CAIRO,
April 16, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The dreams cherished by the
citizens of the northern city of Halabja of a prosperous life in
post-Saddam Iraq continue to be dashed by the US occupation
authorities who shifted billions of dollars from reconstruction to
security, a leading American newspaper reported on Saturday, April 16.
Before
invading Iraq two years ago, Washington played Halabja as a catchword
for birth defects, deadly diseases, pollution and mass graves caused
by chemical attack ordered by Saddam.
Today,
the US has canceled the much-needed clean water project it had planned
for the city as part of a vast effort to rebuild Iraq after the 2003
invasion, The New York Times said.
“Everybody
uses Halabja like a card…But when it comes to working in Halabja,
nobody does it,” Nuradeen Ghreeb, a civil engineer and the head of
water and sewage projects in the city since 2001, told the daily.
“If
the Americans think that training the Iraqi army comes before clean
drinking water for the people of Halabja,” he added, “then we
can't expect anything from them.”
Spreading
Diseases
Less
than 50 percent of Halabja's population has regular running water, and
even that may be contaminated by bat feces from the mountain cave
where much of the water originates, The Times said.
The
Iraqi environment ministry has warned that the contamination of water
supply could be connected with abnormalities found in residents' white
and red blood cell counts and the relatively high levels of kidney
disease, miscarriages and other maladies that have been reported.
“They
cut Halabja, of all places,” said Kurdish Nesreen Siddeek Berwari,
the national public works minister.
“I'm
outraged and amazed. Where else is it more important to do a water
project?”
Widespread
Cancellations
 |
|
A
man checks a tank for the Halabja water department near where
water surfaces from a bat cave. (Courtesy: NY Times)
|
The
Halabja project, worth around $10 million financed through the US
Projects and Contracting Office, accounted for a small fraction of the
$18.4 billion that Congress approved in 2003 for the reconstruction of
Iraq, including $4 billion for water and sewage projects.
The
US, however, shifted $3.4 billion from water, electricity and oil
projects to pay for training and equipping the Iraqi army and police
forces, The Times said.
Many
other projects have been canceled across the country with some of the
largest cancellations in waterworks.
An
Iraqi official with the Public Works Ministry, of 81 water projects
all but 13 have been canceled, with many of the rest reduced in scale.
According
to US embassy figures, as of March 30 there were 249 water and sewage
projects - 185 in progress and 64 completed - financed by the
Congressionally approved money across Iraq.
A
total of 92 projects have been canceled because of the shift of money
to security, the embassy said.
Thousands
of Iraqis protested on April 9 the continued US occupation of their
country on the second anniversary of the downfall of their capital to
the invaders.
Many
Iraqis had complained that their lives were no better off under the
US-led occupation with unemployment hitting towering rates.
Reports
said that the US occupation has left some 10
million
Iraqis in
both the private and public sectors jobless.
