By Jerome Starkey in Camp Bastion and Anne Penketh

Published: 26 December 2007

Two senior Western diplomats were given 48 hours to leave Afghanistan yesterday after trying to negotiate with anti-government leaders in Helmand.

Michael Semple, the acting head of the European Union mission in Afghanistan and a close confidant of Britain's ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, and Mervin Patterson, the third-ranking United Nations official in the country, were detained yesterday by KGB-trained secret police.

They were accused of threatening Afghanistan's national security. President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said the two were " involved in some activities that were not their jobs".

The men were ordered out of Afghanistan after allegedly offering aid and development incentives to tribal elders in the Taliban heartlands. Diplomats say they were given until Thursday to leave, although there were hopes last night that a negotiated solution could be found as officials spoke of a " misunderstanding".

They were meeting government officials and tribal commanders connected to Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold recently retaken in a major British-led assault and within sight of the strategic Kajaki dam. British troops spent Christmas in the town trying to kick-start development initiatives to win over the civilian population.

It follows a pledge by Gordon Brown to increase engagement with tribal groups in the area in a bid to secure a lasting peace, while ruling out talks with the Taliban's more intransigent senior leaders. As reported in The Independent on 12 December British agents have already begun talks with low-level Taliban leaders. Britain also backs Mr Karzai in his own efforts to reach out to lower-level Taliban.

At least one important leader in Musa Qala decided to stop supporting the Taliban and aligned himself with the Kabul government, greatly assisting the battle to retake the town.

Helmand's governor, Assadullah Wafa, ordered the arrest of Mr Semple and Mr Patterson yesterday, diplomats said. The embattled governor, who is nearing the end of his first year in office, is reportedly facing the sack for failing to help curb violence in the province.

Afghan officials claimed the pair were arrested, but their diplomatic status means they have been ordered to leave instead. Their Afghan colleagues are being investigated.

But a spokesman for the UN, Aleem Siddique, said the arrest was a " misunderstanding", and strongly denied the pair had been holding talks with the Taliban. "We don't talk to the Taliban, full stop." He said: "We do not believe there is any basis for any UN official to need to leave the country, and we're making this position clear to the government of Afghanistan. We see this as a misunderstanding of what people were doing in Helmand.

"There is a miscommunication between the authorities in Helmand province and the central government, and that's what we're trying to clear up."

Both diplomats are believed to hold Irish passports. Mr Semple has great experience in Afghanistan, speaking Dari and Pashtu. His expulsion would be a setback for the Western push to win "hearts and minds" at a time when Nato forces are struggling to hold terrain captured from the Taliban.

Mr Semple serves as deputy to the EU representative in Kabul, Francesc Vendrell. He has previously worked for the UN as acting humanitarian co-ordinator in Afghanistan. He was praised by the British ambassador in his blog in October as someone who "understands the grain and granularity of Afghan society better than almost any other foreigner".

Contacted by The Independent last night, he said it was "not a good time for me to talk", declining further comment except to say that a statement would issued from Brussels. A relative said that Mr Semple had been in his office yesterday morning "and was even wearing a tie".

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By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's government agreed on Sunday to abolish the centuries-old monarchy in a political deal with Maoist former rebels, but the decision only comes into effect after next year's elections, party officials said.

The Himalayan nation plunged into a fresh political turmoil three months ago when the anti-monarchy Maoists, who ended their decade-long civil war last year, quit the government.

They were demanding an immediate declaration of a republic, a step that indefinitely delayed the constituent assembly elections that had been set for November.

Those polls, Nepal's first national vote since 1999, were meant to map the country's political future, including that of the monarchy, and expected to cap the landmark peace deal.

Government leaders met with Maoist chief Prachanda to break the deadlock that has dealt a blow to the 2006 pact ending the conflict which caused more than 13,000 deaths.

"Nepal will be a Federal Democratic Republic nation ... and the decision will be implemented after the first meeting of the constituent assembly," the six-party ruling alliance and the Maoists said in a statement.

"But if the king creates serious hurdles to the constituent assembly elections a two-third majority of the (interim) parliament can remove the monarchy even before the polls," it said.

The popularity of King Gyanendra plunged when he sacked the government and assumed absolute powers in 2005 only to bow down after weeks of protest last year. The monarch has traditionally being viewed as an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu.

A party official on Sunday said the government will move a motion in the interim parliament to amend the provisional constitution to incorporate the agreement.

Leaders also agreed to increase the number of seats in the constituent assembly to 601 from 497. 335 of them will be elected on the basis of proportional representation, 240 on first-past-the-post basis and the rest to be nominated by the cabinet.

