Iraq:
Eight years of sanctions

Since the end of the Gulf War, Jane Howarth has been working tirelessly 
to raise money for the children of Iraq. Jane went to Iraq in July/August 
this year to see for herself the impact of eight years of US-imposed UN 
sanctions. Jane was particularly interested in following up reports of a 
six-fold increase in incidents of childhood leukemia linked to the 
extensive use of depleted uranium (DU) in the weapons used by Britain and 
the US during the War. She spoke to The Guardian about her 
visit.

I knew that the Iraqis had taken up the subject of the use of depleted 
uranium shortly after the Gulf War.

Iraq was really a testing ground. NATO used weapons that had never been 
used before and Iraq was a testing ground for them.

The Americans and the British used depleted uranium extensively in their 
weapons, shells and rockets, even bullets. The armour of their tanks was 
hardened by incorporating depleted uranium into the actual building of the 
tanks.

The term "depleted" is a misnomer. It sounds as if it is really harmless 
but it is not. It's one of the waste products of the nuclear fuel process. 
It has a half-life of two million years.

A lot of this material is still there because they did not remove it; the 
tanks are still there, just rotting away.

In recent times a lot of information has come out about depleted uranium 
because it has now turned up in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

It breaks down into fine particles and it is almost like an aerosol spray 
the way the stuff disintegrates in the atmosphere and becomes a fine mist, 
carried by the wind. One test showed it had been carried 60 kilometres.

When it rains this fine dust that has been carried by the wind is carried 
down into the soil. Even farming produce that is now being tested has been 
found to contain residues of it.

You never hear about this, only about UNSCOM Chief Richard Butler and his 
nonsense. I read quite a lot about this and was interested in finding out 
about the medical effects.

Cancers

While in Iraq I met Dr Ahmad Ahmad Hardan, head of research and Director of 
Internal Health at the International Health Department in Iraq. He has 
carried out a comprehensive study on the effects of depleted uranium which 
has taken him several years.

He discovered, in places where depleted uranium had been used, an 
extraordinary increase in childhood leukemias: various types of lymphomas, 
childhood cancers and even breast cancers in children as young as 14.

It was extraordinarily depressing because there was this huge array of 
photos of very horribly malformed babies and foetuses.

Men and women in their early 30s in areas where they had been in contact 
with depleted uranium had developed cancers.

The unfortunate part of about this is that they do not have the equipment 
or the facilities to do biopsies and to do extensive research into the 
cells and investigate further.

I was told of shells or rockets that were fired and were then followed by a 
strange smell. They noticed these were unusual because they glowed in a 
different way and what fell down and was left on the ground was a strange 
colour.

Children picked it up because it was unusual and played with it afterwards. 
All of those people appear now to have developed some type of cancer.

Hospitals without medical supplies

The thing that I found really quite shocking was when I visited four 
hospitals. I found things so stark and bare — they have absolutely 
nothing. There is nothing to treat these sick children.

Children are unable to get treatment for even simple, basic things like 
diarrhoea and gastroenteritis and they die for lack of simple basic 
treatments.

Often operations are carried out without anesthetic because there is none 
and there are no pain killers to relieve the pain of these really ill 
children. It's appalling.

You walk through these hospital wards and you see all these children in 
beds with the mother always there sitting beside the bed, fanning the child 
because the electricity cuts out three and four times a day.

The electrical system, the water supply system, the transport system — 
everything was bombed time and time again to make them inoperable.

And now the parts to repair them are embargoed. They were really quite up-
to-date, sophisticated structures and the parts needed to repair them need 
to come from the places where they were originally manufactured.

The Iraqis are clever: they've manufactured things and sort of cannibalised 
stuff but it has got to the stage where there is nothing more they can do 
but conserve the electricity.

They do try to see that the major teaching hospital in Baghdad gets 
electricity a bit more than the others because their students have to be 
taught.

It was record heat when I was there — 50 degrees and over and 55 degrees 
one day — and I was sitting in the office of the head of the Family 
Planning Association. There was no fan, no air-conditioning, no 
electricity, nothing.

He told me how the things they imported and needed had been embargoed. They 
have 80 something clinics throughout Iraq. It took him three years to have 
the embargo on the family planning materials lifted. And even then only 
half of what they order comes in.

Originally their medical and health service was second to none in the 
Middle East. The United Nations used to refer to it as an example that 
other countries should follow because it was an excellent health system and 
it was free to all citizens.

Iraqi doctors and other professionals were always sent overseas to upgrade 
their skills and to get additional degrees. Now they even find it difficult 
to get a visa to study overseas.

When you go through the wards and see these ill, ailing, malnourished 
children with pencil-thin arms and legs and large heads, and there is 
nothing to give them — no antibiotics, no medicines — it really shocks 
you.

It made me feel so ashamed to think that I was part of the human race that 
was allowing such things to happen and that children are being sacrificed 
in this way; children who were not even born when the war was on and are 
still paying — for what?

Embargo killing

I noticed so many things that made me angry. There is no pure or drinkable 
tap water because of the state of the Tigris river.

Because it was so hot even kids and their animals were bathing in it. 
Sewerage outlets were flowing into it because the pumps are not functioning 
properly.

This polluted river is the source of most of their drinking water. It's 
been the incubation centre for diseases of all types.

This has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths — from cholera and things 
like that; things that people would not believe still kill people in a city 
like Baghdad.

Everything is in a state of disrepair. In the hospitals, for example, they 
can't get new incubators or humidicribs.

They can't have Pap smears, they can't do mammograms or x-rays because the 
film for x-rays and mammograms is embargoed.

