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We're killing the innocent
Just back from Iraq, Svend Robinson says
UN sanctions are destroying a society
SVEND ROBINSON
Globe and Mail
Wednesday, January 19, 2000
The eyes of the Iraqi mother cradling her
emaciated baby communicated hopelessness
and
anger: "Why are you killing my innocent
child?"
The baby's doctor had just told us that
the child
would die within days for want of
medicine --
another victim of UN sanctions.
I was in the oncology ward of a Baghdad
pediatric hospital earlier this month
with a
delegation from [Montreal based] Voices
of Conscience, including
doctors, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), artists and journalists. We had
come to
see and hear for ourselves the impact of
more
than nine years of economic sanctions on
the
people and society of Iraq.
Certainly Iraq's president, Saddam
Hussein, is
guilty of brutal repression of his
people,
including the gassing of Kurdish
communities,
and terrible violations of civil and
political rights.
But Mr. Hussein and his circle are not
being hurt
in any way by these sanctions. As one
Iraqi
woman asked me, "If you want to punish an
evil
father in a big family, do you do so by
killing his
children?"
This latest trip was a return visit for
me. I'd led a
parliamentary delegation to Iraq in
November of
1990, just before the allied bombing
started the
following January. On that occasion the
delegation included Lloyd Axworthy, who
was
then Liberal foreign-affairs critic. Now
the
minister, he must remember that earlier
visit --
and know as well as anyone the results of
the
draconian sanctions regime, as well as
the
massive bombing campaign in 1991. He must
know that the sanctions and the U.S. and
British
bombing, which continues even today, have
been
devastating to both Iraq's infrastructure
and its
people.
Back in 1990, despite years of the
Iran-Iraq war,
Iraq was one of the most advanced
countries in
the Middle East in economic, social and
cultural
terms. Holding the world's second largest
oil
reserves (after Saudi Arabia) Iraq had an
extensive health-care system, clean and
abundant
drinking water, sewage-treatment plants,
electric
power generation plants, free education
at all
levels, and a comprehensive network of
social
services.
What our delegation witnessed almost a
decade
later was the total collapse of a nation.
Iraq has
experienced what the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) describes as a
shift from relative affluence to massive
poverty.
Unemployment is epidemic. Inflation is
skyrocketing -- the average salary is $5
(U.S.) a
month. There has been a dramatic increase
in
begging, prostitution and crime. The
agriculture
sector is in disarray -- a million sheep
have
succumbed to foot-and-mouth disease and
the
country has suffered a major drought. The
once-thriving cultural sector is another
victim of
sanctions, as our delegation heard from
the artists
we met.
Amid the litany of grim statistics, what
struck me
most was the gut-wrenching effect of
these
sanctions and the continued bombing on
the most
vulnerable people in Iraqi society,
particularly
children, women, the disabled and the
elderly. A
recent and comprehensive United Nations
Children's Fund (Unicef) report confirmed
that
the mortality rate for children under 5
in the south
and centre of Iraq increased from 56
deaths per
1,000 live births from 1984 to 1989 to
131
deaths from 1994 to 1999.
Describing the situation as a
humanitarian
emergency, Unicef confirmed that more
than
500,000 children have died as a result of
the
imposition of UN sanctions. Another 4,500
children continue to die every month.
Doctors we
met in Baghdad and Basra spoke of their
feelings
of helplessness at being unable to save
the lives
of more than 2 per cent of the children
in their
care in the oncology wards, and knowing
that
many of those who survived would return
to
hellish conditions of malnutrition and
open
sewage.
There was only one nurse on a ward of 100
children that we visited. Iraq has
experienced an
explosive rise in the incidence of
endemic
infections such as cholera, typhoid and
malaria,
and major increases in measles, polio and
tetanus. In the pediatric clinic we
visited in
Basra, in the south, we told that the
death toll
over the last year is almost certainly
linked to
radiation and the Allies' use of
depleted-uranium
anti-tank shells in 1991. In that one
clinic alone
were 165 cases of massive congenital
deformities
leading to death in 1999. We saw shocking
photos of these children, victims of
weapons that
continue to kill long after they were
used.
