War's 13 million forgotten victims

By LEONARD DOYLE

It is not Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, but Iraq's 13 million children who will be most vulnerable to the force the US plans to unleash against their country.

With or without United Nations Security Council backing, a war on Iraq would have immediate and devastating consequences for the country's children, who are more vulnerable now than before the 1991 Gulf War.

A team of international investigators, including two of the world's foremost psychologists, have conducted the first pre-war field research with children and concluded that Iraqi children are suffering "significant psychological harm" from the threat of war hanging over their heads.

The team was welcomed into the homes of more than 100 Iraqi families, and found the overwhelming message from the children was one of fear and the thought of being killed.

Many live in a news void, with little updated information concerning the heightened threat of war.

"I think every hour that something bad will happen to me," said Hadeel, 13.

Assem, at 5 one of the youngest children interviewed, said: "They have guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much."

But it is the fear that most of the children expressed that shocked the investigators most.

In a breaking voice 13-year-old Hind told them: "I feel fear every day that we might all die, but where shall I go if I am left alone?"

If a bombardment and invasion come, the team says, the consequences will be so dire that the plight of Iraqi children must be given more priority when Britain and the US consider the alternatives to war and continued weapons inspections.

Because Iraq has only one month's supply of food and the overwhelming majority of its people depend on Government-distributed rations, the chaos of war could tip a population of malnourished children into starvation.

And once American and British bombs start falling on Saddam Hussein's power stations, the country's main water treatment plants will fail, sending sewage into the Tigris river and making its water unsafe to drink.

Millions of Iraqis rely on river water to irrigate crops and prepare food. Once the bombers knock out the electricity power supply, as they did in the first Gulf War, Kosovo and Afghanistan, the sewage of entire cities will flow straight into the rivers.

Drinking or even washing dishes in contaminated water will make an already susceptible population vulnerable to potentially deadly water-borne diseases ranging from e coli to typhoid.

Until 1990, Iraq's health care system was the pride of the Middle East and was described by the World Health Organisation as "first class".

The Gulf War and sanctions have crippled it, causing death rates of children under five to double over the past decade.

Seventy per cent of deaths are caused by easily avoidable gastric disease and respiratory infections.

More worrying is an extremely low level of emergency preparedness in the international community to respond to the harm suffered by children in any military operation.

Despite grave concerns at the highest levels, UN agencies are unable to prepare for an emergency that has yet to happen without being accused of preparing for war. The World Food Programme is preparing to feed up to one million Iraqis for at least three months, but once the shooting is about to start it will pull out its expatriate staff.

Iraq's civilian population is particularly vulnerable because about 16 million people - half of them children - depend completely on Government-distributed food for their survival.

Twelve years of sanctions and corruption in the Government mean few, if any, families have stockpiles of food to get them through a war of any length.

The WFP supplies basic foodstuffs, but the distribution is up to the Government.

If a bombing campaign destroys bridges over the Euphrates and Tigris, it will stop food distribution in its tracks.

The international study team's report, published by the charity Warchild, warns of a "humanitarian disaster" should war break out.

Iraqi children, already weakened and vulnerable because of sanctions, are "at grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma".

The experts expect casualties among children to be in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands, "and possibly in the hundreds of thousands".

A leaked UN report has revealed that in war, about 4 to 5 million Iraqis will need emergency supplies and international aid.

The World Health Organisation says that 100,000 people may be injured by bombing and that a further 400,000 will become sick if they cannot get food, water and shelter.

If Saddam's Government does not quickly collapse and there is street-to-street fighting in Baghdad and other cities, the humanitarian crisis would balloon as people flee the cities.

A full-scale armed conflict along the lines of the intensified aerial bombardment leaked to the US media followed by a ground war could kill up to 251,000 people, including 2000 to 50,000 civilians.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald feature: Iraq