Tony Maturin
a)
Full Report
of the Quaker Peace and Service Aotearoa/New Zealand delegate to Iraq in April, 2002.
b) Interview with Nasra Al Sadoon
c) The Artist : Noori Al Rawi
d) Interview with Carel de Rooy, Director of UNICEF
e) Interview in Basra Leukaemia Hospital
f) Anna Riatti - Bridge to Baghdad: the Sinbad project
g) Radio New Zealand interview with Tony Maturin (Geoff Robinson, 17/5/02.)
h) The Dominion, may 15, 2002
i) Wellington Man Visits the Al Amiriya Bomb Shelter in Baghdad.
Report
of the Quaker Peace and Service Aotearoa/New Zealand delegate Tony Maturin to Iraq in April, 2002.
Note, the opinions expressed here are those of the writer and not necessarily agreed by QPS A/NZ.
A.C.Maturin.
Executive summary
I describe briefly conditions in Iraq before the 1991 Coalition attacks. Following that is a description
of my, and other group members' experiences, visits to hospitals and other health facilities. These
experiences include interviews with Iraqis, which are quoted from at length. I have backed up their
statements with references to UN and other reliable sources. I thought it important to include quite full
transcripts of interviews as a useful means of building up a picture of the situation. Some anecdotal
material is included for the same purpose. There is a brief discussion on the subject of the Sanctions
Committee (661 Committee). This is followed by a report on the role of the US, and a brief
conclusion
Introduction
For twelve days in April, 2002, I visited Iraq as part of a group of over one hundred doctors,
journalists, MPs, writers, documentary makers and photographers. Most came from Belgium, with others from
Finland, France, Italy, Britain, Germany, Holland and Algeria.
The visit was arranged by the Iraq-Belgium and Iraq/Holland Friendship Societies. Delegates paid their own
way to Baghdad, once there, we were the guests of those Societies. We stayed in hotels in Baghdad and
Basra, and were mostly transported in large modern buses, occasionally in taxis.
Delegates were aware throughout of the possibilities for their manipulation. We believed also that at
least some of our interpreters, though not government employees - they were mostly retired people -
probably had party leanings. The main drawback there was that when they were with us we couldn't ask
people we met if they were happy with the government!
However, I for one had enough years of following the situation to know the background and much of what to
expect. All of the delegates were able to follow their own inclinations from time to time. My visits to
the UNHCR and with Iraqi families are cases in point.
Background
Just over a decade ago, Iraq had one of the most modern infrastructures and highest standards of living in
the Middle East. The world's second largest oil producer, it had in recent decades used oil revenues for
ambitious projects and development programmes.
Carel de Rooy, Director of UNICEF in Baghdad told me, "Between
'75 and '85 there was a period of very heavy social investment. Oil was nationalised in '72 and during
those ten years this country made very heavy investments in education, health, water supplies, sanitation.
They achieved very high standards. Of course by mid '85 because of the Iran/Iraq war the social
investments started to decline. One has to remember that.
"Then you get at the end of the decade the Gulf War. Devastating of course. And on top of that you
have 11 years of sanctions. So it's a cumulative process which has led to the situation where we are today
(Carel de Rooy, UNICEF, April 2002)."
It had established a modern, free, complex health care system, with giant hospitals built on Western
models and using the latest equipment, supported by a first class distribution and roading system. It had
constructed sophisticated water-treatment and pumping facilities that covered 90% of the country. It had a
free and extensive school and university system.
The Saddam Hussein Children's Hospital, Baghdad.
That scene has now changed: there is the possibility of course, as some would say, that the parts of the
hospital we saw had been set up by the GoI specially for overseas visitors. I can't comment on that,
except to say that I have good advice that that is not so. That conditions are bad in all the public
hospitals. Small private hospitals have been built because of the sanctions situation, and these are
better, and the wealthier patients can have access to smuggled medicines.
From the outside the Saddam Hussein Children's Hospital is an attractively designed modern building,
probably similar, apart from cultural differences in architecture, to many in NZ. Before 1991 it was
probably similarly equipped, and staffed by similarly dedicated and well-trained people. The dedication is
still there, though how they maintain it in the face of the conditions they're immersed in I don't know.
The first ward you pass through has perhaps forty beds, is cool and airy and quiet. On each bed sits a
woman, continuously tending her child. Sometimes a grandmother is there too. All the faces have the beauty
of young motherhood, or the beauty that lies in the lines of life's experiences.
There was no time to make any kind of survey of ailments. But one woman lifted the T-shirt of her small
boy, who could have been my grandson in other circumstances, to show me a misshapen little body with a
chest infection
Though "run down" doesn't come anywhere near a description of the empty corridors, light
fittings cannibalised so that there are no lights in the corridors. Holes in walls where once were lift
buttons, chipped and broken concrete walls that haven't seen paint in years. You are surrounded by
dereliction.
The children are mostly under ten, round about five perhaps, they mostly suffer from low birth weight and
malnutrition leading to gastro-enteritis. Low birth weight is one of the big problems. Sixty or seventy
percent of the mothers are anaemic due to poor diet.
We went up to the second floor of that hospital. There's no lift, they don't work. It's a wreck. I was in
a room with some incubators, and suddenly the passage outside rang with a woman's screams and this young
woman was being escorted to a ward, where she fainted. She'd just lost her child who I think was about
four weeks old, and I think the whole ward grieved with her.
I spoke to the doctor about it, and asked him what was the cause. And he said it's gastro-enteritis, it's
due to malnutrition and we don't have enough medicine to cover it. And I asked him how many cases he would
have in a week. He sort of looked at me a bit blankly and said, I don't know. So I said,
"Ten?" He said. "No, more than that". "Twenty?" "No, more than
that." "Thirty?" "Put down any figure you like," he said, "It doesn't
matter, it's happening all over Iraq." And it occurred to me then that it was an insane question. It
shouldn't have been a question. It should have been a statement, and the statement is a very simple one.
This should not be happening.
The same doctor, when I asked him about shortages said, "Well yes, there are shortages. We have
trouble getting the necessary instruments, but we improvise, we manage." What he was telling me
was what I picked up from every Iraqi I met, "We will survive, we will not give in."
The Al Amaria bomb shelter
From the hospital, we went to the Al Amaria bomb shelter. Inside it still smells of burnt concrete, eleven
years after the attack. On Feb. 14, 1991, US-lead Coalition aircraft dropped a bomb into the ventilation
shaft of the Al Amiriya Bomb Shelter in Baghdad which opened a great hole in the roof. Four minutes later
they dropped a second bomb - napalm or fuel-air - through the same hole, which finished their job. Only
four of the 408 people sheltering there escaped. The dead were civilians, nearly all women and children
who lived in the neighbouring residential area.
You stand on the edge of the crater in the floor, beneath the bomb hole through a few metres of reinforced
concrete roof, with twisted reinforcing steel snaking away in all directions. All around you are the
blackened thick pillars that support the roof. Around them blackened walls, hung, like some of the
resistance head-quarters in rural Guatemala, with photographs of the dead.
Octagonal, the shelter has an inside diameter of around fifty metres, and is lit here and there with
low-powered bulbs so that visitors can pick their way through the rubble and dust and, if so inclined, pay
their respects to the victims.
The place is a carefully preserved memorial to the dead. But more than that, an image, a graphic symbol of
one of the most deliberate, carefully planned pieces of barbarism of the late twentieth century. Because
that attack was but a small part of the destruction of a modern infrastructure that supported twenty two
million people. That supported a vibrant, highly educated, cultured people whose roots were in the
beginnings of civilisation. People who are proud of their traditions, proud to be Iraqis.
The Artist
One memorable evening we visited Nouri Al Rawi, internationally famous artist, in his impressive small
gallery in Baghdad. Well, he used to be internationally famous, but now, he told me, "Before the
embargo we used to visit America, and were very happy and invited them to visit us in Iraq. One of our
young artists won a $100,000 award for first place in a competition. But that was the last one.
"Now we are banned from the art exhibitions. They don't explain why, but the reason is well known.
Even though art is not political, in Iraq everything has to be kept inside the country.
Being a working artist is his life and he wants to be well known again, especially through exhibitions in
the US and Europe. Now, when he wants get a visa to the States or Europe he cannot, "because he is an
Iraqi. They don't allow any painter to help Iraq. It is impossible to get a visa for any country in
Europe.
"This is the great voice of America! And they treat us like servants. Why? This Iraq has a big heart.
We tell everybody in the world, "Welcome!" Our country puts no doors between anybody from any
country and Iraq.
"This is the great United States! This how they fight our culture. "What really makes us sad, I
was working in the Ministry of Culture and we met always delegations of culture from all over the
world, now, under the embargo, no one is interested in our problems.
"We hope that the message will pass among you to take home. How we are under the power of Europe, and
to show Europe how the
suffering is here in Iraq. As artists, we want you to take this message please to your countries.
"We wish that those old friends would visit us and take an interest again in our problems here and in
this manner of living which is not
appreciated."
Appropriate to the above, I believe that Iraqi citizens have to pay very large taxes to leave the country.
The Baghdad Tb and Chest Diseases Institute
I joined a smaller group, mostly of doctors, to pay a brief visit to the Baghdad Tb and Chest Diseases
Institute, and spoke with the
Director.
He told us, "The two main problems we are facing today are the shortages of children's medicines. We
are using medicines for adults and dividing them to cure the children because of the shortages. We used to
have free of charge compulsory vaccinatio for newly-born infants. Now we have shortages for the bcg
project.
"Even the WHO says you must not change the vaccine. If you make changes you make many complications
and side effects for the
children. We are not supplied with this vaccination.
"The embargo routine of the memorandum of understanding is the problem. The programme of the
Oil-for-food is restricting the
delivery of such vaccines.
He said that the second part of the treatment is sometimes unavailable, but could not be precise as to why
that should be. "We are not informed, we don't know the reasons. At first we were importing such
medicines for the second phase. But now if we want to import, our request would go through the
international routine, so many stages, the whole affair will be forgotten. It is the
complications of the system that cause many problems."
"We were requesting to receive and to import this vaccine, but you have to wait until they approve
this and approve that. Also the
international system, the people we are dealing with, they restrict the delivery of the
medicines." They used a process that took
forty-two days. But there is a very modern medical way to do this called the Pectic 2 (?) System to do it
in one or two weeks. But
they couldn't get it delivered because it is put onto the "dual use" list by the 661 Committee
(Sanctions Committee).
I asked him if there was any of it in the country, but held up within Iraq itself?
Dr.: "No, in Iraq we haven't. Pectic 2 we don't have. We make many requests for it but they don't
give it to us. Nor even for
private hospitals, no, no.
"Our treatment is short course chemo-therapy, four drugs in the intensive phase, and two drugs in the
continuation phase. The
intensive phase is two months, continuation phase twelve months. During the intensive phase we have the
health workers supervising the medicine. And for the continuation phase the patients take their medication
weekly and go. Every week we give the medicine for seven days.
A Belgian doctor asked, "What laboratory means do you have for making the diagnosis? If you have no
radiography and no culture,
how do you decide on a clinical basis which patient you will give the drugs to?"
"We make our decision not only on a clinical base. We make decisions on laboratory tests. We use
sputum tests. We do each
patient three times. This is for our sputum examination. We have sequential sputum examinations. One when
the patient comes in,
one before breakfast and one when they come next. We have three sample of sputum.
The same doctor asked the Director, "How can tuberculostatic drugs fall under the
embargo? There is no double use possible.
The bcg vaccination cannot be double used. So why can they block the importation of the vaccination?"
But all he could say was, "The routine for importing the vaccination is a very difficult routine. The
working of the embargo is very
difficult. So the direct importing from Japan is very difficult now. This is our problem."
Paragraph 87 of the UN Secretary General's 2001 Report states, "Vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella,
pneumonia, tetanus and
hepatitis are also in short supply; anti-tuberculosis (BCG) are not available countrywide at all levels of
health facilities. ........ The
shortages are due in part to delays in placing orders for replenishment of health items, irregular
deliveries of orders, holds placed on applications and failure of some of the ordered items to pass
quality-control tests. ......... At present two applications, one for tetanus and diphtheria anti-toxins
and another for hepatitis-B vaccine are on hold (S/2001/186)."
One of the doctors remarked to someone in the group as we were leaving, "Your visit reminds us of the
inspectors, and makes us feel
sick."
We were taken to Kerbala and its famous Imam Al-Hussein mosque, on a day when it was crowded with Iranian
pilgrims. The courtyard, perhaps 150 metres square, was crowded that day with visitors swelling the usual
crowds of worshippers. Family groups sat on the clean tiles on the shady side. The niches all around the
beautiful gold-and-blue-patterned and tiled outside walls were
also filled with groups of people, picnicking, talking, children dressed in their best for the occasion.
They were happy to be photographed - smiles all round. The huge golden dome of the main building and the
two golden minarets dominated. But non-Muslims
were not allowed inside the main building.
That was an important visit, because, apart from the inspiring loveliness of the historic architecture, it
was a chance to absorb, in minute measure of course, the history of the country and the religious central
theme, both part of the essence of Iraqi life and culture. The latter not so easy to understand for anyone
from a largely secular society .
The mosque visit was important also because it is vital, absolutely vital to raise the sanctions debate
above the facts and figures and theory that tend to dominate. The essence of the debate, if indeed there
should be any debate at all, must be focused on the
culture, the people and the injustices presently being imposed upon them.
Basra
We flew down to Basra for a three day visit, an hour or so's flight from the magnificent architecture of
Baghdad Airport. That airport building is, I suppose, about on a par with Wellington airport's main
building, except of course for the distinctive Iraqi-style design. The tiled-floored concourse dwarfed our
120 strong group. There was one small transport jet on the tarmac besides the daily aircraft to Basra, and
that was it.
At Basra you are greeted by another superb, almost deserted, modern building, with Basra International
Airport written large on its frontage. Inside, in the carousel baggage area, one whole wall is covered by
a superb, distinctively Iraqi mural. I asked if I could
photograph it, and was told, yes, go ahead. But as soon as I showed a camera, another guy came along and
forbade it. I told him that I'd been given permission, but he gave me a cold look and said, " I'm
police."
Basra Paediatric Hospital
I joined the group going to the main teaching hospital in Basra, the Basra Paediatric Hospital. The
hospital has 70 doctors, 8 or 9 in
paediatrics and 12 post graduates.
The situation is worse in Basra. The area suffered more damage in the Coalition attacks of 1991. The
canals that run through the city
are polluted with sewage. Power supply is worse, the potable water situation is worse; UNICEF told
me that the water is as much as 40% sewage at times. And the disturbing thing down there is the increase
in cancers and leukaemias.
I found my way to a small ward with about six beds in it, and there's a child there with a brain tumour,
he might have been seven or eight, a lovely kid. But one eye was as big as a golf ball, it looked gross,
and the doctor lifted up his shirt to show also the shoulder, swollen and all out of proportion. It was
leukaemia. He said, "He first came in about four years ago, we've known about him for four years, but
we didn't have either the diagnostic equipment or any treatment." He went on, "I'm giving him IV
fluids as you can see, because he's malnourished and dehydrated, but that's all I can do for him. We
just don't have the chemo-therapy drugs. All these children will die within a month, but I don't tell the
mothers."
"If he'd been in your country, or if the Coalition attacks had not happened and the embargo lifted as
it should have been when Iraq
retreated from Kuwait, then this boy would probably have been cured. As it is there are many similar
cases."
This kid's mother was standing just behind me in her black head-scarf, cut off from her son by this
intrusive group of foreigners. I
wanted a long-focus lens to capture her expression from a discreet distance, not having one I retreated as
quickly as possible.
In New Zealand, 80% of children with standard risk leukaemia will have no trace of the disease after five
years' treatment.
The medical staff here blame the Sanctions Committee for using the "dual use" clause to define
some medicines as having possible
military application, so putting them "on hold". And they well know that 90% of these holds are
placed by the US, and the other 10%
by the UK.
The Director of this hospital told us how the number of cancers in Iraq has dramatically increased, and
new, previously unseen cancer types have appeared. Since 1996 seven cases of "double cancer",
i.e. patients who are affected by two different cancer types simultaneously, have appeared in Basra for
first time. Fourteen-year-old girls are suffering from breast cancer. "Many of the
doctors also, breast cancer in women and lung cancer in men."
We were told of the increasing incidences of birth abnormalities, not seen before a few years ago. So
widespread now that the first question mothers ask is not, "Is it a boy or a girl?" But,
"Is it normal?" The doctor described some of them to us and we saw the photographs. Abnormality
is hardly the word. They call them lumps of flesh, and attribute the cause to the depleted uranium (DU)
used by the Coalition forces in 1991.
An Iraqi study on DU of the Basra area says: "As a result 44% of the population of these areas are
expected to have lung cancer
and about 5% of them with fatal different types of cancers and that the effects will appear 10 years after
the exposure."
I have to say here that there is still a good deal of discussion on the causes of these cancers. The Gulf
War environment was highly
toxic with smoke from burning Kuwaiti oil wells, and there is the possibility that chemical weapons dumps
might have been bombed.
My own belief is that depleted uranium probably is the main cause. That studies which show that will be
accepted, and that the
emerging patterns of cancers will support this.
