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For more than two decades HIV/AIDS has been causing untold human suffering in different parts of the world. The issue of HIV/ AIDS was concentrated regionally in the initial years. There was an assumption that HIV is a disease of the West. In course of time it appeared in South Africa with a devastating effect. Since the late 1970s, more than 23 million people have lost their lives from this disease. By the year 2010, the cumulative toll from the killer disease is expected to rise to 45 million [UNICEF].
   This is widely accepted that women and children become immediate sufferers of any disaster. It is no exception in the case of HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, more than one-third of all people living with HIV/AIDS are under the age of 25 years, and almost two-thirds of them are women. AIDS has orphaned 14 million children, and left millions extremely vulnerable. Almost 2,000 infants become HIV-positive every day. It is apprehended that by 2010 infant and child mortality rates from HIV/AIDS will double in the worst-hit countries in the absence of concerted global action.
   By the end of 2002, 42 million people were living with HIV/AIDS, including almost 12 million young people between 15 and 24 years of age and more than three million children under the age of 15. For the first time since the initial onslaught of the epidemic, half the number of people living with HIV/AIDS was women and girls. In 2002 alone, AIDS killed more than 2.5 million adults and 610,000 children. In South Africa, the number of child-headed families has increased significantly due to the epidemic at an alarming level. But it sounds good that Africa has already acknowledged the reality and started intervention.
   
   The children are more at risk because
   l There is always a chance of parent-to-child transmission
   l Children can be infected through breastfeeding
   l Children have lesser access to and awareness about HIV information
   l Children (especially girls) involved in commercial sex work has little option to say no to unsafe sex
   l Sexual exploitation is a part of child labour
   l Orphaned children have little chance of receiving care and support
   l Children lack nutritional support in case of being orphaned due to parents' death from AIDS
   l Stigma with HIV-positive children results in their isolation from others
   
   The youths were once considered relatively safe from HIV/AIDS. Today, more than half of all new infections strike people under the age of 25. Girls are hit hard. Infant and child death rates due to this disease have risen sharply, and 14 million children are now orphans because of the disease.
   But there is hope still. Recent developments in the medical science have minimised the risk of parent-to-child transmission, and comprehensive care and support programmes have built a platform to put up a fight against AIDS.
   And this is widely accepted that youths are the main driving force to strike out the epidemic.
   From the Sub-Saharan Africa to South East Asia and the Americas, rates of AIDS prevalence are falling among young people who have been equipped with and motivated by safe behavioural practices that stem the spread of HIV. Investing in young people and children by ensuring that they have information, skills, services and protective environment they need to make safe, healthy decisions is clearly the world's best strategy for fighting the disease.
   In Maputo, Mozambique, children-led broadcast on life-saving HIV/AIDS prevention messages via 'Child-to-Child' radio programme has been initiated in which 200 young journalists are involved. It goes out once a week to around 8,000 listeners.
   
   What needs to be done to prevent HIV infection among children are:
   l Children-friendly activity
   This requires such an enabling environment where children have easy access to information, can ventilate themselves - their fear, joys, sorrows and tension -, claim their rights and have all facilities to cope with the situation especially for HIV-infected people and affected ones
   l Gender-sensitive atmosphere
   This is most important for the girl children who are deprived of education, access to information and nutrition and are vulnerable to trafficking or forced prostitution due to gender disparity.
   l Information flow
   The children should have the information in a modified way so that they can easily get the essence from that. The design of information should be children-specific and recreational.
   l Discrimination-free society
   The prevention programme should be irrespective of class and caste. This is also appropriate for care and support programme for the children infected or affected by HIV. Children should not be deprived of ARV (Anti-Retroviral Therapy), nutrition and schooling as well as social security due to the HIV-positive status.
   
   l Involvement of children in prevention and care programmes
   Child-to-child learning could be one of the best means to prevent the epidemic. This has been experienced that children love to learn more from their peers.
   The response to the issue of HIV/AIDS epidemic should be country-and-culture-specific. The means of recreation and learning differ from country to country or culture to culture.
   The writer is Associate Coordinator, Rights & Social Justice Sector, ActionAid Bangladesh

