Digest by David Smith-Ferri, Voices in the Wilderness

Summary
Several articles follow this summary.

At the recent gathering of the UN Human Rights Commission, Jean Ziegler, UNHRC food specialist, announced the findings of a report that concluded that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children under five has nearly doubled since the US invasion and occupation, rising from 4% in 2002 to 7.7% today. Malnutrition is one of the most comprehensive indicators of the well-being of children, because it relies on the functioning of many sectors of society. Ziegler didn’t stop there. He condemned the US military tactics in the siege of Fallujah. “At Fallujah…the blockade imposed on food and the destruction of water reservoirs was used as weapon of war.” This, he said, was a “clear violation” of the Geneva Conventions. He went on to say that money for food aid is drying up, and blamed the huge amounts being spent on the “war on terror.” Any effort to curb terrorism, he said, should be linked to efforts to ease hunger and poverty. US spokespersons, trying to minimize the political damage from the report, attacked both Ziegler’s credibility and the validity of his findings.

In Baqubah, 80 miles from Baghdad, there has been an outbreak of leishmaniasis, a disease which “leads to disfigurement of the face and hands, and social stigma, particularly for women and children.” The disease is associated with poor sanitary conditions, especially a lack of sewage treatment and the accumulation of garbage in public places. In Baqubah the disease has spread at an alarming rate. Coping with the disease is beyond the means of individual hospitals. It will require the cooperation and effective action of governmental agencies, and as the director of the Infectious Disease Control Center, Dr. Abdul Jalil Nafi, maintained “All our efforts could come to nothing if the government doesn’t take urgent action to reduce sewage on the streets and repair the water purification system in the country because, without it, the doors will still be open for the appearance of new diseases.” One wonders to what extent the US government will take responsibility, as an occupying nation, and aid in dealing with the disease.

The articles in this digest also include stories of “paralysis” in Iraqi hospitals, which have yet to see significant improvements in equipment and staffing, the US military storming of hospitals in Ramadi and Haitha, and the unauthorized sale of medicine on the streets.

return

Children ’starving’ in new Iraq

news.bbc.co.uk

More and more children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.

Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.

The report was prepared for the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

It also expressed concern over North Korea and Sudan’s Darfur province.

UN specialist on hunger Jean Ziegler, who prepared the report, blames the worsening situation in Iraq on the war led by coalition forces.

He was addressing a meeting of the 53-nation commission, the top UN rights watchdog, which is halfway through its annual six-week session.

When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, about 4% of Iraqi children under five were going hungry; now that figure has almost doubled to 8%, his report says.

Governments must recognise their extra-territorial obligations towards the right to food and should not do anything that might undermine access to it of people living outside their borders, it says.

That point is aimed clearly at the US, but Washington, which has sent a large delegation to the Human Rights Commission, declined to respond to the charges, says the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.

Increasing hunger

Mr Ziegler also says he is very concerned about the lack of food in North Korea, where there are reports that UN food aid is not being distributed fairly.

In Darfur, the continuing conflict has prevented people from planting vital crops, he says.

Overall, Mr Ziegler says, he is shocked by the fact that hunger is actually increasing worldwide.

Some 17,000 children die every day from hunger-related diseases, the report claims, which it says is a scandal in a world which is richer than ever before.

“The silent daily massacre by hunger is a form of murder,” Mr Ziegler said. “It must be battled and eliminated.”

UN Rights Expert Charges US Using Food Access as Military Tactic

commondreams.org, Published on Thursday, March 31, 2005 by the Agence France Presse

GENEVA — A UN human rights expert sharply condemned the invasion of Iraq and the global anti-terror drive, accusing the US-led coalition of using food deprivation as a military tactic and of sapping efforts to fight hunger in the world.

“The situation of the right to food in Iraq is of serious concern,” the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said in a report to the UN human rights commission.

