The New Nation - Internet Edition

Five years after "Victory": Iraq numbers tell grim story

Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

It is sad these days to meet Iraqi academic and political leaders a full five years after the March 2003 American-led invasion and occupation of their country.

One cannot help being touched in heart and mind by their stories about witnessing death, destruction and despair on a scale unprecedented since the Middle Ages. Recently, I was among those listeners moved by what they shared of their experiences.

When I admitted regretfully that I did not visit Iraq prior to the 2003 occupation (although I had traveled to its neighbor states), my Iraqi colleagues commented that if I had visited their homeland then, and gone back to see it now, I would be shocked at the low state of public security, the high death rates and the general malaise that accompanies the widespread destruction and misery of any prolonged war-zone.

All the Iraqi expatriates or exiles with whom I spoke emphasized that Washington's repeated assertion that civil war will break out as soon as American and coalition troops leave, is a big propaganda lie. They were unanimous in their belief that Iraq's own political authorities are capable of peacefully resolving their differences and that nothing would do more for national reconciliation than for the entire country to be free of America's "liberation" forces.

In fact, the prevailing informed opinion of Iraqis both inside and outside their country is that the presence of occupation forces is the greatest single factor contributing to the incitement and proliferation of factional and sectarian violence. More than 80 per cent of Iraqis want the occupation to end, sooner rather than later; they are tired of seeing their country divided and shattered under an ineffectual puppet government. Among the remaining 20 percent are politicians exploiting the American occupation to enlarge their own wealth and power.

These conclusions are not merely anecdotal; they have been confirmed by experts such as Karen de Young in the Washington Post, when she recently reported on a focus group study done in Iraq and released in December 2007.

This survey, she wrote, "provides very strong evidence" that national reconciliation is possible and anticipated, contrary to what's being claimed. It was found that a sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis" from all over the country and all walks of life. This discovery of "shared beliefs" among Iraqis throughout the country is "good news, according to a military analysis of the results."

But here is the shocking contrast of some other numbers that America is trying to ignore.

More than one million Iraqis have been killed over the past five years, a large number of them civilians, especially women, children, the elderly and the ill. The British polling agency, Oxford Research Bureau, estimates the Iraqi death toll to be even greater, at 1.3 million.

Today in Iraq there are more than one million widows, most of them under 30 years of age, and a staggering five million orphans. Of these, 1.6 million are under 12. All of these millions are destitute and many are homeless as well. An increasing number support themselves and their families through prostitution, according to beleaguered Iraqi humanitarian aid organizations, whose meagre resources cannot begin to address the scope of need.

The drop-out rate among school children is at an all-time high of 33 per cent. Urgently needed social services, such as mental health and therapeutic counseling for school-aged children - some of whom have lost all members of their immediate families-is almost non-existent.

Even further marginalized beyond the reach of most relief resources are the estimated three million Iraqis with special physical and mental needs; many of them require constant medical care and are not receiving it.

Contrary to U.S. president George Bush's claim that an influx of 30,000 more American troops last year quelled bloodshed, preventable deaths from all causes are in fact rising in Iraq. Deaths rose again sharply in February and early March of this year. New figures from the Iraqi government also indicate that civilian casualties in February 2008 were 33 percent higher than in January.

Internal and external displacement is another under-appreciated crisis that has ravaged Iraq over the past five years under occupation. More than 150,000 Iraqis languish in American military prisons, or in those of the puppet Iraqi government.

Many of these prisoners are women and children, aged eight to 14.

Three million civilians have left their homes in and near conflict zones and moved to remoter parts of the country in hopes of greater safety.

Another four million have become destitute refugees, mainly in Syria and Jordan. Their numbers have overwhelmed the aid resources of both countries, resulting in one of the worst - and most under-reported-humanitarian disasters of recent history.

Unemployment has reached a staggering 90 percent and there is a crisis in skilled services resulting from the deaths of some 400 professionals, including doctors, nurses, professors and teachers.

As a result, medical facilities are almost non-functional and no sustained care or treatment can be given to people with serious conditions, or illnesses such as cancer. Electricity is available for only a few hours every day, and only 25 percent of schools and universities are even minimally functional.

Food staples, when available (and often, they are not) are distributed through monthly ration cards, while at the same time Iraq's oil resources are being robbed-literally from under the nation's feet - by American interests who are providing no fiscal accountability to anyone. Not surprisingly, Iraqis believe that the U.S. is financing its $3 trillion war against them by looting their oil.

Ironically, they can no longer afford to use their country's only economic resource - consumer prices for gasoline and other kinds of petroleum-derived fuels have gone up by an incredible 2000 percent since the American invasion, while other services (when you can get them) have risen 100 to 150 per cent above pre-occupation levels.

