By Sebastian Abbot for The Associated Press

For decades, archenemies Pakistan and India have engaged in a dangerous nuclear arms race. Now they’re also competing in a more cheerful forum. The outcome will be mouthwatering curries and soothing Sufi ballads, not violent conflict.

The fractious neighbors are going head-to-head in a pair of reality TV shows that pit chefs and musicians against each other. Producers hope the contests will help bridge the gulf between two nations that were born from the same womb and have been at each other’s throats ever since.

But so far it hasn’t completely worked out that way. The top Pakistani chef on the cooking show, which is called Foodistan, quit the contest early. He accused the judges of bias toward India and is threatening to sue. The producers denied the allegations.

Pakistan and India were founded in 1947 following the breakup of the British empire. They have fought three major wars, two of them over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The TV shows do not try to hide or brush over this painful history. They make light of it.

“Now the world’s greatest rivalry is going to get spicier,” said co-host Ira Dubey during one of the early episodes of Foodistan, which first aired in India on Jan. 23 and will be shown in Pakistan starting in mid-February.

Her counterpart, Aly Khan, said the aim of the two teams “would be to grind the opposition into chutney, to make them eat humble pie, to dice them, slice them and fry them on their way to culinary glory.”

Eight chefs from each country were scheduled for individual and team competitions over 26 one-hour episodes, with the winner authoring the first Foodistan cookbook and receiving a trip to three cities of his or her choice anywhere in the world.

There is significant overlap in the cuisines of both countries, as there is in language, music and culture. Pakistanis and Indians both love curry, kebab and biryani – a spiced rice dish. But they often use different ingredients, and dishes can also vary from one region to another within the same country.

Pakistani dishes often include beef, which is not eaten by many people in majority Hindu India for religious reasons. India has more vegetarian dishes, and the food is often cooked with ingredients like coconut milk that are rarely found in Pakistan.

Many Pakistanis and Indians have missed out on enjoying the varied tastes of the other country because mutual enmity has made cross-border travel difficult.

“Even though they are neighbors, Indians don’t know what Pakistani food is like and vice versa,” said Mirza Fahad, a production assistant at India’s NDTV, which developed Foodistan. “It was long overdue to get to know each other’s foods.”

During the first cook-off on the show, filmed in New Delhi, the judges gave four chefs from each side two hours to prepare a biryani, curry, kebab and dessert. Each of the three judges gave the team’s meal a score out of 10.

The judges loved the Iranian-inspired fish biryani cooked by the Pakistanis, their chicken kebab stuffed with figs, olives, bread and mango chutney, and their shahi tukda – a dessert of fried bread soaked in hot milk with spices. They scored 21 out of a possible 30, losing points because a dish of chicken in shalimar curry was a tad chewy.

The Indians ended up winning the first contest by one point with a menu that included chicken tikka with truffle cream, cheese kofta in a tomato and water chestnut curry, lamb biryani and phirni – a sweet rice pudding that they topped with strawberry granita.

The captain of the Pakistani team, Mohammed Naeem, executive chef at the Park Plaza Hotel in Lahore, alleged the judges didn’t have enough knowledge of Pakistani food and were destined from the beginning to pick an Indian to win.

The judges included a British chef, an Indian food critic and a Bollywood actress of Pakistani and French descent.

Another member of the team, Akhtar Rehman, a chef at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, said concerns about the judges were fairly widespread on the Pakistani side, but Naeem was the only one to quit.

It remains to be seen whether the music competition – Sur Kshetra, or Musical Battlefield – also will spark ill will.

The contest, which is being filmed in Dubai, is scheduled to air in Pakistan and India starting in mid-February, said Mohammed Zeeshan Khan, a general manager at Pakistan’s Geo TV, which is developing the show.

“Music can unite people across borders and bring them closer together,” said Khan.

The competition will include teams of six musicians from each country between the ages of 18 and 27. The teams will be mentored by two well-known pop singers and actors, Pakistani Atif Aslam and Indian Himesh Reshammiya. They will compete across a range of genres, including jazz, pop, rock and qawwali – traditional Sufi Muslim ballads that are popular in both countries, said Khan.

The grand prize is still being worked out, but Khan said the winner can claim to be “the new musical icon for the subcontinent.”

