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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 6, 2003
issue of Workers World newspaper
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SPECIAL REPORT FROM BAGDAD: IRAQI PEOPLE PREPARE FOR U.S.
INVASION
By Sara Flounders
Baghdad, Iraq
A delegation led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark arrived in
Baghdad Feb. 22 after a 14-hour drive from Amman, Jordan, across the
open desert. A waning moon lit the nearly empty six-lane highway. We
couldn't help wondering if the Pentagon will launch the war when the
moon disappears from the sky. Or will the surging world movement against
this war be powerful enough to stop the attack?
The delegation's purpose, as in previous trips, was to assess the impact
of the 1991 war and 12 years of sanctions, especially on health care.
Dr. Zuhair Abdul Al-Azawi, senior deputy minister of health, told the
delegation on Feb. 24 that after 11 years of constantly worsening
conditions, this year the situation had finally stabilized and even
slightly improved. Conditions are of course still horrendous compared to
the excellent health care available to Iraqis before the 1991 U.S. war,
when hospitals were targeted by bombs and missiles. Sanctions since then
have kept out even standard medicines and medical equipment. They've
also diminished the capacity of water purification plants, the food
processing industry and the electric power grid.
After years of deprivation, there are no surpluses to cope with an
emergency. Every effort is being made to distribute generators, drugs,
antiseptics and all other available material to different parts of the
country.
"This time," said Clark, "our greatest concern is the state of
preparedness of the health services in the face of war. In 1991 when the
hospitals and pharmacies were fully equipped, doctors ran out of
everything in the first weeks of the war.
"When we visited hospitals in February 1991 there were no antiseptics,
no gauze, no gloves, no antibiotics and no anesthesia. Thousands died
because there were no materials to save them. But again, the bad water
will be the greatest crisis.
"The world must be told of the impending crisis," Clark added. "And
there must be every form of emergency medical assistance now."
SURFACE CALM IN BAGHDAD
On the surface Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, is calm. Schools,
workplaces, offices and shops are open. Traffic is heavy.
There are photo exhibits and sports events, even weddings. Movie houses
are open. But every small merchant says that people buy only what they
absolutely need. People expect a horrendous war, with the civilian
population a Pentagon target.
"My family has a plan when the missiles start to hit," Ali told us. "We
are all going to stay in the same room. Whatever happens, it will happen
to all of us together."
For decades, Ali and his two brothers have run a small fish store in a
poor market neighborhood of Baghdad. Their shop had the misfortune of
being near one of Baghdad's larger bridges. In the 1991 war, bombs
destroyed the bridge and much of the community--and one wiped out their
shop.
The brothers worked hard and rebuilt their shop. But now people are too
poor to afford to buy fish.
We spoke to Ali on Feb. 22, just a week after the massive worldwide
demonstrations against a war. Protesters are trying to stop the
Pentagon's "Shock and Awe" plan, which the media say will deliver as
much destructive power in two days with "conventional" weapons as the
atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945.
Ali remembered how hard it was to
get drinking water after U.S. firepower destroyed the water and sewage
systems in 1991. "We drank whatever we could get," he said. "Lots of
people got sick. Many died, especially the children."
In 1991, the Pentagon had a strategy of purposely targeting anything
that people need for health and life. This included water and food
supplies, the electrical grid necessary in an urban society, hospitals
and schools.
Thomas Nagy, professor of expert systems at George Washington
University, has drawn public attention to declassified Defense
Intelligence Agency documents showing that the Pentagon knew what havoc
the destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure would cause. It was
part of the plan.
Nagy's findings appeared in the Sunday Herald of Sept. 17, 2000, and the
September 2001 issue of The Progressive magazine.
The latest figures show that the 1991 war and subsequent sanctions
caused the premature death of 1.8 million Iraqis.
Attacks on the Iraqi drinking water supply and on the health-care
infrastructure are violations of the Geneva Convention, which forbids
targeting the civilian population.
This time, Ali hopes some of the precautions the government is taking
might avoid the 100,000 deaths from illnesses the attacks caused
throughout 1991.
The government has more than doubled the free food ration for the last
three months so that many basic necessities can be stockpiled in every
home. Families have now received five months of extra rations.
The food rations mean survival for that large section of the population
unemployed since the last U.S. war. Over the course of 12 years the U.S.-
imposed sanctions have kept most industry shut down.
Iraqi families are stockpiling kerosene for cooking and heating, candles
for light, and endless containers of water. Families with some resources
are buying small generators.
Today many families are digging wells in their back yards. The water
will be untreated, but it may be better than drinking straight from the
Euphrates River.
A LONG RESISTANCE?
Besides helping the population to survive, the government is mobilizing
them to fight the invaders.
When many millions around the world demonstrated to stop a war on Iraq
on Feb. 15, people in Iraq were also in the streets--hundreds of
thousands in every major city. In each of four different sections of
Baghdad there were massive demonstrations of the Iraqis' will to resist.
A council of both Shiite and Sunni Islamic clerics has signed a "fatwa"
or religious edict calling for total resistance to foreign occupation.
This did not happen in 1991.
There is a popular volunteer army the Iraqis say is 7 million strong,
drawing from almost every family in Iraq. It has received basic training
in military tactics, street combat and resistance.
Almost every family has been issued small arms for the home.
People know they can't stop U.S. cruise missiles with rifles and
pistols. No one can predict what kind of battle this people's army can
wage. But in working out war scenarios, the Brookings Institute put its
estimate of possible U.S. casualties at 5,000 dead and 30,000 wounded,
should the urban population resist. There are already news reports that
the Pentagon has quietly ordered tens of thousands of body bags to be
shipped to the area.
Beyond the initial attack lies the prospect of a long U.S. occupation.
This is a colonial war to steal the resources in an area where
nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiment is very strong. The
population is educated and conscious, and nearly everyone is armed.
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