Gorilla’s Guides

A new US estimate of the number of Iraqis killed seven years after the US-led invasion serves as a reminder that civilians are dying on a daily basis in Iraq, writes Salah Hemeid

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s famous quotation apparently justifying the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as a result of the Washington- backed and UN-imposed sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s has often been remembered as a cold-blooded assertion of US policy objectives.

The aphorism came to mind again last week when US media reported that the United States had finally released its first official compilation of data on Iraqi casualties, more than seven years after its invasion of the country.

The report, posted on the US Central Command website in July, drew little notice until last Thursday, when media outlets published details showing that 63,185 civilians and 13,754 members of the Iraqi security forces had been killed from early 2004 to August 2008.

It is not clear why the figures did not include casualties from the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2003, or from the period after August 2008. It is not clear either how the data were compiled and using what methodology.

The figures seem to represent a "policy engineered" anti-climax as the Obama administration, facing a mid- term election challenge, tries to bring an end to America’s misadventure in Iraq.

The number of Iraqis killed during the US-led invasion and its aftermath has long been hotly debated, estimates ranging from fewer than 100,000 to more than a million.

Knowing how these latest US figures were arrived at would speak volumes about how the United States is faring as it prepares to exit from Iraq.

The casualty figures released by Washington are lower than those from Iraqi government sources. Last year, the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights reported that 85,694 Iraqis, including military and police personnel, had been killed from the beginning of 2004 through to October 2008.

In January 2008, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that 151,000 deaths had taken place in the country due to the violence, with a 95 per cent confidence estimate of between 104,000 and 223,000 from March 2003 through to June 2006. The figures were based on the results of an Iraq family health survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a respected US journal.

Another estimate from the Iraq Body Count, a non- governmental organisation based in Britain that uses media accounts, has put the number of civilian dead in Iraq at 47,668 during the same period as the WHO study. The group’s latest figures for civilian deaths from violence in the country until September 19 2010 stood at between 98,252 and 107,235.

A 2006 survey in The Lancet, a British medical journal, estimated that more than 600,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war, a figure more than 10 times higher than other estimates at the time.

Iraq has not officially reacted to any of the studies, though many Iraqis have rejected the new US figures on the number of civilian deaths in the conflict, saying that they are well below the actual numbers who have died.

The numbers are misleading, critics say, because they are not based on a well- defined methodology dealing with all violence-related deaths, including assassinations and in operations conducted by the US military.

Estimates of casualty figures during the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq have been controversial because of the high political stakes involved and the possibility of manipulation aimed at swaying public opinion. The recent report was prompted by a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Scepticism has arisen about these latest figures not only because of possible discrepancies and the mysterious standards used to establish the magnitude of the casualties, but also because the parties involved have been reluctant to tell the truth about this human tragedy.

A fundamental question is why the US military, which bears primary responsibility for the conflict, failed to address the issue start from the start and why it did not keep accurate records on the victims of the invasion and occupation.

The military’s apparent incapacity to provide statistics about the causalities of US air bombardments and other related operations is a real and pressing concern.

Another question of concern is why the US media, omnipresent in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, has not capitalised on its high standards of professionalism to gather accurate data about the human tragedy in Iraq.

The Associated Press kept a record for the period from 28 April 2005 to 30 September 2010 listing some 49,416 deaths.

Yet, even more disturbing than these US failures has been the failure by successive Iraqi governments to establish an efficient process of data collection to register the deaths of Iraqi citizens and to compensate their families.

Failure to collect data and dodgy statistics are not the only problems. There is also the problem of how to count deaths that are directly related to the war and occupation, separating them from deaths as a result of violence in the country.

Absent from the debate is any explanation of the humanitarian crisis that has struck Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, including increasing poverty, unemployment, the deterioration of health services and the destruction of the country’s ecological system.

Statistics such as those released by the US military have also largely ignored Iraqi fatalities caused by a lack of clean drinking water and a breakdown in utilities.

