Under Siege in the Wild, Wild East

[Ted]

The Toronto Star

Under siege in the Wild, Wild East
Aid workers struggle in post-war Iraq

Establishing law and order top priority


LESLIE SCRIVENER
FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER

They're calling Iraq the Wild, Wild East now. While Americans search for hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons to justify their war on Iraq, the country is littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, or the perversely named bomblets, dropped by coalition forces.

It's often children who are the victims of this unexploded ordnance, losing hands or arms, legs or feet, losing their sight or their hearing. They are drawn to the brightly coloured bombs that seem to shimmer in the dust and debris.

The Red Cross, which reports 76 hospitalized in Amara and 50 in Basra — mostly children — says hundreds of bombs are found each day.

A map showing the location of unexploded mines and bombs was produced by the Humanitarian Operations Centre in Kuwait and given to humanitarian aid agencies in Iraq. But the concentration of bombs is so intense, the maps provide scant direction for anyone hoping to avoid them.

Doctors and nurses trying to put these broken bodies together are under siege in this hostile, post-war world. Some doctors in Basra are asking for armed security guards because patients' families are threatening them.

The World Health Organization, in reporting on the situation, quoted several health-care professionals in a briefing paper this week:

"We find ourselves carrying out operations while the patient's relatives are waiting outside the operating theatre with guns and knives to take revenge if things go wrong," a respected surgeon told WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib.

And while humanitarian aid workers plead to let Iraqis rebuild their country themselves, everyone agrees that no one can get on with restoring the basics of civic life, clean water and electricity, and re-constituting government bureaucracies until law and order is re-established. It's the top priority.

"The job the Americans can do best is provide security for the population," said Dr. Eric Hoskins, president of War Child Canada.

"We have to let the Iraqis build their future for themselves. We need to provide security, peace and freedom.

"Rebuilding and reconstituting the government doesn't sound very sexy and doesn't require lots of foreigners and a lot of NGOs (non-governmental organizations). We need to invest all of our efforts in getting bureaucracies up and running."

Hoskins has a long history in the country and has been there about 30 times.

Iraqi workers are reluctant to go to work to leave their homes undefended — and aren't receiving salaries if they do go to work.

Families aren't sending their children to school because the streets are unsafe; there are reports of abductions of girls and women.

Although 30 per cent of schools have opened, most of them are primary schools, in local neighbourhoods. Most secondary schools remain closed — they were looted and some used as weapons depots.

"What I saw was pretty shocking," said Barbara Shenstone, an Ottawa policy adviser for CARE Canada, who returned from Baghdad last week.

"I didn't see people dropping on the street, it's not a humanitarian crisis of that kind. But I saw a country spinning into anarchy."

She told the terrible story of a man who'd been driving with his wife and daughter when their car was hijacked by bandits. The man was faced with a nightmare — the bandits told him they would take either his wife or daughter; the choice was his.

"I can't choose," he pleaded. His attackers shot him in the leg, took both women and the car.

Shenstone met him the day of the attack. "Where does he go, who does he turn to?" she asked.

Only 26 of the 61 police stations that have been closed in Baghdad are scheduled to reopen by the end of June, the U.N. officer of the humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq reported last week.

Despite the proliferation of weapons and carjackings, the U.N. said security had improved in Baghdad.

Still, there were shootings at night on the banks of the Tigris, a coalition vehicle hit a mine on a highway, and the situation in the Diyala neighbourhood in northeast Baghdad was described as tense in the heavily armed population, say briefing notes from a meeting of a non-governmental organizations.

One night from her hotel room, Shenstone heard screams of agony from a nearby street. "What do you do the middle of the night? You stay put and listen helplessly."

In her report to CARE, Shenstone's lead recommendation to the Canadian government is to advocate an increased U.N. presence in Iraq to provide a nation-wide perspective and co-ordination. There are at least 88 agencies running some 564 programs.

Iraqis have told aid workers that while life under Saddam Hussein was oppressive, the highly centralized government network of services was creaky with age and overuse, but it worked.

Now the Americans are sifting through civil servant lists removing tens of thousands of government officials — linked to the Baath party — from any role in rebuilding the country.

Communication is still broken down. Phones don't work and it's impossible for Iraqis to get into the giant palace that houses what's left of the dismantled government ministries.

