World AIDS Day: Refugee agency chief pledges to keep HIV and AIDS a priority

Rocking in Nepal: A band on stage at the World AIDS Day concert in Damak.

As the world marked World Aids Day on Tuesday, the UN refugee agency’s chief, António Guterres, revealed that UNHCR had expanded its global HIV and AIDS interventions.

Guterres, while reiterating his personal commitment to keeping HIV and AIDS a priority for UNHCR, also stressed that his agency would continue to advocate for the abolishment of laws discriminating against those with HIV.

In an annual message to staff, the High Commissioner noted: “We now have activities in more than 75 countries, and 75 percent of refugees have access to anti-retroviral therapy when it is available to surrounding host country nationals, whereas 63 percent have access to prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes (PMTCT).”

He continued that in southern Africa, the epicentre of the AIDS epidemic, “We have 100 percent coverage for voluntary counselling and testing, PMTCT and anti-retroviral therapy for refugees.” In 2005, UNHCR only had HIV/AIDS programmes in Africa and Asia; it has since expanded these to the Americas and Eastern Europe.

Guterres said UNHCR’s goal was to ensure that all people of concern to the agency had access to these essential services. “Furthermore, the HIV and AIDS response for internally displaced persons and for high risk groups among UNHCR’s persons of concern needs strengthening,” he said.

The High Commissioner also pledged to help staff members affected by HIV and AIDS. “More needs to be done to combat stigma and to support those staff members who live with HIV. We are committed to reaching the 10 UN minimum standards on HIV in the workplace by 2011, so that every staff member has an active knowledge about HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment and related rights within the UN system,” he said.

“World AIDS Day provides each of us with an opportunity to renew our resolve to fight the epidemic both in our personal and professional lives and I encourage us all to do exactly that,” Guterres concluded.

UNHCR is holding a wide range of activities at Geneva headquarters and in field offices and camps for the forcibly displaced around the world. A banner of a large red ribbon, symbolizing AIDS awareness, was hanging from the façade of the headquarters building, where staff could pick up literature and educational material on HIV and AIDS as well as purchase silk and cotton clothing items made by people living with HIV in Thailand.

Among overseas events held to mark World Aids Day, was an awareness-raising concert for refugees and local communities in eastern Nepal. The event, held at a school in Damak with support from FC Barcelona, featured a wide range of music, including Nepali folk, raga, rock, funk, blues and jazz.

Source: UNHCR

Perspectives on the Swedish refugee asylum system

Igor Rankovic came to Sweden from former Yugoslavia as a refugee in 1993

They fled because of war, tyranny or hunger. When 2006 turned into 2007, almost 33 million people were refugees around the world, according to the Church of Sweden. Some of them sought asylum in Sweden, where a steady stream of applications keeps coming in.

“I remember this feeling of waiting for something that we did not know what it would be,” says Igor Rankovic, who came to Sweden as a 22-year-old university student in 1993.

Rankovic fled a Yugoslavia torn apart by war and came to Ystad in southern Sweden by boat. Talking of the time he was forced to become a refugee, he says: “People are dying, people are disappearing. In order to survive you adapt, the extreme becomes normal.”

Dag Bonke with the Swedish Migration Board says that the asylum applications are like a world map. Asylum peaked in the early 1980s with about 80,000 applicants, many then came due to the civil war in former Yugoslavia, Bonke says.

Officials estimate that about 20,000 people have sought asylum in Sweden in 2009. That is about half of the number of refugees arriving in 2007. Now most asylum seekers are from Iraq, but more and more of these applications are denied, Bonke says and explains that the decisions are made based on the Geneva Convention and the repercussions for an individual to return home.

“It’s very hard for the individual [asylum seeker] but it is also hard on case managers and police,” he says and points out that it is a hard task to explain to sometimes desperate people that according to the rules, he or she cannot stay in Sweden.

At the Migration Board, regular counselling sessions are held and within the police, debriefing is available if requested, or deemed necessary, officials say.

It can be the local police, the Swedish Prison and Probation System or the Swedish Border Patrol that then gets the assignment to enforce the deportation.

This year the Swedish Border Patrol will return about 2,000 asylum seekers to their original countries, officers say. And, there are an estimated 8,700 asylum seekers, who got their application denied, currently living illegally in Sweden.

