Iraq: Let Freedom Reign?
A snapshot from the Institute of War and Peace Reporting of everyday life in Iraq over the past few weeks:
Halabjans Resent Lack of Investment
Civil Servants Short-Changed
New Welfare System Overwhelmed
Female Politicians Fear Exclusion
The Growing Pains of Democracy
Child Labour Fears
Comment: Back to Baghdad
Halabjans Resent Lack of Investment
Stalled economic development has stirred unrest in this once-flourishing agricultural town.
By Mariwan Hama-Saeed in Halabja (ICR No. 174, 26-Apr-06)
Before the chemical weapon attacks, before it became a symbol of Kurdish suffering at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Halabja was known as one of the most agriculturally rich areas of Iraq.
Pomegranates, grains, grapes, tobacco and nuts grew in Halabja’s fertile soil. And those not working in the town’s thriving agricultural sector were employed by local factories.
Today, eighteen years after the Iraqi military launched chemical attacks on this mountainous town near the Iranian border, the factories destroyed by war remain closed.
The agriculture industry, which once employed about 90 per cent of Halabjans, never recovered after the 1988 attacks and the United Nations-imposed sanctions in the 1990s. Local products now struggle to compete with lower-priced imports.
“Halabja’s economy needs support,” said Arsalan Manucher, an economics professor at the University of Sulaimaniyah who is from Halabja. “Even after all that has happened in the area, it can be restored.”
Many people in Halabja, a town of about 80,000 in Sulaimaniyah province, feel betrayed because their economy remains stalled since Kurds took administrative control of the northeastern Iraqi region in 1991.
Their expectations grew when sanctions were dropped in 2003.
The lifting of the embargo led to an improvement in the lives of many Iraqi Kurds, but few in Halabja experienced any benefits.
Many of the survivors of the chemical weapons attacks still suffer dozens of different ailments, including cancer and respiratory issues, and there is no decent health care. The roads are not paved, and buildings hit during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s lie in rubble.
Last month, the memorial to Halabja’s chemical attack victims was set on fire during a protest over poor services during an anniversary of the outrage.
Security forces opened fired on demonstrators, killing a teenage boy.
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Civil Servants Short-Changed
Authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan dump worthless currency on public sector employees.
By Wrya Hama-Tahir in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 174, 26-Apr-06)
Mohammad Ahmad, a 34-year-old civil servant in Sulaimaniyah, recently brought home a treat for his child: 2,000 dinar, a little over one US dollar, in change.
His three-year-old son’s response, “Is this is a trick?”
In Kurdistan, Iraqi coins are used to make jewellery and play games, and even children know they have no monetary value.
Since February 2006, civil servants have received 2,000 dinars of their salaries in coins, which in Iraqi Kurdistan are not accepted as payment for utility bills or to even buy a cup of tea.
“The government is getting rid [of the coins] by giving them to us,” said Ahmad. “It’s ridiculous.”
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New Welfare System Overwhelmed
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families sign up for a more inclusive benefits scheme.
By Wa’d Ibrahim in Mosul (ICR No. 174, 26-Apr-06)
Many of Iraq’s poorest families should by now be benefiting from a new welfare support system, but only a fraction of those in need have received help so far because the civil service cannot cope.
The government created the Social Safety Net earlier this year as way of caring for the growing number of poor families.
It replaces the previous family welfare project which offered aid to needy Iraqis such as war widows and the disabled. The new scheme provides higher monthly payments and increases the number of people who qualify, paying out monthly benefits to groups such as the unemployed, low-income families and married students. Families which would have received up to 50,000 dinars (34 US dollars) a month before will now get between 50,000 and 120,000 dinars.
The government has allocated about 500 billion Iraqi dinars, or 341 million dollars, from fuel revenues to fund the scheme.
Hundreds of thousands of families have signed up for benefits, overwhelming branch offices of the labour and social affairs ministry, which have had difficulty handling the bureaucracy.
In a country where the government and economists estimate the unemployment rate at between 30 and 40 per cent, most of the individuals registering are jobless.
“I’ve registered my name on the unemployed list because my family is under a lot of [economic] pressure. I really hope it helps us,” said Ameera Hussein, a 25-year-old unemployed university graduate. “My dreams are much bigger than [this], but life is getting harder by the day.”
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“We’ve had nothing but promises,” said Fakhri Majeed, a 39-year-old unemployed father of four with a degree in agriculture. “Our names are on the list, and we keep going from one office to another. We don’t know if we’re going to get anything or not.”
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Female Politicians Fear Exclusion
Women who hold seats in parliament worry they will be passed by when posts in the new cabinet are allocated.
By Zaineb Naji in Baghdad (ICR No. 174, 26-Apr-06)
Women are being deprived of access to political power as parliamentary factions battle over posts in the forthcoming cabinet, female politicians from several parties say.
Female members of parliament say that they have been excluded from the months of negotiations over the cabinet, and that no woman leads any of the top parties or blocs.
The constitutional requirement that women should hold 25 per cent of seats in parliament has not been met; their representation stands at 19 per cent or 52 of the 275 seats. That position is mirrored within the individual political blocs in the legislature.
The limited political power that women have won raises questions about how effective their representatives in parliament and government will be in raising women’s issues.
