Babylon Festival Victim to Democracy

Saddam Hussein used to hold the Babylon Festival at the end of Iraq’s sweltering summers on the site of the ancient ruins of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, an hour’s drive south of the capital. It was agitprop, an annual expression of megalomania and, until the last one in fall 2002, with war already in the air, a forum for railing against the United States.

This year the Ministry of Culture decided to revive the festival over three days that ended on Monday. The organizers, supported by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, envisioned a celebration of a new democratic Iraq.

Instead the festival fell afoul of the religious and political schisms — and the chaos — that democracy has wrought.On the eve of its opening on Saturday, after a dozen foreign music and dance troupes had already arrived by the busload, the region’s deputy governor banned music and dance. He cited the coincidence of the birthday of the sixth imam of Islam, Jaafar ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq.

The ban scuttled much of the weekend’s program, which had been prepared months in advance, and left a dozen performers — flown in from Algeria, Azerbaijan, Denmark, Finland, Iran and Russia, among others — in the lurch, whiling away unexpected free time at the ruins of Babylon.“We rehearsed,” said Nurhan Mohammed Abdel Hamid, 20, a dancer with an Egyptian folkloric dance troupe, Pharaoh of the Nile.

The show must go on, and it did, for a bit.

A theater group from Diwaniya Province performed a play called “Globalization,” which recounted the displacement of Iraqis by war. The cultural wing of the movement of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr staged a play called “The Devil” about the United States. (Some things never change.) There were exhibitions of photographs and paintings, a book fair and poetry readings.

Attendance was sparse, though, with reporters and performers-not-performing outnumbering the audience. The festival, promoted heavily by officials in Baghdad, was not advertised in Hilla, the provincial capital that abuts the ruins.By Monday, the festival’s climactic day, the rest of the program was simply canceled, the musicians and dancers sent back to Baghdad after lunch.

“We wanted to revive this festival in a new way, in a new Iraq,” said Ali Makzumi, an official at the Ministry of Culture who was responsible for shepherding the foreign visitors, sounding exceedingly disappointed in the result. “Babylon failed us — not the people, but the government.”The ban on music and dance appeared, at first glance, to reflect the rising sway of Islamic conservatism here. But the province is known for a relatively moderate, multicultural attitude. And as in everything here, politics appeared to have a role.

The deputy governor, Sadiq al-Muhanna, declared the ban on music and dance in the absence of the governor, who happens to be a political rival from Mr. Maliki’s party, Dawa.The governor, Salman al-Zargany, is a relentless promoter of tourism in the province and had lobbied for the revival of the festival. The reason for his absence was unclear, though he is under investigation by the provincial council that elected him.

Mr. Muhanna argued that the Ministry of Culture had waited too long to send the program of events, including the musical and dance acts, which he called offensive to Muslims during religious ceremonies for Imam Sadiq. But he also said people had complained about the cost of staging an event so closely associated with the previous government.

“It reminded people of what Saddam used to do,” he said.

A member of the provincial council from the conservative Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Ali Hussein Ghzar, disputed Mr. Muhanna’s account. “It’s true we were opposed to the dancing and singing, because it is unacceptable morally and religious, a violation of the doctrine, but we overlooked it,” he said.

He added, “I think the reason for the festival’s failure is political, not religious.” (He also dismissed the acting in the play from Diwaniya as being “not a very good standard.”)The debacle clearly embarrassed the Ministry of Culture. In the lobby of a Baghdad hotel on Monday night, the performers waited with their baggage, uncertain what was next, as officials scrambled to find venues for them to perform, hopefully, in Baghdad.

Ms. Hamid, wearing fishnet stockings beneath short jeans, kept cheerfully saying how pretty Iraq was. “We didn’t feel any war,” she said.The troupe’s manager, Mohammed Ibrahim, expressed disappointment but seemed wary of assigning blame. “Maybe it was just circumstances,” he said. “It could happen anywhere.”


By STEVEN LEE MYERS for the New York Times, with Maha al-Kateeb contributing from Hilla, Iraq, and Khalid Ali from Baghdad.

Getting to Know You

Young Iraqi refugees in Syria are in touch with US kids thanks to a novel idea to bring them together via web chats and video conferences. From there, friendships have blossomed, writes Sarah Birke.

In the overcrowded suburbs of Jaramana and Sayda Zeinab on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria’s capital city, the difficult lives of young Iraqi refugees are a million miles away from those of their peers in the United States.

But a project of web conference chats is bringing them closer together. For the past three years, Firas Majeed, a 34-year-old refugee from Baghdad, has been linking up young Iraqis, from nine to 19, with young people in the United States via Skype. His aim is to build friendships and show Iraqi refugees in Syria that people haven’t forgotten their existence.

The project has been so successful that Ross School, a private institution in New York State, has added the web chats to its 5th grade (10-11 year-olds) syllabus. “The conferences help the children who feel they have been forgotten and are running out of hope,” says Majeed. He started the project, Native Without A Nation, after informally helping other Iraqis to learn computer skills. That made him realize what a powerful tool the internet could be: “They are so eager to connect with the outside world.”

The Iraqi refugees have been living in run-down bare buildings since fleeing the sectarian violence which broke out in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR, calculated that in January 748,000 Iraqis were residing in Syria -- the country which has taken in the largest number of Iraqi refugees. Relatively few have been resettled or have returned to Iraq. Many children are not in school; they either need to work or cannot find a school with spaces close to home. Poverty and depression engulfs the community.

Seeing this widespread malaise prompted Majeed to start his project. He had already had the idea after coming across Skype; then he found a partner in Marie Maciak, the media director at Ross Institute, the umbrella organization of the school. Maciak had met Majeed’s sister, a journalist married to an American, in New York in 2007. That prompted her to go to Syria. She met Majeed and was enthused by his efforts, and agreed to start the video conferences on her return to the United States.

Video chats with children at Ross School have given the young Iraqis friendship -- and more hope for the future. And there is also a blog on which they can write about their lives, and give updates. “The most important thing has been making new friends,” says Asmaa Ali, 13, whose family fled Bani Sa’ad in Diyala province in 2007 after their father, who worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross, was threatened. “I like learning about other people’s cultures,” says Asmaa. Her brother Hussein Ali, 16, agrees. “We need to know there are people out there who remember us and want to help us.”

The private initiative has been welcomed by refugee experts. “There is a lack of funding and programming available to address the dire mental health conditions of Iraqi refugees; this kind of cultural exchange can open children’s minds and provide them with ideas,” says Elizabeth Campbell, senior advocate at Refugees International, a US-based advocacy group. “Communications technologies should be used much more regularly in humanitarian operations, but unfortunately the agencies tend to be stuck in the habitual ways of responding.”

Initial conferences focused on conversation about family, school subjects and hobbies, but inevitably the children began to discuss the war and the US’s leading role in it. That was mainly prompted by the US students. “Our children feel very guilty about the US invasion,” says Maciak. “The older students started the conversation by apologizing for the war. They assumed Iraqi children would hate them.”

Some Iraqi families would not let their children take part in the project on account of the US role, but they are the minority. “It’s wrong to confuse the American people, especially children, with the US army or government,” said Ali, Hussein and Asmaa’s father. “They are people like us.”

The reaction of the US children -- especially those in the 11th grade (aged 16-17) with more of an understanding of the war -- was far greater than that of the Iraqi children. One session, in which they watched footage and talked about some of the refugees’ reasons for leaving their country, had the children in tears, Maciak says. “There is a real sense of shock at the situation and frustration that this could have been prevented. The kids find that hard to deal with.”

As there’s no internet connection at home, the conferences take place in one of Damascus’s myriad internet cafes. The Iraqi children have tight schedules: Many have jobs as well as school, and are expected to help in the home. So their access to the internet and email is limited.

To expand the relationship, the children have sent each other presents: textiles embroidered by the Iraqi children, bracelets, drawings. And they have jointly written a play about a young Iraqi boy who becomes an archaeologist. The Ross School children performed the play, taped it and sent it to the Iraqi children to watch.

Three years in, the project is having unforeseen benefits as an initiation for those who have been accepted for resettlement to the United States. Some of the children -- and Majeed himself -- are due to depart for the United States before the end of the year. Asmaa and Hussein’s family is also due to leave. The parents hope that having experience of the American people and a glimpse of their culture will help ease the difficulties of resettlement.

“We hope to meet the children,” says Hussein. Asmaa adds that because of the video conferences, they are less nervous than they would have been about resettlement. After all, the children speak only a little English and will be moving to an entirely new country and culture. “But at least I know what an American classroom looks like, that they have libraries and that the school system is organized.”

Beyond the initial goal of giving the Iraqi children friendship and hope, the web chats are shattering stereotypes. One American child had been fascinated by classes about ancient history but had associated modern Iraq with “bad people.” Speaking to the Iraqis made him realize they were children just like him, with the same likes, the same hopes and dreams.

Majeed says that from his new home in New York he hopes to expand Native Without A Nation beyond links between Iraqis and Americans, to reach all those who have been forced to leave their homeland. He hopes this will translate into more honest discussions among the next generations. “These are the people who will be managing the world after us. If they talk, and they understand each other, they will grow up with more empathy and think of the repercussions on others before they act.”