Detective Superintendent, Per-Uno Johansson, who heads the investigation unit of the border police in Stockholm, says their job is also to escort people who refuse to return home. “There can be a lot of emotions involved,” he says. “But we try to do it with dignity and respect.”

No matter how it’s done, deportation is not a positive thing, and going through the asylum process is hard, mentally, asylum seeker Igor Rankovic says.

He remembers a vivid incident at one of the refugee camps, when the wait had gotten to a family father. “He just attacked this guy with a fork, he had a nervous breakdown,” Rankovic says. “And there were more such situations, especially with those who had families.”

Source: Sveriges Radio International

Swiss ban mosque minarets in surprise vote

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population.

Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland’s international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations and wealthy investors who bank, travel and shop there.

“The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights,” said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was “grief and deep disappointment.”

Some 2.67 million people voted 57.5 to 42.5 percent in favor of the referendum by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, which labeled minarets as symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation. Voters in only four of the 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, granting the double approval that makes it part of the Swiss constitution.

Muslims comprise about 6 percent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million people. Many are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and fewer than 13 percent practice their religion, the government says. Swiss mosques have not traditionally broadcast the call to prayer outside their own buildings.

The sponsors of the initiative said the growing Muslim population was straining the country “because Muslims don’t just practice religion. They increasingly make political and legal demands.”

Local officials and rights defenders objected to campaign posters showing minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman.

“The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls,” the sponsors said. They noted that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has compared mosques to Islam’s military barracks and called “the minarets our bayonets.”

Anxieties about growing Muslim minorities have rippled across Europe in recent years, leading to legal changes in some countries. There have been French moves to ban the full-length body covering known as the burqa. Some German states have introduced bans on head scarves for Muslim women teaching in public schools. Mosques and minaret construction projects in Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Germany and Slovenia have been met by protests.

But the Swiss ban in minarets, sponsored by the country’s largest political party, was one of the most extreme reactions.

“It’s a sad day for freedom of religion,” said Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organization. “A constitutional amendment that’s targeted towards one religious community is discriminatory and abhorrent.”

He said he was concerned the decision could have reverberations in other European countries.

Amnesty International said the vote violated freedom of religion and would probably be overturned by the Swiss supreme court or the European Court of Human Rights.

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government spoke out strongly against the initiative but the government said it accepted the vote and would impose an immediate ban on minaret construction.

It said that “Muslims in Switzerland are able to practice their religion alone or in community with others, and live according to their beliefs just as before.”

It took the unusual step of issuing its press release in Arabic as well as German, French, Italian and English.

The results were in stark contrast to opinion polls, last taken 10 days ago, that showed 37 percent supporting the proposal. Experts said before the vote that they feared Swiss had pretended during the polling that they opposed the ban because they didn’t want to appear intolerant.

“The sponsors of the ban have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way,” said Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Zurich. “Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore.”

The People’s Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.

The four Swiss minarets now standing are unaffected by the amendment, which was turned down only in the urban French-speaking cantons of Geneva, Vaud and Neuchatel as well as the German-speaking city of Basel.

Geneva’s main mosque was vandalized Thursday when someone threw a pot of pink paint at the entrance. Earlier this month, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin’s call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building.

Source: The Associated Press

Iraqi refugees build new lives in Germany

The EU has pledged to host 10,000 Iraqi refugees

It is cold, the language is foreign, and there are many unfamiliar rules. For the approximately 1,800 Iraqi refugees in Germany, while it is not always easy to feel at home, many see their futures here.

After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, around two million Iraqis fled to neighboring Syria and Jordan, where many lived in extreme poverty. In November 2008, the EU’s interior minister announced the bloc would take in up to 10,000 of those Iraqis in need of protection as part of efforts to alleviate the refugee crisis.

Germany currently hosts 1,800 Iraqi refugees and has pledged to take in as many as 2,500 under the EU deal.

Challenges in the classroom
One-third of the Iraqis here are under the age of sixteen – among them, twelve-year-old Ahmed from Baghdad.

He arrives on time to German class, as he wants to improve his language skills as quickly as possible. His goal is to make the most of his new life, and he pushes himself hard. The class takes place in a small and simple room with wooden tables and plastic chairs in blue, yellow and orange.

One-third of Germany's 1,800 Iraqi refugees are under the age of sixteen

In addition to Ahmed, there are seven other children between the ages of ten and fifteen who attend. They receive thirteen hours of extra class time per week outside of their regular school schedule – but they still don’t understand much and are still at a basic level. Today, the students are learning how to write the word “mama.”

