Population influx is biggest problem in south15 Jan 2007Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim-dominated southern provinces have witnessed far less violence over the past three years than their eastern and northern counterparts. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites have fled south or returned from abroad to seek refuge there, giving rise to a number of militias and making it increasingly difficult for aid agencies to cater to the needs of the displaced. “Aid workers all over the country lack security. In the south, we work in difficult conditions because of the presence of militias,” said Mayada Obeid, a spokesperson for South Peace Organization, an NGO based in Basra, some 550km south of the capital, Baghdad, and Iraq’s second biggest city. “Sectarian differences have caused the death of many aid workers because people don’t understand us when we say we’re neutral. They would rather live without assistance than receive aid from people of a different sect.”
US air strikes isolate Baqubah villagers15 Jan 2007Hundreds of people have been trying to flee the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala, close to the Iraqi-Iranian border, following a recent offensive by US and Iraqi troops in the area. Although the offensive has ended, scores of families in rural villages were said to be hiding in their houses for fear that air strikes might start again. “During the past week, US forces have been attacking rural areas near Baqubah trying to flush out insurgents. Their air strikes have killed about 14 civilians and led to the capture of dozens of insurgents. But these attacks have caused many people to suffer because of lack of assistance and difficulties in getting to health centers,” said Salah Ahmed, media officer for Diyala provincial council.
U.N. Officials Question Iraq’s Rough Justice15 Jan 2007The U.S.-backed government in Baghdad is facing harsh criticism from the international community for ignoring calls to adopt a policy of restraint with regard to carrying out death sentences against the members of Iraq’s former ruling party. Reacting to the hanging of Saddam Hussein’s two close aides Monday, senior U.N. officials and human rights organizations warned that the government must end its policy of executions, which they see as serious violation of international human rights standards. “Those responsible for serious human rights violations must be brought to justice,” said Louise Arbour, the top U.N. official for human rights. “But to be credible and durable, the fight against impunity must be based on respect for international human rights standards.”
Disease alert after sewage system collapses14 Jan 2007Residents of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, are at risk of contracting a range of waterborne diseases as the city’s sewage system has collapsed after four days of heavy rain, the country’s health ministry said on Monday. For nearly a week now, 45-year-old teacher Jassim Abdullah has been forced to buy bottled water for his family’s daily use at an expense that his meagre income barely covers. “We can’t use tap water for drinking or cooking. It’s all sewage. That is why I have put aside 100,000 Iraqi dinars [about US $75] to buy water for cooking and washing,” said Abdullah, a father of five girls, from Baghdad’s poor neighbourhood of Hurriyah.
A Tribute to Yasin14 Jan 2007A courageous and talented journalist, IWPR contributor Yasin al-Dulaimi was recently killed in a roadside bombing. Yasin, 36, died of severe head injures on December 26 after being hit by a roadside bomb in the Baghdad neighborhood Kadhimiya. He was driving home when the device, targeting a US convoy, went off. He died at the scene. He’s the second IWPR contributor to have fallen victim to the conflict. Last April, trainee journalist Kamal Anbar was killed when US and Iraqi troops raided a neighborhood in the capital.
A New Real Estate Market in Iraq: The House Swap14 Jan 2007Thousands of families have now been displaced by both Sunni and Shia insurgents. Abdul-Khaliq Zangane, a parliamentary deputy and member of the parliamentary committee on displaced and migrants, says that through November 2006, around 100,000 families had been forced from their homes. As a result, a new phenomenon has emerged: Sunni and Shia families swapping houses. Real estate agents provide lists of available property, facilitating swap arrangements. When Abdul-Fatah heard about the housing exchanges, she immediately started looking for a Sunni family displaced from the capital willing to take her house in Baquba. After many inquiries, she found a real estate agent in the Mashtal neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad with a list of uprooted Sunni families looking to swap properties. She made a deal with a family that had left the neighborhood after receiving threats from Shia militants. According to their arrangement, the two families agreed to exchange their houses until the security situation gets better, each taking their own furniture.
