wfn.org | Title: In once forbidden places, find women and children still

["WCC Media" <Media@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
Feature 03-06
For Immediate Use
6 May 2003

In once forbidden places, find women and children still at war

By Jonathan Frerichs

(Free photos available - see below.)

Hai El Mahdi, April 30, 2003 - Follow aid workers to the doorsteps of Iraq's
big humanitarian problems and you find yourself in places that outsiders
rarely visited in the past.  Iraq's former regime clearly preferred palaces
to poverty - a fact confirmed by a glance at Baghdad's skyline. 
 
But drive past the imposing monuments - including the mosque due to be
completed in 2015, already bigger than a domed stadium - and there are
unauthorized, hidden showcases of poverty newly accessible on the outskirts
of town.  
 
In the northern reaches of Baghdad are the millions who live in and around
Saddam City.  Most are Iraq's majority Shiites, economic migrants who came
here from the south.  They were marginalized by the past government, but they
are now increasingly organizing to put pressure on the government to come.   

 
The best passport for a visit to deprived areas is anti-diarrheal medicines,
or other cures for the age-old plagues that take a high toll on human life,
especially on the young.  The average Iraqi child suffers 14 episodes of
diarrhea per year, according to UNICEF. 
 
It is an average driven up by what is happening in places like Hai El Mahdi. 
Like other communities now stirring with expectation, the more than 20,000
impoverished Shiite citizens here have organized themselves under their local
cleric.  They will soon have two small primary health clinics.	One opened at
the end of April.  Another will open soon.  Both are signs of change in a
community that went unrecognized by government authorities for 35 years.  
 
"We have wanted to start clinics and a build a real water system here for
nearly two years," said Alexander Christof, head of a small German NGO
starting the clinics.  "We were not allowed to do so.  The government told us
that this settlement does not exist."

Your entry visa to such places is your intentions.  A crowd soon gathers to
meet and greet you, but without local hosts to vouch for who you are and what
you are doing, the locals may well exert their new-found authority and ask
you to leave. They are in no mood to suffer further abuse or neglect.  Your
actions must speak for themselves, must earn you your stay.

Hai El Mahdi stands on land that was empty because nobody wanted it and that
looks as if nobody would want it now. Large ponds beside the road contain a
mixture of stagnant water and sewage. Streets never paved are lined with rows
of garbage. One of the first people you meet is a child standing with a
bandaged foot on a large piece of dung.  
 
Outside the clinic are mothers who do not normally encounter foreigners. Some
of the infants in their arms can't hold their heads up. You notice thin arms
and limp hair on children who should be toddlers. This is the vulnerability
at the low end of the government ration scheme that fed 16 million people -
two Iraqis in three - until the war. These mothers and children are still
fighting their own war, against opportunistic diseases and chronic
malnutrition.  
 
There are no churches here, but churches offer safe storage for the needed
relief goods and medicines. On the way, you stop for supplies at one church
aid depot established by Action by Churches Together (ACT)-Middle East
Council of Churches. It is important, in today's Baghdad, to add that this
church and the mosque next door were both protected from looters by the
people of the neighbourhood.
 
A team of Iraqi doctors, nurses and assistance is now at work. The German NGO
behind them, APN, is supported by a people-to-people initiative called "All
Our Children" which includes two US members of ACT. 
 
"All Our Children" supports four more clinics like those in Hai El Mahdi.
Christof's strategy is to start small clinics in poor neighbourhoods, and
then turn them over as soon as possible to the health department, which was
officially re-opened end of April.  Banking on improved security and access
in the weeks ahead, APN has also begun to refurbish small water systems to
treat the water supply that is spreading disease.   
 
"The place to work in Iraq is places like this.  Saddam Hussein's government
wanted to keep poverty hidden, and it is still likely to be forgotten now,"
said Christof. "There is not much money for working here, and no money to be
made here, but this is where Iraq's humanitarian crisis is."  

For further information, please contact the Media Relations Office, 
tel: +41 (0)22 791 64 21 / 61 53

- - -

Jonathan Frerichs worked in Iraq as a communicator for Action by Churches
Together (ACT). He has been replaced since the beginning of May by Guy Hovey,
who can be contacted until 14 May at the following satellite telephone
numbers, and who is available for interviews: 
Tel. Nos.: +882-1654-20-1083 und +882-1651-10-1785	      

Free photos to accompany this feature are available on request. The photos
appear on our website at: 
http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/iraqphotos.html 

**********

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches, now 342, in
more than 100 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but works
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Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

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