Iraq
:'Internationally
Sponsored Genocide'
By
Felicity Arbuthnot
29 November,
2007
Between Two Rivers
Editors have a mantra, do not
look back, move on, write what is current. But sometimes looking back
is vital. Those who ignore even the recent past are doomed to understand
nothing, sink deeper into quagmires - and bleat again : 'Why do they
hate us'?
Looking through
material for the book that has been far too long in the making, I found
a copy of a letter which I sent to a prominent (UK) Member of Parliament.
It is dated November 1993 and clarifies for ever why the invaders were
never going to be greeted with 'sweets and flowers'.
Near exactly
fourteen years ago - three years and three months in to the embargo
- I wrote:
" Meridian Hotel, Baghdad, 4th November 1993.
"As
you know, when I was here in April/May 1992, I thought things could
get no worse. Yet in July this year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation
of the United Nations note in a Report: '..with deep regret', all the:
'pre-faminine indicators being in place'. Further that an appreciable
proportion of the population now had less calorific intake than the
most famine stricken parts of Africa. That was July. This is apocalypse.
This is internationally sponsored genocide.
"Food
has risen in real terms, one thousand percent. Some most basic of staples
have risen eleven hundred times. This morning a breakfast for three,
of three black cofees, two orange juices and an omlette cost, what would
have been, in 1989, the equivalent of one thousand three hundred US
dollars. With US dollars, one can buy stacks of black market Iraqi Dinars,
an inches high wad for fifty dollars, chillingly redolent of Germany
after the first world war. Most Iraqi people have no dollars.
'"In
the foyer of the Rashid Hotel, is one of the most magnificent display
of wonderous artifacts one could ever hope to see: jewellery, paintings,
superb, rare antique boxes, chandeliers, crystal, exquisite family treaures,
handed down over generations, many also collected from around the globe.
They are the belongings of the middle class, for sale in the hope they
will be sold for hard currency to the rare visitor. Living for a few
more weeks. The poor have no antiques.
"A friend,
a multi-lingual, much travelled novelist and editor, whose great grandfather's
statue graces an area of Baghdad, boils rose petals for a face cleaner,
concocts a mixture of boracic and herbs for deodorant and uses an ancinet
clay for hair conditioner.She and her family, as many Iraqis, now clean
their teeth with husks from a plant, a method from a bygone age.Tooth
paste and tooth brushes are vetoed. Her last novel is trapped in her
computer, for want of a minor, embargoed spare part.If she could release
it, it would be anyway useless, there is no paper to print it on. Paper
is also veoted by the U.N., Sanctions Committee.
"Car
tyres cost sixteen month's average salary.Yet people have to drive the
gruelling, utterly isolated, seven hundred kilometre, desert road to
Jordan, to attempt to conduct any business, or for medical help, if
they are the few lucky enough to have the money to operate in hard currency.They
drive one resewn tyres, often stuffed with just about anything to keep
them inflated, in the searing heat. They travel in cars that are now
death traps. All spare parts also vetoed.
"The
deaths on the Jordan road (and the visible testimony of them) are a
bare decimal point in the reality of life here.The U.N., of course,
fly in, and loudly demand Nescafe for breakfast, unattainable anywhere.
The delicious Turkish coffee which is available for those who can afford
it, has become a token of ' the enemy' for them, it seems. I have witnessed
this over and over again, in this hotel: ' No, no, Nescafe, not Turkish
coffee ...' Then something along the lines of : ''What is wrong with
you people, do you understand nothing'? Last night, they wanted hot
' vegetable soup'. The temperature was Hadean and the Chef had worked
miracles with pulses and fresh salads, unattainable for most and now
pretty difficult for even the government subsidised hotels.U.N., personnel
in Iraq are a million miles from the aspirations expressed on behalf
of 'We the people ...' They are bent on ritual humiliation - utterly
shameing 'We the people'.
"The
U.N ,. personnel were sporting satelite phones and bleepers.Two months
ago the U.N., Sanctions Committee (read US and UK., as ever) vetoed
a consignment of bleepers and mobile 'phones for the doctors, medical
staff, ambulance drivers and other emergency units, denying all contact
between emergency and life saving personnel.
