Iraq Bleeds

On October 29, 2004, a reputed medical journal, Lancet, published a report by a group of researchers who have done a survey to compare the mortality rate in  Iraq 14.6 months before the March 2003 invasion and 17.8 months after the invasion. What Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham found out is shocking.

They took a cluster sample survey throughout Iraq during September 2004. They chose 33 clusters of 30 households and interviewed the residents about household composition, births, and deaths since January 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. Then they assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17·8-months after the invasion with the 14·6-month period preceding it. (The survey is available online at http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf 5.)

The study revealed that the risk of death was 2·5-fold higher after the invasion when compared with the pre-invasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. When they excluded the Falluja data, the risk of death was still 1·5-fold  higher after the invasion.

Using advanced scientific methods, they have estimated that 98,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion. This is excluding deaths in Falluja! If one included Falluja, the estimated deaths would be around 120,000.

They have also found out that the major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. These violent deaths were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals killed by coalition forces were women and children.

Translated into layperson’s language, this survey shows that somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 Iraqi men, women and children have been brutally killed by coalition forces during the last 17.8 months; that is 5,617 murders per month. This is genocide in cold blood.

The survey is the first scientific inquiry into this large-scale slaughter of a nation by the United States and Britain. It opens a small window on the making of a real human tragedy.

There is hardly a household left in Iraq which has not suffered violence. There is hardly a person left who is not carrying the scars of the death of a close relative; there is hardly a child left in that devastated country who has not heard gunshots and who has not witnessed death first hand.

Today, Iraq is a nation bleeding to death. The violence continues at a scale that is simply appalling. There is hardly a day when scores of deaths are not reported in the media and what is not reported is far more than what is reported. And all of this is happening in broad daylight, everyone knows about it and no one seems to care enough to stop this genocide.

Even before the recent invasion, Iraq was already a shattered country. Years of sanctions, brutality of Saddam’s regime and radio-activity in its soil and water had played havoc with the lives of its citizens. An estimated 3 to 7 million people had suffered traumatic deaths during that decade of slow death which set in after the 1991 Gulf War.

The 1991 War was a watershed between two eras. Before 1991, it was still possible for Iraqis to look forward to a stable and happy future, although the country had already witnessed the violence and bloodshed during the eight long years of war with Iran. Thousands of Iraqis had perished during that brutal and pointless war which had been started by its dictator for no reason whatsoever.

But 1991 brought dramatic changes. As a result of the Gulf War, this oil-rich country was littered with uranium-tipped bombs and thousands of small canister bombs littered its length and breadth. This was the beginning of an era of suffering unlike the previous decades when Iraqis had witnessed the brutalities inflicted by Saddam Hussein. Now, their soil and water were contaminated with radio-active material and they were breathing poisonous air. As a result, health standards dipped, diseases of previously unknown kinds erupted and thousands of innocent children, women and men started to suffer from ailments that would devastate the living more than the dead.

Then there were the sanctions. In spite of billions of barrels of oil in its possession, Iraq could neither buy nor sell anything worth selling and buying; its economy was crippled. Food shortages, declining standards of health, malnutrition, and the general demoralizing state of its populace brought Iraq to the brink of a devastation that made it more like a country of the dead than the living.

During that long decade of sanctions, Saddam Hussein and his regime managed to function and though there was much suffering and gloom, Iraqis were still able to live with their unfortunate situation with the hope that soon sanctions would be lifted and they would resume their lives. But then came 2003 and a new wave of cluster bombs and a new wave of devastation. This time around, it was unlike anything witnessed during the 1991 bombing. Now, the unchallengeable B-52 bombers could drop their lethal bombs wherever and whenever they wished. And this time around, the targets were not merely military installations; bombs were dropped in the hearts of cities like Baghdad and Basra. Whole neighbourhoods were wiped off the face of earth.

Unlike 1991, this time the ground assault brought US and British soldiers onto the streets of Iraqi cities. This invasion was totally different in character from all that had gone before in Iraqi history. The foreign army not only brought its humvees and tanks, it also brought a whole regiment of night raids, checkposts, arbitrary arrests and cold-blooded murders. Now, no one was safe. Anything could happen at any time.

Those who witnessed the humiliating photographs of Abu Ghuraib prison only saw a tiny portion of the actual brutality that has become the order of the day for most Iraqis. The truth is that there is no household in Iraq that has not been shattered by the invasion. Falluja is like a huge cemetery, Baghdad continues to bleed, and Basra, Musul and other cities witness daily violence. Even the countryside has not remained immune from this latest brutality.

Why is this nation suffering like this? Why is the world so callous about this suffering? Whatever has happened to the 1.5 billion brethren in faith of these Iraqis now witnessing a slow and agonizing death? Perhaps there are no sure answers for these questions, only a crippling realization that perhaps humanity has lost some vital human traits forever and the end of life as we know it is not far now.