The Dominion - Iraq

September in Review

dru — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:34:05 +0000

GM on strike, uranium mining, 1.2 million dead in Iraq

73,000 employees of General Motors (GM) went on strike, shutting down 82 facilities, to oppose cuts to wages, jobs and health care. After two days on the picket line, which cost GM an estimated $100 million per day, United Auto Workers announced a tentative deal with GM management. The strike also affected plants in Canada, which supply roughly 50 per cent of the parts used by GM. Initial details of the contract sparked anger among some workers, who say the agreement benefits union bureaucracy, but continues to roll back wages and jobs. "I’ve read the Wall Street Journal and they’re gloating over the agreement," said one auto worker. "The company wanted to outsource a lot of these jobs, but instead... they can keep them in-house and pay the same rate as they would to someone on the outside. The only difference is the union keeps these workers as dues-paying members. The UAW doesn’t lose, but the workers do." Before it is adopted, workers must vote to ratify the contract.

Algonquin demonstrators from the Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwan Algonquin First Nations paddled canoes to Ottawa to protest a planned uranium mine near Sharbot Lake, Ontario. The canoers seeked to demonstrate that radioactive waste from the mine would potentially flow into the Ottawa River and subsequently Lake Ontario. Algonquin demonstrators have been occupying the mine site, which they say is Algonquin territory.

A proposed uranium mine near the Inuit community of Makkovik, in northern Labrador, has stoked debate. While the prospect of jobs appeals to many, a radioactive mine is not as appealing to others. Douglas Jacques, whose family has hunted and trapped near the mine site for three generations, told the CBC that he anticipates mining companies will "go off with millions and millions, and we won't get a thing out of it."

Nine protesters from Six Nations were arrested at a Caledonia subdivision construction site. The Six Nations demonstrators say the developer of Stirling Creek Estates does not have the right to build on the property, as it is Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) territory. The arrests occured after one of the developers was reportedly injured in an altercation with several Six Nations youth.

The UN General Assembly passed the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The only countries to vote against the declaration were Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

The government of New Brunswick announced a $237 million budget surplus, more than ten times what was expected. The extra revenues are thought to stem from increased prices for metals mined in the province, such as zinc.

The government of Ecuador ordered Canadian mining company Ascendant Copper to suspend all activities at its controversial Junín project. Carlos Zorilla of DECOIN, a grassroots environmental group that has been fighting Ascendant, said, "It's a fine political balancing act... I see it as an attempt to close down Ascendant's operations in [the area] while at the same time trying hard not to provoke... the international financing institutional world, not to mention the wrath of the Canadian government." Ascendant has been accused of using bribes and paramilitary thugs to suppress local opposition to the Junín mining project, which Conservation International has called one of the most ecologically diverse areas in the world.

The levels of Arctic sea ice reached a record low on September 16, breaking the previous record, set in 2005, by 1.19 million square kilometres--roughly the size of Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined. Some scientists say that Arctic ice has reached a "tipping point," which will be followed by accelerated melting. "All models seem to underestimate the speed at which the ice is melting," one climate scientist told Reuters. The change is likely to result in increased exploration of oil, gas and other natural resources in the region.

Carpenters, roofers, pipefitters, plumbers and other tradespeople staged wildcat strikes in Alberta, demanding changes to the Alberta Labour Code. The contested legislation denies the right to strike after 75 per cent of the province's trade unions have agreed to a contract. Hundreds marched in Edmonton to protest the legislation, which dates back two decades.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers went on the offensive against a new report calling for Alberta to receive a larger share of revenues from tar sands mining, calling it "faulty" and "flawed." The Globe and Mail reported that the tar sands were facing a "capacity squeeze" due to insufficient pipeline space to carry increased production of oil.

A coalition led by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty held a "day of action" calling for the provincial government to "increase social assistance, raise the minimum wage and build affordable/social housing." "Welfare and disability rates have lost 40% of their real value, the minimum wage is still at sub poverty levels and the lack of decent housing in this City is a shame and a disgrace," the group said in a release.

The Halifax Coalition Against Poverty (HCAP) began a series of clinics aimed at educating welfare recipients on how to obtain a little-known "special needs" allowance of $150. The coalition is working with doctors and health care professionals to provide letters for people seeking the special needs allowance. The campaign "provides the possibility for people to win money they need from the government and to have that be a way to build the confidence and dignity needed to be part of broader political struggle," said HCAP organizer Cole Webber.

Hotel workers in Vancouver threatened to strike over wages and working conditions, diversion of tips, working conditions, medical benefits, workloads and other issues. They reached a tenative agreement on September 22.

Some Canadian postal workers refused to deliver addressed advertising mail to addresses that they knew no longer belonged to the addressee. Canada Post has ordered the delivery of mail, which postal workers say takes discretion away from workers, reduces professionalism, and could violate privacy rights, if the mail disclosed religious affiliation or other personal information.

Afghan protesters near Kandahar chanted "death to Canada" and called for foreign troops to leave after two men were killed in a military raid on a local house. Canadian officials denied involvement, and dismissed requests for compensation. "We don't want to be in a situation where we're seen as just bribing people who have a grudge against us because that puts us up against insurgents who can likewise bribe," said a military spokesperson.

About 200 protesters accused NATO of war crimes, and called for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan in Victoria, where NATO generals were meeting to discuss military strategy.

Maxime Bernier's first speech in Quebec as Foreign Minister was repeatedly disrupted by protesters calling for an end to Canada's occupation of Afghanistan.

Protesters picketed outlets of Indigo books in Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal on the 25th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon. The picketers called for Indigo majority shareholders Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz to end support for groups recruiting soldiers for the Israeli army.

According to a new study, an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis have died since the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The study, published by Opinion Research Business, was almost entirely absent from North American media outlets.

The UK's Telegraph reported that the US was preparing to attack Iran. "Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran," the report said. "Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran." Many US and Canadian media outlets appeared to be engaged in a campaign to demonize the government of Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The government of Israel declared the 1.4 million residents of the Gaza Strip to be an "enemy entity." The move gives Israel the power to cut off power, water and other vital supplies to the impoverished, densely populated area.

Israel also carried out an unprovoked air raid into Iran. The government refused to comment on the operation, but some commentators have called it a test of Israel's capacity to attack Iran.

Sharbot Lake

Greenpeace

"a simple message of resistance"

dru — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:01:21 +0000

Has anyone seen "a simple message of resistance", a video apparently (?) put out by a group called the "Islamic Jihad Army"? It has apparently been around for quite a while (Jan 06), but I'm behind the times, it would seem. There's also this, which is more recent.

I have no idea as to its authenticity, but I've never seen this kind of direct, targeted video propaganda from guerrillas before--I'm not even sure the Zapatistas did anything like this with video--at least not in English.

Regardless of its origin, that makes it interesting as an attempt to bypass the media and speak to people directly.

Update: There's this, but I haven't found much in the way of commentary.

Latest Murder Poll Puts Iraq Total at 1.2 Million

Stuart Neatby — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:30:56 +0000

LA Times: "The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful."

Correcting Selective Reporting

hillarybain — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:10:30 +0000

An interview with Jooneed Khan of <em>La Presse</em>

Jooneed Khan has been reporting on international affairs in the French-language Quebec daily La Presse for just over 30 years. Khan has done extensive on-the-ground reporting, from Iraq to Haiti, and while his work is little-known outside of Quebec, he has gained an extensive following in the neighbourhoods of Montreal. The Dominion spoke to him in his home in Montreal. The interview will be published as a series of excerpts, of which this is the first.

D: There doesn’t seem to be anyone else who is doing anything remotely critical of Canadian foreign policy, and certainly not doing it on a regular basis for a major publication--your position seems to me to be totally singular in the Canadian media landscape. When they do cover foreign affairs, the Globe or the Star’s coverage seems to be very much in lockstep with the broad assumptions of Canadian foreign policy. What makes your situation different, and do you think that’s a result of working in a Francophone milieu?

JK: I think that there are like-minded journalists in Canada, and I read them with great interest. I can think of Haroon Siddiqui at the Toronto Star.... Siddiqui still writes, and he’s very critical of Canadian Foreign Policy, and he seems to come from the same viewpoint that I do; he’s a man of the south. He sees official Canadian foreign policy as being a vision of the north.

I have found that Rick Salutin is extremely critical--he’s a bit of a token dissident voice at the Globe and Mail, in the way you could say that I am a token dissident voice at La Presse, and there was Heather Mallick at the Globe, who I found extremely critical--very trenchant... she had this great vision to go straight to the point without beating around the bush.

D: What strikes me about your coverage is that you don’t have to excuse it in any way--you write straight news stories, and they have the legitimacy of reporting. Why do you think La Presse of all places would choose to have somebody like that writing regularly?

