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Iraq: Plus ça change
Iraq's cosseted politicians finally announce who among them gets what in the new government, while ordinary Iraqis turn up dead and tortured, writes Nermeen El-Mufti
Last Saturday, as the representatives of the people met under the dome of the parliament -- or shall we say behind the ramparts of the Green Zone -- I was watching hundreds of people standing, faces filled with grief and eyes with tears, in front of the gate of the Forensic Medicine Department in Baghdad. That same day, 15 unidentified bodies were found bearing the marks of torture, and bombings claimed the lives of 56 people in Baghdad. Every five minutes or so you'd hear the sound of wailing, as a father emerges from the door along with a body of a son, one of the butchered no longer unknown. In front of that gate, shock and grief reigned supreme. Everyone was consoling everyone. Everyone was hoping not to find their loved ones, though such hopes were often dashed.
Saadiya Hasan, a teacher, is in black. She lost her son, Omar, two months ago when unidentified gunmen dragged him from her house along with his father. The body of her son was found at the forensic medicine morgue. His father is still missing. "My eyes are dry but my heart is filled with tears. Omar was only 19, a college student ... When they came into the house they said straight away that they wanted Omar. When his father resisted, they took them both." Om Omar described the time she spent looking for her son at the morgue, among dozens of bodies. She'd been looking for over two weeks. Now that she found her son, she'd keep looking for her husband.
Abbas Mohamed has found the body of his son in the same morgue, but was still looking for his brother. "The hand that kills an Iraqi Sunni is the same that kills an Iraqi Shia. One of my acquaintances was looking for the body of his son when he saw that of mine. Here I am. I don't dare to go in. I don't know what to tell my elderly mother and my pregnant daughter-in-law." Hassan, his son, was a builder. Someone hired him along with six other men and took them in his car. None of the men returned home. Their bodies were later found in the morgue.
Between one bout of wailing and another, as bodies were passing in and out of Baghdad's morgue, the leaders of Iraq got together and announced the formation of the first permanent government since the occupation began. The road from the Forensic Medicine Department to the Green Zone is not long, but it takes time because of traffic and frequent roadblocks. While in the car, I heard the names of the new ministers announced on the radio. Some of them were outside the country, and some hadn't yet been informed of their new posts, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said.
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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/796/re2.htm
Saadiya Hasan, a teacher, is in black. She lost her son, Omar, two months ago when unidentified gunmen dragged him from her house along with his father. The body of her son was found at the forensic medicine morgue. His father is still missing. "My eyes are dry but my heart is filled with tears. Omar was only 19, a college student ... When they came into the house they said straight away that they wanted Omar. When his father resisted, they took them both." Om Omar described the time she spent looking for her son at the morgue, among dozens of bodies. She'd been looking for over two weeks. Now that she found her son, she'd keep looking for her husband.
Abbas Mohamed has found the body of his son in the same morgue, but was still looking for his brother. "The hand that kills an Iraqi Sunni is the same that kills an Iraqi Shia. One of my acquaintances was looking for the body of his son when he saw that of mine. Here I am. I don't dare to go in. I don't know what to tell my elderly mother and my pregnant daughter-in-law." Hassan, his son, was a builder. Someone hired him along with six other men and took them in his car. None of the men returned home. Their bodies were later found in the morgue.
Between one bout of wailing and another, as bodies were passing in and out of Baghdad's morgue, the leaders of Iraq got together and announced the formation of the first permanent government since the occupation began. The road from the Forensic Medicine Department to the Green Zone is not long, but it takes time because of traffic and frequent roadblocks. While in the car, I heard the names of the new ministers announced on the radio. Some of them were outside the country, and some hadn't yet been informed of their new posts, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said.
Read More
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/796/re2.htm
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It was perhaps no coincidence that at the time when the new Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki was making headlines about "a plan to protect Baghdad" by using "maximum force" to restore order, as many as 20 Iraqis lost their lives in a string of suicide attacks that hit Baghdad on Sunday in Al-Karada district. The killings were just another grim reminder that has now become an hourly occurrence of the kind of challenges the new cabinet will face during its four-year mandate.
The plan, whose existence was disclosed by Al-Maliki during the inauguration of the new Iraqi cabinet, centered around forming new special forces to secure Baghdad. But hardly any details were revealed as to how this will take place.
The 37-member cabinet that was approved by the Iraqi national assembly on Saturday emerged after more than five months since the country went to the polls on 15 December.
Al-Maliki's inauguration speech focused mainly on the issue of the government's plan to restore security to Iraq. He was not oblivious to the fact that force alone will not defeat terrorism and that what Iraq needed most was to take steps towards national reconciliation.
"We have a new plan of reconciliation for Iraq to restore trust," Al-Maliki said. He would not, however, disclose details of the plan. This left many to question the new cabinet's ability to achieve such a difficult objective. Such doubts grow stronger when considering the fact that for many Iraqis, the basis upon which the government was formed exacerbate sectarian tensions instead of muting them.
After months of political bickering that left a huge political void in the country and rendered it vulnerable to sectarian conflict and civil war, the final count of the Iraqi cabinet was hardly a surprise since the same sectarian quotas -- first applied in the Iraqi Interim Council -- have been adopted to select cabinet members. The main Shia alliance, the United Iraqi Alliance, which holds 130 out of the 275 seats in parliament seized 19 of the 37 ministries including the powerful oil and finance portfolios. The main Kurdish bloc snatched seven ministries including the Foreign Ministry while the National Accord Front, the main Sunni bloc, grabbed six ministries. Former premier Iyad Allawi's Iraqi list secured five including the Ministry of Justice and Human rights.
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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/796/re1.htm