Sarah Birke is a journalist in Damascus, Syria. © 2010 Le Monde diplomatique

Senior Iraqi police officer assassinated

A senior Iraqi police officer was assassinated Tuesday near his home in the suburbs of Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, reported authorities.

Sources said that unidentified gunmen fired on Brigadier General Mohammed Aziz, who is also the director of forensic evidence at Mosul's police headquarters. He died on the spot, according to sources.

Also in Mosul, but on Monday night, security sources said a local police officer escaped a failed assassination attempt to bomb his car with adhesive explosives.Mosul is one of the most dangerous and volatile cities in Iraq, with insurgents carrying out near-daily attacks, even as police claim that security sweeps have netted hundreds of detainees.

Both Iraqi civilians and security forces have increasingly been coming under attack from insurgents in recent months, with US forces now down to their lowest levels of 50,000 troops in Iraq since the war began in 2003.

Author: Aya Batrawy

Ahmed Chalabi Strikes Again

Ahmed Chalabi is at it again. In a discussion on the future of Iraq with Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn at last week's Washington Ideas Forum, the Iraqi with nine thousand lives insisted that the issue of weapons of mass destruction was only "marginal" in the lead up to the Iraq War. The short conversation failed to explore the former provisional president of Iraq's impressive knack for dishonest saber-rattling and naked opportunism.

A prominent dissident voice since the early 90s, Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress fed the Bush adminstration bogus evidence on Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMD program that was used by the White House to justify the invasion. Flash forward to the present: Chalabi has assumed a prominent place in the administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, leading continuing efforts to weed out members of Saddam's Sunni Baathist party. Meanwhile, the National Iraqi Alliance—of which Chalabi's INC is a part—finished third in the March elections.

"The issue was never weapons of mass destruction," he insisted. "It was the repression of Saddam against the Iraqi people, and the threat that Saddam constituted against the Iraqi people." Chalabi maintains that he and the INC didn't provide misleading evidence on WMDs, but merely introduced the Bush administration to those who provided it.

"The US has a massive intelligence apparatus," he said. "It is very improbable that they would take the word of a person or an exile organization opposed to the regime and act on the basis of this to go in the country and wage war," he said. "They made their own decision. And I think the various investigations that happened afterwards showed that our input into the intelligence was marginal." While the war was worth it, he said, the extended occupation shouldn’t have happened—just as he advised at the time, he hastened to mention.

On the topic of government formation in Iraq, Chalabi said his coalition's choice to push Maliki as its candidate for prime minister was an important step in breaking the deadlock that has stalled governance for the past seven months. Things got marginally testy when Quinn asked whether Iraq was headed for a theocratic future, and pushed Chalabi, a Shiite, on his relationship with radical anti-American cleric Muqtada-al Sadr. "Sectarian division in Iraq is not about theology—it's about power, and it's about power structure. And it goes back a long time," he said, launching into an abbreviated history of Shiite/Sunni relations over the past 500 years.

Chalabi described his relationship with Iran as close, and considers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "smart man." The Iranian president's claims that the U.S. was behind the attacks on September 11 are "prevalent in the Middle East. It's nonsense, but it's prevalent. And people accuse all kinds of organizations and states of being behind 9/11. They could not believe that 19 people, young men, could do such damage, such lasting damage to America." Quinn chose not to press Chalabi on allegations that he passed US secrets on to the Iranians.

Despite foreign meddling and violence, he reminded the audience, Iraq has managed to form a government, boding well for the country's democratic future. Never one to squander the spotlight, Chalabi announced a bold vision to form a "concordant" consisting of Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq—a sort of EU for the Middle East.

"We would moderate those extremist tendencies, and we would create understanding instead of conflict," he said. "We hope to persuade the world that this would be a good idea . . . and I think Iraq would be the heart of this coalition."Since 9/11, Ahmed Chalabi has gone from privileged exile, to close U.S. confidante, to disgraced opportunist, to reborn Iraqi politician. As Maliki continues to draw him close, there's no telling where he might end up (or what type of mischief he might be causing) in another ten years.

By Siddhartha Mahanta

Fight over leader, then posts

The flurry to close the first chapter of Iraq's seven-month political drama is suddenly intense with angry Sunnis pledging to dig in for a fight while Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tries to win over the last few allies he needs to stay in power.But after the struggle for prime minister is finally settled, then comes the next big fight that could also drag on for months — the competition for key government posts.

A taste of both the old and upcoming showdowns was offered Monday inside the parliament building that's been idled by the political crisis since March elections.Sunni leaders lashed out at al-Maliki, who appears on the verge of dodging election defeat and hanging onto power. But the pledges of Sunni unity and defiance also pointed to the drawn-out fight over Cabinet seats that could extend the impasse into its fourth season.

"It's a very complicated political scene right now," said Hadi Jalo, a political analyst at Baghdad University. "There are pressures and rivalries that could keep this going for a long time."For the moment, it's all about al-Maliki's drive to get enough backers for a parliament majority and the right for his Shiite-led coalition to begin putting together a government. He's close after gaining support from hard-line Shiite factions last week. An expected nod from Kurdish parties would put him comfortably over the top.

And this is just Act I.

The real brawling begins when it's time to dole out the ministries, including such gems as the Interior Ministry that directs security affairs and the Oil Ministry that oversees lucrative exploration deals and oil reserves which — according to new figures announced Monday — are now the second largest in OPEC after Saudi Arabia.If Al-Maliki pulls it off, he'll need to reward his new partners such as anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Analysts say the Sunnis will most likely put aside their anger and also join the scrabble for key posts despite pledges to boycott an al-Maliki government.

Among their presumed wish list is the presidency — now held by a Kurd — and parliament speaker. Both roles are seen as ways to push back against feared Iranian influence via Shiite groups such as al-Sadr's movement.In recent days, Al-Maliki has been dispatching envoys to Sunni leaders in hopes of trying to find some path toward a unity government. So far, the Sunnis seem in no mood for any concessions that could ease the process along.

They've already waited a long time. The Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance narrowly won the March parliamentary elections, but could not pull in enough partners to gain a majority in the 325-seat chamber. This left them as glum bystanders while al-Maliki began racking up fresh allies late last month.

They punched back a bit Monday.

Hayder al-Mulla, the Iraqiya spokesman, demanded that al-Maliki and his allies "give up the post" of prime minister to acknowledge the victory of Ayad Allawi, Iraqiya's leader who served as prime minister after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"The prime minister's post is for all Iraqis and not for one sect or one party," he said in a direct reference to the dominance of Shiites over political affairs and security forces since the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime.His comments sought to counter reports of defections to al-Maliki's side. They also showed the fragile nature of the rapprochement between majority Shiites and Sunnis just three years since the country stepped back from the brink of sectarian civil war.

"Our reservations over al-Maliki come out of the bitter experiences of the past four years," al-Mulla told reporters at a press conference in the idled parliament building. The site has been quiet since March except for one informal, 20-minute "session" used by some lawmakers to protest the postelection gridlock.

On Sunday, a key Sunni political leader in the northern city of Mosul hit even harder.Atheel al-Nujaifi, governor of the northern Ninevah province, told The Associated Press that a return of al-Maliki as government leader would destroy the country's "last chance for democracy" and leave Sunnis cold about taking part in future elections.

And despite holding a measureable advantage over all rivals, al-Maliki has not locked down complete support among Shiites.A highly influential group, the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, has so far withheld its backing for al-Maliki in a possible last-ditch efforts to find an alternative prime minister nominee, perhaps their ally Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

It is political posturing like this that unnerves U.S. officials.Washington has not endorsed anyone for the prime minister post, but American officials appeal nonstop for the new government to represent all of Iraq's groups.The fear is that rifts between the majority Shiites and Sunnis could scare off needed foreign investment and severely complicate internal security cooperation as U.S. military force leave.

U.S. military commanders link a recent wave of targeted attacks on security personnel and government workers to Sunni insurgents trying to discredit authorities and tap into Iraqis' growing frustration over the political limbo. At least two people were killed Monday in apparent targeted bombings, including a freelance journalist for the U.S.-funded Al-Hurra TV.The political stalemate also has left needed reconstruction projects on the drawing boards — such as upgrades to electricity grids and plans to sell off state companies — while potential new foreign investors may be waiting in the wings.

"The ones that are already here, they're moving full speed ahead," said Hussein al-Uzri, chairman of the state-owned Trade Bank of Iraq, at an investment conference last week in Bahrain. "The ones that are considering ... They're probably (going to) wait a few months until the government is formed."Washington is pushing ahead nonetheless. The first official U.S. trade delegation to Iraq in more than 30 years is scheduled to begin meetings Tuesday led by Francisco Sanchez, the U.S. undersecretary of commerce for international trade.

Associated Press Writers Hamid Ahmed in Baghdad and Adam Schreck in Manama, Bahrain, contributed to this report.

Political wrangling affecting IDPs

The delay in forming a new Iraqi government following elections in March is adversely affecting internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, according to a senior UN official.

"This situation certainly makes it more difficult to move ahead to find durable solutions," Walter Kaelin, a representative of the UN Secretary-General responsible for the human rights of IDPs, said on 29 September during an eight-day visit to the country.

