Rev. Danny Fisher

Reuters reports that the Tripartite Core Group (TCG)–an aid coordinating group made up of the United Nations, the Association of South East Asian Nations, and Burma’s junta–has issued an appeal for $700 million in aid over the next three years to recover from the aftermath of last year’s Cyclone Nargis. Of course, there are a couple of obstacles to getting that money:

The appeal, focused on eight key areas including nutrition, health and livelihoods, comes at a time when many governments are being squeezed by the global economic crisis.

Foreign donors are also reluctant to provide aid to the former Burma, under military rule since 1962 and isolated internationally over its dismal human rights record.

While people are reasonably wary of handing the junta a check in the current economic climate, the cyclone devastation is considerable.

“It is a very, very modest support request compared to the magnitude of the disaster,” Bishow Parajuli, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar, told reporters in Bangkok.

He said the recovery budget for Cyclone Nargis, which left 140,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million severely affected, was small compared to the $5.1 billion donated for recovery in Indonesia’s Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Nearly a year after the cyclone swept away their villages, survivors are still struggling to find permanent shelter. A survey of 2,000 households in October found one in three living in temporary conditions.

Access to clean water also remains a challenge. Aid agencies are using reverse osmosis machines to purify the water but it is labour-intensive and costly.

“We’re in the middle of the dry season in Myanmar and around half of the affected areas in March will experience salty streams at high tide,” said Andrew Kirkwood, country director for the charity Save the Children.

“Basically it means getting fresh drinking water this time of the year is extremely difficult,” he said.

A lack of credit and access to markets have also saddled many delta farmers with heavy debts, said Chris Kaye, country director for the U.N.’s World Food Programme.

Via Dharma Folk:

For more, follow this link.

One of the two Buddhas of Bamyan in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan before (left) and after (right) their destruction by the Taliban in March of 2001.
Barbara O’Brien at Barbara’s Buddhism Blog points us to reports that the Taliban of Afghanistan is bent on destroying a museum housing precious Gandharan Buddhist artifacts. Barbara tells very well the story of the collection there:

Buddhism spread into present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan during the reign of the Emperor Ashoka of India, ca. 304–232 BCE. So, although Islam dominates those nations now, within their borders are sites of ancient Buddhist cities, temples and monasteries. These were not pioneer outposts but centers of Buddhist civilization.

The kingdom of Gandhara stretched across what is now northern Pakistan, Kashmir and eastern Afghanistan, and for a time (1st to 6th centuries CE) this kingdom was ruled by Buddhist kings. Gandhara Buddhist art is especially beautiful. The Buddha in the photo is from Gandhara, 1st or 2nd century, and is now safely in the Tokyo National Museum.

In the 6th century the kingdom was invaded and destroyed. A small group of Buddhist monks carried as much art as they could over the Malakand Pass into the valley of Swat. Buddhism flourished in Swat for another five centuries.

In the late 1950s, the local government in Swat built a museum to house and preserve the remaining Gandhara and other Buddhist artifacts. The Swat museum was renovated with assistance from Japan in 1992. Now the museum is a prime target of Taliban militants. Last year the militants planted an explosion in the museum that damaged more than 150 artifacts. Now Pakistani troops guard the museum, but the threat remains.

Many readers probably know that several months before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamyan, an UNESCO World Heritage Site in central Afghanistan (pictured above). Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban of Afghanistan, had declared that under Sharia law the stautes would be considered “idols,” and the order was subsequently given to have them dynamited. A similar logic is at work in the case of the Swat Museum.

The Agence France-Presse reports that Cambodian premier Hun Sen has “called for television shows related to Buddhism to be approved by clergy after the country’s first rock opera was deemed insulting to the religion [by a group of Buddhist monks].” For my past posts on this story, follow this link.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in Rome today to be made an honorary citizen of the Italian capital. Congratulazioni, La Sua Sacralità!