With handouts and grants, troops hope to help slum

[unhappycamper]

Cows dine among trash littered fields accented by smoke and fire Thursday in poverty stricken Shawra Wa Um Jidr, an eastern suburb of Baghdad.


With handouts and grants, troops hope to help slum
By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, March 10, 2009

BAGHDAD — It’s hard to describe the crushing blight, the desolate squalor, the abject poverty in east Baghdad’s Shawra Wa Um Jidr.

Raggedy, mud-stained sheep and cattle — shepherded by the destitute — graze on endless acres of refuse in a wasteland that has long served as Baghdad’s landfill. Curling smoke signals trash fires that speckle the sprawling garbage dump. Human scavengers scour the heaps, searching for anything of use.

Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment — alongside Iraqi and other U.S. institutions — aim to improve the lot of residents in the area known in military parlance as the "SUJ."

U.S. soldiers with the Iraqi National Police have given away blankets and school supplies. Road-paving and street-lighting projects are in the works. A water project should begin soon and sewer repairs should start in August. Donations for the needy in the area are pouring in from around the States in part thanks to a touching video put together by the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

The area has suffered neglect dating back to Saddam Hussein’s reign. Late last week, the soldiers out of Fort Bragg, N.C., donated medical supplies and worked with local leaders on requests for microgrants, which would give business owners a few thousand dollars each.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61221



uhc comment: After six years of the occupation we're finally getting around to water and sewer projects? Gimmeafuckingbreak.