Just Foreign Policy News
November 12, 2010
Acquire Your Own Superpowers: Go See This Movie
If many Americans see the documentary Budrus, it could change U.S. policy towards the Palestinians.
http://www.truth-out.org/acquire-your-own-superpowers-go-see-this-movie65041
South of the Border on DVD
Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border is now available on DVD. Why did the center-left cruise to victory in Brazil? You can get the DVD here.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/southoftheborder
Help Support Our Work
Your donation helps us educate Americans and create opportunities to advocate for a just foreign policy.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) A task force of the Council on Foreign Relations led by former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage and former national security adviser Samuel Berger says Obama should dramatically cut the number of US troops in Afghanistan if there is no sign of progress in the conflict, the Canadian Press reports. "The cloudy picture and high costs raise the question of whether the United States should now downsize its ambitions and reduce its military presence in Afghanistan," the task force said. "If the December 2010 review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan concludes that the present strategy is not working, the task force recommends that a shift to a more limited mission at a substantially reduced level of military force would be warranted," the CFR report said. "If progress is being made, the United States should be able to draw down its forces starting in July 2011, based on conditions on the ground," it said. "However, if U.S. efforts are not working, a more significant drawdown to a narrower mission that emphasizes counter-terror objectives with fewer US forces will be warranted."
2) Rep. Kucinich says he will force a vote on a hard date for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the heels of reports they could remain there at least through 2014, The Hill reports. Kucinich said he will force a vote via privileged resolution at the beginning of the next Congress on ending the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2011.
3) The coup in Honduras illustrates that political reform, not aid, is the key to development, writes Jonathan Glennie in the Guardian. In 2005, the richest Hondurans 10% earned 47% of the country’s income. In 2006, after a year of President Zelaya’s government, they only earned 42.4%, a step in the right direction, with the poorest 10% earning 2.5%, up from 2.1%. In 2005, 66% of Honduran households lived below the poverty line. Two years into his administration, Zelaya had brought poverty down to 60.2 percent. Zelaya increased the minimum wage by 60%, abolished school fees, allowing up to 450,000 more children to go to primary school, and oversaw a 25% increase in children receiving free school lunches. Urban unemployment fell from 6.5% in 2005 to 4% in 2007. Economic growth averaged 5.6% in the first three years of Zelaya’s tenure, faster than the previous administration. Since the coup, growth has stalled and the economy is now in recession, shrinking by over 3% last year.
4) Since Gen. Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 50% more attack sorties than they did during the same period in 2009, Wired.com reports. According to NATO statistics, 49 by-standers were killed or wounded by coalition forces last month, compared to 38 last October, an increase of 30%.
5) On Veterans Day, a backlog of more than a million claims for treatment were pending at the Department of Veterans Affairs, USA Today reports. More than 200,000 cases in the VA system are appeals by veterans who believe they were wrongly denied benefits. Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense says the VA’s inspector general found mistakes by VA claims processors in 20% of cases reviewed. "Mistakes cause more appeals that clog VA’s system," he says.
Israel/Palestine
6) German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called Israel’s blockade of Gaza "not acceptable" and said it "strengthens the radicals and weakens the moderates," AFP reports. "It is important that imports and exports are allowed through again," Westerwelle said, stressing that this was also the position of the EU.
7) Netanyahu’s trip to the US damaged Israel diplomatically, undermined Israel’s relations with the U.S. administration and showed Netanyahu up as a rejectionist, writes Haaretz in an editorial. His public call on the US to create a "credible military threat" against Iran portrayed Israel as a warmonger trying to drag America into another entanglement in the Middle East, Haaretz writes. Reports about Israel’s approval of large construction plans in Har Homa and other East Jerusalem neighborhoods compelled Netanyahu to have "clarification talks" with Vice-President Biden. Netanyahu apparently tried to show that the Republicans’ victory in the congressional elections rendered him immune to the administration’s pressures and that he had the upper hand in the controversy over the settlements. This is a shortsighted approach that endangers Israel’s interests, argues Haaretz.