The class is not only a challenge for the students, but also for the teacher, who doesn’t speak a word of Arabic. The children are indeed willing to learn, she said, but they can also be unruly.

“This is understandable. We don’t know what these children have been through in their lives so far,” she says.

Peace in Germany
After class, Ahmed goes straight home. He lives with his mother and two younger sisters in the so-called “Transitional Home for Refugees.” Four Iraqi families live in the four-story house.

Ahmed runs up the dirty staircase to the second floor and knocks on the door of apartment number 22. Behind it is the one room his family members have all shared since they came to Germany six weeks ago.

“In Iraq it was very difficult. We came to Germany to have a better life – without injustice and oppression. In Iraq we lived in a constant state of fear and stress. Here in Germany, peace and order rules. I wish for peace for all the children who still live in Iraq,” says Ahmed, visibly content to be in Germany.

Memories of death and violence
Flowers sit on the window sill – Ahmed’s mother has made a great effort to make their home more beautiful. She is in her mid-thirties and wears a plain headscarf.

Around half of the Iraqi refugees are Christian

“Everything is in order here,” she says.

But previously, everything was not in order. Memories from their last days in Iraq keep coming back up.

“They threatened me and my children because I worked for an American firm in the Green Zone in Baghdad. They pushed my son and punched out two of his teeth,” she says.

They threatened to kill the family if they didn’t leave of Iraq.

Ahmed’s mother takes out a photo showing an overturned desk chair and a hole in the ceiling after an attack on her office. Shiite militias had also attacked people in a residential neighborhood with baseball bats – and abducted twenty-five of them. Two of Ahmed’s uncles were shot.

Ahmed also has bad memories from his homeland. He and other people were shot at as they tried to buy bread.

“A bullet flew by and just narrowly missed my face,” he says, falling silent.

Father and grandparents left behind
Ahmed’s family fled to Syria in 2006 where they applied for asylum at the UN refugee agency. After a long wait they finally received an answer – Germany would take them. Refugees from Iraq receive a three-year residence and work permit.

Millions of Iraqis have fled to Syria and Jordan

Around half of the refugees are Christian. Others, like Ahmed’s neighbors, belong to the religious Mandaean minority, whose beliefs contain elements of Judaism, Christianity and Gnosticism.

When Ahmed remembers his first day in Germany, he begins to cry. He thinks of his father and grandparents who had to stay behind in Syria. But then he remembers what he likes about Germany.

“In Germany, the teachers speak politely to the students. They respect them and make a big effort. In Iraq, children were hit. Here it is different and I feel happy.”

And finally, Ahmed can play football again – his passion. On TV and on the Internet he can follow his favorite club, FC Barcelona.

Ahmed and his sisters also speak to their father almost every day over the computer. They tell him that Germany is cold; that it is wonderful to take the streetcar; and they report on their trip to the zoo.

And they always ask him the same question – when will you get here?

Source: DW-World

West African refugee makes new home in Bay Area

Kai Massaquoi is seen here at the basketball courts at James Logan High School, were he spends time playing hoops, in Union City, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009. Massaquoi a refugee from Guinea witnessed family members executed, spent years living in rehab clinics and camps before his family moved to California six years ago. Massaquoi recently graduated from James Logan High School. (Photo: Anda Chu/Staff)

There are many things about Gbessaykai Massaquoi that distinguish him from his friends. One is the twangy music he switches to when they get out of the car.

No one understands why this West African refugee, who has survived war and peril, likes country music band Rascal Flatts.

“We listen to hip-hop,” Massaquoi says. “Then, when they leave, I listen to country music. It’s soft. It calms you down. The sound, the melodies of it, just keep you going.”

American country songs distract him from violent memories and daily poverty. The music and other pastimes — basketball games each evening, long hikes through the trails above Hayward — are salves.

“All that stuff, it keeps me busy, stops me from thinking about the past,” he said.

Massaquoi, who goes by the nickname Kai, was a young boy when armed men stormed his family’s home in Monrovia, the Liberian capital that in 1996 was ravaged by chaos and urban slaughter.

