datum: dec 97

The Sanctions Holocaust in Iraq
 
By Husayn Al-Kurdi
 
Exclusive for the Portland Free Press c Husayn Al-Kurdi
 
 The United States government and its associates have inflicted a
 genocide of holocaust proportions
on Iraq. The sanctions-embargo regime imposed by the United Nations
under U.S. supervision has resulted in the deaths of over a million
Iraqis, most of them children under the age of five. A plethora of
U.N. reports indicates that the Iraqi population has been reduced to a
level of poverty and suffering unheard of in the recent history of the
Middle East.
 
The purpose of the sanctions is allegedly to force the Iraqi
government to divest itself of all nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons-manufacturing capability. This gives Iraq's tormentors an
excuse to prevent lead pencils, chlorine and even ordinary nuts and
bolts from reaching Iraq. U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen can
glibly assert that "we're not seeking to bomb anyone into the stone
age," knowing full well that that objective was achieved in the Gulf
War of 1991, when America's top political and military leaders boasted
of that great accomplishment.
 
During the Desert Slaughter of 1991, over 200,000 Iraqis were
massacred and what was a relatively strong, modern and prosperous
country was reduced to rubble and ashes, its infrastructure destroyed
beyond repair, so long as the sanctions continue. The unprecedented
sanctions imposed since then have taken a human toll several times as
great as that exacted by the war itself. Almost all of Iraq's
agricultural crops were lost in the war. Almost all of Iraq's drinking
water became hopelessly contaminated, resulting in epidemics of
diseases such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid. Starvation and severe
malnutrition became the New World Order of the day for millions of
Iraqi children and babies. The average life expectancy has fallen by
over ten years, to under 57. Medicine is not available to treat easily
curable diseases, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. It is
alleged that over five thousand children a month are dying in Iraq as
a result of the embargo.
 
According to author Jeff Archer,(1) "Only one in five children born in
Iraq since the end of Desert Storm has a chance to grow up and live a
productive life. Two will die by the age of five, and two will either
be retarded or physically not able to conduct a normal life."
Conditions not seen in Iraq for more than three decades made a
reappearance, including starvation-related diseases such as marasmus
and kwashiorkor. Of the Baghdad children surveyed in a U.N. poll,(2)
over seven out of ten were either "wasted, stunted or underweight."
 
In the present standoff, ostensibly centered on the expulsion of U.S.
members of the U.N. Nuclear Inspection team in Iraq, USA
representative to the U.N. Bill Richardson proclaimed that the "United
States has the right to attack Iraq if it carried out its order to
expel the Americans." Arab-American activist and constitutional
scholar Dr. M.T. Mehdi disagrees with this position, stating that
"Iraq has a right to expel U.S. citizens or anyone else. That is a
right recognized by international law." Dr. Mehdi, who was "born in
Baghdad and reborn in Berkeley, at the University of California in the
early Fifties," called the U.S.-pushed sanctions "illegal, immoral and
self-defeating," noting that Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique are
not hurt but rather helped by the sanctions, which turn the people's
attention to the superpower and away from their local dictator.
 
A small but growing group of people calling themselves Voices in the
Wilderness (VitW)(3) is organizing against the sanctions. Led by
Chicagoan Kathy Kelly, an energetic and articulate 41-year-old peace
and justice activist who is committed to non-violent forms of protest
and civil disobedience, the group organizes trips to take medicines to
Iraq and investigate conditions there, defying a travel ban which
could carry heavy penalties and imprisonment if the government can
successfully prosecute them.
 
Kelly spoke of her repeated experiences holding dying and sick
children in her arms and listening to their mothers' laments. The
mother of one child wondered out loud at American policies which were
resulting in her child's unnecessary demise, exclaiming, "Would they
want this for their child?" Explaining the group's name, Kelly said,
"We'd like to be voices in what is really a wilderness of awareness
and compassion."
 
