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IRAQ: IRAQ CRISIS: Weekly round-up Number 90 for 27 November - 3 December - OCHA IRIN

Friday 17 December 2004


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IRIN AFRICA

IRAQ CRISIS: Weekly round-up Number 90 for 27 November - 3 December

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Key Humanitarian Developments

Decisions relating to Iraq this week included the UN Security Council endorsing the creation of a trust fund to support a UN protection force in Iraq, a statement issued on Thursday said.

A request for the trust fund to be established before 3 December was made by the Security Council in a letter to the UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan, so that a safe environment can be provided for UN presence in Iraq.

There have been calls for larger numbers of UN staff to return to Iraq to help with upcoming elections slated for 30 January. All international UN staff were evacuated from the troubled country, following the devastating bombing in August 2003, in which 22 people were killed.

A very small number of election experts have been in Baghdad to help organise the poll to elect a 275-member parliament. However, there are doubts over how a free and fair election can take place given current insecurity across the country and 17 political groups in Iraq have called for a delay in voting, expressing technical concerns.

However, US President George Bush and Iraqi leaders have said the elections would not be postponed.

"It's time for the Iraqi citizens to go the polls," Bush told reporters at the White House on 2 December. "And that's why we are very firm on the January 30th date."

The Permanent Representative of the Netherlands has informed the President of the Security Council that the member states of the European Union (EU) were ready to contribute approximately US $12 million to finance the "middle ring" of a UN protection force in Iraq, provided there was a Council mandate for such a force, the statement read.

Meanwhile, the top UN envoy for Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, on Wednesday welcomed an agreement by Iran to take a number of measures to improve security, including cooperating on border control and fighting terrorism.

"We are at your disposal, at the disposal of the Iraqi government and the people of Iraq, to help in the noble cause of rebuilding a country," Qazi told a conference of regional interior ministers in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

During the meeting, a joint communiqué pledging measures to improve security in Iraq was adopted. The top UN envoy said the steps would be a great help towards achieving success in the political process.

CONTENTS:

IRAQ: People from Latifiyah and Mahmoudya in need of supplies
IRAQ: Political differences over repatriation to north fade away
IRAQ: Elections will be about religion v secularism - new parties
IRAQ: Education for European Kurds - a tough task
IRAQ: Cheap home loans will help displaced people
IRAQ: Fallujah still need more supplies despite aid arrival
IRAQ: Educating the young about elections in the north
IRAQ: Out-of-country voting critical to quash vote buying claims
IRAQ: Focus on returnees from Iran
IRAQ: Unemployment caused by insecurity and vice-versa
IRAQ: NGOs feed displaced and undernourished children

IRAQ: People from Latifiyah and Mahmoudya in need of supplies

Hundreds of people have fled the towns of Latifiyah and Mahmoudya, southeast of the capital, Baghdad, Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) officials told IRIN, as US and British troops continue to battle to flush out insurgents. The towns’ streets are empty and people from the area said that basic supplies such as water were hard to come by. Dr Jaffer Hussein, a medical official from the main hospital of Latifiyah, told IRIN that they had run out of medicines and surgical materials. Since the insurgents had taken control of the hospital two weeks ago, they had not received any help from the government, he said.

Full report

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IRAQ: Political differences over repatriation to north fade away

The future of a UN-sponsored scheme offering voluntary repatriation to Iraqi Kurdish refugees from Iran is beginning to look brighter as policy differences between Iraq's two main Kurdish parties begin to dissipate. In June, joint International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) convoys began to repatriate some of the estimated 5,000 Iraqi Kurdish families.

Full report

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IRAQ: Elections will be about religion v secularism - new parties

Elections scheduled for the end of January will be about religion verses secularism, not a power struggle between formerly strong Sunni Muslims and majority Shi'ite Muslims as most people think, leaders of two newly formed political parties told IRIN. “I think some people want to use religion to advance their political cause. Politics is about serving the people, not showing them the way to heaven. Church and state should be separate,” Hamid al-Kifaey, leader of the new Movement for Democratic Society, told IRIN.

Full report

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IRAQ: Education for European Kurds - a tough task

There's no shortage of fresh hormones in classroom four. A sound system blasts out music straight from America's grooviest recording studios. Boys and girls, in pairs, moonwalk their way past the teacherless white board. Others imitate the jabbing, stabbing arm movements of their favourite rap band. "We're practicing for a show we're putting on next week," 16-year-old Dashne, codename MC Soul, shouted above the din. "There's going to be traditional Kurdish dancing too."

