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Sanctions take grim toll on Iraqi children
Local group will carry supplies to Baghdad
Saturday, August 5, 2000
By ISAAC BAKER
Bert Sacks slowly unzips his backpack and sets a small bottle of water on the table. It appears clean enough, there are no specks of dirt and no debris.
But he knows that the water carries fecal coliform and other contaminants. He knows that this water he took from a hospital in Basra, Iraq, is a killer.
"That's become our biological weapon," Sacks said of Iraqi water that remains contaminated as a result of economic sanctions following the Gulf War. "All you have to do is destroy the sewage system and it's there in the wells."
Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of U.S.-backed sanctions, which were enacted days after Iraq invaded Kuwait and began the Gulf War.
It is the same date, Aug. 6, that a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, killing 125,000 civilians and effectively ending World War II. For critics of sanctions, the parallel as a weapon of mass destruction is powerful. The sanctions, they and others say, have killed far more.
The issue is not pending before Congress, and the United States and Britain continue to staunchly support sanctions, despite protests from France, Russia, China and the Arab League.
Haunted by images of the impoverished nation, Sacks will lead a small delegation, including three Washington men, to Iraq Tuesday for a 10-day trip to protest the sanctions.
More than 120 people, including religious and political leaders, have agreed to break the sanctions with him on Monday by bringing food and medicine to a rally at Steinbrueck Park next to the Pike Place Market.
Sacks' group will bring two duffel bags each of antibiotics, water filters and other supplies to deliver to charities and hospitals around Basra and the capital city of Baghdad.
A former software consultant who has devoted his life to working for humanitarian causes, Sacks runs a hand through his silver hair as he talks about the desperation he's seen in his six trips to Iraq.
Doctors with advanced training in chemotherapy and cancer treatment sit by helplessly as their patients die. They don't have the proper medicines or equipment.
It is illegal to bring any aid to Iraq without government approval, a violation punishable by stiff fines and jail time.
And the consequences are real. Sacks received a letter from the State Department in 1998 threatening $163,000 in fines. He was never charged. Despite the risks, Sacks said the trip is worth it.
"We're doing this to publicly violate the sanctions and to call attention to their immorality," Sacks said.
After a decade of sanctions, Saddam Hussein remains firmly entrenched in power and the country's infrastructure remains in shambles.
Unemployment is rampant, and with no foreign aid, the economy has stagnated.
By most accounts, a lethal combination of malnourishment, contaminated water and a lack of basic medicines has decimated Iraqi children.
The United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that at least 500,000 children under the age of 5 have died since the sanctions began, most from preventable causes such as diarrhea and dehydration.
International humanitarian organizations estimate that 5,000 children are dying each month.
The last two coordinators of the U.N.'s humanitarian mission to Iraq have both resigned in protest of the sanctions.
"We are in the process of destroying an entire society," said Denis Halliday, after resigning in 1998. "It's as simple and terrifying as that."
But U.S. officials insist that Saddam Hussein is to blame for the country's misery. The Clinton administration has repeatedly said it would support ending sanctions if Saddam would stop all biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs and allow U.N. inspectors free reign in examining Iraq's facilities.
"Our concerns about Saddam Hussein's desire to pursue a program of developing weapons of mass destruction, those concerns remain," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said this week. "We need to have inspectors on the ground."
Saddam frustrated the United Nations for years by limiting access to inspection teams, and the United States and Britain launched a new round of bombings against the country when he expelled the U.N. team in 1998.
Iraq still refuses to allow the team back in.
The monitoring of no-fly zones in the northern and southern regions of Iraq, instituted by the United States and Britain after the Persian Gulf War, is the longest U.S. air operation since the Vietnam War. This year it will cost as much as $2 billion.
Pentagon officials say short of removing Saddam and his weapons programs, the United States has accomplished its goals in the region.
"Kuwait is free. It's rebuilt. It has a thriving economy," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters this week. "Iraq is contained. It has a broken economy. It is an isolated state.