Violence against Syrian refugees increasing14 Jan 2007Thousands of Syrian refugees and residents in Iraq face increasing violence and lack of assistance from local NGOs, according to rights groups. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there were 686 registered Syrian refugees in Iraq at the beginning of January. Of these, 584 were Syrian Arabs, who mainly live in the Baghdad and Ninewa governorates, and 102 were Syrian Kurds, who live in the three northern governorates of Iraq – Ninewa, Dahuk and Arbil. “In addition to the Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR, we believe there are about 1,000 Syrians in the capital and 500 in different places in Iraq, especially Mosul and Kirkuk,” Saeed said. “Every Syrian in Iraq is scared because of the violence they are facing and most of them have no financial means to leave the country. Also, most of them have built their lives here or are married to Iraqis,” he said. Iraq’s Syrian Arab refugees arrived in waves between 1954 and 1993, following a succession of coup d’etats that changed the balance of power there and led to the persecution of Syrians of opposing political views.
Anbar province Iraq’s worst for violence14 Jan 2007Of Iraq’s 18 provinces, Anbar has witnessed more fighting and killing than any other since the US-led occupation of Iraq began in 2003. While US forces flushed out a number of Sunni insurgent groups there in military operations in 2004 and 2005, the insurgents have returned and escalating violence has prevented NGOs and aid agencies from reaching people who desperately need food and medical supplies. Anbar residents say that ever since former president Saddam Hussein was overthrown, they have lived in constant fear. According to counter-insurgency experts, many young insurgent recruits were trained in six towns in Anbar: al-Qaim, Haditha, Anah, Hit, Fallujah and Ramadi. As a result, these five towns have witnessed particularly heavy clashes resulting in the deaths of hundreds of local citizens and the destruction of thousands of shops, schools, houses and government buildings.
Execution of Saddam Hussein aides is a further slide into errors of the past14 Jan 2007Amnesty International today condemned the executions of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and the former head of Iraq’s revolutionary court as a brutal violation of the right to life and a further lost opportunity for Iraqis to properly hold to account those responsible for the crimes committed under Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Journalist murdered in Mosul, another found dead in Baghdad14 Jan 2007Reporters Without Borders expressed its horror at the murder of freelance journalist Khoudr Younes al-Obaidi, shot dead as he returned to his home in Mosul, northern Iraq, on 12 January 2007. The killing comes eight days after the discovery of the body in Baghdad of Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, an occasional cameraman for the Associated Press, who went missing on 30 December 2006. These two deaths bring to 141 the number of journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since the US invasion in March 2003.
Bush’s Iraq Plan: Goading Iran into War14 Jan 2007“President Bush’s address on Iraq was less about Iraq than about its eastern neighbor, Iran,” writes analyst Trita Parsi. “There was little new about the U.S.’s strategy in Iraq, but on Iran, the president spelled out a plan that appears to be aimed at goading Iran into war with the U.S. While Washington speculated whether the president would accept or reject the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations, few predicted that he would do the opposite of what James Baker and Lee Hamilton advised. Rather than withdrawing troops from Iraq, Bush ordered an augmentation of troop levels. Rather than talking to Iran and Syria, Bush virtually declared war on these states.”
We Live in Misery…11 Jan 2007I am a 38-year-old Shiite Arab. I have been displaced since 23 March 2006 when insurgents came to my home in the Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad and gave me and my family 24 hours to vacate our home. I have a wife and four children to look after but I have had no job since I was displaced. I was a mechanic and here it is impossible to get work in this area. We fled to Kerbala, southern Iraq, because it is a Shiite city.
Sick, Literally, of Fighting in Iraq11 Jan 2007Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. Newly revised Defence Department guidelines for service-members with “a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance” say they may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a “treatable” problem. Many believe President George W. Bush’s newly announced plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers to Iraq will involve the redeployment of soldiers suffering from severe trauma. Press reports indicate Bush wants to implement his “surge” by speeding up previously scheduled redeployments and extending the tours of soldiers already in the field of battle.
