Two Hiroshimas, twenty Lebanons

By Amira Howeidy

"We monitored whether or not they received the food, whether they received it in time, whether they paid extra for its transportation," he explained.

If anything, Bayoumi's experience in Iraq taught him enough about the backbone of the Iraqi social and health system to conclude that the sanctions are nothing but a long, slow -- and largely silent -- death. "The insinuations made by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in their two most recent addresses -- that the oil-for-food deal was in fact oil for tanks -- are nothing but lies," he declared.

The Observation Unit cooperated with UNICEF on surveys of the nutritional status of the Iraqi children. "We did at least two surveys," he told the Weekly, "writing reports to show the distribution of food, what is in the warehouses, how much food is arriving, etc. We followed each contract, in order to prove that it was being carried out and completed. There was no doubt that the Iraqi regime was functioning properly in this respect."

Bayoumi's term with the Observation Unit ended last May. But on 20 November, he decided to return: "I decided to write a book to expose the truth of what I saw." This vision included "the obstacles some people in the UN are putting in the way of the oil-for-food programme, specifically, sanctions committee 661. We calculated the average time required for a food contract to be approved [through this committee] at 68 days. This was until October 1997. In contrast, it took only between four and nine days for food to reach a warehouse, once it had arrived in the Iraqi ports."

"You kill people without blood or organs flying around, without angering American public opinion," he explained. "People are dying silently in their beds." Bayoumi made a rapid calculation and came up with a horrific figure: "If 5,000 children are dying each month, this means 60,000 a year. Over eight years, we have half a million children. This is equivalent to two or three Hiroshimas. "

Bayoumi was staying at the Carthage hotel in the Jadiriya district of Baghdad when the strikes began around midnight last Wednesday. Although it was dark, he could see the impact of the rockets from a distance: "The buildings were shaking, and you could see the blaze." He described the first night of shelling as "relatively light, although it continued for a long time." As the attack grew more brutal the following three nights, it was clear, he said, that each missile knew exactly where it was going. How? "UNSCOM provided all the information."

"The attack was more an act of revenge than anything else. Many believe that more serious strikes targeting the infrastructure are still to come." More seriously, though, Bayoumi fears that, if internal order breaks down, "Iraq will be something like 20 Lebanons."

Despite the destruction caused by the US-UK assault, Bayoumi believes that the two objectives of weakining the Iraqi regime and degrading Iraq's ability to rebuild its weapons of mass destruction have not been achieved. The Iraqi regime was not weakened. "It's the usual thing: when facing such an aggression, any people will normally direct their anger at the aggressors."

As for weapons of mass destruction: "You can develop biological weapons in a small room. To effectively prevent this from happening, you have to get rid of and de-skill the generations of scientists and engineers who are capable of producing such weapons."

Bayoumi saw very clearly "the disastrous effects of the sanctions on the most vulnerable sections of society, and on children in particular. The most conservative reports of the World Health Organisation (WHO) say between 5,000 and 7,000 people die each month because of sanctions alone." To Bayoumi, this figure is an "underestimate", because in many cases babies who die within a few days of their birth are not reported. The high death toll can only be understood in light of the inhuman living conditions. "The water is not clean, the food is not adequate, mothers are very weak." Bayoumi told the Weekly he saw mothers almost incapable of lifting their young children because they themselves are under-nourished.

Bayoumi put the total estimated number of deaths in the past eight years, above and beyond the normal mortality rate, at about "one and a half million". This figure, he says, is based on estimates from various sources, including the Iraqi Health Ministry and the WHO.

The death toll is likely to rise further because of water pollution and improper sanitation. "Diseases which were formerly absent in Iraq are now on the rise. Cholera, typhoid and amoebic dysentery of the worst type are increasing, because of cross-contamination between the sanitary system and the water supply, particularly in areas such as Basra."

These estimates, he pointed out, are not government propaganda, but a painful reality. "Dennis Halliday, former UN coordinator in charge of administering the Oil-for-Food Programme, who resigned last October, quotes the same figures. In fact, he resigned because he said he couldn't carry the UN flag any more after all the deaths he had seen."