Iraq's Shocking Human Toll ! ! !

[bigron]

Half Life of a Toxic War

Iraq's Wrecked Environment

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and JOSHUA FRANK
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m53883&hd=&size=1&l=e



May 1, 2009

The ecological effects of war, like its horrific toll on human life, are exponential. When the Bush administration (parts one and two) and its congressional allies sent troops to Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime, they not only ordered these men and women to commit crimes against humanity, they also commanded them to perpetrate crimes against nature. Former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said the environmental consequences of the Iraq war could be more ominous than the issue of war and peace itself. Blix was right.

Months of bombing during the first Gulf War by the United States and Great Britain left a deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the United States hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a rather benign sounding name for uranium-238, the trace element left behind when fissionable material is extracted from uranium-235 for nuclear reactors and weapons. For decades, this waste was a nuisance; by the late 1980s there were nearly a billion tons of the radioactive material piled at plutonium processing plants across the country. Then Pentagon weapons designers discovered a use for the tailings: they could be molded into bullets and bombs. Uranium is denser than lead, making it perfect for armor penetrating weapons designed to destroy tanks, armored personnel carriers and bunkers. When tank-busting bombs explode, depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air, carried on the desert winds for decades. Inhaled, the lethal bits of carcinogenic dust stick to the lungs, eventually wreaking havoc in the form of tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems, and leukemia.

More than 15 years later, the dire health consequences of our first radioactive bombing campaign in this region are coming into focus. Since 1990, the incidence rate of leukemia in Iraq has increased over 600 percent. Detection and treatment of cancers was made unnecessarily difficult by Iraq’s forced isolation under a regime of sanctions, producing what was described by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as "a humanitarian crisis."

The Pentagon has shuffled through a variety of rationales and excuses. First, the Defense Department shrugged off concerns about depleted uranium as wild conspiracy theories by peace activists, environmentalists and Iraqi propagandists. When the United States’ NATO allies demanded disclosure of the chemical and metallic properties of U.S. munitions, the Pentagon refused. Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately the age of the Earth. Thus, thousand of acres in Kuwait and southern Iraq have been — in terms of humanity’s existence — contaminated forever.

The bombing of Iraq’s infrastructure has had further substantial public health implications. Bombed-out industrial plants and factories have polluted groundwater. The damage to sewage-treatment plants, with reports that raw sewage formed massive pools of muck in the streets of Baghdad immediately after Bush’s "Shock and Awe" campaign, is also likely to result in poisoning rivers as well as humans; cases of typhoid among Iraqi citizens have risen tenfold since 1991, largely due to polluted drinking water. That number has almost certainly increased again since Saddam’s ouster.

While Iraq was sanctioned during the 1990s, U.N. officials in Baghdad agreed that the root cause of child mortality and other health problems was no longer simply lack of food and medicine, but the lack of clean water (freely available in all parts of the country prior to the first Gulf War) and of electrical power, which had predictable consequences for hospitals and water-pumping systems. Of the 21.9 percent of contracts vetoed as of mid-1999 by the U.N.’s U.S.-dominated sanctions committee, a high proportion were integral to failing water and sewage system repair efforts.

The future indeed looks bleak for the ecosystems and biodiversity of Iraq, but the consequences of the U.S. military invasion will not be confined to the war-stricken country. On the second day of the 2003 invasion it was reported by the New York Times and the BBC that Iraqi forces had set fire to several of the country’s large oil wells. Five days later in the Rumaila oilfields, six dozen wellheads were set ablaze. The dense black smoke rose high in the sky in southern Iraq, fanning a clear signal that a U.S. invasion had again ignited an environmental tragedy. Shortly after the initial invasion, the U.N. Environment Program’s satellite data showed a significant amount of toxic smoke had been emitted from burning oil wells.

According to Friends of the Earth, the fallout from burning oil debris — laced with poisonous chemicals such as mercury, sulfur, and furans — has created a toxic sea surface affecting the health of birds and marine life. One greatly affected area is the Sea of Oman, which connects the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf. This waterway is one of the world’s most productive marine habitats, which, the Global Environment Fund contends, "plays a significant role in sustaining the life cycle of marine turtle populations in the whole northwestern Indo-Pacific region." Of the world’s seven marine turtles, five are found in the Sea of Oman and four of those five are listed as endangered while the other is classified as threatened.

The gulf’s shores, according to BirdLife’s Mike Evans, are "one of the top five sites in the world for wader birds and a key refueling area for hundreds of thousands of migrating water birds." The U.N. Environment Program claims 33 wetland areas in Iraq are of vital importance to the survival of various bird species. These wetlands, the U.N. claims, are particularly vulnerable to pollution from munitions fallout as well as from sabotaged oil wells.

Mike Evans also maintains that the current Iraq war could destroy what’s left of the Mesopotamian marshes on the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Construction of dams on the once roaring Tigris and Euphrates has dried up more than 90 percent of the marshes and has led to extinction of several animals; water buffalo, foxes, waterfowl, and boar have disappeared from the area. "What remains of the fragile marshes, and the 20,000 people who still live off them will lie right in the path of forces heading towards Baghdad from the south," wrote Fred Pearce in the New Scientist prior to Bush’s invasion in 2003. The full effect this war has had on these wetlands and its inhabitants are still unknown.

The real cumulative impact of U.S. military action in Iraq, past and present, won’t be known for years, perhaps decades, to come. Stopping this war now will not only save lives, it will also help to rescue what’s left of Iraq’s fragile environment.

This essay is adapted from Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes From the Dark Side of the Earth.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the brand new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press in July 2008.

 

[Geolibertarian]

Half Life of a Toxic War

Iraq's Wrecked Environment

And U.S. troops and U.S.-funded mercenaries are still over there.

So much for "change." 

[RiJiD-W1LL]

wait wait wait I thought our mission was Accomplished WTF?!?!





 

[bigron]

Displaced Iraqis stay away as violence persists

by Aseel Kami

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54210&hd=&size=1&l=e

May 12, 2009



SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – In summer, the heat is unbearable. In winter, the torrential rains turn the cramped, leaking tent where Khalid Jamhuri lives with his family into a freezing morass of mud.

Still, Jamhuri is unwilling to leave this refugee camp in the semi-autonomous, northern Kurdistan region and return to the Sunni Arab area of Baghdad where Shi'ite militiamen killed his parents, brother and cousin in 2006.

"Some days I make enough to bring home food to eat. Some days I don't," said the slender 19-year-old, who now looks for construction work to support his wife, brother and new baby.

Jamhuri is one of the 3.8 million Iraqis who, prompted by six years of sectarian killing, packed up their belongings and fled to safety. About 1.8 million of them fled to different parts of Iraq and the rest left the country, mostly to Syria and Jordan.

Resettling displaced Iraqis promises to be a major challenge toward achieving reconciliation and averting renewed violence.

It is also key to getting a sluggish economy going and attracting foreign investment that has proven so elusive for Iraq, which has vast oil resources but little real industry outside that underproducing sector.

"This (resettling refugees) will encourage foreign investors," said Iraqi analyst Hazim al-Nuami, adding that investors see a troubling signal in the fact that most refugees have not returned home.

Very few have returned, a sign of widespread wariness in a country still rocked by violence and where the threat of renewed sectarian war lurks just under the surface.

Only 195,000 internally displaced Iraqis came back to their homes by the end of 2008, the United Nations said, but officials hope that figure could reach 400,000 by the end of this year if the security situation improves in Iraq.

That's far from guaranteed. A relative lull in violence ended with a rash of bloody suicide bombings across Iraq in recent weeks, bringing the monthly civilian death toll to 290, the highest since last November.

Many fear security will deteriorate when U.S. combat troops pull out of Iraqi cities in June, ahead of a full U.S. withdrawal by 2012, and before national polls due late this year.

GOING HOME

The recent attacks, which mainly targeted Shi'ites, have made some refugees reconsider the decision to return home.

"We don't want to be hasty. We'll see what the coming months bring," said Afyaa Shaker, who fled to Egypt in 2006.

Jabbar Mohammed Ali, a displacement and migration official in Sulaimaniya, said only 3 or 4 percent of the 8,500 displaced families registered with his office have returned home.

The fortunate among internally displaced Iraqis can afford to rent apartments or homes, or they live with relatives.

The less lucky squat in abandoned state buildings or end up at camps like the one in Sulaimaniya. Most report difficulty in obtaining health care and sending their children to school.

The Iraqi government offers grants to displaced families, but the amounts are small and often difficult to obtain.

Layla Idan, a single mother, is one of the displaced Iraqis who says the government has not delivered on its promises.

Her children complain of sleepless nights in their dripping tent. "We need the government's help," she said.

Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration has offered money to families that return to their homes. But even the modest compensation offered by the government is thrust into doubt as Iraq, dependent on oil revenues for almost all its revenue, reels from a major slump in oil prices.

"We tell them about oil prices and they ask: 'Does the value of a person go up and down with oil prices, too?'" said Ali, the displacement and migration official.

EPICENTRE OF SECTARIAN CLEANSING

Baghdad, where al Qaeda just a few years ago controlled whole neighbourhoods and Shi'ite militias ran roughshod over others, was the epicentre of Iraq's internal displacement.

After the ethnic bloodshed of recent years, the city today is far more divided along sectarian lines than it once was.

The government says about 104,000 families were displaced from their homes in Baghdad, and about 32,000 have returned.

"If we look at Baghdad, we see a lot of resettlement," said Displacement and Migration Minister Abdul-Samad Sultan, putting a bright face on the situation.

In Baghdad's Doura neighbourhood, 41-year-old Abu Mohammed, a Sunni, watches as workers repair the doors of his home, which was ransacked after he fled to Syria in 2007.

He was encouraged to return by improving security, due in part to the government-backed militia guards keeping watch of the mainly Sunni area, once terrorized by al Qaeda and Shi'ite militias.

"When I left, Doura was a city of ghosts. We didn't know who our enemy was and we were attacked from all sides. Now, it's totally fine," Abu Mohammed said.

But the number of those returning home is small.

Iyad Menfi Mohammed wants to come back to Baghdad from the camp in Sulaimaniya, where he has been since Shi'ite militiamen occupied his house and stole his money and valuables.

"If they stormed my house, how can I come back?" he asked.

(Editing by Missy Ryan and Megan Goldin)




 

[bigron]

The Rape of Iraq's Children.


Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54472&hd=&size=1&l=e

May 22, 2009

I received a mail the other day from someone who I assume to be some Westerner, most likely an American.
In it he said that he enjoyed reading my posts, however he requests me to stop using the word "f**k" as it was offensive and that children may be reading it.

First of all, children are not supposed to be reading political blogs on the net and should be watching cartoons instead.

Secondly, I want to remind this reader and others that if they get offended by the F. word, then they really have a huge moral problem on their hands, because...

The American, British and Iranian Occupation has literally f**ked Iraqi children.

Oh, No ! Oh, Yes !

It does not take a luminary in the social sciences to realize that there is a humanitarian/social catastrophe taking place in Iraq, and for generations to come.

I do not wish to go through ALL the aspects here, but suffice to tell you that when you occupy and destroy a whole country, its first victims are CHILDREN and Women.

Millions (5.M to be precise and that is the official figure) of orphaned kids, millions...

You know what millions are don't you ? Surely if you are a nation obsessed with dollars and making millions, you must know how to count millions, no ?

And what about thousands, surely can you count those too.

Thousands of refugee children with no future...thousands of maimed children, thousands with NO MORE access to education, health care....thousands of cases of malnutrition, poverty, illness...thousands deeply traumatized for life...

Okay so what about hundreds of dollars ? You can count hundreds of green bills.

Hundreds trafficked, sold, bought, turned into sex slaves....hundreds jailed and tortured...and the list goes on, and on, and on...

But that is not all, Ladies and Gentlemen...that is not all.

That is not all, because your "civilized" West with its "civilized" democratic system and its "civilized" state of law and its "civilized" civilizing mission, and its "civilized" culture...has literally f**ked Iraqi children - SODOMIZED and RAPED them , to be more accurate.

You set precedence and the sectarian Shiite militias did exactly the same when they kidnapped and tortured Iraqi children, because they were Arab Sunnis for the most part. Too bad, youtube removed the testimony of one Iraqi doctor who saw kids brought it by armed Shiite militiamen for "treatment". The youtube video no longer exists.

So when your democratic Obooma agreed not to release more pictures from Abu Ghraib, because there was more committed in Abu Ghraib, much more...most websites re-ran old pictures with the caption -- this is what the current administration does not want you to see.

BULLSHIT and more BULLSHIT from "alternative" websites.

What your current COMPLICIT government does not want you to see is the TORTURE and the RAPE of Iraqi children and women in Abu Ghraib. This is what they don't want you to see. Supposedly under the pretext that it will inflame further anti-American sentiments. So you already know that there are burning anti-American sentiments huh ? Who would have guessed, you sons of bitches. Who would have guessed ?!

A "cool" article finally came out, from the alternative media :

"The real reason behind Obama’s reversal of a decision to release the torture photos has been almost completely ignored by the corporate media - the fact that the photos show both US and Iraqi soldiers raping teenage boys in front of their mothers."

And these are the testimonies from ex-detainees.

"Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay?" said Hersh. "Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out."

and,

"I saw [name blacked out] f**king a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass," Mr Hilas told military investigators. "I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures."

and,

"They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer [Corporal Charles Graner, one of the military policemen facing court martial] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners," he said."

and,

"A 2004 London Telegraph report also described photos which showed "US soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death and having sex with a female PoW," as well as a videotape, apparently made by US personnel, which shows "Iraqi guards raping young boys".

(source - here)

When I wrote about that, nearly 2 years ago, including the brutal, sadistic rape of women in Abu Ghraib, I received mails calling me a perverted liar.

No, you motherf**kers, you are the sick perverts and the liars, steeped in pathological deceit. A sick nation(s) made of sick f**ked up people parading under the guise of "civilized" democracy and freedom.

Who will pick up the pieces now, you garbage of a people ? Who ?

Your brave boys and girls ? Your leeches of NGO's ? Your politically corrupt U.N ? Your Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch ? Your morally bankrupt E.U ? Your democrat Obooma or the anti-war shits around ? Or maybe your anti-zionist Iran and its shiite militias and its Nouri Al-Maliki and Muqtada Al-Sadr ? Or maybe your alternative media with its sham writers ?

Who the f**k will pick up whatever pieces left -- the pieces of a raped childhood in Iraq.

WHO ?

 

[bigron]

Over 20 percent of Iraqis live below the poverty line

IRIN news
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54533&hd=&size=1&l=e


Photo: IRIN  Poverty has forced these children to rummage through garbage every day to help make a living for their families (file photo)


BAGHDAD, 24 May 2009 (IRIN) - Some 20-25 percent of Iraq’s estimated 27 million population lives below the country’s poverty line, a government survey released on 21 May has found. Though wide disparities were found between northern and southern provinces, the government said the results were better than expected.

"Poverty is concentrated in the Iraqi rural areas more than in the urban areas in all provinces," said the survey, which was conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation.

It found that the highest poverty rate was in the southern province of Muthana with 49 percent, followed by the central provinces of Babil with 41 percent and Salaheddin with 40 percent.

The lowest poverty rates were in the three northern provinces that make up Iraq’s self-ruled Kurdistan Region: Dahouk, with 10 percent living below the poverty line, and Erbil and Sulaimaniyah with 3 percent each.

The survey defines poverty as living on 76,896 Iraqi dinars (about $66) a month, or $2.2 a day.

Better than expected

Abdul-Zahra al-Hindawi, spokesman for the planning ministry's Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology, blamed unemployment, dilapidated infrastructure and corruption as the causes for the high poverty rates - but thought the rates would have been even higher.

"We expected to find higher rates of poverty for many reasons but we found that the state-run food programme has a big role in assisting poor people," al-Hindawi told IRIN.

He added that a supreme governmental committee, made up of lawmakers and representatives of different ministries, is drawing up a strategy to alleviate poverty in the country. This 2010-2014 anti-poverty strategy will be released in the second half of 2009, he said.

"We are certain that poverty rates will be reduced in the coming few years if a big role is given to Iraq’s private sector in economic development," al-Hindawi said.

Iraq's food rationing system, known as the Public Distribution System, was set up in 1995 as part of the UN’s oil-for-food programme following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait 17 years ago. However, it has been crumbling since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 due to insecurity, poor management and corruption.

sm/ar/ed

 

[trailhound]

I have no info to add its been pretty well covered here but i just wanted to throw my disgust card in the hat here. These media whores always center on u.s. soldier deaths compared to car accident statistics and other gimmicks but never discuss the innocent in iraq. Seems the dead might have gotten off easy compared to many who have to live in the shit. I can hear them now though, but it was Saddam's fault he wouldnt cooperate U.N res blah blah blah....yuck, it just all sucks.  I suppose one could almost swallow their arguments if the people were any better off now. Dammit i hate these arguments...  they will talk about new schools being built and blah blah....regardless of what we are doing right or wrong in iraq its hurting us at home. I feel like we are watching the phoenix set itself on fire so the new order can be born.

[bigron]

Published on Monday, May 25, 2009 by the New York Times
Fate of Iraqis Gone Missing Haunts Those Left Behind
by Timothy Williams

BAGHDAD - During the worst of Iraq's sectarian violence three years ago, Anam Diham's 13-year-old son went out to buy vegetables one afternoon. He never returned.
Since then, Ms. Diham has exhausted her family's life savings trying to find the boy, who spent his days with his father searching Baghdad's streets for dropped coins.

The six remaining children of Anam Diham, whose 13-year-old son went to buy vegetables one afternoon and never returned. She has exhausted the family’s life savings looking for him. (Christoph Bangert for The New York Times)She has traveled to big American prisons and small-town Iraqi cemeteries. And as have hundreds of other people, mostly women in black abayas, she often waits patiently in line outside government offices, waiting to meet with officials she hopes will have news. They never do. After all this time, no one can say whether her son is dead or alive.

"All I need is to find some clue about him," Ms. Diham, a mother of seven, said recently as she pored over hundreds of photographs of unidentified bodies at a morgue. "I'd like to build a grave to visit him. Nothing more than that."

She made it through about a quarter of the photos before she left, too upset to continue.

Ten thousand Iraqis are listed as missing since the American invasion six years ago - although the Iraqi government acknowledges that its figures are probably only a small fraction of the actual number. Most of those who disappeared are believed to be dead. But even those whose bodies have been found are not always identified quickly; Dr. Munjid Salah al-Deen, the manager of Baghdad's central morgue, said his staff was working to identify 28,000 bodies from 2006 to 2008 alone.

The authorities are hampered by some of the cruelties of war and the poverty it brings: some bodies are mutilated and hard to identify, and there is little money for new forensic workers to handle the huge caseload.

But families also question the Iraqi government's resolve in investigating cases, and groups like the Red Cross have become involved on the issue. "The problem of the missing is enormous," said Dibeh Fakhr, a spokeswoman for the Iraq office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Families have the right to know, and governments have an obligation to help find out what happened to their loved ones."

In some cases, the missing have been kidnapped and are released after ransoms are paid. Other times, their bodies are found years after they disappeared, after being fished out of a river or dug up from one of the mass graves that continue to be discovered around the country every few weeks.

Relatives say the lack of information from the government has left them in limbo: not wanting to admit that a loved one has probably been killed, but not believing that he or she is still alive either.

The toll of not knowing is not just emotional; in Iraq's male-dominated society, there is also a practical consequence.

In most cases, until a missing male head of a household is declared dead by the government, the wife is unable to collect benefits, hold a funeral, remarry or gain access to the family's bank account, usually in the husband's name, for four years.