"What we have seen in the last six months is that the number of returns really has come down quite considerably… People are waiting to see what is going to happen," he said.Daniel Endres, the representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Iraq, said the number of returning refugees and IDPs has gone down from an average of 15,000-20,000 a month in the 18 months before the election to about 10,000 a month.

Endres said 45 percent of the refuges questioned by UN staff at border crossings with Jordan and Syria said they did not want to return permanently because of "political uncertainty". Others questioned cited the security situation (15 percent) and poor public services (40 percent) as reasons for not wanting to return permanently.

The 7 March vote produced no clear winner, setting up a fight between the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc of Ayad Allawi and the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite. Allawi narrowly defeated al-Maliki in the vote, but both men claim they have a mandate to form a new government.

Kaelin said: "The complexity of the internal displacement situation in Iraq requires stronger efforts by the Iraqi government and the international community to protect the human rights of displaced persons, address their immediate needs and find durable solutions to end their displacement."

He called for an "inclusive and comprehensive strategy that takes into account all communities affected by displacement, including host communities and communities in areas of return."He also highlighted the need to meet immediate humanitarian needs, and ensure equitable access to basic services.

According to an August 2010 UNHCR report, Iraq has an estimated 1.5 million IDPs, including about 500,000 in settlements or camp-like situations in extremely poor conditions who are a priority for protection and emergency assistance.There are also over1.5 million Iraqi refugees or asylum-seekers, mainly in countries in the Middle East.

IRIN News

Vets Call for End to Deployment

October 7th marks the 9-year anniversary of the Afghanistan War, the longest ongoing war in U.S. history. Pressure from fighting two wars has put enormous strain on U.S. troops, with multiple deployments leading to an explosion of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD makes service members six times more likely to commit suicide.

Instead of being treated, troops are often redeployed to combat while still suffering from PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Military Sexual Trauma. Officials recognize that suicides and violent crimes are on the rise, with four decorated combat vets killing themselves at Ft. Hood in one week. "The emergency issue for me right now is the suicide issue," said Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking person in the U.S. armed forces.

WHAT: Afghanistan & Iraq veterans will meet at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and embark on a six-mile march to Capitol Hill to announce the launch of Iraq Veterans Against the War's first veteran-led campaign - Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops. Service members will testify about their experiences being redeployed while traumatized. A letter will be read publicly and delivered to government and military officials requesting an end to the deployment of traumatized troops. Veterans will voice opposition to the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

WHO: Iraq Veterans Against the War (Afghanistan & Iraq vets), Ethan McCord of Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" video, Civilian Soldier Alliance, Military Families Speak Out

WHEN/WHERE: Thursday, October 7th, 2010
10:15 Meet at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC 20307
10:45 March begins
1:30 Press conference at Delaware Ave. NE and C St. NE 20510

WHY: Multiple deployments cause PTSD and increased incidents of suicides and violent crimes among service members, exemplified by the recent Ft. Hood suicides and twelve soldiers in Afghanistan who formed a "kill team" targeting civilians and collecting body parts as trophies. The occupations carry high human costs at home and abroad, while draining vast resources from American taxpayers during a recession. Furthermore, the strategy and objectives of the Afghanistan War remain questionable. Opposition to the occupations is growing within the military.

"I was denied treatment for the mental and physical wounds I sustained in battle, like so many others," says Ethan McCord, a veteran whose unit was captured in the "Collateral Murder" video distributed by Wikileaks. "IVAW's campaign is critical for soldiers because we are asserting our right to heal. Now, the government has a choice - will it recognize our right to heal, or deny it?"

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent.

The heavy toll of dementia

This amounts to 1 per cent of GDP worldwide or equivalent to the 18th-largest country in the world.The report commissioned by Alzheimer's Disease International predicted that the number of sufferers would grow to 66m in the next 20 years and up to 115m by 2050.

In Britain there are 820,000 people who have dementia, around half of these suffer with Alzheimer's. This figure is expected to double by 2050.While the dementia debate seems dominated by statistics, what must never be lost sight of is the terrible suffering it causes.

My family had to deal with dementia when my dad became a sufferer. He grew steadily worse over the years.Reading Dad's diaries after he died, it was apparent how his thought processes were breaking down as detailed chronicling of each day declined to where it was one or two points and then nothing. One particularly sad entry showed a desperate loneliness as he revealed it was getting difficult to remember things he'd done that morning.

The process of seeing your loved one transform into someone who cannot remember your name can be debilitating for all concerned.Dementia and the care needed with the illness is something that is fortunately beginning to gain more attention, though in our case there was little help for many years.When the bean-counters are throwing the numbers around, there should be a little more focus on some of the damage being done to those unpaid carers on whom the burden often falls.

In our case that was mainly my mother, who for 18 months prior to dad going into a home was the main carer. She was 80 years old at the time, in need of care herself if anything, not dealing 24 hours a day with a husband in the advanced stages of dementia.That 18 months of caring for my dad took its toll on mum. The stress no doubt contributed to her loss of eyesight, hearing and other ailments. And it is people like my mum who end up bearing the burden of the dementia time bomb.

Government does not want to pay for the condition. While you don't want the health service taking on big brother powers to remove loved ones, sometimes people need help. The system is too willing to let individuals go through their own private hell as they struggle to provide the care required.Dad finally went into a home in October 2005, the first of three before he died in August 2008.

Care homes though are another world that the dementia sufferer and carers have to endure. The whole sector has pretty much been farmed out to the privateers.There is a lack of regulation in an area that patently needs regulating. Dementia sufferers are in many cases as vulnerable as babies. The scope for abuse is immense, as was evidenced last year by a government report that found homes over-using drugs to sedate dementia patients - otherwise known as "the chemical cosh."

Care home owners see them in the main as profit centres. The staff are often on low wages, for a job that if being done properly requires a high level of expertise.A good home will seek to stimulate the dementia sufferers. They will be kept in a safe and caring environment. The worst homes are really warehouses of dementia sufferers waiting for death.

Dementia has gained a greater profile over recent years. This is no doubt due to a number of factors. First the growing number of sufferers and subsequent impact on those involved in caring and other duties.Around 25m people, or 42 per cent of the population, are affected by dementia through knowing a close friend or family member with the condition.

Second, the instances of the famous like Cliff Richard, Fiona Philipps and John Suchet having relatives affected has led to greater publicity.So there has been improvement in terms of the growing public awareness of the condition. But there is still much that needs to be done. The level of funding for research to find an answer to the disease is lamentably low compared to other conditions like cancer and heart disease.

While cancer attracts £600m a year in research funding, dementia gets just £50m.The attitude among medical practitioners to dementia needs to change. A doctor on a documentary presented by Fiona Philipps commented that you would not send a cancer patient away and say come back when the conditions worsens, which is what happens with many dementia cases.

There also needs to be a real focus on care. It should not be left to the relatives of the dementia sufferer to pick up the care duties unaided. There should be more help in the home and proper regulation of homes. All of these matters need to be addressed in order that our society can deal more humanely with the victims of dementia.

Written by Paul Donovan & first published by the Morning Star and for more of Paul Donovan's writing visit www.paulfdonovan.blogspot.com

Dementia to treble by 2051

The number of people with dementia in Northern Ireland will almost treble in the next 40 years, according to new research.Alzheimer’s Society research shows that 16,000 people in Northern Ireland have a form of dementia — more than half have Alzheimer’s disease — but by 2051, 47,000 people will be living with dementia.

While research is ongoing in a bid to find out the cause of dementia, it is known that age is a major risk factor in developing dementia so with the growing ageing population, the number of people who develop the condition is expected to rocket in the coming decades.The Alzheimer’s Society has said that dementia services in Northern Ireland are lacking and greater support for people with the condition would help save millions of pounds each year.

A spokeswoman said: “We would like to see people get better support immediately after diagnosis. Across the whole of the UK, £20bn is spent on crisis care and unnecessary residential care so greater support and better signposting for people upon diagnosis to available services has the potential to save the health service millions of pounds every year.”

The Alzheimer’s Society is holding a flagship ‘memory walk’ on September 26 to raise funds for support services for people affected by dementia.Wilma McMurray has benefited from such support, which she said has been invaluable after her husband of 47 years Jim was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

She said: “When he was 56, Jim was diagnosed with bowel cancer and he had an operation for it but never really recovered after that. At first they thought he was depressed but then we were told he had early onset Alzheimer’s disease.“I knew something was wrong but it was still terrible when we were told. We couldn’t believe it.” Mr McMurray’s condition deteriorated over the years and he now lives at Holywell outside Antrim.

”It was very hard when he first went in because I thought he was only going for a few days but he has been there ever since,” explained Mrs McMurray.“We were very close throughout our marriage and still are but I don’t think he knows me now. He knows I am someone important but I don’t think he knows who I am.

“I see him most days. I like to go down at lunch time and feed him. I also do his laundry as they’re the only things I can do for him now. He doesn’t speak much now, he says a few words but they don’t mean anything. My husband is there but he isn’t really. Every now and then there is a wee spark and it makes my day when there is.

“Alzheimer’s Society got involved with us in 2001 and I couldn’t have done it without them. Alzheimer’s is such a cruel disease but I go along and meet other people in the same position as me and it helps a lot.”

