By Kathy Kelly

In my 14th visit to Iraq, I came to know a little boy.

5 year old Munthedar, whose name means “waiting for,” suffered from leukemia and thalessemia, and had just had his spleen removed when I first met him in early December. He barely noticed me. On my second visit he was sitting up and smiling, and by my third his mother said he’d been asking after me every day. He greeted me with kisses and shyly whispered, “Is there a toy for me?” Fortunately, I had one last, toy harmonica to give to him. There aren’t words to describe his mother’s
eyes as Munthedar clutched his tiny piece of plastic and flashed the gentlest smile I’ve ever seen. When I returned for a fourth visit, little Munthedar’s bed was empty. He died Saturday, 5 January 2002.

Later, listening to the Baghdad symphony rehearse, I wondered tearfully about the 5 year old whose joy over a plastic harmonica might have led to a life in music had he lived. Dreams, hopes, and lives snuffed out by a raging and vengeful embargo. Month after month, the bullying goes on, unchecked. The abuser hiding in the muddle of hypocritical policies that no one involved really believes in.

All are painfully aware of the violence visited upon innocents in Iraq as a result of policies deemed genocidal by 2 UN humanitarian coordinators, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who resigned their posts rather than cooperate.
“Is there a toy for me?” asked 5 year old Munthedar.

To what shall we liken UN acquiescence to murderously punitive policies that afflict innocents who’ve done no harm? The UN’s relationship to the US is that of a battered woman to an abusive partner, desperately going to great lengths to provide cover for her abuser. Battered women often struggle to gain some control over their situation by “cooperating” with the violence done to them - providing excuses, and emotional support, to their attacker.

When “oil for food” was initiated, one UN official remarked, “we break their legs, then give them crutches.” Another official recently expressed fear that confronting the US too aggressively would undermine his agency’s ability to pressure the US to release at least some needed items from the list of goods on hold. When it is needed most, these officials are afraid to speak out. Instead, the UN quietly issues internal “Holds Bulletins,” which track the holds placed by the US - treating the stranglehold on Iraq as some sort of natural phenomenon, somehow out of anyone’s control.

Battered women sometimes give up hope of entirely stopping their attacker, and simply try to control the extent of the beatings. Where hope lives, it is often in the lie that love comes at the end of a fist, and that if we only find the right sequence of words and caresses, the long wait for compassion can finally end.

But what’s the message? Keep Daddy happy. It’s my fault. Scream quietly, so the neighbors won’t hear. And never let on that Daddy is vicious, selfish, dangerous, and absolutely out of control.

The entire façade of bureaucratic delays that make up the UN’s efforts in Iraq is absurd. Do any of the UN workers who struggle to provide minute documentation that Iraq isn’t building bombs out of parts for water treatment plants, for example, really believe that the US cares about their work? After 5 years of “oil for food,” it’s clear that the U.S. is simply interested in finding excuses to maintain sanctions. Despite repeated denials, and incredibly detailed levels of “monitoring” and documentation, by UN officials across every agency working in Iraq, the US continues to pretend that Iraq is actively stockpiling food and medicine in warehouses and refusing to distribute it.

What do we say to Tun Myat, the humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who recently boasted to his staff that he was able to convince the Sanctions Committee to release some holds on equipment needed to repair Iraq’s bombed out and dilapidated electrical grid? Over $4 billion in other desperately needed items, representing over 25% of the entire “oil for food” program in Iraq to date, remain on hold.

What therapy can we prescribe the UN? I think of Munthedar, denied the therapy he needed, as he waited to die.

We must resurrect the dream that created the UN out of the nightmare of WW II. We must show courage, wisdom and love by acting now to confront a bullying, rogue superpower which refuses to allow the UN to act in accord with its own charter as world events bring all of us closer to the threat of expanded warfare and nuclear annihilation.

UN officials are responsible, now, to provide curative, ethical action, and stop postponing moral actions to some never reached future moment.

The alarm has sounded. It blares agonizingly in our ears, beckoning conscientious action. Tiny Munthedar sounded that alarm yet again, with faint breaths into a plastic harmonica, as he waited to die for the crime of being born Iraqi.