The hospital's Director told us that the mortality rate for cancer is about 80%. Most of the cases of
cancer die immediately because there is no chemo-therapy and there are no supportive measures regarding
antibiotic drugs, anti-viral, antifungal drugs are not available. So most of the cases die either because
of the disease itself, or maybe because of complications of the infection leading to death."
Of the cases in that ward , most were of leukaemia and cancer. Cancers sharply increased especially after
1995. "As you know," he
said, "the incubation period of depleted uranium is five years. So the sharp increase after 1995 I
tell you is about 70 cases of leukaemia in 2001. Acute leukaemia, not Hodgkin's, leukaemia, acute
mylistic leukaemia, chronic mylistic leukaemia. All three types are increasing. Most people here have
tumour of the kidney, but most of the children have leukaemia in these years. The child
cases are increasing and there is a relationship between depleted uranium and cases of leukaemia. And in
addition there is also an
increase in brain tumours.
"Also there now has come fear in the families. Most of the families now, even if the child develops
even a low grade fever they ask for an investigation to exclude leukaemia. Regarding congenital
malformation and all cancers, they all come from areas near Kuwait, near the battlefields."
They don't do autopsies he told us, because most of the families refuse it. They take their babies away
immediately. Down's
Syndrome? It has not increased since before the war.
"Under the OFF programme, only 20% of our chemo-therapy needs are being met. Because the American, or
British governments, I
don't know which, say that some of the drugs may be used in weapons, so they are prohibited."
He was asked, "Have you seen any changes in the deliveries of medicines in the last six months, is it
getting better or worse?"
"No, very much worse. Very much worse. The Iraq government supplies many drugs, they try to improve
the manufacture of some
drugs. But some drugs are not available here. Some drugs are omitted from the list of drugs. Only some of
the medicines regarding the simple things is available. But some of the drugs like chemo-therapy, the more
toxic drugs, are not available. I am responsible for malignant cases, and responsible for this treatment.
I can only give one or two drugs to the patients, and there is a special protocol for the treatment of
patients, about four or six drugs are used. I give only two drugs to the patients. And so I tell you, most
of the cases die or relapse. They don't respond to treatment.
"What happens exactly here, this is a crime. .....Brain tumour or other type of leukaemia, acute ...
leukaemia, I have only one drug
to treat this patient. In England or America you can't treat patients with leukaemia with only one drug,
you give many drugs and supportive measures and treat the patient as a human being. Where's the humanity,
because that is not applied in our society.
It is very miserable, believe me. The economic sanctions and the contamination by this DU. We don't know
what will happen to us in
the future. Most of the patients now, regarding cancer, breasts as regarding female, and leukaemia
regarding children. And these are
some of the terrible things.
"This patient (a child of about 7 yrs.) has cancer on his arm that will spread. The grossly enlarged
eye is caused by a tumour. We
are giving him I.V. fluids because he's weak and not eating. We first saw this child four years ago, but
had no diagnostic or
therapeutic equipment.
A member of the group asked, "Do the people lack vitamins in their diet?" And was told,
"Other agents do not affect the
chromosomes, this is DU (rogation?) not toxicity. The effect is on the structure of the chromosome. "
One of the 'Medicines for the Third World' doctors asked, "You said that some of your colleagues, the
doctors are getting cancer
also. Do you mean that they go to the battlefields, or is it having contacts with patients or....?
"No, no, some of the cases were because of exposure, of bombing in this situation. Or maybe in some
cases the father was shelled in
the war and this also affects the baby. Even the child with cancer, with a highly sophisticated lab, if we
take the blood from the
parents and from the child we see there is also abnormality of the chromosome. Especially in leukaemia.
Question: What do you know about the transfer of depleted uranium from the battlefields to the city, and
beyond?
"In these years even the centre is involved. Last week we had five new cases. You can see them in
front of you and you can ask the
families. There is strong documentation of the relationship of these cases to DU, and there is no family
history at all of these
malformations or malignancies. It's the economic sanctions that prevent us from treating these patients.
And we can't prevent
incidences of these cases.
"For the future of other populations, don't use DU. This is very miserable, very destructive. The
mortality from these
abnormalities is increasing. This is a weapon of mass destruction. We are destroying a generation of the
future. We destroy the
future. I tell you, this is one of the weapons to make the Iraqi sick, decrease the number of future
generations, to make them sick and illiterate, this is one of the aims of the Americans and the British.
"Lifting the sanctions is not a complete solution to improving the situation. All the environment has
to be decontaminated. Lifting
the sanctions will allow us to help this family and improve the outcome - maybe. I tell you, some of the
leukaemia, if we could give the child good treatment the recovery would be 95%.
Another doctor said, "To lift the sanctions and clean up the DU needs international effort. To clean
the oil-fields from the effects of depleted uranium. Because the effect of DU you know is not only in
regard to our society, because the wind will transfer that radiation even to the surrounding countries and
affect them."
Question : "Do you see now here also cases of kwashiorkor and marasmus? What's the reason you have
here malnutrition? I ask as
the devil's advocate!"
"Even before the sanctions there was not always a good food supply. But since there is the increased
percentage of malnutrition."
Question: "Before the sanctions did you see cases of marasmus and kwashiorkor?"
"It was very rare, very rare. We only saw them in books. I am a paediatrician in the Medical college,
and we did not see these cases. In these years we see many cases. I am Assistant Professor in the Medical
College, and in these years is the first time I've seen these things."
Question: "Do you think some of these chemo-therapy drugs are in the warehouses but not reaching the
hospitals?"
"No, not available at all. Even in Baghdad. Some of the rich families can afford these drugs from
Jordan, and their children are cured.
With five years of this treatment they are okay. But if the drugs are available to some patients, maybe
others could get benefit from them.
"When the newspapers say that Iraq is in a good situation most of them do not speak the truth. But
you go to the wards and see the
patients.
"Some of the gastro-enteritis cases need (potassium ?), and the US government says that is a chemical
weapon so it is forbidden
us. And most of the cases die because we don't have very simple drugs. Some of the electrolytes
also."
Question: "Do you have problems with anaesthetics as well?"
"We have a great shortage of anaesthetics."
Question: "Are some of the shortages due to the complications of the ordering system?"
"The government orders all that we require. From A to Z. They order all drugs that we need. But the
problem is that the 661 Committee accepts this, does not accept this. This is related to chemical weapons.
This is related to a biological weapon. (2nd Dr.
"They treat us like animals, not like human beings.") They explain this potassium, a simple part
of body fluid, might have a role in
chemical weapons. Why do we need potassium for example? We need potassium solutions, we need anti-biotics,
we need culture
media.
"Some of the malignant cases occur also in Kuwait. But in Kuwait they have good treatment and most of
them are cured. Also in
Kuwait is an increase in congenital malformation and cancer but the drugs are available and they can treat
their patients thoroughly.
Question: Is it true that they cannot perform an operation because there is no anaesthetic?
"Yes, three or four years ago even tooth extractions were done without anaesthesia. But now it is
better. Some of the
anaesthetics are manufactured locally and that helps us.
Question: How many different drugs do you have available in this hospital?
"For example, out of ten items once available, five would be now. For the next period (OFF phase) out
of the five three or four might be available, and we miss from the first list also three or four. And we
are suffering from that cycle. If the drug is not available today, it might be in the next three months,
and the other drugs will be missed from other hospitals and so on. Therefore we do not have good choices
of the ideal drugs for patient treatment. Sometimes we are forced to substitute one drug for another in
order to try to help people.
Question: For pain killers like Aspirin and paracetamol, do you have them?
"Some of these are manufactured in Iraq and the government supplies us and they are very good and
cheap.
Question: The pharmaceutical factories were destroyed in the bombing weren't they. Have you managed to
rebuild them?
"Yes, the government rebuilt some of them and they supply some of the medicines now.
Question: Is all your water purified?
"It is all purified. It must be purified because of the sanctions. The sanctions affect every part of
our lives. We need a special station for the purification of water. Special substance also for
purification. But since the economic blockade ten years ago there has been a shortage of machines and
materials. So water has become the main transmitter of diseases, especially gastro-enteritis.
"This child is aged three months and suffers from gastro-enteritis. Always, they suffer from the
simplest things. And the water
contamination is a main problem. A very important thing is education. We need an education programme for
all the people, but we need more facilities to reach vast areas in Iraq. But education is still only a
small solution. We are suffering from two wars. One war in 1980 and another in 1991, the last of which
made significant difficulties in Iraq. So we have psychological conditions also. We pay special attention
to psychological problems.
Question: We saw the Saddam Hussein Children's Hospital in Baghdad, and it was in terrible condition. It
was awful and you have a beautiful hospital here. Why is there a difference?
"As you know, this building is a newly formed building. Some of the hospitals were exposed to
bombing, direct bombing during the war. And one of them was our hospital. During the Iran war major parts
of this hospital were destroyed. And after rehabilitation it has
become like this. That's this hospital, we have other hospitals expose directly to American force bombing
during the Gulf War and destroyed completely. We have the Saddam Teaching Hospital, in Basra, you see it
near the Shatt Al Arab river, which was exposed directly to American bombing. All the windows and doors
and even the ceilings and some of the floors were destroyed completely.
"Now we have a lack of potassium, so this patient might die because of dehydration. Before, we
had adequate supplies of all kinds of drugs, but now we are always short of medication.
"This woman has ten children. Nine girls and one boy. That will be enough for her! They love the boys
more than the girls.
Interjection: Yes, funny idea!
"In [each of] these two rooms we have four patients with malnutrition and gastro-enteritis. There are
ten to twenty children in here now like this. From forty four patients, we have ten to twenty patients
like this. Here in this general wing we have fifty beds. And in the other wing the same. There is a
special ward upstairs that is costly for the patients.
Question: So you have a VIP wing!?
"Not only VIP, some patients want to be in special conditions. But all the facilities are the same
and we hope that all the patients get
the same treatment. The care is the same. We are doctors and nurses and the difference is only in the
rooms.
Question: You say you have 40 patients here. What do you call this ward?
"This a general ward. You can see that it is not ideal for the isolation of the patients. You can
compare conditions here with European hospitals. We have special wards for leukaemia where patients
require special care. But the sanctions make us limited in
our jobs.
Question: What is the difference in the equipment you have before and now after the sanctions?
"The differences are great, although in the last two years some of the equipment we wanted was
allowed through the 661
Committee. In this hospital we need many things that have been refused by the 661 Committee. Before 1990,
we had a blood-count
analyser, but now we don't have one. This is a simple example of the equipment and machines that we
require. We also require sophisticated laboratory equipment for investigations. We always work with
primitive investigations. We have to depend on our
knowledge and our clinical judgement.
"We have a chromosomal analysis machine in Baghdad, but we need to have them distributed to all Iraqi
hospitals.
Question: I see that you have very little oxygen equipment, is the distribution a problem?
"We used to have oxygen distribution here before the bombing. The equipment was destroyed because of
the pressure that was
put on it. Now we cannot give as much as is needed."
The Sinbad Clinic
While in Basra, I and a Belgian doctor from Medicines for the Third World organisation went to see the
Primary Health Care centre that has been renovated, and is now supported and supplied by the Rome-based
NGO, Bridge to Baghdad. It is now supported also by NZ NGO Quaker Peace and Service.
It's named the Sinbad Project after the famous Arabian story, Sinbad the Sailor, which invited children
all over the world to dream. His home town was Basra. And the Sinbad Clinic in Basra restores life to at
least some of the children there, so that they also may dream.
It's set in a shady garden in Basra, over the road from the Shatt Al Arab waterway. It's staffed by an
Iraqi Director, two Iraqi nurses, one of them from the Red Crescent Society, one lab. technician and a
gardener. They confine their attentions to gastro-enteritis in children under five years of age and treat
nine thousand of these children a year. Many of them return more than once, an indication both of the
great need for such services and the appalling state of public health in the area, which is due mainly to
malnutrition and contaminated water.
Anna Riatti, Bridge to Baghdad's person in Baghdad told me, "In 1996 we decided to create a special
place specially for children from nought to five years to take care of malnutrition and diarrhoea. Because
at that time (and still now) the other Primary Health Care Centres in the governorate weren't able to take
care of these things."
"We give the medicines free of charge, to every child, and we are obliged of course to import into
Iraq these medicines from outside. You cannot find these medicines in Iraq because of the embargo."
"The Oil-For-Food programme should cover them, but in reality it's not possible to import all the
medicines that they need."
I asked Anna, "Why is that? Because these medicines are essential medicines and essential medicines
are supposed to be allowed
freely into the country? Are they being held up by the Sanctions Committee?"
She told me, "Well yes, but I think there are two components in this problem. Some get held up, but
there are also difficulties in
ordering because of the embargo. Whatever it is, they control the importation of medicines. And it's
impossible to import all the
medicines they need for all the children's diseases in Iraq."
Anna also told me that severe shortages of power were a big problem, specially in the villages when summer
temperatures are a
steady 50 degrees and people need a lot of water, all of which has to be boiled. It is very difficult to
keep the children healthy under
these circumstances.
The UN Secretary General's (SG's) Report, March, 2001 paragraph 112, states, "Holds placed on key
electricity items continue to have a negative impact on the sector. As at 31 January 2001, the total value
of applications placed on hold in the electricity sector amounted to $765.8 million ............. the
consequences of these holds are greater than the above-stated percentage would suggest."
UNICEF told me that of Iraq's 1,800 Primary Health Care clinics (PHCs), because of the embargo, only 600
are now functioning. The
Sinbad Clinic is small jewel in a very rough paddock.
Two fuller accounts of this project are appended to this report.
Water treatment plant
From Basra also we were proudly shown over a newly renovated water-treatment plant. These plants are the
keys to people's lives. Various NGOs, volunteer groups and the International Committees of the Red Cross
(ICRC) have put a lot of money and effort into restoring many of these water treatment plants. But this
one had been done by the GoI with oil-for-food (OFF) money and the people there were obviously pleased
with the job they'd done. It was running continuously and smoothly. A success story.
Though, since the Shatt Al Arab became too salty because of reduced flow in the Tigris due to three bad
drought years and the
building of a dam by Turkey, they now have to pipe the water from a distance of 200 kms..
Whether power supply was a problem here I can't say. I forgot to ask. Throughout much of the system it is.
Paragraph 97 of the
March 2001 SG's report says that "The lack of continuous power supply has further aggravated the
situation. Of the 43 boosting
stations observed, 37% have a continuous power supply, while others, on average, have power supply for
only 15 hours a day."
Interview with the editor of an English language newspaper.
The whole group had a question and answer evening with the editor of one of the five English language
newspapers in Baghdad. I will
take a few quotes from her replies because she did paint a picture of several aspects of Iraqi life under
the sanctions.
She told us, "Regarding the GoI's spending money on "useless" buildings, like mosques for
example: Usually when there is a war, or a natural disaster, the natural reaction of people is that only
God can help. It is a general feeling everywhere in the world. Most of you do not remember World War II,
but during World War II people used to go to churches all over the world. Moslem churches and religious
places are there to comfort. In many churches and mosques, donations are distributed to people. The
preaching helps them to be on the right side. We've been living in a state of war for too long. The
sanctions have killed one and a half million people. Most of these were children less than five years old.
So when a mother loses her kid of less than five years old, nothing can comfort her than her belief in
God. Whatever is your point concerning this matter, I think that whatever is good for the people and
comforts them is a good deed.
"These mosques are mostly built by people who donate the money and the material, so it's not the
government, as the American
administration says, are building the mosques instead of feeding the people. It gives a lot of people a
way to live, to work, in the
state of unemployment created by the sanctions. These are places of meditation, of exchanging help and
solidarity among the people.
"When the war ended, all estimations given by the UN, by the Harvard team, said that Iraq would need
at least fifteen years to be reconstructed with foreign aid. Remember again, after World War II, the US
created the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe and inject dollars so that the European economy would be
re-invigorated so that communism would not enter Europe by that door. Iraq did not wait for a Marshall
Plan, because it entails re-colonisation of the country and foreign control. So that the first
re-construction happened exactly two days after the cease-fire of 1991.
"The same thing applies to the reconstruction. We are doing our best so that we can continue our
resistance and we have survived
and it's almost twelve years now. And we will continue this way. How this is financed, it is mostly by the
government and the people, but we have done it and we will continue to do it.
[While one does have to recognise that there is a political agenda, the government is putting a lot of
resources into policies that
contribute to the people's pride in the rebuilding of their country.]
"Sometimes if you go for vaccinations or to take a medicine, it's almost free of charge because it's
supported by the government, but sometimes you have to go at seven o'clock in the morning because at nine
o'clock you'll find none. It's been distributed. Because the store is not enough. And it goes on for other
sectors in life. So you can see the buildings are reconstructed, but the human beings are targeted.
"It's not a list of components. It's a political question, How long is this genocide going to
continue? If we accept the concept of
sanctions, then we accept the concept of the new colonisation of countries in the name of the world
population.
"You cannot decide for me what I eat, what I work, and what I do with my life. It's up to me. So it's
not for the Western countries
to decide what should happen in Iraq because they know better than us, the natives. We are equal to them,
and we believe that we
are entitled to decide for ourselves. It's not for a UN official to say that this is good for you, off you
go and eat it.
