Three years after serving in Iraq, Sgt. Carolyn Schapper is still working to regain a “normal” life. While she was serving as an intelligence officer in Iraq, Schapper saw her fair share of violence. The truck she was driving was hit by a roadside bomb twice; her unit came under mortar fire, sniper fire and countless other close calls.
Schapper is not the only woman with these war stories. A recent report released by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) highlighting the unique needs of female service members and veterans spotlighted these changing roles of women. According to the report “Women Warriors: Supporting She Who Has Borne the Battle,” more than 212,000 female service members have been deployed during the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as of January 2009. These women make up approximately 11 percent of American forces deployed to the region. Read more…
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Click to hear about the problem of displacement in Pakistan.
Courtsey of Refugees International
WASHINGTON — Nearly 2.4 million civilians have been displaced by violence in Pakistan in the last year, according to UN estimates. This humanitarian crisis is being called the worst in Pakistan’s existence by researchers at the non-profit Refugees International.
The organization recently released a field report highlighting what it believes to be failures of current American and international policies. The report aims to educate politicians and citizens alike about the issues most vital to improving the lives of vulnerable Pakistanis.
Patrick Duplat, co-author of Pakistan: Protect the People First, says American politicians and citizens still have a number of things to learn about the situation.
“[The displaced] are innocent victims of a conflict that is in part encouraged by the international community and the U.S.,” Duplat said, adding that a greater understanding of the situation “would help the American people to feel a certain amount of responsibility for what is happening there and help policy makers to realize that this is not just a question of security, it’s a question of making sure that people are protected.”
Staff at Refugees International point to the Non-Military Aid to Pakistan bill recently signed by President Barack Obama as an opportunity to help the displaced population. Duplat believes the bill, offering $1.5 billion to Pakistan each year for the next five years could be used as political leverage to eradicate inequalities in aid distribution.
WASHINGTON–Nearly two months into the school year, thousands of returning warriors are still waiting for their education benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs; benefits desperately needed to pay for tuition, housing and books. Timely payments have been delayed because of backlogs caused by the new program, the Post-9/11 GI Bill.
After our interview, Derek Blumke, executive director of Student Veterans of America took a moment to explain the details of the “old” and “new” GI Bills. (Jessica Harbin/MNS)
Derek Blumke, the executive director of Student Veterans of America, has been hearing complaints from a number of his member chapters about this issue. As an organization partnering with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Student Veterans of America has been in close contact with the VA on this issue.
Blumke said, “When it came time for the first checks to start running, and for the fall semester to begin, the VA was just kind of scrambling to get things together and this is where the delays are coming from. You only have so many VA employees able to process that paperwork, and as of now they are doing it all manually.”
Since realizing the magnitude of their backlog problem, the Department of Veterans Affairs has begun offering up to $3,000 in emergency funding to program participants.
But for Adam L’Episcopo, a student veteran at American University in Washington, even this emergency funding is out of reach. Because of an unexplained delay in the processing of his application, L’Episcopo doesn’t even have the paperwork to get the money he so desperately needs to pay his rent and bills.
Accusations of nuclear weapons, crazed political leadership, finger pointing, American impatience with the international system… it’s all too familiar. Did we learn nothing from 2003? We were certain then that Iraq had gone nuclear, but, let’s face it, we were dead wrong. So before we rush ourselves into yet another war, lets take a step back and look at the facts.
Dr. Juan Cole, a professor of History and Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Michigan and President of the Global Americana Institute, has been working to set the record straight before it’s too late. His blog, Informed Comment, is one of the top blogs on the Middle East and last week he wrote a post that truly opened my eyes to the absurdity of the arguements against Iran. Cole wrote a simple list of “The top things you think you know about Iran that are not true.” Even I got caught following the crowd on some of them. Read more…
Chicago’s Public Radio had a very interesting exclusive Tuesday. CPR’s “Worldview” spoke with Fouad and Ahmed, two Iraqi participants in the Iraqi Student Project, a non-profit helping Iraqi students get degrees from American universities.
These teens, like so many others, fled Iraq to Syria because of the war and have found themselves in U.S. Before beginning their time at university, together these students took a road trip, stopping in New York City and Dearborn, Michigan, among other places, to learn from others how the Iraq War has affected their lives. Amazed by what they heard, these teens are now making an audio documentary about the effects of the war.
Listen to their opinions of America, and how what they found was different from what they expected:
Afghanistan’s latest election has been bogged down with complaints of fraud and intimidation. The latest voices to join the chorus of complaints are the tribal leaders in southern Afghanistan. These leaders say the governor of their district,
Delaga Bariz, was detained by aides to President Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, in order to keep him from endorsing Karzai’s top opponent, Abdullah Abdullah.
In addition, these leaders are saying that all 45 of the local polling sites were shut down and some 23,900 ballots were sent in to be counted—all for Karzai. “Not a single person in Shorabak District cast a ballot—not a single person,” Bariz told The New York Times.
And unfortunately the election dispute is hardly the only pressing problem in the country as terrorists are still gaining ground and staging major attacks. A bomb in Kabul on Wednesday killed 24, including a high ranking intelligence official.