Kelly does not believe that the United States wants to remove Saddam
Hussein from power, but rather that they are maintaining the sanctions
instead to keep Iraqi oil out of the market. "As long as Iraqi oil is
off the market, the Saudis can charge more per barrel and that gives
them more revenue to spend on our type of crop in this country -
weapons." She believes in organizing and educating the old-fashioned
way: "There's something more credible about going beneath the radar -
to the alternative press, community groups, churches, mosques and
synagogues; to the schools and universities."
 
A Portland peace activist, 33-year-old Dan Handelman, will be in Iraq
during the Thanksgiving period (which should more appropriately be a
time of International Mourning over the unparalleled misdeeds of the
world's remaining superpower). Handelman is outraged that "We've
killed 1.2 million people. I don't think that that's an appropriate
way to enact foreign policy, to starve people to death." He is part of
VitW's eighth delegation to Iraq. A member of The Iraq Affinity Group
connected to Peace and Justice Works (4), this will be his maiden
voyage to the area. Handelman noted that the Oregonian, Oregon's
leading daily newspaper, was urging the bombing of Iraq. "We call it
the WARegonian," he reported, noting that they had run an "op-ed
suggesting `housebreaking Saddam Hussein with a good bombing.'"
 
Dr. Mehdi, who leads the National Council on Islamic Affairs and has
been a major Arab-American and Islamic activist and public figure in
the United States for over four decades, was exasperated at possible
pending attacks against Iraq. Discounting the "evil dictator and
madman Saddam" rationale for continuing attacks, Dr. Mehdi stated that
he "would rather have this tyrant in power than America attacking Iraq
and killing innocent people."
 
Dr. Mehdi joined me and others over nine years ago in denouncing
Saddam's chemical bombing of the Kurdish village of Halabja. At that
time, Saddam's patrons in the U.S. State Department covered up for
this atrocity. They were backing him to the hilt in that typically
fiendish Israeli-U.S. project known as the Iran-Iraq war, which
devastated both countries and their peoples for over eight years.
 
As for the pretext that Saddam may have some weapons of mass
destruction hidden or ready to assemble somewhere, Dr. Mehdi pointed
out that Israel has virtually every known weapon of mass destruction,
including over two hundred nuclear warheads, armed and ready to be
activated against Arab population centers. Israel, backing all
destructive initiatives of the U.S. and others toward the Arab world,
has had over 130 U.N. resolutions of various kinds censuring its
outrageous behavior toward its neighbors and toward the Palestinians,
whose very land it occupies. In most cases, the United States stood
virtually alone in opposing these resolutions. Needless to say, the
U.S.-controlled U.N. is not likely to pressure Israel into compliance
in the same manner in which they are handling Iraq.
 
Dr. Mehdi insisted that the key to a solution in the Middle East lay
with "the human rights of the people of Iraq, of Palestine, of
Kurdistan. The recognition of these people's rights is the only
foundation for true peace and security in the region." The American
people need to know what "their" government's policies mean in terms
of the human suffering in Iraq. It is more than fair to ask the
question, along with so many grieving mothers who have lost babies and
children because of the sanctions, "Would they want this for their
children?" I don't think that most American people would want it for
anybody's children anywhere.
 
 
 
Footnotes
 
(1) Jeff Archer is editor and publisher of The Alternative and
Alternative Publishing in San Diego, California. He is also a
correspondent for News International Press Service. He is the author
of a book, The Sledgehammer and the Ant, and numerous articles on Iraq
and U.S. Foreign Policy.
 
(2) U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Report, December 1995. For
more details, see The Children Are Dying, published in 1996 by World
View Forum, Inc., and distributed by International Action Center, 39
West 14th Street #206, New York NY 10011. The FAO Report is included
in this book.
 
(3) Voices in the Wilderness, 1460 West Carmen Avenue, Chicago IL
60640. Phone 773-784-8065.
 
(4) Peace and Justice Works, PO Box 42456, Portland OR 97242. Phone
503-236-3065.
 
 Additional recommended reading on the subject: The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, Ramsey Clark, 1992, Thunder's Mouth
Press; and War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes Against
Iraq - Ramsey Clark and Others report to The Commission of Inquiry
for the International War Crimes Tribunal, 1992, Maisonneuve Press.
 
 
 
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