While in Basra, we witnessed the
aftermath of
allied bombing that "accidentally" hit a
civilian
neighbourhood within the past year -- an
attack
that killed and injured many. And I will
never
forget visiting the underground shelter
in
Baghdad hit by a so-called "smart bomb"
in
1991, where it killed hundreds of
civilians.
Lack of hope and an economy wracked by
hyperinflation has caused a huge brain
drain out
of Iraq. The middle class has been
destroyed and
youth have no faith in the future. We
were told of
proud Iraqi families forced to sell off
their family
heirlooms and furniture to survive.
In the long run, one of the most
destructive
impacts of the sanctions is what a
Baghdad
professor called the "intellectual
genocide" of
Iraq. Under the sanctions regime, only
3.4 per
cent of oil proceeds have gone to
education, so
the system has collapsed. There is no
access to
basic scientific and medical journals, no
opportunity to attend professional
conferences
outside Iraq, and no access to computers.
Parents
give their children chalk to take to
school,
because the UN bans the imports of
pencils (the
explanation we got was that graphite has
"potential dual use" and could be used by
the
military). Our delegation carried
thousands of
pencils into the country as an act of
silent
defiance.
The ridiculous nature of some of these
sanctions
is astonishing: The Iraqis also sought to
import
cloth, which they wanted their thousands
of
unemployed seamstresses to convert into
badly-needed hospital bedsheets. They
were told
they could import only finished sheets,
lest the
cloth, too, find some military use.
In 1996, the UN launched an "Oil for
Food"
program -- a scheme that allows Baghdad
to sell
$5.2-billion worth of oil every six
months for
food and medicine. It has not made any
meaningful difference to the lives of the
Iraqi
people. The 661 Committee (the UN
security
Council committee that implements the
sanctions
regime) has imposed absurd restrictions
and
delays on the import of basic medical
equipment
and supplies. Resolution 1284 (which
basically
approves a new sanctions and
weapons-inspection process) was recently
adopted by the Security Council despite
the
abstentions of France, China, Russia and
Malaysia. It will do little to alter this
grim reality.
Indeed, some believe that the West's real
aim is
to gain access to Iraq's huge oil
resources and
fear that Resolution 1284 advances this
objective.
Following our 1990 visit to Iraq, Mr.
Axworthy
spoke out powerfully against the allied
aggression. Today, nine years almost to
the day
since the bombing began, I am appealing
to him
to apply the principle of "human
security" that is
the cornerstone of his foreign policy in
the
Security Council; I'm asking for him to
call for
an end to all non-military sanctions on
Iraq.
Mr. Axworthy's senior policy advisor, Dr.
Eric
Hoskins, has personally witnessed the
destructive impact of these sanctions and
has in
the past called for Canada to speak out
in
opposition. While Mr. Axworthy may
disagree
with former UN Humanitarian Chief Denis
Halliday and others (including myself)
who
describe the impact of these sanctions as
genocidal, surely he cannot remain
indifferent to
the suffering and death of so many
innocent
humans beings.
Of course, we must work to get rid of all
weapons of mass destruction in the Middle
East.
But the deaths of Iraqi citizens -- in
breach of
many international instruments and
treaties -- is
not the way to achieve that objective. As
Mr.
Halliday said recently, "We are
destroying an
entire society. It is as simple and
terrifying as
that."
If I needed any more evidence during my
recent
visit, I needed look no further than the
eyes of
that anguished mother in the pediatric
hospital in
Baghdad.
Svend Robinson, who represents the B.C.
riding of Burnaby-Douglas, is
foreign-affairs
critic for the New Democratic Party of
Canada.
[Voices of Conscience can be reached at: 8166 Henri-Julien, Montreal
Quebec, H2P 2J2, phone: (514) 858-7584,
email:voices@colba.net
--
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