News & Views 12/12/07

Photo: Residents are seen through a damaged window of a building after a bomb attack in Baghdad's al-Ghadeer district December 12, 2007. Five civilians were killed while 13 others were wounded in the car bomb attack southeast of Baghdad on Wednesday, police said. REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz (IRAQ)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Wednesday: 71 Iraqis Killed, 152 Wounded

Radio: Discussion on Iraq

Host is Michael Krasny and guests are Abe Sofaer and Raed Jarrar. They discuss Iraq’s governing body and its struggle with sectarian pressures.

IRAQ: Parliament finds spare cash for IDPs

The Iraqi parliament decided on 6 December to allocate 500 million Iraqi dinars (about US$410,000) to help displaced families nationwide. The money is unused attendance allowances for members of parliament (MPs), explained Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. “This is a preliminary payment and will be followed by more. The money has already been sent to parliament’s displacement committee to distribute,” al-Mashhadani said. In a bid to curb frequent absences of its members, Iraq’s 275 MPs decided to recycle unused attendance allowances in this way. The displacement committee said it would use the money to buy food, blankets, hygiene kits and clothes, especially for children, and other essentials which will be distributed to internally displaced persons (IDPs). “It has become very hard for the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to meet the increasing needs of these [displaced] families and especially those who are living in camps and abandoned government buildings,” said MP Abdul-Hadi Mohammed.

McClatchy: Confronting Iraq – See their interactive media guide on Iraq.

Let there be light

This is the very last time I will attempt this, I say to myself as I drive towards the checkpoint. If they won’t let me through this time, I will give up the idea of going home. The problem, of course is that they are afraid of the idea of letting the generator through the checkpoint. I have been trying for two weeks. “We don’t know what’s inside it. Get us a letter from the local council.” And off I go to the local council. “Is it a very big generator? Why are the soldiers so reluctant to let it in? There must be something wrong. But we can’t vouch for your generator – how could we?” No it isn’t a big generator. It’s like the wheelbarrow you use in the garden. So I let it go for another couple of days And now, here goes. “Assalamu Alaykum. I took my generator to be repaired and I want to take it home now. Can we pass?” This is a new soldier, I haven’t seen him before. “Is it big?”, “No, there, you can see it in the pickup truck behind me.”

He looks at me very suspiciously then walks off to take a look. “OK. But you must get us a letter from the owner” That’s easy! I am the owner. I took out my ever ready notebook and pen. “I am the owner. What shall I say?”, “No. Not from you. From the owner.”. “I am the owner. What do you want me to write?”, “NO. NO. NOT FROM YOU – FROM THE OWNER”, “I AM THE OWNER!!” He looks baffled. “Then get me a letter from the fitter who repaired it.” He was so fresh from the back of nowhere that he could not conceive of a generator being owned by a woman. What to do now? I ring my nephew. I had wanted him to stay clear of the generator; he was driving several cars behind me. I give him specific instructions, and wink in the phone. He comes. “Assalamu Alaykum. How are you doing, my cousin? What about my generator, my aunt says there are problems …”, “Oh, the generator, is it yours? No, not really, we just can’t let it through without a letter from the owner that’s all. And your aunt here, the Hijiya, doesn’t seem to understand.” “Never mind, my cousin, you know how it is … (making a face and rolling up his eyes). This is my ID, keep it with you until I install the generator and come out. Come with me if you like, and after you are sure that I have taken the generator to my house, you can give it back to me.” “No, no. This letter is enough. Yalla, go through.” I was so intent on my own business; I hadn’t noticed that more than fifty cars had piled up behind me blocking the road. Oh no! Flushed faces – angry eyes, but no one out of their car to fight – yet. “Quickly, Hammoudi – lets go!” And we drive off. And today there shall be light in my home – again.

New dam for Kirkuk

Work on a new dam has started in the Province of Kirkuk. The dam, to be completed in 14 months, will cost 3.5 billion Iraqi dinars. The province, of which the oil-rich city of Kirkuk is the capital, suffers from drinking water shortages. But the dam, officials say, is being built specifically for agricultural purposes. Governor Abdulrahman Mustafa has laid the dam’s foundation expected to store 1.3 million cubic meters of water, mainly from rainfall. It is the second dam to be constructed in the province since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Mustafa said the dam, situated in a barren plateau, is bound to turn the area into green fields of vegetables, orchards and grain.

