by George Capaccio

This January (2002), on my way home from Iraq, I met an old friend in Jordan’s Queen Alia airport. She is Palestinian and had been visiting her family in Amman. I had spent the previous three weeks living with families in Baghdad and Basra as a member of a Voices in the Wilderness delegation. It was my eighth visit to Iraq in nearly five years. My friend and I were returning on the same flight to Boston. As we waited for the boarding call, she told me stories about life on the West Bank. The one I found most compelling concerned a Palestinian couple attempting to pass a checkpoint. The woman held her child in her arms and explained to the soldiers that the little girl was very ill. They needed to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. The Israeli soldiers told the couple they would have to come back in the morning.

They argued, they pleaded. But the soldiers were steadfast. The man and woman walked back to their home about a mile away. During that long night, their little girl died. She died in her mother’s arms. The woman would not surrender her child. In the morning she returned, with her husband, to the same checkpoint. This time, they explained to the soldiers, theywanted to bury their child in the cemetery that lay a short distance away. The soldiers told them to wait. When the husband asked for a reason, one of the men pointed his gun at him and ordered him to shut up.

An hour later, the husband was permitted to pass the checkpoint. However, he could not take the direct route to the cemetery. Instead, he had to remove his shoes and walk the long way around, hobbling over mounds of rubble and broken glass. The soldiers did not let the man’s wife join him. They told her she would have to come back tomorrow. She refused to move. She would stand there until they allowed her to pass. The soldiers did not soften. Neither did the woman. She stood there, facing them, holding her dead child in her arms through the morning and into the night.

Iraqi mothers, I suspect, would surely understand what that young woman must have been feeling. They would understand her grief. They would understand her stubborn refusal to submit. They would understand her defiance, her courage, and her pride. For eleven years, Iraqi mothers have watched their children die, sometimes in their arms, more often than not in hospitals lacking essential equipment and medicine.

The world has been slow to hear the cries of Iraqi mothers and their children. But their fate is not wholly unlike the fate of their Palestinian counterparts. An important difference is that in Iraq there is really only one checkpoint and its name is sanctions. Always within view are the good things of life, things we take for granted in the West, like clean water, well-maintained schools and hospitals, sufficient clothing, adequate food. Under the regime of sanctions, there is just enough to prevent famine and the extermination of the Iraqi people, but not nearly enough to enable the country to rebuild its economy, reduce unemployment, improve children’s nutritional status, and reduce the unacceptably high rate of infant mortality.

We hear much nowadays about the efficacy of Oil-For-Food, the billions Iraq earns from the sale of its oil, and the surfeit of consumer goods entering the country. Oil-For-Food, now in its eleventh phase, has undoubtedly done much to offset the harm caused by sanctions. Since I began visiting Iraq in 1997, I have seen steady improvement in the quantity and quality of fresh p roduce, for instance, and in the conditions of some public hospitals. The markets in Baghdad do a brisk business. There is ample merchandise to satisfy any need. Medicine, on the whole, is far more available.

But only the rich can take full advantage of these changes. The majority of Iraqis remain impoverished. On the basis of UN documents, eyewitness testimony, and first hand experience, I believe that the pervasive poverty found in Iraq is primarily the result of sanctions. From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, sanctions have failed to achieve their stated aim of “regime change.” The Iraqi regime is more entrenched than ever and quite immune to the effects of sanctions. It is the people of Iraq who suffer.

Despite modest improvements in health care and nutrition, too many Iraqi mothers are anemic and giving birth prematurely. Too many children are malnourished and dying from preventable diseases. Too many parents have simply lost hope. They see few bright prospects either for themselves or their children. The sanctions imposed on Iraq have not just restricted access to basic goods and services; they have violated the basic human rights of an entire people and threaten to destroy the very fabric of Iraqi society.

