News & Views 05/17/07

Photo: While Arabs commemorate the 59th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the madonna-like image of an Iraqi woman cradling her baby as she waits along with family members in her living area while a US Marine lurks in the background recalls decades of Arab woe. And yet the poignant dignity of the image points to the determination to survive. (photo: AFP)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

“You Can Come Upon Women’s Bodies Anywhere”

As if car bombs and suicide bombers weren't horrific enough, criminal gangs, religious militias and death squads kidnap, rape and kill with impunity, with special attention to women professionals, students and rights activists. According to the United Nations' most recent quarterly report on human rights in Iraq, domestic violence and "honour" killings are on the rise - Kurdistan, often described as comparatively peaceful and orderly, saw more than 40 such killings between January and March this year; in the province of Erbil, rapes quadrupled between 2003 and 2006. Women who had worn western clothes and moved about freely all their lives have been terrorised into wearing the abaya and staying inside unless accompanied by male relatives. In Sadr City and elsewhere, sharia courts mete out misogynist "justice".

"The political climate in Iraq is such that anyone can carry out crimes against women.You can come upon women's bodies anywhere," Kurdish feminist and labour activist Houzan Mahmoud told me in London, where she serves as the UK representative of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). Far from promoting women's rights and security, "the occupation has strengthened the tribes, political Islam and reactionary bourgeois parties - all of which are anti-women." The true extent of the violence may never be known. According to Yifat Susskind, author of this year's report by women's human rights group Madre entitled Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq, comprehensive statistics don't exist: the Iraqi institutions responsible for collecting human rights data are complicit in human rights abuses and, besides, the Iraqi prime minister has told the Ministry of Health not to publish figures on civilian fatalities.

How you can help

The Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq runs shelters for battered women in four cities and an "underground railroad" to conduct women at risk of murder to safe havens. In response to the murder of Doaa, it is mounting an international campaign to ban honour killings and force Kurdish and Iraqi legal authorities to investigate and prosecute them. There have been demonstrations in London and Erbil; you can sign OWFI's petition at equalityiniraq.com, where you can also show your support for women's rights in Iraq by clicking on "make a donation".

Iraq is on the verge of collapse

Iraq's government has lost control of vast areas to powerful local factions and the country is on the verge of collapse and fragmentation, a leading British think-tank said on Thursday. Chatham House also said there was not one civil war in Iraq, but "several civil wars" between rival communities, and accused Iraq's main neighbours -- Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- of having reasons "for seeing the instability there continue". "It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation," it said in a report. "The Iraqi government is not able to exert authority evenly or effectively over the country. Across huge swathes of territory, it is largely irrelevant in terms of ordering social, economic and political life." The report also said that a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad launched in February has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have just shifted their activities outside the capital.

Burning bridges

Despite a security plan that is in its third month, violence continues to rage in Iraq. Now, bridges seem to be the favourite target for attacks. Last Friday, three vital bridges were blown up with car bombs. The old Dyali Bridge, the new Dyali Bridge in southern Baghdad, and the Taji Bridge in northern Baghdad suffered extensive damage in the attacks that left 26 people killed. Rear Admiral Mark Fox, communications director for the US military, said gunmen want to spread panic, make life harder for the Iraqis, and disrupt traffic across the Tigris. What Fox didn't say was that the Americans closed several bridges following the fall of Baghdad in 2003, including the 14 July Bridge, the Aemmah Bridge, and the Bab Al-Muazzam Bridge. Last month, a car bomb destroyed the Sirafiya Bridge. Meanwhile. although the Al-Adhamiya wall is nearing completion, the Iraqi parliament has passed a unanimous decision calling on the occupation forces to stop building it. "We know that our decision will be ignored, but we had to make the point for the record," an Iraqi parliamentarian who did not wish to be identified said. "The wall was built, ostensibly to protect Al-Adhamiya from attacks, but it will only serve to exacerbate factional segregation," he said.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Iraq rejects proposal for OIC force

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Wednesday rejected a Pakistani proposal for a Muslim peacekeeping force, saying more foreign troops were not welcome in Iraq. Opening a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference on Tuesday, Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf had raised the idea of a peacekeeping force for Iraq drawn from Muslim nations. Asked by reporters about the idea on Wednesday, Zebari said the idea had been raised and knocked down before. "My government's position is not for welcoming any more troops. We want our troops, the Iraqi troops, to rise up and stand, let's say to stabilise the situation," Zebari said. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the ongoing meeting is likely to adopt a resolution supporting Iran's right to peaceful use of nuclear technology. The three-day foreign ministers' meeting of the OIC began deliberations on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia To Support Iraq Sunnis: American Diplomatic Source