The fear and resentment of Iraqis are borne out by comments from Paul Wolfowitz who when Deputy Secretary of Defense, stated that much of the war's cost could be covered by Iraqi oil revenues, since the country is after all, floating on "a sea of oil."

Furthermore, Wolfowitz told a Congressional hearing: "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong." His statement did not address the human cost to America -- 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed and more than 60,000 wounded - much less the disproportionally greater loss of Iraqi lives and livelihoods.

American journalist Nir Rosen, who has witnessed death, destruction and misery in Iraq over the past five years, wrote in The Death of Iraq (an article appearing in Current History): "The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols, who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth century."

My Iraqi friends in Cairo sadly agree.

(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.)

Do Canadians know why we are in Afghanistan?

Saqib Khan

Do the policy makers in Canada have a thorough knowledge of the culture and the history of Afghanistan?

Politically, Afghanistan still operates under a feudalistic system and has been continuously fighting wars not only among various internal factions, but also against foreign occupation forces from Alexander the Great to the present American-led "Coalition of the Willing." Culturally, the country is still most influenced by regional and solidly traditional tribal affiliations. It may seem primitive to us in the West, but Afghanis are basically satisfied with their way of living.

According to Afghan tribal culture, if someone provides you with shelter, regardless of who you are, and even if you are a criminal, they will protect you with their own life if necessary. Also in Afghan tribal culture, blood feuds have no limit. These are important factors to remember when becoming involved in the affairs of a culture that has so little resemblance to Western ways, especially those of America.

Canada acquired a strong peacekeeping reputation after the Korean conflict of the 1950s. The original goal of Canada's mission in Afghanistan was solely for peacekeeping to ensure the security of the capital city, Kabul. But Canada's role has been altered to bolster the over-extended American military. It has taken on an active offensive combat role to root out insurgent resistance, hoping to diminish the extent of a Taliban comeback. But so far, Canada has not been successful militarily according to the facts on the ground. Canadian troops are learning the hard way that armed occupation is not an appropriate means of pacification or to bring about positive change. America's failure in Vietnam and the Russians hasty retreat from Afghanistan clearly demonstrated the fact that you can kill people, but you cannot kill an ideology.

Once again the casualties of war are mostly those of the innocent; women, children and the elderly. Canadian losses, while painful, are minuscule compared to "collateral" civilian losses in Afghanistan. We grieve for our beloved ones in Canada, but who is grieving for unfortunate Afghanis caught in the crossfire?

Canada's budget for the Afghanistan operation has now been exceeded and taxpayers will eventually have to pick up the cost. This money could be better used at home to feed and house our poor and improve social services. Unfortunately, we are not willing to send professionals to help Afghanis reach a higher standard of living; we are not willing to send them needed food and medical supplies; we are not willing to help them rebuild their roads, hospitals and schools.

The Afghan people may fear Canada and other Western troops because of our firepower, but in the end they dislike us because we are just another invading army that must be resisted in one form or another.

American society seems to be suffering from mass depression, brought about by unjustifiable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its failed "revenge" for 9/11. There was no Al-Qaeda, and no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But Americans continue to pay for two inconclusive wars with too many lost lives and deficit financing. Will Canada follow suit? Perhaps those who voted enthusiastically to support the war effort, never gave it full consideration before putting up their hands to shout "aye".

For those who remember, Rwanda was a shameful disaster for Canadian foreign policy. It seems Afghanistan could be next.

(Saqib Khan lives in Vancouver, BC. This article was edited for the Canadian Islamic Congress Friday Magazine.)

A faltering freedom agenda

Radwan Masmoudi & Joseph Loconte

Whatever the actual results of Egypt's municipal elections yesterday, the fix is in: President Hosni Mubarak made sure that even the most moderate and reform-minded candidates would be shut out of the process. The charade of democratic elections in Egypt typifies the Bush administration's faltering freedom agenda for the Arab world.

When President George W. Bush delivered his first major speech on democracy in the Middle East, it seemed as if the United States had turned a page of history. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said in the fall of 2003. "Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."

Never had an American president so openly admitted his country's failure to advance democratic ideals. Never had a Wester leader so boldly asserted that democracy could and must take root in the Middle East. This profession, joined with a promise of a fundamental shift in U.S. policy, raised the hopes of Muslim reformers in the region. In an open letter to President Bush, "Support Freedom in the Arab World" (published in the Washington Post on October 11, 2006), 105 Arab and Muslim democrats framed the challenge this way: "Freedom and democracy are the only ways to build a world where violence is replaced by peaceful public debate and political participation, and despair is replaced by hope, tolerance and dignity."

Many of the signatories, however, already had begun to doubt the seriousness of the administration's vision. Today the aspirations of many have succumbed to cynicism. The question we hear too often from Muslim reformers is this: What has become of the Bush democracy agenda?

