Stopping for Melons on the Side of the Road

By George Capaccio

“Shuf!” (“Look!”) the minister next to me said. Gazing out the rear window, I looked. “The word means more than look,” he said. “Behold!” The sun was setting. It hovered above the desert like an immense mirage of fire and heat—eternal glory manifest, the original blast from which all things sprang.

It had been a long drive from Basra, Iraq. In the afternoon we stopped in the ancient city of Ur to visit the reputed birthplace of Abraham, father of three religions. On the walk to the crumbling ruins, I felt like clay baking in a kiln, so hot was the sun. Thousands of pottery shards, millennia old, slept in peace on the ground. At the foot of the Zuggernaut, after our walk, we guzzled cold sweet water from north Iraq, then climbed back into the car.

Near dusk we saw a man selling melons. Mike, coordinator of the trip, had the driver stop. All of us were hungry and dry after a full day on the road. Baghdad was still an hour away. The melons looked so tempting. The man selling them touched his heart and smiled as he welcomed us. Other customers stood around sampling slices and tossing the rinds in a pit. Watermelons, cantaloupes, honey dews, freshly picked, brimming with juice and fragrance—the keeper of the stand thumped one after another until he found the ripest, then, with a few deft flicks of his knife, cut us each a dripping wedge. “Eat as much as you like,” he said. “When you have found what pleases you, we will talk about price. But for now, taste and enjoy. God’s bounty has neither beginning nor end. The fruit you see here is nothing compared to what you will find in Paradise.”

With the first bite into a succulent slice of watermelon, I thought I had truly found Paradise. God was here in the guise of this thin, sinewy seller of melons. He only wanted us to rejoice and savor the goodness and sweetness of life. I did so with great abandon and gratitude. Not for the fruit alone but for the spirit in which it was bestowed. For the delight that streamed from the fruit seller’s face as he shared his wealth and made no fuss about our paying up. He knew he had made a sale. Once tasted, the fruit of Paradise is impossible to resist.

In the kingdom of palms and peace, I forgot what I had seen that morning in a hospital in the south: children with fused fingers and cleft palates. With protruding brains or no brains at all. With twisted spines and enormous heads. With missing or horribly shortened limbs. I forgot how grotesque they seemed to me. I forgot how I tried but failed to see them as children of God in whom there are secret springs of wholeness and beauty.

I forgot the pain in the hospital director’s eyes as he told us how he and his staff had never seen such things before 1990. I forgot how the chief resident shrugged his shoulders and shook his head and said, looking at each one of us. “Here in the south we have more birth abnormalities than in any other part of Iraq. The only reasonable explanation we can find is your country’s use of radioactive weapons. Basra was irradiated. It remains so. More and more children are born this way. What can we do?”

With each slice of melon, I went on forgetting. I forgot the young girl with leukemia: how I stood by the side of her bed and held her hand and, having nothing else to give, offered her a plastic toy. I forgot how her grandmother, all in black and wrinkled to the bone, reached out her hand to me. I gave the last toy I had, a green brontosaurus. She smiled and kissed my hand as if I had given her a rare jewel—as if I had just banished the disease consuming her grandchild. I forgot the waves of nausea that washed over me as I walked through the cancer ward knowing none of these children would ever go home again. I forgot that in my own country 70 percent of children with leukemia recover, that in Iraq remission is down from 50 percent to zero.

It was time to go. Mike insisted on paying for the melons we bought that night. I picked out two fat ones for the people I was staying with. They were expecting me for dinner. I was already late. We piled into the car. The sun was slipping out of view in a final wave of glory. I turned to Peter, the Arab-American minister from Kentucky. “Shuf!” I said. “Behold the sun, mother of all melons!” He smiled. The sky lost its last light. All that I had forgotten came back.

Capaccio has been to Iraq several times, most recently with Middle East Council of Churches.

