July 2008

THE TALE OF A PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST

`Do you have love in your culture?'

by Dahr Jamail

(Note to readers-this is an expanded piece about the same topic, with much more information, than that published in French for LMD on 3 July 2008)

Muhammad Omer and I jointly received the Martha Gellhorn
Prize for Journalism in London on 16 June (1). Omer is a
24-year-old Palestinian with whom I feel honoured to have
shared this award, as I told the audience at the prize-giving
ceremony. His work from his Gaza homeland has been a beacon
of humanitarian reportage; it is a model of peace, and an
attempt at reconciliation with Israel.

Then, after the ceremony, there were our even more different
return journeys. My biggest problem was an hour's delay for
the flight back to my home country, the United States, which
last year gave Israel $2.38bn in military aid, and will give
that amount in the coming fiscal year, along with an extra
$150m. (By July 2006 direct US aid to Israel had reached
$108bn according to conservative estimates.)

On his return home, Omer was badly beaten up and physically
and psychologically abused by Israel's security forces, Shin
Bet. At the Allenby Bridge crossing, from Jordan to the West
Bank, he was met by the Dutch official who was to ferry him
back into Gaza. The official waited outside as Omer entered
the Israeli building. Omer was told to turn off his mobile
phone and remove the battery. When he asked if he could call
his embassy escort, he was told sternly he was not allowed. A
Shin Bet officer searched his luggage and rifled through his
documents. "Where's the money?" he asked Omer. "Where are the
English pounds you have?" They wanted to confiscate his prize
money, which Omer was wise enough not to carry on his person.

Omer was surrounded by eight armed Shin Bet officers. This is
how he described what happened next. "A man called Avi
ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through
an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was
told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand
on his gun. I began to cry: `Why are you treating me this
way? I am a human being.' He said: `This is nothing compared
with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it
to my head, and with his full body weight pinning me on my
side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a
concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said:
`Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied: `They are gifts
for the people I love.' He said: `Oh, do you have love in
your culture?'

"I had now been without food and water and the toilet for
12 hours and, having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I
vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them
gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender
flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers
in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The
pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time.
Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing it into
the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became
a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."

`Moderate physical pressure'

The Israeli Supreme Court has allowed the use of "moderate
physical pressure" in the questioning of prisoners. Israel
holds more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them
under administrative detention (no charges filed, detention
can be renewed every six months).

The fourth Geneva Convention (GC) (1949) states: (1) Persons
taking no active part in the hostilities, including members
of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those
placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any
other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,
without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour,
religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar
criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall
remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever
with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to
life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,
mutilation, cruel treatment and torture (c) outrages upon
personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading
treatment."

The Israeli military regularly bombs and uses snipers to
attack Palestinian ambulances. Article 20 of the 1949 GC
states: "Persons regularly and solely engaged in the
operation and administration of civilian hospitals, including
the personnel engaged in the search for, removal and
transporting of and caring for wounded and sick civilians,
the infirm and maternity cases shall be respected and
protected."

Israel has blockaded Gaza, isolating and starving the
1.5 million Palestinians who live there. In 2006 Dov
Weisglass, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud
Olmert, said: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet,
but not to make them die of hunger."

Article 23 of the 1949 GC states: "Each High Contracting
Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of
medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for
religious worship intended only for civilians of another High
Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It
shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of
essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for
children under 15, expectant mothers and maternity cases."

The Israeli government has threatened to close orphanages for
Palestinian children in Hebron, which would be another
violation of international law, for article 24 of the Geneva
Convention states clearly: "The Parties to the conflict shall
take the necessary measures to ensure that children under
fifteen, who are orphaned or are separated from their
families as a result of the war, are not left to their own
resources, and that their maintenance, the exercise of their
religion and their education are facilitated in all
circumstances. Their education shall, as far as possible, be
entrusted to persons of a similar cultural tradition."

The Shin Bet violated many GC principles in the way it
treated Omer. Part III of the 1949 GC, which covers the
status and treatment of protected persons, section I,
article 27, says: "Protected persons are entitled, in all
circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour,
their family rights, their religious convictions and
practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all
times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially
against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against
insults and public curiosity." Article 29 of the same section
states: "The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected
persons may be, is responsible for the treatment accorded to
them by its agents, irrespective of any individual
responsibility which may be incurred."

The gross imbalance of power Israel enjoys, thanks to US
support, makes these atrocities possible. Absolute power
corrupts absolutely. According to Alison Weir, the executive
director of If Americans Knew, Palestinians receive 1/23rd of
the amount of aid the US provides to Israel.

According to Defence for Children International, Israel has
"engaged in gross violations of international human rights
and humanitarian law". Between 1967 and 2003, Israel
destroyed over 10,000 Palestinian homes, and that continues.

Attacking journalists is not new. On 16 April Fadel Shanaa, a
Palestinian cameraman working for the news agency Reuters,
was killed by a rocket fired during an Israeli military
incursion into the Gaza Strip. His assistant, Wafa Barbakh,
was seriously injured. Both were in vehicle clearly marked
"Press". This appears to be part of systematic targeting of
journalists by the Israeli military. Since the beginning of
the second intifada in September 2000, the Israeli military
has killed at least nine journalists, including an Italian
and a Briton. At least 170 other journalists have been
wounded by the Israeli military during this period.

Former Dutch ambassador Jan Wijenberg said of what happened
to Omer: "This is by no means an isolated incident, but part
of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social,
economic and cultural life... I am aware of the possibility
that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or
bomb attack in the near future. . . [Omer] is a moderating
voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek
peace with Israel." Janet McMahon, managing editor of the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, for which Omer
writes, says he is still in hospital. "He may go home, or
have an operation. He's still in a lot of pain, and it's hard
for him to swallow, or to breathe deeply. He's being fed
intravenously."

I cannot reconcile the disparity in our experiences. How can
we reconcile something that is irreconcilable in the absence
of all justice?
________________________________________________________

Dahr Jamail wrote Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an
Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, Haymarket Books,
Chicago, 2007, after eight months in Iraq as an independent
journalist. He also covered the 2006 war in Lebanon

(1) Dahr Jamail's award was for his work on Iraq. See "US
presidents-to-be in denial", Le Monde diplomatique, English
edition, May 2008.

