BY MARGARET ALLUM
On January 12, a delegation of 50 US activists and scientists, led by US former attorney general Ramsey Clark, boarded a flight to Bagdad. The plane also carried US$1.5 million worth of medical aid and school supplies. The delegation's aim is to investigate the effects on the Iraqi people of the depleted uranium weapons used by the US/UN military during and after the 1991 Gulf War.
It was the fourth such visit organised by the US-based International Action Center (IAC), although the first by air. The participants included activists, teachers, social workers, lawyers and scientists from the US and seven other countries.
The flight was only one of a number that have entered Iraq recently in defiance of the sanctions imposed on Iraq since 1991.
January 16 marked the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf War. On top of the massive damage caused to Iraq's basic infrastructure by the US bombs and firepower in the 1991 blitzkrieg, more than 10 years of crippling economic sanctions have left a devastating legacy for the people of Iraq. Close to 2 million have died as a result.
Malnutrition
Designed by the US to weaken the rule of Saddam Hussein, the sanctions have instead been felt most sharply by the ordinary people, especially the very young, old and sick. The United Nation's Children's Fund estimates that most deaths caused by sanctions have been children, mainly from malnutrition and preventable disease.
Arguments that lifting the sanctions will only strengthen Hussein's Baathist Party's grip on power are falling increasingly on deaf ears around the world, as more information about the sanctions' civilian carnage becomes evident.
If anything, the West's economic bombardment has kept Hussein in power by allowing the one-time US ally to pose as an enemy of US imperialism. Members of the IAC aid flight reported widespread anti-US sentiment. At the Bagdad airport, a large sign reading "Down USA" is painted on the footpath.
Within Iraq, especially in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Baathist government has violently oppressed the Kurdish struggle, the Iraqi people are the victims of Hussein's oppressive rule.
However, in the face of US aggression, the Iraqi people felt they had little choice but to give general support to Hussein's government during the Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions.
Demonised
Despite open US support for Hussein's government during its eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, Hussein was demonised in the early 1990s.
The US needed the Gulf War. It was very important for Washington, then headed by President George Bush senior, to overcome the legacy of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. This legacy, which has become known as the Vietnam syndrome, meant that the US people were unwilling to support US wars abroad, especially if they result in casualties.
Taking into account the US working people's squeamishness about military interventions, but desperate to keep its place in the world pecking order, the US government tried a different "clinical" strategy in the Gulf War.
Washington ensured that the mass media was carefully controlled. It used, or more accurately, it claimed to use, "smart" bombs that allegedly targeted military sites with razor-sharp precision. Civilian deaths were obscured behind euphemisms such as "collateral damage". And in case the extent of the civilian deaths were to leak out, the US government and military — before, during and after the one-sided barrage — carefully created an image of the "enemy" Iraqis as not only sub-human, but the embodiment of evil.
Devastation
In the 10 years since, US and British bombers continue to bomb Iraq on a daily basis, ignored by the capitalist media. The lack of food and medicine and the unrepaired infrastructure, including for essential services, created by sanctions has created a nightmare existence for the vast majority of Iraqis.
The Red Cross has reported that "the situation of the civilian population is increasingly desperate". The Independent's Patrick Cockburn was told that "in poorer districts, garbage collectors noticed a sinister change. Before the war, a third of all garbage consisted of food scraps. Now, thanks to the war and sanctions, these had disappeared; food was too precious to throw away. Everything, even melon skins, was being eaten."
The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) reported that the US and British militaries have conducted air attacks, which in 1999 alone resulted in 156 people killed in 138 separate bombings. More than 1800 bombs were dropped in that year.
According to the ADC, Iraqi sources said that last year US and British aircraft violated Iraq's air space 11,065 times and 68 civilian buildings were bombed.
Depleted uranium from weapons used in the war are having a devastating effect on the health of the Iraqi people. Evidence of cancer and sickness from these weapons have been rife for years but have been ignored by the West. It was only when US and European soldiers began reporting the same illnesses that the use of depleted uranium weapons began to be questioned in the West.
Ramsey Clark pointed out that the Iraqi scientists who have been studying the effects of depleted uranium on the population are isolated because of the sanctions. He plans to invite some of them to the US to report on their findings.
Growing resistance
Seventy members of US congress appealed to former President Clinton one year ago to lift the sanctions on Iraq. The Russian government is the latest to support the ending of sanctions, joining France, China, Syria and other countries.
The head of the UN's humanitarian operations in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck resigned last March in protest at the effect of the sanctions on the people of Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, resigned in September 1998 for the same reason and now campaigns against the sanctions.
Von Sponeck said that the UN "oil for food" program, which is supposed to address the needs of the Iraqi people is "utterly inadequate".
More flights are being made to Iraq to bring aid, in defiance of the sanctions, and the campaign to lift the sanctions is gathering support worldwide.
Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said that she believed the death of more than a million Iraqi children was "worth it" to achieve US objectives in Iraq. Colin Powell, her replacement and the chairperson of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff who waged the Gulf War, will take an even tougher stand unless the pressure from around the world and within the US stymies him.
It is more important than ever to make a stand and call for the ending of sanctions against the people of Iraq. As Lana, a student from Sarah Lawrence College in the US and a member of the IAC expedition to Iraq stated: "My motivation is the indignation within me that refuses to remain silent before such acts of US imperialism such as the genocide of an entire nation." With close to 2 million victims of the sanctions so far, her terminology is not extreme.
[Visit the International Action Center's web site at .]