The Maoists had previously demanded fully proportional elections.

The twice-delayed elections will now be held within the Nepali year which ends on April 12 and the Maoists will rejoin the government, said Arjun Narsingh K.C., a spokesman for the Nepali Congress Party, the country's biggest.

The government will decide the election dates.

Thousands of Maoist former fighters are confined to United Nations-monitored camps since last year after the government agreed for the elections, a key demand of the Maoists during the war which started in 1996.

The government will also begin the process of integrating the Maoist ex-fighters and pay their wages regularly, the statement said.

In return the Maoists will hand back the property and land seized from the people during the conflict.

"All parties must be honest to implement the agreement. Otherwise, it has no meaning," K.C. said after the meeting.

Mainstream political parties say the Maoists are still extorting money and intimidating political workers.

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Almost all of the time, the Washington I know and live in is utterly unrelated to the Washington you see in the movies. The government is far more incompetent and amateur than the masterminds of Hollywood darkness.

There are no rogue CIA agents engaging in illegal black ops and destroying evidence to protect their political bosses. The kinds of scenario cooked up in Matt Damon’s riveting Bourne series are fantasy compared with the mundane, bureaucratic torpor of the Brussels on the Potomac.

And then you read about the case of Abu Zubaydah. He is a seriously bad guy – someone we should all be glad is in custody. A man deeply involved in Al-Qaeda, he was captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002 and whisked off to a secret interrogation, allegedly in Thailand.

President George Bush claimed Zubaydah was critical in identifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9/11. The president also conceded that at some point the CIA, believing Zubaydah was withholding information, “used an alternative set of procedures”, which were “safe and lawful and necessary”.

Zubaydah was waterboarded. That much we know - it was confirmed recently by a former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who even used the plain English word “torture” to describe what was done. But we know little else for sure. We do know there was deep division within the American government about Zubaydah’s interrogation, and considerable debate about his reliability.

Ron Suskind’s masterful 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine recorded FBI sources as saying that Zubaydah was in fact mentally unstable and tangential to Al-Qaeda’s plots, and that he gave reams of unfounded information under torture - information that led law-enforcement bodies in the US to raise terror alert levels, rushing marshals and police to shopping malls, bridges and other alleged targets as Zubaydah tried to get the torture to stop. No one disputes that Zubaydah wrote a diary - and that it was written in the words of three personalities, none of them his own.

A former FBI agent who was involved in the interrogation, Daniel Coleman, said last week that the CIA knew Al-Qaeda’s leaders all believed Zubaydah “was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone. You think they’re going to tell him anything?” Even though preliminary, legal interrogation gave the US good – though not unique – information, the CIA still asked for and received permission to torture him in pursuit of more data and leads.

The Washington Post reported that “current and former officials” said the torture lasted weeks and even, according to some, months, and that the techniques included hypothermia, long periods of standing, sleep deprivation and multiple sessions of waterboarding. All these “alternative procedures”, as Bush described them, are illegal under US law and the Geneva conventions. They are, in fact, war crimes. And they were once all treated by the US as war crimes when they were perpetrated by the Nazis. Waterboarding has been found to be a form of torture in various American legal cases.

And that is where the story becomes interesting. The Bush administration denies any illegality at all, insists it does not “torture” but refuses to say whether it believes waterboarding is torture or not. But hundreds of hours of videotape were recorded of Zubaydah’s incarceration and torture. That evidence would settle the dispute over the extremely serious question of whether the president of the United States authorised war crimes.

And now we have found out that all the tapes have been destroyed.

See what I mean by Hollywood? We know about the destruction because someone in the government told The New York Times. We also know the 9/11 Commission had asked the administration to furnish every piece of relevant evidence with respect to Zubaydah’s interrogation and was not told about the tapes. We know also that four senior aides to Bush and Dick Cheney, the vice-president, discussed the destruction of the tapes - including David Addington, Cheney’s right-hand man and the chief legal architect of the administration’s detention and interrogation policies.

At a press conference last Thursday the president gave an equivocal response to what he knew about the tapes and when he knew it: “The first recollection is when CIA director Mike Hayden briefed me.” That briefing was earlier this month. The president is saying he cannot recall something - not that it didn’t happen. That’s the formulation all lawyers tell their clients to use when they need to avoid an exposable lie.

This is not, of course, the first big scandal to have emerged over the administration’s interrogation policies. You can fill a book with the sometimes sickening details that have come out of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram in Afghanistan, Camp Cropper in Iraq and, of course, Abu Ghraib.