An American diplomatic source has told the Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm that Saudi Arabia is threatening to intervene in Iraq to support Sunni allies. The unnamed source was reported as saying that once American troops leave Iraq Saudi Arabia will support the Sunni population militarily. "Saudi Arabia has threatened direct interference in Iraq to protect Sunnis in case [coalition forces] suddenly pull out," the source said, referring to the current struggle in American politics on the date to remove troops. Al Masry Al Youm added that the source close to the United States State Department revealed that there was a letter sent to Washington concerning this development. According to the source, American Vice-President Dick Cheney's recent Middle East tour was related to this matter, although the source did not specify the VP by name. The story in the Egyptian daily commented on the possibility of a greater Middle Eastern war caused by the Iraq crisis. It said that a military escalation could result between Iran and Iraqi Shias vis a vis Saudi Arabia and other regional Sunni powers. Manar Ammar contributed to this report in Cairo.

COMMENTARY

Send in the Clown

It is hard to imagine how Jo Wilding's kidnappers reacted when she told them what she was doing in Iraq. They were in Fallujah, a city under siege in 2003 - and this British woman was claiming to be a clown, in a circus she had brought to a country in the middle of a war. "We could have been anyone," she recalls, "there to spy or assassinate someone. The only foreigners there were Americans - and they were there to kill them." She seems remarkably generous about her kidnappers: "From their point of view, what else could they have done?" In fact, she does not even refer to them as kidnappers: "I don't really think of it as hostage-taking because they didn't take us for political or financial gain. It was purely for security reasons: they wanted to know who we were." But when she writes about it in her book, Don't Shoot the Clowns, her fear is palpable.

How to describe Wilding? She's 32, a mother and a newly qualified barrister, who lives in Brighton with her partner. But she is also an activist, blogger, unembedded journalist, documentary star, human rights worker and a clown with a talent for making balloon animals. "Jo was the only one of us foreigners in Iraq who I was absolutely sure was doing something useful," says Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo. The journalist and film-maker John Pilger is another fan. "Living with families and without a flak jacket, she all but shamed the embedded army of reporters in her description of the atrocious American attack on an Iraqi city," he wrote last year. He said her dispatches from Iraq, posted on her blog, were "some of the most extraordinary I've read". The writer, director and academic Jonathan Holmes has written a new play, Fallujah, which draws heavily on Wilding's experiences, among others.

IRAQI REFUGEES

In Search of Dignity

For those Iraqis who manage to enter Sweden, the immediate sense of safety and relief is overwhelming. "On one level, I feel lucky that I have found safety at last," says Bassem, an Iraqi economist from Baghdad who has been living in Malmo for five months. "The situation in Baghdad was terrible, insurmountable, when I left. I knew I would not survive if I remained there, particularly as the educated classes are among the most heavily targeted by the occupation and those Iraqis who are supporting it."

However, as is the case with Palestinians arriving in the West today, this euphoria is soon replaced by a sense of dislocation and sadness. "I find it incredibly difficult not to be working. I am a professional. Now, I am being told that until my papers come through, I cannot work. I do not live a dignified life; and I know that I never will, unless the occupation ends and I can return to Iraq -- which is my home after all," said Bassem.

UNHCR highlights Palestinian refugees’ plight in desert camp

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees stranded at al-Waleed makeshift camp in no-man's land between the desert borders of Iraq and Syria are living in precarious conditions and people could die if they do not get medical treatment, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on 15 May. “We are particularly worried about the lack of medical facilities – many of the camp's 942 residents need urgent medical attention, including a mother of seven who suffers from leukemia and a teenage diabetic boy,” UNHCR spokesperson, Jennifer Pagonis, said in a statement on Tuesday. "The tented camp is overcrowded and many people are suffering from respiratory and other ailments that need proper medical treatment. But the nearest hospital in Iraq is located four hours away by car and the road runs through dangerous territory," the statement said. At least three people, including a six-month-old baby, have died from treatable illnesses since the camp opened last December, it added.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

Quote of the day: They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace. Tacitus