BBC picks

Plight of Pakistan's displaced
Last year Pakistan finally closed camps that had housed Afghan refugees for three decades. During the past six months it's been forced to reopen them, this time for its own people.

In the Katcha Ghari camp near Peshawar, at the edge of abandoned and crumbling Afghan homes, row after row of tents stretch into the distance.

They are divided into clan and family groupings and separated by neatly packed dirt roads, lending an air of permanence to a temporary village.

This is the other side of Pakistan's battle against the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

Huge cost

More than half a million people have been displaced by the fighting in the tribal belt near the Afghan border. And American plans to intensify the conflict in the border region could deepen the crisis.
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Page last updated at 23:58 GMT, Sunday, 5 April 2009 00:58 UK
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Plight of Pakistan's displaced

By Barbara Plett
BBC News, Katcha Ghari camp near Peshawar

Children at Katcha Ghari camp
Children do not have many facilities at Katcha Ghari camp but they do at least receive an education

Last year Pakistan finally closed camps that had housed Afghan refugees for three decades. During the past six months it's been forced to reopen them, this time for its own people.

In the Katcha Ghari camp near Peshawar, at the edge of abandoned and crumbling Afghan homes, row after row of tents stretch into the distance.

They are divided into clan and family groupings and separated by neatly packed dirt roads, lending an air of permanence to a temporary village.

This is the other side of Pakistan's battle against the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

Huge cost

More than half a million people have been displaced by the fighting in the tribal belt near the Afghan border. And American plans to intensify the conflict in the border region could deepen the crisis.

Katcha Ghari camp
The residents of Katcha Ghari camp are both angry and confused

Already the government is struggling to cope.

Thousands of homes have been destroyed by military operations, particularly in the tribal area of Bajaur.

The army has declared victory, saying it has won back territory from the militants. But this has been at a huge cost to civilians.

Many have fled to the camps, many more have squeezed in with relatives or rented cheap accommodation. They are not sure it's safe to return, and few have anything left to go back to.

Some of the tents in Katcha Ghari serve as makeshift classrooms. These provide a refuge from the conflict for children. Their schools have been targeted by militants, and used as bases by the army.

For girls especially, school is the plus side of homelessness. Bound by the conservative tribal culture, they are rarely educated.

But 12-year-old Samina Khanpur has just had the opportunity to finish kindergarten and enter first grade.

She remembers bombing raids, and cowers in her tent when planes fly overhead, but comes eagerly to learn her lessons.
"They've destroyed the whole village, the whole market. There are no hospitals, no schools, no teachers in Bajaur. They're all here."

Mr Haleem and the camp dwellers are angry with the military and confused. They tell me they do not understand a war that punishes civilians. They want the army to make peace with the Taleban, even defend the militants against the Americans.

"The Taleban have stood up against bombardment by US missile strikes, and the army should tell the Americans to stop this!

Mr Obama calls Islamic militancy a cancer that is destroying Pakistan from within. But for many of the tribespeople, the cure seems as deadly as the disease.

Struggling for survival in Swat
The fighting in the Swat valley between the Pakistani army and Taleban militants has almost completely destroyed the communications network and links with the rest of the country.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the area, but there are some who have not been able to escape.

One female student in the town of Saidu Sharif has managed to send e-mails to the BBC News website describing the struggle to survive.

I am still in Swat and I will die here. I will not leave my homeland because of the Taleban and I'll fight against them with every possible means.

Our communication system is not working. My phone hasn't been working for many days, it only gets a signal occasionally, especially when the curfew is removed.

There is no electricity and we are using a generator but we have a limited supply of oil to run it. We are only using it for half an hour every 24 hours to charge the laptop and the phones. I am writing this in a hurry.

Most of the people in our town and surrounding villages have left. The ones who have remained want to leave, but most have no money for transport.

Everybody here is against the Taleban. But for me there is a big question mark over the dedication of the Pakistani army

Pregnant women and sick people, who can't walk, have been left behind. In the whole of Swat there is not a single lady doctor. Even a male doctor is hard to find, as they have left.

I know that people in refugee camps in Pakistan live in bad conditions, but the government and international donors are ignoring those remaining in Swat.


Food shortages

People are hungry. Because of the curfew there is a shortage of food. We are running out of stored food items. But we are at risk every time we go out as we might be targeted by the Taleban or the army.

There are many Taleban commanders in my village. Their intelligence is so good, they know what we discuss in our homes.

