Iraqi Palestinians living in miserable conditions

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees forced out of their homes in war-torn Iraq and settled eventually in Brazil have complained of the miserable conditions they and their families are experiencing because no one is taking care of them

In an appeal they sent to international human rights institutions, including the UNHCR, the refugees asserted they haven’t tasted the meaning of living since they arrived in Brazil two years ago, adding that many of them suffer from chronic diseases but no adequate medical attention was given to them in this regard.

"Many of us are sick but no one extend a hand of help for us… the ESAF organization that supervise us isn't fit to care for animals let alone caring for human being? This organization pays no respect to the simplest human needs… if they promise they tell a lie, and they rarely visit us… they don’t mind what happens to us", said the refugees in the appeal call.

They added, "The UNHCR which is the sponsor of all this program specified a period of two years for a humanitarian program it had planned for us since we left Iraq, but the period has expired now, and they told us to mange our own affairs from now on".

But the refugees confirmed they couldn’t manage their own affairs due to the poor economic condition and inadequate job opportunities in Brazil that made them unable to find job and live independently.

"We are foreigners here, and we have a culture, language, and traditions which are different from that of Brazilians that must be taken into consideration before anyone ask us to manage our own affair", the refugees underlined, fearing they and their families would end up begging in the streets and searching for food in the garbage.

As far as the Palestinian embassy in Brazil is concerned, the refugees underscored that officials of the embassy did not even bother themselves to pay a visit to the refugees despite the persistent appeals they are sending to them to look into their situation.

"If no one could ensure an honorable life conditions for us and for our children, then they should work hard to return us back to our own country Palestine" they stressed.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in Iraq were forced out of their homes at gunpoint at the hands of armed Iraqi militias shortly after the USA and its allies invaded Iraq and ousted Iraq's President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Palestinian Information Center

Aziz May Die in Months

Saddam Hussein’s deputy and former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, may die within months and should be freed from prison "as a humanitarian gesture," his eldest son said.

"He won’t survive more than two to three months," Ziad Tariq Aziz said of his father in a phone interview today from Amman, Jordan. The 74-year-old has had three strokes in the eight years he has been in prison and can no longer speak or walk, his son said. The family has sent medicine to his Baghdad jail "but no one knows if he took it or not," he added.

In October, a court set up to try senior members of the former Baathist regime condemned Aziz to death "for the persecution of Islamic parties," including the Shiite Muslim Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. President Jalal Talabani has refused to sign the order, joining the Vatican, Russia and Greece, along with the United Nations and the European Union, in objecting to the sentence, given Aziz’s age and health.

At least eight other senior Baathists are being held in Iraq. Their fate remains one of the most delicate issues facing al-Maliki’s government, which has pledged to heal sectarian rifts between Shiite Muslims and Sunnis, who dominated Hussein’s inner circle, and bring stability to the country as U.S. troops prepare to exit at the end of the year.

Hussein’s Execution

Talabani is against the death penalty on principle and has never signed off on an execution, including the December 2006 hanging of Hussein, which embarrassed the Iraqi government when a video emerged showing the former president being taunted at the gallows by Shiites. Under the constitution, death sentences must be ratified by the president, though an act of parliament or a veto by a vice president can override the presidential decision.

An appeal against his father’s death sentence was filed within the legal period of 30 days after he was condemned to die, and no one knows where the process stands, Ziad Aziz said.

The court ruling came as Iraqi leaders competed to form a new government after March’s inconclusive elections, and was politically motivated, the son added. Presiding Judge Mahmoud Saleh al-Hassan ran unsuccessfully for parliament as part of al- Maliki’s coalition, saying he would humiliate "Baathist tyrants".

"The entire world is against the implementation of execution. This is about revenge, not justice," said Ziad Aziz, 44. "They’ve implicated my father in everything, in every single case you can imagine. He’s been apportioned blame for issues that never even fell within the realm of his responsibilities."

Prison Sentences

Before Aziz received the death penalty, he had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the execution of 42 merchants and a further seven for helping to plan the forced displacement of Kurds from northeastern Iraq. He was acquitted of charges he had a role in the killing of Shiite protesters.

Aziz, a Christian from Mosul, met Hussein in the 1950s when they were activists for the then-banned Baath party and rose through the ranks when it came to power in 1968. When the U.S. issued a deck of cards to portray the most-wanted regime leaders after the 2003 invasion, Aziz was the eight of spades.

Ziad Aziz said he last saw his father on April 24, 2003, the day he surrendered to U.S. forces. Tariq Aziz was held in a U.S.-run prison before being handed over to Iraqi authorities in July as part of the Obama administration’s phased pullout of American forces.

The younger Aziz said al-Maliki’s new government should show mercy toward his father, citing the case of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who has cancer and was returned to Libya on compassionate grounds in 2009 after being imprisoned in Scotland for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

"As a humanitarian gesture, release my father," Aziz said.

By Massoud A Derhally and Caroline Alexander, Bloomberg.To contact the reporters on this story: Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut, Lebanon, at mderhally@bloomberg.net. Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Louis Meixler at lmeixler@bloomberg.net

Iraq marks army's 90th anniversary

Iraq's army on Thursday marked the 90th anniversary of its 1921 founding with a huge military parade that included tanks and artillery weapons in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Commander-in-chief Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, standing on a small wooden platform at the foot of the imposing Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, took the salute as hundreds of soldiers marched past in the Armed Forces Day parade.

Also on show were 10 Abrams tanks Iraq has bought from the United States, whose forces are to withdraw from the country this year. A total of 140 such tanks to be delivered by the end of 2011.

About 20 helicopters and 10 training aircraft flew over the parade, but there were no fighters, as most of those were destroyed in the 2003 US-led invasion."We in the national unity government will not let the army be politicised, and it will be for all, not for a specific faction," Maliki said in a speech after placing a wreath on the tomb.

"Under the dictatorship it became the authority's politicised army. It was the enemy army against neighbouring countries, and the people," he said, referring to the regime of executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

"While we are working on building a stable country, we want an army that doesn't carry any hatred for any country, and that is based on protecting the people, not like it was during the collapsed regime," Maliki said.

"All of us in the executive, legislative and judicial authorities, must work to build a non-politicised army that is able to protect the country, and must arm it and train it according to the needs of the country."

US forces dismantled the Iraqi army after toppling Saddam in 2003 in a move later widely panned for having put hundreds of thousands of men with military training out of work and potentially driving them into the arms of insurgents.

Since August 31, 2010, the main focus for the roughly 50,000 US troops remaining in the country is training police and the Iraqi army, which numbers about 300,000 men.

Under a security accord between Baghdad and Washington, the remaining American forces are to withdraw by the end of 2011.But though US forces are to withdraw, army chief of staff Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari has said the Iraqi army will still need American support.

"The army will be fully ready in 2020," Zebari told AFP in August. "If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020."

According to an AFP tally based on figures from the Iraqi defence, interior and health ministries released over the course of 2010, 429 soldiers were killed in violence that year -- an increase of 204 on the year before.