Filed under: Desi, India, Pakistan, Pakistanis, Peace, SAARC Tagged: Atif Aslam, Biryani, Foodistan, Himesh Reshammiya, India, Kashmir, Lahore, Pakistan, Sufi, Sufi Ballads, Sufism

By Ravi Nessman for The Associated Press

India will celebrate a full year since its last reported case of polio on Friday, a major victory in a global eradication effort that seemed stalled just a few years ago.

If no previously undisclosed cases of the crippling disease are discovered, India will no longer be considered polio endemic, leaving only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria on that list.

“This is a game changer in a huge way,” said Bruce Aylward, head of the World Health Organization’s global polio campaign.

The achievement gives a major morale boost to health advocates and donors who had begun to lose hope of ever defeating the stubborn disease that the world had promised to eradicate by 2000.

It also helps India, which bills itself as one of the world’s emerging powers, shed the embarrassing link to a disease associated with poverty and chaos, one that had been conquered long ago by most of the globe.

The government cautiously welcomed the milestone as a confirmation of its commitment to fighting the disease and the 120 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) it has spent on the program.

“We are excited and hopeful. At the same time, vigilant and alert,” Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said in a statement. Azad warned that India needed to push forward with its vaccination campaign to ensure the elimination of any residual virus and to prevent the import and spread of virus from abroad.

The polio virus, which usually infects children in unsanitary conditions, attacks the central nervous system, sometimes causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.

With its dense population, poor sanitation, high levels of migration and weak public health system, India had been seen as “the perfect storm of polio,” Aylward said. Even some vaccinated children fell ill with the virus because malnutrition and chronic diarrhea made their bodies too weak to properly process the oral vaccine.

In 2009, India had 741 cases. That plunged to 42 in 2010. Last year, there was a single case, an 18-month-old girl named Ruksana Khatun who fell ill in West Bengal state Jan. 13. She was the country’s last reported polio victim.

Part of the sudden success is credited to tighter monitoring that allowed health officials to quickly hit areas of outbreaks with emergency vaccinations. Part is also attributed to the rollout of a new vaccine in 2010 that more powerfully targeted the two remaining strains of the disease.

Under the $300 million-a-year campaign the government runs with help from the WHO and UNICEF, 2.5 million workers fan out across the country twice a year to give the vaccine to 175 million children.

They hike to remote villages, wander through trains to reach migrating families and stop along roadsides to vaccinate the homeless.

Philanthropist Bill Gates, whose foundation has made polio eradication a priority, hailed India’s achievement as an example of the progress that can be made on difficult development problems.

“Polio can be stopped when countries combine the right elements: political will, quality immunization campaigns and an entire nation’s determination. We must build on this historic moment and ensure that India’s polio program continues to move full-steam ahead until eradication is achieved,” he said in a statement.

Health officials are working to make polio the second human disease eradicated, after smallpox. But while smallpox carriers were easy to find because everyone infected developed symptoms, only a tiny fraction of those infected with the polio virus ever contract the disease. So while no one in India is reported to have suffered from polio in a year, the virus — which travels through human waste — could still be lingering.

That’s why the country will not be certified as completely polio-free until at least three full years pass without a case. And it is why public health advocates warn against complacency in the massive vaccination efforts.

“We are at a threshold. If we take a long step, we may be in trouble,” said Dr. Yash Paul, a pediatrician in the northern city of Jaipur who was a member of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics’ polio eradication committee until it was dismantled last year because the academy felt it was no longer needed.

Paul also appealed to public health officials to begin switching from the oral vaccine, which is easy to administer but contains live virus that can cause the disease in rare cases, to an injectible vaccine that uses dead virus.

The last time a country came off the endemic list was Egypt in 2006. If India succeeds in getting removed from the list in the coming weeks, only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria will remain. All three saw a rise in cases last year over 2010, and Pakistan is suffering a particularly explosive outbreak, Aylward said.

In addition, 22 other countries that had eradicated the disease suffered new outbreaks. However, some of those outbreaks stemmed from polio imported from India, so getting rid of the virus here is expected to lessen such outbreaks in the future.

