Tina Susman

HAITI: A City in Ruins

DISASTER IN HAITI;
Song and tears from a city in ruins;
In Port-au-Prince, chants turn to screams as an aftershock hits

Los Angeles Times
January 14, 2010 Thursday

Tina Susman and Joe Mozingo

DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI

As darkness fell on Haiti's capital Wednesday, crowds sought out the relative safety of the streets and open spaces.

In a hillside neighborhood just above downtown Port-au-Prince, they gathered under a spectacularly starry sky. And they sang. Like a huge school choir, earthquake survivors broke out in loud communal song, a soothing sound in a city with no power, little water and untold numbers of bodies hidden in rubble or strewn along the roadsides.

But the songs turned to screams as a strong aftershock hit, shaking the buildings that survived the magnitude 7.0 earthquake Tuesday and jolting the streets.

In moments, the crowd on the streets grew. Many of those who had risked remaining inside ran from their shaky shelters, away from the walls and ceilings that had caused such destruction a day earlier. People loitered, some looking at nearby buildings or collapsed walls.

Then the singing and chanting continued -- Catholic, Protestant, voodoo. "God, all of our hope is in you!" one man cried.

Across Port-au-Prince, the damage seemed nearly random.

Some homes covering hillsides looked as if they had simply crumbled into the dirt. Major government institutions and businesses were damaged or destroyed. Other buildings, such as the cheerful-looking Rose Restaurant, appeared untouched.

Officials could only guess at the number of dead and injured. Along the city's roadsides, the bodies were neatly lined up, some covered in white sheets and some not.

The corpses included that of a girl, perhaps a teenager, in pink shorts; a couple lying next to each other; a man covered in a sheet save for his horribly swollen feet.

There was virtually no sign of outside assistance other than a few United Nations vehicles passing by. There was little police presence, no water being handed out, no encampments, except those set up by people apparently left homeless by the quake or those too afraid to go back into their ramshackle homes.

Tent and tarp cities sprang up wherever there was shade or open space. Virtually no shops were open, leaving residents in the street with no apparent means of finding food.

Outside the Canape Vert Hospital, a crowd surged toward the entrance. A few bodies covered with sheets lay nearby on the road. From the streets, choked with cars and pedestrians, one could hear a person screaming in the medical facility.

At the St. Esprit Hospital, a knot of people gathered at the gate seeking treatment for the injured.

"They take them out here because they can't pay," said Colas Enelson, 36.

Enelson said his pregnant wife had suffered broken legs. Neighbors had pulled her out of the rubble of their home.

Like other anxious relatives gathered at this spot and in the open around the city, he feared that she might die here, staring up at the stars.

Many of the injured had hideous wounds. Outside a makeshift Doctors Without Borders center a short walk from St. Esprit, one young woman, her foot impaled on a large wooden stake, lay on a refrigerator door being used as a stretcher.

A clearly harried worker in the guarded compound said there was no means to treat severely injured people. Only bandages and other equipment to provide basic care were available, the worker said.

The most formal kind of "triage" in plain sight was on the grounds of the once-lavish Villa Creole hotel, which had been turned into a makeshift outdoor hospital. The grounds were covered with injured: swollen, bloody limbs; crying children; others too weak or injured to make a sound.

"Ask him if he can wiggle his toes," a man who appeared to be a doctor said to a woman as a young boy slumped in one of the hotel's lounge chairs.

Some of the worst damage appeared to be in hillside neighborhoods such as Petionville, a suburb of the capital. People used sledgehammers and their bare hands to dig through a collapsed shopping center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies, according to news reports. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a U.N. truck.

Elsewhere in the capital, structures lay collapsed like giant sandwiches, with layer upon layer of concrete and remnants showing through: mattresses, shreds of clothing, chairs.

On the gentle hillside near downtown, two young women lay on mattresses with makeshift IVs supported by sticks and cinder blocks, apparently crafted by a nurse.

The brother of one of the women said a house had fallen on them.

Around the women, as night fell and the stars came out, the fearful and dispossessed settled down to sleep.

--

 

Haiti: After the Quake, Day 3

DISASTER IN HAITI;
Aid surge gets going in Haiti;
Helped by the U.S. military, supplies begin to flow -- but time is short

Los Angeles Times
January 16, 2010 Saturday

Tina Susman and Joe Mozingo and Julian E. Barnes

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, AND WASHINGTON

The leading edge of a massive relief effort gained a toehold around the Haitian capital Friday, with the U.S. military taking control of the airport and helicopters ferrying supplies from an aircraft carrier positioned off the coast. But deep within the city's neighborhoods, residents fended for themselves -- evacuating those who could go, caring for those who couldn't and putting to rest those who would move no more.

Hundreds of doctors and aid workers and tons of supplies arrived at the airport, now teeming with traffic. U.S. officials said their goal was to land an aid flight every 20 minutes. Through the weekend, the U.S. military contingent assigned to the relief effort will grow to as many as 10,000, the officials said.

As aid poured in, those trying to distribute it faced the challenge of punching through mountains of rubble, smashed cars and streets strewn with bodies to reach a population clamoring for help.

Aside from a few police officers trying to control crowds at a gas station or direct traffic, there was virtually no sign of any authority in Port-au-Prince. The capital seemed remarkably calm three days after being devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, despite the growing frustration of people with no food, water or shelter.

Franz Solomon, 30, who was searching for the bodies of his mother and sister, still unburied two days after they were taken to the main morgue, was furious that he had nowhere to turn for help.

"The government can't do anything anymore," he said. "It doesn't even exist."

Scenes of desperation were everywhere, and the stench of death began wafting from beneath the broken concrete and flattened roofs.

The United Nations estimated that in the worst-affected areas of Port-au-Prince, as many as half the buildings were damaged or destroyed.

At one intersection, an elderly woman approached a vehicle, holding out a horribly burned right arm, skin charred and the hand swollen. With a bewildered look on her face, she asked where to go for help.

More than 100 members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were in place. U.S. officials said the military deployment would include 4,000 to 5,000 sailors on ships, including the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, plus 3,000 soldiers and 2,000 Marines on the ground.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that she would visit Haiti today with Rajiv Shah, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to see the relief effort up close. Clinton said she would meet with Haitian President Rene Preval and other officials and with U.S. authorities working to get aid to victims.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would come Sunday. The U.N. appealed for $550 million to provide food, water and shelter to the victims. At least 37 U.N. personnel, part of a large, long-standing contingent in Haiti, were killed in the quake and 300 others still were unaccounted for, officials said.

Some aid made it through the obstacles. Water was being distributed from trucks in certain areas, a U.N. team distributed water-purification tablets, and French aid workers visited tent cities to see what people needed most.

Michelle Chouinard, Haiti director for Doctors Without Borders, said the group hoped to set up medical tents and perform surgeries. For now, though, its workers could offer only the crudest help: bandages and some floor space or furniture for the seriously injured.

Laura Blank of the aid group World Vision, which was expecting 18 metric tons of aid to arrive on a flight Friday evening, said that like most Haitians, the agency was having problems finding fuel.

"If we don't have gas in the cars, we can't get anywhere, and who has time to sit in a gas line all day?" Blank said as workers at the agency compound moved boxes of latex gloves and gauze as well as plastic bags containing clothes and hygiene supplies out of a warehouse where they had been stashed for hurricane season. The agency began distributing the items to nearby churches and clinics after the quake, and was one day away from running out.

Even the incoming aid, such as portable cooking kits and containers for water, would be of limited help if they could not find water to fill the containers, and the proper food for the cooking kits.

"The biggest crisis obviously is how do you get the resources all over the place?" said David Lipin of San Carlos, Calif., commander of the 40-member disaster medical assistance team sent in from California.

It was one of five such teams that arrived Friday afternoon, deployed by the State Department. About 250 doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians, surgeons and even a couple of veterinarians were among those waiting to learn where they would be deployed -- and how.

There were still no reliable estimates of the number of dead, but some Haitian officials have said the number could exceed 100,000.

Officials and analysts said the speed with which aid is delivered will be key to preventing people from turning violent in their desperation -- at a time when Haiti's government is almost nowhere to be seen.

