News & Views 07/03/07

.Photo: Iraqi children swim in filthy water. Medics are warning of an increase in waterborne diseases in July, the hottest month of the year. Photo: IRIN

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Shantytowns springing up in Iraq

Harper passed along details and photos about one of the makeshift camps in Najaf province called Al-Manathera, which a UNHCR team visited in May:

>There were more than 2,000 people in what is a collection of tents, with 60 percent of them women and 30 percent children.

>They lacked proper water access and the heat makes potable water too hot and undrinkable. There was no medical care, and many of the children suffer from typhoid, diarrhea and skin rash.

>The people had to cope with snakes, scorpions and mosquitoes. They had no change of clothes, and there were no toilets.

>The UNHCR said the camp needs 50 tents, 50 water tanks, urgent medical care, sterilizers, insecticides, mattresses, blankets and "healthy, real toilets." "UNHCR will expand the delivery of emergency non-food items and we are aiming to distribute tents, water containers, blankets and kitchen sets to another 100,000 displaced before the end of the year. But the fundamental problem is security," Harper said.

>Another group, the International Organization for Migration, said Friday it has launched an $85 million appeal for internally displaced Iraqis and those enduring food shortages.

>"If people cannot get help with shelter, food, water, health care or even ways of earning a living to pay for these things because everyone is in a desperate struggle to survive, people will feel they have no choice but to flee Iraq. The situation cannot continue like this. We can and must help them," says Rafiq Tschannen, IOM's chief of mission in Iraq.

Kurdistan Government Appeals for Medical Supplies

The semi-autonomous government of Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, has issued a global plea for medical supplies to ensure patients there receive required treatment. It blamed violence in other parts of Iraq for the dire shortage of supplies in the north. "With the current situation in the south of Iraq, and particularly Baghdad, it is very hard for us to get the materials, equipment, and pharmaceuticals that we need," Dr Abdul-Rahman Osman Younis, the region's health minister, said in an appeal issued late June. In the appeal, Younis talked of the relative peace and booming economy in the three provinces that make up Kurdistan and praised the region as "a bright spot in the present and future of Iraq… yet with all these advancements our medical institutions need a lot of work”. Younis added that many of the region's 48 hospitals and 672 primary health care centres lack the basic medicines and medical supplies needed to treat wounds or provide basic care. "Our children suffer from one of the world's highest rates of heart disease and leukemia and we lack the facilities to treat them here in Kurdistan," he said.

Sadr City Plea for medical equipment

Doctors at Sadr City Hospital said they urgently needed medicines and emergency kits, as they believed the situation would worsen. “We cannot cope with the number of casualties. They should send us materials to fully equip our hospital before people start to die for lack of medicines. I know there weren’t many casualties but militants and locals are revolted by the recent actions by US troops and they might take revenge any time,” said Hassan Khalif, a physician at Sadr City Hospital. “We need needles, pain-killers, antiseptic and cotton. Also our X-ray machine is nearly broken and needs to be repaired urgently,” Khalif said.

Health Ministry issues warning on waterborne diseases

Iraqi Health Ministry officials warned on 3 July of a possible increase in waterborne diseases among children and the elderly during the summer's hottest month of July. Water and sewage networks have not been repaired and this could exacerbate the problem, which has been further highlighted by five cholera cases recently reported in southern Iraq, the officials said.

"Many cases of viral hepatitis, diarrhoea, typhoid and bacterial infections have been registered in Baghdad due to polluted drinking water," Ahmed Assad Naji of Baghdad's health directorate said. "Water is an enormous need, and people take it where they can get it, and they are getting it from places where it is not always clean. The deteriorated security situation has made it very hard to repair the country's sewage and water networks to work properly and that caused these waterborne diseases," Naji said. "The number of cases in Iraq is still small; none has been fatal and all of them are still under control. Nevertheless the cases could reach serious levels if immediate measures are not taken to repair sewage and water networks," he added. Naji said the most vulnerable persons for these diseases were children under five, women aged 19-45 and elderly people.

Cholera in Najaf

In late June, five cases of cholera were reported among children in the southern city of Najaf, about 200km south of Baghdad, said Nasser Mohammed Ali of the city’s health directorate. "All of the cases were among children under 12," Ali added.

