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July 3:
International fears are mounting that North Korea could be facing a famine as severe the one it experienced in the mid-1990s. The
Los Angeles Times reports that Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons has isolated it from the international community, causing a steep decline in humanitarian aid. South Korea, angry at the North’s withdrawal from the six-party nuclear talks, recently delayed its promised shipment of fertilizer for agrarian use. The United States, for its part, intends to donate some 50,000 tons of food this year, but the UN World Food Program has hinted that it may have to cut 80 percent of its assistance to the country’s estimated 6.5 million aid recipients.
July 6:
The escalating campaign of violence in Thailand’s restive south has forced the Thai government to resort to a new homeland defense tactic: the arming of teachers. The
International Herald Tribune reports that government-run schools and their teachers, who are considered high-profile members of the community, have become the latest targets of bombs and attacks by regional rebels. Over the past year and a half, dozens of schools have been damaged or destroyed by arson, and some 18 teachers have been killed. In response, the country’s Education Department has been forced to offer teachers hazardous-duty pay and to buy used pistols, so that teachers – who are being trained by Thailand’s military – can defend themselves.
According to Burma’s National League for Democracy (NLD), the government in Rangoon has released 249 political prisoners. The move comes at a time when Burma’s military junta has come under renewed international pressure over its undemocratic practices, reports the BBC. Citing the country’s spotty human rights record, the United States and the European Union have protested Rangoon’s plans to take over the rotating chairmanship of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year. Officials from regional human rights groups have dismissed the prisoner release as a government ploy intended to appease foreign critics.
In a new twist in the escalating war of words between Islamabad and Kabul, Pakistan has accused the government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan of inadequate security measures that have facilitated the resurgence of Taliban fighters.
Asia Pulse reports that Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Information, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, has accused the Afghan government of concealing massive security failures, declaring that “most Afghans are disillusioned with the incumbent government is a patent reality.”
July 8:
Nepal’s Maoist rebels have begun receiving logistical training and strategic support from the Tamil Tigers, the
South Asia Tribune reports. One Maoist operative has revealed to the Asian daily that the Sri Lankan terrorist group is helping form human bomb squads for suicide missions, and aiding in the recruitment of women and teenagers for the ranks of the Nepalese irregulars. Training camps of the Tamil Tigers have reportedly been established in Nepal’s Narkatiaganj and Ghorasahan districts.
The involvement of the Tamil Tigers mirrors another transformation underway in Nepal’s insurgency. According to the rebel leader, since last October, Southeast Asia’s Maoist rebels have begun operating in a loose-knit regional alliance. As part of this change, insurgents in India and Nepal have expanded their contacts, and now have begun carrying out joint terrorist operations.
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