Goodwill ambassador Jolie with a resident of Chikook, Baghdad © UNHCR
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UNHCR’s goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie, paid a visit to some of the estimated 1.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq Thursday 23 July, her third to the country.
Jolie spoke to some families in the Chikook camp northwest of Bagdhad which houses 20,000 people, mostly women and children, displaced by sectarian violence that wracked the country beginning in 2006.
Drought but mainly poor water management is causing the Euphrates River to dry up and it is now about half the size it was just a few years ago, writes Campbell Robertson in a New York Times feature. One result is that Iraq has increased its grain imports, but the issue is also causing tensions to rise between Iraq and its neighbours, notably Turkey and Syria.
Inside and outside of Iraq, the question is being raised of the country’s ability to deal with the string of suicide bomb and other explosives attacks on citizens, following the killing of more than 50 people in a series of attacks Thursday 9 July and 16 Wednesday. Numbers for the dead and wounded vary, with Yahoo reporting 60 people killed Thursday, in an article that focuses on the return to Iraq by US military authorities of five Iranians who had been detained for suspected links to terrorist groups. Al Jazeera, The Age, Australia, Reuters
US troops are turning over patrolling of Iraq’s cities and towns to the country’s police and armed forces, a cause for celebration in much of Iraq, but in Kirkuk, the withdrawal of foreign forces was marred by the latest deadly blast, a bomb that killed 30 people when it went off in a market, reports Al Jazeera. CNN
A series of bomb attacks have killed at least 29 people in several towns and cities in Iraq Monday. Coming so soon after a weekend suicide truck explosion in Kirkuk that killed 70 people, and days before US troops are to move out of towns to mililtary bases, 30 June, there is concern that “insurgents are determined to make things look as unstable as possible as the pull-out deadline approaches,” according to a BBC reporter in Baghdad. The US has 133,000 troops in Iraq, scheduled to leave the country by September 2011. Xinhua
A US soldier who raped a 14-year-old girl in Iraq, then killed her and her family, will be sentenced by a judged in Kentucky to life in prison instead of being given the death penalty after the jury failed to agree on his punishment. Steven Green, age 24, was tried in a civilian court because he was given an honourable discharge for a personality disorder before the crimes were discovered. BBC, CNN
US President Barack Obama has provoked the ire of Amnesty International and civil liberties groups by saying he has stopped the planned 28 May release of photos showing US soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama said (BBC video) that the photos are not as sensational as those seen at Abu Ghraib in Iraq but they do not conform to acceptable behaviour in the army manual. However, he noted, the cases of abuse have been dealt with by the military and there is “no benefit” to be gained by releasing them, a change from his earlier stance.
Two separate suicide bombs went off in two areas in Iraq, Baghdad and a town in the province of Diyala, killing 70 people, among them Iranian pilgrims having lunch after visiting Shiite shrines, and national police. BBC, CNN
Chart: UNHCR, "Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2008"
Geneva, Switzerland (Genevalunch) – Political turmoil in Afghanistan and Somalia increased the number of asylum seekers in 2008 for the second year running, according to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Iraq provided the largest number of applicants for asylum, 40,500, a 10 percent decrease from 2007.
A bomb exploded as VIPS were leaving a peace conference in western Baghdad when a bomb went off, killing at least 33 people and injuring another 46, reports the BBC. It is the third deadly attack since 5 March, with the other two killing 40 people.
US President Barack Obama announced Friday 27 February that the US will pull most troops out of Iraq by August 2010, leaving 30-50,000 of the 142,000 troops currently stationed there, and these will gradually be withdrawn by 31 December 2011, he said. CNN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraq man who famously threw a shoe at George Bush, is reported by the Tribune de Geneve to be asking for political asylum in Switzerland. The story has been widely picked up, by the BBC, among others, outside Switzerland, but on Monday morning other Swiss media were not carrying it.
Canada, which is harbouring an estimated 200 US soldiers who’ve deserted, many of them living incognito according to the BBC, has given Kimberly Rivera and her family, including three young children, until the end of January to leave the country. Rivera served in Iraq in 2006 but refused to be redeployed.
Thirty-five top officials at the Ministry of the Interior are under arrest in Iraq, some of them accused of working to revive the banned Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. The elite counterterrorism unit that reports directly to the president has been involved, reports the International Herald Tribune, and there are reports that some of those arrested were in the early stages of plotting a coup.
Fifty-five people died in a restaurant in the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk, not far from Russia, while Arab and Kurdish officials were meeting to find ways to reduce tensions. CNN
In the most positive and concrete sign yet of an improvement in the situation in Iraq, walls that were build by the US military “to stop neighbours from killing each other,” are now slowly but steadily being dismantled. International Herald Tribune
General David Petraeus handed over the responsibility for US troops in Iraq to his successor, General Ray Odierno, with praise from several quarters for the reduction in the level of violence in Iraq as well as a significant drop in the number of US soldiers killed, for which Petraeus is largely credited; he now becomes commander of US Central Command. CNN