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The Growing Pains of Democracy
Despite greater freedoms, life has in many ways become harder since the overthrow of Saddam.
By Emad al-Sharaa in Baghdad (ICR No. 173, 20-Apr-06)
Abdul-Zahra Mohammed sold religious books secretly for ten years near al-Khilani mosque in Baghdad.
Mohammed, 42, said he was trying to earn an income for his family and publicise Islamic thought by selling the forbidden texts. But he was regularly harassed and chased by security forces, and lived in fear of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Today, three years after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam, Mohammed’s business is flourishing. He now has a stand where he sells his books publicly and faces no threats of censorship.
“Iraq’s democracy is thriving, and no-one can take away any freedoms,” said Mohammed.
But Iraq’s experiment with democracy and freedom has received mixed reviews three years after the toppling of Saddam.
For large numbers of people, like lawyer Raja Hussein, 31, life has in many ways become harder since 2003. With democracy came American tanks, and as a woman she has faced many new hurdles.
“I used to work safely in the all the Baghdad courts,” she said. “But today I have to wear a headscarf for fear of being killed by [extremist] groups, because I’m not veiled.”
Like Hussein, many say that although in the past they were at the mercy of Saddam’s security forces, they now fear American Humvees with signs warning cars behind them saying, “Don’t get closer or you will be killed.”
Many are particularly critical of the fact that political parties seem to be split along sectarian and ethnic lines. Their frustrations are inflamed by the fact that Iraq has had a lame-duck government for four months and has been plunged into civil conflict.
And despite the fact that Iraqis enjoy more freedoms than they did under Saddam, they still fear random violence. The conflict in the capital is restricting freedom simply because people are too afraid to leave their houses.
All this means that although they support democracy, many do not believe it is being properly practiced in Iraq.
“What is going on in Iraq is a long way from the democracy that we’ve never actually had,” said Alia Talib, director of the international cooperation centre for media in Baghdad. “It was the will of Iraqis to live under democracy, not chaos, but that was never achieved.”
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Child Labour Fears
Poor enforcement of labour laws leaves children vulnerable to exploitation.
By Jasim al-Sabawi in Kirkuk (ICR No. 173, 20-Apr-06)
In a crowded market, ten-year-old Mazin expertly navigates his way through shoppers and vendors. He wears a second-hand t-shirt and cheap sneakers and has an ice cream box slung around his neck.
Mazin, who did not give his last name, earns 3,000 to 7,000 dinars (two to three US dollars) per day doing seasonal work, which in spring means selling ice cream. He only went to school for two years and now helps support his family in Hawija.
But Mazin doesn’t miss school. His true love is soccer, though he only has time to play on Fridays, which Iraq takes as a weekend holiday. Otherwise he starts his day in the morning and keeps walking until sunset. “I’m the best player on the block,” he bragged.
Iraq signed the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. However, provisions on child labour have almost never been enforced, in part because the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s had tough effects on poor and uneducated families, and parents frequently pulled their children out of school to work.
The US-led Coalition Provision Authority, which governed Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime three years ago, made it illegal for Iraqi children under the age of 15 to work. But child labour remains common and may be on the rise once again, because the country’s conflict is hindering economic development, experts say.
The US State Department noted in its 2005 Iraqi human rights report that children from the estimated one million Iraqi families living on less than one dollar a day were “routinely used as an additional source of labour or income”.
“It’s natural for us to see a large number of children under 10 years old doing jobs that they shouldn’t be doing, and the law prohibits it,” said attorney Abdullah Nazal.
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Comment: Back to Baghdad
One year after leaving the capital, a reporter returns to a ghost town.
By Ayub Nuri in Baghdad (ICR No. 172, 13-Apr-06)
The first time I saw my country’s capital was in April 2003, ten days after the war. I went to Baghdad as a reporter and fixer, and for the first time I met Arabs from every province of the country. As a Kurd from Halabja, I was as much a novelty to them as they were to me.
Everybody was trying to find a job with the US army, foreign companies or news agencies. English-language courses started to open in Baghdad.
The economy was booming, and I remember people saying, “Iraq is becoming the 51st American state.”
I shared the dream of many that democracy would come to Iraq, that we were starting a better life.
After the war I travelled to the mass graves in Hilla province. Families were digging and finding the bones of their loved ones. I was sad to see that – yet happy at the same time, telling myself these would be the last mass graves in Iraq, and everyone would now live in peace.
I was a strong supporter of the war, and did not like it when anti-war protesters in other countries took to the streets.
But then I saw with my own eyes American Humvees driving over peoples’ cars in Baghdad. I saw with my own eyes American soldiers firing at a building where only civilians lived.
The hopes I shared with so many other Iraqis slowly dimmed as I travelled throughout the country and witnessed growing violence.
I feared I too could become a victim of the rising insurgency. I left Baghdad after strangers asked questions about me in my building and my apartment was broken into several times when I wasn’t there.
After moving back to Sulaimaniyah, I visited Baghdad only intermittently.
I recently decided to report from the capital for several weeks to try to understand the new situation there. After the two Shia shrines in Samarra were bombed in February, all I had seen and heard on the news was that bodies were piling up in the streets of Baghdad.
When I returned, I found not the energetic capital I had left, but almost a ghost town where militias roam the streets freely and residents are afraid to carry out even simple daily tasks.
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