The administration has admitted that several prisoners have been killed in interrogation, and dozens more have died in the secret network of interrogation sites the US has set up across the world. The policy of rendition has sent countless suspects into torture cells in Uzbekistan, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere to feed the West’s intelligence on jihadist terrorism.

But this case is more ominous for the administration because it presents a core example of what seems to be a cover-up, obstruction of justice and a direct connection between torture and the president, the vice-president and their closest aides.

Because several courts had pending cases in which testimony from Zubaydah’s interrogation was salient, the destruction of such evidence triggers a legal process that is hard for the executive branch to stymie or stall - and its first attempt was flatly rebuffed by a judge last week.

Its key argument is a weakly technical one: that the interrogation took place outside US territory - and therefore the courts do not have jurisdiction over it. It’s the same rationale for imprisoning hundreds of suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - a legal no man’s land. But Congress can get involved - especially if it believes that what we have here is a cover-up.

What are the odds that a legal effective interrogation of a key Al-Qaeda operative would have led many highly respected professionals in the US intelligence community to risk their careers by leaking top-secret details to the press?

What are the odds that the CIA would have sought to destroy tapes that could prove it had legally prevented serious and dangerous attacks against innocent civilians? What are the odds that a president who had never authorised waterboarding would be unable to say whether such waterboarding was torture?

What are the odds that, under congressional grilling, the new attorney-general would also refuse to say whether he believed waterboarding was illegal, if there was any doubt that the president had authorised it? The odds are beyond minimal.

Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.

Congresswoman Jane Harman, the respected top Democrat on the House intelligence committee in 2003-06, put it as simply as she could: “I am worried. It smells like the cover-up of the cover-up.”

It’s a potential Watergate. But this time the crime is not a two-bit domestic burglary. It’s a war crime that reaches into the very heart of the Oval Office.

Yes, it is Hollywood time. And the ending of this movie is as yet unwritten.

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Displaced Fleeing War in Somalia Face Humanitarian Crisis

Somalia 2007 © Jehad Nga

Tens of thousands of Somalis are living in camps like this one, north of the capital Mogadishu, suffering from a lack of water, food, shelter, and access to medical treatment.

As violence in Somalia escalated this year to some of the worst levels in over 15 years, both assistance for and attention to one of the most challenging and acute humanitarian situations in the world seemed to wane. Ethiopian troops and Transitional Federal Government forces, supported by international partners such as the United States and the European Union, clashed with a range of armed groups, including remnants of the Islamic Courts Union. The fighting caused an unknown number of civilian casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from the capital, Mogadishu.

In 2007, MSF increased its presence in Mogadishu in different locations and opened an emergency response program in Afgooye, just outside the capital, where an estimated 200,000 internally displaced persons sought refuge, living in extremely harsh conditions with little access to food, water, and shelter. Many of those remaining in Mogadishu are staying in makeshift camps with little more than ripped cloth and plastic sheeting for shelter and are exposed to a high degree of violence.

In a country where a 16-year conflict has resulted in some of the world's worst health indicators, with an estimated life expectancy of 47 years, few international aid organizations managed to run effective independent aid programs. Present since 1991, MSF increased its operations in 2007 and is now running projects in 10 out of the 11 regions of south and central Somalia. Nevertheless in many areas, especially in the Mogadishu area, MSF is extremely frustrated by its inability to reach more patients due to security concerns.

In August, MSF called upon all parties to the conflict to respect the safety of medical workers and allow access to medical care in and around Mogadishu. Throughout MSF hospitals, from Kismayo to Galcayo, the medical services provided range from primary and maternal to surgical care, with nurses and doctors treating malnutrition, tuberculosis, kala azar, cholera, and war-related trauma on a daily basis.

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Political and Economic Turmoil Sparks Health-Care Crisis in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe 2007 © Dirk-Jan Visser

Women queue to collect water from a spring outside the capital city of Harare. Zimbabweans, especially those in high-density areas, are facing massive water shortages.

Rampant unemployment, skyrocketing inflation, food shortages, and political instability continued to wrack Zimbabwe in 2007. Up to 3 million people are believed to have fled to neighboring countries in recent years among a population of 12 million.

The national health-care system, once viewed as one of the strongest in southern Africa, now threatens to collapse under the weight of this political and economic turmoil with the most acute consequences potentially for the estimated 1.8 million Zimbabweans living with HIV/AIDS. Currently, less than one-fourth of the people in urgent need of life-extending antiretroviral (ARV) treatment receive it. This translates into an average of 3,000 deaths every week. And the prospects for a further scale up of the national AIDS program are dim.

