When Maahti Atisaari, then Special Rapporteur to the United Nations,
visited Iraq in March 1991, he
wrote that "nothing we had heard or read could have prepared us for
this particular devastation - a country
reduced to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come."
An estimated quarter of a million had perished. Yet the war has
continued in the form of a UN
embargo unique in its ferocity.
To reflect on nearly a dozen visits since early 1992, is to raid
memories which haunt. Looking
through hundreds of photographs is to revisit children now dead - often
for want of simple medication -
wistful, tentative, shy, smiling - unbearable.
Ali was three when he lost his father in the Gulf War. Every day for
three years he ran repeatedly to
the grave, digging with his small hands, saying "It's alright daddy,
you can come out now, the men who
put you there have gone away..."
Ali was just one manifestation of what psychologists still describe as
one of the most traumatised
child populations on earth. With toys, books, pencils, and exercise
books vetoed by the UN Sanctions
Committee, even minimal escape into temporary normality is impossible.
Sugar Babies
By 1993, doctors had a new diagnosis. Women, too malnourished to breast
feed and unable to afford
milk powder, were feeding their babies on sugared water and tea. The
babies became chronically
malnourished and terribly bloated. Doctors named them "the sugar
babies".
In 1996, aid agencies reported malnutrition such that one third of
children now suffered stunted growth
or impaired intelligence due to lack of protein.
Childhood cancers are estimated to have increased fivefold since the
Gulf War - an increase some
experts have linked with the depleted uranium weapons used by the US
and Britain which left a residue of
radioactive dust througout the region.
Not Available
Oncologist Dr. Selma Haddad of the Al-Mansour Hospital in Baghdad was
reassuring small patients
and frantic parents.
For each case, she made out a meticulous treatment card - on the card
or between the lines of old notes
because paper is largely unavailable. A large consignment of pulp was
recently vetoed by the Sanctions
Committee.
Each child was prescribed ten to twelve different medications for the
early stages of treatment. Under
almost all she wrote "n/a, n/a ..." for not available.
For the medicines available, she prescribed only half dosage otherwise
the next child would have to go
without.
Each parent begged for full medication for their precious child.
To each she said gently, "Please, these are difficult times, don't be
selfish, look behind you ..."
Meanwhile, cancer treatments are vetoed by the Sanctions Committee
since they contain minute
traces of radioactivity.
This December in the UNICEF building in Baghdad a woman, incoherent
with grief, burst through
the doors. The story she sobbed out was a living nightmare. She had
five children. The previous Monday
the smallest had become ill, dehydrated with intractable diarrhoea.
(Water-borne diseases are endemic. Pipes
fractured during the war cannot be repaired for want of parts vetoed by
the Sanctions Committee). Having
no transport, she ran to the hospital with the child in her arms. They
had re-hydration fluid, but no
antibiotics, or the necessary gastro-nasal high protein feed. The child
died.
Returning home with him in her arms (only two ambulances in Baghdad,
for five million people -
consignment of new ones from France blocked by the Sanctions Committee)
to arrange burial, she found a
second child ill. She ran back to the hospital with him. He too died.
Returning agian, the third sick, same scenario, he too died.
She had come to UNICEF to beg for medication for the remaining two, now
also sick.
Common Humanity?
Children shiver in thunderstorms, thinking it is the bombers returning.
Many children no longer play
games - they remind them of their dead friends.
They will be shivering again if Britain and the US take threatened
further action.
Such action will effectively consign the UN Convention on the Rights of
the Child to the trash bin,
and with it our common humanity and right to call ourselves civilized.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a freelance journalist who has visited Iraq many
times in recent years. She is
currently working on a television documentary on the health effects of
radiation.
Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq
c/o Sebastian Wills
Clare College
Cambridge, UK.
CB2 1TL
tel +44 1223 509974
Email: saw27@cam.ac.uk
This article was reprinted from Peace News, February 1998.