[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Drakonix

Here is a genuine cut & paste from http://www.un.org/News/ossg/iraq.htm

(bolded emphasis added)

Hmmmmm

Looks nice on a piece of paper doesn't it? Looks clean and humaine and full of good intentions. Unfortunately...

UN organizations, UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) report that more than a million people have died in Iraq over the past decade, as a consequence of the blockade. More than 500.000 children, below the age of five are to be counted among its victims. The comprehensive economic sanctions against Iraq were initiated in 1990 as a means of forcing Iraq to withdraw its troops from Kuwait. But the withdrawal of Iraqi troops and the recognition of all UN resolutions pending on this matter, did not bring a lifting of the sanctions. Instead the sanctions were linked to new demands.

These sanctions are the most severe sanctions in history, and also the most fateful: Child mortality in Iraq has more than doubled, one third of Iraqi children suffer under malnutrition, and many are permanently stunted in their physical and mental development. Even with humanitarian exemptions from the embargo and subsequent aid programs e.g. the "oil for food" program, are entirely insufficient to be able to prevent also the devastating social and psychological consequences of the sanctions.

US scientists Noam Chomsky and Edward Said have written that the embargo against Iraq is "not a foreign policy - it is state-sanctioned mass murder."

No political or other objectives can justify sanctions with such horrendous consequences for the life and health of the general population. The sanctions are in violation of fundamental human rights, numerous internationally binding conventions and international humanitarian law...

From

Here is some reading on the living conditions before and after the embargo.

The humanitarian disaster
This section provides an overview of a number of aspects of Iraqi life from 1990 to the present. Important events during this period are the imposition of sanctions in August 1990, Iraq's first UN-approved oil exports under the oil for food programme in December 1996 and the start of the enhanced oil-for-food programme in May 1998. Between August 1990 and December 1996 Iraq received almost no external assistance, with the exception of some foreign donations for Iraqi Kurdistan, the northern three of Iraq's 18 governorates; against the will of the Iraqi government in Baghdad these have been administratively separated from the rest of Iraq since 1991.

The organisations collecting the data that we present in what follows are United Nations agencies, with the following exceptions. In April and May 1991 a Harvard Study Team (HST), an independent organisation of ten public health specialists, physicians and lawyers, travelled to Iraq to, "report on the effect of the Gulf crisis on the health and health care of Iraqi civilians". Part of their report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The sites visited by Team were chosen independently of the Iraqi government; they travelled with independent interpreters. The HST later became the non-governmental organisation, the Center for Economic and Social Rights. In 1996 the CESR sent a 24 person delegation of doctors, public health experts, economists, lawyers, and health surveyors from eight countries to Iraq. [HST; NEJM 1991, Lancet 1997]

The other exception is an International Study Team (IST) of 87 researchers in agriculture, electrical engineering, environmental science, medicine, economics, child psychology, sociology and public health. They visited Iraq's thirty largest cities in all 18 governorates and rural areas throughout the country in August 1991. They worked with neither Iraqi government supervision nor funding; they were were supported by Unicef, the US MacArthur Foundation, the John Merck Foundation and Oxfam-UK. The IST study is cited as a source by later UN documents.

Life before sanctions
Prior to 1990, when sanctions were imposed, "Iraq had one of the highest per caput food availabilities in the region, due to its relative prosperity and capacity to import large quantities of food"; The Economist's Economic Intelligence Unit actually puts Iraq at the top of this list by the end of the 1980s. With an estimated minimum requirement of 2,100 calories a day Iraqis were, on average, eating about 3,372 calories a day over 1984 to 1989; except for 1989 these were years of war with Iran. [FAO/WFP 1997; EIU 95/96, p.6 ]

Oil had moved Iraq away from its traditional mainstay, agriculture. By 1989 oil accounted for 61% of Iraq's GDP and agriculture for only 5%. Consequently, about two thirds of Iraq's food was imported before the war, even in years of good harvests. In bad years like 1989 domestic cereal production could fall to as low as 15% of needs. This amounted to imports of 3 million tons of cereals per year, or 8,220 tons per day (out of an estimated consumption of 10,000 tons), costing between $2 billion and $3 billion a year. [FAO/WFP 1997; WD 1992, p. 923-24]