The report also highlighted “widespread concerns about the continued lack of access to clean drinking water” and allegations by British campaigners that water sources were deliberately cut off by coalition forces.

“Those are the allegations, but what is proven is that at Fallujah, denial, the blockade imposed on food and the destruction of water reservoirs was used as weapon of war,” Ziegler told journalists.

He insisted that the practice was a “clear violation” of the Geneva Conventions and delivered a firm condemnation of any attempt to deny food or water supplies.

The UN expert insisted he was not judging the legitimacy of the invasion or the tactics used by military forces.

“I am simply maintaining a firm condemnation, very firm, of the humanitarian consequences of this strategy and the military tactics applied since March 2003 by the occupying forces,” he said.

Citing previous studies reported last year, the report said that “acute malnutrition amongst Iraqi children under the age of five has almost doubled from four percent to 7.7 percent,” since Saddam Hussein was toppled.

A US official said Ziegler’s comments were “unfortunate.”

“First he has not visited Iraq, secondly he’s wrong,” said US ambassador Kevin Moley.

Moley said the rise in malnutrition rates began in 2002 and 2003 under Saddam Hussein’s regime, and the rates were still lower in Iraq than “throughout the Arab world.”

“He’s taking some information that in itself is difficult to validate and juxtaposing his own views which are widely known about the war in Iraq and suggesting the two are linked,” he told journalists.

“Vaccination rates, food aid have improved dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” the US envoy added.

Overall efforts to tackle terror groups and the invasion of Iraq had also drained precious resources away from fighting hunger in poor countries when they should be doing the opposite, the UN expert said.

The wide-ranging report on global food rights also warned that more people could die as aid programmes in crisis areas, notably in Africa, were obliged to cut down food deliveries.

The World Food Programme had cut food rations by about one third in February 2004, bringing them “drastically under” international minimum nutritional standards, according to Ziegler.

“This will bring higher mortality in the camps, because aid is being redirected towards the ‘War against Terror.’ This is unacceptable,” he added.

Ziegler’s report said the resources spent on “the international ‘Alliance against Hunger’ remain pitiful, when compared to the billions of dollars spent on the ‘War against Terror.’”

“The amount of aid being provided for development and famine relief is falling, as money is redirected towards strengthening national security and the fight against terrorism.”

“Yet the fight against terrorism should incorporate efforts to reduce hunger, poverty and inequality,” it added.

Ziegler urged authorities in Iraq to ensure that reconstruction was carried out “in ways that address chronic malnourishment and do not undermine the future food security of the Iraqi people.”

US rejects Iraq malnutrition claim

english.aljazeera.net
Thursday 31 March 2005

A US human-rights delegation has rejected a UN monitor’s claim that child malnutrition has risen in Iraq and said that, if anything, health conditions have improved in the country.

“First, he has not been to Iraq, and second, he is wrong,” Kevin E Moley, US ambassador to UN organisations in Geneva and a member of the American delegation to the 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission, said on Thursday.

“He’s taking some information that is in itself difficult to validate and juxtaposing his own views - which are widely known,” Moley said, referring to Jean Ziegler’s opposition of the US military intervention in the country.

Citing evidence

Ziegler, the commission’s expert on the right to food, cited US and European studies on Wednesday in telling the commission that acute malnutrition rates among Iraqi children under five rose late last year to 7.7% from 4% after Saddam Hussein’s ouster in April 2003.

Moley rejected the rate that he said was purported to be accurate by Ziegler. Moley said malnutrition in Iraq was notoriously difficult to gauge.

He noted that some estimates had put it at 11% in 1996 and 7.8% in 2000, while Hussein was still in power.

“The surveys that have been taken … have indicated that the recent rise in malnutrition rates began between 2002 and 2003 under the regime of Saddam Hussein,” Moley said.

“If anything, vaccination, food aid … has improved dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” he added.

