IRAQ: Where Nobody Is Accountable

Ali al-Fadhily*, IPS
Killings, crime, lack of medical care, collapse of educationàthe list goes on. But with the occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong. It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say. "It is good of these people to discuss accountability for theft, but the most important thing to account for is Iraqi blood," Numan Ahmed, a human rights activist from the Adhamiya neighbourhood in Baghdad told IPS. The British medical journal Lancet has reported that by July 2006, 655,000 people had died as "a consequence of the war." It has reported that the risk of death among civilians is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. "By now a million Iraqis have been killed for no reason, and many millions disabled or badly injured just because of some thieves in Baghdad and Washington," Ahmed said. "We are prepared to reveal the documents to condemn them even if takes us a lifetime."...
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