“They asked, ‘Where’s Mr. Massaquoi?’ My stepmom said, ‘He’s not here.’ They said, ‘We came to kill him.’”‰”

Born in Guinea to parents who fled from conflict in neighboring Liberia, his father had been a driver for Samuel Doe, the Liberian president who was executed by rebels in September 1990 — two months before Kai was born.

That made his family a target as fighters allied with rebel warlord Charles Taylor waged a brutal war to take over the country. Uncomfortable in Guinea, which had been flooded with refugees from years of bloodshed in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the family returned to Liberia because they thought they would be safe. They were wrong.

Assailants ordered the oldest brother to rape his stepmother — right now, they demanded, in full view of everyone. The brother refused and was shot dead on the spot.

Massaquoi, then 5, remembers sprinting outside and toward an uncle’s nearby home as bullets fired in his direction. It is one terrifying memory of many.

“I’m surprised that I’m here, that I actually made it to America,” said Massaquoi, who turned 19 this week.

Massaquoi will not share some stories, but he will say this: Along with witnessing the war, he was recruited to become a part of it.

“It was about tribalism, it was about religion,” he said. “Most kids, they join the rebels for revenge. ‘You killed my mom, you killed my dad, so now I’m going to kill you.’ That’s why the war kept going on for 14, 15 years. Just too much blood. Too much.”

Desperation and abductions also pressed thousands of boys to join the fight, wandering in bands and factions — some of them sponsored by government leaders — that battled throughout the northeastern counties of Liberia and across the forested border with Guinea.

“His story is not the only one in the U.S. and I would wager not even the only one in Oakland,” said P.W. Singer, an author and researcher with the nonprofit Brookings Institution. “You’re talking about a global phenomena. Let’s put it this way: There are roughly 300,000 active child combatants in the world.”

Burdened by wartime stories his family advised him not to divulge, Massaquoi will not talk about being a child soldier, only about how he got out of it.

“Me and my friend Prince, we decided to just get out of there,” he said. “While they were advancing, going toward the gunshots, we retreated.”

He and his friend fled from Liberia into Guinea, washing up in a river and cutting their disheveled hair before looking for refuge in the town of Yomou. Sometimes they had to steal or rob to get what they needed to survive.

“It was very hard for us to live normal, act normal,” he said.

They made their way to the refugee-filled border town of Gueckedougou and later to Conakry, the capital, where Massaquoi eventually entered a rehabilitation center before being transported to a refugee camp near Dabola. It wasn’t until just before coming to the United States that he was reunited with most of his family.

“As soon as you let it out, you feel free,” he said of his stories. “That’s what my family doesn’t want to do.”

The burdens of his past are compounded by the fact that many Liberians have been hesitant to forgive and move on, or are still afraid of what could happen to them, he said. It was children like him, they whisper, who killed or mutilated their relatives.

“Even when I go to a party, I hear it — ‘That kid was a child soldier’ — I hear them,” Massaquoi said.

More than 200,000 people were dead and untold thousands maimed by the time Liberia’s civil wars finally concluded with Taylor’s ousting in 2003.

“Like other child abuse, when it ends, that person may be scarred by that experience psychologically as well as physically, but it doesn’t mean that they are somehow lost forever,” Singer said. “It’s an experience that’s going to shape them, but it doesn’t mean they can’t get past it.”

Massaquoi’s first stop in the United States was Torrance, where he moved with his aging father and siblings when they arrived as refugees in fall 2003.

As he turned 13 and entered classrooms for the first time in years, Massaquoi had trouble adjusting. His father, frustrated by signs that the neighborhood gang culture was influencing his son, sent Massaquoi north to live with an aunt he barely knew. By age 17, the teen moved out of the house, rooming in Hayward with Lisa White, a cousin who had grown up in Texas.

They both had lost their mothers to illness. Friends sometimes lent them gas money, and they signed up for food stamps. When their apartment went up for sale last month, they prepared to sleep in a car, then reluctantly moved back with their aunt, paying $600 to sleep on the couch and floor of her converted garage.

“We don’t have bad credit, we just don’t have any credit,” said White, who hopes to find a new apartment soon. “Sometimes I ask, when was the last time anything good happened? And I can’t remember.”

White juggles caregiving work with studying engineering at Chabot College and enjoys both. Massaquoi, unemployed for months, has signed up to learn welding next year. He could make easy money selling drugs, his friends tell him. He changed his number to stop their calls.

“I don’t want to keep making mistakes. I made enough already,” he said.