"The concept of sanctions, and it's equal to colonisation. Why do they keep them? Until America can
put its hand on Iraqi oil so that
it can monopolise the region's oil and control the world from there. Was it a question of Bin Laden in
Afghanistan, or the pipelines passing through Afghanistan? Who organised the 11th. of September events?
Who made them possible? Let's discuss the basics. And I believe the question of sanctions is a political
question. Not an economic one, not a social one. It's a political question. It's a new colonial design
made for third world countries. And mostly with those rich in natural resources.
"I believe in my people. They've been living in hard conditions for thousands of years. We suffered
lots of occupation forces, the
last of which was the British. And we survived, and we built our country. I believe we can do it again.
"Let me remind you again that sanctions were imposed because Iraq had entered into Kuwait. That was
in 1990. And the sanctions
were supposed to be lifted once Iraq left Kuwait. If you read the 661 Resolution you can easily see that.
When Iraq was out of
Kuwait, sanctions were revised in 1991 with more conditions on Iraq. Whenever Iraq complied with UN
Resolutions, new conditions
were imposed. So there is no way out unless America stops its interference in the Security Council. We
have survived and we
believe we can survive again. If we are going to wait for an American, or Western decision, we'll wait for
a long time. Because
the only thing that the West wants from us, and mainly America, is our oil and resources. And as our
people, 23 million persons, have
the right to their own oil, and resources, we will not permit America to colonise us. And this is why we
are paying the high price.
"Now they threaten to bomb Iraq or invade Iraq from the North or from the South, I don't know what
other pipe dreams they have. The United States want their own way. But whatever they do, Iraq would not be
on its knees. They have to understand this.
Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation since at least the fifties. They did not stop their
resistance."
School visit
We visited a primary school in Baghdad, crowded, dingy, tiny cramped classrooms which would have been okay
with fewer children in them. Except there were no teaching aids apart from the blackboard, no pictures
brightened the walls as would be the case in NZ schools. But the kids were delighted with their visitors.
I found myself in a class of 54 boys. One of them, called to the front by the teacher was reciting the
lesson for the day, confidently and probably extra loudly for my benefit.
I won't quote it here to save space, but for a reliable picture of the primary school conditions, please
refer to the SG's Report,
S/2001/186, paragraph 116 onwards.
The spirit of the people
The spirit of the people is absolutely wonderful. I went to Iraq with the express purpose of trying to
discover why there were drug shortages. Because some people say, "The medical supplies are getting
through, there's plenty in the warehouses, it's the fault of the government." That's a simplistic
argument that doesn't stand up to analysis. Pre 1990, it wasn't like this. I will go into the issue of
"holds" placed on the GoI's orders later in this report.
I soon found that there is a bigger issue, into which that of the hospitals had to be fitted. An issue
greater even than the vast task of reconstruction, which under on-going sanctions is, and would continue
to be devastatingly tough on the people. It is the whole issue of this culture which is being destroyed
along with the infrastructure. You get the feeling very quickly that the people are tremendously proud of
their history, but that some of the links are being broken through the breakdown of education and the
disruption, caused by poverty of old societal values.
The schools and universities continue to function, despite being physically run down and short of books
and educational equipment.
This country which once had one of the highest numbers of PhDs per capita continues to amaze in its
dedication to culture and
learning. Sitting with an elderly mathematics professor in a tea house in central Baghdad, one of the
group was assured that although educational standards were not as high in the universities as they had
been, they were still the highest in the Middle East. The students are completely dedicated and dream of
one day being able to complete their post graduate studies in the West.
What also happened was, that in order to keep some kind of economy going, the government printed dinars.
Which resulted in inflation, something like 6,000 percent inflation, but at least it kept a little money
circulating in the private sector. And it meant that some people - engineers for example, could be getting
as much as $30 a month. At the very most. Before the embargo, 70% of Iraqis were middle class on
reasonable incomes, now around four million of the most educated are living abroad but the rest, for the
most part, have been driven to grinding poverty.
People are selling their most valued possessions in order to survive. One man in the market where people
go to do this told us that his passion was English poetry. He had come to the point where the last of his
collection was now on the pavement. "Except for one," he said. "There was one book which I
promised myself that I'd never sell. Yet finally I brought even that one here. Today,
somebody picked it up to look at it, and I took it from him and took it home. I'd sooner go hungry for
three days than part with that one!"
People have sold the last of their furniture, washing machines and other household goods, either to meet
some emergency, or just to
survive.
Yet you look around, and they're rebuilding and rebuilding everywhere because Iraq is rich in building
materials, apart from the reinforcing iron. I was talking to one of our interpreters on the river bank, he
said to me, "Look at those bridges. They were
destroyed by the bombing. Each end was deliberately bombed. And we've rebuilt them." There's this
tremendous pride in being part
of this rebuilding, and in being part of an ancient, and immensely valuable and educated culture, in being
Iraqi.
Conversations
I've mentioned my felt need to be wary of information given us by our interpreters, but I've checked the
account below with an Iraqi friend who is certainly not biased towards the GoI, and he's reassured me that
it's basically unbiased.
One
of our most helpful interpreters, whom I liked a lot, told me that, "The First two or three phases of
the OFF program were used mainly to provide people with the absolute
Basic necessity of food and medicines. It was thought that the programme was a temporary one and
for limited time. Once the revenue was sufficient (phase 4 --) the Program had another goal, which was
importing the necessary foreign Components for rebuilding of the infrastructure. By phase 7 or 8 the
program allocated money for the Housing and construction sector as well as the other important sectors.
"It was thought that encouraging the construction and housing sector - labour intensive with minimal
import requirement - would lead to revitalisation of the economy. To achieve that goal the
government imported huge quantity of steel rods, bathroom set, electrical fittings, wood, glass, pipes and
fittings etc..
"As a further encouragement the government subsidised these imports. Steel rods for example were
reduced from nearly US$ 300 to less than US$ 100 per ton. This subsidy was achieved by actually adopting a
very low (artificial) exchange rate when pricing the goods.
"The government "gave" land "free" for the people to build houses. Any one with a
valid building permit can buy these subsidised building materials based on the "covered" area of
the house. Further more the government entered into contracts with international companies to build
housing complexes.
"All these government measures and subsidies have snowballing effects on other sectors like
transport, buildings raw material and others. It generated a lot of work opportunities which intern
resulted in a lot of cash flow which revitalised the whole economy.
"To overcome problems with the transport sector the government relaxed its privet sector import
restrictions. They allowed the privet sector to import used cars and trucks with very little taxes. This
resulted in a very substantial inflow of used cars and trucks from all over Europe and Southeast Asia.
These "New" cars were used to generate income to the drivers and owners. By the way all those
BMW's and the Mercedes cars that the reports are talking about are privately imported that way.
"Furthermore the government imported thousands of brand new cars and again subsidised the pricing of
them and is selling them at almost half price. A brand new Nissan taxi for about US$6000. A brand new
Peugeot 406 for less than US$ 9000."
You see a scattering of these yellow taxis in the Baghdad streets, amongst the hundreds of beat-up
old VWs that form the bulk of the traffic. And even for me at the time, they came across as a surprisingly
powerful sign of hope.
"Public transport buses (nearly 1000 British Leyland buses) were scrapped a few years ago They are
now replaced by new fleet of Chinese double-decker buses, with a German engine!! British Leyland lost its
lucrative and captive market. I hope to God that they will not be permitted to enter the market again!!
" Since I believe that the continuation of the sanctions are illegal and are imposed on us by
US/UK belligerency then I refuse to call Iraq's export of oil outside the MOU as smuggling. It is just
selling oil outside the MOU.
"Iraq exports other commodities. These exports, whether government export or private sector export,
go to the bordering nations like Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia or through them to other
countries. These exports generate back flow of foreign currency.
"Religious tourism from Iran, 200,000-300,000 people yearly and from other countries is another
source of foreign currency.
"Iraqis living abroad are sending money to family members and friends either to pay old debts or as
help to family members or send money to purchase property for them.
"Speculative currency traders living abroad are buying the "worthless" Iraqi Dinars hoping
that at some time in the future they will be able to double their money many times over. This is long term
investment which was proved valid in Lebanon a few years ago. I might add that the Iraqi Dinars are kept
in the country so the net result is that foreign currency is flowing in.
"Iraqis as well as some Arabs are taking advantage of the depressed property values to buy properties
in Iraq as an investment. They are sending foreign currency in to buy these properties. I know that it is
difficult for most people in the West to understand that Arabs are buying properties and register them in
the name of Iraqi friends - since the non Iraqi can not own property - with a simple IOU document
based on personal trust.
"The free trade agreement with Arab countries meant freer flow of goods and capital between them.
Iraq being a relatively large market companies started to establish small local assembly plants for their
goods inside Iraq. The company outside Iraq will supply the necessary parts, and that is foreign capital,
to be assembled in Iraq and sold as an Iraqi product.
"I think that taking all those factors into consideration one can understand the comments in the
media that "thing are getting a lot better in Iraq". It is a combination of government
decisions, the MOU, the adventurism and most importantly the will of the people to make a better life.
"I want to end by quoting the Minister of Oil "We know it is difficult for those without
thousands of years of history to understand, but oil is not the only resource of the Iraqi people."
Small, really small businesses are a feature of the place. You see rows of vehicle repair shops, each the
size of a single-car garage. I don't know how lucrative they are. You see some new cars in the streets,
because some people, for example those who have access to dollars from outside Iraq can make a lot of
money Under the sanctions, but most by far are early eighties
models. The inability to import spares for these results in some awful wrecks being on the road and
constant cannibalising for parts.
More Notes From Conversations with Iraqi friends
There are power cuts over most of the country of 2 - 3 hrs. morning and night. Some areas have power only
for a couple of hours morning and night.
I was told that some govt. departments run on an incentives system. For example, customs; the more they
catch the more they're paid. A kind of private/public partnership. There's a lot of bureaucracy and this
seems to be a way round paying for it, because the government gets no cash from the oil-for-food
arrangements.
No one lives on their salaries alone. They drive taxis, use their own 20-year-old vehicles for hire,
work at three jobs.
A teacher might get around ID 20,000 a month, so they could buy one egg a week. An engineer a little more.
A skilled labourer working in the private sector earns around ID 20,000 a day when work can be found.
There is little incentive for young people to keep up the high standard of education that was so valued in
Days past.
There is widespread understanding that the government is trying to help, but that each person has their
Own responsibility in the rebuilding of a strong Iraq.
Because the Muslim religion does not allow sex outside marriage, it used to be the custom for parents to
get their children married at around sixteen. Then they had their babies and went on to university. That
can no longer happen because under the embargo few parents can afford to set up their children in a house.
The
result is much very real frustration.
Police are paid 10,000 Iraqi dinars a month ((1 $US sanctions ID 2,000) and are open to "gifts".
My informant hastened to add that this is not a police state.
Meat, which is not part of the OFF food basket, costs ID3,000 a kilo.
The Iraqi government printed a lot of dinars in the early stages of the embargo in order to keep some sort
of internal economy functioning and pay people, though a pittance, to work at the huge task of
reconstructing the country.
The local economy, especially in Baghdad is thriving, though at a low level. There are no fruit or
vegetables in the food basket, and some people are forced to sell some of the food basket food to buy
other items. If it were not for strict govt. control there would have been a famine. The Ba'ath regime
might be a repressive
one in many respects, but on the other hand there is much to their credit.
The embargo is not hurting the rich in Baghdad. But many in Basra for example are selling if they can,
their electrical goods – fridges etc.. (in summer temperatures of over 50 degrees).
There is a widespread thinking that if you want a commodity under the OFF deal, then you apply for a
US-made one and you stand a better chance of getting it - could be apocryphal!
There is also a widespread understanding that the control of Iraq's oil is not the number one priority for
the US, but the defence of Israel. That the cold war provided an ugly balance, but that now the US is
trying to run the world with a six-gun mentality.
A visit to a friend
Arab houses have a main entrance which leads both to their own living quarters and to the guest rooms. The
guest room and guest dining-room are always by far the best in the house and reserved for entertaining
guests. The one I was shown into was beautiful. A tiled floor, and small carpets, patterned blue-tiled
cool walls with good furniture of simple design, where they served me sweet dark coffee in tiny cups on
low tables. The few windows looked out onto the small central courtyard cool with shade trees. A design
feature, I believe, of nearly all Iraqi houses, which provides shade to the internal walls.
The ethics of hospitality require that guests are not only given more than the family's best, but are
cared for in ways that a Westerner could find embarrassing. The hosts' responsibilities, I'm told, extend
even to taking responsibility for the actions of their guests, even outside the house, sometimes in
situations that
would lead to a visitor being thrown out in our society!
In Basra, there is now an attitude of resignation. The people have lived under war conditions for 20
years. The reconstruction isn't as advanced there as in Baghdad.
Before the embargo Iraq had a large middle class, made up largely of government servants. They mostly
rented their houses and bought their cars, so that there were few huge private houses pre 1990. Now, some,
with contacts outside Iraq make fortunes on the exchange rate or through smuggling in goods for trade, so
that in the street my friends' house is in now has two obviously opulent houses - amongst the rubble and
dirt of what was once a very beautiful street. "And", said my friend, "like newly rich
anywhere,
they tend to be a little brash in showing off their wealth!" The gap between rich and poor is growing
under these conditions.
________________________________________________
Undoubtedly, the Ba'ath government has an appalling human rights record, we know this, and in no way do I
make any apologies for them in that area. On the other hand, as UNICEF told me, they have done a
remarkable job of managing under the sanctions regime, and we do them and ourselves a disservice if we
don't acknowledge that.
I asked many people how they felt about the possibility of another US attack. Their overwhelming responses
were. "The US bombed us, but we have re-built. And if they bomb us again, we will re-build
again." I was photographing an old - still in use - car and the rubble of a not yet repaired
building, and a passing man said to me, "Do you photograph only rubble?" The doctor who'd just
told us of the lives lost through shortages of medicines and equipment saying, "But we manage, we
improvise." The newspaper editor, "We are not a nation of refugees. We are not a nation of
beggars. We are as good as you are and in some ways better."
The Sanctions Committee:
You will have noticed that wherever we went in Iraq, medical staff complained about shortages of medical
supplies, often referring to hold-ups in the embargo system. A major aspect of that problem has been the
so-called 'dual use" clause, which allowed for items considered to have possible military uses to be
put on "hold". Many of these items were pharmaceuticals, often life-saving - analgesics,
anaesthetics, chemo-therapy drugs, vaccines. The fact that many of these "dangerous" items are
now being released points up the duplicity and misuse of the sanctions system.
To illustrate the above point, below are excerpts from UN reports and correspondence. Made clear in these
reports is the manipulation engaged in by the US.
"The UN's humanitarian programme in Iraq has been hampered by a record $5.3bn (£3.7bn) worth of
blocked supplies, mainly by the US. The contracts include some $4.6bn worth of humanitarian supplies and
$703m for oil industry equipment, the UN office of the Iraq programme said in its weekly report.
"Many of the contracts are approved individually by a Security Council Sanctions Committee, any one
of whose 15 members can block them. The US has put "on hold" nearly all of the blocked contracts
while Britain shares objections on some $500,000 worth of contracts under the UN oil-for-food programme,
committee members say (Reuters in New York Thursday February 21, 2002. The Guardian)."
And from the Financial Times:
"The US lifted blocks on more than $200m (£140.8m) worth of Russian contracts last week in an
attempt to win Moscow's agreement to refocus United Nations' sanctions against Iraq, diplomats said.
"The US had blocked many of the humanitarian contracts on the grounds that they could be misused by
Iraq for military purposes. Others were delayed by a lack of information submitted by the seller.
"Last June, the US released more than $80m of Chinese contracts it had blocked in order to gain
Beijing's support for an earlier resolution retooling UN sanctions.
"Last week, the US released a contract it had blocked last August. The contract was for $105m worth
of electricity equipment for a thermal power station, to be sold to Iraq by Technopromexport of Russia.
"The second largest contract was for $58m of vehicles for the food-handling sector, to be sold by JSC
Hydromash Service, also a Russian company. Other Russian contracts released in the past week included,
$34m for the agricultural sector, $13.2m for telecommunications equipment, $7.1m for bulldozers, $3m for
water sanitation equipment and $2m in the oil sector (by Carola Hoyos, United Nations correspondent
Financial Times, 3rd April, 2002)."
Both the Secretary General of the UN and the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme have
constantly complained about the US' and Britain's roles here.
Both have also criticised the Iraqi government for tardiness in placing contracts, but at the same time
acknowledging some of the constraints on it. Degraded communication and transport systems, lack of
technology, shortage of expert staff, shortage of money (no cash component for the Centre/South in the OFF
agreement) and the difficulties both of assessing current needs and complying with the detailed
contracting processes. UN officials have never accused the Iraq government of deliberate obstruction.
"UN observers also found that all the warehouses and health facilities lacked computers of the
appropriate capacity for the effective management of the increasing number of programme inputs. (Computers
over 286 capacity were banned under the older sanctions regime.) The provision of computers would also
facilitate
tracking of the arrival, distribution the expiration of drugs. The Ministry of Health is currently
preparing a detailed plan for the allocation of computers and the training of sufficient staff. The plan
will be shared with the UN upon its completion in order to facilitate the release of items on hold, which
will contribute greatly towards the effective provision and monitoring of health care services in Iraq.