Dr. Donald Henderson, who headed WHO’s smallpox eradication program and had long been skeptical of the possibility of eradicating polio, said Thursday he was now hopeful the disease could be conquered across the world by the end of next year.

“You look at a series of dominoes, this is the big one. The others are definitely easier. If we can do it in India, than I’m more optimistic that we can do it in these other countries,” he said. “I’m celebrating a bit. I’ll certainly drink a glass tomorrow … and keep my fingers crossed.”

Aylward hopes India’s success will spur donors to dedicate more money to the polio fight, partly because full eradication could free up funds for other global health issues.

The WHO program needs another $500 million to fund operations for the rest of the year, and some programs could run out of funding by March, he said.

“If we fail at this point, it’s an issue of will,” he said.

Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note- Congratulations to India on a great achievement. Despite massive poverty and numerous internal problems, India is working towards the betterment of its people, something Pakistan can learn a great deal from~

Filed under: Afghanistan, India, Pakistan Tagged: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Polio, Smallpox, UNICEF, WHO, World Health Organization

Osh, Kyrgyzstan — A security guard stands near an overturned Russian-made Tupolev Tu-34 passenger jet at the airfield outside the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh, a day after the plane crash. The packed passenger jet flipped over and caught fire on landing. PHOTOGRAPH BY: JILDIZ BEKBAEVA / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

It was a rough but lucky landing (both “rough and “lucky” are strong understatements here) when a Soviet-built Tupolev (Tu-134) crash landed in dense fog in the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. According to The Washington Post 82 passengers and 6 crew members were evacuated, 31 of them were injured and 17 hospitalized. Miraculously everyone on board survived. No doubt, the local emergency services deserve some major kudos for reacting quickly, killing the fire and safely evacuating everybody from the scene.

RT reports there were about a dozen of children among the passengers. One of them, a seven-month-old girl, was diagnosed with a head injury and concussion. The Ministry of Transportation of Kyrgyzstan said that the crashed vehicle was working its last days, with its airworthiness due to expire on 19 January. It was also reported that the aircraft had been manufactured in 1979 and was not equipped with modern navigation systems such as GPS. Reports say one of the likely causes is a mistake made by the pilot operating the aircraft, but the accident is still to be investigated.

Here’s the description of the crash from The Aviation Herald. Note that this report on the number of passengers and crew on board of the aircraft differs from other sources. “An Altyn Air (alias Kyrgyzstan Altyn) Tupolev TU-134A, registration EX-020 performing flight QH-3 from Bishkek to Osh (Kyrgyzstan) with 73 passengers and 6 crew, suffered a hard landing resulting in the right main gear collapse, right main wing separation and the airplane rolling on its back while landing on Osh’s runway 12 in fog and low visibility around 12:15L (06:15Z), official times of landing varying from 12:05L to 12:48L. The aircraft came to a stop on soft ground about 10 meters off the right runway edge. A fire fed by a fuel leak off the left wing erupted which was quickly extinguished by airport emergency services. One passenger received serious injuries, 24 people received minor injuries (concussions, bruises), 16 of which were taken to local hospitals.”

We know that the bird involved in the crash is a Tupolev-134. Here’s a little blurb about the Tu-134s from the Associated Press: The twin-engined Tu-134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s, with more than 800 planes built. It also has remained in service with many post-Soviet carriers. In recent years, Russia and other former Soviet nations have had some of the world’s worst air traffic safety records. Experts blame poor maintenance of the aging aircraft, weak government controls, insufficient pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality.

This type of Soviet-built aircraft was infamously involved in several deadly crashes. Here’s more info on Tupolev crashes. More recently, this past June a Tu-134 crashed in northern Russia killing 43 passengers, but it appears that a drunken pilot was at fault. Earlier in 2011 at least 43 were injured when a Tu-154B carrying 124 people, burst into flames before take-off from Surgut, Russia. And of course another painful reminder of Soviet-era aviation was the crash of a Tu-154 plane near Smolensk that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people in April of 2010. Pilot error was clearly at fault here – both captain and first officer ignored numerous instrumentation warnings including verbal commands from the plane’s terrain awareness warning system (TAWS) warning the pilots to “PULL UP.” Procedure requires any pilot who receives that warning from the TAWS to immediate pull up and throttle to maximum to avoid an imminent collision with the ground. Clearly both pilots heavily deviated from standard safety protocols.

