Iraq

Leaving Iraq – February, 2006

I had wanted to stay past the end of 2005 when the permanent government would be elected.  We all knew that the Sunnite insurgents and Al Qaeda would, regardless, continue to contest the future of Iraq on the streets but we could also see that these two forces were increasingly hostile fellow travelers with the later still driven by the vision of their Caliphate and the former hanging on to privileges in a nation-state. 

The Avant Garde: How we left Iraq...

It was the summer of 2005 and for the time being a group of us humanitarian workers had found an acceptable security situation in Khanaqin, a town in eastern Diyala a few kilometers from the Iranian border.

"They are imbuing the soil with their blood", I had said. "Sanctifying it and making it them. The field of Black birds for the Serbs", I had added as I turned toward my Serbian program director,  "versus the foot-loose, the homeless, and the multinational who will not die for soil."

Salam al Waili is an Iraqi national currently working with IJMA3 and BTD based in Beirut, Lebanon. A software development engineer by training, Salam began working in the relief and development sector when he joined Mercy Corps’ Iraq program in 2003. In 2008, he joined IJMA3 and is currently overseeing ICT for Development projects in Bourj al Barajneh, and supporting BTD’s LMEPP refugee assistance program. 

Access to services has been a basic and persistent demand of Iraqis since the 1991 Gulf War when Iraq’s infrastructure was badly damaged.  The greatest damage was to access to services by Iraqis despite all the funds spent by and claimed to be spent by the government.  Today, the quality of services to Iraqis continues in a worse state ever.  The worst service in the life the average Iraqi is access to electricity.  In 2010, Iraqis are subjected to daily cuts in electricity at the national level with the exception of Iraqi Kurdistan.  Droves of Iraqis have

On October 4^th, the President of the Republic of Iraq, Jalal Talabani received in his office in Baghdad, a large delegation of people with disabilities and Moaffak al-Khafaji, Head of the Iraqi Alliance of Disabilities Organizations (IADO). Mr Al-Khafaji reiterated the priorities for PWDs in Iraq, and more precisely the necessity to ratify the International Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and the creation of a national committee for the disabled.

BAGHDAD - 09/22/2010

The Iraqi Alliance for Disability Organizations (IADO) organized, in cooperation with Mercy Corps International, the fourth conference for the ratification of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (ICRPD) and for the establishment of a National Authority for Disabled in Iraq.

Among our activities as an organization is to distribute humanitarian aid to women detained at the Directorate of Transfers in Kirkuk. Female detainees suffer from infirmity and lack of decent accommodations. The Ministry of the Interior does not ensure that it provides anything for them save basic meals of food and water, which would put them in a poor psychological state if it weren’t for what civil society organizations gave them. Listed is a group of pictures, in which we were not allowed to photograph or show the faces of the detainees pictured.

From a statement released by Moaffak Al-Khafaji, the President of the Iraqi Alliance of Disability Organizations (IADO)

BAGHDAD – 8/29/2010

On 8/21/2010, one of the days of the holy month of Ramadan, the Iraqi Alliance of Disability Organizations (IADO) held an evening iftar dinner event for the disabled citizens of Iraq to prove that they actively take part in social initiatives, as well as to affirm their commitment to their causOn 8/21/2010, one of the days of the holy month of Ramadan, the Iraqi Alliance of Disability Organizations (IADO) held an evening iftar dinner event for the disabled citizens of Iraq to prove that they actively take part in social initiatives, as well as to affir

8/11/2010 – BAGHDAD, Headquarters of the Iraqi Ground Forces Leadership.