Iraq's prosperity had not stopped at eating well. Adult literacy was reported to be 95% and Iraq boasted 22 Universities and Institutes of Higher Education [FAO 1995]. This well educated public built the Iraq described by John Field, a member of a 1991 Tufts University - Unicef mission to Iraq:

By the end of the 1980s, 92% of the population had access to safe water, somewhat less enjoyed modern sanitation, and an impressive 93% lived in the catchment areas served by modern health facilities. The government's network of health centers and hospitals was well disseminated, well supplied, well staffed, and effectively - if rather clinically - engaged with the populations in their jurisdiction. ... Iraq had converted oil wealth into enhanced social well-being with considerable success. ... Education expanded, child mortality declined, and life expectancy increased all quite impressively. [in Unicef 1998, p.2]

Iraq's public hospitals were free, attracting patients from throughout the Arab world. Many of Iraq's 9,000 physicians (one in 2,200 Iraqis) had trained in the UK; about a quarter were certified specialists. "Iraqi biomedical specialists provided some of the most sophisticated medical care in the Arab region. ... [but] relied heavily on import-dependent, high-technology curative biomedicine". While medical specialists tended to be male, female pharmacists and dentists outnumbered their male counterparts in hospitals so that women actually formed the majority in the group of doctors, dentists, pharmacists and specialists. Throughout Iraq, according to 1994 government figures, women slightly outnumbered men as specialists and technicians, partly in response to men's involvement in the war with Iran. [Unicef 1998, p.10]

Iraq's medical sector was not unusual in its reliance upon technology. Urbanisation had left Iraq dependent upon electricity for clean water and sewage treatment as well. [NEJM 1991] Unicef explains that,

South/Centre Iraq had an advanced system of 210 fixed water treatment plants which served urban and major rural areas and 1,200 compact mobile plants for mainly rural areas, with an extensive system of distribution pipes. Almost all water comes from the Tigris, the Euphrates, their branches and tributaries. Being surface water, most of the water systems require liquid chlorine gas and alum for treatment. [Unicef 1998 p.31]

Summing up its accomplishments, The Economist's Economic Intelligence Unit stated that, "the Iraqi welfare state was, until recently, among the most comprehensive and generous in the Arab World". [EIU 95/96, p.6]

Life and death since sanctions
On August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, United Nations Security Council Resolution 661 responded by stopping Iraq's imports and exports. There were a few technical exemptions to this: "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs". In practice, the United Nations Security Council, whose responsibility it was declare when "humanitarian circumstances" had arisen, did not do so until April, eight months later. During this time an "effective embargo" also applied to medical supplies, whose import, according to Dr Eric Hoskins, may have fallen to 3% of their usual levels during the bombing that occurred in early 1991. [SCR 661; Hoskins cited in WD 1992, p. 924].

In March UN Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari travelled to Iraq to report on conditions there and make recommendations for future policies. Civil uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime by Iraqis across the country, verbally encouraged by the United States, were now, without any external support, being brutally suppressed by the government; by April, stability had been restored. Two million Iraqis, ten percent of the population, had been displaced in this unrest. In the midst of it, the Ahtisaari report explained that, "[n]othing we had seen or read could have prepared us for this particular devastation, a country reduced to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come." It went on to warn that:

the Iraqi people may soon face a further imminent catastrophe, which could include epidemics and famine, if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met. [MA 1991, p.13]

It went on to recommend that Iraq be allowed to import food and supplies to help it rebuild its water supply and sanitation systems. These had been badly damaged by the Gulf war.

