Charles J. Hanley, AP Special
Posted in Uncategorized on March 26th, 2003 by Bigwig – 1 CommentCharles J. Hanley, AP Special Correspondent
No refugee exodus yet, but aid officials fear humanitarian crisis in Iraq
“It is clear that Iraq is on the brink of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and that UNICEF is facing possibly the largest and most complex humanitarian operation we’ve ever undertaken,” United Nations Children’s Fund spokeswoman Wivina Belmonte said in Geneva.
The Hungry to Get Hungrier as War Blows Away Harvest
The upheaval of an invasion could interrupt the reaping and the sowing just as stored food is running out for most Iraqis. “It’s a particularly bad time for both the winter crop and the spring crop,” said Barry Came, a U.N. food specialist.
The Iraqi government’s food- rationing system, the daily sustenance for most of its people, is crumbling. That, along with the wartime threat to the grain crop, points toward a huge emergency in the coming weeks, requiring possibly “the biggest humanitarian operation in history,” said Khaled Mansour, regional spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program in Amman.
Basra again stands on war’s frontline
The UN Children’s Fund estimated up to 100,000 Basra children under the age of 5 were at immediate risk of severe disease from the unsafe water, especially life-threatening diarrhoea.
“Many of these are children already suffering from malnutrition. This drives such children into a downward spiral,” said Unicef’s Iraq spokesperson Geoff Keele, temporarily operating from Amman.
Baghdad homes for abandoned children offer glimpse into terror of war
International relief officials got word from Baghdad on Friday, the day after the cruise missiles began slamming into the city, that food was growing short at four children’s institutions in the central part of the capital. Two more children’s homes had shortages in Karbala, a city to the south that came under U.S. attack over the weekend.
Aid professionals said it would be a mistake for the U.S. military to try to oversee aid distribution long term.
“Only civilian organizations specializing in humanitarian relief can make impartial distribution of aid supplies,” said David Wimhurst, of the U.N. office on Iraq, speaking in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
Evidence of Iraq weapons remains elusive
Two months after US officials said they had begun providing ?significant? intelligence to the inspectors, Blix told the council he was still awaiting ?high-quality information.?
He said no evidence had emerged to support US contentions Iraq was producing chemical or biological weapons underground or in mobile laboratories.
The inspectors, privately, disparaged the ?leads? they were receiving from the US government.
Ex-Hostage Plans to Travel to Baghdad
Kara Speltz, 65, of Oakland, Calif., sees one similarity between their team and the young Americans now waging war in Iraq with assault rifles and grenades.
“If we’re committed to nonviolence and are not willing to put our lives on the line … ,” she said, pausing. “We have to be as committed as those soldiers are”
Unlike those camouflaged troops, the group is traveling light, equipped with such provisions as candy bars, water and stuffed animals for Iraqi children, and Bibles and a deep religious commitment as members of several Christian denominations.
In the last three days, according to his story locations, Charles J. Hanley, AP Special Correspondent, has been in Washington, Amman, Umm Qasr, Basra, and Juweideh, Jordan. It’s the ability to travel through a war zone at will that separates the AP Special Correspondent from your run of the mill regular AP correspondents, you see. He reports with the speed of ten, because his heart is pure. If you see a meek and mild mannered reporter jump into a phone booth, and a man in blue tights emerge, with the letters APSC flowing across his broad, rippling chest, odds are it’s Charles J. Hanley, AP Special Correspondent, off to a distant land to report on another humanitarian crisis story.
It is that purity that gives him his innate objectivity, the objectivity that allows him to compare human shields and American soldiers with the phrase “Unlike those camouflaged troops, the group is traveling light”. The objective journalism of the AP Special Correspondent finds that human shields are not only braver than American combat troops, but also less materialistic.
The AP Special Correspondent knows without even seeing that the information given to United Nations Arms Inspectors by any agency of the United States on Iraqi weapons of Mass Destruction is useless. One source is sufficient for an AP Special Correspondent to establish the facts of a situation, especially if the source is a paladin of the U.N. He is beyond having to cultivate the two or more sources than lesser journalists must gather for a story.
For the AP Special Correspondent it is an unquestionable fact that “Only civilian organizations specializing in humanitarian relief can make impartial distribution of aid supplies.” The United States could not possibly be impartial in handing out food supplies, because the United States is disrupting the food supply network and putting Iraqi children at risk for no good reason. The Objective Reporter knows this, because he’s interviewed damn near every U.N. official with a title in Amman, Jordan, and he’s seen Tommy Franks on television a couple of times.
Journalism just doesn’t get any better than that.
