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CounterPunch
February
13, 2003
Report from Iraq
Bombing the
Starving, Sick & Homeless
By CHARLIE CLEMENTS,
M.D.
I
am a public health physician and a human rights advocate. I have
just returned from a 10-day emergency mission to Iraq with other
public health experts to assess the vulnerability of the civilian
population to another war. I'm also a distinguished graduate
of the USAF Academy and a Vietnam veteran, so I have some sense
of the potential consequences of the air war we are about to
unleash on Iraq as a prelude to the introduction of American
troops.
The population of Iraq has been reduced
to the status of refugees. Nearly 60 percent of Iraqis, or almost
14 million people, depend entirely on a government--provided
food ration that, by international standards, represents the
minimum for human sustenance. Unemployment is greater than 50
percent, and the majority of those who are employed make between
$4 and $8 a month. (The latter figure is the salary of a physician
that works in a primary health center.) Most families are without
economic resources, having sold off their possessions over the
last decade to get by.
Hospital wards are filled with severely
malnourished children, and much of the population has a marginal
nutritional status. While visiting a children's hospital, we
were told about newly emerging diseases that had previously been
controlled when pesticides were available. (Current sanctions
prohibit their importation.) Later I saw a mother who had traveled
200 km with her young daughter, who suffered from leschmaniais,
or "kala azar" as it is known there. She came to the
hospital because she heard it had a supply of Pentostam, the
medicine needed to treat the disease. The pediatrician told her
there was none. Then he turned to me and, in English, said, "It
would be kinder to shoot her here rather than let her go home
and die the lingering death that awaits her". Our interpreter,
by instinct, translated the doctor's comments into Arabic for
the mother, whose eyes instantly overflowed with tears.
The food distribution program funded
by the U.N., Oil--for-Food, is the world's largest and is heavily
dependent upon the transportation system, which will be one of
the first targets of the war, as the U.S. will attempt to sever
transport routes to prevent Iraqi troop movements and interrupt
military supplies. Yet even before the transportation system
is hit, U.S. aircraft will spread millions of graphite filaments
in wind-dispersed munitions that will cause a complete paralysis
of the nation's electrical grids. Already literally held together
with bailing wire because the country has been unable to obtain
spare parts due to sanctions, the poorly functioning electrical
system is essential to the public health infrastructure.
The water treatment system, too, has
been a victim of sanctions. Unable to import chlorine and aluminum
sulfate (alum) to purify water, Iraq has already seen a 1000%
increase in the incidence of some waterborne diseases. Typhoid
cases, for instance, have increased from 2,200 in 1990 to more
than 27,000 in 1999. In the aftermath of an air assault, Iraqis
will not have potable water in their homes, and they will not
have water to flush their toilets.
The sanitation system, which frequently
backs up sewage ankle deep in Baghdad neighborhoods when the
ailing pumps fail, will stop working entirely in the aftermath
of the air attack. There will be epidemics as water treatment
and water pumping will come to a halt. Even though it is against
the Geneva Conventions to target infrastructure elements that
primarily serve civilians, this prohibition did not give us pause
in Gulf War I ---and, based upon current Bush administration
threats, will not this time. Pregnant women, malnourished children,
and the elderly will be the first to succumb. UNICEF estimates
that 500,000 more children died in Iraq in the decade following
the Gulf War than died in the previous decade. These children
are part of the "collateral damage" from the last war.
How many civilians will die in the next
war? That is hard to say. One estimate for the last Gulf War
was that 10,000 perished, mostly during the bombing campaign
that led up to the invasion. That figure will surely climb because
our government has promised that a cruise missile will strike
Iraq every five minutes for the first 48 hours the war. These
missiles will seek out military, intelligence, and security-force
targets around highly populated areas like Baghdad, Basra, and
Mosul, Iraq's largest cities, where "collateral damage"
is unavoidable. Unable to meet the acute medical needs of the
country's population now, the health care system of Iraq will
be overwhelmed by such an assault.
This scenario is conservative. I have
not taken into account any use of weapons of mass destruction,
or the possibility that the war will set loose massive civil
disorder and bloodshed, as various groups within the country
battle for power or revenge. I have also ignored what would happen
if we became bogged down in house-to-house fighting in Baghdad,
which could easily become another Mogidishu or Jenin.
There was a lot that made me angry on
that trip. I have worked in war zones before and I have been
with civilians as they were bombed by U.S.-supplied aircraft,
but I don't think I've experienced anything on the magnitude
of the catastrophe that awaits our attack in Iraq. Still, as
deeply troubling as this looming human disaster is, another issue
troubles me far more. If the U.S. pursues this war without the
backing of the U.N. Security Council, it will undermine a half-century
of efforts by the world community to establish a foundation of
humanitarian and human rights law. Such an act on our part would
also violate the U.N. Charter and make a mockery of the very
institution we have helped to fashion in the hopes it would help
prevent crimes against humanity. Many might define the consequences
of such an attack on the population of Iraq as just that.
Saddam is a monster, there is no doubt
about that. He needs to be contained. Yet many former U.N. weapons
inspectors feel he has been "defanged". His neighbors
do not fear him any longer. There are many Iraqis who want him
removed, but not by a war. Against the short--term gain of removing
Saddam, we must take into account that idea that we may well
unleash forces of hatred and resentment that will haunt us for
decades to come in every corner of the world. I can just hear
Osama Bin Laden saying now, "Please President Bush, attack
Iraq. There's nothing better you could do to help the cause of
Al Qaeda!"
Charlie Clements,
a public health physician, has spent much of his professional
experience dealing with issues of war, human rights, and the
humanitarian needs of refugees. He is the co-founder of the International
Medical Relief Fund (IMRF) and was president during the 16 years
it functioned (1982-1998). From 1984-1986 he served as the Director
of Human Rights Education of the Unitarian Universalist Service
Committee (UUSC). He has served on the board of Physicians for
Human Rights (PHR) from 1987 to the present and is currently
its past president. PHR was one of the founders and leaders of
the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Clements represented
PHR at both the signing of the Treaty to Ban Landmines in Ottawa,
Canada and the next week at the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony
in Oslo, Norway. He is also the founder of the International
Commission on Medical Neutrality, which has focused attention
on the need to extend the protections afforded military physicians
and patients by the Geneva Conventions in times of war, to include
both civilian health professionals and patients. Clements is
the author of Witness to War published by Bantam in 1984 and
subject of a 1985 Academy Award-winning documentary of the same
title produced by the American Friends Service Committee. He
is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and
a distinguished alumnus of the University of Washington School
of Community Medicine and Public Health. He is the director of
the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict
at the United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico. He can
be reached at: clclements@aol.com
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