Original text in English

Click here to read story with photo, highly recommended.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 3 (IPS) - U.S. journalist Zoriah (who publishes only under that name) says he was censored by the U.S. military in the Iraqi city of Fallujah after photographing Marines who died in a suicide bombing.

On Jun. 26, a suicide bomber attacked a city council meeting in Fallujah, 69 kms west of Baghdad, between local tribal sheikhs and military officials.

The explosion also killed two interpreters and 20 Iraqis, including the mayor of the nearby town of Karmah, two prominent sheikhs and their sons, and another sheikh and his brother. All were members of the local "awakening council," one of the U.S.-backed militias that have taken up arms against al Qaeda in Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi authorities.

Zoriah was embedded with Marines on a patrol one block from the attack when it occurred. He had originally turned down the option of going to report on the city council meeting that was bombed.

Zoriah ran with the Marines he was with to the scene of the attack. "As I ran I saw human pieces...a skull cap with hair, bone shards," he told IPS during a telephone interview from the so-called Green Zone in Baghdad. "When we arrived at the building it was chaotic. There were Iraqis, police and civilians running around screaming. Bodies were being pulled out of the building."

"I went in and there were over 20 people's remains all over the place," Zoriah continued, "Of the Marines I jogged in with, someone started to vomit. Others were standing around, not knowing what to do. It was completely surreal."

"At that moment I realised this was far beyond anything I'd experienced, and I realised I wanted to focus and make sure I could capture what it felt like, and the visual horror," Zoriah explained.

"I thought, 'Nobody in the U.S. has any idea what it means when they hear that 20 people died in a suicide bombing.' I want people to be able to associate those numbers with the scene and the actual loss of human life. And to show why soldiers are suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]," Zoriah told IPS.

Zoriah was taken out of the building by Marines, but then allowed back inside where he took one last photo of the carnage before they closed the scene to him.

"We spent most of the rest of the day as Marines picked up body parts and put them in buckets and bags," he said.

In an Iraqi Police station in Karmah, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) was brought in to investigate the bombing. Zoriahs' photos were the only ones of the scene, so the NCIS team asked for them.

"I made them copies, but then one of the Marines came in and told me to delete my memory card after I give them the photos, and I refused," Zoriah told IPS, "I told the NCIS that if they forced me to delete them, I would stop sharing them. So they stopped pressing that issue."

Zoriah said that he was following the rules for embedded journalists. "That evening, during the debriefing, the guys [Marines] I was with told me that the higher-ups had said I was a stand-up guy and behaved well and to treat me well. The guys I was with were all very much on my side."

Zoriah explained to IPS that he meticulously showed his photos to the Marines he was with to make sure he was not going to show any photos that would upset the family members of the deceased Marines. "They were all okay with them, so then about 96 hours after the bombing I published the photos on my blog."

Then things got interesting.

"Tuesday [Jul. 1] I awoke to a call in their combat operations centre, and the person on the phone told me they were a PAO (Public Affairs Officer) at Camp Fallujah, and he wanted me to take my blog down right away," Zoriah told IPS. "I asked them why, and was told then called back after five minutes by a higher ranking PAO who claimed I had broken my contract by showing photos of dead Americans with U.S. uniforms and boots."

Zoriah said the PAO claimed he was not allowed, by the embed contract, to show dead or wounded U.S. citizens or soldiers in the field. "I never signed any contract for that," Miller said.

He was called back after another five minutes and told his embed was terminated and they would send him back to Baghdad on the next flight. He was then taken back to Camp Fallujah where he said, "Everyone was extremely angry and fired up at me."

Nevertheless, the lower ranking Marines he had embedded with "were on my side, and they told me they thought that what was happening was wrong."

Zoriah explained that he grew nervous when the flight was cancelled due to a sandstorm, and then a security guard was assigned to him.

"I started to feel uncomfortable with this," Zoriah explained. "The next day, Gen. Kelly, [Major General John Kelly, who is the Commanding General of the I Marine Expeditionary Force] wanted to have some words with me. I was to meet with him at 3 pm, and we sat outside in the sun for two hours and he never showed."

Zoriah was told he would be flown out that night, but he was deleted from the flight and told that General Kelly wanted to see him, so he waited again until Thursday, Jul. 3. Again the general did not appear, so Zoriah was given an official letter about the grounds for the termination of his embed, signed by Gen. Kelly, and flown to Baghdad.

"Now, as I think about it, I think they needed the extra time to figure out what they were going to say about my dismissal," Zoriah said. "Their original reason ended up being bogus, so they had to figure something else out."

The letter he was given stated reasons for his dismissal as "you photographed the remains of U.S. soldiers", "you posted these images along with detailed commentary", and "by posting the images and your commentary you violated 14 H and O of the news media agreement you signed".

In addition, the letter, which Zoriah read to IPS, stated, "By providing detailed information of the effectiveness of the attack and the response of U.S. forces to it, you have put all U.S. forces in Iraq at greater risk for harm."

Zoriah feels the reason for his dismissal is otherwise.

"The bottom line is that the thing they cited as the reason for my dismissal was 'information the enemy could use against you'. They realised, probably from keeping track of my blog, that I was not showing identifiable features of a soldier...and they couldn't find a reason to kick me out. Because it was a high ranking person who got killed, they were all fired up."

Zoriah concluded, "Up to that point they said it was because I showed pictures of bodies with pieces of uniform and boots. The letter, though, doesn't mention that at all. I checked the document I had about ground rules for media embeds, and I followed them."

The Pentagon would not comment on the story when contacted by IPS, saying they had no information on Miller's case beyond what Central Command had already posted.

On June 16 I was the co-recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism with Mohammed Omer in London. Omer is a 24 year-old Palestinian with whom I felt, and feel, honored to have shared this award. During my brief talk while accepting the award, I told the audience I could not think of anyone else I would rather share the award with. Omer’s work from his Gaza homeland has been a beacon of
humanitarian reportage; his work serves as a model of peace and attempted reconciliation with Israel for the youth in his occupied territory.

Unlike me, Omer’s journey to London to receive the award was next to impossible. When I heard the news that I was a co-recipient, I simply booked my flight from San Francisco and boarded my plane. Omer – whose home has been crushed by an Israeli bulldozer and who has seen most of his seven siblings killed or maimed by the Israeli army which occupies his homeland – struggled even to get an exit visa. The veteran journalist John Pilger, who handed us each our award, described his journey: “Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza's borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out.”