Iran
8) The IAEA said Friday it protects the confidentiality of information gathered during inspections, indirectly rejecting an Iranian accusation it would feed sensitive information to Washington, Reuters reports.
9) The EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has accepted Iran’s proposal to meet Dec. 5 but has rejected Istanbul as a venue, Glenn Kessler reports for the Washington Post. Kessler explains Ashton’s rejection of Istanbul as a venue as being driven by opposition by the "P5+1" to allowing Turkey to participate in the talks.
Iraq
10) Many Christians say they are planning to leave Iraq because of the threat of violence, USA Today reports. Human Rights Watch says the number of Christians in Iraq had fallen to about 675,000 in 2008 from 1 million at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) U.S. panel urges drawdown in Afghanistan
Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press, November 12, 2010
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/101112/world/us_afghanistan_report_1
Washington – A respected panel of U.S. military and foreign policy experts says President Barack Obama should dramatically cut the number of American troops in Afghanistan in the absence of any concrete signs of progress in the bloody nine-year-old conflict.
The 25-member task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, led by two key officials in the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, is urging the White House to make some tough decisions on the war, which is costing billions of dollars a month at a time when the United States is dealing with massive deficits and a painfully slow economic recovery.
"The cloudy picture and high costs raise the question of whether the United States should now downsize its ambitions and reduce its military presence in Afghanistan," the council’s task force said in a 98-page report. "We are mindful of the real threat we face. But we are also aware of the costs of the present strategy. We cannot accept these costs unless the strategy begins to show signs of progress."
The Obama administration’s hotly anticipated review of its Afghanistan strategy is set for next month. Top U.S. military officials are said to be painting a positive picture of the conflict for Obama, while independent analysts are far more pessimistic about the prospects for success.
"If the December 2010 review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan concludes that the present strategy is not working, the task force recommends that a shift to a more limited mission at a substantially reduced level of military force would be warranted," the Council on Foreign Relations report said.
[…] In recent days, the Obama administration has been signalling it’s reconsidered its previously announced intention to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan next July, instead emphasizing the goal of handing over security to Afghans by 2014. The changing U.S. timeline is expected to be made official at a NATO conference in Lisbon next week.
But the task force, led by former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage and former national security adviser Samuel Berger, implicitly argued against extending the withdrawal deadline. "If progress is being made, the United State s should be able to draw down its forces starting in July 2011, based on conditions on the ground," it said. "However, if U.S. efforts are not working, a more significant drawdown to a narrower mission that emphasizes counter-terror objectives with fewer US forces will be warranted."
Armitage, Bush’s deputy secretary of state, had surprisingly harsh words for his former employer during a news conference on Friday to discuss the task force report. "After acknowledging that President Obama got a bad lie from the Bush administration regarding Afghanistan, we do salute his attempt at the surge to rectify the situation," he said.
"But we support him conditionally. We feel that the president and his administration should take the time from December right up through July 2011, if necessary, to have a very deep and clear-eyed review of the situation. And if real progress is not deemed to have been made … a majority of us suggest that we change the mission to a much different mission."
The war is an increasingly unpopular one in the United States, with some comparing it to the futility of the Vietnam War a generation earlier. But Republicans, now in control the U.S. House of Representatives, have urged Obama to rethink the July 2011 timeline, saying it’s only encouraging the Taliban to wait out U.S. forces.
Just as there’s debate among the American people and lawmakers about the war, Armitage said, there was also some dissent on the panel over the report’s conclusions. "We had the kind of debate among ourselves that the Congress should have, the American public should have on a matter that’s so important, as it involves the lives of our men and women in service, and civilian organizations," he said.
The report suggests just 10,000 to 20,000 troops remain in Afghanistan to fight militants, pointing out that most of the al-Qaida training camps have already been eliminated in the country.
It noted, however, the risks of such a strategy, particularly if the Taliban joined forces with international terrorist organizations to fight the notoriously weak central government in Afghanistan.
"Under those circumstances, Afghanistan could easily fracture into full-fledged civil war. That war would be every bit as devastating as earlier Afghan conflicts, creating millions of refugees and widespread humanitarian tragedy," the report said. "By its decision to remain focused on a narrow counter-terror mission, the United States would be held partly to blame for the suffering, making many Afghans even less willing to assist U.S. operations."
