The United States is knowingly violating Article 54 of the Geneva Convention which prohibits any country from undermining “objects indispensable to the survival of (another country’s) civilian population,” including drinking water installations and supplies, says Thomas Nagy, a business professor at George Washington University.

Writing in the September 2001 issue of The Progressive, Nagy cites recently declassified documents that show the United States was aware of the civilian health consequences of destroying Iraq’s drinking water and sanitation systems in the Gulf War, and knew that sanctions would prevent the Iraqi government from repairing the degraded facilities.

During the Gulf War, coalition forces bombed Iraq’s eight multi-purpose dams, destroying flood control systems, irrigation, municipal and industrial water storage, and hydroelectric power. Major pumping stations were targeted, and municipal water and sewage facilities were destroyed.

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention prohibits attacks on “drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.”

Nagy says that not only did the United States deliberately destroy drinking water and sanitation facilities, it knew sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding, and that epidemics would ensue.

One document, written soon after the bombing, warned that sanctions would prevent Iraq from importing “water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals” leading to “increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.”

Another document lists the most likely diseases: “diarrheal diseases (particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza); typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal (particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely.)”

Then U.S. Navy Secretary John Lehman estimated that 200,000 Iraqis died in the Gulf War, but many more have died since. UNICEF estimates that well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S-led sanctions regime, in place for the last decade. Some 500,000 children have died, and an estimated 4,000 die from various preventable, sanctions-related diseases, every month, says the U.N. agency.

Despite the massive human toll, the United States continues to support the sanctions regime, arguing that sanctions won’t be lifted until U.N. inspectors are free to return to Iraq to verify that the country has rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.

American Scott Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector, claims that Iraq is effectively disarmed, and has been for some time.

And deaths from sanctions exceed those from weapons of mass destruction. Political scientists John and Karl Mueller say that sanctions have “contributed to more deaths during the post Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction throughout history,” including deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At one point, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that despite the civilian deaths the sanctions were “worth it.”

Meanwhile, Israel, a U.S. ally in the region, is widely believed to have an arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons. While in violation of countless U.N. Resolutions ordering its withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, Israel faces no sanctions and no order to disarm. Amnesty International, which has warned that Israel’s crackdown on the latest Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, borders on war crimes, recently condemned Tel Aviv for its “utter disregard for human life in the Occupied Territories” and for its violations of international law. And yet even calls for intervention as mild as placing international observers in the Occupied Territories have been rebuffed.

The Gulf War erupted after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait. After the war, the United Nations imposed sanctions, ordering Iraq to disarm. Iraq’s violation of international law in invading its neighbor was cited for the harsh treatment. But critics of the policy say that punishment for violations of international law are being meted out unevenly and hypocritically. Israel’s innumerable transgressions go unpunished, while governments that have fallen out with Washington, often over investment or debt repayment issues, are treated severely.

Moreover, say critics, the United States itself has a long track record of violating international law. Washington’s undermining of Iraq’s water treatment and sanitation facilities in violation of the Geneva Convention is just one of many recent transgressions, including the bombing of Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the continued bombing of Iraq.

U.S.-led NATO forces also targeted civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia. At one point, U.S. Air Force General Michael Short explained that NATO’s bombing campaign was aimed at causing misery in the civilian population. “If you wake up in the morning,” said Short, “and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, ‘Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?’”

NATO forces used depleted uranium munitions in Yugoslavia, as did coalition forces in Iraq. Depleted uranium may be toxic, and may be responsible for an epidemic of cancers and birth defects that have arisen in Iraq over the last decade. Some have charged that Gulf War syndrome, a cluster of mysterious and debilitating illnesses suffered by U.S. and allied soldiers, is related to depleted uranium. Others point to the contamination of soil, water and air by carcinogenic effluent from destroyed industrial facilities and chemical plants as being responsible.