Following the historic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was dramatic talk in early 2005 of an "Arab Spring," the tirrings of real democratic change. In Lebanon, Christian and Muslim protestors marched together to bring down the puppet government installed by Syria. In Damascus, over 140 Syrian intellectuals signed a statement opposing their government's occupation of Lebanon. Demonstrations in Egypt forced Mubarak to allow a multiple-candidate election for president for the first time. Tunisia released hundreds of political prisoners, and even Saudi Arabia held unprecedented local elections.

These developments were real and important--and easily reversible. Indeed, Arab dictatorships have not loosened their grip on political power, nor begun to embrace democratic ideals. They continue to thwart the rise of a strong and independent civil society. In many countries, the status of women, press freedom, and the independence of the judiciary remain appalling. None of this is likely to change without prolonged engagement, and pressure, from the United States.

This kind of tough and strategic diplomacy as never really been tried, however, and the consequences for Muslim democrats have been dire. The retreat from political reform, now evident throughout much of the Islamic world, is especially significant in Egypt, the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the region apart from Israel. Over the last two years, Mubarak has arrested liberal-minded activists, cracked down on political parties, further muzzled freedom of the press, and restricted the activities of non-governmental organizations. Political repression extends well beyond the orbit of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. More than 800 political dissidents--most of them committed to non-violence--have been arrested in the past six months alone, in the run-up to this week's local elections. Ayman Nour, who founded the liberal al-Ghad and challenged Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections, still languishes in prison on phony charges.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government manipulates Islam to preserve its uncontested authority. On the one hand, Muarak's regime portrays itself as the only "moderate" alternative to the forces of extremism. On the other hand, it ignores constitutional protections of religious freedom and equal justice under the law. If the government abuses the rights of its majority Sunni Muslim population, how can it respect the rights of minorities? In fact, severe restrictions on freedom of worship, in conjunction with the use of religious identity cards, are feeding a culture of intolerance toward religious minorities. The end result: Disfavored groups--including Coptic Christians, Shia Muslims, and Baha'is--are becoming the scapegoats for society's ills.

The threat of religious extremism is real enough in the Middle East. Yet Arab governments use the specter of Islamic fundamentalism as a proxy to justify thuggish and autocratic policies. It is a self-defeating strategy. The cocktail of repression, economic stagnation, and social unrest--over half of the 320 million Arabs in the region are under 20 years of age--invite political radicalism.

As various human-rights organizations report, Egypt's political regression is being duplicated in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan, and beyond. What especially galls Muslim reformers is that all this is happening with hardly a whisper of protest from the Bush administration. (Yesterday the State Department declined to condemn Egypt's rigged elections.) Under different circumstances, America's sacrifices in Afghanistan and Iraq might have persuaded many of its commitment to political reform--but not today. Numerous conversations with Muslim democrats make one thing clear: They

are increasingly scornful of a democracy agenda that seems selectively applied to suite narrow U.S. interests.

During his Middle East trip earlier this year, President Bush gently referred to "some setbacks" to democratic reform. But he avoided any direct criticism of the brutality and corruption that passes for political leadership in the Arab world. Meanwhile, U.S. aid continues t flow unhindered to the region, supporting unprincipled and undemocratic rulers. The administration's Middle East Partnership Initiative, aimed at strengthening grass-roots reformers, remains woefully underfunded and saw its budget cut from $150 million last year to less than $50 million for fiscal 2008.

What can be done diplomatically to challenge the illiberal regimes of the Middle East and embolden democratic reformers?

First, the Bush administration should loudly insist that the Mubarak government release Ayman Nour and those political prisoners--academics, journalists, human rights activists, and others--arrested in the latest crackdown. If public pressure fails, the administration should threaten to withhold a portion of its economic support to Egypt until it complies with international human-rights guarantees. Second, U.S. diplomats must seriously engage with leaders of moderate Islamic parties, those who reject violence and endorse democray, about how best to promote democratic governance and human rights in their countries. This will require the State Department to abandon its almost exclusively secular approach to political reform in the region--a tone-deafness to matters of faith that has frustrated would-be reformers.

Third, the United States should establish an annual fund of at least $500 million to support Arab and Muslim non-governmental organizations of all kinds that are genuinely committed to representative government and political and religious freedom. As Tocqueville once observed of America, it is the religious organizations of civil society that "direct the customs of the community" and are "indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions." The same will be true of any long-term democratic reform in the Middle East.

Finally, the administration should support, much more robustly than it has to date, American Muslims and American Muslim organizations to promote democrtic freedoms from within an Islamic perspective--to develop a modern interpretation of Islam that puts the principles of self-government and human dignity at the core of its moral theology. These groups can become a vital resource for Muslim democrats in the Arab world and beyond.

In a speech at Abu Dhabi in January, President Bush again raised expectations of U.S. support for democratic change. "You cannot build trust when you hold an election where opposition candidates find themselves harassed or in prison," he said. "You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government."