Humanitarian agencies like the International Committee of the Red Cross have warned that the country’s healthcare facilities face grave shortages of staff and supplies, with the water, sewage and electricity infrastructure being in critical condition.

Rates of cancer, leukemia and brain tumours, widely believed to have been caused by US weaponry, have been on the rise, some research suggesting that they rival those reported among survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The US military’s report on the death toll in Iraq comes at a time when US President Barack Obama has reached his lowest ratings in US opinion polls ahead of crucial mid-term elections next month.

The release of the statistics while Obama embarks on a campaign to drum up support for Democratic Party candidates cannot be a coincidence.

By publishing a limited number of casualties in Iraq, the Obama administration may be hoping that it can go ahead with its policy of "turning the page" in Iraq, ending the US military presence in the country by the end of next year.

Exiting from Iraq would benefit the Democratic Party, whose president vowed to end the legacy of the Republican Party and its president in Iraq.

If all goes to plan, Iraq will no longer be front-page news in America, as US soldiers pack up to leave in order to help Democrats achieve some sort of hoped-for victory in next month’s elections.

However, the very day this article was sent to print, a spate of bomb attacks across Iraq killed and wounded many people, serving as proof that the threat of death remains a part of daily life in the country.

If Albright’s idea that the price paid by Iraqi civilians for US policy "is worth it" can serve as any sort of reminder in this sad chapter of Iraq’s history, then it should be that the US-led invasion has turned into a humanitarian tragedy, as well as an American national predicament.

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Death and body bags

BAGHDAD, 14 July 2010 (IRIN) – The city of Fallujah, about 60km west of Baghdad, still has no functioning sewage system: Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water supplies.

The city’s infrastructure was in ruins after two fierce battles between US forces and Sunni militants in 2004. In a bid to garner local support for the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, US officials pledged to build a sewage treatment plant at a cost of US$35 million.

Work began in July 2004 and was supposed to be completed in 18 months, but continuing violence, design changes and the replacement of incompetent contractors delayed the project and costs ballooned to over $100 million.

Six years on and with US forces preparing to withdraw from Iraq next month, not a single house is connected to the system. The US army has decided to hand over the partially finished project to a local contractor with the promise of providing the necessary funding to complete it.

"The project is in its final stages and is expected to be handed over by the end of this year," Sheikh Hameed al-Alwan, head of Fallujah local council, told IRIN. "But unfortunately the plant will work only partially as its backbone, which is the main pipeline that sends all the waste to the main processing unit, will not be constructed because of the lack of funds."

Without this vital pipeline, the plant will serve only a fraction of the city’s 580,000 residents, al-Alwan said, adding that the worst affected would be those in suburban areas. “Our only hope is that the Americans can secure the money to complete it, especially after the Iraqi government has said it does not have enough to allocate to it.”

Foul smells

Foul-smelling sewage has run through the rutted and pockmarked streets of Fallujah for more than three years. Residents currently depend on underground septic tanks which are in many cases leaking waste onto the streets from where it eventually ends up in the River Euphrates, a main drinking water source for Fallujah and other downstream cities.

Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of Fallujah general hospital, said the sewage problem had taken its toll on residents’ health. They were increasingly affected by diarrhoea, tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases.

Al-Nawaf said that although he did not have specific numbers, 10-15 percent of patients at his hospital had water or sewage-related diseases.

Experts say the Fallujah plant is just one of many abandoned, incomplete or hastily finished projects around the country.

Anbar-based analyst Khudhair Jassim Ali, who lectures at the university, said that a lack of funds, corruption and a lack of cooperation between the government and companies working on projects have delayed badly needed infrastructure projects.

"The government should follow up with these projects to take over from those parties that will leave Iraq, whether US forces or NGOs. It should fill the gap.”