Six days ago one of my relatives was slaughtered in Mingora city. His dead body was left on the road for four days and nobody handed it over to his parents.

A militant group from a nearby village, all of them young boys, used to come to our girls' college to intimidate the girls. They were checking the faces of girls and were saying things like "I love you" and similar nonsense. One day this group tortured a female school teacher.

I wanted to complete an MBA course. Now the colleges are closed, schools are destroyed, education is impossible. Women can't even go out on the streets any more.

I know who the local Taleban are. I know them personally. Some of them are my distant relatives. A friend of mine works for the police here and he knows them too, but he can't do anything. The ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] targeted and destroyed the police force structure, clearing ground for Taleban activities.

In the past, when people have come forward with the details of Taleban they know, they have been betrayed.

So I don't know who we can trust with that information now.

Everybody here is against the Taleban. But for me there is a big question mark over the dedication of the Pakistani army.

The Taleban have their own FM radio station. How come they can be traced by foreign media to give interviews, but they can't be traced and killed by the Pakistani army?

Mingora city is under Taleban control. What is the army doing about it?

Obama Complains About the News Cycle but Dominates It, Worrying Some
Mr. Obama has given roughly three times as many interviews as George W. Bush and held four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton had by comparable points in their terms.

EU reaches gas deal with Ukraine

The EU and international lending institutions have agreed a deal with Ukraine to help it provide stable supplies of Russian gas to Europe.

Loans worth $1.7bn (£1bn) were agreed in return for reforms to Ukraine's gas sector, the European Commission said.

The deal is meant to include money to help Ukrainian national gas company Naftogaz pay off large debts to Russia.

In January, many countries were left without gas because of a payment dispute between Moscow and Kiev.

The new deal will allow Ukraine to replenish its reserves of Russian gas before the winter.

Universities 'fail on standards'

Universities in England are failing to safeguard degree standards, according to a damning report from MPs.

The current system for ensuring quality is "out of date" and should be replaced," the Commons universities select committee concluded.

"Inconsistency in standards is rife," said committee chairman, Phil Willis.

Universities UK attacked the report as "ill-thought through" and rejected the accusation that university leaders were "defensive and complacent".

The hard-hitting report calls for urgent action to improve how universities safeguard the quality of degrees.

It describes as "absurd and disreputable" the claim that the growing demand for courses, including from overseas students, is proof that university standards are being maintained.

'Unacceptable'

The cross-party committee attacks university leaders for failing to "give a straightforward answer to the simple question of whether first class honours degrees achieved at different universities indicate the same or different intellectual standards".


REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS
Consistent degree standards required across all universities
Independent standards watchdog needed
Accreditation checks every 10 years
Better protection for whistleblowers
National bursary system
More support for mature and part-time students

Oxford or Oxford Brookes: MPs compare degrees

And the MPs question why universities have failed to explain the rapid increase in the number of top grade degrees being awarded.

To protect the "integrity" of degrees, the committee calls for a radical overhaul of the current watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency, replacing it with an independent body charged with maintaining academic standards.

The report casts doubt on the reliability of self-regulation by universities and calls for tighter rules for external examiners and a way of comparing standards in different institutions.

"We are extremely concerned that inconsistency in standards is rife and there is a reluctance to address this issue," said Mr Willis, chair of the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee.

The report says it is "unacceptable" for higher education to receive £15bn in taxpayers' funding "but be unable to answer a straightforward question about the relative standards of the degrees of the students".

As an example, the report says that there was no clear answer to MPs' attempts to find the answer to whether an upper second history degree from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes were equivalent .

University leaders have rejected the criticism levelled at the higher education sector.

'Outburst'

"We are rather dismayed and surprised by this outburst," said Wendy Piatt of the Russell Group of leading universities.

"Universities are not schools. An essential feature of a university is its academic freedom and autonomy, with the responsibility to award degrees and uphold standards," she said.

Diana Warwick, head of Universities UK, said: "We reject the suggestion that the way to improve the system that protects standards is to create some super-quango or Ofsted-style Quality and Standards Agency. This seems to us a sledgehammer to crack a nut."

New Mozart pieces to be performed

Two newly discovered pieces of piano music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are to be performed in the Austrian city of his birth, Salzburg.

The pieces had long been in the archive of the International Mozarteum Foundation but only recently were they identified as compositions by Mozart.