Category Archives: United Nations

Escape from Iraq

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A story I wrote appeared Mon­day in the Newark Star-Ledger, a great smaller paper that cares about for­eign news. The story dealt with the plight of the Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

Lives sus­pended by war
AMMAN, Jor­dan — Rana crosses her legs on the thread­bare car­pet in her liv­ing room in this poor Pales­tin­ian sec­tion of town and watches as her three chil­dren light a can­dle. The kids are hav­ing a pre­tend birth­day party with­out a cake or presents, but their faces are painted a mag­nif­i­cent shade of gold by the candlelight.

Across town, Hasa and his fam­ily sit in their richly-appointed apart­ment, with all the mod­ern con­ve­niences and bed­rooms for every­one. The kitchen is espe­cially bright and clean.

Rana and Hasa live in sep­a­rate worlds, but have much in common.

Both fam­i­lies are Iraqi refugees fac­ing an uncer­tain future in a for­eign coun­try. Both want to return to their shat­tered coun­try. And both agreed to be inter­viewed and pho­tographed for this story only if their real names would not be used because they fear depor­ta­tion from Jor­dan and ret­ri­bu­tion in Iraq.
Dri­ven from their homes by vio­lence and threats of death, Rana and Hasa also pro­vide rare por­traits of the refugee life fac­ing many Iraqis. The two fam­i­lies are among the 750,000 Iraqi refugees esti­mated to be liv­ing in Jor­dan, a coun­try about the size of Penn­syl­va­nia and chok­ing on the stag­ger­ing bur­den of its new pop­u­la­tion. (The Iraqis account for about 15 per­cent of the peo­ple liv­ing in Jordan.)

Rana’s fam­ily is strug­gling to fit in and faces dis­crim­i­na­tion from other Iraqis, Jor­da­ni­ans and Pales­tini­ans. Jor­da­ni­ans, Rana says, com­plain to her that “you’re not wear­ing a hijab, you’re wear­ing tight jeans, you’re leav­ing the house.” Pales­tini­ans, mean­while, say, “You killed Sad­dam.”
Hasa’s fam­ily, while well off, faces dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances as well. From their plush perch over­look­ing the local mosque, they made a com­fort­able life here after arriv­ing in 2003.

Things have changed, though.

Hasa now com­plains gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions make it impos­si­ble for him to run his busi­nesses here or in Iraq, and his life sav­ings is being bled dry.
At the same time, he rages at the U.S. government.

“We are in such a state that we who wel­comed Amer­ica now hate it, and hate the peo­ple as much as we hate the pol­i­tics,” he says. “This isn’t the free­dom we expected. This isn’t what we wanted.”

Two fam­i­lies in a coun­try where they don’t want to be.

Two fam­i­lies in a coun­try that really doesn’t want them. …

“Please read the whole thing”:http://www.nj.com/starledger/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1180932323248120.xml&coll=1. It should be noted that two days after the story appeared, the UNHCR raised the num­ber of Iraqis who are dis­placed or refugees to 4.4 mil­lion — almost twice the num­bers that were avail­able to me at the time of my report­ing. That’s 16 per­cent of the entire Iraqi pop­u­la­tion, mak­ing it the largest human cat­a­stro­phe to hit the Mid­dle East in recorded his­tory. It dwarfs the Pales­tin­ian dis­place­ments in 1948 and 1967. If some­thing isn’t done about this, it will fur­ther desta­bi­lize an already volatile region.

By the way, can some­one rec­om­mend a good server host? Yahoo! is ter­ri­ble and I keep get­ting 500 Server Errors pre­vent­ing me from get­ting into the blog, rebuild­ing it, etc.

Horrors of war linger…

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BEIRUT — Thought you might like to see a por­trait of the south I did for the Newark Star-Ledger. I have to say I was very pleased with the edit­ing process and these guys gave great play for a story that I would have thought most Amer­i­can media were no longer fol­low­ing much.

HORRORS OF WAR LINGER IN LEBANON

MAROUAHINE, Lebanon — For 34 days this sum­mer, the Israeli and Hezbol­lah rock­ets and mor­tars whis­tled through the lit­tle vil­lages like this one all across South­ern Lebanon. More than 1,000 peo­ple, includ­ing many Lebanese women and chil­dren, were killed. Far­ther north, con­crete cities were flat­tened. And then, the war ended on Aug. 14.
Or did it?
Nearly two months after a frag­ile cease-fire was announced and nine days after Israeli promised it had with­drawn the last of its troops from Lebanon, cit­i­zens in these south­ern vil­lages are skep­ti­cal. And angry.

You will have to enter some demo­graphic infor­ma­tion to see the whole story, but it’s not too odi­ous a require­ment.