Trained medical professionals are leaving the country, the government program for HIV/AIDS treatment is oversubscribed, and the lack of ARV supplies has stifled further expansion. Patients often face obstacles to reach hospitals or clinics because of high fuel and transport prices.

Through programs in Bulawayo, Tshlotsho, Gweru, Epworth, and various locations in Manicaland province, MSF provides free medical care to 33,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, 12,000 of whom are receiving ARV treatment—nearly one tenth of all people on treatment. However, MSF's ability to care for more people in need is hindered by the lack of trained health workers, restrictions on which staff can prescribe ARV drugs, and stricter administrative requirements for international staff to work in the country.

At the same time, Zimbabweans are feeling the health impact of degraded or nonexistent water-and-sanitation systems. During the year, outbreaks of diarrhea affected people living in the capital, Harare, and Bulawayo, the second largest city. Fleeing the country is also a dangerous enterprise as evidenced by the reports of refugees being beaten and raped along the South African border, and those who do make it across may be destined to live in the shadows with little or no access to health care.

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Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Spreads As New Drugs Go Untested

Thailand 2007 © Francesca Di Bonito

A MSF physician examines a tuberculosis patient in the Maela refugee camp near Maesot.

Every year, tuberculosis (TB) kills an estimated two million people and another nine million develop the disease. In spite of the rising human toll, there have been no advances in treatment since the 1960s and the most commonly used diagnostic test—sputum smear microscopy—was developed in 1882 and only detects TB in half of the cases. An estimated $900 million is needed annually for research and development for TB, but only $206 million is invested worldwide.

Existing treatments and diagnostics are even less adapted for people living with HIV/AIDS, the easiest prey for the TB bacilli. And for those who become infected with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB)—more than 450,000 people every year—or develop it as a result of incomplete treatment, the prospects for survival are even bleaker. The only guarantee for the few who are able to access treatment for MDR-TB is up to 24 months of ingesting a daily cocktail of highly toxic and expensive drugs that often trigger violent side effects.

In MSF programs in Armenia, Abkhazia, Georgia, Cambodia, Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan, even under the best conditions, only 55 percent of MDR-TB patients completed the 18 to 24 month treatment. The remaining proportion died, did not improve, or stopped treatment altogether because of side effects.

Adding to the frustration for medical staff on the TB pandemic's front line is the fact that not all new drugs are being tested in the neediest patients—those with MDR-TB. A recent article authored by international experts and published in the open-source medical journal PLoS Medicine, called for the testing of new drugs in patients whose TB is resistant to standard treatment. This approach could make it easier to detect anti-TB activity of new drugs and ultimately accelerate drug development.

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Expanded Use of Nutrient Dense Ready-to-Use Foods Crucial for Reducing Childhood Malnutrition

Niger 2007 © Anne Yzebe/MSF

Mothers feed their children a ready-to-use food (RUF) product called Plumpy'Doz at an MSF outpatient nutrition center in Maradi.

Acute malnutrition in early childhood is common in large areas of the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and South Asia—the world's “malnutrition hotspots.” Every year, malnutrition is associated with the deaths of five million children under the age of five.

Recently, an effective response has emerged in the form of nutrient dense ready-to-use foods (RUFs) that can save the lives of acutely malnourished children. These products come in the form of milk- and peanut-based pastes enriched with all the vitamins and nutrients needed for rapid recovery. And they do not require refrigeration or preparation, allowing most malnourished children to be treated with RUF at home. But so far these products are only available to a tiny fraction of the severely malnourished children who need them.

MSF urges international donors to support systematic purchasing and use of RUF in countries where it's needed. RUF also has the potential to prevent children from becoming acutely malnourished by treating at earlier stages. This means international food aid programs targeting young children must incorporate RUFs to treat less severe forms of malnutrition and to prevent acute malnutrition from developing in areas of high prevalence.

In Niger in 2007, MSF launched a pilot program using a modified RUF as a supplement to prevent some 62,000 children from becoming malnourished during the period of seasonal food shortages. The program has helped to stanch a rise in acute malnutrition in one of the country's high prevalence districts.

In addition to calling for urgent scale up of RUF for children most in need, MSF is urging further efforts to use supplemental RUF to prevent children from becoming dangerously malnourished in the first place.

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Civilians Increasingly Under Fire in Sri Lankan Conflict

Sri Lanka 2007 © Henk Braam

A wounded woman and child receive treatment at MSF's surgical program in Vavuniya, a town close to the front lines of the ongoing conflict between government and rebel forces.

Caught in the middle of fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE), civilians in Sri Lanka's eastern and northern regions live in terror. Sri Lanka has been in the grips of this fighting on and off for nearly 25 years, but the conflict has received very little attention, especially in terms of the toll it has taken on civilians living in the conflict zone.

