Life in Yarmouk is ‘beyond inhumane’

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NEED TO KNOW:

Last week news broke that the Islamic State had taken control of large parts of the Yarmouk refugee camp outside of Damascus, Syria. This week the fighting continues. It's hard to imagine a worse scenario. The United Nations called the situation “beyond inhumane.”

The Yarmouk camp was established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. At one time in held up to 150,000 people, mostly Palestinians. Over the decades it transformed into a thriving residential neighborhood and has been treated essentially as a densely populated suburb of the Syrian capital. For a long time there was nothing in Yarmouk that evoked “refugee camp” other than its population of displaced people.

Then the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011. The neighborhood became a flashpoint for fighting between the Syrian government and rebel groups. Most of those living there were forced to flee, like their parents and grandparents before them. About 20,000 remain, including 3,500 children. They are now under siege with exits mostly sealed.

When the Islamic State moved in last week, things got a whole lot worse. The United Nations says no humanitarian aid has been able to enter Yarmouk in the last five days. “That means that there is no food, there is no water and there is very little medicine," a UN official told the Associated Press.

In addition to the war, the starvation, and the ever-present government snipers, there is now the threat of beheading and kidnapping. And since Yarmouk is pretty much a gateway to Damascus, it is unlikely the fighting will cease any time soon.

WANT TO KNOW:

Here is an unintended consequence of the police crackdown in Ferguson, Missouri last year: the faraway and military-led government of Myanmar is using events there to justify its own crackdown on protesters.

For decades Myanmar was an isolated authoritarian state. It has recently begun to open up and grant more freedoms to its long-oppressed population. If it continues on this path, the United States has promised aid and investment.

Everyone got nervous that the government was regressing when last month police in a previously unknown town — like Ferguson — met student protesters calling for education reform with violence and dubious arrests.

But that's just silly, Myanmar's minister of information said in a statement. He cited Occupy Wall Street and Ferguson and noted that, unlike in Myanmar, “nobody spoke of US democracy having backtracked.”

GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Patrick Winn caught up with the good minister in Yangon last week and asked him to elaborate. You can read it here. And then you can feel sheepish.

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

In 2010, 23 percent of the world identified as Muslim. More than 31 percent identified as Christian. The way things are going, however, those numbers could change dramatically over the next few decades.

According to a new Pew Research report, Islam is growing fast and by 2050, there will be just as many Muslims as Christians. Pew says the Muslim population could grow by as much as 73 percent. That's compared to 35 percent for Christians and 34 percent for Hindus. That's like, twice as fast.

There are many more interesting stats in the report. For instance, this one might be surprising: based on current trends, the number of atheists, agnostics and the religiously unaffiliated will grow slightly. But as a percentage of the world population, there will be fewer. It seems we are not as godless as we thought.