the initial violence, clashes between the army and anti-government forces have been reported in at least seven states. Rebels seized three state capitals, though the government has since regained control of the towns.

Aid organisations report thousands of people are suspected to have been killed and wounded, though it is impossible to gather an accurate estimate at the moment, because access to many areas of the country is still limited. What is clear is that the five weeks of fighting have created a severe humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations reports that at least 494,000 people were internally displaced – nearly one-tenth of the population. Less than 220,000 of them have received any assistance so far. Another 86,000 people fled to neighbouring countries.

Jacob Kurtzer, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said the known needs are massive.

“We’ve seen people displaced without any personal effects,” he told IPS. “Leaving their homes without basic shelter, very little food. We’re always concerned about sanitation. And the last would be the medical care, in particular, for the people who have been weapon wounded, to be able to respond to their medical needs. We’re trying to meet all of those needs simultaneously.”

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) flew in 70 tonnes of emergency supplies and medicines this week to distribute to women and children across the country.

At least 70,000 people have crowded into U.N. bases around the country to escape the fighting. But the cramped conditions and a shortage of toilets have created a high risk of disease transmission. UNICEF has warned of an outbreak of measles at some of the camps, which has prompted two emergency vaccination campaigns.

And that is only for those people the aid groups have been able to reach.

Dermot Carty, UNICEF’s deputy director for emergency operations, told IPS that the fluid nature of the fighting made it nearly impossible to predict where they could even maintain a sustained response.

UNICEF’s plans to reach 70,000 displaced people this week in Awerial County in northeastern Jonglei state had to be postponed at the last minute, he said, when unexpected fighting broke out.

“We were all ready to go and the security situation suddenly changed and we had to stand down.”

With a ceasefire now in place, the government, the U.N. and humanitarian groups are hopeful those interruptions will stop and they will be able to start reaching the hundreds of thousands of people who have gone without assistance so far. But better access is also likely to reveal an even bigger demand for assistance.

Paul Akol – a national lawmaker from Jonglei and a member of Kiir’s Crisis Management Committee – travelled with a team to Jonglei’s capital, Bor, which government forces reclaimed late last week. He said the town is decimated and bodies are still scattered in the streets.

“These towns are towns in name, but nothing exists on the ground,” he told IPS. “The houses are on the ground. The shops are on the ground. The little infrastructure that we built during the interim period has been completely destroyed.” He said it would take months, if not years, of assistance to help people start rebuilding their lives.

He suspects emergency response teams will encounter the same situation as they enter other areas that have been subject to intense fighting – when they are able to get there.

In a country that was already difficult to navigate – there are few paved roads and much of South Sudan is prone to floods during the months-long rainy season – the wide-scale destruction from the fighting has only made it more difficult and more expensive to get around.

The ICRC’s Kurtzer said his organisation already anticipates South Sudan “will be one of our most expensive responses in the next year. To a certain extent, that reflects the challenge of operating in this particular environment. But I think it also reflects the scale of the needs.”

The U.N. has already put out an emergency appeal for 209 dollars million just to respond to the immediate crisis and has said the country will require 1.14 billion dollars in assistance over the next year.

And that is only if the situation stays where it currently is. Oxfam Country Director Jose Barahona told IPS that this is not a guarantee.

“We don’t expect that the ceasefire means there’s no more shooting the following day. There are a lot of people with guns out there. All sorts of different groups armed. I think we cannot be naïve.”

It is also unclear whether the loose coalition of anti-government forces are all allied with Machar and feel bound by the agreement.

That could mean continued danger for hundreds of thousands of people across the country and ongoing difficulties for the aid agencies that are trying to help them.

Irina Grigoryan, director of a kindergarten in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR), does not want to lose another generation to war. Credit: Enzo Mangini/IPS

By Enzo Mangini
STEPANAKERT (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Caucasus), Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

Sixty-year-old Irina Grigoryan’s voice is drowned out by the merry noise of 230 children waiting for their lunch. Director of kindergarten N3, located in Stepanakert, capital of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR) deep in the Caucasus, Grigoryan smiles tolerantly at the din.

But the poster hanging on the wall behind her desk – picturing a single dove flying above the words “Give peace a chance” – suggests that all is not well in this misty, mountainous city of 50,000 people, 2,400 kilometres south of Moscow.

In fact, NKR, nestled between Azerbaijan and Armenia, is in the middle of a long-forgotten war.

Two communities, Armenians and Azeris, who lived side by side for many years, are now wrenched apart.
When the USSR was still alive, Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region, but in 1936 the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin handed it over to Azerbaijan, sparking calls for autonomy by the primarily Armenian population.