Omer, on his return home last Thursday, was tortured by Israel’s security forces, Shin Bet. He was met by a Dutch official at the Allenby Bridge crossing (from Jordan to the West Bank) who was to ferry him back into Gaza. The official waited outside for Omer as he entered the Israeli building. Inside, Omer was told he was not allowed to call this embassy escort when he asked to do so; a Shin Bet officer searched his luggage and documents, and asked him for his English pounds.

Omer was surrounded by eight armed Shin Bet officers. This is how he described what happened next. “A man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was
told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: 'Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.' He said, 'This is nothing compared with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said: 'Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied: 'They are gifts for
the people I love'. He said: 'Oh, do you have love in your culture?’

"I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours and, having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing it into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."

Consider the fact that the Israeli Supreme Court has allowed the use of “moderate physical pressure” in the questioning of prisoners. Israel holds more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them under administrative detention (no charges filed, detention can be renewed every six months).

Now consider the fourth Geneva Convention (1949): “(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities…shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.”

“To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;…(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment…”

Former Dutch ambassador Jan Wijenberg said of what happened to Omer: “This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life ... I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future.”

Janet McMahon, managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs with whom Omer files stories, just told me he is still in hospital. “He may go home, or have an operation. He's still in a lot of pain – and it’s hard for him to swallow, or to breathe deeply. He's being fed intravenously.“

As Omer’s colleague, I cannot reconcile the disparity in our experiences. How can we reconcile something that is irreconcilable in the absence of all justice?

BAQUBA, Jun 24 (IPS) - Iraqis seem divided on who they would like to see as the next U.S. president, but few believe that either will end the occupation.

Some wish for Barack Obama to win because he claims to represent a great change in the history of the United States.

"Being a black man, he definitely carries different thoughts about the world," Ali Hussein, a city employee, told IPS. "We sympathise with him since he has some kind of Muslim origins. He may view Arabs in a new and different way."

Adding to this view, Naser Mahdi, a secondary school teacher, told IPS, "I feel he is totally different. The world needs new blood in rulers, and we hope that he might decrease the dominating authority of the United States."

"Because the result of the race affects the lives of Iraqis, I wish that a Democrat could win the round in order to give Iraqis a better future," schoolteacher Khalid Abid told IPS. "We still hope to be viewed with care and consideration. Things surely must change in Iraq after the elections."

But Abdulla Hamid, a city resident, expressed deep concern over Obama's recent speech at the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.

"What hope is there in a man who wears the Israeli flag and calls for a Jewish state with a unified Jerusalem," Hamid told IPS. " Obama clearly couldn't care less about the Palestinians and the Arabs."

Hamid referred to the fact that Obama appeared at the speech with a lapel pin comprised of both the U.S. and Israeli flags. In his speech, Obama's call for a unified Jerusalem omitted Palestinians' demands for their share of Jerusalem, which is a sacred city for them too.

Like most U.S. citizens, most Iraqis are not familiar with U.S. foreign policy. While Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful, calls for a shift in the U.S. policy in Iraq, neither he nor his Republican rival, John McCain, talk about changing the National Security Strategy of the U.S., or the military document Joint Vision 2020, which calls for "full spectrum dominance" of the world by the U.S. military by the year 2020.

'Full spectrum dominance' means not just total control of land, air, and sea, but also of information and of space.

"The U.S. strategy is firm and unchanging," a political analyst at Diyala University told IPS on condition of anonymity, given widespread fear of U.S. forces. "It makes no difference whether one wins or the other. The general strategy is well established, and is never affected by the changing of the president."

"I do agree with this point of view," local merchant Abdul-Rahman told IPS. "During the nineties we wished that Bill Clinton would win in order to stop the economic sanctions that caused us so much suffering. When Clinton became president, sanctions remained as they were, and even worsened."

At that time, the majority of Iraqis had wished for Clinton to be president, but year after year of sanctions left them embittered.

Barak Obama has made public statements that he will withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. But his advisors speak of plans to keep at least 60,000-90,000 troops in Iraq, and at least until 2013, the year his first term in office would end if he is elected.

Many Iraqis appear to be skeptical of the promises made by Obama.

"I'll believe the troops are gone from Iraq when they are no longer on our streets and their warplanes no longer bomb our homes," a local merchant told IPS. " All politicians are liars, even school children know this."

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).

For a widow, all things are the same, dark.

"Being a widow means being dead in Iraq today," a professor from Diyala University, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "This is because of the tremendous responsibilities cast upon her."

The widows have become victims of the occupation, but also of social codes. Women are not supposed to commit mistakes, and when they do, their mistakes are rarely forgiven. Women are easily accused of doing 'bad things', regardless of proof.

Widowed women have a tough struggle on their hands, beyond the loss they have had to live through. They are not easily allowed to work, or even to carry out normal daily activities.

"When a woman breaks these rules, she loses the respect of others, or might be spoken of badly," a local trader told IPS. "This is because much of rural Iraqi society is primitive and undereducated." Like most others, the trader did not want his name used, for fear of retribution.

"Islam gives respectable freedom to the woman when she loses her husband," a religious cleric told IPS. "But because of their ignorance, people place severe restrictions on the woman."

Millions of lives have been shattered during the occupation. Two groups, Just Foreign Policy in the U.S. and the Opinion Business Research group in Britain estimate the total number of Iraqis who have died due to the occupation to be at least 1.2 million.

This has had devastating knock-on effects. The man is typically the one who earns the living. Death means his wife has to do a double job -- to be responsible for earning a living, and to take care of her children and home as well. And, she has to conduct herself as a widow is expected to.

A woman whose husband was killed told IPS of her "unimaginable" troubles.

"I have five children. The oldest one is 11 years old and the youngest is two," she said. "They are a very big responsibility because I have no job, and there is no salary for my dead husband.

"Life is getting terribly hard, and in addition to the loss of my husband, there is this new suffering; being lonely, and responsible for a big family. The hours of joy are very few in the long years of grief. This occupation has brought a very heavy tax."

