Sanctions against Iraq have killed 500,000 babies: This is no softer weapon of war

By Deirdre Griswold, Workers World [28 January 1996]

In the blue waters of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, U.S. warships stop vessels suspected of carrying cargo in or out of Iraq. Even dhows--traditional sailboats--loaded with dates are boarded, searched and turned back.

U.S. planes patrol Iraqi skies, making sure no unauthorized truck or plane crosses its borders.

For the Pentagon crews, it's an easy assignment. No slogging around in mud or burning sands. No combat. Three meals a day, every day, with snacks and movies thrown in. Their biggest complaint is boredom.

Yet these troops are engaged in starving Iraq. Their methods are just as cruel as the medieval sieges that laid waste to walled cities.

They have murdered 500,000 babies and children. They are stunting a whole new generation.

That is the conclusion of a United Nations report that will soon be widely disseminated, thanks to important public meetings held in January in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Rome, as well as in Athens, Greece; Madrid, Spain; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Naples, Turin and Milan, Italy.

These meetings called for ending sanctions against Iraq. In the words of Sara Flounders of the International Action Center, sponsor of the U.S. meetings: Sanctions are war. Today this old weapon has horrendous potential. U.S. economic power is now focused on creating an artificial famine in Iraq, a developing country at the mercy of the world market.

SANCTIONS: IMPERIALIST WEAPON OF CHOICE

A featured speaker in both New York and San Francisco was former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who spearheaded opposition to U.S. intervention in the Gulf as early as 1990.

When the shooting stage of the Gulf War ended, sanctions became the Western imperialists' weapon of choice against the Iraqi people.

Sanctions has such a moral ring to it. At the time of the Gulf war, the anti-war movement here was split over whether or not to support sanctions.

The coalition headed by Clark and others who went on to form the International Action Center opposed the sanctions that were being proposed as an alternative to the shooting war.

Now many more people are realizing that sanctions can be as deadly and horrible as nuclear weapons.

So in mid-January--while the commercial media were reveling in the fifth anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm--prominent figures were coming forward to denounce the sanctions on Iraq as cruel and even genocidal.

DOCTORS TELL OF `MAD SITUATION'

Dr. Peter Pellett and Dr. Mary Smith-Fawzi were part of a team that the UN Food & Agriculture Organization sent to Iraq in 1995. They told the New York meeting of the scientific methods they used to arrive at this conclusion.

Half a million Iraqi children have died because of malnutrition and disease directly caused by the sanctions.

Rickets, pellagra and infectious diseases are common in Iraq today. Many low-birthweight babies die in infancy. In contrast, Dr. Pellett said, a 1989 survey on which he worked showed Iraqi children at international standards.

If the children of Baghdad had any problem at that time, he said, it was that they tended to be slightly obese.

Pellett called the role of the United Nations a mad situation--one hand kills while another helps. While UN organizations like the FAO and UNICEF try to help with small donations of food and medicine, he explained, the Security Council keeps extending the sanctions.

That makes it impossible for Iraq to provide clean water, medical facilities and adequate food to the population.

Dr. Mary Smith-Fawzi presented a slide show illustrating the grim statistics in the report.

BOOK TO BE PUBLISHED

The IAC announced at the meetings that it will publish and distribute a book containing the FAO team's report, along with other important documents on the sanctions. Funds for this project were raised at both U.S. meetings.

The Voices in the Wilderness Project intends to challenge the sanctions by delivering embargoed goods to Iraq at the end of February. Rania Masri told the New York meeting that over 60 people have already signed up as violators--ready to disobey a prohibition they consider illegal and inhumane. She also announced that the Iraq Action Coalition has put up a Web page on the Internet.

[Note - the number of violators has risen to 80. For more information, refer to the Iraq Action Coalition homepage at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~rrmasri/www/IAC/]

The San Francisco meeting heard a chilling report by freelance journalist Kate Casa on the long-term health effects of depleted uranium. Some believe that this substance, now prevalent in Iraq, is implicated in Gulf War Syndrome, a complex of illnesses suffered by U.S. veterans of the war.

Depleted uranium is a radioactive byproduct the U.S. military uses in shell casings and tank plating because it makes them hard enough to penetrate steel. When a DU shell hits its target, said Casa, as much as 70 percent turns into an aerosol. These uranium particles travel easily on the breeze, can be inhaled or ingested and are highly toxic- -according to the U.S. Army itself.

Many Iraqi children are being born with malformations similar to those occurring in babies of Gulf war veterans here.

OTHER SANCTIONS CONDEMNED

The broad range of speakers at both U.S. meetings showed that the issue of sanctions is not confined to Iraq. Father Miguel D'Escoto, the former Sandinista foreign minister of Nicaragua; Roosevelt Douglas, head of the opposition Labor Party of Dominica; Nico Varkevisser, an organizer of Cuba solidarity in Amsterdam; Hugh Stevens from the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions in Britain; Jaime Ballesteros of Madrid; and Ben Dupuy, former ambassador-at-large of the Aristide government in Haiti--all spoke of the great suffering the rich and powerful countries are imposing on the Third World with the sanctions weapon.

Dupuy pointed out that after the Haitian Revolution of 1804, sanctions imposed by the pro-slavery capitalist nations lasted until the U.S. Civil War. They wanted to prove that a Black republic could not survive. The result was to make Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Rosie Douglas of Dominica called for a strong stand against imperialism, which has blockaded Cuba and imposed sanctions on Libya. He also gave Iraq credit for having helped peoples struggling for national liberation in the days before it was deprived of its income from oil.

Gloria La Riva of the International Action Center told the San Francisco meeting that sanctions against north Korea have prevented that country from getting international relief after disastrous floods last summer that caused $15 billion in damages.

She related a conversation with a representative of the American Red Cross who admitted that the U.S. State Department is calculating how it can use the natural disaster in Korea to change the government.

La Riva announced a solidarity campaign to raise material aid for the Korean people and demand an end to the restrictions that are holding up international help.

Sara Flounders of the IAC, who co-chaired the New York meeting with Cleo Silvers of the Emergency Women's Action Committee, says the next step in this campaign is to get the forthcoming book distributed as widely as possible and support other actions against the sanctions.