Iraq: coping with violence and striving to earn a living
March 31, 2010 at 9:08 pm | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Detainees in Iraq, Drought in Iraq, Electricity supply in Iraq, Internally displaced Iraqis, Iraqi Agriculture, Iraqi Refugees, Water supply in Iraq
In a variety of different ways, the ICRC has been helping Iraqi individuals and communities to be self-sufficient economically. This is an update on ICRC activities carried out in Iraq since the beginning of the year.
30-03-2010 Operational update
The beginning of 2010 was marred by acts of violence that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, mainly in Baghdad, the central governorates and Najaf. In Mosul, families fled violence and sought refuge in safer areas. Although recent violence-related displacement has been sporadic, there remain some 2.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq who had to leave their homes over recent years in search of safety.Many Iraqis, especially those worst affected by the effects of the conflict and the ongoing violence, such as displaced, elderly and disabled people and women heading households, continued to struggle to feed their families. Their inability to buy enough of the essential goods they require remains a major concern.
Agriculture, formerly an important part of the economy, has been declining for the past decade. Individuals who have lost agricultural machinery to damage, age or disrepair often cannot replace it owing to a lack of financial wherewithal. In addition, the water supply has been hard hit by a failure to properly maintain pumping stations and irrigation and distribution canals, by the unreliable electricity supply and by higher fuel costs. The massive increase in the price of seed and fertilizer, and cheap imports from neighbouring countries, also play a role in making farming difficult, if not impossible, in many parts of Iraq. Many farmers try to survive by cultivating smaller patches of land, but as they are forced to use low-quality supplies the result is often poor harvests. Others have migrated to cities in search of other ways of earning a living. Continue Reading Iraq: coping with violence and striving to earn a living… |
The New ‘Forgotten’ War – Iraq occupation falls into media shadows
March 16, 2010 at 9:21 am | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Drought in Iraq, US Occupation of Iraq
The New ‘Forgotten’ War
by Dahr Jamail
March 15th, 2010 | Extra! The Magazine of FAIR
Iraq occupation falls into media shadows
“The Western world that slaughtered Iraq and Iraqis, through 13 years of sanctions and seven years of occupation, is now turning its back on the victims. What has remained of Iraq is still being devastated by bombings, assassinations, corruption, millions of evictions and continued infrastructure destruction. Yet the world that caused all this is trying to draw a rosy picture of the situation in Iraq.”
-Maki Al-Nazzal, Iraqi political analyst
As Afghanistan has taken center stage in U.S. corporate media, with President Barack Obama announcing two major escalations of the war in recent months, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has fallen into the media shadows.
But while U.S. forces have begun to slowly pull back in Iraq, approximately 130,000 American troops and 114,000 private contractors still remain in the country (Congressional Research Service, 12/14/09)-along with an embassy the size of Vatican City. Upwards of 400 Iraqi civilians still die in a typical month (Iraq Body Count, 12/31/09), and fallout from the occupation that is now responsible, by some estimates, for 1 million Iraqi deaths (Extra!, 1/2/08) continues to severely impact Iraqis in ways that go uncovered by the U.S. press.
From early on in the occupation of Iraq, one of the most pressing concerns for Iraqis-besides ending the occupation and a desperate need for security-has been basic infrastructure. The average home in Iraq today, over six and a half years into the occupation, operates on less than six hours of electricity per day (AP, 9/7/09). “A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq’s civilization is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water,” the Guardian (8/26/09) reported; waterborne diseases and dysentery are rampant. The ongoing lack of power and clean drinking water has even led Iraqis to take to the streets in Baghdad (AP, 10/11/09), chanting, “No water, no electricity in the country of oil and the two rivers.”
Devastation wrought by the occupation, coupled with rampant corruption among the Western contractors awarded the contracts to rebuild Iraq’s demolished infrastructure, are to blame (International Herald Tribune, 7/6/09). Ali Ghalib Baban, Iraq’s minister of planning, said late last year (International Herald Tribune, 11/21/09) that the billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on so-called reconstruction contracts in Iraq has had no discernible impact. “Maybe they spent it,” he said, “but Iraq doesn’t feel it.”
Last January, the Los Angeles Times ran a story (1/26/09) that highlighted the lack of electricity: “As elections near, people say it’s hard to have faith in leaders when they don’t even have electricity,” was the subhead. But most other large U.S. papers have avoided the topic-unless it is brought up in such a way as to blame Iraqis for the problem, as the New York Times (11/21/09) did with its piece, “U.S. Fears Iraqis Will Not Keep Up Rebuilt Projects.”
