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www.MiddleEast.Org GENOCIDE AGAINST IRAQ:
A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT
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M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups,
and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know from Independent
Middle East Experts Around the World.
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G E N O C I D E A G A I N S T I R A Q
MER - Washington - 15 February:
Before the recent crisis which is likely to inflict
still more catastrophic destruction upon Iraq, the
American-led sanction campaign against Iraq had itself
become a kind of genocidal weapon of mass destruction
and human misery.
This article from the current Jan/Feb issue of
CATHOLIC WORKER MAGAZINE dramatizes what has been done
to Iraq by the American/Israeli policies that today
dominate the Middle East region.
I R A Q - A S T H E P E O P L E S U F F E R
By Rick McDowell
CATHOLIC WORKER MAGAZINE - Jan/Feb 1998
"The hidden nature of the war being waged against
Iraq is tragic. Editorials seldom appear, and we
see no front-page stories, even though these
sanctions have caused the deaths of more than one
million people, constituting one of the greatest
human rights abuses of our time."
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
When I returned to Iraq in late May of 1997, nearly six months
since the implementation of UN Resolution 986 ("Oil for Food"), I
expected to see improvements in the availability of food and medicine.
I found, instead, a deterioration of all conditions necessary for
the sustenance of life. Traveling to Iraq for the third time in nine
months, I encountered a resigned hopelessness amongst the people, a
population historically known for its resilience.
Seven years of the most comprehensive sanctions in modern history
have reduced Iraq and its people to utter destitution. The United
Nations Security Council's economic sanctions, invoked only ten times
since the inception of the United Nations, and applied eight times
since the end of the Cold War, constitute an extension of the
devastating Allied bombing campaign of 1991.
For the 6th time since January of 1991 a delegation from Voices in
the Wilderness, a campaign to end the US-supported UN economic sanctions
against Iraq, traveled to Iraq in public violation of US law. The
delegation visited hospitals in Baghdad and the southern port city of
Basra. Members met the UN and relief officials, doctors, government
workers, religious leaders, and Iraqis from all walks of life. Our
findings of increasing suffering, death and desperation throughout Iraq
are confirmed by recent UN reports.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in December of 1995
that more than one million Iraqis have died --567,OOO of them children
-- as a direct consequence of economic sanctions. UNICEF reports that
4,500 children under the age of five are dying each month from hunger
and disease. An April 1997 nutritional survey, carried out by UNICEF
with the participation of the World Food Program (WFP) and Iraq's
Minister of Health, indicates that in Central/Southern Iraq 27.5% of
Iraq's three million children are now at risk of acute malnutrition.
To date, more children have died in Iraq than the combined toll of two
atomic bombs on Japan and the ethnic cleansing of former Yugoslavia.
The UN's Department of Humanitarian Affairs reports that Iraq's
public health services are nearing a total breakdown from a lack of
basic medicines, lifesaving drugs and essential medical supplies. The
lack of clean water -- 50% of all rural people have no access to
potable water -- and a collapse of water treatment facilities in most
urban areas are contributing to the rapidly deteriorating state of
public health.
Airborne and waterborne diseases are on the rise, while deaths
related to diarrhea diseases have tripled in an increasingly unhealthy
environment. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports a six-fold
increase in the mortality rate for children under five, an explosive
rise in the incidence of endemic infections, such as cholera and
typhoid, and a markedly elevated incidence of measles, poliomyelitis
and tetanus. Malaria has reached epidemic levels. The WHO further
states that the majority of Iraqis have subsisted on a semi-starvation
diet for the past several years.
The use of depleted uranium during the Gulf War -- which may be a
contributing factor of Gulf War Syndrome -- may also be linked to
increases in childhood cancers, including leukemia, Hodgkin's disease,
lymphomas, congenital diseases and deformities in fetuses, along with
limb reductional abnormalities and increases in genetic abnormalities
throughout Iraq.
The vaunted "Oil for Food" resolution is a failure, its promise of
food and medicine having proved to be too little, too late. According
to the WFP by the end of May, 1997, Iraq had exported 120 million
barrels of oil and received 692,000 metric tons of food, 29% of what
had been expected under the deal. Of the 574 contracts submitted to the
Sanctions Committee for exports of humanitarian supplies to Iraq, 311
were approved, 191 placed on hold, 14 blocked, and 38 were awaiting
clarification.