Back to our Kygryztan Air crash. Until the final findings of the commission are published it’s too early to draw any conclusions, although bad weather conditions had something to do with it. The Tupolevs are aging and even though in the past they might have been sound and well engineered planes, they have become outdated compared to modern aircraft. Not to mention they are not being properly maintained as they are mostly employed in cash-strapped countries. Modern day aircraft are sophisticated enough to be able to land automatically without human intervention more akin to a tram with a stop-and-go button. No Cold War-era planes can compete with that. In an initiative to keep its skies safe,  the E.U. banned airlines it deems unsafe from operating in European airspace and according to its website this includes the airline that was involved in the Kyrgyz crash.

There’s a lot of chatter and opinions on aviation websites debating the airworthiness of Soviet-built planes and the skill of Soviet/post-Soviet pilots. I found one post on The Aviation Herald board about the Osh accident particularly interesting. “There has been a lot of pressure on the pilot to fly (as the only road linking the northern and southern parts of the country has been often closed recently because of snow and avalanches. Flying is the only way to get to Bishkek in a reasonable time (road 14 to 16 hours now for a flight that takes 40 minutes). A TU 134 with its navigation equipment should not have been clear on that day. That the pilot was able to bring down the plane speaks for his skills and the robustness of the plane. A similar crash with one of the old Boeing 737 they use here had been fatal for sure.”

One of my colleague here at the Foreign Policy Blogs recently wrote a post in a similar vein about the safety of Soviet-made planes.

Here are more photos of the crash.

Yet again the Interior Minister gets in action. This times constituted a committee to examine draft bill regarding misuse of electronic equipment i.e. emails, SMS, MMS in anti-state activities detrimental to the national security. This comes in wake of the recent change in political winds and anti-state messages been floated on emails, mobile phones etc.. As reported by the APP:

The committee headed by Secretary Interior would brief the Minister within one week regarding the proposed legislation. He was chairing a meeting on the subject of “misuse of electronic equipments, i.e. internet, email, SMS/MMS and to take remedial measures to curb the menace of such illegal activities with iron hands.

Secretary Interior, Secretary, Information Technology,Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Inspector General Sindh, Members FBR and Representatives of Intelligence Agencies attended the meeting.

Once again the Multiple and illegal SIMs got under the gun:

It was observed that the criminals are still using unauthorized mobile SIMS for their criminal activities and terrorists’ acts, bank robbery, target killings and other heinous crimes.

The Minister directed Chairman PTA to revisit the whole system and ensure that all those illegal SIMS which are being used on stolen identity shall be blocked.

Mobile number portability (MNP) was also discussed to be banned in wake of misuse associated with them. Any kind of misuse to be booked under Anti-Terrorism Act.

The meeting decided that in view of the grave complaints, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) by the service providers is banned in future and anybody found violating should be booked under Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 as it is against the national security.

Anybody misusing, sending threatening emails or tampering with email address, mobile phone via SMS, MMS etc shall be dealt with under ATA and other relevant sections of law.

Chairman PTA and Secretary IT have been directed to immediately hold a meeting with service providers and convey the concerns of the government and ensure that their services are not misused by anti-slate and anti-social elements, putting the security of the country in danger.

The SMS filtering policy was also discussed.

The meeting also decided that the service providers shall have to have their own monitoring system to block such detrimental communication as mentioned above in coordination with the PTA.

The meeting decided to identify “obscene words” or anti state wordings, being used by anti-social elements and they shall be entered in the system to be blocked.

The service providers would ensure that they will not advertise anything against social norms and customs and they will not support any media programme with content that brings government into disrepute, scandalizes it or is against the national honour and security.

The Minister also directed PTA and other authorities that while taking such remedial measures, it would be ensured that general public may not face any problem and no site would be blocked.

