A sense of despair is sweeping through Iraq

[SocalDinar]

 

A sense of despair is sweeping through Iraq. This email from my driver in Baghdad proves it

 

Focus in Europe has been on refugees from the war in Syria, but a mood of desperation and despair is also sweeping through Iraq

 

I used to have a driver called Omar in Baghdad at the height of the Sunni-Shia slaughter between 2004 and 2010. He was a Sunni Arab and, at the peak of the sectarian bloodshed, he fled with his family to Damascus where they stayed for a year.

On his return, he found that his house, on which he had spent all his money and was in a religiously mixed district in west Baghdad, had been seized by Shia militiamen. When he briefly visited it, his neighbours warned him to go away as quickly as he could or he would be killed.

He sold his wife’s jewellery, borrowed some money and paid an Iraqi in Sweden a considerable sum to get him there. It was always a doomed idea because he spoke only Arabic and had no skills other than those of a driver. He flew first to Kuala Lumpur, then to Phnom Penh and finally by bus to Ho Chi Minh City where he tried to get a flight to Lithuania using a Lithuanian passport he had purchased.

A few questions by Vietnamese officials revealed that he did not speak Lithuanian and he was soon back in Baghdad where he tried to earn a living as a taxi driver. This was not easy in a city crowded with taxis, where it was not safe for him to venture into Shia districts. The situation was not quite as dangerous, however, as it had been at the height of the killings.

I lost touch with Omar, which is not his real name, until a few weeks ago when I got an anguished email in slightly broken English, which he must have got a friend to translate from Arabic, recalling that he had once worked for me. He wrote that once again Baghdad had become very dangerous, adding a plea: “I need your help in a simple way, you remember in 2006 I forced to leave my house and threatened to be killed by the shiite militia and after that time I tried to travel to Europe illegally but I failed.

“You know our situation how it is dangerous and very bad…” He asked me to help him get out of Iraq by writing a letter saying that his life is in danger, as it certainly is, and supporting his request for asylum.

I did not think that any country would give him refuge, but I suspected that, if they did not, Omar would make another disastrous effort to get to Europe illegally and either end up dead or even more impoverished than before. On the other hand, it was his choice and I wrote a letter truthfully describing his dire circumstances.

Omar is one of a tidal wave of Iraqis trying to get out of Iraq as the war continues and insecurity grows worse by the day. Kidnapping is rife in Baghdad, with victims ranging from three-year-old children to the deputy Minister of Justice.

Eighteen Turkish construction workers were abducted by a Shia militia and moved to Basra without the government being able to do anything about it. In addition there are daily bombings by Isis which a multitude of government checkpoints fail to stop.

Focus in Europe has been on refugees from the war in Syria, but a mood of desperation and despair is also sweeping through Iraq. Over the last eighteen months the surge in fighting has raised the number of people displaced from their homes to over three million or 10 per cent of the population according to the International Organisation for Migration. Even in the Kurdish north, where security is much better, one can see young men on the streets with heavy rucksacks as they start the long trek towards Europe.

The five or six million Sunni Arabs in Iraq are particularly vulnerable because they are suspected by the Kurds and Shia of secretly sympathising with Isis. Many stories may be apocryphal, but Kurds and Shia claim that wherever Isis advanced, it is aided by “sleeper cells” in Sunni districts.

If the Shia or Kurds recapture an area, the Sunni are given short shrift and, since Isis captured Mosul in June 2014, one million Sunni have fled to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) zone from Anbar province and the provinces around Baghdad. Isis’ capture of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, on 17 May this year, saw another 180,000 Sunni take to the roads in search of safety. 

As in Syria, millions of people in Iraq are despairing of ever living a normal life with a job. The mass exodus from the country is gathering pace. “There are eighteen or nineteen planes a day leaving Iraq filled with people with one way tickets,” lamented a former senior official in Baghdad, who did not want his name published.

 

A foreign diplomat in KRG, who also wishes to remain anonymous, says that “there are 700 or 800 young men leaving from the two airports here every day, most of whom want to go to Europe. Some of them even have a job and a salary, but see no future here”. He added that, because there is more sympathy in the EU for Syrian refugees than those from Iraq, Iraqi refugees often throw away their passport and claim to be from Syria.