JK: It’s a very good point you make. All the people I mentioned are opinion writers. I have tried to avoid being an opinion writer. I’ve never even wanted to be on the editorial team who was writing editorials--all of them have been journalists. My concern has always been that before one can form an opinion, one needs facts--as wide a spectrum of facts as possible. I’ve found that mainstream media selects the facts to bring people to think and look in a certain way; and that was not only incomplete, but a disservice to the reader, and that the reader needed what one could call the other side of the coin. I’ve tried to bring those facts which were selected out, and put them together in a coherent way. I’ve done it constantly for almost 30 years. Trusting the reader--telling him or her that these are the facts... I’ll tell you a very recent example is Lebanon. The hue and cry in the western media of what Lebanon is today--that Hezbollah is radical, that it’s a proxy for Syria and Iran, that it’s threatening Israel, threatening Lebanese democracy. The statements that I’ve heard out of the White House, from Ottawa and Paris constantly reiterate democracy, democracy. I thought, this is a totally artificial debate, which can have dangerous consequences, so I did a piece last week, called the “Democractic Deficit in Lebanon.” I just brought the facts to show that when you have a dictated arrangement--dictated by the US and Saudi Arabia--on the Tyre Agreement, where they have allotted 64 seats to Muslims, 64 seats to Christians on a sectarian basis and you haven’t had a census in the country for 75 years... everyone who has done estimates based on the official figures has come to the conclusion that the Christians today are about 35 per cent of the population. Even the sectarian democracy that they’ve imposed does not reflect the true sectarian makeup of the society. These are just facts and figures.

D: Those facts have some embarrassing implications for the owners of the newspaper you work for--what kind of response do you get to those facts?

JK: I joined La Presse in ‘74, and shifted to the International Affairs section in ‘76. I always made it a point to be rigorous on my facts and I was bringing a lot of facts that were not mentioned in mainstream reporting, and I think people appreciated that. Over the years, I think I’ve built that credibility...

D: With the audience.

JK: Yeah. And from my editors. I try my very best not to allow any kind of sloppiness, so that I couldn’t be attacked on the basis of my facts. So that earned me credibility from my own bosses. For the period that I’ve been writing, from ‘75 onwards, there has been a growing influx of immigrants into Quebec, from Africa, from Asia, from Latin America.

Also, Quebec itself has had this longstanding tradition, I suppose, of looking critically at English power in Canada--therefore, being doubtful of English Canadian jargon and concepts and all that. So all that I think came together and allowed me to continue to do my work.

D: I’m assuming you’ve come under pressure from both inside the paper and outside the paper. Can you give any examples? How did that play out?

JK: Initially, I can be sure that my articles are not appreciated by the Israeli lobby. There’s no doubt about that. But I wrote about Palestinian rights and Palestinian suffering at the same time as I wrote about South African Apartheid, and the legitimate rights of the South African majority. I suppose the South African consulate in those days did call my editors once in a while, but since I could not be silenced on my facts, what the paper did was allow colleagues of mine to peddle the official line. So on one page--mostly in the business section--articles that were praising the [apartheid] system as a free economy and a bulwark against Communism and an outpost of the free world. And other colleagues were invited by the South Africa Foundation and other organizations just to peddle that line. But I was writing about the Freedom Charter, I was writing about exclusion, which was also part of the reality. So you had in the same paper the two views. And I appreciate that. I think newspapers in a free society should reflect the diversity of views.

D: It seems that that diversity of views can be seen less and less in Canadian newspapers. Have you noticed a decline in that kind of diversity of reporting? It seems that La Presse has to some extent resisted that, so I’m wondering if you see a trend?

JK: As you say, [La Presse] seems to have held out, but I would say that over the past fifteen years, La Presse has also converged with the rest of the dominant media. I think there is less and less of a relaxed attitude about my writing, for example. You know, you feel it in intuition--

D: But there nothing tangible? There’s no anecdote that you could point to and say...

JK: Well, the one story is my article from Iraq. In April of 2003, when the American troops moved into Baghdad and toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein, I was right there. I experienced it all, and saw it with my own eyes. I was in a small hotel behind the Palestine Hotel, belonging to an Iraqi family. The owner had brought his entire family into the hotel for the duration of the bombing. He had even brought neighbours, so there were Muslims and Christians and Kurds and Arabs, all in that little hotel. They watched all of this on TV, and I talked to them, and there was no joy. There was a great feeling of humiliation. One young man told me, “We are happy that this statue is toppled, but we are humiliated that it was not done by Iraqis.” The following day, while Rumsfeld was crowing about the Iraqi people “receiving us as liberators” et cetera, the checkpoints started going up around the Palestine Hotel, and jeeps with machine guns and soldiers patrolling. And suddenly, you feel that this distrust between the Iraqis and the US troops was very, very thick. I wrote a piece to, in a way, debunk the operation of the statue and to say that the real war begins now. I think it was a 1200-word story. I was there and had no way to check what was being printed; I was sending stories every day. When I got back, I gathered articles and saw that that particular piece had been cut down to about 300 words, and the language had been changed completely, to the point that it was saying the opposite of what I was trying to say.

That’s one specific example, and there’s no doubt that people in charge, the editors, my immediate boss, were watching all of this on CNN and realized that what I was writing from there was exactly the opposite of what CNN was telling them.

To me that is a very good example of the kind of changes that are taking place. In 30 years of journalism, it has never happened to me and it seems to me that there is more and more convergence, that there is a kind of uniform thinking in the West and it’s also due to the fact that Quebec, over the past 25 years, has native bourgeoisie, which I don’t think it had, in all manner of speaking, before ‘75. That was the coming of the Parti Quebecois.

[Continued in Part II]

Jooneed Khan

[film] Iraq in Fragments

dawn — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:15:37 +0000

Iraq in Fragments, James Longley's three year project, is a beautiful, poignant document that brings the viewer in for a close look at Iraq and it's people.

Coming soon to Calgary, Toronto, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Ottawa, the Peg, and more.

Abandoning Hypocrisy

dru — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:44:06 +0000

Canada's foreign policy and Afghanistan

The following remarks are based on a talk delivered in September 2006.

Canada is fighting a counternarcotics campaign and a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Afghanistan currently supplies 90 per cent of the world's heroin. The narcotics Canada is fighting are a product of the occupation. They are a product of the alliances the Afghan government has made with the warlords who actually control the country. They are a product of the falsehood that Canada or the US is interested in 'development' in Afghanistan. They are a product of fact that the only hope a farmer has of earning a livelihood is through this crop that can bring a little cash (not a lot of cash, because no peasant ever gets rich from growing poppy in Afghanistan).

The Taliban, who ruled the country before the US and Canadian occupation, had banned the poppy. That's not praise for the Taliban -- they also banned music, sports, television and laughter. That isn't the solution to the problem either –- it can't be a solution to the livelihood of 2.3 million people, the 10 per cent of the Afghan population who rely on the poppy. Solutions to drug problems are clear enough and well-enough known: treatment for addiction; legalization and control; education; and support for the agrarian economy. But the drug war is a useful pretext for other agendas.

As for the counterinsurgency, the question of how Canada came to be involved in it is important. It is part of an evolution in Canadian foreign policy in recent years.

Canadian foreign policy used to be based on hypocrisy. Canada's leaders have always seen themselves, and presented themselves, as men of the West, involved in the wars the West was involved in, including colonial wars. But Canada has also tried to present itself as a country without a colonial history, an honest broker and peacekeeper that has, and deserves, the trust of the world.

From America's war against the Vietnamese and before, Canada has been a supply centre, a diplomatic supporter and a training ground (see Canada, Empire), but it shied away from direct military participation in colonial wars.

That started to change in the 1990s, for various reasons. Canada was in the process of adopting a "free trade" agreement that was integrating the economies of Canada and the US in new ways. Neo-liberalism was locking other countries into weakness and dependency on the US. Everywhere, the segment of the elite that sought a degree of independence was weakened. People who tried to fight back were told they were on the wrong side of history.

There are three stories about Canadian foreign policy during this period that illustrate the drift from hypocrisy.

Back in the 1980s, there was a little 'blip' in Canadian support for Israel against the Palestinians. During the initial expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948, Canada followed Britain. During the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Canada followed the US. But in the 1980s, when Israel invaded Lebanon, when Israel was crushing the first Palestinian Intifada, some Canadian leaders -- Trudeau and Clark -- actually criticized Israel. But in the 1990s, when the Oslo Accords brought a phony "peace" to Palestine, Canada was able to return to its hypocritical role; supporting "peace" publicly, while supporting Israel privately -- and moving towards increasingly public support.

