Digital Extras

11.5.2001

Young pay for failures of Saddam, sanctions

BY RANDALL RICHARD
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The girl was perfect -- 5 years old, innocent and dead.

If you wanted, you could touch her, just to be sure.

The flesh was cold, but still supple.

Rigor mortis had yet to set in.

A short man with dark, noncommittal eyes pulled back a spotless, beige blanket and exposed the child's throat for anyone who needed confirmation that there was no longer a pulse.

Only one person did.

The other handful of Americans in the hospital corridor simply stepped aside to clear a path for their designated photographer.

But for the impassive looking man who said he was the girl's father -- and the group's Iraqi "minder," whose job was to keep his American guests from wandering off unnoticed -- the tableau might have been heart wrenching.

Instead, it appeared to be just another twisted Kodak moment -- a moment made grotesque by its unlikely genesis and its poorly staged theatrics.

Rana Abdul-Aziz was seething.

How could anyone so callously strip the child of her humanity?

Rana's instinct was to cover the child's face.

She wanted to smash the cameras of those who seemed so eager to turn the girl into a poster child for America's arrogance.

Instead, Rana sobbed until her body trembled so violently that even the Iraqi minder -- and the reporter -- were shamed into putting away their cameras.

But if the scene in the hospital corridor had been staged -- just a ploy to milk the child's death for all the propaganda value it was worth -- the scenes upstairs were far too real.

There, in the children's wards of Al Mansour Medical Center, the suffering and the pain were indisputable, the frustration of overworked and poorly equipped doctors and nurses was palpable, and the prayers of frightened and desperate parents continued around the clock, whether the American visitors were there to see them or not.

These were just two of the contrasting realities the 22 members of Conscience International -- all but one of them Americans -- had to grapple with during their historic visit to Iraq earlier this year.

Not only did they have to sort fact from fiction, they also had to deal with competing claims about who is to blame for Iraq's misery.

In a country ruled by fear -- a country where access to information is as tightly controlled as its people, the delegation's job, at least on one level, seemed insurmountable.

On another level it was easy.

The enormousness of the task, as some in the delegation saw it, only confirmed the suspicions they had before coming to Iraq -- that a decade of economic sanctions had failed, that the embargo had done nothing to undermine the power or absolute control of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Still, the members of Conscience International -- the first Americans to go to Baghdad by air since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 -- knew their credibility was on the line.

Critics back home would peg them as unwitting dupes, or worse, of one of the world's most brutal regimes.

It was bad enough that they risked going to jail for defying the U.S. ban on travel to Iraq. But giving ammunition to their detractors by getting their basic facts wrong, they decided early on, was inexcusable.

The delegates were determined to document and double check everything they were told -- and even, if warranted, what they observed.

It was for that reason -- and to minimize disruption to the hospital routine -- that they agreed to split into three groups.

One person in each group was assigned to take photographs, another to serve as translator and a third to take scrupulous notes or, better yet, tape record all interviews with the patients, their families and hospital staff.

If there were doubts or inconsistencies, they wanted to identify them quickly and clear them up.

Roger Reid, a Presbyterian minister from Syracuse, N.Y., and one of the activists, was the first to spot the man lurking in the shadows.

The man was at the far end of a dimly lit side entrance to the hospital, holding what appeared to be a bundle against his chest. For several minutes he stood there, eyeing the cluster of Americans who had paused to collect stragglers and wait for a staff doctor to take them on a tour of the hospital.

When the doctor arrived the man walked over. He suddenly appeared lost and confused, and began asking for directions in Arabic.

He said he had been roaming the hospital since 6 a.m. -- for nearly eight hours -- with his daughter in his arms, looking for someone to give him a death certificate so he could take her home and bury her.

She had died, he said, because the hospital didn't have the equipment it needed to save her life -- equipment, the doctor said, that was being held up by U.S. monitors assigned to enforce the United Nations's embargo that has helped to cripple Iraq for the last 10 years.

As if to punctuate this outrage, the man placed his bundle on a wooden railing and pulled back the blanket, revealing the lifeless face of his daughter.

It was no secret among the 22 members of Conscience International that the Iraqi regime wanted to exploit their visit. From the moment they stepped onto the tarmac at Saddam International Airport and walked down a receiving line of diplomats, generals and assorted high ranking officials of the ruling Baath Party, the television cameras were rolling.

Nobody in the delegation liked it. Neither did they like it when their hosts insisted, over their protests, that they stay at the luxurious Al-Rashid Hotel, which made it all the easier for their handlers to keep an eye on them.

To a person, the Conscience International members opposed the economic sanctions against Iraq. But they appreciated the sometimes fine line between expressing solidarity with the Iraqi people and being exploited by a regime they neither trusted nor liked.

No one in the delegation appreciated that distinction better than Rana Abdul-Aziz or Asif Tejani.

