Public warned of rising fraud - Oman Daily Observer

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2013
ANALYSIS
9
Children adapt to a life marred by conflict in Aleppo
Unicef says over two
million children have
been affected, and
has warned that
the country’s youth
could become a “lost
generation” because
of insuficient
support, reports
Marie Roudani
Goal! Goal! children scream, kicking a football around
like children everywhere. But in war-ravaged Aleppo,
their playground is a strip of no-man's land near buildings
on the front line. In the courtyard of a school destroyed
by bombing, they kick around without any apparent regard
for the clatter of bullets ired by snipers from the Syrian government
and dissident sides.
In the poorer neighbourhoods of Aleppo, immersed in con-
lict for the past nine months, it was not unusual even before
the war for teenagers to go out to work. But now what little
childhood remained for Aleppo youngsters has gone.
"They have forgotten, and in the case of the toddlers, they
have never even known normal life. They haven't known anything
but war," one dissident commander in the city says, with
regret in his voice. "Their role models are the ighters who
blow themselves up."
On almost every street corner, children can be seen selling
cigarettes and honey cakes to the armed dissidents ighting
the government, close to pick-up trucks mounted with guns.
In this environment, it's no surprise that the children have
become experts on weaponry. Each time an explosion goes
off, even the youngest among them profess to know the difference
between a mortar shell, a rocket and tank ire.
"When there's a plane, we go up on the roof to see it ire,"
says 11-year-old Ibrahim, his father looking on with pride.
"My son has become a man very early," he says. "The only
thing he's missing is an education, because there are no more
schools," Ibrahim's mother adds.
In the two years since an uprising against the government
of President Bashar al Assad broke out, the UN children's
agency Unicef estimates that one in every ive schools in Syria
has been destroyed. Among the young salesmen of Aleppo,
the mere mention of school elicits a bitter laugh.
"What school? All our schools have been destroyed by
bombing. We haven't been for a year," 12-year-old Ahmed
says. "We're on the front, waging war. The women are waging
an even bigger war because they have the education of future
generations in their hands, the future of all of Syria," says one
dissident ighter, who left behind a wife and children in his
village to ight in Aleppo.
Unicef says more than two million children have been affected
by the conlict in Syria, and has warned that the country's
youth could become a "lost generation" because of
insuficient international support. Many have suffered the
psychological trauma of seeing a family member killed, being
separated from their parents, or being terriied by the constant
threat of bombing, the agency says.
The country's youngest citizens are also dying in the con-
lict, with at least nine children among those killed in a single
air raid on the Sheikh Maqsud district of Aleppo on Saturday
alone. In addition to being constantly exposed to weapons
and violence, some Syrian children have been forced to beg or
work to help support their families.
In a garage in the impoverished Maslakh neighbourhood,
nine-year-old Yehya leans on the hood of a car as he looks
at the building across the street. "It was my school. It's been
closed for a year. Since then, I've worked as a mechanic," he
said. "My father's on the front lines, he's ighting Assad's soldiers.
We are 11 children at home and most of my brothers
are working so we can afford to eat."
He works all day long at the garage to earn 200 Syrian
pounds ($2) a week. The work is exhausting, and at night he
goes home and collapses into sleep. "Play? When I get back
home, I have neither the time nor the energy to play," he says.
Others are even less fortunate than Yehya. At dawn, dozens
of children can be seen combing through the piles of garbage
that litter Aleppo's streets, hoping to glean something they
can either eat or sell.
Meanwhile, a senior UN oficial warned yesterday that aid
operations for Syrian refugees have reaching breaking point
in the face of a massive funding shortfall, amid fears that the
number of people leeing the war-torn nation could triple.
“We want to ring the alarm bell. We are at a breaking
point,” said Panos Moumtzis, regional aid coordinator for the
UN high commissioner for refugees. “Clearly we’re reaching a
point where the increase in the crisis, the rapid deterioration,
and the resources available, do not match,” he told reporters
in Geneva. “It is our duty to respond,” he added.
Moumtzis underlined that just $400 million has been
provided from the $1.5 billion pledged for Syria-related aid
operations at an international conference held in Kuwait in
January. “We’re appealing to parliaments, we’re appealing to
governments, we’re appealing to donors to go beyond their
available funding in Western countries. And we’d also like
to see the generosity announced in the Gulf to materialise as
quickly as possible. Because we cannot wait any more,” he
said.
Almost $1.0 billion of the total sum on the table in January
was pledged by Gulf nations. A total of 1.3 million people have
now led Syria since protests which started in March 2011
against the Assad and have spiralled into a sectarian-tinged
civil war.
Underlining the inexorably rising violence, Moumtzis noted
that just 12 months ago, the number of Syrian refugees in
neighbouring countries was 30,000. Some 200,000 people
are now spilling across Syria’s borders every month in search
of safety in neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq,
placing a huge strain on the countries’ ability to cope.
“We fear that if the current level of insecurity, and the current
situation of no political solution continues, we may see a
doubling or a tripling, or more, of the number of refugees that
we have today in the region,” said Moumtzis.
Largest copper smelter
ignites toxic debate
By Anupama Chandrasekaran
Uhuru Kenyatta (L) and Chief of Defence Forces General Julius Karangi (R) after his swearing-in ceremony in Nairobi yesterday.— Reuters
Following in his father's footstep
His trial at The
Hague-based court
is due to open on
July 9. Kenyatta has
repeatedly said he will
cooperate with the
court, even though it
could mean he will be
absent from Kenya for
long periods, reports
Peter Martell
UHURU Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's founding
president, takes up his father's mantle
to become head of state despite facing
international charges of crimes against humanity
over election violence ive years ago. Uhuru,
meaning "freedom", and Kenyatta, the "light of
Kenya" in Swahili, carries his country's aspirations
in his name, but brings with him controversy.