'I love you' crosses Iraqi sectarian divide

At mass wedding, 70 couples are feted by a media magnate promoting Iraqi reconciliation. Hames al-Shimmari says he had good reason to brave a trip recently from his home in Shiite Sadr City to the mixed area of Al-Fadhel across the Tigris River: It was time to propose to Hanan Qasim, who is Sunni. "Her area is ... a great danger for me, coming from a place that is Shiite to the core," said Mr. Shimmari, a sports journalist, as he celebrated their marriage last Friday. "We wanted to break the barriers between the sects, which is an ugly phenomenon." Dumou Jalaleddin, a Kurd who celebrated her nuptials at the same event, echoed Shimmari's defiance. "I love this man," she said, pinning a carnation on the lapel of Haidar Hussein, her Arab groom. She stamped his cheek with a kiss. "We fell in love two years ago at the height of the war." The two were among 70 couples taking part in a mass wedding in Baghdad, organized by a media magnate eager to send a message that average citizens are a more worthwhile symbol for reconciliation, through basic human rites like marriage, than are the country's feuding leaders.

Taking Time to Dance in Baghdad

One sign of improving security in Baghdad is the recent lifting of an 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. curfew (with the exception of east-west travel on city bridges) on Fridays. It was put in place to ensure that the traditional weekly Friday prayers were, well, tranquil enough for prayer. Last Friday offered correspondent Sam Dagher an opportunity for another taste of normal life. He attended a mass wedding of religiously and ethnically mixed couples sponsored by a Kurdish businessman (see story). "For a few hours, it was a chance to join Baghdadis in moments of pure joy, dancing, clapping, and music," says Sam. "The attitude among many people I spoke to was: "We want to live today as if it was the last day of our life." That bittersweet comment came to mind Wednesday. A bombing in Baghdad killed five people, including the sister of a Christian Science Monitor Iraqi driver. She had just returned from Syria, expecting that it was safe enough now to live in Iraq's capital.

Safe Falluja…sounds of reconstruction instead of bullets whizzing

The city of Falluja, which for a long time remained a stronghold of gunmen, lives these days within different circumstances as construction and building movements began replacing shooting and bullets whizzing by, coinciding with the spread of calmness and stability. Most of the main streets in Falluja have been lightened with lasers, construction on the Falluja modern hospital are coming to an end, and there are scores of health centers and schools that have been established in a very modern style.

…..The return of normal life to Falluja did not prevent its residents from complaining of the lack of basic services. Hamied Ibrahim, 29, an employee, said "Despite the return of normal life in Falluja, we suffer shortages in many services: we have electricity for only two hours everyday and a bottle of gas costs 15,000 dinars (13 dollars)." Garbage areas turned into gardens and football courts where scores of young men play, and between residential areas separated by concrete blocks you can see old men sitting in front of their homes drinking tea and engaging in conversations. Hazem Faleh, 44, a taxi driver, says "we suffer a lot here because of wars and armed attacks, my house was destroyed. It was a real drama here. We need to get some rest."

Iraqi Policewomen Are Told to Surrender Their Weapons

The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation's police force. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title "policewoman" by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs. Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers. "We nursed it along," he said last week, referring to the recruiting effort. "We saw this as: 'If we could get 50% of the brain power in this country that is not being utilized engaged, how much further along would we be?' " Without policewomen, Phillips said, there will be no officers to give pat-down searches to female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Iraq praises Syrian cooperation in boosting security

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Wednesday praised Syria's efforts to stop the flow of fighters into his war-torn country, saying the security situation in Iraq was improving. "There is better security cooperation on the part of Syria to help the Iraqi government to police the (Syria-Iraq) border and to prevent the movement of fighters" into Iraq, Zebari told a news conference in Damascus. "The security situation in Iraq has started to improve. We appreciate the measures taken by Syria," he said at the joint conference with Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem without specifying the nature of the measures. "The data on the ground shows a drop in the movement of members of criminal gangs and terrorists in Iraq, because of the (Syrian) application of these measures." The comments came as three car bombs killed at least 25 people and wounded 151 in the southern Iraqi Shiite city of Amara, dealing a blow to British and Iraqi claims of achieving stability in the south of the country.

150 billion dinars dedicated as volunteers' salaries

The Iraqi cabinet said on Wednesday that it would dedicate 150 billion dinars as salaries for the volunteers of the awakening council in Baghdad and other provinces in 2008. "The cabinet decided to dedicate the amount as part of the 2008 budget," the cabinet said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The statement did not add any further details. The awakening council has branches in Anbar, Diala, Ninewa, and Salah el Din and aims at mobilizing all tribal and clan powers to fight armed men especially al-Qaeda network. The council in Baghdad and other provinces called to integrate their elements within the ministries of interior and defense. A senior official in the Ministry of Interior had said that the number of the awakening councils have over 70,000 volunteers.