Alex Puig, a security expert for International SOS, a Philadelphia-based risk management firm working in Haiti, said some violence was likely, despite the presence of U.S. forces. "It's going to be a tough, long road, " he said.

The scenes of devastation prompted Haiti's deposed former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to offer to return. Speaking to reporters in South Africa, where he lives in exile, Aristide said he felt a need to try to save the lives of victims, but he refused to take questions on whether he planned to fly to Haiti without an official invitation.

"We are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time, to join the people of Haiti, to share in their suffering, help rebuild the economy, moving from misery to poverty with dignity," Aristide said, reading a statement in an almost inaudible whisper.

Aristide, 56, became Haiti's first democratically elected leader in 1991 but was ousted in a coup led by the army later that year. He regained power in 1994 and was reelected president in 2000, before being toppled again in a violent 2004 coup. Aristide took asylum in South Africa but could still face legal charges if he returned to Haiti.

In the meantime, Haitians left to their own devices buried bodies where they could.

On the edge of the city's cemetery along a once-grand boulevard, people heaved the dead into a 20-foot-deep mass grave, one of the makeshift burial sites popping up.

It held 60 bodies so far, and more were arriving every few minutes by wheelbarrow and in pickups festooned with logos such as "Love baby."

Sanitation crews went through the streets, loading bodies into dump trucks. In a parking lot outside the capital's main morgue, about 2,000 bodies lay in the sun, waiting to be identified and taken away.

Solomon circled the rotting mass looking for his mother. He had brought the bodies of his mother and sister two days earlier, but now realized they would end up in a mass grave unless he took them for burial. Amid the stench, he found his sister's body and wrapped her in a bag. He couldn't recognize his mother anymore.

The family of Elie Pierre, a pastor, survived -- as did his home. But like many Port-au-Prince residents, they had been sleeping outdoors in fear of new tremors.

On Friday, Pierre loaded about 10 members of his family into a small pickup to shuttle them out of the city. He planned to stay behind to find help for his 23-year-old daughter, Kesly, whose leg was broken during the quake.

Asked if he thought help was on the way, Pierre shook his head.

"I don't believe anything right now."

 

Haiti: After the Quake, Day 2

Desperate to help and be helped;
Aid begins arriving in Haiti, but obstacles stand between it and survivors

Los Angeles Times

January 15, 2010 Friday   Tina Susman, Tracy Wilkinson and Joe Mozingo

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI  

Emergency aid flowed from around the world toward Haiti on Thursday, only to confront a reality that grew more desperate by the hour: Crippled ports and communications left stunned earthquake survivors on their own to scavenge for food and water, carry away legions of dead and dig frantically for voices calling out from under the rubble.

President Obama promised $100 million and the full resources of the U.S. government for what he said would be one of the largest relief efforts in recent history. U.S. officials said 30 countries had either sent aid or promised to do so. Rescue teams from eight countries already had arrived.

But two days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, there was little evidence of the aid effort in the capital of the hemisphere's poorest country.

"In Haiti, you're lucky if they come with a screwdriver," said Jean Marc Mercier, a Haitian American who spent the last two days hunting for survivors in the wreckage of the Hotel Montana, a longtime gathering spot for diplomats, journalists, humanitarian workers and businessmen.

The toppled six-story hotel was an exception to the scenes of abandonment elsewhere; a rescue team newly arrived from Virginia was combing the debris.

Mercier, who runs a computer business in Haiti, said he and others had been burrowing by hand toward voices calling out from deep inside the wreckage. They had managed to save one woman, an aid worker.

"Last night after I went to bed, all I heard were the voices in my head. One guy told me not to bother: 'Go help people who are in better shape. There is no way you are getting to me,' " said Mercier, 44. "I wasn't able to sleep all night."

Asked how many people were in the hotel when it collapsed, he whispered, "Hundreds."

Aid officials said the risk of violence and looting would increase as scant food and water run out and frustrated families fail to find medical care for the injured.

Officials who were willing to estimate the number of dead acknowledged that they were just guessing. Victor Jackson, an official with Haiti's Red Cross, told Reuters news agency that his organization was estimating 45,000 to 50,000 had died.

All across Port-au-Prince, it seemed, the living bore the dead -- in the beds of pickups, in wheelbarrows, on makeshift stretchers. At a hospital named St. Marie, crowded a day earlier with dozens of people seeking help, the courtyard was empty except for two cleaners mopping bloody water into the street.

Even many who didn't lose their homes were afraid to sleep in them.

Lionel Aceveje, a police officer who lives in a hillside shantytown near the suburb of Petionville, said his family of six was sleeping outside in the evening chill. "Every little shaking terrifies us," he said.

Both the air- and seaports were proving to be bottlenecks for the international aid effort.

Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard medical professor and U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, said supply lines to Haiti are often fragile, even without a devastating natural disaster.

The quake-damaged seaport is "basically shut down," said Farmer, who has 27 years' experience working in Haiti. Air traffic was backed up, he said, with planes jockeying to land at a minimally functioning airport.

UNICEF, the United Nations' children's charity, was amassing supplies in Panama for an airlift. The agency sent one plane with medical kits, blankets and tents to Port-au-Prince on Thursday, but the plane could not land and had to return to Panama.

"It's really a logistics nightmare," Farmer said. "We need to fix the port and open up other land bridges and air spaces where planes and helicopters can land."

The U.N. response has been further hampered by its own losses. Although there's no official body count, U.N. officials said at least 30 of their colleagues in Haiti are known to be dead and 100 to 150 remain missing.

Among the rescue teams in place was a 72-member contingent from Southern California. A Los Angeles County search-and-rescue team that includes firefighters, doctors, six rescue dogs and their handlers arrived Thursday morning. The team is equipped with medical supplies as well as cameras, listening devices and cutting tools.

In Washington, Obama enlisted both of his immediate predecessors, Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, to lead the U.S. aid initiative, following an example set by Bush after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It was his first presidential request of Bush, whom he criticized for his administration's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten," Obama said, addressing the people of Haiti. "In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you."

U.S. officials were able to evacuate 300 to 400 U.S. citizens by air, most of them to the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

A U.S. diplomat was among the dead. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Victoria DeLong, 57, a cultural affairs officer, had been stationed in Haiti since last year. He said she was from California, but her hometown was not immediately available.

One immediate focus of the U.S. effort was restoring communications, which were so bad that Obama was unable to reach Haitian President Rene Preval on Thursday afternoon.

The U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, equipped with three operating rooms, 19 helicopters and a water-purification system, was en route to Haiti and was expected to arrive today to help shuttle relief supplies and serve as a floating hospital.

The Navy also dispatched an amphibious assault ship, the Bataan, with 2,000 members of a Marine expeditionary force aboard and its own medical facilities. Officials said they hoped the Marine contingent would arrive as soon as today.

The military also has ordered two other amphibious vessels to set sail.

About 125 troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were also sent, the leading edge of a contingent of 3,000 soldiers, Defense officials said.

They will confront a patchwork of destruction. In downtown Port-au-Prince, many old buildings with columns and porticoes toppled into the wide and once-splendid Grand Rue. The middle section of the National Palace and all three domes fell, but the president's apartment on the grounds appeared to be intact.

The adjacent Dessalines barracks, the infamous army barracks where enemies of the Duvalier dictatorship were tortured and killed, still stood. But many government buildings, including the tax office and Health Ministry, were complete losses.

For residents, the shortages of food, water and fuel carried the prospect of increased hardship in a nation with a volatile history. Chaotic lines formed at gas stations, though it was unclear if any gasoline would be pumped. Those with enough fuel created a noisy traffic jam on one main boulevard heading out of the capital.

People scavenged for water, carrying empty canisters in the street.

One elderly man, who wanted to be identified by only his first name, Milton, said Haitians were hoping that U.S. Marines, who have been deployed during times of political upheaval, would come again.

"When the U.S. occupation is good and big, it creates work, builds roads, helps people," he said. Not only that, Milton added, Marines tended to toss the remains of their meals into the city's omnipresent mountains of garbage.

"They bring good ham and cheese," he said. "And you know it's good food because they have eaten it."