Maliki, who was approved by parliament for a second term of office along with a national unity cabinet on December 21 after more than nine months of political deadlock, has cited security as one of his top three priorities.

By Jacques Clement (AFP)

2,000 Iraqi army officers killed

Attacks, mainly by silencer guns and explosive devices targeting Iraqi army officers, have surged recently and more than 2,000 officers are reported to have been killed in the past few months.

Intelligence sources, refusing to be named, said in the face of the "new form of terror," Iraqi security forces have intensified their searches of individuals and vehicles particularly in Baghdad.

The intelligence sources said there were organized "assassination groups" whose main target was killing Iraqi army officers.To check the upsurge in violence directed at Iraqi army officers, the government says it is ready to pay more than $40,000 for informers on the deadly assassins.

A senior intelligence officer admitted that "these assassination networks" had infiltrated security, police and government ranks and were using government-licensed vehicles and identity cards to carry out their attacks.

Jihad al-Jaberi of the anti-explosive squad said "up to five army officers are killed by silencer guns" in Baghdad every week.Jaberi refused to deny or admit unidentified intelligence officer reports that more than 2,000 army officers have been killed so far.

However, Jaberi said assassination networks had infiltrated Baghdad and were very active. "They have their own intelligence gathering methods. They monitor their targets carefully and only attack when they are absolutely sure they are not be caught.""The past few days have seen an extensive campaign by these networks," he added.

By Karim Abdulzair, Azzaman

Iraq Moves to Ban Toy Guns

The Ministry of Health here is campaigning to ban the sale of guns in Iraq. Toy guns, that is.

Baghdad’s toy markets are stocked with plastic weapons in all prices and sizes: toy guns, tanks, knives, uniforms, even silencers. In a country where guns and military gear are heartbreakingly prevalent, basic training begins early.

“It’s the responsibility of the community to get rid of these toys,” said Dr. Emad Abdulrazaq, national adviser for mental health at the ministry. “They make it easier for a child to make the next step to real violence, because every day he enjoys guns.”

The ministry, which itself has no authority to regulate toy sales, has urged the government to ban all toy weapons. But for now it is concentrating on one: a cheap plastic air pistol highly popular among boys that fires plastic pellets and has been the source of hundreds, possibly thousands, of eye injuries.Dr. Kudair al-Tai, head of the technical department at Ibn al-Haytham Hospital, the country’s main eye hospital, is one of those waging the campaign.

On a recent morning, Dr. Tai examined the eye of a 5-year-old boy named Mustafa, searching for scratches or internal bleeding. In late November, during Id al-Adha, the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, the boy was playing with his neighbors when one of them fired an air pistol, hitting him in the eye. The boy looked alright, but for seven days he cried and could not sleep. Finally, his father took him to the eye hospital, where Dr. Tai discovered a yellow plastic pellet the size of a small pea lodged between his eyeball and the surrounding socket. There was bleeding in the eye’s interior chamber and partial dislocation of the iris.

“He was lucky,” Dr. Tai said. Many children suffer much worse injuries from the pellets.

During the five-day celebration of Id al-Adha, when families give children money to buy toys, Dr. Tai said, he often sees several injuries from pellet guns a day, some severe enough to require surgery. This year he went on television to advise parents not to buy the guns.

“The problem is not with the parents who purchase these toys but with the merchants that import such kind of toys,” Dr. Tai said. Because the toys are popular, parents “cannot resist their children’s persistence,” he said. He said he had seen toy air pistols with a range of 50 yards.

Children here live amid the impact of real violence, both on the news and in their neighborhoods. During the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, bodies often remained on the streets for days before being collected. Few children have access to psychiatric care, which is deeply stigmatized. Iraqi families are often large, and the children share rooms with their parents, so they are not sheltered from adult television or conversation — both of which commonly refer to horrific violence, theatrical or real.

“We have our own horror scenes, we don’t need extra,” said a hospital ward matron, who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to talk to reporters. “It should all be banned, any fireworks. The other day I started shouting at neighborhood kids who were shooting at each other. But at least they shot at each other’s legs, so they wouldn’t hurt their eyes.”

At the markets on Karada Street, where pellet guns sold for $8 or less, merchants said toy guns were their most popular.“The culture of violence is dominant,” said one shop owner, Hussein Mohammed, who declines to sell pellet guns.

“Children are no longer interested in educational games,” he said at his store. “All they want to play with is the games that express power and violence.”Teachers said that living with so much violence in both their real and fantasy lives had made students quicker to fight and less patient with their studies.

Where students used to ask teachers to help resolve conflicts, now they rarely do so, said Instisar Mohammed, a primary school teacher in the Yarmouk neighborhood, where most residents are relatively well educated. “They resolve with their fists more easily,” she said. “They fight a lot more than they used to.” She added that “after 15 minutes in the classroom they do not pay attention anymore and start moving around, then fighting.”

A ban on toy weapons is unlikely because it would require action by a number of ministries, none of them responsible for public health. But the Trade Ministry is in talks with health experts about a ban on some imports, a ministry spokeswoman said.Mustafa, who was shot in the eye, said he no longer talked to the neighbors who shot him.“I don’t like them,” he said. When he grows up, he said, he wants to be an ophthalmologist.

His father, Raad Kharaibut, 62, said he had tried to persuade the neighbors not to allow their children to play with the guns, but to no avail. “I don’t bring home such things because I know they are harmful,” he said. “We’ve seen similar incidents. Guns are not nice and not civilized toys.”

Even without the toys, he said, his son would be growing up in a martial culture. “The child sees checkpoints, he sees the military stop traffic,” he said. “The soldier has the gear, he has the right to express his power. The boy wants to be like that.”

The larger danger, though, is that a childhood spent among guns, real and toy, will make children more likely to embrace any use of power, Dr. Abdulrazaq said. “In the short term, it makes them more hostile at home and in school,” he said. “They become more cruel. In the long term, it will encourage them to engage in more adventures with weapons. He will be more vulnerable to be recruited by police, criminals or terrorists.”

Real guns, he said, “will be an enjoyment, not a stress.”

But for many parents, the question of whether to have toy guns at home rests on more immediate considerations. “They like it,” said Saddam Abdulsalam, who buys toy guns for his six children, though one shot his brother in the eye.

Even his three daughters play with the guns. “This is the new generation,” he said. “They will grow out of it.”

By John Leland, the New York Times

US aid may help few Iraqi refugees

Jordan, one of two main destinations for Iraqis displaced by the US-led war, has received nearly $400 million in aid designed to help as many as 1 million Iraqis reported to have fled there. Much of the aid came from the United States and went to the Jordanian government directly.

The idea was that donors would help Jordan, and Jordan would help the Iraqis.

But it's now widely recognized that the actual number of Iraqis in Jordan is vastly smaller than originally thought. The inflated numbers mean more aid went to the Jordanian government, and some argue that that prevented the Iraqis from getting effective assistance.

Iraqi Christians: Better off than other Iraqi refugees?