Further complicating matters, a drought that is now over four years old plagues most of Iraq. In the country’s north, lack of water has forced more than 100,000 people to abandon their homes since 2005, with 36,000 more on the verge of leaving (AP, 10/13/09).
Corporate media coverage of the ongoing Iraqi refugee crisis-the U.N. estimates that more than 4.5 million Iraqis in all have been displaced from their homes (UNHCR.org, 1/09)-continues to be scant. The stories that do appear tend to be local stories about Iraqi refugees in the newspaper’s home city (e.g., Chicago Tribune, 10/25/09).
For Iraqis who remain in the country, another critical story is cancer. The U.S. and British militaries used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion (Jane’s Defence News, 4/2/04)-on top of 320 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War (Inter Press Service, 3/25/03). Literally every local person I’ve ever spoken with in Iraq during my nine months of reporting there knows someone who either suffers from or has died of cancer.
The lead paragraph of an article by Jalal Ghazi, for New America Media (1/6/10), is blunt:
Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al-Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Ghazi reported that in Fallujah, which bore the brunt of two massive U.S. military operations in 2004, as many as 25 percent of newborn infants have serious physical abnormalities. Cancer rates in Babil, an area south of Baghdad, have risen from 500 cases in 2004 to more than 9,000 in 2009. Dr. Jawad al-Ali, the director of the Oncology Center in Basra, told Al Jazeera English (10/12/09) that there were 1,885 cases of cancer in all of 2005; between 1,250 and 1,500 patients visit his center every month now.
Babies born to U.S. veterans of the 1991 war are showing birth defects very similar to affected Iraqi babies (Sunday Herald, 3/30/03), and many U.S. soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome 2, alleging they have developed cancer because of exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq (New America Media, 1/6/10).
How has this ongoing story been covered by the corporate media? It hasn’t, at least not in the last five years, with the exception of an article in Vanity Fair (2/05) and a few isolated Associated Press stories, like “Sickened Iraq Vets Cite Depleted Uranium” (8/13/06). While smaller publications like the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (11/05) and the Public Record (10/19/09) have taken it on, none of the other big outlets have touched the story.
While U.S. newspapers have been following the lead-up to the Iraq elections, there has been virtually no coverage of the mass arrests Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s government is busy conducting in predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq. As the Iraqi daily Azzaman (1/4/10) reported:
Iraqi security forces have launched a wide campaign in Sunni Muslim-dominated neighborhoods of Baghdad and towns and cities to the north and west of the capital…. The campaign is said to be the widest by the government in years and has led to an exodus of people to the Kurdish north.
Family members of those being arrested are not told where their loved ones are being held, only that those arrested will remain behind bars until after the elections. These sweeps have collected members of the formerly U.S.-backed Awakening Councils, Sunni militias once paid off by the U.S. to stop their attacks on occupation forces. The cutoff of U.S. support for the Councils is another underreported story.
Meanwhile, the hardship for Iraqis continues unabated, along with the need to find alternative sources for accurate information-or any information-about an occupation that continues to involve as many troops as when Iraq dominated U.S. headlines in 2004 (Congressional Research Service, 7/2/09).
Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has been reporting about the U.S. occupation of Iraq for more than six years. His most recent book is The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Turkey, Iraq launch new term with new partnership model in region
September 19, 2009 at 10:07 am | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Drought in Iraq, Eurasia, Turkey-Iraq agreements, Turkey-Iraq border gates, Turkey-Iraq relations
Turkey, Iraq launch new term with new partnership model in region
Turkish and Iraqi ministers held a series of meetings during Turkey-Iraq High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council in Istanbul.
World Bulletin / News Desk
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Friday they lauched a new term with a new partnership model with Iraq in the region, behaving as one state, Turkish media said.
Continue Reading Turkey, Iraq launch new term with new partnership model in region…
Idle Iraqi Date Farms Show Decline of Economy
August 17, 2009 at 7:18 pm | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Date palms, Drought in Iraq, Iraq's agricultural industry, Iraqi Agriculture, Iraqi Dates
NY Times August 15 2009
But here in Iraq, one of the places where agriculture was developed more than 7,000 years ago, there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates — or much of anything for that matter.