I asked Salim al-Jabouri, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, who recently visited London and is the most important non-Jihadi Sunni leader in Iraq, about the fate of his community. He said that Sunni demands for fair treatment and power sharing needed to be satisfied, but he did not sound confident that this would happen soon.

In his own province of Diyala, he said that kidnappings and killings of Sunni were increasing. I asked him what advice he would give to a Sunni like my former driver Omar, a man who fears for his life, is without any prospects inside Iraq, and who wants to flee the country. Mr Jabouri said that it was “difficult for me to say, but we must create an environment in which Omar could live in Iraq”. Omar and millions like him cannot wait that long. 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/a-sense-of-despair-is-sweeping-through-iraq-this-email-from-my-driver-in-baghdad-proves-it-10509799.html

[stealthwarrior]

It's all part of the bigger picture of what's REALLY going to happen very soon.prepare yourself.

[Texstorm]

It's all part of the bigger picture of what's REALLY going to happen very soon.prepare yourself.

Unfortunately stealth not everyone can see and I agree with being prepared.  

[Antietam]

Yes, this is a very sad situation, made far worse by the absence of American leadership. There seems to be no end to the misery and suffering of these people, regardless of religious affiliation. I thank God every day for the mercy He has shown those of us who were born in the US. But with this mercy, we have a great responsibility to help others. I am reminded of the parable of the servants who were given ten talents, five talents and one talent. God expects us to increase our gifts for the furtherance of His Kingdom, regardless of a dinar RV. In my opinion, every American has been blessed with ten talents, regardless of our financial situation. Just being able to have clean water, food, clothing, and a safe environment for our families places us in the "Ten talent" category, and God is watching.

[Cynthia AH]

AMEN Antietam AMEN!

[Palmtree1970]

Prepare yourself ? Lol...some people are just over optimistic

[Santanna]

Some Iraqi soldiers are abandoning their posts and joining a wave of civilian migrants headed to Europe, raising new doubts about the cohesion of the country's Western-backed security forces in the fight against Islamic State militants.

    Interviews with migrants and an analysis of social media activity show scores of fighters from the national army, police and special forces as well as Shi'ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga have left in recent months or plan to go soon.

    They join more than 50,000 civilians who have left Iraq in the past three months, according to the United Nations, part of an even larger exodus from neighboring Syria and other conflict zones across the Middle East.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/20/us-europe-migrants-iraq-military-idUSKCN0RK0EB20150920

    The inability of Iraq to retain its soldiers threatens to further erode morale in a military that has partially collapsed twice in the past year in the face of the Islamic State militant group.

    It could also undermine the efforts of a U.S.-led coalition that has spent billions of dollars training and equipping Iraqi forces to take on the militants.

    A spokesman for the Iraqi defense ministry said the military was not concerned about the migration of soldiers, which he put in the "tens" out of a security force estimated to number in the tens of thousands.

    "The armed forces are performing their duties. There is no reason to be worried," said General Tahsin Ibrahim Sadiq.

    But Saed Kakaei, adviser to the minister of peshmerga forces in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, said while he could not provide a specific figure for how many peshmerga forces had left, the numbers were "concerning”.

    The soldiers' departure highlights a pervasive sense of hopelessness among many Iraqis more than a year after Islamic State seized a third of their country's territory, threatened to overrun the capital and declared a modern caliphate.

    Despite driving them back in some areas, members of the security forces say they are leaving because they face daily offensives by the insurgents, sectarian violence, and economic depression.

Many in the security forces are also frustrated and disillusioned with elected officials, who they allege abandoned them on the frontlines, while failing to provide adequate resources and enriching themselves through graft.

    "Iraq is worth fighting for but the government is not," said a 22-year-old SWAT policeman who decided to emigrate after his brother was killed in battle earlier this year at the northern Baiji refinery where he was also posted.

    "There is no concern for us at all. The government has destroyed us," he told Reuters, saying Baghdad's failure to reinforce soldiers had caused avoidable losses in a battle that has dragged on for more than a year.

Control of neighborhoods in Baiji, about 190 km (120 miles) north of Baghdad, has changed hands many times. Authorities said in July they had recaptured most of the town, but Islamic State attacked central neighborhoods days later, forcing pro-government forces to pull back.