IRIN Middle East | IRAQ: Seeping sewage hits Fallujah residents’ health | Middle East | Iraq | Health & Nutrition Water & Sanitation | News Item

Iraq (Reuters) – Abdullah Hasan blames chronic water shortages for ruining his crops and has little faith a new government will be able to revive Iraq’s agriculture sector, shattered by war and starved of investment.

The 50-year-old father of five from Falluja in western Anbar province was forced to abandon his 50 acres of land and take a job in construction after years of drought killed off his wheat, barley, tomato, cucumber and watermelon harvests.

He has little hope of returning to farming — his primary source of income for 35 years — and plans to sell some of his land as water levels in rivers and reservoirs continue to drop, increasing the concentration of pollutants in the water.

"Day after day, the soil situation is deteriorating because the level of salt is increasing and fertility is decreasing. It’s like a cancer hitting the human body," Hasan said.

Already damaged by decades of war and sanctions, Iraq has acute water shortages which are expected to worsen as its population of around 30 million grows.

A country dominated by arid desert landscapes, it has one of the most extensive irrigation systems in the world but years of war, underinvestment and sanctions have prevented it from properly harnessing what little water it has left.

Iraq’s main rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, provide little relief to the parched plains as hydroelectric dams in neighbouring Turkey, Iran and Syria have stemmed the water flow.

Investment in dilapidated infrastructure like water pumps is vital for key industries like agriculture and oil, as well as the broader reconstruction effort seven years after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

SEWAGE THREAT

Parched Anbar province, a vast desert area, has been hit particularly hard. Large areas of formerly arable land by the Euphrates have become unusable because of insufficient methods to pump clean water through the soil.

The United Nations says around 83 percent of sewage is being discharged untreated into waterways, while the government estimates 24 percent of Iraqis do not have access to safe water.

Working with U.S. experts, the government is trying to build treatment plants and biological lagoons to clean polluted water.

In Anbar, a Provincial Reconstruction Team — a unit set up by the United States to help rebuild Iraq — has spent over $100 million (69 million pounds) to build and maintain treatment facilities and expects 97 percent of residents to have clean water by year’s end.

Around 90 percent of Anbar’s 1.4 million people live along the Euphrates, where water levels have dropped dramatically. The river had an average flow rate of 1,000 cubic metres per second before being dammed and slowed to 290 cubic metres per second last August — its lowest level in six years.

Iraqi officials say sewage facilities in Anbar are insufficient. A sewage system for the town of Ramadi would cost at least $400 million, they say.

"Where are we going to find investors who will come and invest $400 million in a project like that?" said Ibrahim Madlool, the director general of water for Anbar province.

"We are looking for support from the central government to support us in projects of this magnitude."

POLITICAL VOID

The wait may be long. Iraq has been in political limbo since a March 7 election produced no outright winner.

It could take months before a new government is formed and that means delays in new projects that need cabinet approval.

The new government is expected to focus on improving basic services, including negotiating more water supplies from neighbours and focussing on efficient use of the little water Iraq has.

The lack of water threatens development of the oilfields. Iraq has the world’s third-largest reserves and struck deals last year which could propel it to major producer status.

But large volumes of water must be pumped under ground to maintain pressure as oil is extracted. Production of a barrel of oil requires around 1.6 barrels of water.

Developing agriculture and the oil sector, which employs more people than any other industry, are seen as crucial for keeping unemployed youth away from the insurgency as Iraq recovers from the sectarian bloodshed of 2006 and 2007.

But Hasan, who earns 2,000 dinars ($1.71) a day in construction, expects little improvement from a new government.

"I don’t believe that a conscious government awakening will happen, especially after more than seven years of this deterioration," he said. "I am not optimistic."

Source: Lack of water threatens Iraq’s long-term stability | Reuters

Millions of people in Iraq cannot get clean water or water in sufficient quantity. The ICRC is doing its best to improve access to safe water. This is an update on ICRC activities carried out in Iraq in March and April.

