Iraq may face
GULF WAR
UN report states:
rice, tea, vegetable oil, powdered milk and pulses are currently at critically low levels or have been exhausted. Distribution of powdered milk, for example, is now reserved exclusively for sick chilepidemic and famine dren on medical prescription.....
...The mission recommends that, in these circumstances, of present severe hardship and in view of the bleak prognosis, sanctions in respect ot tood supplies
WE publish below substantial extracts from the report prepared by a United Nations mission, led by
Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari, which visited Iraq between March 10-17, 1991, to assess humanitarian needs in the country after the Gulf war. The report gives a graphic picture of the devastation caused in Iraq by the imperialist onslaught. The "civilized world" meanwhile is continuing the embargo and demanding that Iraq pay reparations.
DOCUMENT
AND the members of my mission were fully conversant with media reports regarding the situation in
Iraq and, of course, with the recent
WHO/UNICEF report on water, sanitary and health conditions in the
It should, however, be said at once that nothing that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country.
The recent conflict has wrought nearapocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq, has, for some time to come, been relegated to a preindustrial age, but with all the disabilities post-industrial dependency intensive use of energy as a result of war, virtually all viable sources of fuel and power (apart from a limited number of mobile generators) and modern means of communication are now, essentially, defunct. The far-reaching implications of this energy and communications vacuum as regards urgent humanitarian support are of crucial significance for the nature and effectiveness of the international response.
These conditions, together with recent civil unrest in some parts of the country, mean that the authorities are as yet scarcely able even to measure the central dimensions of the calamity, much less respond to its consequences, because they cannot obtain full and accurate data.
Additionally, there is much less than the minimum fuel required to provide the energy needed for movement or transportation, irrigation or generators for power to pump water and sewage. For instance,
26 meeti medical supplies can be to health centres only with
International Viewpoint #208 • June 10, 1991 extreme difficulty, and, usually, major delay. Information regarding local needs is slow and sparse. Most employees are simply unable to come to work. Both the authorities and the trade unions estimate that approximately 90% of industrial workers have been reduced to inactivity and will be deprived of income as at the end of March. Government departments have at present only marginal atten-
Prior to recent events, Iraq was importing about 70% of its food needs. Now, owing to the fuel shortage, the inability to import and the virtual breakdown of the distribution system, the flow of food the private sector has been reduced to a trickle, with costs accelerat-
Many food prices are already beyond the purchasing reach of most Iraqi families. Agricultural production is highly mechanized, and much land depends on pumped-water irrigation. Should main harvest in June 1991 be seriously affected by a lack of energy to drive machines and pump water, then already grave situation will be further
As shown below, prospects for the 1992 harvest could, for combined reasons, be at least as much in jeopardy. Having regard to the nature of Iraq's society and economy, the energy vacuum is an omnipresent obstacle to the success of even a short-term, massive effort to maintain life-sustaining conditions in each area of humanitarian need.
....Food is currently made available to the population through both government allocations and rations, and through the market.... While the mission was unable to gauge the precise quantities still held in government warehouses, indicates that flour is now at a critically low level, and that supplies of sugar, should be immediately removed, as should those relating to the import of agricultural equipment and supplies...
..With the destruction of power plants, oil refineries, main oil storage facilities and water-related chemical plants, all electrically operated installations have ceased to function. Diesel-operated generators were reduced to operating on a limited basis, their functioning affected by lack of fuel, lack of maintenance, lack of spare parts and non-attendance of workers. The supply of water in Baghdad dropped to less than 10 liters per day but has now recovered to approximately 30-
40 litres in about 70% of the area (less than 10% of the overall previous use)....
..As regards the quality of water in
Baghdad, untreated sewage has now to be dumped directly into the river - which is the source of the water supply - and all drinking-water plants there and throughout the rest of the country are using river water with high sewage contamination.... While the water authority warned that water must be boiled, there is little fuel to do this, and what exists is diminishing. Cool winter conditions have prevailed until recently...
All modern communications destroyed
Only limited information is available to authorities regarding the situation in the remainder of the country because all modern communications systems have been destroyed and information is now transmitted and received (in this sector as in all others) by person-to-person contact. In those areas where there are no generators, or generators have broken down, or the fuel supply is exhausted, the population draws its water directly from polluted rivers and trenches....
....As regards sanitation, the two main concerns relate to garbage disposal and sewage treatment. In both cases rapidly rising temperatures will soon accentuate an existing crisis. Heaps of garbage are spread in the urban areas and collection is poor to non-existent. The work of collection vehicles is hampered by lack of fuel, lack of maintenance and spare parts and lack of labour, because workers are unable to come to work. Incinerators are in general not working, for these same reasons and for lack of electric power. Insecticides, much needed as the weather becomes more torrid, are virtually out of stock because of sanctions and a lack of chemical supplies. As previously stated,
Iraqi rivers are heavily polluted by raw sewage, and water levels are unusually low. All sewage treatment and pumping plants have been brought to a virtual standstill by the lack of power supply and the lack of spare parts. Pools of sewage lie in the streets and villages. Health hazards will build in the weeks to come..... Precarious health conditions throughout country
...health conditions in Baghdad and throughout the country remain precarious. A major factor is the water and sanitation situation described above. Additionally, the total lack of telephone communication and drastically reduced transport capability pose other problems to the health system since basic information on communicable diseases cannot be collected and disseminated, and essential drugs, vaccines and medical supplies cannot be distributed efficiently to the coun try...
