Al Jazeera contributor Ruwaida Amer speaks out about the Gaza famine
Al Jazeera contributor Ruwaida Amer speaks about her own struggle to survive the Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza.
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Al Jazeera
8 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Gaza family's battle for survival as hunger and heat deepen despair
After they were forcibly displaced multiple times during Israel's war on Gaza, the Sobh family has taken refuge in a coastal camp west of Gaza City. Street vendor Fadi Sobh, 30, describes his tent as 'unbearably hot during summer'. His 29-year-old wife, Abeer, collects seawater because clean water is in short supply. The children bathe in turns, standing in a metal basin as their mother pours saltwater over them. Nine-month-old Hala cries when the salt irritates her eyes, while her siblings bear the discomfort without complaint. Abeer feeds Hala water from a baby bottle. On good days, she has lentils to grind into powder and mix with the water. 'One day feels like one hundred days, because of the summer heat, hunger and the distress,' she says. Fadi travels to a nearby soup kitchen, sometimes with one of his children. 'But food is rarely available there,' he said. The kitchen operates roughly once a week, never meeting demand. Often, he waits an entire day only to return home with nothing 'and the kids sleep hungry, without eating'. Abeer sometimes goes to aid trucks near the Zikim crossing alone or with Youssef, one of her children. The crowds are mostly men – stronger and faster than she is. 'Sometimes I manage to get food, and in many cases, I return empty-handed,' she said. When unsuccessful, she begs those who secured supplies. 'You survived death thanks to God, please give me anything,' she pleads. Many respond kindly, offering her a small bag of flour to bake for the children. During the hottest hours of the day, the six children stay in or near the tent. Their parents encourage them to sleep through the heat, preventing them from using energy and becoming hungry and thirsty. As temperatures drop, the children go outside. Some days, Abeer sends them to ask the neighbours for food. Other times, they search through Gaza's ruined streets, sifting through rubble and rubbish for anything to fuel their makeshift stove. After spending the day seeking life's essentials – food, water, and cooking fuel – the family occasionally gathers enough for Abeer to prepare a meal, usually a thin lentil soup. More often, they have nothing and go to bed hungry. Abeer says she is growing weaker, frequently feeling dizzy while searching for food. 'I am tired. I am no longer able,' she said. 'If the war goes on, I am thinking of taking my life. I no longer have any strength or power.'
Al Jazeera
16 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Dangerous Mekong River pollution blamed on lawless mining in Myanmar
Houayxay, Laos – Fishing went well today for Khon, a Laotian fisherman, who lives in a floating house built from plastic drums, scrap metal and wood on the Mekong River. 'I caught two catfish,' the 52-year-old tells Al Jazeera proudly, lifting his catch for inspection. Khon's simple houseboat contains all he needs to live on this mighty river: A few metal pots, a fire to cook food on and to keep warm by at night, as well as some nets and a few clothes. list of 4 items list 1 of 4 list 2 of 4 list 3 of 4 list 4 of 4 end of list Advertisement What Khon does not always have is fish. 'There are days when I catch nothing. It's frustrating,' he said. 'The water levels change all the time because of the dams. And now they say the river is polluted, too. Up there in Myanmar, they dig in the mountains. Mines, or something like that. And all that toxic stuff ends up here,' he adds. Advertisement Khon lives in Laos's northwestern Bokeo province on one of the most scenic stretches of the Mekong River as it meanders through the heart of the Golden Triangle – the borderland shared by Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. This remote region has long been infamous for drug production and trafficking. Now it is caught up in the global scramble for gold and rare earth minerals, crucial for the production of new technologies and used in everything from smartphones to electric cars. A fisherman along the Mekong River in Bokeo province, Laos [Al Jazeera/Fabio Polese] Over the past year, rivers in this region, such as the Ruak, Sai and Kok – all tributaries of the Mekong – have shown abnormal levels of arsenic, lead, nickel and manganese, according to Thailand's Pollution Control Department. Arsenic, in particular, has exceeded World Health Organization safety limits, prompting health warnings for riverside communities. These tributaries feed directly into the Mekong and contamination has spread to parts of the river's mainstream. The effects have been observed in Laos, prompting the Mekong River Commission to declare the situation 'moderately serious'. Advertisement 'Recent official water quality testing clearly indicates that the Mekong River on the Thai-Lao border is contaminated with arsenic,' Pianporn Deetes, Southeast Asia campaigns director for the advocacy group International Rivers, told Al Jazeera. 'This is alarming and just the first chapter of the crisis, if the mining continues,' Pianporn said. 