By the Belfast Telegraph and the Alzheimer’s Society provides a helpline that can be reached by ringing 0845 300 0336. you can also get more information by checking out http://alzheimers.org.uk/

Care homes in crisis

News this week that the Care Quality Commission had to close more than 40 care homes and agencies last year to protect residents' safety was a stark reminder of what goes on behind closed doors at Britain's privately run care homes.

A further 51 shut voluntarily after the watchdog labelled them "poor," forcing around 1,600 elderly and disabled people out of their homes.The commission's findings make for grim reading.Two of the privately operated homes forced to close were owned by Anbanaden and Shamila Chellapermal, who were jailed last year for human trafficking.

The commission reported "evidence of neglect of the most basic kind" towards the vulnerable residents with dementia who were supposed to be in their care.In August the Chellapermals were also ordered to hand over around £450,000 in profits they had racked up while employing immigrants illegally in slave-like conditions, working 90 hours a week for a mere 90p an hour.

At Sherwood Lodge in Gillingham the commission reported that residents were not being given their medication and that the home's carpets were stained with blood and urine. In a single month there had been eight incidents of residents attacking each other.In Turnbull House, Birmingham, the commission found a host of failings that removed from residents their right to "independence, respect, choice and dignity." It singled out a shortage of staff as a key safety risk.

In each case the homes were either shut down or the owners did so themselves voluntarily.Home care visits also got their fair share of bad press last year thanks to a BBC Panorama undercover investigation.It found that elderly people in South Lanarkshire were being left to fend for themselves for hours due to missed or shortened home visits.

The programme filmed secretly in the home of one 78-year-old man who was left alone for 14 hours on Christmas Day and was being fed a diet of sandwiches, tinned spaghetti and Quavers crisps.At another home run by a private provider with 48 local authority contracts an 89-year-old woman had been neglected for 24 hours before she was finally found lying in her own faeces by her son.

All these incidents come back to the same thing. If profit-making companies are holding the reins the main thing they care about is how much money they can make, not how good a service they are providing. But unfortunately that lesson still has not been learned.The drastic consequences are that many socially essential services are provided on the cheap. In the case of care homes this means rip-off charges to the vulnerable residents and staff working on a slave's wage.

"A care home placement is more than a room - it is a home, a community, a place where people end their lives," says Age UK Charity Director Michelle Mitchell."Operators that have failed to provide an environment free of abuse or neglect deserve to be shut down by the CQC."And yesterday the commission finally got tougher powers to tackle this ongoing problem. A new registration law came into force to beef up the regulation of health and adult social care in England which brings the NHS, private health care and adult social care providers under the same inspection regime for the first time.

Every care service is now legally responsible for making sure that it meets essential standards of quality and safety to prevent the disastrous, disgusting situations in the past from happening again and again.And the watchdog will only licence care services that meet these essential standards and will regularly monitor each licensed provider. It will have new powers to issue warnings, fines or closures if high standards are not maintained.

Each service user will be involved with what's happening at every stage of their care, each provider will be fully staffed by qualified carers and the quality of services will be constantly checked and updated.Mitchell agrees that the commission's new powers are a positive step. But she warns that it will only have teeth if it has the resources to carry out regular inspections and intervene as soon as possible.

However the watchdog's chief executive Cynthia Bowers is adamant that it will make a difference."We did not tolerate poor care under the old registration system and we certainly will not tolerate it under the new system," she says."Services where problems have been identified can expect frequent inspections and we will use our powers where it is necessary to protect people - even if it means shutting services down."

GMB, a union which represents many of Britain's care workers, also broadly welcomed the new rules.National officer Sharon Holder is hopeful that minimum standards will improve in care homes."It will have the impact of keeping out operators who are in the business for a quick buck," she says.But only time will tell if the new legislation will deliver in the real world, especially against the backdrop of the coalition government's cuts programme.

For now, though, many of the vulnerable people housed in Britain's care homes remain little more than bound and gagged cash cows for private profit.

By Will Stone

Fire fighters put on a shine

Fire fighters in Rochdale, UK, were out in full force today (Saturday 2 October 2010) for this year’s charity car wash.The Fire Fighters Charity National Car Wash 2010 is taking place at fire stations all over the country.

Rochdale's Green Watch along with off duty fire fighters attended to put a shine back onto cars.The fire fighters also used the event to pass on fire safety information as requested, offering free Home Fire Risk Assessments, where if needed, smoke alarms are provided free of charge

Steve Webb from Rochdale Fire Station said: “Despite fire fighters best efforts, fire fighters see first hand how fire can destroy lives and devastate communities on a daily basis. By learning more about safety around the home, lives can be saved.

“It is also a fantastic way to raise essential funds for The Fire Fighters Charity in order to continue to support those in need.”County Fire Officer Steve McGuirk said: “The National Car Wash Day is a great opportunity for us to raise money for a worthwhile cause which has benefited many fire fighters and their families over the years.”

The Fire Fighters Charity is the official organisation which exists for fire fighters during their times of need and assists over 13,000 injured individuals every year by providing pioneering treatment and support services.The Rochdale fire fighters hope to have raised in the region of £350.

Published by Rochdale Online and for more information please check out www.firefighterscharity.org.uk/

Firefighters raise cash for injured

Firefighters in Watford and Rickmansworth soaked more than 100 cars this afternoon as they raised cash for charity.Crews at both stations ran car washes to raise money for the Firefighters Charity, which provides help and support to injured firefighters and their families.

Station commander at Rickmansworth, Phil Smith, said: “It is a chance for the lads to come in and get the boss wet, raise some money for what is a great charity, and also an opportunity for us to sign people up for safety check visits to their homes.”The events were part of a National Car Wash, organised by the charity, and stations across the country took part.

Rickmansworth station mascot, Welephant, stood at the entrance waving people in and had attracted about 50 cars by 2pm.Crews at the Rectory Road station have raised more than £3,000 for the Firefighters Charity, which is entirely funded through donations, over the past two years.Watford crews also raised about £500 at today's event, which ran from 11am until 4pm.

By Chris Hewett of the Watford Observer.

UNHCR concerned over deportations

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has expressed concern about the growing number of deportations of Iraqi asylum-seekers from Western Europe in the last two months.

Special charter flights to take failed asylum-seekers home have increased in frequency, and Iraqis are being returned to parts of the country which are still unsafe, in contravention of UNHCR guidelines for the handling of Iraqi asylum applications, it says.

The deportations are handled by Frontex, a Warsaw-based agency set up to coordinate operations between European Union (EU) member states in the field of border security, and their planes can carry returnees from several different countries. The most recent (on 22 September) had failed asylum applicants from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.

One of the UNHCR’s complaints is that the information provided by those countries is usually sketchy, varies from country to country and is given only very late in the process. In the case of last week’s flight, Sweden told the UNHCR the names and dates of birth of those being sent home, but not their destinations. The UK provided details of where its rejected claimants were going but not their identities.

No country told the UNHCR how many of the passengers being put on board the plane were going home voluntarily, and how many were being deported against their will, but reports from Baghdad say police had to be called to escort some of them off the plane.

A spokesperson for the UNHCR, Sybella Wilkes, called for states sending home asylum-seekers to be more transparent. “We are aware when a flight is leaving,” she told IRIN, “but we don’t know until the last minute who is on board or which countries they are coming from.”

The organization does not oppose people being sent back to Iraq in every case. “It’s possible that some people on the plane were going back voluntarily,” Wilkes said. “It’s possible that some were going to areas where we don’t have issues about security. But we don’t know. Having full information would be in everybody’s best interests.”

What they do know is that among the passengers leaving Sweden were two women and four children. The British government said all those it was sending last week were single adult males, but their destinations included Baghdad, Ninawa, Kirkuk and Salah ad-Din - all areas the UNHCR considers unsafe.

Five governorates unsafe

“We are very clear in our guidelines,” said Sybella Wilkes. “Baghdad, Diyala, Kirkuk, Ninawa and Salah ad-Din are still not safe, in view of serious human rights violations and continuing security incidents in those areas. We specifically ask governments not to return people to those five governorates, and we are disappointed they are ignoring our guidelines.”

The general secretary of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, Dashty Jamal, blamed the rise in forced removals on the electoral success of right wing parties in a number of European countries. He told IRIN: “Most of the EU countries’ right-wing parties have united together to change their immigration policy, and deport back all Iraqis who apply for asylum in their country.”

He said that as well as the charter flights run by Frontex, individual refugees are being sent back almost every night on scheduled flights to Jordan. “I believe that no part of Iraq is safe, even Kurdistan. It is like the UN saying that Berne in Switzerland is safe but Zurich is not safe. This is not the time to send people back. They are playing with the lives of innocent people.”

Contacted by IRIN, the UK’s border agency denied there had been any overall policy recently to deport more Iraqi asylum-seekers. Detailed figures of deportations over the past two months are not yet available, but a spokesperson insisted that every case is looked at individually and considered on its merits. “We only ever return those whom the Border Agency and the courts are satisfied are not in need of our protection, and who have failed to comply with a request to leave.”

Are the Agency and the courts ignoring the UNHCR guidelines on safe and unsafe areas? “A whole range of factors are taken into account,” the spokesperson told IRIN. “And from the UK’s point of view we have to be satisfied that they don’t need our protection.”

