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Iraq 10 Years Later

March 20, 2013 by Nicholas Slayton

The Iraq War started 10 years ago, an anniversary marked by violence. In December 2011, the United States said its involvement in combat was over, and with it, the war. The reasons behind the invasion and the mishandling of it are a myriad of falsehoods and ineptitude. But looking past that, where is Iraq after a decade of war and with American combat forces out of the country? It’s not in a good state. And the international community is ignoring a country resting on an unstable foundation.

The so-called “surge” in 2007 worked, but not in the way it was presented. Iraq was in a civil war then, with Sunnis and Shias in large ethnic and sectarian clashes. The United States and coalition forces took sides in the civil war to stop it, but the conflict only increased refugees and didn’t resolve Iraq’s internal conflicts, only postponing them. Roughly 1.5 million were internally displaced during the fighting, and many remain displaced today. According to Refugees International, there are as many as 2.8 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) within Iraq today.

With foreign combat troops withdrawn from Iraq, long-simmering conflicts and the civil war’s fallout are rearing their heads. One of the country’s vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, is living in exile in Turkey after being sentenced to death on charges of running Sunni death squads. The warrant for his arrest came the day after American troops left the country. The semi-automous Iraqi Kurdistan is in on-and-off fights with the Iraqi government over its own oil trade. And with the Syrian civil war next door, the risk of the fighting spilling over could reignite Iraq’s own civil war. Already, over 115,000 Syrian refugees have registered with the UNHCR in Iraq.

Meanwhile, reconstruction efforts in Iraq remain inconsistent. Projects are abandoned halfway to completion. The government’s authority is tenuous at best in parts the country. And the State Department ended its training program for Iraqi police after years of mishandling, even as the country’s security forces continue to grow. So Iraq’s left with an unstable authority, while regional and local authorities bare teeth at each other. Instead of rebuilding the country and providing for basic humanitarian needs, the international community is letting Iraq set itself up for conflict and humanitarian problems.

The world wants to forget Iraq, and the disaster that was the war. It wants to try to sweep it under the rug and focus on the global economy or current conflicts such as Syria. But the facts won’t go away: more than 30 million people live in Iraq, and they need help to rebuild their country and avoid another decade of violence.

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UXOs In Mali A Major Concern

by Chris R Albon

Unexploded ordnance (UXOs), meaning the bombs, rockets, shells, and other explosive munitions left scattered on battlefields and bases after conflict, have been a major concern in post-war environments since WWI. Now, the latest conflict between Islamist militants and the government (supported by their French allies) in Mali is spreading this deadly legacy across the country.

According to UNICEF, over fifty people have been injured by UXOs since April last year, with a significant majority being children. Hector Calderon of UNICEF describes that in Mali UXOs are “all over the place; on the streets, close to schools and health centres.” UNICEF estimates that since the French military joined the civil war, the number of UXOs has doubled.

“Explosive remnants of war are a direct threat to people’s lives and limbs, but also adversely affect livelihoods and disrupt daily routines. The presence of such dangerous items is an obvious source of fear and distress that prevents affected communities from resuming normal lives,” said Marc Vaillant, programme officer for the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Mali.

…

“Civilians feel the threat of these explosives,” said Calderon. “One mother was afraid to bring her child to a health centre because she was scared the health centre was contaminated with ammunition. It’s clear that the left-over ammunition has impacted the lives of these communities.”

The problem with UXOs is often two fold. First, because most UXOs come from either munitions that failed to detonate on impact or (often unmarked and recorded) landmines, organizations attempting to secure areas from the danger have little to no information on where to look. UXOs can be underground, in buildings, even in trees (from airdropped munitions or artillery). Finding them, let alone safety disarming them, is an incredibly time consuming and labor intensive task.

Second, UXOs can lay hidden for years, even decades, before they are discovered — often by children. Furthermore, the longer a UXO sits, the more unstable it’s explosive contents become, meaning that they are even more dangerous to move or touch.