Flights to Baghdad resume but all is not well

By Gregory Elich

The boy paced rapidly back and forth, driven by desperation. His mouth, twisted in anguish, produced an expression of such intensity that I could not avert my eyes as I gazed at him through the window of our bus. Only moments before, as we approached the bus that would take us to the airport, we were surrounded, as if from nowhere, by several street peddlers. They were all pre-adolescent boys carrying trays filled with goods, their hopes soaring at the sight of more than 90 Westerners. This was Baghdad, and we were about to return home. The boy who caught my eye appeared to be no more than eleven or twelve years of age, and his tray was filled with packs of cigarettes. He hadn't made a sale, and his suffering countenance told me that this failure wasn't merely a matter of losing extra income. The very survival of his family could well depend on him and he had just missed the best opportunity to put food on the table that evening. He was not alone. As a side-effect of UN sanctions, plummeting living standards pushed nearly one quarter of Iraq's children age 6 to 11 to drop out of school in order to help support their families.

We were in Baghdad to challenge these sanctions and our delegation of peace activists, journalists and Greek politicians was led by former First Lady of Greece Margarita Papendreou. Our flight, on an Olympic Airways Boeing 737, was only the second Western flight and the first by a Western national carrier to land in Baghdad since the imposition of sanctions in 1990.
A cheer went up when the wheels of our plane first touched ground at Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. As we disembarked, we noticed that our plane stood alone on the tarmac. Except for the hospitality rooms Iraqi officials led us into, the terminal itself was darkened and empty, enveloped in an eerie silence that seemed to symbolize the grip sanctions held on this beleaguered nation.

The charm and beauty of Baghdad was striking. At first glance, Baghdad appeared much like any other Third World city, but in time differences became apparent. One soon noticed there was a widespread state of disrepair. When something became broken, it stayed broken, due to the difficulty of obtaining spare parts under conditions imposed by sanctions.

Although we frequently encountered beggars and street peddlers, many residents of Baghdad appeared to be scraping by in straightened circumstances. The situation outside of Baghdad was more desperate and a brief trip confirmed a deeper level of misery and poverty. Our limited time in Iraq prevented us from visiting the province of Basra, in the south, where living conditions were said to be dire. Inflation has sent the value of the Iraqi dinar plunging into near worthlessness, and providing food for one's family is a daily struggle for all.

During the Gulf War, U.S. and British warplanes deliberately bombed water treatment plants. Since then the population has been forced to rely on contaminated water because the import of spare parts required to rebuild these plants, as well as the chlorine needed for their operation, has been blocked by the UN Sanctions Committee. Disease is rife. Over ten percent of babies die before reaching their first birthday. During just the single month of our visit, November 2000, a total of 7,556 children under the age of five died from diarrhea, pneumonia, respiratory illnesses and malnutrition, according to the Iraqi Health Ministry. Over half of Iraqi's children suffer from diarrhea, reports UNICEF.

Our tour through the multi-story Saddam Central Hospital for Children gave a face to the statistics. Mothers dressed in black maintained vigils at the bedsides of their children who lay sick or dying. Journalists from our delegation charged through the rooms, shoving others aside, flashing pictures and thrusting cameras in people's faces. It almost seemed a desecration but the patients and their families bore the intrusion patiently. A young girl of about 13 walked on wobbly legs up and down a corridor, leaning on her mother for support. A boy who appeared to be about five lay motionless on a table, his eyes rolled back so that only the white showed. He would soon die. In the leukemia ward, I choked up when a young boy of about 12 forced a weak but sweet smile and waved at each of us from his bed as we entered the room. He will not live to adulthood. A mother buried her head in a handkerchief, sobbing over the bed of her young son, who was curled asleep on a bed. Another mother sat on a bed, her arms enfolding her adorable daughter of about eight, who was wearing a beautiful red dress. Her daughter will not survive. In fact, none of these children will survive, for the fatality rate in the leukemia ward is 100 percent.

Most of the patients in this ward hail from Basra province, a region heavily bombed with depleted uranium munitions during the Gulf War. Missiles and bombs tipped with depleted uranium, with 1.7 times the density of lead, are extremely efficient at penetrating targets. The aerosol released by their explosion, however, sows thousands of alpha radioactive particles into the environment, where they may be borne by the wind or soak into the ground and water, entering the food chain. People and animals ingesting even a single particle of depleted uranium suffer grave consequences as it wreaks havoc in its victim. Leukemia and other cancer rates in southern Iraq have skyrocketed since the Gulf War. In all, U.S. and British warplanes saturated the region with up to 800 tons of depleted uranium. With a half-life of 4.5 billion years, depleted uranium has essentially guaranteed the near permanent contamination of southern Iraq.