Baghdad garage where drivers swap Shi'ites and Sunnis

Shi'ite driver Basim Mohammed sits by his dusty truck at "Friends Garage", an informal Baghdad transit point where passengers are swapped depending on their sect. Not long after, Abu Ali, an old Shi'ite man forced by gunmen to leave his home in the Sunni area of Abu Ghraib, turns up in a pickup truck. His belongings are stacked in the back. His Sunni driver is too scared to venture into the mainly Shi'ite suburb where Abu Ali will live with relatives, so he has brought him to "Friends Garage". "I was afraid they would kill my five sons so I decided to move," said Abu Ali, wearing a tattered brown robe and watching workers carry tables, chairs, bedding and other belongings onto Mohammed's truck. "I had to use this point of transfer because drivers can't risk going into areas where they may be killed ... There is no difference between us (Shi'ites and Sunnis), I just don't understand," he added, tears trickling down his ageing face.

Baghdad suburb residents flee after US raids

Some residents of the mainly Shia Baghdad suburb of Sadr City are fleeing their homes - apparently scared of reprisals by US troops searching the area for militants. The US raids, which started on 30 June, led to the deaths of 26 people and dozens were injured, according to government officials. Schools, government offices and many shops have been closed, and eye-witnesses said houses and shops had been damaged. “I’m fleeing my home today and won’t take anything with me. I cannot see my children dying. We need protection and we cannot get it in Sadr City any more. US troops are invading our houses, shooting at our doors and killing innocent people and I don’t want my loved ones to be the next victims,” said Mamun Ali, 45. “They made it clear during their raid on 30 June that they were going to return to finish the militants and surely dozens of innocent Iraqis are going to die just for remaining in their homes,” Ali said. “We are going to Najaf today with the hope of finding a camp for the displaced to stay in and save our lives.” [You can bet the “insurgents” left also. – dancewater]

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Problems For The Iraqi Oil Industry

Among the political benchmarks the Bush administration has embraced to chart progress in Iraq, approval by the Iraqi parliament of a hydrocarbon law looms large. Oil provides 95 percent of Iraq's national income, making the recovery of the country's oil sector critical to reducing the United States' military and economic burden. But two recent U.S. government reports show that the much-awaited approval of that law - which is designed to manage distribution of future oil revenue in Iraq and govern the granting of exploration rights to foreign companies - would be just the beginning of addressing the nation's oil problems. An April 30 report to Congress by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction shows that Iraq oil production and exports remain below even prewar levels and that U.S. spending on security to protect pipelines and upgrade facilities has had mixed results. And a recent Government Accountability Office report, titled "Integrated Strategic Plan Needed to Help Restore Iraq's Oil and Electricity Sectors," explains that passage of the hydrocarbon law would provide only a broad framework for handling Iraq's oil industry, leaving many devilish details to be worked out.

"The draft law was expected to clearly assign roles, decentralize the development of oil and gas fields, centralize control of revenues, and grant regions and regional oil companies the right to draw up contracts with foreign companies for exploration and development of new oil fields," the GAO reported. Establishing Iraqi "regions" to control oil fields, a critical element of this structure, remains elusive. The borders of Iraq's Kurdish region are established, but a constitutionally mandated referendum on the status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich and majority-Kurd city, still awaits. Meanwhile, the Iraqi parliament still has to deal with Shiites' demands for their own region in the south, where most of Iraq's oil fields are found. Another part of the law, the distribution of revenue based on regional population levels, "will require a politically sensitive census to be undertaken," according to the GAO - a difficult task for a nation at war.

Kurdish security forces torture suspects-HRW report

Kurdish security police in northern Iraq routinely torture suspects and have held hundreds of people without trial, according to a report by a human rights group released on Tuesday. "Detainees reported a wide range of abuse, including beatings using implements such as cables, hosepipes, wooden sticks and metal rods," said New York-based Human Rights Watch. The report was based on interviews with 158 detainees held by the Asayish, which means 'security' in Kurdish, in detention centres in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The interviews were conducted between April and October 2006. Kurdish officials were not immediately available to comment. As well as physical abuse, the report detailed cases where people were held after their original sentences had expired, and it found that the vast majority of the detainees it interviewed said they had never been formally charged with any crime. "Most had no knowledge of their legal status, how long they would continue to be held, or what was to become of them," the report said.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Curtain falls on Iraq's `M.A.S.H.'

The opening of that 107,000-square-foot hospital, [more evidence that they plan to stay there for a very long time – dancewater] in stages throughout July, not only brings a more standard, state-of-the-art facility to Iraq. It also announces that the U.S. military, after more than 3,500 dead and 25,000 wounded in four years of war, will be well prepared to deal with severe casualties for years more to come. At a time when no target date has been set for a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, the new Balad hospital looks ready for an extended U.S. stay. "It'll be good for 10 years, depending on how well you take care of it," said Col. Brian Masterson, the hospital commander.

