Skip to main content

Santa Barbara News-Press

Santa Barbara News-PressCAIRO, Egypt - The U.S. government is ''unforgivably slow'' in resettling Iraqi refugees and has failed to coordinate with its Arab allies to address the suffering of an estimated 4.5 million displaced Iraqis, according to a report released Tuesday by a leading Washington-based refugee advocacy group.

Nearly five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has made little effort to speed up relief for a population that's growing more vulnerable by the day, Refugees International concluded after its most recent trip to Iraqi refugee communities in the Middle East. The group's advocates said the White House appeared oblivious to the magnitude of the war's humanitarian disaster.

''The first reason for this is the lack of political will,'' said Kristele Younes, a co-author of the Refugees International report. ''Until very recently, the Bush administration never even acknowledged the humanitarian crisis because they were concerned that it would be interpreted as acknowledging failure in Iraq. And President Bush still has yet to acknowledge that there are now almost 5 million Iraqis who've had to leave their homes.''

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review : "The placement of four Ethiopian girls in a separate class from their peers at a Petah Tikva grade school has sparked accusations of segregation on Tuesday morning following a report in Yediot Aharonot. According to ‘Hamerhav’ principal, Rabbi Yeshiyahu Granvich, complete integration of the girls was impossible. The reason being, said municipal workers, was that the students were not observant enough, nor did their families belong to the national-religious movement that the school was founded upon. Among the differences in the daily school life of the girls, a single teacher was responsible to teach them all of their subjects. Worse yet, the four were allotted separate recess hours and were driven to and from school separately. Such action has been labeled by observers as “apartheid.”"

Iraqi weapons 'expert' unmasked as a fraud - Independent Online Edition > Americas

Iraqi weapons 'expert' unmasked as a fraud - Independent Online Edition > Americas : "The Iraqi defector whose claims regarding Saddam Hussein's biological warfare capabilities were central to the US government's case for the 2003 invasion, despite repeated warnings that they were dubious, has been unmasked by a television documentary. The informer, codenamed Curveball was Rafid Ahmed Alwan who, in 1999, turned up at a refugee centre in Germany seeking political asylum. He went on to convince the Pentagon he was a brilliant chemist who had helped develop mobile biological warfare laboratories."

FT.com / UK - Al-Jazeera journalists become faces of the frontline

FT.com / UK - Al-Jazeera journalists become faces of the frontline : "Ayman Mohyeldin was in a coffee shop joking with colleagues in Gaza City when the first Israeli bomb struck, smashing into a police station just a short distance from where they were sitting. The tremors from the explosion shook the café, but it took a few minutes for the reality to sink in - Gaza was under attack. Since that moment 18 days ago, Mr Mohyeldin and his colleagues at al-Jazeera English, the satellite channel, have worked day and night, providing 24-hour coverage of the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis it has triggered. Donning a helmet and a flak jacket, Mr Mohyeldin has become one of the faces of the war, delivering calm and balanced analysis of the chaos and destruction going on around him in a soft American accent."