Les acteurs humanitaires œuvrant au Nord-Kivu ont annoncé vendredi 3 février à Goma que plus de 500 000 personnes ont fui l’insécurité dans leurs villages respectifs. Ils l’ont dit à l’occasion du lancement officiel du plan d’action humanitaire 2012 en RDC. Les combats qui opposent, depuis l’année passée soit les FARDC aux milices étrangères et locales, soit ces milices entre elles dans certains territoires comme Masisi, Walikale et Beni au Nord-Kivu ont chassé plusieurs milliers d’habitants de leurs villages. Les mêmes facteurs de crise risquent de se maintenir et ou même de s’intensifier en 2012, estiment les humanitaires. Pour le Bureau des nations unies pour la coordination des affaires humanitaires (OCHA), bien que la situation soit encore volatile en province, des interventions plus adéquates seront planifiées pour renforcer la prote...


MGNREGA: The road ahead (Feb 4)
The UPA Government's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) completed six years of its implementation this week. The flagship programme that aims at enhancing the livelihood security of people in rural areas has, time and again, attracted criticism for the lapses in its execution, undermining the success stories it has scripted.


India faces female infanticide crisis (Feb 3)
As the only girl in her noisy classroom of 22 boys, Padma Kanwar Bhatti is one defiant symbol of the toll exacted by India's deadly preference for male children.


AN ASIA TIMES ONLINE EXCLUSIVE : Taliban eat into Afghanistan's core (Feb 3)
Even as several tracks of peace talks with the Taliban open up, Asia Times Online has learned that senior members of the Western-trained and financed Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police plan to defect with vast numbers of their colleagues to the militants once foreign forces start to leave the country. - Hamza Ameer and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud (Feb 3, '12)


Rants and raves for new US pullout plan (Feb 3)
The surprise decision to phrase out a combat role for US troops in Afghanistan by mid-2013 has drawn mixed reaction in Washington, with critics of the 11-year international occupation cheering and neo-cons and other hawks assessing that the strategy will open the door to Kabul for the Taliban. The announcement comes as a critical juncture on a number of fronts. - Jim Lobe (Feb 3, '12)


THE ROVING EYE : Exposed: The Arab agenda in Syria (Feb 3)
Washington, London and Paris are falling over themselves to assure the real international community that the "Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown" in Syria at the United Nations is not seeking another mandate for bombing a la Libya. But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is: no less than a crude drive for regime change. - Pepe Escobar (Feb 3, '12)


India poised to be world's biggest arms importer (Feb 2)
(NEW DELHI) India's planned purchase of 126 fighters from France's Dassault marks the latest stage in a huge military procurement cycle that has turned the world's largest democracy into its biggest arms importer.