Some families have resorted to claiming a body they know is not their loved one's, so the women can get access to the money they need to live, a Baghdad morgue official said.

Kamil Amin, a director at Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights, the agency charged with helping people track the missing, said recently that he believed that more should be done to aid the families of those who disappeared, especially those whose primary wage earners are missing.

His ministry, Mr. Amin said, is doing its best to cope with a heavy caseload. "The government is morally responsible to these families," he said. "We think almost all of the missing have been killed by terrorists, but the legal system needs evidence."

There are a variety of factors contributing to the delays in solving cases, according to aid organizations and the government. Iraq has only one DNA lab and a limited ability to freeze samples; almost half of the country's provinces have no forensic pathologists; and a lack of coordination among government agencies means that the Iraqi Army and the police frequently remove bodies from graves without first informing the Human Rights Ministry, often losing valuable identifying evidence in the process.

Further, Iraq has no central database to try to link the more than 15,000 unidentified bodies that have been buried anonymously in the past few years with a list of names of the missing. There is also no record of victims of sectarian violence who have been buried informally in unmarked plots.

Even if family members think they have found a missing relative, they often need the help of government labs to be sure. Many victims of sectarian violence were beheaded, had limbs amputated or had holes drilled into their skulls, making them less recognizable.

The bodies of others have decomposed, leaving only bits of bone, tattered clothing and plastic sandals as clues.

Identification sometimes comes down to a guess, a dim memory of a shirt worn the day a husband disappeared or of which tooth a son had lost years before in an accident.

Ghaniah Ayed Mudhi, who lives in the industrial city of Baiji, in northern Iraq, has had a brother, two cousins and two brothers-in-law disappear since 2006.

Her brother, Muhammad Ayed Mudhi, left behind 4 children and 11 other dependents. He disappeared after being pulled out of his truck at a checkpoint. Later, a stranger came to the family's house demanding the equivalent of $7,000 for his return. The family paid the ransom, but Mr. Ayed Mudhi, who would be 29 if alive, remains missing.

In the Shuala neighborhood of Baghdad, Fadhilah Harfish has kept the room that belonged to her 25-year-old son, Muhammad, as he left it - just a little tidier. The bed is made. The curtains are drawn. His shirts hang neatly in a closet. Relatives removed photos of Muhammad from the house because Ms. Harfish sometimes spent hours crying over them. The family has visited morgues, prisons and graveyards, and has even communicated with members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Mahdi Army militia, to no avail.

Muhammad, who trained as a teacher, had been working as a taxi driver, a common job for Iraqis who cannot find career-oriented work. Driving cabs was also among the most dangerous jobs during the height of the sectarian killings. He disappeared one morning in December 2007, early in his workday.

"I can't sleep at night," said Ms. Harfish, sobbing. "I can't forget him. He's like my breath."

The family of Ms. Diham, whose 13-year-old son disappeared while buying vegetables, has been squatting at a former army base in Baghdad's Amiriya neighborhood.

They survive by recycling aluminum cans scavenged from a large garbage dump a few dozen yards away.

The glass on their windows has been knocked out by explosions from car bombs, and there is no proper front door, only a strip of white cloth.

One of the rooms is filled with piles of empty cans waiting to be bagged. Among the family's few possessions are two white mules and a television set.

Ms. Diham said she had decided to give up looking for her son, Meethaq, out of frustration and fatigue. But her husband, Basim, who cries at the mention of the child's name, vowed to keep searching.

"This case has exhausted our money," he said, sitting on a worn carpet. "But I won't stop until I find something."

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company


Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/25-1

[bigron]

Who will do justice to victims of U.S. invasion of Iraq?


by Fatih Abdulsalam, Azzaman

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54570&hd=&size=1&l=e

May 24, 2009


Iraqis killed, maimed, turned into refugees, and made homeless as a direct or indirect result of the 2003-U.S. invasion are in millions. Who will do justice to them?

The victims of the past six years, it seems, have turned into meaningless numbers about which nobody cares. They have apparently turned into erased lines in Iraq’s book of darkness, or graves with erased epitaphs in the desert of death.

Iraqi lives are as valuable as those of U.S. marines whose numbers, names and graves are very well marked and commemorated. In one way or another, their families and beloved ones are being taken care of.

That is unfortunately not the case with Iraqis who, directly or indirectly, have become the victims of these marauding marines.

History will one day tell us that no country occupied by a foreign super power ever suffered as Iraq at the hands of the United States.

Iraq’s victims are of different categories and levels. There are those whose bodies were torn apart by U.S. helicopter gunships. There are those who were killed in cold blood by U.S. Marines. And there are those who have been killed due to the sectarian and factional strife – an indirect outcome of U.S. invasion.

The number of Iraqis killed is in hundreds of thousands. The figure could be more than one million. Rarely has any of the killers been punished. Justice is far from being administered.

Iraqis who lost their lives, whether those buried properly, or those whose bodies were left to rotten, or devoured by stray dogs, cannot be resurrected.

If justice cannot be done to the dead victims, we still have room to look after the living victims – the families, the children, the mothers, the orphans, the wives, the refugees, the homeless, the internally displaced, etc.

Justice can be done by caring about these victims. And that is what the government should do.

But what we are seeing now is that justice is being done on sectarian and factional considerations. This sets a dangerous precedent with grave consequences for the future of Iraq.




 

[bigron]

Plain & Simple.


BY Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54580&hd=&size=1&l=e

May 26, 2009

I met with a friend today for coffee...I have already warned that friend about 10000 times, that if she wants to bring anyone along - she should inform me in advance and not leave me with a fait accompli.

Well, she did not. So here I was face to face with a Westerner, my "friend" who if she persists in her ways, will be written off as no friend, and myself.

The subject of Iraqi refugees came up and naturally the subject branched out to the main source of all ills and evils - the Occupation. And naturally, Layla is not terribly diplomatic when it comes to the occupation and destruction of her country.

Why should I be polite and diplomatic about it ? And what is there to be polite and diplomatic about ?

I did not insult the woman or anything, but she did receive a (strong) piece of my mind and she did not like it too much...

She was expecting me to go on a self pity party, so she could extend her "empathy" to me and hence alleviate whatever was gnawing at her, presuming anything was gnawing at her. But more importantly, her expectations were derived from that typical Western monster -- that of feeling superior, important and indispensable, thus allowing her to assume her role of the "white" savior, helping those "poor, poor Iraqi people"...

All the while, sidestepping or more accurately, evading the crux of the matter, namely the root cause of all Evil that has assailed Iraq -- the Anglo-American Occupation and the not so-covert Iranian occupation.

She remarked in her typical snide way, that I was too "bitter" (for her taste, I suppose) and that "anger will not resolve anything."
And I replied to her in those exact terms -- " we are left with nothing but our Anger."

I suppose she was expecting me to be apologetic to her, or feel guilty for "flying off the handle"...

Tough luck Madame, neither you nor anyone else who holds a similar position/attitude as yours vis à vis the occupation and destruction of my country will receive anything else but...my anger.

For God's sake, can anyone explain to me what is so radically wrong, so fundamentally warped with the Western mind

What is the matter with you people - don't you have any sense

What if I (I as in some nation), on bogus charges, brought in over 650'000 armed men, bombed the shit out of you, destroyed your homes, your infrastructures, your state, your army, your civil institutions, partitioned your country, build walls around your neighborhoods, unleashed the most deadly militias against you, used DU and Napalm, displaced thousands of you and turned them homeless, maimed thousands of you, killed thousands of you, turned thousands of your kids and women into orphans and widows, raped and tortured your women and men and sodomized your kids, destroyed your monuments, looted your history, burned your libraries, changed your school textbooks, urinated in your churches, insulted you with the most denigrating epithets, pillaged your homes and your treasury, burned your fields, arrested your families, detained thousands of you, brought in missionaries to convert you to Islam...and more....all in your own country, on your own turf --- what the f**k would you do ?

Come on, ask yourselves this question, what would you do ?

The least, the minimum, the bare minimum is that you will get angry...

But the way your minds function, your screwed up, sick minds function, is that in those putrid heads of yours, we are not even allowed our anger...

Not only are we not allowed our anger, but we need to demonstrate gratitude, a forever gratitude that you have "visited" us...the way you did.

After all in your minds, it is not called an armed invasion and occupation...you call it an "unfortunate mistake", "an unnecessary war" at best, and preach to me and us that we should forgive, while you're still there, physically there "visiting" us and while you persist in the lie...
And in those sick, sick, minds of yours, you justify it all with "we are here to help."

Do you know why you do that ? I will tell you why. It is because you have this amazing propensity to LIE TO YOURSELVES...you are in fact the PEOPLE OF THE LIE.

And that is the plain and simple Truth.

 

[bigron]

War is Unsuitable for Children: Another YouTube outrage

by Cindy Sheehan
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54609&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

May 27, 2009

Last week, after being bombarded with pseudo-patriotic images of graveyards, gravestones and flags, I decided to begin posting images of maimed and killed Iraqis, but especially children and transform the mega-pseudo-patriotic Memorial Day to Remembrance of Victims of US Empire Day.

I got a great response to this and my friend and videographer, Clifford Roddy put together a short film called: finaledit,
http://http//www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1358899491&ref=profile#/posted.php?id=1358899491&share_id=82851064483s82851064483
with the images I posted and with images that he took at a national cemetery in Santa Fe, NM where we were together for my Myth America book tour. I have a Cindy Sheehan You Tube page so we posted it there.
http://www.youtube.com/cindyforcongress


The video was just yanked off of You Tube because it "violates the terms of service" but even before it was yanked, it had a warning: "This video is unsuitable for children."

The pictures of the dead and maimed Iraqi children were gruesome. War is gruesome. War is never pretty but the Iraqi war has been "Sanitized for your protection." It’s not enough that adult males have been tortured but thousands of women and children have also been imprisoned and cruelly treated.

I think it’s pretty gruesome that the US Military has held up to 6000 juveniles in its torture prisons in the Middle East and there has been rape and torture reported to individuals as young as 10 years old!
http://http//www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7704/
How can any human being torture another human being, much less a child? These kinds of stories remind me of the most horrendous slasher movies that I can think of, but they are not the pretend product of twisted fantasy, but factual and mind-blowingly real.

Former US Soldier, Steven Green, was recently given life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2007 rape, mutilation and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. Not only was Green the ringleader in the rape and murder; the squad also killed her family.

Unfortunately, even though Green was a "bad apple," the situation we find ourselves in is an entire salad of rotten fruit and incidences like this one are not uncommon, but rarely reported.

Once when I was in Amman, Jordan speaking with prominent Iraqis, a Sheikh told me that US soldiers burst into his home, severely beating him and raping his wife, all in the presence of his 14-year-old son. The Sheikh told me that it was his son’s fondest dream to kill US Soldiers. Can you imagine this happening to your family? What if something like this happened in your home? You’re sitting around watching American Idol, or some crap like that, and Iraqis break into your home and terrorize and brutalize your family? I am sure you would all just chalk it up to "freedom and democracy" and be happy to go about your miserable lives comforted by the fact that your country was being occupied and destroyed for your own good.

During the US-UN-Clinton led sanctions against Iraq, the UN estimates that over 500,000 children died from starvation, disease, or violence. 500,000 Iraqi children would be like 5,000,000 US children dying. Former UN Ambassador under Clinton called that sacrifice for US Empire by the children of Iraq "worth it." Over one million people have died in Iraq since Bush's invasion in 2003 and most of that figure counts women and children.

I have spoken to men who were still in their teens who were sodomized with broom handles in Guantanamo. I have seen the horrific photos of the US’s inhumanity to man and cannot forgive my country for the terror it has unleashed on the world. I can’t stand the fact that our government operates with such craven cowardice and has harmed so many people while Americans revel in blissful ignorance.

Young people who never get a chance to live their lives have their lives snuffed out so corporations can profit and politicians can earn their John Wayne, muy macho credentials and I wish that we could get a movement going that would be as large and as angry about weddings parties being blown up in Iraq-Af-Pak as they are about inequality in marriage rights here in the US. Please don’t email me with hostility because I wrote about marriage equality: I am 100% for marriage equality, but I am also 100% for people living to be able to be married whether they are gay or straight. Lives are in the balance and our inaction is tipping the scale in the wrong direction.

I am sorry (sarcasm) that our video "violated" You Tube’s terms of service, but the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan not only violate my terms of service, but international law.

LINK
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/05/war-is-unsuitable-for-children-another.html

[bigron]

Iraq Vet: "How Many Nine-year Old Boys Have You Held in Your Arms, Crying for Their Father?"

How about a boy clinging to his lifeless father that you just killed?




By Kristoffer Rehder, AlterNet
Posted on May 25, 2009, Printed on May 30, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140122/

I don’t remember how old I was when my father asked me this peculiar question, maybe sometime during my high school years. And I don’t know why he asked me or how it came up in conversation, but when it did, it hit me like a brick. “How many dying boys have you held in your arms, crying for their mother?”

To this day I have never held anyone dying in my arms, and no one crying for their mother. I don’t remember how I answered his question. I was dumb founded.

My father fought in the Vietnam War. He was an Infantry Scout Dog handler where he walked the point man with his German Sheppard, Beau. They led they way and looked for Charlie, ambushes, booby traps, tunnels, and weapon caches. My father and Beau were a team. They walked out in front of the patrol and Beau would alert my father if he smelled trouble ahead. The lives of the men they were leading through the jungles of South Vietnam was theirs’ to protect. 

Years later after my father asked me this disturbing question, he explained what had happened to him years ago in Vietnam. One day my father and Beau were leading a patrol through the jungle, when Beau threw up a signal to my father that he smelled danger, so he signaled for the patrol to halt.  The Lieutenant ran up front and asked why “his” patrol had stopped. My father explained to the LT that his dog had alerted him that there was something ahead to be cautious of. The LT became angry, “That’s bullshit, this area has been cleared. Charlie hasn’t been in the AO for days,” the LT then ordered them continue on with the mission. Against my father’s better judgment he continued to lead the patrol deeper into the jungle.

Within a few minutes they walked right into a heavy ambush. Beau had been right. The patrol was pinned down and had to fight their way out of it. They were able to break contact with the enemy and pull back to safety.

However, during the firefight, a soldier in the squad took a bullet to the lower stomach and was bleeding fast. This young soldier happened to be a good friend of my father. Seeing his wounded buddy, he ran over to him yelling for a medic to come and assist. The soldier was lying on the ground, holding his guts in his hands, crying out for his mother. All my father could do was hold his friend and provided what comfort he could as he died in his arms.

After my father told me this experience, he confessed that he still felt guilty for this young man’s life. He said he wished he could have tried to convince the LT not to continue the patrol any further. Maybe there was more my father could have done.

In my father’s face I could see the heavy guilt and anger as a tear rolled down his cheek. Right then I knew that my father had just shared something with me that he probably hasn’t shared with too many others. I didn’t know what to say. But I did gain a better understanding as to why he asked me that question years ago.

As I mentioned, I have never held anyone dying in my arms crying for their mother. So the answer to my dad is no I have never experienced that. But let me ask you this, Dad: How many nine year old boys have you held in your arms, crying for their father? How about a boy clinging to his lifeless father that you just killed?

In the summer of 2003, I was working a check point outside the small city of Al-Hawija in Northern Iraq. I was in the Army, in the Infantry, just like my father was, but instead of patrolling the humid jungles of Vietnam, I was fighting an urban guerilla war in the extreme heat and sand of Iraq.

Our check point was set up outside of town and we were stopping every vehicle trying to enter. We were searching the vehicles for weapons, explosives, suspected bad guys, stuff to build IED’s, and other contraband. Our check point looked like this:  300 meters out we had a warning sign written in Arabic that said, “Slow Down. Prepare to Stop!” 150 meters out we had another sign that said, “Deadly Force will be used if you do not stop!” We then had a maze of concerinta wire set up for the vehicles to weave in and out of before coming to a stop in an area that we nicknamed the “pit”. In the pit we searched the vehicles, and when nothing was found and they were clean, we waved them on, and allowed them to enter the city.

On that summer day back in 2003, my squad was manning the check point into Hawija. It was a slow day with not much traffic. I think it had something to do with the mid afternoon heat. When the temperatures reached over 130 degrees, most of the Iraqis wisely stayed inside and off the roads. Most traveled at night when it was cooler. But one vehicle did approach our check point. So I peered through a pair of binoculars and spotted a small white Toyota pick-up truck heading towards our position. I put the binos down and raised my weapon to the ready position.   

The white truck approached the first warning sign, but did not attempt to slow down. My squad leader ordered a warning shot to be fired as a sign of force, so the man next to me fired off a three round burst with his M-16 over the top of the truck. The truck was not slowing down. It soon approached the 150 meter second warning sign. Fearing that the truck could be loaded down with explosives on a suicide run, our squad leader ordered everyone to open fire on the truck. I raised my weapon and put 30 rounds into the driver’s side windshield. The man next to me with the M-240B machine gun opened fire and sprayed about 150 rounds into the vehicle’s engine. With each bullet weighing 180 grains, he put about a pound of lead into its engine block. 

Black smoke started to billow out from under the hood, as the little truck started to swerve back and forth. It ran into our concertina wire and eventually came to a stop inside the pit. Immediately I slammed in a flesh magazine and fired off a few more rounds into the driver side door. Our squad leader then yelled for a cease fire. The firing stopped but my adrenaline was still pumping. The driver of the truck was hanging out the driver side door, hunched over.  Blood was running out of his head, chest, and arms, turning the side of the truck a dark liquid maroon. A squad member opened the driver side door, and his body fell to the ground. I can still hear the thud it made as he rolled out of the truck.

Wildly, the passenger side door flew open, and I saw a young boy, eight or nine years old, jump out and run around the front of the truck. He dove on top of the bullet riddled body, screaming and crying, all in Arabic so I am not certian what was being said. All I could do was watch in horror. 

As it turned out, the driver was the boy’s father. Fortunately the boy was not injured as we all fired our shots into the driver’s side of the truck. The boy was wailing hysterically holding onto his dead father. He was now covered in his father’s blood and it took three of us to pry him away.  We managed to drag the boy from his father’s body and over to one of our Humvees. We held the boy so he couldn’t see his father lying on the ground in a pool of blood.  Our medic walked over to the body to check it out. There was nothing the medic could do. The damage had been done. The medic just stood over the body and kicked it a few times and then flung his arms up into the air, telling us, “f**k this!” We all knew he was dead. I don’t think you could count all the bullet holes in his body.

They loaded the young boy into the Humvee and drove him off. To where, I don’t know. I never saw the boy again. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to clean up the carnage. We packed the father’s body into a body bag and tossed it into the back of another Humvee like it was a old bag of trash.  Where they took him, I also don’t know. I never asked where they took the bodies after we killed them. I really didn’t care either. My job was just to kill.  The rest was up to someone else. I don’t know whose job was worse.

Next, we had to figure out what to do with the truck. It was completely disabled and the inside of it was covered with blood and chunks of flesh. No one wanted to climb into the truck, so we called in the mechanics and they towed it out of our check point. Later on the mechanics told us after checking over the truck that the breaks were broken. The truck wasn’t trying to run our check point, it just couldn’t stop. It turned out just to be a father and son coming back into town after what had to be a grueling day working out in their watermelon fields. The back of their truck was full of watermelons and shovels.  Maybe they were on their way into town to sell their melons at the market and perhaps make enough money to get the breaks on their truck fixed.

