Looking for Trouble

Iraq’s deadly legacy

Seven years after the invasion of Baghdad, the Iraqi people are experiencing a devastating legacy. Babies are being born with severe deformities and the cancer rate is skyrocketing. The following video from Australian Special Broadcasting Service’s Dateline program offers a visually disturbing look at this legacy.

Please be warned, journalist Fouad Hady, an Iraqi who went to Australia seeking asylum but returned to Iraq for a series of groundbreaking stories, pulls no punches in revealing the depth of the problem. The images are haunting.

(The embedding link has been disabled. When you click to start the video, you will get a message suggesting you watch it on YouTube. Please do. The video is long, but it is definitely worth watching.)

Here is a link to the study mentioned at the end of the video report:
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf, and a wiki page on the suspected cause: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium.

And here are links to stories I’ve published about depleted uranium:

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/95178_du12.shtml

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/133581_du04.html

Dateline is a multi-award winning international current affairs program with a brief to provide stories for Australians about life beyond Australia’s shores. The program is presented by George Negus, one of Australia’s most respected journalists, and is made up of a team of acclaimed producers and video journalists. Commissioned in 1984, it is Australia’s longest-running international current affairs program.

Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), according to an Australian government website, “is the voice and vision of multicultural Australia.” The principal function of SBS, is to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that “inform, educate and entertain all Australians, and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society.”

Guest blog: What you will not hear about Iraq by Adil E. Shamoo

The following is from the Media with Conscience news site and is used with permission of the author:

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 is a senior analyst at Foreign Policy In Focus, and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He writes on ethics and public policy. He can be reached at: ashamoo@umaryland.edu

Media blitz aimed at preventing troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

The cover of the August 9 edition of Time magazine was designed with shock and awe in mind. It shows a picture of Bibi Aisha, a young woman from Afghanistan whose nose and ears had been cut off. The photo was accompanied by the headline: “What happens if we leave Afghanistan”.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Gen. David Petraeus almost simultaneously began giving interviews to The New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, Meet the Press and others voicing his opinion that a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan would be unwise.

Normon Solomon wrote an article in Common Dreams.org today, “Gen. Petraeus Goes to Media War,” which says: “Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, with the evident approval of the White House, has launched a fierce media blitz to cripple the policy option of any significant military withdrawal a year from now. Riding high in what is supposed to be a civilian-run military, Petraeus is engaging in strategic media operations to manipulate what should be a democratic process on matters of war and peace.” http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/16

Solomon, author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and president of the Institute for Public Accuracy http://www.accuracy.org/, visited Kabul last year.

Lucinda Marshall said Monday, “On Meet the Press on Sunday, Petraeus cited the recent Time cover story featuring a young Afghan woman with her nose cut off. Said Petraeus: “If you lose, it has, I think, some significant repercussions, not just for this country, although they would be enormous, and start with the cover of Time magazine for starters.”

Marshall is director of the Feminist Peace Network, which just posted the article “Time’s Story About Afghan Women – Questions Raised About Author’s Vested Interests And Accuracy Of The Story.”

See also: “Time Magazine Once Again Trots Out the Tired and Inexcusable ‘We’re in Afghanistan (and Have to Stay) to Protect Women’ Mantra”

But you don’t have to be an American to see the dangers of the military setting a nation’s agenda.

This is from an article by Tony Iltis in Green Left, an Australian-based alternative weekly that describes itself as “a proudly independent voice committed to human and civil rights, global peace and environmental sustainability, democracy and equality.” Tony’s article was headlined, accurately, I believe, “‘Time’ exploits victim to promote war.”

“…what happened to Aisha took place in Afghanistan under Western occupation.

“In return for allowing Time to publish her photo, Aisha was flown to the US for reconstructive surgery. However, although Time ensured her mutilated face was seen worldwide, they appear less keen for her voice to be heard.

“I heard Aisha’s story from her a few weeks before the image of her face was displayed all over the world”, Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, wrote in the August 12 Nation. “She told me that her father-in-law caught up with her after she ran away, and took a knife to her on his own; village elders later approved, but the Taliban didn’t figure at all in this account.