Another woman whose husband was killed two years ago at a militia check point in the main street in Baquba (the capital city of Diyala province, 40 km northeast of Baghdad), says her life is hell.

"My husband was all my life. He was a prominent businessman in Baquba. The militants asked for 50,000 dollars to release him. I gave them the money but my husband did not return. I found him in the morgue.

"Now, after the luxurious life we had with my husband, we ask for help from relatives. But no one cares about me or my four children. We're forgotten."

A woman who loses her husband can live a life of begging and humiliation.

"When I need something, I have to go to my relatives for help," a widow with four children told IPS. She lost her husband to U.S. military gunfire. "They are fed up with my repeated needs. And I feel reluctant asking for anything.

"This being alone, fully responsible for the first time for a family is exhausting," she added. "My eldest son, 12 years old, will not listen to me, and I don't know how to deal with him. My husband was controlling everything at home, I find it hard to take on such a big task."

A local resident said the fear of death brings also the fear of what will happen to the family later. "I'm worried and full of fear that I may be killed and leave my family in this wild world. They're everything to me. I don't want them to suffer after me."

The government pays little attention to the plight of widows. "Every family is given a 2,000 dollar donation if someone is killed in violence or random firing," an employee at the provincial office told IPS.

"This donation solves no problem," said an employee at the social care office, also speaking on terms of anonymity. "The real solution would be to give each of these families a monthly payment."

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)

BAGHDAD, Jun 14 (IPS) - As statistics go, at least 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the occupation, now in its fifth year. Every one of them has left behind once loved ones to mourn the loss and to think of what might have been.

All who have died had their own love stories, if not all romantic ones. And that must be a million of them. The figure of 655,000 – of Iraqis who died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation -- came from the British medical journal Lancet based on a study in July last year. The number would have risen significantly after one of the bloodiest years of the occupation.

The deaths are not the only tragedies to have fallen upon Iraq's love stories.

"We were engaged to be married after the end of the war," Hussam Abdulla, a 28-year-old engineer from Baghdad told IPS. "We thought the war would not last more than a month, and so we planned our marriage for May 2003. But everything went wrong. I was detained for two years, and my fiancée's family had to flee to Egypt because her father was a senior army officer whose life was threatened first by occupation forces and later by death squads."

Abdulla's engagement never led to marriage.

And it was the lucky ones who fled the country early. Others stayed on to face death, detention, or a living hell at home. Army officers, doctors, journalists and artists came particularly to be targeted by death squads.

"I thought the man I loved simply dumped me," a 25-year-old woman, who asked to be called Arwa, told IPS. "He told me he will call me as soon as he finds a job in Jordan, but he just disappeared. His family told me they did not know where he is."

Much later, she was told he had been detained by U.S. forces near the Jordanian border. "The U.S. authorities said his name did not exist on their files. But I will wait for him, even if I have to wait all my life."

Tens of thousands of detained Iraqis have never been found on any U.S. military records. Their families still do not know whether they are dead or alive.

"I told my fiancée to find herself someone else for a husband," 32-year-old Khalik Obeidy, who was visiting Baghdad from Fallujah, told IPS. "I lost my job as an army officer, and my family house was blasted during the U.S. siege of Fallujah, so our marriage seems to be next to impossible.

"But also, getting married in such a situation will only mean more agony. And bringing up children is more than difficult. My fiancée still says things will improve, she says she will wait. She's crazy."

Stories of broken engagements and marriages are everywhere in Baghdad.

"In 2006, I sent my wife and two daughters to Jordan for work, and I was supposed to follow them after selling the car and the furniture," 40-year-old teacher Tariq Khalaf from Baghdad told IPS. "But my father died, and I had to stay here to look after the rest of the family. Now I don't know whether to bring them back to this Iraqi hell, or just stay separated."

Jassim Alwan, who recently made the dangerous trip to Baghdad from Samarra, 90km north of the capital city, tells the story of 23-year-old Abdullah that everyone in Samarra seems to know.

"He has a scruffy beard, and he keeps wandering the streets," Alwan told IPS. "Abdullah is now better known than the mayor of the city. He was a wonderful guy. And then his bride was shot by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint. The poor guy could not stand the shock."

This is the kind of love story Iraqis tell nowadays. "The country of the Arabian Nights and of wonderful poetry is no longer good for love," Maki al-Nazzal, political analyst and poet, told IPS. "All Iraqi poetry under occupation is now about death and separation."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.)

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.

"We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles," Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. "I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.

"The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations."

"I had two children who had brain damage from birth," 28-year-old Hayfa' Shukur told IPS. "My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money."

Shukur said doctors told her that it was use of the restricted weapons that caused her children's brain damage and subsequent deaths, "but none of them had the courage to give me a written report."

"Many babies were born with major congenital malformations," a paediatric doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down's syndrome, and limb defects."

The doctor added, "I can say all kinds of problems related to toxic pollution took place in Fallujah after the November 2004 massacre."

Many doctors speak of similar cases and a similar pattern. The indications remain anecdotal, in the absence of either a study, or any available official records.

The Fallujah General Hospital administration was unwilling to give any statistics on deformed babies, but one doctor volunteered to speak on condition of anonymity -- for fear of reprisals if seen to be critical of the administration.

"Maternal exposure to toxins and radioactive material can lead to miscarriage and frequent abortions, still birth, and congenital malformation," the doctor told IPS. There have been many such cases, and the government "did not move to contain the damage, or present any assistance to the hospital whatsoever.

"These cases need intensive international efforts that provide the highest and most recent technologies that we will not have here in a hundred years," he added.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern Mar. 31 about the lack of medical supplies in hospitals in Baghdad and Basra.

"Hospitals have used up stocks of vital medical items, and require further supplies to cope with the influx of wounded patients. Access to water remains a matter of concern in certain areas," the ICRC said in a statement.

A senior Iraqi health ministry official was quoted as saying Feb. 26 that the health sector is under "great pressure", with scores of doctors killed, an exodus of medical personnel, poor medical infrastructure, and shortage of medicines.

"We are experiencing a big shortage of everything," said the official, "We don't have enough specialist doctors and medicines, and most of the medical equipment is outdated.

"We used to get many spinal and head injures, but were unable to do anything as we didn't have enough specialists and medicines," he added. "Intravenous fluid, which is a simple thing, is not available all the time." He said no new hospitals had been built since 1986.