The teen was struggling to get through high school more than a year ago when Sharyl Larson, a teacher at the Union City adult school where he was making up a course, first spotted him in a classroom with his head down.

She chatted with him, asking what was wrong. They were questions that few adults had ventured to ask Massaquoi since he moved to America.

“She said, well, ‘Kai, I’m here, whenever you need my help, just let me know.’ She’s been a good friend,” he said.

Graduating from James Logan High School this year was one of his most hard-fought accomplishments. Massaquoi knows many languages — French, Kpelle, Mandingo and Arabic — but English was not his best, and he failed the state high school exit exam the first two times he tried.

On the third try, after studying hard, he passed it, meaning he could graduate. The day he found out about his score was one of the greatest of his life — not since he was 12, when he found out he was moving to the United States, did he feel so hopeful, he said.

“He’s been through a lot,” said Larson, who is no longer Massaquoi’s teacher but remains a friend. “He’s going through hard times right now. But he manages to get up every day to look for work and take care of his business.”

The ebullience that rests beneath Massaquoi’s serious outlook was on display Sunday, as Larson invited Massaquoi and White over for an early Thanksgiving dinner at her Oakland home. The friends joked, discussed their challenges but also the possibilities they have for the long lives ahead of them.

“I think he will survive,” Larson said. “If the past means anything, he’ll be able to get through anything.”

Source: Inside Bay Area

Refugees United in Kenya III

New update from the team in Kenya – 25th of November.

“I just got online at the guest house after 2 days of power cuts – all is well, though we’ve witnessed more human tragedy at the refugee slums today than I thought possible to bear. I will post real updates and photos when we get to uganda tomorrow. Smiles. Christopher”.

Refugees United

Refugees United in Kenya II

Nairobi Nov. 24th 2009.

The night has slowly crept up on the Nairobi mish-mash of high rises and animals drawn in from the wild, and, with it, the cold has tagged along. Darkness reigns complete as cars disappear and people vanish, leaving the before so hustling and bustling streets reminiscent of a quaint village’s arteries, all void of life after daylights disappearance.

Under the glare of a naked light bulb I’m sitting in my hotel room, an acrid smell of paint thinner mixed with car fumes lingering as I think of the day’s work. And a tremendous day it has been, full of African hospitality and a far greater sense of common purpose shared among the NGOs we’ve spent the day with than I have experienced most other places. The towering problems leaning against the doorstep of every organization here are so prominent one cannot escape the shadows they cast. And this, fortunately, brings out the best in people. Refugees United has been welcomed with open arms, enthusiasm and wonderful possibilities I am much looking forward to share with you all as we return home.

Come morning we will journey to the heart of the Nairobi slum in a part of town called Asili, to meet with refugees in search of missing family, families reconnected through Refugees United, and the wonderful people we work with in these outreach programs aimed at helping some of the most information-deprived people among us.

My hands and heart are trembling with excitement and slight apprehension as we’re venturing into territory unknown, to uncover human tragedy and moments of triumph, with stories of separation and reunification laid bare before us. Wish me courage and luck.

I will keep you updated. Christopher

Refugees United

Refugees United team in Kenya

David and Christopher Mikkelsen and Helene Vestegaard Sørensen, from Refugees United, are in Kenya to meet the refugee families reunited through the search engine www.refunite.org.

We will be sharing the updates on their travel diaries and the developments of the journey that will end in Uganda.

Here is the first information that came this morning, 24th of November:

“An early morning greeting from Nairobi in a rare moment of internet access. Descended through heavy storm clouds yesterday to find what ended up being a beautiful sunny day, though heavy showers pummeled us throughout the night. Have been meeting with organizations and enjoying the African hospitality – will upload photos when the connections is a bit more stable. Off to the slums now. Christopher”.

Refugees United

Yemeni refugees caught up in Middle East’s forgotten war

Some displaced families have made the arduous journey to Mazrak refugee camp. Many more have scattered across northern Yemen seeking shelter from local people. (Photo: Hugh Macleod)

A long-running conflict between rebels and government forces has entered a dangerous phase with attacks by Saudi forces forcing thousands of families into overcrowded refugee camps

Eyelashes still thick with the dust of a three-day journey, Nasser Mohammed stood with his family amid the plastic pots and bright blankets of the recently uprooted as children and old men gathered around the tent to hear his story.

