Earthquakes

Massive Earthquake Devastates Haiti
Voice of America

The most powerful earthquake to strike Haiti in more than 200 years has left parts of the impoverished Caribbean nation in ruins, destroying buildings and burying people in the rubble.

Witnesses say bodies were lining the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, after the magnitude 7.0 quake struck Tuesday afternoon, sending a cloud of dust from falling buildings into the sky. The quake was centered about 16 kilometers from the capital, and struck at a depth of just 10 kilometers.

Buildings across the capital have collapsed, including the presidential palace and the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.

U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said many people were in the U.N. building when it went down and they remain unaccounted for. A Brazilian military official later said four Brazilian soldiers who were part of the U.N. mission were killed.

U.N. officials say communications and power are out across the city, making it difficult to get accurate details regarding the full extent of casualties and damage.

Some residents have been using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to send pictures of the devastation to news organizations.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says there is an urgent need for search and rescue volunteers as well as field hospitals, emergency health, water purification and telecommunications.

The organization says it has volunteers in the country and expects another team in Haiti later Wednesday.

The quake was also felt in the Dominican Republic, where some people there ran out of their homes as the quake rattled walls and windows.

The Haitian ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, told CNN the Caribbean nation is seeking U.S. assistance. He called the quake a catastrophe of major proportions.

Separately, the Inter-American Development Bank said it will immediately approve a $200,000 grant for emergency assistance to Haiti. The funds will be used to provide food, water, medicine and temporary shelter for victims of the massive quake.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is dispatching a disaster assistance response team to Haiti and says it will continue to provide additional support as needed.

The aid group Oxfam says its emergency response team for Latin America is based in Haiti and is well prepared, with a public health, water and sanitation team in Port-au-Prince. Oxfam says it is preparing to send in emergency supplies as soon as possible from Panama.

Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. Recent development efforts have suffered severe setbacks because of political violence, lawlessness, corruption and natural disasters. Seventy percent of the population lives on the equivalent of less than $2 per day.

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Earthquakes

Solomon Islands Hit by 7.2 Magnitude Earthquake, Local Tsunami
By Ed Johnson

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The Solomon Islands archipelago in the Pacific was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake today causing a local tsunami, disaster agencies said. Several houses collapsed and some people were injured as they ran away from the shore in panic, Agence France-Presse reported.

The quake hit at 9:36 a.m. local time about 105 kilometers (65 miles) south-southeast of Gizo, at a depth of 30.5 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said sea level measurements taken off Honiara indicated a tsunami of 6 centimeters (0.2 feet) was generated. There was no region-wide threat, it said.

“The earthquake caused a small wave,” AFP cited Julian Makaa of the country’s National Disaster Management Office as saying. Some homes collapsed on the island of Rendova, near Gizo, he said.

The Solomon Islands archipelago, about 2,500 kilometers east of Australia, lies in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and experiences frequent seismic tremors. About 50 people were killed and more than 5,000 left homeless there after an 8.1- magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami in April 2007.

Today’s 7.2-magnitude quake was the strongest of several temblors to hit off Gizo. A 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck at 8:48 a.m. local time, according to the USGS, followed by quakes of 5.3, 5.2 and 5.7. Gizo is the second-largest town in the Solomon Islands with a population of about 6,000 people, according to AFP.

The tsunami warning center said that “small, non- destructive sea level changes” could last for several hours in other coastal areas.

There was no tsunami threat to the Australian coastline, the Bureau of Meteorology said on its Web site.

--Editors: Paul Tighe, Dave McCombs

To contact the reporter on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at +61-2-9777-8647 or ejohnson28@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Tighe at +61-2-9777-8626 or ptighe@bloomberg.net.

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Pestilence
 

Haiti Could Face Major Disease Outbreak
CBN

Haiti could soon face an outbreak of diseases due to the lack of enough shelter and bathroom facilities.

In a camp just across the street from Haiti's collapsed National Palace, one toilet served approximately 2,000 people. It forced many to use a gutter that runs parallel to an area where food is prepared and children are bathed.

"We wash the vegetables first from water brought in by trucks, but a lot of times the water isn't clean," said one 45-year-old Haitian mother. "We don't have any choice."

Many crowded areas have puddles of filthy water, which have become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

That, in turn, has begun the spread of deadly diseases and epidemics such as dengue, malaria and cholera.

Some hospitals are reporting that half the children they treat already have malaria.

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War and Rumors of Wars
 

Muslim cleric predicts World War III in 2010
By Abdul Karim Naatogmah/

Hundreds of Muslims gathered in front of the Salawatia Mosque in Gumani a suburb of Tamale to hear the annual event of the unfolding of some Islamic scriptures by Sheikh Imam Rashid Hussein.