In 1990 and 1991, Mulroney rushed to Bush Sr.'s side when Bush ordered the beginning of the destruction of Iraq. Canada made sure that its warplanes and ships were active, involved in bombing the relatively defenceless Iraqi military and the completely defenceless Iraqi population. That campaign killed hundreds of thousands of people and was followed by sanctions against Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands more -- sanctions Canada participated in. The sanctions were followed by another invasion that has killed over a hundred thousand more, according to conservative and not-very-recent estimates.

In 1993, the Canadian Airborne Regiment was sent to Somalia. Here, too, Canada went with the US. The US was there to "Restore Hope," and killed several hundred (or was it several thousand?) Somalis in the process, before leaving ignominiously. Canada went along to support the mission. The story was familiar. Somalia was a "failed state." Canada had a "responsibility to protect" the people from evil. So Canada set up a base in a town called Belet Huen. The armed forces set up a well-supplied base in the middle of a miserably poor country, a country of desperate shortages and starving people. Some of those people started to sneak onto the base and steal supplies. If the Canadians were to lock them up, they'd have to lock up a lot of them. So they came up with a series of humiliating punishments: keeping them out under the sun under armed guard, tying them up, beating them up, shooting them, or torturing them. This culminated in a group of Canadian soldiers torturing a 16-year-old child to death over the course of a whole night. The child's name was Shidane Arone and his murder was recorded in a series of gruesome photographs that came to appear in the Canadian press. Today, Canadian commentators talk about the "Somalia Affair" as a national trauma -- for Canadians. This is narcissism. We focus on ourselves, rather than the victims of our actions. The same is true in Afghanistan.

The last hiccup of hypocrisy in Canadian foreign policy was the second destruction of Iraq in 2003. Canada performed, and continues to perform, its historical services of supply centre, training ground and diplomatic supporter. But the US wanted more from its allies and that meant Canada had to 'mend fences,' and it did so on the bones of Haitians, Palestinians, the Lebanese and Afghans. The primary way Canada helped the US invasion of Iraq was by relieving the US in Afghanistan. It isn't much relief: 2,200 troops in a mission that involves some 36,000 troops, including 20,000 Americans. But it goes some way, presumably, to 'mending fences.'

This 'fence-mending' began the new period of Canadian foreign policy, in which Canada has abandoned hypocrisy outright.

Canada's first move towards abandoning hypocrisy was joining the invasion of Afghanistan; until recently, Canada was pretending that the Afghan mission was of the innocent peacekeeping variety that was done in Somalia.

The second move towards abandoning hypocrisy happened in December 2004, on the heels of Bush Jr.'s visit to Ottawa. Previously, Canada had abstained from several votes requiring Israel to comply with its obligations under international law by withdrawing from the territories it occupied in 1967. Canada's Ambassador to the UN at the time, Allan Rock, said that the "value added" of the committees trying to put Palestinian rights on the agenda at the UN was "questionable" and that the process was biased –- against Israel. So Canada started to vote against Palestinian rights.

Next, six months later, in July 2005, Canada's Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier put the "peacekeeping" and "failed states" story to bed with a rhetorical flourish. Talking about the Afghans on the receiving end of Canada's military, he said: "These are detestable murderers and scumbags. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties... We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people." Hillier was concentrating his fire directly on the Canadian myth that we are innocent peacekeepers. He was doing that because he wants to see Canada involved in a counterinsurgency that he knows is going to be bloody and brutal. Like Harper, he hopes that by talking tough he can increase the public's tolerance for blood.

These moves by the Liberals preceding the Tories' rise to power set Harper up nicely. He was the first to cut all aid to the Palestinians earlier this year, to starve them for the election they held shortly after the one that brought him to power. This summer, when Israel destroyed Gaza's power plant and massacred hundreds of Palestinians from the air, Harper called the response "measured." While Israel was massacring civilians in Lebanon, suffering largely military casualties at the hands of Hezbollah, Peter MacKay was calling the resistance "cold-blooded killers" and a "cancer on Lebanon."

The abandonment of hypocrisy led Canada directly into this counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan. The escalation of the war in recent months is probably because the many promises made of development and peace in Afghanistan were demonstrated to be lies. Having demonstrated that its interest in Afghanistan is "to be able to kill people," Canada ought to have been able to anticipate the consequences.

Since 2001, the 'international community' has spent $82.5 billion on military operations and $7.3 billion on aid and development. The Canadian figures are similarly skewed. The CIDA aid figures are in the hundreds of millions and most of it has not actually been spent. The military budgets are in the billions and forever rising. Canada has set up Tim Horton's in its well-equipped camps in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. This is an affront and an insult to starving people. Canadian soldiers follow the US Air Force, "mopping up" people who are called "suspected Taliban" when they are killed by the dozen or hundred. Major General Andrew Leslie earlier this year told reporters that, "every time you kill an angry young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you." Despite demonstrating this understanding, the Major General's military machine continues to kill.

By any decent measure, Canada's mission in Afghanistan is an outrage. By the measures claimed by Canada and the US, the mission is a failure. Canada's counternarcotics have placed Afghanistan at the centre of the world's opium trade. Canada's counterinsurgency has the Taliban controlling half the country and going from strength to strength. Canada's development program has led to massive hunger and starvation, right under the noses of the Canadian military presence in the south and within a distance to smell Tim Horton's coffee and donuts. With Canada guaranteeing security, schools are being burned all over the south.

Canada should leave; should apologize for what it has done and make amends; should stop killing people and calling whoever is killed 'Taliban'; and should stop letting young Canadians who have no idea kill and get killed so that colonial powers can 'mend fences.'

And Canada will leave. For all the bluster of Harper and Hillier, the military realities are stark and there are at least some, even in Canada, who know it. It would be tragic if Canadians come to think of Afghanistan as a 'national trauma' in which we were scarred, forgetting our victims like we did in Somalia. If, instead, Canadians could learn that Canada is not an innocent peacekeeper and never was, that the traumas we cause are worse than the ones we suffer and that our place isn't cheering for slaughter but fighting against it, we could actually make the world safer.

Tim Horton's in Kandahar

M777 artillery gun

Grilled Cheese and War Crimes

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:25:46 +0000

US soldier who refuses assignment in Iraq claims refugee status in Canada

Corey Glass is hoping Canada will let him eat grilled cheese sandwhiches in peace. photo: Shasta MacNasy

Corey Glass seems like a regular 23-year-old; he likes skateboarding, grilled cheese sandwiches and Quentin Tarantino movies; he doesn't enjoy illegally occupying Middle Eastern countries.

Glass spent five months in Iraq as a sergeant with the United States National Guard, before becoming a 'war-resister.' He left the army, lived underground in the US for eight months and then came to Canada in August, claiming refugee status.

"When I joined the National Guard, they told me the only way I would be in combat is if there were troops occupying the United States," said Glass in a phone interview from Toronto, where he is searching for an apartment. "I signed up to defend people and do humanitarian work filling sandbags if there was a hurricane; I should have been in New Orleans, not Iraq."

There could be upwards of 200 American soldiers who refuse to fight in Iraq clandestinely living in Canada, according to Lee Zaslofsky, co-ordinator of War Resisters Support Campaign, the group trying to secure status for conscientious objectors.

"None of the hearings at the immigration and refugee board have gone well," says Zaslofsky, who came to Canada in the 1970s after refusing to fight in Vietnam.

The central argument being used by war resisters is that the war in Iraq is illegal and if they remain in the US, they'll be forced to fight in an illegal and immoral war or face the consequences.

"In every case, the immigration board has decided they won't listen to arguments about the legality or illegality of the war in Iraq, which obviously undermines us," says Zaslofsky.

"The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter," said UN Chief Kofi Annan during a 2004 interview with the BBC.

Being the custodian of International law, Annan's opinion is worth noting.

If the war was and is illegal, then Canada has a moral duty to provide sanctuary for people who won't participate in criminal activities; a 'responsibility to protect', to use the rhetoric of the powerful.

Zaslofsky thinks the Supreme Court will eventually decide whether or not the resisters can stay here rather than fight, if Parliament doesn't get involved first.

"We aren't just treating this as a legal matter, but also a political matter," said Zaslofsky. "We think Canada has an obligation to protect these people who are coming north because they are taking the same position that Canada did: opposing the war." His group has gathered 35,000 signatures on petitions demanding Canada treat Iraq War objectors the same way we treated Vietnam War resisters.

Thus far, the immigration and refugee board, whose mandate is different from the courts, has ruled that rank and file soldiers are not liable for participating in an illegal war because they weren't the ones who decided to launch an invasion.

Glass never personally witnessed human rights violations during his service but he "heard stories from people coming back from duty." Recently, The Lancet, one of the world's most respected medical journals, published a study showing the death toll among Iraqis as a result of the US-led invasion has now reached an estimated 655,000 people. The figures were quickly condemned by the Bush administration for inaccuracy, although they were nevertheless compiled by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and validated by four separate, independent experts.

