The Iraq War is over and "Apparently, the US lost"
from Pogge.ca via Counterpunch
"First there was their inability in the end to force the Iraqi government to hand over the oil. Now there’s the new SOFA, or Status of Forces Agreement.

the 150,000 American troops in Iraq will withdraw from cities, towns and villages by June 30, 2009 and from all of Iraq by December 31, 2011. The Iraqi government will take over military responsibility for the Green Zone in Baghdad, the heart of American power in Iraq, in a few weeks time. Private security companies will lose their legal immunity. US military operations and the arrest of Iraqis will only be carried out with Iraqi consent. There will be no US military bases left behind when the last US troops leave in three years time and the US military is banned in the interim from carrying out attacks on other countries from Iraq.

The agreement turns on their head all the key provisions that the US had put in the draft they recommended. The Americans are being kicked out. It’s a measure of how unwelcome this agreement is to the United States that they have not even translated it into English, the better to sweep it under the carpet.

Let’s put it this way: Iran has said publicly that they approve of the agreement.

BAGHDAD, 13 August 2008 (IRIN) - The Iraqi and US governments should do more to address Iraq’s displacement crisis which has affected over four million people and threatens regional stability, a group of Iraqi and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has said.

“We… endorse a bolder approach to helping vulnerable Iraqis, especially ones who are displaced. Current US efforts to help Iraqis are a good start, but they don’t go far enough,” said the 8 August statement by scores of NGOs inside and outside Iraq.

“The Iraqi government is responsible for assisting its internally displaced population as well as other vulnerable Iraqis, and all efforts should be made to urge more action and assist its efforts,” it continued.

The statement said many Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries were struggling to survive as their savings were limited and they did not have the legal right to work; many lived in fear of being forcibly returned to Iraq, and face possible death threats and persecution.

“As their stay in neighbouring countries drags on without any immediate solution in sight, the protection concerns facing these people continue to rise,” the statement said.

The group praised the US government’s efforts in resettling around 10,000 Iraqi refugees (and the planned resettlement of another 12,000 refugees in 2008), but it said: “The needs are much greater. We ask the US to reconsider resettling 105,500 refugees from Iraq and, if necessary, to reassess this number for the next few years.”

These calls were echoed by Basil al-Azawi, head of the Baghdad-based Commission for Civil Society Enterprises, an umbrella group for more than 1,000 NGOs.

“There is clear negligence by the Iraqi government, other governments and international bodies via-à-vis the needs of the internally displaced persons [IDPs] and refugees in neighbouring countries who are forgotten,” al-Azawi told IRIN.

“Iraq is still a country of conflicts and therefore the most dangerous place in the world,” he said.

The NGO statement said Iraqi institutions should be strengthened to provide improved services to all vulnerable Iraqis, especially IDPs, and prepare comprehensive data.

Al-Azawi blamed the lack of data on the paucity of government offices dealing with IDPs: “There are some families who have not been registered yet because government offices are located in remote areas and they find it hard to reach these offices to register.”

“All actors recognise that [IDP] needs are enormous and unmet. The needs of IDPs and other vulnerable Iraqis are extremely difficult to address, as there is a generalised lack of information and hard data,” the statement said.

July 24, 2008
Most NGOs in Iraq Losing Face
by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail

BAGHDAD - Welcomed at first after the US-led invasion in 2003, most NGOs have run into skepticism and mistrust. Few remain to help.

Hundreds of local and foreign NGOs became active in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, after decades of restrictions under the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

"The former Iraqi regime did not trust NGOs, and always thought them to be spies," Muath A'raji of the National Societal Organization, a human rights NGO based in Baghdad told IPS. "Iraqis used to think the regime was wrong, but now they have changed their minds because of the many false foreign NGOs that look more like contracting companies than humanitarian and human rights organizations."

Iraqis expected NGOs to ease the agonies caused by both the US occupation and corruption of the Iraqi government. But now most appear to believe that NGOs work for money and personal interests, if not for intelligence and missionary purposes.

Talk of NGOs now often inspires fear rather than hope. "I was terrified when I heard of French organizations smuggling children from Chad to sell in Europe," says Um Yassen, whose six-year-old son was injured by a US bomb in Fallujah. "I have applied for many NGOs to take him for treatment abroad. We do not know who to trust any more."

But there is still the occasional NGO genuinely assisting Iraqis in need.

"Dozens of organizations took my niece's medical reports and pictures; only one came back to take her for treatment abroad," Anwer Abdul Hameed from Hit, just west of Baghdad, told IPS. "Our five-year-old Nora was shot in the head by an American sniper in 2005. Her father took her to many Iraqi hospitals. Doctors did their very best, but with the hospitals practically not working and medicines not available, Nora's head remained broken until an organization called No More Victims appeared and took her to Amman on way to America."

