The Growing Toll Of Iraqi Civilian Deaths
By Dr. César Chelala
04/14/07 "ICH"
-- - "New York' -- -- "The suffering that Iraqi
men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and
unacceptable," the director of operations of the International
Committee of the Red Cross, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, stated
Wednesday on releasing a ICRC report on the situation in Iraq
after four years of the US-led war. Entitled “Civilians Without
Protection - The Ever-Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq,”
Mr. Kraehenbuehl added that the humanitarian situation is
"affecting in one way or another, directly or indirectly, all
Iraqis today."
Studies of this nature have been systematically rejected by the
Bush and Blair administrations. When, in October 2006, a team of
American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimated that 655,000 more
people had died in Iraq since the beginning of the war than
would have died if the invasion had not taken place, the British
foreign secretary, Margaret Becket, stated that the figures,
published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, were
inaccurate. President Bush stated that the Lancet study was not
a credible report.
In contrast, however, scientists at the UK's Department for
International Development concluded that the study's methods
were "tried and tested," and that the authors' approach, if
anything, underestimated civilian mortality. That conclusion was
supported by President Bush's own Iraq Study Group in indicating
that violence in Iraq is markedly under-reported.
The new ICRC report lends added credibility to The Lancet
report. Civilians, it says, many of them children, bear the
brunt of relentless violence, while inadequate security
conditions are disrupting the lives of millions of Iraqis. Food
shortages have contributed to the rise in malnutrition;
inadequate water, sewage and electricity infrastructure
contribute to a decline in public health. Fuel shortages
affecting power stations further aggravate the worsening crisis.
Hospitals and primary healthcare centers lack supplies and are
forced to rely on unreliable back-up generators,
It is estimated that some two million Iraqis are now displaced
persons within their own country, while two more millions have
are now refugees abroad. The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that
since February 2006, more than 100,000 families have been
displaced. High among those fleeing the country are medical
professionals and nurses; according to estimates published by
the Iraqi Ministry of Health more than half of Iraq's doctors
have left. With fewer personnel, the additional influx of
civilian casualties in the hospitals places the system under
inconceivable strain.
Despite all evidence, some political leaders continue to insist
that the situation is improving, as though the brutal TV images
of the war did not exist, as if it were a fantasy invented by
evil spirits. The chasm between the people's view of reality and
that of their leaders has rarely been greater.
The editor of The Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton, stated recently:
"Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders
at their word". Senator John McCain, speaking recently to cadets
at the Virginia Military Institute, affirmed that to continue
the war is, indeed, to pursue the right road. And, added McCain,
one of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential
nomination, "it is necessary and just." The above-mentioned
facts should prove to him that it is neither.
Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant,
is a foreign correspondent for the Middle East Times
International (Australia).Click here
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