World Beat: Iraq

By Aaron Weiner
The Flat Hat

As the United States begins its war with Iraq, the citizens of Baghdad, the city at the focal point of the conflict, are prepared for what many of them see as the inevitable fallout. According to the March 20 edition of the Washington Post, many shop owners have shuttered their stores and built make-shift brick walls in an effort to protect their property from possible damage. Others are hoarding supplies, hunkering down for the worst.

At the same time, according to CNN.com, Amnesty International has called on countries neighboring Iraq to open their borders to refugees.

"The United Nations has estimated that there will ... be about two million refugees," Amnesty International's Kamal Samari told CNN Wednesday. "It is their right to flee the conflict and it is the obligation of the neighboring countries to offer protection."

The United Nations has warned that a war could trigger a major humanitarian disaster in a country already devastated by more than a decade of sanctions and corrupt rule. In the short term, food would be urgently needed to feed about 10 million people.

Iraq could face, in the worst-case scenario, widespread starvation and epidemics, Ramiro Lopez da Silva, the U.N.'s aid official in charge of Iraq, said. While making it clear that the United Nations would not provide aid under the shadow of "military governance in Baghdad," aid agencies are preparing to cope with the inevitable exodus and are ready to spring into action when called upon.

Many other aid agencies have the same views, only allowing themselves to work under the power of the United Nations, so as not to compromise their impartiality. For example, the British aid agency Oxfam said earlier this week it would not work under any U.S.-run postwar government. The United Nations must enter Iraq quickly after hostilities cease to co-ordinate humanitarian and reconstruction work so as not to place their workers in danger, the agency said.

According to the March 20 Washington Post online, the reaction of the world's leaders has been mostly as it was expected to be: as allies tacitly approve, others regret and traditional enemies condemn. Most of Europe has given little support for initial U.S. action in Iraq. France's National Assembly briefly suspended its Thursday session in a symbolic protest. President Jacques Chirac said the war would have "serious consequences for the future."

Germany said the outbreak of war "sparked grave concern and dismay in the federal government." Russian President Vladimir Putin said "Military action ... is a big political error." Greece said it regretted the crisis had not been solved peacefully and with international unity. The Vatican was "deeply pained" by the outbreak of war.

Reaction in the Islamic world was largely, but not uniformly, negative. Iran, part of what U.S. President George W. Bush declared an "axis of evil," has called the attack "unjustified and evil." Turkey, which previously had a strong military alliance with the United States, has refused to allow the United States to use its land as a launch pad for invasion. However, the Turkish Parliament did vote to open its airspace to the United States. According to CNN.com, the parliament voted 332-202 to allow warplanes to fly over Turkey.

On the other end of the spectrum, many in Muslim Kuwait, invaded by Iraq in 1990 and freed by U.S.-led forces, were relieved to see what they hoped was the beginning of the end of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Some Kuwaitis have even held a party on the border to celebrate what they hoped was the end of Hussein.

Meanwhile, the number and size of protests in Europe and the Middle East flared up dramatically. Plus, barely three hours after the first U.S. missiles struck Baghdad, a crowd that organizers put at 40,000 and which police said numbered "tens of thousands" brought Australia's second largest city, Melbourne, to a standstill.

In Germany, 50,000 school students marched from Berlin's central Alexanderplatz past the guarded U.S. Embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate. The crowd whistled and chanted and carried banners which read "Stop the Bush fire," "George W. Hitler" and "No blood for oil."