Rana spent most of her childhood in Iraq and plans to return there to teach after she graduates from Tufts University.

Although she too opposes the economic sanctions and is convinced that the suffering of the Iraqi people is a direct consequence of ongoing U.S. attempts to manipulate and exploit the countries throughout the Arab world, her principle reason for joining the delegation was to visit her family.

Asif, a Shiite Muslim who has a dental practice in Canada, has been to Iraq several times on religious pilgrimages and knows better than most how the Shiite majority in Iraq has suffered under Saddam Hussein.

Unlike the others in the delegation, Rana and Asif knew firsthand what Iraq was like before the Gulf war. And for both, the visit to the hospital was especially painful.

As a dentist, Asif was appalled by Iraq's inability to buy a number of life-saving drugs and medical supplies -- not because it cannot afford them, he was told, but because they are routinely placed on "hold" by a United Nations committee that monitors all Iraqi imports.

According to the physicians at the Al Mansour Medical Center, the U.N.'s "661 committee" -- named for the resolution to establish the sanctions in August 1990 -- has blocked the purchase of roughly 1,000 basic humanitarian and civilian items because those items, it says, also can be used to build "weapons of mass destruction."

Among those banned items, the delegation was told, are the nitroglycerin tablets used by heart patients during an attack -- tablets the committee reportedly placed on hold for fear they could be used to make bombs.

When you consider the tens of thousands of tablets it would probably take to extract enough nitroglycerin to build even a single explosive device, says Asif, the committee's decision would be ludicrous if it wasn't so devastating for those Iraqis who suffer from heart disease.

But the threats to Iraq patients, Asif would soon learn, go far beyond the embargo on heart pills.

After one dentist told Asif that even blood-clotting agents are among the items on hold, she turned to him and told him about a decision she was forced to make one week earlier. She then asked the question for which Asif knew there was no good answer.

The child, she said, was a hemophiliac and had been brought in to get a tooth pulled. "What would you do? Remove the tooth and risk killing the child, or leave the infected tooth in and risk killing the child?"

The decision was to pull the tooth.

"Muna bled for three days," the dentist told Asif. "The only thing that saved her were the compresses made of tea bags -- and her mother's prayers."

Even Asif's distress over the Iraqi government's treatment of his Shiite brothers did not soften his outrage at the international community.

Iraq's sins, he decided as he walked through the wards of Baghdad's central hospital, did not excuse the sins of the United States and its allies, not even if you gave them the benefit of the doubt and considered their sanctions well intentioned.

His fellow Shiites were twice cursed -- compelled to suffer not only at the hands of Saddam Hussein, but at the hands of those who hoped to topple him.

With his fluency in Arabic, and a determination to see for himself the conditions under which the Shiites in Iraq are forced to live, Asif decided to risk angering his hosts by slipping off on his own to visit one of the holiest shines of the Shiah faith.

By chance -- though one with short odds given Iraq's demographics -- he managed to hail a taxi with a Shiite driver, a man who immediately became suspicious when Asif, dressed unmistakably as a Westerner, asked him in Arabic to take him to the shrine.

Iraqi taxi drivers, at least a breed or two apart from those in the rest of the world, tend to be adamant about refusing to accept money from anyone they suspect might be an American.

As often as not, members of the Conscience International delegation literally had to beg their drivers to take money for hauling them around.

"No, no, no" -- they would protest in broken English. "You are a guest in my country. I cannot accept money from you."

What made these refusals even more extraordinary was the realization that the tip alone, for just an average U.S. taxi fare, would have generated a wad of Iraqi dinars thick enough to choke a camel -- and important to the driver because it could have fed his family for a week.

Although touched and embarrassed by such hospitality, the delegates were determined to pay their own way and persisted to the point of frustration, until they finally discovered the one way to defeat the generosity of their drivers.

The money, the activists eventually learned to say, is not for you. It is for your wife and for your children. Please pay me the honor of accepting it.

Iraqi sensibilities and politeness notwithstanding, Asif immediately recognized a wariness on the part of his Shiite driver he had not seen before.

The reason for it, he would soon learn, was frightening -- not because of what it meant for his own safety, but because of what could happen to the man behind the wheel.

I am sorry, but it is not permitted, the driver declared, when Asif told him he wanted to go to Samarra, the site of a major Shiah shrine, about a three-hour drive north of Baghdad.

When Asif persisted, saying he had come all the way from Canada on pilgrimage, the driver looked startled, and even more wary.

You are Shiah? he asked Asif.

Yes, from East Africa, of Indian and Arab parents, Asif responded, in answer to the driver's unasked question.

But that didn't explain the rash on Asif's face -- and it was that barely noticeable rash that was a cause for concern among several people he would meet that day.

In his haste to get an early start, Asif had scraped himself shaving, leaving the rash-like blotches -- a telltale sign, to some Iraqis, that something was terribly wrong.