Targeted bombings, killings, mine attacks, suicide bombings, abductions, forced recruitment, extortion, restrictions on movement, and arbitrary arrests make day-to-day life in Sri Lanka increasingly precarious. Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans in need of humanitarian assistance have been displaced since the resumption of major fighting in August 2006.

The dire nature of the situation is compounded by a general climate of hostility and suspicion toward humanitarian aid organizations. As a result, humanitarian aid is increasingly restricted and civilians suffer from the resulting lack of access to lifesaving emergency assistance. This lack of respect for humanitarian aid comes at a time when areas near the front line of fighting have lost nearly all of their medical specialists and hospitals no longer have the human resources to treat the wounded.

After having to evacuate in late 2006, MSF is now providing medical, obstetrical, and surgical care in Point Pedro, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, and Mannar.

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Conditions Worsen in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Democratic Republic of Congo 2007 © Guillaume Le Duc/MSF

A displaced woman recovers after amputation surgery in MSF’s Rutshuru Hospital in North Kivu province.

The headlines emerging from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2007 paid scant attention to the humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in the eastern province of North Kivu. More than a year after the first democratic elections in decades were supposed to bring stability to this conflict-ridden region, fighting between armed groups has continued in North Kivu.

Supported by MONUC, the UN force, the government is now in open combat with the forces of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. A number of different groups such as the Mai Mai and the Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are involved in the fighting.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes in the past year, many of whom have been displaced multiple times. The displaced are often forced to hide in the forest, with little access to food or basic health care and under constant threat of attack from the various armed groups. With few avenues to receive health care, displaced Congolese are increasingly vulnerable to easily treatable diseases and conditions such as malnutrition, malaria, respiratory infections, and obstetrical complications. Outbreaks of cholera have struck Rutshuru and Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu.

MSF teams have reinforced their activities to try to meet the increasing medical needs, but fighting and insecurity make it difficult for humanitarian workers to deliver assistance to the population. Large areas remain inaccessible, with many roads simply cut off by the insecurity.

One particularly disturbing aspect of DRC's conflict is the alarmingly high rate of sexual violence. In North Kivu, MSF cared for more than 2,375 victims of sexual violence from January through October 2007. In the DRC's Ituri district, the setting of conflict between different armed groups from those operating in North Kivu, 150,000 internally displaced people are still unable to return home. In a state of utter destitution, they remain vulnerable to exploitation and assaults.

Through the Bon Marché hospital in Bunia, capital of the Ituri region, MSF has treated 7,400 rape victims over the last four years. More than one-third of these people were admitted over the last 18 months. MSF also responded this year to a number of disease outbreaks in other provinces, including an epidemic of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in southern West Kasai province.

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Living Precariously in Colombia's Conflict Zones

Colombia 2007 © Juan Carlos Tomasi

Graciela and her family are a few of the millions of Colombians who have had to flee their homes to escape fighting between government, rebel, and paramilitary forces.

Largely fuelled by a fight over control of the narcotics trade, Colombia's decades-old civil war often makes headlines, but its impact on the civilian population of the country is rarely the focus of attention.

Over the years, as many as 3.8 million people have been driven from their homes by violence brought on by government troops, paramilitary, and rebel forces battling for territorial control, ranking Colombia third in the world after Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the largest number of internally displaced people.

Armed groups have a stranglehold on roughly half of Colombia's rural areas, depriving civilians of access to health care by making roads impassable, forcibly conscripting children into militias, and murdering those suspected of collaborating with rivals. These civilians are equally treated with suspicion of potentially “collaborating” with armed groups by Colombia's armed forces and often face harsh reprisals as a result.

In desperation, families flee their homes for urban slums with little more than the clothes on their backs; and when they arrive, looking for work and shelter, they often find conditions that are as threatening as those they fled. Their new homes are overcrowded shacks without adequate facilities. The living conditions can lead to respiratory infections and diarrheal disease, but there is little access to health care. There are also very few internally displaced persons who have the option of returning safely to the homes they were forced to abandon.

MSF has a presence in 13 of Colombia's 32 departments, working in isolated rural areas through mobile and stationary clinics and in urban areas where displaced families have gathered. Teams provide medical care ranging from vaccinations to reproductive care and emergency services, and offer psychological care to victims of violence. As the conflict in Colombia rolls into its sixth decade and armed groups continue to target civilians in their war for control, many Colombians do not remember a time when daily life was not ruled by guns and terror.