In another ward of the hospital, we entered a small room. A tiny baby lay motionless inside an incubator, while the father sat nearby, filled with anxious nervousness. “Five days newborn,” we were told. “Admitted to the hospital and diagnosed as a case of atresia.” This baby would require surgery. “We have a shortage in many things, including anesthetics, surgical supplies and antibiotic drugs. This intravenous set, which is needed for every surgical patient is in extremely short supply.” Due to medical and surgical complications, the hospital had many cases of septicemia, or blood poisoning. “Septicemia needs triple antibiotics,” the doctor continued. “So many times we have only one of the drugs or nothing at all.” Mortality rates were high as a result of the lack of antibiotics.

Although no hospital in Iraq has the capability of performing bone marrow transplants, the Iraqi Health Ministry hopes to open a bone marrow transplant center at Mansour Hospital in Baghdad. The plan, however, can come to fruition only in the unlikely event that the UN Sanctions Committee permits the import of necessary equipment. Past experience holds little promise for the new transplant center. The UN Sanctions Committee has blocked nearly half of the medicines and equipment contracted for by the Health Ministry. Some of the items the Committee refused to allow Iraq to import include spare parts for kidney transplantation equipment, refrigerators, numerous medicines, artificial limbs and spare parts for x-ray equipment. The Health Ministry was not alone in finding its contracts cancelled by the UN Sanctions Committee. In all, nearly 2,000 contracts totalling $4.4 billion have been blocked. The Committee has approved a mere seven percent of Iraq's contracts for water purification and sewerage equipment. Barely ten percent of the contracts for educational needs met with UN approval.

Under terms of the UN's “oil for food” program, Iraq may export a portion of its oil to purchase goods for civilian purposes, although many items are blocked by the UN Sanctions Committee.

The U.S. and Great Britain, the driving force behind the sanctions, seek to impose a collective punishment on the entire population of Iraq. Along with sanctions, U.S. and British warplanes routinely bomb Iraq about once a week or so. During our short stay in Iraq, Western jets fired four missiles at the Ali Al-Hayaini School at Hmaidi village in Basra province. Four children, aged 12 and 13, and three teachers were wounded. Several nearby houses were also amaged during the attack. Every week or so these attacks continue, killing about 300 and wounding over 800 civilians since December 1998. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and potential further Iraqi military actions are given as justification for Western hostility.

Skepticism is called for if one examines the broader historical picture, even limited to the immediate region. Just ten years before its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq invaded Iran in a war of aggression that lasted eight years. Over 1.7 million people were killed in one of the major wars of the twentieth century. An Iranian friend described to me graveyards stretching as far as the eye could see, blanketing hill after hill. By comparison, the invasion of Kuwait was a minor affair. Yet, the Western Powers responded with full support to the far more serious breach of international law and peace posed by Iraq's invasion of Iran. The U.S. and Great Britain backed Iraq with diplomatic measures and supplied it with weapons and satellite photos of Iranian positions. Without that support, it is doubtful the war would have lasted so many years and filled so many graveyards. American and British leaders, so eager to act as self-appointed judges in regard to others, have shown that no one poses a greater threat to peace than they do.

Whether sending missiles to flatten a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, or bombing an Iraqi neighborhood now and then, or waging a full scale unprovoked war of aggression against Yugoslavia, Western leaders demonstrate a contempt for the lives of others. “Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the so-called Cold War,” Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz observed to our delegation, “a new hot war and warm war has been imposed on many nations, and at the forefront this nation: the people of Iraq.”

Post-Gulf War inspections by UN personnel oversaw the destruction of significant portions of the Iraqi arsenal, until the news broke out that the UN inspection teams were being misused to carry out intelligence activities for the CIA. By the time the UN inspection teams were expelled, 97 percent of Iraq’s so-called weapons of mass destruction had been demolished. According to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, “By 1994, it was clear that Iraq had been disarmed.”

After years of forced acquiescence, several nations have reached the point of exasperation with Western insistence on maintaining sanctions against Iraq. Our flight to Baghdad was part of a burgeoning movement to reopen air traffic to Iraq. In the last three months of 2000, over 80 flights — primarily from Eastern European and Arab countries — defied the ban on air travel. Regular air links are slowly being reestablished, including twice-weekly flights between Damascus and Baghdad. Egypt and Jordan have also resumed regular flights. In defiance of U.S. and British efforts to tighten the screws on Iraq, the sanctions policy is crumbling. Even Iran is seeking a rapprochement with Iraq, establishing joint committees to resolve contentious issues and work towards a resumption of normal relations. While we were in Baghdad, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi called for the cessation of sanctions against Iraq.