Nagy says that what is most disturbing about the documents is that they reveal a U.S. government concerned more with the potential negative publicity of the deaths, than with the deaths themselves. Dealing with the public relations downside of massive killing is a common theme in U.S. foreign policy. During the Gulf War a bomb that hit a marketplace and killed civilians led CBS News correspondent Dan Rather to remark: “We can be sure that Saddam Hussein will make propaganda of these casualties.” Frequent reference is made in the documents Nagy has uncovered to the potential for Iraq to use epidemics for propaganda purposes.

When Nagy sent the documents to the media last fall, only two reporters wrote lengthy articles. One was Felicity Arbuthnot, who wrote in Scotland’s The Sunday Herald that the “US-led allied forces deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water supply during the Gulf War – flagrantly breaking the Geneva Convention and causing thousand of civilian deaths.” Despite the seriousness of the allegations, and their being backed up by official documents, the story quickly fizzled.

(by Stephen Gowans)

Doctors’ Survey of Families Estimates Iraqi Wartime Deaths at 100,000

Doctors’ survey of families estimates Iraqi wartime deaths at 100,000 Friday, October 29, 2004 Emma Ross Associated Press London - A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.

There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non- governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000.

The scientists who wrote the report concede that the statistics they based their projections on were of “limited precision,” be cause the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqis, most of them doctors.

Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University located in Baghdad, the study was published Thursday on the Web site of the Lancet medical journal.

The survey indicated that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and that airstrikes by coalition forces caused most of those deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.

Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article’s timing just days before the U.S. presidential election was up to him.

“My motive in doing that was not to skew the election,” Roberts told The Associated Press. “My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.”

To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample.

(AP Report, October 29, 2004. Emma Ross Associated Press).

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there were 100,000 “excess deaths” in 18 months.

The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.

“Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” said Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.

“The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children,” Roberts told Reuters.

The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which the Iraq war has been a major issue.

Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers described what they found as shocking.

The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.

Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370.

By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting, according to the Pentagon.

VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS

The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.

“What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it,” Roberts said.

Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was “very bad for Iraqi civilians.”

“We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians populations,” he told Reuters in an interview.

The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each, recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.

They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.

Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.

Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.

“Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes,” Roberts added in the study.

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving security situation in Iraq.

“But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq — in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a pre-emptive war,” Horton said in an editorial.

(As reported by Reuters)

“Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children.”

“Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”

Background

In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14·6 months before the invasion with the 17·8 months after it.

Methods A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We 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.

Findings The risk of death was estimated to be 2·5-fold (95% CI 1·6-4·2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1·5-fold (1·1-2·3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98000 more deaths than expected (8000-194000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. 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.

Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8·1-419) than in the period before the war.

Interpretation Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes.

(Lafta, Riyadh, Jamal Khudhairi, et al. Pub. 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca)

BAGHDAD, July 16 — A suicide bomber in the volatile northern city of Kirkuk on Monday crashed his truck into a compound that includes offices of a major Kurdish political party, killing 85 people. Many victims were women and children, shopping in the busy market next to the political offices, who were engulfed by a large fireball.

Hours later, the Iraqi authorities said, men wearing Iraqi military uniforms stormed into a village in Diyala Province and killed 29 men, women and children. An Iraqi security official, Col. Ragheb Radhi al-Umiri, said the gunmen surrounded the victims and fired into the crowd. The attack occurred in a remote village north of Baquba, he said, and the bodies of some victims were “desecrated” before the attackers fled.

In response to questions, an American military spokesman in Baghdad said via e-mail that American forces had received a report from the Diyala Provincial Joint Coordination Center that men “wearing Iraqi army uniforms attacked Adwala village, killing 29 civilians and wounding four civilians,” and that the attackers rode in new Iraqi police trucks. The coordination center serves as a clearinghouse for emergency response services in the province.

No other information was available about the attack. If the Iraqi authorities’ accounts are correct, they suggest that the attackers either were able to steal official Iraqi uniforms and vehicles or that they may have themselves been members of the security forces.

