SVEND ROBINSON
                               Globe and Mail
                               Wednesday, January 19, 2000

The eyes of the Iraqi mother cradling her emaciated baby communicated
hopelessness and anger: "Why are you killing my innocent child?" The baby's
doctor had just told us that the child would die within days for want of
medicine -- another victim of UN sanctions.

I was in the oncology ward of a Baghdad pediatric hospital earlier this
month with a delegation from [Montreal based] Voices of Conscience,
including doctors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), artists and
journalists. We had come to see and hear for ourselves the impact of more
than nine years of economic sanctions on the people and society of Iraq.

Certainly Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, is guilty of brutal repression
of his people, including the gassing of Kurdish communities, and terrible
violations of civil and political rights.

But Mr. Hussein and his circle are not being hurt in any way by these
sanctions. As one Iraqi woman asked me, "If you want to punish an evil
father in a big family, do you do so by killing his children?"

This latest trip was a return visit for me. I'd led a parliamentary
delegation to Iraq in November of 1990, just before the allied bombing
started the following January. On that occasion the delegation included
Lloyd Axworthy, who
was then Liberal foreign-affairs critic. Now the minister, he must remember
that earlier visit --and know as well as anyone the results of the draconian
sanctions regime, as well as the massive bombing campaign in 1991. He must
know that the sanctions and the U.S. and British bombing, which continues
even today, have been devastating to both Iraq's infrastructure
and its people.

Back in 1990, despite years of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was one of the most
advanced countries in the Middle East in economic, social and cultural
terms. Holding the world's second largest oil reserves (after Saudi Arabia)
Iraq had an extensive health-care system, clean and abundant drinking water,
sewage-treatment plants, electric power generation plants, free education
at all levels, and a comprehensive network of social services.

What our delegation witnessed almost a decade later was the total collapse
of a nation. Iraq has experienced what the United Nations  Development
Program (UNDP) describes as a shift from relative affluence to massive
poverty.

Unemployment is epidemic. Inflation is skyrocketing -- the average salary is
$5 (U.S.) a month. There has been a dramatic increase in begging,
prostitution and crime. The agriculture sector is in disarray -- a million
sheep have succumbed to foot-and-mouth disease and the country has suffered
a major drought. The once-thriving cultural sector is another victim of
sanctions, as our delegation heard from the artists we met.

Amid the litany of grim statistics, what struck me most was the
gut-wrenching effect of these sanctions and the continued bombing on the
most vulnerable people in Iraqi society, particularly children, women, the
disabled and the elderly. A recent and comprehensive United Nations
Children's Fund (Unicef) report confirmed that the mortality rate for
children under 5 in the south and centre of Iraq increased from 56 deaths
per 1,000 live births from 1984 to 1989 to 131 deaths from 1994 to 1999.

Describing the situation as a humanitarian emergency, Unicef confirmed that
more than 500,000 children have died as a result of the imposition of UN
sanctions. Another 4,500 children continue to die every month. Doctors we
met in Baghdad and Basra spoke of their feelings of helplessness at being
unable to save the lives of more than 2 per cent of the children in their
care in the oncology wards, and knowing that many of those who survived
would return to hellish conditions of malnutrition and open sewage.

There was only one nurse on a ward of 100 children that we visited. Iraq has
experienced an explosive rise in the incidence of endemic infections such as
cholera, typhoid and malaria, and major increases in measles, polio and
tetanus. In the pediatric clinic we visited in Basra, in the south, we told
that the death toll over the last year is almost certainly
linked to radiation and the Allies' use of depleted-uranium anti-tank shells
in 1991. In that one clinic alone were 165 cases of massive congenital
deformities leading to death in 1999. We saw shocking photos of these
children, victims of weapons that
continue to kill long after they were used.

While in Basra, we witnessed the aftermath of allied bombing that
"accidentally" hit a civilian neighbourhood within the past year -- an
attack that killed and injured many. And I will never forget visiting the
underground shelter in Baghdad hit by a so-called "smart bomb" in 1991,
where it killed hundreds of civilians.

Lack of hope and an economy wracked by hyperinflation has caused a huge
brain drain out of Iraq. The middle class has been
destroyed and youth have no faith in the future. We were told of proud Iraqi
families forced to sell off their family
heirlooms and furniture to survive.

In the long run, one of the most destructive impacts of the sanctions is
what a Baghdad professor called the "intellectual
genocide" of Iraq. Under the sanctions regime, only 3.4 per cent of oil
proceeds have gone to education, so the system has collapsed. There is no
access to basic scientific and medical journals, no opportunity to attend
professional conferences outside Iraq, and no access to computers. Parents
give their children chalk to take to school, because the UN bans the imports
of pencils (the explanation we got was that graphite has "potential dual
use" and could be used by the military). Our delegation carried thousands of
pencils into the country as an act of silent defiance.

The ridiculous nature of some of these sanctions is astonishing: The Iraqis
also sought to import cloth, which they wanted their thousands of unemployed
seamstresses to convert into badly-needed hospital bedsheets. They were told
they could import only finished sheets, lest the  cloth, too, find some
military use.

In 1996, the UN launched an "Oil for Food" program -- a scheme that allows
Baghdad to sell $5.2-billion worth of oil every six months for food and
medicine. It has not made any meaningful difference to the lives of the
Iraqi people. The 661 Committee (the UN security Council committee that
implements the sanctions regime) has imposed absurd restrictions
and delays on the import of basic medical equipment and supplies. Resolution
1284 (which basically approves a new sanctions and weapons-inspection
process) was recently  adopted by the Security Council despite the
abstentions of France, China, Russia and Malaysia. It will do little to
alter this grim reality.

Indeed, some believe that the West's real aim is to gain access to Iraq's
huge oil resources and  fear that Resolution 1284 advances this objective.

Following our 1990 visit to Iraq, Mr. Axworthy spoke out powerfully against
the allied aggression. Today, nine years almost to the day since the bombing
began, I am appealing to him to apply the principle of "human security" that
is  the cornerstone of his foreign policy in the Security Council; I'm
asking for him to call for an end to all non-military sanctions on Iraq.

Mr. Axworthy's senior policy advisor, Dr. Eric Hoskins, has personally
witnessed the destructive impact of these sanctions and has in  the past
called for Canada to speak out in opposition. While Mr. Axworthy may
disagree with former UN Humanitarian Chief Denis Halliday and others
(including myself) who describe the impact of these sanctions as genocidal,
surely he cannot remain indifferent to the suffering and death of so many
innocent humans beings.

Of course, we must work to get rid of all weapons of mass destruction in the
Middle East. But the deaths of Iraqi citizens -- in breach of many
international instruments and treaties -- is not the way to achieve that
objective. As Mr. Halliday said recently, "We are destroying an entire
society. It is as simple and terrifying as that."

If I needed any more evidence during my recent visit, I needed look no
further than the eyes of that anguished mother in the pediatric hospital in
Baghdad.

 Svend Robinson, who represents the B.C.  riding of Burnaby-Douglas, is
foreign-affairs critic for the New Democratic Party of Canada.

[Voices of Conscience can be reached at:
8166 Henri-Julien, Montreal Quebec, H2P 2J2,
phone: (514) 858-7584, email:voices@colba.net