Sri Lanka’s voters go to the polls next Tuesday 26 January in elections that were called almost two years early by the country’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. They are almost evenly divided between supporters of the president and his main opponent, former army chief Sarath Fonseka.
Both the president and his opponent are claiming to be national heroes after last year’s victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers in the country’s decades-long war. The Tamils of the north and east are eagerly courted by both sides in the race, and presidential politics have arguably speeded up the government’s dismantling of the remaining displacement camps, set up to house and screen the hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians displaced by the civil war.
The Tamil Tigers were fighting for a separate homeland, arguing that Tamils suffered discrimination and neglect at the hands of the majority Sinhalese.
Links to other sites: AFP, Al-Jazeera, Sri Lanka Guardian
People of Waziristan leave home again © 2009 Tariq Saeed/IRIN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Thousands of people displaced by the two-week old conflict in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s northwest, are arriving in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) districts of Tank and Dera Ismail Khan, sometimes fleeing the fighting by difficult, dangerous and expensive routes.
Their escape from the middle of a war zone, access to and from which is tightly controlled by the Pakistan military, is recounted in an article by Irin News. A local newpaper, Dawn, reports 20 October on a family, 12 of whose members were killed by a bomb while fleeing.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says about 125,000 people have fled since hostilities began, joining the 81,000 who had already left since August. Most find accommodation with friends and family, following Pashtun tribal customs of hospitality. The UN children’s agency, Unicef, says most of the displaced are women and children.
Pakistani army troops are slowly advancing deeper into South Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan from three directions to fight an estimated 10,000 battle-hardened Pakistani Taliban fighters on their own ground, close to the border with Afghanistan. Official reports say over 60 militants and six soldiers have died since the operation began Saturday 17 October but claims by either side cannot be verified. The Pakistan Taliban militants are backed by up to 1,000 Uzbek fighters loyal to al-Qaeda.
The hostilities have caused almost 24,000 civilians from the area to flee in the past few days, and almost 100,000 since May according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In anticipation, the UNHCR has set up four reception camps for displaced people. By Sunday, over 21,000 people had been registered, according to a UN official. The government has sent almost 29,000 troops supported by helicopter gunships and jet fighters into an area of 6,600 km2, about the combined size of the cantons of Bern and Solothurn.
Pakistan has suffered several bomb attacks around the country in the past week that have left over 170 dead. General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, which covers Afghanistan, Paksistan and Iraq, is meeting Pakistani generals in Islamabad, Pakistan on Monday 19 October. BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Reuters
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