Conditions described above affect the whole population of Iraq and, most especially, low-income groups. The mission paid particular attention to the plight of especially vulnerable groups, whether Iraqi or non-Iraqi. Thus, it found that care for orphans, the elderly and the handicapped had been in many instances disrupted, with residents of institutions having had to be moved and regrouped at various locations....
As regards the displaced and the homeless, the authorities themselves have not been able fully to assess the impact of the recent hostilities. They have, however, that approximately 9,000 urgently needed for some of those who have been obliged to leave one of the camps. Additionally, some 80,000 Palestinians are resident in Iraq, including a group of 35,000 considered as refugees benefiting from the protection of the Iraqi government...
... At present, Iraq's sole available surface transport link with the outside world is via Amman to Aqaba....Internal transportation by road is now severely affected by a lack of spare parts and tyres and, above all, by a lack of fuel. Some internal railway capability still exists on the Baghdad-Mosul line. The mission was informed that a total of 83 road bridges had been destroyed and a number were inspected
As regards communications, the mission was informed that all internal and external telephone systems had been destroyed, with the exception of a limittown....Communication in Iraq is now on a person-to-person basis, as mail servic-
The role of energy in Iraq is especially important because of the level of its urbanization (approximately 72% of the population lives in towns) its industrialization, and its prolonged, very hot, sum-
Pre-war energy consumption consisted of oil and refined products (85%), electricity (14.8%) and other sources (0.2%). About 30% of electric power generation was hydro-power. Bombardment has paralyzed oil almost entirely. Power output and refineries' production is negligible and will until the first repair
GULF WAR areas and for health facilities is provided by mobile generators. There have, officially, been virtually no sales of gasoline to private users since February... Initial inspections are said to have shown that necessary repairs to begin power generation and oil refining at minimal levels may take anywhere from 4 to 13 months. Minimal survival levels to undertake humanitarian activities would require approximately 25% of pre-war civilian domestic fuel consumption. Its absence, given the proximate onset of hot weather conditions, may have calamitous consequences for food, water supply and for sanitation; and therefore for health conditions.....
### Major aid mobilization
....The account given above describes as accurately as the mission has been able, using all sources, including much independent observation, to ascertain the situation, which, with the time available and the travel limitations referred to carlier, was perceived to exist in regard to urgent humanitarian needs in Iraq during the week of 10-17 March. I, together with all my colleagues, am convinced that there needs to be a major mobilization and movement of resources to deal with aspects of this deep crisis in the fields of agriculture and food, water, san-
Yet the situation raises, in acute form, other questions. For it will be difficult, if not impossible, to remedy these immediate humanitarian needs without dealing with the underlying need for energy, on calculated homes were destroyed or beyond repair during the hostilites, of which 2,500 were in Bagh-
İNTERNATIGNAL dad and 1,900 in Basra. This has created a new homeless potential total of 72,000 per-
MARXISTREVIEW sons. Official help is now hampered by the conditions described throughout this
İNTERNATIENAL
THE SUMMER 1991 double issue of report and, especially, a virtual halt in the production of contains the documents of the Fourth local building materials and the impossibility to import.
• "New world order" or international
The input of essential mate-
• Bureaucratic decay and struggle rials should be permitted....
for socialist democracy in USSR
...Some 64,000
Iranian
Documents nationals, protected under revolutionary left in Latin America either the Fourth Geneva
• Bourgeois plans and workers
Convention relative to the perspectives in capitalist Europe
World Congress
Protection of Civilian Per-
• Dynamics of struggle for women's sons in Time of War of 14 of the Fourth
Plus drafts on ecology and Manifesto
August 1949, or the 1951
International
Convention relating to the
Status of Refugees, had prephase is complete. The limited and spo radic power supply in some residential
• Strategic challenge to liberation of Fourth International an equally urgent basis. The need for energy means, initially, emergency oil imports and the rapid patching up of a limited refining and electricity production capacity, with essential sup plies from other countries.
Otherwise, food that is imported cannot be prewater cannot be purified; sewage cannot be pumped away and cleansed; crops cannot be irrigated; medicaments cannot be conveyed are required; needs cannot even be effec-
It is unmistakeable that the Iraqi people may soon face a further • imminent catastrophe, which could include epidemic and famine, if massive lifesupporting needs are not resided in three viously camps in Iraq.
There has
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rapidly met. The long summer, with its often 45 or even 50 degree temperatures
(113-122 degrees Fahrenheit) is only weeks away.
27
Time is short. *