Full report

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IRAQ: Cheap home loans will help displaced people

A middle-aged woman covered in flies is using a hose to wash her clothes in a blue plastic bucket. It rests on a pile of dried cement parked next to a rubbish dump in front of the former Jamhuri, or “Republic” newspaper office in the capital, Baghdad. “There is no water inside and no electricity,” Khariya Kathem Ramadan, 60, complained to IRIN, scrubbing her laundry against the cement as the flies buzz around her hands. “We have nothing here, not even a door to lock or walls to keep out the cold.”

Full report

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IRAQ: Fallujah still need more supplies despite aid arrival

In a flood of tears, praising and thanking God, Um Kasser, a mother of five, collected food supplies from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS), which was recently allowed to enter the troubled city of Fallujah, some 60 km west of Baghdad. "We were eating flour mixed with dirty water during those days because we couldn't leave our homes to get food or clean water.
I felt like I was going to die holding my sons. God bless the IRCS staff who reached us in time to save our lives," she told IRIN in Fallujah, where the conflict between US soldiers and insurgents has raged on for more than three weeks.

Full report

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IRAQ: Educating the young about elections in the north

"In 1978, the Iraqi constitution described Kurds and Arabs as equal partners in Iraq. In reality, that was a lie. Why would these January elections change that?" The speaker, Lokman Abdullah, is a final year student at Sayyid Sadiq secondary school, 45 minutes south of the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah. Having turned 18, it will be the first time Abdullah will be able to cast a vote as he has reached the legal age.

Full report

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IRAQ: Out-of-country voting critical to quash vote buying claims

Thousands of Iraqis currently living in Iran have been promised land and money if they return home in time to vote in the 30 January elections, according to at least two officials at the Ministry of Migration and Displacement (MoMD). Whether it’s true or not, the allegations are one of the main reasons out-of-country voting is being organised in 14 countries where exiles live, Hussain Hindawi, president of Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission, told IRIN.

Full report

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IRAQ: Focus on returnees from Iran

After weeks of standing in line every day at the immigration office in Baghdad, Zainab Ahmed, an Iraqi who lived in Iran for the last 18 years, finally got the required official’s signature this week to start getting her identity documents back. Like thousands of other Iraqis, Ahmed, 65, and her family of seven were forced to leave the country by former president Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. She moved back to Iraq from neighbouring Iran months ago, but lives with her son-in-law as her house is occupied by another family told to move there by Saddam.

Full report

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IRAQ: Unemployment caused by insecurity and vice-versa

It's catch-22 in Iraq - a huge increase in danger means less employment; more unemployment could mean more potential recruits for insurgents as people become increasingly tired of the situation. It's one of the country's most serious problems, government sources say. Officially, unemployment stands at more than 60 percent, according to unverified statistics from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MLSA).

Full report

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IRAQ: NGOs feed displaced and undernourished children

With backing from international NGOs, a local organisation in the northeastern Iraqi governorate of Diyala is distributing specially prepared food packages to internally displaced children who show signs of malnutrition. Based in the mainly Kurdish town of Khanaqin, al-Salam Organisation began handing out rations of fish, chicken, corned beef, honey and protein-rich biscuits this August after a survey of children aged between six months and six years found 800 with vitamin deficiencies and abnormally low body weight.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Other recent IRAQ reports:

IRAQ CRISIS: Weekly round-up Number 92 for 11-17 December, 17/Dec/04

Red Cross monitoring hunger strikers ahead of trials, 16/Dec/04

Interview with Minister of Agriculture, 16/Dec/04

New commission looking into endemic corruption, 16/Dec/04

Interview with UNDP head, 16/Dec/04

Other recent Children reports:

IRAQ: IRAQ CRISIS: Weekly round-up Number 92 for 11-17 December, 17/Dec/04

SWAZILAND: US $ 26 million needed for OVC education, 15/Dec/04

SYRIA: Orphans benefit from Japanese grant, 14/Dec/04

SYRIA: Orphans benefit from Japanese grant, 14/Dec/04

BURUNDI: Mother and child health campaign begins, 13/Dec/04

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