At the end of the 1980s, amidst the rubble of the crumbling Soviet Union, opposition to Azeri rule grew more vocal, and Stepanakert saw mass demonstrations of citizens demanding that they be allowed to join the Soviet republic of Armenia.

At the end of 1991, the population of 191,000, 75 percent of which was Armenian, proclaimed an independent Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR) – a month later, in January 1992, Baku sent in its troops to quell the secessionist movement.

Today, the two countries remain officially at war, with 150,000 NKR citizens living in a political limbo.

For those who survived the conflict, the precarious situation is a source of daily stress and anxiety, and though nearly 20 years have passed since the declaration of a ceasefire, citizens continue to live under the shadow of war.

“During the war I was teaching at a local gymnasium, and I saw 80 percent of my male students die in the fighting,” Grigoryan tells IPS.

“I do not want this to happen again –that’s why here, in our kindergarten, we do not speak about the war and we do not teach hatred to our pupils,” she says.

But though she does not speak of her memories, they are still fresh in her mind.

With vivid clarity she recalls the 1992 siege of Stepanakert, when Azeri Grad rocket launchers positioned in the hills in the nearby town of Shushi rained missiles down on NKR’s capital every day.

Civilians, quick to learn the rhythms of war, soon discovered that it took soldiers 18 minutes to reload a Grad battery and would use those intervals to move around the city, or steal brief moments of normalcy.

“I remember the mothers and fathers of the children you hear in the next room playing 18-minute-long football matches (during the siege),” Grigoryan says.

She is also active with the Public Diplomacy Institute, a local organisation that works to build bridges between Armenian NGOs and former Azeri inhabitants of NKR who were forced to flee to Azerbaijan in their tens of thousands during the war.

Lamenting that “two communities, Armenians and Azeris, who lived side by side for many years” are now wrenched apart, she hopes to build ties between them, through direct dialogue among people and peace activists on both sides.

Part of Grigoryan’s work entails “explaining” to her fellow countrymen that if they want peace, they must be prepared to make sacrifices, including territorial and political concessions to Azeris, like giving up the buffer zone beyond the NKR border and allowing Azeri refugees to return.

“We do not want to lose another generation to war,” she added, referring to the skirmishes that constantly erupt along the ceasefire line, and threats issued periodically from the government in Baku, which suggest that conflict is not far off.

Until 2009, Grigoryan’s cross-border diplomacy between NGOs and peace activists received some support form the international community, including a series of meetings in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and in Moscow, facilitated by the UK-based NGO International Alert.

But then everything slowed down, and the negotiations taking place under the auspices of the Minsk Group, a diplomatic initiative co-chaired by the U.S., Russia and France to mediate between the governments on either side of the Line of Contact, or ceasefire line, reached a stalemate.

Geopolitics hinder chances for peace

Though it boasts everything from a parliament to a ministry of foreign affairs, located just a few paces away from Grigoryan’s kindergarten, NKR has not been recognised at the international level.

Soldiers in the trenches of the 1994 ceasefire line after the Armenian-Azeri war over Nagorno-Kharabakh. Credit: Enzo Mangini/IPS

Azerbaijan does not have any direct contact with NKR, leaving all negotiations to Armenia, which it has labeled the “occupying force” in the region.

NKR Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan says he is “ready to sit at the table with my Azeri colleagues, but the problem is that they are not ready to sit with a member of the NKR government.”

Mirzoyan was appointed several months ago, when the July 2012 elections gave the incumbent president Bako Saghosyan a second term, with 64 percent of the vote.

“We received a clear mandate from our citizens,” Mirzoyan tells IPS: “They want to be free and independent and I am ready to make any concession that is consequent with this goal.”

But what this means on a practical level is far from clear.

NKR authorities blame the Azeri government, led by President Ilham Aliyev, of running an anti-Armenian campaign at the international level and of silencing dissenting voices in its own country.

Experts point to numerous incidents that support this claim, including the case of journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in Azerbaijan for his investigations on the Khojaly massacre, which cast doubt on the official Azeri version of the events. Faullayev was eventually pardoned in May 2011.

Experts like Richard Giragosian, head of the Regional Studies Centre, an independent think-tank for the southern Caucasus, believe there is a “desperate need for bold and creative political confidence building measures”, such as a universal withdrawal of Armenian troops from some stretches of the buffer zone.

“Armenia and Azerbaijan are stuck in a political stalemate that is hurting both countries,” he told IPS. “This could fuel instability in a region that is essential for the energy security of other countries, like Turkey, but also of Western Europe.”

Two major pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyahn and the Baku-Tiblisi-Supsa, plus the Baku-Tiblisi-Erzurum gas line, pass a few miles away from the NKR border.