Speaking slowly, he told of their 60-mile trek from a village in the tough mountain scrublands of Yemen’s north-west after a warning from Saudi authorities that their lives were at risk.

“Please evacuate your homes in order to survive,” blared the message from loudspeakers across the Saudi side of the border.

Mohammed, 35, who scratches out a living smuggling food or bundles of narcotic qat leaves into Saudi Arabia for a dollar or two a day, said: “We heard the sounds of planes and heavy shelling. The Saudis were bombarding the Houthi positions and our village was hit.”

Mohammed, his wife and six children now find themselves in an overcrowded refugee camp, the latest victims of the Middle East’s forgotten conflict. The fighting that forced them from their home grew out of a local conflict between the Yemeni government and rebels in the north and risks turning into a proxy war that pits Saudi Arabia, the Sunni powerhouse of the region, against its great Shia rival, Iran.

Carved into remote and inaccessible regions by its soaring mountains and vast, empty plains, Yemen remains a tribal society, the poorest in the Middle East and as complicated to rule as Afghanistan, where clan elders and the armed men they command often trump the authority of central government.

For five years, fighters from the powerful Houthi clan have led an armed rebellion against the Yemeni government in Sana’a, accusing it of religious, economic and political discrimination.

Dug into tunnels and bases in the mountainous north, the Houthi rebels, estimated at between 5,000 to 10,000, have been waging an effective guerrilla insurgency, fighting with rockets, grenades, machine guns and roadside bombs to inflict serious casualties on Yemen’s outdated military. The conflict has killed several thousand people, uprooted 175,000 and directly challenged the ability of Yemen’s three-decade president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to maintain his rule over this wild and rugged land.

Despite relentless air bombardment of the area, the Sana’a government has struggled to gain the upper hand. Then the military might of Yemen’s oil-rich, US-supplied northern neighbour got involved three weeks ago.

Enraged that Houthis had allegedly killed a border guard and crossed on to their side of the now all too aptly named Jebel Dukhan, or Smoking Mountain, the Saudi military declared a “kill zone”, pounding positions with airstrikes and artillery, the first war for Saudi forces since fighting with the allies against Saddam Hussein in 1990.

Mohammed and his family were caught in the middle of it. “I felt I was going to faint with fear every time I heard the planes and bombs,” said his wife, Raira. “I was so scared my children would be killed.”

Mohammed said Houthi rebels threatened to kill him and the other villagers if they refused to fight alongside them. “We replied, ‘We are ordinary citizens. We can’t join an uprising against the government’.”

As the violence intensified, the family set off on foot and on the back of a donkey and pickup truck for the journey south to the UN-run camp at Mazrak.

“It was a horrible trip. We haven’t eaten properly for three days and the children are tired, hungry and still scared,” said Raira, speaking to the Guardian a few hours after their arrival.

The escalation of the war, which today saw further Saudi bombardment of Houthi hideouts, has uprooted an estimated 25,000 people, overwhelming resources at the camp just north of Harad, the last Yemeni town before the Saudi border.

Raira and her children, along with dozens of other families, were sharing tents in Mazrak’s crammed reception area, while Nasser and other men from the new arrivals slept beyond the camp’s fence, out in the open rather than share quarters with another man’s wife.

A second camp in Mazrak for up to 1,000 families is due to open before the end of the month, but the majority of the displaced have scattered across large swaths of northern Yemen, seeking shelter and food among the local rural population.

Inside Mazrak camp, UN agencies are struggling to cope. Over half the camp’s residents are under 18, and there are upwards of 1,000 cases of severe malnourishment.

According to Unicef, some 250 children die from malnutrition daily in Yemen and scenes in Mazrak at times resemble a famine. Six-year-old Faris al-Thawebi, his arms and legs little more than skin and bone, his empty stomach swollen, cried in distress as a Unicef doctor examined him. The family had arrived in Mazrak in September from the Haiden district west of Sa’ada, but two months into his stay at the UN-run camp, Faris remained severely malnourished. So too did his three-year-old baby sister. “They’ve been ill since they were born. I don’t have any money and I can’t read or write. I don’t even know what my age is,” said Faris’s father, Ali Mohsen al-Thawebi, when asked why his children were in such poor health.

