2.7 MILLION IRAQIS DISPLACED WITH NO HELP FROM US GOVERNMENT

IRAQ: Chaos Hardening Sectarian Fiefdoms

By Ali GharibWASHINGTON, Apr 17 (IPS) -
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42031

There are an estimated 2.7 million Iraqis who have been displaced within their own country. No house; no food; no security.

Who do they turn to for help?

The international community's humanitarian organisations?

The occupying United States government?

The central Iraqi government based in Baghdad?According to a report released Tuesday by Refugees International (RI), none of these has been able to provide sufficient assistance to the most vulnerable Iraqis.

As a result, they are turning increasingly to local religious-political armed groups for their humanitarian needs -- often Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, or the Sunni militias known as Sahwa or Awakening groups, made up of former insurgents armed and funded by the U.S. military, though other militias and strongmen exist as well.

The ongoing fragmentation of Iraqi society well beyond pre-U.S. invasion levels -- caused by the flawed U.S. occupation and even encouraged by some of it and the nascent Iraqi government's policies -- has left militias and other neighbourhood strongmen the only ones able to effectively provide food, shelter, oil for heating and cooking, and the semblance of a judiciary system, according to the report entitled "Uprooted and Unstable: Meeting Urgent Humanitarian Needs in Iraq".

"The trend more and more has been [that] Iraq, leaving aside Kurdistan, resembles Somalia, where you have warlords and militias independent fiefdoms," said journalist Nir Rosen, who has spent significant time in Iraq, in a conference call to launch the report, which he co-authored.

"These militias, be they Mahdi Army, be they Sunni Awakening groups or otherwise, provide security, provide housing, and other forms of assistance."