[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [report from NGO representatives and former UN officials ]
Al Kagan
akagan at uiuc.edu
Fri Jan 17 18:19:54 CST 2003
>Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 21:53:24 -0000
>From: Martyn Lowe
> <martynlowe at usa.net>
>To: " "
> <akagan at uiuc.edu>
>Subject: Fwd: [report from NGO representatives and former UN officials ]
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>Hej Al !
>
>I thought that you might like to see this, & might perhaps be one of the best
>persons I know of in order to network this info thoughout the states.
>
>Hope all is well with you
>
>Martyn
>
>
>' Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent ' - Isaac Asimov -
>Foundation.
>
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>Subject: report from NGO representatives and former UN officials
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>LETTER FROM BAGHDAD
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>From 3rd- 8th January 2003 a group of NGO representatives and former
>UN officials was able to meet with cabinet ministers in Baghdad
>including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister Nagi
>Sabri and Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid, as well as to talk with
>doctors, teachers and scientists. We had the opportunity to meet
>ordinary Iraqis and visit sites recently inspected for weapons of
>mass destruction. The aim was to contribute to efforts to prevent
>war and to gather information not available in the western press,
>particularly with regard to the human situation.
>Attached is a brief summary of a very intense series of visits, as
>well as suggestions responding to the frequent question asked by
>citizens of western countries "What can we do to help prevent war?"
>Please circulate these documents as widely as possible, asking NGOs
>and individuals to act quickly on the practical suggestions offered.
>Your help will be very valuable.
>With warm wishes,
>from
>Margarita Papandreou, former First Lady of Greece
>Scilla Elworthy, Director, Oxford Research Group, UK
>Denis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and UN
>Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq
>Christian Harleman, the Transnational Foundation for Peace and
>Future Research, Sweden
>Jan Oberg, Director, the Transnational Foundation, Sweden
>Zeynep Oral, Winpeace and Peace Initiative, Turkey
>Omaima Rawas, peace activist and Vice President of the Syrian Arabic
>League, Syria
>Fotini Sianou, President, Women’s Committee, European Trade Union
>Confederation
>
>**********************
>
>NEWS FROM BAGHDAD - a visit to Iraq 3rd 8th January 2003
>including meetings with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Foreign
>Minister Nagi Sabri and Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid, as well
>as conversations with ordinary Iraqis in the street and visits to
>sites.
>
>1. Attitudes of Iraqis today. We experienced an extraordinary
>mixture of fatalism, faith and defiance in the El-zahrawi tearoom.
>Watching Saddam Hussein’s Army Day speech on television, we talked
>with people at random, many of whom spoke English. They said that
>twice now world opinion has predicted that Iraq would collapse
>after the Gulf War in 1991, and in 1998 when 350 cruise missiles hit
>the country and once again they will survive. Yes, their children
>are afraid. Yes, the teenagers do not know if it is worth studying
>seriously or not. No, they will not go to the shelters. They do not
>talk so much of US or UK aggression but rather of Bush and Blair:
>until now, they have not resented the people of the countries about
>to bomb them, nor the civilizations, but the leaders. However that
>trend seems to be changing with the Iraqis increasingly holding the
>people of the UK and the US responsible for their countries’
>policies. In the words of Dr. Hoda Ammash “People here bear every
>respect for western people and western civilization. We respect your
>technological advancement, and your values. We know that westerners
>are being given the opportunity to learn about Arabic civilizations.
>Yet hatred is being manufactured, by some, to engineer a clash of
>civilizations.”
>
>2. Food reserves. Iraqi households have been given three months’
>(and now a further two months') food rations in order to get it out
>of the main storage sites to prevent warehouses being bombed. The
>food distribution programme, according to Denis Halliday (former
>Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN
>Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq (1997-98), is one of the most
>efficient in history, involving 49,000 food distribution agents and
>minimizing corruption through a system whereby if 100 people
>complain about an agent, he or she is removed. Iraqis are also
>stock-piling water but have no suitable large containers. People
>with gardens are being asked to dig wells.
>Under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme only about half the oil revenues
>can be used for buying food and other necessities for the population
>of the centre and South of the country; the rest being used for
>compensation to Kuwait, food for the Iraqi Kurds in the North, and
>the costs of the UN programme including the UNMOVIC weapons
>inspections.
>Halliday concludes: “ The twelve year sanctions regime has become a
>weapon of mass destruction, built on the massive damage to civilian
>infrastructure by US bombing and resulting in the deaths of over one
>million people since 1991, over half of whom are children.”
>According to UNICEF 25% of Iraqi babies are born weighing 2kgs or
>less, a key indicator of famine. One million children under 5 suffer
>acute or chronic malnutrition.
>
>3. Shelters. Everyone we spoke to said they would not use the 34
>shelters provided for civilians in Baghdad because of the 1991
>bombing of Al-Amarya shelter when 408 out of 422 women and children
>in the shelter were burned to death.