(UN SG's Report, March 2, 2001)."
"Significant supplies of medicine and medical supplies and equipment have reached the country under
SCR 986. Their utilisation remains, however, not optimal. The installation and transportation to locations
where they are needed has been and is still often prevented by logistic or financial constraints (WHO
Health situation in Iraq 2001)."
As Tun Myat, the director of the UN's humanitarian programme in Iraq, put it last November in New York:
"The biggest killer of children is not lack of food or medicine but of water and sanitation - clean
water and sanitation are absolutely necessary for the children of the country. Humanitarian staff
that I speak to in Iraq consistently stress the complexity of public health."
Relevant to this area is paragraph 78 of the 2001 SG's Report concerning the port of Umm Qasr "
(south of Basra) .............preliminary observation findings indicate that the lack of essential
equipment, spare parts and marine generators for the existing dredges and tugboats, as well as the
equipment needed to free the port from sunken wrecks, is limiting the availability of cargo-handling
berths. New equipment would contribute to reducing current
port congestion. Contracts for all the aforementioned items are on hold during the reporting period.
.............. The congestion at Umm Qasr continues to impede the effective implementation of the
humanitarian programme. (UN S/2001/186.)"
______________________________
I have described some of the conditions that prevail in Iraq now. Before 1991 it was not like this. Now,
more than 4,000 mothers are losing their children each month. That did not happen before the Coalition
bombardments of 1991 which took away their life support systems and the subsequently imposed sanctions
which prevented the repair of those systems..
A huge injustice has been deliberately engineered by the United States.
The following is taken from a paper by Michael Rattner, an attorney former director of the Centre for
Constitutional Rights, and past president of the National Lawyer's Guild.
"As early as October 1989 the CIA representatives in Kuwait had agreed to take advantage of Iraq's
bankrupt economy to put pressure on Iraq to accede to Kuwait's demands with regard to the border dispute.
Then they encouraged Kuwait to refuse to negotiate its differences with Iraq as required by the United
Nations Charter, including Kuwait's failure to abide by OPEC quotas, thus threatening Iraq's economy
further; its pumping of Iraqi oil from the Rumaila oil field by slant drilling and its refusal to
negotiate these and other matters with Iraq, such as the repayment by Iraq of Kuwait's Iran war loan.
"Months prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United States administration prepared a plan and
practised elaborate computer war games pitting United States forces against Iraqi armoured divisions.
"In testimony before Congress prior to the invasion, Assistant Secretary Kelly misleadingly assured
Congress that the United States had no commitment to come to Kuwait's assistance in the event of war.
"April Glaspie, US Ambassador reassured Iraq that the dispute was an 'Arab' matter and the U.S. would
not interfere. According to the New York Times, the U.S. wanted to "block the diplomatic track
because it might defuse the crisis at the cost of a few token gains for Iraq.''
"UN Resolutions embargoing Iraq and supposedly authorising the use of force were all suspect because
of the bribing, intimidating and threatening of others, including members of the UN Security Council by
the US.
"Immediately after the November 29, 1990 vote in the UN authorising force, the US administration
unblocked a $140 million loan from the World Bank to China and agreed to meet with Chinese government
officials.
The Soviet Union was promised $7 billion in aid from various countries and shipments of food from the
United States. Zaire was promised forgiveness of part of its debt as well as military assistance. A $7
billion loan to Egypt was forgiven, a loan the President had no authority to forgive under U.S. law. Syria
was promised that there would be no interference in its Lebanon actions. Saudi Arabia was promised $12
billion in arms sales. The U.S., which owes the most money to the U.N., paid off $187 million of its debt
immediately after the vote authorising the use of force. The US administration attempted to coerce Yemen
by threatening
the cut-off of U.S. funds. (Michael Ratner).
Professor Thomas J. Nagy, who teaches at the School of Business and Public Management at George Washington
University, obtained a minutely detailed seven-page document prepared by the US Defence Intelligence
Agency, issued the day after the war started, entitled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities, and
circulated to all major allied Commands.
"In spite of this document's detailed warnings of the effects of the destruction of Iraq's water
reticulation system, during allied bombing campaigns on Iraq the country's eight multi-purpose dams had
been repeatedly hit, simultaneously wrecking flood control, municipal and industrial water storage,
irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31
municipal water and sewerage facilities - 20 in Baghdad, resulting in sewage pouring into the Tigris.
Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq. (A copy of this document is available if
needed. My file ID, iac3/water.txt or directly at http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_51
1rept_91.htm).
"Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render
useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" and includes foodstuffs,
livestock and "drinking water supplies and irrigation works". The results of the allied bombing
campaign were obvious when Dr David Levenson visited Iraq immediately after the Gulf War, on behalf of
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He said: "For many weeks people in
Baghdad - without television, radio, or newspapers to warn them - brought their drinking water from the
Tigris, in buckets. "Dehydrated from nausea and diarrhoea, craving liquids, they drank more of the
water that made them sick in the first place."
Water-borne diseases in Iraq today are both endemic and epidemic. They include typhoid, dysentery,
hepatitis, cholera and polio (which had previously been eradicated), along with a litany of others. A
child with dysentery in 1990 had a one in 600 chance of dying - in 1999 it was one in 50.
In 1999, the country's health ministry said that more than 10,000 people died in July of that year of
embargo-related causes - 7,457 were children, with diarrhoea diseases one of the prime conditions.
In July 1989, the figure was 378. UNICEF does not dispute the figures.
Conclusion
The Coalition attacks were engineered by the US with bribery and threats in the Security Council. They
were a war crime and a crime against humanity and any sanctions, "smart" or otherwise build on
that.
For that reason the emphasis must be taken away from the red herring of sanctions tinkering. UNSCR 1409
does not address the issue of US control of the situation, does not give even temporary relief for Iraq of
the 25% of its oil income it is forced to pay in reparations - without any defence being allowed. Still
leaves Iraq
having to spend part of its oil income to pay for UN administration. Does not address the issue of the
almost totally widespread poverty in Iraq or the enormous task of rebuilding an infrastructure that once
supported 22 million people. Which still leaves a 300 page list of goods still to be under the control of
the Sanctions Committee.
The fact that billions of dollars worth of contracts now on hold will be released, points up the specious
nature of some of the arguments that put them on hold. Costing how many hundreds of Iraqi lives?
Emphasis must be taken away from the issue of weapons inspectors. People who are concerned for that issue
must think more widely round the subject. On this point, please see the attached Monbiot article. I
repeat, the essence of the debate, if indeed there should be any debate at all, must be focused on the
culture, the people and the injustices presently being imposed upon them.
It is important to point out the immorality of using the sanctions for political purposes and of holding
the Iraqi people to ransom for a situation beyond their control.
The sanctions should be lifted as soon as possible and other means found to address the question of
weapons inspections.
It is of utmost importance to recognise the links between the situation in Iraq now and the US
administration's felt need to control the second largest oil reserves in the world, and to defend Israel.
I maintain that a basic sense of fair play says that it is important to call for reparation to be made to
Iraq by the members of the Coalition forces in proportion to their parts in the destruction of 1991.
It's important to call for an adequate international response to this rogue terrorist state which the US
has become.
A.C.Maturin,
4 Hoggard St.,
Vogeltown,
Wellington.
25/6/2002.
Nasra
Al Sadoon, editor Iraq Daily, English
Language Newspaper.
(recorded by Tony Maturin 14/4/02 )
Q. I've heard from somebody
that the reason why they are building so many mosques is to solve a social problem. In the first years after
the war, there was a lot of criminality, and you do not solve that with repression. Because the people are
not afraid of the police or the army, but they are afraid of God.
Nasra Al Sadoon: Usually when there is a war, or a natural disaster, the natural reaction of people
is that only God can help. It is a general feeling everywhere in the world. Most of you do not remember
World War II, but during World War II people used to go to churches all over the world. Moslem churches and
religious places are there to comfort. In many churches and mosques, donations are distributed to people.
The preaching helps them to be on the right side. We've been living in a state of war for too long. The
sanctions have killed one and a half million people. Most of these were children less than five years old.
So when a mother loses her kid of less than five years old, nothing can comfort her than her belief in God.
Whatever is your point concerning this matter, I think that whatever is good for the people and comforts
them is a good deed.
These mosques are mostly built by people who donate the money and the material, so it's not the government,
as the American administration says, are building the mosques instead of feeding the people. It gives a lot
of people a way to live, to work, in the state of unemployment created by the sanctions. These are places of
meditation, of exchanging help and solidarity among the people. That's all I can say about that.
Q: There seems to be a lot of building going on in Baghdad. There are monuments and other private
buildings going up all over the
place. I'm wondering where the money is coming from?
Nasra Al Sadoon: Iraq is a country on the way to development. The construction started in the
seventies when the Iraqi oil was nationalised. Its revenues were re-invested inside the country. Which
brought American anger against us, because they wanted petrodollars to be invested in the West. It is very
important for us, is part of our belief, that construction is one of the major tasks of any government,
politician and person.
When the war ended, all estimations given by the UN, by the Harvard team, said that Iraq would need at least
fifteen years to be reconstructed with foreign aid. Remember again, after Word War II, the US created the
Marshal Plan to reconstruct Europe and inject dollars so that the European economy would be re-invigorated
so that communism would not enter Europe by that door. Iraq did not wait for a Marshall Plan, because it
entails re-colonisation of the country and foreign control. So that the first re-construction happened
exactly two days after the cease-fire of 1991.
Everybody participated. It took about two years for all the sites that were completely or partially
destroyed to be reconstructed. Including electricity grids, water treatments, telecommunications, trains,
whatever. It took two years - and bridges - it took about two years to re-construct the country, but as the
sanctions continued, we could not get the spare parts and the imported parts for the continuation of the
development that comes after the reconstruction.
Here our problem was, how to finance development in the country, how to feed the people and how to continue
to survive. And we did that. We used many means, but mostly the interaction between the people and the
government that helped to keep the country together. Helped to keep the least harm possible, because we can
not take away all the harm done to our country.
The United Nations was created to help the developing countries to develop. In the name of the United
Nations, sanctions were imposed. Now you see hospitals, some of them reconstructed but without the
appliances that needed to be imported. So you see the building, but inside it's almost empty. What we can do
in Iraq with the sanctions going on is, we try to substitute one with the other. If we don't have this glass
of water, we use anything else to help.
The same thing applies to the reconstruction. We are doing our best so that we can continue our resistance
and we have survived and it's almost twelve years now. And we will continue this way. How this is financed,
it is mostly by the government and the people, but we have done it and we will continue to do it.
Q: Today we went to Babylon and visited a mosque, and we didn't see many signs of the embargo. Why
not? The people looked well- dressed and well fed. We saw plenty of old taxis and old cars, but people
were moving about and there was plenty of rebuilding.
Nasra Al Sadoon: I don't know what are the obvious things that you would like to see. We are not a
nation of beggars. And we refuse to be a concentration camp and we refuse to be a refugee camp. It is our
country and we have been trying and working very hard so that the sanctions will do the least possible harm.
People are working double, triple shifts so that they can gain enough money. If you have a recession in your
economy in your country, and the economy would drop for two percent, there would be a great uproar. For us,
it is an imposed recession for twelve years.
What you cannot see is many simple things. For example, if you have a chronic disease, diabetes, whatever,
and you can get the medicines from abroad, four months, six months, and then there is a period when the 661
Committee would not permit the import of this medicine, you cannot wait until it is permitted, you just die.
Cancer medicines come, but sporadically. Once you don't have them you just die. For example, I give you a
simple example that is happening to me personally. I have a grand daughter who was born a week ago. We were
looking around for a week for a PCG vaccine for the baby. It's non existent. It's very simple. It used to be
obligatory and they wouldn't give you the official paper that this person is born until he's vaccinated.
That was before the sanctions. Now I've got the paper because the vaccine is not available.
Now you have the persons who can work, the odd persons. They work in the morning, they work in the afternoon
and they work at night. And women are obliged to work two shifts and do their housework as well. Many
children go to school without having breakfast. And some of them, if they have breakfast, they don't have
lunch. The ration cards are distributed to every Iraqi and
every person living in Iraq for more than one month. But the rations are not sufficient for one month. They
are enough for, let's say, twenty days. The others you have to work to get them.
They do not cover everything, I don't know if you have a list of the ration cards' components. It's rice,
sugar, tea, vegetable oil, soap, detergents, sometimes beans. That's not enough to live on if you don't have
another support to buy vegetables, meat, chicken, whatever is necessary for your health. So you cannot see
it in buildings, because sanctions target human beings and not the buildings. We have reconstructed the
buildings - if you have visited the hospitals , ask to see where they keep the medicines. You'll see them
almost empty.
Sometimes if you go for vaccinations or to take a medicine, it's almost free of charge because it's
supported by the government, but sometimes you have to go at seven o'clock in the morning because at nine
o'clock you'll find none. It's been distributed. Because the store is not enough. And it goes on for other
sectors in life. So you can see the buildings are reconstructed, but the human beings are targeted.
I cannot go in depth into an economic analysis of the embargo. But what I say is, that privatisation
is not the only thing that they want to make in our country. As long as we still have free education,
obligatory education, free hospitalisation, and social security, the basics of our system are still in
existence.
Iraq is not like the ex-Soviet States. We have a private sector. It was active before the sanctions, before
the war. But as long as the government is reinvesting the oil revenues, which are the most important
component of the Iraqi revenue, it has created a social balance. So if you have a chance to get the highest
education possible, you get your PhD degree, and you come from a very poor family, you have changed you
social structure with the government profile. So, this has continued. And this is what they want to destroy.
Because globalisation mostly implies not only privatisation of the public companies, it also destroys the
social security, the education system, and the health system. They could not do that here. Although almost
nothing is available, but still, they are public facilities. As for water, electricity, and other
facilities, they are distributed with government subsidies, which helps a lot.
Question: The amounts of money that can come into the country are absolutely inadequate. It's also
clear from reading all the reports that what does come in through that programme is distributed equally and
in a way that all the observers say is not a problem. I don't have a problem with any of that. But something
I haven not been able to understand, two things related to nutrition - and this may be too technical. But
it's why the powdered milk is still in the ration for families with young children, and why (the government)
has been so slow to order high-protein biscuits, because the UN - I've read these report now for three years
- the UN are constantly saying that this contributes to child mortality. Because people mix the powder with
contaminated water and the children get diarrhoea. I don't understand why these two things - taking the
powdered milk out and putting the high-protein biscuits in - I don't understand why that hasn't happened,
despite all the recommendations for maybe three years now.
Nasra Al Sadoon: The main problem with the Oil-for-food is that the 661 Committee would permit
something now and refuse for four months or six months and then they permit it. Sometimes large shipment
come of high-protein biscuits, but no milk. So it has to be changed. Then we have lots of milk without
high-protein biscuits. It happens sometimes. The quality that is provided to Iraq has to be checked and
double checked. We have received lots of material that is sub-standard, so it has to pass through
laboratories and we lack the needed laboratories in Iraq to test them. Many times the materials we get are
not fit for human consumption. So we cannot distribute them to our people. They say it's high-protein
biscuit, but it's fit for dogs. And we are not dogs. Maybe the Western people love their dogs, but when we
receive large shipments of high-protein biscuits as dog food, we cannot accept that. We just ship it back,
refuse to take it and refuse to give it to our kids.
Ghazwan: May I add to this? In the first three or four months in the life of the child, it is not
advisable to give him any solid food. After a certain age you can start feeding him solid food. High-protein
biscuits are provided as a supplementary protein. When the mother takes the child to the health service they
are not given immediately to the child. It's a supplementary. So you cannot actually substitute the
high-protein biscuits for milk.
Eric Herring: I don't equate the two things. What the UN has said there's a problem with, is that the
choice of more funding initially. So the UN has said many times, "Please order high-protein
biscuit." and in the distribution plan the government of Iraq has chosen not to do so.
Nasra Al Sadoon: When you want to introduce a new product to the markets, you have to educate the
people to accept it. You can't just decide by UN person, "This is good for you." They cannot rule
us like this. I've just got two kids, I never had any need to have this high-protein something. We don't
trust it. They don't know what it is. It's biscuits, okay, give it to all the children. They get it with
their ration card and they give it to their kids. Or present it to their visitors. It's something new they
don't know about. They have to be educated about it. It's not a question of how much you're going to
allocate for this kind of biscuits. What's the use when the people are using them not for the needed way for
the beneficiaries.
Q: And the milk powder?
Nasra Al Sadoon: It's included in every family of less than one year I think.
Ghazwan: there are infant milks and a milk for the adults. Anybody who has a kid from the age of
new-born to about five gets an additional special formula. We adults get half a kilo of powdered milk. It's
totally different composition. In the matter of acceptance, we never, never in our lives ate soy beans. Soya
bean is a high-protein, but we do not accept it in our diet. So is the UN going to force us to eat soy bean
because it its a high-protein diet? You can't. I mean you're talking about people liking or disliking
something.
Nasra Al Sadoon: They do this in the ration cards. What is permitted in the 661 Committee and
the real life of the country. How long are we going to be subjected to the UN regulations? They want us to
become a colony of the United Nations. And this is what we refuse. It's not a question of milk, powdered
milk, high-protein or low protein, It's not that. It's not a list of components. It's a political question,
How long is this genocide going to continue. If we accept the concept of sanctions, then we accept the
concept of the new colonisation of countries in the name of the world population.
