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A NEW United Nations report highlights the doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq since the United States' war of occupation.
Unsurprisingly, military occupations are never much fun for the occupied population. Apart from the loss of national autonomy and the overt suppression of basic freedoms of the nation, typically a set of policies is imposed, which is clearly to the advantage of the military occupier and those who choose to throw in their lot with the occupier, which also works to the material detriment of most of the local population.
And when the occupier is actually a foreign power with an eye to the natural resources of the country, the effects are predictably worse both for the people and for the broader development prospects of that country. So it should come as no great surprise to anyone that conditions are bad for the people of Iraq, whatever the occupying power may claim about the supposed benefits of the puppet democracy that the U.S. is trying to introduce in that country.
However, even occupying powers usually follow certain norms. Occupation - however brazenly imperialist - requires a certain minimal legitimacy in the eyes of the world and at least a section of the local population. This particular occupation, for which the official justification of the U.S. government now is explicitly that it is spreading freedom and democracy in the Arab world and generally making things better for the citizens of Iraq, requires even more of such legitimisation.
This is why the latest news coming from Iraq still comes as a shock, even after recognising the basic nature of the occupation as imperialist. It has been historically rare for an occupier to show such little concern for the welfare of the local population, simply because greater distrust and hatred of the occupier typically increase the costs of occupation too much and can make it unviable. However, the current occupying powers seem to give rather less priority to this, and much more to the sheer military battle against the continuing resistance.
To take just one example, basic supplies of electricity and essential goods are still erratic in most of the country, two years after the invasion. Across the major cities, and in most parts of Baghdad, sewerage and sanitation systems are in a mess, and the vast majority of people have access to only contaminated drinking water. By contrast, after the 1991 Gulf war left much of Baghdad in a shambles, Saddam Hussein's government had restored electricity and kerosene supplies in two months, despite sanctions.
All this naturally has direct implications for health. While the entire population is adversely affected, young children are the most vulnerable and their health indicators reflect the current terrible conditions most starkly. The dramatic rise in malnutrition is one such indicator.
A generation ago, the nutrition problem facing young Iraqis was that of obesity. But after the first Gulf war, the effect of sanctions championed by the U.S. administration was to reduce sharply access to food and other basic supplies. This led to an alarming increase in child malnutrition, from around zero to 11 per cent.
Subsequently, concerted efforts by the Saddam regime as well as the U.N. oil-for-food programme (which is currently being attacked by Washington for supposed "corruption") were instrumental in ensuring basic food supplies to the people, and bringing down the degree of child malnutrition to 4 per cent just before the invasion in March 2003.
But a recent report, released by Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, says that by late 2004, 7.7 per cent of Iraqi children under five suffered acute malnutrition. This is almost 8 per cent, nearly double the previous figure in just 18 months. This refers only to acute malnutrition: over one-fourth of children in Iraq do no get enough to eat, according to Ziegler's summary of various studies.
Malnutrition is not only a major direct killer of children at present, it also leads to various kinds of physical and mental impairment and increases vulnerability to disease in general. It is usually exacerbated by impure drinking water and poor conditions of sanitation, both of which stem directly from the collapse of public health conditions since the U.S. war of occupation. Even in the worst periods of the prolonged 13 years of suffering under U.N.-imposed sanctions, the Saddam regime, however oppressive, had still managed to provide better basic living conditions than the U.S.-led occupation has provided in the past two years.
In the mainstream media, this is often blamed on the violence and absence of basic security that come out of both the Iraqi resistance and the attempts of the occupying powers to suppress it. But the continuing distress of the Iraqis is much greater than can be explained by the violence alone - it also reflects a much higher degree of both callousness and incompetence than has been found in other historical instances of occupation. Indeed, the conditions have now been so bad for so long that it can almost appear to be intentional.
Much of this relates, very simply, to the fact that not enough money is being spent by the occupying powers on genuine reconstruction. By far the greatest proportion of the money being spent in Iraq is going towards the military costs of occupation, on the U.S. army itself and its related expenses.
These costs are already so much more than were anticipated, and show so little sign of coming down in the near future that both the U.S. administration and other significant forces determining U.S. public opinion are increasingly stingy in providing resources for anything that will improve the basic living conditions of the people.
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