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Children starving under ‘democratic’ occupation

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.