--

 

HAITI: After the Quake, Day 1

DISASTER IN HAITI;
Destruction in Haiti 'unimaginable';
In the paralyzed capital, bodies line the streets and medical care is scarce

Los Angeles Times

January 14, 2010 Thursday

Tina Susman, Joe Mozingo, Ken Ellingwood


DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINC

The capital of Haiti lay in ruins Wednesday, shattered by an earthquake it was not built to withstand. With most international aid yet to arrive, bodies lined the streets, the injured gathered at hospitals devoid of doctors or functioning equipment, swaths of the city were reduced to rubble and even the presidential palace -- long a symbol of whatever stability the country could muster -- was damaged and sagging.

Most telecommunications were down, making it next to impossible for the government and aid agencies to count the casualties or assess the extent of damage from the magnitude 7.0 quake that struck Tuesday afternoon.

President Rene Preval described the destruction as "unimaginable" and predicted that the death toll would reach into the thousands. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said a preliminary assessment led him to fear that the number of dead could be "well over 100,000."

Rescuers, often equipped with little more than their hands, hunted for survivors amid a grim tableau of destruction. Entire hillsides of homes appeared to have tumbled, while in other areas structures stood unaffected next to piles of dusty debris. Some buildings lay in pancake-like concrete heaps.

Relief workers said it could take a day or two to know how many of Haiti's 9 million residents need assistance.

Homeless or fearful survivors took shelter under tarps on the grounds outside the prime minister's office and elsewhere across the capital. As night fell, crowds filled downtown streets. People sought open-air spots to spend the night, either because they were afraid to be indoors or had no home left.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is a place where misery is an everyday condition and disasters -- of both the natural and man-caused variety -- are not uncommon. At best, the government has made only halting progress toward improving the lives of its citizens. The quake, said to be the strongest in the country in 200 years, caused death and destruction of a whole new magnitude.

In a predominantly Catholic country that already relied heavily on United Nations relief, the dead were reported to include the archbishop of Port-au-Prince and at least 16 U.N. personnel, possibly including the head of the U.N. mission. Both the hotel that served as U.N. headquarters and the city's main cathedral were heavily damaged, as were the Parliament building, schools, hospitals and other hotels.

The U.N. reported that the main prison also had collapsed and that inmates escaped.

Some looting was reported, and about 3,000 police officers and international peacekeepers were trying to maintain security.

U.S. officials said most of the damage appeared to be concentrated around Port-au-Prince, a teeming city of 2 million that sits like a hive of gray concrete that creeps up a mountainside rising out of the Caribbean. The homes are mostly made of cheap, porous concrete made with sand from nearby quarries.

In the aftermath of the quake, entire big-box apartment blocks had collapsed along roads carved into the hills. Rubble had blown out onto the roads. Next to the debris lay bodies, their faces dutifully covered by sheets.

On Martin Luther King Avenue, just past a sign reading, "Bienvenue a Port-au-Prince," the slender legs of three young children poked out from under sheets. The bodies of three adults were strewn nearby.

At two badly damaged hospitals in the capital, there were virtually no doctors or medical workers in sight.

Outside St. Esprit Hospital, bodies lay on the street, including that of a woman whose white hair showed above the sheet covering her, with a small child next to her.

But behind the compound's iron doors, the scene was worse: people dead and apparently dying on the ground as their relatives stood by helplessly, watching them. Some of the injured wept in pain; others lay silently.

One man dragged visitors to see his mother, who lay on her back wearing only a light yellow flowery robe. She was on the street just outside the hospital gate, one leg clearly broken.

"I don't know what to do," another man lamented as he dragged visitors over to look at his cousin, who lay on the ground covered only with a towel.

Many of those on the ground had been hooked up to IVs from the hospital, but apparently by their own relatives.

President Obama called the earthquake a "cruel and incomprehensible tragedy," and promised that the U.S. would help in any way it could.

"This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity we all share," Obama said in televised remarks from the White House. "With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us, Haitians are our neighbors in the Americas and here at home."

The U.S. military deployed a 30-member team to assess the damage and help manage the response. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters evacuated four severely injured U.S. Embassy employees to the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said more than 100 of the estimated 45,000 Americans in Haiti had gathered at the airport to be evacuated. Officials said they had heard no reports so far of widespread casualties among U.S. citizens.

The United States also sent two 72-member urban search-and-rescue teams, including a specialized rescue team from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. U.S. military aircraft began arriving Wednesday, and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was due to reach Haiti today.

Officials also were planning to send an amphibious ship with 2,000 Marines, and have alerted a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in North Carolina, about 2,500 soldiers, to prepare to help.

Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said the military's immediate goals are to help restore telecommunications and get the airport up and running. The control tower was heavily damaged, and many commercial flights were canceled.

The L.A. County rescue team was to fly to Port-au- Prince on Wednesday night, officials said. It includes paramedics, structural engineers, search dogs, physicians and firefighters trained in using sophisticated equipment to find and free people trapped in collapsed buildings.

Kimberley Shoaf, associate director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters, said residents of Haiti were likely to face an increased risk of dengue fever, malaria and measles. She also warned that the lack of healthcare could lead to complications among the injured.

Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, said that the "silver lining" was that the earthquake struck shortly before 5 p.m., when many office workers had gone home for the day.

The body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot was found in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the St. Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France, who spoke to the Associated Press by telephone. He said that fellow missionaries in Haiti had told him that they had found Miot's body.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the head of the U.N. mission in Port-au-Prince, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, was killed along with other U.N. personnel when the organization's headquarters in the Christopher Hotel collapsed. Kouchner said the information came from the Haitian ambassador to France. U.N. officials said 100 to 150 U.N. personnel were missing, including Annabi.

Troops from the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, mostly Brazilian, worked through the night to try to reach those trapped in the hotel. Rescuers recovered several bodies and seriously injured people.

The U.S. is expected to lead the international aid effort.

Obama said he had directed his administration "to respond with a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives."

Rajiv Shah of the U.S. Agency for International Development will coordinate the response, Obama said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton canceled a trip to the Pacific and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates put off plans to travel to Australia in order to deal with the quake's aftermath.

"The situation is horrific and, unfortunately, we do not have the kind of information yet that gives us a road map as to how we're going to be able to respond effectively, although we are moving a lot of our assets to position them to do so," Clinton said before scrapping the planned visit to Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Former President Bill Clinton, who serves as the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, called on people around the world to donate money to relief organizations or the U.N.

"We do not have the logistical or organizational capacity right now to handle a lot of things, even if we need those things," he said. "What we need now is food, water, supplies for first aid and shelter."

Iraq: Hiding in Plain Sight

Los Angeles Times
May 23, 2008 Friday
Home Edition
COLUMN ONE;
The Iraqi who wasn't there;
Abu Hassan's fear for his life and his family rose with the sectarian killings in Baghdad. So he went into hiding -- without leaving home.

Tina Susman and Raheem Salman, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD _ Abu Hassan took deep breaths of joy as he crossed the double-decker bridge spanning the Tigris River. The water below may have stunk of sewage. The air may have been choked with traffic fumes. It didn't matter to Abu Hassan.

He was free after nearly a year hidden inside his house, the only place he had felt safe from the gunmen and killers who had taken over his neighborhood in south Baghdad.

"To breathe, to see people, to feel that I am still alive," he said recently, recalling his decision that day last winter to drive across the bridge leading from the Dora neighborhood to central Baghdad.

All he did was buy gas, turn around and go back into his house, but Abu Hassan, a Shiite Muslim living in a mainly Sunni Arab area, had taken his first tentative steps back into the world that had terrified him for so long.

This is one man's story of survival in the midst of the capital's deadly sectarian war, but it is also the story of how fear paralyzed a city by driving people underground or out of their homes.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that since February 2006, when the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra unleashed massive Sunni-Shiite bloodshed, 1.5 million Iraqis have been displaced within the country, most of them Baghdad residents who fled their neighborhoods. There is no estimate of how many people locked themselves away and pretended not to exist, as Abu Hassan did.

For Abu Hassan, it was a year in which time had no meaning. He would not sleep until 3 or 4 a.m. He would eat meals and devour nuts, coffee, tea and soda all day while watching TV. He would try to read, but it was difficult to concentrate.