'Fishermen have recently caught diseased, young catfish. This is a matter of regional public health, and it needs urgent action from governments,' she added. Advertisement The source of the heavy metals contamination is believed to be upriver in Myanmar's Shan State, where dozens of unregulated mines have sprung up as the search for rare earth minerals intensifies globally. Laotian fisherman Khon, 52, throws a net from the bank of the Mekong River without catching anything [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera] Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an expert on Southeast Asia, said at least a dozen, and possibly as many as 20, mines focused on gold and rare earth extraction have been established in southern Shan State over the past year alone. Myanmar is now four years into a civil war and lawlessness reigns in the border area, which is held by two powerful ethnic armed groups: the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the United Wa State Army (UWSA). Advertisement Myanmar's military government has 'no real control', Abuza said, apart from holding Tachileik town, the region's main border crossing between Thailand and Myanmar. Neither the RCSS nor the UWSA are 'fighting the junta', he said, explaining how both are busy enriching themselves from the chaos in the region and the rush to open mines. 'In this vacuum, mining has exploded – likely with Chinese traders involved. The military in Naypyidaw can't issue permits or enforce environmental rules, but they still take their share of the profits,' Abuza said. Advertisement Pollution from mining is not the Mekong River's only ailment. For years, the health of the river has been degraded by a growing chain of hydropower dams that have drastically altered its natural rhythm and ecology. In the Mekong's upper reaches, inside China, almost a dozen huge hydropower dams have been built, including the Xiaowan and Nuozhadu dams, which are said to be capable of holding back a huge amount of the river's flow. Advertisement Further downstream, Laos has staked its economic future on hydropower. According to the Mekong Dam Monitor, which is hosted by the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington, DC, at least 75 dams are now operational on the Mekong's tributaries, and two in Laos – Xayaburi and Don Sahong – are directly on the mainstream river. As a rule, hydropower is a cleaner alternative to coal. Advertisement But the rush to dam the Mekong is driving another type of environmental crisis. According to WWF and the Mekong River Commission, the Mekong River basin once supported about 60 million people and provided up to 25 percent of the world's freshwater fish catch. Today, one in five fish species in the Mekong is at risk of extinction, and the river's sediment and nutrient flows have been severely reduced, as documented in a 2023–2024 Mekong Dam Monitor report and research by International Rivers. Advertisement 'The alarming decline in fish populations in the Mekong is an urgent wake-up call for action to save these extraordinary – and extraordinarily important – species, which underpin not only the region's societies and economies but also the health of the Mekong's freshwater ecosystems,' the WWF's Asia Pacific Regional Director Lan Mercado said at the launch of a 2024 report titled The Mekong's Forgotten Fishes. In Houayxay, the capital of Bokeo province, the markets appeared mostly absent of fish during a recent visit. At Kad Wang View, the town's main market, the fish stalls were nearly deserted. Advertisement 'Maybe this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow,' said Mali, a vendor in her 60s. In front of her, Mali had arranged her small stock of fish in a circle, perhaps hoping to make the display look fuller for potential customers. At another market, Sydonemy, just outside Houayxay town, the story was the same. The fish stalls were bare. 'Sometimes the fish come, sometimes they don't. We just wait,' another vendor said. Advertisement 'There used to be giant fish here,' recalled Vilasai, 53, who comes from a fishing family but now works as a taxi driver. 'Now the river gives us little. Even the water for irrigation – people are scared to use it. No one knows if it's still clean,' he told Al Jazeera, referring to the pollution from Myanmar's mines. A fish seller at Kad Wang View, the main market in Houayxay, where stalls were nearly empty during a recent visit [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera] Ian G Baird, professor of geography and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said upstream dams – especially those in China – have had serious downstream effects in northern Thailand and Laos. Advertisement 'The ecosystem and the lives that depend on the river evolved to adapt to specific hydrological conditions,' Baird told Al Jazeera. 'But since the dams were built, those conditions have changed dramatically. There are now rapid water level fluctuations in the dry season, which used to be rare, and this has negative impacts on both the river and the people,' he said. Another major effect is the reversal of the river's natural cycle. Advertisement 'Now there is more water in the dry season and less during the rainy season. That reduces flooding and the beneficial ecological effects of the annual flood pulse,' Baird explained. 'The dams hold water during the rainy season and release it in the dry season to maximise energy output and profits. But that also kills seasonally flooded forests and disrupts the river's ecological function,' he said. Bun Chan, 45, lives with his wife Nanna Kuhd, 40, on a floating house near Houayxay. He fishes while his wife sells whatever he catches at the local market. On a recent morning, he cast his net again and again – but for nothing. 