You cannot decide for me what I eat, what I work, and what I do with my life. It's up to me. So it's not for
the Western countries to decide what should happen in Iraq because they know better than us, the natives. We
are equal to them, and we believe that we are entitled to decide for ourselves. It's not for a UN official
to say that this is good for you, off you go and eat it. So I'm sorry, but I will not take soy bean oil. The
discussion should be more concentrated on the concept of sanctions instead of discussing the particulars.
The small things that keep misleading many people, many activists in the West to just mislead them so that
no one would discuss the question of sanctions themselves.
The concept of sanctions, and it's equal to colonisation. Why do they keep them? Until America can put its
hand on Iraqi oil so that it can monopolise the region's oil and control the world from there. Was it a
question of Bin Laden in Afghanistan, or the pipelines passing through Afghanistan? Who organised the 11th.
of September events? Who made them possible? Let's discuss the basics. And I believe the question of
sanctions is a political question. Not an economic one, not a social one. It's a political question. It's a
new colonial design made for third world countries. And mostly with those rich in natural resources.
Question: Were you educated in England?
Nasra Al Sadoon: No, never. I don't hate the British people, or even the American people. I have many
friends there, and I hope that they can do something to stop the colonial designs of their countries.
Britain was once a great colonial power, that ruled Iraq, or tried to rule Iraq. What the British government
is doing is in the name of its people. They are equally criminal. If they don't (want that), they have to
stop their government, the United States of America, and for every other government in the West that try to
colonise third world countries so that it can stop its people from living with the others, which is us. We
are human beings just like you. We are your equals, and sometimes your betters. I'm sorry to say that. But
it's the truth.
Q: The Americans say they will stop oil imports from Iraq. So what are your thoughts on this, plus
given the consideration that a
higher oil price these days does not necessarily hurt the targeted countries that can afford higher oil
prices because these
economies are more sound than the Pakistanis, the Chinas, people that are more friendly to Iraqi people and
the Iraqi government.
And it is these governments that are intended to be hurt. Can you please comment on these
points.
Nasra Al Sadoon: Have you forgotten that oil was stopped by a UN decision for more than ten years?
Every body was saying that they don't need Iraqi oil. We've been under sanctions since 1990. And the oil
market was going on, up and down, without Iraqi oil. But as the oil is Iraq's, we make our own decisions.
Not only in oil matters, but in any other matter.
Oil was exported, it was taken by several companies, and America needed Iraqi oil because it has a special
quality. They used to import it from third parties, they can take it or they can leave it. And they can take
the decision they want to.
Question: I was told by an Iraqi friend in Wellington, that what was hurting him most was what he
perceived as the destruction of
a society which had spent generations in lifting the morality of society, the integrity of society and
getting rid of corruption, and
he said now that's been reversed. Would you comment on that?
Nasra Al Sadoon: Sanctions have created the conditions for corruption, but let me remind you again of
the corruption scandals that have been going on in the Western world. We have been reading of them in the
newspapers. Corruption does not take the poor person. Sometimes it's the most rich that are corrupted. I
think you know better than me about the corruption that has been
going on in the Western world. Yes, sanctions have had great effect that we do not want it to have. But it's
there. They have created the best conditions for corruption. But I believe personally that corruption in
Iraq is much less than propaganda implies. Because people here have their self-respect. We've been having
problems, yes, we try to solve these problems, yes, and we believe that lifting sanctions is the best remedy
for this society. Corruption has no society and no social structure.
Q: So can I assure my friend that his fears are not as well-grounded as he thought?
Nasra Al Sadoon: I believe in my people. They've been living in hard conditions for thousands of
years. We suffered lots of occupation forces, the last of which was the British. And we survived, and we
built our country. I believe we can do it again.
Q.: Do you think it would be possible to go to Europe to get yourselves out of this situation with
the UN?
Nasra Al Sadoon: Let me remind you again that sanctions were imposed because Iraq had entered into
Kuwait. That was in 1990. And the sanctions were supposed to be lifted once Iraq left Kuwait. If you read
the 661 Resolution you can easily see that. When Iraq was out of Kuwait, sanctions were revised in 1991 with
more conditions on Iraq. Whenever Iraq complied with UN
Resolutions, new conditions were imposed. So there is no way out unless America stops its interference in
the Security Council. We have survived and we believe we can survive again. If we are going to wait for an
American, or Western decision, we'll wait for a long time. Because the only thing that the West wants from
us, and mainly America, is our oil and resources. And as our people, 23 million persons, have the right to
their own oil, and resources, we will not permit America to colonise us. And this is why we are paying the
high price.
Q.: Would it be possible to have positive contact with European governments?
Nasra Al Sadoon: Well. let me know if you have any information that Europe can act outside of NATO.
If they can act without American consent.
Q.: What is the relationship between Iraq and Iran now, and what will it be in the future?
Nasra Al
Sadoon: We are trying our best and the Iranians also are trying to solve the problems we have with them.
In the final analysis both countries are threatened by the United States of America, and we hope that
co-operation can be established once more with Iran, and with all other Asian countries who are not under
American influence.
Q.: What is your perception of the Western media, of the representatives here, and Western media
in general. What is your critique, what are your feelings, what do you have to say about that? And secondly,
what is the situation of the media in this country. For instance, what would it take for me, as a private
person to set up a newspaper or radio station or a TV station or
something like that? What permissions do I need? Can I do it as a private person?
Nasra Al Sadoon: My perception of the Western media or the mainstream media, I agree completely with
what Michel Collon has written in his book. The mainstream media are controlled by the big businesses, and
they have been launching an aggressive campaign against my country, against all Arabs, and now Moslems also.
It's been serving the big businesses, not only in our country, but in yours also. There is also the
alternative media which we try to get in touch with mostly. We try to search for the truth that's going on
in the world.
As for the situation of the media in Iraq, it's financed by the government, but we are free to write what we
want, there is no censorship on it. I don't know if you can establish your own newspaper without the
advertising of the big businesses. It's good for you, but I believe being owned by the government is much
better. That's a personal point of view. I'd rather have my newspaper owned by the government and we have
free direction of it, than owned by a multi-national and being directed by it for its own interests.
Now, and just remember that we have been in a state of war for about twenty years, how can you build your
own radio station when your country is under sanctions and you are not allowed to import the technology? If
you know a way, please tell me I will be interested. We are under sanctions as persons and as government.
And everything that interests Iraq should pass by 661 Committee that considers telecommunication as
"dual use", which is not permitted to enter Iraq.
Q.: I have a question concerning the governorates in the North, the so-called Kurdish areas. First
question - how are the relations
with those areas? Are there official contacts and people travel to the North? Second question, it is no
secret I think that the
American administration is bombing Kurdish parts in the North and they think of using the Kurdish parties as
a modern alliance in a
possible attack on Iraq. So what is your opinion on that please?
Nasra Al Sadoon: Kurdistan has always been an Autonomous Region. The rights that the Kurds have in
Iraq don't exist in neighbouring countries, in Iran or in Turkey. In spite of that, the Americans have
dictated that the Northern part be ruled directly by the UN.
There are contacts between the government and the two main Kurdish parties. We wish that Kurdistan was a
safe haven for Kurds, but as I have read lately - I receive many e-mails from Kurds - if they think of
travelling to Europe, and asking for political asylum there, I think that Belgium has been refusing them and
evicting them, lately, even the Christians who have run away from Kurdistan. If it was a real safe haven,
then why would they go away? And these boats trying to go to Italy or Belgium or elsewhere to seek political
asylum, it's a political question that only the Kurds can solve, without American intervention. And we hope
that one day the Kurds will stay there.
A boat of Kurds detained in Europe or Australia, are always "Iraqis", and they never mention that
they are Kurds. And they say that they have run away from Saddam Hussein instead of saying they have run
away from American "safe haven". I think you should check that once more, and ask this question,
"Are these Kurds from the safe haven or from the Central and south parts of Iraq?"
Ghazwan: One thing, even Sweden has said that the Kurds who are seeking political asylum are not
running away from Saddam Hussein, because Saddam Hussein doesn't rule the Kurds. So now they are claiming
that because of the factional problems and have stopped saying they are running away from Saddam.
Q: The United States have made it very clear that they want to use the sanctions to get Iraq onto
its knees. Now, since about a year it has become definitely clear that the sanctions are about to crumble
and with every month they're crumbling more. Would you share the view that the increased war-mongering and
the increased tendency for the United States to launch a new war against Iraq is something to do with what
the sanctions can't do and they want to smash Iraq in another way again?
Nasra Al Sadoon: The sanctions have been crumbling for years now, and the United States knows that.
And George Bush himself said they were just like Swiss cheese. Now they threaten to bomb Iraq or invade Iraq
from the North or from the South, I don't know what other pipe dreams they have. The United States want
their own way. But whatever they do, Iraq would not be on its knees. They have to understand this.
Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation since at least the fifties. They did not stop their
resistance.
If America wants friendship with Arabs, they are welcome. But if they want to have servants, I'm sorry, we
cannot accept that. We have refused British colonialism, we cannot accept American colonialism. We ended the
British rule in Iraq, and American rule will never enter Iraq. As long as there is one Iraqi left. And they
have no right, they are violating the UN Charter. You have to
remember that. Whatever they say, they are violating the UN Charter, which they created according to their
specifications. It's an American creation. So, we'll be always there. Thank you.
Q: Is Iraq counting on Arab rulers to help it out of this impasse?
Nasra Al Sadoon: This is a simplification of the question. Iraq has resisted American aggression in
1991, depending on its own people. Once you defend your own house, you do not rely on others, but you are
happy to get all the help you want. We know the Arab people have been demonstrating with Iraq since 1991. In
every Arab town and in every Arab city and capital. We never wait for other support, we resist. And the
others get the lesson. Personally I believe that without Iraqi resistance for more than twelve years, the
Palestinian intifada would not have started when it did. When the official Arab armies entered in wars with
Israel, everybody was defeated. And Israel gained more lands. But once Palestinians took to the streets
themselves and started to fight themselves, all Arabs are with them. And it will go on like this.
We believe that Iraq will resist, and Arabs with them. Without their support we are week, because all the
Arab Nation is one Nation and one People. I cannot say we are Arab peoples, no, we are all Arabs and our
feelings are the same and I believe every Arab will support Iraq as they support Palestine. It's not a
question of propaganda, just look at the demonstrations going on in every Arab capital, they always say,
Iraq and Palestine. Because we are in the forefront. And if we do not keep our forefront strong, everybody
will crumble.
When Cheney was here, he heard the word, "No." by the Arab rulers, and now the second failure of
Colin Powel. He was not even received by Mr.?????????? . Being sick, politically sick! So it's a double
failure and the situation has changed. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have understood that sanctions will
accomplish nothing, and going on like this, even their own people refuse to comply with American dictates.
So the whole situation is completely useless.
Q: You are a grandmother now. Have today's Iraqi children the same opportunities of being as you
are today. And I have seen pictures taken fifteen years ago in Baghdad, and hardly anyone was wearing the
headscarf and now the majority of women are wearing the headscarf, why?
Nasra Al Sadoon: You never ask the question, "Why are the Jews putting the ???????? on their
heads?" Listen, the head-dress, or whatever you call it, is something very personal. We have the
opportunity, I've lived my life I had my public education, in Iraqi schools, I went to university in
Baghdad. When I was young, there was only one university, that was Baghdad University. Now there
are about thirty universities, all over the country. Admission to the universities is for boys and girls,
they have the same opportunity to get their education free of charge up to the PhD degree. And they have the
freedom to work, and if they are capable they can get the positions they deserve.
Last year on Women's Day, the Minister of Information received a letter from UNESCO requesting that for
Women's Day, a woman should be appointed for one day as Editor in Chief for the media in Iraq. And he asked
me to answer them. I told them that this is not a gesture. Because they requested this to be a gesture for
women. I told them it could not be a gesture because we have two Editors in Chief in Iraq, and it is not a
gesture but it is our job and we have been doing it for a long time.
I believe women In Iraq have equal opportunity to work in the private or the government sector, and wearing
the head-scarf has not stopped them from progressing. So let them wear it, there's nothing against it, it's
their freedom. They are free to wear whatever they like, either mini-skirts or scarves.
Q: What is your opinion of the non-aligned movement?
Nasra Al Sadoon: The non-aligned movement? It should have another name. Non-aligned to whom? It's
more than that, it's the refusal of globalisation. I believe that the American empire is progressing, helped
by Europe. And Europe will be the loser in this empire, because once America has complete control of our
oil, you'll pay a price that you cannot imagine in Europe. Personally I
believe that our future in this region lies with Asia, Africa and Latin America. Co-operation with these
countries can help us a lot. All of us. Because we share the same worries about the colonial future. The
political systems are different. in these third world countries. But we believe that in getting together we
can help each other to have better lives. And then we would not need the West.
Q: Do you think it was a question of coincidence that there were twelve years of blood and
terrorism in Algeria and the twelve years of the embargo here?
Nasra Al Sadoon: It was not a coincidence. It was designed this way, that all Arab countries suffer
one way or another. Destabilisation is part of the American design for this region, so that it appears to
the world that we cannot rule ourselves and we need our Big Brother to rule us. The problems of Algeria are
not natural and it's not a question of Islam, it's a political question. And should be treated this way. I
cannot get into particulars but I believe that the demonstrations in Algeria started in support of Iraq and
then they were transported into political problems that continue until now.
I believe that sanctions in Iraq are a demonstration for the whole Arab region that, here you are, you will
suffer the same fate as the Iraqis as long as you do not follow USA.
Q: Where does the oil used by the Israeli army now come from?
Nasra Al Sadoon: The Israeli occupation is criminal. I believe that Arabs should stand together in
refusing the Israeli occupation. I believe all Arabs should support the Palestinians because we are one
people. We all speak Arabic, we have the same feelings, we have the same history. We share the same general
values. We were divided by the colonial powers, so that the division should last. So I believe that it's our
aspiration, once we become one state we can create our own development.
Q: I want to return our attention to the role of the United States. There are a lot of people in
Europe who think that Europe can play another role. That they can be a go between the tough guys and the
softer ones who want to solve the problems. What do you think about the role of Europe in the global view in
this question of Iraq?
Nasra Al Sadoon: How many permanent members are European in the Security Council? What have they
done? Is their role only to be the go-between like the lap-dog like Tony Blair is being? We believe that
Europe can play a larger role to rein in the American aspirations for a new empire. But being partners of
America they cannot play a double role. It's more than possible for Europe to do that. They have to have
their own position, their own point of view. Up till now they have not decided their position on the
question of Palestine. For twelve years they have not taken a decision concerning Iraq. What do you want me
to believe? They are just following the United States.
Q: Can you say something about the situation of the street children in Iraq? I think under the
embargo many families have broken up, so there are many children in Baghdad without homes. How do the
authorities deal with this problem?
Nasra Al Sadoon: We do have these problems. Families have been breaking up. But it's not as it seems.
Because in Iraq, the social structure - because the family is not only father mother and children, it's more
than that. It's uncles on both sides, grandparents. If a family breaks up they always have uncles and family
to live with. The government is trying to help in whatever way they can. But it is mainly a social structure
preventing what they can do.
As for the media, yes, we are being isolated, but it was very late that we got the internet. And up to now
it is very restricted because we do not have the infrastructure. You all very well know that our
telecommunications grid was completely destroyed in 1991. No spare parts were permitted. They made a great
storm when Iraq tried to import fibre-optics. They said that it is dual use. Everything is dual use. So we
were not permitted to renovate our telecommunications system. Because of that, the e-mails are very
restricted. I have e-mail at home, but I cannot use it. For one month it has been out of order because the
telephone isn't functioning very well. And those who telephone me have great difficulty in hearing me.
So we are trying our best to use this internet and to use the e-mail to get in touch with people. My
newspaper is printed in English and is on the net. You can access it every day. I don't know if it is
interesting for you or not, but it contains a lot of information about Iraq and we do our best. We get the
mainstream media and the alternative media through the net also. Before that the best presents my friends
used to bring me were some books and some newspapers!
The
Artist : Noori Al Rawi. (Recorded
by Tony Maturin)
[Before the embargo] we used to visit America, and were very happy and invited them to visit us in Iraq. One
of our young artists won a $100,000 award for first place in a competition. But that was the last one.
But now we are banned from the art exhibitions. They don't explain why, but the reason is well known. Even
though art is not political, in Iraq everything has to be kept inside the country.
He talked about the suffering - he's not forgotten that he's an artist. Being a working artist is his life
and he wants to be very well known, especially through exhibitions in America and Europe and so on.
Now, when he wants get a visa to America or Europe he cannot because he is an Iraqi. They don't allow any
painter to help Iraq. It is impossible to get a visa for any country in Europe.
This is the great voice of America! And they treat us like servants. Why? This Iraq has a big heart. We tell
everybody in the world, "Welcome!" Our country puts no doors between anybody from any country and
Iraq.
We received our friends from all over the world. But they stopped everything and now we can receive nobody -
nothing for Iraq. When I receive a magazine from the US my son sends it to me one page at a time at monthly
intervals because they aren't allowed to send to Iraq more than 20 gms in the post.