>
>4. Weapons Inspectors. Dr. Sami Al-Araji, a nuclear engineer and
>Director General of Planning at the Ministry of Industry, is
>facilitating the work of the UNMOVIC inspectors. Everywhere we went
>there was a remarkable willingness to co-operate with the
>inspections, but patience is being tested. During our visit there
>was a routine inspection near the University of Baghdad where there
>are 6 science centres. The inspectors wanted to investigate one of
>these, but froze the entire complex meaning that nearly 3,000 people
>could not move for six hours, even though their place of work was
>not under inspection. This meant that toddlers were left uncollected
>at nursery schools. Not even the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, there
>for a visit, was allowed to leave.
>A professor of microbiology at the University of Baghdad told us
>that during 1991-98 inspectors re-examined the university every
>three weeks, searching minutely. “They enter exam halls where
>students are doing their finals and search under their chairs.”
>Iraqi people thought the inspections would last 2-3 years, and then
>they could go back to normal life. It is now 12 years since the
>inspections started, they are more intense than ever, and there is
>no end in sight.
>We visited the al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute which was
>high on the list in the UK Government dossier (published September
>2002) of biological weapons sites. Since 1994 the site has been
>inspected 60 times, it has been closed since 1995, when all the
>equipment was destroyed or removed and there were cameras everywhere
>connected to the former UNSCOM Monitoring Centre in Baghdad. The
>place was wrecked.
>
>5. Civil and political rights. Since Oct 2002, laws and regulations
>have been or are being revised as follows:
>
>
>· Amendments to the constitution to allow for a multi-party system.
> · Abolition of special ‘security violations’ courts which had
>no rights of appeal
> · Abolition of laws requiring cutting off hands of thieves
>
>· Amnesty for political prisoners
>
>
>· Exiles not linked to intelligence services may now return to
>Iraq with the right to criticise the government
> · Reduction of fee for exit visa from Iraq from $200 to $10.
>
>6. Oil. Current Iraqi production is approx 3 million barrels per day
>(current world production approx 77 million) but it has the second
>largest reserves in the world. If controls were lifted, and with
>infrastructure investment, with its immense reserves of easily
>extractable oil Iraq has the potential to supply 10% of the world’s
>oil needs, and to continue to do so for at least a century (since
>less than 1% of reserves are being used up each year). Iraqis are
>very conscious of the energy needs of the western economies - the US
>has to import 60% of its oil needs - and know that the main reason
>for military invasion is to gain control of its vast reserves of
>oil. Iraqi ministers fear that if the US were to control Iraq's oil
>production, it would manipulate the economies not only of the Far
>East, but also of Europe. Iraq takes a long-term view, wants a
>stable oil price, and would like to adopt normal trading relations
>rather than be subject to crises, threats and manipulation.
>
>7. Depleted Uranium (DU). Water-borne and air-borne dust from DU
>shells, used by the US and the UK in the 1991 Gulf war, is spreading
>over vast areas of Iraq but the government has no way of detecting
>the direction of the spread because airborne radiation sensing
>equipment is prohibited. People are developing cancers by consuming
>meat and milk from animals grazing in polluted areas. Cancers of
>all kinds are increasing dramatically in Iraq particularly amongst
>women with breast cancer and leukaemia. Members of our delegation
>have visited hospitals in Iraq since 1991 and observed that current
>conditions in the hospitals have worsened. Equipment needed for
>treatment lies idle because the computerized controls have been
>removed due to sanctions. There is one nurse for every 16 beds where
>previously there was one for every two beds. Every child has a
>mother or grandmother giving full time care. Omar, three years old
>has a plastino plastoma*, which attacks kidneys and then destroys
>the brain and nervous system: his head is enlarged to twice normal
>size, his face swollen unrecognizably out of shape and his eyes
>blind. His mother sits with him like a madonna, waiting for her
>child to die. Tiny Aia (‘Miracle’) was born with a second head, a
>brain sack attached to the back of her own head, a condition known
>as meningoceal* and not seen in Iraq before the mid-1990s. Dr. Ahmed
>Fadeh of the Baghdad Children’s Hospital told me there are unlimited
>cases he simply can’t treat because his equipment is worn out or
>lacks spares, and he has not got the drugs or even the suture thread
>that he needs because of sanctions.
>*this was told to us phonetically in a hurry, we are not sure of the
>correct spelling
>
>
>
>8. Implications for the future. This visit was a shock treatment in
>learning what it feels like to be an Iraqi. This is an ancient
>people with a civilization 7000 years old (Iraqis point out that the
>United States is barely 300 years old), an economy that until the
>1980s was a model for the entire Middle East, and with a free health
>service that was ahead of the National Health Service in the UK. The
>streets are now rubble-strewn, most of the middle class have left,
>and people are selling their household goods on street corners in
>order to survive. The currency has devalued 6000 (six thousand) % in
>20 years; in 1981 one dinar bought three US dollars, today one US
>dollar buys about 2000 dinars. To pay a modest hotel bill for 6
>days, you need a pile of dinar notes two meters high. Twelve years
>of sanctions, which were intended to make the Iraqi people revolt
>against their leadership, have had the opposite effect giving Saddam
>Hussein total control over his people through food rationing.