Unicef recently launched a special feeding centre in Mazrak for severely malnourished children and along with the World Food Programme has been distributing food rations and sachets of Plumpy’nut, a food used in famine relief. “Malnutrition is the silent emergency in Yemen, but no one is talking about it,” said Naseem ur Rahman, a Unicef spokesman.

With plans to lay a 14-mile pipe to pump much needed additional water to the camp, and electricity pylons being driven into its dusty ground to provide lighting, it appears Mazrak and its residents won’t be going anywhere soon.

The same could be said of the war in Yemen, which may now have taken on a regional dynamic, but has its roots in a local struggle that dates back to the 1960s. The Houthis are members of the Zaydi sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, and estimated to number one third of Yemen’s 25 million people. The majority of Yemenis are Shafeis, one of the four traditional schools of Sunni Islam. Commentators in the west have thus often explained the Houthi conflict in terms of another Middle East struggle between Sunni and Shia Muslims, a Sunni-led Yemeni government battling a minority Shia rebellion.

But the simple religious divide between Islam’s two main branches has traditionally gained little traction in Yemen, as elsewhere in the region. In their religious observance, Shafeis and Zaydis are surprisingly close, with Zaydis adhering to practices closer to Sunni religious doctrine than those followed by Shias in Iran, Iraq or Lebanon.

Zaydis and Shafeis have prayed together in mosques in Yemen for generations, even as their Shia and Sunni brethren across the region grew ever further apart. Importantly, many Zaydis do not believe the Houthis represent their religious identity.

Mohammed Dahiry, professor of political science at Sana’a University, argues the Houthi rebellion is rooted in their view that as Hashemites, or direct descendants of Prophet Muhammad, the Houthis must restore the rule of Yemen to Zaydi imams, who lost their position in the creation of the Yemen Arab Republic in the 1962 revolution.

“President Saleh comes from the working class,” said Dahiry. “The Houthis claim they are more eligible to rule Yemen.” The Houthis insist they are defending their community from government aggression and discrimination, and deny links to Iran. The military believes it is closing in on victory, though admits the insurgency is difficult to quell.

“We are tightening the noose and they are besieged,” said Askar Zuail, the army’s spokesman, speaking to the Guardian.

With a renewed secessionist movement in the south and al-Qaida gaining a foothold among the disaffected tribes of the east, the stakes for the Yemeni authorities in the Sa’ada conflict could hardly be higher.

Analysts warn that failure to defeat the Houthis risks encouraging other militant groups to challenge the president’s authority. Abdulelah Shaea, an expert on Islamist groups, said: “Al-Qaida has tried to divide Yemen for a long time and that is what this war is doing.”

For now though, the war has taken on a logic of its own. Smugglers are making vast profits running “food, fighters and weapons” through the military checkpoints on the only road open to Sa’ada city, according to Nabil al-Soufi, a journalist who recently gained rare access to Sa’ada.

“This war is now being fought for the continuation of the war,” said Soufi. “The war that the Houthis want will not come, and the war that the government wants will not end.”

Source: Guardian

Despite troubled economy Iraqi refugees come to Detroit

Iraqi refugee Rawaa Bahoo helps her daughter Maryam, 5, with her hair as Marvin 8, left, and Maryana, 4, right, watch television in Farmington Hills. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)

Tens of thousands have fled Michigan’s troubled economy, yet Iraqi refugees continue to move here.

It is the cultural support from Michigan’s large Middle Eastern community that continues to attract the refugees despite a U.S. effort to place them in cities where they stand a better chance of financial success.

A U.S. government policy is trying to limit refugee resettlements in the Detroit area. However the Detroit area saw a big jump in Iraqi refugees from other U.S. cities, according to a Michigan-based refugee resettlement agency.

For Rawaa Bahoo and Sinan Shamsulddin. both Iraqi refugees never intended to stay where the U.S. government relocated them in July 2008.

Bahoo, 29, said she stayed just a few days in Atlanta before heading to Michigan, where relatives could help her overcome her language barrier.

Kabobs are easier to come by than Big Macs in some areas of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn that more closely resemble a Middle Eastern city than a Midwestern one. Arabic signs are common on storefronts, headscarves are worn by many women and at some fast food joints in the city, the meat is halal which means it is prepared according to Islamic law.

Southeastern Michigan has one of the country’s largest Middle Eastern populations at about 300,000. Iraqi’s can trace their roots back to the region and Detroit has long been a top destination for Arab immigrants to the U.S.

Source: Examiner