Go down a corridor, Shenstone said, and you see a door marked ministry of health, another marked ministry of education.

"What you see are three guys huddling around a laptop. How are you going to run a country like this?" Shenstone asked. "Every thing is stalled."

Sergio Vieira de Mello, who oversaw the reconstruction of East Timor, recently arrived in Baghdad as special representative of the U.N. secretary-general.

Re-establishing the rule of law, he says, is a precondition for improving human rights.

In addition to the $200 million Canada has pledged to help rebuild Iraq, another $100 million has been promised for humanitarian aid.

Most of the aid money has been channelled to U.N. agencies, as well as to CARE and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

About $19 million has gone to the World Food Program for emergency food aid; tonnes of dried beans, long-life milk, infant formula and sugar are being trucked into Iraq daily.

It's been reported that up to 70 per cent of Iraqis depended to some extent on the U.N.'s oil for food program, which had 45,000 distribution outlets through out Iraq. The system collapsed during the war.

The Red Cross received $13.5 million; its tasks include delivering hospital gowns, surgical masks, IV equipment and fluids, sutures, anaesthetics and crutches.

CARE received $600,000 for its mobile trucks to repair damaged water systems. The agency, which has been in Iraq for the past 12 years, has also been trying to get Iraqi health ministry staff back to work. To help, the U.S. gave health ministry employees a one-time payment of $27 (Cdn).

Some employees say they need fuel for their cars to do their jobs — so CARE is helping to keep their tanks full, said Aly-Khan Rajani, a CARE Canada spokesperson. The agency also rented buses to transport ministry employees to their offices.

But humanitarian aid is hampered by security concerns.

CARE cars have been hijacked. They've repainted their remaining vehicles a non-descript green and removed the logos to make them less attractive to bandits. But that causes troubles at military checkpoints. Young American soldiers, twitchy about car bombs, point their guns and bark questions at drivers and passengers and everyone is scared.

"We would be able to move more freely if we were absolutely certain vehicles wouldn't be taken by gunpoint," said Anne Morris, CARE emergency response director said from Baghdad.

CARE is also repairing health clinics, bringing in generators, cleaning supplies, blankets, bed sheets and fixing sinks. Generators at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad have been repaired three times, Rajani said.

"It's not sustainable. Electricity needs to be restored and they need money to get the systems up and running.

"Canada is in a unique position, its funds are seen as much less political," Rajani said. "It's been neutral and people are more willing to take their funds, without strings attached."

Canadians have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal donations for humanitarian relief.

The Mennonite Central Committee has sent in some 30,000 relief kits — big plastic buckets filled with toiletries, towels and laundry detergent.

Volunteers have canned 13,600 kilograms of Canadian beef — 19,200 cans — which are awaiting inspection before being shipped to Iraq.

"It's chaos and anarchy," Canadian George Richert, with the Mennonite Central Committee, said from Amman, Jordan.

"Nobody knows a lot, simply because the military had no plan for post-war Iraq and that's painfully obvious."

The Mennonite committee had been helping Iraqis in a tomato seedling project — with 14 greenhouses, 14,000 seed trays and some 460 farmers — and the project had been thriving pre-war.

But Richert, the retired president of Menno Simons College in Winnipeg, which specializes in international development studies, saw wrecked greenhouses and thousands of withered plants.

Iraq's ministry of agriculture is a ruin, he said, while the ministry of oil was protected during the war.

The lament heard most often from Iraqis is that the war was to rid them of the despotic Saddam, but also improve their lives. Now it continues to be unclear who will be responsible for administering rebuilding programs.

"Will there be a ministry of agriculture run by the United States or a revived Iraqi ministry of agriculture?" Rick Janzen of the Mennonite Central Committee, said from Winnipeg.

It was a doctor at a psychiatric hospital who told Janzen, "Iraq is the Wild East, no law and guns for sale everywhere."

And a Dominican priest also told him, "Help us not to be dependent. Help us trust you, only then can we be free."

Canadian aid workers describe depressing scenes of orphanages, homes for the elderly and handicapped, abandoned and stripped bare; even metal window frames have been dragged away.

While the looting is not on the scale of the weeks immediately after the war, there are fears that crime has become more organized and less random.

In the city of Diwanyah, Red Cross worker Jodi Sydor, from Vancouver, found a home for the elderly, looted but functioning. Mattresses, clothing food, the stove and medical supplies were gone, but caregivers were still there — though not being paid — coping with the 35 old people living with dementia and a host of physical disabilities.

