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	How can the country be abandoned in its hour of need? by Desmond Tutu, Navi Pillay The Elders & agencies Syria   How can the country be abandoned in its hour of need, asks Desmond Tutu.   The massacre in Syria rages on and yet we stand idle. We must realise that, to millions of Syrians trapped in the country, the virtual absence of humanitarian relief is nearly as arbitrary and cruel as the war itself.   Bombs, even ballistic missiles, are tearing homes apart and more than 70,000 people have been killed. Weapons, not blankets, are pouring into the country. The BBC asks a child if he misses playing with his friends and he replies, "they are all dead." God is weeping.   Where are the shelters and the food? More than a million Syrians are leaving the country and their lives behind. Half of them are children.   Across the border, the refugee camps, where help exists, are swelling in size and struggling to cope. Families are opening up their homes to those fleeing the conflict, in wonderful acts of kindness – but this is a huge burden to them. We cannot, and should not, rely on such generosity.   Help must be made available inside the country to all who need it. It is shameful that the few brave organisations who can provide relief must often do so in hiding, or, if not, are severely impeded anyway.   The stories they tell are heartbreaking: water tanks are riddled with bullet holes, neighbourhoods are starved, hospitals are deliberately shelled. These groups ask for nothing more than to aid Syrians on the right scale, in the open and in safety.   What on earth will it take for this to finally happen? For two years, our so-called international community has allowed complex power plays to take priority over the terrible suffering of Syrians. It is so uncaring and cynical. If your loved ones were trapped there, would you not be moved to act? Would you care for politics rather than safety in the face of such carnage?   In the absence of a political solution, there is simply no excuse for the lack of concerted, neutral humanitarian efforts to reach the millions who are suffering everywhere in the country. Surely it is in the interest of anyone who cares for the future of Syria to keep families safe and children unscathed?   As my fellow Elders, Martti Ahtisaari and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, wrote last week, no-one with the power to change the situation, no human being, can in good conscience refuse to heed this call. But we must be making this call a lot louder than we have done so far. It is a moral failure not to do so.   How many more harrowing scenes of exhausted families crossing the border into Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey must we bear witness to? For how long must we hear their tales of grief and devastation before the ambulances are allowed to enter?   Ultimately it falls to the Syrian authorities to give their blessing if the UN is to organise humanitarian access for medicine, food and blankets to reach all parts of Syria. But our efforts to achieve even this, and fulfil our deepest moral obligation to Syrians, have been half-hearted at best.   As Elders we wish our colleague Lakhdar Brahimi strength as he faces an unconscionable situation as the UN-Arab League peace envoy to Syria. We pray he can help reach a breakthrough to the crisis.   But until then we must really knock some heads together. For each second that passes without care for the people trapped in the crossfire, we undermine our own moral standards. We act as if their lives have less value than ours, as if we have written them off already. We abandon our brothers and sisters in their greatest hour of need.   The international community must not become numb to atrocities in Syria warns UN rights chief.   The international community must act to stop the conflict in Syria and ensure those responsible for human rights violations are held accountable, the United Nations human rights chief said today following reports of massacres in Baniyas, as well as displacement of civilians due to military build-up in Qusayr.   “We should not reach the point in this conflict where people become numb to the atrocious killing of civilians,” said the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. “The increasingly brutal nature of the conflict makes international efforts to halt the bloodshed imperative […] but we need a much greater sense of urgency.”   Images of piles of bloodied and burned bodies, including of small children and babies, have been emerging – allegedly taken after Government forces and militia overran al-Bayda and other parts of Baniyas last week.   “These images, if verified, indicate a complete lack of regard for the lives of civilians,” Ms. Pillay said. “There needs to be a careful investigation of each and every incident like this.”   “Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture, constitute very serious crimes,” she said. “Our concern is all the greater given recent information reaching our team on the ground in neighbouring countries that Government forces are continuing to resort to indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force in residential areas.”   Witnesses, many of whom had suffered serious injury such as loss of limbs, told UN human rights monitors their homes had been shelled during attacks from February to mid-April.   “We are getting consistent testimonies that suggest Government forces are directly targeting key life-sustaining entities such as bakeries and pharmacies, hospitals and schools where civilians are sheltering,” Ms. Pillay said. “Depending on the circumstances, these attacks may constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.”   