Could this shootout have been avoided? I don’t know. Myself, and the others in my squad were just following orders. We were ordered to open fire on the truck, and we were just doing our job. A job that was illegally ordered by a Congress and White House without any recognition of international law, let alone humanity. How were we to know if the white Toyota truck wasn’t loaded with explosives, ready to blow us all up? And how were we to know that the truck was just a father and son coming back from their fields and that the breaks on their truck were faulty? And how to you explain this to the young boy who watched his innocent father be killed by American Forces occupying his country? 

That was over five years ago, making him a teenager by now. Maybe he will be driving a white Toyota pickup truck tomorrow, approaching a collation check point somewhere in Iraq.  And I can damn sure bet you that he won’t be hauling watermelons.


Kristoffer Rehder was first deployed to Kirkuk, Iraq in 2003 where he served in the 4th Infantry Division, 1-12 Infantry Battalion for 13 months. In 2005 he was redeployed to Iraq for an additional 400 days despite being classified as 50% disabled by the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Minnesota for severe PTSD, hearing loss and bad knees. He now lives in Montana and can be reached at KRehder@carroll.edu.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140122/

[bigron]

Silent Words...

by Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54779&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 2, 2009

Am not writing much about Iraq...

Well, not true, am alway writing about Iraq, but maybe not out loud...maybe it's all in my heart and in my mind...

Maybe it's all silent, but very alive.

Today I prayed the Isha prayers (evening) and I prayed to the 1 million and more, to forgive us for our silence...to forgive you too.

I don't know if they will accept my prayer...

Would you ?


 

[bigron]

Children in Iraq still suffering psychologically from war trauma

by Ghassan Awad, Gao Shan
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54794&hd=&size=1&l=e




BAQUBA, Iraq, May 31, 2009 (Xinhua) -- Bursting into tears, Jasim came forward and embraced his six-year-old son Omer who was shivering and crying excessively with fear "they will take me and kill me," as he had already seen some heavily armed soldiers walking towards them in the volatile province of Diyala.

"My poor son is screaming, completely lost in hysteria as soon as he sees Americans or Iraqi troops," said Jasim who declined to give his full name for security reasons.

Jasim explained the cause of his son's psychological malady that appeared nearly two years ago when Omer saw an insurgent was killed and two others detained by a joint dismounted patrol of U.S. and Iraqi troops during clashes near their house in the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad.

"The bloody fighting had affected severely the psychology of my son who became so scared as soon as he sees armed soldiers," Jasim said with tears in his eyes.

Asked about the roles of psychiatrists in his city in treating his son, Jasim replied hopelessly that he has frequently taken his son to them but his attempts went in vain.

In the past six years, Iraqi children are suffering severely from relentless bloodshed, especially from the fear of being killed or kidnapped.

Um Kholood said that her 7-year-old daughter Kholood had suffered great pain and discomfort since a year and a half ago as a witness of his father being killed by militants.

"My daughter saw veiled armed people killing her father in front of her eyes while she was with him in his car in an area outside Baquba," Um Kholood broke into uncontrollable sobs.

"My daughter's psychology has improved after the incident of her father but it just relapsed when she saw veiled security members in checkpoints or streets," Um Kholood said.

The Iraq war and the following violence had affected millions of children. Lots of Iraqi children have been killed and the lucky survivals are found to be suffering from serious stress. The negative affect of violence on Iraqi children is pervasive and will alter their lives in unimaginable and horrible ways for years.

Some psychological doctors warned that the bloody war and sectarian killings will see children in Iraq growing up either deeply scarred or habituated to violence, which will severely damage their growth.

Six-year-old Khalil Muhiee have the same miserable story with Kholood.

Hiding in a chickens' coop, he saw a group of militants stormed his house in southwest Baquba two years ago and killed his father who was a member of local security forces.

"After the militants fled the house, Muhiee got out the coop and saw his father beheaded, lying on the floor stained with his blood," said Kamal Abdul Rahman, Muhiee's uncle.

Rahman revealed that since that day his nephew has always carried a fake plastic Kalashnikov and said "I will kill the murderers of my father and behead all of them."

Khaldoon Qasim, a psychological researcher in Baquba, told Xinhua that a wide slice of children in Diyala suffer deeply from violence in the war-torn country as shootings and bombings have become a part of their daily life.

"Horrible images of torn dead bodies scattered in streets and the scenes of their fathers or relatives being killed in front of their eyes will remain firm in the children's minds for many years and will leave negative psychological stamps in their future behaviors," Qasim said.

"They may keep the pattern of violence and hatred going on as they enter adulthood," he added.

Mrs. Nahid Aws, who works as a teacher in a kindergarten in the city of Baquba, said that some children behave cruelly and strangely with their classmates.

"I saw a boy in the class carrying a plastic dagger and threatening by waving it towards his classmates," she said.

"Then, I found out that the child is an orphan who has not only seen his father killed by militants but also seen the dead body of his father lying in front of his house for four days. Nobody dared to move it and transfer it to a morgue because the armed groups at that time prevented people from moving the dead bodies killed by them," Aws said.

"Such incidents have negative impacts on the child's psychological mood and behavior," Aws said dejectedly, adding that the local psychiatry service for children is very "underdeveloped".

Diyala has long been the hotbed of insurgency since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, despite the ongoing security crackdown in the province conducted by U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces.

Iraqis are aware of the problem of their children but still feel helpless due to the continuance of violence in the country.

A government spokesman had ever told media that there is not much Iraqi government can do to help children until there is proper security.

"According to the statistics available, there are more than 5,000 orphans in the province under the age of seven who lost their fathers in violence, which left most of them suffering from negative psychological mood and squalid conditions," said Naieem Khalid, an employee in a government foundation giving aids to orphans in Baquba. (Ali Al-Khiyam also contributed to the report.)




 

[bigron]

In Iraq, Rape Without Recourse

Posted: 05/30/09
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/30/in-iraq-rape-without-recourse/


  In Iraq's Red Zone, there is an apartment with no listed address. The two small bedrooms house six women and their children, who comprise a temporary, but closely bound, family. Of the six women, four have been raped. The curtains are drawn tightly against the outside world, but that is not their only defense. One of the women raises her handbag to show that, in case of the worst, she carries a gun.

"FRONTLINE/World" on PBS has produced a piece on the rapid rise in rapes in Iraq, which takes us inside this women's shelter in the middle of the Red Zone. It is one of very few in existence and forced to operate covertly in the face of threats and danger. Before the war began in Iraq, rape was not a frequently reported crime and when it did occur the legal recourse was clear. Today, though the exact figures are unknown, estimates of rape are in the thousands. On the question of who takes responsibility to prevent and punish rape in Iraq, the short answer seems to be no one.

The rapes are committed by warring religious factions, they are committed by Iraqi security forces, they are committed by foreign soldiers sent there to serve, they are committed by contractors sent there for hire, they are committed by former friends and neighbors, they are committed by strangers. Even knowing who to report a rape to is difficult and dangerous.

In 2006, Steven Green, then a soldier stationed in the middle of an Iraqi combat zone, left the base in the middle of the night with a group of three soldiers. The group headed to the home of 14 year-old girl, where they shot and killed her parents and sister, before gang-raping her and shooting her dead.

Just last week, Green's trial in a US civilian court, resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment. The defense never denied that Green committed the crimes, nor did they deny that it was premeditated or that Green was the ringleader. The strange and distasteful defense they brought was that the context of the Iraq war and living with the daily stress of combat brought Green to it.

What they didn't mention was the growing culture of rape in Iraq -- ignoring it when it happens, blaming the victims, punishing or even killing the victims. Though Green was tried and convicted, the majority of rapes in Iraq are not punished. They're often not even reported.

GO TO SITE FOR VIDEO :

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/30/in-iraq-rape-without-recourse/

[bigron]

Scores of unidentified bodies buried in Iraq’s Baaquba


By Husain al-Yaaqobi, Azzaman

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54891&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 5, 2009

Hospital sources in the restive city of Baaquba say they had to bury 50 corpses of Iraqis who were killed in the past two months but they could not identify.

The sources said the bodies were collected from across the Province of Diyala of which Baaquba is the capital.

"We have buried bodies of 50 victims because no one asked about them and they were mutilated beyond recognition," one source said.

"These are part of the corpses which were brought to us in the past two months," another source said.

He declined to say how many corpses the hospital in Baaquba receives every month.





 

[Satyagraha]

Iraqi Security Forces Arrest Five American CiviliansDetentions Follow Investigation Into Slaying of Contractor; U.S., Baghdad Officials Differ on Details

By Nada Bakri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 8, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/07/AR2009060700989.html

BAGHDAD, June 7 -- Iraqi security forces have arrested five Americans in connection with the killing of a contractor last month in Baghdad's Green Zone, Iraqi officials said Sunday. It could be the first case in which Americans face local justice under a security pact signed last year.

The Americans were detained Wednesday, although U.S. and Iraqi officials say no charges have been filed. James Fennell, a U.S. Embassy spokesman, said Sunday that consular officials had visited the men a day after their arrest to make sure "they're being afforded their rights under Iraqi law."

"The men appeared well," he said.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the men were being held at a police station in the Green Zone as part of a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation. He said FBI agents had provided a tip to Iraqi forces, then accompanied them on a raid at a house where they had uncovered weapons and drugs.

But there were conflicting accounts about the arrest and possible charges.

Fennell said the men were not arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Jim Kitterman, a 60-year-old contractor from Houston. During a search of the men's house, authorities found "possible evidence on an unrelated matter," he said, without disclosing details.

Khalaf and Alaa al-Ta'i, an adviser to the interior minister, said that although the men had not been charged, they were indeed being held as suspects in Kitterman's death. Two other Iraqi officials said that only two men were being held in regard to the killing.

Kitterman's body was found in the heavily fortified Green Zone on May 22. He had been blindfolded and stabbed, and his hands were bound.

A U.S. official in Baghdad had said that a preliminary investigation into his death suggested that it was a crime of passion. "Our suspicion is that it was some kind of an argument that went bad," the official said at the time.

The men appear to be the first arrested since a security agreement between Iraq and the United States went into effect this year.

Under the agreement, laboriously negotiated over months in 2008, U.S. contractors, including those working for the American military, are subject to criminal law in Iraq, where the death penalty remains a possible punishment. Contractors working for the State Department and other U.S. agencies retain their immunity. U.S. soldiers remain immune unless they commit "major premeditated felonies" while off duty and off base.

Before the agreement took effect, all contractors were immune from the Iraqi legal process under an order signed by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, in June 2004. As a result, not a single private security contractor was charged with a crime during the first five years of the war, despite dozens of suspicious shootings of Iraqi civilians.

Among those detained for questioning were Donald Feeney Jr., 55, his son Donald Feeney III, 31, and three other people, including two employees of Corporate Training Unlimited, a Fayetteville, N.C., security firm founded by Donald Feeney Jr.

John Feeney, another son of Donald Feeney Jr., said in a phone interview that Kitterman "was a good friend of my father" and that the two knew each other not only from the Green Zone but also from the time when they both served in the military.

Donald Feeney Jr., a former Delta Force operator, founded the firm in 1986, according to the company's Web site. The company, which has been in Iraq since 2003, trains corporate and other officials in how to operate safely in conflict zones. Feeney was also a chief security consultant for such firms as Shell Oil in Bogota, Colombia, according to the company's Web site.

Kitterman is believed to be the first American killed in a crime inside the Green Zone, although other soldiers and civilians have been killed in rocket and mortar attacks since the zone was set up in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion.

Since Jan. 1, Iraqi forces have assumed nominal control of the Green Zone. They man entry checkpoints, searching vehicles and examining identity papers. Iraqi authorities have also begun removing the blast walls around the Green Zone and opening closed thoroughfares to alleviate frequent traffic snarls along its walls.

Kitterman worked in Iraq for years for several companies, including Houston-based KBR and Kuwait-based Peregrine. He was a former U.S. Navy chief petty officer.

Correspondents Steve Fainaru and Anthony Shadid, staff writer Peter Finn and special correspondent Qais Mizher contributed to this report.

[bigron]

Iraq orphanages offer haven for homeless 

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096985557839613.html
 
 
  Years of war have left more than five million Iraqi children orphans, with nearly half a million living on the streets.

For some, Iraq's orphanages represent a safe haven for children who have nowhere else to go.

But as Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid reports, the traumatic experiences that many of these children have faced could have far-reaching consequences.
 
WATCH VIDEO :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q-3M0XM5jk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fenglish%2Ealjazeera%2Enet%2Fnews%2Fmiddleeast%2F2009%2F06%2F20096985557839613%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded

[Satyagraha]

Deaths in Iraq car bomb attack 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096107523248809.html

Thursday, June 11, 2009
 
At least 30 people have been killed and 70 others injured after a car bomb ripped through a market in a town in southern Iraq.
Ali Fahad, the mayor of al-Bathaa, said that children and women were among those killed in the attack on Wednesday.

"We are now transporting the casualties to the general hospital in Nasiriya."

Al-Bathaa is situated 30km west of Nasiriya in the province of Dhiqar.

Al-Qaeda suspected

Mohammed al-Nasiry, a journalist in Nasiriya, told Al Jazeera: "It's the first time in three years since we've had such a big explosion in Nasiriya.
 
"High security measures have been taken by authorities, bridges are being closed and the city is under semi-curfew. There are fears of another suspicious car that may explode at any time," he said.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, but car bombings are regarded as being a standard form of attack by al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Talib al-Hassan, the governor of Nasariya, said : "We accuse al-Qaeda  ... the security forces are working to get precise information."

'Creating havoc'

The local police chief was sacked following the attack, and an inquiry launched to determine whether police could have prevented it. 

Hussein Salim, a witness, said the market was supposed to be guarded by the police, adding: "The police neglected their job.
 
"How could the car enter the market? It was crowded with people."

The death toll from the explosion could rise, Akram al-Tamimi, the media manager of the Nasariya provincial council, said.

The attack comes just weeks before US troops are due to pull out of all towns and cities across the country.

Fereydun Rafiq Hilmi, an Iraqi political analyst, told Al Jazeera: "... the philosophy of a car bombing is to create havoc and a feeling of insecurity, a situation where the government look weak, the forces that are actually keeping law and order, look weak.
 
"Violence is escalating. Even today it is not the only bombing or violent attack that we have seen. There have been attacks all over Iraq, in Baghdad and Mosul and Fallujah and in other places. The shootings and a grenade here and there is not reported.
 
"This happened in an area which has been quiet for some time and that is why I think we have this in the news today whereas the others are ignored."

[bigron]

Fruits from a Jungle...

by Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55253&hd=&size=1&l=e

                                                   
 

June 18, 2009

While everyone is very busy with Iran's elections, some pretty sick stuff is going on in Baghdad...
Actually, I don't care much for the Iranian elections personally, but only in so far as how final outcome will affect Iraq. And the final outcome will affect Iraq since one of its proxies - the sectarian Shiite puppet government was put in place by both Iran and the USA, plus of course all the all shiite parties with their all shiite militias...and the mere utterance of their names still brings on immeasurable fear in people's minds...

Iraq has become a very sick society. Very, very, sick. Corrupt and diseased to the core. And it pains me a great deal to have become a "historical witness", to this rapid degeneration of a whole society...

Three related factors played an essential role in this hellish downward spiral...

a) The example set by the Americans Occupation with their applied "culture of no limit."

b) the continuous presence of Iranian backed parties and militias who literally terrorize people with their presence.

c) the destruction/disintegration of the Iraq State with all of its attached civic/civil society/institutions.

End result is the Jungle. You actually have 20 million (or less) Iraqis trying to survive in a Jungle...

What is the law of the Jungle ? " La loi du plus fort" - the law of the strongest.

When there is no State of Law, Might becomes the only "law".

This law of the jungle is best reflected in :

1) the status of women. I am not sure one can talk of status of women anymore...
There is no status of women in today's Iraq. I repeat - there is no status of women in today's Iraq. Unless you consider female refugees and widows to belong to a certain status.
Iraqi women are now collectively viewed as a commodity. A COMMODITY. Because there are no longer laws to protect them as in the past - as in the past during the times of "dictatorship".

This lawlessness is most felt by the staggering increase and I mean in the thousands, of rape cases that go unreported...for obvious reasons.

During the "dictatorship", there were clear applicable laws for rape - hanging was one of them and it was non negotiable. A good deterrent in my opinion - because one does not mess with an Iraqi woman's honor and integrity. But this is no longer the case.

A fairly recent article states :

" Before the war began in Iraq, rape was not a frequently reported crime and when it did occur the legal recourse was clear. Today, though the exact figures are unknown, estimates of rape are in the thousands. On the question of who takes responsibility to prevent and punish rape in Iraq, the short answer seems to be no one.
The rapes are committed by warring religious factions, they are committed by Iraqi security forces, they are committed by foreign soldiers sent there to serve, they are committed by contractors sent there for hire, they are committed by former friends and neighbors, they are committed by strangers. Even knowing who to report a rape to is difficult and dangerous"

Now you can understand why almost all the Baghdadi women outside the Green Zone veil themselves. Not only it is now required by the militias that rule neighborhoods but also these women hope, the veil will afford them some form of protection from the same men that order them to veil...

Need I say more ? I don't think so.

2) Another aspect where this law of the jungle is seen operating is in the prisons.

Thousands of men (and women) are arrested, detained, tortured, raped and some have been there for years with no trial. Several reports came out (finally) urging the puppet government to seriously look into the grotesque torture and rape that is taking place in Iraqi prisons. I have already covered some of that in my post "Iraq's underworld". For an added confirmation, you can read this article.

3) One more aspect where this jungle's lawlessness is most felt is - when you look at the Iraqi children - not that you terribly care about Iraqi children, but I thought I'd mention it.

The number of orphaned children with no support is in the millions. Street children in Baghdad alone are around half a million. These children are kidnapped, bought and sold, trafficked and used as sex slaves. This is a very serious problem that no one is addressing. This is a catastrophe that everyone is silent about.

There are hardly any properly organized and funded institutions to look after those kids. Hardly any. What will become of them, what is becoming of them ? They are the immediate/direct fruits of the occupation.

4) Yet another aspect from the Jungle of the New Iraq - is abduction and kidnapping by armed groups for ransom. No one really knows who these armed groups are. They may be gangs, criminals, political parties, militias, the police itself, no one really knows...Abduction and kidnapping of ordinary citizens is another very serious problem, another fruit of the Occupation.

5) One more aspect, the increase in drug dealing, selling, buying and using. The number of drug addicts has increased exponentially since the Occupation, and since the Iraqi agricultural fields in particular in the South, have been turned to growing opium instead...

Thanks to Iran and its serious meddling in Iraq, what used to be literally unheard of during the "dictatorship" - drug addicts and drugs trafficking - are now an increasingly common fact.

6) Still more fruits of the Occupation - beggars and prostitutes. I suppose I need not explain why this is so. It is self explanatory no ?

7) And before I forget, one more. 2 million Iraqis still displaced, most living in tents...and form a good deal of the beggars. Another fruit from the Jungle. Not to mention the exiled refugees.

Of course, I have not mentioned all the other types of "juicy" fruits. You may add corruption, non functioning public services, embezzlement of public funds, non existent health services, severe shortages of educated, experienced, intelligentsia, doctors, teachers and technocrats, totally run down educational system, the continuous theft of Iraq's riches and history - the lamentable state of archaeological sites, etc...etc...

And before closing, I want to share with you one story that will illustrate all the above main points. I read it today, a small caption, at the bottom of a newspaper...

It said :

"A small Iraqi boy finally finds Freedom.

An 3 year old Iraqi boy, kidnapped and tortured for 70 days, in the region of Abu Ghraib, has been finally released. His four kidnappers were arrested. The child's father tried reaching an agreement with the kidnappers. He accepted paying a ransom of 50'000 dollars. The leader of the gang had already been condemned in the past for 18 years of prison for another kidnapping."

