Tens of thousands of hectares of farmland is being destroyed as desert locusts swarm over Somalia, in the worst invasion in 25 years. 
 
The locusts have damaged about 70,000 hectares of farmland in Somalia and neighboring eastern Ethiopia, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Wednesday. 
 
VOA’s Harun Maruf tweeted dramatic videos of the insects flying over the central Somali town of Adado:

Video: Huge locust swarm over Adado town today. Somalia faces the worst Desert Locust outbreak in over 25 years according to @FAOSomaliapic.twitter.com/2ZuI0vEhDI

— Harun Maruf (@HarunMaruf) December 18, 2019

The FAO said the locust invasion was worse than had been predicted and was likely to spread to other nations in the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, South Sudan and Sudan. 
 
“As the weather seems favorable for the locust breeding, there is a high probability that the locust will continue to breed until March-April 2020,” FAO regional coordinator David Phiri said. 
 
“I was supposed to get up to 3,000 kilograms of teff [a cereal grass] and maize this year, but because of desert locusts and untimely rains, I only got 400 kilograms of maize and expect only 200 kilograms of teff,” Ethiopian farmer Ashagre Molla, 66, said. “This is not even enough to feed my family.” 

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In mid-June, Abdulrasoul Ibrahim Omar, 38, hired smugglers to transport him, his pregnant wife and his two small daughters out of Libya. 
 
Speaking over WhatsApp during the journey, he would not say where he was going. 
 
“No safety in Libya. I fled to … ,” he texted, not completing the thought. 

Before arriving in Libya, Omar fled genocide in Darfur and Sudan, and survived one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.   
 
Almost all the people traveling to Libya’s coast in hopes of making it to Europe face beatings, rapes, torture or kidnappings, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Smugglers demand heavy ransoms from the usually impoverished families in exchange for their loved ones’ lives. 
 
“[They are] suffering some of the gravest human rights abuses in the world today,” said Charlie Yaxley, a UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva. “We don’t know how many people are dying on the way.” 
 
At the U.N. Refugee Conference on Wednesday, Libya’s permanent representative to the U.N. office at Geneva said the world’s wealthy nations should take more preventive actions for people feeling the need to flee their countries in the first place. 
 
“Prior to official refugee status, refugees face terrible tragedies through migration and displacement,” said Ambassador Tamim M. Baiou. “As a transit country, Libya is deeply familiar with the first two phases.” 
 
Danger in Libya 
 
Despite the danger of traveling, staying in Libya was not an option, Omar said. 
 
In April, his neighborhood was bombed in the war between the country’s eastern and western governments. He and his neighbors took up residence in a makeshift camp inside a schoolhouse in Tripoli.

Months later, as Omar and his family traveled out of the country, bombs hit a detention center holding refugees and migrants on the other side of town, killing more than 50 people. Most had been arrested after the boats they were trying to take to Europe wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea. 
  
The victims were among the thousands of refugees and migrants detained in Libya above the objections of the UNHCR, which calls the arrests arbitrary and advocates for the release of all the detainees. 
 
Omar’s teenage cousin, Abdullah, was a detainee in the center and survived the blast. 
  
As he searched for a safe place, Omar continued to text. He said the trip was too dangerous to reveal his route.   
   
“When I reach wherever, I will [send] you my location,” he texted. 
  
Dreams of resettlement 
  
Before he left Libya, Omar, his family and his neighbors described their journey into the country. Many wept as they told their stories in a crowded room in the schoolhouse. 
  
One woman was raped by a smuggler. At the time, she was pregnant, and miscarried after the attack. She later found she was pregnant with her rapist’s child. Her husband abandoned her, apparently ashamed.   
   
Another woman pointed out scars on her teenage son’s arms. He had been kidnapped and beaten until she gathered enough money to pay the ransom.   
   
Once in Libya, the families were among the luckier travelers, taking odd jobs and apartments while they continued efforts to get to Europe or other Western countries. Like Omar, they all wanted to be resettled by the U.N., but the wait is long, and there is no guarantee. 

Only 5% of the people determined to be eligible for resettlement are placed, according to Yaxley, because wealthier countries offer too few spaces. 
 