Opposition forces have also committed human rights violations as anti-Government groups operate and hide within densely populated areas, endangering civilians.   Ms. Pillay renewed her call to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).   “I believe that serious human rights violations and other acts amounting to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity have been committed. We must make it clear to both the Government and the armed opposition groups that there will be clear consequences for the people responsible for these crimes.”   http://theelders.org/article/no-fuel-no-electricity-no-food-crisis-syria http://reliefweb.int/country/syr http://www.unocha.org/crisis/syria http://www.wfp.org/countries/syria http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4f86c2426.html http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/syriancrisis_68134.html Visit the related web page
	Iraq, Afghan Wars to cost 4-6 Trillion Dollars - Harvard Report by LA Times & agencies   May 2013   April deadliest month in Iraq in five years – UN   More people were killed and wounded in violent attacks across Iraq in April than in any month since June 2008, the United Nations mission in the country reported.   According to figures released by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), a total of 712 people were killed and 1,633 were wounded in acts of terrorism and violence.   The majority of victims were civilians, with 595 people killed and 1,438 injured. A further 117 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed and 195 were injured.   Baghdad was the worst affected governorate, with a total of 697 civilian casualties, followed by Diyala, Salahuddin, Kirkuk, Ninewa and Anbar.   Hundreds of people have been killed or wounded in recent clashes across the country, including in Hawija, north of Baghdad, where government helicopters shot at militants hiding in the village, resulting in dozens of people killed or injured.   The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Iraq, Martin Kobler, has repeatedly called on Iraqi authorities to take decisive measures to stop the escalating violence, and on Tuesday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all Iraqis to come together and engage in inclusive dialogue to overcome the “deep political crisis” facing the country.   “It is only through dialogue and full participation in the government institutions that bold initiatives can be taken to overcome the critical phase the country is going through,” Mr. Kobler said.   Mar 2013   Iraq, Afghan Wars to cost 4-6 Trillion Dollars reveals Harvard Report.   Washington:- Costs to U.S. taxpayers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will run between four and six trillion dollars, making them the most expensive conflicts in U.S. history, according to a new report by a prominent Harvard University researcher.   While Washington has already spent close to two trillion dollars in direct costs related to its military campaigns in the two countries, that total “represents only a fraction of the total war costs”, according to the report by Linda Bilmes.   “The single largest accrued liability of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to war veterans,” she wrote in the 21-page report, "The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan".   Bilmes, who since 2008 has co-authored a number of analyses on war costs with the World Bank’s former chief economist, Joseph Stiglitz, noted that more than half of the more than 1.5 million troops who have been discharged from active duty since 9/11 have received medical treatment at veterans’ hospitals and have been granted benefits for the rest of their lives. More than 253,000 troops have suffered a traumatic brain injury.   Additional costs include the replacement and repair of equipment — which wears out at an estimated six times the peace-time rate — and the accumulation of interest on money borrowed by the Treasury to finance the wars since the nearly two trillion dollars in war costs were not subject to the normal budgetary process.   So far, Washington has paid some 260 billion dollars in interest charged on war-related borrowing, but the “potential interest cost of the U.S. war debt reaches into the trillions,” according to the report.   “One of the most significant challenges to future U.S. national security policy will not originate from any external threat,” she wrote. “Rather it is simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.”   That most war-related costs are actually incurred after the wars are themselves concluded is not unusual in U.S. history, according to a recent investigation by the Associated Press (AP).   After researching federal records, it reported last week that compensation for World War II veterans and their families only reached a high in 1991 – 46 years after the war ended.   It also reported that, almost exactly 40 years after the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam, the government is still paying veterans and their families or survivors more than 22 billion dollars a year in war-related claims, and that that figure is on the rise, as the beneficiary population ages.   The calculation, paints a grim picture of how America"s future at home and abroad has been mortgaged to the two conflicts entered into by George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003.   "The legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades".   Linda Bilmes makes clear that the true legacy of the two conflicts has not yet begun to be appreciated. "Unfortunately, the legacy of these wars, because of decision about the way we funded these wars, means we will be paying the costs for a long time to come," Professor Bilmes said. Visit the related web page
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