"I was thinking about what would happen after one hour, tonight, tomorrow," he said.

After the mosque bombing, Dora quickly became one of the capital's worst killing grounds. Sunni insurgents loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq began moving in, targeting Christians and Shiites, who were minorities in the area. The once-thriving Dora market fell into ruin, and the streets became dumping grounds for bodies of people who refused gunmen's orders to leave their homes and businesses.

An influx of U.S. and Iraqi security forces in the last year, along with the growth of neighborhood security groups known as the Sons of Iraq, has changed Dora and brought the number of attacks down to about one or two a week, according to the U.S. military.

But the people of Dora are wary of pushing too far, too fast.

Abu Hassan, for example, went back into hiding for weeks after his drive over the bridge and finally emerged fully in December. He reluctantly began telling his story a few weeks ago, but is terrified that insurgents will come after him if they learn he was living in their midst.

So he refuses to give his full name, going only by a moniker that identifies him as the father of Hassan. He will not identify the Shiite uncle and cousin who were killed by insurgents last year when they refused gunmen's orders to close their shop.

He won't allow visitors into the home he shares with his parents and his wife and son. Nor will he come to where foreigners live. He won't let his house be photographed or permit a physical description of himself to be published, other than to say he is 32 and fat -- a result of his overeating during his self-imposed house arrest.

He fidgets and squirms as he speaks and glances around frequently, as if looking for a stalker. He chain-smokes, forcefully shoving each butt into the ashtray at a hotel cafe before lighting the next one. Still, he is impeccably dressed and unfailingly polite as he finally tells his story after canceling plans to meet several times.

Abu Hassan made the decision to hide the month his son was born: November 2006. Worried for his family's safety, he sought advice from a Lebanese friend who had survived his own country's civil war.

"You have the experience of 15 years of sectarian killing," he said to the friend. "What is the best to do?" The friend advised him to shut himself off from the violence.

That wasn't easy. Abu Hassan was a car salesman who commuted to another part of town. Insurgents favored his upscale neighborhood because of the comfortable houses, the highway that offered a quick escape route and the vast fields nearby that were ideal for stashing weapons and for hiding from security forces.

"Day by day, things got worse," Abu Hassan said. "The highway was witnessing killings, kidnappings and explosions. It was not possible even for the security forces to put checkpoints in some of its parts. The checkpoints there were always attacked."

The insurgents targeted men and usually left women and the elderly alone, so Abu Hassan went into hiding and his mother and wife, both teachers, went to work, did the shopping and updated him on the world outside: the killings, the bombings, the deterioration of the neighborhood and eventually the turnaround. His wife is a Sunni, which helped ensure her safety, as long as nobody knew her Shiite husband was hiding at home.

From November 2006 until December 2007, he remained inside except for the day he drove across the bridge and the rare times he ventured into his walled garden at night.

His father, a grocer, joined him in hiding after a friend at the market warned him that as a Shiite, he was sure to be killed. It had happened to several fellow shopkeepers. Abu Hassan rattled off the ones he remembered: a man selling food, a shoe salesman, a humble man who sold tea from a small wooden kiosk.

"All of them were killed for sectarian reasons," he said.

Trapped inside, he learned to cook and to care for his child, becoming a househusband in a society where men are supposed to be the breadwinners and women the homemakers.

Depression set in. "I had nothing to do. I felt that I was idle, and on top of hearing all the sad stories and bad news, the only thing to do was eat," he said.

Most of his time was spent in the living room, where the TV is. When he grew restless, he would go upstairs, then downstairs and then upstairs again. Anything to break the monotony. But each time he heard of another killing or attack, it convinced Abu Hassan that he was right to stay inside.

Sometimes he would hear shooting nearby and sit silently, barely breathing, until the danger passed. Several times, he tried to convince his parents that the family should leave. They refused to give up the family home, and Abu Hassan refused to go anywhere without them, so the family remained together in Dora.

It was a wretched life, lived behind drawn curtains and locked doors, with their weapons loaded and a lock and chain to keep the front gate secure.

"Sometimes I had a glance at the street either from behind the fence of the house or through a very small hole in the gate," he said. After glimpsing bombed-out homes and deserted streets, "the area seemed to me as if it were attacked by a chemical weapon."

To outsiders, it appeared that his house was occupied by only his mother and his wife.

Late last fall, he sensed a change. U.S. forces had been in Baghdad in increased numbers since January 2007. A movement known as the Awakening, which involved Iraqis volunteering to help protect their neighborhoods, was catching on.

"Instead of the news of the killings and violence, we began to hear that this Qaeda leader was killed or that one was detained or had left the area," Abu Hassan said.

The highway became safer, and the sounds of gunfire decreased. Abu Hassan felt the chains loosening.

He can't remember the day he decided it was safe to go outside. It was not a particular event that encouraged him so much as a growing sense that things were better.

One day, he washed the dust off his car and drove over the bridge. But then he hurried back to his house.

A few weeks later, though, after hearing of the deaths of some key insurgent leaders in the area, he quietly came out for good.

Now, he has returned to work. A few days ago, he felt confident enough to stand on the street and chat with neighbors. They welcomed him back, thinking he had been out of the country. He let them believe it.

In his neighborhood, shops have reopened and are full of men and women, holding on to their children's hands and browsing through colorful collections of clothes, fruits and vegetables. Iraqi police stand guard at dozens of checkpoints across Dora.

Some people worry that elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq remain in the area. Abu Hassan isn't one of them. He says they have lost their leaders or turned against the insurgency to earn money as guards working alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.

His main concerns are losing the weight he gained, earning money to help the family recover the savings used during his year of inactivity, and learning to live again.

In Rwanda, Left to Die as Help Passes Them By

 
The Associated Press
June 8, 1994, Wednesday
Monastery Becomes Rwanda's Latest City Of Horror

By TINA SUSMAN, Associated Press Writer

KABGAYI, Rwanda _ There's a madman shouting nonsense in a corner. The bloated body of a government soldier, his eyes wide open in death, is sprawled in a nearby room.

In the middle of a courtyard, a man sits beside a cooking fire, surrounded by buzzing flies, corpses and others on the brink of death.

Six days ago, the rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front took control of Kabgayi, the tiny Central African country's largest monastery, where thousands of people had sought shelter from the war, but where hundreds instead met their deaths.

The city monastery has become a nightmare of corpses and several dozen starving victims left behind in the evacuation by the rebels and the Red Cross.

Some have lost their minds, probably driven mad after weeks in this death camp. Others, like Innocent Rudasingwa, are all too aware of their surroundings.

"I don't have any hope," the emaciated man said as he sat with four other people in a filthy room once used as a medical clinic.

They are still here because they could not walk to the vehicles that have come in the last week to evacuate survivors.

Rudasingwa was living happily with his wife and five children in Kigali, the capital about 23 miles to the north, when a machete sliced into his skull on April 8 during an attack by pro-government militiamen.

His wife was killed. His five children have disappeared. His wounds have left his right arm and leg paralyzed.

The university-educated teacher, who is fluent in English and French, ended up here after hospital workers decided it was too dangerous to keep patients in the Kigali hospital.

"At the beginning we received medical assistance, but by the end it dropped. That's why they decided to remove all the patients from here," he said. "Unfortunately, we were unable to get to the trucks."

It is unclear why the Red Cross has not come back for these people. Perhaps they are not aware of them; perhaps they are simply too overloaded with other victims at a Red Cross hospital at Nyanza, about 20 miles away.

The rebels have been evacuating people when they can find transportation, but their priority is winning the war.

"The situation is the same everywhere. It is pretty hard to fight and rescue," said rebel Lt. Tony Kulamio as he wandered through a maze of leaf-and-stick huts on the monastery grounds.

An estimated 200,000 people have died since the Rwandan civil war erupted again on April 6, the day after the deaths of the president and his Burundi counterpart, both Hutus, in a mysterious plane crash.

The government forces are largely from the majority Hutu tribe while the rebel RPF is made up mostly of minority Tutsis.

The vast majority of victims have been civilians killed in widespread massacres, mostly conducted by Hutu militiamen, often backed by soldiers.

