- Ordinary people in Iraq are in utter dread of war - and,
with every speech that President Bush makes, they become more convinced
that it is inevitable.
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- They have experienced two wars in the recent past --
the bloody war of attrition against Iran and, 10 years ago, the Gulf War,
so they know only too well what war is like and its terrible cost.
-
- They know that smart bombs are fallible, and only as
smart as the human intelligence that guides and programmes them, and that
surgical strikes are never as accurate or as surgical as they are made
out to be.
-
- Most observers agree that a new war in Iraq, relying
heavily on aerial bombardment, will exact a high price in civilian casualties.
-
- The phrase "regime change" is a misnomer: "regime
removal" would be a more accurate term because, since there appears
to be no coherent plan for the rebuilding of Iraq, politically and socially
as well as economically after a "successful" war.
-
- The Gulf War was followed by 10 years of economic sanctions
that have made life a grim struggle for survival in a country that was
once rich and prosperous.
-
- Water-borne diseases are rife because sanctions have
starved the country of the resources it needs to maintain and repair pumping
stations, water mains and sewage systems.
-
- Now only 41 per cent of the Iraqi population has access
to clean water. Up to 800,000 children are chronically malnourished.
-
- There has been an upsurge in cancer, attributed to the
use of depleted uranium munitions during the Gulf War, but Iraqi hospitals,
starved of the drugs and hi-tech equipment that they need to treat cancer,
are unable to offer more than palliative care.
-
- Four-and-a-half million people have left Iraq as refugees
in the past five years. They will be joined by hundreds of thousands more.
-
- There are already three-quarters of a million displaced
people within Iraq -- within a country with a total population of 22.4
million.
-
- Hospitals and civilian medical facilities will be overwhelmed
by thousands of civilian casualties. And there are real possibilities of
civil strife, with Iraqi social networks weakened by sanctions and divided
along religious lines between Shia and Sunni Muslims and a tiny minority
of Christians.
-
- There have been positive developments amid the talk of
war. The Iraqi government has said that the weapons inspectors can return
unconditionally to Iraq, opening the door to the possibility of a peaceful
resolution of the dispute over weapons of mass destruction, and President
George W. Bush has been persuaded to take his case to the United Nations
-- for the time being.
-
- Such has been the belligerence of Bushís rhetoric,
however, that most Iraqis believe it is only a matter of time before the
bombs begin to fall.
-
- The humanitarian consequences of a war aimed at "regime
change" should be a central issue.
-
- All the available evidence suggests that in a highly
urbanised country like Iraq -- with three-quarters of its people living
in towns and cities -- the toll of civilian lives and injuries would be
very heavy.
-
- Civilian casualties should not be pushed to the margins
of the debate with that chilling phrase "collateral damage".
-
- Indeed, failure to take account of the humanitarian impact
of war will come back to haunt policy makers since it will dominate Iraqi
and Arab perceptions of the United States and its allies for years to come
and will shred their vision of a peaceful, stable and prosperous Middle
East.
-
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- George Gelber is head of public policy at the Catholic
Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD). Originally a lecturer in political
science in Chile in the 1970s, he has worked in development for many years.
He has been with CAFOD since 1989.
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- http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/530406?version=1
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