“The Time story, however, attributes Aisha’s mutilation to a husband under orders of a Talib commander, thereby transforming a personal story, similar to those of countless women in Afghanistan today, into a portent of things to come for all women if the Taliban return to power.”

In March, Wikileaks published a CIA document that outlined a strategy to counter growing opposition in Europe to participation in the US-led occupation. It recommended using a narrative about the oppression of women in Afghanistan that highlighted the Taliban’s misogynist violence while ignoring that of the pro-occupation warlords and the occupation armies.

Afghan feminist Malalai Joya condemned the pro-war media manipulation. “During the Taliban’s regime such atrocities weren’t as rife as it is now and the graph is hiking each day”, she told France 24 on August 1.

“Eighteen-year-old Aisha is just an example and cutting ears, noses and toes, torturing and even slaughtering is a norm in Afghanistan

“ … The US used the plight of Afghan women as an excuse to occupy Afghanistan in 2001 by filling television screens, internet pages and newspapers with pictures of women being shot down or beaten up in public.

“Once again, it is molding the oppression of women into a propaganda tool to gain support and staining their hands with ever-deepening treason against Afghan women.”

Malalai Joya, who also is a politician the BBC called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” for denouncing the warlords in the parliament, toured the United States earlier this year in an effort to get support for pulling out U.S. troops from her country.

This was her message to Americans:

“Democracy will never come to Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun, or from the cluster bombs dropped by foreign forces. The struggle will be long and difficult, but the values of real democracy, human rights and women’s rights will only be won by the Afghan people themselves.

“So do not be fooled by this façade of democracy. The British and other Western governments that claim to be bringing democracy to Afghanistan ignore public opinion in their own countries, where growing numbers are against the war.

“In my tours to countries that have troops in Afghanistan, I’ve met many bereaved parents who have lost their loved ones in the war in my home. I am very sorry to see governments putting the lives of their soldiers in danger in Afghanistan in the name of bringing democracy. In fact the soldiers are serving the strategic and regional interests of the White House and the consequences of their occupation so far have been devastating for my people.

“The worst casualty of this war is truth. Those who stand up and raise their voice against injustice, insecurity and occupation have their lives threatened and are forced to leave Afghanistan, or simply get killed.

“We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.

“My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.”

But, of course, the current media blitz by Gen. Petraeus and his willing media accomplices isn’t aimed at the people of Afghanistan. It’s aimed at us.

Where do you stand? What will you do?

Guest blog by Ethan Casey: Pakistan Floods: Why Should We Care?

(From Ethan Casey’s blog: Reporting with Respect, used with permission.)

SEATTLE, AUGUST 13 – Yesterday a non-Pakistani friend here emailed me: “I wanted to ask you which you think would be the best organization to make a donation to for the current crisis in Pakistan. We usually give to MSF, but their website doesn’t seem to offer the opportunity to give specifically for Pakistan. Can you offer advice?”

This friend is British and greatly prefers British media outlets, but I need to believe that there are many Americans who also want to help flood victims in Pakistan – or who would want to, if they knew the scale and severity of the disaster.

Why don’t they know? We can, and I do, blame “the media,” but that’s unhelpful and ultimately a cop-out. Each of us individually has the opportunity and responsibility to be aware of every tragedy in our world, and we should be willing to exert ourselves to redress them. We’re all in this together. But the real problem is that there’s too much tragedy, and it’s happening too fast, and these days Americans are distracted and confused and worried about serious problems close to home, like our own jobs and mortgages.

This is understandable. But you need to know that all indicators are pointing toward an enormous, long-term human tragedy unfolding in Pakistan, and we need to do something about it, for several good reasons. The New York Times acknowledged one of these when – belatedly, in its first significant coverage of the floods that I noticed – it headlined an August 6 article “Hard-Line Islam Fills Void in Flooded Pakistan.”

A related point is that we Americans owe Pakistanis a measure of basic human respect and compassion, as well as gratitude specifically for the sacrifices they’ve made at our behest in several wars in Afghanistan. When we repay this debt, it will also redound to our benefit. “It’s high time we showed Pakistanis the best of America,” a disaster relief specialist told me last year. “If you’re a true friend, you don’t run out on somebody when you don’t need them anymore. … Pakistanis don’t trust America anymore. We need to show Pakistanis who we really are.”