"We could have dealt with 50,000 refugees, who had very little, much more effectively, provided the funding had been appropriate," says Harriet Dodd, who was country director for CARE International in Jordan during the crisis.

Indeed, many nongovernmental organization workers, academics, and independent researchers now say that the aid has failed to provide the help Iraqis needed, while significant funding went to programs that suited Jordan's national priorities – and thus, some argue, it aided Jordanians more than Iraqis.

Officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) counter that building up local institutions like schools, hospitals, and water systems is the only effective and fair way to help the Iraqis.

A 'revolutionary' schoolA prime example is a school in Dahiet Amir Hasan in East Amman being built with help from USAID. It is only half finished, but it's clear that it will be offering a very different kind of education from that offered at Jordan's other government-run schools.

The classrooms are spacious, and there's a gym, an art studio, and a music room. Downstairs are science labs, equipped with vapor hoods, sinks, and Bunsen burners, and set up for students to conduct experiments in groups.

None of it would seem out of place to an American 12-year-old, but in a country where rote learning is still the basis of most education, it's almost revolutionary."It's really based upon a new philosophy of teaching," says Jay Knott, head of USAID in Jordan, which is behind the project. "In the 21st century, teaching kids by rote method is ... not going to advance you toward the vision of a knowledge-based economy."

USAID is putting up these incredible schools in low-income neighborhoods all over Jordan; 28 are currently in the works. The agency is also renovating and expanding 100 existing schools, boosting Jordan's government as it struggles to meet the educational needs of a young and rapidly growing population.

But a portion of this work is being done with money allocated by Congress to aid Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

All Iraqi children have, since 2007, been officially allowed to attend Jordanian government schools. Funding from international donors helped make that possible, and Mr. Knott says US funding is helping to relieve some of the burden those schools have shouldered by educating Iraqis as well as Jordanians.

While some displaced Iraqis will surely benefit from the new schools, many of the most needy have been resettled to third countries, and more will be gone long before the first of the schools that are supposed to serve them opens in September 2011. Schools built in expectation of hundreds of poor Iraqi students may end up serving only handfuls, or none at all.

"The schools in East Amman, where the most vulnerable populations were, just didn't have very many Iraqis," says Jason Erb, assistant country director for Save the Children in Jordan during the refugee crisis.

US, UN give aid straight to Jordanian governmentThe number of Iraqis in Jordan has been contested since the crisis began. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Jordan office of the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, prepared for a flood of refugees fleeing the conflict. But Iraqis only trickled in slowly, fleeing persecution, looking for jobs, or waiting until things got better back home.

So UNHCR was surprised, in 2006, when some of its partner agencies started reporting substantial numbers of displaced Iraqis coming to them for aid. Early guesses suggested there were between 500,000 and 1 million Iraqis in the country.At first, Jordan seemed dismissive of the reports, and was accused by human rights groups of trying to hide a huge refugee crisis.

But as the US and other international donors scrambled to respond, the crisis turned into a source of cash: From 2007 to 2009, Jordan received close to $400 million in aid officially directed toward Iraqis, much of which went either to the Jordanian government directly, or into programs like USAID's school construction program.

The lion's share of the aid came from the US. In 2008, Congress authorized $200 million in supplemental aid funding for Iraqi refugees; $110 million went straight to the Jordanian government, another $45 million went to existing USAID programs working in the water, health, and education sectors. UNHCR also gave 61 percent of its budget to the Jordanian government in 2007.

US and UN officials say that the aid contributed to creating "protection space" for Iraqis, meaning access to some basic services and protection from harassment and deportation.Number of Iraqis likely far lower than estimatedA 2007 survey found only 161,000 Iraqis in Jordan, a fraction of whom appeared to be poor or persecuted people who needed aid or asylum.

Other data have backed up the low estimate of the survey – carried out by the Norwegian NGO Fafo and Jordan's Department of Statistics – including the number of Iraqis registered in schools, and the number registered as refugees with UNHCR.

USAID officials said in 2008 they were aware of the number of Iraqis in the individual schools they're working on, but they had been asked by the Jordanian government not to share that information because it was "sensitive."

Support for 'community approach'Some say that giving aid to one group of people in a poor neighborhood, but not their neighbors, could cause a backlash, and that supporting Jordan's institutions was actually the best way to help displaced Iraqis.

"It's the best approach to improving education and health care," Knott says. "It's a community approach, and that's what our programs are designed to undertake."Mr. Erb argues that the aid program, though imperfect, did help those who needed it the most; it's just that those were often Jordanians, not Iraqis.

"If you looked at donor intention, it might not really have hit the nail on the head. But that shouldn't be the only applicable standard, when the needs of everyone around are so much greater," he says. "As much as Iraqi refugees needed the assistance, it was frustrating sometimes that we had to focus so much on the Iraqis, because there was often greater need among Jordanians."

By Nicholas Seeley, The Christian Science Monitor

Services project gets new lease of life

A project providing vulnerable Iraqi children living in Jordan with psychosocial services is about to experience a rebirth thanks to a partnership agreement with the Noor Al Hussein Foundation’s Institute for Family Health (IFH), reached on Monday.

Terre des hommes Lausanne (Tdh), an international NGO, launched the project in September 2008 with funding from the European Commission and UNICEF Jordan, and although the funding ends in August 2011, the centre, located in Hashemi Shamali, will not be closing its doors.

Tdh formally recognised the partnership agreement during a ceremony yesterday, attended by Her Majesty, Queen Noor, according to a statement released by the King Hussein Foundation.

Project manager Steina Bjorgvinsdottir said the overall goal of the project was to provide Iraqi children and their families with specialised psychosocial assistance.

“In a move like this, when people become refugees, the family dynamics change so the work that we’ve done is to try to heal the family dynamics so that the family can come together as one and they can live a healthy family life,” she explained.

According to Bjorgvinsdottir, the project has helped more than 1,500 individuals by providing them with individual or family counselling since the centre first opened its doors in east Amman in September 2008.While the majority of the centre’s clients are Iraqi, Tdh also serves vulnerable Jordanian children and their families.

“This is quite special… although this is something that most international organisations would strive for, in practice it’s not something that takes place,” Bjorgvinsdottir noted, referring to the partnership with a local organisation that wants to continue the work.

IFH Director Manal Tahtamouni also commended the alliance, noting that the official handover ceremony marks an important milestone in Jordan, the celebration of a partnership between an international NGO and a national organisation.

“It’s a success story we need to present to the international family,” she said, adding that the institute has its work cut out, as it will have to secure new donor funding to continue offering psychosocial services at the centre beyond 2011, in addition to the comprehensive array of health services and outreach programmes it wants to offer.

“IFH will include health services, reproductive health, training and outreach activities… We will also try to target more vulnerable Jordanian families,” the statement quoted Tahtamouni as saying.

UNICEF Representative in Jordan Dominique Hyde also welcomed the partnership agreement.

“We are really glad the counselling for children and parents is continuing… Tdh did an extraordinary job of supporting vulnerable Iraqis and Jordanians in east Amman”, she said adding, “this is a real success story”.

