False Sense of Security in Iraq
The Pentagon ushered in the New Year with seemingly welcome news: Iraq’s security is improving. Attacks across the country fell 62% and, according to aid organization Iraqi Red Crescent, 20,000 Iraqi refugees returned home from Syria in December alone. The U.S. troop surge must be working. Even the Democratic opponents of President George Bush’s agenda in Iraq are befuddled by the news, unclear how to proceed.
But wait, before America breathes a much wanted sigh of relief, do these measurements have merit? A closer look reveals that the refugee numbers, in context, are misleading and that security in Iraq remains ever elusive.
Take the numbers first. Iraqi Red Crescent reports indicate that 40,000-plus refugees returned home from Syria between September and December 2007. In theory, this is a good thing because it implies increased safety in Iraq. At least that is how Western media is telling the story. Yet even Said Hakki, the organization’s president, is downplaying the numbers, recognizing that given the 1.2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone and the 1 million in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, and Turkey, these returnees remain a small part of the picture.
The U.S. military, furthermore, appears disinclined to see an increase in the numbers of refugee returns. Afraid that a flood of refugees will incite further sectarian violence, General David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, refuses to put resettlement responsibilities in the hands of U.S. forces. In his words, “We obviously do not have that kind of capability on the ground here.” That means that over 4 million total displaced Iraqis, 2.2 million inside Iraq and over 2 million outside, are on their own. To put it differently, one-fifth of the nation’s entire population, many of whom left in response to the 2003 U.S. invasion, should head home without expectation of American assistance.
What Petraeus and the Pentagon fail to factor in is the impending impact on public services when refugees return. Security, it seems, will quickly go south. Not only will conflict increase when those displaced are determined to reclaim property rightfully theirs. But perhaps even more significant is the inevitable conflict arising when the burden on government services intensifies. Given the current state of Iraq’s electricity, water, health care and nutrition and it becomes painfully clear that services are already overburdened.
With Iraq’s oil production at prewar levels, production capacity for electricity is barely at 50% of the country’s current demand. The urban environments benefit most while the rural towns remain dark. Baghdad had 9 hours of electricity daily at the end of 2007 while rural residents in Hawijah, for example, hardly got half that at 4 hours a day. When all 700,000 displaced Baghdadis return to their capital city, convinced by U.S. forces that the troop surge is working and that security has improved, electricity capacity will be quickly compromised.
Clean water and sanitation capacity is certainly no better. A 2007 report by international aid organization Oxfam concluded that nearly 70% of Iraq remained without access to clean water with a higher majority, 80%, still lacking effective sanitation. Petraeus is right in one sense; a flood of refugees might result in higher levels of violence, but not because of sectarian reasons. The national utilities sector is saddled in servicing even its non-displaced. More numbers, then, mean more insecurity-explaining, perhaps, why Petraeus is protesting plans for resettlement.
Health services remain the least secure, bordering on catastrophic. Ninety percent of the hospitals in Iraq lack basic medical and surgical supplies. Even if the hospitals were fully equipped, few professionals remain in-country, able to use the equipment. Fifty percent of the country’s trained medical staff fled in recent years, leaving a nation with nearly half its population struggling in absolute poverty.
One wonders, then, how the United States can call this country secure. If attacks were the sole barometer of security and the key indicator of state stability and military success, then yes, America’s New Year’s message might make sense. But with 4 million of Iraq’s citizens still displaced and electricity, water, sanitation, and health services struggling, calling this country secure is not only indefensible but unethical.
Security in Iraq will only come after basic needs are met for the displaced and the non-displaced, something that has never been a priority for Petraeus or the Pentagon. Now in the silent aftermath of the surge, these needs beg our political and moral attention.
Michael Shank is a contributor to Foreign Polcy in Focus and an analyst with George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
Copyright © 2008, Institute for Policy Studies
Why is Michael Shank letting the facts get in the way of the Bush Regime’s great story about “success in Iraq”, just when the US electorate is feeling warm and fuzzy about Iraq and the presidential candidates who will assure a long, profitatble war in Iraq ???