Kenyatta, 51, and his deputy William Ruto,
46, face trial in the International Criminal Court
(ICC) for crimes against humanity over their alleged
role in having orchestrated 2007-08 postelection
unrest. Last month Kenya's Supreme
Court ruled that the March 4 polls were valid,
with Kenyatta sworn into ofice as the country's
fourth president at a ceremony yesterday.
He was born in 1961 shortly after the release
of his father Jomo Kenyatta from nearly 10
years' incarceration by British colonial forces,
and two years before Kenya's independence.
Fifty years on, the outgoing deputy prime
minister and former inance minister is one of
Kenya's richest and most powerful men, with
the Kenyatta family owning vast swathes of
some of the country's richest lands.
The Kenyatta family business empire also
includes major banking and media interests as
well as Kenya's main dairy business. Educated
in the United States at the elite Amherst College,
where he studied political science and economics,
he is viewed as the top political leader of the
Kikuyu people, Kenya's largest tribe making up
some 17 per cent of the population.
However, he also appeals to Kenyans from
different ethnic backgrounds, able to mingle
not only with the elite he was born into but also
with the average Kenyan, cracking jokes. With
permanent heavy bags beneath his eyes and
well dressed in pin-stripe business suits, Kenyatta
exudes an image of power and entitlement.
In the 1990s, he joined with the sons of other
independence heroes to call for reform but
gradually drew closer to autocratic former president
Daniel arap Moi. "He went into politics
partly because Moi asked him to, and probably
because it was a good way to protect his family's
interests at a time of political transition,"
said Daniel Branch, a professor at Britain's Warwick
University.
"Until recently, politics never mattered as
much personally for Kenyatta as for Raila," he
added, referring to his key rival he beat in the
election, outgoing Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
In the December 2007 election Kenyatta
threw his weight behind then incumbent President
Mwai Kibaki. The polls rapidly descended
into chaos and left over 1,100 dead and forced
hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Delays in the 2007 vote count saw violence
erupt over suspicion that Kibaki was stealing
the election from Odinga, and killings mainly
targeting Kikuyus spread across the country.
The Kenya National Commission on Human
Rights has accused Kenyatta of attending
meetings in early 2008 to plan for retaliatory
violence by the Kikuyu. ICC prosecutors say he
mobilised the Mungiki — a sect-like Kikuyu
criminal organisation known for skinning and
beheading its victims — to attack opposition
supporters.
The Kikuyu launched reprisal attacks in which
homes were torched and people hacked to death.
Kenyatta, listed by Forbes magazine as one of the
richest people in Africa, faces ive counts including
orchestrating murder, rape, forcible transfer
and persecution in the polls' aftermath.
His trial at The Hague-based court is due to
open on July 9. Kenyatta has repeatedly said
he will cooperate with the court, even though
it could mean he will be absent from Kenya for
long periods, with the trial expected by many
to stretch for several years. "I will be able to
handle the issue of clearing our names... while
at the same time ensuring that the business of
government continues," Kenyatta said in reply
to a question about how he and Ruto will juggle
court appearances and run the country.
HOUSEWIFE A Puneeta was washing dishes on a foggy morning when
suddenly her throat began to burn. Coughing hard and struggling to
breathe, she rushed into the street to ind her neighbours running, haphazardly,
in panic. "First people said there was a gas leak, and then someone
said Sterlite seemed to have opened up something, and that's the cause of the
throat burning," said Puneeta, 32, who is married to a isherman in the Tuticorin
port town near the southern tip of India.
She was referring to Sterlite Industries, a unit of London-based Vedanta Resources,
which operates India's biggest copper smelter a few kilometres away,
and which has been shut by authorities despite the irm denying the smelter
was to blame for the emissions in the area on March 23.
Other residents told similar stories. Two spoken to separately by Reuters
also said the emissions caused leaves on plants and trees to wither and drop
in front of their eyes, while another, who is asthmatic, said she struggled to
breathe as she walked home from church and had to use her Ventolin inhaler.
The plant employs 4,000 and supports thousands more jobs indirectly. But
since opening in 1996 it has split this coastal city between residents who say
it is crucial for the local economy and farmers and ishermen who see it as a
health hazard. Similar debates are playing out across India where disputes
over safety, the environment and livelihoods overshadow the efforts of Asia's
third-largest economy to industrialise. Just 100 km south, in Kudankulam,
ishermen are iercely opposing a new nuclear power plant.
Tuticorin and Kudankulam sit on the Gulf of Munnar, famed for its pearls,
coral reefs, and marine life. Environmental activists who say Sterlite is damaging
the region's ecology have been ighting for years to close the smelter
permanently. The state of Tamil Nadu's Pollution Control Board closed the
smelter until further notice late last month and said a sensor in the smelter's
smokestack showed sulphur dioxide levels were more than double the permitted
concentration at the time emissions were reported.
Sterlite denied the smelter, which makes half the copper India produces
every year, was the source. The smelter's general manager of projects said
there were no emissions at the time because the plant was starting up after
two days of maintenance, not producing copper, and high readings in the
smokestack were likely a result of workers recalibrating the sensors.
Yesterday, a fast-track environmental court deferred until April 12 a hearing
on allowing the plant to reopen, a move that is being closely watched by
environmentalists and the global copper market. The plant will remain shut at
least until then.
The future of the plant — which is seeking approval to double its capacity
to 800,000 tonnes per year — now hinges on the decision of the National
Green Tribunal.
A general view of Sterlite Industries’ copper plant in Tuticorin.— Reuters
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