JORDAN TIMES

Wales and the Question of Asylum

LAST year more than 1,500 people sought refuge in Wales claiming they faced persecution. David James examines the politically difficult question of asylum

IT is just one part of the controversial story of migration into Wales, yet one of the most politically difficult.

Every year, between 1,500 and 2,000 people ask for asylum in the UK and are housed in one of Wales’ four largest cities and towns.

As figures obtained by the Western Mail show, they come from more than 50 different countries across the world.

Their stories are often emotive tales of persecution, fleeing religious or sectarian violence in some of the world’s most troubled countries, yet more than half are turned down because they cannot prove the dangers they claim they face.

People who work closely with asylum seekers told the Western Mail that, in a political climate where successive governments have been under pressure to cut the number of people migrating into the UK, working with asylum seekers was fraught with difficulties.

Raad a Halabia, 49, an Iraqi Christian who has lived in Cardiff for nearly 30 years, works with asylum seekers through the organisation Asylum Justice.

He said one of the greatest difficulties was to help those in need while feeling frustrated that others had no legitimate claim. One of his fears is that granting too many applications will alienate the public against everyone who seeks refuge in this country.

“You hear stories that people face death and persecution, yet not everyone has a legitimate claim to stay,” he said.

Mr a Halabia is concerned about refugees from Iraq’s minority Christian community as they are often sent back to the north of Iraq because it is deemed safe, when they are not welcomed by the largely Muslim Kurdish community there.

Yet he criticises the Borders Agency for being too soft in other cases, arguing that it would only encourage applications from people who have no case to remain.

The agency’s difficulties are highlighted by controversial cases like that of Egyptian teenager Shrouk El-Attar, who has spent three formative years in Cardiff with her mother and is now fighting deportation after her mother’s claim was rejected.

The 18-year-old, who has cropped, dyed hair, argues she will face persecution as a lesbian in her staunchly Muslim homeland and says she has made a life here – yet the Home Office has fought her case in the courts as it does not recognise persecution over sexuality in Egypt as a cause for asylum.

Over recent years, as immigration has become a key political issue due to the rise of groups such as the British Nationalist Party, the Home Office has taken a tougher line.

It is likely to be one of the key reasons why the number of people seeking refuge in the UK has fallen from around 100,000 a year between 2000 and 2003 to 30,700 last year. Of those, 11,635 were last year deported, either voluntarily or by force.

Successful refugees now make up just more than 3% of the 560,000 migrants who come to the UK every year.

The Rev Aled Edwards is the chairman of the Displaced People In Action project which seeks to help to integrate refugees into society and educate the public about the value they can contribute.

He said Wales had been a world leader in treating asylum seekers and refugees, and had shown that offering medical treatment would not attract health tourists.

He said: “We have our prejudice and our difficulties but there was a report that showed quite significantly that Cardiff of all the major cities in the UK had the best attitude towards asylum seekers.”

One of the organisation’s projects is a scheme to retrain foreign doctors to work in the NHS and it has so far worked with 130 medics.

Asylum seekers are not allowed to work during the seven- and-a-half months that it takes, on average, to process an application for asylum and are often dependent on the state and charities.

Elizabeth Perret-Atkins, who works with a charity in Cardiff which hands out food parcels once a week to struggling asylum seekers, said that being unable to work was often their greatest frustration.

She said: “Many are highly skilled and they are frustrated that they are just wasting their time and cannot contribute.”

A spokesman for the Home Office said the 30,000 people who seek asylum in the UK every year were spread around the country, with 8% being placed in Wales and the south west of England.

The UK receives one of the largest numbers of asylum applications in Europe every year, behind only France, which last year received 42,000 applications.

A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “The UK has a proud tradition of providing a place of safety for genuine refugees. However, we are determined to remove those who do not need our protection.”

by David James, Western Mail

Iran minister meets Iraq clerics

Iran's foreign minister courted top clerics in Najaf, the Iraqi religious heartland, on Thursday, the second day of a visit to Iraq aimed at boosting ties between the Shiite-majority neighbours.

"I came carrying a letter from the Iranian leadership to the religious authorities in Najaf," Ali Akbar Salehi told a news conference in the central Iraq Shiite shrine city.

"I had a good meeting with (top Iraqi Shiite cleric) Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and I also just finished a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim," Salehi said."And I will meet Grand Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi and Grand Ayatollah Ishaq al-Fayad in order to give them the message from the Islamic republic," he said, referring to other senior Shiite clerics.

The message "said that the Islamic republic supports the new Iraqi government, and will build relations with Iraq based on non-intervention in its internal affairs, and according to the interests between the two countries," Salehi said.

"We support security, services and rebuilding in Iraq, and we will stand by Iraq until it gets over this distress," he added.The United States has in the past accused Iran of backing various militias within Iraq.

An April 2009 US diplomatic cable published in November by whistleblower website WikiLeaks said the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force was "active in Iraq, conducting traditional espionage and supporting violent extremists as well as supporting both legitimate and malign Iranian economic and cultural outreach."

Brigadier General Jeffrey Buchanan, the spokesman for US forces in Iraq, told AFP last week that "at least certain elements of Iran have had what I would call a destructive relationship with what's been going on in Iraq."

But he added, "Iran and Iraq share a tremendously long border. It's important for them to have a relationship.""Our hope is that it's a constructive rather than a destructive relationship," he said.

Salehi arrived in Iraq on Wednesday and met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Malik and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. He did not indicate if he would meet with radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who returned to Najaf on Wednesday after four years of self-imposed Iran-based exile.

After their meeting on Wednesday, Zebari told a news conference that Salehi had met with Maliki and that one of the issues discussed was the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), an Iranian opposition group based at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.

"Our constitution doesn't allow any organisation to be on our land and attack our neighbors, and we are committed to that," Zebari said, without providing details on the talks.PMOI forces based in Iraq fought against Iran during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and were disarmed following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

The "25 year presence of Ashraf residents in Iraq has been in accordance with international laws and treaties," the PMOI said in a Thursday response from Paris to Zebari's remarks, also insisting that they are entitled to status as "protected persons" under the Geneva convention.

Separately, a lawyer for plaintiffs in a case filed in Spain said on Tuesday that a judge is to probe a raid by Iraqi police and soldiers on the PMOI's Camp Ashraf in July 2009 that killed 11 people.The PMOI statement said it was "very unfortunate" that Zebari did not mention that incident, and also accused Iran of "meddling" in Iraqi affairs.

This is Salehi's second trip abroad since taking over the ministry.

His appointment, which is yet to be ratified by Iran's parliament, came after Ahmadinejad sacked his predecessor Manouchehr Mottaki.Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq fought a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s which left almost a million people dead on both sides.

Ties between the two countries have warmed considerably since the overthrow of Saddam's Sunni-dominated in the 2003 invasion.

Yahoo! News

Iran foreign minister visits Iraq

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi met with Iraq's prime minister and foreign minister in Baghdad on Wednesday in his second trip abroad since taking over the post.

"We look forward to Iraq returning to its full independence and security," Salehi, who was born in Karbala in central Iraq, told a news conference in Baghdad.

