by Mira Tanna, Jun 20, 1998

From the burgeoning crowds on the streets that first evening in Baghdad, you couldn't tell that this was a country under siege. Dimly lit shops offered their wares: oranges, lettuce, sweets, toiletries, and stacks of cheap, worn postcards. Flood lamps showed off ornate domes and minarets, war monuments, and pictures of the president. Arriving at the Al Dar Hotel was like a homecoming. I had not expected such a warm welcome.

A sense of doubt lingered in my mind as I fell asleep that evening. Over a million Iraqis dead from the sanctions, 600,000 of them children under the age of five? Were the reports exaggerated perhaps to make a better case for lifting the sanctions? I was to spend the next ten days getting answers to these questions.

The next morning we walked to a private Catholic hospital around the corner from the hotel. Sr. Maryann ushered us in to speak with the director, a Protestant Iraqi man, Dr. Abdul Jabar Amin. We threw out question after question which he responded to, sometimes with a hint of anger at the situation and sometimes with a jovial laugh. My question produced the harshest reaction: "One concern that Americans have is that food and medicine may be getting in the country but not getting distributed to those who need it. Is this true?" (We were to ask this question to every doctor, relief worker, UN official and religious leader we met in the next two weeks.) He railed: "Dirty propaganda! That is such dirty propaganda! Don't you see they are saying that to deny us medicine?" He continued, "In medical school we were taught that we could not refuse treatment even to our worst enemy. If a man killed my father and later came to me for medical treatment, I would be obligated to treat him. Yet, Iraq is being denied even medicine for its sick and dying." We apologized for our naive questions, but explained that Americans simply do not know the extent of suffering in Iraq. "How can they not know?" he replied. "You lock a person in a room alone and what will happen to them? How long can they survive?"

Dr. Amin's eloquence impressed us, as did his credibility, considering that as director of a private hospital, he was not dependent upon the central government for medicine. But still, these were just words.

We met Dr. Abdul Sattar in the lobby of Al Mansour Children's Hospital and immediately began our barrage of questions. He answered simply, as if he was fulfilling his duty to talk to these unannounced American visitors who thought they could help. Then Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest in our group, asked: "What would you like to say to the American people?" For the first time, he faltered. Then he said, "Come upstairs, and I'll show you the patient wards. They say everything -- more than words."

He guided us through the national leukemia treatment center, through wards filled with children dying of respiratory illnesses and gastroenteritis, and through the "China Ward," a malnutrition ward thus named because of the number of patients assigned to one bed. In one of the first rooms we walked into, he was cut off in mid-sentence, after saying that we were Americans, by a tall, thin Kurdish man who focused his piercing eyes on Simon and pointed at him, speaking in Arabic. The doctor replied, trying to calm the man down, while we demanded a translation. "He says that you are the cause of his son dying." We looked at Ali Erfan, a 10-year-old boy, struggling with leukemia. Simon sat beside the boy and prayed, for we knew that at this point, praying was the only thing that could be done for his son.

We met Mustafa Azawi, a 3-year- old boy, whimpering in pain and staring at his gangrenous finger. Mustafa was suffering from his third relapse of leukemia, and, with no medicines to treat him, he was being sent home to die. We heard from Dr. Sattar that he had noticed a rise in leukemia admissions from about 10 - 20 cases per month before the Gulf War, to about 2 0-30 cases per week currently. They hadn't been able to research the cause of the dramatic increase, but we wondered if it could have been related to the 350 tons of depleted uranium which the United States dropped on Iraq during the war.

A poor Shiite woman in a black abaya uncrumpled a prescription for her child and thrust it in front of my eyes. I looked at it and shook my head, helpless. All I could do was take her hands in mine and stand beside her. We had brought with us about $40,000 worth of medicine, but we knew this was a drop in the ocean compared to the needs of the people. Throughout our stay, we were to receive requests for medicine from a journalist, a government official, a university professor, and from countless people in hospitals whose names I never knew. The sanctions, though they affected the poor and the internal refugees disproportionately, affected people at every level of society we encountered.

Doctors told us of parents selling their belongings, even their homes to pay for medicine for their children. But after seven years, many had nothing left to sell. Hearing these stories and seeing mothers desperately trying to ward Death away from their children, I had a shock of recognition at my own prejudices. Somehow, subconsciously, I had thought that losing a child would be easier here, in a society that has tragically seen so much death, in a society where it was not uncommon for a couple to have ten children. I now know how false and dangerous this presumption is.