"Although such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century and should be of grave concern to everyone," write the study's authors.

In an international context, there isn't much anyone can do about the accusations of America's conduct in Iraq. The US refused to ratify the international criminal court, so the army can continue violating the law without prosecution. Humans developed law to protect the weak from the strong. When the powerful are above the law, the whole foundation of decent society collapses.

After the Second World War, at the famous Nuremberg trials for German war criminals, the four judges of the tribunal (American, British, French and Russian) wrote a famous passage declaring the crime of aggressive war to be, "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Glass doesn't compare America to the Nazis, but an illegal war is an illegal war. According to the former sergeant, "In Germany some members of the Third Reich probably said this was a bad idea and didn't want to participate and that's what I have decided."

Chris Arsenault chats with an average 23-year-old who's hoping Canada won't send him back to the US to fight in a war he doesn't believe in.

Coup in Iraq reportedly in the making

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:06:21 +0000

Iraqi army officers are reportedly planning to stage a military coup with US help in order to oust the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, reports the United Press International.

"Washington is becoming increasingly impatient with the failure of Maliki's government in quelling sectarian violence threatening to plunge Iraq in an all-out civil war," reports UPI.

In response to increasing US pressure for a crackdown on Shia militias hostile to the American occupation and public criticisms of Maliki by American military commanders and politicians, the Prime Minister complained that the US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and the Bush administration were undermining the idea that he was the sovereign head of a democratic government, reports the WSWS.

"I'm a friend to the United States, but not America's man in Iraq," Maliki told Khalilzad, according to Hassan Senaid, one of Maliki's advisors.

The proposed plan, according to the UPI source, stipulates that the new Iraqi army, with the assistance of US forces, will take control of power, suspend the constitution, dissolve parliament and form a new government. The military will also take direct control of the various provinces and the administration after imposing a state of emergency.

Hillary Bain Lindsay

"War on Terror" has killed at least 62,000: Report

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:58:39 +0000

A series of new figures show the impact of the US-led "War on Terror." According to two recent estimates, the number of people killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is between 62,006 and 180,000. A total of 2,976 people died in the September 11 attacks that were the main impetus for the new war, which has now been waged for five years.

The estimates were compiled by UK newspaper The Independent. The low estimate of 62,006 is based on figures compiled by groups like Iraq Body Count, which use a strict methodology that requires confirmation by two independent media reports. As a result, an Independent report statesthat the media-based method "almost certainly produces a substantial underestimate."

The higher estimate is based on an update of a randomized study of Iraqi
households conducted for the prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. The original report, which extrapolated data from a survey of 988 households to formulate a national casualty estimate, sparked controversy with its estimate that 98,000 people had been killed. The higher estimate, says The Independent report, is mostly "educated guesswork."

The estimates do not include those who subsequently die from injuries or conditions created by the war, or those in refugee camps, though analysts tend to agree that an inclusive figure would be much higher. According to a survey by the Iraqi government and UNICEF, a quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition, and the campaign group Medact reported that "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths" in Iraq.

As of July, the US Congress had approved $437 billion for costs related to the "War on Terror." According to Make Poverty History, $375 billion would be required to clear the debts of the world's poorest countries.

Another recent report from Wired News measured the likelihood of death caused by terrorist attacks against other possible deadly threats. Reporter Ryan Singel found that for residents of the US, "your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is."

Between 1995 and 2005, Singel found Americans are 80 times more likely to die in a car accident than they are in a terrorist attack. In that period, 254,419 died in the car wrecks, while 3,147 were killed by terrorists. Accidental poisoning killed 140,327, making it a threat 44 times more dangerous to Americans than terrorism over the 11-year period.

» The Independent: 62,006 - 180,000, the number killed in the 'war on terror'

» Wired News: One Million Ways to Die

Reconstruction money for Iraq spent on security

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 18:23:27 +0000

U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. has spent its $200 million budget after completing less than a quarter of the health clinics it was contracted to build in Iraq.

Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps commander overseeing reconstruction in Iraq, said he still hoped to complete all 142 clinics as promised. McCoy is seeking emergency funds from the U.S. military and foreign donors. "I'm fairly confident," he told the Washington Post.

By the end of 2006, the $18.4 billion that Washington has allocated for Iraq's reconstruction runs out. Much of that money has been spent on security for reconstruction projects (guards and surveillance cameras, for example) and building up Iraq's police and military.

A recent report released by the nonprofit research organization RAND Corp, states that the US has failed to improve basic sanitation and provide safe drinking water in heavily populated areas of Iraq.

According toReuters the report goes on to say that botched efforts to improve public health may be to blame for elevated anti-American sentiment in the country.

Doctors in Baghdad's hospitals still cite dirty water as one of the major killers of infants.

Cars, jewelry and sex buys reconstruction contracts in Iraq

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:03:43 +0000

In order to obtain lucrative reconstruction projects in Iraq, Philip Bloom offered US officials money, cars, premium airline seats, jewelry, alcohol, and sexual favours from women at his villa in Baghdad, reports the Associated Press.

Bloom's companies won $8.6 million worth of reconstruction contracts in exchange for $2 million worth of bribes. According to court documents made public on April 18th, Bloom is pleading guilty to conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering.

In one e-mail included with the court papers, an unnamed official
requested an electric blue Nissan 350Z sports car costing over $35 000. An employee trying to find the car told Bloom in an e-mail it was a "very desirable, hard-to-find color'' and only two were available in the Western U.S., reports CorpWatch.

Bloom is one of four people charged so far in a scheme that included the theft of $2 million in reconstruction money and the illegal purchase of machine guns and other weapons.

Refugees and Citizens

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 23:50:29 +0000

Displaced Louisianans settle in Houston's Astrodome. photo: Houston Indymedia [video]

Jesse Jackson and Bruce Gordon are just two of many high-profile Black leaders who have expressed indignation at the description of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina as 'refugees'. 'It is just wrong', Jackson said, 'they are citizens displaced by a disaster'.

After 9/11, 2001, some victims of war and of bombing campaigns wondered, in writing, whether the experience of being bombed would increase America's empathy towards the rest of the world.

There was, of course, no single response of America to 9/11. It did increase the empathy of some Americans and caused many to question the relationship of the US to the rest of the world. But the net effect was to accelerate the march towards militarism and to strengthen, rather than weaken, the idea that America was different from the rest of the world. The 'War on Terror' was launched, and it featured bombing Afghanistan, a country full of internally displaced people long before 2001 - those people were referred to as 'refugees' in the media. It featured domestic legislation that tightened borders and deported international migrants - some of whom were referred to as 'immigrants', others as 'refugees'. It featured support for Israel in its own military campaigns against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, many of whom were refugees, though they weren't referred to that way. And ultimately, it featured the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which turned much of the population of Fallujah, among other places, into internally displaced people who, when they are referred to at all, are referred to as 'refugees'.

Nationalism in America did not come from 9/11. It was forged over hundreds of years of conquest of indigenous territories, a process of growth into the greatest power on the continent and then in the world. Racism was built into the ideology from the start, but it was complex as well. Within America, there was a hierarchy that left Black people at the bottom - first slaves, then second- or third-class citizens. But there were also those who were outside America: non-citizens, or to use the legal term, aliens. These people too were victimized by racism, of a xenophobic sort. So there have been two different kinds of racism, and they play out differently. Tragedies bring out the best and the worst in communities. After 9/11 there were many tales of heroism and self-sacrifice in saving lives, and there are countless such tales about Katrina as well. But after 9/11 elites sponsored a cruel nationalism, an impulse first to blame foreigners, and then to strike out at them, expel them, and bomb them. With Katrina, there was no foreigner to blame, only poor and Black people who needed evacuation, water, food, and resources to repair their lives. The government's response to Katrina was a different kind of racism: not hatred of foreigners, but contempt and utter disregard for Black people's lives, and for the extraordinary city they had made.

If 9/11 showed Americans the horrors of being bombed, after Katrina many Americans have the experience of being displaced. The horrific scenes of refugee camps that are the lot of millions of people in different parts of the world are on display in America. Americans also have the experience of a government that is unable or unwilling to help them or protect them, a government that is arbitrary and violent and unresponsive. For Black Americans this isn't new, but it is also much more stark than it has been in a very long time. It seems that the American government is treating Black Americans on the Gulf Coast with the contempt that it normally reserves for the citizens of other countries. After decades of struggle and sacrifice for the right to be full American citizens, Black people are being treated like the rest of the world is treated - as problems to be solved as cheaply as possible, not fellow citizens and human beings with dignity.

Are Jackson and Brown right, then, in bristling when they hear Black Americans referred to as 'refugees'?

