'Swimming
Up The Tigris'
By Felicity Arbuthnot
15 October, 2007
Uruknet
Book Review: 'Swimming
Up The Tigris' By Barbara Nimri Aziz
This
poignant book, by a woman who knows and loves Iraq, covers both the
embargo years and the aftermath. Her astute insights cover both the
political games and the resulting human cost. Writing in one chapter:
'Imagine', she writes of a family who had withstood the 1991 onslaught,
the embargo's unique deprivations, numerous bombings, but decided to
flee the invasion, fearing for the lives of their children.
'Imagine', she writes of
each step: leaving all that is precious, pictures, books, momentos;
'imagine' entrusting the keys to your neighbour's gardner, who promises
to guard their home as his own. 'Imagine' delivering the childrens'
precious pet bird to their aunt, ordering the taxi, locking the gate,
the children sobbing .... leaving all that is the centre of your lives.
Florida University Press
requested that I write the foreword for 'Swimming ...'In the event it
was deemed too radical, though a clip appears on the cover. So, in tribute
to a remarkable book and labour of love of some years and witness to
and experience of terrible grief, of humanity, laughter, in the 'land
between two rivers', over many, here is the unpublished foreword. Salut,
Barbara.
This is a book that had to be written, an insight in to a land and a
people demonised and villified for sixteen years, written by an author,
journalist, broadcaster, academic, and anthropologist, who walks in
the shoes of so many, who have suffered so uniquely grievously, due
to United Nations' policies, driven almost entirely by the United States
and Britain.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait
in 1990, the United Nations imposed an embargo on both countries, seemingly
to pressure for a resolution to the dispute. It was, ironically, implemented
on Hiroshima Day (6th August) and heralded a silent holocaust and one
of the U.N.'s most shameful eras, as it was lifted on Kuwait and ground
on for thirteen years for Iraq. Then replaced by illegal invasion, occupation,
slaughter and ongoing, unimaginable destruction, heartbreak and bloodshed.
As the western propoganda
machine rampaged through the the years, the Iraqi people - their warmth,
ingenuity, generosity, their humbling welcome to those from countries
who had brought them such suffering - were air brushed out of the picture,
except by a small band of journalists, activists and aid workers, consumed
by an historic injustice and love for those of this complex, haunting,
ancient land.Barbara Nimri Aziz, usually travelling alone, was one such,
who repeatedly returned, broadcasting and writing, speaking for people
whose voices too, had become embargoed. For the outside majority, it
seemed just Saddam Hussein, existed, not the twenty five million people
(broadly, half of which are under sixteen) of ancient Mesapotamia, the
'land between two rivers': the biblical Tigris and Euphrates.
Space does not permit an
adequate background to the reasons for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. However,
during the eight year Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) losses on both sides
which were compared to the first World War and in which the United States
backed Iraq (but provided arms to both sides) Kuwaiti settlements encroached
well in to Iraq.Iraq's currency was subsequently devalued by Kuwait's
oil transactions and during the war, Kuwait engaged in slant drilling
under the border and extracting oil from Iraq's vast Rumaila oil field.
When efforts to resolve these complexities failed, the Iraqi government
approached the then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, querying
Washington's views, should conflict become an option.
Glaspie replied that the U.S. had: '.. no view on Arab-Arab conflicts.'
Whatever and about Saddam Hussein, imagine the U.S., response to Mexico's
residents settling three hundred kilometres in to the United States
beyond the common border - and slant drilling in to Texan oil wells.Iraq
imported, broadly, seventy percent of everything (ironically, largely
on the advice of the United Nations Food and Agricutural Organisation.)
With the country bombed 'back to a pre-industrial age', as had been
promised by James Baker, then Secretary of State under President George
Bush, Snr., catastrophe loomed.
The entire manufacturing
and industrial base had been destroyed with infrastructure (water de-salination
and purification) electricity, communications, medical and food warehouses,
roads, the great bridges which joined a country, fractured by the two
great rivers.All necessary to rebuild and repair was vetoed by the United
Nations Sanctions Committee, in a country which had enjoyed, according
to the U.N's own assessment, over ninety percent access to clean water
and high quality free medical care and education.