We had the opportunity to meet many heroic people who are planting seeds of hope in dry places. Their deeds remind me of a verse from the Koran: "Whoever saves a human soul should be regarded as if she/he has saved all mankind" (Koran Ch. 5, v. 32). Michael Nahhal, a man of intellect, dedication and compassion, who runs the Middle East Council of Churches relief program in Iraq, didn't spend Christmas with his family because he was awaiting a shipment of blankets which he wanted to deliver before the end of the year. He has also agreed to distribute the Infant Friend-ship Kits which AFSC offices and Friends Meetings around the country are collecting. When I showed him an example of one of the kits (we had brought ten to distribute), his eyes lit up as he carefully unwrapped the receiving blanket. "They will cry," as he stared with wonder at a tiny outfit. "They will never have dreamed of this. They will cry." And indeed, when we delivered the kits on Christmas Eve at a hospital, he was right. There were tears in mothers' eyes.

Dr. Mohammed Chaifat, an MD/Ph.D. at Basrah Children's Hospital, was working practically as a volunteer, earning only $3 per month, yet he continued to serve the people day in and day out. His biggest frustration was not the pay (which meant he could barely afford any food on top of the government rations), but was knowing the diagnosis and the treatment for a patient, and not having the resources to administer the treatment. Shortages in oxygen, sodium bicarbonate and other simple medical supplies, not to mention frequent electrical outages in the hospital, were causing death, and yet he persevered.

We sang Christmas songs with a toothless Assyrian mother of ten, who lived with 11 families at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, a crumbling, decrepit monastery, after fleeing from the north. Her husband and eldest son were mentally ill, had no medication, and she had been providing for her family until her husband found work shining shoes. The situation was taking its toll on her material well-being, but not on her spirit.

And we spoke with Denis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, an Irish Quaker who worked for Quaker Peace and Service in Kenya in the late '60s. A man of conscience, he was bracing himself for the flak after his statement that "the moral integrity of the United Nations is seriously at risk if the sanctions continue" was leaked to the press. He headed the team of observers for the distribution of food and medicine through Resolution 986 (the "food for oil" deal), and said that he hadn't seen any cases of misallocation or diversion of these resources by the Iraqi government. But the goods and services from Resolution 986 couldn't even begin to address the shortfall in imports. Halliday was negotiating through a bureaucratic system in which many of the actual contracts for supplies (such as powdered milk, ambulances and tires) were delayed or vetoed by the US representative to the sanctions committee. Planning under such a system was a Herculean feat, but Halliday was determined to work with the Iraqi government to find the best use of these resources for the maximum long-term impact, since nobody could say when the sanctions would be lifted. Halliday was committed to his work, though he knew it was taking a toll on his family. He gave us his family's phone number is New York, so that we could call his 14-year-old daughter who was complaining that she saw him more on TV than in person.

After visiting six hospitals in three cities (Baghdad, Basrah, and Amarah), talking with numerous representatives of relief and UN agencies, delivering $40,000 of medicine, sitting with families in their homes, and meeting with religious leaders, we felt we had accomplished a great deal in the ten days we were in Iraq. But we had a picture of Iraq which was very different from the portrayal on the US nightly news. Rather than being received with hostile anti-American sentiment, we had been received with warmth and generosity, even by those unaware of our mission in Iraq. Rather than confronting a repressed population anxiously awaiting the overthrow of their president, we saw a proud people who seemed to support Saddam Hussein in spite of the hardship he has caused his country. We recognized the failure of US policy, how the sanctions target the young, the sick and the elderly, and how the sanctions have created more support for the Iraqi government rather than less. We hoped that our presence as US citizens also helped to dispel myths that Iraqis had about us, and would help the process of reconciliation between our peoples.

Reflecting back upon my first impressions of Iraq, I realized that it is very hard to imagine what a country that is suffering under a silent war looks like. It is difficult to imagine that over 600,000 children have died a slow, starving death, unless you have seen it for yourself. As I got off the plane in Chicago, I thought, now begins the most difficult part of my trip: explaining what I have seen to the American people.

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