Obviously, the criminal leader of that gang never served that initial sentence of 18 years.

This is the New Iraq - the innocents one are in prison or murdered and the criminals and the corrupt rule and lead...

This is really the main, lush, fruit bearing tree of the American Occupation - the tree of no-limit "culture" - in the Jungle that has become Iraq - the New Iraq.


Painting : Iraqi artist, Saad Najm.

 

[bigron]

Iraqi exiles decry their government’s decision to allow host countries send them home by force

By Fatih Abdulsalam, Azzaman

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55247&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 17, 2009


Over the past three months I have received a flood of letters whose senders urge me to highlight the case of Iraqi refugees whose requests for asylum were and will be rejected by mainly European states.

Taking advantage of what many in Iraq see as 'murky deals’ Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zaibari forged into agreements, several European states have began rounding up Iraqi refugees, dumping them in detention centers prior to having them hand-cuffed and then dragged into Iraq-destined planes by force.

It is still not clear how and why Zaibari singed those agreements which ostensibly have sparked denunciation and indignation from both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government in Arbil.

Analysts say Zaibari rushed the agreements in return for 'political commission’ the terms of which may require setting up an independent investigation.

One cannot understand how Zaibari could sleep well at the sight of Iraqi children born in Sweden and forced to interrupt their education and sent home by force.

Perhaps he has not read Swedish media reports on the planeloads of Iraqi refugees, some of them dragged from hospital beds, and drugged on the way home to keep them quiet.

The reports have raised an avalanche of condemnation in Sweden but still Zaibari remains unperturbed.

The U.N. refugee organization (UNHCR) has denounced the forced repatriations and so have human rights groups. But our Foreign Minister remains unflinching in his position.

UNHCR officials say they have not seen the agreements Zaibari’s Foreign Ministry signed with countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway. And even if such an agreement exists, they say, it violates human rights.

The reasons are obvious to everyone but Zaibari’s Foreign Ministry.

Iraqis in question have nothing left to return since they had lost, and for the lucky ones, sold, everything they had back home and paid the returns to smugglers on their way to safety.

The government itself is in no position to provide decent living conditions for the refugees sent home by force.

Does Zaibari realize the dangers involved in the agreements he singed and which certain European countries use as a pretext for the forced repatriation of Iraqis?

Iraqi refugees, after spending years in exile, thought they landed in a safe haven that will help them start a new life.

It did not occur to them that their own government would collude with their host countries to have them flown by force to the hell they escaped from.

Iraqis abroad, those with permission to stay and those whose cases have been rejected, are furious, indignant and hurl insults at all the government officials who care nothing about the well being of their own people.

They simply denounce those who try to use their suffering for the realization of dirty and corrupt political gains.






 

[bigron]

Iraq’s refugees; the region’s largest displacement crisis goes on

by World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ Central Asia office
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55328&hd=&size=1&l=e

                               

June 20, 2009

Some 2 million Iraqi refugees across the Middle East will spend a fifth World Refugee Day far from home and even further from any prospect of return or a better life as their needs and rights continue to go largely unaddressed.

'Exposure to violence, instability and disrupted education characterise the childhoods of many of Iraq's refugee children – some of whom can no longer call Iraq home because of what they experienced there', says Siobhan Kimmerle, Programme Director for World Vision in Jordan. 'We must not turn our backs to their needs, which require long term interventions', she added.

Lack of prospects for Iraqi refugees to return because of instability, or to integrate into host communities, coupled with the effects of the global economic crisis, including rising food and commodity prices, are exacerbating their sense of vulnerability and displacement in countries like Jordan, which still hosts some 500,000 Iraqi refugees or 8% of its population, according to the UNHCR Global Report 2008.

Jordan's hospitality and generosity towards refugees has been significant, but so too has the strain on resources such as water, which is already lacking for its own population, as well as its already under-resourced health and education systems. Both the governments of Jordan and Syria claim that hosting Iraqi refugees has cost them up US$1 billion per year, according to the report 'Realizing protection space for Iraqi refugees: UNHCR in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, January 2009'.

Despite hosting most of Iraq's refugees, neither Jordan nor Syria are signatories to the refugee convention. Iraqi refugees are therefore 'subject to the restrictive legislation applicable to foreigners, diminishing the likelihood that their basic rights are upheld', claims the same report.

Without access to a residence permit, refugees in Jordan can't work and their savings are quickly depleted. Many Iraqi refugee families in Jordan's second city of Zarqa, rely on supplementary food aid because their usual breadwinners can't find work or wages from the illegal casual work they resort to are low and irregular.

'Even with the food aid we do not have enough. I have a big family,' said Um Raed. 'It's not adequate, but it helps', added the mother of six. Her family was one of 1,250 families in Zarqa that received a monthly supplementary food ration from World Vision, funded by the Government of Germany.

'In our work with refugees around the world, World Vision prioritises the needs of the most vulnerable, especially children,' said Jeff Hall, Deputy Advocacy Director for World Vision's Middle East and Eastern Europe Region. 'We also take special steps to help the displaced live with dignity despite their rather precarious situation.'

Education for Iraqi refugee children in Jordan is also a significant need and key concern for World Vision, which is providing opportunities for informal learning, recreation and psychosocial support to children in the capital Amman, and the cities of Zarqa and Irbid.

"Iraqi children in Jordan are now permitted to attend any school but they are still competing for precious space in overcrowded classrooms, which impacts upon the quality of education children in Jordan receive. Students have also missed a lot of their schooling and need to catch up and then there are some families that can't afford the transport and school supplies or need their children to work to support the family', said Siobhan Kimmerle.

'World Vision is offering an education and recreation programme for 225 children in Zarqa, for example, because without extra tuition in Arabic, English and Maths, these refugee children would really struggle in school', she added.

According to a February 2008 study by the International Organisation for Migration, there is a growing need for psychosocial and psychological support for the refugee population in Jordan – a need that World Vision is trying to meet through recreation centres and Child Friendly Spaces that give children a safe and structured place to express themselves and experience a fuller childhood.

'Children need a place where they belong – for Iraqi refugee children in Jordan, home is a foreign concept – so these spaces and the opportunity to interact with other children are very important to their sense of wellbeing and development', explained Kimmerle.

World Vision's programmes are currently supporting some 4,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, half of whom are children. The organisation plans to provide assistance to around 15,000 refugees and impoverished Jordanians, but requires adequate funding to implement the activities focusing on food aid, education, psychosocial support and vocational training. World Vision's approach is designed to not only benefit the Iraqi refugees, but also the communities that are hosting them.

Relief and development projects across the Middle East, Central Asia, Balkans and Caucasus are also assisting thousands of refugees and displaced persons with a special focus on children.


Additional information

'At the end of August 2008 more than 300,000 people were registered with UNHCR in the countries surrounding Iraq. However, it is believed that a total of some one to two million Iraqis are living in these countries, mainly in Jordan and Syria. UNHCR is also involved with an estimated 2.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and some 42,000 refugees, including Palestinians, in Iraq. (UNHCR Iraq Situation Update August 2008)

'The largest displacement crisis in the Middle East since 1948, of approximately two million Iraqi refugees in the region, the UNHCR estimates that at present Syria hosts 1.2 to 1.4 million Iraqis, Jordan 500,000 to 600,000 and Lebanon 20,000 to 30,000.2 These countries have no specific legislation concerning refugees. ('Realizing protection space for Iraqi refugees: UNHCR in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon January 2009).




 

[bigron]

In Iraq People Die Every Day

by Steven D, Daily Kos

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55393&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 22, 2009

I know Iran is the total and complete focus of every media person on the planet right now, but in all honesty, I see stories like this one about the ongoing slaughter in Iraq all the time and I wonder where all the outrage and concern over this cornucopia of death and misery went? Why isn't this story getting as much media attention as the death of Neda?


BAGHDAD — At least 24 Iraqis were killed and 78 were wounded Monday in the latest wave of violence sweeping the country, Iraqi police said.
The attacks, which were concentrated in Baghdad, came just days before the June 30 deadline for U.S. combat forces to finish withdrawing from major Iraqi cities. The attacks raise questions about the readiness of Iraqi security forces and their ability to control the recently unstable security situation.

Here's one from two days ago:


A suicide truck bomb detonated in front of al Resool Mosque in Taza district, southwest Kirkuk at 12.30 Saturday. The tremendous explosion killed at least 67 people, injuring more than 200 others and destroying 30 houses.
Maybe because they are so ubiquitous no one here in America cares anymore, or certainly no one who reports the news on the TeeVee. But if this was happening in Iran there would be front page headlines screaming about the violence and the usual suspects questioning President Obama's failure to do something about it. I guess everyone in the news biz has "moved on" but for the Iraqi people Bush's Folly continues to be the gift that keeps killing them.

Just remember, there is little Obama or the international news media can do to change the course of events in Iran. But back in 2002-2003, there was a lot that our news media, our renowned journalists and institutions, could have been doing to expose the lies of the Bush administration. But they didn't.

Instead, they acted like a bunch of glorified publicity agents, warmongers and cheerleaders. They were so effective (Yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. New York Times for enabling and publishing Judy Miller's creative fictions) that Bush and Blair didn't even have to resort to Plan B: a false flag operation to provoke Saddam into making the first move. No surprise then, that they have abandoned the plight of the Iraqi people. It's merely an old reality show that's run its course, and the ratings in the have been slipping. Much more fun to cover the new conflagration. As they say in the business, That's Infotainment!

I'm sorry, People of Iraq. The powers that be in this country don't think your suffering matters anymore. Not that they ever did.



 

[Satyagraha]

AFGHANISTAN: Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line
Analysis by Gareth Porter*



PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON MOTLAGH/THE WASHINGTON TIMES "My girls, do they look like Taliban?" asked the father of Nouviya Barakat, 7, who is recovering in the burn unit of a hospital in Herat, Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON, Jun 25, 2009 (IPS) - The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the U.S. command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the "Taliban" were fraudulent.

By covering up the most damaging facts surrounding the incident, the rewritten public version of report succeeded in avoiding media stories on the contradiction between the report and the previous arguments made by the U.S. command.

The declassified "executive summary" of the report on the bombing issued last Friday admitted that mistakes had been made in the use of airpower in that incident. However, it omitted key details which would have revealed the self-serving character of the U.S. command’s previous claims blaming the "Taliban" – the term used for all insurgents fighting U.S. forces - for the civilian deaths from the airstrikes.

The report reasserted the previous claim by the U.S. command that only about 26 civilians had been killed in the U.S. bombing on that day, despite well-documented reports by the government and by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission that between 97 and 147 people were killed.

The report gave no explanation for continuing to assert such a figure, and virtually admitted that it is not a serious claim by also suggesting that the actual number of civilian deaths in the incident "may never be known".

The report also claimed that "at least 78 Taliban fighters" were killed. The independent human rights organisation had said in its May 26 report that at most 25 to 30 insurgents had been killed, though not necessarily in the airstrike.

A closer reading of the paragraph in the report on Taliban casualties reveals, however, that the number does not actually refer to deaths from the airstrike at all. The paragraph refers twice to "the engagement" as well as to "the fighting" and "the firefight", indicating that the vast majority of the Taliban who died were all killed in ground fighting, not by the U.S. airstrike.

An analysis of the report’s detailed descriptions of the three separate airstrikes also shows that the details in question could not have been omitted except by a deliberate decision to cover up the most damaging facts about the incident.

The "executive summary" states that the decision to call in all three airstrikes in Balabolook district on May 4 was based on two pieces of "intelligence" available to the ground commander, an unidentified commander of a special operations forces unit from the U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MarSOC).

One piece of intelligence is said to have been an intercepted statement by a Taliban commander to his fighters to "mass to maneuver and re-attack" the Afghan and U.S. forces on the scene. The other was visual sighting of the movement of groups of adults moving at intervals in the dark away from the scene of the firefight with U.S. forces.

A number of insurgents were said by the report to have been killed in a mosque that was targeted in the first of the three strikes. The "absence of local efforts to attempt to recover bodies from the rubble in a timely manner", the following morning, according to the report, indicates that the bodies were all insurgent fighters, not civilians.

But the report indicates that the airstrikes referred to as the "second B1-B strike" and the "third B-1B strike" caused virtually all of the civilian deaths. The report’s treatment of those two strikes is notable primarily for what it omits with regard to information on casualties rather than for what it includes.

It indicates that the ground force commander judged the movement of a "second large group" – again at night without clear identification of whether they were military or civilian – indicated that they were "enemy fighters massing and rearming to attack friendly forces" and directed the bombing of a target to which they had moved.

The report reveals that two 500-pound bombs and two 2,000-pound bombs were dropped on the target, not only destroying the building being targeted but three other nearby houses as well.

In contrast to the report’s claim regarding the earlier strike, the description of the second airstrike admits that the "destruction may have resulted in civilian casualties". Even more important, however, it says nothing about any evidence that there were Taliban fighters killed in the strike – thus tacitly admitting that the casualties were in fact civilians.

The third strike is also described as having been prompted by another decision by the ground commander that a third group moving in the dark away from the firefight was "another Taliban element". A single 2,000-pound bomb was dropped on a building to which the group had been tracked, again heavily damaging a second house nearby.

Again the report offers no evidence suggesting that there were any "Taliban" killed in the strike, in contrast to the first airstrike.

By these signal omissions, aimed at avoiding the most damaging facts in the incident, the report confirms that no insurgent fighters were killed in the airstrikes which killed very large numbers of civilians. The report thus belies a key propaganda line that the U.S. command had maintained from the beginning – that the Taliban had deliberately prevented people from moving from their houses so that civilian casualties would be maximised.

As recently as Jun. 3, the spokesperson for the U.S. command in Afghanistan, Lt. Commander Christine Sidenstricker, was still telling the website Danger Room that "civilians were killed because the Taliban deliberately caused it to happen" and that the "Taliban" had "forced civilians to remain in places they were attacking from".

The central contradiction between the report and the U.S. military’s "human shields" argument was allowed to pass unnoticed in the extremely low-key news media coverage of the report.

News coverage of the report has focused either on the official estimate of only 26 civilian deaths and the much larger number of Taliban casualties or on the absence of blame on the part of U.S. military personnel found by the investigators.

The Associated Press reported that the United States had "accidentally killed an estimated 26 Afghan civilians last month when a warplane did not strictly adhere to rules for bombing".

The New York Times led with the fact that the investigation had called for "additional training" of U.S. air crews and ground forces but did hold any personnel "culpable" for failing to follow the existing rules of engagement.

None of the news media reporting on the highly expurgated version of the investigation pointed out that it had confirmed, in effect, the version of the event that had been put forward by residents of the bombed villages.

As reported by the New York Times May 6, one of the residents interviewed by phone said six houses had been completely destroyed and that the victims of the bombing "were rushing to go to their relative’s houses where they believed they would be safe, but they were hit on the way."

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

[bigron]

Video: Depleted Uranium Children Iraq

ConflictingTruth
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55510&hd=&size=1&l=e


 

June 26, 2009

Watch:

Depleted Uranium Children Iraq

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWJmOweKC_4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Euruknet%2Einfo%2F%3Fp%3Dm55510%26hd%3D%26size%3D1%26l%3De&feature=player_embedded


There is widespread contamination with cancer-causing depleted uranium munitions in Afghanistan and Iraq causing dramatically rising birth deformities. This video was censored on you tube...Lets see how long it will stay up this time...





 

[bigron]

An Electrifying Argument...


Layla Anwar, Uncensored Arabwomanblues

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m55505&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 26, 2009

My mother, God bless her, has this very annoying habit of leaving the lights on even though she's not using that particular room at that particular time.

This is almost always a cause for an argument. Of course, I am the one who starts it.

- Yumma (mom in Iraqi), you've left the lights on again !

- Ohoo, stop nagging me

- Think electricity bills

- Ohoo, Layla, "mat juzeen" - you never cease...

- Okay, think that you are contributing to global warming. Do you want to be an extra cause for global warming ?

- Global warming ! You are worried about global warming, when they burned us alive!

Obviously the money and ecological twists have failed...

- Okay, think about your brothers and sisters, they only get 2 hours of electricity a day, no running water and it's 50 C.

That kind of does the trick.

- Tayyeb, tayyeb, I will switch it off, ohoo...


6 years down the line and Baghdad still has no electricity.

The "opposition" which is now the current puppet mafia ruling Iraq, used to claim that the "dictatorship" was deliberately cutting electrical output to oppress the Iraqi people.

Of course, the current ruling mafia cannot explain why there is less electricity today in the "free" Iraq than during sanction times where one could not even find a light bulb to buy...

One thing is for sure, occupied Baghdad is not contributing to global warming with excessive electrical consumption. Nor is it contributing to global water shortages and desertification, since there is no water...

Now that's a thought for the "Green movement" to ponder upon.

 

[bigron]

Jun 27, 7:56 PM EDT
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TOXIC_LEGACY_OF_WAR?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


Did toxic chemical in Iraq cause GIs' illnesses?

By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer


In this May 18, 2009 photo, Steve Moore recalls his brother, David, through photographs at home in Dubois, Ind. Sgt. David Moore died last year of a lung disorder after serving in the National Guard in Iraq where his brother believes he was exposed to a deadly chemical.   AP Photo/BRIAN BOHANNON
 
 
 
 
Larry Roberta's every breath is a painful reminder of his time in Iraq. He can't walk a block without gasping for air. His chest hurts, his migraines sometimes persist for days and he needs pills to help him sleep.

James Gentry came home with rashes, ear troubles and a shortness of breath. Later, things got much worse: He developed lung cancer, which spread to his spine, ribs and one of his thighs; he must often use a cane, and no longer rides his beloved Harley.

David Moore's postwar life turned into a harrowing medical mystery: nosebleeds and labored breathing that made it impossible to work, much less speak. His desperate search for answers ended last year when he died of lung disease at age 42.

What these three men - one sick, one dying, one dead - had in common is they were National Guard soldiers on the same stretch of wind-swept desert in Iraq during the early months of the war in 2003.

These soldiers and hundreds of other Guard members from Indiana, Oregon and West Virginia were protecting workers hired by a subsidiary of the giant contractor, KBR Inc., to rebuild an Iraqi water treatment plant. The area, as it turned out, was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a potent, sometimes deadly chemical linked to cancer and other devastating diseases.

No one disputes that. But that's where agreement ends.

Among the issues now rippling from the courthouse to Capitol Hill are whether the chemical made people sick, when KBR knew it was there and how the company responded. But the debate is more than about this one case; it has raised broader questions about private contractors and health risks in war zones.

Questions, says Sen. Evan Bayh, who plans to hold hearings on the issues, such as these:

"How should we treat exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals as a threat to our soldiers? How seriously should that threat be taken? What is the role of private contractors? What about the potential conflict between their profit motives and taking all steps necessary to protect our soldiers?

"This case," says the Indiana Democrat, "has brought to light the need for systemic reform."

For now, dozens of National Guard veterans have sued KBR and two subsidiaries, accusing them of minimizing and concealing the chemical's dangers, then downplaying nosebleeds and breathing problems as nothing more than sand allergies or a reaction to desert air.

KBR denies any wrongdoing. In a statement, the company said it actually found the chemical at the Qarmat Ali plant, restricted access, cleaned it up and "did not knowingly harm troops."

Ten civilians hired by a KBR subsidiary made similar claims in an arbitration resolved privately in June. (The workers' contract prevented them from filing suit.)

This isn't the first claim that toxins have harmed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; there have been allegations involving lead, depleted uranium and sarin gas.

