Hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan have been internally displaced by armed conflict, ethnic tensions or human rights violations, natural disasters such as drought, or secondary displacement in the case of refugees and deportees who have returned from neighbouring countries.
An ongoing exercise by the Afghanistan IDP Task Force suggests that over 200,000 people are internally displaced in the country, and this estimate does not include most of those displaced by conflict between the government, international coalition forces and the armed opposition; it is composed primarily of a protracted caseload from before 2004. The conflict is estimated to have displaced tens of thousands of people every year since 2006, but their number has been impossible to determine due to a lack of access to the conflict zones.
The Afghan government and the United Nations refugee agency have pledged to strengthen efforts to resettle returnees and people inside the country displaced by violence. The pledge came after a high-profile visit to the country this week by the head of U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres. As VOA’s Ravi Khanna reports, the U.N. official wants the international community to do more to resettle Afghan refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) which number over 2 million refugees and another 200,000 IDPs.
Carla Robbins of The New York Times and Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs magazine join Martin Savidge to discuss the weeks top stories: A new intelligence report suggesting al-Qaeda may be on the decline, the discussion over Senator Hillary Clinton as a potential member of the Obama cabinet and reports that Iran now has enough uranium to produce a nuclear bomb.
Venezuelans head to the polls on Sunday in the first major electoral test since last year’s failed constitutional referendum. All but one of the country’s 23 state governorships are up for grabs as are 328 of 335 municipalities including the four that make up the city of Caracas. An opposition boycott helped give the President Chávez’s allies an almost clean sweep in the previous regional elections in 2004, making it almost certain Chávez will lose some governors and mayors on Sunday.
If losses are minimal, Chávez is expected to declare victory and push for another constitutional referendum to abolish term limits, allowing him to stay in power for as long as he wins elections and to move the country to whatever “Bolivarian socialism” happens to be. That term is such an oxymoron but that aside it clearly means something to Chávez and his followers. Still, opinion polls suggest that the opposition will make major gains at Chávez’s expense. The elections are already controversial for over 300 candidates, all members of the opposition, were declared ineligible to run by the country Electoral Commission pending judicial investigations.
President Hugo Chávez faces an important test of his self-styled socialist revolution on Sunday when Venezuelans vote in regional and local elections after a tumultuous election campaign.
Opinion polls suggest a resurgent opposition could win control of key states and cities and rein in the forceful president on the eve of his 10th anniversary in power.
Discontent over violent crime, inflation and poor public services threatens to topple government candidates and trip up Chávez’s ambition to turn South America’s energy giant into a socialist state.
With government revenues tumbling along with oil prices, the president has cast the election as an existential battle to protect the revolution from traitorous “little Yankees” and criminals who take orders from Washington.
“If I am to continue governing Venezuela, it will depend on what happens [on Sunday]. Make no mistake, Chávez’s political destiny is in play here,” he said this week.
Opposition leaders said the vote was a chance to rebuff an authoritarian megalomaniac whose corrupt and incompetent rule frittered a historic oil windfall.
“It is not a choice between capitalism and socialism, that’s a lie. Here the choice is between efficiency and inefficiency,” said Carlos Ocariz, the opposition candidate for Sucre, an impoverished municipality in Caracas which opinion polls suggest has swung away from Chávez.
James Pethokoukis of US News and World Report is sounding the alarms for the conservative movement or what’s left of it in an article entitled How Tom Daschle Might Kill Conservatism. Personally, I think conservatives did a fine job themselves on that score. While bleeding the American Republic dry, the GOP slit their own wrists. Let’s hope that old and tired patient dies but I fear those who wish for the not-so-golden Gilded Age to continue will continue to bark and foam at the mouth as only rapid dogs can.
The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. “Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that’s it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail.”
And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom Daschle. He’ll be the guy shepherding President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan through Congress via his probable role as secretary of health and human services. At the core of Daschle’s thinking on the subject is the creation of a “Federal Health Board that would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board” and ensure “harmonization across public programs of health-care protocols, benefits, and transparency.” (Forget secretary of state, Hillary Clinton should shoot for chairman of Fed Health and run one seventh of the U.S. economy.) And the subject of that “harmonization” would be a $100 billion to $150 billion a year plan that would let individuals (and small businesses) buy insurance from private companies or from a government plan.
Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry’s trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn’t interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate.
News sources are predicting that President-Elect Barack Obama will name Timothy F. Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary. It’s a compelling and thoughtful choice. Mr. Geithner has a long and distinguished career for one so young. He’s 47 but has already served in the Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton Administration. Currently, he is the Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank where he has been at the center of the maelstrom that has whipped through the world’s financial markets this year. Under Clinton, he worked in the Summers Treasury Department as Undersecretary for International Affairs responsible for coordinating the actions of the US Treasury with other Economics ministeries worldwide. He has also work in Japan and China, who are the largest foreign holders of US debt. China this week surpassed Japan as the largest holders of US bonds estimated now at 10%. I might have preferred Laura Tyson, the former US Economic Advisor to President Clinton and a former dean of both the Haas School of Business and the LSE. Still, Mr. Geithner is an astute choice. More from the New York Times.
Other Cabinet Appointments
The rumours swirl around the likely embittered Bill Richardson who wanted State despite so many protestations to the contrary that he had the job he wanted as Governor of New Mexico. Reports suggest that he is in-line to be named Commerce Secretary or perhaps a return to the Department of Energy. Commerce is likely the better fit. It is as much an international position as it is a domestic one. The one positive about Richardson is that he is a free trader and so having him at Commerce might induce President Obama to resist his protectionist urges. The other rumour is that Richardson is headed for the Interior Department.
It is also expected that Obama will name as his budget director Peter R. Orszag, a Clinton administration economist who is now head of the Congressional Budget Office. Mr. Orszag, like Mr. Geithner, is another Rubin protege and a competent well-thought of choice.
The other appointment was that Janet Napolitano, the current Governor of Arizona, for Homeland Security. As a border Governor, she certainly has expertise on issues concerning that vast bureaucracy. The one negative is that it removes the leading Democratic candidate to take on John McCain for the US Senate seat from Arizona in 2010. It’s a seat that Napolitano, a popular Governor, can win.
Finally, as per the latest Hillary for Foggy Bottom watch. The job seems to be hers if she wants it and again according to the New York Times, she is leaning in that direction.