U.S. rejects Iraqi malnutrition surveys

washingtontimes.com
Friday 30 March 2005

Washington, DC, Mar. 30 (UPI) — The U.S. State Department says a U.N. report claiming malnutrition among Iraqi children had doubled is “open to doubts.”

A U.N. Human Rights Commission official Wednesday told reporters in Geneva that malnutrition among Iraqi children under five nearly doubled last year to 7.7 percent. She blamed the war led by coalition forces for the development.

“These kinds of assessments are open to questions, open to doubts,” State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told a briefing in Washington. “Many of these assessments are based on pre-war statistics.”

The United States, he said, was aware of the nutritional needs of the Iraqi people and, since May 2003, had vaccinated more than 3 million children under five along with 700,000 pregnant women.

He said the United States has provided supplementary doses of Vitamin A for more than 600,000 children under two and 1.5 million lactating mothers. Iron folate supplements were provided to more than 1.6 million women of childbearing age.

“We have screened more than 1.3 million children under five for malnutrition. We have distributed high-protein biscuits to more than 450,000 children and 200,000 pregnant and nursing mothers,” Ereli added.

return

Health officials fear leishmaniasis epidemic

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
Friday 05 April 2005

BAGHDAD, 5 April (IRIN) - Health officials in Iraq are concerned following an outbreak of the disfiguring parasitic disease cutaneous leishmaniasis in Baqubah, some 120 km from the capital Baghdad, with as many as 250 new cases reported in the last two weeks.

Dr Abdul Jalil Nafi, director of the Infectious Diseases Control Centre (IDCC), told IRIN in Baghdad, that the discovery of such a high number was extremely worrying and that they feared that there could be an epidemic if prevention and control programmes were not put in place immediately.

Leishmaniasis is a disabling disease transmitted by the bite of the female sandfly. Dogs and other animals act as a source of infection from which the flies spread to humans. Rodents, especially certain species of rats, are considered the main carriers.

The disease leads to disfigurement of the face and hands, and social stigma, particularly for women and children.

Known locally as the “Baghdad sore”, leishmaniasis is linked to poor social conditions, especially in areas lacking sanitation and waste disposal. Baqubah has been suffering from poor sewage treatment and accumulation of rubbish in many areas around the city.

“The biggest problem that we are having now is related to the poor hygiene in the area and it’s something out of the control of the Ministry of Health. We depend on the cooperation of other ministries to help in the cleaning up of the city to prevent the proliferation of the flies,” Nafi said.

The doctor added that many areas in Iraq were suffering from poor hygiene and that poor distribution of information on prevention was compounding the problem. He explained that the most common type of leishmaniasis was urban, which is transmitted by human contact.

The rural type comes from the interaction of humans with rodents and that in poor hygiene areas the presence of rodents was very high, worsening the situation.

According to Dr Husseiny Sami, an infection specialist at the main hospital of Baqubah, the large increase in cases in such a time frame was not common. “We haven’t had such a large number of cases in our city before and this makes the situation worse. We are offering treatment here but with this increase we require much more medicine to be offered as most of the families cannot afford treatments,” he explained.

Prolonged systemic treatment may be necessary for the disease, according to Sami and, in endemic areas, sandflies should be controlled by spraying homes with insecticide. He added that rubbish heaps, which are breeding areas for sandflies, should be eliminated.

Dr Nabil Amin, head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Iraq, told IRIN that although an increase could be expected during this season in the country, the numbers were larger than predicted.

“We are supporting the IDCC with insecticides, instruments, lab materials for the tests and training to provide more efficient and fast diagnosis of the disease,” Amin added.

The WHO has been working in partnership with Kimadia, Iraq’s formerly state-run pharmaceutical company, to cover needs in the country.

“All our efforts could come to nothing if the government doesn’t take urgent action to reduce sewage on the streets and repair the water purification system in the country because, without it, the doors will still be open for the appearance of new diseases,” Nafi maintained.

