Iraqis Sold Out; Oil Sold Off
Linda Heard
The White House’s criticism of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki is muted nowadays. And no wonder. Last Monday President Bush and Iraq’s leader agreed a cozy “declaration of principles”. This permits the US to keep permanent “long-term” military bases within country - expected to house up to 50,000 personnel - and opens the door to American control of Iraq’s oil sector — illegal under the 2008 US Appropriations Act, which expressly forbids such control.
The same act and the 2008 Defence Authorisation Act preclude the US from establishing “any military installation or base for the purposes of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq”.
The deal, which was effected without the approval of Iraq’s Parliament or Congress, gives grist to the mill of those who claim the invasion of Iraq was primarily carried out to further Washington’s regional hegemony and cement its control of Iraq’s rich oil and gas resources. It’s couched in terms of “two fully sovereign and independent states with common interests” - laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.
From the standpoint of the Bush administration it’s a coup. It facilitates an eventual showy withdrawal of US troops, which will please the public and quiet Democrat demands, while all the while an unspecified number of soldiers, Marines, airmen and intelligence officers will remain behind fortified walls. The voters will then be conned into believing Iraq is old news.
Why would Al-Maliki give the go ahead? Does he believe Iraqis need to be protected from each other or does he think his country is threatened by predatory neighbours? I suspect neither. Iraq survived without foreigners since its inception and with international support in terms of training, weapons and equipment it could do so again.
Moreover, bitter sectarian divisions emerged after the 2003 invasion and provided oil and gas revenues were evenly distributed throughout all provinces and a process of forgiveness and reconciliation implemented, it’s probable the country could be re-glued.
The most likely scenario is Maliki has been somehow coerced. It gets worse. The Iraqi leader is also set to ask the United Nations to renew the multinational forces’ mandate in Iraq for another year, which translated means “US forces” since the so-called coalition of the willing has been decimated with even Britain and Australia preparing to quit.
Shouldn’t he instead be appealing to the UN to call for US withdrawal, especially when almost everyone agrees the invasion was illegal and based on false pretences in the first place?
The firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and his followers believe so. They are said to be seething over the prime minister’s capitulation effected without their consent. Iraq’s Vice President Tarek Al-Hashemi is equally scathing, while the tribal heads of Anbar province who have recently been cooperating with the Americans against al Qaeda are threatening to change allegiances.
Another point of contention within Iraq is the controversial oil law, which the US government is asking the Iraqi Cabinet to pass into law as swiftly as possible. Again, no wonder, as it allows foreign oil companies to develop the country’s oil fields and retain a substantial proportion of revenue for decades to come.
Iraq’s Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani, who fled Iraq after being jailed by Saddam for refusing to help build a nuclear bomb, says final approval of the oil law is just months away. He welcomes the law as an instrument to encourage foreign investment.
It will do that alright but while most other oil producing countries have painfully rid themselves of foreign control and interference it begs belief that the Iraqi oil minister seems to be opening his arms to a plan that, on the face of it, is tantamount to theft and smacks of a bygone imperialist age.
In fact, the Kurds have beaten him to it. They’ve already had a yard sale signing 15 exploration contracts with 20 overseas oil companies.
It looks as though elements of the Iraqi government are virtually saying to their nation’s occupiers, “Our house is your house. Stay as long as you like and help yourself to the fridge”. I don’t know why and I suspect neither do the Iraqis.
Arab News
Monday, April 7, 2008
Prostitution ordeal of Iraqi girls
Lina Sinjab
With their bright neon signs and glitzy decor, dozens of nightclubs line the streets of the Maraba district in the Syrian capital Damascus. It's here that men come from far and wide - car number plates are not just from Syria but Iraq and Saudi Arabia - to watch young women dancing. Most of the dancers are teenagers and many of them are Iraqi refugees.
They dance for the cash which gets tossed onto the stage. The dancers are surrounded by bodyguards, to stop them being touched by the men. But the guards also arrange for their charges to be paid for sex with members of the audience. A women came to my mother, who agreed to send me to these places. We needed the money
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees have moved to Syria and Jordan during the past four years, escaping the violence and instability that followed the US-led toppling of Saddam Hussein. Women supporting families face the greatest challenge.
The Syrian authorities and aid agencies do not know the exact numbers, but many of the women say they have little choice but to work in places like Maraba. Rafif is an innocent-looking 14-year-old, her long hair tied in a pony tail. She seems barely to understand the enormity of the crisis she is living.
"I have three sisters who are married and four brothers. They are all in Baghdad. I am here with my mother and young brother only. None of my family know what I do here."