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Humanitarian Aid Restricted in Myanmar

Myanmar 2006 © Claude Mahoudeau/MSF

A father waits with his son to receive health care at an MSF clinic.

Isolated from the outside world since the ruling military junta came to power in 1962, the people of Myanmar (formerly named Burma) suffer from the consequences of repression and neglect.

The crackdown on monks marching for democracy in September brought international attention to this long-suffering population, but it did not expose what ordinary Burmese go through every day. Faced with high malaria and HIV rates, the impoverished population is provided with little assistance—only 1.4 percent of the regime's budget supports health-care services.

In spite of the overwhelming need, there are few humanitarian aid groups working in the country and, for those on the ground, operating in an independent and impartial manner is difficult. Moreover, donor governments and agencies are reluctant to fund programs that might support the regime. Travel inside the country can require time-consuming visas, which can make responding to emergencies impossible and needs assessments challenging. In some regions, such as those gripped by armed conflict involving Karen and Mon rebels along the eastern border with Thailand, government restrictions have stymied humanitarian aid efforts, including MSF's.

Some of the largest gaps in health services are in the western Rakhine state, where MSF treated 210,000 people for malaria in 2006. Muslims from Rakhine state, known as Rohingyas, live in particularly precarious circumstances. Denied citizenship rights by the state, this group suffers numerous forms of abuse. MSF provides basic medical care and HIV/AIDS treatment to Rohingyas.

The slow response to the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic has fueled the spread of the disease. In Yangon, Rakhine, Kachin, and Shan states, MSF offers comprehensive HIV/AIDS programs, but these meet just a fraction of the need. While there is little independent information to shed light on the number of Burmese in clinical need of life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, of the UN-estimated 360,000 people who are living with HIV, only 10,000 are believed to be receiving ARVs. MSF provides ARV therapy to 8,000 of them. And even fewer have access to care for complicating diseases like tuberculosis. As a result, the UN estimates that 20,000 people die annually from HIV/AIDS.

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Civilians Caught Between Armed Groups in Central African Republic

Central African Republic 2007 © Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A mother sits with her child in Massabiou, a village that was attacked by armed militia in April, causing thousands to flee. Those who have returned are now destitute, struggling to survive without food, water, or shelter.

Fighting between government forces and various rebel groups in northern Central African Republic (CAR), which started in late 2005, has caused significant displacement of the population. In the northwest, villages have been attacked, pillaged, and burned, forcing people to flee into the surrounding, inhospitable forest, and severely restricting their access to health care. Civilians are also the victims of violence at the hands of roadside bandits.

In 2007, MSF supported health structures and provided primary and secondary health care in and around Kabo, Batangafo, Paoua, Kaga Bandoro, Markounda, and Boguila in the northwest, and Birao and Gordil in the northeast. In the first eight months of the year, more than 100,000 consultations were carried out and tens of thousands of people—many of them children under five years of age—were treated for malaria and other infectious diseases often associated with poor living conditions.

Acts of harassment and general insecurity frequently forced MSF to stop its mobile clinics on short notice, which sometimes left people without access to health care for up to eight weeks. In June, MSF aid worker Elsa Serfass was shot and killed by rebel gunfire, leading to a lengthy reduction of MSF operations in northwestern CAR. The violence in the northwest has also forced close to 30,000 people into neighboring Cameroon, where they have suffered from a lack of shelter, food, and medical assistance.

During the year, MSF carried out a nutrition intervention after alarming rates of malnutrition were discovered among children within this refugee population. Affected children were treated and MSF also carried out distributions of supplementary food rations. More than 45,000 CAR refugees also gathered in southern Chad, where MSF works in a district hospital and provides assistance to refugees in camps and local residents.

In parts of Vakaga province in northeastern CAR, home to approximately 45,000 people, violence between rebel groups and government troops has forced thousands of people to flee their destroyed homes and villages. Many sought safety in the nearby forest. The region suffers from a near-total lack of health care and MSF provided assistance to the beleaguered population through mobile and fixed clinics in Birao and Gordil.

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As Chechen Conflict Ebbs, Critical Humanitarian Needs Still Remain

Chechnya 2007 © Misha Galustov
agency.photographer.ru

Mothers of kidnapped Chechens protest in a park in Grozny.

It has been nearly four years since the most intense fighting subsided between Russian government and rebel forces in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya. Tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who had fled to the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, have returned to Chechnya. At the same time, reconstruction has increased in the Chechen capital, Grozny, the scene of indiscriminate bombing less than a decade ago, and the republic's airport has been reopened.