Iranian officials have expressed hope that the new Iraqi government, which was approved by parliament on December 21, would help stabilise the war-torn country and lead to the exit of the "occupying" US forces.

Iran has regularly called for US troops to leave Iraq, citing their presence as the main cause of violence in its western neighbour.Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the news conference that Salehi had met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and that one of the issues discussed was the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), an Iraq-based Iranian opposition group.

"Our constitution doesn't allow any organisation to be on our land and attack our neighbors, and we are committed to that," Zebari said, without providing details on the talks.The PMOI fought against Iran during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and was disarmed following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

A lawyer for plaintiffs in a case filed in Spain said on Tuesday that a Spanish judge is to probe a raid by Iraqi police and soldiers on the PMOI's Camp Ashraf in July 2009 that killed 11 people.Iraqi police chief Major General Abdul Hussein al-Shemmari has been called to appear before the court.

Salehi's appointment as foreign minister, which is yet to be ratified by the Iranian parliament, came after Ahmadinejad sacked his predecessor Manouchehr Mottaki.Ties between predominantly Shiite Iran and Shiite-majority Iraq have warmed considerably since the overthrow of Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime in a US-led invasion in 2003.

Yahoo News

Al-Sadr returns to Iraq from Iran

Muqtada al Sadr, the Shiite cleric who led uprisings against the US military before becoming a government king-maker, returned to Iraq yesterday after years of self-imposed exile in Iran.

He arrived in Najaf yesterday afternoon, arriving at the city's recently opened airport, according to officials in the Sadrist political bloc, the powerful grassroots movement the cleric leads.

Despite playing a major role in the formation of the current Iraqi government, Mr al Sadr has not been seen in the country since 2007. Since then he has been living in Iran, and studying in Qom, a major centre of learning for Shiite Muslims.

His arrival coincided with a visit to Baghdad by Iran's acting foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, although the two men had separate itineraries.

"I wouldn't read too much into them arriving on the same day. I don't see a direct link," said Ala Allawi, an independent Iraqi political analyst. Instead, he viewed the cleric's return as a signal that the Sadrists would step up their work.

"Muqtada has made real political achievements and he wants to make sure his house and party are strong," Mr Allawi said. "We will see even more activity from them now, in all fields, political, economic and cultural."

It remains unclear if Mr al Sadr's appearance will be a fleeting stopover or marks a more permanent return to Iraqi life.

He paid a visit to his family home in Najaf yesterday, where hundreds of supporters gathered to welcome him. He was also due to visit the grave of his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al Sadr, who was killed in 1999 having publicly defied the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Mr al Sadr remains a highly divisive figure in Iraq. His critics say he has fallen under the influence of Iran, and point to the role his Mahdi Army militia played in the sectarian bloodletting of 2005 to 2007, when it was heavily implicated in death squads that targeted Sunnis.

There are signs that Mr al Sadr has paid a price for his long years away from Iraq, with some of his followers now doubting his loyalty to the country.

"Muqtada used to be an Iraqi nationalist but now he is too close to Iran," said a disgruntled former senior member of the Mahdi Army in Baghdad. "He has Iranian ideology, Iranian advisers and Iranian security guards."

But his supporters, largely drawn from Iraq's impoverished Shiite residents, see him as a nationalist hero and man of God, who bravely stood up to US military occupation and struggled for the common man's interests against corrupt Baghdad politicians.

The Mahdi Army fought a series of battles against US troops following the 2003 invasion. The militia was eventually disbanded, but only after Iraqi forces killed and arrested hundreds of its fighters in 2008, restoring government control to the streets of Basra and Sadr City, the Baghdad slum where the movement draws much of its backing.

Some had written off the Sadrists at that point, believing it had been terminally weakened militarily and turned into a political irrelevance. But it quickly transformed itself from a movement of violent militancy to one of the major players in mainstream Iraqi politics.

That anti-militia campaign of 2008 had been lead by the then Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki, who, in 2005, had relied on support from the Sadrists to take the premier's job.

Mr al Maliki, now in his second term after a contentious election in March, was once again dependent on the Sadr movement to clinch the premier's job, its 39 parliamentary seats crucial in giving him the edge over his rival, Ayad Allawi.

As part of the political deal for its support, hundreds of Sadrist prisoners were freed from jail. The movement was also assured control of seven government ministries, although none of the coveted offices of oil, finance or security fell into its hands.

While that may please Mr al Sadr's opponents, both here and in Washington, which remains wary of the cleric's anti-American credentials, some commentators say the movement has been canny in taking over apparently weak or incidental ministries."If they play their cards in the right way, they might take control of Iraq," said Ahmed al Bahadili, an independent political analyst in Baghdad.

"They will be able to spread their influence over the coming four years and by the time of the next election, they will be even more powerful."I expect them to get stronger and I would not be surprised if the next prime minister was the Sadrists' man."

While the movement no longer has the military capacity to fight government forces, it wields great influence."The Sadrists still have followers who would fight for them if they needed that, but they are getting everything they want politically these days," said Mr Allawi, the analyst.

Nizar Latif and Phil Sands, the National

Defeat in Iraq: Muqtada's Return

The return of Muqtada Al-Sadr, a junior Shia cleric and head of the Mehdi Army militia, from his refuge in Iran to a prominent role in Iraqi politics is not only a sad testimony to the sham democracy in Iraq but also serves a humiliating end to America's adventure there.

Unless there is a military coup by nationalists in Iraq or an about-face by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, Iraqis will live in perpetual fear for the foreseeable future.

Muqtada's resurgence as chief of the Sadrist political faction means that any hopes of reconciliation between Shia and Sunni will be dashed. We have already seen a renewed vicious campaign against weakened minorities, such as the Christians, gain in ferocity in the past six months.

It also means that Iraqi Sunnis will likely not participate in any democratic endeavor in the future; their enthusiasm in the elections process last year resulted in Maliki's return to power despite losing at the ballot. But because Iraq's constitution has been rewritten with vague terminology and skewed in favour of sectarian politics (and because the courts are controlled by his allies), Maliki not only returned but also made Muqtada the real winner of the elections.

It was intense Iranian pressure that brought the Shia factions together - after Muqtada vowed to prevent Maliki from becoming prime minister - to essentially overthrow the Iraqiya party which really won the March 2010 elections.

Muqtada's return does not bode well for the war-weary nation. His support of Maliki in securing the premiership came at a price - the Sadrists control the Education and Justice ministries, among six others, and will continue to implant theological paradigms in the curricula while maintaining Sharia Law to override every other legal consideration. Women's rights are likely to be left in the Middle Ages.

The Sadrists know they are the so-called kingmakers and are the fulcrum for stability within the new Iraqi parliament. They have won several concessions from the interior ministry, including the release in December of hundreds of Mehdi militia members, many of whom participated in atrocities against Iraqi civilians. Some fear revenge attacks against their arresting officers.

Muqtada is the brainchild of the Sadrists main doctrines; to understand which way they will move the country one must look at comments the young cleric has made in the past.