Hospitals endure Iraqi paralysis

news.bbc.co.uk
Thursday 17 March 2005

As Iraqi politicians wrangle over the make-up of the future transitional government, the BBC’s Matthew Price visits a hospital in Baghdad to learn about the effect the delay is having on doctors and patients.

At the entrance to Baghdad’s Yarmouk medical facility, there are three armed guards. They hold their Kalashnikov rifles at the ready and check everyone who comes in. The distribution of essential medical supplies is being held up There have been too many bombers in Iraq. In hospital, even the patients are suspects.

In room number four of the surgical ward, 14-year-old Ali lies awkwardly, his two painfully thin legs in plaster. His face is scarred from where the shrapnel cut into him.

Ali was at prayer with his father when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside their mosque. He watched his father die.

“I won’t be going back to school,” Ali tells me, “I’ve got to look after the family when I leave here.”

He has six sisters and a baby brother. Ali’s eyes are wide open, bewildered. He chews his lip nervously.

Crying at his bedside, Ali’s mother, Alral Mohammed, is desperate. She voted in the elections just over six weeks ago and hoped a new government could make a difference.

But the politicians are still arguing over who should run this traumatised country.

“We want the politicians to hurry up,” she says. We don’t know what they’re doing. We don’t want them to delay for two or three months. We want a president quickly to punish the criminals, that’s what we want.”

In one of the hospital’s emergency wards, people are lying on beds waiting for the overstretched doctors to come to help them.

One man lies with his arm over his head. Nearby is another man, obviously in a lot of pain.

‘All Iraq is in chaos’

He is a security guard and this morning when he left his home to go and work at the railway station someone fired at him.

He was hit by a bullet and now he is going to need to be operated on.

In the emergency department, Dr Mohanad Mesar tells me the hospital has seen little of Iraq’s $1bn health budget.

More drugs are being brought into the country, but without a government, they are not being distributed.

The ministry of health tells me they are getting more drugs, they are getting better equipment, things are improving.

“I wish….and this moment, or after one week, one month, one year….I don’t know,” says Dr Mesar.

In fact no one here knows. When you speak to Iraq’s civil servants, they will tell you of their numerous successes.

They say money is available for rebuilding ministries, plans and projects are in place.

But without a decision on who will run the country, there seems to be paralysis.

And at ground level, men like Dr Moussa Naja are not seeing many of the promised changes.

“It is better from the financial point of view, but in other ways, no, it is worse, definitely worse,” says Dr Naja.

“Our main concern is about our lives. You don’t know whether you will be shot dead….for no reason.”

I repeat to him what the health ministry told me about things improving.

“Not exactly,” says Dr Naja. “Not exactly. There is no such improvement.

“What health can you see? All Iraq is in chaos. I don’t blame anybody. The ministry was corrupted from inside, from its employees. Now they are trying to improve, but nothing will be so rapid.”

Doctors here are doing their best to treat people, but they, like the rest of Iraq, will have to wait while the politicians continue to try to build a state from scratch.

Iraqi doctor: US troops storm hospital

english.aljazeera.net
Sunday 27 March 2005

US soldiers stormed a women and children’s hospital in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday, a hospital director said.

Dr Ahmad Ibrahim, the assistant director of the city’s pediatric hospital, told Aljazeera on Saturday that the soldiers entered the hospital after an explosion on Ramadi’s main road.

The soldiers ordered medical staff and patients to leave, he said, before destroying the hospital’s doors and detaining members of staff.

Ibrahim said the forces stormed an operating theatre where a doctor was carrying out Caesarean surgery. They initially ordered the doctor to leave, he said, but when she told them the mother’s life was at risk they allowed her to carry out the surgery under guard.

The assistant director also said that US troops raided Ramadi and Haditha General Hospitals a few days ago, and questioned whether doctors had become military targets and if the raids were aimed at closing hospitals.

He also called on every “honorable Iraqi official” to immediately take action to stop such operations.