For these two reasons, one of the most effective tactics for protecting populations against UXOs is educating civilians both about how to recognize UXOs and what to do when they discover one. The bitter truth is that these lessons will become some of the most important for Malian civilians for decades to come.

Photo credit: Tom Oates

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Top of the Morning: Zimbabwe’s new constitution; Philippines back-track on contraception; UN in Syria

by Penelope Chester

Zimbabwe Overwhelming Votes for New Constitution

The draft constitution that was supported by both major parties passed with nearly 95% of the vote, though only just over half of all eligible Zimbabweans turned out to vote. “Some observers have expressed their concern on whether there is enough time to synchronise the existing laws with the new constitution in time for elections. McDonald Lewanika, an observer from the Crisis Coalition, said that it is ‘almost certain’ that elections would be held this year, but said that it was unlikely that all the constitutional changes would be implemented in time for the elections.” (Al Jazeera http://aje.me/139d7mS)

Philippine Court Freezes Disputed Contraceptive Law

It took years to pass a law that would provide free contraceptives to the poor in the Philippines, and now people will have to wait another 120 days. The Philippine Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled for the delay giving opponents to the law time to make their case against the law on June 18th. “Opponents, principally Catholic organizations, have argued that the bill promotes a culture of promiscuity that offends the country’s values and would lead to abortion, which remains illegal in the Philippines.” (NYTimes http://nyti.ms/Ypf7zA)

UN defends aid work in Syria – Humanitarian appeal only 20% funded

The United Nations defended its humanitarian work in Syria on Monday, saying it deals with all parties in a “neutral and transparent manner” and offers assistance to all those affected by the conflict.
Radhouane Nouicer, the regional coordinator for the UN’S OCHA humanitarian affairs office, said the organisation was working under tough conditions and repeated a call for additional funding.
But he brushed off allegations that the body has delivered little aid to rebel-held areas, focusing its work in regions still under regime control. He said just over 20 percent of the $519 million dollars the UN was seeking to fund its work had been pledged so far.
“It is difficult to apply an assistance programme with this modest sum,” he said, warning “the resources are minimal and the needs are enormous.”
“The international community accords more importance to the political and military side than to resources intended for humanitarian aid,” he added. (ReliefWeb http://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/un-defends-aid-work-syria)

Photo credit: Asian Media - UN monitors in Baba Amr – Homs

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Lessons from the UN on the Iraq War

March 19, 2013 by Mark Leon Goldberg

The ten year anniversary of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq is causing some reflection and soul searching–actually, not enough if you ask me. But still, it is a good moment to look back and reflect on what went wrong. There’s much to talk about. But I will focus on the UN. Specifically, the decision by the USA to violate the UN charter and invade Iraq without the approval of the Security Council.

What lesson does this teach us about the value of the Security Council? If you cannot convince the Security Council about the necessity of a war, then you should probably not start the war.

The Security Council is the sole entity with the legal ability to authorize the non-consensual intervention. In other words, it is the only body that makes war legal when the country that’s being invaded by foreign forces does not want to be invaded by foreign forces.  The Security Council did not approve of the Iraq war. The USA went to war anyway.  That made the war technically illegal. It also made the war much harder to win – the Security Council doesn’t not just confer legality on an intervention, it confers legitimacy, as well. This is an important point. When an intervention has the backing of the Security Council it is more likely to succeed. Under 50 countries joined George W. Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing”, only three countries sent troops for the initial invasion (Poland, Australia and the United Kingdom.) While other countries provided troops over the years, only a handful sent more than 1,000 troops to Iraq. The politics at play and the lack of international consensus around the war created a situation where the US-led intervention was perceived as imperialistic and self-serving, making “winning” the war an all but impossible task. Indeed, in this context, what does “winning” look like? When President Bush appeared in front of the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner a few short weeks after the initial invasion, it would be another eight years before the US formally ended operations in Iraq.