Experts fear there could be severe ripple effects if the international community allows the issue to rot.

“Over the years, NKR’s independence has become an issue of national pride and national identity for Armenians and Azeris, thus making it all the more difficult to make concessions to the other side,” Giragosian says.

He believes strong players like Russia – which has sturdy relations with, and military bases in, both countries – ought to play a more prominent mediator role.

The Mar. 21 ceasefire in the battle between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state offers Turkey not only the hope of peace after decades of bloodshed, but poses profound implications for the region at large.

“If this [peace] process is successful, Turkey will be in a position to overcome its most strategic vulnerability” – its roughly 30-year-long fight with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) over greater rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority – claimed Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based research institute Edam.

Under the proposal, announced by jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, the group would pull thousands of its fighters out of Turkey and start disarmament.

Ending the conflict with the PKK, which has cost tens of thousands of lives, “would put Turkey strategically on a very different level and would imply that Turkey is becoming a more assertive, influential and confident player regionally,” Ulgen said.

Any such newfound confidence could help temper not only Turkey’s suspicions of its ethnic minorities, but of its neighbours as well.

Ultimately, the diplomatic peace dividend could extend from Cyprus to the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan, pointed out Attila Yesilada, a political analyst at Global Source Partners, an Istanbul-based research firm.

“If we solve our Kurdish problem, it will serve as a role model,” predicted Yesilada. “If we finally deliver in deeds rather than words.”

Ankara’s European and U.S. allies have often touted Turkey as a model of democratic and economic success for conflict-strewn countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

But the consequences of a more assertive Turkey no longer at war with itself may not only be benign, analysts caution. If Kurdish nationalism is no longer seen as a threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity, it also opens the door to a reconfiguration of its stance toward the large Kurdish populations in neighbouring Iran, Iraq and Syria.

“Ankara would naturally be more disposed to establishing alliances with Kurds in the region, be it in Iraq or Syria,” predicted analyst Ulgen. “In a way, there will be implications for the region, especially if we take into consideration the future of nation states like Iraq and Syria, which is very much uncertain.”

With Ankara’s backing, Turkish companies have been signing direct energy deals with Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government and circumventing Baghdad. For months, a massive energy deal involving the construction of gas and oil pipelines has been in the offing between the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds.

Washington fears such deals fuel Iraqi Kurdish aspirations for independence, but the Turkish government has rejected these misgivings.

The pipeline agreement is expected to be ratified shortly.

The energy deal not only offers potentially billions of dollars in transit fees to Turkey, along with the prospect of discounted energy prices, but also could solve one of its most pressing economic and diplomatic headaches – more secure energy supplies.

“Currently, we are almost completely reliant on Russia and Iran, which are, to say the least, volatile neighbours, if not hostile,” elaborated expert Yesilada. “And both are bound to use gas delivery as a negotiation [tool] in diplomacy.”

But the success of the deal with the Iraqi Kurds is dependent on peace with the PKK, he cautioned. “Unless the current ‘peace process’ reaches fruition, such pipelines would be lame ducks” for PKK attacks, Yesilada said.

In a televised Mar. 27 interview, Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said the PKK is expected to leave Turkey “before the end of summer”, Hürriyet Daily News reported. The PKK, though, has asked for legal guarantees for its fighters’ safe passage into northern Iraq and for the Turkish parliament’s inclusion in the peace process – proposals so far rejected by Ankara.

But if the ceasefire holds, and ends Turkey’s “paranoia” about the Kurds and tensions over their relationship to the Turkish state, “it will help the resolution of other remaining age-old problems,” predicted Cengiz Aktar, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University.

One of the beneficiaries could be neighbouring Armenia, Aktar argues. Diplomatic relations between the two countries broke off in 1993 amidst the war between Turkish ally Azerbaijan and Armenia over the breakaway territory of Nagorno Karabakh. A recent attempt at reconciliation between Ankara and Yerevan has stalled, with both sides blaming the other.

Nonetheless, even with the centenary of Ottoman Turkey’s 1915 massacre of ethnic Armenians approaching, “a Turkey at peace with itself . . . might be tempted to go ahead with Armenia,” Aktar reasoned. As yet, Yerevan has not commented on the PKK ceasefire.

And while the potential fruits of peace with the PKK are undoubtedly considerable for Ankara, neighbouring rivals may interpret them differently, warns analyst Ulgen.

“If Turkey becomes a stronger and assertive player in the region, it will be a serious disadvantage for the countries that are at odds with Turkey in terms of regional objectives,” he said. “That can be Syria, that can be Iraq, that can be Iran. [T]hese countries might want to prevent this rapprochement from happening.”