Survivors say this area was a concentration camp controlled by government troops and militiamen who each night would choose victims for execution. Others were left without food or water.

Now the huts, tents and a chapel house hundreds of dead or seemingly dead. One girl appeared long dead and lay in her decaying mother's arms on the floor of the chapel, but suddenly she moved.

Rebels bent down and removed the girl from the tangle of corpses. Within two hours, another child and an old man had been pulled from the dead. They were loaded into a truck and driven to safety.

Rudasingwa was not among them. He stayed behind, the stench of a dead man in the next room drifting down the hall. Outside the madman screamed words no one understood and waved his arms wildly.

A few steps away, another man sat staring vacantly at the dead government soldier. When asked why he did not move, the man pushed aside his blanket and showed a bullet-shattered leg.

"We don't survive. We don't eat - it is apparent," Rudasingwa said.

Rebel spokesman Wilson Gumisiriza said these living-dead would be evacuated, but he didn't say when.

"I don't know why the Red Cross is not here. How do you explain this situation?" he said with a shrug. "So, this is how Rwanda is."

In Liberia, There's Room in the Zoo

The Associated Press
January 4, 1995, Wednesday
People Displaced By Civil War Find Home in Zoo, Wherever There's Space

By TINA SUSMAN, Associated Press Writer

MONROVIA, Liberia _ Josiah Kuoh has a stiff left arm, its muscles mangled and paralyzed when the hippo he used to feed clamped its jaws around the limb and wouldn't let go.

The hippo is long gone, a casualty of Liberia's civil war. Kuoh, however, remains in Monrovia's zoo, wandering among the cages with about 60 other people who now call it home.

Before Liberia's civil war began on Christmas Eve in 1989, this seaside city had about 400,000 people. Now the population is about 1.2 million, mainly people who came to escape fighting in the countryside and settled wherever there was space.

The war was supposed to be over with a Dec. 28 cease-fire accord. But fighting has continued outside Monrovia, and the capital's displaced are not going to leave until they're sure life is back to normal.

Only when animals return to the zoo, when a government returns to the wrecked administrative buildings, when shops reopen in the old mall will the people living in them move out.

"I don't like it, but we've got nowhere else to go," said 22-year-old Louise Jolo, who has lived since January with her mother and hundreds of other people in the old Department of Foreign Affairs building.

In another city, this seven-story oceanside building might be an enviable address. The rooms are spacious, with magnificent views of the Atlantic. There's a well outside, so water is never a problem. It's cool even on the baking equator, thanks to thick concrete walls that keep out the heat. The sea breeze flows down the long dark corridors through huge gaps where there used to be windows, or where shells slammed in during fighting.

When night comes, however, kerosene lanterns are the only light. Jolo stays in her room, on the bed with a teddy bear, to avoid falling down the crumbling stairway or being caught by thugs who occasionally roam the building.

The civil war began when forces loyal to rebel leader Charles Taylor invaded from Ivory Coast to overthrow tribalist dictator Samuel Doe. Doe subsequently was tortured to death by a breakaway faction.

What began as a popular rebellion ballooned into a tribal war that has left more than 150,000 of this West African nation's 2.6 million people dead. About half the population has been displaced by the fighting.

Kuoh has lived and worked at the old Monrovia Zoo for more than a decade, but he never thought it would house people. By day, children run free among the cages that once housed bears, eagles, snakes, apes and big cats.

In 1990, when fighting raged across the country and food was scarce, army soldiers started coming to the zoo and asking for animals to feed themselves. They were given a deer or a bird, said Margaret Williams, whose Swiss brother-in-law, Charles Steiner, opened the zoo 30 years ago.

"Then when things got really bad, they would just come in and shoot the animals through the cages," said Williams, who also lives on the zoo grounds. The soldiers shot and killed leopards, panthers and other animals.

"My brother-in-law, he took care of them like they were human beings," Williams said. "All his life he worked to build something, and now it's all lost."

Kuoh was attacked by the hippo in 1989 but continued tending the animal until it, too, became a war victim. Today, he still guides visitors through the zoo as if the animals were there, pointing out where the species used to be housed. "On Saturdays, we used to have people lined up to come here and see them. I wouldn't have believed this," he said.

The zoo founder, Steiner, is back in Bern, Switzerland with his Liberian wife. Williams says she's confident the zoo will one day reopen, bigger and better than before.

Even when that happens it will be impossible to forget the past brutality: Across the street from the zoo entrance is a sign marking a mass grave of hundreds of civilians killed during rebel attacks.

In Iraq, Hiding in Plain Sight

Los Angeles Times
May 23, 2008 Friday
Home Edition
COLUMN ONE;
The Iraqi who wasn't there;
Abu Hassan's fear for his life and his family rose with the sectarian killings in Baghdad. So he went into hiding -- without leaving home.

Tina Susman and Raheem Salman, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD _ Abu Hassan took deep breaths of joy as he crossed the double-decker bridge spanning the Tigris River. The water below may have stunk of sewage. The air may have been choked with traffic fumes. It didn't matter to Abu Hassan.

He was free after nearly a year hidden inside his house, the only place he had felt safe from the gunmen and killers who had taken over his neighborhood in south Baghdad.

"To breathe, to see people, to feel that I am still alive," he said recently, recalling his decision that day last winter to drive across the bridge leading from the Dora neighborhood to central Baghdad.

All he did was buy gas, turn around and go back into his house, but Abu Hassan, a Shiite Muslim living in a mainly Sunni Arab area, had taken his first tentative steps back into the world that had terrified him for so long.

This is one man's story of survival in the midst of the capital's deadly sectarian war, but it is also the story of how fear paralyzed a city by driving people underground or out of their homes.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that since February 2006, when the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra unleashed massive Sunni-Shiite bloodshed, 1.5 million Iraqis have been displaced within the country, most of them Baghdad residents who fled their neighborhoods. There is no estimate of how many people locked themselves away and pretended not to exist, as Abu Hassan did.

For Abu Hassan, it was a year in which time had no meaning. He would not sleep until 3 or 4 a.m. He would eat meals and devour nuts, coffee, tea and soda all day while watching TV. He would try to read, but it was difficult to concentrate.

"I was thinking about what would happen after one hour, tonight, tomorrow," he said.

After the mosque bombing, Dora quickly became one of the capital's worst killing grounds. Sunni insurgents loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq began moving in, targeting Christians and Shiites, who were minorities in the area. The once-thriving Dora market fell into ruin, and the streets became dumping grounds for bodies of people who refused gunmen's orders to leave their homes and businesses.

An influx of U.S. and Iraqi security forces in the last year, along with the growth of neighborhood security groups known as the Sons of Iraq, has changed Dora and brought the number of attacks down to about one or two a week, according to the U.S. military.

But the people of Dora are wary of pushing too far, too fast.

Abu Hassan, for example, went back into hiding for weeks after his drive over the bridge and finally emerged fully in December. He reluctantly began telling his story a few weeks ago, but is terrified that insurgents will come after him if they learn he was living in their midst.

So he refuses to give his full name, going only by a moniker that identifies him as the father of Hassan. He will not identify the Shiite uncle and cousin who were killed by insurgents last year when they refused gunmen's orders to close their shop.

He won't allow visitors into the home he shares with his parents and his wife and son. Nor will he come to where foreigners live. He won't let his house be photographed or permit a physical description of himself to be published, other than to say he is 32 and fat -- a result of his overeating during his self-imposed house arrest.

He fidgets and squirms as he speaks and glances around frequently, as if looking for a stalker. He chain-smokes, forcefully shoving each butt into the ashtray at a hotel cafe before lighting the next one. Still, he is impeccably dressed and unfailingly polite as he finally tells his story after canceling plans to meet several times.

Abu Hassan made the decision to hide the month his son was born: November 2006. Worried for his family's safety, he sought advice from a Lebanese friend who had survived his own country's civil war.

"You have the experience of 15 years of sectarian killing," he said to the friend. "What is the best to do?" The friend advised him to shut himself off from the violence.