Banned from doing regular work in Syria, she says their money ran out and her mother started looking for other means to survive.
She says she makes about $30 a night at the clubs, but when men take her to private villas she makes $100. She won't say what she must do to earn this money.
"A woman came and spoke to my mother, who agreed to send me to these places. We needed the money. "I have already been arrested for prostitution and sent back to Iraq, but I came back with a false passport."
Not all sex workers went into the industry by choice. Nada, 16, says was dumped by her father at the Iraq-Syria border after her cousin "took away my virginity". Five Iraqi men took her from the border to Damascus, where they raped her and sold her to a woman who forced her to work in nightclubs and private villas.
She is now waiting at a government protection centre to be deported back to Iraq. The government says police have arrested Iraqi girls as young as 12 working as prostitutes in the nightclubs.
"We are coming across increasing numbers of women who do not manage to make ends meet and are therefore more vulnerable to exploitative situations such as prostitution," says Laurens Jolles of the UN refugee agency.
"Intimidation and shame means the numbers of trafficking victims and sex industry workers in Syria may never be known by government or aid agencies." Women picked up by the police are sent to protection centres, which they frequently escape from, or are sent to prison.
"Immediately after we get to them, or sometimes before, they are bailed out of prison, often by the same people who probably forced them into prostitution," says Mr Jolles. Many of the young women who leave Iraq hoping for an easier, safer existence find what is in some ways an even tougher life in Syria. At an age when life should just be beginning, Iraqi teenagers like Nada feel they have reached a dead end. "Now they will send me back to Iraq, I have no-one there and in any case I am afraid for my life. I have no hope leaving here. I have told the government I don't want to go back. My family has abandoned me."
BBC News
Lina Sinjab
With their bright neon signs and glitzy decor, dozens of nightclubs line the streets of the Maraba district in the Syrian capital Damascus. It's here that men come from far and wide - car number plates are not just from Syria but Iraq and Saudi Arabia - to watch young women dancing. Most of the dancers are teenagers and many of them are Iraqi refugees.
They dance for the cash which gets tossed onto the stage. The dancers are surrounded by bodyguards, to stop them being touched by the men. But the guards also arrange for their charges to be paid for sex with members of the audience. A women came to my mother, who agreed to send me to these places. We needed the money
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees have moved to Syria and Jordan during the past four years, escaping the violence and instability that followed the US-led toppling of Saddam Hussein. Women supporting families face the greatest challenge.
The Syrian authorities and aid agencies do not know the exact numbers, but many of the women say they have little choice but to work in places like Maraba. Rafif is an innocent-looking 14-year-old, her long hair tied in a pony tail. She seems barely to understand the enormity of the crisis she is living.
"I have three sisters who are married and four brothers. They are all in Baghdad. I am here with my mother and young brother only. None of my family know what I do here."
Banned from doing regular work in Syria, she says their money ran out and her mother started looking for other means to survive.
She says she makes about $30 a night at the clubs, but when men take her to private villas she makes $100. She won't say what she must do to earn this money.
"A woman came and spoke to my mother, who agreed to send me to these places. We needed the money. "I have already been arrested for prostitution and sent back to Iraq, but I came back with a false passport."
Not all sex workers went into the industry by choice. Nada, 16, says was dumped by her father at the Iraq-Syria border after her cousin "took away my virginity". Five Iraqi men took her from the border to Damascus, where they raped her and sold her to a woman who forced her to work in nightclubs and private villas.
She is now waiting at a government protection centre to be deported back to Iraq. The government says police have arrested Iraqi girls as young as 12 working as prostitutes in the nightclubs.
"We are coming across increasing numbers of women who do not manage to make ends meet and are therefore more vulnerable to exploitative situations such as prostitution," says Laurens Jolles of the UN refugee agency.
"Intimidation and shame means the numbers of trafficking victims and sex industry workers in Syria may never be known by government or aid agencies." Women picked up by the police are sent to protection centres, which they frequently escape from, or are sent to prison.
"Immediately after we get to them, or sometimes before, they are bailed out of prison, often by the same people who probably forced them into prostitution," says Mr Jolles. Many of the young women who leave Iraq hoping for an easier, safer existence find what is in some ways an even tougher life in Syria. At an age when life should just be beginning, Iraqi teenagers like Nada feel they have reached a dead end. "Now they will send me back to Iraq, I have no-one there and in any case I am afraid for my life. I have no hope leaving here. I have told the government I don't want to go back. My family has abandoned me."