In 2005, he issued a fatwa forbidding men from wearing shorts. A few months later, the coach of the national tennis team and two of his star players were executed in Baghdad for wearing shorts.

In 2006, he signaled he would ban football in Iraq when he issued a fatwa calling the national sport evil and sacrilegious. He has also said that the sport is an Israeli conspiracy designed to distract Arabs.

Just two weeks ago, he issued a fatwa forbidding Iraqis from working with foreign companies until the latters' intentions were known.

The Mehdi militia is a prime example of the religious zealotry that has gripped Iraq. In May 2007, they issued an order that all Christian women in Baghdad should be veiled; they have shot at cars if unveiled women are spotted in the windows.

Christian and Muslim women in Basra who did not adhere to the new dress codes and continued to work had their noses crushed. Other women suffered much more horribly.

According to a Sunday Times article published in May 2007:

Their autopsies revealed painful deaths. One woman found in "a red dress" had a 9mm bullet wound in her left hand, three in her right hand, three in her right upper arm, and three in her back. Two of the women were beheaded, one with a saw.

Six years ago, I wrote an article about how Muqtada was becoming America's nightmare.I wrote then that:

The political and emotional dynamic among Iraqis creates intense difficulty for the US. Al-Sadr has ensured that his destiny is a catalyst for further anti-US sentiment and resistance.However, for each day that al-Sadr's forces retain control of the towns they have "liberated from the US occupation", he will be seen as the centre of resistance to the occupation. The United States is then likely to be caught in a trap of its own making.

Unfortunately, there are some who have inflated Muqtada's status as a revolutionary and his street battles with US forces as uprisings. They were never uprisings but merely a show of force by a man using the established clerical reputation of his family to gain a foothold among some of Iraq's Shia, position himself as a resistance leader and earn dividends both in Iran and among Iraq's disenfranchised.

His militia is comprised not of revolutionary nationalists but is a ragtag force of high school drop-outs, brigands, and common criminals; it is no threat to a regular army and was routed even by the then poorly-trained Iraqi army. However, the police, security and armed forces have been infiltrated by thousands of Sadrists in the past five years.

American strategists can claim victory in replacing a secular dictator with a theocratic one. In the meantime, the trap has been sprung and all Iraqis are living the nightmare.

Firas Al-Atraqchi

Sadr tells followers to remain calm

Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, back in Iraq after four years of Iran-based exile, urged his followers on Thursday to remain calm after they gave him a rowdy welcome in his home city of Najaf.

Hundreds of people turned out to greet the radical cleric when he arrived on Wednesday in the central Iraq city, but they apparently became too exuberant when Sadr later visited the shrine of Imam Ali and caused a stampede.

"I did not know you like that. Your indiscipline while I was performing my religious rituals bothered me and hurt me. I beg you to be disciplined, and not to shout excessive slogans," Sadr said in a statement.

"The stampede hurt me, and hurt others, and this will tarnish the image of our movement in the eyes of others," he added.Sadr, who according to a source in his movement left Iraq at the end of 2006, has so far remained mum about the reasons for his return from self-imposed exile.

That may change on Saturday morning when, according to Sadr movement spokesman Salah al-Obaidi, the cleric is set to give a speech "to the Iraqi people."The son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr who was killed in 1999, Sadr had reportedly been pursuing religious studies in the Iranian holy city of Qom.

The cleric, who is said to be in his 30s, gained wide popularity among Shiites in Iraq in the months after the US-led invasion of 2003, and his Mahdi Army later battled American troops in several bloody conflicts.

Sadr was identified by the Pentagon in 2006 as the greatest threat to stability in Iraq.His militia became the most active and feared armed Shiite group, and was blamed by Washington for the death-squad killings of thousands of Sunni Muslims.

But in August 2008, Sadr suspended the activities of the Mahdi Army, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, in the wake of major US and Iraqi assaults on its strongholds in Baghdad and southern Iraq in the spring.

Following the ceasefire, US military commanders said Sadr's action had been instrumental in helping bring about a significant decrease in the levels of violence across Iraq.Two residents of Sadr City, a sprawling area of Baghdad that is named after the cleric's father and is one of his strongholds, said on Thursday they thought increased stability would follow Sadr's return.

"I'm very happy today for his return," said Amr Zayed, 38.

"I think the situation will be stable after that, and will be much better than before, because even the Sadrist group will calm down and will not dare to participate in any violence."Ahmed Rahim, 25, said: "His return is a victory for just people. It's a great pleasure for us, especially because his movement is to participate in the government.

"That means there that no security problems will happen -- no battles or confrontation with the government, as happened before," he added.Sadr City was the scene of heavy fighting in 2008 between US and Iraqi forces on one side and Shiite fighters, mainly from the Mahdi Army, on the other.

AFP

The Fate of Christians in the Middle East

Should we be concerned about the fate of Christian communities in the Arab world?

This burning issue hits the headlines time and again whenever a church is attacked in Iraq or Egyptian Copts are bullied. Most recently an appeal by a group of Arab intellectuals to rise above sectarian divisions was published in the French media following a gory attack against Iraqi Christians.

The media routinely characterize the disappearance or wholesale departure of Middle Eastern Christians as “imminent” or “unavoidable”. And the trend has been to explain the dangers facing the Christian community as a result of the rise of “radical” Islam. This explanation reinforces the idea that Christians are victims who must be “saved” from Islam.

This coverage also provides the opportunity for Arab governments to escape responsibility by blaming religion for any political or social unrest, thus renewing their lease on legitimacy on the cheap.

Conversely, some Western opinion leaders do not realize the impact of statements asserting, for instance, that the end of colonialism deprived Middle Eastern Christians of valuable support from Europeans, or calling Arab Christians “Westernized Arabs". Such remarks ignore the importance of Christians’ ideological contributions to Middle Eastern societies, and the fact that in the mid-20th century it was Christian elites who imagined, conceived and carried the inspiring project of Arab unity.

Arab Nationalism

The concept of Arab nationalism, conceived in part by Christian Arab intellectuals, such as Michel Aflaq, the Syrian founder of the socialist Ba’ath party, was based on the idea of a social body where clan, tribal and religious divisions would be subsumed in the nation, or even in the Arab community.

Arab unity was the avenue to a pan-Arab state bolstered by the values of reason, citizenship and modernity.

Despite efforts for pluralism, such as the UN coining 1999 the Year of the Dialogue of Civilizations, the international community seems to be blind to the real challenges of diversity in the world in the past decade.

Celebrating coexistence is not the only response. Dialogue between cultures at the international level can succeed only if it is paired with changes at the national level. How can cultural coexistence be promoted if, within national borders, the cult of the dominant faith, or indeed the one-party system, still exists? Governments in Arab countries should protect their Christian citizens instead of bringing to court men and women who have chosen a way other than that of the majority.

What Arab and Muslim Organizations Can Do…

Multi-national organizations can also lend their support. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in addition to defending Muslims living in the West, can also advocate against the abuse inflicted on Christians in the Middle East.

