Humanitarian Crisis

While the Pentagon trumpets its victorious race toward Baghdad, the death, starvation, disease and homelessness that war will inflict on Iraqi civilians goes unmentioned. In the rush to war, the Bush administration's plans for the impending humanitarian crisis are too little, too late. A recent confidential U.N. planning report for humanitarian relief in a war-ravaged Iraq predicts that "the collapse of essential services in Iraq ...

BEIRUT - Syrian President Bashar Assad predicted a global catastrophe should the West invade his country, and representatives of Syria's notoriously divided opposition struggled Thursday to form a united government in exile against Assad's beleaguered rule. The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, said it could no longer cope with the fast-expanding humanitarian crisis in Syria, where a raging civil conflict has left millions in need of shelter, medical aid, food and other necessities.

Eritrea teetered on the edge of a major humanitarian crisis Thursday, as more than half a million people fled invading Ethiopian troops, artillery and warplanes, U.N. and Eritrean aid officials said. With the key western town of Barentu under the control of the Ethiopian military, Eritrea also faced a humiliating reversal in its two-year war with its larger neighbor over a border dispute. The latest round of fighting began last Friday.

DAMASCUS, Syria - When Hytham was released from a Syrian prison in the spring after his third incarceration for being an opposition member, he expected to return to the streets with thousands of other activists to call for the fall of the government. Instead, he found an opposition landscape that had been transformed from one of demonstrations and peaceful dissent to that of an armed uprising. Now Hytham, who graduated from medical school last year, volunteers in the field hospitals that dot Damascus and its suburbs, treating civilians injured in government shelling and airstrikes and rebels wounded in fighting.

Returning to Baghdad for the first time since the start of the war, top U.N. relief officials warned Saturday of a possible humanitarian crisis in Iraq and faced criticism over the little humanitarian aid they have provided so far. About 60% of Iraqis are considered fully dependent on aid from the United Nations' "oil-for-food" program, put in place after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Nearly two months have passed since program workers last distributed food.

ALEPPO, Syria - In million-dollar apartments in a neighborhood of the city as yet unscathed, the battle for Aleppo plays out daily on flat-screen TVs. Amid imported sofas and abstract art, the revolution doesn't seem so close. But as the call for night prayers rang out from the minaret of the nearby mosque on a recent day, two loud explosions boomed. "Do you hear that?" a father of seven asked, briefly looking away from the TV. "It's like this every night. " From the balcony, which on this night let in a little cool summer breeze, his family can occasionally see smoke rising above other Aleppo neighborhoods that are under attack by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Alabama's estimated 130,000 illegal immigrants are worried. They are confused. And in some cases, they have disappeared. They have disappeared from classrooms and from tomato fields. Last week, some had disappeared from the Guadalajara Jalisco restaurant, a former diner now serving Tex-Mex fare to a largely American-born clientele in this sleepy town east of Birmingham. Manager Fredy Vergara had lost three of his 12 employees, and more workers said they planned to leave soon, fleeing in fear of Alabama's new immigration law. Waiter Ever Salas struck out for Washington state.

BEIRUT - In the last few days, thousands of Syrians have poured across the borders of neighboring countries, fleeing increasing violence in their homeland but creating tension elsewhere. More than 170,000 Syrians have sought sanctuary in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq - at least 12,000 of them just in the last three days - leading to a growing humanitarian crisis, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. At least 168 people were killed across the country Friday, activists said, many of them in the cities of Aleppo, Damascus and Dara, as the regime of President Bashar Assad uses attack helicopters and warplanes with greater frequency in its assaults on towns and cities.

In his first major speech to the nation since the operation was launched more than a week ago, President Obama said progress had been made in preventing a humanitarian crisis in Libya thanks to the American-led effort. Outlining his decision in a nationally-televised addressed, the president said the United States and the world "faced a choice" when confronted with a dictator bent on killing his own citizens. "We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi – a city nearly the size of Charlotte – could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world," Obama said.

DAMASCUS, Syria - When Hytham was released from a Syrian prison in the spring after his third incarceration for being an opposition member, he expected to return to the streets with thousands of other activists to call for the fall of the government. Instead, he found an opposition landscape that had been transformed from one of demonstrations and peaceful dissent to that of an armed uprising. Now Hytham, who graduated from medical school last year, volunteers in the field hospitals that dot Damascus and its suburbs, treating civilians injured in government shelling and airstrikes and rebels wounded in fighting.