No More Victims is a Los Angeles based organization that takes Iraqi children injured by occupation forces to the United States for treatment.

The hundreds of Iraqi NGOs spread all over the country seem to have lost credibility too, along with most foreign NGOs.

People in Fallujah, 69km west of Baghdad, told IPS that some associations that helped them during the 2004 sieges disappeared after some of their activists were detained by the US military.

"The good men who served the city were either detained or forced to flee the country under threat of detention or even termination by secret police squads," an Iraqi doctor in Fallujah, speaking on terms of anonymity, told IPS. "Most of the ones who are active now belong to parties in power or people who know nothing about organized work. The Iraqi Red Crescent, for example, is totally dominated by Iraqi Prime Minister (Nouri al) Maliki's Da'wa Party."

A member of the Iraqi Red Crescent IRC in Fallujah denied that the Da'wa Party controls the organization, but refused to answer IPS questions about the way they work.

Danger is clearly an inhibiting factor as well. The NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI), an independent initiative launched by a group of NGOs in Baghdad in April 2003, now comprises a network of about 80 international NGOs and 200 Iraqi NGOs.

The group does not provide a list of NGOs operating in Iraq because of "security concerns", according to their website. "With the high risks taken by aid workers on the ground, at least 94 aid workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003 (updated on 27th of September 2007)," the group says.

NCCI adds: "Our data takes in consideration incidents reported to NCCI. As aid workers face the same difficulties as any civilians in Iraq, the figure could certainly be higher, particularly regarding local NGO staff."

ICRC on Iraq's Healthcare crisis

Very sick, and not getting better, By Alexander Casella

GENEVA - Five years after the American invasion of Iraq, the humanitarian situation is one of the world's most critical, according to a recent report issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva.

Currently, about 1 million Iraqis are reported missing and are considered as having either been killed or abducted. Some 2 million have fled to neighboring countries and an additional 2.5 million have been internally displaced - this in a population estimated at 27.5 million people. But the greatest level of deterioration had been the virtual collapse of the health care system. This was a process that started well before 2003.

From the early 1980s, the Iraqi health care system did not keep pace with the country's population growth and existing facilities became increasingly strained. Sanctions imposed after 1990 further compounded the problem and forced health authorities to shift their emphasis towards the provision of emergency services at the expense of public heath and infrastructure maintenance.

Thus, at the time of the American invasion, the Iraqi health care system was already under considerable stress. Rather than contributing to redressing the situation, the occupation and ensuring resistance only precipitated the crisis and brought the system close to a total collapse.

According to official Iraqi figures, of the 34,000 doctors registered in 1990, at least 20,000 have left the country. Since 2003, more than 2,200 doctors and nursed have been killed and more than 250 kidnapped. There are currently 172 public hospitals with 30,000 beds, well short of 80,000 beds needed, plus 65 private hospitals. Practically all are in sub-standard condition and are short of equipment and drugs. Interventions such as open-heart surgery are no longer practiced and the only choice, for those who can afford it, is to seek treatment abroad.

Lack of qualified staff, and in particular midwives, has had a direct impact on infant mortality rates in particular and on the level of care in general. Lack of medical facilities is compounded by the poor security situation. In many areas road checkpoints and curfews have restricted movements to the point in which access to a hospital in the event of an emergency has become impossible.

While private clinics provide marginal better services and security than public hospitals, most of the population can't afford the cost. A private sector doctor charges between US$2 and $7 for a consultation, a fee beyond the means of the average Iraqi who earns on average $5 a day when not unemployed.

Compounding the effects of the health care crisis is the lack of sanitation. Inadequate treatment of sewage, constant breakdown of water treatment plants due to equipment failure and electricity shortages, outdated piping and illegal connections have resulted in a major shortage of drinking water.

Restrictions on chlorine, essential for water sterilization but also an ingredient on the making of explosives, have further hampered efforts at water sterilization. With most Iraqis no longer able to rely on public services for clean water, the only alternative is bottled water at a cost of some $50 per month per family. It is an alternative that most can't afford, and the cholera outbreak of 2007 was directly attributed by the ICRC to the combination of a collapsing healthcare system and the increasing lack of sanitation.

The ICRC, as a matter of policy, has left the finger pointing to others and has chosen to focus on the facts rather than on their cause. Thus, the report not once refers to the "United States" and the invasion is qualified as the "outbreak of the war". This restraint, however, is only a matter of cosmetics and it is not even necessary to read between the lines to view the report as a damning indictment of the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq.