| September 2000 - Return to Monthly Index MiddleEast.Org 9/22/00 |
|
|
To receive MER regularly email to INFOMER@MiddleEast.Org |
US Poisoned Iraqi Public Water Supply
ALLIES DELIBERATELY POISONED IRAQ
PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY IN GULF WAR
SUNDAY HERALD - 17 September 2000:
The US-led allied forces deliberately destroyed Iraq's
water supply
during the Gulf War - flagrantly breaking the Geneva Convention
and
causing thousands of civilian deaths.
Since the war ended in 1991 the allied nations have made
sure than any
attempts to make contaminated water safe have been thwarted.
A respected American professor now intends to convene
expert hearings
in a bid to pursue criminal indictments under international
law
against those responsible.
Professor Thomas J Nagy, Professor of Expert Systems at
George
Washington University with a doctoral fellowship in public
health,
told the Sunday Herald: "Those who saw nothing wrong in
producing
[this plan], those who ordered its production and those
who knew about
it and have remained silent for 10 years would seem to
be in violation
of Federal Statute and perhaps have even conspired to
commit
genocide."
Professor Nagy obtained a minutely detailed seven-page
document
prepared by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, issued
the day after
the war started, entitled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities
and
circulated to all major allied Commands.
It states that Iraq had gone to considerable trouble to
provide a
supply of pure water to its population. It had to depend
on importing
specialised equipment and purification chemicals, since
water is
"heavily mineralised and frequently brackish".
The report stated: "Failing to secure supplies will result
in a
shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population.
This could
lead to increased incidents, if not epidemics, of disease
and certain
pure-water dependent industries becoming incapacitatedƒ"
The report concludes: "Full degradation of the water treatment
system
probably will take at least another six months."
During allied bombing campaigns on Iraq the country's
eight
multi-purpose dams had been repeatedly hit, simultaneously
wrecking
flood control, municipal and industrial water storage,
irrigation and
hydroelectric power. Four of seven major pumping stations
were
destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities
- 20 in
Baghdad, resulting in sewage pouring into the Tigris.
Water
purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq.
Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: "It is prohibited
to
attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable
to the
survival of the civilian population" and includes foodstuffs,
livestock and "drinking water supplies and irrigation
works".
The results of the allied bombing campaign were obvious
when Dr David
Levenson visited Iraq immediately after the Gulf War,
on behalf of
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War.
He said: "For many weeks people in Baghdad - without television,
radio, or newspapers to warn them - brought their drinking
water from
the Tigris, in buckets.
"Dehydrated from nausea and diarrhoea, craving liquids,
they drank
more of the water that made them sick in the first place."
Water-borne diseases in Iraq today are both endemic and
epidemic. They
include typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio
(which had
previously been eradicated), along with a litany of others.
A child with dysentery in 1990 had a one in 600 chance
of dying - in
1999 it was one in 50.
The then US Navy Secretary John Lehman estimated that
200,000 Iraqis
died in the Gulf War. Dr Levenson estimates many thousands
died from
polluted water.
Chlorine and essential equipment parts needed to repair
and clear the
water system have been banned from entering the country
under the UN
"hold"system.
Ohio Democrat Representative Tony Hall has written to
American
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, saying he shares
concerns
expressed by Unicef about the "profound effects the deterioration
of
Iraq's water supply and sanitation systems on children's
health".
Diarrhoeal diseases he says are of "epidemic proportions"
and are "the
prime killer of children under five".
"Holds on contracts for water and sanitation are a prime
reason for
the increase in sickness and death." Of 18 contracts,
wrote Hall, all
but one on hold were placed by the government in the US.
Contracts were for purification chemicals, chlorinators,
chemical
dosing pumps, water tankers and other water industry related
items.
"If water remains undrinkable, diseases will continue
and mortality
rates will rise," said the Iraqi trade minister Muhammed
Mahdi Salah.
The country's health ministry said that more than 10,000
people died
in July of embargo-related causes - 7457 were children,
with
diarrhoeal diseases one of the prime conditions.
In July 1989, the figure was 378. Unicef does not dispute
the figures.
The problem will not be helped by plans for the giant
Ilisu Dam
project (to which the British government is to give £200
million in
export credit guarantees), which will give Turkey entire
control of
the water flow to Iraq and Syria.
Constructors Balfour Beatty write in their environmental
impact
report, that for the three years of construction, water
flow to Iraq
will be reduced by 40%. Iraq has also suffered a three
year drought,
with the Tigris the lowest in living memory.
|
|
Copyright © Mid-East Realities
& The Committee On The Middle East.
|