Of the $2 billion in Iraqi oil revenue authorized for a six-month
period, 30% is designated for war reparations, 5 to 10% for UN
operations, 5 to 10% covers maintenance and repair of the oil pipeline,
and 15% is earmarked for humanitarian supplies for the Kurdish
population in northern Iraq. About $800,000 is available for Central/
Southern Iraq or approximately 25c per person per day for food and
medicine. Regardless, UN Resolution 986 does not provide for critically
needed parts to repair Iraqi water sanitation and medical
infrastructure,
which was devastated during the Gulf War. The importation of such basic
items as chlorine, fertilizers and pencils is prohibited.
Lacking spare parts and minerals needed to repair and maintain their
water and sewage treatment facilities, the condition of many Iraqis is
scarcely improved by the food they receive. The untreated water is
contributing to disease and death. Without hard currency. the economy
of Iraq, estimated to have the second largest oil reserves in the world,
has collapsed. Average public sector wages, for the few who have
employment, have fallen to less than $5 per month, while hyper-inflation
has caused the price of goods to rise astronomically. The Iraqi dinar,
worth $3 prior to sanctions, was worth .000625 in May, 1997. Skilled
workers, including doctors and engineers, have deserted their jobs to
become taxi drivers or cigarette salesmen. Iraqi professionals are
leaving the country in increasing numbers. With an estimated 80% of
Iraqis affected by sanctions, families are selling household and
personal possessions to purchase food and medicine. As the population
struggles for survival, the social fabric of Iraq is disintegrating, as
witnessed by the widespread rise in begging, street children, crime and
prostitution. The people of Iraq have been on a roller coaster of hope
and despair for seven years and seem to have settled into despair. For
example, Frial, the manager of a small hotel, asked us to go home and
tell our government to bomb Iraq for 32 more days and get it over with,
for, she says, "We are dying a slow and painful death under sanctions."
A young doctor at a Baghdad hospital said, "Our life is over."
Another doctor, who has practiced for eight years and is forced to play
God with the few lifesaving drugs available makes 3,000 dinar a month,
or $2, while a bottle of milk for his children costs 3,500 dinars. He
asked, "What does your country gain from our suffering?" An Iraqi
reporter despairingly stated, "the world is upside down, nothing makes
sense anymore, it's all gone mad."
Most horrific is the pain in the eyes of the mothers who wait in
hospitals, with their children -- for far too many mothers it is a death
watch. The children, born since the Gulf War and hardly involved in the
politics of sanctions, suffer in silence, often without access to pain
killers, drugs, antibiotics or hope. Some childhood cancers realized an
80% cure rate prior to sanctions. Now, without cancer-fighting drugs,
the survival rate for children with these same cancers is 0%.
The United Nations, chartered to protect civilian populations from
the ravages of war, is, instead, engaged in a war of collective
punishment, a war of mass destruction directed at the civilian
population of Iraq. The UN, at the insistence of the US, and contrary.
to inter-national conventions and treaties, has created, in Iraq, a
zone of misery and death -- with no end in sight.
Considering the horrific suffering and death of children and families
in Iraq, the lack of public debate over the UN/US participation in this
massive violation of human rights is astonishing. The toll of these
sanctions on an entire generation of Iraqi children is incal-culable.
What are the implications of Iraqi children growing up traumatized by
hunger and disease, if they survive at all? How can the deeds of one
leader or even an entire gov-ernment be used to justify this
unprecedented, internationally sanctioned violation of human rights?
The scourge of sanctions on the people of Iraq must come to an
immediate and unqualified end.
ÆThis January marks the seventh anniversary since the bombing of Iraq
in 1991. The devastating effects continue to harm the environment,
agricultural production and health of the Iraqi people significantly.
Rick McDowell belongs to the Chicago-based organization Voices in the
Wilderness, whose goal is to end the US-led UN sanctions against the
people of Iraq. As we go to press, delegations from this group have
traveled to Iraq seven times since January, 1996, to deliver medical
supplies and gather information in open and public violation of US law.
Participants in these groups have been threatened by the US government
with "up to 12 years in prison and $1 million in fines."
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