But a reduced mission, the report said, could pave the way to a political solution in Afghanistan that would include some Taliban in the process. The panel added that a smaller force would reduce American reliance on Pakistani supply routes, diminishing that country’s leverage in the region.
2) Kucinich to force vote on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan
Jordan Fabian, The Hill, 11/11/10 12:08 PM ET
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/128785-kucinich-to-force-vote-on-afghan-withdrawal-deadline
Anti-war Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) says he will force a vote on a hard date for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the heels of reports they could remain there at least through 2014.
Kucinich said Wednesday that he will force a vote via privileged resolution at the beginning of the next Congress on ending the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2011. "The withdrawal of our troops must be driven by Congress, not the corrupt president of Afghanistan," the Ohio congressman said in a statement.
His announcement comes after The New York Times reported that the Obama administration has stressed that it will leave troops in place at least through the end of 2014 in an effort to persuade Afghans and the Taliban the U.S. intends to complete its mission.
[…]
3) It’s the politics, stupid: why aid isn’t the answer in Honduras
Jonathan Glennie, Guardian, Thursday 11 November 2010 16.51 GMT
Ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was improving the lives of the poor when he was the victim of a coup. Political reform, rather than aid, is the key to development
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/nov/11/honduras-politics-poverty-aid
You could be forgiven for thinking, as you read development blogs and articles, that we are all on the same side. You’re likely to read about partnerships, win-wins, and technological breakthroughs. Disputes and conflict? Those are on the international relations pages.
Development, it is implied, is about managing things better, coming up with good ideas, all working towards the common goal of poverty eradication, as agreed by our heads of state.
Wrong. Development is political. Almost all of my friends who are involved in development in poor countries are also engaged in politics, whether at grassroots or national level.
Progress against poverty may sometimes be a "win-win" (such as better ways of organising industry, technological advances in health or energy), but very often it involves a "win-lose": win for the poor, lose for the wealthy (although they win in the long term from living in a more equal society and world). That means that rather than supporting development efforts, those with power and wealth often fight to keep what they have, rather than see it distributed more fairly.
This becomes most obvious when violence is involved. Let’s take a recent example. The 2009 coup in Honduras, in which the elected president Manuel Zelaya was removed at gunpoint, was covered as a foreign affairs issue by the international relations experts in the media commentariat.
Two years on, and another group of experts from the development sector look at the Honduran statistics for health, education and overall poverty as we look at progress towards the millennium development goals. Two parallel discussions take place, when the issue is really one and the same. In Honduras, as in most countries, it is not aid, or internationally-agreed targets, or bright experts turning up from the west with good ideas about trade policy, that are going to make a difference for the poor. It’s politics, stupid.
The coup ringleaders claim that they acted in the interests of the people by scuppering plans for illegal constitutional reform. This is, of course, nonsense. They acted to prevent the redistribution of wealth and opportunity.
Honduras, home of the famously low-wage maquilas, or factories, which produce 65% of its exports and make the country so attractive to multinationals, is incredibly unequal. In 2005, the richest 10% earned 47% of the country’s income, and that isn’t even looking at land and asset wealth. In 2006, after a year of Zelaya’s government, they only earned 42.4%, still very unequal, but a step in the right direction, with the poorest 10% earning 2.5%, up from 2.1%. (These statistics and others further down come from the Center for Economic and Policy Research).
In 2001, according to World Bank-supported think-tank Sedlac, more than 64% of Honduran households lived below the poverty line. In 2005 it had reached 66%. But two years into his administration, Zelaya had brought poverty down to 60.2 percent. Still high, but moving in a good direction.
Against strong opposition, including a tense legal battle in the courts, Zelaya increased the minimum wage (the lowest in Central America apart from Nicaragua) by 60%, and even then it didn’t cover the basic basket of goods considered necessary to escape poverty.