Indeed, The Economist's Economic Intelligence Unit reported a 75% drop in Iraqi GDP from 1990 to 1991 alone, knocking it back to a similar level as in the 1940s. [EIU 96/97, p.13]

Electricity
Iraq ran on electricity. In the low-lying lands in the south of Iraq electricity irrigated and drained fields, preventing waterlogging and salinisation. Throughout, it powered hospitals and water purification and sewage treatment plants. Its failure would not only interrupt the activities of these plants but, by reducing pressure, would allow untreated water to backwash through the system. [IST 1991]

Thirteen of Iraq's 20 power stations had been damaged or destroyed during the first days of allied bombing. The two that were still in operation by the end of the bombing only managed to produce 4% of Iraq's pre-war output. By May 1990, repairs undertaken by cannibalising spare parts from other plants had brought generation back up to about a quarter of pre-war levels. By August the system was back to two thirds of its 1990 peak output but, without the imported supplies required for proper repairs, these were expected to be temporary and to pose increased safety risks. [NEJM 1991; IST 1991]

Water purification and treatment
By April and May, 1991 the loss of electricity had badly damaged Iraq's water purification and distribution infrastructure. The Harvard Study Team observed, "people collecting water from broken pipes surrounded by pools of murky water or even directly from drainage ditches". Loss of electricity had also caused Baghdad's two sewage treatment plants to stop working; one was later destroyed by bombs, spilling raw sewage into the Tigris River. Blockages in the system meant that even when electricity was restored raw sewage

leaked into drainage ditches, formed open pools in residential neighbourhoods, and contaminated water supplies. In neighborhoods in both [the southern port city of] Basra and Baghdad, whole streets were blocked by pools of foul-smelling water. [NEJM 1991]

In August, 1991 only one of the 18 water plants inspected by the International Study Team was working at full capacity. This was the result, not so much of the bombing and subsequent civil uprisings, of "lack of spare parts and chlorine". Raw sewage flowed through streets, where garbage was also accumulating. An estimated half of the public drinking water supply suffered fecal contamination. [IST 1991]

For Basra's million inhabitants the sanitation in 1995 was probably the worst in the country with, "huge areas of sewage water, sometimes green with algae and sometimes showing visible faecal material. These areas were grossly unhygienic and much of the city smelled badly as a result of these overflows". While there were increases in infectious diseases as a result the FAO Mission was surprised that the city, faced with such bad conditions, had managed to avoid major epidemics. [FAO 1995 p.8]

By 1997, every day saw over 100 tons of raw sewage being pumped into Iraq's major rivers, especially in the south, whose flat terrain required more expensive treatment plants with lifting stations. [Unicef 1998, p. 34]

The water supply system, a higher priority than the sewage system, was not much better off. Per capita water use had halved over 1989 to 1997 and less than half the rural population now had access to potable water in 1996, down from over 70% before sanctions. Iraq's water supply standards are based, ironically, on the US standards adopted by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO); by 1997 70% of Iraq's civilian water supply greatly exceeded acceptable levels. [Unicef 1998, pp. 27 - 34] The system had broken down:

Water treatment plants lack spare parts, equipment, treatment chemicals, proper maintenance and adequate, qualified staff. Loss of electrical power supply is a crucial factor, where extended power cuts limit efficiency. Further, plants often act solely as pumping stations without any treatment, due to the high demand for water. The distribution network on which most of the population relies has destroyed, blocked or leaky pipes. Further, there have been no new projects to serve the expected population increase over the past seven years.


Local supplies of chlorine and alum [for purification] are minimal. The major manufacturing plant for chlorine is unable to produce even one-tenth of the required 500 metric tons per month due to frequent breakdowns. Locally produced alum sulphate is impure, which ruins the water treatment equipment. Importation has not been possible. [p.32]

Impoverished Iraqis, unable to afford bottled water, were turning to the polluted rivers, spawning a host of communicable diseases, malnutrition and excess child deaths. [Unicef 1998, p. 27]...

From

I'm in no way defending Saddam but so far, the US imposed embargo on Iraq killed more than Saddam and it's cohort ever did. The embargo and the war on Iraq is simply wrong. It has accomplised almost nothing for the population, their infrastructures still need to be rebuilt. I don't know about you but after 16 years of this shit, i'd be mad as hell.