Crackdown on unauthorised sale of medicines

www.alertnet.org
Wednesday 30 March 2005

BAGHDAD, 30 March (IRIN) - Health officials in Baghdad are increasingly concerned over the cut-price, unregulated sale of medicines, some of which are out of date and potentially dangerous.

Drugs such as flu and headache pills, antibiotics and tablets to control blood pressure, diabetes and rheumatism are commonly sold on the streets of the capital by people unqualified to prescribe them.

“It is true I do not have diploma in medicine, but I learned the description of medicines and their names and can sell them easily,” Muhssin Alwan, a 44-year-old local vender, told IRIN.

“People like to buy from us because we are cheaper than the pharmacy. I have chronic disease medicine too, but I sell it only to people I know,” Saheb Hameed told IRIN.

“I mainly sell antibiotics and headache pills. My business is good because people need medicine all the time,” he continued. But questions continue over the safety of such trade.

“Medicines must be taken under medical supervision. They should be prescribed by authorised pharmacies, and buying medicines from these peddlers could cause side effects like poisoning due to poor storage or because they may have expired,” Dr Muhsin Ali, a doctor at the al-Kindi hospital in the capital, told IRIN

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the availability of medicine in Iraq remains a key health issue in the country, with many essential medicines still missing due to insecurity, smuggling problems, or delays in delivery to the distribution centres.

Saheb told IRIN that he got the medicine he sells from people working in government hospitals who allegedly smuggle drugs from the hospital pharmacy in return for money and sell them for half the price of the private pharmacies.

Meanwhile, officials at the Ministry of Health (MoH) say they have formed a special committee to deal with the problem. The committee is keeping a watchful eye over areas in the capital like the local markets in al-Baya’a district and Dakliah, west of Baghdad, to monitor the situation.

“Twenty people have already been caught and sent to court and a quantity of medicine was seized and destroyed,” MoH official Hadi Hassin told IRIN.

Yet local pharmacies continue to feel the brunt of the illegal trade. “Our work is being affected by these peddlers, especially in local places like new Baghdad and east gate, because of their cheap prices. However, some people still prefer to get their medicines from the pharmacies to avoid expired medicines,” Haider Saleh, a local pharmacist told IRIN.

Rebuilding Iraq a big, slow job

sfgate.com
Sunday 20 March 2005
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Under constant threat of sabotage, up to 200 U.S. companies are hard at work patching a nation together

Nearly two years into Iraq’s reconstruction, progress is measured in pieces.

A sewage plant rumbles to life outside Baghdad. Drinking water pumps start churning in Basra. Trucks and cars trundle across a rebuilt highway bridge in Tikrit.

But the sweeping changes Iraqis hoped for after the invasion of March 19, 2003, haven’t materialized.

Contractors work under the constant threat of attack by insurgents, who have killed more than 300 Western workers to date. The 41,450 Iraqis employed on reconstruction projects have also become targets, although no one tracks the number killed.

Billed as the largest such effort since the Marshall Plan, Iraq’s $18.4 billion reconstruction continues in slow steps, taken under armed guard. The insurgency hasn’t been able to stop it. But large-scale progress — like bringing most of the nation clean drinking water and providing a stable electricity supply — has proven elusive.

Even January’s election, which buoyed the hopes of many Iraqis, hasn’t made the work easier. Some companies have reported a drop in the number of attacks and threats they face. Others haven’t.

“We had probably hoped that the security situation would improve after the election, which would help,” said Karsten Rothenberg, in charge of Middle East operations at Pasadena’s Parsons Corp. “We haven’t seen any change in the security situation, for better or worse.”

Parsons, however, still is able to repair the hospitals, government buildings and waterworks it was hired to fix, Rothenberg said. “We aren’t stopped dead in our tracks anywhere,” he said.

The companies at work in Iraq haven’t given up hope that a new government will provide a turning point, eventually leading to greater stability. Some describe a change in attitude among their Iraqi employees.

