File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1999/postcolonial.9902, message 189


From: vacirca-AT-charm.net
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 19:15:28 -0500
Subject: [IAC] Haunting Images from Iraq


>Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 12:25:09 +0000 (GMT)
>From: Rania Masri <rmasri-AT-leb.net>
>To: iac-list-AT-leb.net
>Subject: [IAC] Haunting Images from Iraq
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>>             Haunting images from Iraq
>>
>>             By Felicity Arbuthnot
>>
>>             BAGHDAD: Iraq, embargoed since August 1990, has been called by
>> many commentators a vast concentration camp. A vast death camp seems more
>> appropriate. Images of Baghdad today haunt for all time.
>>
>>             "We have a new phenomenon," remarked one doctor. "People are
>> just dying. They are not ill. They just give up - especially young men
>> between the ages of about 30 to 35. "Their youth has been sacrificed to the
>> embargo and they see middle age approaching with no hope, no dreams, no
>> aspirations or ability to provide for those they love."
>>
>>             From Jordan, I telephoned Mustafa, an old friend and gentle
>> academic, whose childlike joy of life illuminated every experience.
>>
>>             During the December bombing his voice had broken as he described
>> the destruction of some of the most ancient buildings - World Heritage
>> sites - in his beloved Baghdad. Mustafa always celebrated my arrival with an
>> aubergine dish to dream of.
>>
>>             Surprisingly the call connected immediately: "I'm on my way, get
>> the aubergine ready..." There was a silence, then his daughter Doha said:
>> "We have had a catastrophe, Mustafa is dead."
>>
>>             He had died five minutes earlier. A month before he had
>> undergone a full medical and had been told he had "the heart of a lion. He
>> was haunted by the thought we would be bombed again after Ramazan and he had
>> no way to protect us," said Nasra, his wife. He died on January 17, the
>> anniversary of the start of the Gulf War.I travelled to Baghdad for the
>> mourning, a four-day grieving of an intensity defying description. When
>> Nasra - feisty, gutsy, witty, beautiful and beloved friend - entered, she
>> was unrecognizable, bent double, unable to walk without support, wracked by
>> the unimaginable; the weight of grief encapsulated.
>>
>>             "It is killing us all, one by one," she gasped. "We lost five
>> friends this year." All were under 40, all had "just died".
>>
>>             I heard haunting human tales of the bombing. "We had seven
>> children in our house during the bombing, the youngest six months, the
>> oldest seven years," said Jameel. "Their terror was such that when the bombs
>> stopped, we were left in the dark (the electricity sub-station was
>> reportedly hit again) with great pools of urine and faeces." At the Saddam
>> Paediatric Hospital, three-year-old Sahara was dying. She had acute myeloid
>> leukaemia and was bleeding internally from the nose and gums. She needed 10
>> to 15 units of platelets a day - the doctors could obtain just one.
>>
>>             "In the UK and US leukaemia is a treatable disease, yet due to
>> lack of chemotherapy we have not achieved one cure - only some remissions -
>> in the last eight years," said Dr Rad Aljanabi, chief resident. "In 1994 and
>> 1996, we had no treatment at all, so every single patient died."
>>
>>             Iraq's cancer, leukaemia and malignancy rates have risen by as
>> much as 70 per cent since the Gulf War. The increase is associated with the
>> depleted uranium weapons, used primarily by the US and the UK, which left a
>> residue of radioactive dust throughout the country.
>>
>>             According to studies - including work by Johns Hopkins
>> University in the US - the residue has entered the food chain via the water
>> table and soil. Leukaemia was a rarity before 1991. "This is my first
>> residency and I saw 39 new cases in three months," said one doctor. "I
>> admitted eight last month, I remember all their names. We are suffering - I
>> cry so often."
>>
>>             There were other horrors. Five-year-old Heider Latif, weighing
>> just 13 kg. Starvation, multiple congenital abnormalities, cancers, heart
>> defects, leprosy, waterborne diseases. Death stalks Iraq's children from the
>> moment of birth.
>>
>>             In the beautiful, relentlessly bombarded southern city of Basra
>> where the biblical Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet, the state of health
>> takes on another dimension. One doctor has completed a thesis comparing the
>> congenital abnormalities, cancers and malignancies since the Gulf War with
>> Hiroshima.
>>
>>             Dr Jenan Ali, a world-renowned surgeon trained in Glasgow, has
>> been keeping a record of "mysterious" congenital abnormalities. Her
>> photographs for 1998 are chilling: full-terms babies undeveloped, babies
>> reminiscent of those born in the nuclear testing areas of the South Pacific,
>> a baby with no face, another with no eyes, twisted limbs, or no limbs, tiny
>> mite with huge head and no brain. Page after page of tragedy. "All young
>> parents with no history of abnormalities in the family as far as we can
>> tell, since we have few laboratory facilities now."
>>
>>             Jenan said she believes many of the cases are "not recorded in
>> textbooks, but we cannot be sure since we haven't had textbooks since 1990".
>> Textbooks and medical journals are vetoed by the UN sanctions committee. "I
>> can show you a baby born one hour ago if you are strong and not prone to
>> fainting," said Jenan. A nurse brought in a small bundle in sterile
>> wrappings (baby clothing is just a memory in this formerly internationally
>> renowned hospital).
>>
>>             The tiny being making little bleating noises had no eyes, no
>> nose, a sweet little mouth, but no tongue or oesophagus, no hands or
>> genitalia. Hopelessly twisted small legs were joined together from the knees
>> upwards by a thick "web" of flesh. "We see many similar," commented Jenan

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