Bush Isolates Himself Further11 Jan 2007President George W. Bush’s decision to escalate U.S. military intervention in Iraq and issue new threats against Syria and Iran appears to have left him politically more isolated than ever. Both Democrats and Republicans expressed regret that Bush appeared to reject the central recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, particularly its call to gradually withdraw U.S. combat troops, tie future support for the Iraqi government to its efforts at healing the sectarian divide, and directly engage Iran and Syria, along with Baghdad’s other neighbours, to stabilise the country. At the same time, military analysts said the 21,500 troops Bush plans to add to the 132,000 already deployed to Iraq were unlikely to succeed in their mission to pacify Baghdad and al Anbar province.
Bush’s Sacrificial Americans11 Jan 2007“When the President announced that he had already ‘committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq,’” writes the Nation Institute’s Tom Engelhardt, “when he ‘surges’ them into Baghdad and al-Anbar Province, he is surging from Kenai, from Wasilla, from South Gate. And he is ensuring a spate of future Pentagon ‘announcements’ that will again take us to what’s left of the hamlets, villages, small towns, and out of the way smaller cities of this country, the places Americans increasingly don’t notice. When the President talks to us, as he did last night, about “a year ahead that will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve,” this is who he is mainly sacrificing.”
UNHCR upbeat about future of refugees on Jordan/Iraq border10 Jan 2007Officials from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday they were confident about the resettlement of 119 refugees from Iraq who are in Ruweished refugee camp, 50 km from the Jordanian-Iraqi border, after 49 Palestinians left the tent camp for Canada last month. “UNHCR will aggressively look for resettlement opportunities for the refugees in Ruweished and once that has been achieved the camp will be closed permanently,” said Rana Sweis, Public Information Assistant at UNHCR, Jordan. The UNHCR representative in Amman, Robert Breen, would not say which countries it was in contact with or at what stage negotiations were, but confirmed it would not “spare any effort before all refugees are resettled. We are in contact with a number of host countries to have all refugees settled. I am full of hope these people will get a decent place to move to,” said Breen.
Media Under Siege10 Jan 2007The U.S. administration continues to tout Iraq as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East, but press freedom in Iraq has plummeted since the beginning of the occupation. Repression of free speech in Iraq was extreme already under the regime of Saddam Hussein. The 2002 press freedom index of the watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq a dismal 130th. The 2006 index pushes Iraq down to 154th position in a total of 168 listed countries, though still ahead of Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, China and Iran. North Korea is at the bottom of the table. The index ranks countries by how they treat their media, looking at the number of journalists who were murdered, threatened, had to flee or were jailed by the state.
Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal9 Jan 2007Last Summer, Electronic Iraq featured an interview with Anthony Arnove, author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal. Now available on paperback, the book remains relevant to anybody trying to understand the argument for withdrawal – an argument often presented without nuance. Arnove’s argument is nuanced and direct and deserving of a wide hearing by people on all sides of the withdrawal issue.
On Iraqi Tradition and the Hussein Hanging9 Jan 2007Mowaffak al-Rubaie is Iraq’s National Security Advisor.
Al-Rubaie was a witness at the Hussein Hanging. Shortly
after the hanging, he spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and
was challenged on the conduct of witnesses and guards in
the gallows before and after Hussein was hanged. In that
interview, he seemed to say that dancing around the body
of a man just executed was “a tradition of the Iraqis.” In this eIraq op-ed, al-Rubaie clarifies his CNN comments
and answers critics of the timing and methods of Hussein’s
hanging. “In no way did I mean that dancing around dead
bodies is ‘an Iraqi tradition.’ In fact, it is neither an
Iraqi tradition, nor an Arab or Muslim one. Our religion
and traditions ban any gloating over someone’s grief, even
if we loathed that person and thought he got what he
deserved. Our Iraqi traditions in particular are against
sectarian or ethnic taunting. All the mistakes that
happened during this execution do not reflect our heritage
and religion, and they do not reflect our values in
building the new Iraq.”