The Middle East has seldom been a quiet place in past centuries. Iran is not quite in the Middle East (it spans the East of West Asian region bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan) but Iran by virtue of its geographical, economic and political importance, by history and civilisation, commands a key position. Iran wishes to play its part be it comfortable or not with the new imperial power.
   The current contest between Iran and America is more than just the nuclear ‘ambition’ Iran seems to have irrevocably committed itself to. This is a contest between the West’s quest for geo-political and strategic dominance of that region and a resurgent post-revolution Iran wrestling to gain pre-eminence.
   This contest is about political and strategic space, about Iran’s role in the alignment of powers and interests in a region of great historical, economic and military significance. To start with, Iran has vast oil and significant natural gas reserves — two highly coveted materials for uninterrupted economic growth of America. More importantly, America is not only ‘addicted to oil’ but also relies heavily though not with great deal of logic on secure supply of cheap oil absolutely necessary to retain high productivity and competitiveness in world economy.
   Yes, there is oil and gas in Central Asian republics also close to Iran; and America has been making inroads there too. Yet, it would not hurt to secure Iranian oil and gas as well; access to Caucasian and Central Asian oil and gas fields will be a bonus.
   So what should be abundantly clear is that this is not just a security issue around a nuclear or non-nuclear Iran. Far from it. This is about unrivaled geo-strategic pre-eminence by the unchallenged superpower in a region rich in vital resources. This is about oil and Persian Gulf oil shipment route, control of which is absolutely vital to the US; so vital that if all else fail, ‘gunboat diplomacy’ is not off the table.
   This is about the ‘civilised’ world’s natural right to the natural resources of the poorer world. This is about keeping ‘our way of life’ unimpeded. If that is at the expense of the rights of others, so be it.
   Lest we forget. There is something else; it is called the Israeli lobby which has consistently strong influence upon US policy cutting across the US party lines. That lobby successfully promotes Israeli interest making it an almost obsessive compulsion for America to secure Israel as the proxy sheriff of the Middle East to keep the Arabs in line. Only Iran remains ideologically stubborn unlike many other regimes in the region.
   As long as America remains staunchly wedded to a policy of supporting the Zionist Israeli regime even at the cost of its larger and long term national interest in that region, Iran will stand out as a renegade in American eyes. So no one should be surprised that President Bush and the US Congress publicly announced funding to Iranian dissidents and other subversive activities inside Iran, engaging in that favourite pastime called ‘regime change’ in non-conformist countries.
   America needs docile and compliant regimes never mind monarchy, dictatorship, or ‘democratic’. Iran is the stumbling block. Do we need more to realize what is the hidden agenda behind this entire furore over a nuclear Iran?
   The ‘great game’ that had in the past pitted the once mighty British Empire against the expansionist Czarist Russia never ended. The British Empire collapsed by the end of Second World War; the Cold War was over with the collapse of the Soviet Union. An uncontested America is romping on the global stage. It is seeking permanent position of unchallenged influence and domination by whatever means available, including physical occupation if necessary. Iraq had been the ‘aperitif’ that whetted the imperial appetite; a strategically and economically vital Middle East is too tempting a platter at the banquet to be left alone.
   As of now, the Iran – America contest is playing out somewhat like a chess game quite unlike in Iraq where America had a virtual walk over by ‘shock and awe’ of superior military power. Iran is proving difficult, dilatory and different. Unlike Iraq and several other kingdoms, sheikhdoms, and emirates that were drawn on the map by the victors of World War I, Iran has been an entity for centuries and had once its own Empire. In spite of memories of occupation by Arabs with the advent of Islam, Iran retained memories of its imperial history spanning well into pre-Islamic centuries.
   If Iraq was the opening move, Iran is being readied as a checkmate. All this nuclear noise is a clown act in a circus, something to keep the ‘international community’ and the United Nations entertained with.
   The great game now has deeper and wider dimensions; also it is demanding subtler and defter moves like in a game of chess. Diplomatic finesse and psychological manoeuvres are at high premium.
   But given the demonstrated predilection of a White House enthralled by ‘neocons’, diplomatic subtlety and finesse are not its forte. That is evidenced by the signals of crude military threat alternating with arrogant diplomatic demarches coming out of the US administration.
   Something else is queer; America plays the game via proxy of European powers, hoping (wrongly it seems) that EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) will get the ‘job done’. When the entire world and Iran most of all knows who calls the shots, it is equally queer why America stubbornly refuses to sit and talk directly to Iran? The EU-3 could soon become ‘irrelevant’ in America’s eyes if it fails to deliver what America wants it to.
   Meanwhile, Iran seems to have room to play its own diversionary ploys, gain precious time to confuse and confound its adversary, to create some division by clash of supreme national interests among the otherwise united US-EU group.
   Playing a game driven by a psychological pressure and counter-pressure, the Iranians are showing a mixed bag of deftness with resoluteness. Iran is biding time, engaged in diplomatic dance avoiding frontal challenge or skirmish (reminiscent of how Ali the Greatest danced around the boxing ring to deflect the menacing blows by his formidable challengers).
   In the current stalemate of sorts, both Iran and the US are making moves in a bid to push the other into a corner or into a box that limits the room for manoeuvre.
   Iran made overtures without appearing publicly to have ceded anything to the US; Iran welcomes direct diplomacy. Iran rejects ‘carrot and stick’ of the West as an affront to its national pride and dignity.
   It would be interesting to see how long it will take before the United States and Iran eventually sit and negotiate face-to-face, and stop playing games. Even stern eyeball-to-eyeball diplomacy would be preferred to proxy diplomacy with its dire predictions if and when the proxies fail to deliver.
   The region has seen enough turmoil, suffered staggering losses and humanitarian crises in Iraq for example; and bloodletting continues in a doom and gloom scenario in Palestine. Here in the twenty-first century, long after the demise of Empires, there is no need to reincarnate the imperialist conquests by force of arms.
   The region and the wider world will sigh in relief if and when the present impasse is addressed directly by the parties and resolved diplomatically. One Iraq with its maleficent fallout is enough; no one needs another.