The Tigris and the Euphrates, which supply the bulk of Iraq’s water, are slowly dwindling and in some areas can no longer be used as a reliable source of drinking water. Across the country, the shrinking of the rivers is having serious consequences on the functioning of water treatment plants. It also affects underground aquifers, where the salt content of the water is increasing. This water is often unfit for human consumption or even for agricultural use.

The volatile security situation in some areas and the rising price of fuel have put additional strain on already scarce services, as have population growth and displacement. In many places, the strain is further compounded by a lack of qualified engineers and staff able to maintain and repair water and sanitation facilities. Many farming communities were hard hit by the drought that struck northern Iraq in 2008. Average rainfall over the past 10 years has been far lower than in previous decades. In the north, water supply systems fed by springs and shallows aquifers have been depleted and often have less water available to meet demand. Although rainfall has been better in many places during 2009 and 2010, low water-levels continue to affect agriculture production, meaning Iraq needs to import more rice and wheat. With less water of sufficient quality generally available, management of the existing resources is key.

Because large suburban residential areas have sometimes developed without adequate infrastructure, and certain sewage treatment plants are bypassed, wastewater is discharged untreated into rivers and lakes. Ditches and ponds filled with foul-smelling polluted water blight many neighbourhoods. The United Nations recently estimated that around 83% of sewage is being let into rivers and waterways.

Water treatment and distribution facilities are also disrupted by persistent power shortages. Iraq is currently producing around 6,000 megawatts of electricity a day, while demand is estimated at 10,000 megawatts. Health, water and sewage facilities and other infrastructure in many parts of the country still rely on back-up generators to meet their need for electric power.

Water distribution systems that are old or badly maintained are further weakened by illegal connections and substandard plumbing within households. Leakages cause large amounts of wasted water and frequent contamination. According to the United Nations, nearly half of Iraqis in rural areas are without safe drinking water. The Iraqi government estimates that 24% of Iraqis in the country as a whole, or nearly one in four, do not have access to safe water.

"Reliable access to enough water of sufficient quality remains a major challenge for large parts of the population", said Julien Le Sourd, the ICRC’s water and habitat coordinator in Iraq. "The ICRC is doing its utmost to improve this by repairing and upgrading water supply and sewage systems. We do this in partnership with the authorities and we are also providing training for maintenance staff working in water treatment plants."

In March and April, ICRC water engineers:

• completed work at the Ashty water station, in Erbil governorate, which provides safe drinking water for around 10,000 people living in nearby villages;
• built an emergency unit in the 50-bed Qala’t Salih Hospital in Missan governorate;
• upgraded the storage capacity for drinking water and for water used in the cooling system in Medical City Hospital, Baghdad. The hospital can accommodate 1,400 patients and treats around 10,000 outpatients per day;
• renovated a primary health-care centre serving around 400 patients in Sadr City, Baghdad;
• connected the school of al Rahma camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Najaf City, which has 1,000 pupils and teachers, to the municipal water and electricity supply networks;
• supplied and installed a new mortuary refrigerator with a capacity of 12 corpses in Beiji General Hospital, in Salah Al Din governorate;
• delivered water by truck to 4,500 displaced people in Sadr City and to 340 in Husseinia and Ma’amil, Al Imam Ali General Hospital and Fatma al Zahra Hospital, all in Baghdad governorate, and to 360 in Qalawa Quarter camp in Sulaimaniya;
• installed equipment used to fill water bags for distribution during emergencies at Al Wathba water treatment plant in Baghdad;
• repaired the Hindiyah water treatment plant in Karbala, which supplies water to around 125,000 people;
• installed a large-capacity pump in al Fadhliya water treatment plant, Thi Qar governorate, providing drinking water for 82,000 people.
• assessed, in cooperation with Iraqi Correctional Services engineers, 11 detention facilities under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, evaluating needs and recommending improvements for the delivery of essential services (water, electricity, sewage).