As recently as the 1980s, Iraq was self-sufficient in producing wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and sheep and poultry products. Its industrial sector exported textiles and leather goods, including purses and shoes, as well as steel and cement. But wars, sanctions, poor management, international competition and disinvestment have left each industry a shadow of its former self.
Slowly, Iraq’s economy has become based almost entirely on imports and a single commodity.
“Ninety-five percent of the government’s revenues come from oil,” said Ghazi al-Kenan, an Iraqi economist. “And while they are trying to attract investment in the private sector, Iraq finds itself in very difficult circumstances — without sufficient electricity, machinery and a drought.”
The agricultural industry has been particularly damaged during the past few years, a situation perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the country’s once bountiful date orchards. Date palms have been left to die for lack of water, and fungi and pests have ruined thousands of tons of fruit because the country has only three crop-dusting airplanes and three qualified pilots. American military approval is still needed to fly.
Even the wealthiest and most influential date farmers are struggling. Faraoun Ahmed Hussain, the 62-year-old scion of a date-growing family who serves as the head of the government agency that oversees Iraq’s date production, said his family’s 62 acres in south Baghdad have been producing at the lowest level in memory.
“I could put more money into it, but the situation does not encourage it,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, the owner of such property would be a very wealthy man.”
Iraq, which once produced three-quarters of the world’s dates and grew 629 different varieties, is now an also-ran, falling behind Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Last year, the country produced 281,000 tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, about half the level of the mid-1980s.
The number of Iraq’s date palms has fallen, too, to fewer than nine million from 33 million in the 1950s, according to the government. Likewise, the number of date processing factories is down to six today, from 150 before the American-led invasion in 2003. Iraqi dates are now packaged in the United Arab Emirates — 865 miles away.
Iraqi and American officials say the declining fortunes in date production and other seasonal agricultural work have fed the insurgency with desperate, out-of-work young men.
The decline, Iraqi government officials say, has also led to both public health and environmental degradation. As growers have abandoned farms, the orchards that had once formed a lush green ring around Baghdad have shrunk, causing more frequent sandstorms in the capital this summer and higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Still, dates remain a staple in Iraq, valued for their ability to stay fresh without refrigeration, as a source of nutrition, and for uses as varied as making alcohol and desserts and feeding farm animals. They are also an inexpensive sugar substitute.
As the head of a partnership that includes his 12 brothers and 6 sisters, Dr. Hussain is the master of a once prosperous, now unkempt orchard on the banks of the Tigris River in the Dora neighborhood. On a blazing hot summer morning recently, he gave a tour. The story of the orchard, which his family has owned since 1910, has been one of slow decline.
Because the amount of money he receives for his crop from the Trade Ministry — the agency that buys most farm products in Iraq — is sometimes less than the cost of production, he says he no longer invests much in the farm.
Each year, even the most productive trees provide less. In normal times, each palm might produce 130 to 175 pounds of fruit a year.
Last year, each tree produced just about 30 pounds. This season, Dr. Hussain is hoping to rebound to 90 pounds per tree.
Many of the orchard’s 4,000 palms, which can live 120 years, are clearly unhealthy. A fair number have either brown fronds or a white fungus that resembles cobwebs.
Half of the orchard is irrigated by well water, the other half by the Tigris. But because of a drought, now in its second year, farmers have been ordered to limit irrigation to twice a month instead of once or twice a week.
Fruit trees — orange, grapefruit and pomegranate — planted beneath the palms, look to be nearly dying of thirst. The ground is bone dry and dusty.
Even some of the palms, which need very little water, are withering. Water salinity has also become a vexing problem.
Dr. Hussain pointed to some of the healthier palms.
“These trees are 40 years old, and I have some emotion, some love for them, because I planted them,” he said. “I’ve watched them grow.”
Even here, there are signs of Iraq’s war: Accompanying Dr. Hussain are five bodyguards, at least one of whom is armed.
And stationed at the edge of Dr. Hussain’s orchard is a 50-member Kurdish pesh merga military unit. They are protecting the home of Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, who is Kurdish and lives across the river from the orchard.
Continue Reading Idle Iraqi Date Farms Show Decline of Economy…
Iraq Drought Cuts Harvest, Boosts Imports as Oil Cash Slips
August 9, 2009 at 9:18 am | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Drought in Iraq, Iraq oil export, Water shortage in Iraq, Wheat harvest Iraq, Wheat production Iraq
Iraq Drought Cuts Harvest, Boosts Imports as Oil Cash Slips
By Anthony DiPaola and Caroline Alexander
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aP2Jq8mr3vNQ#
Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) — Iraq may have its worst harvest in a decade this year as an extended drought cuts its water supply, forcing the third-biggest OPEC producer to increase grain imports as oil revenue drops.
