Campaigning for Iraq: Signs of hope?

An anecdote that suggests the discussion of sanctions has at least matured in our country stems from experiences during an August 1990 fast in front of Fort Benning, an army base that houses a training school with a horrible human rights record. A dozen peace activists held a vigil before the Fort for over one month. Our sign said, ‘A Fast for Peace in El Salvador.’ Late at night, soldiers from the base and their spouses would come to visit us, much as Nicodemus made queries under cover of darkness. On several occasions, our visitors questions were about Kuwait. ‘El Salvador,’ said one young woman, ‘Is that a province of Kuwait? You know, my husband’s being sent there, an’ I am really worried.’

Think of it. Soldiers were being asked to loan themselves to possibly be killed or possibly kill, in a far away land, and their loved ones were uncertain as to whether or not Kuwait was just south of Texas! I tell that story knowing I must confess that in August of 1990, while I could spell Kuwait and find Iraq on a map, I didn’t know much more. In the ensuing years, kindly people have helped many of us become far better educated about the complexities of Middle East history, geography, politics and economics. We were given a tuition free crash course immediately following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. By now, I think many people are still woefully unaware of the ‘facts on the ground,’ but at least the discussion has changed.

What has become of accountability?

A few years ago, many people in the US thought sanctions merely inflicted hardships on Iraqi people. Now, as campaigns begun by faith-based and humanitarian groups have broadened concern and outreach, many US people understand that the sanctions against Iraq have caused the deaths of over one million innocent people, over half of them children under age five. Yet, we are still nowhere near finding actions commensurate to the crimes being committed.

In the face of child sacrifice – would slaughter of children be too strong a term? – we still find a tendency, amongst those concerned for human rights, to stress the Government of Iraq’s accountability for abuses of Iraqi citizens’ civil and political rights without searching for ways to hold the United States accountable, as well, for the devastating consequences of the economic sanctions. Isn’t the United States responsible, primarily, for turning the United Nations – a world body founded to eliminate the scourge of warfare – into an instrument of economic warfare waged primarily against children?

Additionally, it is the United States that sold to Iraq materials which were used to build biological and chemical weaponry. It is the United States that armed Iraq throughout the long years of the Iran/Iraq war. It is the US that still refuses to seriously examine the effects of depleted uranium used in the Gulf War, and, most recently, the presence of plutonium within depleted uranium munitions.

We still don’t hear of accountability due from the country which has researched, developed, stored and used more weapons of mass destruction than any other country on earth. And we’ve yet to hear acknowledgement that the major weapon of mass destruction in force, today, in the Middle East, comes in the form of sanctions that continue to destroy the lives of Iraq’s most vulnerable people, - the poor, the sick, the elderly, and children.

On 18 January 1991, the United States Defence Intelligence Agency issued a report, recently declassified, which details, in 28 chilling points, exactly how six more months of economic sanctions could be expected to cause a thorough degradation of Iraq’s water treatment system. Item 11 in the report states that ‘Iraq’s rivers contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur.’ It seems to me that the economic sanctions, enabling the spread of water-borne diseases, have constituted a form of biological warfare against Iraqi civilians. The Defence Intelligence Agency report from 1991 shows calculated, clear awareness of the effects of the sanctions.

When Bishop Gumbleton decried the planning and orchestration and co-operation that went into creation of death camps during World War II, his condemnation calls on us likewise to overcome the kind of careful planning that has assured that economic sanctions will be lethal and punitive.

Holding children hostage

We may ask, ‘Why don’t the Iraqi people take action?’ We may be appalled at the fear they feel. And yet shouldn’t we likewise ask why we ourselves don’t take action to stop the abuses perpetrated by our own government. Unlike Marta, in El Salvador, we’re not threatened with torture, disappearance, or death. If we express dissident views or engage in civil disobedience, we’ll very likely be treated with kid gloves in this country and may, at the most, suffer inconvenience, or an interruption to the comfort we take for granted. Yet many don’t take significant non-violent action to stop the US from waging economic warfare against civilians in another land because we fear the consequences.

The US government maintains a bullying, threatening posture toward Iraqi civilians, essentially saying to Iraqi parents, ‘We’re now holding your children hostage. You either force your government to surrender unconditionally to every demand we make, or we’ll slaughter these children. And if you don’t believe we could do such a thing, check your statistics from last month. And the month before, and the month before.’ And so the death toll rises. Mothers cradling limp and dying children stare at us and ask, ‘Why?’