To be sure, the Kosovo intervention was also a violation of the UN charter. But though the action was not approved by the UNSC, circumstances were different than Iraq. At the time, Milosevic was carrying out an aggressive campaign against civilians, and there was a real sense of urgency driving the international community to act. Even Kofi Annan, who was Secretary-General of the UN at the time, said that while he regretted that the UNSC had not been involved in the decision to pursue military action in Kosovo, stated “that it was the rejection of a political settlement by the Yugoslav authorities which made  [NATO bombings] necessary, and that, indeed, there “are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace“.” In the late 90s, following the Rwandan genocide and with an increasingly paralyzed UNSC, the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine was beginning to emerge, taking aim at sovereignty as a responsibility and not a right, taking aim at the foundational principle of the UN Charter and the source of the UNSC’s legitimacy in war and peace.

While this doctrine was later adopted by the UN (in 2005, after the war in Iraq began), it’s questionable whether it would have applied to the situation in Iraq. While there was never any doubt that Saddam Hussein was a negative force not just in his country but in the region, the rationale that existed for the Kosovo campaign did not exist in Iraq (in fact, the US felt the need to create some intelligence about WMDs in order to justify their intervention and create this much-needed rationale.)

Today, the protection of state sovereignty as an inalienable right of nation states continues to be a preeminent concern of the UNSC. Indeed, the UNSC has not agreed to allow an intervention in Syria, for example, where there is no question that the regime is at war against its own people. Geopolitical interests and pressures, as well as the strong intent of some members of the Security Council to preserve the non-intervention in sovereign affairs modus operandi, have made agreement at the UNSC all but impossible.

Finally, an unfortunate legacy of the war in Iraq is that it undermined the legitimacy and strength of the UNSC in the eyes of the international community. Where the buck was supposed to stop with the UNSC, the US-led invasion and subsequent war in Iraq made the Security Council and the United Nations more generally look weak and irrelevant, unprepared to handle the complex conflicts of the 21st century. The long-awaited reform of the UNSC – in the works for decades – may be able to strengthen it again and reposition the UNSC as the legitimate – and respected – arbiter of world peace.

Penelope Chester contributed to this article.

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A Cambodian Prisoner of Conscience is Set Free

by Faine Greenwood

A prisoner of conscience in Cambodia is set free. But that does not mean the country is becoming any more welcoming of dissent.

Cambodian radio station owner and human rights activist Mam Sonando has been released, in a surprising reversal of policy that has many Cambodians and Cambodia-watchers genuinely shocked. Analysts are now questioning whether the release constituted an official indication that Cambodia’s top-brass are lightening up on freedom of speech — or if it was instead a somewhat cynical attempt at displaying tolerance for democracy to both local and international critics.The drama began in October of 2012, when Sonando was arrested on charges that he had attempted to foment a separatist revolution in the remote province of Kratie, though in fact the 72-year-old, who holds French citizenship, was not even the country at the time.

During the crackdown on these so-called secessionists (angered over official land-grabbing, but with little aspiration of actual separatism), security forces fatally shot and killed a 14-year-old girl in a violent land eviction, a murder which was officially deemed a “accident” and never fully investigated.

Sonando, who had only broadcast charges against Hun Sen in an international court on his radio station, proved an easy scapegoat in the incident: he bravely returned to Cambodia and was promptly sentenced to a 20 year long prison sentence on sedition charges.

The world reacted with speed: Amnesty International deemed him a prisoner of conscience, US President Obama demanded Sonando be released during his decidedly awkward pow-wow with Hun Sen during his ASEAN visit in November. French President Francoise Hollande,US assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, various NGOs, and others also condemned his arrest publicly and often.

When Sonando’s sentence came up for appeal on March 5th, streams of supporters, many elderly and frail, came out to the court to advocate for him. Surprisingly, no military police had appeared to scatter the supporters or intimidate them with hard plastic riot shields, even as the gathered hundreds partially blocked the busy street running by the appeals court.

Shouting “Dakhing!” over and over (which translates into “walk freely”), Sonando’s supporters threatened Cambodian curses on those who would keep Sonando in custody, and demanded to be allowed to share the burden of custody with him. One elderly man told me that he ridden his bicycle all the way across town, in the profound heat of a Phnom Penh March, to attend the proceedings.