The reason the term 'refugee' has a stigma attached is not because of what the refugee is - it isn't like the label 'criminal', for example - but because of how the refugee is treated. A refugee is someone who is kicked around, disregarded, made invisible, someone with no protection and nowhere to go for help. Someone who, in other words, is being treated as those who have been displaced by Katrina have been treated. Calling them 'refugees' is accurate: treating them that way - or treating any human being that way - is unconscionable.

The idea that America is unable to bring its awesome wealth and power to bear to save its own citizens or one of its major cities is one that is shocking to the rest of the world. But beneath that shock there is also a glimmer of hope - hope that, before it is too late for all of us, the idea that Americans rate more than non-Americans will disappear.

Hope that the idea might arise that 'citizens' and 'refugees' deserve the same treatment.

Justin Podur is based in Toronto. He can be reached at justin (at) killingtrain.com

Justin Podur asks what it means to be a refugee, and why the title is considered disparaging in the USA

Violence, Poverty Underscore Story of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:48:11 +0000

[This article was originally published by New Standard News, a daily source of original journalism. Non-corporate journalism depends on reader support; please consider contributing to New Standard News to ensure more independent coverage from the Middle East and elsewhere.]

Iraqi men in a park in Amman, Jordan. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005

AMMAN, Jul 22 - Hisham Jamil is unequivocal when asked why he and his wife have chosen a life of unemployment in a foreign country over the life they built together in Baghdad.

"You know why we left," he said as he walked hand-in-hand with his wife, Hamsa, down a busy street here in Jordan's capital. "The whole world knows why we left. We can't live in Baghdad anymore; it is as simple as that. Life is impossible."

Jamil, a fashion designer in his now-former life in Baghdad, said his family's home was destroyed in March 2004 by a massive car bomb that targeted Baghdad's popular Mount Lebanon Hotel. "Our home was adjacent to the Hotel. It has been structurally damaged to such a degree that selling it is impossible; so too is living in it," Jamil said.

Transcending economic and social class, religion and hometown, the principal reason Iraqis living in Jordan cite for fleeing their country is the ubiquitous violence and instability that has engulfed and suffocated Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion of their country.

Rather than focusing on a grand political narrative, Jamil, like virtually all Iraqis who spoke to The NewStandard, stressed the lack of electricity, sanitation, potable water and absense of security that plagues daily life in Iraq. Because of this, he said, "life is impossible on the most basic level."

Carol, a middle-aged beautician and salon owner in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district, left Iraq in June. She is equally blunt in explaining why she left.

"We are full of frustration and angst," she said over dinner with several Iraqi friends. "No one in the world would leave their home willingly, unless it was under such circumstances."

The violence is, of course, not a mysterious phenomenon to Iraqis. They see it as a direct result of the ongoing occupation.

"At first we believed that America has come to save us from a cursed situation under Saddam Hussein," said Carol. "But in fact they have given us an even greater curse. We have no dignity; we are humiliated. We have no water, no electricity, and no security. We don't understand. We know the Americans can make the situation better, but they are not."

Popular accounts on the streets of Amman place the number of Iraqis in Jordan seeking refuge from the war at 500,000 and higher, though only a tiny fraction of these people are officially categorized as refugees.

Jordanian Interior Ministry General Secretary Mukhaimer Abu Jamous told TNS that the accepted number of Iraqis in Jordan is more like 300,000 – though he was quick to claim that these are not refugees, but rather people on personal business or vacation.

An official at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Amman said that 15,000 Iraqis had received temporary protection for asylum-seekers pending official refugee status. Only 800 Iraqis have received official refugee status in Jordan, she added, almost all of whom fled during the Saddam Hussein regime. The official refused to allow TNS to report her name, claiming it is UNHCR policy for spokespeople not to be identified in news stories.

According to the official, "only in the rarest of occasions" have those who fled after March 2003 received official designation, and therefore the attendant compensation from UNHCR. All such rare cases are characterized as the "most vulnerable" – primarily the elderly or ill.

A lack of resources makes outreach to those Iraqis who have fled the war impossible for the UNHCR, the official said, and only those who approach the offices are able to navigate the necessary bureaucratic machinations in order to qualify as recognized refugees.

Both the Interior Ministry and the UN agency said that, although they had expected one, there was no influx of Iraqis as a result of the war, and that the flow across the border has been steady but unchanged by the conditions in Iraq. "Influx is a big word, we cannot say that that is what has happened," said Adel Al-Hadid, director of international organizations at the Interior Ministry.

Refugees shopping in an almost all-Iraqi area of downtown Amman, Jordan, July 2005. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005.

Yet, on the streets of Amman, popular sentiment is that "influx" is exactly the word for it. Whether in the malls, parks, or simply on the street, Iraqis are everywhere in Amman.

While most Iraqis living in Jordan were able to successfully escape the violence of their home country, others, like Suasan Shakir, were not so lucky.

Shakir left the violence of Iraq overland on a makeshift gurney in the collapsed back seat of an SUV. A terrorist attack left her paralyzed in November 2004. A man trying to sneak a bomb into the bank where Shakir worked detonated his deadly burden early when police stopped him at a checkpoint. His payload of explosives killed two officers and sprayed shrapnel throughout the immediate area.

Along with about two-dozen other bank employees being shuttled to work on a minibus, Shakir was waiting at the same checkpoint. Five pieces of shrapnel embedded in her spine, and one penetrated the base of her skull, coming to rest in her brain. She fell paralyzed instantly, losing her ability to see or speak.

The staff at a Baghdad hospital was able to stabilize Shakir's condition, but her husband says a lack of resources and medicines robbed her of the chance to improve in her home country. Doraid Kadhim Abd-al Hameed took the opportunity to move his wife to Amman in search of better care, presently unavailable in Iraq after fifteen years of sanctions, war and occupation.

In the more than three months since Shakir arrived in Amman, her husband reported, their family has spent upward of $25,000 USD on her care, with no help from any government.

Abd-al Hameed says he has sold everything of value to pay for his wife's care: his bookstore, a building he rented-out and his car. "I bought my bookstore in 1996 for $10,000," Abd-al Hameed recalled. "Because of the situation in Iraq, I received only $2,000 when I sold it one month ago," he said. His modest monthly income of $200 has been all but eliminated by the sale of his store and the building he owned in Baghdad. The substantial income they claim now is the $125 USD per month Shakir receives from her former employer.

"If we were to take legal action against the British and the Americans – who created this catastrophe for all Iraqis – the problem would be how to even imagine what degree of compensation to ask for," Abd-al Hameed added. "We have lost everything: our future, our families' future…" His voice trailed off as he choked-back tears.

Shakir's condition has improved since coming to the Ibn Al-Haytham Hospital in Amman. Last month she began to see for the first time since the accident and her speech is slowly returning, though during a bedside interview, her enunciation was limited, her words slurred.

Yet, in a day or so, Shakir will return to Iraq, the family unable to sustain the costs of treatment in Amman.

"Please, I ask that you put more pressure on the American government – on the Western governments – to pull out of Iraq, immediately," said Abd-al Hameed as Shakir wept.

The Poverty of Diaspora

The package of twelve kitchen sponges with scouring-pads cost pennies each, but for Thayla Kareem they represent hope that she will someday return to her family in southern Iraq. Kareem is one of thousands of Iraqi refugees struggling to make ends meet on the streets of Amman.

An Iraqi street vendor sells her wares in Amman, Jordan, July 2005. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005

Known as the basta – an Arabic term that describes their simple existence, whereby their goods are spread out on cardboard or small mats placed on the ground, rather than in proper market stalls – Iraqi women such as Kareem are fixtures on streets throughout the city.

Dressed from head to toe in traditional, flowing black abaayas, these women sell everything from sponges and toothbrushes to individual cigarettes -- anything that comes cheap and can be resold at a modest profit.

Because of debt incurred starting her small street enterprise, and the meager revenues it brings in, Kareem is stuck in Jordan, hundreds of miles away from her family in Amara, in southern Iraq. "The work is not good enough," Kareem said, squatting in the hot midday sun on the marble steps of a grocery store.

"I pay 30 [Jordanian dinars] every month for rent, electricity and water," noted Kareem. Thirty JD is about $42 USD, a substantial burden on her monthly take. She shares an apartment with seven other Iraqi women – all of them street vendors.

The economic difficulties affect a large swath of the Iraqi refugee population in Jordan. On any given day the downtown parks of Amman are a haven for unemployed Iraqi men, ranging in age from late teens to elders.

Ziad, a 25-year-old originally from Baghdad, now spends his afternoons sitting listlessly in the park beside the Roman Amphitheatre in Amman's downtown core, along with dozens of other Iraqis.

