- BAGHDAD (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.
-
-
- (c)2006 Dahr Jamail.
-
- All images, photos, photography and text are protected
by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to
reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright
notice and a prominent link to the http:// DahrJamailIraq.com website.
Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com
. Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but
not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward
Dahr's dispatches via email.
-
- More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images
at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
|