During July and August 2000, a small team from our campaign lived with impoverished families in southern Iraq. We grew to understand better the effects of economic sanctions against Iraq by learning what it’s like to live without electricity for 14 hours per day in 120 degree heat, to share meals from meagre rations, and to be cut off from communication with the rest of the world. We drank only bottled water and were painfully aware that the families with whom we lived drank contaminated water. At every level, educational institutions were dilapidated and inadequate. Hospitals and clinics lacked basic equipment.

When we returned from Iraq, I was surprised to read in The New York Times that the former US Secretary of State Ms. Madeleine Albright had told news reporters that religious groups who go to Iraq and return believing the US engineered sanctions are the cause of suffering in Iraq hold Alice in Wonderland fantasies.

Fantasy? If you don’t allow people to sell what they have in order to buy what they need, they’ll suffer. That’s reality, not fantasy. Ms.Albright fantasised that the whole problem can be reduced to simple, cartoonised terms of the ‘good guys,’ – US policymakers – and the demonised ‘bad guy,’ Saddam Hussein. Days later, Ms. Albright said ‘The problem is simple. He’s the villain. It’s his fault.’ Those words work well for public relations purposes, but the imagined simplicity of the situation hardly coheres with the complex reality that afflicts Iraqis with whom I lived last summer.

If you’re Fatima, age 8, and you can’t rise from the floor because you’re struggling with nausea and weakness, the villain is diarrhoea that might become dysentery and the problem is not simple. If you’re seven year old Zahra, and you want to go to school, but you have only one dress, and you sleep in that dress and you have no shoes, then you can’t go to school, and the villain is poverty - relentless, inescapable poverty. If you’re Dr Firas Abdul Abbas, and you’re the chief resident of a large city hospital, and you start your day with five blood bags and must try to cover the needs of two large wings, deciding by the end of that day which patient gets the one remaining blood bag, the problem is not simple and the villainy must have something to do with ‘holds’ placed by the UN Security Council on desperately needed goods.

If you’re 18 year old Maghareb, and you awake each morning and count your scars, large scars that cover your shoulders, breasts and thighs, the problem isn’t simple and it must have something to do with the country which manufactured the bomb that destroyed your home, killed your relatives, and maimed you. I grew very close to radiant little girls with gleaming eyes who, upon hearing US warplanes fly overhead, instantly plugged up their ears and shouted out loud to drown out the sound. For them, the villain is panicky fear that the plane will again bomb your street.

All of us who’ve returned from Iraq can tell you numerous stories of Iraqi hospitality. But we can also tell you about school children in Mosul who were badly frightened when they learned that Americans were visiting their school. Two children began to cry so inconsolably that the school officials had to summon their parents to take them home. Days earlier, a US bomb had exploded near their school, shattering the windows. Teachers carefully picked shards of broken glass from the children’s trembling heads and shoulders.

‘Why my son?’

We wonder what the younger generation growing up in Iraq will think of US people. Are there lessons to learn from the aftermath of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles imposed a harsh embargo against Germany, causing a generation of German children to grow up feeling resentful toward neighbouring states, vulnerable to propaganda glorifying fascism, and, for many of them, all too familiar with going to bed hungry and not getting their basic needs met.

Despite the deaths, the malnutrition and the growing regional resentment, the American government and media continue to feed US people facile and child-like notions about the effects of US policy in Iraq. Our own capacity for democratic decision making is weakened, since we lack even the most basic information about how sanctions and continual bombardment affect Iraqi people. Consider, for example, the opening lines of a 22 December 1998 San Francisco Chronicle editorial concerning the Desert Fox bombing: ‘Once again, the durable despot Saddam Hussein has emerged from the bomb rubble spitting defiance and claiming victory after surviving four days of the US and British air strikes.’

Lulled by the misleading notion that Saddam Hussein is the only person living in Iraq, Americans seldom question the convenience of personifying an entire nation as one demonised figure used to justify US-led persecution of that nation’s civilians. Mainstream media echoes Ms. Albright’s cartoon-like ‘bad guy’ as the sole perpetrator of wrongdoing. The ‘good guys’ take aim and fire, but with no real consequences. After all, Saddam Hussein emerges ‘from the rubble,’ dusts himself off and claims victory. Oh well, maybe next time.

As for sanctions that have cost the lives of over half a million children, US leaders repeatedly state, ‘It’s his fault, not ours.’ Iraqi civilians are not likely to see it that way. Iraq’s ruling Ba’ath party may deny the civil and political rights of Iraqi civilians, but the UN Security Council led sanctions have deprived Iraqis of their most basic human rights: the right to food, clean water and employment.