Whether that prediction will prove to be the case remains to be seen in the months to come.

*Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A PKK soldier stands in front of a crowd gathered in the Qandil mountains to hear the long-awaited message of peace from Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

It was only seven in the morning when Mohamed Abdi spread out a rug a few metres away from an artillery crater, up in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq. This Iraqi Kurd from Suleimaniyah, 260 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, was ready to celebrate the Newroz – the Kurdish and Persian New Year – along with his family.

They had travelled here for what promised to be the most special Newroz festival in years — not only for its setting in these imposing snow-capped mountains but for bringing a long-awaited message from Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“Last year there were much less people here, probably because of a fear of bombs. Maybe it’s crowded because we are talking about peace this time,” this former ‘peshmerga’, an Iraqi Kurdish soldier, told IPS.

The Abdis were far from the only family who had risen so early. In fact, over a hundred PKK guerrillas were struggling to manage the unusually busy traffic as thousands of Kurds in hundreds of vans and minibuses crawled along the winding road up to this PKK stronghold.

For almost three decades, the PKK has been fighting the Turkish government in Ankara, in a deadly struggle for language rights and constitutional recognition for the country’s 15 million Kurds that has claimed over 40,000 lives and destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border.

Between 30 and 40 million Kurds are today divided by the borders of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. But on Thursday, those borders seemed to melt away as Kurds from various regions converged here, prepared to wait several hours to hear news of a ceasefire.

Starred PKK flags mingled with the yellow and green flags of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the dominant coalitions in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

The stage set up for musical performances, speeches, and even small theatre sketches attracted most of the attention. Blown-up images of the most prominent deceased PKK fighters – including the three Kurdish female activists murdered in Paris in January — stood out starkly against the snowy peaks, rising above a sea of heads and thousands of waving flags.

People lined up to have their pictures taken next to huge portraits of the Kurdish leader, imprisoned since 1999; food and tea was served and books were sold from makeshift stalls. Many also took the chance to greet long-lost friends and relatives.

Having driven up here from Van, 920 kilometres east of Ankara, Gulistan hugged her younger brother for the first time since he joined the PKK four years ago.

“We have seven family members in the PKK and we are all very proud of them,” claimed their father Muhamed.

Three Kurds queued next to them to get a picture with the young fighter, a request that was made of each and every guerrilla present that day.

“We have driven from Erbil (the administrative capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, 320 kilometres away from Baghdad) to celebrate Newroz with our brothers from the north,” Nashuan, a young Iraqi Kurd, told IPS.

Ayub Salahadin, a taxi driver from Suleimaniya, echoed his sentiments.

“The PKK today reminds us Iraqi Kurds of what we were just twenty years ago. We all feel some kind of nostalgia when we see these young guys,” he told IPS, referring to the decades-long guerrilla war that Iraqi Kurds fought against Saddam Hussein’s regime. That conflict ended only after the Kurds started building up their own autonomous region in 1991, after the First Gulf War.

Uncertain future

Ocalan’s message was officially read out by leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s biggest Kurdish city, located about 670 kilometres southeast of Ankara. At two o’clock the message reached the roughly 8,000 people gathered in Qandil.

According to the ceasefire declaration, “The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders…It’s not the end. It’s the start of a new era.”

PKK Chief Leader Murat Karayilan confirmed the statement in a broadcasted message late Thursday afternoon.

Although the mood in the mountains was joyful, many of the older generation struck a wary tone when discussing the future.

“It’s not just us who need to make a move towards peace — Turkey should do her part too,” explained Saharestan, a veteran fighter from Afrin, a Kurdish town in the north of Syria.

Years of struggle in the mountains have already turned this middle-aged woman’s hair completely white; a seasoned fighter, she is hesitant to express optimism, claiming that Turkey has fooled the Kurds  “too often” in the past.

If negotiations remain on track, Saharestan and her comrades will cease armed activities in Turkey and withdraw definitively to these mountains.

In a clear move toward dialogue, the PKK handed over eight prisoners – six soldiers, a policeman and a civil servant – to Ankara on Mar. 13.

But unsettled issues and simmering tensions suggest the road to peace will not be smooth.

“I don’t feel too optimistic,” confessed Mahmud, an Iranian Kurdish fighter. “It’s mandatory that Apo (a popular nickname for Ocalan) is released from prison, in order to finally reach a peace agreement between the two parties,” he stressed.

In fact, prudence seemed to be the most popular sentiment among the guerrillas.

“We cannot comment on anything until we have examined in depth Ocalan’s message,” PKK Press Liaison Roj Welat told IPS from a tent adjacent to the stage.

