Humanitarian crises of the Iraq War
On December 14, 2008, a New York Times article by James Glanz and T. Christian Miller discussed the pending release of a report that criticizes the Bush administration for failing to effectively plan for post-combat operations in Iraq.
According to the article, the report "depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure."
[1] In a report entitled "Civilians without Protection: The Ever-Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq", produced well after the stepped-up US-led military operations in Baghdad began on February 14, 2007, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement said that millions of Iraqis are in a disastrous situation that is getting worse, with medical professionals fleeing the country after their colleagues were killed or abducted.
Red Cross Director of Operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl said that hospitals and other key services are desperately short of staff, with more than half the doctors said to have already left the country.
The Iraqi government's estimate of the number of civilian deaths has always been much lower than reports from independent researchers, such as the Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties.
Despite official Iraqi and U.S. statements to the contrary, the reports indicated that the number of unidentified bodies in the capital rose to pre-surge levels in July.
Media reports have indicated that the U.S. military has usually focused on areas where they have been attacked rather than districts witnessing such sectarian reprisal killings.
[8] In December 2007 the Iraqi government announced plans to cut food rations and subsidies by almost 50 per cent as part of its overall 2008 budget because of insufficient funds and rising inflation.
During the same conference, Wijdan Salem Mikhail, the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, stated that the phenomenon of orphans in Iraq "is one of the most passive things that grew immensely during the past few years due to destructive wars and unbridled violence in the country."
Amal Kashefal-Ghetaa, the president of the Islamic Foundation of Woman and Child, explained that "a massive change took place in the lives of children that forced many of them to leave their schools and friends to go to work; a matter that affects them mentally."
A report on the survey published by the BBC estimated that these rates correspond to a finding that "between 800,000 to a million Iraqi children have lost one or both of their parents."
An estimated 331 school teachers were slain in the first four months of 2006, according to Human Rights Watch, and at least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been murdered and 250 kidnapped since the 2003 U.S.
[32][33] Entire neighborhoods in Baghdad were ethnically cleansed by Shia and Sunni militias and sectarian violence has broken out in every Iraqi city where there is a mixed population.
[42] The policies of Kurdification by KDP and PUK after 2003 (with non-Kurds being pressured to move, in particular Assyrian Christians and Iraqi Turkmen) have prompted serious inter-ethnic problems.
