Iraqi
Hopes Dim Through
Worst Year Of Occupation
By Dahr Jamail &
Ali Al-Fadhily
24 December, 2006
Inter
Press Service
BAGHDAD, Dec. 22
(IPS) - Despite promises from Iraqi and U.S. leaders that 2006
would bring improvement, Iraqis have suffered through the worst year
in living memory, facing violence, fragmentation and a disintegrated
economy.
A year back Iraqis were promised
that 2006 would be the fresh beginning of a, prosperous, democratic
and unified Iraq. Through an elected parliament and a unity government,
they would find peace, and start rebuilding a country torn apart by
the U.S.-backed UN sanctions and then the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.
But everyone agrees that
the situation now is worse than ever. Leaders in Iraq disagree only
to the extent they blame one another for the collapse in security that
has led to worsened services and living conditions.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
along with many other Shia leaders in the Iraqi government, blames al-Qaeda
and "Saddamists" for the degrading situation. Echoing statements
by U.S. President George W. Bush, al-Maliki told reporters recently:
"Those terrorists hate democracy because that makes them lose power,
and all they are doing is killing Iraqi people in order to recapture
what they lost after the liberation of Iraq."
Whatever leaders say, people
are simply looking back on a hellish year, and fearful of another to
come.
"I wish I could flee
to any third world country and work in garbage collection rather than
stay here and live like a frightened rat," Adel Mohammed Aziz,
a teacher from Baghdad told IPS. "We are all living in fear for
our lives; death chases us all around.."
The displacement of Iraqis
from Iraq is currently the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis, according
to the Washington-based group Refugees International which works towards
providing humanitarian assistance and protection for displaced people.
The United Nations estimates
that at least 2.3 million Iraqis have fled the growing violence in their
country. They estimate that 1.8 million Iraqis have fled to surrounding
countries, while another half million have vacated their homes for safer
areas within Iraq. An estimated 40,000 people are leaving Iraq every
month for Syria alone, according to the UN.
Cases of sectarian killings
had been reported before this year, with targeted victims such as former
military people or scientists. But this year sectarian-based death squads
became a threat to all Iraqis, particularly Sunni Muslims, whose beliefs
differ in ways from those of Shia Muslims. The body count has increased
to a minimum of 100 a day, with most killed after monstrous torture.
"We cannot go to work,
cannot go to pray in our mosques, and cannot send our children to schools,"
young mother Um Rheem from the Shaab quarter in Baghdad told IPS. "Many
Sunni men have been killed by Shia death squads who have the full support
of the government and Americans."
Such fears are common in
many areas in Baghdad where the Sunnis are a minority. Other areas have
other problems to live with.
"In areas where Sunnis
are a majority, death squads attack in hundreds, taking advantage of
curfews and using government police cars," Mahmood Abdulla from
the predominantly Sunni Jihad quarter of Baghdad told IPS. "When
we defend ourselves and our homes, they shell us with mortars and Kaytousha
missiles. All of this takes place under the eyes of Americans and Iraqi
government officials."
Shia Iraqis complain that
they cannot go to Sunni dominated areas for work, and they cannot travel
on the highway that leads to Syria and Jordan for fear of Sunni militias
looking for revenge.
"Sunnis who lost family
members would kill any Shia they find, and so we cannot go through their
areas," Sa'arat Hassan, a vegetable merchant at the Jameela wholesale
vegetable market in Baghdad told IPS.
According to a survey conducted
by U.S. and Iraqi doctors for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health, published in the British Lancet Medical Journal Oct.
11 this year, 654,965 Iraqis, or 2.5 percent of the entire population
of the country, have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.
The survey found that "of
post-invasion deaths, 601,027àwere due to violence, the most
common cause being gunfire."
The two months following
publication of the survey have been Iraq's bloodiest to date.
The streets of Baghdad, once
packed with cars and open businesses, look deserted most of the day
now.
"We cannot open our
shops for more than three to four hours a day," a carpet seller
on the volatile Rasheed Street told IPS. "Many of my colleagues
have been abducted for ransom or killed for sectarian reasons on the
way to work. We expect death every minute."
The economic disaster is
now an emergency. More than five million Iraqis are living below the
poverty line, close to half of them in desperate conditions, according
to a government study.
Iraqi officials and NGOs
estimate the unemployment rate at more than 60 percent.
The cost of basic necessities
soared during 2006, compounding the unemployment crisis. A report by
Iraq's central office for statistics cited by the NGO Coordination Committee
for Iraq (NCCI) suggests 70 percent inflation from July 2005 to July
2006.
The World Food Programme
said in a report 'Food Security and Vulnerability in Iraq' last May
that if the situation in Iraq was not controlled, 8.3 million more people
(31 percent of the population) would be rendered "food insecure"
if they were not provided their monthly food rations. The rations were
introduced under the Oil for Food Programme set up during the sanctions
period in the 1990s.
Sectarian violence increased
in Iraq after the bombing last February of an important Shia shrine
located in Samarra, 60 km north of Baghdad. Shia death squads started
appearing in massive numbers afterwards to carry out mass killings of
Sunnis, and setting fire to their mosques. U.S. forces failed to provide
protection for civilians on either side.
Meanwhile, armed Iraqi resistance
to the U.S. occupation increased rapidly during 2006.
"Resistance fighters
are Iraqis who are trying to put an end to this vicious occupation,"
a senior political analyst at Baghdad University told IPS on condition
of anonymity. "The Americans ignited sectarian war so that they
reduce the action of national resistance, but the result came to be
the opposite, and they are being hit harder and more often."
The Sunni-dominated areas
of Baghdad and western Iraq faced the worst U.S. military operations
during 2006. The policy of siege, raids and large-scale detentions led
to massive killing of civilians in cities like Haditha, Karma and Ramadi.
"Those Americans take
us all for terrorists," the manager of a human rights NGO in Ramadi
to the west of Baghdad told IPS.
Speaking on condition that
he and his organisation remain unnamed for fear of U.S. military reprisals,
he added: "Their (U.S. military's) crimes in Fallujah in 2004 were
exposed, but they have committed a lot more crimes in 2006, and the
world is silent about them. There is moaning in every house in the western
and northern parts of the city (Ramadi) for losing members of their
families."
A poll conducted by the well-respected
group World Public Opinion last month showed that 61 percent of Iraqis
support attacks against U.S. forces. The poll found that 83 percent
of Iraqis surveyed want the U.S. to withdraw completely next year.
U.S. casualties increased
dramatically during the last three months of the year. This year saw
at least 812 coalition soldier deaths in Iraq, with December looking
to be one of the deadliest months for them, according to the website
Iraq Coalition Casualties.
So far, at least 3,193 occupation
troops have been killed in Iraq, 2,946 of them from the United States,
according to the website. In addition, there have been 46,880 U.S. non-mortal
casualties, including non-hostile and medical evacuations.
With no drastic changes imminent
to the failed U.S. policy in Iraq, coupled with an Iraqi government
that grows more impotent by the day, Iraqis have dim hopes of improvement
in 2007.
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