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* Scott Harding
Soviet Union let economic and strategic needs trump concerns for
the well-being of Iraqi citizens. While Iraq’s own policies fostered
repression and limited social development, Western powers played
a central role in creating human-made disaster by ignoring Iraq’s
authoritarian rule through the 1980s.
The use of UN economic sanctions against Iraq for its 1990
invasion of Kuwait caused massive harm to the civilian population.
This followed the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure from US
bombing in the 1991 Gulf war (Ascherio et al., 1992) and devasta-
tion from the Iran–Iraq war (1980–8). Sanctions, enforced from
1990 to 2003, degraded Iraq’s health-care system, formerly among
the most developed in the region (Popal, 2000; von Sponeck,
2002). As Iraq’s oil-dependent economy withered, child mal-
nutrition, disease, and infant and child mortality increased sharply
in the 1990s, and food self-sufficiency declined (Dobson, 2000;
Garfield, 1999; UNICEF, 1998). Al-Nouri (1997) found that the
UN trade embargo created profound effects on Iraqi family life by
distorting social mobility, weakening social norms, altering long-
standing social networks, and producing emotional strain and
psychological distress. Sanctions were chiefly responsible for the
excess deaths of 300,000–500,000 infants and children during the
1990s (Garfield and Leu, 2000). On the eve of the 2003 US invasion
of Iraq, the United Nations reported that more than one-fifth of
Iraq’s population in the heavily populated regions was ‘chronically
poor’, unable to meet basic needs over long periods of time (UN
World Food Programme, 2003). Devastation from sanctions,
imposed for more than a decade largely at the behest of the USA
and the UK, was recognized by international observers. The social
work profession’s response to these developments was muted
within the USA and internationally, and little attention was given
to this human-made disaster through its publications or organiza-
tions (Harding, 2004).
The USA has 140,000 troops in Iraq and is promoting policies
that jeopardize national reconciliation and inclusive social develop-
ment. The American occupation has been marked by overt political
pressure on Iraqi leaders to achieve a quick transition to constitu-
tional democracy through a number of forced, truncated political
processes. Given the instability and long-standing tribal, religious
and ethnic divisions that existed in Iraq, this is a dubious policy
(Baram, 1997; Sirkeci, 2005). While the US government has empha-
sized its desire to promote democracy and a pluralistic society, it has
failed to ensure that all sectors in Iraq are equally involved in these
efforts. The lack of security and stability, the inability to foster social
development through reconstruction, and the perceived bias
towards key Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq have been crucial short-
comings of US policy. By late 2006, much of Iraq was engulfed in
kidnappings, retaliatory killings and forms of sectarian strife that
bore all the hallmarks of a civil war. At least 100 civilians were
being killed daily (UNAMI, 2006) and there were more than
3 million refugees and internally displaced persons (UNHCR, 2006).
The Iraqi government claimed about 150,000 civilians had been
killed since 2004 (Oppel, 2006).
Despite some economic and social progress in Iraq, the US-led
war has created a deepening disaster for much of the civilian popu-
lation, especially for social development, public health, security and
economic progress. A food security assessment from late 2004 found
that one-fourth of Iraqis were highly dependent on food rations,
with 2.6 million people so poor they were forced to sell rations to
meet other basic needs (UN World Food Programme, 2004). A com-
prehensive survey of living conditions in 2004 found deteriorating
physical and social conditions. Throughout the country, electricity,
water and sewer systems are deeply compromised and unreliable,
further endangering health. Unemployment among youth exceeds
33 percent and is nearly 40 percent for young men with a secondary
higher education (UNDP, 2005). Nearly one-fourth of children
under age 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition. A lack of medicines,
equipment and personnel has imperiled an already fragile health
service system.
Violence has become normalized in Iraq, ranging from the threat
of suicide bombings, Iraqi and US military assaults and sectarian
militias, to violent street crime (Wong, 2005). Of particular concern
is the long-term mental health impact of pervasive violence,
especially on Iraqi children (Greene, 2005; MedAct, 2004). Fear of
everyday violence is also acute for women and girls, limiting their
freedom of movement and ability to go to work or school (Amnesty
International, 2005).
One public health survey found that at least 100,000 excess civilian
deaths occurred in Iraq from March 2003 to September 2004. Most
of these were civilians, mainly women and children killed by US and
coalition troops (Roberts et al., 2004). This report offers a useful
comparison of how different forms of disaster are viewed and how
international media coverage differs. Its findings and methods
were contested by the Bush administration, the US media provided
minimal coverage and there was little public outcry, a response that
Note
1. A similar response occurred in October 2006, when another study using compar-
able methodology suggested some 650,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed since
the 2003 US invasion (Burnham et al., 2006).
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