Gorilla’s Guides

A dark pool of dried blood and a fallen red scarf mark the place where Ronak, who had fled to a woman’s shelter in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah when she was accused of adultery by her husband, was shot three times by a man hiding on the roof of a nearby building.

Ronak was wounded by bullets in the neck, side and leg and only survived after a four-hour operation. She was the latest victim of a huge increase across Iraq in the number of “honour” killings of women for alleged immorality by their own families.

Many are burnt to death by having petrol or paraffin poured over them and set ablaze. Others are shot or strangled. The United Nations estimates that at least 255 women died in honour-related killings in Kurdistan, home to one fifth of Iraqis, in the first six months of 2007 alone.

The murder of women who are deemed to have disobeyed traditional codes of morality is even more common in the rest of Iraq where government authority has broken down since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A surprising reason explaining the massive increase in the number of honour killings is the availability of cheap mobile phones able to take pictures. Men photograph themselves making love to their girlfriends and pass the pictures to their friends. This often turns out to be a lethal act of bravado in a society where premarital or extra-marital sex justifies killing.

The first known case of sex recorded on a mobile leading to murder was in 2004. Film of a boy making love with a 17-year-old girl circulated in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Two days later she was killed by her family and a week later he was murdered by his.

Continue reading ‘How picture phones have fuelled frenzy of honour killing in Iraq’ »

Karbala, May 14, (VOI)- 12-year-old Waad was not the only child selling cloth rugs for drivers at a traffic light in the Shiite sacred city of Karbala. Scores of boys and girls his age stand near traffic lights areas all over Iraq to do same.

No sooner had the traffic policeman stopped the traffic movement than Waad rushed to offer drivers his goods for sale.

“My father died in an explosion a year ago, and I was forced to go out for work to earn living for my five-member-family,” Waad told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).

The boy who knew no entertainment bitterly adds, “I come out everyday in the early morning and will not be able to return home before I earn money enough to keep our life rolling.”

Continue reading ‘Child labor, a forgotten childhood under poverty’ »

Continue reading ‘اصوات العراق - عمالة الأطفال في كربلاء، طفولة منسية تحت وطأة الفقر’ »

UPDATE The toll is still rising from report below At least 4 dead and at least one hundred wounded Sadr city Friday night. So far toll is 20 dead 115 wounded and rising Imam Ali hospital 15 dead and 54 wounded, Sadr Hospital 5 dead and 61 wounded toll will rise as many of wounded not able to be treated

Editor’s Note: Fixed typing twice - first his, then mine

Suheila

GENEVA, May 9 (UNHCR) – Faced with a looming funding shortfall, the UN refugee agency warned on Friday that it could soon be forced to reduce and, in some cases, to halt a number of aid programmes for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees unless donor governments provide extra support.

Agency officials told a donor meeting at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on Friday that they lacked US$127 million required for assistance programmes for uprooted people in and around Iraq through the end of the year.

“We will not be able to help hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees and internally displaced if we do not receive funding for the remainder of 2008,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “Without this support, the humanitarian crisis we have faced over the past two years may grow even larger.”

In January, UNHCR appealed for US$261 million for its operations on behalf of some of the 4.7 million people uprooted by the conflict in Iraq. It has so far received US$134 million, but urgently requires the remainder to ensure the continuation of direct assistance programmes for many of Iraq’s internally displaced people (IDPs) as well as those who have fled elsewhere in the region, including to Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. The agency also cares for some 41,000 non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq, including Palestinians, Iranians, Turks and others.

Most of the refugees outside Iraq are in Syria and Jordan and are living in urban areas such as Damascus and Amman. The most vulnerable of these benefit from medical, food and direct financial assistance. Last month in Syria, more than 128,000 refugees received food assistance and close to 40,000 received subsidized health care. Many of them are running out of money and finding it increasingly difficult to survive amid a dramatic increase in food prices across the region.

In addition to direct cash assistance to some of the most vulnerable refugees, UNHCR is supporting efforts by governments in the region that are struggling to cope with the huge numbers of Iraqis who have strained local resources and infrastructure, including schools and health systems.

UNHCR has registered more than 280,000 Iraqis in neighbouring states; given health assistance to some 250,000 people and provided educational support in Syria, Jordan and other countries that has enabled some 72,000 refugee children to attend school. This year, the agency has set a target of getting another 70,000 Iraqi refugee children into school, but with the shortfall in funding, many Iraqi children might miss out on education.

In Egypt and Lebanon, where most Iraqi refugee children are enrolled in private schools, more than 4,000 children will not receive the education grants that UNHCR offered last year to enable them to continue their education.

Health programmes for Iraqis could be drastically reduced and the provision of some specialized medical interventions might come to a complete halt. By August, UNHCR will not be able to cover all basic health needs of Iraqis, and many seriously ill Iraqis will not be able to receive their monthly medication.