He abolished school fees, allowing up to 450,000 more children to go to primary school, and oversaw a 25% increase in children receiving free school lunches (about 200,000 extra kids). In a country of only 7 million people, where over half are under 18, you can see how significant these numbers are. No wonder Zelaya became so popular with the poorest sectors of Honduran society.
Perhaps this was government largesse, unsustainable in the longer term? Was the economy faltering? No. Urban unemployment fell from 6.5% in 2005 to 4% in 2007, according to the Consejo Monetario Cetroamericano. Economic growth averaged 5.6% in the first three years of Zelaya’s tenure, faster than the previous administration.
So what has happened since the coup? Growth has stalled and the economy is now in recession, shrinking by over 3% last year. This is down to a combination of a recession in the US, a key trading partner, the drying-up of loans from governments and organisations that do not recognise the present regime, and the impact of stringent security controls to keep unrest in check – Jesus Canahuati, vice president of the Honduran chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, estimated that the five-month curfew imposed by the de facto regime cost the economy $50m per day.
In today’s Honduras, development is a civil rights issue. To protest about wages or labour rights, education or health standards, is to be at risk of reprisal. The opposition claims that 50 people have been killed for political reasons since the coup. Land occupations by poor farmers, which were under negotiation in the Zelaya administration, were met with a military response under interim leader Roberto Micheletti, with dozens of arrests.
Meanwhile, the energy that civil society and NGOs should be put into reducing poverty is spent on fighting simply to have a voice and to stave off reprisal and recrimination. The same old elite is reasserting its grasp on Honduras, preventing a fair distribution of land, wealth and the trappings of slow economic progress.
What should be done? The Brazilian government, mindful of the precedent set by the Honduran coup in a continent historically beset by coups, insists on the full establishment of human rights and the return of Zelaya to public life. What is really needed is an open debate drawing the poorest into a discussion about the future of the country. Predictably, this is not high on the present regimes to-do list. Instead, the elites fight over the spoils.
The challenge for those of us living outside Honduras is to discover what we can do to help the country develop and reduce poverty. There are a number of answers, but, please, don’t say more aid.
4) Bombs Away: Afghan Air War Peaks With 1,000 Strikes In October
Noah Shachtman, Wired.com/Danger Room, November 10, 2010
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/bombs-away-afghan-air-war-peaks-with-1000-strikes-in-october/
The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.
NATO officials say the increase in air attacks is simply a natural outgrowth of a more aggressive campaign to push militants out of their strongholds in southern Afghanistan. "Simply put, our air strikes have increased because our operations have increased. We’ve made a concentrated effort in the south to clear out the insurgency and therefore have increased our number of troops on the ground and aircraft to support them in this effort," Lt. Nicole Schwegman, a NATO spokesperson, tells Danger Room.
On the other hand, some outside observers believe the strikes are part of an attempt to soften up the insurgency before negotiations with them begin in earnest. But one thing is clear: it’s a strategy Petraeus has used before. Once he took over the Iraq war effort, air strikes jumped nearly sevenfold.
Next month, the Obama administration is set to review the strategy for the Afghanistan campaign. Petraeus’ newly-aggressive approach will almost certainly part of that examination. It’s a dramatic reversal from Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy, which drastically restricted the use of air power – even when troops came under fire.
[…] But in the meantime, more innocents are getting caught in the cross-fire. Schwegman emails Danger Room that "while our air strikes have gone up, our incident rate of causing civilian casualties has actually decreased. As you know, our main principle in our counterinsurgency strategy is to protect the civilian population first and foremost."
According to NATO statistics, however, 49 by-standers were killed or wounded by coalition forces last month, compared to 38 last October. It’s an increase of 30%.
[…]
5) Veterans Day highlights VA claims backlog
Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, November 12, 2010
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-11-12-veteransday12_ST_N.htm
Washington – Amid a throng assembled at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here Thursday, Harold Wiley presses his hand against the name of "Anthony Wayne Manstis" etched into black granite – killed in a helicopter shot down seven days before his 22nd birthday in 1970. "Tony Manstis was my roommate in Vietnam," Wiley says. "I think about him a lot."
