Iraqi Children Should Not Suffer For Saddam Hussain’s Sins

by Robert Hazo

Commendable U.S. government and media concern for relieving famine in Zaire and Rwanda stand in sharp contrast to the continuing major famine which the United States has caused in Iraq.

What the Iraqi people have been suffering is a continuing hell on earth the dimensions of which are staggering. Carol Bellamy, who heads the United Nations Children’s Relief Fund, estimates that in Iraq “approximately 4,500 children under the age of five die every month from hunger and disease.” Other United Nations officials estimate that an additional 4,000 to 5,000 elderly and ill Iraqis also die prematurely every month due to the lack of food and medicine.

The numbers are so high because of the U.S.-instigated United Nations sanctions and boycott, and could go higher because of rampant inflation and because Iraq’s agricultural production is down by about one-third. Half of all the women in Iraq are said to be getting only 50 percent of their nutritional needs and most of a whole generation of children who survive for more than five years are in serious danger of never becoming healthy adults.

U.S. Secretary of State designate Madeleine Albright is fully aware that President Bush said again and again that Americans have nothing against the Iraqi people. Nevertheless, when faced with these facts as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she maintained that the picture can change dramatically if Saddam Hussain steps down. Since Saddam Hussain said long ago that he would never relinquish power, even if not doing so would start World War III, Ms. Albright has never explained just how the Iraqi people are to survive while they wait for the Iraqi dictator to implement her suggestion.

There is something not just callous but inhuman in this kind of diplomatic dismissal of indirect genocide. Ms. Albright knows the facts on the ground in Iraq and, therefore, knows just how powerless to alter the situation the Iraqi people have been and still are.

The situation is so bad that both the European Union and many Arab states have been pressuring the United States to get on with implementing the oil-for-food program which was agreed upon a full year ago. A memorandum of understanding was signed in May, after months of delay because Washington objected to some of the supplies requested by Iraq.

Then further delay was caused by American objection to the monitoring arrangements. Finally in August, the U.S. said it was satisfied, but shortly thereafter implementation again was delayed when internecine fighting broke out among the Kurds in northern Iraq. Since the government in Baghdad was involved on the side of one of the two Kurdish factions, Washington said it might delay the relief effort “indefinitely.”

Under the U.N. plan, the bulk of the oil to be sold is to be piped through the Kurdish enclave to Turkey which, of course, will profit from the $2 billion transfer. Still the U.S. has refused, even though the Turks wanted a test to be run to see if the oil would actually get through to them. Instead, the U.S. insisted that a fair share of the relief might not get to the Kurds without extensive monitoring, which the U.N. could not promise.

Waste and pilferage are inherent in massive relief operations, as the world learned in Somalia and may again see in Rwanda. But were those reasons for sending no relief at all?

A Heavy Price

The Iraqi people and many others have paid a heavy price in blood and suffering for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussain and the 1991 Gulf war to push his Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. After the ground war, the Saudi commander estimated that several thousand Iraqi soldiers died in the fighting on land. Multiply by three for those wounded and one can get an estimate of 10,000 casualties.

Add to that those who died during the 100-hour ground war, when a bomb a minute was dropped. Add to that the casualties on the crowded highway of death between Kuwait and Basra and one can double the 10,000 to 20,000.

Having urged the Iraqi people to revolt, we must add to the toll the casualties of the Shi’i uprising in southern Iraq against Hussain’s Republican Guard, as well as the Kurdish casualties during their uprising in northern Iraq. Add to that gruesome total the hundreds of Iraqi Kurdish civilians who died of disease and starvation in the mountains of Turkey and Iran while fleeing Saddam’s vengeance.

Today, almost six years after the end of the Gulf war, as many as 100,000 Iraqis may still be dying every year for lack of food and medicine. To end the dying, all President Clinton had to do this time is go through with the agreement to let the Iraqis sell $1 billion of oil every six months to provide food and medicine for their own people and make a start on paying reparations to those victimized by their invasion of Kuwait. U.N. monitors soon will know whether the supplies are making a difference. And, happily, they now are scheduled to arrive soon.

When the U.N. announces that fewer thousands and, after a time, only hundreds are dying of deprivation in Iraq, that will be evidence enough. What is at stake is nothing less than reverence for the sanctity of human lives, whatever their nationality.