During our visit, a major trade fair was held in Baghdad, drawing over 1,500 trade representatives from 12 countries, and 18,000 business people from 45 countries. Already, Russian buses, trucks and agricultural machinery are arriving in Iraq, and recent agreements with India will result in expanded trade. An oil pipeline running between Syria and Iraq, dormant nearly twenty years, was reactivated following extensive repairs. Plans call for the pipeline, currently pumping 150,000 barrels of oil a day in contravention of the sanctions, to be extended to the port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon. Meanwhile, a second pipeline is undergoing repairs. After its completion, plans call for increasing the flow of oil to 1.2 million barrels per day. Iraq recently signed an accord with Syria, establishing a free trade zone between their countries, as it has with Egypt as well. In an effort to shore up the sanctions regime, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to the Middle East in late February. Unconfirmed reports indicate that he may have pressured Syria into agreeing to place oil imports from Iraq under UN sanctions control. Jordanian officials were forced to cancel a planned free trade agreement with Iraq when Powell told them the agreement would discourage congressional approval for a Jordanian-American free trade pact. The road connecting Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, though, remains heavily traversed by trucks bearing goods. Despite Western pressures, a growing number of nations are brushing sanctions aside and pursuing more normal relations with Iraq and its people.

Greg Elich is a writer and has been an activist since the Vietnam war. He hails from Columbus, Ohio.

Facing the Tragedy in Iraq

By Laurel Severns

Since 1990, the US government has successfully reduced all of Iraq, in the American public eye, to a single, vilified leader—Saddam Hussein. While the Iraqi people are aware of this, they continue to accept and even embrace humanitarian delegations in our small offerings of goodwill.

I felt I needed to personally look Iraq in the face — even if I might flinch — to witness the damage our government has done. I found, on the trip, that the Iraqi people are some of the kindest, warmest people I have ever known. They have withstood the enormous losses of almost eleven years of sanctions and two decades of war with incredible grace. I was humbled by many pleas such as one from a friend named Ali, who said “Please go back and tell the American people that we do not hate them. We know that if they knew what your government was doing to us they would not accept it.”

I traveled with a delegation sponsored by Voices in the Wilderness, a pacifist organization dedicated to ending the sanctions on Iraq. Our mandate was to investigate the possible effects of “smart sanctions,” the proposed policy crafted by the UK and US that was under consideration of the UN Security Council at the time. The stated purpose of the new proposal was, in part, to allow more civilian items into Iraq under the auspices of the UN Oil-for-Food Program in an attempt to convince the international community to recommit to the sanctions regime. Not everyone was won over by the proposal — namely Russia and many of Iraq’s neighbors — and as I write, “smart sanctions” has been tabled.

For example, in three different hospitals we visited, doctors reported that their salaries had increased in the past year from 6000 Iraqi dinar per month to 30,000 dinar per month. In US Dollars, this is a raise from $3.00 to $15.00 per month—still pitiful by our standards, but substantial for an Iraqi today. The doctors hinted that this money had come from the illegal border trade. We also found that water treatment facilities had obtained crucial spare parts through this trade.

After witnessing the extent of the destruction in Iraq, I am convinced that the vast humanitarian crisis will not be alleviated with an expansion of the Oil-for-Food Program.

The devastation in Iraq is most directly attributable to the destruction and collapse of the civilian infrastructure. One of the hardest hit areas is Basra, a large port city in southern Iraq that was heavily bombarded in 1991 and in no-fly zone air raids. Water treatment facilities have been repeatedly targeted over the last ten years, and now raw sewage runs in the streets. Treated water is more expensive than most families can afford.