By March 6th, it was revealed that the prosecutors had decided to suggest dropping the two worst charges against Sonando and replace them with a decidedly lesser charge of “destruction to the forest,” a legislative bait and switch that’s been used in Cambodia before, in the case against a prominent group of land grabbing activists.

When the ruling finally came on March 14th, the news was good: Sonando was to be freed, his sentence reduced to five years with four years and four months of that suspended. Two men convicted alongside Sonando on similar charges, Kan Sovan/Chan Sovann, and Touch Siem/Touch Rin also had their sentences reduced and were slated to walk.

He walked out of prison early on March 15th to a crowd of hundreds exultant supporters, who trailed him across town from Pray Sar prison back to his home outside of Phnom Penh. He was soon enough back in his old Beehive Radio office: beaten, but unbowed.Did they imprison him in the first place out fear? That was the stance of Association of Democrats Pannary Huon, who was visible releasing symbolic flights of birds into the air as she and her supporters waited for the ruling on March 5.

“I guess they [the government] is afraid of the elections, and also afraid because a lot of people support Sonando,” she told me. “He never did anything wrong, he followed the rules, that’s why it was a crime they put him in prison.”

But it is more than likely that fear explains why he walked into freedom on March 15th as well: fear by the government of international condemnation, and fear that the people’s uncomfortable attention to the case will prove troublesome for the Cambodian People’s Party in the upcoming elections.

He is only one man, and, the ruling party likely hopes, is sufficiently chastened to remain quiet for a while, as the July elections approach.

Meanwhile, to avoid the illusion that Cambodia’s leaders are entirely ceding to international requests, the government has lashed out against Amnesty International and other NGOs and individual who condemned Mam Sonando’s arrest, deeming them enemies of the Cambodian constitution — although critique of Obama and other international leaders has remained curiously absent.

The question remains: who will gather in droves as yet another peasant protesting land grabbing is disenfranchised, or as yet more of Cambodia’s dwindling natural resources are auctioned off to the highest well-connected bidder, or when yet another journalist turns up dead under mysterious circumstances? In my opinion, international observers would be foolish in the extreme to assume that this ruling indicates that Cambodia is becoming more free.

Photo credit: Faine Greenwood

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Top of the Morning: Experts Warn About TB; War Criminal Inside US Embassy

by Chris R Albon

Top stories from DAWNS Digest

The Terminator Walks into the US Embassy…

…and asks to be handed over to the ICC. Though it is a relief that such an infamous criminal may finally be brought to justice, the move is puzzling and has analysts scrambling for an explanation. “[Ntaganda] denies charges of conscripting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution and rape. Those charges relate to his time as the leader of a militia in the north-eastern DR Congo between 2002 and 2003. Since then he has fought for other rebel groups in the region, as well as the Congolese army. Most recently he was believed to be one of the leaders of the M23 rebel group, which is fighting government troops in the east of the country. …On Sunday, the DR Congo government said Gen Ntaganda, who comes from the Tutsi ethnic group, had fled to Rwanda after he and some of his followers were apparently defeated by a rival faction of the M23 group.” (BBC http://bbc.in/YMgsTC)

TB: Invest Now or Pay More Later, Warn WHO and Global Fund

The spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in general is worrying enough; frankly, this is terrifying. They didn’t call it “consumption” for nothing. “TB is often seen as a disease of the past – but the emergence of strains that can not be treated by various drugs has turned it into one of the world’s most pressing health problems over the past decade. …In 2011, 8.7 million people fell ill with TB and 1.4 million died of the disease. The WHO says as many as 2 million people may be suffering from drug-resistant strains by 2015…[E]xtensively drug-resistant TB – which can evade even the most highly effective drugs – was reported in at least 77 countries in 2011, according to the WHO. Doctors in India have also reported cases of totally resistant TB, for which there are no effective drugs.” (AlertNet http://bit.ly/ZmxlEc)

Photo credit: AK Rockefeller

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