The UNHCR has been lobbying since June against the forced removals to Iraq, but says so far they have not seen any shift in position by Western European governments. Sybella Wilkes says she is disappointed. “I would like them to consider that they have a minority of Iraqi asylum-seekers in their countries. And this is not a very positive example when Iraq’s neighbours have much greater numbers, and have been much more generous and welcoming.”

Dashty Jamal told IRIN on 28 September that a number of Iraqis in the UK had received tickets for a flight back to Iraq on 6 October, and that a demonstration was being planned that day outside the Iraqi embassy in London to protest at the way returnees are treated when they get to Baghdad.

Published by IRIN News

A Show About Iraqi Refugees

Tholfikar Altaie, a 28-year-old Iraqi refugee who lives with his family in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, does not always know how to begin explaining to friends in New York the life he left behind in Baghdad. Their curiosity is as vast as the gaps in their knowledge.“They think it is all camels and desert,” Mr. Altaie said. “I’ve never seen a camel in my country, by the way.”

Creating a more cosmopolitan picture of Baghdad, which his family fled in 2006, is easy enough; but describing the terror he once felt commuting to the city’s Green Zone, where he worked in security and where he fully expected to die on the job, can sometimes be too much.

He cannot capture for his colleagues, at the office where he works in marketing, the hopelessness of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees (some sources say millions) thought to be living without the possibility of working legally in various countries in the Middle East. They are stories he knows as well as he knows his own, more fortunate one.

Instead, he plans to take six of those co-workers next week to see “No Place Called Home,” a play written and performed by the New York actress Kim Schultz, who last fall interviewed dozens of Iraqi refugees living in limbo in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. From that experience, Ms. Schultz created a one-woman show that will be presented at various sites, nomadic style, but which starts in previews on Wednesday at the Wild Project in the East Village.

It combines a personal love story — Ms. Schultz fell hard for an Iraqi artist in Syria — with what is sometimes called verbatim theater: in-character monologues based on interview transcripts. “I felt like I needed to speak their voices,” Ms. Schultz said, “because they can’t get anyone to listen.”On Thursday evening, Mr. Altaie was among several Iraqis and assorted advisers Ms. Schultz invited to watch a rehearsal of the play and give their impressions of its authenticity.

To be a refugee almost anywhere is to be lonely. In New York, that loneliness may be particularly acute: of the 50,000 or so Iraqis who have been resettled in the United States since 2007, about 100 landed in the five boroughs, according to the State Department (although more than that have come independently to settle with family in the city). Since refugees often live on $950 a month provided by the federal government for the first eight months, the cost of living in New York is prohibitive; and smaller towns, some resettlement agencies find, are more likely to adopt refugees informally and ease their transition.

Over the course of Ms. Schultz’s performance on Thursday, the Iraqi refugee population of New York City increased virtually by something like 10 percent, as she brought stories of urban refugee life into a spare rehearsal room.

Blond and stately, Ms. Schultz transformed herself into a mother in Syria who fakes phone conversations with her missing husband so that her children will not be concerned about his absence. She became a father in Jordan who tells his son simply to take the abuse, when other children beat him, rather than risk jeopardizing their situation by fighting back. Lying on the ground, watching television, she was a 13-year-old boy in Beirut who is the family breadwinner: he irons clothes all day, rather than attend school as he once did in Iraq, and is told by his father he should just “be grateful we are alive.”

When the show was over, two of the Iraqis — Wafaa Bilal, who teaches art at New York University, and Adalet Garmiany, a Kurdish Iraqi artist visiting from London — said they were pleased by Ms. Schultz’s representations of Iraqis. Mr. Bilal added, wistfully, that he wished the show included a good Iraqi joke. Iraqis are never without one, he said; he and his friends used to meet in the middle of a crosswalk just to trade jibes about Saddam Hussein. “Honestly,” Ms. Schultz said, “that was not my experience.”

Mr. Garmiany said that he loved her inevitably American versions of the Iraqi characters and called that odd amalgam art, but said that he longed for more hope in the play.For Mr. Altaie, hope lay not in the arc of the play, but in the fact of it. “It touched my heart very hard,” he said. Opening night, he would take his friends. And they would listen.

E-mail: susan.dominus@nytimes.com

Soccer Club a hub for refugees

UPFIELD Soccer Club is still celebrating promotion after rising to the club's highest rank in its history as a member of Football Federation Victoria's provisional grades.

Even though a large fine hangs over the club, the on and off-field success at Upfield has been undeniable this season. Upfield is a social hub for most of its players - Iraqi refugees of the north-western suburbs.Hume Weekly reporter TEO PELLIZZERI went to Gibb Reserve to hear about the football and culture that makes the Upfield club what it is.

Promotion

Upfield played Sunday amateur-league soccer prior to a switch to the metro north-west division in the past decade.Previously there was Greek influence, but the influx of Iraqi refugees changed the demographic of the club significantly.As more and more Iraqis arrived in Australia, more footballing talent was unearthed.All of a sudden, Upfield had the players to not just earn promotion from the metropolitan league but earn promotion from provisional division 3 north-west after just two seasons.

All backgrounds

Walid Hanna, 29, fled Baghdad and came to Australia in 1998 to settle in the Broadmeadows area. "From the year 2000, when we were in high school, everyone from Iraq said, 'Come to Upfield, come down, come down'."There were people from all backgrounds here. This club helped a lot to learn the Australian culture; [it's where] I picked up my English."Most of the players feel comfortable when they are here. They can play decent soccer and this is what they look forward to."Hosam Al-Kaisi, 23, came to Australia in 2006 from Iraq via Jordan where he spent six years.

"I love to play soccer and I couldn't stop playing. When I came here I found a fully-Iraqi club [Reservoir Strikers] and played with them for two years."Al-Kaisi came to Upfield in 2008 and credits both the club and the game with helping to grow his support and friendship network.The teammates of Al-Kaisi, a Sunni Muslim, include Shi'a Muslims, Assyrians, Christians and Kurds.

"These are parties that are fighting in Iraq. Here in Australia we have Muslim majority teams, but Upfield is diverse. Football, whatever background you are from, has united these people."Belal Azez is also from Baghdad and is Upfield's only player of Kurdish background. He came to Australia in 2002.

The coach

Rob Ottone does not speak Arabic but can claim to be the most important communicator at the club.Having switched from the Moreland Wolves to Upfield to play and coach, Ottone is the disciplinarian at the top of the club.He sees discipline as the key to harnessing the natural ability in his playing group.

"We were confident of promotion right from the start. There's a spirit within the group, but it took a lot of discipline."We were a lot quicker than any other team and the opposition would always rise to the occasion to play us. Every year there's more people coming from overseas, players these guys know around the traps."

Ottone says that, more than any coaching drill or tactical move, keeping aggression under control is his main coaching tool."They've got a short fuse, which is easy to set off. Once you get that aggression under control the rest is easy."

The next challenge

Upfield's immediate concern is settling a $3000 fine issued by FFV's independent tribunal.A hotly contested match against arch-rival Watsonia ended with the club's associates causing property damage, threatening the officiating team and opposition fans, among other charges of which it was found guilty.Hanna says the club is doing everything in its power to raise the money to settle the fine.

Report on Girls Education in Iraq

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) published their 2010 report about the current education situation for girls in Iraq. The report PDF analyzes the education system in Iraq and makes recommendations to both the Iraqi government and UNICEF Iraq to improve girls' access to high quality instruction.

The overall number of children receiving primary education in Iraq has been declining since the 2004-05 school year, although girls' enrollment in schools is much lower than that of boys and their drop out rate is higher. According to the study, "for every 100 boys enrolled in primary schools in Iraq, there are just under 89 girls."

The report attributes girls' under representation in schools to the lack of family approval of girls' education, difficulties traveling to and from school, early marriages, and unsafe conditions and abuse at the school. To address these issues, UNICEF recommends improving school curriculum, providing safe transportation to the girls, implementing innovative educational strategies, and improving teacher training.

By MS Magazine

Iraq: history's greatest crime

America's hidden history is ugly and disturbing. No nation ever matched it. To Iraq alone, over the past two decades, it includes ongoing genocide, destruction, terror, occupation, and contamination — a horrendous combination of crimes, unmentioned in Western discourse.

Environmental Engineering professor Souad N. Al-Azzawi documents them, including in her report titled, "Crime of the Century: Iraq's Occupation and DU Contamination," a detailed account of US culpability.

America's strategic aims, she explains, include:

• controlling most of the world's oil and other natural resources;

• remaining permanently in the Middle East, "the intersection zone of the three continents where 80 percent of the world('s) population" lives; and

• if the above two objectives are achieved, America will control the world's economy, or enough of it to matter.

Spread over a large enough area, depleted uranium (DU) is a weapon of mass destruction, because it's radioactive and chemically toxic. If ingested or inhaled through food, air, water or other means, it enters the human body, remaining for decades. An earlier article reported the dangers, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2006/01/depleted-uranium-hidden-looming_16.html

It explained that continued DU use has the potential to end planetary life, yet few understand the risk, or that weaponized DU is used regularly in missiles, bombs, shells and bullets wherever America wages war — first during the 1991 Gulf War.