"I have been here for eighteen months," Ziad said. "I left Iraq after the war, as the resistance began to escalate. I could no longer get to work safely; car bombs and American attacks made such a simple task a gamble for your life."

In the summer of 2003, Ziad said he began to line up for the newly opening positions in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and police forces. "But how many bombs exploding in the line-ups would it take before you decided to stop?" Ziad asked rhetorically.

"I would rather be unemployed in Jordan than dead in Iraq," he added flatly.

Ziad said he has had several odd jobs since arriving in Jordan, including one in a restaurant, where his salary was one-half that of his Jordanian coworkers. He quit, frustrated at the wage discrimination.

"I search each day for work," Ziad insisted, "but everyone says the same thing: 'I'll call you back.' They never do."

There is a degree of resentment, simmering just below the surface, toward the Iraqis living among Jordanians, believing their arrival has driven prices up dramatically. A Jordanian taxi driver put the common nationalist perspective in plain terms: "You see, they sold their country and came here to buy ours."

The competition for "unskilled" labor has become fierce as well, as so-called "illegal" Iraqi refugees have allegedly driven wages down across the board by working for significantly less than the previously prevailing rate. Meanwhile, signs can be spotted in Amman that advertise "Jordanian workers wanted," a not-so-subtle reference to the developing segregation.

Work permits are very difficult to obtain for Iraqis in Jordan, and their cost is often prohibitive. At approximately $225 each, a one-year permit costs more than most "unskilled" jobs pay in a month.

"I have tried so hard to get a work permit," said Hisham Jamil, the former fashion designer. "It seems that it isn't possible for Iraqis."

Abu Jamous of the Interior Ministry explained that this obstacle is a natural step in protecting Jordanian workers.

Salah, a Shia Muslim from the southern city of Hilla, has been living in Jordan since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

At 27, Salah said he possesses a degree in Computer Science, which should render him a hot resource in Iraq, a country that has experienced a relative boom in Internet access and the spread of technology since the fall of Saddam. Instead, Salah, spray bottle hanging from his pocket, pushes a broom through the Mecca Mall, collecting fallen ketchup packages and random French fries strewn about the bustling food court.

In Amman, Salah lives like many refugees who do not have the support of a wealthy family; that is, in a small apartment that he shares with 15 other Iraqis. He pays only $25 USD a month for his accommodations, "which means I can send the rest home to my family in Hilla," he said.

"I came here for work, to feed my family," he said. His family in Hilla has 20 members dependent almost solely on Salah's modest wages. Salah said he is the only one of them with work.

Salah works in the mall from 7 a.m. until the mall's midnight closing, seven days a week. His monthly pay of about $160 USD constitutes significantly less than the $200-plus made by Jordanians for the same work.

This discrimination is simply the reality for most Iraqis who are fortunate enough to find work in Jordan.

Salah obtained his job in housekeeping in April 2003. "Back then, it was relatively easy for Iraqis to work," he said. "But I fear my time is running out. My contract ends at the end of the year." he lamented. When his contract expires, so too does his work permit.

As he sees it, when that happens, Salah will have two options: either obtain an extension on his work permit -- virtually impossible for Iraqis working in the general labor sector unless their employers vouch for them -- or else live illegally and likely unemployed in Jordan, facing the possibility of sanction and deportation.

Abu Jamous said that the Jordanian Public Security Department is "proactive" in working with inspectors from the Department of Labor in seeking out "illegals," as he referred to undocumented immigrants, be they Iraqi or otherwise.

If workers are caught in violation of the typical three-month visas or year-long work permits, Abu Jamous added, they are detained in police custody for seven days before being deported to the third country of their choice. According to the Interior Ministry, immigrants generally choose expulsion to a country like Yemen, which does not require a visa.

"For humanitarian reasons, we cannot deport them back to Iraq if their life is deemed to be in danger there," said Abu Jamous.

Still, that does little to quell Salah's anxiety about his soon-to-expire permit. "I have to support my family," he said. "I do not know what I will do."

In Jordan, Jon Elmer describes the plight of thousands of Iraqi refugees.

On Iraq-Jordan Border, Various Roles Play Out in Desert

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 17:40:54 +0000

AL-KARAMA, Jul 13 - Omar Al-Jarirri is the controller of the Mahat'ta, the staging point for travelers preparing to make the 1,000-kilometer trip from Amman, Jordan to Baghdad, Iraq by car. This is the way most Iraqis travel in and out of Iraq. Air service in occupied Iraq is cost-prohibitive for most.

The departure area is a dusty harbor of white, late-model Chevrolet Suburban sport utility vehicles.

The drivers, almost all Iraqi, often sleep in their vehicles, partly in order to get a good spot in the line-up and partly because their homes are in Iraq, a thousand kilometres away. The vehicles most often leave Amman in the middle of the night to avoid driving in Iraq after dusk. Almost none of the drivers owns his own vehicle; they are simply the ones hired to negotiate the harrowing journey to Baghdad.

A small man dressed in a flowing white dishdasha, Al-Jarirri walks with a pronounced limp. "Ninety-nine percent" of the travelers on the Amman-to-Baghdad voyage are Iraqis who have fled their war-torn country and are "going back to visit family," he said.

The highway, a vast desert expanse marked by signs warning of camels, is a rat race of SUVs, leap-frogging one another for the whole 400 kilometres to the Al-Karama border crossing.

Bilal, who has driven the route regularly since the climax of the US-led invasion of his country in 2003, is a 22-year-old from Sadr City, the sprawling, poverty-stricken Shia district in Baghdad. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Bilal applied for a nursing position at Baghdad's biggest hospital, Madinat Al-Tib -- Medicine City. But when he called on his school to obtain his nursing records, Bilal learned that the files had gone missing when looters stole the school's computers during the chaos that swept over Baghdad in the first days of US occupation.

"All of my records were destroyed. You must have seen this on TV," he said, referring to the riotous images broadcast around the world in the days following the fall of Baghdad.

"'You're free, take what you want,'" Bilal mimicked sardonically, a reference to Rumsfeld's infamous statement in the second week of April: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

Bilal said he proposed to a woman about a year ago, but her mother refused the marriage because he no longer had a degree and could not acquire decent work without one. So he tried to pay a bribe in order to get a job as a police officer, but it failed to secure him one of the most dangerous jobs on earth.

Instead, he drives the infamous land route, which Iraqis refer to simply as "the highway," through some of Iraq's most dangerous areas, including the restive Al-Anbar province.

The highway requires operators to be alert and hyper-vigilant, always on the lookout for US convoys, which require the drivers to pullover as far as possible.

"If we drive too fast, or are too tired to notice the American convoy in the distance, they will shoot me up, and waste my car," said Bilal, something that has happened more times than anyone knows on the highway and elsewhere throughout Iraq.

The drivers are not permitted to work legally in Jordan, and in Iraq, they are under siege.

"Why do I have to stay up all night to make a simple living," Bilal said, rubbing his eyes between deep yawns. "We are exhausted. This is no life."

Usually, Bilal shuttles between four and six passengers per trip. Though each traveler pays 15 Jordanian dinars -- about $20 USD -- for the ride to Baghdad, Bilal makes only about $40 USD for each round trip, a journey that generally has him away from home for four or five days.

With each trip home, he imports items that his family needs but finds difficult to obtain in Iraq. This time, the precious cargo is boxes of laundry and dish soap.

The dominance that the Suburbans enjoy over the Jordanian road is not broken until about 350 km's east of Amman, near the town of Al-Ruwayshid. There, they are joined by the bah'haar, or "merchant seamen" -- smugglers who run Iraqi gasoline out to Jordan.

Omar Al-Hayek, one of the elder seamen, explains the moniker: "Just as the fishermen who head out onto the sea in search of plenty, for the benefit of those on shore, we are transporting the riches of Iraq: the gas."

Apparently one of four original seamen, Al-Hayek, said he has been smuggling gas across the border to Jordan since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Before that, he explained, the smuggling was in the opposite direction, from Jordan to Iraq.

But the end of the war saw Iraq's oil production skyrocket, reaching levels comparable to those boasted by Saudi Arabia. Al-Hayek describes the years following the war with Iran as the glory days of the merchant seamen.

His car, a baby-blue 1991 Chevrolet Caprice station-wagon, is in relatively decent condition. Given the volatile cargo, it has to be. Yet, juxtaposed against the late-model Suburbans, the seamen's sedans of '80s vintage, retro-fitted with large storage tanks that hold up to 500 liters of gas, look decidedly aged and worn. They travel at about half the speed of the Suburbans.

"I take the car into my mechanic after each day, just to make sure everything is right, and safe," Al-Hayek said.

The smell of fuel in the car is overwhelming. One little flaw – a flat tire, an errant spark, a damaged muffler – could lead to catastrophe.