Normality too was vetoed.
Professor Magne Raundalen, founder of the Center for Crisis Studies
in Bergen, Norway, one of the world's foremost experts on the psychological
damage to children in war zones, in 1992, estimated that the children
of Iraq were the 'most traumatised child population on earth'. Subject
to forty two days of carpet bombings ( 17th January 1991 - 28th February
1991 - an average of two thousand sorties daily)(1.) they had no way
of recovering, of gradual return to normality.School books, paper, pencils,
blackboards, pens, were vetoed, in a country, two years running, presented
with an Award by UNESCO, in tribute to a free eduacation, from Primary
level, through university, in which children born to even illiterate
parents, could graduate with a Ph.D. Toys, even a consignment of ping
pong balls and childrens' bicycles were denied - and inflation became
stratospheric. In 1989, one Iraqi Dinar (ID) was worth three U.S. Dollars.
By 1992, two hundred and fifty ID - formerly seven hundred and fifty
U.S Dollars - would not buy a postage stamp in neighbouring Jordan.
For most, childhood died in Iraq, with birthday parties, Eid and Christmas
celebrations increasingly cancelled - money for presents, for celebratory
meals, dwindling or gone, in a country where family celebrations with
friends, are the years' highlights, planned in minute detail, anticipated,
photographed and joyously embraced.
And the children were dying
in their thousands from 'embargo related causes' - 'not with a bang,
but with a whimper'. Prior to August 1990, wasting diseases resultant
from malnourishment were rarely heard of. Cheap, plentiful food, had
led to obesity becoming a medical problem.Kwashiokor and Marasmus, associated
with the word's poorest countries, rose respectively, from just 485
in 1990 to 13,744 in 1992 and 5,193 in 1990 to 111,477 in 1992. (2)
The same year under five mortality rose from 43.2 per thousand to 128.5
per thousand.(3)
Water born diseases soared.
Cholera, of which there had been no cases in 1989-1990, presented 2,100
in 1991-1992; typhoid rose by 1,060 percent and polio, with just ten
cases in 1989, presented with one hundred and twenty by 1992. (4) Parts
for repairing water vetoed, Iraq's water became a biological weapon,
with shattered sewage and water pipes mixing their contents.Yet potassium,
vital for rehydration and purchasable over the counter in chemists in
the West, was vetoed, as, largely, anti-biotics and diahorroreal treatments.
In strict contravention of
the Geneva Convention, on 18th January 1991, the U.S. Defence Intelligence
Agency circulated a detailed scientific Report on Iraq's complex water
system to all Allied Commands.Entitled: 'Iraq Water Vulnerabilities',
it detailed the catastrophic health effect bombing the network would
have, concluding, that after all the essential purification, distribution
and networks were bombed: 'it is estimated that it will take six months,
for Iraq's water (systems) to fully degrade.'Professor Tom Nagy of the
University of Washington discovered this document, ten years later.
A member of the authorative Association of Genocide Scholars, he presented
it for their deliberations.Their verdict was that this shameful, shocking
paper, fell within their remit. (5)
Early in the embargo, doctors
made a new diagnosis. Mothers too malnourished to breast feed and too
poor to buy milk powder, a tin of which exceeded the monthly salary
of many, fed their baby sugared water, or sugared tea. All became bloated,
chronically malnourished and almost all died.Doctors named them: 'The
sugar babies'. Cancers became epidemic, as did birth defects. Conditions
linked with with the radioactive and chemically toxic depleted uranium
weapons used by the U.S. and Britain, waste from the nuclear industry,
dust from which if inhaled or ingested, causes genetic mutations and
is carginogenic.Cancer medications were largely vetoed, so living in
their irradiated land, Iraqis suffered only the detrimental effects
of radiation and little of the therapeutic.'There is a hole where my
heart should be', a young doctor suddenly remarked on one visit, stroking
the heads of her small, doomed patients. Another quoted Goethe: 'Man
can only stand so much pain, after that he either dies, or sinks in
to apathy.'