Its danger comes from radiation residue after use. On impact, DU munitions penetrate deeply and aerosolize into a fine spray, polluting surrounding air, water and soil. It's microscopic, sub-microscopic, and permanent. Spread over vast areas as radioactive atmospheric dust, its contamination causes virtually all known illnesses and diseases from severe headaches, muscle pain and general fatigue, to major birth defects, infections, depression, cardiovascular disease, and many types of cancers. It also causes permanent disability and death.

Over the past two decades in Iraq alone, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tons have been used, irradiating the entire country, some areas more than others. In her October 2009 presentation to the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia International Conference to Criminalize War, Al-Azzawi accused America and Britain of:

"subject(ing) the whole nation of Iraq for two decades to torture and slow death through the intentional use of radioactive weapons and the sanctions. The continuous and intentional use of (these) weapons is a crime against humanity due to its undifferentiating harmful health effects on civilians in contaminated areas tens of years to come after the military engagements."

Radiation, in fact, is permanent, affecting unborn generations like living ones.During the Gulf War, about 320 tons were used in southern Iraq, affecting the Basra region. Post-conflict, "comprehensive" examination detected it, especially "in and around Basra City," showing:

• "high gamma radiation" levels;

• "soil samples from 39 locations (with) higher activities than natural background levels;" and

• "Surface water channel sediments (with 2 - 3) times higher radioactivity than the natural background" level.

Contamination was widespread, affecting at least "45 percent of people in the area, the Iraqi troops, and" coalition ones. As a result, soldiers (and civilians) exposed "to DU oxides (can expect) 70 cancer cases per 1,000" persons. Perhaps a higher incidence over time, and along with other illnesses and diseases, an epidemic of human affliction.

Subsequent epidemiological studies in Basra showed a "five times rise in the incidence rate of malignancies amongst children to be far more noticeable from 1995 onward." In addition, exposure to ionized radiation caused:

• higher child leukemia rates;

• a "sixfold increase in congenital malformations among births in Basra City since 1995 onward," some too disturbing to view; and

• higher rates of congenital heart diseases and chromosomal aberrations.

Even more destructive weapons were used in the 2003 war, including banned ones like napalm, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, and greater amounts of DU — "against people, infrastructure facilities, and environment." Further, "the looting and burning of factories, industrial complexes, laboratories, and ministries (including the looting of the Tuwaitha Atomic Energy Agency, and 300 other highly contaminated sites....)" caused contamination.

Much more as well across the country in Baghdad and suburbs, Basra, Mosul, Fallujah, Balad, Anbar, Haditha, Qa'im, Rawa, Kerbala, Najar, Aubaidi, Diala, Samara, Tikrit, Baiji, Ahsaiba, Mada'in, Kubaissa, and other locations.

In March 2009, Gideon Polya used the Just Foreign Policy estimate of 1.32 million Iraqi deaths post-March 2003 alone, a number considerably higher today. It's also well below his post-9/11 eight million "war on terror" total, mostly affecting women and children, aged five and younger, killed by war, diseases, and/or depravation, America's horrific ongoing genocidal legacy — air-brushed from history. Al-Azzawi adds more:

• at least 4.5 internal or external refugees, many victimized by "militias and police raids and terrorist groups;"

• death squads targeting "certain ethnic and sectarian groups" daily; and

• in cities throughout Iraq, sieges cutting off "all life support aids on people, (affecting) thousands of children, women and elderly who could not leave their houses and were subjected to collective punishment...."

For weeks, these areas were deprived of food, water, health care, and electricity. As a result, contaminated water was used "from ditches and nearby rivers," causing cholera and other waterborne diseases.

The continuous use of DU weapons in heavily populated areas exposes millions to its destructive effects. Further, "Continuous negligence of medical care systems, hospitals, and the killing of prominent medical and health-care specialists....after 2003" exacerbated a widespread health crisis.

Yet occupation forces provide no data on civilians killed, wounded, kidnapped or otherwise harmed. Nor do they allow "exploration programs to detect (DU) related contaminated areas." Yet they're vitally needed to "help Iraqi people....cope with the damages."

Known evidence shows "Continuous deterioration of environmental quality....in Baghdad City due to explosions, and heavy traffic of tanks and vehicles...." Concentrations of numerous toxins way exceed safe levels. "Water quality deterioration caused an increase in "pathogenic water born diseases like cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, (and) others." Air pollution results from continuous bombing and explosions.

The "multiple impact of all of the above pollution sources on the human body can be critical, especially for children, women and the elderly people."From DU munitions alone, Al-Azzawi told the Kuala Lumpur conference that contamination is spread over vast areas by "wind storms, duststorms, sandstorms, and rainstorms," besides polluted waterways and surface migration in soil, causing:

• "Siltation, creeping, and suspension from contaminated soil to atmosphere; (and)

• Suspension and re-suspension of deposited DU aerosols....the most dangerous and critical pathway of transfer and spreading from source to the human population."

America and Britain are responsible "for exposing a whole nation to the risk of continually receiving high radioactive and toxic persistent contaminants," including DU and many others, a noxious brew leaving no one untouched and many lethally harmed. "This is a crime against humanity (because of) its undifferentiated harmful health impacts on civilians long (after) military operations" are concluded.

A final comment

On Sept. 19, Brussels Tribunal Executive Committee member Dirk Adriaensens headlined, "Iraq: The Age of Darkness," explaining "a devastating balance sheet (of) success," including:

• a 150 percent increase in child mortality since 1990;

• only half of primary-aged children in school;

• about 1,500 children in (horrific) detention facilities;

• in 2007, about "5 million Iraqi orphans;"

• over two million external refugees and almost three million internal ones (IDPs);

• official unemployment at 50 percent; real unemployment at least 70 percent;

• at least 43 percent of Iraqis "in abject poverty;"

• at least eight million need "emergency aid;"

• at least four million "lack food and are in dire need of humanitarian assistance;"

• at least 80 percent lack "effective sanitation;"

• "Religious minorities are on the verge of extinction;" and

• an Oxfam survey showed 33 percent of women got no humanitarian aid since 2003; 76 percent of widows lack pension help; 52 percent are unemployed; 55 percent have been displaced; and 55 percent have been "subjected to (various forms of) violence."

In Iraq today, "killing of innocent people has become part of daily life." America is committing genocide against the entire population. It persists daily unreported, yet called "a success."It includes death, destruction, torture, terror, occupation, displacement, disease, and insecurity in a nation that no longer exists. For sure, one unfit to live in — unsafe, corrupt, terrorized, tyrannized, contaminated, and permanently occupied. In virtually all rankings that matter, Iraq scores last, Afghanistan second last, a testimony to America's liberating values.

They're run from Washington with no functioning governments, de facto satraps instead obeying their imperial masters. Yet on Aug. 31, declaring an "end to the combat mission in Iraq," Obama outrageously said: "Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility," infamously displaying his culpability as a war criminal, matching the worst America ever produced.

Under him, George Bush, and their successors, "Iraq has no viable future," Adriaensens' final assessment of America's "success."

— Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net Also visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com

Iraq: Gay Life and Death

There were bullet holes across his chest when I found him in the room.They were merely a decoration on his black T-shirt, tight against his broad shoulders and puffy biceps. He reminded me of a "Sopranos" character, with the fake bullet holes surrounding the word Mafia. He was only 25, but his gelled hair was thinning, a soul patch adorning a scruffy face.

He seemed afraid to look directly at me, tight-gripped hands wringing, his nervousness compounded by the time he was left alone to think as he awaited my tardy arrival. An improvised explosive device, or IED, was found near my hotel, and I was nearly an hour late.

We met in the Baghdad office of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, a coalition run by Yanar Mohammed, who has been active in helping persecuted gays. She was overseas during my visit, but her staff helped me interview men, some of whom lived in Sadr City, a poor, largely Shia Muslim area of Baghdad at the heart of the insurgency, and named for militia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr’s father. Many on her staff lived there and had gay friends.

Mohammed (anyone identified by first name only in this series has been given a pseudonym, to protect their privacy and safety), the young man I was meeting, had just secured a visa that would get him out of the country within a week of our interview.

An organization that mostly serves women, many widowed, who have suffered horrifically since the US invasion, OWFI has an open door policy to anyone needing assistance. With my limited knowledge of Arabic, I noticed that the staff used the polite term "mithlee" for homosexual, rather than more offensive labels common among Iraqis.

I met with men on the Sadr City death lists, the postings placed throughout this part of Baghdad by Muqtada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Mohammed was on the list for many reasons, not just his sexuality; the calculus that determines death sentences in Baghdad is jumbled and terrifyingly far-reaching.

My interviews at the women’s center were difficult not only because many men were reluctant to fully explain why they faced persecution, but also because of the OWFI’s office layout. There was no privacy as people watched interviews; little children sometimes played in the room, climbing into my lap as I tried to make sense of a cacophony of languages — English, Arabic, and Kurdish.

A loud air-cooler made hearing difficult, but the power repeatedly blacked out, easing the burden until the Badhdad heat became overwhelming. Still, the welcoming staff made the OWFI one of my favorite places in Baghdad.

