Word: shaalan
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When Iraq's tough-talking interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan starts talking about postponing the January 30 election, it's clear that the issue is being considered at the highest levels of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's administration - despite official insistence that the poll will go ahead on schedule. Calls for an election delay from within the government aren't new - interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni, has publicly called for a UN assessment on the feasibility of voting on January 30. But Shaalan has until now been one of the more bellicose officials in Allawi's government when...
...political parlance, "go negative." Defense Minister, Hazem Shalan (who is standing on an independent list), fired the opening shot of his own campaign Tuesday when he accused the United Iraqi Alliance, assembled at the behest of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, of being "an Iranian list." Shaalan proclaimed Iran as Iraq's primary enemy, and urged Iraqis to resist to the death what he called the efforts of the "black horde" in Tehran to turn Iraq into a theocracy...
...while Shaalan's suggestion that the IUA is an "Iranian list" smacks of partisan mudslinging - the SCIRI and Dawa, after all, participate at cabinet level in Allawi's government, and served in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council before that - both groups are certainly closer to Tehran, where they were based during their years in exile, than they are to Washington. U.S. officials have drawn comfort from the fact that Sistani, and much of the Iraqi Shiite clerical establishment, opposes the Iranian view that clerics ought to hold political power. Leaders of both SCIRI and Dawa have been somewhat ambiguous...
...Pakistan and Bangladesh, these refugees once worked in Kuwait at jobs the natives disdained: as drivers, waiters and maids. Though never wealthy, they earned good wages and had become accustomed to the air-conditioned placidity of their adopted country. Today they languish in three sprawling, filthy tent cities, called Shaalan One, Two and Three, erected in a sweltering moonscape infested with snakes and scorpions. At least 10 refugees, including two babies, have already died of dehydration and exposure. Says Xavier Emmanuelli, president of the French relief organization Doctors Without Borders: "These people are hostages of the desert...
...Shaalan One camp, civility ends when the water truck arrives. As cries of "Water! Water!" erupt in a babel of languages from hundreds of parched throats, men and women battle their way to the nozzle of the tanker. One feverish man grabs a stone and threatens to bash a competitor's skull. Meanwhile, most of the precious liquid spills on the ground and vanishes into the sand...