We agree with the president's words, and we're grateful for them. But the qualities of trust and hope have taken a severe beating in recent years, and will require much more than words to be revived.

(Radwan Masmoudi is the president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, which conducts democracy wrkshops throughout the Muslim world. Joseph Loconte is a senior fellow at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy and a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.)

India: Planning in the air?

Sunita Narain

India has added two more swanky symbols to bolster its first-world ambitions: the Rajiv Gandhi international airport in Hyderabad and the gleaming Bengaluru international airport in our software capital. But look beneath this glitzy façade and you will find another instance of development on the cheap. We refuse to admit that our dream of world-class infrastructure is not grounded on the hard reality that we are a rich and poor country at the same time. As a result, we do not think differently and plan for solutions that suit our needs.

Our distaste (rightly) for crowded airports, lack of facilities and reported inefficiency leads us towards massive investment in refurbishing or building new facilities by the private sector.

Nothing wrong. But we never considered the cost of building and maintaining these facilities and how they would be paid for. In the meantime, air travel has become cheaper, driven by the surge of new and low-cost airlines, competition and public incentives.

New airport new private owners say they require passengers to pay a hefty user development fee-up to Rs 1,000 per head to cover their investment; require airlines to pay higher ground handling charges to maintain the new facilities we craved for; and of course, we would have to pay higher rates for cars to be parked in the new multilevel facility. These costs, if accounted for, would make the attractive air travel option less desirable. So, naturally airlines don't want this to happen.

What then is the option? The developer-private and poorly regulated-wants to make money. Government can't risk taking sides: with the articulate air passenger lobby on the one side and the powerful development company on the other. The answer is to find another short-cut: developers are asked not to charge passengers (air travel is subsidized) but instead make more money from "extra-curricular" revenue options: open more malls and build more real estate and take larger shares of the profits of these publicly held assets.

We can call this public-private partnership and live with it. But this is still not the entire story. We forget public investments, which are required to be made so that private investments can work. In our quest to make private profitable and to keep costs low, we end up short-changing these basic requirements and believe that glitzy exteriors will make our nightmares go away.

Take the case of Gurgaon, Delhi's mall-infested suburb and the creation of private developers. It has glass exterior building, which boast of international looks. But it has no provision for water supply, it has no facility for collection or treatment of sewage, it has no garbage site and certainly has never invested a penny in building public transport services. Who will invest in the public services? Who can invest in the services that we have never planned for?

Similarly, in our fancy new airports ask how much (or little) attention has been paid to air traffic control. Bengaluru airport is reported to have traffic of 500 aircraft each day; it needs a minimum of 80 air traffic controllers. But it has only 25 on staff.

While air travel has boomed in the country, personnel, essential for air traffic control, have not been trained or recruited.

Aviation experts say that if we improved our radar reach and connectivity and had more skilled air traffic controllers we could greatly increase the number of flights. This would call for public investment in surveillance equipment and in training institutes. We build swanky airports instead, which we cannot pay for. So we subsidize them at the cost of developmental work.

Similarly, we want cheap air travel so we do not pay for its cost of fuel, even go as far as argue that it is an essential service for the aam admi. On the basis of strident lobbying by the airline industry, the minister for civil aviation has reportedly asked state governments to reduce the value added tax on aviation fuel. Already, much to the glee of industry Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and now Maharashtra have brought down taxes from 25 per cent to 4 per cent. This is the diesel-car phenomenon in the air-we want high class mobility but we will run our expensive cars on cheap fuel, we will not pay for parking, forget about costs of pollution or congestion.

We have also increased air travel to such an extent that there are crippling congestion problems in air. Much like our solution to road congestion, we believe that we can build our way out of this mess. It is estimated that between Delhi and Mumbai, congested airways lead planes to circle for half-hour each way during peak hours.

This means that the plane consumes extra fuel and emits extra pollutants-all this while it is estimated that every month six new aircraft are added to the skies. Congestion increases and we wait for the infrastructure to be geared for this growth.

But we never learn that unless we plan differently, the pace of infrastructure development will never keep pace with growth. Take the now famous Delhi-Gurgaon highway, which was planned for everyday traffic of 160,000 vehicles in 2016, but opened with 130,000 vehicles earlier this year-daily vehicle numbers have already crossed 150,000. The result is even longer waits at the many-gated toll plaza and even longer time to get past jammed city roads.

The car-lobby answer is to build even broader roads-even double-decker flyovers. The answer is certainly not to provide dedicated bus services or have rail connectivity between the two cities. That would require planning to suit our needs and pockets.

But no, that would be a travesty. Even if we get grounded-in air and on the road-we are after all stuck in swank and have not even paid for the costs of our travel. How much better can it get?

(The writer is the editor, Down to Earth magazine, New Delhi, India)