7 year old Munther al-Abbas with his father. Munther’s treatment for leukaemia has stopped due to lack of drugs - without them he will die.
US soldiers guarding the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad

His family is safe and living with relatives, as their own house is unlivable due to a missile, which hit next to their house. His son Ali - who stopped talking during the Gulf war and whose subsequent stuttering required years of treatment - seems to be doing alright, as is their younger son Yassar, 13 years old. Lamia, his wife and also a university teacher, has not fared as well. The bombing and now the occupation have taken their toll on her. She cannot bear the presence of foreign troops in her beloved country. She wants to leave the country, and it seems that for her own emotional and psychological well being she should. Saad on the other hand is determined to stay on with his students. He broke down more than once as he told us about the “total destruction of the university.” He told us that his books, all his memories, and his students’ theses have gone up in smoke. “They burned the national library too.” Like many others, he is struggling deep within himself to understand how this destruction can be happening. He too is asking the question “why, why, why?”

(Members of the Iraq Peace Team report on meeting Professor Saad Al Hassani, 17 April 2003. See www.iraqpeaceteam.org for all their reports from Iraq.)


While the U.S. secures its economic and military interests in Iraq, the population – and especially Iraq’s children – remain in grave danger because of the massive damage and disruption caused by the war and its aftermath. Waterborne diseases have increased sharply, the food reserves of the most vulnerable Iraqis are predicted to run out by early May and Iraq’s shattered hospitals are struggling to begin to recover from the effects of war, looting and twelve and a half years of economic sanctions.

As occupying powers the US and UK have obligations under international humanitarian law to:
• ‘ensur[e] the food and medical supplies of the population’;
• restore public order and safety;
• and ‘facilitate by all means at [their] disposal’ humanitarian relief by impartial aid agencies
(see Amnesty International’s briefing ‘Iraq: Responsibilities of the occupying powers’, available on-line at http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde140892003).

So far they have failed to fulfil these obligations:
• Although the US/UK have so far spent at least $20 bn on their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq (FT, 17 April) the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been unable raise the $1.3 bn it needs for its emergency operation to re-establish food distribution inside Iraq and ‘avert a humanitarian catastrophe.’ Prior to the war 60% of Iraq’s population were dependent upon a Government food ration, distributed via a network 44,000 food and flour agents. Reactivating and supplying this network will be one of the largest logistics operations in the WFP’s 40 year history. As at 25th April – almost a month after the WFP launched its appeal - there was still a $959 mn funding shortfall. The UK had contributed a minuscule $13 mn.
• While much planning and resources were devoted to securing Iraq’s oilfields and the Ministry of Oil, Iraq’s hospitals and water-treatment plants were left to the looters. On the 19 April the Independent reported that all but three of Baghdad’s hospitals were ‘closed because of looting and arson.’ Oxfam’s engineers found that water-treatment plants in the south – and even a chlorine factory in Zubayr – had been badly looted (Guardian, 19 April).
• The US military has prevented Save the Children (SCF) from landing desperately needed medical supplies even in areas declared safe by the UN. According to SCF this lack of cooperation was ‘a breach of the Geneva convention’ and ‘cost[ed] children their lives’ (Guardian, 18 April).

On 27th April UNICEF reported a serious outbreak of diarrhoeal illness at the al-Noor hospital in one of the Baghdad’s poorest suburbs, with over 300 cases of diarrhoea admitted in just three hours. Lack of security means that many sick people are not being brought to hospital until they are severely dehydrated. According to UNICEF: ‘If - as reports suggest - the outbreak at the al-Noor hospital is being replicated in other parts of Baghdad and beyond, it only underscores the crucial importance of ensuring that safe water supplies reach the Iraqi population fast. By and large this is not happening … we are faced with the very real possibility that in the south of the country at least, water treatment plants will very soon run out of supplies of the chemicals needed to make raw water supplies safe to drink. Unless urgent steps are taken to rectify this, a dramatic escalation in the incidence of diarrhoeal disease may be unavoidable.’

In war-ravaged Nasiriya, with no electricity to pump water, locals have been breaking into the underground pipes, allowing raw sewage to seep into the system. According to Mary McLoughlin, field worker with the Irish NGO Goal, if the water and sewage situation is not mended soon, Nasiriya will face a “major humanitarian crisis” with the “grave danger of a cholera epidemic by the summer.” (BBC On-line, 23 April).

In the first eight months of 1991, an estimated 47,000 children under the age of five died as a result of the devastation caused by the 1991 Gulf War and its aftermath – over ten times the number of civilians that were killed during the war itself. As Iraq continues to slip down the media’s agenda we must act to ensure that this history is not repeated.