Tankers wait on the Jordanian side of the Iraq border for their American military escorts to arrive and take them into the war zone. (© Jon Elmer 2005)

The border is a mesh of people heading west into Jordan – some are Iraqi workers escaping the rampant unemployment and lack of opportunity in their homeland, some are merchants moving their wares to markets elsewhere. Many others are going to visit family members who have escaped the chaos in Iraq or are themselves fleeing.

Refugee camps on the Jordanian side tell this story in stark relief. They lay off the roadside, hastily constructed of tents with tattered sides flapping in the incessent wind that blows from Saudi Arabia to Syria unimpeded. Small funnel clouds of sand dance about the camps, just one element of the desert's relentless brutality indefinitely endured by those lacking the funds to escape the new Iraqi nightmare in style.

Although many Iraqis wealthy enough to move out of the war-torn country did so before, or during the initial stages of the war, the ever-deteriorating security situation in Iraq has increased the refugee flow dramatically.

Still others are simply seeking short reprieve: a vacation in Jordan's resort towns of Aqaba or Petra, or just a hotel in peaceful Amman.

The Fayez family from the Al-Khadimiyah district of Baghdad is one such case. They are taking 10 days to themselves in a three-star hotel in the Jordanian capital. "We need a break," said Nour, the eldest daughter. "The situation is impossible."

Nour recently completed high school and should have much to look forward to. But the conditions in Baghdad are so chaotic and unpredictable that daily life has been all but confined to the home, she relayed. "There is no life; there is no hope. We must leave."

The border is a major conduit for the machinery of occupation as well. Dozens of trucks – many of them tankers importing fuels for the aircraft and armoured vehicles, others supply trucks toting cargo covered by flapping tarps – wait in long line-ups for military escort into Iraq.

In no small part, it is these convoys that make the highway so dangerous, as they are vast, vulnerable and coveted targets for ambush. Their burned-out carcases litter the highway across Iraq as testament.

On the Jordanian side, the border is patrolled by the Jordanian military; on the Iraqi side, it is the US Marine Corps keeping a watchful eye.

The actual border crossing station between Jordan and Iraq looks like most other terminals between nations, with long line-ups and crowds in the various offices. But here at Al-Karama, the language of expedition is spoken in cash.

Caught in a long wait, cars nudging bumpers with hardly an inch between them, a single Jordanian Dinar slipped subtly out the window to an official will secure a key place in the line-up, or may in fact open another lane altogether. With each incremental move, and each official encountered, the appropriate documents are passed out the window, the necessary money stowed inside. Bilal, the veteran driver, is adept at this form of communication.

The Al-Karama border area is patrolled by a unit from the US Marines' 2nd Division.

Attracted by the sound of English spoken with North American accents, one of the Marines notices that the passport officer is demanding from The NewStandard, a bribe well beyond the usual $1 or $2.

"Hey, 'hajji,' you takin' money? How many times did I tell you not to take money," barked a 19-year-old Marine named Rusty. The epithet "hajji" is an Arabic term conveying great respect, commonly turned on its head by occupation personnel to disparage Arabs and other brown-skinned people in Iraq. "I tell you, we always have to baby-sit these guys," Rusty remarked condescendingly.

Rusty said he graduated high school in May 2004 and immediately enlisted. A distinct accent confirmed his claim to North Carolina as home. In March, the Corps deployed him to the border crossing, where he will likely remain until September.

Rusty's father, also a Marine, only recently returned to the US after serving his own tour in Iraq. "My mom used to worry all the time; now she only worries half the time."

Rusty, dressed to the brim in uniform -- helmet, sunglasses, Kevlar flak jacket with shielding neck-piece, hand on the shaft of his M-16 – was sweating, visibly uncomfortable. "They hate us," he said. "They sure want us out of their country."

Asked if he sees himself leaving, Rusty responded without a moment of hesitation. "No way; we'll be here forever."

Rusty said his platoon has not experienced much combat. "We raid that village over there all the time," he said, pointing to the village of Trebil, "but we never find anything."

Asked if he was disappointed at the lack of action, the Marine nodded slowly. "Yeah, I mean, it would make me feel better about myself," Rusty said, lifting his helmet to wipe sweat from his forehead.

Hours later in Trebil, a village general store owner named Abu Mustafa sarcastically contested Rusty's claim of weekly incursions. "Not really," he said smiling. "Once we went fifteen days without a search."

Jon Elmer speaks to truckers, soldiers, shopkeepers and migrant workers at the edge of the occupation of Iraq.

"I can't go back to Iraq"

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 01:03:12 +0000

American "deserters" seek refugee status

Darrell Anderson speaks to a crowd in Halifax. Photo: Benjamin Witte

HALIFAX--US Army Specialist Darrell Anderson hated his seven months in Iraq. He hated the people he was fighting against, hated the people he was fighting for. There was hate between soldiers. And hatred against the Iraqi people. Anderson hated facing death every day. Knowing people who died made him hate even more.

"You stub your foot, you're going to hit something. You ruin your life, you're going to kill someone," the stocky 22-year-old Kentucky man told a crowd gathered at Dalhousie University in early March.

In all likelihood, Anderson did kill people. That, after all, is what the US Army trained him for. In Najaf, he and his fellow soldiers in the 1st Armored Division fired hundreds of rounds. Of course people died. But that was combat at a distance. It was impersonal. Anderson didn't see his enemies fall. Najaf isn't what keeps him up at night.

What haunts the young American is a pair of incidents in which he came very close to killing innocent Iraqi civilians

What haunts the young American instead are a pair of incidents in which he came very close to killing innocent Iraqi civilians. Anderson says he is haunted in recurring nightmares by a series of "what-ifs". What if I'd pulled the trigger that day? What if I'd followed procedure and fired? Those are the questions he focuses on now, as he looks back on the recent chain of events and decisions that led him to flee the US Army and join a handful of other American war resisters in Canada.

"That's why I can't go back to Iraq," says Anderson. "You can't have a normal life after killing innocent people."

Anderson is hoping to find that "normal life" here in Canada. It won't be easy. Right now he's stuck in a frightening legal limbo. With the help of his lawyer, Jeffrey House -- himself a Vietnam War-era "draft dodger" -- Anderson has asked Immigration Canada to grant him refugee status. It's a process that could take several years. Even then, there's no guarantee the powers that be here in Canada will empathize with Anderson's situation.

Frankly, gaining refugee status is a long shot. In fact, the Immigration and Refugee Board to which Anderson is applying has just recently ruled against granting such recognition to a "deserter" named Jeremy Hinzman, another of House's clients. Hinzman, who's been in Canada since 2003, was the first U.S. citizen ever to apply for refugee status in Canada.

Although House says he will appeal the decision against Hinzman, it's clear the Immigration and Refugee Board's March ruling has complicated matters for Anderson and several other U.S. resisters who, with House's help, have gone public with their pleas for asylum in Canada. In addition to Hinzman and Anderson, House is also representing former U.S. soldiers Brandon Hughey, 19, David Sanders, 20 and Clifford Cornell, 24.

"Their legal case is plausible. It's not far-fetched"

In order to prove their refugee status, says University of Toronto Law Professor Audrey Macklin, Anderson and the others need to show a "well founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a certain group." The key, she says, is to distinguish between persecution and prosecution. Desertion, according to the US military, is a crime, punishable by imprisonment. That's prosecution, and it's not Canada's job to protect foreign nationals from criminal prosecution in their home countries. However, if a foreigner can successfully argue that his or her liberty is being threatened for actions or opinions protected under Canada's list of Charter rights - political opinion is one example - that, says Macklin, might be deemed persecution and thus justify the granting of refugee status.

"Their legal case is plausible. It's not far-fetched," says the University of Toronto law professor. "Other deserters have won refugee status, just not from the United States."

Therein lies one of the problems House and his US clients are facing. "We don't tend to think of the United States as a refugee producing country," says Macklin. "It makes it so that the burden [of proof] is heavier."
Another problem is that unlike the so-called "draft dodgers" of the Vietnam years, all five of these current refuge seekers voluntarily enlisted with the US military. That raises an obvious question, namely, if they really object to the war on political or humanitarian grounds, why did they volunteer as soldiers?

Critics on both sides of the border cite the fact that these men enlisted to argue that Anderson and the other war resisters are cowards - "pussies" as one US-based right-wing Web site recently declared.

Hamilton Spectator columnist Claire Hoy criticized the former servicemen as "volunteer skedaddlers" in a December 4 op/ed. "At a time when thousands of people from some of the world's worst despotic nations are desperately seeking legitimate refugee status in this country, do we really want to welcome some Americans who are only here because of personal cowardice?" she wrote.
Conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly took the issue one step further, blaming Canada's "aggressively liberal" media for creating a media "circus" that "is insulting to America, and especially to those American soldiers who have lost their lives fighting terrorists and supporters of the brutal dictators Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein."