“Among the people we work with here and out at the project sites, there’s definitely a feeling that the future is going to be better than the past,” said Bechtel Corp. spokesman Greg Pruett, speaking from the company’s Baghdad office.

The reconstruction effort’s engineers arrived in Iraq after the American- led invasion.

At first, only a few companies were involved. San Francisco’s Bechtel won a $680 million contract to survey and repair the country’s infrastructure, after an invitation-only competition against other construction giants. Houston’s Halliburton, once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, was given the contract to rebuild the oil industry, virtually Iraq’s only source of foreign income, getting the job without any competition.

As Iraq’s needs became clearer and the damage wrought by wars and sanctions more apparent, the effort’s size ballooned. Bechtel’s contract was expanded to $1.03 billion and supplemented with another, worth $1.8 billion. Other companies, including Parsons and Fluor Corp. of Orange County, were brought in to work on oil, electricity and water.

An incomplete federal list of companies working in Iraq last year names almost 200, although some were there to support the military rather than rebuild.

The total amount of taxpayers’ money committed to those companies in 2004 topped $9.6 billion. In other words, more than half of the $18.4 billion Congress appropriated for reconstruction has already been earmarked for specific projects, although the cash may not yet have been spent.

The list, compiled by the General Services Administration, shows $5.8 billion going to Halliburton in 2004. That figure represents the total amount the government agreed to spend on Halliburton’s Iraq work in 2004 — not the company’s final profit.

Bechtel’s contracts, worth a total of nearly $3 billion, aren’t yet included on the list, which is still being compiled from different federal agencies. But according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which gave Bechtel its contracts, about $2.42 billion has been committed to specific Bechtel projects or spent.

The money has bought progress, if not as quickly as Iraqis would like. During the past year:

– Bechtel dredged and restored Basra’s drinking water canal, rebuilt three major highway bridges and repaired 12 Baghdad telephone exchanges knocked out during the invasion.

– Fluor erected or repaired more than 800 electrical transmission towers in northern and central Iraq and replaced more than 3,500 power plant turbine blades.

– Perini Corp. built a 40-megawatt power plant in Buzurgan, in southern Iraq, and connected it to the country’s grid. It was Iraq’s first new power plant since 1976, according to the company.

In addition, oil tankers load up for export near Basra, bringing the country’s fledgling government badly needed cash.

The attempts to revive and expand the oil industry, however, illustrate the obstacles to reconstruction. In February, the country exported an average of 1.85 million barrels per day, according to Platts energy information service. Before the invasion, it averaged 2.5 million barrels.

Insurgents have virtually shut down exports from northern Iraq. Citizens of the oil-rich nation even have suffered through gasoline shortages, enduring mile-long lines to fill up.

Part of Halliburton’s oil contract included importing fuel into the country. A federal audit, however, questioned more than $108 million of the costs KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, charged the government for bringing the Iraqis fuel.

That finding was blacked out of the audit when it was released in autumn, only to be reported last week by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles.

“I think we’ve wasted a lot of the taxpayers’ money,” said Waxman, who has become one of Halliburton’s most dogged critics. “We’re not getting the most we could for our money.”

Halliburton rejects the notion that it overcharged.

“We will continue to work with the Army to prove, once and for all, that KBR delivered these vital services for the Iraqi people at a fair and reasonable cost, given the circumstances,” said company spokeswoman Wendy Hall.

As for the Iraqis, they labor on under difficult circumstances.

“I would say their overriding feeling is uncertainty and concern about stability,” said Kenneth Kurtz, chief executive officer of the Steele Foundation.

The San Francisco company provides security for firms in Iraq, and Kurtz speaks with his employees there — Westerners and Iraqis — every week on a conference call.

Kurtz said there seems to be a sense within the country that progress is being made, but it hasn’t stopped the attacks his people must evade or defeat. He noted that while many construction projects have started across the country, few have been finished. If anything, he said, the pace seems to be slowing.