…..But Balad's casualties are not just American. Among the side-by-side tents that serve as hospital wards, the Iraqi patient population at times has rivaled the American. On one recent night, as the quiet was broken occasionally by moans, seven children lay in a 10-bed Iraqi ward, victims of explosions and other violence whose origins — crossfire, terrorism, U.S. airstrikes — usually remain murky to those who treat them. Other wounded Iraqis — suspected insurgents — are often dropped off by comrades at the Balad base's gates, to be picked up on routine runs by a hospital ambulance. On this night, nurses and doctors crowded around the bed of an Iraqi newly emerged from surgery for multiple wounds. At the foot of the bed, among the medical staff in their scrubs, stood a soldier with an assault rifle — a guard watching over this captive, blindfolded insurgent.

U.S. Alliance With Iraqi Tribes Poses Risks

American officials were surprised last Monday when an explosion in the lobby of Baghdad's Mansour Hotel killed six Sunni Muslim sheiks whom the U.S. considered top allies. The hotel's tower is visible to most officials who work in the heavily fortified Green Zone, and U.S. officials had talked regularly with the sheiks and given them money. But the officials had no idea that the sheiks were planning to talk with their Shiite Muslim counterparts in the hotel's lobby, though clearly someone else did. One U.S. military officer based in the Green Zone characterized the American reaction as "Huh?" "No one here knew they were getting together until it happened," said the officer, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. In the end, the sheiks were operating on their own, and therein lies the risk in the U.S. strategy of working with Sunni tribal leaders.

While the cooperation has helped quell violence in Anbar province, where tribal leaders turned on the group al Qaeda in Iraq late last year, driving the radical Islamists from the province, it was by no means a signal that the sheiks would coordinate future actions with the United States or with Iraq's Shiite-led central government. That's likely to pit stronger Sunni tribes against a weaker central government, and further fragment an already fractured country, experts warn. "Their allegiance is to themselves," Jeffrey White, a military analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said of the tribes. A strong central government "is fundamentally contrary to the tribal system," he added. "Tribes are essentially about divide and rule."

Contractor Deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan Top 1,000

The death toll for private contractors in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has topped 1,000, a stark reminder of the risks run by civilians working with the military in roles previously held by soldiers. A further 13,000 contractors have been wounded in the two separate wars led by the United States against enemies who share fundamentalist Islamic beliefs and the hit-and-run tactics that drain conventional armies. The casualty toll is based on figures the U.S. Department of Labor provided to Reuters in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act and on locally gathered data. The department said it had recorded 990 deaths — 917 in Iraq and 73 in Afghanistan -— by the end of March. Since then, according to incident logs tallied by Reuters in Baghdad and Kabul, at least 16 contractors have died in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. ….Despite the risks, there is no shortage of those wanting to work in the war zones, lured by high pay and, in some cases, a sense of adventure. [Like the US military, these folks should go home. – dancewater]

COMMENTARY

Michael Gordon trains his stenographer weapons on Iran

The Bush administration's most reliable pro-surge "reporter," Michael Gordon of The New York Times, this morning filed an article -- headlined: "U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.'s" -- that might be the most war-fueling article yet with regard to Iran. Gordon's article is 23 paragraphs long, and makes some of the most inflammatory accusations against Iran imaginable. This is the first paragraph:

Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

This is how the article ends:

But military officials say that there is such a long and systematic pattern of Quds Force activity in Iraq, as well as a 2005 confidential American protest to Iranian leaders regarding Iran's alleged supply of road-side bombs, that senior Iranian leaders must be aware of the Quds Force role in Iraq. "Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity," he said. When he was asked if Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, General Bergner said "that would be hard to imagine."

….I defy anyone to scour Gordon's article and point to a single difference, large or small, between its content and what a Camp Victory Press Release on this topic would say.

