News from the Islamic world war zones

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

The World Wildlife Fund, which usually supports trophy
hunting as a conservation strategy, is opposing a scheme advanced by
Mumtaz Malik, chief conservator of Northwestern Frontier Province,
Pakistan, to introduce trophy hunting for leopards. Officially,
about 40 snow leopards survive in Pakistan, but hunters and herders
claim there are 150-250. Two were shot in June after one snow
leopard allegedly killed six women in two weeks by pouncing down on
them from trees as they gathered firewood near Abbottabad. Malik
claims to have saved markhor mountain goats, a prey species for snow
leopards, by introducing markhor trophy hunting.

Thirty-five small herds totaling 155 markor, a mountain goat
standing six feet tall at the shoulder, have recently been
rediscovered near the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, India, from
Pakistan. “As recently as 1970 there were 25,000 on the Indian
side,” reported Justin Huggler, Delhi correspondent for The
Independent, “but by 1997 they had been poached to near extinction,”
as troops and guerillas often turned their guns from fighting over
the boundary to profiteering on the sale of the markors’ spectacular
spiral horns.

The U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment,
based in Hawaii but stationed in Afghanistan, recently rented 30
mules to haul food and water to Afghan and U.S. troops at isolated
outposts in Kunar province, after the handlers received a crash
course in mule care at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training
Center in Bridgeport, California. This is believed to be the first
U.S. military mule unit since the Army 35th Quartermasters Corps
disbanded their mule teams in 1955, sending handler Warren Cox back
to civilian life. Previously a dogcatcher in Lincoln, Nebraska,
Cox returned to animal control work. Cox is now interim director of
the Suncoast Humane Society in Englewood, Florida, his 22nd post in
53 years of animal work.

The International Network for Humane Education on June 20,
2005 started a Farzi web site, <www.InterNICHE.org/fa> to help
Iranian schools teach the life sciences without using animal
experiments.
Venturing to Pamplona, Spain, for the July 5 “Running of the Nudes”
protest against the annual Pamplona bull-running festival, Animal
Rights Action Network founder John Carmody and his friend Shane
Kiely, both of Limerick, Ireland, anticipated a day in London
before the last leg of their July 7 return trip. They had just
stashed their bags in a locker at the King’s Cross subway station
when the deadliest of the London Underground bombs detonated on the
far side of a corridor wall. “The mayhem will stick in my mind for
ages,” Carmody told the Limerick Post. Killing at least 52 people,
the suicide bombings were apparently undertaken to protest British
support of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The United Arab Emirates on July 5, 2005 banned the use of
camel jockeys under 18 years of age, a month after Qatar ordered
that only robotic jockeys may be used after 2006. Child jockeys–who
have no control over their mounts–often are used in camel racing.
Many are hurt, some killed, and most are reputedly either bought or
kidnapped from their parents in poor nations such as Bangladesh and
Pakistan, then kept as virtual slaves. The government of Pakistan
documented 287 kidnappings associated with Gulf states camel racing
in one recent 10-month period. The UAE previously banned child camel
jockeys in 1993, but the ban was not enforced.
Veteran Washington Post correspondent Pam Constable,
frequently visiting Kabul, Afghan-istan since late 2001, in 2004
founded Tigger House, a dog-and-cat shelter and clinic serving the
expatriate part of the city, with ambitions of extending outreach as
security permits. Adoptions so far have mainly been to foreigners,
“though we hope to attract more Afghan adopters in the future,”
Constable told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Tigger House has also helped at least
four U.S. soldiers to take adopted Afghan animals home,
collaborating with Military Mascots, of Massachusetts. In June 2005
Constable incorporated a Virginia-based nonprofit support group for
Tigger House called the Afghan Stray Animal League. [Contact the
Afghan Stray Animal League and Tigger House c/o Constable, 3823 S.
14th St., Arlington, VA 22204.]