>Sanctions have simply disabled Iraqi people through hunger and the
>wholesale disintegration of their infrastructure. Rather than rebel
>against Saddam Hussein, they feel defiance towards Bush and Blair
>which their leader can constantly reinforce, since their sense of
>honour is continuously provoked. The humiliation is very deep and
>very dangerous. In these circumstances a war and subsequent
>occupation of Iraq will no doubt fuel the fires of hatred and
>terror, and consequently the risk of attacks on the West.
>
>For more information see websites: www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk
>
>
> www.transnational.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
>WHAT YOU CAN DO
>Time is short. The UNMOVIC inspectors are due to report on 27th
>January 2003. Military preparations indicate that an attack may
>begin in early February. A pre-emptive attack will be a clear-cut
>violation of the UN Charter and international law. Medical and
>public health experts in the UK estimate that between 48,000 and
>260,000 civilians could be killed in the first 3 months of conflict,
>and that if WMD are
>used, there could be up to 4 million dead.
>What can be done to move towards a genuine solution of this conflict
>other than war and occupation?
>
>1.The free press and NGOs must speedily step up their analysis and
>reporting to challenge disinformation about the realities in Iraq.
>Please distribute this report to all your media contacts.
>
>2. Whenever you hear a news broadcast on Iraq which does not mention
>something about ordinary people, call them to ask for some human
>interest stories. Iraq is not one man, it is 26 million fellow
>citizens. They have points of views, hopes, fears and dreams like
>all of us.
>
>3. The European Union has a substantial potential role to play. A
>consistent well-structured mediation process could be offered,
>either through key Arab states, or in the form of a meeting between
>the most senior representatives of the United States and of Iraq to
>‘explore whether all avenues short of war have been exhausted’. This
>meeting would need to be announced before 27th January, perhaps to
>take place mid-February. It would need to take place in a very safe
>environment and employ state-of-the-art conflict resolution
>techniques. These moves could be supported by France and by Germany
>in their chairmanship of the UN Security Council in January and
>February 2003 respectively. Urge your EU government to support such
>an initiative, and copy your letter to Prime Minister Costas Simitis
>of Greece, 15 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, 10674 Athens,
>mail at primeminister.gr which has the current presidency of the
>European Union.
>
>4. If you are yourself willing, go to Baghdad to become part of the
>Civilian Protection that has already begun with contingents from
>Spain, the US and Austria. 5000 people are needed to stay at
>civilian sites such as electricity, water and telecommunications
>facilities to try to prevent them being bombed. Individuals taking
>this course of action should be aware of the serious risks involved.
>Contact either Voices in the Wilderness www.nonviolence.org or
>www.iraqpeaceteam.org or Dr. Al-Hashimi, President of the Iraqi
>Organisation for Friendship, Peace and Solidarity in Baghdad,
>Silm at uruklink.net Fax: + 964 1 537 2933 or + 964 1 8853298.
>
>5. Call your foreign office to ask it you have an embassy in
>Baghdad. Many governments do not have any representation and thus
>cannot collect first hand facts and impressions on which to base an
>independent analysis. Neither Britain nor the US has an embassy in
>Baghdad, and communications have to go through the Polish embassy.
>
>6. Ask your parliamentary committee for foreign affairs whether they
>have visited Iraq to see for themselves and if not, why not. Ask
>them to talk to Iraqi people at all levels.
>
>7. Make it known that the 12-year sanctions regime has had the
>opposite effect to that intended; it has put Saddam Hussein in total
>control of the Iraqi people, through the rationing programme.
>
>8. Prime ministers and presidents worldwide need to understand the
>strength and urgency of public opposition to this proposed attack,
>so that they will actively support mediation rather than allowing
>themselves to be bribed or bullied into supporting an attack. See
>George Monbiot’s article ‘Act now against war’
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,869807,00.html for
>ideas on how to get the message across, through non-violent civil
>disobedience. He suggests disrupting the speeches of ministers,
>blocking the roads down which they must travel, blockading important
>public buildings, or airports from which troops take off.
>
>9. Urge your government to support the development of a new security
>regime for the whole region, honouring UN SC Resolution 687
>requiring that the Middle East shall become a zone free of weapons
>of mass destruction.
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
> War Resisters' International
> 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX, Britain
> Ph: +44 (0)20 7278 4040; fax: +44 (0)20 7278 0444;
> email: office at wri-irg.org
>VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE at http://www.wri-irg.org
>-----------------------------------------------------------
--
Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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