    Others echoed the policeman's concerns. A 33-year-old special forces member who was based in western Anbar province - an Islamic State stronghold - said he had lost any reason to stay, and joined 16 fellow soldiers who smuggled themselves to northern Europe last month.

    "We were fighting while the government and political parties made it their mission to make money and officials sent their children to live abroad," he told Reuters via online messaging.

"What drove us to leave was seeing our guys getting wounded, killed or maimed, and nobody cared."

Baghdad launched a campaign to retake the Sunni heartland of Anbar after the provincial capital Ramadi fell in May, leaving only a few government holdouts across the sprawling desert territory.

But fighting has progressed fitfully with sectarian tensions coming to a head and ground advances delayed by explosives planted by Islamic State along roads and in buildings.

A special operations member based in Ramadi said the elite unit alone had seen more than 100 fighters leave for Europe in the past six months. Reuters could not independently verify this.

   Many soldiers who left have changed their Facebook profiles from portraits in fatigues beside tanks or holding machine guns to photos riding bikes or relaxing in parks in Austria,Germany or Finland.

 

    "MERELY TENANTS"

    Iraqis have long complained of corruption and mismanagement in the government, including the armed forces. An official investigation last year found 50,000 "ghost soldiers" on the army's books. The "ghosts", the report said, helped fuel the military's collapse in June 2014 in the northern city of Mosul.

    These men were on the army payroll but paid their officers a portion of their salaries and in return did not show up for duty, enriching their commanders and hollowing out the military force.

    Iraq has since come to rely heavily on Shi'ite militias and volunteer fighters, grouped under a government-run body called the Hashid Shaabi. But even some Hashid, who were called to take up arms by the country's top Shi'ite cleric, are leaving.

    A 20-year-old Shi'ite fighter from the eastern province of Diyala, who declined to identify himself or the specific militia he belonged to, said pro-government forces receive inadequate support to fight Islamic State.

    He recently made a month-long journey to Sweden to join two cousins who are themselves former Iraqi police officers.

    "You cannot fight a war or live in a country under these circumstances," he told Reuters via Facebook from the Stockholm area. The politicians "ransacked the country in the name of religion. Iraq is not ours anymore; we are merely tenants."

    Reuters could not independently verify the fighter’s identity.

    Hashid spokesman Ahmed al-Asadi could not provide an accurate count for fighters who had migrated, but said the government needed to do more to keep young Iraqis from leaving.

    Reforms launched last month by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi seek to end a system of ethnic and sectarian quotas that has spawned corruption and mismanagement. The reforms also aim to improve accountability in the military and other state institutions.

    But the initiative, hindered by bureaucracy and political jockeying, has led to few noticeable gains on the battlefield or improvements in people's daily lives; many lack basic services such as electricity.

    Though Iraqis have been fleeing poor government, violence and economic hardship for decades, recent policy shifts in Europe have presented a fresh opportunity to escape.

    Looking on this summer as refugees from neighboring Syria received a warm reception in Europe, many decided to leave at short notice, using Facebook and other social media to plan their trips.

    The United Nations estimates hundreds of thousands more could leave Iraq in the coming months.

    But the soldiers arriving in Europe face an unknown future. A spokeswoman for U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said those judged to be former combatants would not be granted refugee status.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/20/us-europe-migrants-iraq-military-idUSKCN0RK0EB20150920

[Laid Back]

Abadi's reforms will help to bring the country back from the ashes.!!

Go Iraq Go >>>

[Officiallytook]

If I had money I would flee to the EU too...they know what's coming payments qi card international acceptance

[Boozer]

I have a driver I use on the 9th and14th Hole,

[DinarThug]

I have a driver I use on the 9th and14th Hole,

Ya Boozer - But Ur Wife Says That Ur 'Putter' Doesn't Work After The 19th Hole !

[MyLadiesDaddy]

Ya Boozer - But Ur Wife Says That Ur 'Putter' Doesn't Work After The 19th Hole !

:D

     You never fail my friend, thanks for the laugh this morning. 

[NoviceInvestor]

I too have a sense of despair .. Another year will be upon us all soon and we will still be holding apparently worthless dinar..

[SocalDinar]

I too have a sense of despair .. Another year will be upon us all soon and we will still be holding apparently worthless dinar..

Yep.  Been there done that

[ronscarpa]

Thanks for making us aware SocalDinar (+1), Antietam (+1), and Santanna (+1)