Hardliner’s Hardliner Led Bush’s Iraq Review9 Jan 2007When President George W. Bush’s unveils his long-awaited new strategy on Iraq Wednesday night, he will be relying heavily on the counsel of one J.D. Crouch II, perhaps the most hard line—if most obscure—of his hawkish advisers. Over the past 15 years, the generally low-profile Crouch has taken any number of controversial positions, from advocating military action against Cuba and North Korea to blaming the 1999 Columbine High School student massacre in Colorado on “30 years of liberal social policy”. As deputy national security adviser, Crouch, who has held three posts in the Bush administration, chaired the inter-agency group charged with mapping out Bush’s new Iraq strategy, whose main feature, it is expected, will add some 20,000 new U.S. troops to the 140,000 already there in hopes of stabilizing Baghdad and rebellious al Anbar province.
I prefer to be illiterate than to die9 Jan 200710-year-old Haifa Waleed of Baghdad talks to the UN news agency IRIN about the violence in her city and how it has affected her. She explains that she has not been to school for three years: “I miss my school very much but in the classroom I used to keep looking at the door to see if someone would break in and kidnap me. My family is poor and if they take me, I might die because they cannot pay a ransom. Two weeks ago, a close friend of mine was killed while she was leaving the school with her father. A car with men wearing black crossed in front of them and the men shot them dead. It was horrible and there were many children at the school’s gate at that time. I dream of leaving Iraq but this is only a dream because my parents are too poor to do that.”
Aid agencies cannot cope with displacement, says UNHCR9 Jan 2007The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned that the scale of internal displacement in Iraq was beyond the capacity of humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR. The UNHCR added that the longer the displacement continued, the more difficult it would become as the internally displaced and their host communities in Iraq run out of resources. Between January and mid-November 2006 an estimated 425,000 Iraqis fled their homes for other areas inside the country, most after sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of an important Shiite mosque in Samara in February 2006, according to the refugee agency. At mid-year, internal displacement was estimated to be continuing at a rate of about 50,000 a month. Fatah Ahmed, a spokesperson for Iraq Aid Association said local NGOs were struggling to cope with the increased numbers of displaced people. In Baghdad alone, more than 50 families leave their homes daily. Soon we will have more people who are displaced than those who live in their own homes,” said Ahmed.
Najaf provides land for displaced9 Jan 2007Local authorities in Iraq’s southern city of Najaf, 200 km south of the capital, Baghdad, are allotting pieces of land to displaced families from outside the province as well as to some residents. According to the provincial office of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS), about 10,000 families, almost 60,000 individuals, are living in abandoned government buildings and public parks. They have been assisted by the local authorities, international NGOs and local philanthropists. The director of Najaf’s Red Crescent branch, Dhia Zowain, said only 4,200 families would receive winter material (including blankets, lanterns, pots and foodstuff) as the Red Crescent had run out of such items.
Comedians & Writers raise in San Francisco raise money for Slain Iraqi Comedian Walid Hassan8 Jan 2007Reporters Without Borders was delighted with the outcome of a benefit held in San Francisco on January 8th, 2007. “This benefit was an impressive show of solidarity on the part of Bay Area comedians and writers, a tribute to one of their own – Iraqi comedian Walid Hassan – who was murdered in Baghdad last November,” the international press freedom organization said. “Money raised will help Hassan’s relatives get through the very difficult situation they are facing because of the loss of the head of the family.” The proceeds will go to Hassan’s family through a special fund set up by Reporters Without Borders to support Iraqi journalists and their relatives.
Terrified Soldiers Terrifying People8 Jan 2007Ten-year-old Yassir aimed a plastic gun at a passing U.S. armoured patrol in Fallujah, and shouted “Bang! Bang!” Yassir did not know what was coming. “I yelled for everyone to run, because the Americans were turning back,” 12-year-old Ahmed who was with Yassir told IPS. The soldiers followed Yassir to his house and smashed almost everything in it. “They did this after beating Yassir and his uncle hard, and they spoke the nastiest words,” Ahmed said. It is not just the children, or the people of Fallujah who are frightened. “Those soldiers are terrified here,” Dr. Salim al-Dyni, a psychotherapist visiting Fallujah told IPS. Dr Dyni said he had seen professional reports of psychologically disturbed soldiers “while serving in hot areas, and Fallujah is the hottest and most terrifying for them.” Dr. Dyni said disturbed soldiers were behind the worst atrocities. “Most murders committed by U.S. soldiers resulted from the soldiers’ fears.”
Electronic Iraq