“Nonetheless, it is obvious to everybody that Turkish policy in the Middle East has failed. Besides, the whole region has been shaken by a wave of revolts and unrest for the last two years — these two factors shall definitely play a key role in Ankara’s will for peace.”

(END)

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Palestinian fishers could go out to sea without fear of being attacked, arrested or killed. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Eva Bartlett
GAZA CITY, Dec 17 2012 (IPS)

Shortly after Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21, the Israeli navy abducted 30 Palestinian fishers from Gaza’s waters, destroyed and sank a Palestinian fishing vessel, and confiscated nine fishing boats in the space of four days.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that fourteen fishers from a single family, stationed just three nautical miles from the coast of the Gaza Strip, were all arrested on Dec. 1.

Some fishers were only two miles off Gaza’s coast when they were attacked with machine gun fire and arrested by the Israeli Navy. Ranging from the ages of 14 to 52, the majority in their late teens and early twenties, these fishers hail from some of Gaza’s poorest families.

According to Mifleh Abu Riyala, a representative of the General Syndicate of Marine Fishers, the ceasefire has made no difference to Palestinian fishers.

Palestinians are allowed, under the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “to fish six miles out”, he told IPS, “but the Israeli gunboats still attack us, whether we are six or three miles out.”

The Oslo accords granted Palestinian fishers the right to fish twenty nautical miles out at sea, a right the Israeli navy has unilaterally vetoed, downsizing the fishing “limits” since the 1990s to a mere three miles, until this past November’s ceasefire allowed a slight increase, to six nautical miles.

“But there are no fish at six miles, the sea floor is still sandy. It is only after seven miles out that the sea floor becomes rocky and the fish are plentiful,” Abu Riyala stressed.

“It is our sea, in order to live we must be able to access it.”

Mohammed Baker (70) has been fishing for half a century. He remembers the days when Gaza’s sea was open to Palestinian fishers, and when there was no fear of being attacked, arrested or killed by the Israeli navy.

Two of his sons, Amar (34) and Omar (21), were among the 14 fishers attacked by Israeli gunboats on Dec 1. The Israeli navy has still not returned their “hassaka” (a small fishing boat).

Like many of Gaza City’s fishers, the Bakers live in the Beach Camp, one of the Strip’s most overcrowded refugee camps.

Amar, married with six children, was still being held by Israeli authorities on Dec. 5 when his father, Mohammed, recounted the events of that fateful day to IPS.

“Israeli gunboats and smaller zodiacs surrounded my sons’ hassaka and made them strip naked, jump into the sea, and swim to one of the Israeli boats,” Mohammed told IPS.

“They put a bag on Amar’s head and took him to Ashdod. Amar has asthma, I’m very worried about his health.” Mohammed has still not been able to speak with his son.

Four days after Amar’s abduction, Mohammed went to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose work includes visiting and monitoring Palestinian prisoners’ conditions in Israeli jails and detention centres.

“They told me Amar is forbidden from talking with anyone. He is under interrogation,” Mohammed said.

Amar now stands accused of “being part of the Palestinian resistance”, a charge based on his previous job of making coffee and tea for Hamas officers.

“My son was a ‘kitchen boy’. People who work for the government are still civilians,” Mohammed stressed, echoing the tenets of international humanitarian law.

Stripped of their only boat and a member of their family, the Bakers face even more dire circumstances than ever.

“There is no ceasefire for fishers. We’re ordinary people, we work to earn just 30 or 40 shekels (seven to 10 dollars) per day to feed our families,” Mohammed lamented.

Khadr Baker (20) was lucky that he was not killed during an encounter with the Israeli navy on Nov. 28, during which his boat was gunned down as punishment for fishing just over three miles from the Beach Camp coast.

His father, Jamal Baker (50), spoke to IPS about Khadr’s arrest, explaining that Israeli gunboats appeared without warning and began firing at close range on Khadr’s small motorboat.

“The Israelis ordered the four fishers on Khadr’s hassaka to strip and jump into the sea, which is extremely cold this time of year,” Jamal told IPS.

“They made Khadr tread water for half an hour, and kept machine gunning around him,” said Jamal. The hassaka eventually caught fire and exploded, sinking soon after.

“The Israelis took Khadr on their boat, handcuffed him naked, and beat and interrogated him for three hours, accusing him of working with the Palestinian resistance,” the boy’s father told IPS.

Without their boat, the family of ten has no income. “I sold my nets so that we can eat,” Jamal said simply.

PCHR reported other attacks on fishers that day: in one case, the navy attacked and abducted five fishers from the al-Hessi family, damaging – and eventually confiscating – the large fishing trawler they were on. The boat has not yet been returned.