Yet the Caucasus region remains highly volatile. Fighting outside Chechnya has increased and a large military presence still inhabits the region. Abductions, disappearances, assassinations, and bombings continue in Ingushetia, North Ossetia, and Dagestan. Inside Chechnya, the security situation is still precarious for civilians. Dangers may range from being caught in the middle of sporadic gunfire to getting into a car accident involving heavy military vehicles, the latter recently having become a common cause of trauma.

Basic health services, particularly in the areas of obstetrical and gynecological care, are woefully lacking and, when available, remain out of reach for many impoverished returnees. Through clinics in and around Grozny, MSF and local Chechen doctors see a population with high levels of chronic illness, including lung, kidney, and cardiovascular diseases.

Furthermore, the MSF teams also witness widespread needs for psychosocial care, caused by years of exposure to violence and displacement. An MSF survey of IDPs living in temporary accommodation centers in Ingushetia and Chechnya found that nearly all the people interviewed were suffering from anxiety, insomnia, or depression.

Chechnya's wars also took their toll on the republic's tuberculosis (TB) control system. As a result, MSF supports TB hospitals serving a population of 400,000. And many survivors of the wars still need care for crippling injuries. MSF has tried to meet some of this need by operating a reconstructive surgery program in Grozny hospital No. 9 since 2006.

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By Liz Capo McCormick

Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will conduct biweekly emergency auctions of loans as ``long as necessary'' as part of a global attempt by central bankers to restore faith in the money markets.

The Fed and European Central Bank loaned $30 billion in 35- day funds today at an interest rate of 4.67 percent, 2 basis points more than the initial special auctions four days ago. The rates are less than the 4.75 percent banks are charged to borrow directly at the Fed's discount window, suggesting the central bank is making progress in alleviating the credit crunch.

``The Fed finally gets it,'' said Andrew Brenner, co-head of structured products in New York at MF Global Ltd. ``This allows the Fed to postpone easing, which they prefer due to inflation.''

The U.S. central bank had scheduled four special auctions, with the final two slated for Jan. 14 and Jan. 18. The central banks, along with those in Canada, Switzerland and the U.K., announced plans on Dec. 12 to move in concert to alleviate the credit squeeze threatening global growth, in the biggest act of international economic cooperation since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Policy makers have cut the Fed's target rate for overnight loans between banks by 100 basis points to 4.25 percent since September, and the discount rate by 150 basis points. The U.S. central bank has also provided $8 billion in long-term repurchase agreements through year-end and let $35.2 billion in short-term securities mature so the proceeds could be used to provide liquidity in the banking system.

TED Spread Narrows

``The fact that the Fed said they will continue every two weeks with these auctions will help yields on Treasuries to move higher, spreads to come in, and stocks'' to rise, said Richard Gilhooly, an interest-rate strategist in New York at BNP Paribas Securities Corp., one of the 20 primary dealers that trade directly with the central bank.

Benchmark 10-year note yields rose 8 basis points to 4.13 percent, the biggest increase in a week. Yields on three-month bills, seen as a haven from turmoil by investors, increased 4 basis points to 2.97 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2 percent to 13,406.84, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index increased 1.13 percent to 1,477.42.

The difference between three-month Treasury bills and the three-month London Interbank Offered Rate, known as the TED spread, narrowed 7 basis points to 1.89 percentage point. That's down from a four-month high of 2.21 percentage points Dec. 11.

Fewer Bids

Financial institutions submitted $57.66 billion in bids to the Fed at their $20 billion auction of 35-day funds, resulting in a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.88, lower than the prior auction. There were 73 bidders, compared with 93 banks and securities firms earlier, the central bank said in a statement today.

``The rate wasn't so high that it should cause concern about any dire need for liquidity,'' said Michael Pond, an interest- rate strategist in New York at Barclays Capital Inc., another primary dealer. ``People were looking for funds and liquidity on a competitive basis.''

All the funds were made available at the stop-out rate, or the lowest rate that the Fed accepted at the auction. Bids at the stop-out rate were prorated at 73.40 percent, compared with 1.96 percent at the $20 billion auction of 28-day funds.

`Being Nimble'

The minimum accepted bid rate set by the Fed for today's auction was 4.15 percent, a rate based on a measure, known as the overnight indexed swap rate, of the average overnight fed funds rate over the term of the credit being auctioned.

Overnight indexed swaps are derivatives in which one person agrees to pay a fixed rate in exchange for receiving the average of a floating central bank rate over the life of the swap. For such swaps based in U.S. dollars, the floating rate is the daily effective federal funds rate.