"I think that's the fundamental accomplishment . . . over the last 10 years."
But for many Iraqis, the suffering continues.
The oil-for-food program begun in 1996 has helped ease some of the poverty, allowing Iraq to pump oil and sell it in exchange for food and medicines, as well as oil-drilling equipment.
The United States points out that it offered to begin the program after the Gulf War ended, but was turned down until Saddam became desperate for assistance.
About $21 billion worth of oil has been pumped since the tightly controlled program began. Under the plan, the United Nations sells oil for Iraq and holds onto the revenues. The Iraqi government can then submit proposals to spend the money on food and medicine, but they must be approved by a U.N. committee which checks for dual-use items that could be appropriated by the military.
The bureaucracy of the system has drawn fire from critics who say some of the holds placed on orders are deliberate.
Brian Mack, a religion teacher at Seattle Preparatory Academy who's going on the trip to Iraq, said withholding basic items from the Iraqi people makes no sense.
"An ambulance is dual use?" Mack asked of items held by the U.N. screening committee. "A water pump and an incubator are dual use?"
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has also shown concern over the delays.
"These holds are having an undesirable impact on our humanitarian activities," he said.
To critics, there are other snags: The United States has accused Saddam of stockpiling supplies and withholding them from his people. But since many of the products come in separate parts, when one component is held up, the whole delivery is delayed.
In some cases, boxes of syringes are stacked in warehouses gathering dust, awaiting the arrival of needles.
While Iraq is now allowed to pump as much oil as it can, its drilling equipment dates back to long before the Gulf War and is inefficient when it works at all. Much of the money earmarked for repairs and maintenance equipment has been held up under dual-use fears.
In addition, sanctions opponents point to the distribution of the oil funds: About a third of the oil revenues go to war reparations for Kuwait; another chunk goes for the overhead of the program and more goes to help pay for U.N. operations in the region.
All of the money, peace activist Sacks says, should go to help the starving and the sick of Iraq.
"Why do you limit these people to a certain amount of money?" Mack asked. "Are you afraid they'll eat too much?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appalled sanctions opponents when, after being asked about the death toll on "60 Minutes" in 1996, she replied that if it saved the lives of American soldiers, then "the price is worth it."
For many, like the teacher Mack, blaming Saddam for Iraq's troubles does not excuse U.S. sanctions. America could be helping to save those lives, he said.
"I feel called by my faith to violate these sanctions and suffer the consequences," said Mack, a devout Catholic. "You don't starve a people to punish a dictator. . . . You can't quash evil with evil."
The issue has received little attention in Congress or in the presidential race.
Rep. George Nethercutt, a Washington Republican, has garnered headlines for his call for an end to the embargo on Cuba, but Iraq sanctions have remained on the fringes.
Republican Sen. Slade Gorton will continue to back the sanctions until Saddam complies with the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire, said spokesman Todd Young, including allowing U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq and dismantling his programs for weapons of mass destruction.
A spokeswoman for Democratic Sen. Patty Murray said the issue needs to be revisited, but that no one's talking about it.
"Right now we have some major security concerns about Saddam Hussein and his weapons," said spokeswoman Tovah Ravitz. "But we need to take a close look at what the sanctions are doing to civilians, and especially kids. At this point there's no debate at all."
Gerri Haynes, vice president of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and a nurse and grief counselor at Children's Hospital, said the reality is easy to ignore.
"The American public doesn't know, and it doesn't want to know," said Haynes, who's been to Iraq three times. "It would mean that they would have to stand up."
P-I reporter Isaac Baker can be reached at 206-448-8366 or isaacbaker@seattle-pi.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
But while Sacks will lead a group of local men next week to bring supplies to the people of Iraq and to call attention to the sanctions, Iraq seems to have dropped out of the American consciousness.
Kadhin Hadawi, 67, displays an X-ray showing he likely has tuberculosis at Qadysiaha General Hospital in Baghdad. U.S.-backed sanctions against Iraq have led to a shortage of medical supplies. Dan DeLong/P-I
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