The refugees, fleeing from the "success" in Baghdad, are the ones most susceptible to the cholera outbreak, due to the deplorable conditions they are forced to live in. While neocons and senior military commanders speak in bright tones about how the Iraqi provincial and federal government is "improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis", the truth is that millions are internally displaced and are left to fend for themselves. These are the ones who can't afford to join the 50,000 other Iraqis a month who flee the country's "progress".
Of course, warnings of the current crisis went unheeded by Iraqi officials, who are devoted to the sectarian political struggle, and also by the U.S. military, which is obsessed with Al-Qaeda to the exclusion of everything else.
Notice the anecdote in the article of the poor Iraqi woman who fled Baghdad after her child was kidnapped. Or the man who fled because sectarian militias threatened his life. These are the faces of "progress" in Baghdad, where the surge promised the most. Neocons, who profess such concern over the Iraqis should we withdraw, merely brush aside these stories of shattered lives and grim futures.
story from L.A. Times
Deadly cholera outbreak in north Iraq
SULAYMANIYA, IRAQ -- A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq, where thousands of people have sought refuge from sectarian violence, is overwhelming hospitals and has killed as many as 10 people, health officials said Friday.
The outbreak in Sulaymaniya and Kirkuk is seen as the latest example of the displacement and deterioration of living conditions caused by the Iraqi conflict.
The water-borne disease has struck more than 80 people in the two cities, which are about 100 miles apart, said Claire Hajaj of the U.N. Children's Fund, or Unicef. She said cholera had been confirmed as the cause of five deaths and was suspected in five others.
Local officials said more than 2,000 people had been affected.
Aid agencies had warned of the possibility of a cholera outbreak as blazing summer heat settled in Iraq, where the infrastructure is shattered by war and neglect. The disease tends to appear in the summer because, as the temperature rises, Iraq's chronic electricity shortages make it difficult to operate pumps at sewage and drinking-water treatment plants, which leaves many people without clean water.
That was evident Wednesday at a squalid encampment outside Sulaymaniya, where several hundred people live in makeshift tents that are little more than worn blankets draped over wooden frames. Girls and women lined up to fill containers from a tanker distributing water.
"We drink from this water, whether it's drinkable or not," Zahra Jabbar Kadhim said.
"In this tent, we bathe, cook and sleep," she said, pointing to the canvas she shares with her husband, Abdullah Ahmed, and four children.
Ahmed, a Sunni Arab, said they fled Baghdad after a Shiite militia threatened to kill him.
Lamia Karim Shaalan ended up at the camp after she sold everything she had, including her shop, to pay a $60,000 ransom to kidnappers who took her 10-year-old daughter in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood.
"We live in this handmade tent on the sand and in the middle of heat and snakes," she said.
A Shiite man whose wife gave birth in their tent a week ago said they fled to Sulaymaniya from the Sadiya neighborhood in southwest Baghdad seven months ago after Shiite militiamen discovered his wife was Sunni and ordered him to divorce her.
A nurse with the Kurdistan Health Organization, Abdul Karim, said the camp, which has neither garbage disposal nor a sewage system, is a breeding ground for disease.
The International Organization for Migration, in its latest assessment of Iraq's internal displacement problem, says that more than 70,000 Iraqis have fled to the northern region this year, most of them to escape violence. Such people increasingly are living in camps or camp-like settings because of the scarcity of affordable housing, it says.
In Kirkuk, Dr. Sabah Amin, director of the provincial health department, announced measures to curb the disease, including the closure of public swimming pools, a ban on street vendors selling food and drinks, and testing at ice and soft drink factories.
The number of patients arriving at health facilities with cholera symptoms, which include severe diarrhea, has increased to the point that hospitals have stopped testing everyone.
"They simply can't test them all," said Hajaj, of Unicef. "They're just assuming that if it looks like cholera, they have cholera."
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