BBC News
Desperate Somalia
Darfur has engendered less international attention but no less misery in recent months: Violence is still rampant, and aggression by the Sudanese army continues. But there is at least the hope of relief in the planned deployment early next year of 19,000 more peacekeepers under a UN mandate. That can't be said for nearby Somalia, a failed state where another nasty war is escalating, another major humanitarian crisis is building - and the United Nations, together with most of the rest of the world, has written off any rescue.
Some international aid officials are arguing that the suffering in Somalia is now greater than in Darfur, and they may have a point. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the capital, Mogadishu, to live in camps along roads, where they have little food. A failed harvest has brought the rest of the country close to famine. In the capital there are regular bombings and ambushes by insurgents and occasional flare-ups of all-out combat; more than 80 people were killed in one week this month. Hundreds have drowned in recent months trying to flee the country by boat.
A year ago there was hope that Somalia could be stabilised for the first time since 1991, after Ethiopian troops routed the forces of the Islamic Courts movement, which had installed a fundamentalist administration in Mogadishu and harboured terrorists linked to al Qaeda. But the Western-backed coalition government that the Ethiopian forces carried into Mogadishu proved incapable of broadening its base to include powerful clans whose support was needed to pacify the capital. A plan to transfer security from the Ethiopians, who are widely disliked in Somalia, to an African peacekeeping force fell through. The remnants of the Islamic Courts force regrouped to wage war against the Ethiopians, with the help of allied clansmen. Ethiopian forces have been guilty of indiscriminate shelling of neighbourhoods where insurgents are based.
Not only Somalis stand to suffer in this crisis. The war could escalate into a conflict between Ethiopia and its bitter enemy Eritrea. If the Islamists win, Somalia could become a base for al-Qaeda and a staging point for attacks in East Africa and Europe. Yet the will and resources for an international intervention seem nonexistent. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, struggling to manage nine peacekeeping operations in Africa, recently said there was little chance of one in Somalia. The United States, which was driven out of Mogadishu in 1993, has unsuccessfully sought to act through surrogates - first local warlords, now the beleaguered and undisciplined Ethiopians.
If there is a chance for improvement, it may lie with the 68-year-old humanitarian who last week was named Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. Since Somalia descended into chaos 16 years ago, Mr. Hussein has worked for the Somali Red Crescent, helping to provide health services and build hospitals. Encouragingly, he said in his first speech that "consultations will be my first priority." If Somalia is to be saved from another catastrophe, the solution will have to begin with a home-grown political bargain.
The Washington Post
Darfur has engendered less international attention but no less misery in recent months: Violence is still rampant, and aggression by the Sudanese army continues. But there is at least the hope of relief in the planned deployment early next year of 19,000 more peacekeepers under a UN mandate. That can't be said for nearby Somalia, a failed state where another nasty war is escalating, another major humanitarian crisis is building - and the United Nations, together with most of the rest of the world, has written off any rescue.
Some international aid officials are arguing that the suffering in Somalia is now greater than in Darfur, and they may have a point. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the capital, Mogadishu, to live in camps along roads, where they have little food. A failed harvest has brought the rest of the country close to famine. In the capital there are regular bombings and ambushes by insurgents and occasional flare-ups of all-out combat; more than 80 people were killed in one week this month. Hundreds have drowned in recent months trying to flee the country by boat.
A year ago there was hope that Somalia could be stabilised for the first time since 1991, after Ethiopian troops routed the forces of the Islamic Courts movement, which had installed a fundamentalist administration in Mogadishu and harboured terrorists linked to al Qaeda. But the Western-backed coalition government that the Ethiopian forces carried into Mogadishu proved incapable of broadening its base to include powerful clans whose support was needed to pacify the capital. A plan to transfer security from the Ethiopians, who are widely disliked in Somalia, to an African peacekeeping force fell through. The remnants of the Islamic Courts force regrouped to wage war against the Ethiopians, with the help of allied clansmen. Ethiopian forces have been guilty of indiscriminate shelling of neighbourhoods where insurgents are based.
Not only Somalis stand to suffer in this crisis. The war could escalate into a conflict between Ethiopia and its bitter enemy Eritrea. If the Islamists win, Somalia could become a base for al-Qaeda and a staging point for attacks in East Africa and Europe. Yet the will and resources for an international intervention seem nonexistent. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, struggling to manage nine peacekeeping operations in Africa, recently said there was little chance of one in Somalia. The United States, which was driven out of Mogadishu in 1993, has unsuccessfully sought to act through surrogates - first local warlords, now the beleaguered and undisciplined Ethiopians.