In February 2009, Rafiq Abu Riyala, then 23, was shot in his back – by an Israeli soldier standing less than 20 metres away – with a dum-dum bullet, which explodes on impact.

The hassaka fisher was only two miles off Gaza’s coast when attacked. One of two breadwinners in his family, Rafiq Abu Riyala cannot now fish in cold weather. “The shrapnel bits in my back make it too painful when it is cold out,” he told IPS.

Mahar Abu Amia (40) has sixteen people to provide for. “My wife fishes also,” he told IPS. “But we have no chance: we reach six miles and they shoot, we go only three miles and they shoot. What is this ceasefire? It means nothing for us.”

(END)

A building in Gaza housing media offices bombed by the Israelis. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY, Nov 23 2012 (IPS)

The ceasefire has brought extremities in Gaza. In the morning the coastal territory woke up bashed and bloody from one of Israel’s most intensive nights of bombardment since a week’s tit for tat violence broke out between Hamas and Israel. By late morning the coastal strip was ghostly quiet, gripped with fear as people stayed indoors awaiting the inevitable retaliation from Israel for a bus bombing carried out in Tel Aviv by Palestinian extremists. But as night fell thousands of Gazans took to the streets in joyful celebration in what they see as victory over Israel.

Earlier on Wednesday dull thuds and repetitive booms could be heard along the Rafah border between Egypt’s Sinai and Gaza. IPS witnessed a fleet of Egyptian ambulances rushing into Gaza to ferry Palestinian wounded back to Egypt.

Nervous Palestinian border guards forced a group of incoming journalists to sign an indemnity form for their own safety following a series of attacks by the Israelis on several media buildings and vehicles, which left several journalists dead and more wounded.

The sun was setting and within hours the Gaza strip would be dark, a hazardous time when most of Israel’s attacks take place. Through the half hour drive from the south of the strip to the north, approximately 27km, Israeli naval vessels stationed off Gaza were continually shelling the territory while fighter jets bombed from above.

It was too dangerous to take the coastal road as it was in clear sight of the naval frigates. The other main road to Gaza city passed a number of refugee camps. Nusseirat and Brej camps were bombed shortly before this IPS correspondent passed them by. Rising plumes of black smoke were visible.

Only a few other cars risked travelling along the road. Gaza’s 1.7 million inhabitants were nowhere to be seen, and shops and businesses were closed. Police posts were empty, and apart from small groups of young men assembling on street corners, the coastal enclave was deserted.

The atmosphere of uncertainty and fear was palpable as the taxi stopped periodically to allow journalists to take photos of bombed buildings, including police stations, government institutions and ordinary homes.

“We don’t expect to sleep tonight. We are waiting strong retaliation for the bus bombing,” Ihab Afifi, a ministry of interior employee told IPS. But the bloody revenge did not come, following a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel brokered by the Egyptians and the Americans.

As news of the Hudna or ceasefire spread, overjoyed Gazans took to the streets to celebrate. Women ululated, children waved flags and young men handed out sweets and punctured the night air with celebratory gunfire. Tooting cars weaved between thousands of marching Gazans.

There was a sense of achievement and unity, with flags from all political parties, including Fatah and Hamas lending colour to the celebrations.

“This is unlike the ending of the last war with Israel from December 2008 to January 2009. Nobody celebrated then. This time Israel called the ceasefire and they will not be able to dictate terms to us like before. We have proven that we can exact a price both militarily and politically from the Israelis. Our rockets reached all the way to Tel Aviv. The Israelis too know what is feels like to be afraid,” Muhammad Abu Qeef celebrating on the street told IPS.

For the first time in days Palestinian fighters armed and in uniform came out of hiding. They had gone underground as Israel hunted down targets associated with Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

The feeling of no longer being under Israel’s boot has significantly contributed to Palestinians’ new found confidence, however tentative, following what they see as victory in the latest conflict. Many Israelis are furious with their leadership and what they see as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s capitulation to Hamas.

Israelis believe the ceasefire came too soon and that the job of dealing with Hamas was left unfinished. Israelis took to the streets in Sderot, a southern Israeli town which bore the brunt of rocket attacks from Gaza, protesting against Netanyahu.

However, some analysts have urged caution, concluding that the conditions of the current ceasefire are not too different from the previous ceasefire which ended Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009. Other political commentators are of the view that it is only a matter of time before this current truce is once again broken.

However, what is undisputed is that Israel not only failed to break Hamas, but left the organisation politically stronger, still in possession of significant arms caches, and with growing regional support. (END)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will now need an Iron Dome to protect him from his opponents. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Nov 21 2012 (IPS)

Ending Israel’s first military operation since the Arab Spring changed the Middle East depended on both the diplomatic blitz exerted on Israel and Hamas and the extent of the military blows exchanged between them. As for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the ceasefire must live at least until his re-election.

