Rohan Pearce
"In February 2003, weeks before war was declared on Iraq, millions of people protested in the streets of the world. That call went unheeded. No international institution had the courage or conscience to stand up to the aggression of the US and UK governments. No one could stop them. It is two years later now. Iraq has been invaded, occupied, and devastated. The attack on Iraq is an attack on justice, on liberty, on our safety, on our future, on us all. We the people of conscience decided to stand up. We formed the World Tribunal on Iraq, to demand justice and a peaceful future." — from the preliminary declaration of the World Tribunal on Iraq, Istanbul, June 27.
On June 26, the World Tribunal on Iraq held its final session, the culmination of 20 commissions of inquiry and hearings held across the world over a period of two years. Sessions took place in London, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Brussels, New York, Japan, Stockholm, South Korea, Rome, Frankfurt, Geneva, Lisbon and Spain; the "Jury of Conscience" that rendered judgement on the war and occupation was drawn from 10 different countries.
The tribunal was formed by activists in the anti-war movement because of the absence, as the tribunal's statement on its legitimacy explains, of a "court or authority that will judge the acts of the US and its allies". It added: "If the official authorities fail, then authority derived from universal morals and human rights principles can speak for the world."
It was endorsed by a broad range of anti-war and human rights groups, including two of the most important anti-war coalitions in the US, International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice. Another supporter was Christopher Weeramantry, a former vice-president of the International Court of Justice.
Among the jury's recommendations are the "immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the coalition forces from Iraq"; that the invaders "make war reparations and pay compensation to Iraq for the humanitarian, economic, ecological, and cultural devastation they have caused by their illegal invasion and occupation"; and that US President George Bush, British PM Tony Blair and other government officials from the "coalition of the willing" are tried for war crimes.
The tribunal acknowledged that the crimes committed against Iraq by the US and its allies didn't begin with the March 2003 invasion. Washington's crimes stretch back to the '80s when Saddam Hussein was a favoured client of the US, and included the savagery of the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent brutal economic sanctions, which Iraq endured for longer than a decade (along with a US-British bombing campaign).
In his presentation to the tribunal, Ghazwan al Mukhtar, a retired Iraqi engineer, compared the conditions of life in Iraq before 1990 with "life after war, sanctions and now occupation". He prefaced his evidence to the tribunal by noting that he would "not try to proportionate the blame between Saddam and America for the ills that happened to us, the Iraqi people, since I believe the civilized world should not have turned the blind eye to the plight of the Iraqi people just because the ills were done by Saddam."
He added: "Probably the civilized world is more guilty than Saddam because Saddam was a known dictator long before the war started in 1991. Some of those civilized and bleeding hearts were in Baghdad meeting Saddam, shaking his hand and later on supported him in his war against Iran ... I am sure you know that I am referring to the visit in 1983 and 1984 by none other than Donald Rumsfeld ..."
The impact of the invasion and occupation of Iraq will be felt for decades and all facets of Iraqi life now bear the scars of imperial brutality:
The economy, infrastructure and unemployment
The official unemployment rate in Iraq is 27%, but the real figure is generally acknowledged to be close to 50%. The problem will get worse after the US-sponsored Iraqi government carries out planned cut-backs to the public service (which employs half of the Iraqi workforce). On June 5, a spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told journalists: "Many government ministries can carry out their duties with only about 40-60% of employees."
Indicators of the economic malaise that Iraq continues to suffer are the increase in inflation from 0.6% in July 2004 to 11.5% in February 2005 and the increase in the length of lines waiting for petrol increased by 10 times between July 2003 and January 2005 (to an average 1.6km!).
"Fewer than 25,000 Iraqis are working on projects in the U.S. reconstruction efforts", Al Mukhtar told the tribunal. "In fact the Bush administration concedes that less than one percent of Iraq's workforce of seven million is currently involved in the reconstruction process. Most of Iraq's reconstruction has been contracted out to American companies, rather than Iraqi or regional companies." What's worse is that Iraq, already governed by neoliberal economic policies drawn up by the US-established Coalition Provisional Authority, is due to slash state economic subsidies on food, utilities and fuel in order to be eligible for IMF debt relief.
Health care
Al Mukhtar explained to the tribunal that before August 1990, "the health care system in Iraq was based on an extensive and developed network of primary, secondary and tertiary health care facilities. These facilities were linked among themselves and with the community by a large fleet of ambulances and service vehicles, and by a good communications network facilitating referral to the next level of the health care system." The Iraqi government estimated that 97% of Iraqis in urban areas and 79% in rural areas had access to health care.
The health-care system was devastated by war and sanctions. As a result: life expectancy declined from 63.9 years in 1990 to 58 years in 1995; infant mortality increased from 61.7 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 107.9 in 1999 (reaching 129 per thousand in 1995); the maternal morality rate increased from 117 (1990) to 294 (1999) per 100,000 live births; between 1989 and 1999 the mortality rate for under-fives increased from 30.2 to 130.6 per 1000; and the rate of hepatitis increased by 200% between 2002 and 2004.
Weapons of mass destruction
Iraq's WMDs may have been nonexistent, but Washington's certainly aren't. Al Mukhtar told the tribunal: "The Pentagon estimates that US and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from DU [depleted uranium] during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Moreover, whereas during the first Gulf War much of the DU was dropped on desert battlefields, in 2003 the vast majority of the toxic weapons were deployed in heavily populated urban areas such as Baghdad." Areas near the southern city of Basra were bombarded with DU weapons during the 1990 Gulf War — over a period of 10 years, the incidence of malignancies among children in the city increased more than threefold.
Human rights
Of the human rights abuses committed during the invasion and occupation, the jury's declaration notes: "At least 100,000 civilians have been killed; 60,000 are being held in US custody in inhuman conditions, without charges; thousands have disappeared; and torture has become virtually routine." The tribunal also found the invading coalition guilty of "Actively creating conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded contrary to the repeated claims of the leaders of the coalition forces. Women's freedom of movement has been severely limited, restricting their access to education, livelihood, and social engagement. Testimony was provided that sexual violence and sex trafficking have increased since the occupation of Iraq began."
The World Tribunal on Iraq's final declaration calls for "people around the world resist and reject any effort by any of their governments to provide material, logistical, or moral support to the occupation of Iraq".
The statement concludes: "We, the Jury of Conscience, hope that the specificity of these recommendations will lay the groundwork required for a world where the international institutions will be shaped and reshaped by the will of people and not fear and self-interest, where journalists and intellectuals will not remain mute, where the will of the people of the world will be central, and human security will prevail over state security and corporate profits."
From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.
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