All those who receive threatening messages or anti state messages,the same should be brought to the notice of Ministry of Interior through the following email and telephone numbers for taking legal action against the senders under ATA, 1997 & other sections of law.

via Associated Press of Pakistan

Update

Other point of views on the minister’s nonsense:

1. Rehman Malik back with Tech-Blunders
2. Government to ban MNP (Mobile Number Portability) – Another one by Rehman Malik

Thank you Mark Dummett, for the report in BBC today paying tribute to Anthony Mascarenhas, the brilliant and courageous Pakistani journalist who had to flee abroad in order to be able to tell the truth – Bangladesh war: The article that changed history.

Mascarenhas

“Eight journalists, including Mascarenhas, were given a 10-day tour of the province (East Pakistan). When they returned home, seven of them duly wrote what they were told to,” writes Dummett.

“But one of them refused.”

That was Mascarenhas, who died in 1986 in London.

His wife Yvonne Mascarenhas told Dummett that she remembers him coming back distraught: “I’d never seen my husband looking in such a state. He was absolutely shocked, stressed, upset and terribly emotional. He told me that if he couldn’t write the story of what he’d seen he’d never be able to write another word again.”

“Clearly it would not be possible to do so in Pakistan. All newspaper articles were checked by the military censor, and Mascarenhas told his wife he was certain he would be shot if he tried,” writes Dummett.

Here is a case of a journalist who rose above what was no doubt being touted as the “national interest”. His subsequent reports in the Sunday Times made him a “traitor” to West Pakistan and a hero to the Bengalis. But I think he was a hero to the cause of journalism.

“There is little doubt that Mascarenhas’ reportage played its part in ending the war. It helped turn world opinion against Pakistan and encouraged India to play a decisive role,” writes Dummett… “Not that this was ever Mascarenhas’ intention”.

He was, simply, as editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans wrote in his memoirs, “just a very good reporter doing an honest job”.

It speaks volumes for the mainstream Pakistani narrative about the events of 1971, that I, as a journalist with a deep interest in human rights issues, never even heard of Anthony Mascarenhas until just a few years ago, and then too, quite by chance.

My uncle Zawwar Hasan, a retired journalist now over 80 years old, mentioned “Tony Mascarenhas” while reminiscing about how he ended up in this profession. Unsuccessful in getting a job in his own field, marketing, he had landed a job as a sports reporter with the government-controlled news agency Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) in Karachi in 1948. After his first assignment, a cricket match, he went to the India Coffee House with a new friend, another sports journalist, M. Akhtar.

“We wrote our reports there, and he gave me a lift to my office at APP.… Tony Mascarenhas was there – he later ended up with London Times,” said my uncle, remembering how Mascarenhas, who was editor of APP, had told him off for not coming straight back to the office after the match to file his report.

“Do you realise this is a news agency and every minute is precious. Anyway, show me what you have.”

Mascarenhas the editor then himself typed up the handwritten report (because the rookie reporter didn’t know how to type), telling him only to “come early tomorrow and learn to type.”

Being interested in the contributions of non-mainstream Muslims to Pakistan’s struggle for democracy, I was intrigued by the obviously Goan Christian name Mascarenhas. I started looking him up. I also learned how he “ended up with London Times”, initially as their correspondent in Pakistan.

According to the Times obituary of December 8, 1986, he was born Neville Anthony Mascarenhas in “Belgaum, near Goa, on July 10, 1928. A Roman Catholic, he was educated at St Patrick’s College, Karachi, before joining Reuters in Bombay in 1948.

“At the time of partition he was sent to Karachi to start their operation in the new state of Pakistan. He then helped to found Pakistan’s own news agency, APP.  In 1958 he joined the Times of Karachi as assistant editor…  From 1961 to 1971 he worked for the Morning News, mainly as assistant editor, though for two years (1963-5) he was its correspondent in India, and in 1965 was interned there with his family for three months while India and Pakistan were at war.

“In 1970 he was recruited by The Sunday Times, for which paper he wrote, the following year, the report from East Bengal which profoundly influenced opinion in the outside world, and which changed the course of his life.”

Read Dummett’s article for fascinating details about how Mascarenhas and his family escaped from Pakistan.

Later, in Cambridge MA, with access to the Harvard libraries, I found his books, The rape of Bangladesh (Delhi, Vikas Publications, 1971) and Bangladesh: a legacy of blood (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1986). As far as I know, neither is unavailable in Pakistan although I hear that there have been some translations.

