I think it's important to remember that before the sanctions in 1990, Iraq had an exceptionally high standard of living and some of the highest literacy rates (95%) in the world. 93% of the poulation enjoyed fre access to the health system. So the oft-claimed propoganda that Iraq was an impoverished state with substandard facilities is just that, propoganda. By all standards used to indicate a countries position with regards to well-being of its inhabitants, Iraq rated amongst the best in the world. Now it's in the lowest 20%.
It's also important to realise that sanctions in central and southern Iraaq differ vastly from the way they work in northern Iraq From the impostion of sanctions up to the current war, Unicef reports indicate at least 200 children were dying daily due to malnutrition, lack of sanitation and clean water and a lack of medical equipment and drugs to cure and treat easily treatable diseases.
Prior to 1990, the biggest problem concerning pediatricians was childhood obesity, now it's malnutrition which is now endemic amongst Iraqi children.
Diseases like kwashiorkor or marasmus are common in pediatric wards.
Because most sewage treatement plants were bombed during the first war and others because of lack of imported equipment and chemicals such as chlorine due to fears of 'dual usage' (ie being used in the production of WMD) sanitation and fresh water is of grave concern. Children now die from treatable diseases such as diarrhea and typhoid.
The same concerns ensure children cannot use pencils in school as the carbon ingredient might be used for WMD.
So, too, is the health system affected. Incubators, X-ray machines, and heart and lung machines are banned along with morphine, vaccines, analgesics and chemotherapy drugs. Drugs which ARE allowed are often rendered ineffectual due to probelms with refrigeration and transportation.
More than a million rounds of weapons coated with depleted uranium were fired in the last war. Depleted uranium can enter the food chain tghrough soil and water, it can be inhaled and ingested and while there are those who scoff and say DU is relatively harmless, the sharp rise in cancer victims in Iraq belies this.In 1991, the Atomic Energy Authority warned that, if particles from merely 8 per cent of the DU used in the Gulf were inhaled, there could be "300,000 potential deaths".
"The dust carries death," Dr Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist and member of Britain's Royal College of Physicians, told me. "Our own studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital. We are living through another Hiroshima. Of course, we don't know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed [under sanctions] to get the equipment to conduct a proper scientific survey, or even to test the excess level in our bodies. We suspect depleted uranium. There simply can be no other explanation."
Professor Karol Sikora, chief of the cancer programm of the World Health Organisation, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers"
(as a side note here's an excerpt from The New Statesman, April 2004:
"Dr Doug Rokke, director of the US army depleted uranium project following the 1991 Gulf invasion, estimates that more than 10,000 American troops have since died as a result, many from contamination illness. When I asked him how many Iraqis had died, he raised his eyes and shook his head. "Solid uranium was used on shells," he said. "Tens of thousands of Iraqis - men, women and children - were contaminated. Right through the 1990s, at international symposiums, I watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence and ask, plead, for help with decontamination. The Iraqis didn't use uranium; it was not their weapon. I watched them put their case, describing the deaths and horrific deformities, and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic." During last year's invasion, both American and British forces again used uranium-tipped shells, leaving whole areas so "hot" with radiation that only military survey teams in full protective clothing can approach them. No warning or medical help is given to Iraqi civilians; thousands of children play in these zones. The "coalition" has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to send experts to assess what Rokke describes as "a catastrophe".
Iraq was not allowed to clean up the battlefields. Since 1990 incidence of cancer has risen tenfold and experts predict that if the present upward curve persists, before the decadeis out, 44% of Iraq's population could develop cancer.
Economic sanctions have ensured doctors and nurses are not paid adequately. Teachers, for instance, have had their salaries cut from $400 to $3.00 a month. That is NOT a typo. there are no desks or chairs in classrooms and the teacher and students cmmonly share one textbook. Contrast this to well equipped schools where the students were provided with individual textbooks, milk, hummus, fresh fruit, and vitamin supplements and cooling, heating and sanitation equipment was present and working in all schools.
Due to lack of spare parts for agricultural equipment and drugs for treating illness in livestock, the farming industry is in crisis. Due to heavy bombardment soil erosion and salinity are significant concerns. Foot and Mouth disease is present and threatenign to spread to otehr countries if it hasn't already. The plant which produced vaccines for this diseaase was closed due to, you guessed it, possible 'dual usage'. Imports from abroad face the same refrigeration and transportation problems as mentioned before.
So that's the health, education and environment of a poulation nailed.
Denis Halliday, the former head of the UN humanitarian program in Iraq resigned in protest, saying he could no longer oversee "an immoral and illegal sanctions policy" his successor, von Sponeck, along with the ehad of the World Food Program also resigned in protest of the sanctions. Such actions are unprecedented.
It's estimated that over 500,000 Iraqi children are dead as a direct result of these sanctions.
The word genocide has been used by people such as halliday who tend to use such words with caution, and Not to inflame or sensationalise.
The sanctions decimated the weakest of Iraq's population, they didn't touch Saddam or his minions and their privileged lifestyle, instead, they strengthened hi position as the average Iraqi supported his anti-American stance all the more because of the breathtaking cruelty of the sanctions.
It started off as a "What if". I'm not saying I have answers or what I think is right, I'm not saying I agree or I disagree with the war, I only said "what if". I knew it would probably stick in people's throats and certainly it almost looked as if I might be in danger of getting a boot up the backside, but I want to expound a little. This was the comment which started it all:
"Of course, this was entirely predictable given the current exacerbation of what already was a serious problem. Western foreign policy long ago sowed the seeds we are now reaping. It's a terrifying prospect...Sadly..and alarmingly, there are those among us who STILL believe that the military can conquer terrorism. Plainly..(and throughout history it's been evident) it can't be done. People who against all evidence feel passionately that fighting illegal and unjust wars is actually going to make things better.
Sod the posturing and lunatic fantasies. If they don't accept Bin laden's truce they're insane, ....the refusal to do so will only give more grist to their mill...Spain's decision, in my opinion was an act of political maturity."
This was just a "What if???" genre of musing.