Since January, 150,000 Iraqis in Syria and close 19,000 in Jordan received basic health care assistance. With health facilities compromised in many parts of Iraq and many doctors no longer available, a growing number of ailing Iraqis are becoming refugees as they leave home in search of medical care elsewhere.

Distribution programmes in Syria and Jordan, the lifeline of 150,000 refugees who received food aid in 2007-2008, could be reduced, forcing many Iraqis into further destitution and raising the likelihood of higher malnutrition rates and increased child labour.

Omar, a 69-year-old refugee from Baghdad, said he would die a “slow death” if assistance was stopped. He and his family have depended on food and medical assistance since they fled to Syria in 2006, and are paying rent from remittances from Iraq that he says are “our only way to survive.”

The funding crisis comes as fuel, food and rent costs have risen dramatically.

In November, 5 percent of Iraqi refugees interviewed in a UNHCR-commissioned survey by IPSOS Market Research said that they live on less than US$100 a month. By March, that number had risen to 20 percent.

UNHCR - UNHCR seeks donor help amid funding shortfall for Iraq operation

“When Umm Mohammed threw herself over the body of her son who was hit by a sniper’s bullet just outside their house in Sadr City, she would have never thought that the next bullet would kill her,” a local resident of the Shiite slum said.

Editor’s Note: This is the independent Iraki newsagency Aswat Al Iraq’s (Voices of Iraq) English version of their feature in Arabic “مواطنون من مدينة الصدر يروون معاناتهم اليومية بعد اكثر من (40) يوما من المواجهات “. Which means:

“Sadr City Citizens relate their daily suffering after more than (40) days of confrontations”

We have posted the original Arabic immediately below.

For the last six weeks, Sadr City, the stronghold of Mahdi army fighters, has been a scene of uninterrupted clashes between the Shiite militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Pointing to Umm Mohammed’s house, Abu Muhannad, a neighbor, added sadly, “Umm Mohammed, tried to draw her son into the house, but her body remained along with her son’s corpse on the sidewalk where their house is located, while neighbors watched powerlessly through their windows as nobody was able to evacuate or call an ambulance.”

The neighbor told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI), “We heard Abu Mohammed’s cries for help as he could not recover his beloved due to being unable to walk having lost one of his legs in explosion in Baghdad last year.”

“We all failed him since none of us were able to lend a hand for fear of being killed by another sniper’s bullet,” Abu Muhannad bitterly explains.

After 40 days of severe clashes between followers of the anti-U.S. Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and U.S. and Iraqi troops, the slum, located in eastern Baghdad with a population of almost 2.5 million, seems rich in stories similar to that of Umm Mohammed.

Abdul Khaliq Swi’adi, 46, who moved his family into a house on the outskirts of Sadr city, said “a U.S. helicopter dropped a bomb on my house while I was inside. Fire consumed the house and I was trembling as I was unable to jump out for fear that the soldiers may shoot me.”

“Without even thinking, I was forced to go outside with my hands up on the assumption that I will not be shot at by soldiers and survive by a miracle,” Swi’adi described.
Sadr City is a densely populated city causing houses to be built attached to each other without any space in between. Parks, unused land, and vast spaces are not readily available in the city.

Ahmed Karim, a Sadr City resident, says “U.S. helicopters fly at low attitude day and night and now and then drop bombs on different places in the city.”
The U.S. army claims that copters and troops target gunmen who take position “on rooftops of the houses.”

Hazim al-Rubaie, 32, a resident of central Sadr City, narrates “a couple of days ago, an old man fell while trying to cross the main street near Dakhel Petrol Station.”
“He was hit by a sniper’s bullet. None dared to approach him to save his life. He bled to death,” al-Rubaie says.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health has been unable to release the civilian death toll of the clashes on the grounds that “the security authorities in the Interior Ministry are the only party authorized to issue such statistics,” the ministry’s media spokesman apologetically clarified to VOI.

To draw the attention of the public opinion to Sadr City’s suffering, 60 MPs representing different parliamentary blocs staged a sit-in late in April. So far however, clashes continue in the city on a daily basis.

Families began leaving the dangerous spots to safer areas outside Sadr City due to the continued bombardment.

Abdel Zahara al-Shwili tells VOI, “I moved my family to my brother’s house in the nearby Shaab neighborhood.”

Saadi al-Lami, a resident of Sadr City’s most violent hot spot, says “most families in section 11 of Sadr City have left their houses seeking safer places.” 

The Iraqi government decided on May 7 to set up safe zones for the displaced from the violence-wracked slum of Sadr city according to a statement by the spokesman for Baghdad’s security plan command.

Aswat Aliraq