Only a handful of Americans have ever heard of Umm Heyder, a young and striking mother of four who lives in the Jumurriyah district of Basra, a city in southern Iraq close to the Kuwaiti border. On 25 January 1999, she was washing dishes in her kitchen when she heard a loud explosion and saw something dark pass before her window. Suddenly, dishes were crashing down on her and her two youngest children. Horrified, she remembered that her older boys were playing outdoors. Amid swirls of thick black smoke, she raced outside screaming, ‘Where’s Heyder? Where is Mustafa?’

She found Heyder, already dead, buried beneath the rubble. Then she spotted 3 year old Mustafa, still alive, covered with blood, his hand partly severed from his arm. She scooped him into her arms and ran for help. Her six-year-old, Heyder, would never emerge from the rubble, and three-year-old Mustafa, maimed for life, would hardly claim victory. That day, US missiles destroyed 36 houses in Umm Heyder’s neighbourhood. Seven people were killed and many more wounded. ‘I have a question for the US pilot who flew that plane,’ Umm Heyder tells us. ‘Why my son?’

Facing up to reality

Many think that if Iraqis simply rid themselves of ‘the bad guy’ they could solve all their problems. Yet Iraqis have reason to wonder fearfully if the United States has actually wanted to keep Saddam Hussein in power throughout the past ten years, a crippled giant maintained for political reasons. By demonising Saddam Hussein, the US government conditions the American public to believe they must continue to bankroll our bloated military budget. What’s more, it helps US weapon salespeople convince other Middle Eastern governments to buy our ‘top crop’ – weapons.

The US State Department claims that Iraq poses a threat to its neighbours. Does Iraq threaten Saudi Arabia, home to thirty US military bases? Is Iraq a threat to Turkey, which regularly uses weapons supplied by the US to invade Iraq and attack Kurdish people? Is Iraq a threat to Iran, a country able to launch and deliver ballistic missiles? Perhaps the country most threatened by Iraq is the US, inasmuch as Iraq poses a threat to the US’s ability to control Iraq’s precious natural resources.

What comes of remaining ‘exclusively within a punishment mode and ostracising style?’ We encountered a telling example of how two generations might view US people in a succession of visits to Fallujah, a small city south of Baghdad. Indelibly marked in my memory is a February 1998 visit to Fallujah, just outside of Baghdad. We travelled there during the height of a US bombing threat to visit the site where, in 1991, a Royal Air Force bomb aimed at a bridge missed and hit a crowded market. The explosion killed 150 people and wounded many more. Accompanied by a Reuters film crew, we wanted to interview Fallujah’s residents while the whole country waited for renewed attacks.

Soon a throng of people surrounded us. Angry shouting began. ‘You Americans. You Europeans!’ an older man shouted. ‘I’ll take you to my home and show you water you would not even give your animals to drink, and this is all what we have, and now you want to bomb our children as well. You cannot bomb my child, my child died in this market place during the Bush war.’ Suddenly he stopped. Looking at me closely, he said, ‘Madame, you are too tired. Come, you take something to eat with me.’

In April 1999, we returned to the same marketplace and discovered uncanny similarities. Again, the raucous crowd was eager for leaflets. People aggressively shouted their opinions of the US. I noticed one boy, about ten years of age, staring at us very intently. I asked our friend, Ahmed, whose translation was invaluable, to ask what the child was thinking about. The boy replied, ‘I am a scholar of the faith.’

‘But, Ahmed,’ I persisted, ‘ask him what he’s thinking about right now. He looks so serious.’ The child nodded almost imperceptibly, closed his eyes for a moment, then fixed us with a steady gaze and said, ‘I am thinking about growing up to be a pilot so that I can bomb the United States.’ We smiled forlornly. Then Ahmed whispered, ‘Look there.’ Looking up, I saw an old man who had listened to this exchange shake his head. His huge eyes brimmed with tears, and he turned away.

Kathy Kelly helped initiate Voices in the Wilderness, an activist coalition whose members have campaigned to end the UN/US economic sanctions against Iraq by non-violently breaking those sanctions. The US government has threatened us with fines of over 1 million dollars and twelve years in prison because our delegations have visited Iraq. We travel there in open and public violation of what we believe to be a cruel and pitiless set of laws forbidding travel to or transactions within Iraq. The Office of Foreign Assets Control says they believe we have engaged in certain prohibited transactions.

In fact, VW exported goods including medical supplies and toys, including photographic and/or video services absent specific prior authorisation. Additionally VW has organised members to deliver goods to Iraq in violation of the embargo and made express statements of the organisation’s knowledge of its violative actions.

VW thanked the US officials for the clarity of their warning, assured them that we did exactly what we’re accused of doing, stated that we’ll continue travelling to Iraq with medicines and medical relief supplies, and invited them to join us.