“It’s incredibly challenging,” he said. 
   
The families all said they would not return to their homes and would not stay in Libya. They said that if they were not resettled, they would try to get to Europe on a smuggler’s boat. So far this year, more than 1,200 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea, according to the International Organization for Migration. 
  
“We follow the media, and we see that many ships collapse,” Omar said. “The only thing I’m looking for is freedom.” 

On the move   
   
As the war continued in Libya, the schoolhouse where Omar’s neighbors were staying was evacuated. The residents took shelter in a parking lot.   
   
But Omar and his family found shelter in Tunisia. To get there, the family hired smugglers and walked 25 kilometers through the desert. Mahasen, Omar’s wife, was six months pregnant and exhausted when they arrived. 
  
Now, he is still waiting for resettlement, despite being told months ago that his family was eligible. 
 
“It’s shame from the world to keep silent as we die,” he said in a text on Wednesday.      

His new son, Ibrahim, was born in September and is now also waiting to be resettled. 
  
“We are ordinary people,” Omar said. “Only persecuted and fled from war.” 

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The bodies of two people missing and presumed dead since a New Zealand volcano erupted last week  may never be found, authorities said Wednesday.

Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Clement said he was “deeply sorry” that the bodies of local tour guide Hayden Marshall-Inman, 40, and Australian tourist Winona Langford, 17, have not been recovered.

He said the bodies were probably swept out to sea. “The reality is we have to wait for Mother Nature to produce those bodies. It may and it may not,” Clement said.

The White Island Volcano, also known as “Whakaari” in the Maori language, erupted on Dec. 9 while dozens of tourists were visiting the island, located about 48 kilometers off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

At least 16 other people were killed and more than 20 survivors suffered severe burns.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week that official inquiries by coroners and work safety regulators into the eruption could take up to a year, and will carry potential criminal penalties of up to five years in jail.

There has been much criticism of why tourists were allowed on to the country’s most active volcano.
 

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Yemenis are facing a new battle: Dengue Fever, a potentially fatal illness that spreads in the unsanitary conditions and decimated infrastructure of their conflict-torn country. The World Health Organization says nearly 59,500 suspected cases, including 219 deaths, were recorded in the first 11 months of 2019. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on this new challenge for a country that has endured five years of war that have killed thousands and pushed millions to the brink of famine.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out Tuesday at Western nations for their lack of support for his so-called Operation Peace Spring, which he launched in October in Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria. 

Speaking at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Erdogan described the difficulties encountered by the millions of refugees forced to flee war and persecution, and the need for universal solidarity to support them.  

The Turkish president, who said his country has welcomed more than 5 million displaced individuals — 3.7 million of them Syrian refugees, criticized the European Union for its lack of financial support and the member nations’ unwillingness to share the burden of welcoming refugees inside their own borders.

Erdogan also criticized Western leaders, whom he said have failed to support his military offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. He has accused the Kurds of being allied with PKK terrorists in Turkey, and said his reason for launching Operation Peace Spring was to clear a 120-kilometer area in Syria of what he called a terrorist presence.

“Let us declare these areas as safe zones,” Erdogan said through an interpreter. “Let us implement resettlement and housing projects altogether. Let us have hospitals. Let us have schools there and let the refugees go back to their motherland peacefully and in a dignified fashion. But nobody seems to be inclined to help us. Why? Because oil is a much more needed commodity.”  

President Donald Trump announced in November his decision to post U.S. soldiers in Syria to guard oil fields. The Trump administration previously had been criticized by allies for allowing Turkey’s military assault to go forward by withdrawing U.S. troops allied with the Kurds in the region. The Kurds have called the move a betrayal.

Erdogan said he will go ahead with his plans to resettle about 1 million Syrian refugees in this so-called peace zone in northern Syria, despite international criticism. 

“The YPG and PKK terrorist organizations are attacking civilians, but despite that fact, these areas are now the safest and most stable zones of Syria, which are inhabitable,” Erdogan said. “The Syrian refugees should go back on a voluntary basis, but we know what powers around the world would be disturbed by their resettlement peacefully and in a dignified fashion.”  