Some years ago I asked a senior journalist who had been posted in Dhaka during 1971, why no one in West Pakistan wrote the truth about what was happening. “We were not allowed,” he said simply. “There was strict censorship.”

But Mascarenhas had the courage, and the opportunity, to follow his conscience.

As I wrote in an essay for the Economic and Political Weekly, the State controlled Pakistan Television, that started broadcasts in 1964, has remained very much ‘his master’s voice’.

Along with a few newspapers and the government controlled Radio Pakistan, PTV reported only what the government allowed. This censorship was particularly evident when it came to the growing unrest in what was then East Pakistan. The news censorship and slanting was so extreme that even on Dec 16, 1971, when the Pakistan army surrendered to the Indian, the West Pakistan media was still predicting victory. An exception was Anthony Mascarenhas, the Goa-born, Karachi-educated journalist…. In 1970, recruited by The Sunday Times, London, his reports on the happenings in East Bengal “profoundly influenced opinion in the outside world, and changed the course of his life”, as his obituary in The Times notes.

“He and his family had to leave their home and all their possessions in Karachi. He arrived in Britain on June 12, 1971, and the following day his three-page story appeared in The Sunday Times. It was quoted all over the world and won him awards from IPC and What the Papers Say. But it also earned him the bitter hatred of Pakistan’s military regime, and for time he had reason to fear for his life.”

Ironically, or perhaps tellingly, he had become an Indian citizen in 1976 –obviously Pakistan had disowned him — although at the time of his death he was intending to apply for British citizenship, according to the Times obituary.

President Martelly welcomed by President Chavez source: Le Nouvelliste

“The Venezuelan cooperation is now number one,” said President Michel Martelly shortly before boarding his plane to Caracas, land of Hugo Chavez. “It gives most grants and aids to Haiti,” added the president at Toussaint Louverture airport’s diplomatic room ahead of his first official trip to Venezuela as a member of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
Venezuela’s pledge of $1.3 billion in recovery aid to Haiti after the earthquake slightly surpassed U.S.’s $1.2 billion pledge, making Caracas the largest among all 58 donors. To that, President Martelly said, “We are grateful to President Chavez for Helping us from the bottom of his heart,” in a recent Associated Press interview. “Sometimes for a simple project, it might take too long for the project to happen,” explained the Haitian president, specifically referring to strict conditions accompanying the U.S.’s and other donors’ aids. “If you’re asking me which one flows better, which one is easier,” added Martelly, “I’ll tell you Venezuela.”
This presidential trip to the Venezuelan capital was also part of a larger event: the launching of new 33-member regional bloc CELAC away from Washington and Canada’s shadows. During the two-day summit held form Dec. 2 – Dec.3, 2011,  leaders focused on shielding their economies from the world’s financial meltdown. In spite of global economic woes, the Latin American region achieved a 5 percent economic growth last year. “The economic crisis should be at the center of our concerns,” said Dilma Rousseff who felt the region needed a new paradigm to respond to the crisis. “Together we can be stronger, together we can grow and that should be stronger for everyone,” she added. Her homologous partner Chavez went straight to the point, noting, “As the years go by, CELAC is going to leave behind the old and worn-out OAS,” referring to the Organization of American States, the Hemisphere’s arbitration entity. “Only Unity will make us free,” he later added.
Whether Haiti, a relatively small fish with a foreign aid economic model, can swim huge currents, as do autonomous economies such as OPEC country Venezuela or Dilma Rousseff’s Brazil, currently nursing the world’s fastest growing economy, remains to be determined. Nevertheless, Port-au-Prince’s warm embrace of Caracas differed vastly from that of his predecessor Rene Preval who looked upon Chavez’s motives with suspicions. With the exception of Brazil and Chile, where China has a strong foothold, the U.S. remains the biggest trading partner of many countries in the region. Yet, Chinese President Hu Jintao’s congratulatory letter, which Chavez read aloud to all 33 regional leaders, pledged to deepen cooperation with the new group, development that could shift the region’s geopolitical balance considerably.
Amid this distinct geopolitical puzzle, some observers noticed the emergence of Martelly’s foreign policy model, gearing his country toward his regional allies in search of sovereignty, rather than rigid Washingtonian conditions who stood between him and his army. Only the future will tell if Martelly’s regional play will favor Haiti’s long-term interests, but the president remained true to his ideals. “Now, if nobody wants to help, then we have to think about a way of getting that money,” said the president to the AP about his dream to reestablish the Haitian army. “But at the same time,” he continued. “Why do we need a foreign army to help us? A foreign army that’s costing much more money, why not hire young Haitians? Why not regain our sovereignty?”