Sheikh Imam Rashid who is the leader and head of the Salawatia Muslim Mission in Ghana among other projections into the year 2010 hinted that the world is likely to experience major territorial conflicts that could de-generate into World War III.

He also projected that there will be the re-emergence of military take over of duely elected Heads of State the world over if the United Nations fail to use tactful dipolmacy to avert the calamities that could necessitate the World War III.

According to Sheikh Imam Rashid affectionately known as Qutub Az-Zamaan in the Ismaic World, there will be an astronomical increase in infant mortality especially male children and outbreaks of epidemics as well as the commoness of mental disorders in all parts of the World.

He added that there will be also be incidents of plane crashes, sinking of ships on the high seas and natural disasters such as volcanoes and earthquakes.

Imam Rashid recalled the Air-France disaster that claimed 288 lives in the Gulf of Brazil, the Dagbon calamity and his recent call for the need to cleans Ghana spiritually as a result his outburst on Albinos who were sacrificed for political power in the last elections conducted in Ghana, as some of his projections that occured in the year 2009 as a result of negligence on the part of world leaders who failed to perform the sacrifices he recommended.

The Salawatia Leader and Chief Imam however disclosed that there will food sufficiency and economic progression in the world particularly in Ghana this year.

Sheikh Imam Rashid thereby recommended that Heads of State,the traditional authority, family heads and individuals should extend a helping hand to the needy in society to avert some of the predicted calamities ahead.

He further called on Muslim leaders all over the world to organize 150 Quranic recitations and slaughter six white and and six brown cows and feed the less privileged persons in society.

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War and Rumors of Wars
 

Is Sudan Moving Back to the Brink of War?
By Alex Perry

Sudan enters 2010 poised between war and peace — in Darfur, in its decades old conflict between north and south, and in a host of smaller internal conflicts. The largest country in Africa and home to some of its largest oil reserves, the country faces a general election in April, an independence referendum in the south a year from now, and the indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of its president, Omar al-Bashir, on war crimes charges. Here's TIME's guide to (yet another) year of living dangerously in Sudan:

How likely is a new civil war?

Fairly likely, not least because this has always been a combustible part of the world. Sudan straddles the fault-line between the Muslim Arab world and black, largely Christian Africa and the two sides have a long history of enmity: The first Sudanese civil war lasted from 1955 to 1972 and the second from 1983 to 2005; combined, the conflicts cost more than 2 million lives. Ten aid groups warned this week that 2009 saw a "major upsurge in violence" along the north-south frontier, with 2,500 people killed and 350,000 displaced, and they expressed a widely shared view that such violence is likely to escalate this year to the point of a breakup of Sudan, and a major humanitarian crisis. Rob Crilly, author of the forthcoming Saving Darfur: Everyone's Favorite African War, cautions that aid agencies "have sometimes cried wolf in their attempts to raise funds." But with much of Sudan still controlled by militias, the boundaries of the oil-rich areas between north and south still unresolved, and convincing evidence of large-scale re-arming on both sides, he adds: "At best, the [general election and independence referendum] could ease Sudan along the path towards democracy. At worst, they could herald a new phase of repression, followed by a resumption of war."
(See pictures of China's investments in Africa.)

So what can be done?

In a word, engagement. As Crilly points out, "Under pressure from China, Bashir allowed peacekeepers into Darfur. Under pressure from the U.S., he signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the south in 2005. In short, with the right combination of carrots and sticks, [Bashir] is prepared to do deals." In a report for the British parliament in October, Jon Lunn wrote that engagement was also crucial to helping create a "stable, cooperative and confident leadership in the south" without which, he wrote, a peaceful and successful outcome was unlikely.

Both the U.S. and China, which drills much of Sudan's oil, are engaging Khartoum through special envoys. Also attempting to mediate at one point or another have been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, Muammar Gaddafi and the royal family of Qatar. But more pressing international problems from Iran to Afghanistan and North Korea tend to divert attention away from Sudan. And while world powers agree on the need for engagement, disputes continually arise on how best to proceed.

What are the international differences over how to deal with Sudan?