Iraqi Health Minister Salih al-Hassnawi highlighted the shortage of medicines at a press conference in Arbil in the Kurdistan region in the north Feb. 22. "The Iraqi Health Ministry is suffering from an acute shortage of medicines...We have decided to import medicines immediately to meet the needs."

He said the 2008 health budget meant that total expenditure on medicines, medical equipment and ambulances would amount to an average of 22 dollars per citizen.

But this is too late for the unknown number of babies and their families who bore the consequences of the earlier devastation. And it is too little to cover the special needs of babies who survived with deformations.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).

FALLUJAH, Jun 5 (IPS) - Amidst the huge and growing death toll, it has been easy to forget that animals, in their own way, are finding it hard to survive in Iraq.

Dr. Hashim said animals cannot get basic needs. "Good drinking water, good feed, vet care and medicines are all unavailable in Iraq since the U.S. occupation of the country began in the spring of 2003. When we complain to the government, they laugh at us, saying humans are first priority."

Farmers seem to have lost hope for the future of their animals. "We treat animals like our own children," Hamdiya Alwan, 50-year-old widow of a farmer in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad told IPS. "We were brought up to treat animals in the best way possible, but now it is getting very hard.

"It costs a lot to keep a cow or a few sheep with prices of feed so high, and agriculture in such bad shape. Of the six cows and 30 heads of sheep that we had before my husband was killed in 2004, I only have one cow and four heads of sheep now."

Chicken farm owners have their own agonies. "It was good business, and a real support during the times of the sanctions (the UN-imposed economic sanctions on Iraq 1990-2003)," Hajji Jassim from the Saqlawiya area near Fallujah, 60 km west of Baghdad told IPS. "The support (subsidies) we got from our legitimate (previous) government was reflected in the prices of chicken meat."

Jassim added, "Now it is impossible to work, with no electricity and no support whatsoever. This situation simply finished our business, and the government seems not to care at all for such a great loss."

Some political leaders see this too, as a part of a plan to ruin the Iraqi economy. "The U.S. occupation has destroyed everything in Iraq, and this is part of the comprehensive plan of destruction," a member of the al-Anbar provincial council in Fallujah, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the environment of fear, told IPS.

"The Americans could have continued the support to farmers given by the former regime to keep our farming industry running, but they deliberately stopped all kinds of support in order to destroy it, just like they did with our army and all the good things we had."

"Killing agriculture and animal breeding is a great loss to the economy of Iraq," Youssif Hussein, lecturer in economics at al-Anbar University in Ramadi, 105 km west of Baghdad, told IPS. "Considering the fact that Iraqi oil will go into the pockets of American corporations, Iraqis should think seriously of depending on farming and animal breeding for a long time to come."

In her book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism', Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein wrote that the U.S. followed up its 'shock and awe' bombing campaign with "shock therapy -- mass privatisation, complete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax, a dramatically downsized government." This policy has taken its toll on farms and the livestock business.

Signalling worse to come, the ministry of water resources announced May 22 that the country is suffering from water shortages that could lead to widespread drought.

"The shortage of rain, which last winter was 30 percent of what it was in previous years, has led to an obvious impact on water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries," the ministry said.

Iraq's total water store in reservoirs and lakes is currently 22.07 billion cubic metres, down from the pervious year by 9.19 billion cubic metres, it said. And like humans, animals will suffer as a consequence.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).

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SEATTLE, Jun 3 (IPS) - In a clear change of strategy to energise public anti-war sentiment, Iraq veterans led a determined demonstration of hundreds through the streets of downtown Seattle last Saturday, following regional Winter Soldier hearings at the Seattle Town Hall.

This tactic was apparently meant to draw in more national mainstream media coverage of the event, which, with few exceptions, did not materialise.

Chanan Suarez Diaz, the Seattle Chapter president of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), which organised last weekend's event, had told IPS that his chapter, along with others in the northwest region, intended to make a major effort to draw the public into both the testimonials and taking action afterwards.

The Seattle regional Winter Soldier event was open to the public.

A late April poll conducted by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly three-quarters (68 percent) of respondents opposed the Iraq war. The strategy of the regional IVAW groups is clearly meant to capitalise on the growing opposition to the occupation of Iraq among the U.S. public.

Christopher Diggins, a psychotherapist who attended the demonstration, reflected the feelings of many -- that this strategy is important.

"This tactic is better because you have to get the community involved," Diggins told IPS. "You have to have community awareness and support."

"I want to show my solidarity for vets who are against the war, because it is the only way this war is going to stop," he added. "It's hard to have the war if nobody is going to fight."

Diggins founded the Soldiers Project Northwest in Washington State (www.thesoldiersproject.org). The project is a group of therapists that volunteer to work one hour per week each with soldiers and their families who need assistance.

Saturday's event found veterans leaving their testimony to lead a crowd directly onto the streets to begin a demonstration. Protestors chanting "U.S. out of the Middle East, No Justice, No Peace," and carrying signs such as "You Can't Be All You Can Be If You're Dead!" stopped traffic for nearly an hour.

"I'm here to support the war resisters," Theresa Mosqueda, a Seattle resident who works on health policy advocacy for children and marched behind members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), told IPS, "They are the core part of ending this war. This is an illegal and immoral war, and the resisters have the power to stop it."

At least one Iraq war veteran joined IVAW as a result of attending the hearings last weekend.

Several of the vets urged onlookers to join the march, and many did as the demonstration passed by Seattle's bustling Pike Place Market.

Nick Spring, a student from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, was one of the marchers. "I came down today because it's a great way to be informed by the vets, support GI resistance, and try to end the war," Spring told IPS.

The regional winter soldier hearings were a smaller event, and there was no national mainstream media coverage. However, there was heavy local and alternative media coverage. At least one of the major Seattle television stations covered the testimonials, as well as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the largest paper in the region.

The group Just Foreign Policy estimates that over 1.2 million Iraqis have died since the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003. The Opinion Business Research group in Britain estimates the same number.

According to the U.S. Department of Defence, at least 4,086 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq.

Many of the demonstrators were vets themselves who had just given testimony about their time in Iraq. They included Josh Simpson, Sergio Kochergin, Seth Manzel, Mateo Rebecchi, Jan Critchfield, Doug Connor, and many others.

