Children starving under ‘democratic’ occupation
By
John Catalinotto
Published Apr 6, 2005 4:10 PM
Anyone still trying to defend the U.S.
occupation of Iraq as somehow more hum anitarian than leaving the country to the
Iraqis themselves got hit with some overwhelming contrary evidence March 30:
United Nations hunger specialist Jean Ziegler announced in a report to the UN
Human Rights Commission in Geneva that twice as many children are malnourished
in Iraq now as there were when the occupation began in 2003.
To be
precise, “Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled
since the U.S.-led intervention - to nearly 8 percent by the end of 2004.”
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more
than a quarter are chronically undernourished, the UN report says. The situation
is “a result of the war led by coalition forces,” Ziegler told the
53-nation commission.
“The silent daily massacre of hunger is a form
of murder. It must be battled and eliminated,” Ziegler said.
Before
the war, using funds from the “Oil for Food” program, the
Ba’athist government led by Saddam Hussein managed to organize the
distribution of enough food to Iraq’s population to feed almost all of the
people. At most this was costing $1 or $2 billion a year.
More money than
that has disappeared into the accounting morass of the occupation regime. At the
beginning of the occupation, the Coalition Occupation Autho rity seized $8
billion of the Oil for Food program’s assets and still hasn’t accoun
ted for it. Halliburton and Bechtel have cost overruns that amount to more than
is needed to feed the Iraqis. Yet more Iraqi children are starving now after two
years of U.S. occupation.
The malnutrition is a major but not the only
factor contributing to the increased death rate among children in Iraq. Along
with it is the lack of drinkable water, leading to murderous dysentery and
diarrhea, and the complete collapse of the healthcare system that before the
1990 sanctions took care of all Iraqis.
The billions poured into
Halliburton and Bechtel, who have contracted to rebuild these systems in Iraq,
have so far given next to nothing to the Iraqi people, except they have given
the Iraqis more reasons to support the resistance.
Resistance actions
growing
In comparison with the months leading up to the rigged Iraqi
election Jan. 30—which as of April 5 finally managed to choose a president
but still no government—there has been little media coverage of Iraq
lately. This seems to be the Bush administrationfavorite way of coping with its
Iraq dilemma: try publicly to pretend it doesn’t exist.
One of the
last truly independent report ers in Iraq, Dahr Jamail, said in January that a
modest estimate of the proportion of ordinary Iraqis who support the resistance
movement was 80 percent. Jamail, who is on a speaking tour in the United States
now, made it clear that even those Iraqis who were opponents of Saddam Hussein
and who might have welcomed his defeat in 2003 are by now disgusted with the
U.S.-led occupation. They consider any Iraqis who work with the new government
or with the Pentagon as collaborators, that is, they hold them in complete
contempt.
The resistance attacks over the past few months had concentrated
on forces of Iraqi police and the Iraqi National Guard more than on U.S. troops.
News in early April indicate that this phase of the resistance may be coming to
an end.
On April 3, an insurgent group numbering from 40 to 60 fighters
attacked the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and carried on a sustained battle with
U.S. troops guard ing the prison. This prison camp, where U.S. guards tortured
detainees, still holds 3,000 Iraqi prisoners. The Pentagon reported that its
forces took 44 casualties, all wounded.
The escalation in tactics by
resistance forces means that soldiers in the occupation forces can no longer
feel safe even in their heavily armed bases. It also means that the resistance
forces feel so confident of their mass support that they can risk large battles
and heavy casualties on their own side with the knowledge that there are many
more ready to fill the ranks of their combatants.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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