Bringing aid to vulnerable people

The ICRC maintained its support for people facing special difficulty earning a living and supporting their families, such as women heading households, people with disabilities and displaced people:

• more than 2,300 displaced families headed by women in Diyala, Salah Al-Din and Ninawa governorates were given monthly food parcels and hygiene items;
• around 2,100 people displaced in March from Mosul to Hamdanya and Tilkaif were given food parcels and rice;
• 61 disabled people in Erbil, Dohuk and Ninawa governorates were given micro-economic aid enabling them to start small businesses and regain economic self-sufficiency. A total of 459 disabled people have now received such aid in a programme that started in 2008.

Assisting hospitals and physical rehabilitation centres

Iraqi health facilities still benefit from ICRC support. To help disabled people reintegrate into the community, the ICRC provides limb-fitting and physical rehabilitation services. In March and April:

• six hospitals and three primary health-care centres received medical supplies and equipment;
• 25 doctors and 28 nurses successfully took part in a training course on strengthening emergency services given at Al Sadr Teaching Hospital in Najaf and at Sulaimaniya Emergency Hospital;
• two people from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research involved in the teaching of prosthetics and orthotics went to the National Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics in the United Kingdom under ICRC sponsorship for advanced training.

Visiting detainees

ICRC delegates continued to visit detainees in order to monitor the conditions in which they are being held and the treatment they receive. In all cases, the ICRC shares its findings and recommendations in confidence with the detaining authorities. In March and April, the ICRC visited detainees held:

• in Counter-Terrorism Directorate and Tasfirat Najaf, in Najaf governorate;
• in Mina and Samawa prisons, Basra governorate;
• in Counter-Terrorism Directorate, Kirkuk governorate;
• in US custody, in Remembrance II, Baghdad governorate;
• in four prisons and one police station in Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniya governorates.

Around 1,550 detainees held in Hilla I & II Correctional Facilities were given mattresses and recreational items such as ping-pong tables, soccer balls and volleyballs.

The ICRC makes a special effort to restore and maintain ties between detainees and their families. In March, it arranged for six Iraqi families to enter Kuwait and visit their relatives detained there since 1991. In addition, around 10,500 Red Cross messages were exchanged between detainees and their families in Iraq and abroad during the month of March.

During March and April, the ICRC responded to more than 3,600 enquiries from families seeking information on detained relatives. It also issued 220 certificates to former detainees making them eligible to receive social welfare benefits.

At the request of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the ICRC issued 73 travel documents for Palestinian refugees in Iraq to enable them to resettle abroad.

Clarifying what happened to missing people

The ICRC supports the authorities in their efforts to clarify what happened to those who went missing in connection with the Iran-Iraq War and the 1990-1991 Gulf War. It also helps train forensic professionals in the identification and management of mortal remains and regularly supplies equipment. In the past two months:

• the Technical Sub-Committee of the Tripartite Commission, handling cases of persons missing in connection with the 1990-1991 Gulf War, held its 64th session in Kuwait, which was chaired by the ICRC and attended by representatives from Iraq, Kuwait and the 1990-1991 Coalition (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Saudi Arabia). Nine samples of human remains were handed over by the Iraqi to the Kuwaiti delegation for DNA analysis in an effort to determine if they belonged to missing Kuwaiti nationals. The sub-committee will hold a special meeting on forensics in Kuwait in May;
• mortal remains of Iraqi soldiers were repatriated from Kuwait under ICRC auspices.

Promoting international humanitarian law

In line with its mandate, the ICRC promotes compliance with international humanitarian law and reminds parties to a conflict of their obligation to protect civilians. In March and April, the ICRC organized a series of seminars and presentations on international humanitarian law for various audiences all over Iraq.

The beginning of 2010 was marred by acts of violence that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, mainly in Baghdad, the central governorates and Najaf. In Mosul, families fled violence and sought refuge in safer areas. Although recent violence-related displacement has been sporadic, there remain some 2.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq who had to leave their homes over recent years in search of safety.