Children numbered among the demonstrators as well. Nine-year-old Wes Cunningham, accompanied by his father, was asked by IPS why he was in attendance.

"It's a cool march," he said. "And I think it's bad to kill other human beings."

IVAW now boasts over 1,200 members, a 50 percent increase since the March Winter Soldier hearings in Maryland. The fastest growing segment of their membership is active-duty soldiers.

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SEATTLE, Jun 2 (IPS) - Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the "Winter Soldier" hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.

"I watched Iraqi Police bring in someone to interrogate," Seth Manzel, a vehicle commander and machine gunner in the U.S. Army, told the audience. "There were four men on the prisoner...one was pummeling his kidneys with his fists, another was inserting a bottle up his rectum. It looked like a frat house gang-rape."

Manzel joined the army after 9/11 for economic reasons -- he'd just been laid off, and his wife had just had a baby. Manzel told another story of military medics he was with in Tal Afar who refused to treat an elderly man in their detention centre. Manzel described the old man as being jaundiced and lying on the ground, writhing in pain.

"The medics said the old man was just being lazy and they were not authorised to treat detainees," Manzel said.

Jan Critchfield worked as an army journalist while attached to the 1st Cavalry in Baghdad during 2004. "I was with a unit that shot at a man and wife near a checkpoint," Critchfield said, "She had been shot through her shinbone, and that was the first story I covered in Iraq."

Critchfield told the audience that his unspoken job in Iraq was to "counter the liberal media bias" about the occupation.

"Our target audience was in the U.S., and the emphasis was reporting on humanitarian aid missions the military conducted," Critchfield said. "I don't know how many stories I reported on chicken drops (distributing frozen chickens in a community). I don't know what else you can call that, other than propaganda. I would find the highest ranking person I could get, and quote them verbatim without fact checking anything they said."

Other veterans told of lax rules of engagement that led to the slaughter of innocent civilians in Iraq.

"We were told we'd be deploying to Iraq and that we needed to get ready to have little kids and women shoot at us," Sergio Kochergin, a former Marine who served two deployments in Iraq, told the audience. "It was an attempt to portray Iraqis as animals. We were supposed to do humanitarian work, but all we did was harass people, drive like crazy on the streets, pretending it was our city and we could do whatever we wanted to do."

As the other veterans on the panel nodded in agreement, Kochergin continued, "We were constantly told everybody there wants to kill you, everybody wants to get you. In the military, we had racism within every rank and it was ridiculous. It seemed like a joke, but that joke turned into destroying peoples' lives in Iraq."

"I was in Husaiba with a sniper platoon right on the Syrian border and we would basically go out on the town and search for people to shoot," Kochergin said. "The rules of engagement (ROE) got more lenient the longer we were there. So if anyone had a bag and a shovel, we were to shoot them. We were allowed to take our shots at anything that looked suspicious. And at that point in time, everything looked suspicious."

Kochergin added, "Later on, we had no ROE at all. If you see something that doesn't seem right, take them out." He concluded by saying, "Enough is enough, it's time to get out of there."

Doug Connor was a first lieutenant in the army and worked as a surgical nurse in Iraq. While there he worked as part of a combat support unit, and said most of the patients he treated were Iraqi civilians.

"There were so many people that needed treatment we couldn't take all of them," he said. "When a bombing happened and 45 patients were brought to us, it was always Americans treated first, then Kurds, then the Arabs."

Connor added quietly, "It got to the point where we started calling the Iraqi patients 'range balls' because, just like on the driving range (in golf), you don't care about losing them."

Channan Suarez Diaz was a navy hospital corpsman who returned from Iraq with a purple heart, among other medals. He served in Ramadi from September 2004 to February 2005 with a weapons company. He is now the Seattle Chapter president of IVAW.

"Our commanding officer wanted us to go through a route that another platoon did and was completely wiped out in an ambush," Diaz explained. "We refused. They canceled that mission and we didn't go. I don't think these are isolated incidents. I think this is happening every day in Iraq. The military doesn't want you to know about this, because it's kind of like lighting a fire in a prairie."

The first Winter Soldier event was organised in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to a growing list of human rights violations occurring in Vietnam.

From Mar. 13-16, 2008, IVAW held a national conference titled "Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan" outside Washington, DC. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BAQUBA, Jun 2 (IPS) - The real number of the dead is far higher than even the highest declared in death tolls, many Iraqis say.

Just Foreign Policy, an independent organisation "dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy" offered an updated total of 1,213,716 at the time of this writing.

On Sep. 14, 2007, Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent polling agency located in London, produced a figure of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the invasion.

These estimates are above any official figures from Iraq, but they do consider the reported official figures.

Iraqis believe that the authorities are hiding these figures. "The U.S. military benefits from hiding the real totals," said a political analyst who declined to give his name because of the atmosphere of fear within Iraq. "And the Iraqi government is a puppet of the Americans, so their figures are ridiculously low as well."

The report published in The Lancet did not take into account many circumstances of death, say residents in Baquba, capital of Diyala province 40km north of capital Baghdad.

"All people know that a large number of bodies are dropped into the Diyala river," said a local resident. "I was kidnapped and taken to a village called Huwaider, which is completely Shia and located on the Diyala River. Sunnis there are killed and dropped in the river by militiamen, but I was freed by the U.S Army.

"People in all the villages on the river have gotten used to seeing bodies floating in the river," he added.

"I lived in Gatoon district, the volatile stronghold of the militants in Baquba," Yasir al-Azawi, a 37-year-old truck driver told IPS. "Everyday I saw vehicles dropping bodies in the river. Everyone in my district knows this truth; that the river contained an extraordinary number of bodies to the extent that living in that place became impossible. We left our home and moved to live in the north of Iraq."

An officer at the directorate-general of police for Diyala province said the number of dead is impossible to calculate exactly.

"When the new security plan began in Diyala, some of the arrested militants confessed that they were burying bodies," the officer said. "Some of them led us to the places where they buried the bodies. We found hundreds by digging in the areas that are a stronghold of the militants, and sometimes in the gardens of the houses they were living in, or in a place nearby."

An eyewitness at the Baquba morgue spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity.