Western powers and humanitarian organizations have expressed alarm at Turkey’s insistence on relocating the refugees across the border into the area once controlled by the Syrian Kurds. They warn this will lead to enduring ethnic tensions between the two groups, leading to permanent instability in the region.
 

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One of the biggest refugee crises is about to take place because of recent actions by the Indian government, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan warned delegates Tuesday at the Global Refugee Forum.

Khan said India’s revocaton of Kashmir’s special status on Aug. 5 aims to change the demographics of the region from a Muslim-majority to a Muslim-minority state, which is likely to provoke a refugee crisis that will dwarf previous ones.

“I would like the world community to take notice of what is happening,” Khan said. “We in Pakistan are not just worried that there will be a refugee crisis. We are worried that this could lead to a conflict, a conflict between two nuclear-armed countries.”

Khan pointed to India’s new Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Assam state as another flash point. Under this act, he said, Muslims must prove they are citizens of India or will be stripped of their nationality.

“Please understand the implications,” Khan said. “There are 200 million Muslims in India. … If two or three percent of them cannot prove their citizenship, where will they go?”

Khan warned that the riots in opposition to the new legislation are likely to worsen, but said that Pakistan, which already hosts around three million Afghan refugees, cannot accommodate more.

Khan urged nations to pressure the Indian government to reverse its discriminatory policies against Muslims.
 

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The sixth and final Democratic presidential debate of the year will be held Dec. 19, 2019, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Only seven of 15 candidates seeking the nomination to challenge President Donald Trump will be on stage this time, as the first primary contests early next year draw closer. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the significance of this debate and the issues young student voters want to hear from the candidates.

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As Pyongyang appears to be preparing to launch a long-range missile, experts see an end to a diplomatic process Washington has pursued to denuclearize North Korea.

“I see no signs that the North Koreans are interested in talking to the U.S. at this time,” said Joshua Pollack, a North Korean expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. “They appear to have made their decision.”

On Tuesday, a top U.S. Air Force general said he is expecting North Korea to launch a long-range ballistic missile as a “Christmas gift” to the U.S.

“What I would expect is some type of long-range ballistic missile would be the gift,” said Gen. Charles Brown, commander of Pacific Air Forces and air component commander for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“It’s just a matter of does it come on Christmas Eve? Does it come on Christmas Day? Does it come after the New Year?”  

Earlier this month, North Korea said, “It is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”

The statement came as Pyongyang issued a series of warnings demanding that Washington change its stance on denuclearization talks by the end-of-the-year deadline Pyongyang unilaterally imposed on Washington.

Washington and Pyongyang have been locked in their respective positions since talks failed at the Hanoi Summit held in February. There, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un asked U.S. President Donald Trump for sanctions relief. Trump denied the request and asked instead for full denuclearization before granting any relaxation of sanctions.

North Korea has increased provocations by conducting 13 rounds of missile tests since May in an effort to pressure the U.S. to grant sanctions relief.

This month, North Korea conducted two tests within a week that experts think may be related to preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).  

North Korea said it conducted a “crucial test” on Friday at its Sohae Satellite Launching Ground, the site of its long-range missile launch, to “bolster up the reliable strategic nuclear deterrent” against U.S. threats.   

The test comes after another “very important test” North Korea said it carried out on Dec. 7 at the same launching site.  

Experts think North Korea will continue to increase threats that could put an end to diplomacy.

“Pyongyang is expected to move up the escalation ladder in attempts to induce U.S. concessions,” said Bruce Klingner, former CIA deputy division chief of Korea and current senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “The regime could incrementally raise tensions with medium- and intermediate-range missile launches or jump to an ICBM or nuclear test.”

Evans Revere, a former State Department official who had negotiated with North Korea extensively, said, “A major military provocation, nuclear test or ICBM launch could well bring the diplomatic process to an abrupt end.”  

If North Korea conducts an ICBM or nuclear weapons test, experts think the U.S. is likely to respond with threats to use force rather than cave in to Pyongyang’s pressure, according to experts.

“There are concerns that Trump could either return to threats of preventive attacks, which could lead to an all-out war on the peninsula, or accept a minimal, poorly crafted deal to maintain the façade of progress with Kim Jong Un,” said Klingner.