This also isn't the first challenge to KBR, whose billions of dollars of war-related contracts have been the subject of congressional scrutiny and numerous legal claims.

Among them are lawsuits recently filed against KBR and Halliburton Co. - KBR's parent company until 2007 - that assert open-air pits used to burn refuse in Iraq and Afghanistan caused respiratory illnesses, tumors and death. (KBR says it is reviewing the charges. Halliburton maintains it was improperly named and expects to be dismissed from the case.)

Earlier this year, several members of Congress asked Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to investigate potential burn pit hazards. He replied that his agency is conducting a health study of 30,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and noted the VA "has learned important lessons from previous military conflicts" as it deals with environmental exposure questions.

Some veterans advocates say the military is more attuned to health risks than it was in Vietnam and the Gulf War, but still falls short.

"I'm a realist - things are going to get burned, things are going to be blown up," says Tom Tarantino, an Iraqi veteran and policy associate at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "But I think the DOD (Department of Defense) could do a better job at tracking what people are exposed to. If there's a big pit outside your base, you need to know what's going on and do tests ... so if people start getting sick, they won't spend years trying to figure out what's wrong with them."

This isn't a natural fit, he concedes, since the Defense Department "is a war-fighting agency, not an environmental protection agency. But I think there's a lack of information out there."

This case stems from the chaotic start of the war in 2003 when a KBR subsidiary was hired to restart the plant, which had been looted of equipment, wiring, even metal roofing and siding. The Iraqis had used hexavalent chromium to prevent pipe corrosion at the plant, which produced industrial water used in oil production.

It's the same chemical linked to poisonings in California in a case made famous in the movie "Erin Brockovich."

Hexavalent chromium - a toxic component of sodium dichromate - can cause severe liver and kidney damage and studies have linked it to leukemia as well as bone, stomach, brain and other cancers, according to an expert who provided a deposition for the civilian workers.

The chemical "is one of the most potent carcinogens know to man" and it can "enter every cell of the body and potentially produce widespread injury to every major organ in the body," said Max Costa, chairman of New York University's Department of Environmental Medicine.

KBR, however, says studies show only that industrial workers exposed to the chemical for more than two years have an increased risk of cancer - and in this case, soldiers were at the plant just days or months.

The company also notes air quality studies concluded the Indiana Guard soldiers were not exposed to high levels of hexavalent chromium. But Costa says those tests were done when the wind was not blowing.

Both soldiers and former workers say there were days when strong gusts kicked up ripped-open bags of the chemical, creating a yellow-orange haze that coated everything from their hair to their boots.

"I was spitting blood and I was not the only one doing that," recalls Danny Langford, who worked for the KBR subsidiary. "The wind was blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. You could just hardly see where you were going. I pulled my shirt over my nose and there would be blood on it. I also saw the soldiers. They had blood splotches on their masks."

Larry Roberta, a 44-year-old former Oregon National Guard member, remembers a strange metallic taste and dust everywhere. He sat on a bag of the chemical, unaware it was dangerous.

"This orange crud blew up in your face, your eyes and on our food," he says. "I tried to wash my chicken patty off with my canteen. I started to get sick to my stomach right away."

Roberta had coughing spells and agonizing chest pains, he says, that "went all the way through my back. Whenever I breathed, the pain got more sharp. ... Every day I went there, I had something weird going on."

Russell Kimberling, a former Indiana National Guard captain, had severe sinus troubles that forced his evacuation to Germany. After returning, he became alarmed one August day in 2003 while escorting some officials to the plant in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

"I jumped out of the truck and I turned around and they (KBR staff) had full chemical gear on," he says. "I looked at some of my soldiers and said, 'This can't be very good.'"

"They could have told us to put chemical suits on," Kimberling adds. "There are so many things that could have been done."

Ed Blacke, hired as plant health, safety and environmental coordinator, says he became worried after workers started having breathing problems and a former colleague sent him an internal KBR memo outlining the chemical's dangers. Blacke says when he complained at a meeting, he was labeled a troublemaker and resigned under pressure.

"Normally when you take over a job, you have a briefing - this is what's out there, here's what you need for protective equipment," says Blacke, who testified at a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing last year. "There was nothing, nothing at all."

Blacke and Langford were among those whose civil claims were resolved in arbitration.

Kimberling is among nearly 50 Guard veterans - most from Indiana, a smaller number from Oregon and West Virginia - who've sued.

Mike Doyle, the Houston lawyer representing the soldiers and civilians, maintains KBR knew as early as May 2003 the chemical was there, but didn't close the site until that September.

"Once they (KBR) found out about it, they didn't tell anybody and they did everything to conceal it," he contends. "You have (KBR) managers in Houston, in Kuwait City who knew about this. Their staff was getting reports and soldiers and civilians who were in the field were told, 'No big deal. There's nothing to worry about.'"

The lawsuit cites minutes of an August 2003 KBR meeting that mentions "serious health problems at the water treatment plant" and notes "almost 60 percent of the people now exhibit the symptoms."

In a recent wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, KBR chairman William P. Utt suggested the company be given some latitude with its military contracts.

"We think there ought to be some consideration given in many of these claims to the same protections the government has from these suits that exist," he said.

He also said KBR has been unfairly targeted in war zones. "People think there's an opportunity here in Iraq, let's paint it on KBR, then we'll worry about making the facts precise or correct later," Utt said.

As for the water plant, KBR says once it learned of the chemical, it took precautions to protect workers, notified the Army Corps of Engineers and led the cleanup. It says the Corps had previously deemed the area safe.

KBR also points to Army tests of 137 Indiana Guard soldiers that showed no medical problems that could be linked to exposure, as well as a military board review that found it unlikely anyone would suffer long-term medical consequences.

But Bayh and Doyle say those tests were done too late to be valid and note that soil tests were taken after the contaminated area was covered with asphalt and gravel.

Doyle also disagrees with KBR's contention that workers weren't there long enough - weeks or months - to have elevated cancer risks.

It can take a long time for symptoms of illness to surface - five to 10 years or more for cancer. But some of those who say they were exposed are already ill.

Gentry, a retired lieutenant colonel who commanded the Indiana Guard unit, is in the late stages of lung cancer, which has spread to other parts of his body, according to his friend, Christopher Lee.

Gentry hasn't sued, but in a December 2008 deposition he recalled complaining to his superiors after his soldiers were told by KBR workers the orangish sand was a cancer-causing chemical. He said it was "very disappointing" that KBR managers didn't share that information.

"I'm dying because of it," he said.

While acknowledging he wasn't 100 percent certain that's why he has cancer, Gentry - who served a second tour in Iraq - said his doctor "believes the most probable cause was my exposure to this chemical."

KBR's actions, he said, had put "my men at risk that is unnecessary."

The Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon National Guards have sent hundreds of letters to soldiers notifying them of possible contamination and urging them to seek medical attention. The Oregon Guard also set up a Facebook page and reports about 15 soldiers have reported medical symptoms.

Bayh has introduced a bill calling for a special medical registry that would require the Department of Defense to notify all military members of exposure to potential toxins - and provide comprehensive medical care. (It would be limited to those serving after Sept. 11, 2001.)

A similar notification measure was approved Thursday in the U.S. House, an amendment to the defense authorization bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, an Oregon lawmaker.

All these measures come too late for 1st Sgt. David Moore, who served with Gentry.

He thought his persistent cough in Iraq would stop when he returned home. Instead, breathing became difficult; he eventually needed a chair in the shower because he could no longer stand, says his brother, Steve. Moore had nosebleeds, too, and boil-like rashes behind his ears and on his back, arms and legs. He went from doctor to doctor. "None of them could ever figure out what it was," his brother says.

By late 2007, the one-time construction worker - who had been "strong as an ox," and ran 3 1/2 miles every other day - couldn't even venture outside, Steve Moore says. But he didn't give up.

"He was always upbeat," his brother says. "He said, 'They'll figure it out, they'll figure it out.' He thought that until the last time I talked to him. You could see the fear in his eyes. They had him on 100 percent oxygen and he still couldn't breathe. He requested to be put on a ventilator so they could figure it out."

Moore died in February 2008. The cause was lung disease. His death was ruled service-related. His brother believes it was hexavalent chromium.

Larry Roberta, the former Oregon Guardsman who needed stomach surgery after his return, still has physical and emotional problems: Post traumatic stress. Mood swings. Nose polyps. Chest pains. Migraines that can keep him bedridden for days.

He takes two inhalers - he can't walk a block without them - and high blood pressure medicine every day and testosterone shots every two weeks.

"I have 100 percent disability," he says. "I've got a long laundry list of things that happened to me while I was there. If you add it all up, I'd be almost 200 percent disabled."

Roberta recently testified before Oregon lawmakers, urging them to set aside money for Guard members who develop cancer from exposure to the chemical.

His wife, Michelle, says her husband's illness has dramatically changed his outlook.

"He has no ambitions for life anymore," she says. "At his age, that makes me very sad. I worry about him every day."

Kimberling, the former Indiana Guardsman, struggles as well.

The father of two young children - he's a pharmaceutical salesman in Louisville, Ky. - says he hasn't been able to get life insurance because his possible exposure is mentioned on his medical records.

Sometimes, he says, it's hard to sort out his real aches from his fears.

"I feel like I'm a 38-year-old in a 60-year-old's body," he says. "There are a lot of things that seem to be going south a lot quicker than they should. Sinus problems ... pain in my joints that I've never felt before.

"I'm not sure if it's the anxiety of finding out about it or not. I kind of know and feel it's just a matter of time before it catches up with me."

---

Kimberly Hefling in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
 

[bigron]

Iraq’s Poorest Finding it Harder to Survive

By Sarah Price and Nizar Latif
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56023&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

Huda, in the cast, will lose her arm if she cannot get treatment soon. (Photo: N. Latif)


July 15, 2009

IRAQ, July 15, (Pal Telegraph) - Asime is 13 and lives in east Baghdad. He has lost both his parents in the last two years, and is now taking care of a sick uncle. With no job opportunities and insufficient help from the Iraqi government, he has had to turn to crime to survive. He hates to steal, but knows that without this, he and his uncle will starve.

"My father died two years ago and then my mother died six months later, so my uncle took me in," he says. "He is poor, but said he wanted me with him because he doesn't have any children, and he knew the orphanage couldn't care for me well. But now, my uncle is seriously ill and cannot work. So, now I have to steal - from shops, or from older people. I steal valuable things, because they can be sold for money.

"I hate to steal. It's bad and I don't have the right to do it. But I have the right to life, and the government doesn't provide enough for me and my sick uncle, so I am compelled to steal, for money and food. My uncle doesn't know what I do. I told him I clean up some of the shops in the market for the money."

But he has been offered work - as part of a gang, which is very active in eastern Baghdad and is known for abducting children of the rich.

"I felt very scared, because this work is very dangerous," he says. "It is reasonable to steal and get the money, but it is not reasonable to engage in terrorist acts for it."

But while he will not turn to kidnapping, he cannot stop stealing. He says he will stop when he can earn enough from a job, or when the Iraqi government will provide enough money to allow him to. But he knows his days are numbered. The Iraqi police will catch him eventually.

Asime is one of approximately 2.5 million children in Iraq who have lost one or both parents due to the war, or sectarian or militia violence. The lack of available work and support from the government or humanitarian organizations has led many children to theft, and some of their mothers to prostitution, just to have food. Those who cannot buy food sift through garbage to find something to feed their families, leading also to health problems that they cannot afford to treat.

Umm Ali lost her husband three years ago. She lives in a very old building in a poor and dirty district in the city of Kut, in southern Iraq. Her apartment has no furniture, does not contain electrical appliances, or cold water to drink to endure the deadly heat of the Iraqi summer.

"My husband was working in the men's clothing store in downtown Kut, when a clash between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military broke out in the market center of the city," she says. "He was killed in the crossfire. Since then, I have tried to make a better life for my children, but life is very difficult and I cannot provide them with the most basic requirements of life. Sometimes we do not have food for days, and the children have to search for food from the garbage."


Umm Ali talks about the death of her son, Ali, in the photo behind her (Photo: N. Lizar)


Sometimes she gets temporary work, which helps feed her six kids, but when she can't work, they find themselves begging for money and help. What money she does get from work lasts only long enough to feed the family for a few days.

In addition to the daily struggles of raising her children alone, she is dealing with a new family tragedy: her son, Ali, 13, was killed by a guided missile that fell near their house, and her daughter Huda, 7, injured by the shrapnel in it, while they were playing outside one day. She could not afford to bury Ali, and had to rely on the help of neighbors and friends. And she has not been able to get medical care for Huda. As a result, Huda's arm is infected, and without prompt medical attention, she could lose it altogether. She says that due to the lack of adequate medical treatment in Iraq, the care Huda has been able to get has not helped her. Her flesh is rotting, and every day that passes without medical attention makes her prognosis worse.

"Our lives were much better when my husband was alive," says Umm Ali. "He was very involved. He provided food and clothing for the family, and solved the problems of my sons, and he was interested in all the details, large and small. But since his death, I think I've lost control of my family, and I worry that they could become criminals and dangerous when they grow up, because I couldn't give them a decent life."

She does get help from some humanitarian organizations, she says, but it's not enough.

"My wish was to see my children get a good education and study in universities and become important people in their community," she says. "But instead they are beggars on the street, and they hardly have any food to eat. They could lose their future and become dangerous to people in their community."

Nisreen al-Musawi, director of the Anwarul organization, which takes care of widows and orphans in Wasit Province in southern Iraq, says, "Widows and orphans suffer total neglect by the Iraqi officials, and the problem has increased significantly over the past three years, especially after the events of community violence, which affected all segments of Iraqi society and the increased numbers of widows and orphans across Iraq."

She points out that while some organizations are trying to help, it is not nearly enough to curb the problems caused by this epidemic:

"We're getting support from some international organizations such as the United Nations and other groups that attempt to provide assistance to widows and orphans," she says, "as well as some support from the Iraqi government, some Iraqi officials, the American forces, and some support from the rich, but the Iraqi support is not sufficient for the needs of this large army of widows and orphans."

She feels that there could have been preventative measures taken to stop this situation from occurring, but that the government did not take care of it when it should have. She fears for the future of these families, as well as the impact it could have on the country.

"Terrorist organizations, militias and al-Qaeda are trying to recruit the largest possible number of widows and orphans to their side in the fight against the U.S. military or Iraqi security forces, and they have succeeded in that because widows and orphans are suffering from neglect in Iraq and suffering from hunger and difficult living conditions," she says. "This is what makes them easy targets for al-Qaeda and militias. There is a huge number of widows and orphans at their disposal."

Umm Mohammed is a widow who lives next door to Umm Ali. The fatigue her life causes her shows on her face and can be heard in her voice. She is the mother of four young boys - Mohammed, 12, Ahmed, 10, Mazin, 8, and Moualk, 3. She has a job cleaning a school nearby so she can provide for them, but comes home so tired she finds it hard to do much more. She is considering taking them out of school so they can work and help her, as school and living costs have risen steeply, and state funds don't cover enough of the expenses.

"The state provides less than $100 per month, which is not enough to take care of the family for three days," she says. "Iraq is a country very rich in resources, sufficient to provide a decent life for all Iraqis. The Iraqi officials should stop the theft of Iraqi funds and channel these funds for the widows and orphans, because we are ready to do anything to get food and clothing."

But she is concerned that her children will also be willing to do anything for money, including turning to crime, and she is very concerned about their future.

"I have many friends who are widows, and they are all suffering from ill-treatment by the Iraqi government," she says. "There are no jobs for them or their children, and they are living in very difficult circumstances. Some of them have to work as prostitutes.

"We do not have the simple necessities of life. We live in apartments built in the sixties, and these apartments may collapse at any moment. We do not have any furniture in my house, and we eat very bad food. Perhaps some animals eat better meals."

With tens of thousands of families living below the poverty level in Wasit Province alone, and no government solution on the horizon, al-Musawi fears the humanitarian crisis will only worsen.

 

[bigron]

US Iraq Casualties Rise To 72,380


Wed, 2009-07-15 04:06.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44507



US Iraq Casualties rise to 72,380
Compiled by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

US military occupation forces in Iraq under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered three combat casualties in the week ending July 14 as the official total rose to at least 72,380. The total includes 34,891 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and more than 37,489 dead and medically evacuated (last reported April 4, 2009) from "non-hostile" causes.*

The actual total is over 100,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the more than 30,000 veterans whose injuries-mainly brain trauma from explosions - were diagnosed only after they had left Iraq.**

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by occasionally reporting only the total killed (4,327 as of July 14, 2009) but rarely mentioning the 31,431 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 36,624 (as of April 4))*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,327 reported deaths include 867 (up two) who died from those same causes, including at least 18 from faulty electrical work by KBR and 177 suicides through 2008.****

Key:

* The number of wounded is updated weekly by the Pentagon.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

** New York Times, Jan 26, 2009

*** the number of "non combat" injured is reported irregularly by the Pentagon.
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/OIF-Total.pdf

**** NYTimes, Jan 30, 2009

[bigron]

Posted on Fri, Jul. 17, 2009

Once world's bread basket, Iraq now a farming basket case


Mike Tharp | McClatchy Newspapers.
 July 17, 2009 06:13:39 PM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/72051.html


Naj Habeeb and his son, Mustafa, grow rice in a field along the Euphrates River in Iraq's Mishkab village.

MISHKHAB, Iraq — Once the cradle of agriculture for civilization, the Land Between Two Rivers — the Tigris and Euphrates — has become a basket case for its farmers.

Just ask Naji Habeeb, 85. His family has been growing rice in this village 135 miles southeast of Baghdad for generations. Thin green shoots stick out of the flat paddies, shin-deep in brown water.

The Iraqi government, he claims, still owes him half of what he's due from last year's crop. He turned it in months ago and still hasn't been paid. "Shall I suck my fingers and eat like a baby?" he shouted. "The Ministry (of Agriculture) will never know my family is hungry!"

Habeeb's family members have farmed the 538-square-foot plot next to a branch of the Euphrates River the same way for centuries. Except today they till with tractors, run water pumps with gasoline and spread artificial fertilizer. They plant seedlings by hand in June and July, irrigate and keep bugs and disease away in the summer heat, harvest by hand in October.

However, their efforts haven't helped Iraqi agriculture overcome the twin disasters of war and sanctions, which have transformed the country from one of the world's premier sources of aromatic rice and nearly 500 kinds of dates 30 years ago into a net importer of food.

Iraq now imports nearly all the food its people eat: California rice, Washington apples, Australian wheat, fruits and vegetables from its neighbors. All are staples in Iraqi groceries and on the dinner table.

The decline of the farming sector creates other problems. Agriculture accounts for half or more of Iraqi jobs and is the second-largest contributor to the gross domestic product. The prices that people and the government pay for shortfalls in what they used to grow weaken the country's economy.

For its part, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's office says he unveiled an "agricultural initiative" two years ago. It included $240 million to bolster farmers, including no-interest loans, guarantees to buy crops, research and development, and other plans. A deputy in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mahdi al Qaisi, said that his agency "will be happy to help farmers, who are our brothers. The time of fear has ended; there is no need to be afraid."

Iraq's agriculture faces the same problems as farmers everywhere: drought (in its fifth year), bugs, disease, salty water, red tape. Those problems are exacerbated, however, by location and history. Eight years of war with Iran, defeat in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, then 12 years of sanctions and, most recently, six years of war and U.S.-led occupation have left the country's agricultural sector in shambles.

Reliable statistics are elusive or suspect. Iraq is the only country, for example, in which the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service estimates crop yields by using satellite data.

The available numbers, however, suggest a stagnant and backward sector.