"I was looking for my relative who was kidnapped and then killed, and I saw an ambulance moving the dead who were killed by militants," he said, "I asked the driver about these bodies. He said that the Iraqi army found them in houses and in holes dug within the houses. I also saw a skeleton among the bodies."

Many believe that the number of the dead is higher than these studies reflect also because the lack of access to areas controlled by militias and other fighters prevents police and army personnel from finding and collecting bodies.

"These militia strongholds have prevented access to police for over two years now," Ali Hussein, a local vegetable seller told IPS. "Dozens, and sometimes hundreds were kidnapped everyday and taken to the militants strongholds. People heard nothing about thousands of them. Even today, thousands of families know nothing about their loved ones because they were not found in the morgue."

A policeman, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS that "we were moving the bodies from the main streets of the city through patrols. A body that may have been dropped in the street is a message for people. They dropped it purposely. But these are only a few; the bodies of most we believe were killed, were never found."

"The morgue continues to receive bodies brought by the police or the ambulance," said an employee at the Baquba morgue. "We used to receive many daily. The capacity of the morgue was not enough, so they were buried after certain procedures like taking photos or waiting for the families to ask about them and to take them. Sometimes, at times of bombing and disastrous accidents, we were receiving hundreds of bodies."

Other officials also offered bleak assessments.

"Hundreds of families come to the provincial office everyday to ask about their loved ones who were kidnapped; they do not know whether they are dead or alive," an employee at the governor's office told IPS. "Often the Iraqi army finds records of the dead from the militants through their confessions. Every week there are new lists of names of those who were killed by the militants. People come to find out whether their loved ones are dead, in order to stop searching."

New burial grounds are found often, and the dead are usually not recorded. Many residents told IPS that farmers commonly find bones in their fields.

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)

"These needs are very trivial for people of other countries," 43-year-old political leader Saad Tahir told IPS. "But in Iraq, people dream more of these things than of some ambition or success."

Abdullah Mahdi, a retired 51-year-old trader, says he dreams only of electricity.

"Like millions here, I hope supply gets better to help us to sleep in this hot summer," Mahdi told IPS. "We have been suffering from this problem since the 1991 Kuwait war, and this current occupation only made things worse."

Others dream of freedom of movement. "I dream of travelling among the Iraqi provinces freely and safely," a local resident said. "For more than two years now, I have not travelled to any province of my country." Lack of security means Iraqis can rarely travel even to a neighbouring area.

Children also seem to have begun to dream differently.

"I dream of a playground in which I and my friends can play freely and at any time," 11-year-old Luay Amjad told IPS. Children are not allowed to play just anywhere for fear of unexploded bombs, haphazard firing, and a general fear of the Iraqi military. Many children in Baquba and other districts of Diyala province have been kidnapped.

"All families wish to see their children safe, and then enjoying their time," said a young father. "We know that they currently live in a very closed world. But we put pressure on our children for their own safety. Streets are dangerous, and even gardens may sometimes be dangerous."

Others dream of a functioning economy. According to the ministry of trade, unemployment has been vacillating between 40-70 percent over the last two years.

"I hope that the trade and economic process will improve," said an unemployed trader. "I wish Iraq could be an industrial country with a flourishing and luxurious status of living. I want to get back to my shop and have my own customers."

Teachers dream of an Iraq that can be a centre for education again. "Iraq was one of the countries that paid great attention to education," a university professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "Now, breaking the rules of schools is very common, and fake certificates are spread widely all over the country. We dream of a rigorous and successful educational process."

Farmers simply dream of water, and the security necessary to work in their fields. "I hope I can work on my farm again, and have water to irrigate all the land," said a local vegetable farmer.

A cleric spoke of bigger dreams. "I dream that all Iraqis will love each other again, as we used to in the past days. We miss hope, a smile, and true love. We hope that cooperation prevails again among people. We hope for killing and displacement to end forever in this once peaceful country. We hope that the sectarian discrimination disappears."

A political analyst said he dreams of an end to the occupation. "The occupation is the source of all the problems of our people. I do dream of the end of the occupation -- no more arrests, no more prison for simple and poor people, and no more suffering."

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).

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DAMASCUS, May 19 (IPS) - In the struggle now just to stay alive, everyone has forgotten that Iraq has lost, among other things, its tradition in sports. Some of its best sportsmen are now refugees.

Through all this some still manage to keep up with sports. But it has begun to seem to many others like an indulgence.

"I was one of the best soccer players in Anbar province, and my coach expected the brightest future for me," Ayid Humood from Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, told IPS in Damascus. "I struggled to keep my training together with my work as a construction labourer, but then I had to give up playing because work brought survival for the family."

"Despite the Iraq-Iran war of the eighties, and the UN sanctions later, there was some support for sports and youth in Iraq," a senior member of the Iraqi Olympics Committee told IPS on condition of anonymity on telephone from Baghdad. "Iraq produced many Olympic teams and stars because of the organised system that was founded in the early days of the Iraqi state. It got worse during the UN sanctions, and then the very worst came with the U.S. occupation in 2003."

"Most of our stadiums and playing grounds have been converted into U.S. and Iraqi military bases," Waleed Khalid of the Ramadi Sports Club who fled to Damascus with his family told IPS. "Our Ramadi stadium is now used as a U.S. military base, and we were deprived of playing official games. Gradually we stopped training, given the chaos brought by the U.S. military operations in our city."

Khalid added, "I do not think there will be any future for any Ramadi player any more."

In Fallujah a football stadium was turned into a graveyard through the April 2004 U.S. siege when people could not find any other place to bury their dead. According to doctors at Fallujah General Hospital IPS interviewed after that siege, 736 people were killed, more than 60 percent of them civilians. The football stadium is now known as the Fallujah Martyrs Graveyard.

The al-Sumood stadium in Fallujah was closed down for conversion into a private hospital, a general hospital and a market.

Some of the damage has been done by Iraqis themselves.

"A country that is led by clerics who think sports are forbidden could never have any progress," Adil Hamza, a sports teacher at a Baghdad high school who fled to Syria told IPS. "Our sports stars are all abroad now looking for their personal future. Soccer clubs in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Iran signed contracts with the best Iraqi soccer players and coaches, while most Iraqi clubs cannot afford to pay the simplest salaries to their players."

Many religious leaders in Iraq now forbid sports, and even the wearing of shorts.

