Irish aid agencies step up presence on borders of Iraq
Both Concern and GOAL have sent representatives to neighbouring Jordan in order to co-ordinate humanitarian aid in the wake of an extensive bombing campaign by US and British forces.
The GOAL representative, Ray Jordan, is in the Middle East to help set up his organisation’s response to the impending crisis.
John Kilkenny, Concerns’s representative in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was withdrawn from the country yesterday as the aid organisation became worried for his safety. He had been there for the past week and has been on a number of fact-finding missions among the Kurds since Christmas.
“We have asked John to leave immediately, because we feared for his safety,” Dominic McSorley, Concern’s emergency co-ordinator for Iraq, said yesterday.
Speaking from his base in Amman, capital of Jordan, Mr McSorley, who is heading up his agency’s response, said: “We expect bombing by US and British forces to begin in the next day or two and we will not know what the situation is on the ground for a few days after that. Our priority is to get access to Iraq in the aftermath of war to deal with the human needs there.”
Mr McSorley said Concern was worried that its humanitarian aid programme for southern Africa could be hampered by war in Iraq.
“Iraq is potentially a very rich country with the means to manage its own development,” he said.
“What it lacks is the political will to implement that.” In contrast, much of west and southern Africa is destitute and Concern has been concentrating its activities in Ethiopia where a famine worse than the country’s 1985 crisis is looming.
However, in Iraq itself, 24 million people already rely on food aid and, while there are enough United Nations food stocks to last six weeks, a prolonged war could be devastating.
“There will be real trouble if the war goes beyond six weeks,” Mr McSorley said.
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