As 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly goes to press, the US and Britain look set to finish the complete destruction of Iraq and its people, begun in the Gulf War and continued through eight long years of sanctions, which have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The new threat is in retaliation for Iraq's suspension of cooperation with United Nations investigators, UNSCOM, who have been combing the country for "weapons of mass destruction" since 1991.
Iraq's protest action was against the indefinite continuation of sanctions. JENNY LONG spoke to JANE HOWARTH, who has been campaigning against sanctions since the end of the Gulf War, and raising money for much-needed medical supplies for Iraq. She has recently returned from a visit to the stricken country and spoke about the devastation.
The obvious health crisis, Howarth said, was shocking and angering. Reading about it had not prepared her for seeing newborn babies starved or malnourished and shockingly emaciated bodies with pencil-thin arms and legs and large heads, she said.
"You walk through all these hospitals like I did with the wards full of them, and dedicated doctors who are angry and frustrated because they can't do anything to alleviate the pain and suffering."
Doctors often have to perform operations without anaesthetics, she said, because there are none. There are no analgesics and no antibiotics. "Children are dying, for the lack of basic simple things, from diarrhoea and gastroenteritis.
"This doctor pointed out to me children they call sugar babies, whose mothers can't obtain infant formula and can't feed their babies because they've got no milk: they're malnourished too. They feed them sugar dissolved in water, and they get these distended bodies."
The crisis has reduced the nursing staff too, she said, part of the disintegration of the whole society.
The people who have the professional skills have left the country, and they are the ones who are needed to rebuild. "Iraq had an excellent hospital system, an excellent education and health system, and a transport system, and that was all bombed to obliteration almost."
That's only part of the problem, said, Howarth. There is no clean water, no potable tap water in Iraq. The drinking water comes mostly from the Tigris River; crossing many times, she noticed its brown colour and young children and animals bathing in it.
Broken down, barely functioning sewage plants were emptying into the river, she said. "Lack of proper drinking water and the diseases that have come from the water that they have to use — because there is nothing else for a lot of them — are the source of innumerable diseases that have killed hundreds and thousands of Iraqis."
The so-called food for oil deal — supposed to allow some humanitarian supplies to be purchased by Iraq from the proceeds of limited oil sales — was a sham, she said, and just a cover to let the UN off the hook.
Pressure was building on the UN for easing the sanctions. Somebody in the UN had suggested it as a way of helping, she said, but the US wouldn't agree to it, for something like 18 months. It was finally passed in 1996 as UN Security Council Resolution 661.
But, she said, "They have this 661 committee that oversees all the stuff that comes in under the food-for-oil deal, and that committee has been accused, rightly so, of holding stuff up, of doing everything they possibly can to thwart the stuff getting in, even though it has certain contracts that have been approved".
At first Iraq was allowed to sell US$2 billion worth of oil twice a year and, in the later phases, US$5 billion. But because of the bombings, Iraq wasn't able to pump the oil to match that amount.
Howarth was there after the fourth version of the deal, but Iraq still hadn't received the full amount from the first stage. Iraq had received 70% of what it had ordered in the first phase, 42% from the second phase and 30-something in the third phase.
"They were still waiting when I was there for anything from the fourth phase. It was just being deliberately held up. Every excuse was brought up by this committee, which was dominated by Americans. Antibiotics were held up for so long that they passed their use-by dates."
It took three years just to have the ban on material necessary for contraception and family planning lifted, she said. "They can't take X-rays or mammograms because there is no film. They can't do pap smears because they haven't got the resources."
A doctor Howarth spoke to said even the plastic sheeting on the beds in the hospitals was supplied by parents for their babies and children to lie on. They rely on the parents to monitor the children during the day because they've got no staff.
"The parents are there sitting beside them, and there is no airconditioning and the parents are fanning the children. Every one of the children that I saw in those hospitals is going to die, every one."
Dennis Halliday, head of the humanitarian mission to Iraq, resigned while Howarth was there, after 35 years working with the UN. The resignation, widely reported in the Middle East, said Howarth, was in protest at the sanctions on Iraq.
"He said the sanctions were in contravention of the UN's own charter and also the human rights standards that the UN was supposed to be upholding. He couldn't stand seeing these needless deaths of children and, while the death of one child was too much, the figure of 5000-6000 per month was probably modest."
Suspending cooperation with UNSCOM was Iraq's only way of forcing any review of the sanctions because even the three-monthly reviews of the sanctions had been stopped. The sanctions are to "go on forever, that's what America wanted", said Howarth.
A fellow visitor to Iraq, she said, had been surprised by talking to a Swede who had been in Iraq for about five years with UNSCOM, who said that they had very good working relations with the Iraqis. "I asked about the palaces, and he said, 'Oh, we know there is nothing there, there's nothing in the palaces, but we just have to show that we go where we want, when we want'."
Deductions from oil proceeds for UNSCOM salaries and reparations for Kuwait, Howarth said, leave only 25 cents a day for each man, woman and child in Iraq, she said, and it has to buy all their food and medicine. The government supplies with flour, lentils, oil, tea and sugar, and that lasts for 15-20 days each month.
"There are no jobs, no work. A lot of families have a day every so often when nobody eats, or people in the family alternately don't eat that day so that the child can.
"Everywhere you go, people's furniture, personal belongings and everything are being sold on the street or in markets so that they can live. Children drop out of school, they're begging on the streets. I gave all my money because they're begging or trying to sell single items, one little possession from the household and things like that.
"And this is what they are going to flog them for and turn the place into rubble again."
Howarth's only hope is that sanctions busting will start and that the embargo will collapse, "but it took 20 years for that to happen with Vietnam".
Both Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright have gone on television saying that the sanctions won't be lifted while Saddam Hussein remains there, she said, causing immense resentment in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East.
The US changes the conditions every time it looks like they are getting somewhere in Iraq and that the sanctions might be eased, she said. "The Atomic Energy Agency in April said that it was closing the book on the nuclear weapons issue because Iraq had completed a full and complete account and that it would be effective in July of this year. Even after that, that vile James Rubin of the State Department said they still wanted more information on the nuclear weapons."
Experts with UNSCOM have said that all the chemical and biological weaponry had been long destroyed, and Iraq no longer has the capability to deliver chemical or biological weapons. "At the root of the whole thing is US and Israeli hegemony and control of the Middle East. The whole thing revolves around the ones who they can point the finger at as rogue states and manage to put them out of commission."