By Sean Malloy
Continued UN sanctions and the January 14 bombing of Iraq have intensified the misery experienced by the Iraqi population and eliminated the possibility of a moderate social and economic recovery.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that Iraq's gross national product came to just US$65 per person in 1991, indicating the scale of economic collapse.
In 1988, at the end of its eight-year war with Iran, per capita GNP was US$2367. In 1987 Iraq was calculated to be third on the list of "comfortable" nations in the region. Today the value of the Iraqi dinar is 100 times less than it was in 1990.
Iraqi industry is currently working at 12% of capacity. US bombing of the Al-Nidaa machine-tool factory has aggravated the problem; this particular factory was a major part of the Iraqi recovery program.
Hospitals are working at 50% capacity; receipt of medicines is 10% of prewar levels.
UN and Iraqi sources agree that infant mortality rates are soaring, and that access to safe water is diminishing rapidly.
UNICEF, which is trying to create a social and economic data base on Iraq, estimates that the under-five mortality rate reached 128 per thousand in 1991, five times pre-sanctions level. 80,000 to 100,000 children may die in Iraq this year.
Minister of trade Dr Mohammed Mehdi Saleh told a recent women's conference in Baghdad that "the rate of deaths among children one to two years old has risen sharply, mainly because of the shortage of baby milk".
A small tin of powdered baby milk now costs half a month's wages or more.
Iraq's deputy health minister, Dr Shawky Sabri Morcos, says that 170,000 people have died, directly or indirectly, as a result of the embargo.
UNICEF data reveal other disturbing facts about the collapsing Iraqi economy and public health.
Before the 1991 war and UN sanctions, about one rural person in
three had access to safe water. In 1991, 15 people out of 16 lacked access to safe water.
Another UN body, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, notes in a report published last month that the 1991 "bombing of electrical power stations has also aggravated environmental problems concerning water quality and soil salinity curbing system".
Direct environmental damage included the bombing of irrigation systems, but there was also indirect damage caused by damage to "textile, chemical and milk factories that have burned harmful elements in the atmosphere or threatened nearby water quality".
Public health standards and nutrition have declined; children often get less than half the calories considered reasonable for their health.
UNICEF notes that malnutrition has resulted in diseases like rickets and marasmus reappearing at an increasing rate.
The English-based aid organisation, Oxfam, is calling for sanctions to be eased. Oxfam, which has expertise in water and sanitation, is attempting to repair water and sewage facilities but faces major difficulties without access to parts embargoed by the UN.
Contaminated water and the public health crisis heighten prospects of endemic cholera and typhoid.
David Jones, Oxfam's associate director, said that UN resolutions prevent "the rebuilding of key humanitarian sectors of the economy".
[Much of the above information is taken from an Inter Press Service report by John Roberts.]