Things like x-ray films, even pencils and medical journals are embargoed 
because the UN 661 Committee says they have a "dual purpose" or a "dual 
usage".

They might be able to take the lead from the pencils and use it in 
explosives. And God only knows what they think they can do with x-ray film 
but it is not allowed in either.

They can't get pesticides and herbicides for their crops or chlorine to 
purify their water because they say it can be used for explosives.

UN junket teams

There have been, up until December 1, 1997, 17,000 separate UN inspection 
visits. There are never less than 1,300 in an inspection team, and still 
they could not find anything. It is a junket.

Do you know that those people, including that dreadful monster Butler, are 
paid far more than the average UN bureaucrat? It's in their interest to 
keep the "weapons inspections" going because of the additional money and 
all the perks that go with it.

What a lot of people don't know is that these high salaries are paid by 
Iraq, not the United Nations. The money was being taken from Iraq's frozen 
assets but in the last two years it has been taken out of the food-for-oil 
program.

There is one very expensive restaurant that I saw in Baghdad and the only 
people who eat there are these United Nations people.

Some were in this hotel for visitors from overseas where I was. These 
creatures from the UN teams used to go with their plate to the buffet time 
and time again. I noted one man, he filled his plate three times. It was 
awful.

It is extraordinarily deceptive. They keep referring to them as "UN". They 
are mainly British and American. And the others are selected by the 
countries that America chooses.

They are chosen supposedly for their expertise but the Iraqis know that 
there is only a handful of people in those teams who are really scientific 
experts.

The rest of them are from British and American intelligence or military. 
Even Israelis have been put into the teams.

Professor Francis Boyle, US professor of international law, put this out on 
the Internet some time ago and confirmed what the Iraqis have been saying 
for years.

The Iraqi Information Minister told me when I was there that they knew 
Scott Ritter was a spy and this is why they closed down certain inspections 
at various sites because the material that they were grabbing was going 
straight back to America and Israel. They were by-passing the UN all the 
time.

It's so appalling when you think that in the hospital wards sick and dying 
children are starving, they do not even have the plastic sheeting for their 
beds and they rely on the family to take the place of hospital staff, and 
all these creatures are swarming around the place with their large 
salaries.

It is really sickening.

I was told that the "inspectors" have been buying artifacts and art works 
in Iraq for absolutely peanuts and getting them out of the country in boxes 
with UN immunity.

And yet, the other thing that never comes out is that the Food and 
Agricultural Organisation and World Health Organisation and the United 
Nations in general have given Iraq an A rating for its distribution of the 
bit of stuff that does come in under the food-for-oil deal.

You see them out there distributing it once a month when they are able to 
get it.

Food-for-oil sham

The food-for-oil deal was a sham. Two years ago Denis Halliday proposed 
that Iraq be allowed to sell US$2 billion worth of oil twice a year to buy 
food and medicine. The Americans vetoed it.

Then two years later, with pressure mounting in the Security Council and 
generally for the sanctions to be lifted, they agreed.

But what they did was to deduct from the money the payment for these teams 
and also "reparations" to Kuwait.

What is left over after this has been taken out breaks down to about 25 
cents a week for every man, woman and child and that is supposed to buy 
flour, tea, sugar, lentils and oil for a month!

It does not last a month. It lasts for 15 to 20 days. They have to provide 
for the remainder of the month as best they can.

People have sold everything, all their possessions, to try to procure food 
and medicine for their children. Everywhere you go there are either markets 
or they are just on the streets, selling their household goods and 
possessions.

It's terrible to see everything stacked in the street or in markets being 
sold and very young children who go into the streets to either beg or sell 
a single item — one child was selling a comb.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said they can sell US$5 billion worth 
of oil twice a year. But they can't get the parts for the pumps that were 
bombed in the war. So they can't pump the extra amount of oil.

Rampaging cowboys

If you remember Tariq Aziz said they had been rampaging around the place 
like cowboys. The Iraqis have been complaining about it for ages but it was 
not brought to international attention until Iraq brought it to the 
attention of Kofi Annan when he was there in February.

Kofi Annan was told about what was going on. Even he referred to them when 
he got back as "cowboys" because he had found out what they were up to. I 
think it shocked him.

In this last stoush, the disagreement arose because they wanted the right 
to go into people's homes, at any time. They wanted to go into HQ of the 
Republican Guard, they wanted to go into the officers' homes; they wanted 
to go into their quarters, their apartments, where they wanted to have 
complete and open access.

They even went into schools and took old, out of date chemistry books into 
the yard and burnt them.

They took the equipment out of the only functioning laboratory that had a 
bit of equipment in it like any laboratory does, put it on the ground and 
had a bulldozer come and crunch it up.

They dug up the grave yards — that was never reported out here yet it was 
reported widely in the Middle East. They went into the mosques and wanted 
to lift the floors in the mosques and search them.

They've got cameras mounted outside all sorts of places and there are spy 
planes flying overhead. I really don't believe that any ordinary Iraqi 
could even go to the toilet without them knowing.

They've swarmed all over the place from end to end. They have found 
nothing.

The latest demand is for Iraq to produce the documents showing the number 
of bombs, shells and other weapons which were used against Iran in the 
Iran-Iraq war a decade ago.

If Butler doesn't get the documents then there is going to be more trouble.

The goal posts are changed all the time. The Iraqis told me that they know 
beyond any shadow of doubt that there is no way that the sanctions are 
going to be lifted.

The US has never given an undertaking that even when and if the inspectors 
say they are free of weapons of mass destruction, that they will not veto 
the lifting of sanctions.

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If you wish more information or to assist financially, Jane Howarth may 
contacted at Save the Children of Iraq, PO Box 146, Petersham, NSW, 
2049.