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Concerning the control of oil

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The United States has tabled a U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion to lift most of the sanc­tions against Iraq. The draft also would — sur­prise! —  grant the United States “broad con­trol over the country’s oil indus­try and rev­enue until a per­ma­nent, rep­re­sen­ta­tive Iraqi gov­ern­ment is in place.” (Wash­ing­ton Post)
“The res­o­lu­tion, which is to be pre­sented to the 15-nation body Fri­day, would shift con­trol of Iraq’s oil from the United Nations to the United States and its mil­i­tary allies, with an inter­na­tional advi­sory board hav­ing over­sight respon­si­bil­i­ties but lit­tle effec­tive power. A tran­si­tional Iraqi gov­ern­ment, which U.S. author­i­ties have said they hope to estab­lish within weeks, would be granted a con­sul­ta­tive role.“
In an ear­lier arti­cle on B2I, I wrote about Feisal al-Istrabadi, a found­ing mem­ber of the Iraqi Forum for Democ­racy and an activist on var­i­ous human­i­tar­ian issues relat­ing to Iraq. Istra­badi is also a mem­ber of the plan­ning com­mit­tee for the State Department?s Future of Iraq Project, serv­ing on its Tran­si­tional Jus­tice and Demo­c­ra­tic Prin­ci­ples work­ing groups.
Dur­ing his talk, he out­lined the ideas for a tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment.

It would last two to three years at most, must pro­vide imme­di­ate ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of Iraq, would hold munic­i­pal elec­tions within six months and regional elec­tions within another six months after that and begin imme­di­ate crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. The other duties must be to ful­fill oblig­a­tions to the U.N. regard­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, he said, and human rights agree­ments must be adhered to. “It’s crit­i­cal to me that the tran­si­tional period not be seen as a final sta­tus,” he said. “I don?t think the tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment should be the gov­ern­ment that signs a peace treaty with Israel. That should be the per­ma­nent gov­ern­ment.“
And most impor­tant, he said, the United Nations should not _lift_ the sanc­tions. Instead they should be _suspended_ so that the tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment doesn?t gain con­trol of the country?s trea­sury and the per­ma­nent lift­ing of sanc­tions is an incen­tive to democ­ra­tize.
“If you want to ensure the tran­si­tional fig­ures do not become tran­si­tional in the Iraqi sense of the word — by that I mean last­ing 40 years — you can­not hand over the purse strings of Iraq,” he said. “Sad­dam did not imme­di­ately rule by fear. He co-opted the elite dur­ing the 1960s and ‘70s by drown­ing them in cash.”

Tak­ing con­trol of the oil indus­try, while look­ing really, _really_ bad to the rest of the world, is prob­a­bly the best that can be made of a bad sit­u­a­tion. Istrabadi’s right; if a tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment took con­trol of Iraq’s oil rev­enue, there likely result would be whole­sale rob­bing that would make the loot­ers in the clos­ing days of the war look like pik­ers.
Granted, this will not help the United States’ image in Iraq or in the Arab world. They’re already con­vinced the U.S. was mak­ing an oil grab. The only way to com­bat this impres­sion is to man­age the oil indus­try in an enlight­ened and benev­o­lent man­ner with no favor­tism given to cor­rupted Iraqis or Amer­i­can com­pa­nies.
Hand­ing out crony con­tracts to Hal­libur­ton sub­sidiaries and other, well-connected Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions ain’t the way do this. There really don’t seem to be many good solu­tions to this mess.

Pentagon says chemical weapons will be used

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CNN is report­ing that the Pen­ta­gon is detect­ing prepa­ra­tions on the part of Iraq to use chem­i­cal weapons against U.S. troops. The DoD says it doesn’t know where the CW are, but that it will destroy them if it can find them.
Also, the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan instructed the its 135 or so inspec­tors to bug out from Iraq. CNN is report­ing the U.N. can get them out in about two hours. Rumors swirl of a Bush announce­ment tonight. War tomor­row or Wednes­day?
*UPDATE 10:09 AM EST:* Sir Jeremy Green­stock, British Ambas­sador to the United Nations, that the res­o­lu­tion will be pulled and “we will not pur­sue a vote.”. The diplo­matic process is over. Green­stock crit­i­cized France specif­i­cally, but didn’t men­tion it by name. The U.S. and U.K. will pur­sue their own meth­ods of dis­ar­mamemt.
U.S. ambas­sador to the U.N., John Negro­ponte, called Iraq in “mate­r­ial breach” of 1441.