That wasn't easy. Abu Hassan was a car salesman who commuted to another part of town. Insurgents favored his upscale neighborhood because of the comfortable houses, the highway that offered a quick escape route and the vast fields nearby that were ideal for stashing weapons and for hiding from security forces.

"Day by day, things got worse," Abu Hassan said. "The highway was witnessing killings, kidnappings and explosions. It was not possible even for the security forces to put checkpoints in some of its parts. The checkpoints there were always attacked."

The insurgents targeted men and usually left women and the elderly alone, so Abu Hassan went into hiding and his mother and wife, both teachers, went to work, did the shopping and updated him on the world outside: the killings, the bombings, the deterioration of the neighborhood and eventually the turnaround. His wife is a Sunni, which helped ensure her safety, as long as nobody knew her Shiite husband was hiding at home.

From November 2006 until December 2007, he remained inside except for the day he drove across the bridge and the rare times he ventured into his walled garden at night.

His father, a grocer, joined him in hiding after a friend at the market warned him that as a Shiite, he was sure to be killed. It had happened to several fellow shopkeepers. Abu Hassan rattled off the ones he remembered: a man selling food, a shoe salesman, a humble man who sold tea from a small wooden kiosk.

"All of them were killed for sectarian reasons," he said.

Trapped inside, he learned to cook and to care for his child, becoming a househusband in a society where men are supposed to be the breadwinners and women the homemakers.

Depression set in. "I had nothing to do. I felt that I was idle, and on top of hearing all the sad stories and bad news, the only thing to do was eat," he said.

Most of his time was spent in the living room, where the TV is. When he grew restless, he would go upstairs, then downstairs and then upstairs again. Anything to break the monotony. But each time he heard of another killing or attack, it convinced Abu Hassan that he was right to stay inside.

Sometimes he would hear shooting nearby and sit silently, barely breathing, until the danger passed. Several times, he tried to convince his parents that the family should leave. They refused to give up the family home, and Abu Hassan refused to go anywhere without them, so the family remained together in Dora.

It was a wretched life, lived behind drawn curtains and locked doors, with their weapons loaded and a lock and chain to keep the front gate secure.

"Sometimes I had a glance at the street either from behind the fence of the house or through a very small hole in the gate," he said. After glimpsing bombed-out homes and deserted streets, "the area seemed to me as if it were attacked by a chemical weapon."

To outsiders, it appeared that his house was occupied by only his mother and his wife.

Late last fall, he sensed a change. U.S. forces had been in Baghdad in increased numbers since January 2007. A movement known as the Awakening, which involved Iraqis volunteering to help protect their neighborhoods, was catching on.

"Instead of the news of the killings and violence, we began to hear that this Qaeda leader was killed or that one was detained or had left the area," Abu Hassan said.

The highway became safer, and the sounds of gunfire decreased. Abu Hassan felt the chains loosening.

He can't remember the day he decided it was safe to go outside. It was not a particular event that encouraged him so much as a growing sense that things were better.

One day, he washed the dust off his car and drove over the bridge. But then he hurried back to his house.

A few weeks later, though, after hearing of the deaths of some key insurgent leaders in the area, he quietly came out for good.

Now, he has returned to work. A few days ago, he felt confident enough to stand on the street and chat with neighbors. They welcomed him back, thinking he had been out of the country. He let them believe it.

In his neighborhood, shops have reopened and are full of men and women, holding on to their children's hands and browsing through colorful collections of clothes, fruits and vegetables. Iraqi police stand guard at dozens of checkpoints across Dora.

Some people worry that elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq remain in the area. Abu Hassan isn't one of them. He says they have lost their leaders or turned against the insurgency to earn money as guards working alongside U.S. and Iraqi forces.

His main concerns are losing the weight he gained, earning money to help the family recover the savings used during his year of inactivity, and learning to live again.

--

In Zaire, Waiting for the Flight That Never Comes

February 19, 1997, Wednesday

Zaire's refugees: a bleak existence of leaves, roots, and uncertainty

By TINA SUSMAN, Associated Press Writer

KALIMA, Zaire _ The silver DC-3 took a nose dive toward the grass airstrip, scattering people like specks of sand before soaring skyward again and looping around to land on the now-cleared runway.

About 25,000 people live along a desolate stretch of rocky, sandy terrain hugging the runway, which most hope one day will produce a plane to take them away or, at least, deliver enough food to last until their next stop.

Caught halfway between the rebel-held town of Shabunda, 60 miles to the east, and government-held Kindu to the west, Kalima's refugees are some of the most pitiful of the estimated 200,000 winding their way through eastern Zaire's dense forests.

They fear the rebels too much to go back but are blocked from going forward by the Zairian government, which is so fed up that it refuses even to use the term "refugee camp" to describe places like Kalima.

Instead, in official jargon, this is a "site."

It is a thorny, inhospitable patch of desert-like terrain, where most of the leaves and roots have been devoured by crowds who began trickling in shortly after Shabunda was overrun by Laurent Kabila's rebel army Feb. 5. Before Shabunda, they had fled civil strife in their native Rwanda and Burundi and had been refugees in Goma.

"We're angry because we're stuck here without anything. It's not normal - we must move to another place, another country," said Cyprien Itamgishaka, 30, who fled Burundi's civil strife for Zaire last year.

"Perhaps one country could take 10,000, another 10,000 and so on so that Zaire wouldn't have to bear all the burden," suggested a Rwandan refugee, Emmanuel Habimana, 32.

"They can go on with their conquest. I don't care," he said of the rebels. "But someone should arrange an international agreement for other countries to take us."

Word that Kabila and an envoy of Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko might meet in South Africa has brought hopes of a cease-fire in the five-month war, but it is unlikely to change things here anytime soon. Most refugees are Hutus from Rwanda and Burundi who fled conflict between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis.

Now they're afraid of reprisals if they return, particularly for the 1994 Hutu-orchestrated slaughter of a half-million Rwandan Tutsis.

The Zairian government doesn't want them and is bitter over the Goma situation, in which nearly 2 million refugees fled to the eastern Zaire town in 1994 and refused to budge. When Zaire tried to force them out, it faced international condemnation and was forced to stop.

Many Goma refugees fled home on their own after Kabila began the war. But, to the Zairian government's dismay, those who didn't moved further into the country.

"They don't want to recognize the camps, but the fact is, when you have 25,000 people you have to deal with it," said Ariane Quentier of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The organization tried unsuccessfully to persuade Zairian authorities to let the Kalima crowd move to a more livable space.

Unlike Tingi Tingi about 95 miles to the north, where more than 150,000 refugees have a well-run compound of sorts and receive regular aid deliveries, Kalima is too disorganized for major food distribution or clinics.

The unloading of just a few sacks of flour and some empty pots from the back of a plane brought cheers Wednesday from the haggard thousands along the runway.

The appearance of real food probably would cause a stampede. Weakened adults stagger along the gullies and slopes, carrying malnourished children and displaying them plaintively to visitors.

A hospital sits a few miles away in the town, but the government has refused general access to the refugees. On Wednesday, though, it said the most desperate cases could be accepted.

At the refugee site, meanwhile, efforts to set up a soup kitchen stalled when refugees hired to do the work called a strike Wednesday, saying they hadn't been paid.

Habimana, the Rwandan refugee, scoffed at the idea the kitchen ever would be built. The rebels, he said, probably would run the refugees out of Kalima anyway.

"Who's going to build a kitchen that will just be left after a few weeks?" he said.

Athens Olympics Pushes Some to the Fringes

Copyright 2004 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)

August 26, 2004 Thursday

PLIGHT OF THE ROMA;
Outcasts of Greece and the Games

BY TINA SUSMAN. STAFF CORRESPONDENT

ASPROPYRGOS, Greece - The rubble is everywhere: rusted car parts, a rickety baby carriage, a broken TV and all manner of trash. The ground is unpaved and strewn with rocks. The homes, patched together with stray chunks of wood, plastic and metal, resemble ill-fitted jigsaw puzzles.

Asked what she uses for a toilet, Joanna Aristopoulou motions toward the field. "Nature," she says.

That goes for the dozens of other Roma, or Gypsies, occupying this grimy industrial area outside Athens, which underwent a massive beautification effort to host the Olympics.