Continue Reading Iraq Drought Cuts Harvest, Boosts Imports as Oil Cash Slips…
Iraq in throes of environmental catastrophe, experts say
July 31, 2009 at 10:01 am | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Agriculture in Iraq, Desertification of Iraq, Drought in Iraq, Dust storm, Euphrates, Farming in Iraq, Iraq's marshes, Sandstorms in Iraq, Shortage of Water in Iraq, Tigris
Iraq in throes of environmental catastrophe, experts sayBy Liz Sly
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www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-dust30-2009jul30,0,6963143,ful
l.story
Iraq hit by worst sandstorms in decades
July 6, 2009 at 7:19 am | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Desertification, Drought, Drought in Iraq, Iraq agriculture, Iraq desertification, Lack of electricity in Iraq, Sandstorms, Shock and Awe
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http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/276178,iraq-hit-by-worst-sandstorms-in-decades–feature.html#
The desertification of Iraq: a terrible tragedy
June 20, 2009 at 6:02 am | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Desertification of Iraq, Drought in Iraq, Euphrates, Iraqi Agriculture, Irrigation systems, Lack of water in Iraq, Snakes in Iraq, Tigris, UN sanctions in Iraq
Bloomsday Edition
June 16, 2009
Iraq‘s Looming Peril
A Plague of Snakes
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad.
Snakes are attacking people and cattle in southern Iraq as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers dry up and the reptiles lose their natural habitat among the reed beds.
“People are terrified and are leaving their homes,” says Jabar Mustafa, a medical administrator, who works in a hospital in the southern province of Dhi Qar. “We knew these snakes before, but now they are coming in huge numbers. They are attacking buffalo and cattle as well as people.” Doctors in the area say six people have been killed and 13 poisoned.
In Chabaysh, a town on the Euphrates close to the southern marshland of Hawr al-Hammar, farmers have set up an overnight operations room to prevent the snakes attacking their cattle.
“We have been surprised in recent days by the unprecedented number of snakes that have fled their habitat because of the dryness and heat,” Wissam al-Assadi, one of the town’s vets said. “We saw some on roads, near houses and cowsheds. Farmers have come to us for vaccines, but we don’t have any.”
The plague of snakes is the latest result of an unprecedented fall in the level of the water in the Euphrates and the Tigris, the two great rivers which for thousands of years have made life possible in the sun-baked plains of Mesopotamia, the very name of which means “between the rivers” in Greek. The rivers that made Iraq’s dry soil so fertile are drying up because the supply of water, which once flowed south into Iraq from Turkey, Syria and Iran, is now held back by dams and used for irrigation. On the Euphrates alone, Turkey has five large dams upriver from Iraq, and Syria has two.
The diversion of water from the rivers has already destroyed a large swathe of Iraqi agriculture and the result of Iraq being starved of water may be as great a disaster for modern Iraq as the overtaxing and collapse of Mesopotamian irrigation systems in the early Islamic period, under the Abbassids. Already the advance of the desert has led to frequent dust storms in Baghdad which close the airport. Yet this dramatic climatic change has attracted little attention outside Iraq, overshadowed by the violence following the US-led invasion in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Continue Reading The desertification of Iraq: a terrible tragedy…
Iraq marshes face grave new threat
February 24, 2009 at 7:01 pm | Posted in Turkmens | Leave a commentTags: Drought in Iraq, Iraq's dams, Iraq's irrigation system, Iraq's marshes, Iraq's rivers, Iraq's wetlands, Marsh Arabs
Iraq marshes face grave new threat |
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Life in the marshes is based on water buffalo and sustainable hunting
Iraq’s southern marshes, by far the Middle East’s most important wetlands, are under threat again. At stake is a unique ecosystem that for millennia has sustained a vibrant and diverse wildlife, as well as the extraordinary way of life evolved by the Marsh Arabs. Partially drained by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s to drive out rebels, the marshlands were revived after his overthrow in 2003. Now they are shrinking again, thanks to a combination of drought, intensive dam construction and irrigation schemes upstream on the Tigris, Euphrates and other river systems. |
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