UNHCR Was Ready for Falluja
By Bruno Geddo
We would like to address some factual errors in the article published today on your website: Fallujah, a Military Success But Humanitarian Failure, Could Signal Catastrophe in Mosul It is a great shame this article appeared without the writer carefully checking the facts. UNHCR, like other agencies, had drawn up contingency plans for Falluja.
Dear President Obama: After months of despair we have finally felt a flicker of hope on hearing of the raid by your soldiers with Kurdish forces several days ago which released 69 hostages being held by the Islamic state. We know very well what those hostages were going through. Like them we are held in captivity, abused, and face execution. We have been in this situation for months.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature." It's because of these moral precepts that my parents fled the Ba'athist purge of Saddam Hussein in the hope of providing a better life for my brothers, sister -- and naturally, myself.