BEIRUT - In the last few days, thousands of Syrians have poured across the borders of neighboring countries, fleeing increasing violence in their homeland but creating tension elsewhere. More than 170,000 Syrians have sought sanctuary in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq - at least 12,000 of them just in the last three days - leading to a growing humanitarian crisis, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. At least 168 people were killed across the country Friday, activists said, many of them in the cities of Aleppo, Damascus and Dara, as the regime of President Bashar Assad uses attack helicopters and warplanes with greater frequency in its assaults on towns and cities.

ALEPPO, Syria - In million-dollar apartments in a neighborhood of the city as yet unscathed, the battle for Aleppo plays out daily on flat-screen TVs. Amid imported sofas and abstract art, the revolution doesn't seem so close. But as the call for night prayers rang out from the minaret of the nearby mosque on a recent day, two loud explosions boomed. "Do you hear that?" a father of seven asked, briefly looking away from the TV. "It's like this every night. " From the balcony, which on this night let in a little cool summer breeze, his family can occasionally see smoke rising above other Aleppo neighborhoods that are under attack by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Alabama's estimated 130,000 illegal immigrants are worried. They are confused. And in some cases, they have disappeared. They have disappeared from classrooms and from tomato fields. Last week, some had disappeared from the Guadalajara Jalisco restaurant, a former diner now serving Tex-Mex fare to a largely American-born clientele in this sleepy town east of Birmingham. Manager Fredy Vergara had lost three of his 12 employees, and more workers said they planned to leave soon, fleeing in fear of Alabama's new immigration law. Waiter Ever Salas struck out for Washington state.

To save themselves, Rahmo Ibrahim Madey and three of her children escaped on foot this month from southern Somalia's Bakol region — a drought-racked land controlled by the Islamist militants of the Shabab group. Less than 20 miles from their destination, the battered capital of Mogadishu, Madey's 1-year-old daughter, Fadumo, died of starvation. Days later, under a shelter of plastic sheeting and castaway fabric at one of the makeshift refugee camps in the capital, the 29-year-old mother spooned small helpings of porridge into the mouth of her 4-year-old daughter, Batulo.

The Obama administration this week extended what's known as "temporary protected status" for Haitians living in the United States. The decision means an estimated 58,000 undocumented Haitians can remain here for an additional 18 months while their homeland struggles to rebuild from a deadly 2010 earthquake. Temporary protected status was designed to provide a haven for foreigners in the United States who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of an armed conflict, an environmental disaster or some other extraordinary but temporary situation.

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi destroyed three huge fuel tanks in the besieged city of Misurata, aggravating an already dire humanitarian crisis there, the rebel leadership said Saturday. The bombardment of the stored fuel could lead to critical shortages of gasoline for vehicles and fuel for electricity in the stricken city, said Jalal Gallal, an opposition spokesman in Benghazi, the rebel stronghold in eastern Libya. Meanwhile, fighting in far western Libya again spilled into neighboring Tunisia, where the government strongly condemned the shelling of its territory.

On Independence Day in 1821, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered an address on foreign policy to Congress. The question that preoccupied them all at that moment was how to respond to the wave of revolutionary independence movements sweeping Spain's vast colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. Adams, who in some sense could be called the father of American nationalism, also was an unwavering exponent of American exceptionalism. Yet this was the heart of his counsel that day: "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's]

U.N. humanitarian agencies have asked the United States, Japan and European nations for $37.4 million to prepare for a potential humanitarian crisis in Iraq after a war with the U.S., U.N. officials said Friday. The World Food Program, U.N. Children's Fund, World Health Organization and seven other agencies need the money to buy food, medicine and tents and to transport supplies to nations bordering Iraq, Stephanie Bunker, a spokeswoman for the U.N.

In his first major speech to the nation since the operation was launched more than a week ago, President Obama said progress had been made in preventing a humanitarian crisis in Libya thanks to the American-led effort. Outlining his decision in a nationally-televised addressed, the president said the United States and the world "faced a choice" when confronted with a dictator bent on killing his own citizens. "We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi – a city nearly the size of Charlotte – could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world," Obama said.

On Independence Day in 1821, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered an address on foreign policy to Congress. The question that preoccupied them all at that moment was how to respond to the wave of revolutionary independence movements sweeping Spain's vast colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere. Adams, who in some sense could be called the father of American nationalism, also was an unwavering exponent of American exceptionalism. Yet this was the heart of his counsel that day: "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's]