As one would expect, Iraqi children are most at risk. According to a recent study conducted in Iraq by UNICEF,

“Child mortality has gone up by two and a half times in the last decade. . . the progress made in child survival in Iraq during the 90’s is minus 160%. It ranks last among 180 countries in the world. The next closest countries are Kenya (minus 24%), South Africa (minus 17%), Rwanda (minus 13%), Azerbaijan (minus 3%), all of which are the countries adversely affected by the AIDS epideminc. This shows that the last decade impact on Iraqi children’s survival was about ten times worse that the worst AIDS affected countries in the world.” Overview of Child Health and Nutrition Situation in Iraq, UNICEF, Baghdad 2001

At the start of the New Year, while staying in Baghdad, I moved my things from a hotel overlooking the Tigris to the home of a working class family I have known for several years. From then on, I spent most of my time just being with them. During one cold afternoon, we gathered around the kerosene heater for warmth and sipped glasses of sugary tea. Several relatives dropped by to visit. All the women wore black. They were in mourning since the death of a grandparent.

The talk turned to sanctions and how these have impacted their lives. My host Abla, a mother of four young boys, struggled to keep her composure and normally cheerful manner. Her voice rose and trembled. Her eyes teared. Joined by her husband, she tallied up for me the monthly cost of electricity, water, kerosene, food, clothing, and medicine. Against this amount she placed the family’s monthly income, a mere 10 dollars, or 20,000 Iraqi dinars, almost 50% less than their total expenses.

“We are always behind,” she said. “Always we are borrowing money from others and making debts at the market. The government food (rations) last only 15 days and then we must shop for food. Once a month we have chicken or fish and can take only one meal a day.”

Abla paused. She adjusted her scarf then filled our glasses with tea. “You see,” she continued, sweeping her arm around the room, “we have nothing anymore. But in this neighborhood there are many families even more poor. Why, George, must the Iraqi people suffer like this?”

Before I could answer, Abla’s niece spoke up. Her name is Rana and she is almost 22. Her dream is to study English and become a teacher. So far her dream has not even begun to come true. “We cannot buy fruit or vegetables,” she said. “My aunt loves bananas but she cannot afford them. One kilo is 4,000 dinars (2 dollars).” Rana held up her long black hair. “You see how thin my hair has become. And not shiny anymore. Can you tell me why this is so, George? And why Abla’ssons are not growing. They are 14 and 16 and you see how small they are.”

Suddenly, Rana sat up straight. As she spoke of the difficulties of her own life and the strength of her people, she became more impassioned than at any other time in our relationship. “They give us only a little meat, we live. They give us only rice, we live. They give us only bread, we live. They give us bombs and missiles, we live. It is more than ten years now and still we live.”

In that exchange with Rana and her aunt, I discerned not only the toll taken by sanctions but also something of the human spirit, the capacity to endure and resist defeat and humiliation. Now, home from Iraq, I imagine that young Palestinian mother fiercely holding the body of her dead child under the merciless eyes of the soldiers. I remember the way Rana opened her heart to me and revealed, if only for an instant, the strength that allows her and her family and her people to live, year after year, under the cruel tyranny of sanctions.

Like that lone woman at an obscure gate in Palestine, the Iraqi people are standing fast. So many of their children have died. So many hopes and dreams will never come to pass. But still they live, while US and UK warplanes, in the northern and southern “no-fly zones,” continue to terrorize civilians and drop their bombs with impunity. Still they live, while their economy continues to deteriorate and their currency, the dinar, remains practically worthless. Still they live, while cancer claims the lives of an ever increasing number of children who end up in hospitals often lacking blood bags or even an adequate supply of oxygen. Still they live, while over their heads looms the growing threat of an Anglo-American invasion.

If President Bush and his warrior clan have their way, thousands of Iraqi mothers, fathers, and children will find their homeland has become one vast refugee camp. As it was in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, so it very well may be in Iraq in the not-too-distant future. Only this time it will not be Israeli-backed Phalangist killers coming by night to slaughter the innocent.