Provincial council bans new Falluja awakening council's offices

The Falluja provincial council on Wednesday banned the opening of new offices of the Anbar awakening council to limit armaments in the city, an official source from the provincial council said. "The council decided this morning to ban opening new office of the awakening council in the city of Falluja in an attempt to put limits on armament and to restrict it only to police and army forces," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) under condition of anonymity. "The decision was sent to all police stations and tribes in the city of Falluja," the source also said. "The decision was signed by most of the provincial council's members," he noted.

Iraq rejects permanent U.S. bases: adviser

Iraq will never allow the United States to have permanent military bases on its soil, the government's national security adviser said, calling the issue a "red line" that cannot be crossed. "We need the United States in our war against terrorism, we need them to guard our border sometimes, we need them for economic support and we need them for diplomatic and political support," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said. "But I say one thing, permanent forces or bases in Iraq for any foreign forces is a red line that cannot be accepted by any nationalist Iraqi," he told Dubai-based al Arabiya television. [I will believe that all US bases are removed when I see it with my own eyes. – dancewater]

IRAQI REFUGEES

Illiteracy increasing among Iraq's refugee children

Illiteracy is spreading rapidly among refugee children from Iraq, with at least 300,000 young Iraqis not attending school in the countries where their families have sought safety. Alarmed aid workers in Syria and Jordan report that a growing number of children can't read or write because cash-strapped parents have withdrawn them from school to cut down on expenses. In many cases, displaced families can afford to send only one of their children to school, creating a painful gap between educated children and their illiterate siblings, humanitarian workers say. UNICEF, the U.N. education agency, is beginning a census to determine the size of the problem. There's no program in place yet to deal broadly with the issue. Aid workers admit that the development surprised them, in part because Iraq once boasted some of the highest literacy rates in the Middle East. The Iraqis' legendary thirst for knowledge is encapsulated in an Arabic saying, "The Egyptians write, the Lebanese publish, the Iraqis read."

For Iraqi refugees, a sense of community in the American west

Refugees resettled to the US also receive eight months of government assistance. In San Diego, this is distributed through the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which also runs a variety of assistance programmes. Despite these benefits, Iraqi refugees face particular challenges. "Nearly every Iraqi we see has experienced trauma," said Robert Montgomery, IRC's regional resettlement director. "They've witnessed death and kidnappings on such a scale that every family has been touched by trauma." Ekran Gorgrees, the eldest son in a family of eight, speaks for his father, who he says has difficulty recounting the time before they left their home in Baghdad. His mother, who was suffering from cancer, was terrified of the sound of the explosions. She wanted the family to leave, but was too ill to travel. Then, on a day off from his job at a restaurant, a car carrying seven of Ekran's co-workers was stopped by gunmen and the occupants abducted and killed. Following the death of his wife, Jamil Gorgrees sold what belongings he had and took his family to Turkey in November 2004 by way of northern Iraq, much of the way on foot. There they approached UNHCR, which put the family forward for resettlement. The UN refugee agency has a target of 20,000 Iraqi refugee resettlement referrals for 2007. It announced in Geneva earlier today that this figure had been passed and that, as of last Friday, the agency had transferred the files of 20,472 of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees for consideration by 16 resettlement countries, including the United States.

UK blocks asylum to Iraqi translators

Native interpreters who risked death and persecution to help British troops in Iraq are blocked from starting new lives in the UK, new figures reveal. Of the 200 interpreters who took up an offer to resettle in Britain, 125 have been turned away, statistics unearthed by the Times reveal. The revelations contradict Gordon Brown's promise to fulfil a "care of duty" to those who have served with British troops. ….In many cases the interpreters were told by the government they were ineligible because of absenteeism, but they say any disappearances were due to them fleeing for their lives from Shia militia. Lynne Featherstone, a Liberal Democrat MP, told the Times: "If those Iraqis who have helped us are now being told that they can't come here because their absence was regarded as a resignation. "This is a world gone mad."

Harsh refugee life rather than improved security spurs return of Iraqi refugees

The recent return of considerable numbers of Iraqi refugees to their homeland has been hailed by some as evidence of an improvement in the security situation inside Iraq. Many Iraqi refugees face little alternative, however, than to return to their homeland, according to a survey by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Syria.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

ANOTHER Way to help: The Collateral Repair Project

COMMENTARY

Kucinich: Iraq War Funding Deal Is Immoral

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) released the following statement before Congress takes up yet another Iraq war funding bill this week:

“It is immoral for Congress to make a deal to keep this war going. It is immoral to keep a war going that is based on lies. And it is immoral to make a deal to claim legislative victories unrelated to the war while at the same time spending money to keep the war going,” Kucinich said. The House is expected to bring up an omnibus spending package this week. The mechanism and timing for inclusion of Iraq war funding in the bill is not yet decided. One option is for the Senate to amend a House-passed version of the bill to reflect the back room deal on domestic spending. It would reportedly not include Iraq war funding. The Senate would add funding for the Iraq war and send it back to the House. “In politics, you can make a deal where one party gets its way and the other party gets its way and that’s okay when people don’t die,” Kucinich said. “This war funding plan shows a distressing lack of concern about the situation of our troops. It shows a disregard for the Democrats’ promise to the American people to end the war.”