From the department of Newspeak

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OK. See if you can fol­low me here: The United States is con­cerned that Sad­dam Hus­sein could launch a first strike against the troops in the region — or Israel — once Bush sig­nals that war is immi­nent, so the United States may have to strike first. But offi­cials are con­cerned that if Amer­ica strikes first, it will appear the _United States has started a war._
_38959027_tomcatap203.jpgDid I wake up in some weird alter­nate uni­verse or some­thing? After months of mass­ing troops, threat­en­ing Iraq, bul­ly­ing the United Nations, admit­ting that Sad­dam has not attacked the United States nor was it involved in Sept. 11, 2001, _now_ offi­cials are wor­ried they might look like they’re start­ing a war?
I thought Iraq was part of Pres­i­dent Bush’s doc­trine of “preëmptive self-defense,” which sounds an awful lot like “best defense is a good offense.” Which means, by def­i­n­i­tion, that start­ing a war is _kind of the whole point._
Most likely, this is some bone­head offi­cial talk­ing smack to an ABC reporter. But it does high­light the prob­lems fac­ing the United States: namely, that this is a war of choice, not neces­sity. And that if it’s pros­e­cuted with­out the aegis of the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil, it will be an aggres­sive war, which is _highly_ ille­gal under the U.N. char­ter.
The irony of all this is that if the United States doesn’t have a res­o­lu­tion, Iraq would be per­fectly jus­ti­fied in attack­ing first, both under the logic of the Bush Doc­trine and Arti­cle 51 of the the U.N. char­ter, which states, “Noth­ing in the present Char­ter shall impair the inher­ent right of indi­vid­ual or col­lec­tive self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Mem­ber of the United Nations, until the Secu­rity Coun­cil has taken mea­sures nec­es­sary to main­tain inter­na­tional peace and secu­rity.” (George over at War­blog­ging has a nice take on this.)
This is just get­ting twistier by the moment. And now that war is loom­ing ever closer, Amer­ica is twist­ing Iraq’s legit­i­mate right to self-defense to jus­tify a first strike. I love Amer­ica, I really do, but this is going beyond all rea­son­able stan­dards for how a demo­c­ra­tic coun­try founded on some of humanity’s best ideals is sup­posed to act. To say the rhetoric com­ing from Wash­ing­ton is Orwellian is now to under­state the case rather than blow it up into hyper­bole. There seems to be no attempt to hide the pro­pa­ganda, indi­cat­ing a supreme con­tempt for the dis­cern­ing facil­i­ties of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and other peo­ples of the world.
Mean­while, Bush, Blair and Aznar are meet­ing in the Azores (say that three times fast) to work out some last minute diplo­macy. This is inter­est­ing since it means Bush will have to get off the phone and actu­ally spend some face time with his bud­dies. But wouldn’t it be bet­ter to have some face-time with coun­tries like Free­dom (neé France) and Rus­sia who don’t sup­port him? Back in 1990, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State James Baker was ubiq­ui­tous and the coali­tion was a big suc­cess. When was the last time Colin Pow­ell went out of the coun­try? Bush? I know it’s not a good time to fly, but still…
By not invit­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from France, etc., this loos like a war coun­cil aimed at get­ting a suc­cess­ful UNSC vote instead of a sum­mit look­ing for com­mon ground and a com­pro­mise out of the diplo­matic marsh­lands. But this is just more down-the-rabbit-hole insan­ity, with U.S. for­eign pol­icy used to make pos­si­ble a war on Iraq. Clause­witz once said, “War is regarded as noth­ing but the con­tin­u­a­tion of state pol­icy with other means.” But as I said once before, this war is no longer a tool for state pol­icy, but instead state pol­icy has become a tool for war.
Stu­pid.
No Love Boat
In other news, the mar­riage between the media and the mil­i­tary is look­ing as rocky as Rick Rock­well and Darva Conger’s from Fox’s “Who Wants to Marry a Mil­lion­aire?” At least on the USS Abra­ham Lin­coln. The “embed­ded” jour­nal­ists on the Lin­coln are mon­i­tored, minded and accom­pa­nied by escorts every­where they go. Once, when mis­tak­enly wan­der­ing into a meet­ing, two cam­era­men were con­fronted by armed guards.
Now, I know there are restric­tions in war time; jour­nal­ists need to under­stand that. And most of the time fric­tion between reporters and the mil­i­tary is caused by mis­un­der­stand­ings rather than hos­til­ity. But I was pretty sure the Pentagon’s new pol­icy for embed­ding jour­nal­ists with the troops was a pro­pa­ganda ploy, and if the events on the _Abraham Lincoln_ are indica­tive of how the press will be treated, I’m not con­fi­dent this war will as aggres­sively cov­ered as peo­ple think it will be.