'Looks like I won't catch anything today,' Bun Chan told Al Jazeera as he pulled up his empty net. 'The other day I caught a few, but we didn't sell them. We're keeping them in cages in the water, so at least we have something to eat if I don't catch more,' he said. Fisherman Hom Phan steers his boat on the Mekong River [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera] Hom Phan has been a fisherman on the Mekong his entire life. He steers his wooden boat across the river, following a route he knows by instinct. In some parts of the river, the current is strong enough now to drag everything under, the 67-year-old says. All around him, the silence is broken only by the chug of his small outboard engine and the calls of distant birds. 'The river used to be predictable. Now we don't know when it will rise or fall,' Hom Phan said. 'Fish can't find their spawning grounds. They're disappearing. And we might too, if nothing changes,' he told Al Jazeera. Evening approaches in Houayxay, and Khon, the fisherman, rolls up his nets and prepares dinner in his floating home. As he waits for the fire to catch to cook a meal, he quietly contemplates the great river he lives on. Despite the dams in China, the pollution from mines in neighbouring Myanmar, and the increasing difficulty in landing the catch he relies on to survive, Khon was outwardly serene as he considered his next day of fishing. With his eyes fixed on the waters that flowed deeply beneath his home, he said with a smile: 'We try again tomorrow.' Source: Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Al Jazeera
‘A death journey' for Palestinians desperately seeking aid at GHF sites
Starvation is spreading across the Gaza Strip, and the only organisation on the ground mandated to provide food aid stands accused of grave rights violations and the targeting of civilians. The controversial United States and Israel-backed GHF took over aid distribution in Gaza in May, after Israel eased its total blockade of the Strip. Since then, the United Nations says, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed trying to reach food. Many have been purposefully shot by Israeli soldiers or US security contractors hired by GHF, according to testimonies from whistleblowers published in the media. Still, in desperation to get any food they can to ensure survival, thousands of Palestinians brave the GHF sites every day. Al Jazeera spoke to mothers, fathers and children who said they saw soldiers open fire on aid seekers amid chaotic scenes as hungry people scrambled for flour and milk. 'What can I do?' The struggle trying to get food from a GHF-run distribution point in Gaza is 'a death journey', said one Palestinian woman, who we are not naming for her safety. 'I need to provide for my girls,' the woman, a mother of two, said. 'I don't have anyone to support me.' In her desperation, she visits the aid sites. There, the aid retrieval process is a violent scramble where only those who dare to push deep into the crowd return with anything, she said. 'There are children who worked hard to get [aid], and men come to take it from them.' After putting herself at risk, the woman left the aid site with only rice, cooking oil and a can of tomatoes, she said. Still, 'it's a blessing from God', she added, despite having hurt her arm after being hit in the crowd. A child speaking to Al Jazeera told of how going to a GHF site was his only option. 'I am going to get food for my siblings. My father was martyred. If I didn't go to bring it, my siblings would die from hunger. What can I do?' he asked. But at the distribution site, he said he saw hundreds of starving Palestinians shot dead. 'Shooting, killing, death' A Palestinian man, Ibrahim Mekki, from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, said he waited at least six hours and risked being shot by Israeli forces just to end up with a few bags of pasta. 'Shooting, killing, death, destruction and martyrs,' he said of the scene. 'And for what? Just to get a little food. 'It's a trap, a game … Letting you move a little, then opening fire.' Mekki said an 'enormous' number of people had congregated at the aid site he went to, but he estimated just 5 percent succeeded in retrieving anything of value. 'Look at me, what did I get? Nothing,' he said, revealing two small bags of pasta and a bag of bulgur. 'It's not enough to feed the kids for a single day. I'm forced to go back every single day to try again.' 'He died in my arms' Another man, Rakan Jneid, told Al Jazeera he saw people rushing towards aid trucks near a distribution point – and some of them were run over. 'Today, milk came in and people started fighting each other to take the milk,' Jneid said. 'The Israelis opened fire to take advantage of the situation.' Another Palestinian, Muhannad Abu Jarad, also described seeing the Israeli army 'shooting at us'. Separately, a mother of eight told Al Jazeera that her five-month-old daughter is malnourished because she was not getting enough food during pregnancy. She had already lost her fourth child to malnutrition, she said. 'My fourth kid died … He was severely malnourished. We couldn't provide food for him or provide anything for the child to eat,' she said. 'He died in my arms as I was taking him to the hospital.'