Mohammed told me he loves Americans, showing me a cell phone picture of himself with American soldiers. It’s part of what sparked having his name put on the death list. As I tried to dig deeper, he paused, sighed, and told me, "because I drank and stayed out late" and because of his tight Western clothes that showed off the body he built up at a gym eventually shut by the militias as un-Islamic.

Members of the Mahdi Army "phoned me and threatened me," he said, his words translated by others in the room. Though he never told me why, the militia killed his brother, and his panicked family sent him into hiding. Mohammed told me the name of his brother’s killer, someone the women’s group is familiar with. On another visit, I watched a video of the killer.

I came to learn that in Baghdad people know the murderers in their midst, but can do nothing to stop them. Because of the numerous grounds on which murder victims are singled out, it is quite possible that the number of gay killings has been undercounted, with families saying other motivations were at play.

Mohammed was almost kidnapped during a Mahdi Army visit to his house. "Many of us are on the lists," he told me of his group of friends, and "there are many guys who look like Mahdi Army, and they come to my home. They ask who is this guy, why does he visit you," about one of his friends. "Twelve friends are on the list, twelve names, and that people must kill me. I had one friend who had a car come up beside him, and they shot him and they killed him. Another friend was kidnapped, and we do not know what has happened. Still we have not heard from him. I leave my neighborhood, because it is dangerous."

He looked down again at his twisted hands.

Mohammed was brought to the women’s center by a neighborhood friend, Nadeem, who told me the full story of the murdered friend, killed in front of a Sadr City café popular with gay men, strafed by machine gun fire by men on motorcycles. Nadeem pulled up the cuffs of his jeans and showed me markings on his legs, made, he said, by the gravel forced up by the motorcycle wheels. Sensing that I was skeptical, he pointed at his eyes and shouted, "I saw it with my own eyes!" again and again.

"All the people in the coffee shop went back to their house," Nadeem continued. "All the people, they go, afraid of the Mahdi Army, afraid for all the people. They are doing with the army and the government, because all the people in the government are with the Islamic party." Sometime after midnight the day of the machine gun attack, he said, the café, by then empty, was firebombed.

Nadeem, who was often at the women’s center, was in his early 20s, skinny, and with his spiky hair, funky clothes, and flamboyant manner, he could have been a member of an Iraqi boyband. Sometimes, he wore tight jeans, and at others, unbelted loose pants that rode low enough to show off his underwear. His wrists were always adorned with gold chains. That’s fashion to die for in Sadr City, and he said gay neighbors who dressed like that had been murdered.

He pantomimed how he got ready to leave his house, showing how he would wear plain clothing on the streets and then, after arriving at the center, change into fashionable Western clothes and gel his hair, washing it out before returning home.

Nadeem never specifically said he was gay, but spoke freely of his gay friends and of frequenting Sadr City cafés popular with gays. He explained that the firebombed café was rebuilt, but gay men are afraid to return. "I will visit and take pictures on my phone," he said. It was a simple café, with one window and a single chair on the street, so small, "it don’t have a name [and] is a secret," except to "every gay in Tharwa City," Nadeem said, using another name for Sadr City, which is also known as Revolution City, so called because it was constructed after the1950s overthrow of the monarchy.

"Because it is a small area and three million people," the café’s secret did not last. The density of Sadr City, with its conservative, insular norms, makes it a dangerous place for gays and others who embrace Western ways, even as more secular parts of Baghdad have opened their arms to nightlife.

Ali, who works at the women’s center, told me, "Sadr City is very small, the culture, everyone knows what someone else is doing. People ask, 'What is this friend doing? Is this friend gay or not?’" Looking at Mohammed, he added that the Mahdi Army has "spies with the youth to know who is gay."

Even as he recounted his death threats and his brother’s murder, Mohammed remained largely reserved. But at the mention of the Mahdi Army spies, he suddenly became more emotional. "Many eyes, many neighbors," he told me, adding, "They see everything, they see every home and now they go inside the government. They have a good license to kill. They kill the puppies because they are gay, because of the occasions, because of the parties from the new year."

He made a starling assertion, one echoed by Hassan, the Iraqi LGBT contact, but labeled impossible by officials I interviewed from foreign governments — that the murders are now spearheaded by the Sawa, also known as the Awakening, the US-backed Sunni militia that has challenged the power of both the Shia Mahdi Army and the Sunni Al-Queda. "It was the Mahdi Army" doing the killings, Mohammed said, "but now the new cover is the Sawa. They are now the ones killing."

With chaotic side conversations going on around me, I almost didn’t hear his comment that "they call my mother and told her I was to be killed because I was gay." His family, he said, wants "their son to be outside Iraq. To be free, to feel free."

As the interview concluded, Mohammed told me, "Nobody in my country cares about my case, so I leave." It came out as a polite but sad plea. As he stood up, I noticed how brawny he is and remarked that if I were to run into him, I would be afraid he could beat me up. Muscles, he said, are no protection from bullets. If the killers see "me face to face, they shoot me with a gun and they run."

When I told Yanar in an email about the difficulty in getting Mohammed and others to talk directly about being gay, she responded, "Men in our culture would never admit to being gay… In six years of work in OWFI, only two Iraqi men told me — in private — that they are gay."

She added that Iraqi male bisexuality has a familiar paradox: "They would not admit that both guys who have sex are equally gay. It is a macho culture which respects the male part of the intercourse." That attitude seems to fuel the rapes gay men suffer at security checkpoints.

A beautiful black woman from the Sudan working at OWFI, herself a war refugee who reminded me of the model Iman, told me about a male prostitute who had shown up asking for shelter. Veiled and trying to hide her emotions, she couldn’t help tearing up as she described how he was covered in blood, desperate for his life.

"He was taken by four men and raped and beaten," in the neighborhood of Bedowin, which is known for male and female prostitution. She washed the blood off him, bandaged him, and the group sheltered him for a few days. After that, he returned to Bedowin. "Why would he go back there?" she said.

The staff also told me of male sexual slavery and the harvesting of body parts. One orphaned boy of 15 was adopted by a government official. "He secluded him for prostitution," sometimes "dressing him up as a girl, and everybody came to him for sex. He was obliged to work as a slave" an OWFI staffer told me, emphasizing that the official was from Babylon, a city that I found many Iraqis equate with homosexuality. Its modern name is Hilla, with residents described as Hili. Ali Hili of Iraqi LGBT purposely incorporates this reference to Babylon in the name he created to protect his true identity; it is a signifier gay Iraqis will understand.

The boy’s fate could have proved more dire down the road. "He wants to sell him, his heart and other parts of the body, his kidney," the staffer told me of the government official’s intentions." No one would care if another gay prostitute wound up dead, he said.But the adopted youth, along with two others forced into sexual slavery, escaped. "One of them was killed, and one of them, he used a sham passport and he fled to Syria," I was told.

Several months later, I visited Syria and learned from locals that about 9,000 gay Iraqi male refugees are living in Damascus, half with their families who were escaping Iraq’s violence, the rest who went there alone solely to escape gay persecution. That figure, however, represents a tiny percentage of the nearly one million Iraqi refugees who have resettled there.

A Very Different View

He came into the hotel restaurant, calm and confident. He was 24, handsome with a generous smile, short, curly brown hair, and a toned body. His clothing was simple, nothing fashionable. The youngest of a large professional family, he worked in the computer field and was applying to graduate schools in the US and Europe.

Haider and I met on Manjam, the gay cruising website, a tool I have used before to connect with gay Iraqi men, though I make clear my intentions are journalistic. Haider was very interested in meeting, worried about what was happening to gay men in Baghdad. "I’ll help you and support you as much as I can," he said in one message, telling me later, "I hope to establish a website and a small office that can help the gays to face their problems and make their lives more better."

His worries did not seem personal; he described himself as masculine and said he fell under the radar of suspicion about his sexuality. "The gays are safer than the she-males," he said, using a term for transgenders I heard often in Baghdad. "I don’t like to talk about them because they are killed every day at the checkpoints. Every day we must pass through eight checkpoints, so when they see someone with woman’s face and color, and they will cut him and punish him and maybe have sex with him."

Effeminate gay men and transgender Iraqis suffer similar problems, forced into sexual encounters in trucks or trailers at the checkpoints. Usually, "it is oral sex," Haider explained, sometimes at gunpoint. If a gay man "is afraid and having long hair and clothes that are not normal, then he will be having many problems at the checkpoint." Haider told me of a friend who fought back, making it "difficult to rape him."

But for Haider, "nothing" happens at the checkpoint. The guards assume he is straight, and he passes without incident. His family has no suspicions about his orientation. In fact, since our meeting took place during Ramadan, when sexual activity is supposed to be curtailed, his brother was worried he was clandestinely meeting a girl the day I interviewed him. Haider explained that his closeness with his family is the major source of his conflict about being gay.

"I hope someday to face my father and my mother and tell them that I am gay and cannot get married, but I find it now very difficult," he said. He fears getting older, that one day he might essentially have to give up being gay. Wistfully, he asked me, "They tell me when you are gay and you get married, you leave the gay community. Is that true?"

It was Manjam that helped him enter the community, when he turned 18. His close friends are much like him — good-looking, masculine men from large, educated families who enjoy nightlife. One of Haider’s friends came out to his parents, but the others also worry that as they age they will marry to appease their families. Two of his friends married, but are now divorced.

