Ellington

April 3, 2003

Marking the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet is an apple tree with a double trunk. This gnarled tree bears a bronzed plaque: "Here the holy tree of our ancestors Adam and Eve grew." For some Iraqi scholars this place, near the outskirts of Qurnan in southeastern Iraq, is the Garden of Eden. In spring 1991, as a part of a humanitarian aid team, I took medical supplies to the pediatric hospitals in Iraq. A broken tree on the Euphrates banks heralded, for me, a far different reality: not of Eden, but of death.

Wholly bare, this tree's jagged stumps jutted out like limbs from a broken skeleton. The tree hung eerily over a sand crater that a bomb had blasted. Four hundred children died here on Feb. 5, 1991, at 3 p.m. when an allied bomb, aimed at the pontoon bridge on which they were walking home from school, struck.

Dr. Masnel Abdul Hadi, a physician at the Pediatric Hospital in Nasiriya, recalled the day the children were killed: "In January the allies bombed the large industrial bridge at Nasiriya. The only way that the children could keep going to school was across the pontoon bridge. It was just large enough for them to walk across." As she spoke I looked across to the large bridge's metal girders twisted like keloid scars against the sky. A few feet away, what remained of the school children's pontoon rose wearily from the water.

"We were not able to recover all the children's bodies," said Dr. Hadi. "Every family in Nasisriya lost two or three children. I was on the bank of the river that afternoon when the bombing occurred. I am a pediatrician, and I saw the children die." Earlier in the week Dr. Mahmood Mater Atab, director of the Surgical Hospital in Nasiriya, reported to me identical details of the pontoon bridge bombing. He spoke of a 12-year-old boy who died that day on the pedestrian bridge. He then fell silent. For a few moments the young physician looked away, tears streaming down his cheeks.

While the U.S. applauded its smart bombs and sanitized 1991 victory stripped of images of suffering, I saw firsthand that the war's principal victims were children.

Sponsored by 150 women's organizations and religious communities across the U.S., our five-person humanitarian team distributed several tons of medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Iraq. From the western border of Iraq to Baghdad, we journeyed for 18 straight hours by rented bus and crossed two deserts, moving through landmines. We traveled for another nine hours down the interior of the country to Basra. In Baghdad, Qut, Nasiriya and Basra, we visited hospitals. The ravages of the war on the country's children, as well as on its medical system, came into sharp focus.

Shortly before our arrival in Iraq, a Harvard medical team called the situation there a "slow-motion catastrophe of immense proportions." By April 1991, the temperature in Basra had reached 126 degrees, each individual's needs for water had tripled, the Tigris had become, according to an investigative team, "the most poisonous river on earth," and typhoid had reached epidemic proportions.

In southern Iraq tens of thousands of people were still without running water or electricity. Stagnant pools of raw sewage from which people were filling water pails to quench their thirst were evident. In some neighborhoods the sewage covered entire ground floors of dwellings and residents were forced to live on their rooftops.

Etched on the faces of the Dominican sisters at St. Raphael's Hospital in Baghdad who spoke of more than 1,200 women and children dying when the allies struck the Ameriya bomb shelter, the pathos of this catastrophe became something I could touch. St. Raphael's was the only private hospital operating in Baghdad during the 1991 bombing. These things, each one, focused the realities for me. But it was in the faces of the children that the ravages of the Gulf War became most palpable.

At the Nasriya Pediatric Hospital I visited each ward. In one ward, I saw a 4-month-old baby with a shriveled face. Her ribs protruded like wings from her chest. Her legs were spindly as an insect's; her stomach was grotesquely swollen. Over the bed a young woman with clear searching eyes kept vigil. Dressed in a long black dress and veil, she watched as her daughter lay dying of starvation and diarrhea.

The hospital was crammed with children—but with no resources to save them.

Jonathan E. Fine, M.D., executive director of the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, said, "the devastation of Iraq's infrastructure during the Gulf War put all of Iraq on the verge of starvation." Civilian food and medical transport were crippled. Irrigation could not occur. The water supply became contaminated. The attack on the electric power grid disabled the country's water purification, as well as its sewage pumping and treatment system. Raw waste filled city streets and flowed untreated into the rivers where millions of Iraqis turned for drinking water. Typhoid, hepatitis, cholera, meningitis and gastroenteritis surged to what Western doctors and relief officials termed epidemic levels.

Subjected to the most stringent sanctions ever inflicted in modern history, one-half million Iraqi children under age 5 have died. Exacerbated by allied bombing that damaged hospitals, including three in Baghdad, one in Nasiriya and two in Basra, what occurred in the Gulf War represented a new threshold in war. "Doctors have called it," notes Louise Cainkar in "Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader," "biological warfare." She continues: "The destruction of Iraq's infrastructure by coalition bombing and the ongoing imposition of sanctions transformed a relatively healthy population into a sick one denied proper medical care and nutrition." Cainkar concludes: Surgical precision destroyed the brain of Iraq, and the body has been left to die. A new level of inhumanity, brought about by the development of weapons of precision, has been achieved."

I saw it in the faces of the children.

President Bush provided assurance when he said, "Coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm." Yet, Operation Iraqi Freedom, states a recent United Nations report, "could create a humanitarian situation far worse than that sparked after the Gulf War of 1991."
As Visiting Scholar in Ethics and Society at Harvard Divinity School, Anne Mayeaux spoke in June 1991 before the U.N. Security Council on the Gulf War's civilian casualties. A native of Jackson, she recently returned home.