Gary Samore, a former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction in the Obama administration, said, “A full long-range missile test is a little dangerous for Kim Jong Un because Trump may overreach and start threatening military actions.”  

Earlier in December, Trump threatened to use force against North Korea if necessary.  He said, “We have the most powerful military we’ve ever had.”  He continued, “And hopefully, we don’t have to use it. But if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it.”

In response, North Korea’s army chief of staff Pak Jong Chon said, “The use of armed force is not the privilege of the U.S. only.  

While tensions are expected to continue heightening, experts said the only way forward on denuclearization talks is for either Washington or Pyongyang to change position.

“Unless the U.S. or North Korea change their position, there’s no progress on denuclearization,” said Samore.  

Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at CNA, said, “Unless the U.S. puts concessions on the table, it is unlikely that North Korea will come to the negotiating table.”

However, a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Monday the U.N. must maintain sanctions currently in place on North Korea.

“Now is not the time for the U.N. Security Council to consider offering premature sanctions relief,” said the spokesperson. “The DPRK is threatening to conduct an escalated provocation, refusing to meet to discuss denuclearization and continuing to maintain and advance its prohibited weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile program.”

The DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official English name.

The statement was made in response to a Chinese and Russian proposal made on Monday for the U.N. Security Council to lift sanctions placed on North Korea’s major export commodities including coal, iron, seafood and textiles, and to ease restrictions on North Koreans working overseas whose remittance provide the Kim regime with much needed hard currency. 

The U.N. Security Council ramped up sanctions on North Korea in 2016 in an effort to make the country give up its nuclear weapons program.

Ham Ji-ha contributed to this report.

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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Tuesday for the resettlement of 1 million Syrian refugees in their homeland in “a very short period of time” and accused world powers of moving more quickly to protect Syria’s oil fields than its children.

Erdogan, whose country hosts 3.7 million Syrian refugees, the largest refugee population worldwide, said more than 600,000 should voluntarily join around 371,000 already in a “peace zone” in northern Syria from which Turkey drove Kurdish militia.

“We need to find a formula that will allow the refugees to remain in their homelands and the ones who have already traveled to Turkey to be peacefully returned and resettled in their homelands,” he said.

Addressing the Global Forum on Refugees in Geneva, he said Turkey had spent $40 billion hosting the refugees over nine years and criticized the European Union, which had earmarked nearly 6 billion euros ($6.61 billion), for failing to deliver it all.

“We are still waiting at the threshold of receiving the other 3 billion euros that was pledged,” he said.

Housing and schools could be set up in the northern zone, where some 371,000 Syrian refugees have already returned since Turkish military operations to clear the area of “terrorist organizations”, he said, naming Islamic State as well as the Syrian Kurdish YPG and PKK, Kurdish separatists within Turkey.

“If we can implement the projects that I have talked about at the General Assembly of the United Nations I think the resettlement can easily reach 1 million in a very short period of time,” he added.

Erdogan, taking a thinly veiled swipe at the United States, which moved quickly to protect oil fields in Syria after the retreat of Islamic State, said: “Unfortunately the efforts that were spared to protect the oil fields were not mobilized for the safety and security of the children in Syria.”

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China’s second aircraft carrier entered service on Tuesday, adding major firepower to its military ambitions as it faces tensions with self-ruled Taiwan as well as the US and regional neighbors around the disputed South China Sea.

The commissioning of the warship, named the Shandong, puts China in a small club of nations with multiple aircraft carriers, and the country is reportedly building a third.

China’s first domestically built carrier was delivered to the People’s Liberation Army navy in Sanya, on the southern island of Hainan, at a ceremony attended by President Xi Jinping, state media said.

China has one other carrier — the Liaoning  — a repurposed Soviet vessel bought from Ukraine that went into service in 2012.

Around 5,000 people attended Tuesday’s ceremony, singing the national anthem as the national flag was raised, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Xi inspected an honor guard during the ceremony and met with service personnel on board the warship.

Hainan province is in the South China Sea east of Vietnam, which has competing claims in the waterway along with China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei.

The 700-meter (2,400 feet) long carrier dock in Sanya is able to service multiple carriers simultaneously and is the largest port of its kind in Asia.