This year's wheat harvest is expected to be 1.3 million tons, down a million tons from last season. The prized amber rice crop grown by Habeeb and popular throughout the region for its perfumed scent will be around 100,000 tons, one-third of last year's yield.

One result is that Iraq has become one of the world's biggest importers of wheat, around 3.5 million tons. Barley to feed livestock — sheep, goats and cattle — also is shipped in from other countries. The higher cost of raising livestock means that more will have to be culled.

Another result: Iraqi consumers pay more for homegrown produce than they do for some imports.

Zaineb Kemal, a mother of four in Mosul, said that Iraqi produce had become scarce and expensive. That's why "so many people prefer to buy imported goods," she said, adding that she likes Iranian watermelons, Syrian cucumbers and Egyptian oranges.

Anti-globalization groups praise the fact that Iraqi farmers reuse their own seeds season after season. That doesn't lead to robust crops, however, and farmers routinely spread twice as much seed as they ordinarily would need to ensure the reduced yields.

As in any country, agriculture is political. Unlike most nations, however, the present Iraqi government doesn't protect — let alone subsidize — many of its farmers, according to Western experts, the rice farmers in Mishkhab and consumers.

"Most farmers have been abandoned by the state," said Qasim Muhaideen, 43, who works in Mosul's central market. "How can our farmers compete in price and availability?"

Geopolitics also influences what happens to Iraq's farmers.

Turkey and Syria have built dams on the Euphrates within their borders, and they turn the spigot off and on to Iraq.

"The shortage is very effective," Awn Theyab, the director general of Iraq's National Center for Water Resources, said after Turkey reduced the flow after one week. "If it continues, we won't have enough water for the first round of the winter season, because our reservoirs are empty."

A few bright spots have sprouted. Aquaculture is emerging slowly as a food source, and 100,000 carp fingerlings were released to reservoirs in April. They'll grow to only one-fourth the size of the 25-pound monsters pulled from the Tigris, but the supply is more stable.

There's also been a boom in "hoop houses," plastic greenhouses for tomatoes using drip irrigation, not the usual field flooding.

Multinational provincial reconstruction teams report growing interest in better farming practices. Beekeepers, poultry producers and growers who want to learn modern techniques have started attending workshops. During the years of sectarian and tribal violence, they were afraid to be seen with Americans. Just this week, 175 Iraqis signed up for a soil salinity seminar.

Habeeb and his partner, Abdul Abbas Muhair, 67, have never met a foreign agricultural adviser, however.

Sitting barefoot on a carpet runner in a tiled room next to their paddies, Habeeb and Muhair swapped gripes about the government. Poor or zero planning. Delayed or incomplete payments. Baksheesh — bribes — needed for the best seeds. Weak fertilizer. Weaker pesticide. Power to run water pumps for only six hours a day, so they must buy gasoline for generators.

Even worse than their litany, they said, is their loss of pride. In their fathers' day, the aromatic rice they grew was enjoyed in Egypt, Lebanon — throughout the Middle East. Now it's all sold to the government.

A rooster crowed outside as little boys in the 15-member clan slid closer and listened to their elders.

"I feel sad not to export our rice anymore," Muhair said. "It was enough for your life."

(Tharp is the executive editor of the Merced (Calif.) Star-Sun. McClatchy special correspondents Laith Hammoudi and Sahar Issa contributed to this article from Baghdad.)

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Shiite pilgrimage poses major challenge for Iraqi military:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/71986.html

In Baghdad, the poor have no choice but to beg:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/71817.html

Read what McClatchy's Iraqi staff has to say at Inside Iraq.:
http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq/

McClatchy Newspapers 2009

[bigron]

A Massacred Generation.


by Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56168&hd=&size=1&l=e

                                                   
 

July 20, 2009

I am feeling excessively depressed tonight. Behind this feeling of "depression" lies the two familiar monsters - sadness and rage.

Was watching T.V. Two programs, to be precise.

One was aired on Al-Arabiya and originally produced by ARTE in 2008, called Oil for Food. It dealt with the sanction years and the billions of dollars of commissions that the civilized West made out of this program, a program institutionalized by the United Nations. Memories of the sanction years came back, filled with despair, horror and pain and I can tell you that they were golden years compared to today's "liberated" Iraq.

This program re-confirmed to me that the West and in particular England and the U.S. are nations of criminals - a people with no conscience, no ethics, no morality.

I felt the all too familiar "depression" creep in again, all too ready to take over, as it had done so many times before...

By the time this program was over, my morale was in the pits. The plundering, theft, pillaging of Iraq is something I will never get used to. The deliberate massacre of this country, is something I will never get used to...and something I will never accept. The injustice is so monumental that to accept it, is to accept the essence of Evil itself. And this is something I can never bring myself to.

Against this background and before the second program was aired. I saw a piece of news which was very symbolic. Zalman Khalil Zad, the ex. U.S Ambassador to Iraq, was in Erbil, inaugurated the first " independent Kurdish" oil refinery with Barazani, the zionist kurdish mafioso. This was followed by a Khalil Zad's speech, congratulating the kurdish regional authorities and urging them to open the Iraqi markets for more "investments" of the same kind, in order " to develop the Iraqi infrastructure, so all the Iraqi people can prosper..."

I need to remind the readers, that a whole bunch of despicable leftists, with particular reference to Arab leftists, so called anti-zionists, ardent supporters of the "Palestinian" cause were the first supporters for an "independent" kurdistan.
This I will never ever forget. Blogosphere is full of these political whores. And you will find them nesting on the "anti-zionist" blogs. But this is another chapter altogether...the darkest chapter in the history of the despicable Left and its mass of ignorant following sheep. A revolting, disgusting bunch. Worse than your average zionist, a hundred times worse.

The second program called "Rights" or Huquq, aired on Al-Sharqiya Iraqi sat.T.V, really did me in. The one presenting the program is a bit of an idiot. I really don't know why they brought this woman in. She is of North African origins, I could tell from her accent and she knows f**k all about the subject matter. The subject matter was - Iraqi children and the (violation) of their Rights.

The program had invited three guests, only one of which made any sense. An Iraqi child psychologist based in Amman, Dr. Rakan Ibrahim. A UNICEF representative, an Iraqi female by the name of Bann Al Day'e - your typical UN bureaucrat, there to defend the incompetence of her agency. And a sectarian shiite, occupation, puppet government apologist MP, an Iraqi woman by the name of Samira Mussawi in charge of the "League for the protection of the Iraq Family, Child and Women."(hahahaha)

How do I know she's sectarian and a puppet apologist? Easy, she blamed all the problems of Iraq's childhood on the previous regime and only mentioned in the most brief of ways - that maybe things got a little worse since 2003...

There was also a short filmed reportage - the pictures, oh God the pictures...
Thousands, literally thousands of children begging in the streets aged between 5 and 15...

Hundreds in prisons aged between 10 and 17. Some were showing the signs of torture on their ever so frail bodies, confirming what I have been saying all along, that they were not only tortured but also regularly raped as well, in those prisons.

Thousands aged between the age of 5 and 15 engaged in hard labour.

Thousands with no shelter and no families, drinking water from the river...

One boy about 13, handicapped, his parents were killed by a bomb and his home destroyed to rubbles, was crawling in the garbage dumps - and he said he had 7 sisters to feed...

According to the UNICEF data which is incomplete because the most neglected childhood in the world and by the U.N. -- that same despicable, disgusting U.N who put the sanctions in place, has TOTALLY ignored till this very day - the very serious and grave plight of Iraqi children; their misery, their lack of primary health care, their lack of schooling, their total pauperization, their orphaned status, their severe mental/psychological trauma due to the continuous violence they are being made witness to since 2003 - since their "liberation".

According to this data, HALF of the Iraqi population is below the age of 18.
11% of Iraqi children have dropped out of school and are engaged in HARD CHILD LABOUR to support their mothers and siblings. Or just to fend for themselves, if totally orphaned.

One child not older than 7, said he worked for 10 hours a day, carrying heavy loads for 5'000 dinars -- less than 3 dollars, just enough to bring bread for his family. Heavy loads, too heavy for their small, weak bodies.

The Iraqi government in the 80's had signed the legal protocols for the protection of children as per the Geneva convention.

Today the plight of a massacred childhood, of a massacred generation is falling on deaf ears. The puppet government is not doing anything to remedy the situation. According to this MP Mussawi, she is proposing laws that already exist, but the conflicts of interests between the various ministries, each ruled by a shiite sectarian party - like the ministry of education and health, for example, make it impossible to have any coordinated effort at the governmental level to stop the Iraqi children's catastrophe from unfolding further...

This is truly harrowing.

A whole, gravely deformed -- physically, psychologically, morally, traumatized generation is springing up and NO ONE is doing anything. NO ONE. And no one is stopping the damage, no one is stopping this silent bleeding of the Iraqi children's soul...

And as I have repeated it over and over again, the program re-affirmed what I have always written - namely that; Iraqi children specially in the most hard hit areas - Baghdad, and the Anbar - are being trafficked, sold to pedophile sex rings, and also kidnapped for organs stealing. In other words they are kidnapped so their organs are sold - traffic of organs. Oh God, Oh God.

When the UNICEF rep was asked why is her agency not more pro-active. She simply said the "challenges are so overwhelming..."

The idiotic presenter asked the child psychologist what these kids can do for leisure - he nearly slapped her with his reply.

He said : "what toys and what leisure?. These children saw the dead corpses of their parents. These kids are witnessing an ongoing violence that has ripped them apart. Stop the violence first, stop the damage. Feed them. Give them shelter. Build trauma centers, let us try to heal them first, then ask me about leisure and toys..."

By the time the program was over, I felt paralyzed. So numbed out, as if I had been battered by a thousand rods...

I went to the bathroom and opened the water taps - I did not want anyone to hear me. I shouted - Why God, why do you let this happen to these innocent children. They are the first victims of this Occupation. Why

Then I remembered a line I had read in one of Farid Esack's books in which he was taken over by doubt and asked that same question - where are you God ? when witnessing the starving, street children of South Africa under apartheid.

And he said to the effect, God said to me - I am that child screaming and crying in your face - but you hear me not.

This is not Brazil, these Iraqi kids are not a product of some accumulated unadressed, poverty. These Iraqi kids, in the thousands, are a direct product of YOUR Occupation.

These kids did not work as child labourers before 2003, they did not beg in streets, they did not drop out of school, they had homes and they had a mother and a father...

You put them in this predicament.

You caused their anguish, you massacred their childhoods, you killed their families, you destroyed their homes, you made them drop out of school, you made them take the streets as beggars, you prevented them from basic health care, you forced them into hard labour, into trafficking, into sex slavery... you traumatized them for life, you destroyed their future, you gave birth to a generation of potential monsters... the new generation of "liberated" Iraq.

There are thousands of Iraqi kids silently screaming and crying in your faces and you hear them not.

And you could not care less.

You, you, you -- you are criminals.


P.S: You can voice your indignation, if you have any, by sending a mail to rights@alsharqiya.com.

Painting : Iraqi female artist, Betool Fekaiki.

 

[bigron]

Iraqi Refugees: Women’s Rights and Security Critical to Returns

by Refugees International

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56247&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

Iraqi refugees living in Syria (Flickr: James Gordon)



"Refugees International" - July 21, 2009

The Iraqi refugee crisis is far from over and recent violence is creating further displacement. Iraqi women will resist returning home, even if conditions improve in Iraq, if there is no focus on securing their rights as women and assuring their personal security and their families’ well being.  Reducing support to displaced families could force returns to insecure areas without adequate services and trigger additional instability in Iraq. Budget cuts will hit women the hardest.  The U.S. and other donor governments should avoid shifting funds into returns programs without fully funding programs for the displaced.

Women’s rights and the reluctance to return

Very few displaced people in northern Iraq and Syria are willing to return in the foreseeable future.  81,000 internally displaced Iraqis returned as of May 2009, but these returns were often not sustainable. Refugees International interviewed families in northern Iraq who had returned to their home areas, but had been displaced again.  Only 900 of the 208,030 refugees registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Syria signed up for voluntary return this year. UNHCR in Damascus currently registers around 2,000 new Iraqi refugees every month. It is clear that large-scale returns are not going to happen in the near future given the current uncertainties in Iraq.

Not one woman interviewed by RI indicated her intention to return. Some women said they won’t return because they are members of targeted minority groups, or because of injuries they suffered. Many widows told RI that they fear returning to homes where their husbands were killed, and where they now have no means of economic survival. Some fear rising conservatism would restrict their ability to participate in civic and professional life. Women seeking to resume their former roles and lifestyles in high profile professions, such as journalists or doctors, believe current circumstances in Iraq put them at risk. Others feared they were at risk of so-called "honor killings" by family members because they refused marriages, had divorced, or were accused of prostitution.

RI learned of situations where men decided to return but their wives refused. UNHCR protection workers reported that this is often because the women did not tell their husbands about sexual abuse during kidnappings or when their husbands were missing. Others feared kidnappings or murders of surviving children, particularly their sons. A displaced woman living in a tent in very poor conditions in northern Iraq told RI, "This tent is more comfortable than a palace in Baghdad; my family is safe here."

Women’s vulnerability and financial and legal insecurity

In both the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Syria, extreme financial pressures on displaced families are resulting in increased reports of forced early marriages, "temporary marriages" (muta), prostitution, and trafficking of women and girls.  The U.S. should fund at least 50% of the UN’s regional appeal for Iraq to provide assistance and services that reduce the vulnerability of displaced women.

In Syria, refugees cannot legally work, and risk deportation if discovered. Most refugees who arrived with resources have now exhausted them during their years of exile. Many men are unemployed and frustrated, their families forced into exploitative illegal work conditions and poorer housing given the rising cost of living. Continually having to seek extensions of residence permits, which may not be granted, adds to the stress on families.  Increasing domestic violence is one result. Community center workers said more women are reporting domestic violence, and more women come into the centers covered in bruises.

Refugee women are deterred from seeking police protection because of their uncertain legal status and fears of deportation. RI learned of an Iraqi woman working as a singer in a restaurant who was attacked by three men and raped. When she reported the crime to the police and asked for assistance, she was arrested, detained for six days, and threatened with deportation for working illegally. UNHCR finally obtained her release, but her assailants were never arrested.

Financial support to prevent destitution and abuse

Much of the abuse and exploitation of women reported to RI was linked to desperate economic problems, which could be reduced by greater financial support to families at risk.  Female employment levels are low - only 18% in Iraq. Many women who had jobs lost them when they had to flee. Those who depended on the incomes of men who have been killed, gone missing or become disabled have few skills or opportunities to earn money and now ask for training to build their skills.

In the KRG, RI met with displaced women whose only means of economic survival was begging; others depended on charity. Few women interviewed by RI in the KRG had managed to successfully navigate the complex bureaucracy involved in claiming their widow’s pension, obtaining their internally displaced person’s (IDP) stipend, or in transferring their Public Distribution System (PDS) card to give them monthly access to food. Nor have they been able to obtain the necessary documents needed to reclaim property or compensation for its destruction in Iraq. People who had returned and been displaced again told RI that they had not received the government return allowance.

While most internally displaced people interviewed commended the KRG for its hospitality and security, very few displaced people had received their IDP stipend. The KRG Directorate of Migration and Displacement said they received insufficient funds from the Government of Iraq to cover this. Fixing Iraq’s safety net for the survivors of violence and conflict should be a priority.

The Government of Iraq’s announcements of its intention to "close the IDP file" by the end of 2009 have fueled anxiety that already inadequate levels of assistance would disappear. According to the UN World Food Program (WFP), female-headed households are the most food insecure group in Iraq. UNHCR reports that only about 10% of the internally displaced in KRG have managed to transfer their PDS card to their new temporary residence. Some women lost access to PDS due to non-registration of divorces or marriage. To prevent hunger and illness, WFP is seeking $90 million to continue distribution of emergency half-rations to destitute IDP families not receiving PDS.

In Syria, UNHCR is currently providing needs-based cash assistance ($113 per month plus $10 for additional family members to a maximum of $200) via bank cards to only 11,500 of the most vulnerable registered families, while recognizing that at least 18,000 families need such assistance. Increased rents and rising prices mean the stipend only covers part of the rent. Since half of its 2009 budget is unfunded, UNHCR fears having to cut rather than expand this program.

By necessity UNHCR limits cash assistance to certain vulnerable people (such as large families, female-headed households, elderly or disabled). The current criteria need revision, however. As soon as a family’s able-bodied son turns 18, the family usually loses its assistance, even though the son cannot work legally. This type of provision forces people into illegal --- and at times dangerous and exploitative --- work conditions. RI was told that wages of less than $50 for 70 hours of work were typical. UNHCR prioritizes aid to female-headed households, but this has had some perverse effects. For financial survival, some couples have divorced, creating new protection problems for the women. RI met women forced to undertake dangerous journeys to Iraq for divorce documentation needed to qualify for cash assistance.

WFP provides food bi-monthly to almost all registered Iraqi refugees and UNHCR adds commodities. Most refugees interviewed would prefer cash to be able to choose the quality and quantities of food; some told RI that they sold their rations for as little as $5 to $6. A Joint UN Assessment Mission is being conducted to re-assess and hopefully re-design the program. RI is concerned that the 5,000 recognized non-Iraqi refugees in Syria do not receive the same levels of assistance.

Violence against women

In northern Iraq, the KRG has taken some welcome steps to respond to the disturbingly high levels of reported gender-based violence (GBV), particularly so-called "honor killings," burnings and other attacks on women, often disguised as accidents or suicides. Recent higher GBV statistics in KRG may indicate a greater willingness to report such crimes, but further visible government support for women’s rights is sorely needed throughout Iraq.

The KRG, unlike the Government of Iraq, has suspended laws providing for "mitigating circumstances" to reduce the punishments for so-called "honor" crimes and has increased the penalties. Its Prime Minister set up a Cabinet-level Committee on Violence against Women and set up and staffed in each KRG governorate a "Directorate to Follow up Violence against Women."  The offices conduct outreach and public education and investigate cases to turn over to the prosecutor. To protect women at risk of serious violence, the KRG and nongovernmental organizations operate small residential shelters. However, staff has little training or experience on security, confidentiality, or the counseling skills needed to assist clients. RI learned of recent incidents of women being trafficked from shelters.

The KRG could enhance these institutions’ effectiveness and credibility by appointing experienced women to senior leadership posts in the Cabinet Committee and the Directorates, by regulating the shelters, and by ensuring shelter staff receive training and oversight. Donors should provide technical assistance through deploying specialists in investigations, witness protection, counseling, and helping to create standard operating procedures for temporary shelters. Donors should increase support to local NGOs experienced in GBV prevention and response services.  Help is also needed in ensuring the wider distribution of public education materials in both Kurdish and Arabic, since higher levels of domestic violence are reported in the displaced population, which has not benefitted from any government outreach.

The U.S., particularly the State Department and the Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, and the UN should urge the Government of Iraq to reform its laws on violence against women, particularly the sections of the 1969 Iraqi Penal Code and the Revolutionary Command Council orders that provide reduced or no punishments for violence against women. This would send a message that Iraq is now taking these issues seriously. Public education measures on the rights of women should be undertaken with the involvement of religious leaders. Government services to prevent, investigate and respond to violence against women must be improved to ensure that those responsible for such crimes are brought to justice and receive penalties that match the severity of the crime.

Access to physical and mental health services

Doctors confirmed that many Iraqis have high levels of chronic diseases, complicated by the psycho-social stresses of war and displacement.  The KRG has insufficient public medical care for internally displaced people who have experienced trauma.  The national government is not distributing medical resources, including medicines, according to current demographics in the region. Displaced women are disproportionately affected since gynecological, preventive and mental health services are particularly weak. The UN Population Fund’s (UNFPA) current focus is not on internally displaced people.