OPINION: Only hatred of US unites Iraq

As British forces come to the end of their role in Iraq, what sort of country do they leave behind? Has the United States turned the tide in Baghdad? Does the fall in violence mean that the country is stabilizing after more than four years of war? Or are we seeing only a temporary pause in the fighting? U.S. commentators generally are making the same mistake that they have made since the invasion of Iraq was first contemplated five years ago. They look at Iraq in over-simple terms and exaggerate the extent to which the U.S. is making the political weather and is in control of events there. The U.S. is the most powerful single force in Iraq but by no means the only one. The shape of Iraqi politics has changed over the past year, though for reasons that have little to do with "the surge" in the 30,000 U.S. troop reinforcements -- and much to do with the battle for supremacy between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities.

Will Iraq's Great Awakening Lead to a Nightmare?

American casualties in Iraq have declined dramatically over the last 90 days to levels not seen since 2006, and the White House has attributed the decline to the surge of 35-40,000 U.S. combat troops. But a closer look suggests a different explanation. More than two years of sectarian violence have replaced one country called Iraq with three emerging states: one Kurdish, one Sunni, and one Shiite. This created what a million additional U.S. troops could not: a strategic opportunity to capitalize on the Sunni-Shiite split. So after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr decided to restrain his Mahdi army from attacking U.S. forces, General David Petraeus and his commanders began cutting deals with Sunni Arab insurgents, agreeing to allow these Sunnis to run their own affairs and arm their own security forces in return for cooperation with U.S. forces against Al Qaeda fighters. As part of the bargain, the Sunni leaders obtained both independence from the hated Shiite-dominated government, which pays far more attention to Tehran's interests than to Washington's, and money—lots of money.

Striking such a "sheikhs for sale" deal (whether they be Sunni or Shiite) is nothing new in the Arab world. The men who ran the British Empire routinely paid subsidies in gold to unruly tribal leaders from the Khyber Pass to the headwaters of the Nile. (Of course, British subsidies were a pittance compared with the billions Britain extracted from its colonies in Africa and Asia.) While the arrangement reached by U.S. military commanders and dubbed the "Great Awakening" has allowed the administration and its allies to declare the surge a success, it carries long-term consequences that are worrisome, if not perilous. The reduction in U.S. casualties is good news. But transforming thousands of anti-American Sunni insurgents into U.S.-funded Sunni militias is not without cost. In fact, the much-touted progress in Iraq could lead to a situation in which American foreign-policy interests are profoundly harmed and the Middle East is plunged into even a larger crisis than currently exists. [There is plenty in this article that is crap, but some good points also. – dancewater]

RESISTANCE

Why We Resist

Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are few in number and dismissed by the cynics who hide their fear behind their worldliness. Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality. We remember and honor the names of those who, solitary when they began, defied their age. Henry David Thoreau. Jane Adams. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Mahatma Gandhi. Milovan Djilas. Andrei Sakharov. Martin Luther King. Václav Havel. Nelson Mandela. It is time to join them. They sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, meant to defy authority. When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were “this is for me the end, but also the beginning.”

Bonhoeffer, who returned to Germany from Union Theological Seminary in New York to fight the Nazis, knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. He affirmed what we all must affirm. It did not mean he avoided death. It did not mean that he, as a distinct individual, survived. But he understood that his resistance, and even his death, was an act of love. He fought for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative. His defiance condemned his executioners.

This Generation's 'Winter Soldiers' to Expose Horrific Reality of U.S. Occupation

A Soldier Speaks: In the early months of 1971, a group of Vietnam vets spoke of the atrocities of that generation's senseless war and helped end that conflict. This March, the vets of another unjust war will follow in their footsteps.

We Support the Troops Who Oppose the War

On the weekend of 13-15 March, 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will assemble history's largest gathering of US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors. They will provide first hand accounts of their experiences and reveal the truth of occupation. We support Iraq Veterans Against the War and their Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation. Join us in supporting the effort to reveal truth in the way that only those who lived it can.

Please go to this website to sign the petition.

Quote of the day: “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” King wrote from another era as he sat inside a Birmingham jail. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ – from article Why We Resist