This is the Great America! This how they fight our culture. The magazine is American, the News Art of
America.
To have founded this gallery means a lot of things. I believe that Iraqis have a kind of energy and I
believe in that energy and we defy the Europeans with this work which has no relation with the state.
We hope that the message will pass among you to take home. How we are under the power of Europe, and to show
Europe how the suffering is here in Iraq. As artists, we want you to take this message please to your
countries.
What really makes us sad, I was working in the Ministry of Culture and we met always delegations of
culture from all over the world, now, under the embargo, no one is interested in our problems.
We wish that those old friends would visit us and take an interest again in our problems here and in this
manner of living which is not appreciated.
Interview
with Carel de Rooy, Director of UNICEF in Baghdad. (Recorded
by Tony Maturin)
Between 75 and 85 there was a period of very heavy social investment. Oil was nationalised in 72 and during
those ten years this country made very heavy investments in education, health, water supplies, sanitation.
They achieved very high standards. Of course by mid 85 because of the Iran/Iraq war the social investments
started to decline. One has to remember that.
Then you get at the end of the decade the Gulf War. Devastating of course. And on top of that you have 11
years of sanctions. So it's a cumulative process which has led to the situation where we are today.
If one were to take a few statistics and try to summarise the situation, the most important and impacting
statistic is the under 5 mortality rate. It's measured in blocks of 5 years. There was a survey done in 1989
with a mid-point of around 87, that survey provided a figure of 56 per 1,000 of deaths of children under 5
years old. That's child mortality generally. Another 5 year period surveyed ten years later with a mid point
of around 97, provides a figure of 131 deaths per 1,000. In other words a mortality rate 2.5 times that
measured a decade before. 160% deterioration in the situation of child mortality. So that's the 1999 figure.
Now, one has to remember that the oil-for-food programme started really de facto in 97 so that the last
measurement mid-point 97, so that was probably the worst situation you would have had in that decade. The
OFF programme, we have not measured as yet the mortality impact of that programme. We do have some
indications that from a malnutrition perspective the situation has stabilised, and possibly even improved a
little bit in the south/centre, and improved somewhat more in the northern part of the country. So that it
is likely that if one were to measure mortality you might see some small improvement in the under 5
mortality rate, but it would not be something drastic. And still there is an unacceptably high rate of
mortality.
Why is there a difference between north and south? Well in the north there is a cash component which allows
the UN agencies who do the implementation in the north to rehabilitate schools, rehabilitate primary health
care centres, train teachers, train water and sanitation personnel, pay all kinds of government personnel in
the health sector. It allows the UN system to invest in mass media campaigns for health education and
support. It allows investment in management information systems. So there is a series of things one can do
in the north which one cannot so in the south because of the absence of a cash component.
Why is there no cash component in the south? Because the government and the sanctions committee have not
been able to agree on the modality of spending and managing that money. And it really affects the
effectiveness of the OFF in the centre and south.
Other issues - there have been gaps in the provision of medicine and vaccines. There have been breakages in
supplies, but we have seen no significant differences in supply and breakages both in supply of both of
medicines and vaccines between north and south. By which I mean there is an equitable distribution of
whatever is available. There are no indications of its being otherwise.
What are the main issues leading to child mortality? There are several issues. Anaemia is on the
rise. 60% of pregnant women have anaemia. Why is anaemia on the rise? Because the purchase power of
the population has reduced so drastically. You have to
remember that between 85 and today there has been a depreciation of the Iraqi dinar of 6,000%. It used to be
$3 to one Iraqi dinar, and now it's 2,000 dinar to one US$. So there's been a massive depreciation that has
affected the purchase power of the people. The common people today, although there is a food basket which is
distributed to 24 million people in this country. Every month everyone gets access to a food basket, at a
rate of about 2,300 kilocalories per capita per day. It's a massive food distribution system. According to
the World Food Programme probably the best in the whole world. And in scale also one of the largest. On the
one hand it provides minimum food needs, but it is heavily biased towards carbo-hydrates, sugar, oil. There
is very little protein. And the eating habits of the Iraqis, they are basically a meat-eating people. Meat
has been the vehicle to obtain protein needs. They don't eat much eggs, milk, cheese as one may have in
other countries. There is a massive protein deficit right now - protein/energy malnutrition as they call it.
That leads to anaemia, anaemia in turn leads to low birth-weights. There has been an almost five-fold
increase in low birth-weight. That is, children born with a birth-weight below 2,500 gms.. When a child is
born with low birth-weight, the child is at risk. The child is much more vulnerable to disease, and to all
kinds of problems. So it is already an indicator of mortality. When you have a large low birth-weight
proportion, the likelihood of a child dying is much bigger. And that is linked to anaemia.
Then on top of that you have a reduction - I mean we have a very low level of breast feeding. 17% of the
mothers do exclusive breast-feeding. From 0 to 4 months exclusive breast-feeding. That's very low. And it
puts children at risk. Why is the proportion of mothers doing exclusive breast-feeding so low? The main
reason is - mothers have to work. Mothers have to go out and get their income so the
breast-feeding is not something which is done so easily. But there's also a problem which we brought up with
the government. The government includes an infant formula in the food basket, and when the formula is mixed
with polluted water or not handled hygienically one has a risk of diarrhoea, so that is a problem. And we
are trying to address it by promoting
breast-feeding and trying to convince the government to extract the infant formula from the food basket.
But ultimately the real problem is poverty. The oil-for-food programme is a humanitarian programme. It was
conceived and designed to address humanitarian problems. It's not a developmental programme designed to
address income, to address employment, to address structural issues. So it is not a solution in the long run
and if it were to be extended for a very long period it would be absolutely dramatic. So it is definitely
not a solution and its impact on the children has been felt very clearly.
Maturin: In the supply of medication - we go to hospitals and they say, "We don't have
chemo-therapy," or, "We get the first phase but not the second phase." What are the
causes of that?
Carel de Rooy: This kind of issue you should probably bring to the WHO, my colleague [name
unclear on tape], he would have more details about that. I honestly don't have the exact answer for that. I
do know that, for more complex medicines there have been breakages in supply, and it's probably more to do
with bureaurocratic issues. Slowness in getting things ordered, contracts being interrupted. The lack of
commercial protection - there is no commercial protection for the Iraqi government in any supply it brings
in. That is a major constraint, a major weakness in the oil-for-food programme. So suppliers can break off
contracts just like that without any commercial penalty, so that is a very serious constraint. We have
brought it up in the 661 Committee, the Sanctions Committee presentations that we, the UN have done, and
there was one recently in late March on health and nutrition. The lack of commercial protection is a problem
and you have all sorts of problems arising from that. Of course there might be issues on hold for different
reasons. That is another problem. But on medicine I propose you talk to my colleague the WHO representative.
Maturin: In what way is the embargo affecting the choices that teenagers can make for their lives?
Carel de Rooy: Teenagers obviously are an interesting issue for us of course. And a very important
one. As I said, the humanitarian programme does not address structural issues. Employment and all that is
not addressed by it, so it definitely is not something you want to stretch into the future because it
definitely is affecting the fabric of society. For example, a school teacher earns between three and five
dollars a month. An engineer earns the equivalent to ten to fifteen dollars a month. A casual labourer,
unskilled, earns about two and a half dollars a day. A skilled casual labourer, a carpenter or an
iron-bender can make seven dollars a day. Because in the private sector with contracts the private sector
pays better today than the government services. That is very confusing for an adolescent. Why should an
adolescent go to university when a skilled labourer is making as much in two days. So I would assume that
adolescent would be pretty confused. so it is definitely a situation that should not be maintained for a
long
period. I hope that at some point the situation improves.
Maturin: There seems to be quite a thriving internal economy. You have dollars on the outside and
obviously the Iraqi people can't export. But within the country money is circulating in dinars and –
Carel de Rooy: Well but not much either and I don't think it reaches the majority of the people.
There's not enough money in circulation. Just to give you one example, the food basket. If I were to make a
very, very rough estimate, I would guess that the average family - you take the family income and you relate
it to the food basket and you have about twenty five dollars per person. So in a family of six you have
about one hundred and fifty dollars worth of food distributed monthly. And you take that and you add the
family income, you'd say that the food basket would be roughly 80% of the family income. That already shows
that there's not much cash floating around. And the dependency on that food basket is horrendously large.
Maturin: What about the supply of calcium in the diet.? Because I'm vegetarian and I get my
calcium from vegetables.
Carel de Rooy: There's obviously some supply of vegetables. People do eat vegetables. But they all
get very expensive, and particularly now when we are heading into the dry season they become less available,
there is a problem with access to vegetables and fruit of course. And it's not something which is easily
obtainable. And with the purchase power that people have it's not easy.
Interview in Basra Leukaemia Hospital
(Recorded
by Tony Maturin)
Director of Hospital?
Malformations among the new-born babies. These anomalies are severe in size, and new syndromes not mentioned
in medical textbooks. And most of these malformations are incompatible with life. That means that babies die
a few hours after delivery. These are directly related to the effects of depleted uranium used against my
country by the American and British forces in 1991.
And the effect of that radiation on pregnant women and that is confirmed by measuring radiation levels in
........?....... tissue from the new-born and related to families living nearby and related to families
whose husbands shared in the war. That is, soldiers or officers exposed to this type of depleted uranium
used in those types of weapons.
And we have mixtures of these things, and I will show you details of malignancies and types and I will let
my colleagues talk to you about the effects of the economic sanctions and the effects of the depleted
uranium and the increases of incidence and severity and virulence of such cancers and malignancies and the
dire effects of the economic sanctions. Shortage, and sometimes severe shortage or absence of chemo-therapy
treatment available and facilities for early diagnosis and treatment of such conditions directly result in
poor diagnosis and contribute to a poor mortality rate that unfortunately exists. Seven times more than
1991.
Woman doctor:
Congenital malformations are increasing after the war. In 2001 the number of congenital malformations in
this hospital only, is about 252. Up more than three percent. And most of the congenital malformations
presented are multiple deformities, and are not mentioned in the journals of the last twenty years. Most of
the congenital malformations may be syndromes but these are not syndromes, and most of them die immediately
after delivery.
Not only the congenital malformations increased after the war. Someone asked me , "How do you prove
(the link between depleted uranium and cancers?)" I tell you that some of the women are not married at
that time. But still now there is an increased percentage of congenital malformation. During the war, some
of the women were not pregnant at that time. Now they get pregnant and produce babies with congenital
malformations now. Indicating that most of the women during the conception period may have been exposed to
DU. This would lead to the DNA structural defect. A chromosomal defect. In the father and the mother. And
some of the fathers and the mothers were not married at that time. But in these years most of the fathers
maybe shared the war and the mother suffered exposure at that time to DU.
And if there was a highly sophisticated lab here you would be able to document what we say. If we take a
blood sample from the mother or from the baby and send it for chromosomal study there is breakage of this
chromosome. Due to the exposure to the radiation, but we do not have this. And most of the congenital
malformations that occur in these years are the same as those occurring in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and
Chernobyl.
Kris Merckx: "Did you see the same pictures or the same abnormalities as were seen in
Hiroshima?"
Doctor: Exactly, I tell you, some of the babies without lips, without eyes, without noses, I have
some of the photographs of these babies. These are very terrible pictures. And some of the babies born in
this hospital are just pieces of meat. Without heads, etcetera, and they die immediately after
delivery. And this problem affects many families. Most of the family get psychologically upset, and most of
the mothers after delivery - before the war most of the mothers asked is the baby a boy or a girl? But in
these years they say is it normal or abnormal? This is their first fear, congenital malformation. I tell you
this is only in this hospital. There are another three hospitals in this governorate responsible for
delivery. This (that I have been telling you about) is only in one hospital.
Malignancies - cancer cases - there is also an increase in cancer cases after the war. As compared with
1990. By 1995 there was about a hundred percent increases in cancer, and in these years about two hundred
and forty two percent increase. And leukaemia about one hundred percent increase. In the last year there
were one hundred cases of malignancies, and leukaemia seventy cases. And the number of cancer cases was
ninety two in the last year. This is in children only. And in leukaemia this year about sixty cases.
Anna Riatti - Bridge to Baghdad, Baghdad.
(Recorded by Tony Maturin, April, 2002.)
I will describe to you the aim of this project. The Sinbad Project was created to solve, of course in a
little part, the problems of malnutrition and diarrhoea. Because in Basra these are the main problems of the
children. That of course is a consequence of the condition of the water. You can see that in Basra the
situation of the water is really bad. So we have a lot of cases of diarrhoea and
malnutrition according to the data the authorities give us.
So we started to work in Basra in the health field in 1994, to evaluate the situation. And this little
Primary Health Care Clinic has existed since 1996. And it was created to take car of the malnutrition and
diarrhoea. Because at that time the conditions of the other Primary Health Care Centres in Basra governorate
weren't able to take care of these things. So we decided to
create a special place specially for children from nought to five years.
We give the medicines free of charge, to every child, and we are obliged of course to import into Iraq these
medicines from outside. You cannot find these medicines in Iraq because of the embargo.
Maturin: Why is that? Because these medicines are essential medicines and essential medicines are
supposed to be allowed freely into the country.
Anna Riatti: You mean the OFF programme should cover them, yes. Well, it should, but in reality
it's not possible to import all the medicines that they need.
Maturin: Do they get held up, in the 661 Committee for example?
Anna Riatti: I think there are two components in this problem. Some get held up, but there are also
difficulties in ordering because of the embargo. Whatever it is, they control the importation of medicines.
And it's impossible to import all the medicines they need for all the children's diseases in Iraq.
As you know, when you have a situation like this one in Iraq, a country under embargo, you don't need only
medicines. Even though the health care programme is really important you still have to take care of the
water situation. Also some facilities. As you see here in Baghdad there are some cars that are imported. So
they are trying to provide all the needs according to what they can import through the OFF programme. Of
course this is not enough to cover all the needs of the children. And apart from these, our medicines are
going according to the needs of the south, and after discussion with local institutions are going in part to
our project and in part to the hospitals.
When a child arrives in our project, as you saw, we also have a laboratory room in which the technician does
the tests to evaluate which kind of virus is causing the trouble. Because there are a lot of things to
consider. But what we do - it happens sometimes that in our Centre we are not able to solve the child's
problem. Because maybe the situation is worse than usual. So in theses
cases we have a consultant who is working in the children's hospital in Basra and we send the child directly
to the hospital where we have a consultant who will take care directly of this child who is in a bad
condition. Worse than the others which we can manage.
So we agree to send also some medicines to cover the lacks of the hospital, because they also have their
problems. So we do our best, but of course it's not enough, because in this project we treat approximately -
last year we treated 9,000 children, and most of them came two or three times. So it means that these
diseases are spreading. Because if one child came once or twice,
there is a deep problem.
For us this is a good thing, because we have a file for every child so we can evaluate the medical and
clinical situation of the child because all the data for the child are included in our file. And that's
important because in this Centre, we do also some educational programmes for the mothers on breast feeding.
It's important of course because some of these mothers are not able to manage the simple things like making
the child avoid drinking undrinkable water. So we explain to them how to avoid these things. For this we
publish a little book as part of the Sinbad Project. We are also running a project in the field of training
because prevention is much more important than curing.
Maturin: Tell me, how do parents manage to boil their water?
Anna Riatti: They have little electrical things that are not always working because in Basra
especially there is not always electricity. Especially in the summer season when the diarrhoea is more
widespread because of the fact that it's hotter (a steady 50 degrees). So they cannot always boil the water.
I suppose also in the little villages some of them use also the little fire.
I spent three months approximately in Basra last year, and I remember that I went to a little village one
hundred and fifty kms from Basra. I came back at four o'clock in the afternoon and most of the time there
wasn't water. In the morning when I got up and also in the afternoon till eleven or twelve in the evening
because they cart the water. Sometimes also here in Baghdad.
There are two kinds of problems. One for example is inside this hotel, because they can't provide water
upstairs because they can't renew the pipes. And when they have a lot of gas, especially in the summer
period, people shower two or three times a day and so they finish their water.
The other problem in the hotel I'm speaking of is that sometimes they cut the water in the area. Also
in some schools here in Baghdad there isn't water and the children are obliged to use the two or three
teachers' bathrooms. In Basra it's worse. And in the small villages worse again!
Bridge to Baghdad works a lot in the little villages where we're trying to make an integrated project in a
lot of fields. Particularly in education and health, because it is the only way to see some results.
Maturin: do you deliver medicines in the villages too?
Anna Riatti: No, we only rehabilitate Primary Health Care Centres in the villages. We build some
water stations using the osmosis process which is one of the technologies available here in Iraq. And the
results are fantastic, because I used to drink out own water and nothing happened to me. That was very nice!
Also we did things with the children, like street theatre, to teach them how to use the water, how to boil
the water. To teach them which behaviours are better in this field. In this village there is a big problem
of water because if you make a tour of the village you can see that the women go every day to fetch the
water from the river. And they boil this water and drink it, because there is not enough water for
everybody. Now that we have built this water station
the situation has improved a little because the station is producing one hundred and fifty cubic metres a
day. And we distribute this water around the village.
Maturin: You're working in one village. How many villages are there?
