The Other War: Iraq's Humanitarian Crisis

By Judith Coburn, AlterNet. Posted March 28, 2003.

Until two missiles fell on a Bagdad market a week into the war, Iraqi civilians had been invisible in the high-tech production of "The War" brought to you by the American media. Some 17 men, women and children died in that raid and close to 40 people were wounded. Although definitive casualty figures are impossible to come by, combining reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), international aid groups and European reporters in Bagdad suggest over 100 Iraqis have been killed and several hundred wounded by Anglo-American attacks in the first week of the war.

Also neglected by the American media have been the ravages of war besides death: starvation, disease and homelessness which are building to a crisis as the war begins to engulf Iraqi cities where most people live. Complicating the humanitarian crisis has been a behind the scenes international struggle against the Bush administration's militarization of humanitarian aid.

A confidential United Nations planning report for humanitarian relief in wartime Iraq written last summer is alarming reading. It predicts that "the collapse of essential services in Iraq...could lead to a humanitarian emergency of proportions well beyond the capacity of UN agencies and other aid agencies." Thirty percent of Iraqi children -- 1.25 million -- could face death from malnutrition, the report says.

International aid groups from Oxfam to Refugees International to the International Rescue Committee echo the alarm. "This isn't 1991 in the Gulf, not a war in the empty desert, it'll be a war for the cities and will engulf a people already vulnerable from twelve years of sanctions," says Erik Gustafson, a Desert Storm veteran and executive director of EPIC, the Center for Education and Peace in Iraq. "Food would be the most urgent need," says Kenneth Bacon, President of Refugees International. "Iraqis could starve."

The UN report predicts that 10 million Iraqis would have insecure access to food because of military operations, that only 39 percent of Iraqis would have access to water even on a rationed basis, that shortages of fuel and power in cities would shut down water and sewage systems, that up to 1.45 million refugees may try to escape Iraq during the war and that 900,000 may flee their homes inside the country. "All UN agencies have been facing severe funding constraints that are preventing them from reaching even minimum levels of preparedness," the report concludes.

And this is only what disaster planning specialists call a "medium" case -- not a "worst" case -- scenario.

One hundred ten thousand Iraqi civilians died in the eight months following the brief 1991 Gulf War from the paralysis of the urban infrastructure and lack of food, water and electricity. More than 10,000 refugees died from disease and food shortages.

So far the Pentagon has not targeted Iraq's urban infrastructure. Pentagon officials and even some private aid experts argue that since the Pentagon is expecting to run Iraq for at least several years after the war, that it really does want to minimize civilian casualties -- rather than face a hostile people who've lost family to American bombs and a decimated infrastructure. But now Anglo-American troops are being drawn into the cities and Iraqis are using classic urban guerilla tactics of basing troops and antiaircraft in residential neighborhoods, hospitals and schools. More and more unarmed Iraqi civilians will be slaughtered as these targets are attacked.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers softened up the American public for the carnage: "People are going to die. As hard as we try to limit civilian casualties it will occur. We need to condition people that this is war. People get the idea this is going to be antiseptic. Well, it's not going to be," he told reporters at a Pentagon press conference before the infamous "shock and awe" campaign began.

Thirty-five hundred Iraqis died in the intense bombing raids that began the first Gulf War. This time, the Pentagon says it is limiting civilian casualties by varying the size of bombs to minimize surrounding damage, controlling the blast by using different fuses and angles of attack and picking the time of day or night the target is hit. As for hitting chemical and biological weapons facilities or ammo dumps, which maimed both Iraqis and American soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon says this time they'll use smaller weapons like mines and restrict access to the sites.

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