Aristopoulou and other Roma say they are victims of this effort and that the attention being focused on Greece should be turned to their plight. That's especially the case, they say, since many Roma settlements were dismantled before the Games, including one cleared to make way for a parking lot at the main Olympic complex.

The Roma say the government has reneged for years on vows to provide them better living standards.

"We are Greek citizens too. What is it for them to give adequate housing to the Roma?" said Aristopoulou, one of tens of thousands of Roma living in Greece, which has long been accused by human rights groups, including the government's own National Commission for Human Rights, of neglecting them. Those accusations took on new strength in the run-up to the Games from organizations such as Amnesty International, the European Union and the United Nations. Among other things, the government was chastised over the eviction that cleared land for the Olympic parking lot. That Roma settlement had existed nearly 50 years.

"The Games and all the infrastructure that's been done - the highways and this and that - that's all very good and very helpful. But for us to feel good about the Olympics, we need to be housed somewhere," said one of those displaced by the parking lot, Prokopis Nikolaou, 36.

Nikolaou and others who had lived in the shack settlement said they were promised rent subsidies so they could find apartments, and were told permanent housing eventually would be built for them. But the subsidies have been consistently late or not paid at all, Nikolaou said. Two years after the forced move, he, his wife and their three children share a cramped house with other relatives because, he says, the erratic subsidies made it impossible to secure an apartment.

In addition, he said his monthly subsidy, calculated according to family size, was never raised after his wife had their third child 11 months ago. "Basically, we feel we were cheated," he said.

The Greek government denies mistreating the Roma and says they, like other fringe groups, are simply feeling the bite of enhanced police enforcement during the Games. The interior ministry did not respond to e-mailed requests for specific comments, but in response to past criticisms it has described the Roma situation as "of great concern" to Greek authorities. It says it has spent millions of dollars moving Roma into prefabricated houses to replace their shacks and tents; to build permanent housing for others; and to offer them job training.

Determining how many Roma live in Greece is difficult. Estimates range from 120,000 to a half-million, and they are scattered and subject to different treatment, depending on municipality.

Commumities Wiped Out

A common complaint by rights groups concerns evictions by local officials determined to keep Roma out of sight and away from non-Roma, who derisively call them "gyps." Such evictions picked up speed after Athens was awarded the 2004 Olympics in 1997, as local officials saw a chance to bulldoze unsightly squatter settlements, the National Human Rights Commission said in 2001.

Those in Aspropyrgos, northwest of Athens, say they ended up in their current spot after their settlement next to a dump was razed by local officials. In Spata, south of the capital, another group was moved from its settlement behind a school to a seemingly preferable spot a few miles away, on a breezy hill with a view of the sea. But four years later, the promised electricity and water never materialized, and it's too far from town for children to walk to school, or for residents to go shopping or to a doctor on foot.

Land of broken promises

The Romas who were evicted to clear land for the parking lot two years ago are scattered across the city, since no settlement was established for them.

Critics say no matter what municipalities are guilty of, the final responsibility lies with the central government, which in 1996 and 2001 unveiled plans to, among other things, build new settlements for Romas, improve existing ones and make housing loans easier. In May, a report from the UN's Economic and Social Council said few of the promises had been kept and that "persistent discrimination" against Roma existed. It also said it was "gravely concerned" about demolition of Roma housing without adequate compensation or provisions of alternative housing.

Separate lives

The Romas' nomadic past, and the illegal squatter settlements they formed when they were drawn to cities in search of work, have prompted disdain among non-Roma. Many dismiss them as criminals who choose not to integrate with other Greeks. "The Roma are always in camps. They don't want to live in houses," said Theodoros Stefanides, a university student in Athens. "These people always complain, but it's their choice to live in tents. They're difficult people."

His companion, Daphne Dedopoulou, agreed: "If they want more respect from us, they could stop selling drugs."

Those attitudes rile Roma like Spiros Parianos. "Look at our hands! They are honest, hardworking!" he said indignantly, holding out his dry, calloused hands. "We are not illegal. We don't go to steal. We don't deal drugs."

Parianos makes a living selling scrap metal. Others sell wares at street markets but have been hampered by crackdowns on nonlicensed sellers.

Nikolaou admits he was selling trinkets and housewares without a permit. And there's no question some Roma are involved in questionable businesses. As one woman in Aspropyrgos lamented her poverty, her son drove up in a flashy red BMW she insisted was paid for through selling vegetables.

Economic Reality

Human rights groups say the majority of Roma, though, are law-abiding people forced by poverty and discrimination to live on the fringes of society. Nikolaou, for example, now cruises neighborhoods selling watermelons out of the back of a truck because the crackdown makes it impossible for him to sell at the flea market.

"We spent billions to make Athens much more beautiful," said Panayote Dimitras of Greek Helsinki Monitor, a rights group that has taken up the Romas' cause. "If only a tiny fraction of that was spent for those Roma who are in need, we would have model settlements that we could brag about."

Copyright 2004 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)

August 26, 2004 Thursday

PLIGHT OF THE ROMA;
Outcasts of Greece and the Games

BY TINA SUSMAN. STAFF CORRESPONDENT

ASPROPYRGOS, Greece - The rubble is everywhere: rusted car parts, a rickety baby carriage, a broken TV and all manner of trash. The ground is unpaved and strewn with rocks. The homes, patched together with stray chunks of wood, plastic and metal, resemble ill-fitted jigsaw puzzles.

Asked what she uses for a toilet, Joanna Aristopoulou motions toward the field. "Nature," she says.

That goes for the dozens of other Roma, or Gypsies, occupying this grimy industrial area outside Athens, which underwent a massive beautification effort to host the Olympics.

Aristopoulou and other Roma say they are victims of this effort and that the attention being focused on Greece should be turned to their plight. That's especially the case, they say, since many Roma settlements were dismantled before the Games, including one cleared to make way for a parking lot at the main Olympic complex.

The Roma say the government has reneged for years on vows to provide them better living standards.

"We are Greek citizens too. What is it for them to give adequate housing to the Roma?" said Aristopoulou, one of tens of thousands of Roma living in Greece, which has long been accused by human rights groups, including the government's own National Commission for Human Rights, of neglecting them. Those accusations took on new strength in the run-up to the Games from organizations such as Amnesty International, the European Union and the United Nations. Among other things, the government was chastised over the eviction that cleared land for the Olympic parking lot. That Roma settlement had existed nearly 50 years.

"The Games and all the infrastructure that's been done - the highways and this and that - that's all very good and very helpful. But for us to feel good about the Olympics, we need to be housed somewhere," said one of those displaced by the parking lot, Prokopis Nikolaou, 36.

Nikolaou and others who had lived in the shack settlement said they were promised rent subsidies so they could find apartments, and were told permanent housing eventually would be built for them. But the subsidies have been consistently late or not paid at all, Nikolaou said. Two years after the forced move, he, his wife and their three children share a cramped house with other relatives because, he says, the erratic subsidies made it impossible to secure an apartment.

In addition, he said his monthly subsidy, calculated according to family size, was never raised after his wife had their third child 11 months ago. "Basically, we feel we were cheated," he said.

The Greek government denies mistreating the Roma and says they, like other fringe groups, are simply feeling the bite of enhanced police enforcement during the Games. The interior ministry did not respond to e-mailed requests for specific comments, but in response to past criticisms it has described the Roma situation as "of great concern" to Greek authorities. It says it has spent millions of dollars moving Roma into prefabricated houses to replace their shacks and tents; to build permanent housing for others; and to offer them job training.

Determining how many Roma live in Greece is difficult. Estimates range from 120,000 to a half-million, and they are scattered and subject to different treatment, depending on municipality.

Commumities Wiped Out

A common complaint by rights groups concerns evictions by local officials determined to keep Roma out of sight and away from non-Roma, who derisively call them "gyps." Such evictions picked up speed after Athens was awarded the 2004 Olympics in 1997, as local officials saw a chance to bulldoze unsightly squatter settlements, the National Human Rights Commission said in 2001.