Whereas he called the shots when initiating the ‘Pillar of Defence’ operation last Wednesday, Netanyahu is fully aware that Hamas will now be calling the shots as far as the ceasefire is concerned.

A “non paper” allowing room for Israeli manoeuvring was the preferred way out of a potentially hazardous ground operation into Gaza, if only because Netanyahu learned the lessons of the “Cast Lead” assault (2008-9) on Hamas in Gaza which ended with Israel accused of “war crimes” and a 43-paragraph agreement that was never respected.

The new agreement is informal, and structured along two phases.

First, “quiet versus quiet” is to be enforced – an immediate cessation of rockets attacks, attacks on Israeli civilians and troops on the Gaza border, and attacks from Sinai by Palestinian guerrillas. Hamas must enforce the understanding on all Palestinian factions.

In exchange, Israel simultaneously stops bombing Gaza as well as targeting Palestinian militants, but not preventive actions against potential attacks against Israelis initiated from the occupied West Bank.

While Phase One deals with implementing the ceasefire and testing its effectiveness, Phase Two includes talks for a longer-term agreement involving guarantees from Egypt and the U.S.

But the prospect of a truce is even more burdened by the many conflicting interests and demands of the many parties involved in the ceasefire’s monitoring effort.

Israel will insist on guarantees that Egypt blocks the flow of smuggled weapons from Sinai into Gaza through underground tunnels. Egypt has had difficulty policing Sinai – partly because President Muhammad Mursi’s Islamic government doesn’t want to be perceived as Israel’s police force.

While it’s got no influence on Egypt’s readiness to ease its blockade on the Gaza Strip by opening the Rafah border crossing to Gazans and goods, Israel will reject the Hamas demand that it eases its navy blockade which, it argues, stops weapons entering Gaza. But it will alleviate its already insubstantial ground blockade.

Israel’s military operation is over, and all in all, very little has changed.

Netanyahu has adopted the prescription offered by a protagonist of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

To change a thing or two so as to leave the situation as is, Netanyahu has, prudently yet determinedly all through his four-year tenure, used a strategy of sceptical nihilism towards the Palestinians.

Israeli officials close to him explain his disbelief and wavering attitude regarding peace negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by invoking the strengthening of Hamas as a result of the Middle East becoming fundamentally Islamist, and the unresolved schism between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and its arch-rival Hamas in Gaza.

Indirectly, letting Hamas become a growing force in the West Bank enables the Right under Netanyahu to oppose any change in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Hamas meanwhile has grown more popular than Abbas, as demonstrations in its support throughout the occupied West Bank show.

The Islamist movement can boast its role at the vanguard of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. After all, it’s managed to lob homemade long-range M35 rockets onto Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Hamas can also display political gains. During the eight-day operation, Hamas was courted by Egypt, Tunisia, Qatar, and Turkey. A prime minister, foreign ministers, all came to Gaza, braving Israel’s military siege.

The Netanyahu operation has rendered a major plank of Abbas’s strategy in absence of peace talks irrelevant – his bid to have the UN General Assembly endorse Palestine as a non-member state on Nov. 29.

Exploiting the fear factor amongst Israelis of a stronger Hamas in Gaza coupled with stronger support for Hamas in the West Bank is a potent electoral card for the incumbent Prime Minister.

Yet, if rocket fire resumes while the tentative ceasefire is enforced, Netanyahu might risk his January re-election – especially as the one-million Israelis residing in the south of the country, tired of living under constant shelling, hope for a solution that maintains quiet once and for all.

For if Netanyahu didn’t factor in the election campaign when he launched his military campaign, his prospective re-election was definitely an important factor to end it.

The “Iron Dome” defence system has certainly proven effective in intercepting rocket attacks from Gaza. Now’s the time for Netanyahu to wish he had a political “Iron Dome” umbrella against attacks from his opposition for having maintained things as they are by letting the situation worsen in the West Bank and Gaza.

A refugee camp in Mae Sot, a town on the Thai-Burma border where peace talks are being held. Credit: Mikhail Esteves/CC-BY-2.0

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MAE SOT, Thailand, Aug 3 2012 (IPS)

In a country where talk of a ceasefire brings representatives from 11 different armed ethnic groups to the table, Myanmar’s chief peace negotiator, Railway Minister Aung Min, is experimenting with an unusual solution to decades of separatist struggles.