If there is a chance for improvement, it may lie with the 68-year-old humanitarian who last week was named Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. Since Somalia descended into chaos 16 years ago, Mr. Hussein has worked for the Somali Red Crescent, helping to provide health services and build hospitals. Encouragingly, he said in his first speech that "consultations will be my first priority." If Somalia is to be saved from another catastrophe, the solution will have to begin with a home-grown political bargain.
The Washington Post
Chavez isn't finished
On election days in Caracas, fireworks and bugles awaken voters in districts known to support Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who controls all branches of government and has cowed or taken over most of the media. With that kind of political machine, the defeat of Chavez's favoured constitutional reforms in a referendum on Sunday was a remarkable indictment of his agenda for the nation's future.
Yet while many have ample reason to celebrate the setback for Chavez, whose so-called reforms were aimed at turning a democracy into a socialist dictatorship, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that there is a resurgent opposition movement in a nation that has already ceded most of the reins of power to its president. Nor will Sunday's close vote - the 69 constitutional amendments were divided into two packages on the ballot, with the first losing by a margin of 1.4% and the second by 2% - put a serious brake on Chavez's quest for more influence.
Among other things, the amendments would have given Chavez control over the central bank, allowed him to appoint regional vice presidents whose powers would have superseded elected governors and mayors, granted him the ability to censor the media and suspend due process at whim, and ended presidential term limits. Even with the defeat, Chavez probably will be able to pass many of his desired reforms legislatively, given that he controls all 167 parliamentary seats as well as the Supreme Court. The term limits can't be undone without voter approval, though, meaning that Chavez may have to call for another referendum if he wants to keep his seat after his second term expires in 2012.
Media images of huge student marches in Caracas in the run-up to Sunday's vote gave the impression of a powerful opposition movement in action, but in reality, Venezuela's opposition groups are deeply fragmented and leaderless. The biggest factor in the poll loss Sunday probably wasn't the students' protests but Chavez's own nonsensical economic policies, which have caused many of his impoverished supporters to wonder if he really knows what he's doing.
Massive oil revenues and heavy government spending are helping to spark the highest inflation rate in Latin America. Chavez's response has been to impose price controls on basic foodstuffs, giving farmers no incentive to produce and retailers no incentive to sell. The result is severe shortages and hours-long waits to obtain staples such as milk and beans. If that sounds like Soviet Russia or modern Cuba, there's a reason. Chavez's socialist ideals are leading Venezuela to a precipice, and it's the poor who will suffer most if it goes over the edge.
Los Angeles Times
On election days in Caracas, fireworks and bugles awaken voters in districts known to support Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who controls all branches of government and has cowed or taken over most of the media. With that kind of political machine, the defeat of Chavez's favoured constitutional reforms in a referendum on Sunday was a remarkable indictment of his agenda for the nation's future.
Yet while many have ample reason to celebrate the setback for Chavez, whose so-called reforms were aimed at turning a democracy into a socialist dictatorship, it shouldn't be taken as a sign that there is a resurgent opposition movement in a nation that has already ceded most of the reins of power to its president. Nor will Sunday's close vote - the 69 constitutional amendments were divided into two packages on the ballot, with the first losing by a margin of 1.4% and the second by 2% - put a serious brake on Chavez's quest for more influence.
Among other things, the amendments would have given Chavez control over the central bank, allowed him to appoint regional vice presidents whose powers would have superseded elected governors and mayors, granted him the ability to censor the media and suspend due process at whim, and ended presidential term limits. Even with the defeat, Chavez probably will be able to pass many of his desired reforms legislatively, given that he controls all 167 parliamentary seats as well as the Supreme Court. The term limits can't be undone without voter approval, though, meaning that Chavez may have to call for another referendum if he wants to keep his seat after his second term expires in 2012.
Media images of huge student marches in Caracas in the run-up to Sunday's vote gave the impression of a powerful opposition movement in action, but in reality, Venezuela's opposition groups are deeply fragmented and leaderless. The biggest factor in the poll loss Sunday probably wasn't the students' protests but Chavez's own nonsensical economic policies, which have caused many of his impoverished supporters to wonder if he really knows what he's doing.
Massive oil revenues and heavy government spending are helping to spark the highest inflation rate in Latin America. Chavez's response has been to impose price controls on basic foodstuffs, giving farmers no incentive to produce and retailers no incentive to sell. The result is severe shortages and hours-long waits to obtain staples such as milk and beans. If that sounds like Soviet Russia or modern Cuba, there's a reason. Chavez's socialist ideals are leading Venezuela to a precipice, and it's the poor who will suffer most if it goes over the edge.
Los Angeles Times
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