The Government of Iraq and humanitarian organizations are encouraging greater use of local Public Health Centers (PHCs), but doctors and patients complained in particular that PHCs have unhygienic conditions and lack medicines, well-trained staff and privacy for women giving birth. Post-rape kits and HIV tests are unavailable in most KRG hospitals and PHCs. The displaced, like many Iraqis, prefer specialized care from private physicians or hospitals. The UN and donors should increase efforts to make PHCs more sensitive to women’s physical and mental health needs.

In the KRG and Syria increased mental health services are needed to respond to the serious traumas that women and children suffered in Iraq, often complicated by the uncertainties of displacement and family separations. Psychiatric or psychological services are needed for some; for others, attending a rehabilitation/community center that provides skills training and self-reliance programs can help overcome social isolation, provide psychosocial support, and create opportunities for greater independence. Traditionally women from more conservative areas of Iraq have lived lives centered on their homes; many were illiterate. When their communities were still intact, they interacted with extended families and friends. In displacement, they are socially isolated. Some never go out of their homes; some know no neighbors or friends. Outreach programs, particularly those staffed by displaced Iraqis, must be an essential component of effective service provision for urban IDPs and refugees.

RI urges the UN and donors to increase support for legal assistance centers and outreach services to reach women to enable them to deal with pressing health, legal and social issues. In the KRG, UNHCR is developing NGO-staffed Protection and Assistance Centers with GBV programs.  These programs help women overcome their isolation and encourage the formation of self-help groups, while providing legal assistance and information on available services. But such services are overstretched, reaching only a small percentage of those who need them, and the UN’s security rules continue to hamper UNHCR’s ability to coordinate and lead the protection sector.

In Syria, donors are supporting innovative new rehabilitation/counseling community centers, staffed by Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers with the support of various international NGOs. These programs help some of the most vulnerable Iraqis and their Syrian neighbors to integrate socially, overcome fears, and deal with pressing family problems. They can access education and skills development, and experience safe structured recreation, particularly for at risk children and adults.  One Iraqi woman told RI, "In Iraq our children saw dead bodies on the way to school…my son was kidnapped and it greatly affected my daughters…I keep them at home with me, but they need help…that’s why I come to the center."

The Centers located in refugee neighborhoods provide free services, including referrals for those needing more intensive psychological or medical services. Many refugees are waiting for underfunded community center and rehabilitation services, including  UNFPA’s proposed GBV rehabilitation center. An Iraqi refugee woman volunteer teaching English at a community center told RI, "It was like I was in jail before – I had nothing to do, nowhere to go. Now I feel useful."

Education for displaced children

In the KRG, Arabic-language schools were already overcrowded before large numbers of Arabic-speaking internally displaced people arrived. More Arabic-language classrooms and textbooks are needed, as well as Kurdish language instruction. Many families sacrifice significant resources to transport and equip their children to attend school. But many IDP families are unable to afford the transportation costs to an Arabic-language school. Some internally displaced attend Kurdish-language schools, but without Kurdish language support, many failed or became discouraged and dropped out. Some of the displaced are forced to pick one child to educate and expect the others to work to support the family.

Syria generously opened its public schools and health care to all Iraqis. In 2008, the Ministry of Education reported Iraqi primary and secondary school registration dropped from 50,000 to 35,000. While a few returned to Iraq, many families reported needing children to leave school to work. Others blamed falling enrollment on overcrowding, the different Syrian curriculum, lost years of education, high incidental costs, no documentation for proper student placement, and students’ discomfort with more prosperous classmates.

The UN and donors are funding some informal education programs and vocational training for youths who dropped out. Parents urged that these programs be expanded. Families noted difficulties convincing children to complete free secondary education since they could not go on to college given the fees required. UNHCR has a small college scholarship program, but its future is uncertain.

Parents and NGOs agreed that more remedial classes were needed both in the KRG and Syria for children to catch up for years of lost schooling while helping women become literate. Some feared Iraq would otherwise lose a generation of potential leaders.

Information on resettlement opportunities

UNHCR has identified and referred 70,000 vulnerable refugees needing resettlement. To date, 25,000 have been resettled. RI urges countries to continue to resettle the most vulnerable, but recommends that persons facing security threats be moved immediately, and not left in a queue. With limited places, recipient countries and the UN should provide better information about resettlement requirements and program operations, particularly outside the major cities.

Melanie Teff and Dawn Calabia assessed the situation for Iraqi women in northern Iraq and Syria in June 2009.

 

[bigron]

Drought takes toll on Iraq revival efforts

By Missy Ryan
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56360&hd=&size=1&l=e



July 25, 2009

YUSUFIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - What was known as history's fertile crescent, where lush farmland and abundant water gave rise to civilization, is today a dusty desert where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers crawl sluggishly toward the sea.

Vast tracts of Iraqi farmland are cracked and barren, precious marshes have dried up and sandstorms blot out the sun.

Even "Saddam River," the flagship drainage system Saddam Hussein launched in the 1980s to restore Iraq to its ancient agriculture glory, has turned into a sickly green stream flowing far below its high-water mark.

Such are the symptoms of a worsening water shortage that threatens to undermine Iraq's efforts to rebuild its economy after six years of war unleashed by the 2003 invasion.

Water is such a precious commodity in the arid Middle East that many experts predict water wars in the future if a sustainable solution is not found.

Tensions intensified earlier in the month when Turkey announced that it would resume work on its controversial plan to build a hydroelectric dam on the Tigris in its southeast.

Citing cultural and environmental standards, European backers have pulled support for the Ilisu dam project, a temporary victory for Baghdad, but Ankara is determined to push ahead as it seeks to wean itself off energy imports.

"This is not a new crisis for Iraq, but this time it's more serious than ever before," said Amro Hashim, an economic expert at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University.

Iraqi politicians are quick to blame upstream neighbors Turkey, Iran and Syria for dams and increased usage, but experts say Iraq's problems are also rooted in an exploding population, inefficient irrigation and few incentives to conserve water.

"It's everything going on at once. It's the urbanization, it's the climate change, short-term variability in climate, increased demand for food," said David Molden, deputy head of the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka.

"Iraq is one place, but it's not alone in the world ... Yes you can always blame neighbors or climate change but ultimately we've got to change the way water is managed," he said.

Iraq is now in the second year of a major drought, and last year's use of reserves has made for the worst water shortage in a decade, U.S. officials in Baghdad say.

TROUBLED FARMERS

Drought may bring one of the worst wheat crops in a decade, as low as 1.35 million tonnes or around half a normal crop, a dramatic reversal for a nation that was once a regional grains supplier but which now ranks among top world wheat importers.

It's not just a lack of water that has made Iraqi agriculture so anemic, says Salah Faisal, a farmer bracing himself for reduced harvest on his farm south of Baghdad.

"In the 1980s it was war with Iran, in the 90s it was Kuwait and now it's the Americans. There are 5-6 million martyrs and 70 percent of the people in the countryside have fled. What do you expect?" he asked, squinting beneath the scorching summer sun.

Trouble for Iraq's farm sector, the largest employer but dwarfed by oil in economic output, equals trouble for Iraq.

Dependence on food imports, depopulation of the countryside and a fear that idle youth may be recruited as insurgents are factors behind a special initiative launched by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to revive the moribund farm industry.

Yet results will be slow as officials nudge farmers to abandon practices such as flood irrigation, which over time has boosted soil salinity and helped make farmland less fertile.

In the absence of proper drainage, Iraqi waterways are dangerously salty. The salinity level of water flowing into Iraq is 400 parts per million (ppm). When it reaches the Gulf, that has risen to 2,000 ppm, the Agriculture Ministry says.

That compares to around 1,000 ppm in the United States' Colorado river at its outfall, Molden said. "Most crops, except the most salt tolerant crops, will drop in productivity from their potential when irrigated with this water."

In Baghdad, mud banks sprouting fields of reeds now rise out of the slow-moving Tigris, a far cry from 20 years ago when schoolchildren took a swim in its swift currents at their peril.

Chronic shortages threaten drinking water supplies and sanitation and exacerbate public health problems.

Complaining of government inaction, lawmakers voted recently to block any deals with Iran, Syria or Turkey that do not grant Iraq a greater share of water. It was a largely symbolic move, but one that spoke of deep political disaffection.

"The government doesn't have political will," said Jamal al-Bateekh, a member of parliament's water committee. "It needs to leverage its ties with the United States to pressure Turkey."

Attempts to force the government's hand could undermine Maliki's efforts to improve fragile relations with Turkey, a key trading partner which has often been at odds with Baghdad over Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

There are growing complaints from Iraqi officials like Oun Thiab Abdullah, Iraq's water resources director, who doubts Turkish promises to guarantee a minimum of 400 cubic meters of water a second at the point where the Euphrates leaves Turkey and enters Syria before crossing into Iraq.

Abdullah said the river's water flow at that entry point had dropped in early July as low as 289 cubic meters a second.

"We are giving 515 cubic meters to Syria per second on average. This figure is consistent with our obligations," Taner Yildiz, Turkey's energy minister, said last week.

SALINITY

In a bid to reverse soil salinity and improve farm yields, the United States has spent at least $130 million to repair and extend the farmland drainage canal made famous under Saddam.

It rehabilitated a drainage pump station in southern Iraq, the Middle East's largest, that will send runoff farm water out to sea and, if managed properly, over time leach salt from soil.

Much more must be done to promote conservation in a country where farmers do not pay for water and many people in the capital go years without getting a single water bill.

A U.S. official in Baghdad, who requested anonymity, said the government must also embrace conservation as a priority.

"Should they start a policy of some of a market-oriented water management system where they charge for water? Probably, but it's not politically acceptable," the official said.

Improved methods such as drip irrigation are costly and require equipment and training most farmers don't now have.

"If we plant it, it dies off because there's not enough water and too much salt," said Abdul al-Salam Haider, who used to grow apricots, oranges and other fruit on his farm in southern Iraq. Now he doesn't even try.

"Iraq, because of its environment, is seeing these problems now, but a lot of other places on earth will see them in the future," Molden said. That is why, he said, "we've got to take a stand to figure it out in places like Iraq."

For an interactive factbox on water, please click on the link: ">here

(Additional reporting by Mohanad Mohammed, Aseel Kami and Khalid al-Ansary in Baghdad, Aref Mohammed in Basra and Selcuk Gokoluk in Ankara)

(Editing by Megan Goldin)




 

[bigron]

Iraqi Displaced Return to Nothing


By Afif Sarhan, IOL Correspondent

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56477&hd=&size=1&l=e

July 29, 2009


BAGHDAD — For three long years, Mohammad Zoba impatiently awaited his return to his home in Fallujah city to pick up the shattered pieces of his life and start over.

"We have returned two weeks ago and have found our home totally destroyed, with only few walls standing," he told IslamOnline.net.

"We were forced to camp inside our home, with open ceilings and no electricity," he added.

"I found myself displaced inside my own home."

Zoba could not get back his job to provide for his family.

"My old boss said he couldn’t give me my job back because someone else has already been hired."

Millions of Iraqis have been displaced internally since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country because of the war, violence and sectarian strife.

According to the Switzerland-based International Organization for Migration (IOM), about 1.6 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) remain in Iraq.

Some two million are believed to have fled the country to escape the violence.

While many are still too scared to return, the government argues that with better security many of the displaced people can return to their lives.

Hundreds like Zoba were motivated to return, but only to find their homes ruined and jobs unavailable.

Salman Abdel-Raoof, a resident of a village north of Baqubah, is terrorized by a militant group.

"If fighters crossed into my land, I don’t know what to do," he told IOL.

"If I prohibit them, they would kill me and if I tell the Iraqi army I might be considered an al-Qaeda member."

Abandoned

Many of the displaced complain of being abandoned by the government that encouraged them to return.

"No food, no compensations for our destroyed home, no transport for our children to school, no hope for a better a life," fumes Abdel-Raoof, 43.

Some displaced families who have recently returned to their homes in places like Diyalah and Baghdad have decided to form associations to look after their rights.

"We pay constant visits to government offices looking for compensations and always get the same excuses," Omar Abdel-Lattif, president of one of the groups, told IOL.

"For this reason, we chose to organize in small groups and choose one person who, with support from a volunteer lawyer, runs after these compensations, a decision that have already brought success to some families."

Abdel-Lattif, who lost his house during the invasion, said displaced people have no resort but to seek a law that can compensate them for their sufferings.

"If the government has enough money to pay for the huge politician salaries, then they also have to pay for our compensations."

Government officials, however, say that progress is going on, even if in slow pace.

They argue that hospitals and schools that were closed or destroyed during the war have reopened.

"It is true that there are a lot to be done and some areas are still weak in health and education assistance," admits Hassan Abdullah Jalil, a press officer at Diyalah governorate.

"But on the other hand, the security improvement is allowing us to address such issues and soon all families will have their rights back and basic services stabilized."

Back to Camps

Aid workers, on the other hand, are struggling to ease the lives of abandoned returnees.

"It is a sad situation," Wassim al-Dulaimi, an aid worker in Baghdad, told IOL.

"Hundreds of homes are still waiting for repair, others to be rebuilt."

He noted that families, afraid that their homes might be taken over, are coming back knowing that they would hardly find a wall standing.

Dulaimi, who is working as volunteer for two NGOs, said this has left aid groups between a rock and a hard place.

"When they leave the camps, they become isolated groups. We can hardly keep giving them the same support we do in displacement camps.

"It is a delicate situation and that's why we try to convince them to return after they have gone and studied their situation."

The aid worker regrets that few of the displaced families would be accepted back at camps.

"Automatically their places are filled with other families."





 

[bigron]

Iraq in throes of environmental catastrophe, experts say

By Liz Sly
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56515&hd=&size=1&l=e

                                                     

Karim Kadim / Associated Press
Iraqis cover their faces during one of Baghdad’s increasingly frequent dust storms. Officials say decades of war and mismanagement, compounded by two years of drought, are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.



Now-frequent dust storms are just one sign of the man-made damage that has taken the country from Middle East breadbasket to dust bowl, they say.

July 30, 2009

Reporting from Baghdad -- You wake up in the morning to find your nostrils clogged. Houses and trees have vanished beneath a choking brown smog. A hot wind blasts fine particles through doors and windows, coating everything in sight and imparting an eerie orange glow.

Dust storms are a routine experience in Iraq, but lately they've become a whole lot more common.

"Now it seems we have dust storms nearly every day," said Raed Hussein, 31, an antiques dealer who had to rush his 5-year-old son to a hospital during a recent squall because the boy couldn't breathe. "We suffer from lack of electricity, we suffer from explosions, and now we are suffering even more because of this terrible dust.

"It must be a punishment from God," he added, offering a view widely held among Iraqis seeking to explain their apocalyptic weather of late. "I think God is angry with the deeds of the Iraqi people."

The reality is probably scarier. Iraq is in the throes of what some officials are calling an environmental catastrophe, and the increased frequency of dust storms is only the most visible manifestation.

Decades of war and mismanagement, compounded by two years of drought, are wreaking havoc on Iraq's ecosystem, drying up riverbeds and marshes, turning arable land into desert, killing trees and plants, and generally transforming what was once the region's most fertile area into a wasteland.

Falling agricultural production means that Iraq, once a food exporter, will this year have to import nearly 80% of its food, spending money that is urgently needed for reconstruction projects.

"We're talking about something that's making the breadbasket of Iraq look like the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma in the early part of the 20th century," said Adam L. Silverman, a social scientist with the U.S. military who served south of Baghdad in 2008.

So fragile has the environment become that even the slightest wind whips up a pall of dust that lingers for days.

Sandstorms are a naturally occurring phenomenon across the region, but the accumulation of dust on the surface of Iraq's dried-out land has exacerbated the problem, leading to more frequent and longer-lasting storms, said Army Lt. Col. Marvin Treu, chief of the U.S. military's Staff Weather Office.

This summer and last have seen more than twice as many dusty days as the previous four, he said. And 35% of the time, dust is reducing visibility to less than three miles, the point at which it is normally considered unsafe to fly. On many of those days, visibility was zero, delaying flights, disrupting military operations and sending thousands of people to hospitals with breathing problems.

"The lack of available water is a huge issue and it's having a huge effect on Iraqi society," said Silverman, social science advisor for strategic communications with the Army's Human Terrain System, a program that links social scientists and anthropologists with combat brigades. He emphasized that he was not speaking on behalf of the military.

It's a dramatic turnaround for the country where agriculture reputedly was born thousands of years ago. Iraq's ancient name, Mesopotamia, means "Land Between the Rivers," and though about half the country traditionally has been desert, the fertile plains watered by the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers once provided food for much of the Middle East.

Now the Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90% of the land is either desert or suffering from severe desertification, and that the remaining arable land is being eroded at the rate of 5% a year, said Fadhil Faraji, director-general of the ministry's Department for Combating Desertification.

"Severe desertification is like cancer in a human being," he said. "When the land loses its vegetation cover, it's very hard to get it back. You have to deal with it meter by meter."

It's difficult to know where to begin to untangle the complex web of factors that have conspired to push Iraq to this point. But officials say human error is primarily to blame.

It hasn't been scientifically proved that tank movements in the desert have helped stir up the dust, as many Iraqi experts believe. But other factors are not in dispute.

In the quest to bolster food production, farmers have been encouraged by the government to till marginal land. When it fails, they abandon it, leaving it cleared of its natural vegetation.

Chronic electricity shortfalls also have played a role. People chop down trees for firewood, leaving more bare land, and the shortage of power has made it difficult to pump water through the irrigation channels that had sustained fertile lands far beyond the rivers. Compounding the already dire shortages, power stations have been forced to shut down for days at a time because they lack water.

Then came the regionwide drought that has dramatically depleted the amount of water available. Last year's rainfall was 80% below normal; this year only half as much rain fell as usual.

Turkey and Syria, which control the headwaters of the Euphrates, have curtailed the river's flow by half to deal with their own drought-related problems, said Awn Abdullah, head of the National Center for Water Resources Management.

Water has been diverted from the Tigris to keep the Euphrates flowing, causing problems for communities along that river. Iran, too, has been building dams on tributaries of rivers that reach into Iraq, drying out riverbeds in the east of the country.

The effects extend far beyond the immediate inconveniences of dust storms. Drinking water is scarce in many areas of the south as seawater leaches into the depleted rivers. The fabled marshes of southern Iraq, drained by Saddam Hussein and then re-flooded after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, are drying up, and the traditional Marsh Arabs who depend on them for their livelihood are being forced to leave again.

In the cities, rural migrants compete with the urban poor for scarce jobs and resources, and in desperation some turn to crime or insurgency.

And then there are the dust storms, which bring the crisis of the countryside directly into the living rooms of city dwellers. The falling dust has the consistency of talcum powder, and it finds its way into cupboards and corners as well as nostrils and lungs.

"It causes health problems, it disrupts business, it destroys machinery, not to mention the psychological effects," said Ibrahim Jawad Sherif, who is in charge of soil monitoring at the Environment Ministry. "It's a catastrophe that's affecting every aspect of Iraqi life."

Fixing the problem would require a huge injection of funds and is beyond the capacity of the Iraqi government alone, Environment Minister Narmin Othman said. The country needs international aid to revitalize agriculture and plant trees, she said, as well as help in negotiating water-sharing treaties with Turkey and Syria, which previous governments neglected to do.