Martelly welcomed at CELAC source: Le Nouvelliste

Although he told the AFP in an interview this weekend, “We no longer want handouts, we want to promote Haiti” in his quest to dissociate his country’s imagery with poverty and misery, President Martelly praised a CELAC’s resolution, promising vast contributions to help rebuild Haiti. Contributing countries included, Ecuador in several areas including security, Columbia in security and education, Chile in education to build 10 schools, and Panama that promised to ease travel restrictions for Haitians. A $40 million grant from Brazil will help restart construction of Artibonite’s hydroelectric plant while the new program “Aba Grangou” promised to reach about 100,000 vulnerable single moms with needed assistance starting January 2012.
However, If Washington’s reaction, still unknown, resembles anything like the 1,918 Haiti-related diplomatic cables revealed by whistleblowing website Wikileaks last summer, President Martelly may soon have a rude awakening as did his predecessor. “What emerges,” wrote the editors of the Nation about the diplomatic cables, “Is an extraordinary portrait of Washington’s aggressive management of Latin America’s first sovereign nation and its bare-knuckled tactics on behalf of U.S. corporate interest there.” If as the Nation deducted, the Haiti cables revealed Washington squaring off against Caracas and Havana, while Beijing and Taipei engaged in fierce diplomatic arm-wrestling that threatened to derail the UN military mission in Haiti, Martelly’s foreign policy shift toward regional allies could prove insurmountable.
Nonetheless, the president held nothing back expressing his frustration with the international community. “I’m the leader of a country that has been neglected for the last 200 years,” he stressed to AFP’s Ramon Sahmkow. “It is my responsibility to bring development to Haiti.”

Thursday, December 1, was World AIDS Day.  Each year, people gather worldwide to remember those lost to or affected by HIV/AIDS and to raise awareness.  It’s also a time to reflect on what’s been accomplished and what remains to be done, and the day serves as a time for politicians, celebrities, implementers, and activists to speak out.  This year, thirty years from the official beginning of the epidemic, proved similar. As always, discussions about increasing financial support of HIV/AIDS programs were at the forefront of most speeches, articles, and press releases.  For World AIDS Day, the UN released an ambitious set of goals to reach by 2015, which they acknowledge are “aspirational.”  In this uncertain funding environment, fears of budget shortfalls, program closures, and stock-outs of vital anti-retroviral drugs are very real.  AIDS-related deaths and new infections are on the decline, something that felt almost unimaginable just a decade or so ago.  We are close to radically altering the course of the epidemic, but the global economic recession is putting progress at jeopardy.

The Atlantic put together a series of articles for World AIDS Day.  Dr. Mitch Besser of mothers2mothers (disclosure: I used to work at m2m) focuses on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) efforts, highlighting UNAIDS’s Global Plan for elimination of MTCT by 2015 and the importance of US foreign aid programs.  Other highlights at The Atlantic include discussions on new scientific developments, a snapshot of the HIV epidemic in the United States, and what it will take to achieve an HIV-free generation.

As per usual, Bono had a thing or two to say.  Although his opinion piece for The New York Times  was a bit slick (and tripped in the end on an image of flag planting, which was meant to parallel the moon landing but inadvertently and unfortunately evokes colonialist imagery) , there’s no denying what he has done to shape the fight against the epidemic.  The piece recalls the frustration of the early years of ART, when drugs were available in high-income countries but not elsewhere.  Bono also acknowledges the vital role the US played in funding efforts to curb the epidemic, listing the names of the politicians and other figures from both sides of the aisle who contributed to the government’s legacy on HIV/AIDS.  He concludes with a shrewd argument about “smart power”–that the effects of US foreign aid efforts contribute to national security and global diplomacy.

US President Barack Obama spoke on Thursday and reiterated and expanded his commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS domestically and around the world.