Particularly contentious has been the role of ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo. The U.S. opposes the ICC in principle, while China, Russia, African leaders and many Sudan experts oppose Ocampo's 2009 indictment which, they say, has pushed Bashir into a corner and imperiled diplomatic efforts to avert a crisis. Ocampo has also been accused, along with the Save Darfur lobby group, of inflating casualty figures in the conflict and thereby allowing Khartoum to discredit international critics.
(See video: "Hunting Children in Sudan")

Of course, without such activist efforts, most people would never have even heard of Darfur. Still, even if you can forgive a little hyperbole, the Save Darfur lobby succeeded in garnering support in party by portraying a complex conflict in a faraway land in simple good-versus-evil terms, Darfuris against an evil genocidal regime in Khartoum. The simplistic picture of Africans being victimized by Arabs ignored the wider context and ethnic complexity of Sudan, and also the human rights abuses committed by Darfuri separatist forces. And the international attention won for Darfur came largely at the expense of southern Sudan, which is now threatening to become the center of a new civil war. To keep the peace, Crilly warns, the West needs to reacquaint itself with the complexity and interconnectedness of Sudan's conflicts, and to understand that the country is "not run by the madmen or genocidal maniacs of popular opinion but by a carefully calculating cabal, intent on securing its own hold on power."

What's climate change got to do with it?

The conflict in Darfur, and most of the disputes across Sudan and indeed the wider Sahel region, are fights over increasingly scarce vital resources — water, fertile land and, latterly, oil. Climate change exacerbates desertification, which aggravates those disputes, potentially sparking new wars and humanitarian disasters. The situation is not all bleak, however: Desertification since the 1970s in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia has prompted villagers to undertake massive re-greening efforts, generally without any outside assistance, that have reclaimed millions of acres. Similar efforts in Sudan, currently being mooted by environmental groups, would likely ease the pressures for war.

What if the Sudanese are set on a return to war?

International pressure and mediation can only do so much. And nobody expects a more robust intervention than the U.N.-African Union peacekeepers already deployed in Darfur. Whatever the calls for the world to act, to a great extent the future of Sudan — war, peace, unity, disintegration — will be left to the Sudanese to decide.

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War and Rumors of Wars
 

India on The Brink of a Major Showdown
By Dr Uddipan Mukherjee

The apparition of 1967 is haunting India yet again, and this time on a far more serious scale. The then 'Naxals' are now being termed as 'Maoists'. Only the nomenclature has changed, but the essence of the problem remains. The genesis of the armed resistance in 1967 was in the 'Naxalbari' village of the eastern province of West Bengal. At that juncture, the movement was temporarily curbed by the 'state apparatus'. What the Indian authorities and policy-makers failed to address, was not the 'law and order' problem but the development and empowerment issues (or the lack of those) at the grass-root level which helped form the backbone of the movement.

Any insurgency sustains itself by feeding on the population. In this case too, the Maoists are doing it no differently. The 'protracted people's war' which was thought to have fizzled out in the early 1970s with the mass arrests of the top brass and the consequent demoralization and innumerable schisms within the party structure of the Naxals, raised its serpentine head in 2004 with the unification of the erstwhile Peoples War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). Since then, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has 'upped the ante' and extended their dominions to penetrate large swathes of the Indian landmass. Presently, about 200 of the total 600 districts in India are under the 'Maoist Influence'. The area basically stretches from the Indo-Nepal border in the north to the southern part of the subcontinent; cutting across several provinces in its trajectory.

The headquarters of the guerrillas is in the dense forests of Central India, named Dandakaranya; which has historical connotations pertaining to the 'Ramayana era'(One of the Indian epics). Interestingly, the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government under Dr. Manmohan Singh came to the helm at New Delhi in 2004 itself but did not follow any well-coordinated policy of combating the 'Red Menace'. It was largely left to the individual provinces as 'Public Order' and 'Police' are exclusively under the jurisdiction of the provinces ('states') as per the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution. And this has been a major reason for the escalation of Maoist-related casualties in the country.

Furthermore, 'alienation' of the tribal population from the mainstream, failure of the government to address the basic livelihood issues of the forest-dwellers and treating the Maoist insurgency as merely a 'law and order' problem has taken the situation to more precarious levels.

Data from the Ministry of Home Affairs of India clearly show a gradual rise of the number of casualties due to Maoist insurgency since 2004. In fact in 2009, the ultras started venturing into territorial domains where previously they did not have a considerable mass-base. The June 2009 offensive by the insurgents at 'Lalgarh' in West Bengal was alarming as the said province had almost totally got rid of Maoism since the early 1970s due to the equitable land distribution schemes launched by the Marxist party which came to power through proper democratic elections.

Actually, indiscriminate bartering away of agrarian lands to corporate houses in the name of industrialization without creating an atmosphere of consensus amongst the peasants was the chief cause behind the 'recent resentment' of the rural populace. Moreover, lack of a proper credit and banking system in the Indian interiors leave the peasantry at the mercy of the moneylenders; which in turn aggravate their distress and lead to 'suicides'. And this disgruntlement engenders the Maoist doctrine.