Since launching his ceasefire initiative in September last year, the minister has traveled around Myanmar (also known as Burma) and neighbouring countries without so much as a nod to the possible role of foreign observers or international peace facilitators.

“It is unlikely that the government wants third parties at this stage of ceasefire talks and we are okay with this arrangement for now,” Zipporah Sein, the 57-year-old general secretary and first female leader of the separatist Karen National Union (KNU), told IPS during an interview in the group’s office on the edge of town.

“This is part of the trust-building stage that will lead to political and peace talks.”

A formal round of talks that was held in Myanmar last April only allowed three foreigners, including a British and United States diplomat, to witness the negotiations as observers, Sein revealed.

Mae Sot, a town along the Thai-Myanmar border that Aung Min has visited three times in the past year, is a microcosm of the specific challenges of peace negotiations in Myanmar between not just two but multiple ethnic groups, each with their own specific concerns.

For the past two decades this town has been home to the country’s majority Burman community as well as a haven for refugees, mostly from the Karen State, fleeing ethnic violence and persecution.

The ‘Myanmar style’ of peacemaking – one that rejects foreign intervention – is a departure from the customary path similar talks have followed in other Asian countries, where foreign governments or international organisations were recognised as neutral third-parties, tasked with liaising between governments and armed combatants who have been locked in decades-long conflicts.

For instance, Malaysia is currently serving as a facilitator in ongoing peace talks between the Philippines government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Negotiators led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari helped establish the August 2005 peace agreement between the Indonesian government and the separatist Islamic Free Aceh Movement. And Norway enjoyed a prominent role as the official go-between during the failed peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the now-defeated Tamil Tiger rebels over a decade ago.

But Aung Min’s challenge is undoubtedly more complex than most other conflicts, and his divergent approach appears to be reaping some rewards.

Between September 2011 and April 2012, his talks have secured ceasefire agreements with 11 armed ethnic groups. Among these accomplishments was the January breakthrough with the KNU, which has been involved in Asia’s longest-running separatist struggle, spanning 60 years.

Still, Sein did not rule out a shift to accommodate an official, independent peace facilitator as the current talks move towards thornier issues, such as the future of the armed Karen forces and greater autonomy in the Karen State.

“We may need a neutral third party when it comes to discussing the political and development issues in the Karen State,” Sein told IPS. “We are for a federal system with greater rights for ethnic groups, so they can live and participate in a meaningful way.”

Win Min, a Myanmar national security expert, does not believe Aung Min’s is a strategy ironed out by insiders from President Thein Sein’s reformist administration, such as the former major general who specialised as an intelligence operative; rather, he is of the opinion that the new approach stems from Aung Min’s relative inexperience and the fact that he was thrust into a role for which he had no training.

As a result, the latter is operating through a model that reflects “a hint of Burmese pride,” Win Min told IPS.

“Aung Min was stepping into uncharted waters when he was given the role of peace negotiator,” he said. “He had to find his way with each of the ceasefire talks. It was unscripted, with no foreign third party to give directions.”

And the further he went down this road “the more confidence he gained”, according to Win Min. “His modest and friendly personality, and a willingness to listen and accommodate different views, also (lubricated) the process.”

Win Min pointed to a streak of honour that still prevails in the Southeast Asian nation gradually emerging from 50 years of military dictatorships.

“Burmese have that sense of pride that we do not want to be subject to international pressure; to say we can do things ourselves,” said the Harvard-trained academic.

Myanmar Egress, a prominent local NGO, bolstered this attitude when it stepped in to help establish contact between the government and its adversaries from the ethnic minorities.

The move also enabled the Thein Sein administration to turn down offers made by many respected international personalities and organisations to shoulder the role of neutral peace facilitators, including former Finnish President Ahtisaari and The Elders, an independent group of global leaders led by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

This streak of national pride does not, however, extend to the economic realm. Myanmar has accepted economic support to strengthen its fledgling peace process from the Peace Donor Support Group (PDSG), led by Norway and supported by Australia, the European Union, Britain and the World Bank, all of which have pledged to pour millions of dollars into relief and rehabilitation work in areas where the guns have fallen silent following the ceasefire talks.

That the ceasefire agreements have held so far reflects a shift in thinking from previous regimes’ attempts to end conflicts with ethnic separatists.

“The position the government is taking in relation to the ethnic groups is one of equality,” Paul Keenan, research coordinator at the Burma Centre for Ethnic Studies, based in the northern Thai town of Chiang Mai, told IPS.

“Previously, the government dictated terms to the armed groups and they had to give up their weapons before talks, because security was the priority, not peace and equality,” he added. “But the atmosphere is completely different now. And Aung Min wants to talk to everyone, which is new.”

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