February 2001

When former American secretary of state Madeleine Albright was asked by CBS’s`60 minutes` presenter Lesley Stahl if she thought the death of half a million children was a price worth paying she replied that "this is a very hard choice but the price, we think, is worth it." The half a million children [at the time in 1996] to which she referred were mainly under 5 year olds who had been slaughtered not by bombs but by the silent killer of near total sanctions imposed by the UN in 1990 on a country heavily dependent on imports.

Wednesday 17^th January saw the 10^th anniversary of the savage blitz of Iraq popularly known as the gulf war, although in reality it was more of a one sided bombing campaign than a war. The allied coalition, largely American with some legitimising British support dropped 88,500 tonnes of ordnance on a nation that had hitherto been seen as a bulwark against Iran and the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. This barbarous assault, which the Pentagon portrayed as a clean war using `high-tech weapons and smart bombs`, was presented to the public by a prostituted media as a crusade for freedom and democracy. In fact it was an act of mass murder that caused at least a hundred thousand deaths in the 45 day, 110,000 air sorties barrage. Thousands more were to die from the long-term effects of the 350 tonnes of DU [depleted Uranium] used to reinforce the thousands of shells expended in the bombardment. Even more were to die and are dying now from the crippling economic embargo imposed by UN resolution 661 on 6^th August 1990-ironically Hiroshima day. These sanctions against the people of Iraq have been the most stringent and destructive in history. Since their imposition they have blatantly disregarded international law and morality and are an utter betrayal of everything that the United Nations is meant to stand for. The UN was formed just after the Second World War with its stated objectives being to `save succeeding generations from the scourge of war` and to ensure that `Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care etc`. Those who sit in great comfort at the General Assembly Building and in the corridors of power in Washington and London ought to try telling that to the impoverished people of Iraq.

"Our quarrel is not with you, it is with your dictator, Saddam Hussein" President George Bush senior assured the Iraqi people in 1990 just before the bombardment began. That must sound as sick to them as his assertion that " We are doing our best to avoid civilian casualties " [i.e. by dropping lots of bombs on them]

A decade on, Iraq is long out of Kuwait and acknowledged as no longer being a threat by outgoing US defence secretary William Cohen and former head of the UNSCOM weapons inspectors Scott Ritter. The question thus begs when will these genocidal sanctions ever end and what now is their purpose?

I was privileged to visit Iraq with the New York based International Action Center [IAC] just a few weeks ago. This human rights organisation wants to end racism, sexism and poverty inside the United States and to stop State Department/Pentagon militarism and domination around the world. Their website www.iacenter.org is a mine of information on matters such as the Iraqi sanctions and the use of depleted uranium in Kosovo that the mainstream corporate media fails to report.

Travelling from their headquarters in downtown Manhattan I flew with them to Baghdad via Amman in Jordan. The group had been concerned at the State Department’s last minute attempt to force our group to travel to Baghdad by the torturous 18-hour desert drive. Fortunately this threat never materialised and we touched down safely at Saddam International Airport on the evening of Saturday 13^th January to a spontaneous burst of applause and a loud American chanting of "UN, US drop the sanctions now!"

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I must at this point confess to a sigh of relief, as I had felt more than a little apprehensive at flying over Iraqi airspace. It must be remembered that British and US planes patrolling the so-called `no fly zones` are engaged in bombing Iraq almost every day. Like the crippling effect of the sanctions this receives little mainstream media attention.

The airport officials asked to speak to the leader of our group former US attorney general Ramsey Clark who founded the IAC and who has led three previous sanctions busting missions.

We passed through customs with minimal fuss as the delegation travelled on a group visa. We were soon approached by camera crews, mainly Iraqi but with a few freelance Western journalists in attendance also. I felt a little too tired to comment at this stage and let the big Texan Ramsey and the other more garrulous Americans do the talking. My first impressions of the country were formed as our coach sped down the palm tree lined boulevards towards the Al-Rashid hotel where the 46 of us were to stay. This land continually demonised in the Western media, seemed so beautiful, so tranquil in the evening twilight, so undeserving of the harsh treatment the bombing and sanctions have caused their people. At the Al-Rashid we were courteously greeted with a buffet dinner and our group leader informed us that there were 20 rooms available. Doubling and trebling up as required I found myself sharing with an emeritus University Professor of American history who has been blind from birth. Remarkably, in spite of his disability he has been on three previous sanctions busting challenges to Iraq. In the hotel foyer there is a picture of the young receptionist killed by a cruise missile strike in 1993, a poignant reminder of just one of the many Iraqi lives lost to Western aggression. As you walk through the main doors there is a floor mural with an image of George Bush senior worded `Bush is criminal`. It is hard to disagree with this after you have seen first hand the awful damage inflicted on a largely defenceless country by so called precision bombs and sanctions that are supposedly aimed at the ruling elite and not the ordinary people.

We all retired early that night after our tiring 20-hour journey from New York knowing that we faced a gruelling schedule of visits and meetings the next day.

Sunday the 14^th of January saw us gathered in one of the large conference rooms for a morning meeting. Dr Abdul Razaq Al Hashami of the Organisation of Friendship, Peace and Solidarity [an NGO], which hosted us, welcomed the group. He made the point that the fate of the 23 million Iraqi people is in the hands of half a dozen members of the UN Security Council. The oil for food programme, which allows Iraq to sell some of its oil to pay for food and vital imports, is in fact a total fraud. Over the last 4 years $32 billion of oil was sold of which Iraq, after reparations to Kuwait and other deductions got $8 billion, this works out at about 7 dollars or £5 for each Iraqi per month-the grand sum of 16p a day. Perhaps those who sit in great comfort at the UN and the State Department [which effectively is the UN] should try living on that. It might be suggested that we were being given Iraqi propaganda but the figures quoted came from UN secretary general Kofi Annan. What we saw next certainly was not propaganda. It was a very moving experience.

We went by coach to the Amariyah air raid shelter, which was `collaterally damaged` on February 13^th 1991 at the height of the Gulf War. As we filed inside silently and respectfully the warmth and sunshine outside gave way to an eerie gloominess and chill inside. It was here that on 4am that fateful morning a tomahawk penetrator missile tore through the roof followed six minutes later by a second more powerful missile, which incinerated some 408 terrified women and children taking refuge inside. There were at most 14 survivors. The shelter itself is now a shrine to those who perished with pictures of those who died on the walls and daily floral tributes are laid. The most affecting reminder is the scorched shadow of a mother and her baby burnt indelibly on to the wall and a damning indictment of the crime that was done in our name.

Next came an even more emotive experience as we went to the Saddam children’s hospital. We were advised beforehand that this was a hospital and not a zoo and that we should be sensitive about taking photographs. The hospital has 360 beds and they see about 1,000 a day admitting 100 and releasing 100 a day. The most common infections are diarrhoea, gastroenteritis, measles and polio. There has been a big increase in cancer notably leukaemia, carcinoma, bone cancer and cervix cancer. The hospital sanitation is not that good and most equipment is out of date. Dry statistics do not hurt for if words were weapons surely the sanctions would have been lifted long ago. The sight of children dying before your very eyes certainly does hurt and those who say they agree with the sanctions should pay a visit to this hospital. There were many females in our delegation and the emotive sight of so many needlessly sick and dying babies reduced many of them to tears of despair. One Iraqi doctor who told me the sanctions committee denied even bags for blood transfusions asked plaintively " What have we ever done to you?"

I’m afraid I wasn't able to answer that.

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