Anna Riatti: I don't know. But the situation is improving a just a little now because of this new
technology I told you of. There are some contractors who are able to build the stations. But the problems
are great so you need a big big action in this field of water. So you build the water station and this is
the better thing that you can do. You try to do something in the field of water, in
Basra for example, where there is a big problem of organisation because of sewerage. So from one station in
Basra the water is going underground and sometimes because of the disorganisation of the system it becomes
contaminated with sewerage. This is really another big problem. And one of course can do nothing about this.
But this is another thing that makes the situation worse for the population.
Maturin: Who pays the staff at the Sinbad Project?
Anna Riatti: We do. As you saw, all of them are Iraqis. But we have some consultants who come every
year to stay to evaluate the improvements to the project. One mission came two weeks ago, and we decided to
invest more in training. Because this is another important need.
Maturin: If you had a lot more money, would you still work in the are of the treatment of
diarrhoea, or would you move on more into the area of malnutrition ?
Anna Riatti: For sure into malnutrition.
Maturin: What can you do about malnutrition?
Anna Riatti: First of all with a big public campaign to teach the people how to avoid
malnutrition. For this reason the Sinbad Project could not work in a good direction if we don't carry out
educational training for the mothers. This is important. and always we have to have this link that we have
till now between the health situation and the water. If we don't work on the water at the same time we
will not solve the problem. Yes, of course we save the lives of a lot of children, but prevention must be
the main aim.
And first we have to prevent in our countries the directions they are taking towards this country! First of
all with our neighbours, in Italy for me, in New Zealand for you, to make the people aware, because you can
do a lot things here, but I continue to think that our presence here is only to give a sign of solidarity.
What we have to do is really a political action in our countries where we know the culture and how to move
the system. Because of course the situation in this country is like this because of the embargo.
Maturin: Yes, well, we've been trying to do that for years in New Zealand and I don't know how
much progress we're making. I hope this visit will help us in that direction.
Anna Riatti: I'm sure. Because this is the first time you've been here? And when you see the
situation you cannot return to New Zealand and not fight against this.
Maturin: No, but one of and problems in our counry is that people say that the Iraq government is
the problem. They say that there are plenty of medicines coming into the country, but the Iraqi government
is not distributing them. And I don't think that's true.
Anna Riatti: Yes, but the Iraqi government is a consequence of the embargo also. That is not the only
cause. I mean, if you cut the embargo, this situation will improve for sure. Because this is a country that
has a lot of capacity. It is a country full of culture, a country full of intelligent people. Without the
embargo they can solve all the problems that they have. They don't need our help. The fact that is under our
eyes is that the embargo creates problems only to the people. Because the few persons who have the power
still have the power. I want to say more, the embargo is increasing their power.
The only thing is that during the embargo, the only thing that is getting worse and worse and worse is the
situation of the people.
Maturin: When we're talking about the food basket that the government provides, there is no fresh
fruit in it, nor green vegetables? Then how do people get sufficient calcium in their diet? It's a basic
diet, but is it sufficient?
Anna Riatti: Of course it's not sufficient. It's not sufficient also because according to the last
data it cannot provide everything the people need. UNICEF will give you all the precise figures about this.
UNICEF is doing a lot of work, apart from the rehabilitation, that is more simple to do.
Maturin: We see on the roadsides, small local farmers' stalls of fruit and vegetables. Can the
people buy them? Do they have enough money to buy extra food like that?
Anna Riatti: I think that in the villages the way of living of the people is better than in the city.
I think that the city people have many more problems than the village people. Because as you know, in the
villages there is the tradition of the big family, so all of them help each other. So it's easier to survive
in the villages, in this field I mean. Because they have more problems than here in
the city.
Here in Baghdad the prices are increasing day after day. So the people in the villages are not dying because
of the food. They're growing their own food. One thing that is important to say is this. In these last two
or three years this country learnt a big lesson from the embargo. Because before the embargo they didn't
increase their agriculture. Because they used to import all their
food from outside. Because they had this fantastic black oil that could solve all their problems.
After the bombing of the Gulf War, it's sure that the cases of cancer and leukaemia and a lot of
malformations in children increased. This is worse because they lack special medicines and they cannot treat
all these cases of leukaemia and cancer. It's an issue of there being a lot of components that go to make
the situation here terrible for the people.
Maturin: Many people, and some in our country, say that depleted uranium is not the problem. That
perhaps it is chemical.
Anna Riatti: But there are a lot of papers and papers and papers that show you that the uranium is
the problem. And because of the pattern of the cancers.
Radio NZ
interview with Geoff Robinson, 17/5/02.
Geoff R. : Before I introduce my guest, I just want to give you a little basic history, because I
think sometimes we forget these matters. So I'm quoting here, selectively admittedly, the Statesman's
Yearbook. Iraq, formerly Messopotamia, was part of the Ottoman empire from 1534 until captured by the
British in 1916. In 1932 Britain's mandate expired and Iraq became an independent country. In 1958, it
became a republic, in 1979 Saddam Hussein, then Vice President, became President in a peaceful transfer of
power.
In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran. A UN-arranged cease-fire took place in 1988. On the second of August, 1990,
Iraqi forces invaded, and
rapidly overran Kuwait. The UN Security Council voted to impose total economic sasnctions on Iraq until it
withdrew from Kuwait. In
1991, the UN Security Council Resolution permitted Iraq to sell oil to pay for food and medical supplies and
start a reparations fund.
It says sanctions have undoubtedly harmed Iraq, but Saddam Hussein remains strong, while the population at
large suffers
increasing deprivations.
Joining me now in the studio is Tony Maturin. He's a Quaker, he's an activist, and he's just been to Iraq.
He went to Iraq on behalf
of the Council for International Development, he joined a fact-finding mission there. Now let's let him tell
the story. Good morning Tony, welcome.
Geoff R. : So,
how were you chosen, and why you?
Maturin: A long story. Partly because I tried to get out of it, I tried to get government interested.
I'd heard of this delegation going from Central Europe, mainly from Belgium, a hundred and twenty people,
European MPs, Dutch MPs, Belgian MPs, doctors, people from Medicines for the Third World, people like that,
and journalists and film crews, and I thought, well, it would be a chance for someone from say, the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and Trade to go and have a decent look round. But they said, no, they didn't want to do
that, there's no money or something.
And Quakers had been involved in fund-raising for sending medical supplies to Iraq through a little
organisation called Bridge to Baghdad based in Rome. And being involved in that, I heard of the Council for
International Development's travel fund, and I'd been
talking via e-mail to the organisers in Brussels, and after a while I found they'd put my name on the end of
the list and said we
expect you! And someone else picked this up here and someone else said we think you should go, and we
got the travel fund.
Because Quakers had been fund-raising, we had decided we didn't want to travel, the money was much better
spent on medical
supplies, so we put travel out of our minds and then this travel fund came up, so we said, there's not
Quaker money going into
this, we'll go.
Geoff R. : So, here you are, never having been there before, arriving in Baghdad with a hundred
and twenty others.
Maturin: Yes.
Geoff R. : What's it like?
Maturin.: With a hundred and twenty others, or Baghdad?
Geoff R. : In Iraq, what's it like? ( there was a good deal of chuckling in this exchange.)
Maturin: We went in through Syria, and the first impression you get of course is of deserts. And
they're wonderful. Lovely colours, lovely soft colours and soft light and no horizon, and misty and not very
hot at all. Then gradually you come to little bus stops and you meet a lot of friendly people. It's
obviously a very third world country. A lot of reconstruction going on. A lot of dirt, a lot of rubble. But
very good roadways, the roading has been repaired a lot. And you saw, on parallel roads, oil tankers going
backwards to Syria. We knew about that. And then you come to irrigated land, a bit of water makes a vast
difference there.
Geoff R. : Is it fertile with water?
Maturin: Yes it is, yes. They grow barley, because barley stands the salination apparently better
than other grains. They grow a bit
of rice, and they grow quite a bit of alfalfa for stock feed. And dates of course.
Geoff R. : Did you see much stock?
Maturin: Very little. Well, no, you're travelling through the middle of the desert and here's a
little mob of sheep with a shepherd
sitting down somewhere about a hundred yards away, and a donkey standing beside him and perhaps a couple of
sheep sort of nuzzling him. And a couple of miles further on there's another little mob, thirty or forty
sheep, perhaps a hundred sheep.
Geoff R. : So it was hard to work out from what you saw what the organisation of their farming is?
Maturin: From that yes. I never worked it out. I never worked out their method of agriculture either.
But it was obviously based on
irrigation, and probably flood irrigation at that.
Geoff R. : Were you stopping on the way, or did you drive more or less straight into Baghdad?
Maturin: More or less straight away. We had a couple of comfort stops.
Geoff R. : Baghdad then. The city, it was bombed, it was attacked, there were cruise missiles
flying in and out, did you see that sort of sign of damage there?
Maturin: Very little. I sent you an account of those attacks, the Coalition attacks, didn't I. They
were terrible. They went on for
about five weeks or something, I don't know how many thousand tons of bombs, and they literally destroyed
all of the civilian
infrastructure of the whole of Iraq, not just Baghdad.
Up till 1985, I was talking with the UNICEF man, and he said there was a really heavy investment in the
social structure of the
country. And so they had potable water for, say, ninety percent of the people, electricity the same,
sewerage the same, free
education right through tertiary, with degrees that were accepted overseas. A really good, well-organised up
to date society, and the hospitals I'm sure were as good as some of ours. And all of that was just bombed to
pieces.
The electricity supply was cut off nation wide within very few days, and that brought almost everything to a
halt. The pumping
stations were likewise destroyed, water and sewage pumping. The whole place was just a shambles. The US
boasted about having
bombed them back fifty years or more.
Geoff R. : That was then -
Maturin: That was then, but the sanctions are on top of that -
Geoff R. : But now? What's it like now? Do they have those things?
Maturin: Yes, they rebuilt a lot of it. They still have power cuts - a lot of people only have power
for say, two hours in the morning
and two hours at night. And that includes hospitals. And it includes pumping stations, and includes
everything a society relies on. And in the south of course it's horrendous because it gets very very hot in
the summer time. And the disease there from contaminated water is just going up and up and up.
Geoff R. : Well yes, you mentioned they had potable water, they no longer do, or do they in the
cities?
Maturin: It sort of works from the centre out. In Baghdad - I wouldn't drink the water - but I got
cholera, probably through being careless. But I was trying not to be careless. And through the rest of the
country there's not always potable water, and in the south, round Basra in particular, which bore the brunt
of those attacks, they say the water tends to be forty percent sewage.
Because of the power cuts which allow the water pumping stations to stop work so the pressure in the
pipes drops and the sewage
system is just old and obsolete and pumping stations there don't work either so they can't keep it moving
and so it gets sucked into
the water.
Geoff R. : Horrible.
Maturin: I know, it's horrible yes. I know, in eighty five for example, there were no cases of
cholera, and I think last year over two thousand.
Geoff R. : You came home with cholera? What's it like? What does it do to you? I mean it's one of
those words - people think cholera!
Maturin: Yes I know! When I got the first signs of it, just diarrhoea, I treated it as you would
here. Stop eating and you drink boiled water for a couple of days. And so I stopped eating, and didn't eat
for about ten days actually, or not very much.
Consequently you just get weak and more and more stressed. But there's so much going on that you can't stop!
Geoff R. : When you're on a trip like this you've just got to keep going. Yes, I know what you
mean. Back home you got proper
treatment?
Maturin: Yes, well, no treament required actually, it works its way out.
Geoff R. : Well I think we needn't go into that! Now tell me if you would what you saw of the
people in Baghdad. You talked about
friendly people. You were able to talk with anyone you wanted to?
Maturin: Almost, but not quite. Because we were there not at the invitation of the Iraqi government exactly,
but the Iraq Belgian
Friendship society, which of course is funded by the government. And what happens is - the Society organised
an itinerary for us, so
we went with a guide from them, which obviously had something to do with representing the government, and
interpreters, who didn't necessarily have anything to do with representing the government, and they were
very very good. And it was very easy to duck out of the programme and go to see the people you wanted to.
But first of all, I have images in my mind of the Saddam Children's Hospital for example. Went in there, and
there were sixty people
remember and it was very intrusive and very embarrassing to be in a situation like that. It was absolutely
horrible, and you go in
there, and the first ward you go into, it's - dingy - I mean it's no worse than just dingy. But there are a
line of beds and on each
bed there's a woman in the black Chador with a child, and only one of them asked me for money, most didn't.
And you sort of point at your camera and ask if you can take a photograph and you do and you get the name of
the child and the outlook from the nearest
doctor. And you see some pretty terrible things. Because mostly they're under ten, round about five perhaps,
and they're all
malnourished and they suffer from low birth weight. Low birth weight is one of the big problems for a start,
because sixty or
seventy percent of the mothers are anaemic.
Geoff R. : In the hospitals are the medicines getting through the sanctions
Maturin: No they're not - well, some are, but there are always shortages. I went up to the second
floor of that hospital. There's
no lift, the lifts don't work there, it's a bloody wreck, it's terrible, and I was in a room with some
incubators, and all of a sudden the passage outside rang with a woman's screams and this young woman was
being escorted to a ward where she fainted. She'd just lost her child who was about four months old.
And I spoke to the doctor about it, and asked him what it was. And he said it's gastro-enteritis, it's due
to malnutrition and we don't
have enough medicine to cover it. And I asked him how many cases he would have in a week. He sort of looked
at me a bit blankly and said, I don't know. So I said, ten? He said no more than that. Twenty? No,
more than that. Thirty? Put down any figure you like
he said, it doesn't matter, it's happening all over Iraq." And it occurred to me a little later, that
it was an inane question. It shouldn't have been a question. It should have been a statement, and the
statement is a very simple one. This should not be happening.
Geoff R. : Take me out of the hospital now, onto the streets. Are people moving around? Do
they seem to be, shall I say going about normal life? Driving around, shopping, things like that?
Maturin: In Baghdad itself? Full of taxis. There's some paint on some of them! I had a ride in a
couple and they're full of exhaust
fumes inside and they keep them going by cannibalising parts I guess. So there's quite a lot of traffic. And
it's pretty dangerous
I think. I had friends there who said we don't drive, we get a taxi.
You go into the suqs and the people are very friendly, yes, they're a great crowd. Everybody seems to know
the English word
welcome. And they're friendly in that way. That's in Baghdad where they're fairly used to visitors. What
comes across immediately - I was talking for example to one of our interpreters, we were standing on the
banks of the Tigris, it's very beautiful, but it's very low just now because Turkey's gone and dammed it
further up. And we were at the Museum of Reconstruction which has models of the buildings that were hit in
the bombing. You know, there were schools and hospitals and ministry buildings and radio stations, the whole
thing, and what happened was that the government got onto reconstruction very quickly. The country's rich in
building materials, all they had to import was the reinforcing steel. What also happened was, that in order
to keep some kind of economy going, they printed the dinar. Which resulted in inflation, something like
6,000 percent inflation, But at least it kept a little bit of money circulating. And it meant that people -
engineers for example, would be getting probably $30 a month. At the very most.
Geoff R.: So there was some money moving through?
Maturin: A little bit yes. But there's something like 60 percent unemployment. And if people do get
jobs, they're not steady jobs.
People work at three jobs during twenty-four hours as much as possible. Including mothers.
Geoff R.: You talked about malnourishment in terms of the people you saw in the hospitals, do the
people on the street seem
malnourished?
Maturin: They don't seem malnourished, and I brought this up with a newspaper editor. I said, you
know, they look well fed, well
clothed, and she said, well, what do you look for? What are the signs of the people suffering under the
sanctions like these. And
the signs really are in the figures, because they get a food basket from the oil-for-food programme. You
see, the Iraqi government
gets no money from the oil at all. It all goes through the escrow account. And they get this food basket,
about which the Director
of UNICEF, who gave me a quarter of an hour's very good interview, said the distribution is absolutely
superb. It's one of the biggest operations in the world, and one of the best caried out in the world.
Geoff R.: But the food is getting through to the people?
Maturin: Yes, but the Iraqis used to be a meat eating people. They used to get protein from meat. Now
they get beans and rice and
cooking-oil and tea and sugar and salt and not a great deal else. A little milk and high-protein biscuits
for lactating mothers and young children.
Geoff R.: A rather strange diet when you're used to something else.
Maturin: If someone came along to you and said you have to live on lentils and rice for the next ten
years, I guess you'd feel slightly
put out about it.
Geoff R.: You were getting around the country, you weren't only in Baghdad were you?
Maturin: No, we got down to Basra as well. Which is worse because it bore the brunt of the Coalition
bombing. And is further away from the centre, the it's very very hot there. Power supply there is worse, the
potable water situation is worse, sewage is worse. And the disturbing thing down there is the increase in
cancers and leukaemias.
We went into the Saddam Hussein Children's Hospital in Basra, and I went into one small ward, and there's a
child there with a brain
tumour, he was about ten I think, a lovely kid. But one eye was as big as a golf ball, it looked gross, I
took some video shots of it
actually. And the doctor lifted up his shirt and the shoulder was all swollen and right out of proportion,
and he said it was leukaemia,
and he said, "He came in about four years ago, we've known about him for four years, and we just
haven't got the chemo-therapy
drugs. They're not allowed through the sanctions." They're blocked, ninety percent of them by the
United States. You know, the United States has a huge amount on their conscience, if they have a conscience.