Previous Comments

ID

169817

Comment

Ananova News: 'Angry' Ark Royal crew switch off BBC http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_768569.html?menu=news.wariniraq

Author

dang ol' philip

Date

2003-04-08T14:47:32-06:00

ID

169818

Comment

Philip, Did you mean to post this link to this particular forum? I can't imagine that you're using it to accuse Dr. Mayeaux of "pro-Iraqi bias." She was an eyewitness to more than most of us could ever imagine and tells the story beautifully and with poignancy. I will say, though, that it surprises and disheartens me that media outlets that choose to run or air eyewitness accounts to history, as well as dissenting views, are being accused of being "liberal media" or "one-sided" (as if the pro-war side isn't faring very well now in the media). The truth can hurt, and still be the truth. And we still need to hear it, no matter whose political agenda it serves. Notice that these British soldiers are upset with "commentators"; sure, they have the right to be upset and speak out about coverage, but that shouldn't lead to censorship by the government (here, the Navy). And this is one of those stories that's easy to question: the Navy could as easily have switched off the broadcast to keep news from its soldiers. It's not like we're hearing from a lot of soldiers by name in this story. It raises more questions than it answers.

Author

ladd

Date

2003-04-08T16:22:08-06:00

ID

169819

Comment

no, sorry. WRONG forum!! My apologies. but....... ;-) Saddam gives $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and gives various other types of support to them as well .... (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect5.html). The terrorist groups most active in the West Bank and Gaza are Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa. Hamas, though, is responsible for the lion's share of them, and recently pledged their support to Saddam (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-01-10-hamas-iraq_x.htm). Here's a sobering record of the victims of Palestinian terrorists: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/terror.victims/page1.html thank you again for the platform you guy provide.

Author

Philip H. scarborough

Date

2003-04-09T01:28:20-06:00

ID

169820

Comment

How in the world can you call that censorship? The crew didn't want the BBC anymore. They didn't agree with the content. They asked that the channel be turned. That's freedom of speech and freedom of choice at its very best. Freedom is not being forced to consume information you don't want to consume. http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_768569.html?menu=news.wariniraq

Author

Reader

Date

2003-04-09T10:58:07-06:00

ID

169821

Comment

"Reader," maybe, maybe not. My point, although I might not have made it well, is that if the Navy pulled the plug itself because they didn't like the news, that would be censorship in its purest definition--and possibly whether or not the soldiers agreed with the decision. They don't have to watch it. And you could certainly argue that it's censorship even if one soldier on the ship still wanted to see it; the article, which doesn't say give much to chew on, didn't say every single soldier, if I recall correctly. And it didn't quote any individual soldiers. Constitutional rights are all about one individual, not the majority, which is so often forgotten or overlooked in order to censor unpopular views. Some soldiers might want to see the broadcasts in order to criticize them, or to use them for motivation for instance, and that should be their right, even if others don't want to see it. I certainly always argue for more information rather than less. All that said, my understanding is that many rights of soldiers are suspended in time of war--which I'm not qualified to say is right or wrong--so maybe this a moot point in this case. But the story is an opportunity for a bit of thought at least.

Author

ladd

Date

2003-04-09T13:08:45-06:00

ID

169822

Comment

The Royal Navy didn't pull the plug. This had to have been a command decision by one of the Officers, most likely the Commander, but definitely one of the Officers of the ship. The plug was pulled after the crew communicated their dislike of the fare. Obviously what would be optimal would be for all of the crew to have an individual choice via access to multiple feeds at numerous private viewing locations on the ship. But this is a Navy war ship, not a hotel. I am positive the switch from the BBC to Sky News would not have been made had the officer making the decision felt that only a minority of crew members were in favor of such a change. To hold that it shouldn't have been changed from the BBC if even one crew member didn't want the change is preposterous. BBC viewing is not a mandatory condition of service in the Royal Navy nor an unalienable right, wartime or not. Like you note, the crew members who don't like Sky News don't have to watch it. Their individual rights are not being trampled, they aren't forced to watch. It is no secret that you are anti-war and a BBC supporter. If a news report came out that the crew had wanted to switch from Sky to the BBC I'm sure you would have been all for it. While you note that the article didn't give you much to chew on it was sufficient to generate your 'truth can hurt' and censorship commentary in response to Philip's original posting of the link. In the United States we have access to multiple TV choices. Nobody forces anybody to watch anything. Amongst the cable news, Fox News is trouncing the field in viewership. Another opportunity for a bit of thought.

Author

Reader

Date

2003-04-09T18:23:58-06:00

ID

169823

Comment

I definitely wouldn't call myself a "BBC supporter," and my comments aren't about that or my war views, so it doesn't add anything to the discussion to try to make it personal in that way. I'm speaking hypothetically in the spirit of discussion. I do believe BBC reports some things that American networks are shy about, but I also know some very intelligent people who don't believe they go far enough, either. So it's all relative. I don't wish to beat a dead horse--this wasn't my link and it's under a story about something completely different--but I don't altogether follow your reasoning. Speaking more hypothetically than this case, since I don't know much of what really happened, censorship occurs when the government or someone representing the government prevents a form of expression or media from occurring or being accessed. One person could argue censorship in a case like this should he or she want to if the government or its agent limited or prohibited a type of communication. In that sense, it seems rather textbook to me, at least in a non-military context. On the BBC viewing not being mandatory, I don't get your point. Obviously, that's true, but that doesn't affect this discussion. Certainly, being forced to watch something they don't want could be an individual rights issue in some arenas, although I suspect in the military, as well in many workplaces, it happens a lot . That's not the point here. My contribution to this discussion is over the government possibly telling one person he or she cannot watch (or say or write or whatever) something. That's the part that's worth thought in a world where Patriot I and Patriot II exist.

Author

ladd

Date

2003-04-09T23:52:35-06:00