These criticisms aside, neither Audrey Macklin nor Jeffrey House see the enlistment argument as an insurmountable legal obstacle. These men believe in serving and defending their country. They don't object to war, per se, just to what they've come to recognize as an unjust war, Macklin explains.
That's exactly what House attempted to demonstrate during Jeremy Hinzman's Dec. 6-8 hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. To present evidence of US-authored injustices in Iraq, House called former US Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmey Massey to the witness stand. Massey, 31, recently discharged following a 12-year career in the Marines, recounted how during one 48-hour period early in the war, soldiers in his platoon killed over 30 unarmed Iraqi civilians.
"I was never clear on who was the enemy and who was not," Massey testified before the Board.

"How would that lack of clarity affect your ability to comply with the Geneva Conventions?" House asked the former staff sergeant.

"It hindered our ability tremendously," Massey replied. "When you don't know who the enemy is, what are you doing there? What's the purpose of being there? When Marines go into battle they are designed, Marines are trained and designed for one thing, and that is to meet the enemy on the battlefield and destroy you. That is their mission. That is their purpose in life. If you have no enemy or you don't know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?"

Most of the civilian deaths Massey witnessed took place at a military checkpoint. Three times soldiers opened fire on cars that failed to stop in the checkpoint's "red zone." In each case, soldiers hits the cars with approximately 500 bullets. They killed all three drivers, plus one passenger, said Massey. After searching the wreckages, he went on to say, soldiers uncovered no evidence that any of the people in the vehicles were armed.

Darrell Anderson's recollections from Baghdad are similar. At one point, he and a group of soldiers were stationed in front of a roadblock near an Iraqi police station. For several hours they sustained enemy fire. Several soldiers had died. Then, for a while, it was calm. Suddenly a car drove toward Anderson's position. It had broken what soldiers call a "safety perimeter." Also the car was emmitting sparks, probably from bad brakes. Protocol in that situation is to shoot first and ask questions later, which is what Anderson's fellow soldiers were yelling for him to do.

"It's ok, it's ok, it's a family," he yelled back.

Anderson held his fire. He had assumed the driver was confused, that he was trying to flee the city. He guessed right. Before the car sped away Anderson could make out two children sitting in the back seat. A boy and a girl, he thinks.

"Why didn't you shoot?" some of the other soldiers asked him. "Next time you shoot," they ordered.

"They got their procedures," says Anderson. "Even if it is a family, you're supposed to open fire, cause they broke the safety perimeter."

Anderson has another combat memory he can't shake. A hot, Baghdad morning. There had been reports of people with RPG's [Rocket Propelled Grenades], he recalls. "They sent us out to confirm this, which basically means they were out there waiting for us." To investigate the reports, Anderson and about four or five other soldiers boarded a Howitzer tank. Several guys, including one of his best friends, were leaning out of the tank's portholes, guns in hand. Anderson and the rest of team sat inside, across from each other, eyes closed, "just calmly getting ready for what's about to happen."

The attack came suddenly. The deafening rally of machine gun fire drowned out all other sounds. "The next thing I know," Anderson recalls, "my buddy's falling, and he falls on to of me, 'cause I'm sitting down, and he's bloody, and he's spitting up blood thinking he's going to die. He's asking us if he's going to die."

"I turn it to fire, I point again, and it's a little kid, 14 years old. He's running for his life scared," says Anderson. "Just like me and my fellow soldiers."

Anderson looked around. Everyone was scared. No one wanted to take his friend's vacated spot atop the vehicle. So Anderson took it upon himself, moved into the porthole position. "I go up there, and I'm thinking, 'right, we're under attack. Shoot somebody!'"

Anderson lifted his gun, aimed, pulled the trigger. Nothing. He'd forgotten to switch the safety to off.

"I turn it to fire, I point again, and it's a little kid, 14 years old. He's running for his life scared," says Anderson. "Just like me and my fellow soldiers."

Again, if he'd followed procedure, he would have shot. In a firefight situation, procedure and training dictate that if you're shot at, you fire at anyone around. They're not innocent anymore, Anderson was told. If they're standing there when someone's done this crime against you, they're guilty.

"I joined the Army to serve my country," says Anderson. "I joined knowing there's a fact that we could fight wars. But the war in Iraq is an illegal war. There's no reason for these kids to be over there doing this, and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being killed.

"I started thinking about the insurgency they're fighting. And I remember seeing their faces and I remember being in combat against them. These were just regular people, there were elderly men, young men. And then I remember looking around Baghdad and seeing the blown up buildings, the people on crutches, the dismembered people, and thinking that these are just their family members. If someone blew up your house and killed a couple of your family, you're going to pick up a weapon and you're going to fight a war for it."

"So there's no way I could go back. It's my human right to choose not to kill innocent people," he says. "And there's no way I could go die for money and oil, rich people's investments. That's when I decided I couldn't go back."

Anderson made his decision while home on leave this last Christmas. Desperate for options, he turned to the Internet, through which he learned about Jermey Hinzman and Brandon Hugley and their efforts to gain refugee status here in Canada. He also tracked down a phone number for Jeffrey House. The lawyer assured Anderson he'd find people in Canada who would help him, give him a place to live, offer him some measure of protection. "It's the right thing to do," says House. "There's a criminal war going on in Iraq and thousands of people are dying. Anyone who doesn't want to be a part of that is a hero to me."
And so on Jan. 5, two days before he was set to report for duty in Germany - en route to a second tour of duty of Iraq - Anderson, accompanied by friends and family, left Knoxville, Kentucky in a rented car. Twelve hours later, after driving through the night and a blizzard, they reached the US/Canadian border at Niagara Falls.

"We just showed them I.D.'s and they let us go," he recalls. "We drove across Niagara Falls. We rolled the window down. It was a beautiful sight. Just a breath of fresh air - my freedom basically. For now, I was safe."
For now.

Just as Jeffrey House promised, Anderson has received a lot of support - and press attention - here in Canada. In Toronto, he meets regularly with Hinzman, Hugley and the other American refuge seekers. Through them he's also been involved with The War Resisters Support Campaign, a Toronto-based organization established last year specifically to help these US military "deserters." The Support Campaign, explains Michelle Robidoux, one of its founders, performs several basic functions. To start with, Robidoux and her colleagues provide day-to-day support for the young men, helping them find housing and jobs. The group is also busy lobbying the government to make a specific provision that would protect US war resisters from the whims of the Immigration Refugee Board. Robidoux says her organization has already gathered some 25,000 signatures, including those of several prominent Canadians - David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Anne-Marie MacDonald and many others. Affiliated committees have also formed across in the country, in Victoria, Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax. "It makes me optimistic that we can build a campaign to oblige the government to act," says Robidoux. "I think we can win it."

So far, however, the government has shown little interest in coming to the aid of the young war resisters. In fact, through its attorneys, the government has actually made it more difficult for Anderson and his fellow American resisters to win refugee status. Going into Hinzman's Dec. hearing, Jeffrey House had originally planned to build his case on the "illegality" of the Iraq war. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler himself, House claims, once signed a petition of international lawyers, arguing that the war is illegal. Nevertheless, it's been government policy not to follow UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's lead and publicly classify the war as illegal. During the Hinzman hearing, government counsel urged presiding Immigration and Refugee Board member Brian Goodman not to accept the war's legality as a relevant issue in the case. Goodman obliged, much to House's dismay.

"For me it's hard to say a soldier should go to jail for refusing to participate in an illegal war," says House. "But if I can't even prove the illegality of the war, it's harder to make the argument."

The small group of resisters have caught the attention of a few sympathetic members of Parliament, specifically NDP MP Libby Davies of Vancouver. Davies met Brandon Hugley last year and was impressed and moved by the 19-year-old. She rejects the argument that Hugley and the other refuge seekers are cowards. "I think they're very brave to take it on," she says. "They're taking on the whole US Army and [U.S President George] Bush's agenda."

Davies admits, however, that neither she, nor NDP leader Jack Layton - who has also met with some of the war resisters - have any concrete plans to pressure the liberal government on the issue. "I think Canada should be helping them in providing some sort of sanctuary," she says, though she isn't "totally optimistic" the government will change its policy. "Paul Martin isn't the guy to go out and make a statement like that."

Still, Anderson says he's confident he'll be able to stay in Canada. "Look at Star Wars," he says. "Bush tried to bully Canada, and the people spoke up. I'm hoping this is the same type of situation... They're going to find a way."

Darrell Anderson doesn't want to kill innocent Iraqi civilians, and is seeking refuge in Canada. Benjamin Witte looks at his situation and his odds of success.