Some voices, including that of Saudi Prince Talal ibn Abd al-Aziz, the brother of King Abdullah, warn that the departure of Christians would be a threat to democracy and modernity in the Arab world. More such voices should speak up in order to initiate a long overdue debate about the living conditions and rights for religious minorities.

A failure of democracy, in which citizens lack equal rights under the law and where there are few checks on leaders’ powers, is largely responsible for the current disaster.

To say that Christians should merely be "tolerated" in the Arab world is grossly unfair. Christians have always been an integral part of the land where they were born and raised, the land of their forbearers, the land of the Bible. They are not a recently imported religious minority that deserves our charity. They do not come from a foreign country. They are active citizens of their homeland where they should have the choice to remain.

If they leave, it will be the end of our history and the beginning of our downfall. The fate of Christians in the Middle East is linked to the fate of the Arab world as a whole.

By Hasni Abidi, OnIslam

Iraq Is Bleeding Every Day

Iraq enters 2011 – the year in which American forces are supposed to finally leave – with all too many wounds from our occupation. While we hear little here in the US about the effects of our war and occupation, Iraqis live with the results daily.

Take for example, the continuing level of violence. Western media keep reminding us that the casualty count is lower than at the height of the war – but for 2010, conservative estimates, from Iraqi government sources, place the dead and injured from violence at unbearable numbers:

"The statistics carried out during the periiod from 01/1/2010 and 31/12/2010, the violence acts, including killings, assassinations, along with unknown dead bodies and victims of the security forces in Iraq has registered 4,561 killings and 12,749 injuries," the report, copy of which landed in Aswat al-Iraq news agency, said.

Attacks and threats against Iraqi Christians have been escalating:Fifteen bombs were placed at different Christian homes late on Thursday, an interior ministry official said yesterday.

"Two Christians were killed and 16 wounded" by the 11 bombs that went off, …Fawzi Ibrahim, 80, and his wife Janet in Al Ghadir in central Baghdad, where a number of Christians reside.The couple had lived in the house with another family of Chaldean Catholics, said a neighbour, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"At about 7pm, they found a bag placed at the gate. One of the residents of the house thought it belonged to Mrs Ibrahim, but when she opened it with her husband, a bomb hidden inside exploded," said the neighbour.The explosion killed the couple and wounded three other Ibrahim family members."The couple had lived here for 40 years, and all the residents of the area loved them," the neighbour said.

Older bombs also continue to kill. A new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (full text can be found here ) and a forthcoming WHO study report on the escalating damage to babies in Fallujah from US munitions.

In May of 2010 alone, 15 per cent of the 547 babies born had defects, while 14 per cent were spontaneous abortions and 11 per cent were born at less than 30 weeks…

Total deformities are said to be around 11 times the world average, and are rising. The report, the first carried out on births during 2010, said they were now at "unprecedented levels", suggesting that the longer adults are exposed to the residual contamination the more defective children will be born.

Other wounds are harder to see but no less real:

"I spent four months of my life under humiliation and suffering in Puka Prison, under a charge I had no relationship with, being a policeman and father of five children, serving my country with faithfulness and devotion," says Abu-Yousif, remembering his suffering in the American Puka Prison, west of southern Iraq’s city of Basra. [Puka is a transliteration for Camp Bucca]

Abu-Yousif, 44, an inhabitant of east Baghdad’s Sadr City, told Aswat al Iraq: "I can’t forget those painful days in that horrible prison and I shall never forget that horrible day, when the American forces arrested me while on duty in my police center, due to an erroneous charge that my innocence had been proven from."

Alaa al-Duleimy, 28, an citizen of southern Baghdad’s Daura district, had spent one year in Puka Prison, describing it as "the worst in his whole life," and demanding the American forces and the Iraqi government to compensate him for the losses he suffered during his imprisonment.

And these are only 2 of the over 15,000 who were held in the US run Puka Prison. The UK’s Channel 4 documentary (see below) on the information found in the Wikileaks files note that 1 out of every 50 adult males in Iraq were detained in these prisons at some time during our war and occupation.

While the US occupation may be winding down, the price paid by the Iraqi people continues.

As "Father Nadhir Dakko, a priest at St. George Chaldean Church, who performed the funeral service for" Fawzi and Janet Ibrahim said:"Iraq is bleeding every day."

The video above is from UK’s Channel 4 report on the Wikileaks release of American Iraqi war files. As our government and media distract us with accusations against Manning and Assange, it’s all to easy to overlook the important information contained in those files – information that documents the actions of our military against Iraqi civilians, actions we must not overlook or forget.

Along with part one above, the other three segments can be seen here: Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Siun

The rebirth of Arab activism

Mohamed Bou'aziz, the young Tunisian who set fire to himself on December 17, is emerging as a symbol of the wider plight of the millions of young Arabs who are struggling to improve their living conditions.

Like many across the Arab world, Bou'aziz, who is now being treated for severe burns, discovered that a university degree was insufficient to secure decent employment. He turned to selling fruit for a living, but when the security forces confiscated his vending cart he torched himself - igniting a series of protests across Tunisia.

The roots of this Tunisian 'uprising' are to be found in a lethal combination of poverty, unemployment and political repression: three characteristics of most Arab societies.

Corruption, nepotism and inefficiency

Official figures place unemployment in the Arab world at 15 per cent but many economists believe the real rate is far higher than government supplied statistics suggest.

A joint study by the Arab League and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) indicates that in most Arab countries young people constitute 50 per cent of the unemployed - the highest rate in the world.

According to the same report, rates of poverty remain high - "reaching up to 40 per cent on average, which means that nearly 140 million Arabs continue to live under the upper poverty line". Worse still, the study noted that the region has seen no decrease in rates of poverty in the past 20 years.

The report was submitted to the Arab summit that convened in Kuwait in 2009, but found no real response from Arab officials - who continued to pursue economic policies that had, in their main outlines, been imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In most Arab countries, rampant corruption, nepotism and inefficiency have further aggravated the impact of IMF-inspired privatisation processes, austerity measures and the reduction or scrapping of government subsidies on fuel and staple foodstuffs.

Bread and couscous

It was, in fact, Tunisians who first rejected the then newly introduced IMF guidelines by protesting against resulting food shortages in January 1984. But the government of Habib Bourguiba, the then Tunisian president, cracked down on the bread riots, as they were called, and imposed nightly curfews to curb the protests.

But the Tunisian protests did not stop other governments from following suit and endorsing the 'economic liberalisation programme' dictated by the IMF and World Bank. In October 1988, violent protests swept Algeria as liberalisation policies were introduced. The 'couscous protests', as they became known, were led by young people who emulated the ongoing Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation by donning the Palestinian keffeya, burning tires and throwing stones at security forces.

The subsequent security crackdown resulted in the deaths of hundreds and the imprisonment of more than 1,000 people - serving to silence critics and pave the way for more governments to adopt IMF proposed austerity measures.

