The Rag Blog

GENEVA: Nearly 100,000 Iraqis each month are fleeing to Syria and Jordan, forcing the United Nations to drop its goal of helping refugees return home after the U.S.-led invasion, officials said Friday.

Instead, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has had to hastily draw up plans to deal with a silent exodus of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who are desperate to escape the violence, chief spokesman Ron Redmond said.

“Much of our work in the three years since the fall of the previous regime was based on the assumption that the domestic situation would stabilize and hundreds of thousands of previously displaced Iraqis would be able to go home,” Redmond said. “Now, however, we’re seeing more and more displacement linked to the continuing violence.”

It has been impossible to obtain accurate totals on the numbers of refugees because few Iraqis are registering with UNHCR, and most are being cared for by host families or charitable organizations, he said.

The U.N. agency has been counting those entering Syria in recent months, however, and has found an average of 2,000 a day leaving Iraq by that route.

“This is not a situation where everyone has left en masse at once, nor are they going to refugee camps,” Redmond said. “This has been largely a silent or invisible exodus.”

BAGHDAD, 2 November (IRIN) – Some children have been recruited by insurgents to fight in Iraq, according to a prominent local NGO.

The Iraq Aid Association (IAA) in Baghdad, which works with children suffering psychological trauma as a result of violence, said most child insurgents harbour reasons for revenge.

International law protects children from recruitment and participation in conflict.

“We have heard of cases of children helping insurgents and this should have been prevented. Insurgents should be careful in putting children in such dangerous situations,” an IAA spokesperson said.

According to the NGO, at least 15 children have been used by insurgents and five are in therapy with the NGO for psychological problems. IAA added that there were many more cases of children participating in the insurgency, especially in the western Anbar province.

Ten-year-old Mustafa Ibrahim is one such child. He said he has hated US troops since his parents were killed by them in May 2004 as they fled a battle in Fallujah city. “I do not have anyone for me in this world and I want to meet my family in heaven by revenging their death because God will compensate me for this,” he said.

Mustafa said he celebrated with his friends after he took part in an attack three weeks ago that led to the death of three US marines on the outskirts of the city of Ramadi.

“I have been trained to be a suicide bomber but he [the insurgent trainer] wants me to wait for an opportune time to become a shahid [martyr] in a very special attack and until that happens, I have to help in attacks against the US troops who are against Islam and [who are] the killers of my parents,” Mustafa said.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 3) – Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

“Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems,” said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (Nov. 3) – An Army dog handler convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has returned to the country with his military police unit, a spokesman said Thursday.

Sgt. Santos A. Cardona boarded a plane Monday at Pope Air Force Base, which is adjacent to Fort Bragg, for the trip to Iraq.

Cardona is assigned to the 23rd Military Police Company, said Maj. James Crabtree, a spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, which is headquartered at Fort Bragg.

Crabtree said it wasn’t known exactly what Cardona’s job would be. The unit will focus on law enforcement, detainee operations and route security and to a lesser extent training Iraqi police.

“We don’t know what he will be doing,” Crabtree said. “We don’t normally discuss individuals who will be deploying overseas. We speak in terms of units.”

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Nov. 3) – The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has given up his post while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex.

The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member association Thursday after being accused of paying the man for monthly trysts over the past three years.

Haggard, a married father of five, denied the allegations, but also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation.

“I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity,” he said in a statement. “I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date. In the interim, I will seek both spiritual advice and guidance.”

Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor’s niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.

Dear Colleagues,

The situation in Oaxaca continues to change daily. The morning of November 2 brought with it yet another dramatic series of events as the Federal Preventive Police attempted to invade the Autonomous Benito Juarez University, only to be met and repelled by the largest and most firm popular mobilization since their arrival.

Narco News correspondent Greg Berger writes:

“After a six-hour siege on the Benito Juarez Autonomous University, which is the home Radio Universidad, voice of the APPO, the Federal Preventative Police was forced to retreat just moments ago.

“As helicopters, tanks, and scores of armed federal police approached the University campus, “la doctora,” the now famous host of radio APPO, urged the citizens of Oaxaca to rush to the scene to aid in the defense of the campus and particularly, of the radio station.”

Once again, the large volume of reports on the PFP attack and retreat make it difficult to send an alert for each report. We urge you to visit The Narco News Bulletin to read about all the latest events in Oaxaca, as well as other news from around Latin America.

www.narconews.com

From somewhere in a country called América,

It’s the oil, stupid!

Even as popular pressure grows around Latin America for a stronger state hand in developing natural resources such as oil and gas, Mexico’s president-elect Felipe Calderón may be forced to consider putting more power in private hands.

The country’s flagship oil company Pemex, has been a point of pride since the industry was wrenched from foreign hands and nationalized in 1938. Its revenues alone cover one-third of Mexico’s budget.

But prosperity from years of record oil prices has allowed Mexico to postpone what most agree are much-needed reforms. And now, as production at Pemex’s top oil field declines, pressure to find new fields is mounting. But industry analysts say Mexico’s constitutional restriction on foreign direct investment will hamstring costly exploration efforts, and possibly disrupt the flow of oil, 80 percent of which heads to the US.

Indeed, with his fragile political mandate, Mr. Calderón may find that oil becomes the issue that will define his presidency.

Translation: If he doesn’t co-operate with the privateers, he’s gonna find a horse’s head on his pillow and a replacement in his chair.

This is an important first battle,” says Benito Nacif, a political scientist at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CRTE), a Mexico City think tank. “In the industry sector, there is a consensus that this reform is necessary, that you have to open it up [to the private sector]. The question is: ‘Will [Calderón] be able to build sufficient [political] consensus?’ “

Many industry analysts had hoped that outgoing President Vicente Fox would be able to push through energy-sector reforms to open up Pemex to more private direct investment, in order to boost exploration and production.

Mexico is the second-biggest supplier of oil to the US, favored because of its proximity and relative political stability.

For “relative political stability”, read stolen elections favorable to US-backed candidates.

In the end, Mr. Fox didn’t push through a consitutional change, largely because trying to privative Pemex, even partially, is so politically unpopular.