It must be one of the most fantastic and bizarre ironies of fate that I am sitting here writing on the eve of the ‘chehlum’ of Nasreen Huq, or ‘Happy’ as I knew her since my childhood and school days. A person who was no less than a younger sister to me and my own younger sister Lubna, close to my parents, and my long-gone brother Nadeem. The relationship couldn’t have been closer as she happened to be the younger sister of Shireen, my bosom friend in Holy Cross School. We were, of course, rebels from the outset. I don’t mean Nasreen, I mean Shireen and I. Needless to say Shireen was the leader and I happily followed her into any prank or outrageous misdemeanour she planned. It bought us quite a reputation in school and later in college and university. Our respective younger sisters went off to do their own (mis)demeanours with (we would like to believe) a bit of awe about us in their hearts.
   Shireen went off to an ultra liberal college in Seattle and I went off to medical school (good old DMC!). Nasreen, a more or less quieter version of Shireen then, went off to that West Coast haven for liberal intellectualism, University of California Berkeley. I remember silently approving of her choice of university then.
    Many moons, joys and heartaches later Shireen invited us to join Naripokkho, which she had just formed with Khushi and others. Those were difficult, but heady days for us, when Dhakaites were not used to women parading the streets and chanting slogans about national issues. Nasreen came back from the West Coast one day and quietly joined in the women’s movement. Little did we realise what a driving force her ‘quiet’ presence would be. She was of course simply amazing to look at, with that halo of gorgeous hair, twinkling eyes and warm smile. Since then the star has been ascendant for Nasreen. She spearheaded the Acid Survivors Foundation, made a brilliant career in all the jobs she held such as in Helen Keller International, and last, but not the least, as country director of Action Aid in Bangladesh.
   I remember her piece in Holiday just after the Kurigram BDR/BSF fiasco and felt how brave she was! But never got to tell her my feelings of awe. I confess that I continued to act like an older sister towards her, and never got to tell her how much I admired her work, commitment and bravery.
   I will leave you with a vivid and happy memory I have of her when we happened to travel to Rio de Janeiro together for a prep-com of the ICPD in the mid-nineties. We had a day free and Nasreen and I went off jaunting to a hill resort in the mountains on a public bus! We could not speak a word of Brazilian and nobody on the bus could speak a word of English. But we managed, and we had a great time! In the conference the next day Nasreen shone like a bright star. She dazzled me, my best friend’s younger sister, our baby sister. We are no avenging angels, but does her untimely death call us to be so?

What is there to comment on the mass arrests? Every time there is a hint of an opposition programme the government clamps down on the activists. One would be jolted if there were not a mass arrest campaign.
   Nairit Haq
   New Easkaton Road, Dhaka
   

Youth enter crime world

I do not think crime was ever an 18+ matter exclusively. If their elder peers can make money out of a little thuggery so can the young hoods. They are the aspiring generation who will take organised crime to its next level. That is what there is in store.
   The trend is on in the political parties too. The young crowd is cornering the old outdated dinosaurs. They will bring dynamism to the party’s ‘fundraising’ activities. But only young politicians cannot do the job by themselves, there must a corresponding batch of young hands out there on the streets. Consider it a beautiful transition.
   Ashfaqul Alam Khokon
   New York, USA

BDB and Jamaat

If the Bikolpo Dhara Bangladesh and Ershad’s Jatiya Party and other smaller parties take note of people’s loss of faith in both the two mainstream political parties, then they could become the kingmakers of the next government. Some of the parties now playing the role of sidekicks of these two main parties should also consider seriously of going alone in the next elections for if they do so, they could find themselves much better placed in the next parliament than going in as alliance partners of either the BNP or the AL.
   Thus the IOJ and Jamaat men joining Bikalpa Dhara is a logical consequence of loss of faith in the BNP in this instance. In fact, the BNP itself, thanks to the prime minister and her son, is also on the verge of a break-up. The next elections could be a real chance for the Bikolpa Dhara to make it big with some intelligent and strategic thinking, not like what it did to start with when Badruddoza Chowdhury showed both impatience and immaturity believing mistakenly at that time that the BNP was ready to break when elections were years away. The time is now ripe for that to happen.
   Rashed Ahmed
   Gulshan, Dhaka

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