Humanitarian hell
Relief agencies are warning that the overall humanitarian situation in Iraq is getting gloomier. Rasha Saad reports
"The humanitarian situation in Iraq is a bleak one." This is how Anis Salem, a UNICEF spokesman in Amman, summed up the current plight of the Iraqi civilians.
In a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Salem painted a dim picture of the situation in the main Iraqi cities of Basra and Baghdad, which are being deprived of electricity, water and sanitation services. With 70 per cent of the population living in cities, the impact of the war on children is immense. "We are particularly concerned about the most vulnerable children, namely those who have been suffering from malnutrition," Salem said. Before the war started, a million Iraqi children under five years of age were suffering from chronic malnutrition. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) believes the figure has more than doubled since the conflict began on 20 March.
The temperature, which climbed to more than 40 degrees Celsius last week, and the drastic effect this has on the population, is another major concern for UNICEF. "We are very concerned because the rise in temperature causes an increase in cases of diarrhoea, dehydration and malnutrition," Salem added.
Speaking about the psychological effect of war on children, Salem said that the UNICEF experience in conflict situations indicate that, "children carry the trauma of war for many years after it ends, and the Iraqis are no exceptions to this."
In the current war, the UNICEF has received reports of children feeling disturbed because of the bombing, showing signs of trauma and having nightmares.
According to Salem, UNICEF members visited a group of children in an institution in Baghdad which provides shelter for orphans and disabled children. When asked about their wishes and what they wanted to have now, the children replied that they wanted the bombing to stop, "so this is just an indication of the cost that children are paying for war," he said.
In response to the growing humanitarian crisis, the UNICEF last week appealed to the United Nations for $166 million in aid -- part of a larger appeal for $2.2 billion -- to start an emergency operation that will extend over six months to provide water, sanitation, child and maternal health measures, education and treatment for trauma. While Salem did not reveal the exact amount collected by the UNICEF to date, he said that some countries had committed themselves to donating aid but that, "we still haven't received the amount we asked for."
Operating in war-torn Iraq is not an easy job for relief agencies. Access to the population is often hindered by lack of proper security, but more often than not it is politics which affect any humanitarian mission.
"There is no political consensus on the mechanism for conducting humanitarian relief [in Iraq]," Salem contended.
Though he refrained from blaming a specific party, Salem complained of, "the usual political constraints we see with governments placing emphasis on the political aspects of humanitarian aid issues. Our position is that humanitarian aid must be a priority and should be allowed to be administered. That goes for all sides involved in the conflict as well as neighbouring countries."
In Baghdad the overall situation is deteriorating with an ever-increasing number of casualties and a devastated infrastructure hampering relief efforts in and around Iraqi cities. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said they were alarmed by the number of civilian casualties in Iraq. The ICRC on Sunday said that the number of casualties in Baghdad is so high that hospitals have stopped counting the number of admissions. "Staff members are no longer able to keep accurate statistics of the war casualties admitted or transferred as one emergency admission follows another in the hospitals of Baghdad," said an ICRC statement.
"All hospitals are under pressure and the medical staff is working without a break," the statement added.
The ICRC also said that hospitals urgently needed more water supplies. Given the general power supply in Baghdad, most hospitals and water plants are now being powered by back-up generators.
Media reports also emphasised the shortage of medical supplies such as anesthetics, saying that some hospitals have to perform major surgery using anaesthesia which is normally used for minor operations. WHO officials also said on Sunday that medical staff in Baghdad's major hospitals were "overwhelmed" and access to health care and drugs was "getting more difficult as stocks cannot be replenished at the moment".
In Umm Qasr, which is in the hands of coalition forces, the situation is no better. The town's sole hospital is also overflowing with patients, with just two doctors available to treat the roughly 200 people who queue every day for treatment. The hospital is also a victim of the town's gravest problem -- lack of water. The few water trucks which drive up from Kuwait and the daily water distributions organised by British troops are said to be insufficient.
"It's been three days now and we haven't received even one litre of water," says Mohamed Al-Mansoury, the hospital's director. "The war started two weeks ago and everything is the same as before, or worse," he added.
To make matters worse, at least 48 civilians, mostly children, were killed and around 300 injured in US attacks on the town of Al-Hilla, south of Baghdad on Tuesday 1 April. Cluster bombs were used in the attack, the use of which by the coalition army has been condemned by several human rights and relief organisations.
The bombing of Al-Hilla was described as "veritable horror" by Roland Huguenin, an ICRC spokesman in Baghdad. "Our four-member team went to Al-Hilla hospital south of Baghdad, and what they saw there was a veritable horror. There were dozens of smashed corpses," he told Agence France Presse (AFP).
International Human Rights watchdog Amnesty International condemned the attack on Al- Hilla saying that, "it constitutes an indiscriminate attack and a grave violation of international humanitarian law."
Responding to statements by British officials, which say that the use of cluster bombs is legal, Salem told the Weekly that as far as the humanitarian community is concerned, "the cluster bomb is a clumsy weapon which often does not distinguish between a military and a civilian target. In addition to this, unexploded bomblets are often picked up by children and can explode later."
The UNICEF has also warned that Iraqi children, in particular, are at risk from cluster bombs or anti-personnel mines, partly because they are coloured yellow like food packages dropped from planes.
One AFP corespondent who was at the town's hospital after the bombing also reported on one citizen, Razek Al-Kazem, who lost his wife, six children, father, mother, three brothers and their wives when their pickup truck was blown up by a rocket from a US Apache helicopter.
"Should I cry over my children? Should I cry over my wife? Should I cry over my father? Should I cry over my mother?" he repeated as he went from one coffin to another.
Ignoring the crowd around him, Al-Kazem lifted up a sheet lying on one of the coffins and saw the mutilated bodies of three of his young children. He unveiled another coffin to find a dead child lying next to the remains of an infant, a pacifier still in her mouth.
The New-York based Human Rights Watch, in a report released days ahead of the start of the war, said cluster munitions dropped in the 1991 Gulf war were to blame for the death or injuries of more than 4,000 civilians after the fighting ended.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 -16 April 2003 (Issue No. 633)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/sc10.htm