He pointed to the declining rates of new infections and deaths around the world and the paradoxical steady rate of new infections in the US and the toll of the epidemic on minority populations in particular.  President Obama, perhaps to counter activists’ claims that he has not done enough to address HIV/AIDS, pointed out his administration’s increased financial commitment to HIV/AIDS programs and the lifting of the travel ban against people living with HIV, which will allow the next International AIDS Conference to be held in the US for the first time ever.  He underlined the need to implement the new US national HIV/AIDS strategy and pledged $15 million in additional funding for the Ryan White Program (which supports HIV clinics in the US) and $35 million extra for state ARV assistance programs.  He also called on countries to fulfill their pledges to the ailing Global Fund and for countries who were once recipients of aid but are now able to create foreign assistance programs, such as China, to make pledges of their own.  President Obama also announced two goals: to provide ARVs for 1.5 million pregnant women over the next two years for PMTCT and to get 6 million people on ART by 2013, which was greeted with hoots and wild applause.  He ended with a request that Congress continue to work together, saying that the gains made under the last three presidencies show “that we can do big things when Republicans and Democrats put common humanity before politics.  We need to carry that spirit forward.”  President Obama’s remarks are heartening, and it’s good to see his administration re-focus on HIV/AIDS efforts.  Julie Pace of the Associated Press reports, however, that PEPFAR will not see an increase in funding and that decreasing the cost of treatment and making current programs more efficient will be required steps to fund the the ambitious goals set out on Thursday.

I’d like to end with Susan Sontag’s definitive piece from 1986 called “The Way We Live Now,” which The New Yorker re-released this week.  It’s a heartbreaking reminder of the earliest days of the epidemic and of how far we have come in the twenty-five years since it was published.  Here’s to making even more progress, expanding commitments, and “getting to zero.”

Photo, via Wikimedia Commons, depicts activists from South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign in Cape Town in 2003.  The photo is from the TAC.

Iraq has agreed to a $17 billion deal covering the next 25 years with Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsubishi to capture the natural gas that is currently being flared off in its southern oil fields. The BBC reports “The new venture will be called Basra Gas Company, with Iraq holding a 51% stake, Royal Dutch Shell’s 44% and Mitsubishi 5%.” Right now, 700 million cubic feet a day are flared, a huge waste due to a lack of infrastructure. Natural gas is commonly burned off in this way as a safety precaution to relieve pressure that might otherwise damage an oil facility.

A memorandum of understanding was inked in September 2008, but some lawmakers demanded parliament OK the arrangement, and in Basra, officials thought their province got short changed. Back-room bargaining seems to have solved the problems. Most of the gas will be burned to generate electricity locally; despite the billions spent on the electrical grid in Iraq, the country still suffers from power shortages.

Iraq’s Oil Minister, Abdul-Karim Elaibi called the deal a “historic turn in Iraq’s oil industry.” Shell CEO Peter Voser told the press Iraq has become a “…substantial part of Royal Dutch Shell’s portfolio in the Middle East.”

To get an idea of how much this is, we can convert it to its oil equivalent. Natural gas is converted to barrels of oil equivalent using a ratio of 5,487 cubic feet of natural gas per one barrel of crude oil. So, 1 million cubic feet of natural gas amounts to 172.3 barrels of crude oil equivalent. Multiply that by 700 and the result is 120,610 barrels of crude oil equivalent daily or 44,022,650 crude oil equivalent per year.

Sinan Salaheddin of the Associated Press wrote recently, “Iraq burns off almost half of the 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of gas that it produces. The deal will help the country capture more than 700 million cubic feet per day of gas from three fields. They are the 17.8 billion-barrel Rumaila field being developed by a BP-CNPC consortium, the 4.1 billion barrel Zubair field, handled by an Eni-led consortium and partners Occidental Petroleum Corp. and KOGAS, as well as the 8.6 billion barrel West Qurna Stage 1, which is being developed by ExxonMobil-Shell consortium.”

The deal is Shell’s third in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, and it will bolster the company’s presence in a country which sits atop 143.1 billion barrels of crude oil and 126.7 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves. It lacks the infrastructure, however, to exploit this as it might.