Less than a year later, Jordan reached an agreement with the IMF that involved decreasing government subsidies. This triggered hikes in fuel prices and resulted in protests in the southern cities of Ma'an and Karak. The government, like those of other Arab countries, responded by sending in the security forces to round up activists and protest leaders.

But the outcry, having shaken the bedrock of Hashemite support in the south of the country, prompted the late King Hussein to restore elections, lift three-decades old martial law and allow the existence of political parties in order to appease the opposition and to contain the growing anger.

The king's response was a success - particularly as parliamentary elections were held and political prisoners released. His subsequent refusal to join US-led coalition forces in the battle to free Kuwait and in the bombing of Iraq, a stance that corresponded with popular sentiment, also helped to ease the tensions that had arisen from his economic policies. Thus consecutive governments continued to 'liberalise the economy' - resulting in higher inflation rates and price hikes.

A prelude to political liberalism?

The US administrations of both George Bush senior, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, asserted pressure on Arab governments to pursue the 'neo-liberal economic model' promoted by American economist Milton Friedman.

Neo-liberalism marked a sharp retreat from the Keynesian model of government intervention through welfare policies to ensure some degree of social equilibrium within capitalist societies. With the collapse of the former Communist bloc, the promoters of neo-liberal economics sought to associate a free economy with a more politically free society.

During the 1990s, neo-liberal economics became more entrenched in Arab societies - producing a new elite of wealthy young capitalist entrepreneurs and prompting envy and discontent among the established elite who too rushed to join the new game.

Even many former leftist intellectuals, in the Arab world and beyond, espoused the new school of thought as a prelude to a politically liberal society - thus dampening opposition to economic policies that were increasing poverty and unemployment.

But political freedoms did not go hand-in-hand with economic liberalisation. In fact, in most Arab countries the governments asserted more control, while taking measures to undercut dissent and opposition.

In 1996, protests again erupted in the south of Jordan in response to increases in bread prices. The government responded with a security crackdown - but this time no widening political freedoms followed.

Crying out against injustice

It was not until the global economic crisis that the Arab world started to witness the recovery of popular opposition - first materialising in Egypt in 2007 and 2008. These strikes and protests were the first indications of a return to organised protests against political repression and poverty inducing economic policies.

These movements, ultimately unsuccessfully, brought students and workers together to challenge the apathy and disdain of the ruling elite to the suffering of the poor and marginalised. The political movement for change, led by Mohamed ElBaradei, to establish a democratic and participatory political system, reflected the merger of the discontented sectors of Egyptian society.

But it was Bou'aziz's heart-wrenching attempt to kill himself that most accurately represented the loud cry of the millions of impoverished and aching citizens against the yoke of politically and economically repressive systems. His act was one of extreme despair. But he is not alone. Lahseen Naji, another young Tunisian, followed - electrocuting himself to death - and at least five others attempted to commit suicide but were stopped.

In Jordan and some other Arab countries, frustration borne out of political and economic disenfranchisement has manifested itself in a higher rate of societal violence, especially among the young. The absence of strong political parties and movements are strengthening tribal rivalries among younger generations, often leading to armed clashes.

But Jordanian society has also witnessed this frustration being turned into affirmative action in the form of workers' and teachers' demands for improved working conditions. Jordan's teachers have emerged as an important force within the country, resisting government attempts to marginalise them and pushing their demand for the formation of a syndicate to protect their interests.

As the Tunisian protests continued, demonstrations took place in Algeria against a housing programme that failed to accommodate the thousands of families made homeless by the country's devastating 2003 earthquake.

Bou'aziz's wounds and Naji's death should not go down in history as mere tragic incidents: if the Tunisian protests do indeed signal the return of social movements to the Arab world, their stifled hopes may just be turned into an outcry against injustice.

Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Clashes follow Egypt church bombing

Clashes have flared in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria, following a car bombing blamed outside a Coptic Christian church that killed at least 21 people.

Police and Christian men faced off late on Saturday afternoon, with reports of rubber-coated bullets and tear gas being fired at crowds of young men.

Enraged Christians emerging from the Qiddissine (The Saints) Church fought with police and stormed a nearby mosque, prompting fights and volleys of stone throwing with Muslims.Authorities blamed the incident on a suicide bomber but provided no evidence to back up their claim.

Reporting for Al Jazeera, Nadia Abou El-Meg, a journalist in Alexandria, said: "This scene [of clashes] has been [witnessed] several times today. The protesters started gathering and throwing stones ... the police responded with tear gas.

"Tension is running very high and people are very angry ... We saw a lot of people weeping and screaming and asking why are they being attacked."The church has issued a statement which was also very angry, demanding justice, and criticising the performance of the government.

"More and more people are gathering as the night is falling. Many people are not buying this idea of the suicide bomber."The Copts are the biggest Christian community in the Middle East and account for up to 10 per cent of Egypt's 80m population.

No bombing claim

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday's bombing, which came as nearly 1,000 faithful left the Qiddissine Church, located in Alexandria's Sidi Bechr district.According to the Egyptian interior ministry, the car that exploded was parked in front of the church.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from the Egyptian capital Cairo, said that the car bomb probably involved sophisticated remote-control timer technology."Churches in Egypt are heavily guarded, so undoubtedly questions will arise about how a car was parked so close to the church and who was able to detonate it from a distance," he said.

While it was not known who was responsible for the blast, a group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq had threatened the country's Coptic Christian community.Adel Labib, Alexandria's governor, has linked the attack to al-Qaida, but our correspondent says the government has not made clear who they were blaming for the bombing.

Plea for protection

The attack in Egypt prompted Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican to call for Christians throughout the Middle East to be protected.

The bombing comes almost two months to the day after an October 31 attack by Muslim fighters on Our Lady of Salvation church in central Baghdad, which left 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security forces members dead.Al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate claimed responsibility for that attack and made new threats against Christians.

The group threatened to attack Egyptian Copts if their church did not free two Christians it said had been "imprisoned in their monasteries" for having converted to Islam.The two women were Camilia Chehata and Wafa Constantine, the wives of Coptic priests whose claimed conversion caused a stir in Egypt.

Protection around Copt places of worship was discreetly stepped up after the threats, as Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, said he was committed to protecting the Christians "faced with the forces of terrorism and extremism".Egypt's Coptic Christians often complain of discrimination and have been the target of religious violence.

Repeated clashes

In 2006 a man attacked worshippers in three churches in Alexandria, killing one person and wounding others.

Authorities said at the time he had "psychiatric problems" but this was rejected by the Coptic community.Clashes broke out between Copts and Muslims the following day at the funeral of the victim, with one person killed and several wounded.

In November clashes took place in a southwestern neighbourhood of Cairo between Coptic demonstrators and police after local authorities refused to allow a community centre to be transformed into a church.

Two Christians died and dozens were wounded.

Al-Jazeera

At least 21 people killed after car bomb explodes outside church in the city of Alexandria. ( 01-Jan-2011 )

Copts mourned as the bodies of several blast victims were brought to ambulances in front of the Qiddissine Church [Reuters]

Copts in the port city protested outside the Qiddissine (The Saints) Church following the early-morning attack [AFP]