Wiley’s own wounds were slow to emerge, insidious ailments such as Type 2 diabetes, lesions and urinary tract problems caused by the Agent Orange herbicide he sprayed while a Huey helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
Wiley is now totally disabled by the illnesses, like many others. In the past few months – 40 years after the Vietnam War- more than 150,000 Agent Orange cases have emerged, adding to a backlog of more than a million claims pending at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Agent Orange cases are either new filings or resurrected old claims, all seeking disability for veterans exposed to Agent Orange after a decision last year by Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to expand access to compensation for the defoliate.
[…] More than 200,000 cases in the VA system are appeals by veterans who believe they were wrongly denied benefits.
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, says the VA’s inspector general found mistakes by VA claims processors in 20% of cases reviewed. "Mistakes cause more appeals that clog VA’s system," he says.
Shinseki acknowledged that the VA must improve training of the department’s 15,000 claims adjudicators.
Israel/Palestine
6) German FM says Gaza blockade ‘unacceptable’
Sakher Abu El Oun, AFP, Mon Nov 8, 9:25 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101108/wl_mideast_afp/palestiniansisraelgermanygazablockadeeconomy_20101108142537
Gaza City – Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip only serves to strengthen extremists, Germany’s top diplomat said on Monday, urging Israel to allow exports from the impoverished Palestinian territory. "It is not acceptable to blockade 1.5 million people in Gaza," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters on a brief visit to the Hamas-run coastal strip.
The blockade "strengthens the radicals and weakens the moderates, and the opposite is what we should be doing," he said of the measure, which has been eased by Israel over the summer months but still remains in place. "It is important that imports and exports are allowed through again," he said, stressing that this was also the position of the European Union.
Westerwelle’s comments came during a visit to the Sheikh Ajleen sewage treatment plant, just south of Gaza City, which is being redeveloped with a 20-million-euro (28-million-dollar) grant from German development bank KfW.
[…]
7) Netanyahu exploited his U.S. trip to embarrass Obama
Netanyahu took advantage of the stage he was given to embarrass the Obama administration.
Editorial, Haaretz, 12.11.10
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-exploited-his-u-s-trip-to-embarrass-obama-1.324266
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States this week damaged Israel diplomatically, undermined the country’s relations with the U.S. administration and showed Netanyahu up again as a rejectionist who does nothing but look for excuses and delays to avoid making decisions.
Netanyahu flew to the annual conference of the United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans; from there he went on to New York. Strengthening ties with Diaspora Jewry is certainly a worthy cause, but Netanyahu took advantage of the stage he was given to embarrass the Obama administration.
His public call on the Americans to create a "credible military threat" against Iran merely exposed the disagreements between him and the administration, portraying Israel as a warmonger trying to drag America into another entanglement in the Middle East. No wonder Netanyahu’s declaration evoked a dismissive response from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Netanyahu focused on issuing warnings about Iran and the "delegitimization" of Israel, pushing the peace process with the Palestinians to the sidelines. His messages sounded coordinated with the scandalous speech by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the UN General Assembly.
Then came the reports about Israel’s approval of large construction plans in Har Homa and other East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Netanyahu again found himself in a public controversy with U.S. President Barack Obama and insulted Vice President Joe Biden, shortly after Biden had praised him enthusiastically in a speech.
Netanyahu was then forced to have "clarification talks" with Biden, whom he had embarrassed in similar circumstances only eight months ago with the declaration of the building plan in East Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood during the vice president’s visit to the capital.
Toward the end of the visit, Netanyahu hinted he would agree to an additional construction freeze in the settlements, but in exchange for some far-reaching demands. He wants extensive American security assistance and all the Arab states (apart from Saudi Arabia ) to sign peace agreements with Israel at the same time as the Palestinians.
Netanyahu apparently tried to show that the Republicans’ victory in the congressional elections rendered him immune to the administration’s pressures and that he had the upper hand in the controversy over the settlements. This is a shortsighted approach that endangers Israel’s interests. Israel needs a steadfast friendship with the United States.