Some people in the States have I know, but others I don't think so.
Geoff R.: What about the spirit of the people?
Maturin: Wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I went there you see with the expressed purpose of trying
to discover why there were drug shortages. Because people say, "they're getting through, there's plenty
in the warehouses, it's the fault of the government." It's not the fault of the government, full stop.
But I found that the bigger issue was the whole issue of this culture which is being destroyed. And how the
people feel about their culture.
You get the feeling very quickly that they're tremendously proud about it. You know, there was the guy I
told you about I was
talking to on the river bank, he said to me, "Look at those bridges. They were destroyed by the
bombing. Each end was deliberately
bombed. And we've rebuilt them." And you look around, and they're rebuilding and rebuilding everywhere.
With quite primitive means mind you. I saw them paving the courtyard of a university they were renovating.
Two guys with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, and another guy squatting down with a little builder's triangular
trowel, patting it down. It's been going on for centuries and will go on for other centuries and without
using up the earth's resources. But there's this great pride in being part of an ancient, and immensely
valuable culture.
Geoff R.: Did you see any signs of the conflict between the Shi'ites, the Kurds, the non-Kurds,
the Iraqis?
Maturin: Oh no, we weren't there long enough and we weren't in the North either where most of that's
going on. The people I did
speak to - I met friends there in the form of an Iraqi man who was married to a New Zealand woman, and I
went and had a bit of time in their house.
Geoff R.: Tell me about it. What sort of conditions were they living in?
Maturin: They were living in very good conditions because he was a specialist and so he was well
paid. And he was working in the
private sector. And the house we went into was interesting because - you go into the main entrance and they
show you into a
room, perhaps ten yards by ten yards or something like that. Absolutely beautiful, stunningly beautiful. A
lovely marbled floor
and tyled walls, dark blue and hangings, simple but nice furniture. And he saw I think that I'd accepted it
as their living quarters.
Certainly not. Every Arab house has a guest room like this and this is far, far better than their living
quarters.
It's part of the Arab hospitality thing. And being a guest can be embarrassing because they look after your
every want. You can't
lift a finger. More than that, they take responsibility for you. If you turn out to be a bit of a rat bag
and behave badly outside,
they take responsibility for that. It's part of an ages old hospitality of which they're tremendously proud.
It's a lovely country you know. I came away impressed with the quality of that culture.
Geoff R.: You were in the nice room, did you get to see what the rest of the house was like?
Maturin: No! I got to see the street of course, which was largely rubble outside, with a couple of
big houses. What's happening is
that, some people with friends outside, can bring in dollars and make huge amounts of money on the exchange
rate, and grow very
very rich, and like the rich in most places they build these huge houses and live quite opulently. So there
were two houses like that, but the rest of the street was a shambles. Apart from this house, which was just
an ordinary looking house outside, with the usual sort of square building, flat roof, cool.
Geoff R.: What about military presence. Were you aware of it?
Maturin: I've been in Guatemala, and there the soldiers were all armed and carried their guns ready
to use. Here, there were soldiers around, not many armed. I spoke to one or two, asking directions, they
were friendly and helpful, all said welcome!
Geoff R.: And did the people you spoke with indicate they felt free to tell you anything they
wanted to, or did you feel that they
were -
Maturin: I didn't ask them that. I didn't ask them that because I know very well that that government
has a horrendous human
rights record. We know that. What we don't know, they're also a very benevolent government as far as the
country goes. They've
done tremendous things for that country. They've built it up from nothing, and they're building it up from
nothing again. And the
people I spoke to, taxi drivers, people in the suqs, that kind of thing, they all say - I asked them
specifically about how they feel
about the possibility of a US attack, and they all say, "Well, they bombed us last time and we rebuilt,
and if they bomb us again we'll
rebuild again. We'll fight them mind you, but we'll rebuild. And we have a country that our government is
doing their best to make a
strong country again."
And it's all part of this national pride. You know you speak to a doctor and ask him what are the shortages,
and he doesn't really
tell you. You know they're there. He tells you a little bit about not getting the right surgical
instruments, whatever, but he says, "We
improvise." He's simply saying, "We're not giving in." And that's the spirit of those people.
Geoff R.: So what did you come away thinking about in terms of the weapons inspections, the
sanctions, the whole question I guess
of the role of the UN, the US, in all this?
Maturin: Well I have no hesitation in blaming the whole thing on the US. I mean, there is a good case
to be made for their engineering the invasion of Kuwait in the first place. There's a very good case been
made against them by a guy called - Oh, sorry I've forgotten his name. An international lawyer in the
States. Who's saying they deliberately chose war, they're deliberately destroying this country. It broke
every UN Resolution you could possibly think of. It was meant to be done in the name of the United Nations
which is meant to be a humanitarian organisation looking after peace. And it just abrogated the whole thing.
I know the United Nations has been taken over, especially the Security Council. And the Sanctions Committee,
things they think should be placed on hold because they're "dual use" for example. Five billion
now. And a lot of them are humanitarian goods. So I put the blame fairly and squarely on the United States.
Geoff R.: Do you think sanctions should be lifted?
Maturin: Sanctions must be lifted. There's no doubt about that. The weapons inspection thing I think
is a red herring. If people are
concerned about weapons inspectors, that's their affair. But they must not use sanctions as a political tool
as is being done now.
Geoff R.: Because they're hurting people?
Maturin: It's terrible. UNICEF will still tell you that between four and five children under five are
dying each month. And this has
been going on for the last twelve years. And it's going to contine to go on as long as there are any form of
sanctions.
Geoff R.: Do you believe there should be restitution that other nations should be paying Iraq?
Maturin: Very definitely. I think that any fair-minded person would say that if one country goes in
and destroys another country, for
no reason, then restitution should be made. And there wasn't a reason - the reason was not to get Iraq out
of Kuwait. Because the sanctions should have been lifted as soon as Iraq withdrew and they weren't. The
United States changed the goal posts there. I
would call very strongly that the Coalition partners should pay restitution according to their share in the
destruction.
Geoff R.: We contributed!
Maturin: I know, specially the previous government. We had a frigate in the Gulf supporting the
blockade. Our present government certainly has moved ahead, but it's not doing anything to lift the
sanctions. They're saying, modify them. But modification, is really, when you look at them, tightening the
grip of the United States on this country.
Geoff R.: Do you believe then that the United Nations, which supposedly represents world opinion,
can do anything here?
Maturin: With its present constitution, no. Because you've got the five permanent members, and only
one of them needs to veto
something - and it happens over and over again. Until the Security Council is reconstituted so that you
don't get one country
controlling it, then we've got problems with the United Nations. But I'm quite certain we must make every
effort to return the UN to the moral high ground where it belongs. And that's what I want the New Zealand
government to do. I want us to take an initiative in all this. Because a lot of countries now - I've got a
list of them - are calling for the lifting of the sanctions. And even for the restoring of sovereignty to
Iraq, including the Arab league and people like that.
Geoff R.: Tony, thank you very much for joining us today. Sharing your story. I'm glad to hear
you're recovering from cholera. And
thank you for the insights you've offered us too. It's a part of the world we hear a lot about, but don't
know much about, and it's interesting to hear your first-hand impressions.
The
Dominion
May 15, 2002.
CHOLERA was virtually unheard of in Iraq before the Gulf War, now it is commonplace - as Wellington man Tony
Maturin found out first-hand. Mr Maturin visited Iraq with an international delegation of 120 observers this
month to witness the effect of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the
subsequent Gulf War.
Three days into the two-week trip he contracted cholera, probably as a result of consuming contaminated
water or food. Mr Maturin was lucky: even though the illness knocked him around pretty badly, he could
return home to New Zealand where medical care and medicine, clean drinking water and sanitary conditions saw
him recover.
Thousands of Iraqis are not so fortunate. There were no cases of cholera in Iraq in 1989, last year
there were about 20,000 cases - and many tens of thousands of people have died from drinking contaminated
water.
Clean water supply is just one of many
vital human needs denied to Iraqi people as a result of the sanctions, Mr Maturin says.
He says United States-led bombing of Iraq destroyed almost all vital services: water, sewerage, roads,
communications, food supply,
electricity, industry, hospitals and schools, and the effect of sanctions in the following decade have been
just as devastating.
The UN and other agencies have put the death toll resulting from attacks
on Iraq and sanctions at 1.5 million people.
In 1989 7110 children under five - the group most vulnerable to ill-health- died of respiratory infection,
diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis and malnutrition - by 1999 that figure had risen to 73,572, a more than tenfold
increase.
The number of underweight births has increased five-fold in the last decade to one in four.
Nutrition-related illnesses, malnutrition, infectious diseases, tuberculosis, cancers and polio have also
skyrocketed.
Illnesses which had high survival rates before the sanctions now have high fatality rates without treatment
and medication, and through the cumulative effect of the sanctions on the physical well-being of Iraqis.
Decaying hospitals with limited electricity, equipment, medicines, antiseptics, anaesthetics, ambulances and
dressings lose patients who they could easily save under normal conditions, Mr Maturin says.
Major surgical operations have fallen 75 per cent from 15,125 a month in 1989 to just 3823 by November
1999. Before the sanctions Iraq had "top-notch" health and education systems comparable to
New Zealand's, but the health system there is now in desperate need, Mr Maturin says.
He visited the Saddam Hussein Children's Hospital in Baghdad, and describes it as "a terrible
place". The lifts did not work, many
areas were unlit, the electrical fittings stripped to be used elsewhere. He saw some incubators, but
medical supplies and equipment
were very sparse and in many cases unobtainable, staff told him.
Many children there were tiny and malformed as a result of malnutrition, and high anaemia rates among
mothers - about 60 per cent.
"A child died while we were there, about four or five years old. I heard this piercing scream
coming down the corridor, and it was a woman who had just been told that her child had died and she laid
down on the bed and fainted. It was the usual: malnutrition and gastro-enteritis and lack of
medicine. The doctor said he saw 10 or 20 or 30 such cases a week and it was the same all over
Iraq."
Despite the desperate situation, the doctors made determined efforts to improvise and do what they could, Mr
Maturin says.
"The conditions were absolutely terrible and unacceptable, but they were not going to be beaten by
it. It was like that everywhere: there was a tremendous sense of pride and national identity,
and belonging to an an ancient culture and they were tremendously proud of that."
Mr Maturin also visited the Basrah
Children's Hospital in the south of Iraq, where conditions were even worse - about 40 per cent of the water
was contaminated with sewage, and death and cancer rates were higher.
"I saw one little boy who had a brain tumour that caused one eye to have one eye of gross diameter, and
his shoulder was swollen to about four times its natural size becuse of leukaemia. He had come to the
hospital but there was no treatment for him, they could not give him chemotherapy because there was none.
"The doctor said the other children were all the same, and would die in a few months but they couldn't
do anything about it. And that's the ongoing story you hear over and over again." A food
rationing system delivers food containing 1100 calories a day
for every person in Iraq - in 1989 daily calory intake averaged 3400.
"The diet is horrendous, there is no animal protein like eggs or meat in the food baskets, no fruit or
vegetables, it's very basic: rice,
lentils, cooking oil, tea, sugar, salt and that's about it."
The Oil for Food programme is not doing enough to stop the poverty, malnutrition and deaths which the
sanctions are causing, Mr Maturin says.
He says Iraq needs cash so it can pay people in crucial positions like doctors and teachers, rebuild basic
services, and import, produce and distribute food.
Mr Maturin says there is no doubt the
Ba'ath regime is repressive, but he says the Iraqi Government has been demonised by the US media and given
little credit for doing a tremedous job in rebuilding following the almost total destruction wrought
by the attacks, and in distributing food.
Mr Maturin says his commitment to pushing to have sanctions lifted is driven by "a general abhorrence
of bullying" and as a Quaker he is part of a long tradition of involvement in peace and justice issues.
The visit was shocking, the experience had some delegates in tears. But Mr Maturin says that despite this he
felt heartened by the strength of will of the Iraqi people.
"Everyone in Iraq knows the word "welcome" and we heard it everywhere. Their hopsitality was
tremendous. There is a real will to survive."
He is writing a report on the trip for Disarmament Minister Matt Robson, will also report to the Foreign
Affairs Ministry and is seeking to raise awareness of the plight of the Iraqi people. The average New
Zealander has little idea - if they did they would be horrified, Mr Maturin says.
He says the New Zealand Government, and other Western countries, must take a stand against sanctions.
We took a stand on the nuclear issue, and we should do it again on sanctions, he says.
"The New Zealand Government should stop pussyfooting around and stand up to the UN and say these
sanctions are terrible, a disgrace, and they should be lifted."
The US and its coalition partners should also pay reparation for the damage inflicted on Iraq, he believes,
though he does not expect this will happen.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of the
Iraqi Government, sanctions are punishing innocent civilians - and poor civilians are suffering
disproportionately - and using them as a political tool.
Weapons inspections, and the threat of weapons of mass destruction, are not the real issues, Mr Maturin
says. "This is all about control of the second largest oil reservoirs in the world and US power".
The New Zealand Government's policy is support for "smart sanctions" targeting Iraq's political
and military elite (such as freezing
foreign bank accounts and arresting Iraqi leaders when they travel overseas) rather than the existing
wide-ranging sanctions.
Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff has said existing sanctions allow Saddam Hussein to build palaces while
ordinary Iraqis starve, and has said he feels the same way about Iraqi children dying as he felt when
militias were killing people in East Timor, and the West had to be persuaded to intervene.
Smart sanctions do not go far enough,
and nothing short of complete lifting of sanctions will alleviate the Iraqis' plight, Mr Maturin
says. "While we support the sanctions, we are at least partly responsible for what is happening.
Children are dying and we are responsible."
Helen Bain, Feature Writer, The Dominion, Wellington Newspapers Limited
Publishers of The Dominion, The Evening Post, Contact and NZ - InfoTech Weekly Level 5,
40 Boulcott Street P O Box 1297,
Wellington, New Zealand - Ph (04) 4740 138 - Fax (04) 4740 220
Wellington
Man Visits the Al Amiriya Bomb Shelter in Baghdad.
Inside it still smells of burnt concrete, eleven years after the attack. On Feb. 14, 1991, US-lead Coalition
aircraft dropped a bomb into the ventilation shaft of the Al Amiriya Bomb Shelter in Baghdad which opened a
great hole in the roof, and which must have killed instantly many of the 404 people inside. Civilians,
nearly all women and children who lived in the neighbouring residential area. Four minutes later they
dropped a second bomb - napalm or fuel-air - through the same hole, which finished their job. Only four
escaped.
You stand on the edge of the crater in the floor, beneath the bomb hole through a few metres of reinforced
concrete roof, with twisted reinforcing steel snaking away in all directions. All around you are the
blackened thick pillars that support the roof. Around them blackened walls, hung, like some of the
resistance head-quarters in rural Guatemala, with photographs of the dead.
Tony Maturin of Wellington was there in April of this year on a visit to observe the effects of the
sanctions on top of the destruction of 1991.
Octagonal, the shelter has an inside diameter of around fifty metres, and is lit here and there with
low-powered bulbs so that visitors can pick their way through the rubble and dust and, if so inclined, pay
their respects to the victims.
The place is a carefully preserved memorial to the dead. But more than that, an image, a graphic symbol of
one of the most deliberate, carefully planned pieces of barbarism of the late twentieth century. Because
that attack was but a small part of the destruction of a modern infrastructure that supported twenty two
million people. That supported a vibrant, highly educated, cultured people whose roots were in the
beginnings of civilisation. People who are proud of their traditions, proud to be Iraqis.
Soon after Xmas 1991, power stations, irrigation, electricity, water treatment and sewerage reticulation
systems, roads and bridges, railways, radio and communications, even schools and hospitals, were
deliberately destroyed in five weeks of aerial attacks. Not to mention people's homes, or the people
themselves. Nobody knows for certain how many thousands were killed in those attacks. They violated
all the Conventions of war, the United Nations Declaration of Human rights and the UN Charter itself. In
short, they were war crimes. And the sanctions have come on top of that, resulting, UNICEF will tell
you, in at least a million and a half deaths, as well as the loss of over four thousand under fives each
month, mainly from malnutrition, water-born diseases and shortages of medicines to save them.
Mr. Maturin joins the many high-profile UN personnel in unhesitatingly calling the sanctions a war crime. He
says that not only should they be lifted immediately, but that the Coalition partners should pay restitution
to Iraq for the 1991 destruction.
Mr. Maturin visited hospitals in Baghdad and Basra and saw some of those four or five thousand children who
would die before the end of the month from sanctions-related causes. He spoke with doctors and taxi-drivers,
artists and people in the suqs and mosques and visited the Primary Health Clinic in Basra that his
organisation, Quaker Peace and Service is supporting.
He found a people, who, although having lived through twenty years of war as they say, won't give in. That
determination showed
everywhere, from the doctors who said, "But we improvise." to the newspaper editor who said,
"Our culture is different to yours, but
it is as valuable as yours. We are as good as you are, and in some ways better."
He asked people if they were afraid of another US attack. The invariable reply was, "They bombed us
once, and we have re-built. And if they bomb us again, we will rebuild again."
But the smell of the Al Amariya Shelter sticks in his memory. Even the black pillars of the Wellington
Public Library remind him of his
visit.