Returning back to power in May 2009 for the second consecutive term, the UPA coalition had a formidable task to deal with; and that was to tackle the Left Wing Extremism which had emerged as the 'biggest internal security threat', even larger than the Kashmir imbroglio or the North-Eastern terrorism.

Hence, the much hyped "Operation Green Hunt" was launched in the Dantewada district of the Central Indian state of Chattisgarh in September 2009. The Union government was able to launch such a military offensive based on the premise that Entry 2A of List I in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution permits the Centre 'to deploy armed forces in the provinces'. In this venture, the Central Paramilitary Forces (CPMF) and the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) which is specially trained in jungle warfare are also likely to move into the later stages of the operation. The deployment of helicopters of the Indian Air Force (IAF) for transportation and rescue operations of troops is also being considered. The Gadchiroli district in the Western state of Maharashtra was the second place where the said operation was likely to have been unleashed in the first week of November.

In the face of vehement criticism by large sections of civil society and human rights groups against this military offensive, the Home Ministry has probably put a halt on the operation. Nevertheless, the tactical pressure seems to have worked as the Maoists have in a formal statement offered a ceasefire, but only if the government dropped its pre-condition that the ultras abjure violence.

And very recently, the Home Ministry has also proposed for dialogue with the ultras, dropping the pre-condition of laying down their arms.

On the other hand, there are reports of a covert alliance of the 'almost decimated' Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Maoists of India. If this fructifies, then the scenario would be more menacing for the Indian authorities. Actually the sagging LTTE may want to bolster their structure through a fresh base in South India, close to the Lankan landmass whereas the Maoists would seek to cash in on the 'land warfare expertise' of the LTTE. Also, the worldwide arms racket that the LTTE is very much aware of can be an option for the Maoists.

Recently, the Home Secretary of India, G K Pillai has suggested that 'small arms and ammunitions' from China are being smuggled into India to feed the Maoist rebels. This opens up a completely new dimension of the quandary. Not to forget, the ideological support that the Naxal movement enjoyed in its early days from Peking (Beijing). The disturbed 'political climate' between India and China might suffer another blow from this angle with Dalai Lama's visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh already generating controversy.

The solutions to this imbroglio are non-linear. Analysts and experts have opined that the Indian government needs to have 'unconditional' talk with the Maoists. Honest efforts have to be made on the part of the mainstream to bring the tribals within the 'social pale'. The huge tracts of land housing mineral resources need to be holistically dealt with. The government can broker a viable deal between the tribals and the corporate sector, with a 'win-win' situation for both. Basic facilities like job opportunities, education, health care and sanitation needs to be pumped into the tribal areas. But whatever be the policies and whether or not the government embarks on a military offensive, the wisdom has to prevail regarding minimizing the collateral damage because that is the basic tenet of 'counter-insurgency'. A 'cul-de-sac' has to be avoided at any logical cost.

Dr Uddipan Mukherjee is an author and a researcher on International Relations. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze or go to his blog at uddipanmukherjee.blogspot.com. 

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Famines
 

West Africa's Sahel Belt Could Face Famine In 2010
Global Health

The European Commission's humanitarian aid department warned Thursday that West Africa's Sahel belt could face famine this year, with millions potentially affected, Reuters reports (John, 1/29). "We are already into what looks like a period of extreme vulnerability and extreme difficulty for the most disadvantaged of the population," according to Brian O'Neill, regional sector head of European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO), Agence France-Presse writes.

He said, "erratic rains in the 2009/2010 agricultural season have resulted in an enormous deficit in food production" in countries such as Niger, Chad, northern Burkina Faso and northern Nigeria. "If we work fast enough, early enough, it won't be a famine. If we don't there is a strong risk" (1/28).

According to O'Neill, an estimated $220 million is required to avert a crisis in Niger alone. He "acknowledged that donors could struggle to raise money after digging into reserves for the Haiti earthquake aid effort," Reuters writes. "All of us are suffering a bit from Haiti," O'Neill said.

"The warning came as Niger confirmed the veracity of a leaked government forecast that half its population will face food shortages this year after a dive in grain production, but said it had enough food stocks to care for the most needy," the news service reports. Hamani Harouna, a Niger government spokesperson, said, "For the acutely vulnerable, there will be free distribution of basic foodstuffs."

According to Reuters, "In 2005 Niger suffered severe food shortages affecting 4 million people but resisted foreign help and denied there was a famine until media coverage attracted international attention" (1/29).

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