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DEMOCRACY
Mideast crisis exposes failure to build democracy: official
by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) June 26, 2014


Caught between government and militants, Iraqis despair
Germawa Camp, Iraq (AFP) June 26, 2014 - Amsha's family decided to leave the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar after shelling one night killed their neighbour as he used his outdoor toilet.

The 24-year-old now lives in a tent with the other eight members of her family at the Germawa camp in the Kurdish province of Dohuk.

She describes nights of terror as Sunni militants traded fire with Iraqi troops desperate to hold onto the town.

She curses her country's politicians, both Shiites like Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Sunnis like herself, for courting her support ahead of April 30 elections, only to abandon the city.

"We walked for four hours to leave Tal Afar. We're now living nine to a tent, trying to breathe in this heat," she says.

"Where are the politicians from Tal Afar? The ones who came to ask for our vote during the elections?

"They are in Arbil," she says, referring to the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

It has been insulated from the insurgent offensive, led by jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, that has overrun parts of five provinces north and west of Baghdad.

They are "safe with their families, or even in the (United Arab) Emirates."

Amsha, who declines to give her last name, has spent eight days in the camp, after fleeing with her family late one night.

"We were going mad with the shelling. The government planes were overhead and we didn't know when they would fire or where," she says.

"Our neighbour was killed in shelling one evening as he went to the toilet, and none of us could sleep because we didn't know if we'd wake up."

She said the army announced, as the battle for the town stepped up, that civilians who wanted to leave should do so.

"We set out at 9:00 pm. We left the city on foot," she says.

"The Iraqi army started to fire in the air as we left, and some of us threw ourselves to the ground, thinking they were shooting at us."

- 'We are trapped' -

She and her family say they walked for hours before they were able to find someone with a car willing to pick them up.

They eventually arrived at Germawa, just as the camp was being set up.

A Kurdish official overseeing the camp says nearly 700 people are sheltering there -- displaced from Tal Afar and nearby Mosul, a city of some two million that was the first to fall in the militant offensive.

Amsha, like many at the camp, says her family fled for fear of the government response to the militant assault as much as to escape the fighters.

"We are caught in the middle. We didn't see the militants, only the army's shelling and air strikes," she says.

"We just want to be able to sleep and know we will wake up in the morning," she adds, tears running through the makeup lining her eyes.

She dabs her face with the ends of the brown scarf loosely tied around her hair and regains her composure, and a measure of anger.

"We are trapped. We have no say in our future, everything is decided by those who are in power," she says.

She makes no secret of her contempt for the Iraqi army, but also expresses no love for the Sunni militants.

"I don't care who is in charge, Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen, Sunni, Shiite. We just want a future.

"I am a student at university. My brother and sister both have exams they still need to take; we don't know what will happen to them."

And she talks shyly about the indignities of life at the camp, especially for its women, including her and her three sisters.

"There's no privacy for us. Imagine what it is like to live like this on your period," she says quietly.

"All we want is a life, and a chance to decide what to do with it."

The surging crisis in Iraq and battles over democracy in Arab Spring nations have exposed the failure of the international community to help lay political foundations, a top official says.

In a wide-ranging interview, Anders Johnsson said global players have repeatedly got the recipe wrong by seeing elections as the end of a process rather than the beginning.

Johnsson, a Swede, heads the International Parliamentary Union, a grouping of 164 legislative chambers that seeks to improve representative democracy worldwide.

He retires on Tuesday, after 16 years at the helm.

"I have seen this time and time again," Johnsson told AFP, saying the international community pours billions of dollars into paving the way for free elections but fails to help newly-crafted parliaments find their feet.

"There is a tendency to look upon elections to a parliament as a means of justifying or legitimising a government and to forget the rest," he said.

"But parliamentary institutions are where all parts of society are supposed to have a say in how government policies are conducted," he added.

He echoed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has said Iraq and other crisis zones should rethink their governance in order to defuse community tensions before they spill over.

Sunni militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have launched an all-out assault on the country's Shiite-run central government.

The latter has ruled since dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted by a US-led coalition in 2003.

The crisis has strained the already-complex ties between Iraq's three main communities: Shiite and Sunni Arabs, and Kurds.

In Egypt, democratically-elected Islamists were ousted last year by the military, firmly back in control of government and overseeing a sweeping crackdown.

Libya, meanwhile remains gripped by community tensions and Tunisia has also faced instability.

- Power "taken for granted" -

"Since the beginning of this Arab Spring, I have been stating very strongly to all the leaders concerned that they should listen attentively and carefully to the voices of people," Ban said last week in Geneva.

"A large part of this problem comes when the leaders, when they are elected or they are given this mandate, take it for granted," he said.

"But legitimacy comes from elections as well as good governance, and respecting human rights, and reaching out to all the people, whatever their ethnicity or religion," he added.

Ban warned that groups with a grievance are a breeding ground for extremism.

Johnsson said a radical shift was essential, and that established democracies should offer a helping hand without laying down the law.

"There has to be a different way of doing politics and of making sure that the day after the elections, we still have an inclusive process worth its name that is allowed to function, that is given the support to be able to function," he said.

"One problem is that this is seen to be too political, because people say, 'But then we'll get involved in political processes'," he explained.

"It's also because it's expensive. These things don't come cheap," he said, adding that investment was worth it if global stability was the return.

In addition, governments can be reticent to take help because strong parliaments act as a brake.

Failings are also clear in established democracies, Johnsson said, pointing to the populist mood in crisis-afflicted Europe.

Voters sense little change despite elections and feel out of touch with an increasingly professionalised political class, he said, blaming parties for narrowing their candidate pool.

"And then leaders, I'm not so sure that they really understand what citizens think about the process. I think there is a real, serious issue here," he warned.

He also condemned lobbyists.

"We have run completely out of spin and it is essentially money that rules, and big money at that," he said.

"We have hardly drawn any real lesson from the crisis that took place in 2008 and we are nowhere near creating a better world than we were before the crisis hit," he added.

.


Related Links
Democracy in the 21st century at TerraDaily.com






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