Iraqis, between the embargo and the thirteen years of subsequent U.S.,
U.K., bombing and ultimate invasion, could not avoid dying, but apathy
was not an option. British colonialist, writer and spy, Gertrude Bell
who never the less was captivated by Iraq, encapsulated the spirit in
an undated essay in the 1930's. She wrote of the 'romance' of this 'cradle
of civilisation' - and of the people: ' The enterprise, the rigors,
the courage...' They remain undimmed.
Over the embargo years, death
stalked Iraq's children from the moment of birth - and the embargoe's
mass graves will for ever be a monument to a U.S., U.K., driven wickedness
which equals that of Pol Pot. In 1998 one man finally fixated the world's
attentions on this unique wickedness.Denis Halliday, distinguished U.N.
career diplomat and a U.N. Assistant Secretary General, appointed as
.U.N. Co-ordinator in Iraq, resigned, from the post and the U.N., calling
the embargo:'genocide', adding that: 'history will slaughter those responsible.'
He travelled the globe, talking of the plight of the Iraqi people.
Fifteen months later, his
succesor, Count Hans von Sponeck also resigned in shame and disgust,
joining Halliday in speaking out, world wide. 'Anyone who has been there
and seen for themselves, could do nothing else', he told me.Between
them, Halliday and von Sponeck had given sixty six years service to
the U.N. The day after von Sponeck resigned, Jutta Burghardt, Chief
of the (U.N.) World Food Programme in Iraq, also resigned: 'The middle
class is disappearing and the stunted children will never recover.'
Representative David Bonier
talked of :' Infanticide masquerading as policy' and seventy Members
of Congress signed a letter to President Clinton, demanding a change
in policy.
Baghdad airport had been
rebuilt and reopened for sporadic flights and neighbouring countries,
shamed at Iraq's plight took less notice of the embargoe's strictures
-and though, for most, the poverty ground on, the soul, the hope, began
to return to the nation. 'For us the embargo is over', was a repeated
refrain. And the isolation, as debillitating as the deprivation, began
to recede. ' Every time a 'plane comes in, there are tears in our eyes',
remarked a friend.
Then came the Presidency
of George W. Bush, the threats, the lies, culminating in the illegal
invasion. Few could encapsulate, as Barbara Nimri Aziz, the spirit,
the laughter, courage, tears of the people of this extraordinary, haunting,
complex land, where Baghdad was described as :'the Paris of the ninth
century' , (6) where civilisation flourished before Mohammed and Christ
walked the earth. For believers, the land of the Garden of Eden, the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, of Ur, where Abraham, father of Islam, Christianity
and Judaism was suckled on two fingers, one which brought forth milk,
the other honey, thus 'land of milk and honey'. Land of humanity's history
- where the 'liberated' now write of the embargo's horrors as : 'golden
years'.
Paul William Roberts writes
of the invasion :
'.... the old people with
resignation stamped across their foreheads, who can't go on yet will
go on; the young married couples who still hope for a better life yet
don't hope too hard lest it break their hearts, the countless unremembered
acts of kindness and of love that fill desolate days, and I realize
I would far prefer to be here than in any house where this war is justified.For
it cannot be justified.'But this region has always led to somewhere
worth going. Baghdad is just as glorious in its ruin as it was in its
glory. For something noble crawls from the rubble, to spread golden
wings in the light of dawn. The gate of God opens wider.'
Barbara Nimri Aziz opens
many gates, to unique, astute and eye misting, insights. Every American
and British politician should read this book and sink to their knees
in shame.
1.The Fire this Time: Ramsey
Clark, Thundermouth Press, 1992.
2.ibid.
3.The Children are Dying ; Report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation,
World View Forum, 1995.
4.The Fire this Time.
5.How the U.S. Deliberately Destroyed Iraq's Water; www.commondreams.org
29th August 2001.Thanks to Professor Nagy, Iraq Water Vulnerabilities
has numerous Google entries for interested researchers. The paper can
be fully downloaded.
6.The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam, Sir Richard Burton, 1898.
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