Air raids continue •Iran has protested | that one US bomb has landed in has been forced to concede that one of its "smart bombs" has hit the wrong target in Basra, destroying homes and killing many civilians. The British and US governments have provided spurious arguments in an attempt to justify these illegal bombings, claiming Iraqi non-compliance with the UN weapons inspection teams.
Many diplomats in Baghdad, however, have confirmed that any non-compliance was marginal and technical, and was seized on by the US and Britain as a pretext for a bombing campaign which they were already determined to carry out. Meanwhile, it has become clear that many of the targets were identified by these same inspection teams, who were acting as spies for the US as well as reporting to the UN.
Since the Gulf War of 1991, the Iraqi infrastructure has been devastated by both bombings and sanchons. Iraq, previously a country with a strong economy, good nutrition, near-Western levels of child mortality, and welldeveloped health, education and welfare provision, has been reduced to a below-subsistence The sanctions are now even more devastating than the bombings, leading to a far higher number of deaths. Yet, until recently, the focus of protest has been on the bombing, with many opponents of direct military attack supporting sanctions as a means of imposing Western demands the Iragi government.
Last year Irish diplomat Denis Halliday resigned as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, describing sanctions and the so-called "Oil-for-Food" policy as "illegal and immoral"
In a packed meeting at London's Conway Hall in January, Mr Halliday pointed out the consequences: 5-6000 children die every month of malnutrition and preventable disease: UNICEF reports that 30% of Iraqi children suffer malnutrition, 20% chronically.
A study by Dr Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, shows that the death rate for under-5s in Iraq has tripled since 1990, a phenomenon unprecedented in the modern world.
Other speakers at the meeting Algerian president Ahmed Ben unable to communicate with SadA particularly moving speech mother of murdered black youth they are a fraction of those comIn an interview with the Independent last year, Dennis Halliday described the "Oil-for-Food" policy, which he used to administer, as "band-aid". The Kritish and US governments regard this policy as proof of their concern for the people of Iraq.
Robin Cook claimed to Parliament in November that it allowed Iraq to sell over $10 billion of oil every year to pay for food, medicine and other humanitarian goods - implying that this money was being diverted by Saddam Hussein to other purposes.
In fact, as Cook well knows, 30% of the notional income is diverted by the UN for its own operating expenses and for war reparations. In addition, the fall in oil prices, and the embargo on supply of spare parts for Iraq's oil industry, mean that the available income is far less than Cook has claimed.
Even if the entire $10 billion was available, this would not be sufficient to rebuild Irag's shattered Cook further claimed that sanctions had never covered food and medicines. In fact, food exports to Iraq were banned from August 1990 to March 1991while many medical supplies, such as swabs and gauze, are indeed banned.
Additionally, the combination of sustained bombing and the ban on exports of pumping gear and other necessary equipment has caused a drop of 50% in the quantity of The sanctions available water.
In some are now even regions, more devastating much as 35% than the bombings, of this is contaminated leading to a far with seware higher number of and uraniumtipped artillery deaths. shells.
Water-borne disense has become pant, while the lack of drugs and medical equipment means that treatable conditions now lead to hundreds of deaths every week.
Iraq's children and poor, of course, suffer disproportionately from this.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1995, about 7-9% of the population was thriving on trade, while 70% was in precarious conditions. Dennis Halliday commented at Conway Hall that members of the United Nations could not continue to punish the Iraqi people, including thousands of children every included Tony Benn and former month, simply because they were Whatever the crimes of Husup Saddam Hussein in an attempt to defeat involution and who continue to support Israel in its 50-year war of dispossession and cultural genocide against Palestine, have no right to intervene in the affairs of Iraq or any other state.
Protests against the sanctions have been growing in the US. The Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness group faces a huge fine from the US authorities for travelling to Iraq and distributing medicine and toys.
The academics and activists Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Edward Said, and Howard Zinn have described sanctions as policy of attacking Iraq. "sanctioned mass-murder that is nearing holocaust proportions." In Britain, Voices in the Wilderness plans a National Day of Action Against Sanctions on 27 February, and the Against Sanctions and War on Iraq plans a national demonstration on 17 April; Tony Benn and Ahmed Ben Bella will be among the speakers. All unions should be pressed to support this demonSit-down protest in Whitehall called by CND and others opposed to British-US stration and its demands; all CLPs should be calling on their MPs to denounce the criminal sanctions and demand that they be dropped. • Voices in the Wilderness, 12 Trinity Road, London N2 8JJ. [email protected] • Campaign Against Sanctions and War on Iraq, BM 2966, London WCIN 3XX.