The Common Ills: Packs of stray dogs roam Wasit Province

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Packs of stray dogs roam Wasit Province

Violence continues in Iraq. National Iraqi News Agency reports a Falluja roadside bombing injured two people, Nouri's forces shot dead 3 suspects in Diyala Province, a Diyala roadside bombing left two police officers injured, a Baghdad roadside bombing has left five college students injured, and early this morning the manager of iron and steel plant was shot dead in Sulaymaniyah Province. Alsumaria adds that tribal leader Hamoud al-Hasnawi and his son Uday were shot dead while on the highway that connect Dhi Qar Povince with Basra. Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count counts 187 violent deaths so far this month.

Alsumaria notes that Iraqis living in Wasit Province also have to deal with an estimated 4,000 dogs running through the province in packs, scaring and intimidating the citizens. If this seems familiar, yes, this was a problem last year as well. Wasit Province attempted to kill the stray dogs then. That effort appears to have made no real impact. Citizens are attempting to use devices that provide ultrasound noises and run on batteries to keep the dogs away.

Dropping back to yesterday's snapshot:

Supposedly, there's been spill-over violence in Iraq. It's strange, though, that you can argue that al Qaeda in Iraq is rushing into Syria and doing battle there and that it's also doing damage in Iraq and responsible for the massive increase of violence in Iraq. It was just like October that Lara Jakes and Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reporting that "now, Iraqi and U.S. officials say, the insurgent group has more than doubled in numbers from a year ago -- from about 1,000 to 2,5000 fighters." But since when have government claims -- US or Iraqi -- ever made sense or been actually factual? They're in Syria, these 2,500 people, but also in Iraq, they're ripping apart Syria but also taking Iraq to the worst violence in five years.

Mohammad Sabah (Al Mada) reports that intelligence sources testified to Parliament's Security and Defense Committee that they estimate 2,000 al Qaeda in Iraq fighters are in the country, with many having returned from Syria. Matthew Hoh reflects on al Qaeda and other things in an interview with Leighton Woodhouse (Huffington Post):

The second thing is to stop lending credence or validating the propaganda claims of al-Qaeda and other terror groups. In 2005, while on the Iraq Desk at the State Department, I recall reading the summaries of interrogations of non-Iraqi fighters we had captured in Iraq (the actual number of non-Iraqi fighters was quite small, in the few hundreds). The overwhelming reason for their travel to Iraq to fight the Americans were the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the photos from Abu Ghraib and the stories from Guantanamo (the reason for the Iraqi fighters fighting us was quite simple: we were there). Al-Qaeda's message to its recruits is not one of establishing worldwide Muslim rule or of gaining virgins in Paradise, but rather it is a defensive message, an exhortation to defend Muslim lands, culture and people from Western invasion and occupation, and, increasingly, revenge for American attacks. The greatest recruitment event for al-Qaeda was not 9/11, but rather the invasion of Iraq and subsequently, the escalation of the Afghan War and the worldwide, too often indiscriminate, targeted killing campaign (additionally, President Bush calling our actions in the Muslim world a Crusade may be one of the greatest foreign policy mis-pronouncements ever). So we need to stop validating and proving the terror groups' propaganda and recruitment messages.

Matthew Hoh is an Iraq War veteran who deployed there as a Marine. Later, working for the State Dept, he was part of Embassy teams in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the world press has treated the meet-up between Nouri al-Maliki and KRG President Massoud Barzani at the start of the week as a big deal, in Iraq, the impression has been far less effusive. Today NINA reports that Kurdistan Alliance MP Sirwan Ahmed Amin is predicting "failure of ongoing dialogues between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government." Also being a lot more realistic was Hanife Sede Kose (Todays Zaman), "Prospects for reconciliation between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the president of the country's Kurdistan region, Massoud Barzani, remain bleak after the two leaders met in Arbil on Sunday to resolve long-running problems between them, analysts note." Nouri's State of Law came in second place in the 2010 parliamentary elections to Iraqiya. Today All Iraq News notes:

The head of the Iraqiya Slate, Ayad Allawi described last visit of the Premier, Nouri al-Maliki, to Kurdistan Region as aiming to calm down the tensions after he failed to run the country. Allawi mentioned in his personal Twitter page "Maliki's visit to KR came to calm down the tensions after he failed to run the state following his domination on the decision-making, thus created many problems."

Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee and her office notes:

FOR PLANNING PURPOSES CONTACT: Murray Press Office

Tuesday, June 11^th, 2013 (202) 224-2834

Murray Amendment to Support Students From Military Families Included in Senate Education Overhaul

Amendment would generate precise data on classroom success of military-connected students

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, an amendment authored by U.S. Senator Patty Murray to help track school progress of students from military-connected families was adopted as part of a major U.S. Senate education overhaul. The amendment passed in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s markup of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) by a bipartisan vote of 13 to 9.

“We ask so much of our service members and their families, but we don’t have any programs in place to study the impact that life in a military family can have on child’s education.” said Senator Murray. “This amendment allows us to take the first step in helping military-connected children succeed in school by learning more about what life events – from deployments of their parents to changing schools every few years – impact their success in the classroom.”

Currently, schools and educators do not have access to reliable, consistent data on the academic well-being of students from military families. Without a military-connected student identifier, school districts cannot track these students’ performance, educators cannot as effectively prepare transitioning students for their new school, and there are no performance indicators for the local districts to discover practices and processes worthy of attention and replication to ensure success.

This amendment would create a report-only subgroup for military-connected students, generating precise data about their classroom success and the schools they attend. The amendment would help federal, state, and local entities eventually target resources for this vulnerable population, and it is supported by organizations supporting military families across the country, including:

American Association of School Administrators

America’s Promise Alliance

Association of the U.S. Army

Military Child Education Coalition

Military Officers Association of America

National Association of Elementary School Principals

National Association of Secondary School Principals

National Association of State Boards of Education

National Guard Association of the United States

National Military Family Association

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Sean Coit