`It's a sign the Fed is being nimble in terms of managing reserves and these temporary liquidity problems,'' said Kenneth Kim, an economist at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Skillman, New Jersey. ``I don't think they will have to do much more but it's a good sign.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Liz Capo McCormick in New York at Emccormick7@bloomberg.net

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On Wednesday, Romney's campaign said his recollections of watching his father, an ardent civil rights supporter, march with King were meant to be figurative.

"He was speaking figuratively, not literally," Eric Fehrnstrom, spokesman for the Romney campaign, said of the candidate.

The campaign was responding to questions raised by the Free Press and other media after a Boston publication challenged the accuracy of Mitt Romney's account.

In a major speech on faith and politics earlier this month in Texas, Mitt Romney said: "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."

He made a similar statement Sunday during an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press. He said, "You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights."

Romney's campaign cited various historical articles, as well as a 1967 book written by Stephen Hess and Washington Post political columnist David Broder, as confirmation that George Romney marched with King in Grosse Pointe in 1963.

"He has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb," Hess and Broder wrote in "The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the GOP."

Free Press archives, however, showed no record of King marching in Grosse Pointe in 1963 or of then-governor Romney taking part in King's historic march down Woodward Avenue in June of that year.

George Romney told the Free Press at the time that he didn't take part because it was on a Sunday and he avoided public appearances on the Sabbath because of his religion.

Romney did participate in a civil rights march protesting housing bias in Grosse Pointe just six days after the King march. According to the Free Press account, however, King was not there.

Broder could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

The Boston Phoenix reported Wednesday it could find no evidence that Romney and King ever marched together.

Mitt Romney's older brother, Detroit attorney Scott Romney, said he recalls his father telling him the elder Romney marched with King, possibly in 1963, but he could not remember exactly when the event took place.

Fehrnstrom called the Romney brothers' recollection and the historical materials a "pretty convincing case that George Romney did march with Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders in Michigan."

The governor's record was one of supporting civil rights. He helped create the state's first civil rights commission and marched at the head of a protest parade in Detroit days after violence against civil rights marchers in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

Mitt Romney's campaign planned today to further research George Romney's papers for evidence of his march with King.

Free Press Library Director Alice Pepper contributed to this report.

The Detroit Free Press is owned by Gannett, USA TODAY's parent company.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Police used chemical spray and stun guns Thursday as dozens of protesters seeking to halt the demolition of 4,500 public housing units tried to force their way through an iron gate at City Hall.

Protesters scuffle with police Thursday outside City Hall in New Orleans, Louisiana.

One woman was sprayed with chemicals and dragged from the gates. She was taken away on a stretcher by emergency workers. Before that, the woman was seen pouring water from a bottle into her eyes and weeping.

Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.

"I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting," said the woman, Kim Ellis.

Arrests were made as officers tried to establish order.

Inside, a scuffle also occurred in the City Council chambers as the meeting opened. Several protesters were forced out, including a woman who was carried, and a recess was called. The room was calm once the meeting resumed.

Protesters had planned to disrupt the City Council meeting, where members were expected to approve demolishing dozens of buildings -- a move that would open racial and class divisions.

The council chambers seat fewer than 300 people. Once capacity was reached, people who were not permitted into the chambers marched and chanted. Eventually violence broke out.

The City Council vote is a critical moment in a protracted fight between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and residents, activists and preservationists.

HUD wants to demolish the buildings, most of them damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, so developers can take advantage of tax credits and build new mixed-income neighborhoods.

The council's approval of the demolition is required under the city's charter.

HUD says the redevelopment, in the works before Katrina hit, will mark the end of the city's failed public housing experiment that lumped the poor into crime-ridden complexes and marooned them outside the life of the rest of the city.

But critics say the plan will shrink the stock of cheap housing at a time when housing is scarce and drive poor blacks out of the city. They also say the buildings are, contrary to popular opinion, mostly handsome brick structures that will outlast anything HUD builds in their place.

A news release from the Coalition to Stop the Demolition, one of several groups organizing protesters, characterized the pending action as a "rubber stamp" at a "sham meeting."

"It is beyond callous, and can only be seen as malicious discrimination. It is an unabashed attempt to eliminate the black population of New Orleans," said Kali Akuno, an organizer with the group.

A recent shake-up on the seven-member City Council turned it into a majority white panel for the first time since the 1980s, a shift that will certainly make the vote even more racially charged.

Three of the council's white members were quick to say they supported the tear-down plan, while the council's three black members were hesitant about expressing their intentions.

One black member, Cynthia Hedge Morrell, issued a statement late Wednesday in favor of demolitions. The fourth white member, Council President Arnie Fielkow, has been careful to tread the middle ground, but a spokeswoman said Thursday he supports demolition.