Publish date6 Jun 2015 - 8:27
Story Code : 193873

Half a million children died in Iraq by the world’s powers

TANA-London
With the dire humanitarian situation in Iraq, humanitarian disasters occurred during 1990s in Iraq is the subject of Britain’s pacifists and their meetings.
Half a million children died in Iraq by the world’s powers

According to Taghrib’s reporter (TANA) in London, Ian Sinclair, British peace activists, recounted some of the humanitarian disasters in Iraq during 90s that were the cause of sanctions made by Britain and US, which were backed by the UN.

In this article Sinclair refers to a quote from “A Different Kind of War”, a book written by Hans Von Sponeck, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. “No country had ever been subjected to more comprehensive economic sanctions by the United Nations than Iraq”

This British peace activist reefers to the Oil-For-Food Programme in 1996 which was set by the UN in order to counter some of the worst effects of sanctions, allowing Iraq to sell oil in exchange for food, medicine and other goods. However according to Hans Von Sponeck’s 2006 book “At no time during the years of comprehensive economic sanctions were there adequate resources to meet minimum needs for human physical or mental survival either before, or during, the Oil-For-Food Programme”

In 1998/99, each Iraqi received a food allocation of $49 ( 27 cents a day) for a six-month period. In contrast, the dogs the UN used to help de-mine Iraq each received a food allocation of $160.

According to Sinclair, Denis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq who ran the sanctions regime noted that the sanctions were causing the deaths of up to 5,000 children a month. Halliday also bluntly stated: “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral.”

Later on in an interview Halliday admitted, “I was instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide, a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.”

Two years later Halliday’s successor Von Sponeck resigned in protest, asking in his resignation letter: “How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?”

The reports show that apart from a few exceptions, the response of the British political class and media was either to ignore or dismiss the fact sanctions were killing Iraqis on a mass scale.

Ian Sinclair believes that in a world of 24-hour news culture, the governing elite, assisted by a pliant media have effectively managed to bury the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a direct result of British foreign policy.

/SR
 
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