Whether it can be resolved is another question, said a Western official involved with efforts to rejuvenate Iraqi agriculture, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The government has other priorities, he said, and "it's a question whether they care. . . . It needs such monstrous help, over such a long-term period. You're talking generations."

- liz.sly@latimes.com



 

[bigron]

IRAQ: Iraqi refugees face urban challenges

IRIN news
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m56690&hd=&size=1&l=e



Photo: Sarah Birke/IRIN 
Iraqi refugees at the UNHCR centre in Duma

 
DAMASCUS, 4 August 2009 (IRIN) - Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon may be missing out on vital assistance because of problems tracing them in the cities, says the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in a report, Surviving in the City.

"The report notes the challenges UNHCR faces in dealing with the refugees who settled in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, Amman in Jordan and Beirut in Lebanon."

Most of the refugees fled after 2006 when sectarian violence broke out in Iraq, and settled in towns and cities - including places not covered by the report.

"Reaching the Iraqi refugees is much more complex in large cities," said Abeer Etefa, UNHCR spokeswoman for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. "In a camp they are all within our control. We are concerned that the most vulnerable refugees are not being assisted because they cannot reach us."

The vulnerabilities cited by UNHCR include poverty, resorting to dangerous activities such as prostitution, physical and mental disabilities, and female-headed households whose main breadwinner has been killed in Iraq.

Etefa says the number of vulnerable refugees is rising. "Most of the Iraqi refugees could afford to settle in cities because they came with savings," she said. However, "those are now running out and many are struggling to survive".

Ghanea, 70, and her husband Hamid, 81, fled to Damascus from Baghdad at the end of 2008, because of Hamid's heart condition. Months later they visited the UNHCR centre in Duma, on the outskirts of Damascus, for the first time.

"We did not go earlier because the centre is far from our home," said Ghanea. "We spent the last of our money on the taxi to this centre so I don't know how we will pay our rent."

Reaching the vulnerable

"Our main approach has been to use the refugee community as they have better access to and knowledge of their fellow refugees," said Etefa.

A volunteer outreach programme in Syria trained Iraqi women to identify vulnerable people in their communities. The women go house to house, informing refugees of available support and notifying UNHCR of those needing assistance.

A similar strategy has been developed in Egypt and Lebanon.

Despite these steps, the number of refugees registered with UNHCR remains lower than the numbers estimated to reside across the MENA region.

In Syria, just over 200,000 Iraqi refugees are registered with UNHCR out of the 1.2 million estimated to live there by the World Refugee Report 2009, published by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in June.

"In part this is because of people who are hard to reach," said Etefa. "But we cannot assist everyone and we do not expect every refugee to register with us - some do not see what we offer as suitable for them."

However, some NGOs suspect the estimated numbers are inflated and the report adds that many Iraqis included in the figures were already settled in other countries, voluntarily seeking opportunities there.

Urban challenges

The urban setting poses further challenges. For refugees these include high living costs - most of their money goes on shelter, says UNHCR; travelling long distances to reach registration centres, and problems accessing health and education services.

For UNHCR, difficulties include being more closely monitored by the host states than they would be when running camps and the difficulty in keeping refugees informed and thereby managing their expectations.

New strategies have been developed to address these problems. The report praises the use of mobile phone text messages in Syria - which hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees - to notify them of food distributions, and the issuing of ATM cards to allow refugees receiving cash assistance to withdraw the money locally rather than travelling to a UNHCR point.

The agency also provides funds to local health and education facilities to increase their capacity to cover Iraqis and mobile registration centres are employed in Syria to reach refugees who are continually moving in search of lower rents.

The urban setting has positive effects too. "It allows for better integration into the community and the chance to find work in the informal sector," says Etefa.

sb/at/mw


 

[bigron]

Grim times for the elderly in Iraq

Aging Iraqis traditionally lived with relatives, but as conditions in the nation have worsened, a new phenomenon has popped up: the old folks' home.


By Ned Parker and Caesar Ahmed
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/thatseemsfair/latimes0281.html
August 6, 2009

Reporting from Baghdad — They are old men and women who have lived through the monarchy, Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led invasion and religion-fueled civil warfare.

Now, they putter about in a house on the Tigris River, passing the time on cots with pink sheets, in whitewashed rooms, with the faint smell of sweat mixing with the odor of sewage from the waters outside their windows.

The guests of the Mercy Home for the Elderly, a residence for indigent senior citizens, come from across Iraq and include Sunnis, Shiites and Christians.

Funded by prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Hussein Sadr, the two-story stone building, opened in November 2006, houses 43 men and women who have nowhere else to go.

At midday, they gather at plastic tables in the lunchroom, where they often eat a meal of lamb before retreating to a hallway to chat with one another or sit by themselves thinking about the past, when they still had families, loved ones, their health and, for some of them, their wits.

The elderly in Iraq traditionally lived with relatives, but as conditions worsened in recent years, some families abandoned their parents, a brother or sister.

Some were sent to Mercy by their kin; others were brought here by a hospital or the police after they showed up penniless on the doorstep of a mosque.

Manager Hadi Hamid Taie says his guests are mostly victims of the violence and economic hard times that followed the American-led invasion six years ago. He believes their families would never have sent them to Mercy before the war.

"This phenomenon is new," Taie says. "According to our religion, it is not permitted to abandon your parents. On the contrary, Islam requires that you take special care of them."

In 2003, the year the war began, there were two government-run homes for the aged in Baghdad.

In addition to Mercy, two private nursing homes have since opened in Baghdad and a few more in southern Iraq.

"The hard circumstances that the country faced -- the fighting and killings, the displacement -- all of these factors have left senior citizens homeless," Taie says.

At the height of the violence in 2007, Mercy had 73 residents. But as the situation has improved, some children have taken relatives back. The home has open beds, and can easily take care of those who show up at its doors. And people do continue to arrive, victims of bloodshed, poverty and instability in Iraq.

The residents are a testament to the country's suffering: an 84-year-old woman whose family was killed and whose home was bombed in Basra last year and now lies curled up in bed; a man in his 80s who lost his faculties in Saddam Hussein's prisons and now speaks gibberish as he tries to massage people's heads to show off his psychic powers.

Then there are those whose pain lies in remembering what has been taken from them and their yearning for the happier days of the past.

Najea Abdul Hussein, 72, is an emaciated woman with a look of fear and helplessness. Ten months ago, she lived with her younger sister and her family in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriya. It was then, she says, that her sister ordered her to leave, shouting, "I can't take care of you. Go to your brothers."

Najea Hussein says she headed off past alleys, palm trees and sand-colored brick homes toward the western bank of the Tigris. No longer wanted by anyone, she planned to drown herself.

As she walked, she says, she bade farewell to the city she had known -- the streets where she and her father once rode in a horse-driven cart on weekends to the Imam Kadhim shrine, with its gold dome, its Shiite pilgrims dressed in black as they entered the sacred ground. It was in Baghdad where she met her husband, an army sergeant, during the time of Abdul Karim Qassim, Iraq's first prime minister after the monarchy fell in 1958.

Najea Hussein was her husband's second wife, the one he spent all his time with, she recalls, because she was young and pretty. They lived together for 20 years before a heart attack struck him down. It was to Hurriya she returned as a widow, to live with her mother and help keep house for her five brothers. And it was here that she was abandoned all these years later.

She finally reached the Tigris, ready to throw herself in, she says. But a policeman spotted her, she says, and pulled her rail-thin body away from the bank. After a hospital stay, and no family member claiming her, she was sent to Mercy.

She points to Taie, the home's manager, a graying, balding man, and says he is like a parent to her. "I was confused and helpless and had nowhere else to go before."

Many facts are hazy to her. She cannot recall Saddam Hussein's name. She does not know if there is currently an Iraqi president or prime minister.

What exists most vividly is the pain of her family shunning her, her mother's kindness and the days after the 1958 revolution when her husband loved her, and Qassim's government awarded them a plot in what was to become New Baghdad, then countryside but soon to be transformed into a dense maze of homes.

"After . . . Qassim, things deteriorated. We had strangers come and they ruined everything," she says, her voice scratchy, as she refers to leaders of Hussein's Baath Party. She excuses herself; a headache is coming on.

Sitting in a hallway, Hassan Ghazi, 77, shakes his head. He didn't expect he would end up here either. He wears brown sunglasses and is gaunt, with his hair cut close to the scalp. He lifts the shades to reveal glazed turquoise pupils. Then he opens his mouth to show four missing front teeth and asks where he can get them replaced.

Ghazi, a government truck driver, retired in 2000. A year later, his wife died and he started losing his sight. "I thought I would live freely. I would dress up and go to the cafe and drink tea and smoke narguila [a water pipe]," he says.

But he hated coming back to his empty home. His wife, he recalls wistfully, "would make me forget my tiredness and worries."

"She made funny jokes. She laughed at me."

With the fall of Saddam Hussein, he seldom left home, hearing second-hand the stories of bodies in the streets and gunmen lurking in the alleys. He smiles warmly thinking about a simpler time when he was a boy and his father wore a feathered hat, serving in the army under the monarchy.

Once a week, he tries to capture a bit of the past by hailing a taxi and crossing the river into the maze of grimy, yellow-brick buildings in old Baghdad, with their soot-covered porticoes and balconied windows. His destination is the shambling Shabandar Cafe at the end of Mutanabi Street, famous for its outdoor book market.

"I've gone there since 1973. I never go anywhere else. It's nice and has intellectual people, lawyers, all the elite."

Ghazi takes out a black-and-white picture from his wallet. He is a young man with dark hair, a mustache and dark, clear eyes. The photo, he says, is 30 years old.

"I was very happy in this photo," he says, then glances with faltering eyes at the halls where men like himself are staring into space. They also carry pictures in their pockets of their younger and healthier selves.

Taie will call them in later for another meal. Some will lie in their rooms until then, or until the rare visit from a relative.

"We have many stories here," Taie says.


Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

[bigron]

Sabah al-Baghdadi - Iraq: Disastrous and Shocking Official Statistics


Translated and adapted from Arabic by Khalil Nakhleh
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/08/07/sabah-al-baghdadi-iraq-disastrous-and-shocking-official-statistics/


 

The following official governmental statistics, up to December 2008, show the disastrous conditions prevalent in Iraq since the American invasion and occupation of that country.

 

1.      One million widowed Iraqi women (according to Iraqi Ministry of Women Affairs).

 

2.      Four million orphaned Iraqi children (according to estimates by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning).

 

3.      Two and a half million (2,500,000) Iraqis killed (according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Forensic Medicine).

 

4.      800,000 Iraqis have disappeared in secret holding places connected with the different ruling parties (according to registered complaints at the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior).

 

5.      340,000 Iraqi prisoners, detained without charge, in U.S. army prisons, the prisons of the Iraqi government, and the prisons in the Kurdistan District (according to Iraqi, Arab, international and UN human rights organizations and agencies).  US occupying forces admit officially that the number of Iraqi detainees in their prisons is about 120,000.

 

6.      Four and a half million (4,500,000) Iraqis are refugees outside Iraq (according to statistics of those seeking passports (category C) from the General Directorate of Passports.

 

7.      Two and a half million (2,500,000) Iraqis are refugees inside Iraq (according to the Iraqi Ministry of Refugees).

 

8.      76,000 registered Iraqi cases of AIDS; this number did not exceed 114 cases before the invasion and occupation of Iraq (according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health).

 

9.      Frightening spread of the use of addictive drugs imported from Iran, among youth (according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the Center for Combating Drugs and Addictions).  I have written a series of well-researched articles about the various methods used to smuggle drugs, some of which are highly toxic, and how they are collected in different storage places in the southern districts, under the total control of some of the parties and the militias participating in the government, and how the profits from these drugs are used to buy (pay off) government officials, in order to gain their support and silence, and to finance their election campaigns.

 

10.  Three out of every four marriages end up in divorce since the invasion and occupation of Iraq (according to Iraqi Ministry of Health).

 

11.  More than 40% of the Iraqi people are under the poverty line (according to the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights).  I believe, however, that the actual percentage is much higher, and surpasses 55%.

 

12.  Decline in the level and quality of basic and tertiary education, according to statements made by officials in UNESCO, which led this organization to refuse to recognize university degrees issued by Iraqi tertiary institutions (universities and colleges).

 

13.  Tens of thousands of forged university degrees are granted to high government officials, high ranking officers, directors generals, and senior officials of political parties (according to statements and statistics from the Iraqi Honesty and Transparency Commission).

 

14.  There exist about 550 political bodies and party coalitions (according to the Iraqi Independent Public Elections Commission), and, as of today, there is no law regulating this large number of political bodies.

 

15.  There exist about 11,400 civil society organizations (according to the Iraqi ministries of the Interior, Justice and Social Welfare).  These organizations have public and secret objectives, and it is not clear what these are, and how they are financed.

 

16.  There are 126 security companies controlled by foreign secret service agencies, and registered at the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.  The declared objective of these companies is to protect foreign embassies, foreign diplomats, and visiting VIPs.  However, their hidden objectives are unknown.  In this case, what is the value of having today one million persons under arms in Iraq, distributed among the Ministries of Defense, the Interior, the various governmental security agencies, in addition to the security agencies of the various ruling parties.

 

17.  There are 43 officially registered armed militias connected to parties.

 

18.  There are 220 newspapers and media publications financed by foreign secret service agencies (according to Iraqi Journalist Union).  The specific objectives of these publications is to do brainwashing of Iraqis, to remove their thinking about the various projects aiming at fragmenting Iraq into sectarian, regional, and ethnic mini-states, and to destroy their national identity.

 

19.  There are 45 TV channels financed by foreign secret service agencies (according to statements by the Management of Nilesat and Arabsat satellite service providers).

 

20.  There are 67 radio stations financed by foreign secret service agencies (according to statements by the Iraqi Information Commission).

 

21.  There are 4 networks of digital communications, the estimated value of each is 12 billion dollars, financed in favor of party leaders.  Among which are the following companies:

·         Kork Company owned exclusively by Mas’aoud Barazani (the President of the Kurdistan District);

·         Assia Company owned exclusively by Jalal Talbani (the President of Iraq);

·         Zein Company (Kuwaiti), 50% is owned by Ahmad Jalabi and the Islamic Da’wah Party;

·         Atheer Company owned exclusively by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim.

 

22.  There are more than 11,400 official and unofficial party headquarters.  These could be the offices of fake contracting company, or an NGO, or a political group.  However, these headquarters in reality are public premises for the Iraqi government that were taken over from their legitimate owners after they were eliminated, or forced to vacate and seek refuge somewhere else.  All are paid for from the Iraqi national budget.

 

This is only the tip of the iceberg of what’s happening in “their new democratic Iraq”, since the American invasion and occupation of the country.

 

The article appeared originally in www.kanaanonline.org, no. 1973, on 30.7.2009.

 

Sabah al-Baghdadi is an independent Iraqi journalist and researcher; he may be reached at sabahalbaghdadi@maktoob.com.

 

Translated and adapted by Dr. Khalil Nakhleh:

 

Dr. Khalil Nakhleh is an independent Palestinian researcher and development consultant; he may be reached at abusama@palnet.com.

[Satyagraha]

Obama names two officials to work with Iraqi refugees
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090814/pl_afp/usiraqrefugeesobama


Iraqi women and children refugees at the Chikouk camp for the internally displaced in northwestern Baghdad's Kadhimiya district in July 2009. US President Barack Obama on Friday named two senior officials to work closely with the Baghdad government on the plight of millions of refugees from war and violence in Iraq.

Fri Aug 14, 6:51 pm ET

BELGRADE, Montana (AFP) – US President Barack Obama on Friday named two senior officials to work closely with the Baghdad government on the plight of millions of refugees from war and violence in Iraq.

Samantha Power, a senior National Security Council official, will coordinate the wider US government effort on the issue, across multiple agencies, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

Senior foreign service officer Mark Storella, who once served as number two in the US mission in Geneva, has already arrived in Baghdad to take up the job of senior coordinator for Iraqi Refugees and Displaced Persons.

"President Obama has long made clear that the United States is committed to working closely with the Iraqi government to aid Iraqis who have been displaced or are otherwise vulnerable as a result of the violence in Iraq," Gibbs said.

"Since April, the United States has made available approximately 196 million dollars in additional support for these populations for a total of 346 million dollars to date in FY 2009."

Gibbs said the appointments were made following discussions that took place during Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's visit to Washington last month.

Power was a key foreign policy advisor early in Obama's presidential primary race in 2008 but left the campaign after she referred to his erstwhile foe, now secretary of state, Hillary Clinton as a "monster."

A former Harvard academic, Power won the Pulitzer Prize for her book on the practicalities of intervention by foreign powers to stop genocide.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated in 2008 that up to two million displaced Iraqis were living in nations bordering Iraq like Jordan and Syria.

A further 2.8 million Iraqis were internally displaced, the UNHCR said.

[bigron]

Gay men attacked, executed in Iraq, rights group says


Story Highlights:

Human Rights Watch says people are targeted on the streets and interrogated

Group: Killings, kidnappings and torture of suspected homosexuals are escalating

Attacks against civilians, including homosexuals, not allowed, Iraq spokesman says


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Hundreds of gay men have been tortured and killed in Iraq in recent months, some by the nation's security forces, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

Interviews with doctors indicate hundreds of men had been killed, but the exact number was unclear because of the stigma associated with homosexuality in Iraq, the New York-based watchdog group said in its report.

"Iraq's leaders are supposed to defend all Iraqis, not abandon them to armed agents of hate," said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Turning a blind eye to torture and murder threatens the rights and life of every Iraqi."

Four victims who spoke to CNN gave accounts of the attacks, which they say have intensified in the past few months.

"In 2004, militias and unknown groups started to go after the gays ... but the peak was six months ago," said Qaisar, who uses a pseudonym for fear of reprisal. "It has become wide scale war against gays in Iraq."

Iraqi officials acknowledged that the nation's culture stigmatizes homosexuality, but said the government does not condone such attacks. Authorities are unable to provide homosexuals with special protection, said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

According to Human Rights Watch, which is urging a government crackdown, attackers target people on the streets or storm homes, where they conduct interrogations and demand names of suspected gay men. Many end up in hospitals and morgues, the organization said, basing its conclusion on reports from doctors.

Men have been threatened with "honor killings" by relatives worried that their "unmanly behavior" will ruin the family's reputation, Human Rights Watch said.

Killings, kidnappings and torture of those suspected of homosexual conduct have intensified in areas such as the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, the watchdog said.

"The Shiite people started this war and especially what happened in Sadr City," Qaisar said, adding that his sister-in-law had warned him against going to the area.

Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which is active in Sadr City, has joined in the attacks and defends its actions as a way to stop the "feminization" of Iraqi men, the report said.

"We have testimony that indicates that the nation's security forces are taking part in the attacks," Long said.

The group interviewed more than 50 people who gave accounts of abuses, beatings and stops at security checkpoints, he said.

"When the gay killings started and when they started go(ing) after them at checkpoints ... we started to change our look," said Basim, who also used a pseudonym.

"These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq's post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens," said Rasha Moumneh, Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch.

A provision from the Saddam Hussein era endorses crimes committed "with honorable motives," according to the organization.

The government spokesman said the provision was popular during the Saddam era, but is not used today. He added that there is a push to educate police about human rights.

Attacks against civilians, including homosexuals, are not allowed, al-Dabbagh said.

All AboutHuman Rights Watch • Muqtada al-Sadr
 

 
 
 
Links referenced within this article

Human Rights Watch
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/human_rights_watch
Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/muqtada_al_sadr
Human Rights Watch
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Human_Rights_Watch
Muqtada al-Sadr
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Muqtada_al_Sadr

 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/08/17/iraq.homosexual.killings/index.html