It is also home to the Yulin nuclear submarine base.

In November China confirmed that the Shandong aircraft carrier had sailed through the Taiwan Strait for “routine” training and tests, drawing the ire of Taipei.

China, which sees democratic Taiwan as part of its territory, has stepped up military drills around the island since Beijing-sceptic President Tsai Ing-wen came to power in 2016.

“With several Chinese carriers, the east coast of Taiwan may no longer be safe for Taiwan’s defenders,” said Steve Tsang, head of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

But it would take nearly a decade for the new carrier to be combat-ready, he added.

“The carriers do not really effect the balance of force between China and the U.S. — or Japan with its sophisticated sea and air capabilities,” said James Goldrick, a naval and maritime strategy expert at the Australian National University

“They are extremely vulnerable to submarine attacks, particularly nuclear-powered submarines such as the U.S. Navy operates in the Western Pacific.

Big ambitions

Beijing has been ramping up its military ambitions and in July outlined a national defense plan to build a modern, high-tech army.

China’s defense spending is second only to the United States  —  though it still lags far behind — and it said earlier this year it planned to raise it by 7.5 percent in 2019.

In March, Beijing said it would spend 1.19 trillion yuan ($177.6 billion) on defense in 2019, after it increased its outlay by 8.1 percent to 1.11 trillion yuan in 2018, according to a government report presented at the start of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC).

The nationalistic Global Times said Tuesday that thanks to “significant improvements,” the second carrier is “not a copy of the first one and is much more powerful”.

The carriers “have the potential to greatly increase China’s capacity to coerce weaker Asian and Indian Ocean states, as well as to intervene to protect Chinese nationals and interests in failing states”, Goldrick said.

A U.S. think tank reported in May that recent satellite photographs indicated that construction of a third Chinese aircraft carrier was well under way.

Adding a third aircraft carrier will put China in an elite club among naval powers but it will still lag far behind the United States, which has 10 nuclear-powered Nimitz-class “supercarriers” currently in service.

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A Chinese state-owned utility says it has bought 49% of the power distribution grid in the Gulf nation of Oman. State Grid Corp. described the purchase as part of China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative to build trade-related infrastructure across Asia to Europe.

State Grid released no financial details but said its tie-up with the Omani State Grid Corp. is the biggest Chinese investment to date in Oman. The company, which operates most of China’s power distribution system, said it would draw on its technology and experience to improve the Omani grid.

State Grid is the world’s biggest utility but has made few investments abroad.

The Belt and Road Initiative calls for expanding trade by building ports, railways, power plants across an arc of more than 60 countries from the South Pacific through Asia and the Middle East to Africa and Europe.

The initiative has become an umbrella for Chinese development initiatives. Companies and Chinese government entities try to link new projects to Belt and Road to earn favor with the ruling Communist Party and secure official financing and other support.

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A Pakistani lawyer known for pursuing cases of those unlawfully detained by the country’s security agencies was abducted overnight from his home in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, his son said Tuesday.

According to the son, several armed men in plainclothes knocked on the gate of the family’s home on Monday night. When the family opened the door, the men barged in and snatched his father, Inamur Rehman, shoved him into a car and then sped away.

Rehman, a lawyer and a retired military officer, was never a threat to anyone, said the son, Husnain Inam. He refused to speculate on who was behind the abduction.

“We are still in a state of shock,” said Inam, adding that the family was too terrified to cry out for help during the abduction.

Inam, a college teacher, said he’s formally reporting the abduction to the police. No government official could immediately be reached to comment.

Rehman has been vocal critic of Pakistani security agencies and has also represented several people detained by the country’s military-backed spy agency in recent years. He has previously reported being harassed by security agencies.

In 2012, he petitioned a court challenging the government’s move to keep outgoing army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in office for another three years.

Last Tuesday, dozens rallied in the capital, Islamabad, marking the the International Human Rights Day by urging the government to release hundreds of people who they say have been “forcibly disappeared” by security agencies in recent years.

The government has repeatedly denied the allegations. Although Pakistani law prohibits detentions without court approval, officials privately concede that intelligence agencies are holding an unspecified number of suspects. The officials say the detentions are because of ties to militant groups.

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