APRIL-MAY2008

By Jill DrewWashington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; Page A08

LEIGU, China, May 27 -- With as many as 14 million earthquake survivors in urgent need of housing, China is beginning to rebuild from scratch.

It is doing so in places like this mountain plain in Sichuan province, where workers are erecting a new town of blue-roofed homes for 20,000 people. Construction got underway here late last week, less than three miles from Beichuan, a town wiped out in the 7.9-magnitude quake.

Fields of wheat and corn have been overrun with earth-moving equipment as construction crews assemble long rows of cookie-cutter houses with walls of Styrofoam sandwiched between two pieces of sheet metal. Builders vow the new homes will be ready by the end of June.

Would-be residents began arriving over the weekend. Originally from nearly two dozen villages scattered around Beichuan county, the people were bused here from an emergency shelter at a sports stadium in nearby Mianyang city. Among the first earthquake survivors to be moved to what is expected to be a permanent relocation site, they are living for now in a sea of government-provided tents next to the construction zone.

Beichuan, nestled in a sliver of valley surrounded by mountains, will not be rebuilt because authorities deem the area too hazardous. Nearby Leigu, however, is situated along a broad, fertile expanse farther down the valley. Before the earthquake, it was a farming town of 18,000 residents. Most of the homes here, as in Beichuan, collapsed in the earthquake, and 1,000 people died. But the fields provide space to build, and now Leigu's survivors will have to make room for new neighbors.

The one-room dwellings are being built in caterpillar-like lines of 14, each 65-square-foot home attached to the ones next to it. There will be electricity and running water, but current plans call for every two homes to share a tap. Every 50 homes will share a bath house and a kitchen. The floors will be hard-packed dirt covered by plastic.

"It's not realistic to have concrete, attached floors at this point," said Wang Di Sheng, a government official from Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, which provided the materials and is supervising the construction of 7,000 houses for the local authority. The dwellings are supposed to last up to three years while the government constructs a permanent community here.

Though spartan, these portable homes are a step up from the tents and tarps that have been the main shelters for millions of people displaced by the quake. China's top leaders have urged manufacturers and construction crews to rush production of the homes, as the rainy season begins and threatens to turn hundreds of tent cities into swamps.

Construction is quick. It took about 24 hours this week for a 10-person crew to put up one row of homes. First they erected a metal frame. Then they slid the walls and windows into pre-fabricated grooves, tightened screws and reinforcement rods. Then they fastened down the metal roof parts. Wiring and plumbing come later.

Chen Yan, 16, can watch the neighborhood going up from the edge of her tent city on the hill above the construction zone. She lives in tent No. 185, an 86-square-foot shelter that sleeps 10. She and her family are among the 384 people from Yuanxing village who survived the quake and are now registered to live here.

"This is better than in Mianyang," Chen said, referring to the stadium where the family stayed until coming here four days ago. At one point, the stadium housed 30,000 people but the government began relocating them in earnest in the past few days. Today the stadium population is about 7,000, an official there said.

Chen said she is settling into daily life in the Leigu camp, where the government provides food for three meals a day, plus cooking pots and staples. Electric lights are strung above most walkways, and there is a line of taps with running water along one side of the camp. There is a charging point for cellphones. Chen volunteers to distribute food each day and helps her mother, who is still shaky from the shock of the earthquake.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A "Fanatic" Iraqi... by Layla Anwar

The other day, someone said to me "You know something - you really are a fanatic Iraqi"...hoping that he would hurt my feelings.

Tell you what, I walked away feeling 10 inches taller.

Of course I am a fanatical Iraqi. My country has been agonizing for 18 years to the total indifference of the world. My country is totally defaced, turned into a hideous monster. My country is totally destroyed, totally destroyed...

From the sanction years and its utter misery and struggles to the present occupation by a so-called "great democracy". An occupation by the mightiest military power on earth, and again to the total indifference of the world.

Millions dead, millions exiled, millions orphaned, millions widowed, millions maimed for life and you don't want me to become a "fanatic" Iraqi ? Ha!

If need be, I will invent fanaticism all over again. I will re-define it for you - my Iraqi version. I will reconstruct the concept and give you a whole new perspective on what fanaticism is. Sure I am a "fanatic" about Iraq.

Some of you people brush off this occupation and remind yourself and me of Vietnam. Crap, pure crap. Vietnam is nothing compared to this. Vietnam took place in a bi-polar world.

Others liken it to the Israeli occupation. Again, we witnessed in 5 years what the Palestinians witnessed in 60. We are actually competing with the Palestinians as to the amount of dead and refugees this occupation manages to produce. And we are competing with the walls too. Who's got more walls and more ghettos.
But at least the EU and a few NGO's visit occupied Palestine and conduct enquiries into human rights violations...or try to. In Iraq no one visits us.

A "fanatic" - Yes I am. A terrible, horrible "fanatic."

When one is abandoned the way we have been. When one has been forgotten the way we have been. When we have been shelved on the side, so as not to ruffle your sensitivities and your political correctness, yes we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When for 18 years, we've done nothing but pick up pieces and hang in there, when for 18 years your bombs and your silence has overpowered our cries, yes we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When our libraries, universities, schools, books...have been burnt to ashes and our kids have forgotten how to read and write, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When our brains are murdered one by one - from our academics, to our scientists, to our artists and singers and we learn that you keep our brains in jars as war trophies, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When our riches are plundered, our homes in ruins, our museums looted, our ancient tablets trampled on and smashed, our history erased and falsified, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When our hospitals are in total shambles, when we knock on doors and can't find work, when we have to beg for an entry visa or a residence permit, when we are shunned, ridiculed, considered a burden, pushed away, humiliated, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When we see our elders begging in streets, our women with no food, our men tortured, our daughters turned to prostitutes and our children trafficked and sold, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When we can't even visit our loved ones either in cemeteries or in prisons, cemeteries and prisons - so packed, so filled, so anonymous, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When our fields have been deserted, a barren land or turned into poppy fields into poppy fields with Iranian seeds. When our rivers are drying up and our trees chopped off, dead. When our sky is reeking with radiation and the air we breath is riddled with uranium, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

When we see you cheering every single "resistance" in the world, but ours, ours - made of resisting bodies and souls, forged by the fire of your weapons.
When we hear your heated debates and revolutionary hot zeal and feel your ice, cold winds blowing our way, we become "fanatic" Iraqis.

And when you finally hand us, on a golden platter, to the most backward, racist, chauvinist, whore around - remaining a "fanatic" Iraqi, becomes an obligation, a duty, a must.

A "fanatic" Iraq is what I am. You can consider my being a "fanatic" Iraqi -- as my flag, my book, my song and my seal.

A "fanatic" Iraqi is what we've got left when everything else has been forcefully ripped away from us, when everything else has gone and vanished...and no one, absolutely no one, will be able to take that away...from us, from me.