When the Red Cross arrived with mattresses, food and other supplies, the staff at the home were pleased but agreed to only keep food they could use immediately. They asked that most of the supplies be taken to a nearby hospital where they could be stored safely. The old people continued sleeping on the bare metal bed slats.

"They probably won't be looted again," said Sydor. "It's not really as bad as it was post conflict, but they are still afraid. We need to help rebuild their confidence in a safe society."

Canadian doctors, Hoskins and Samantha Nutt, were in Iraq at the end of April with their organization, War Child, which is supporting among other institutions, a children's hospital in Karbala.

They brought oxygen cylinders, boxes of antibiotics and antiseptics, laboratory equipment.

But hospitals need more lab supplies for testing for hepatitis and malaria and blood groups.

There's an epidemic of the parasitic infectious disease kala azar, which is spread through sand flies, Hoskins said.

The disease is fatal if not treated and one of the treatments is the drug pentamidine, which costs about $15 and isn't available in Iraq.

If treated, the survival rate is about 99 per cent; six of the 100 or so patients in the children's hospital are stricken with kala azar, Hoskins said.

War Child is also helping resupply Iraqi schools with blackboards, books, note pads, pencils.

The Babylon School for Girls, a technical school filled with computers and once a showcase for Iraqi education, was taken over during the war and used as a munitions depot by the fedayeen, the paramilitary Saddam loyalists.

The American forces drove a tank through the walls then looters moved in and tore even the shelves from the walls. When Hoskins and Nutt visited, they found not only books, but also weapons, including grenades and machine guns.

Hoskins is hoping a university or technical school in Canada will adopt the Babylon School and take on responsibility for rebuilding it.

"Millions were invested in it and now it's an empty shell," he said.

While much of the material for rebuilding Iraq will be sent from other countries in the region, the Mennonite Central Committee, with 10 years experience in Iraq, says it's important that some goods come from Canada.

"We want to give people in Iraq a sense of the personal care and compassion of people here," said Arli Klassen, executive-director of the Mennonite Central Committee in Ontario.

"We want them to be aware it's come from individuals, not mass purchases. It's building bridges between people in the western countries and Iraq. Giving money is the most efficient, but this connects people there with people here."

The committee is careful that whatever is sent to Iraq doesn't smack of nationalism.

So, there are no Canadian flags, not even on pencils sent to children, in any of their overseas bundles.

"We are individuals helping individuals," said Klassen.

"Humanitarian aid needs to be neutral and not associated with any government. Otherwise, humanitarian aid becomes a weapon — we've got to make sure we're not trying to win people to one side or the other."

[Sea Skimmer]

I just love how the author ignores the half decade long bombardment of Brasa by Iran and all million odd shells they fired at it, along with the fact that most of that damage was never repaired and ordinance never policed by the Iraqi army.

[Col. Crackpot]

I just love how the author ignores the half decade long bombardment of Brasa by Iran and all million odd shells they fired at it, along with the fact that most of that damage was never repaired and ordinance never policed by the Iraqi army.

But Sea Skimmer, why would a reporter include facts that would contradict his or her pre concieved conclusion and concurrent agenda?

[Ted]

I just love how the author ignores the half decade long bombardment of Brasa by Iran and all million odd shells they fired at it, along with the fact that most of that damage was never repaired and ordinance never policed by the Iraqi army.

Since when does Iran have cluster bombs?

Much of the children were wounded or killed by new shiny ordinance, something that decades old Iranian equipment would not look like.

[Sea Skimmer]

Since when does Iran have cluster bombs?

Since the 1970's when they bought thousands of BL.755's and Rockeyes from American and the UK. They also produce there own copys of both and a few other designs. Iraqi troops hated them so much they where known to hang pilots who where shot down after dropping them.

[HemlockGrey]

Much of the children were wounded or killed by new shiny ordinance, something that decades old Iranian equipment would not look like.

Where the hell does it say this?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I should note that the NGO aide organizations are pretty much universally reviled in Iraq currently, due to the fact that the main interest of their members are in complaining about things and not actually doing anything, while their top leadership, instead of organizing an efficient method of bringing in aide or suchlike, sit around poolside at hotels and drink alcohol, which is normally banned in Islamic countries.