U.S. Occupation of Iraq More Than Doubles Poverty, Sickness -- Leaves
Country a Total Disaster
The American public has no idea just how terrible we've made conditions in
Iraq.
Adil Shamoo
Foreign Policy in Focus: August 22, 2010
Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament,
rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The
killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the
United States has wreaked in Iraq.
UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United Nations, recently published a 218-page
report entitled State of the World's Cities, 2010-2011. The report is full
of statistics on the status of cities around the world and their
demographics. It defines slum dwellers as those living in urban centers
without one of the following: durable structures to protect them from
climate, sufficient living area, sufficient access to water, access to
sanitation facilities, and freedom from eviction.
Almost intentionally hidden in these statistics is one shocking fact about
urban Iraqi populations. For the past few decades, prior to the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban population living in
slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage has
risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban dwellers. In
the past decade, most countries have made progress toward reducing slum
dwellers. But Iraq has gone rapidly and dangerously in the opposite
direction.
According to the U.S. Census of 2000, 80 percent of the 285 million people
living in the United States are urban dwellers. Those living in slums are
well below 5 percent. If we translate the Iraqi statistic into the U.S.
context, 121 million people in the United States would be living in slums.
If the United States had an unemployment rate of 25-50 percent and 121
million people living in slums, riots would ensue, the military would take
over, and democracy would evaporate. So why are people in the United States
not concerned and saddened by the conditions in Iraq? Because most people in
the United States do not know what happened in Iraq and what is happening
there now. Our government, including the current administration, looks the
other way and perpetuates the myth that life has improved in post-invasion
Iraq. Our major news media reinforces this message.
I had high hopes that the new administration would tell the truth to its
citizens about why we invaded Iraq and what we are doing currently in the
country. President Obama promised to move forward and not look to the past.
However problematic this refusal to examine on the past -- particularly for
historians -- the president should at least inform the U.S. public of the
current conditions in Iraq. How else can we expect our government to
formulate appropriate policy?
More extensive congressional hearings on Iraq might have allowed us to learn
about the myths propagated about Iraq prior to the invasion and the extent
of the damage and destruction our invasion brought on Iraq. We would have
learned about the tremendous increase in urban poverty and the expansion of
city slums. Such facts about the current conditions of Iraq would help U.S.
citizens to better understand the impact of the quick U.S. withdraw and what
are our moral responsibilities in Iraq should be.
Adil E. Shamoo, born and raised in Baghdad, is a professor at the University
of Maryland School of Medicine. He is a contributor to Foreign Policy In
Focus.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67N5FN20100824
Hamas says peace talks will deal blow to Palestinians
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Reuters: Aug 24, 2010
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Tuesday that peace
talks between Palestinians and Israel next week could deal a fatal blow to
the Palestinian cause.
Meshaal said in a speech in Damascus that Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas was too weak to stand up to Israel and negotiate a just deal at the
talks in Washington on September 2.
"If the talks succeed they will succeed to Israeli standards and liquidate
the Palestinian cause. They'll give us parts of 1967 lands. They'll draw the
borders as they want and they'll confiscate our sovereignty," said Meshaal,
who lives in exile in Syria, along with several Palestinian leaders.
Abbas's negotiation strategy has long been condemned by the Hamas Islamist
group which seized control of the Gaza Strip from him in 2007 and is deeply
hostile to Israel.
Hamas does not rule out peace talks with Israel if they realize what it
considers Palestinian rights.
Hamas has said it could live peacefully alongside Israel if Israel withdrew
from all Palestinian land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. Hamas's
1988 founding charter, however, calls for the destruction of Israel and for
restoration of all of British mandate Palestine.
"Our grievance, in a nutshell, is occupation. Our project is resistance,"
said Meshaal.
Meshaal asked Abbas and his Fatah faction to join Hamas in adopting a
Palestinian strategy that does not drop diplomacy but concentrates on the
"option on resistance and holding on to inalienable Palestinian rights."
He said Palestinian negotiators were not legitimate.
The talks are the latest chapter in a peace process which, interrupted by
several years of violence earlier this decade, has given Palestinians
limited self-rule but no state on lands occupied by Israel since 1967.
The borders of the Palestinian state, the fate of Jewish settlements built
on occupied land and the future of Jerusalem are among the tough issues that
the negotiators will face and which past talks have failed to resolve.
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