Todd Shea runs a charity hospital in the Pakistan-administered portion of the disputed region of Kashmir, where he has been working since the October 2005 earthquake that killed 80,000 people. He also responded urgently and effectively to the World Trade Center attack, the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake this January in Haiti. He’s currently on the ground in Pakistan, running medical camps and providing drinking water, food, and other relief. An August 11 update on the floods suggests the scale of the challenge:

In a recent statement appealing for more aid to Pakistan, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said: “While the death toll may be much lower than in some major disasters, taking together the vast geographical area affected, the numbers of people requiring assistance and the access difficulties currently affecting operations in many parts of the country, it is clear that this disaster is one of the most challenging that any country has faced in recent years.

Thousands of people are camped out on roads, bridges and railway tracks – any dry ground they could find – often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and perhaps a plastic sheet to keep off the rain. ”I have no utensils. I have no food for my children. I have no money,” said one survivor, sitting on a rain-soaked road in Sukkur along with hundreds of other people. ”We were able to escape the floodwaters, but hunger may kill us.” …

There is a desperate need to send more well-equipped medical teams to the flood-hit areas to prevent the further spread of disease. The victims of the flood have lost everything and cannot cope with potential epidemics on their own.

I’m writing this article because I live and work between two worlds: the mainstream North America that I come from, and the Pakistani immigrant community. My job is to help bridge the gulf in awareness and sympathy between those worlds. What I’m seeing right now is that Pakistani-Americans and their admirable and effective nonprofit groups are jumping once more into the breach, as they always do. And, as always, they’re confined – and confining themselves – to soliciting funds from each other.

The flooding is “well timed” in the sense that the fasting month of Ramadan has just begun, and many Muslims will be directing their annual charity contributions toward flood relief. Pakistani-Americans are generally an affluent community, but there’s a limit to what they can do. Wealthy Pakistanis in Pakistan also need to help, and surely are helping. Just as important, we non-Pakistani Americans and Canadians must help. We also must somehow self-raise our own awareness, given the paucity of decent media coverage. This is important both for obvious-enough political reasons, and simply because it’s the right thing to do.

I see troubling contrasts between the outpouring of generosity and attention that followed the earthquake in Haiti and the averting of eyes from the flooding in Pakistan. I see several reasons for this: Haiti is nearby; the earthquake killed 200,000 or more people all at once. In addition, though, there’s the fact that Haiti is not a Muslim country. The earthquake fit right in with the story we were already telling ourselves about Haiti, which is all about poverty and tragedy. Dr. Paul Farmer sums it up pithily in the title of his book The Uses of Haiti. The uses of Pakistan are different. We need to move beyond the uses of both countries and toward understanding them accurately and respectfully, in their own terms. Our awareness of Haiti should be more political and of Pakistan less so, or differently so.

Anyway, back to my friend’s question. The short answer is that, as always, grassroots groups are more nimble and effective, and your money will be put to better use if you give it to groups that are nearer the ground. This is why the nonprofit groups founded and run by Pakistani-Americans are crucially important. I’m including links to several of these below, and I recommend them all.

I was jolted the other day when another friend suggested that being asked to donate to the excellent Islamic Medical Association of North America “could possibly turn some people off.” He’s probably right, but shame on them if so. We need to get over our knee-jerk aversion to the word “Islamic.” Your doctor might be a member of IMANA. As a Haitian woman told Paul Farmer years ago, “Tout moun se moun” – all people are people. We’re all in this together.

Please contribute to flood relief in Pakistan through one of these organizations (listed in alphabetical order):

APPNA

The Citizens Foundation

Edhi Foundation

Human Development Foundation

IMANA

Islamic Relief USA

Relief International

SHINE Humanity

UNICEF

 

Ethan Casey is the author of the travel books  Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip (2010)  He is currently writing Bearing the Bruise: A Lifetime in Haiti for publication in spring 2011. He can be emailed at ethan@ethancasey.com and his books and articles are available online at www.ethancasey.com/books and www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans. Until further notice, he is donating 20% of profits from sales of his Pakistan books to flood relief in Pakistan, and from his Haiti book to the Colorado Haiti Project.