"Free" & Ruined Lives

I want to burn Plato's Republic and spit on your Constitution, on your Founding Fathers, on your Laws... Free limbs, detached, solitary limbs, scattered to the four cardinal points and a bleeding heart in the middle, like a compass. An arm to the West, a leg to the East, a head down South and a torso up North...And that damned bleeding heart in the Center.
Free, so free...
Free, free in Prisons. Free, so free in Detention centers...
Detention centers in the Mnistry of Interior, Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Justice!
Crammed, packed, jammed... The smell of blood, urine and feces...covering the infected wounds. Wounds of torture born on transparent skins covering rib cages...
Free, so free.
Tortured and Free in American camps. Sodomized and Free - American democracy flavor. Tortured and Free, whipped by sectarianism - Iranian flavor. Oh so Free.
Free to die. Free to cry. Free to mourn. Free to flee. Free to escape. Free at the borders...jammed, packed.

What's in store for the Middle East after Iraq?

Beyond forecasts of civil war in Iraq, however, there has been little effort to discern what the Middle East will actually look like after the U.S. troops go home. There is already a civil war in Iraq, and it might even get worse for a time after American troops leave, but these things always sputter out in the end. There will still be an Iraqi state, plus or minus Kurdistan, and regardless of whether or not the central government in Baghdad exercises real control over the Sunni-majority areas between Baghdad, Mosul and the Syrian border. The Sunni Arab parts of Iraq have been turned into a training ground for Islamist extremists from all parts of the Arab world by the American invasion. Once the American troops are gone, however, the action will soon move elsewhere, for the U.S. defeat in Iraq has dramatically raised the prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world and beyond. It's not possible to predict which Arab states will fall under Islamist control, and they certainly aren't all going to: the pipe-dream of a world-spanning Islamic empire remains precisely that. But it will be astonishing if one or more of the existing Arab regimes does not fall to an Islamist revolution in the next few years. For the citizens of the country or countries in question, that could be quite a big problem, since it would probably mean not democracy and prosperity, but just more decades of poverty and a different kind of tyranny. For people living outside the Middle East, however, it would probably make little difference. Islamist-ruled states are not the same as bands of freelance fanatics. If they have oil to export, then they will go on exporting it, because no major oil producer can do without the income those exports provide; they need it to feed their people.

IRAQI REFUGEES

CRS ASSISTS IRAQI REFUGEES IN SYRIA, LEBANON

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) will provide assistance to Iraqi refugees living in Syria and Lebanon, thanks to nearly $2 million dollars from the US Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and more than half a million dollars in private funds. The rapid escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq has forced an estimated two million Iraqis to seek safety in neighboring states. The majority of families, upwards of 1.7 million, fled to Syria and Jordan, with a few hundred thousand also seeking refuge in Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey. More than two million more people are displaced within Iraq, and the UN estimates every month another 50,000 Iraqis flee their homes. "Although it's only recently that the international community has acknowledged and begun to respond to this humanitarian catastrophe, when you look at the numbers affected - more than four million people uprooted - the response is still not sufficient," said Jack Connolly, CRS Senior Representative for the Middle East. "More, much more, needs to be done in terms of assisting and protecting this population."

Brazilian resettlement breakthrough for Palestinians in desert camp

UNHCR is grateful for a generous offer by the Government of Brazil to resettle an estimated 100 Palestinian refugees who formerly lived in Iraq. Most of the Palestinians have been living in Ruwayshed inside Jordan – 60 km from the Iraq border – for the past four years. There, they have faced extremely harsh conditions in a dusty and scorpion-infested desert camp with nowhere to go. In recent years UNHCR has repeatedly appealed for a humane solution for this group. Until this latest response from Brazil, only Canada and New Zealand – which took 54 and 22 Palestinians respectively in recent years – had come forward to help this desperate group. The Palestinians are the first group of refugees from outside Latin America to benefit from the 'solidarity resettlement programmes' which were proposed as one of the durable solutions for refugees in the 2004 Mexico Plan of Action. The plan, which was adopted by 20 Latin American countries, has so far only benefited refugees from the region – mainly Colombians. The pilot offer of Brazil will provide a humanitarian solution for Palestinians who have been in the Jordanian camp since 2003.

…..More than 1,450 Palestinians from Iraq remain stranded along the Iraq-Syria border in deplorable conditions. Another estimated 13,000 Palestinians continue to be targeted, harassed, threatened and killed in Baghdad. UNHCR repeats its call to the international community to help these Palestinians who – unlike Iraqis fleeing violence and persecution – are not allowed into any country and have nowhere else to go inside Iraq.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

Iraq Moratorium Day – September 21 and every third Friday thereafter ~ "I hereby make a commitment that on Friday, September 21, 2007, and the third Friday of every subsequent month I will break my daily routine and take some action, by myself or with others, to end the War in Iraq."

Quote of the day: "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." -- Edward Everett Hale