Iran
8) Nuclear information safe with us, IAEA tells Iran
Fredrik Dahl, Reuters, Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:00am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AB1Q420101112
Vienna – The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday it protects the confidentiality of information gathered during inspections, indirectly rejecting an Iranian accusation it would feed sensitive information to Washington.
[…] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted earlier this week as saying the IAEA would pass on information about Iran’s nuclear program to the United States if Tehran agreed to widen the agency’s inspection powers in the country.
IAEA press officer Greg Webb said it had no comment on Ahmadinejad’s remarks.
But, he added in an e-mail to Reuters, "the IAEA takes great care to protect the confidentiality of information it collects during all its safeguards activities."
[…]
10) EU official rejects Turkey as venue for Iran talks
Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, November 12, 2010; 11:45 AM ET
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/11/eu_official_rejects_turkey_as.html
The European Union’s foreign policy chief has accepted Iran’s proposal to meet Dec. 5 but has rejected Istanbul as a venue, according to a copy of the letter seen by The Washington Post.
The exchange is the latest in a lengthy debate over when and where to hold talks between Iran and six nations eager to negotiate restraints on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran earlier this week proposed holding the talks on Nov. 23 or Dec. 5 in Turkey, but that would have meant that Turkish officials would host the event and presumably join in. The countries now involved in the long-stalled talks – the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany – are wary of adding another to the mix at this point.
"As far as the venue is concerned, holding the meeting in Istanbul is not possible for Her Excellency Lady [Catherine] Ashton, but she suggests that the meeting might take place in Vienna, or alternatively in Switzerland," wrote James Morrison, Ashton’s chief of staff, in the letter to Iranian officials.
[…]
Iraq
10) Fear Of Jihad Driving Christians From Iraq
Alice Fordham, USA Today, November 12, 2010
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-11-12-iraqchristians12_ST_N.htm
Baghdad – Priest Wasseem Sabeeh was halfway through Sunday Mass, in Our Lady
of Salvation in Baghdad, when an explosion shook the church. Suddenly men with guns yelling Islamic prayers burst into the church. They fired at the priests, congregants, even murals of Mary and the saints.
Some parishioners screamed and ran out. Sabeeh, 27, and another priest, Thaer Saadallah, 32, hastily directed dozens of others into a room near the altar, then turned to plead with the men in suicide vests to stop the killing.
They shot Sabeeh at point-blank range, then shot Saddallah in the face. He fell on the steps of the altar, his vestments stained with blood. "They were the best people," said Withaina Hadi, 49, a Muslim woman waiting at a health clinic run by Christians at St. George’s, an Anglican church on the other side of the Tigris River.
A terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq, which is linked to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group seeks the establishment of harsh Islamic law in Iraq and says all Iraqi Christians are targets for jihad. Horrified by the threat, many Christians are telling their religious leaders that they plan to go. "They will definitely leave," said Faiz Bashir, St. George’s curate. "We hope it’s not the end of Christians in Iraq, but if things get worse, if there are attacks on the churches and killing on the streets, this will be certain."
The four-hour ordeal Oct. 31 at Our Lady of Salvation, which left 50 people dead, was only the bloodiest of numerous terrorist attacks targeting Iraq’s Christian communities in the past year. The terrorists, who have also killed hundreds of Muslims in bombings in the past several months, have stepped up the targeting of Christians in recent weeks.
[…] Christians have been living in Iraq since long before it was called Iraq and centuries before Mohammed was born. Ancient Assyrians converted to Christianity during the first century A.D.
Back then, Iraq was part of what was known as Mesopotamia, and it would not be until the eighth century A.D. that Islam arrived. Even today, tombs of Old Testament Jewish prophets such as Ezekiel and Daniel dot Iraq.
Standing in his sunlit, yellow-brick church, built in 1936, British clergyman Andrew White said St. George’s has increased security and will have service on future Sundays. He is not expecting many people to come.
[…] Human Rights Watch says the number of Christians in Iraq had fallen to about 675,000 in 2008 from 1 million at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The Catholic Church in Iraq says there are 1.5 million Christians in Iraq, 1 million fewer than 2003.
[…]
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.