Many Iraqis, especially those worst affected by the effects of the conflict and the ongoing violence, such as displaced, elderly and disabled people and women heading households, continued to struggle to feed their families. Their inability to buy enough of the essential goods they require remains a major concern.

Agriculture, formerly an important part of the economy, has been declining for the past decade. Individuals who have lost agricultural machinery to damage, age or disrepair often cannot replace it owing to a lack of financial wherewithal. In addition, the water supply has been hard hit by a failure to properly maintain pumping stations and irrigation and distribution canals, by the unreliable electricity supply and by higher fuel costs. The massive increase in the price of seed and fertilizer, and cheap imports from neighbouring countries, also play a role in making farming difficult, if not impossible, in many parts of Iraq. Many farmers try to survive by cultivating smaller patches of land, but as they are forced to use low-quality supplies the result is often poor harvests. Others have migrated to cities in search of other ways of earning a living.

The situation was exacerbated by the 2008 drought – the worst in the past 10 years – which had an especially severe impact on rain-fed agriculture in central, west-central and some northern parts of the country. In some areas, agricultural production was wiped out. After years of poor rainfalls, pastures were reduced and prices of fodder soared. According to an ICRC survey, breeders were forced to cut down their herds by more than 60 per cent in some parts of the country, which had a drastic effect on their livelihoods. "Before, we used to move to neighbouring districts. Now, everywhere is dry and we lost our crops and animals. How can we go on?," said one local farmer in Ninawa governorate.

For households that have lost their main wage earner, the economic situation is especially hard to endure. Most people who went missing in connection with recent wars or the ongoing violence, and most people behind bars, are adult males – usually breadwinners. The women and children they left behind often became isolated and therefore extremely vulnerable, despite the strong cultural solidarity among Iraqis.

The ICRC is helping the Iraqis who are worst off to cope with their hardships, and Iraqi communities to support themselves unaided. It is distributing seed and fertilizer, and fodder for livestock. In addition, it is vaccinating cattle and cleaning and improving irrigation canals. In 2009 alone, some 195,000 people benefited.

In January and February 2010, according to the ICRC’s own independent assessment carried out by the organization’s staff all over Iraq, more than 20,000 people benefited from its humanitarian assistance:

• almost 15,500 displaced people (families headed by women) in Baghdad, Diyala, Salah Al-Din and Ninawa governorates were given monthly food parcels and hygiene items;
• around 5,400 people recently displaced from Mosul to Hamdanya and Tilkaif received emergency food parcels, rice and ready-to-eat meals;
• over 1,900 farmers in Diyala governorate received 491.5 metric tonnes of urea fertilizer to help them improve their harvest and make their farming sustainable;
• 43 disabled people in Erbil, Dohuk, Sulaimaniya and Ninewa governorates benefited from micro-economic aid enabling them to start small businesses and regain economic self-sufficiency.

The ICRC also endeavoured to respond to other needs of the Iraqi population in January and February.

Providing clean water and sanitation

Access to clean water remains inadequate in several parts of the country. Only 45 per cent of the population, on average, have clean drinking water and 20 per cent proper sewage disposal. ICRC water engineers continue to repair and upgrade water, electrical and sanitation facilities all over Iraq, especially in areas where violence remains a concern, to enhance access for civilians to clean water and to improve the quality of services provided in communities and health-care facilities.

• Baghdad governorate: Samadiya water compact unit for about 20,000 people, Al Mahmodiya General Hospital serving some 400,000 people living in the area, Ibn Al Khateeb Infectious Diseases Hospital, Medico Legal Institute, Tabat al Kurd water boosting station for over 3,500 people and Al Mada’in water treatment plant for 470,000 people (including displaced people) plus three hospitals and eight primary health-care centres.
• Anbar governorate: Heet water treatment plant for 45,000 residents and 250 displaced people, Habbaniya water treatment plant for 30,000 residents and 1,500 displaced people, and Al Qaim Hospital providing health care for around 350,000 area inhabitants.
• Salah Al Din governorate: al Dor clinic and Dijail compact unit supplying water to almost 25,000 people.