Those in Aspropyrgos, northwest of Athens, say they ended up in their current spot after their settlement next to a dump was razed by local officials. In Spata, south of the capital, another group was moved from its settlement behind a school to a seemingly preferable spot a few miles away, on a breezy hill with a view of the sea. But four years later, the promised electricity and water never materialized, and it's too far from town for children to walk to school, or for residents to go shopping or to a doctor on foot.

Land of broken promises

The Romas who were evicted to clear land for the parking lot two years ago are scattered across the city, since no settlement was established for them.

Critics say no matter what municipalities are guilty of, the final responsibility lies with the central government, which in 1996 and 2001 unveiled plans to, among other things, build new settlements for Romas, improve existing ones and make housing loans easier. In May, a report from the UN's Economic and Social Council said few of the promises had been kept and that "persistent discrimination" against Roma existed. It also said it was "gravely concerned" about demolition of Roma housing without adequate compensation or provisions of alternative housing.

Separate lives

The Romas' nomadic past, and the illegal squatter settlements they formed when they were drawn to cities in search of work, have prompted disdain among non-Roma. Many dismiss them as criminals who choose not to integrate with other Greeks. "The Roma are always in camps. They don't want to live in houses," said Theodoros Stefanides, a university student in Athens. "These people always complain, but it's their choice to live in tents. They're difficult people."

His companion, Daphne Dedopoulou, agreed: "If they want more respect from us, they could stop selling drugs."

Those attitudes rile Roma like Spiros Parianos. "Look at our hands! They are honest, hardworking!" he said indignantly, holding out his dry, calloused hands. "We are not illegal. We don't go to steal. We don't deal drugs."

Parianos makes a living selling scrap metal. Others sell wares at street markets but have been hampered by crackdowns on nonlicensed sellers.

Nikolaou admits he was selling trinkets and housewares without a permit. And there's no question some Roma are involved in questionable businesses. As one woman in Aspropyrgos lamented her poverty, her son drove up in a flashy red BMW she insisted was paid for through selling vegetables.

Economic Reality

Human rights groups say the majority of Roma, though, are law-abiding people forced by poverty and discrimination to live on the fringes of society. Nikolaou, for example, now cruises neighborhoods selling watermelons out of the back of a truck because the crackdown makes it impossible for him to sell at the flea market.

"We spent billions to make Athens much more beautiful," said Panayote Dimitras of Greek Helsinki Monitor, a rights group that has taken up the Romas' cause. "If only a tiny fraction of that was spent for those Roma who are in need, we would have model settlements that we could brag about."

Iraqis Debate Whether to Stay or Go

Los Angeles Times
March 10, 2009 Tuesday

COLUMN ONE;

Iraqis rethink American dream;
Many who work with U.S. agencies and media are newly eligible to emigrate. But the sour economy here gives them pause.

By Tina Susman

Baghdad _ Raheem's cellphone rang as we walked through a crowded market, stepping over piles of trash and weaving around slow-moving donkey carts.

He spoke to the caller in his usual low murmur, then hung up. It was a U.S. immigration official, he told me. His application for refugee status in America had been approved. The flight was nine days away. "What do you think?" he asked, as calmly as if inviting my opinion on a new shirt.

But Raheem, who speaks English with poetic fluency and carries himself with the dignity of an Ivy League lecturer, already knew he would not go.

In Iraq, he owns property and has a job, and his son has a promising career in computer technology. Bombs, of course, still go off and gunfire still crackles in the streets. Neighborhood gossip is of sectarian killings and kidnappings. But the epidemic of bloodshed seems a thing of the past.

The local news, meanwhile, reports on America's economic woes, of foreclosed homes being auctioned off for a pittance. Word filters back from Iraqis in the U.S. who are unable to find work, struggling to afford medical care, and devouring savings that once seemed everlasting.

"It used to be that going to America was a dream. No more," said Raheem, 56, a former teacher and experienced reporter who is one of the local cast of journalists, interpreters, drivers, guards, technicians and general fix-it men and women who have kept The Times running here since the war began.

The idea of going to the United States has long been a topic of discussion among Iraqis who have worked with Americans here in aid agencies, news organizations and the U.S. military. Their jobs make them susceptible to attacks by insurgents who have taken aim at U.S.-associated institutions and their most vulnerable employees: the Iraqis who come to work for them each day.

Now the economic aspect invariably creeps into the conversation. One rumor making the rounds is that things in the United States are so bad, new refugees could be sent to Guam.

"Life here has been difficult. We did not arrive at the perfect time," one former Times staffer wrote last month from his new home on the icy East Coast.

Raheem and I have had countless conversations on this topic since last summer, after the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act made it possible for Iraqis who worked for U.S.-based media, aid agencies and the U.S. government and its contractors to receive special consideration as refugees.

Among Iraqi media workers, the first applications under the act were filed in May. A U.S. Embassy official said the number of people applying isn't disclosed, only how many Iraqis have been resettled in the United States. So far 4,409 Iraqis, including those applying under the act, have been resettled this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

By the time most applicants had gone through the requisite Department of Homeland Security checks, interviews and medical exams, the U.S. stock market had begun to tank. Iraq's government, meanwhile, had begun making life here more attractive by giving pay raises to civil servants, many of whom juggle their state jobs with work for American news and nongovernmental organizations.

Even with unemployment in Iraq officially at 18% -- far higher than in America -- Iraqis are eligible for monthly food rations no matter what their income. In a society where bank loans and credit cards are virtually unheard of, most people own their homes outright. And many Iraqis are flush with cash after years of having little to spend money on.

As Iraqis' earnings grew, the violence around them continued a steady drip downward. Stores, restaurants, parks and even nightclubs opened, taking the edge off the bullet-scarred landscape and relieving the suffocating boredom of the last few years, when curfews, bloodshed and religious extremism turned this once-lively society hermetic. On a recent weekend, Baghdad's Zawra Park was packed with families, young couples and children, visiting the zoo, sitting on swing sets, spinning on amusement park rides.

What used to be a simple decision to stay or leave became far more difficult for many Iraqis, with families torn over the issue. One of our drivers, Ahmed, 44, an engineer by training, is determined to leave and expects to get the call within three months.

But his wife, after initially supporting the idea, has changed her mind. She will retire soon after 22 years as a teacher and wants to enjoy her comfortable pension in Iraq's newly stable environment, not struggle to make her way in a new country, he explained one day as we maneuvered through choking traffic.

Ahmed is resigned to starting his new life alone. "I want a new identity," he said.

A reporter, Usama, 34, is undecided. He fears being unable to support his wife and their two young children in the United States, but to leave them behind in hopes of one day bringing them over? "It's a difficult equation. I'm hesitating," he confessed recently, even though he has dreamed since childhood of going to America.

For Usama, awaiting the call is a much-needed stall. It gives him breathing space while he obsesses over the issue.

At least four staffers say they still want to leave, but at least three are on the fence about what to do when the call comes in. A year ago, that was unthinkable.

Most, but not all, applicants are accepted. Some have been turned down for reasons that never quite become clear, as was the case with Qusay, a Times driver who was so certain he would be leaving that he sold everything he owned. "My house is like a mosque," he said recently, referring to its bare floors and lack of furnishings.

When Qusay, 34, got word in December of his rejection, he was distraught. In the nearly two years we had worked together, he had talked of his yearning to leave Baghdad, where he feared for his wife and children in their militia-plagued neighborhood.

But after listening to others, he says he won't fight his rejection. Instead of lamenting his lack of furniture, he's planning to buy new things. He just bought a new car and cheerfully shows off its spiffy feature: an engine that starts up with the flick of a switch when he's outside the vehicle.

"I did the right thing by not going. Every day my wife tells me this," he said with confidence, gripping the steering wheel and eyeing the traffic around us as the worry beads hanging from the rear-view mirror clacked against the windshield. His wife just got a job, bringing in a second income. His neighborhood has been cleared of the masked gunmen who once ruled the roads. Finally, the family is content.

It is a good thing that Qusay seems comfortable with staying put. Rarely do would-be Iraqi refugees get a second chance. Those who opt to stay will have to live with their decision, just as those who take the leap try to live with theirs.

"I am trying my best here and will see what will happen," said the former staffer now living on the East Coast, who earns $10 an hour at a pharmacy. "To be honest . . . the option of returning is always open for me."

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