The Kirkuk attack was the latest to stoke fears that intensified American military operations in Baghdad may have led insurgents to move their operations to locations that can more easily be attacked. The explosion flung bodies throughout the outdoor market and left some of the 185 people who were wounded shouting wildly for help as they ran through the streets with their clothes and hair on fire, witnesses said.

Nine thousand pounds of explosives were used, a senior local police official said, gouging a crater into the ground several yards deep while destroying buildings and scores of shops and cars. One of the buildings, the police said, belonged to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party that controls southeastern Kurdistan and whose leader is the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani. There was no report on casualties among party members.

A witness, Sherzad Abdullah, was a few hundred yards away when the truck ram into the perimeter of the compound and explode, he said. Stunned and slightly wounded, Mr. Abdullah said he watched the fireball “devour the cars passing on the road.”

One passenger bus burst into flames. “The whole bus was on fire,” he said, “and the passengers were jumping up and down inside.”

It was the single deadliest post-invasion blast in Kirkuk, a city rich in oil and ethnicity. Ambitious and organized Kurds are pushing for the city to join the neighboring Iraqi Kurdish region, while Turkmen and Arabs are trying to prevent a full-scale Kurdish takeover.

The enormous payload in the attack was similar to that of a July 7 blast in Amerli, a poor Shiite Turkmen village 50 miles south of Kirkuk, that killed dozens of families who were crushed as their fragile clay-walled homes collapsed.

No group claimed responsibility for Monday’s blast in Kirkuk. But it bore the signs of Sunni Arab extremists and reinforced fears that militants who eluded newly fortified American units closer to Baghdad have turned their lethal focus to places far from the five-brigade troop buildup.

The additional troops have been deployed mainly in Baghdad, Diyala and areas just south of the capital, where the Third Infantry Division on Monday began an operation to cut insurgent supply lines into Baghdad from sanctuaries in the area.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki seemed to acknowledge that the blast could be the work of insurgents who fled central Iraq for easier targets. “The enemy, with his outrageous crimes against civilians, is trying to open the blockade imposed upon him in Baghdad, Diyala and Anbar,” Mr. Maliki said in a statement, referring to offensives by American-led forces and tribal leaders.

The Kirkuk police said the target of the blast was a building housing men from the Kurdish party’s intelligence and security branch. But a party official later said that was not true, saying the bomb struck near a building housing a sports committee and another containing a party relief organization.

The bomber rammed his truck into the blast walls of the compound just after noon, as the adjoining street market was flooded with people heading for lunch or midday shopping. Rescue workers frantically dug through the concrete and rubble and rushed those they found still breathing to hospitals.

But many were turned away, told there was no more room because of the wounded still recovering from the Amerli bombing, which killed 150 people and wounded several hundred more. Many people wounded on Monday were diverted to hospitals in Erbil and Sulaimaniya, the two largest cities in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Two more blasts hit Kirkuk later. A bomb in a parked car exploded about a half-mile from the first attack, wounding one person. Another suicide bomber driving a Volkswagen attacked a police patrol in southern Kirkuk, killing one policeman and seriously wounding 10 others, the police said.

Ethnic tensions have been on the rise in Kirkuk, 160 miles north of Baghdad. Kurds have aggressively moved into the city since the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, angering Turkmen and Arab residents who feel they are being driven out. The government of Saddam Hussein had resettled many Arabs in the city, but Kurds believe that Kirkuk belongs in the Kurdish region, which has its own security and in many ways operates separately from the rest of Iraq.

Meanwhile, two American soldiers died Sunday: one in Diwaniya in southern Iraq, who died from what the American military described as a “non-battle related cause,” and another killed by an explosion in Nineveh Province in northern Iraq.

In Baghdad, 25 unidentified bodies were found around the city, an Interior Ministry official reported. An improvised bomb also killed five Iraqi soldiers. Mortars killed two people in the city, while a car bomb killed one. Gunmen also killed three policemen south of Falluja, the Iraqi police said.

– New York Times