Our delegation visited several hospitals to ask doctors how war and sanctions have effected their lives and work. I had a memorable conversation with Dr. Firas Abdul Abbas, a physician at the Basra Pediatric and Gynecology Hospital. Dr. Abbas has seen his hospital degenerate from a sophisticated medical center in the late 1980’s to the malfunctioning, depressing facility that I visited. He introduced us to several of his patients. Most were children suffering from water-borne diseases or leukemia. There is a high concentration of depleted uranium blowing in the dust in Basra that has caused cancer rates to skyrocket. Dr. Abbas said that several of the doctors in his ward had been diagnosed with cancer, and that he feared for himself and his family. Dr. Abbas expressed his frustration about his inability to obtain proper treatments for leukemia and simple illnesses like gastroenteritis through the Oil-for-Food Program. Many of the medications require refrigerated transport, but the purchase of such trucks is often prevented by the sanctions committee. Blood transfusion bags and antibiotics are also scarce. We asked Dr. Abbas if he thought “smart sanctions” would improve his situation. He was visibly distressed. “They say they want to relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people...I can’t believe people in America and Britain can accept this proposal.”

In my travels through the country, it is clear that if the UN maintains a stranglehold on the economy, Iraq will never be able to address the failures in its infrastructure or meet the health care needs of the society.

A pediatrician highlighted the serious disrepair of the water treatment plants. “Sure, if there is more medicine,” she said, “maybe we can treat these children. But then they will go home and drink more contaminated water and be back again in a month.” The Iraqis I met, as well as the foreign workers in humanitarian agencies in Iraq, repeatedly emphasized that the country’s crippled society could not be rehabilitated without a substantial increase of capital in the economy. For example, it is often four times more expensive for Iraq to complete a repair to its infrastructure through the Oil-for-Food Program than if they had been able to use domestic parts and technicians. The program explicitly prevents Iraq from employing or developing its own resources for such repairs. Like many people, I had believed that “smart sanctions” would slightly improve the humanitarian situation in Iraq, but that it was not nearly enough to address the structural issues. Now I believe that the new proposal would in fact make things worse. As Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq stated, “what is proposed amounts to a tightening of the rope around the neck of the average Iraqi citizen.” I saw evidence of that rope, and fear that Halliday and von Sponeck are right.

Iraqis deserve the same right to self-determination that we demand for ourselves. They want education, proper health care, and air that is uncontaminated by radioactive matter. They want drinking water that will not kill their children. These are basic human rights that the UN itself insists should be guaranteed to all people. Many Iraqi men and women have put their faith in the belief that if Americans knew what was happening to them at the hands of our government, we would not accept it.

I returned to Chicago with the conviction that the Iraqis’ faith in our sense of justice calls on us to strengthen our efforts in educating and mobilizing the U.S. public on the impact of this costly war. As more Americans join us, placing concern for the Iraqi people above political rhetoric by government leaders, their new lives and our joint reconciliation can begin.

Laurel Severns is a Program Associate for the Middle East-Iraq Program American Friends Service Committee in Chicago

What About the Incubators? - Child Sacrifice is Evil

By Kathy Kelly

April, 2000 —It feels oddly like being at a wake in a funeral home. Our delegation members whisper together as we wait to tour the Al Mansour Children’s wing at the Saddam City Medical Center. The Director is away, so someone has been sent to find a senior doctor to brief us. As I flip open my diary, it dawns on me that at about this time four years ago, March, 1996, the first Voices in the Wilderness delegation visited Iraq. Thirty delegations later not much has changed within this hospital. What must the doctors and nurses think as one delegation after another hears the litany of shortages and views the dying children?

When a doctor finally enters the office, my grim mood lifts immediately; it’s Dr. Qusay Al Rahim, of whom I have spoken of so often, to many groups in the U.S. My companions meeting him for the first time will probably feel the same warmth towards him as I, and hold him in the same esteem. He draws forth a sense that we’re working, in concert, to solve intractable problems, that even little gains, in the face of ridiculous odds, are rewarding. I wonder how he maintains his quiet, indomitable strength.

Two years ago, when I first met him, he solicitously accompanied us up to his ward, apologizing for the elevator that didn't work and the hallways that were dark because they had no light bulbs. Suddenly he raced away in response to a furor down the hall. Hospital visitors were shouting for help at the bedside of Ferial, a 7-month-old baby, whose mother was sobbing frantically. Ferial had just suffered a cardiac arrest. Dr. Qusay swiftly bent over her and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Ferial's heart gave out in a fight against malnourishment plus septicemia - full body infection. The hospital lacked both the nutrients and the antibiotics this little one desperately needed. I watched Dr. Qusay face the anguished mother to pronounce the verdict, “I am sorry, but your child cannot live. We have not the oxygen, we have not the tube.” How many times, since then, has Dr. Qusay felt shattered, having to speak tragic words to disbelieving parents?