“The contracting business has dropped off, literally,” he said.

Editor’s note
Two years ago, the United States invaded Iraq. Shortly afterward, The Chronicle’s Business staff embarked on what has become an annual study of the Bay Area’s defense industry.

Dubbed Bay to Baghdad in its first two installments, this analysis of local Defense Department spending has shown that the Bay Area receives a significant amount from defense contracts, with Sunnyvale’s Lockheed Martin obtaining the bulk of the money. This year, the analysis reveals a large percentage of Bay Area defense dollars earmarked for research, development and testing. In effect, we’re the Pentagon’s lab.

Once-plentiful date trees dwindle in agricultural crisis

usatoday.com
Friday 1 April 2005
By Elliot Blair Smith

BAGHDAD - The date palms that bend elegantly across the skyline hold a special place in Iraqis’ hearts. Once they dominated the world market. Some were transplanted early in the 20th century to California, where they are sleek symbols of Hollywood.

But for decades, Iraq’s palm plantations have been decimated by war and neglect. The number of date palms has fallen to 13 million trees today from 30 million trees in the early 1960s, according to Iraq’s Agriculture Ministry.

In that respect, the bushy, dust-covered fronds reflect the misfortunes of Iraq’s agriculture and people. Forty years ago, Iraqi agriculture was self-sufficient. Its farmers fed the nation and exported to the region.

Today, after decades of brutal dictatorship, war and international sanctions, the World Food Program estimates that Iraqis depend on imports for 60% of their food. A deteriorating irrigation infrastructure and increasing soil salinity, both dating to Saddam Hussein’s time, are mostly to blame. The dangerous security situation, which has led U.S. military forces to encamp on some prime farmland, all contributes to the agricultural crisis.

Abid Ali Obaidi, 47, caretaker of a 600-tree date palm plantation in the heart of traffic-choked Baghdad - an area where police and insurgents battle daily - is among the country’s frustrated growers. In bare feet, he climbs to the crest of one of his palms, where he sees the deep, wide Tigris River flowing past his long, narrow plantation. Despite his proximity to the river, Obaidi doesn’t have enough water to irrigate his trees.

“No electricity means no water,” Obaidi says, lamenting the frequent outages and the insufficient power to pump water. “It’s not profitable like before.”

In al-Dora, a neighborhood about 9 miles south of the capital, vegetable farmer Ahmed Salman, 54, his skin blackened by the sun, has similar complaints. “I don’t have enough fertilizer. And I’m seeing many new seeds and fertilizers in the Iraqi market that we’re not familiar with. I’m afraid to buy it.” He adds, “I stopped going to the Ministry of Agriculture because they do not help us.”

At the College of Agriculture in Abu Ghraib, a Baghdad suburb, professors Ma’Ad Yousif and Alaa’ al-Jobouri affirm farmers’ complaints. “We lack seeds and fertilizer,” al-Jobouri says.

He says rats infest the wheat fields in the north. Many palms, already fragile from neglect, have been poisoned by the U.S. bombing campaign, he adds. The fronds rot and fall off, as is evident at Obaidi’s plantation. Yousif says Iraqi farmers have not received direction from the new Agriculture Ministry.

Some help is on the way: The United Nations has committed $35 million to improve Iraqi irrigation and farmers’ technical skills. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has distributed 500 tons of fertilizer to 4,000 beneficiaries, mostly in the south, and is procuring $6.8 million in farm machinery and livestock for the agricultural sector.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is embarking on a project to rebuild Iraq’s date production by funding the purchase of 40,000 date palms as seedlings for a new national system of “mother orchards.” It’s an apt term: Iraq’s “fertile crescent” is where ancient farmers first learned to harvest wheat and other foods.

But for now, Iraq will struggle to be self-sufficient, much less feed the region as it once did. “They will never produce enough wheat to feed everybody,” says Jonathan Greenham, an agriculture specialist at USAID.