Haider and his friends have traveled to meet gay men in other parts of the country — he mentioned gay parties in Erbil, the capital of Kurdish Iraq, and even in the religious city of Karbala. His goal is to create coming-out resources to strengthen the community, yet he knew nothing of the Iraqi LGBT safe houses, nor was he aware of the Human Rights Watch Report on gay killings in Iraq.

He talked about friendship networks sheltering individual gay men, but nothing more formal than that. One of the men his friends helped rescue was a gay Syrian with long hair. "He stayed with our friends for two weeks, to be safe," Haider said, adding, "When I see him out at the party, I ask him, 'How did you come here to the party? It is so dangerous.’"

Haider told me of his first love, a man he never met in person, who was a translator for the Iraqi Army. In 2004, they chatted for several months online. He was on his way to Baghdad for their first meeting when "his car was destroyed by a bomb." Haider looked away, his face sad with nostalgia. "I miss him," Haider said, adding that every Iraqi loved someone who died in the war.

But war has also brought Haider closer to gay America. He told me I was not the first gay journalist to contact him on Manjam, mentioning a reporter based in San Francisco. "But it is difficult, he is far from us," he explained.

Haider also befriended a gay US soldier guarding his neighborhood police station, the playful taunting by other American personnel the clue to the GI’s orientation. "I immediately told him, and he told me," Haider said of their mutual coming out.

Haider has seen "Brokeback Mountain" on a pirated DVD, and was moved by "Touch of Pink," a Canadian-British film about a gay Muslim man pressured to marry. He also mentioned "Shelter" and "Dante’s Cove" from HereTV, which he finds on the Internet, a form of communication forbidden under Saddam. I later sent him DVDs through my friend Amanda, who moved to Baghdad after we traveled there.

Haider promised to bring me to the ShiSha Café, the idea of showing off Baghdad nightlife animating him. The capital city, he said, is a place "to be just for yourself, to be having fun, to be going out. Baghdad is beautiful in the night."

Glamour, Politics & Death

"Where are you?" was the surprising text. I stared down at the small screen in my lap and quickly clicked out, "In the parking lot." I was early. Never before had I met an Iraqi concerned about time. I knew this interview would be different.

My appointment was with Maysoon Al-Damluji, a member of the Iraqi Parliament from the secular Iraqi National List, or Iraqiya, headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The party won the most seats in the March 2010 elections, though Iraq’s new government has still not formed. Al-Damluji is a liberal, secular politician, a leading women’s rights activist, insistent that Ramadan was not stopping her from working — or eating.

I tried contacting other government officials, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Michael Salim, about the gay killings, but Al-Damluji is the only one I could arrange a meeting with. It’s hard to know if it was Ramadan, the controversial topic, or faulty Iraqi communication that kept me from garnering more interviews.

Al-Damluji sat on the sofa across from me with her hands demurely crossed, breaking them apart to draw on thin Davidoff cigarettes. She struck me as elegant and worldly, and I imagine she was stunning when she was young.

In the room with us, behind me at a desk, was another female politician. Her thick black hair was in a Bettie Page, and she wore a gleaming white, structured Dior-esque suit, giving a sense of 1940s Arab glamour, a circular mural behind her like a glowing halo. This woman spoke no English, but smiled and nodded frequently, and I would turn to her to include her in the conversation.

Several men attended to them, one serving us tiny cups of thick Turkish coffee, spiced with cardamom. Another man, tall, in a dark suit, self-effacingly stepped into the office with a limp. When he entered, I held a gasp — his face looked as if it had been smashed in half and crudely put back together.

Al-Damluji and I have many friends in common, based on her former role as deputy minister of Culture. Despite her liberalism, what she said about LGBT rights will likely shock Westerners; gays, she believes, should return to the closet.

"Homosexuality exists in every society," she said. "It is not a new thing, but in this part of the world homosexuals have had to remain discreet, and I understand that they have their own communities. However, as I said, they are discreet and they don’t come out. What has happened recently is that for some reason, they have come out and forming nightclubs and such likes. I don’t think the time is ripe for this kind of action now. I am concerned about the safety of all human beings. I mean I am sorry that it happens, but I do hope that they remain discreet until things become different."

When I asked her opinion of the murders, she said, "I am against killing, full stop," and looked at me as if it were a strange question. When I reminded her that plenty of Iraqis, even those with political power, favor the killings, we both laughed nervously. "Well not me, not me, I am sorry," she said.Al-Damluji was the first Iraqi I met who had seen the Human Rights Watch report covered in Arabic media.

A few decades ago, she explained, "there were a number of well known poets and people who were in the front line who were also known as homosexuals. There was more toleration in the ’40s — maybe ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s — than there is now. This is not only in Iraq, this is throughout the Arab world." After naming some of the openly gay artists from the past, she said, "This kind of thing is not tolerated these days, and as I say I do care about the safety of all, including homosexuals. I really hope they remain discreet."

When I told her I was curious how she was even comfortable talking about the issue, Al-Damluji responded, "I don’t feel comfortable. But the reason I do talk about it, not feeling comfortable, is that one has to give another image of Iraqis. Not everyone is a madman with an axe, trying to kill a homosexual."

Gay issues, she said, have created a stigma regarding all human rights work in Iraq. "Every time we speak about human rights, we are accused of supporting homosexuality," she said. "It has to be separated, otherwise we lose all human rights."

Prior to my trip, in May 2009, I met with Jared Polis, the openly gay Democratic congressman from Colorado, who was just back from his own visit to Baghdad. He told me he spoke with Iraqi politicians about the gay murders, but contacts from foreign governments working in Baghdad’s Green Zone told me they’re not confident that American politicians can make much headway in seriously addressing the issue with their Iraqi counterparts.

"Iraqis that I bring it up with visibly get uncomfortable," one foreign government worker investigating the killings told me. "They just want to get through that part." He tries to impress on them that the issue "got a lot of publicity… in the Western press," and that "it does reflect badly on Iraq, even though it is a small portion of the people."

The Human Rights Watch report said that hundreds of gay men have been the victims of targeted killings; the London-based Iraqi LGBT pegs the number at nearly 700 in recent years. My visit to Iraq came at a time when the bombing of a government ministry killed more than 100 people in a single day.

"Why are you focused on this issue?’" my foreign government source told me Iraqi politicians say, when "we have a number of problems in Iraq. This affects a very small minority of individuals… You’re focusing all your efforts, a great deal of your efforts, on this issue, when we have bombs going off, we have two million widows."

The foreign government worker understands this perspective, but nonetheless remains shaken by the gay murders. "What caught our attention was the gruesomeness of those kinds of attacks," he told me, revulsion crossing his face, making it hard for him to speak. Though he emphasized that you never "get desensitized to violence," he explained, "When a car bomb goes off and people die, you read about it and you kind of move on. When you read a report about individuals taping shut the anus of someone and watching them — " The man stopped, as if he couldn’t describe the things he has been told, before saying, " — that kind of has, viscerally, an impact on you."

But the same man told me Gay City News readers shouldn’t expect miracles in Iraq. Foreign governments don’t have much influence, even if we might think the opposite looking in from afar. "I think that the gay press," he told me, and "even the mainstream press, to a certain extent, and the centers for policy expect us to be able to march into the prime minister’s office and say this is bad, you’ve got to stop the violence, where as in reality, in our view, that would have a pretty negative backlash and actually hurt the people that we are trying to protect. So we’ve taken a much more low-key and under-the-radar approach in talking to the key officials."

I heard this repeated throughout Iraq. I interviewed an American woman working in the north of Iraq who contributed to the Human Rights Watch report. She said she was shocked by staff working for her on that research who, after collecting information for the report, made comments indicating that they were repulsed by learning of gay life in Iraq.

One Iraqi, who gave me extensive help and knows many closeted men through his work in the cultural sphere, wanted to make clear his opinion on gays. "I must be frank with you," he said. "I am not in favor of open homosexuality in my country, but I don’t think people should be killed for who they are. You must approach it from a human rights perspective, not gay rights. It is not that way in this country."

He also offered a warning: "There are many in government who would want you killed for looking at this. They will tell you they are against the killings to your face, but then they would say something different. And remember in your own country, if politicians could have people killed for being gay, they would."

He mentioned the police bashings in a Fort Worth gay bar that happened around the time of my Iraq trip, and he also joked about former Senator Larry Craig’s problems at the Minneapolis airport. "Gay Iraqi politicians are the worst on the topic," he said, breaking into laughter when I asked for names of some of them to interview.

In Maysoon Al-Damluji’s office, we discussed a mutual friend, a ballet dancer seeking asylum in the US after the murder of many of her friends and family. Cultural figures like politicians are often the targets of killings. "There was a time when I used to get threats almost every single day," Al-Damluji said. "But you learn to become fatalistic when you live in this part of the world."I told her I take the same view about being a visiting journalist in Baghdad."Well I know," she said, "coming to Iraq and talking about homosexuality."Nervous laughter hit both of us as we said goodbye.

In the next issue’s installment, Michael T. Luongo visits Sadr City and safe houses for gay men and encounters both spies and Baghdad’s nightlife scene.