The level of fear throughout the country is so great, he was told, that some people frequently broke out in a rash -- a sign, according to a Baghdad urban legend, that the person was extremely nervous, probably because of guilt over some infraction against the regime.

But putting aside any rash-engendered concerns -- or perhaps because of them -- Asif's driver was determined to discover whether his passenger was really who he said he was.

For the next few minutes, with a casualness that seemed to Asif so forced that it betrayed his unease, the driver peppered him with questions, which Asif decided were meant to be a test to make sure he was of the Shiah faith.

The driver, satisfied with Asif's ability to cite Shiah doctrine, still seemed torn between a desire to be helpful and his fear of what might happen to him if he went to Samarra.

Iraqis, Asif was told, especially if they were Shiah, have mysteriously vanished -- sometimes permanently -- for far less.

They would be stopped, the driver warned, and ordered to return to Baghdad at the first roadblock -- and there would then be many questions.

As much as Asif wanted to reach the famous mosque in Samarra, he did not want to push his driver further. As a foreigner, he knew the risks to himself were minimal. But for the driver, the consequences would be severe.

When his driver veered off the main highway, however, and invited him home for tea, Asif knew the man had made his decision.

Perhaps, he suggested to Asif, he might be more comfortable in something more casual. It would be no trouble at all to lend him something. And it might also be a good idea if he took off his fancy gold watch and put it in his pocket.

Asif did not need to be told that by changing clothes and removing his watch he would stand a better chance of making it through the roadblocks.

Again without any need for explanation, his driver said it would be best if he said nothing to the soldiers at the roadblocks unless he was asked a question directly -- making it clear that while the driver was impressed with his Arabic, Asif's accent would betray him, if the rash on his face didn't.

The drive to Samarra was uneventful and the driver became more relaxed and candid the closer they got to the town.

But by the time they returned to Baghdad, Asif's worse fears were confirmed.

The stories he heard in the mostly Shiite town were chilling: Government agents everywhere. Children taught in school to report their parents even for the slightest criticism of the regime. Shiah men arrested for holding extended conversations in public, whether the police knew what was being said or not.

Even at the mosque, he was told, Shiites are so fearful that they engage in only the most casual of conversations, limiting themselves often to just the traditional Salem Alakem greeting -- God be with you.

Those who risked carrying on a conversation in the mosque, Asif learned, did so staring into the Koran so that anyone watching might think they were only reciting prayers.

By the end of their trip, his driver confided that he had been ill for some time, but that he could find none of the medicines he needed beause of the sanctions.

When Asif offered to send him the medicines he needed from Canada and asked for the address, his driver panicked.

If someone at airport security found the driver's name in Asif's address book, there was no telling what might happen to him.

Only when Asif said he would take down the address in Swahili and promised to send the medicine without any accompanying note -- and without even mentioning the condition for which the medicine was intended -- did the driver agree to accept his offer.

None of this, however, mitigates what Asif feels is the absurdity of America's determination to maintain the sanctions against Iraq.

"However much we may detest Saddam, starving and killing an entire generation of Iraqi children is not the way of dealing with a despot."

From Baghdad to Samarra, whether in government-controlled tours, in his unauthorized travels to Shiite shrines, or in private conversations with those in Iraq who detest Saddam Hussein most, Asif heard the same thing: Sanctions have done nothing to diminsh Saddam Hussein's power. All they have done is diminish whatever chance the Iraqis have of surviving it.

To Asif, the number of people who have already perished is staggering.

By the count of the international agency that instituted the sanctions, 150 Iraqi children die needlessly each day -- and the 10-year total, Asif says, is reaching genocidal propotions.

But it is those who are still alive -- like Ahmad, a blind 10-year-old Asif visited at a pediatrics hospital in Basra, in southern Iraq, who keep him awake each night.

For Asif, letting go of Ahmad's hand was unbearable -- even more unbearable than watching the way he quietly sobbed as he was being given a dose of chemotherapy.

The man administering the chemotherapy said the reason for the child's tears was as sad and as senseless as the disease itself.

Before the sanctions, he said, there had been a plentiful supply of central venous lines. But now, only peripheral lines were available, so that Ahmad's veins were literally being scorched by the anticancer drugs with every dose.

What Asif says he sees each night as he tries to get to sleep, is Ahmad's mother whispering into her son's ear. It was then that the blind child muffled his sobs and began to sing.

"I remember his small voice breaking off, frayed from the pain, fading into unfinished lines. It is then that I realized that I am hearing a lamentation -- an ode to the suffering of the Imam in Karbala:

" 'For, is it not said, that the suffering of Husayn in Karbala, is greater than any sacrifice made for Islam? And is it not said that recounting the Imam's suffering, eases ones own?' "

Back to: Iraq: A Decade of War Printer-Friendly Version Read/Post to our Bulletin Board on this topic