The narrow definition of success is based on the number of American casualties. If that number has been reduced, and if that reduction can be sustained, then the war apologists need no other statistics to claim success.
Number of Iraqi dead/injured…that’s for sissies to worry about.
Number of US $$$ that we (US) are going into debt in order to maintain our presence in Iraq…we’ll talk about that some other day.
Chances that the Iraqi parliament will pass the law that will grant US and other western companies priviledged access to Iraqi oil…ok, time to change the subject.
According to the US plutocrats, national and internal security = SECURITY.
Social security is off the table. Too much social security = the lower orders becoming too secure.
I define social security as = to all members of a society getting access to the basic needs of shelter, food, education, health, communication networks, creative activities, clothing, shoes, empowering organizations, and meaningful work.
In other words, freedom from want.
If the lower-orders become too secure, they might not put up with the economic dictates of corporate capitalism and the U.S garrison state.
When one-fifth of the country’s population is dead or displaced, the country becomes easier to control. Therefore, we can get their oil without as much trouble.
Duh
If it so safe, why aren’t the Iraqi refugees..er, I mean Displaced, in Damascus, NOT eager to return yet?
Good News: Australia to pull troops from Iraq:-
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/30518
There is a saying in Malay, “IF YOU CAN’T SUCCEED THEN MAKE BELIEF YOU HAVE !
Things aren’t going well, US casualties are up in January. Earlier this month, the bombing was so intense south of Baghdad, it made the evening news. It’s been a disaster worse then Vietnam, the US is simply paying it’s enemies not to shoot, and they continue to shoot.
And we are now copying the Luftwaffe Guernica tactics because it is going so well.
These disastrous events, leading to and including this Iraq misadvdnture, have been underway since Americans allowed this president to illegally take office. They then permitted him to benefit from 9/11, despite his neglect to obvious signs leading to this tragedy. His unprecedented environmental sellouts that will affect us for decades fueled by his war on science only add to the outrage.
Americans have only themselves to blame for the damage to our planet from the antics of this zealot and his supporting special interests.
Body counts are always misleading and always the last resort of media ‘analysts’ because they do not want to look at things that are so subject to quantification. Electricity, fenced in Iraq neighborhoods, food shortages, oil production and numerous other indices are ignored because they do not fit easily into the pattern of who is winning and who is losing. Iraq has disappeared as a news story except for the propaganda of the government–and it will not be greatly different under Clinton if whe wins–and as long as this is the case, nothing much matters objectively but what people view on their stupid T.V. programs. If you wonder what is wrong with this country, consider this: some people are paying 250,000 for a weeks rent at the super bowl site. I would tell you where that site is, but I havn’t the vaguest idea.
Does anyone actually think the refugees are returning voluntarily? They are returning because their incredibly overburdened host countries are kicking them out. The United States is certainly not going to let them in so they have no choice but to return to the hell on earth that we have created.
Times in Iraq are certainly rosy, for the Iraqi MPs who have reputedly been paid $5 million each by the US for supporting the new oil bill. They are also rosy for those living in the green zone, whp are isolated from the power cuts and desease of everyday life in Iraq. We should not forget the inhabitants of the second largest airbase in the World, just north of Iraq, which is a self contained city, where you can pop down to Walmart, or watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
Latest figures suggest around a million deaths caused by the war, but nobody seems to give us statistics about the war profiteers, who are making millions from this damned fiasco.
How did Stalin improve literacy in the Soviet Union? By killing all the illiterates! Get it? The “surge” improves security in Iraq by getting rid of the Iraqis! And by the way, WTF is with this term the “surge?” Is this some extreme sports competition sponsored by Mountain Dew??!!! Such f—ing frat boy, jockhead terminology! On a more serious note. This article is a great antidote to a lot of the current pap written about the surge. Last Monday, Max Boot - a cheerleader for US empire and fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations - wrote an op-ed in the “LA Times” that claimed “victory is in sight” but the US over-reliance on al-Maliki stood in the way.