Iraqis eke out living in Baghdad rubbish dump

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2007/February/focusoniraq_February186.xml§ion=focusoniraq&col=

BAGHDAD - Sitting amid mounds of rotting garbage in a rubbish dump in Baghdad, 13-year-old Huda Hamdan is the human face of a new UN report that says a third of war- torn Iraq’s 26 million people live in poverty.

The teenager, wearing a black veil, is taking a break from scavenging for aluminium cans and glass bottles that she sells for a few Iraqi dinars. She tries not to gag from the stench of the decomposing household refuse surrounding her. snip

The report said a third of Iraqis overall were living in poverty. It gave no comparison with previous years.

But the UNDP said the study “showed a deterioration in the living standards of Iraqis” since Iraq was a thriving middle- income country in the 1970s and 80s. Four years of war, following a decade of UN sanctions in the 1990s, has paralysed the economy and fuelled soaring unemployment.

“It shows the failure of the state authorities to provide adequate services to the population,” UNDP said in a statement that also blamed Western-backed efforts to transform the economy into a free market for “exacerbating deprivation levels”.

Hamdan said she and her siblings fled Falluja, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after a US sniper shot dead her mother, leaving them orphaned. Now they live with her grandparents and uncles in Sadr City.

[pscot]

1. If you want a look at the future

of the damned human race, here it is. This forms the basis for the economy of more and more places from the Philippines, to the Middle East, to Latin America.