CPTnet
30 June 2005
IRAQ: Why 500,000 Iraqi children are dead
Walking through the streets of Baghdad I often see children playing next to
raw sewage, which flows freely and causes a terrible stench. Two weekends
ago we had no electricity at all from the city grid, and there is rarely
more than a few hours of electricity a day. Even if the city keeps water
running, it is unsafe to drink, which I recently learned the hard way after
spending the better part of two days throwing up and sitting on the toilet.
Let me quickly explain why Iraqis as well as my team and I have to put up
with such a situation.
After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S./U.K. imposed
sanctions on Iraq through the U.N. The Washington Post reported that the
sanctions were meant to "inflict serious
pain on Baghdad of the kind that would change Saddam's behavior."[1] Because
Iraq depended on western parts and supplies to maintain electrical, water
treatment, and sewage treatment plants, embargoing the importation of such
supplies gave the U.S. considerable leverage against Saddam's regime. The
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.) predicted that Saddam's regime
would seek to circumvent the sanctions because, "Failing to secure supplies
will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population.
This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to
certain pure-water-dependant industries
becoming incapacitated--[2]
In addition to the sanctions, U.S. planners decided to directly target
Iraq's civilian infrastructure through bombing once the Gulf War finally
began in February 1991. One U.S. officer who played a central role in the
air campaign against Iraq explained that strategic air bombing is meant to
strike against not only military targets, but also against "all those things
that allow a nation to sustain itself."[3] Iraqi power generating plants
were among the main U.S. targets, because they produced the electricity
needed to keep water and sewage plants, medicine production, and hospitals
running.
Col. John A. Warden III, deputy director of strategy, doctrine and plans for
the Air Force, explained the logic of destroying Iraq's civilian
infrastructure, "Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity. He needs
help. If there are political objectives that the U.N. coalition has [after
the war], it can say, 'Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we will
allow people to come in and fix your electricity.' It gives us long-term
leverage."[4]
Those are some of the reasons why we rarely have electricity for more than a
few hours a day in our Baghdad apartment, why raw sewage flows through the
streets of my neighborhood, and why I don't drink the water from the tap
here.
Oh yeah, it's also why 500,000 Iraqi children are dead.
NOTES:
[1] White House Counts on Military Buildup to Force Saddam's
Hand. Washington Post, August 15, 1990
[2] Defense Intelligence Agency, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities" Jan
18, 1991. Links to this DIA document can be found at "War Crimes, US
Planners and Iraq's Water Vulnerability: A Conversation with Professor
Thomas Nagy." ZNet, June 03, 2003.
http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=3722.
[3] Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy
Went Beyond Purely Military Targets, Washington Post, June 23, 1991, Sunday,
Final Edition
[4] Washington Post, June 23, 1991.
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