The president of the Iraqi Red Crescent, the only relief organization operating in Iraq, is calling on the Democratic-led Congress to rethink its troop withdrawal strategy and recognize that Iraq suffers from a worsening humanitarian crisis.
His call follows on the heels of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) announcement yesterday that Appropriations Committee conferees will set a non-binding goal, as part of the 2007 emergency war supplemental, of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1, 2008.
Congressional leaders find themselves in a continuing stalemate with President Bush, who has vowed to veto any measure that contains a withdrawal timetable. Bush has the support of most Republicans on Capitol Hill.
In Washington for a series of advocacy meetings in Congress, Said Hakki, the president of the Iraqi Red Crescent, expressed concern that by setting a withdrawal timetable, the U.S. would abandon Iraq at the height of a humanitarian crisis.
“It is important that Congress identifies that there is a humanitarian crisis in Iraq,” Hakki said in an interview with The Hill. “If they agree there’s a crisis, let’s not have America be a problem but the solution.”
The Iraqi Red Crescent Society or Organization, as it is often referred to, is an auxiliary arm of the Iraqi government and is a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Insisting that he is not a politician, Hakki — a U.S. citizen who spends most of his time in Iraq’s red zones — is pushing for a time-out in what he calls the “partisan squabble” over the U.S. troop withdrawal timetable.
“Let’s not talk about differences, but about what we can agree upon,” Hakki said. If Congress agrees that there is a humanitarian crisis, he asked, “is it justified to set a timetable and leave all those people in a dire position, worse than they were [before 2003]?”
Hakki, accompanied by Adnan Ali Al-Kadhimi — the adviser to former Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jafaari, who said he now focuses on policy and advocacy for the Iraq Red Crescent — is meeting with several congressional offices, in particular those of members of the foreign relations committees on both sides of the Capitol.
On their list are Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), John Sununu (R-N.H.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), as well as Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.).
According to lobby disclosure data, the Iraqi Red Crescent hired Cassidy & Associates earlier this year as their representation in Washington to work on the political, economic and humanitarian issues related to the Iraqi conflict, as well as the Carmen Group, which signed up to develop a strategic plan for obtaining humanitarian funds, especially for internally displaced persons.
As of April 10, Iraq had 850,000 internally displaced persons; Hakki estimates that number will grow to 1 million by the end of this year. Iraq also has a high number of externally displaced persons since 2003, said Hakki.
About 1.2 million are in Syria; 350,000 in Iran; 750,000 in Jordan; 100,000 in Egypt and 40,000 in Lebanon, according to data provided by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR).
More than 55 percent of all displaced people are children under the age of 12. According to Hakki, there are up to 300,000 widows under the age of 25.
Food insecurity and the vastly inadequate water, sewage and electrical power infrastructure exacerbate the hardship of the population and represent a public-health hazard, according to a recent address by Angelo Gnaedinger, the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Health facilities are stretched to the limit as they struggle to cope with daily emergencies caused by mass casualties.
Because of the security situation, many sick and wounded cannot access hospitals. Many of the dead are not identified. In 2006, 100 civilians were killed every day. Half of them remained unclaimed.
Millions of Iraqis are in a “disastrous” situation that is getting worse, with mothers appealing for someone to pick up the bodies on the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school, the International Red Cross stated earlier this month.
Iraq’s displacement problems go back 25 years but have been exacerbated by the continued conflict in Iraq. Displacement started when Iraq entered into an eight-year war with Iran in 1980 and continued when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The trend continued during the years of U.N. sanctions and the Oil for Food program, said Hakki.
Running what Hakki calls a shoestring operation, the Iraqi Red Crescent has more than 100,000 volunteers all over Iraq and about 300 offices.
This year it requested $246 million from the Iraqi government to help the internally displaced people and received about $60 million. A similar amount would be needed for the externally displaced population, said Hakki. For that, there is a proposal to create a committee under the auspices of the U.N., involving the Red Crescent, the ICRC and IFRC and other sister societies.
While the U.N. wanted to lead the relief process, it has almost no presence and little respect in Iraq as well as no acumen to navigate difficult circumstances, according to Hakki, who is making the case in the international community as well as the U.S. Congress that the higher commission should be allowed to operate in Iraq.
He recalled a recent incident when 18 U.N. relief trucks were hijacked. Insurgents did not touch the only Red Crescent truck in the convoy. Following bomb attacks on the U.N. office and the ICRC delegation in 2003, the organizations had to review their setup in Iraq.
Hakki is also pushing for the United States to lead an international effort and pressure the Arab Gulf states to contribute with relief money: “If they put their foot down they can get twice that number from the Gulf without money from U.S. taxpayers,” he said.
There is $111 million for humanitarian aid in the pending supplemental bill, but Hakki said he does not expect to see any of it until September. The organization currently has $30 million in operating funds, he said.
Despite its own setbacks — 14 of its staff and volunteers were killed and 45 abducted, 12 of whom remain unaccounted for — the Red Crescent has remained operational. The Iraqi government also complained in the past about repeated U.S. raids on the organization’s offices.
The humanitarian crisis, however, is not going unnoticed in Congress. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, introduced legislation concerning the humanitarian situation in Iraq as part of his Iraq Reconstruction Improvement Act, which seeks to provide assistance to internally displaces persons and refugees and encourages the White House to allow more resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the U.S. Lantos also argued that a lot more needs to be done apart from the newly created State Department task force on Iraqi refugees.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) a strong supporter of the troop withdrawal, acknowledged that there is a humanitarian crisis in Iraq and that the issue is not escaping Congress. She supports investing in reconstruction and reconciliation in Iraq and helping through non-military means and also wants to make sure that American aid goes to directly to the Iraqi people. “We are supporting the Iraqis,” she said in an interview.
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