Other water-related works were carried out that will benefit nearly 100,000 people in Missan, Diwaniya and Diyala governorates, and in Ninawa governorate where 3,000 inmates held at Badoosh prison will be among those benefiting.

Water was delivered by truck to:

• 4,500 displaced people in Sadr City and 340 in Husseinia and Ma’amil, and in Baghdad Teaching Hospital, all in Baghdad governorate;
• Qalawa Quarter camp in Sulaimaniya, hosting around 360 displaced people. Two damaged tanks of 5,000 litres each have been replaced.

Assisting hospitals and physical rehabilitation centres

Health-care services are still inadequate. In some areas, it is difficult to reach health facilities because of the prevailing lack of security. Iraqi health facilities still benefit from ICRC support. Limb-fitting and physical rehabilitation services are provided by the ICRC to help disabled people reintegrate into the community. In January and February:

• 12 hospitals and three primary health-care centres received medical supplies and equipment;
• 34 doctors and nurses successfully took part in a training course on strengthening emergency services given in Sulaimaniya Emergency Hospital and in Al Sadr Teaching Hospital in Najaf;
• 26 managers working in the field of primary health care in Ninawa, Kirkuk, Erbil and Diyala governorates participated in a forum, held in Erbil, on improving the quality of health care services in rural primary health-care centres;
• two physiotherapists from Najaf, two from Hilla, one from Sulaimaniya and one from Erbil attended a three-week training course in Erbil, where the ICRC runs a physical rehabilitation centre.

Visiting detainees

Visiting detainees remains a top priority for the ICRC in Iraq. In January and February, ICRC delegates visited detainees held:

• in Fort Suse Federal Prison, Sulaimaniya governorate; in Nasiriya Prison, Thi-Qar governorate; in Mina and Maaqal prisons, Basra governorate;
• in Tasfirat Kirkuk, Emergency Police Station and Juvenile Police Centre; in Assayesh KDP Station, Kirkuk governorate;
• in Brigade 54, 6th Division, Baghdad governorate;
• in six prisons and two police stations in Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniya governorates;
• in Camp Taji (US custody), Baghdad governorate. This was the last visit to the detention facility prior to its handover to Iraqi authorities.

Around 5,200 detainees held in Fort Suse, Chamchamal, Khademiya, Adhala and Amarah prisons received blankets, mattresses and clothes to help them cope with the cold winter season. In Chamchamal Federal Prison, 34 disabled detainees were given crutches as part of a follow-up carried out by ICRC health delegates of health care in the prison.

More than 7,800 Red Cross messages were exchanged between detainees and their families in January and February. In addition, 626 detention certificates were issued to former detainees or internees to make them eligible for social welfare benefits.

Clarifying what happened to missing people

The ICRC supports the authorities in their efforts to clarify what happened to those who went missing in connection with the Iran-Iraq War and the 1990-1991 Gulf War. It also helps train forensic professionals in the identification and management of mortal remains and regularly supplies equipment. In January and February:

• the mortal remains of nine Iranian soldiers were repatriated from Iraq under ICRC auspices;
• the Technical Sub-Committee of the Tripartite Commission, handling cases of persons missing in connection with the 1990-1991 Gulf War, held its 63rd session in Kuwait, which was chaired by the ICRC and attended by representatives from Iraq, Kuwait and the 1990-1991 Coalition (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Saudi Arabia);
• two days of training by an ICRC forensic specialist were provided for staff of Al Zubair centre to help them better manage the files of thousands of missing persons.

Promoting international humanitarian law

Reminding parties to a conflict of their obligation to protect civilians is a fundamental part of the ICRC’s work. The organization also endeavours to promote international humanitarian law within the civil society. In this framework, a series of presentations were organized for various audiences, which included military personnel, prison staff, students and professors

Iraq: coping with violence and striving to earn a living