The al-Karkh Club in western Baghdad was closed down when militias began killing all the young men they could find in early 2006. "I came to Syria looking for a chance to play after our club was closed," Huthayfa, who was a member of the club told IPS. "Now I am going back to Fallujah where my family fled to, I have given up hope of any future in soccer."

Still, not everyone has. Syrian authorities have set aside a soccer stadium in Baghdad for Iraqi youth. The al-Nidhal stadium draws hundreds of Iraqi youngsters.

"It was so generous of our Syrian brothers to gift us such a good place," said Ibrahim Mahmood. "But our problem is much bigger than just finding a place for practice. We need to make our future as soccer players, and that needs huge assets and international support."

(*Maki al-Nazzal, our correspondent in Syria, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported from the region for more than four years.)

BAQUBA, May 15 (IPS) - Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources.

"The shortage of water is the biggest threat that Iraqi agriculture has ever faced," an employee in the directorate-general of irrigation for Diyala province, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "It threatens not only food but also employment in this city (Baquba, capital of the province).

"The shortage of water can be ascribed to the shortage of rain and snow at the main sources," the employee at the irrigation centre said.

Many farmers say that they fear that the northern Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq is facing a dry 2008. The mountains there, besides the mountains of southwest Iran and southern Turkey, form a large source of water for Iraq.

The government is doing little to help people over this crisis. "The directorate is impotent and can give nothing to the farmers," the irrigation centre employee said. "Hundreds of thousands of acres are now desolate, and thousands of people jobless."

Most villagers work in farming, and now that farming no more sustains people as it did, life there is badly hit. Agriculture in this area kept Iraq supplied, and also produced enough for exports. But now farmers sometimes have a hard time feeding themselves.

"The majority of our village farmers have quit and the rest will follow," farmer Nasir Ibrahim told IPS. "This is because of obstacles like security, displacement, water shortage, lack of seeds, and lack of backing on the part of the ministry.

"Farming is our source of our living; it's our job. We used to live in the village; we cannot live in the city to work in offices, even though so many farmers have become policemen."

The degraded security situation in the province has left farmers with the option only of selling their fruit and vegetables in smaller markets, because accessing the central market has become too dangerous.

"Now, we sell in sub-markets on the outskirts of Baquba," local farmer Aziz Helan told IPS. "So farmers are not obliged to go to the centre of the city to sell their crops. But there is also less to sell because very little is grown due to lack of water.

"One orchard that was producing 15-18 tonnes of oranges (per season) during the 1990s now produces only 200-400 kilograms. One farm that used to produce 40 tonnes of wheat now produces nothing."

In desperate search of water, some farmers have installed private water pumps on the banks of the Diyala river which runs near Baquba.

"This big river passes on very low land, about 20 metres lower than the city," the irrigation centre employee said. "All the sewage water leaks into the river. Water from this river is no good now for irrigation because of this pollution.

"I myself saw the sewage network of the public hospital of Baquba directed into the river; it's too bad, and I do not think it will work for farmers to use that water."

Iraq has started to import vegetables for the first time in its modern history despite a rich agricultural heritage that reaches back 6,000 years. Aside from the direct consequences of a failed military occupation, such as lack of security, fuel and electricity, U.S. occupation authorities have installed a neo-liberal free market system that has pushed Iraqi farmers out of competition as foreign goods flood the markets. That in turn is hitting the local economy and increasing unemployment.

Families are also suffering because the Iraqi diet relies heavily on local vegetables, which have become expensive and difficult to obtain. One consequence is that many local people have begun to plant their own vegetable gardens to feed their families.

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).

Fallujah faces this new crisis after much of the city was destroyed by U.S. military operations in 2004.

The area around Fallujah city, which lies 70 km west of Baghdad, has traditionally been one of the most agriculturally productive in Iraq. Farmers planted tomatoes and cucumbers north of Fallujah, others grew potatoes south of the city near Amiriya. Both areas had plenty of date palm trees and small fruit plantations. Now production is down to a fraction of what it was.

Farmers have been struggling with changing times. "We changed our motors from electric to diesel oil to avoid electricity failures during the UN sanctions (during the 1990s)," Raad Sammy, an agriculture engineer who has a small farm in Saqlawiya on the outskirts of Fallujah told IPS. "We used to have a minimum of 12 hours electricity per day under the programmed cut, but there is practically no electricity now. And now we also have to face lack of fuel for our pumps, and the incredible increase of fuel prices on the black market."

The price of agricultural products has skyrocketed. "The average price for one kilogram of tomatoes is approximately one dollar," Yasseen Kamil, a grocer in Fallujah told IPS. "This price is when there is no crisis such as Americans blocking the entrance into the city. It is naturally doubled in winter when we have to import everything from Syria and Jordan."

Fallujah residents say the price of food now exceeds their income. The average income for government employees is 170 dollars a month, and no more than 100 dollars for labourers and salesmen.

Residents say unemployment in the city is well above 50 percent. Under these circumstances, a food crisis has hit people harder than it might elsewhere.

"The social effects of the situation are enormous," Ahmed Munqith from the city told IPS. "We believe that people are carrying out illegitimate acts in order to obtain their daily life necessities. The food crisis has led to vast corruption, and raised crime rates to peak point."

As with any difficulty now, many Iraqis believe that the occupation forces want it this way.

"It is obvious that the prices are up and life is difficult in this city and all of Iraq because it has been so planned," Sheikh Ala'in, a cleric in Fallujah told IPS. "Occupation planners designed this poverty in order to make Iraqis work for them as policemen and spies. Iraq is floating on a lake of oil, but there is no gas to run water pumps. What an irony."

Residents say they are told of a world food crisis that may be affecting them. But their crisis arises mainly from local factors like shortage of water, fuel and electricity.

Whatever the reason, residents simply want relief. "We just want our lives back," said a college student who gave her name only as Nada. "We want to eat, buy clothes, get proper education and breathe pure air. No thanks to Americans for their effort to bring us democracy that killed half of us by their bombs and is now apparently killing the other half by starvation. Can you pass this message to the American people for us?"

According to the UN, at least four million people in Iraq do not have enough food, while approximately 40 percent of the 27.5 million population do not have access to clean drinking water. At least 30 percent do not have access to proper health services.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).