Now Dr. Qusay is explaining to us that in a very real way he thinks we are all fathers and mothers to these children, that it’s a challenge to invent new ways to help them. And when something works, “well, you see, this keeps you hopeful.” He carefully details some of the greatest problems they presently face--they’ve run out of high protein biscuits formerly supplied by UNICEF and they lack immunizations for MMR (measles, mumps and rubella). Although, sufficient batches of the vaccine arrive, electrical outages interfere with proper storage, damaging the vaccines. So far, his tone has been that of a kindly teacher, one who wants us to understand.

But then he lowers his head and shakes it back and forth several times. “We had a terrible tragedy recently. Our incubators are old and broken down, but some we try to repair. We placed an infant inside a patched incubator, thinking it would work, but the sealant was faulty, and the baby grew very cold. In fact, we lost that baby.”

I jot down in my notebook, “Incubators--mom!”

Shortly before the Gulf War began, I applied to join the Gulf Peace Team, a non-violent, non-aligned encampment that would position itself on the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, between the warring parties. The organizers placed me on a waiting list. To my surprise, I learned that if I could be in Boston in two days, I could join a U.S. contingent leaving on a plane that would be the last to land in Baghdad before the bombing began. I had just enough time for a hurried visit to my parents. Of course, they tried their hardest to dissuade me from going. As I flew out their door, the last thing I heard was my mother calling out, in her thick Irish brogue, “What about the incubators?! Kathy, what about the incubators?!”

She was referring to testimony from Nayireh, a young Kuwaiti girl, who told the U.S. Congress that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers barging into a Kuwaiti hospital and stealing the equipment. With luminous eyes and a compelling presence, she told of her horror as she watched the menacing soldiers dump babies out of incubators. Months later, when the war was a distant memory, reporters learned that "Nayireh" was actually the daughter of a Kuwaiti emir, that doctors in Kuwait could not corroborate her testimony, that in fact the supposedly stolen incubators had been placed carefully in storage during the invasion, and that the Hill and Knowlton Public Relations firm had rehearsed with the young woman how to give apparently false testimony effectively.

The Desert Storm bombardment destroyed Iraq’s electrical grid. Refrigeration units, sewage and sanitation facilities, and all sorts of valuable equipment were ruined. Life-saving devices found in a modern hospital were rendered useless. As the Allied bombing went on and on, my mother's question became more and more relevant, yet went largely unasked. “What about the incubators?”
Now, when our teams visit Iraq, following nine and one half years of the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history, we see incubators, broken and irreparable, stacked up against the walls of hospital obstetrics wards. Sanctions have prevented Iraqis from importing new incubators and from getting needed spare parts to repair old ones. And this is only one of the vitally needed items that sanctions prohibit.

Dr. Qusay's heroism is commendable. Earnest as ever, he tells us of other methods he wants to pursue, in the wake of the tragedy incurred by an irreparable incubator. “I have heard about, maybe you know it, the kangaroo method and this they do in Australia. I tell the mothers of tiny infants to try it. They can place the baby between their breasts and wrap themselves in a garment and this may keep the baby warm enough. Or I tell them to try to find gauze and cellophane and with this they might recreate conditions like an incubator. You see, we must invent and try to cope.”

I wonder what would happen if Dr. Qusay testified before Congress as Nayireh did 10 years ago. Would we respond with the same moral outrage now that such actions are American policy? Would we mobilize to end sanctions with the same fervor that drove us to destroy Iraq, and it's incubators and it’s babies?

Now, as then, any mother, Kuwaiti or Iraqi, can tell you child sacrifice is evil.

This was published in the Jordan Times and submitted by Kathy for the Habiba. For more information about Voices in the Wilderness, or to send a contribution, write 1460 Carmen, Chicago, Illinois 60640.

ED. NOTE: Kathy Kelly has been nominated twice for a joint Nobel Peace Prize, along with former United Nations Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday. The nomination from the American Friends Service Committee stated: “Taken together, the work of Kathleen Kelly and Denis Halliday represents a comprehensive approach to the problem of economic sanctions against Iraq and the devastation wrought on the population of that country, particularly the children.”