14 - 20 March 2002
Issue No.577
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 March 2002 Issue No.577 |
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Waiting for the bombs
An American human rights activist who puts people first charges that the fate of 23 million Iraqis already suffering the devastating effects of 10 years of sanctions is conspicuously absent from the US administration's calculations as it prepares to move on Iraq
US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair plan to meet in April to complete details on the campaign against Iraq, Anayat Durrani reports from Washington.
According to US and British sources, Blair will visit Washington to take part a specially convened summit with the American president to discuss military action to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.
"I regard the past 12 years of US policy toward Iraq as an abysmal and lethal failure. It's hard to imagine that people who've suffered so much from sanctions and bombings will suddenly view yet another bombardment as a success story," said Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to put an end to the UN/US sanctions against Iraq.
Kelly recently returned from a 35-day stay in Iraq in January, her 14th trip to the country since January 1996. Voices in the Wilderness has organised 42 delegations to Iraq since March 1996 to witness the effects that sanctions are having on ordinary Iraqis and bring them medicine and other supplies. Another major part of their work has been to focus their efforts on raising awareness among the American public of the plight of the Iraqi people and advocating a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
"The US media has continually fed the US public a cartoonised version of foreign policy -- the good guys versus the bad guys -- and has personified the entire country of Iraq as one demonised bad guy who must be punished and, should the US actually deem it convenient, removed," Kelly told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We hope to educate US people about what we have seen and heard in Iraq and persuade people that words are stronger than weapons, that peaceful negotiation with all adversaries is the best way forward."
Though the Gulf War ended in 1991, the war against the Iraqi people has not ceased. Eleven years of sanctions have claimed the lives of over a million civilians, most of them children and elderly. A United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report issued in August 1999 revealed that more than 500,000 toddlers and infants have died as a direct result of the sanctions which have disabled Iraq's civilian infrastructure and prevented desperately needed food and medical supplies from reaching the Iraqi people. Over 200 people die every day in Iraq due to the lack of clean water, medicine and food. The sanctions continue to deny the Iraqi people access to health care, clean water and electricity. And, Kelly believes, it is civilians who will suffer the most under a renewed US attack on Iraq.
"Even if the US accomplishes leadership change or regime change, ordinary Iraqis will still face huge debts, overwhelming costs for repairing the deteriorated infrastructure, memories of grief and loss sustained during the long years of living under sanctions and the glaring absence of millions of educated middle-class people who have left Iraq in the past several decades," Kelly told the Weekly. "Added to those prospects are the possibilities of civil war or invasion. I can't detect any practical concern, on the part of US rulers, for the well-being of ordinary Iraqi people, nor do I see any preoccupation about adherence to international law."
As the US moves forward with its plans to expand the war on terrorism to Iraq, European Union nations have become increasingly outspoken against such actions, citing the lack of evidence of an Iraqi connection to the 11 September attacks. EU nations insist that military action against Iraq could cause further instability in the Arab world and have suggested, instead, diplomatic and economic action against the country. Kelly, as well as other anti-sanctions activists, have argued that US military action against Iraq not only discounts the value of human lives in Iraq but also exposes the real motives behind such action, namely oil, control of resources, weapons sales and US hegemony in the region.
"I think the US focuses on Iraq for several reasons, all of which overlook the cares and concerns of ordinary Iraqi people," said Kelly. "The US wants to ensure that it can consume Iraq's precious and irreplaceable resources at cut-rate prices in the future; to maintain dominance within the region; to guarantee that petrodollars which flow into the Middle East will be recycled into US banks and industries; [and] to maintain a strong troop presence in the region in order to meet the perceived strategic needs of US allies, particularly Israel."
The US president is already considering a number of alternatives to force, in Iraq, what the administration terms a "regime change." Saddam Hussein has said his country will resist any attempts to overthrow his regime and called the US a bully. US plans regarding Iraq are expected to be finalised in time for Vice-President Dick Cheney's visit to the Middle East in mid- March when he will visit 11 countries, four of which have a common border with Iraq.
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