"Just
before I left the U.K., in September, the Sanctions Committee revoked
the licence for five hundred tons of shroud material. It is currently
stuck in Jordan, having taken since April to get even as far as Aquaba
port. Sanctions reach even beyond the grave.
"Earlier this year the U.S., U.K., and France vetoed a consignment
of school writing pads, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pencils and consignment
of ping pong balls. Childhood is dead in Iraq. There are few birthday
parties anymore, for most, neither the food nor the presents are affordable.
"The
U.S., and U.K., recently also vetoed a consignment of 'medical gauze'
(ie: bandages) and refused to allow a Spanish company to assist in rebuilding
the syringe factory, bombed in 1991. Doctors are forced to re-use syringes
again and again. One lowered his eyes and his voice in shame, as he
told me that they re-use the paediatric canulars from babies who have
died. He did five years post graduate studies in the United States and
spoke better english than you or I. He had believed in the 'land of
the free'. Not any more.
"In
a tiny grocery store,very early yesterday morning, a child of perhaps
five came in, with that air of pride of children everywhere entrusted
to run an errand. He was clutching a five Dinar note, fifteen dollars,
just four years ago. It bought one egg, which he carefully carried to
the door - and then he dropped it.He was beside himself. He fell to
the floor and frantically tried to gather it up in his hands, tears
streaming down his small, desparate face. As I searched in my pocket,
the shopkeeper shook his head, gently touched him on the shoulder and
gave him another egg. Protein is unbuyable for the majority. Families
chop one egg into miniscule pieces, so all have a couple of tiny morsels
- in a country 'floating on a sea of oil', the second largest reserves
on earth.
"How
many more traumatised children, in our name? How many countless 'broken
eggs' are there here now in just three years? What would be acceptable
to the U.S., and British administrations? What do they expect, perhaps
an army of premature babies (a quarter of live births are now premature)
rising up from their non-functioning-for-want-of-western-spare-parts-incubators,
to overthrow Saddam Hussein?
"People
here, broadly, do not care about the government.The struggle to survive
day by day is the greater challenge. Further, I went back to a large
group who were highly critical of the government a year ago. They are
now so furious at what the embago is doing to their families, friends,
neighbourhood and the ancient country they love - and of which , it
seems to the visitor, all feel that they are honoured custodians - this
year they all lit a candle on Saddam Hussein's birthday.
"As
you know, rightly or wrongly, I have no view on politics here, it is
none of our business and to collectively punish - U.N., or not, is illegal
and beyond shame - twenty five million souls hostage to our Adminstrations'
views of their government.The highest category of victims are the new
born, the unborn and the under fives.This is being done, we are told,
that Saddam Hussein will be forced to comply with the latest moving
goal post and curb the excesses of his regime. Yet in the name of our
regimes the 'mass graves' are spreading across the country - with our
nations' names on them.
" I
do not know when or where this shocking epsisode in history will end.
But I know for certain that we will never be forgiven, not alone in
Iraq, but across the region and beyond. Putting out the hand of friendship
and being big enough to forget about 'losing face', might just avert
some major tragedy, the spirit of generosity is what embodies this region.
Otherwise the silent crimes of the U.S.,-U.K., driven 'U.N.' embargo
may return to haunt us too.'"
The embargo of course, ground on for a further ten years, then came
the criminality of 'Shock and Awe' and an invasion where Iraqis can
be killed, tortured, stolen from, raped, run over, bombed, blown up,
imprisoned without trial, with impunity. If anyone treated a domestic
or farm animal in the West, as the Iraqis have been treated for over
seventeen years: denied a proper diet, medication, clean water, a safe
environment, that person would end up in Court and likely in prison.
The above
letter is a minute snap shot from just one visit now long ago - and
it went downhill from there. Every visit saw a new crisis. Forget 'Al
Qaeda', 'insurgents', 'dead enders', 'terrorist elements', 'bad guys'.
The majority of the resistance are the child that dropped the egg within
the man and his generation of childhoodless, traumatised children, who
survived the internationally sponsored genocide. 'No child left behind'?
In Iraq every child has been left behind, discarded year after year,
by the 'international community'.
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