Sunday, June 18, 2023

The missing, the imprisoned, Congo Fever

Jonathan M. Pitts (BALTIMORE SUN) reports on Patrick Smithwick's new book WAR'S OVER, COME HOME. about his son ANdrew who is one of the thousands of homeless veterans in the US (and one of "630,000 homeless people" in the US).


A good athlete and an even better marksman as a boy, Smithwick said, Andrew was such a gentle soul he had to ask his sister to bait his fishhooks. Looking back over the years, though, he can see there were signs of problems to come.

Struggles with organization, he said, likely brought Andrew unwelcome stress, which might have hindered his studying. “Rebelling” — as his father put it — in his final year of high school, he failed to graduate alongside his classmates. After moving to Florida to live with an aunt, he excelled in enough of his community college classes to earn a diploma from his high school.

“Mercer Neale was an understanding man, and he had a lot of respect for Andrew,” said Smithwick, referring to the legendary former headmaster at Boys Latin.

After tackling a series of unfulfilling jobs, Andrew began talking about joining the Marines. He scored so well on aptitude tests that recruiters came after him. By 2004, he had been trained as an infantryman and a sniper, signed up for a five-year hitch, and found himself part of an aviation-support unit on its way to Iraq, where coalition forces had invaded the year before.

Those were not easy times for the Smithwicks. Reports coming out of hot zones like the city of Fallujah were spotty, but the news segments they saw about equipment shortages and IEDs were so nerve-wracking the family constantly felt on edge.

Andrew never shared information about his unit’s whereabouts, Smithwick said, but the family learned from letters home, and from later visits, of some of the horrors he faced — watching as a sergeant entered a bathroom facility before it was blown up, picking up body parts after an ambush, surviving a short-range machine-gun attack only thanks to his Kevlar flak jacket.


Andrew is currently missing.  Robert Pether's family misses him.  They know where he is, they just don't how the Iraqi government continues to justify imprisoning him.  Patrick Ryan and Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) report:

A ruling by an international body has strengthened the case for the release of two Dubai residents from jail in Iraq, a lawyer assisting their families said.

Australian Robert Pether and Egyptian Khaled Radwan have spent more than two years in prison over a contract dispute between their employers, engineering company CME Consulting, and the Central Bank of Iraq.

In 2021, they were sentenced to five years in prison by a Baghdad court and ordered to pay $12 million.

However, a ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration has found that the central bank was to blame for the contractual dispute and ordered it to pay $13 million, which includes legal costs, to the engineering company.

“This completely undercuts the basis for their incarceration,” said Peter Griffin, a UK human rights lawyer who has assisted the families.

The ruling is the second by an international body. Last year, a UN working body found the decision to imprison the men to be “arbitrary and in contravention of international law”.






At The Arab Center, Yari M. Asi notes of Iraq today:


Sectarian fragmentation persists, with the country’s many ethnic and religious minorities unable to fully participate in the country’s political discourse and policymaking. Some of the efforts that are positioned to increase representation, such as legislative quotas, are seen as highly problematic, especially by activists who feel that they result in tokenism and a lack of action on other vital issues, like justice and the restoration of the country.

Yet many groups within Iraq have united against the ineffectiveness of the government, which is deemed by many as illegitimate. The past few years have seen escalating protests, low voter turnout, and an overall disillusionment with successive governments ability to tackle the real problems facing the country, including high unemployment, mounting inflation, poor infrastructure, and a lack of social services. Predictably, protests have been met with massive state repression and violence. The protests of late 2019 (known as the Tishreen uprising), which eventually unseated the Adel Abdel-Mahdi government, also saw the murder of more than 600 protesters, the injury of more than 20,000, and the harassment of countless others.

In terms of social indicators, there are multiple worrying signs. Many of Iraq’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) face significant obstacles in obtaining services and returning to their homes, remaining reliant on humanitarian interventions. In February 2023, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced a new program to verify IDPs and to grant them access to the country’s social safety net, but whether the program will succeed remains to be seen.

Iraq’s poverty rate remains high, with about 31 percent of Iraqis living in poverty in 2020 (a number that is undoubtedly higher today due to economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic), and an estimated 2.4 million requiring acute food and livelihood assistance. Water scarcity is also a significant issue in this increasingly arid country, which is on the frontline of the climate crisis. It is estimated that three out of five children do not have access to safe water services, as the country’s primary sources of water—the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—have progressively dried out due to decreased rainfall, upstream diversion, and poor water infrastructure. The winter of 2022/2023 fortunately saw several rain storms that alleviated the immediate concerns of some farmers, but this is not a sustainable solution for long-term water loss. Some straightforward actions that the government could take, like the diversion of sewage pipelines that currently drain into waterways, are being ignored due to lack of funding.


The report doesn't note Congo Fever but it continues to be a problem in Iraq. Sinan Mahmoud explains:


Congo Fever, also known as Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever, is a viral disease transmitted to humans through ticks or direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of infected animals. The virus causes symptoms including high fever, headache, muscle pain and bleeding.

As of Tuesday, Iraq had reported 634 suspected cases, among which 208 were confirmed, with 32 deaths, Ahmed Zouiten, the World Health Organisation's representative in Iraq, told The National.

The most affected groups are animal breeders, butchers and homemakers, Dr Zouiten said. He added that 73 per cent of confirmed cases occur among people within the 15-45 year age bracket. A little under 40 per cent are women.

“The outbreak poses a significant risk on communities across the country and can also have a regional impact especially in neighbouring countries due to porous land borders and the movement of livestock,” he warned.

The WHO says it has been actively involved in responding to the CCHF outbreak in Iraq by training rapid response teams and enhancing outbreak investigation.

It also supports the state-run Central Public Health Laboratory with diagnostic kits for the detection and confirmation of CCHF and other haemorrhagic fevers.

The escalating threat of climate change has been linked to an increased risk of Congo Fever outbreaks as shifting temperatures and altered ecological patterns create more favourable conditions for the transmission of the disease.


The following sites updated:


 


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