KUWAIT CITY, 31 March 2003 — A coalition general overseeing humanitarian efforts in Iraq warned Sunday that civilians had less than two months of food and water, as he announced that a pipe linking Kuwait’s water supply to southern Iraq will deliver 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) per day.
British Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, the US-led force’s deputy commander of post hostility operations, told reporters that claims by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that he had provided six months of food were false.
“We believe, as indeed most people like the World Food Program, that perhaps most people have got between 30 and 60 days of food. I’m not convinced that people have got that degree of water,” he said.
“We have very clear evidence of people being instructed or encouraged to dig wells in Baghdad, but that water they get out of the wells is undrinkable or at least unsafe,” he added.
“Tomorrow, a pipe goes across from the Kuwaiti water supply system” to the southern port city of Umm Qasr, “and that will deliver something in the order of 600,000 gallons a day,” said Whitley.
The British military together with a number of international aid organizations will provide tankers to deliver water from the pipe’s outlet “to those who need it.”
“We, in conjunction with one of those organizations have already restored the water supply to Basra but not to the outlying towns and nor yet are we guaranteeing to get water to the 270,000 people who, even before the war, either had to collect water or have water delivered by tanker. But that water itself is not clean,” he said.
Clean, drinkable and potable water “is the most significant requirement in southern Iraq. That is something the Iraqis do not have at the moment,” Whitley stressed.
The general said that the humanitarian situation was not at crisis point, adding that blame for the conditions the Iraqi people found themselves in lay at the door of Saddam and not with attacks by the coalition.
“The current humanitarian situation in Iraq is down to the refusal of the regime to comply with UN Security Council (resolutions),” he added.
Whitley said that the Anglo-American forces wanted to hand over a secure environment to UN and aid agencies to take over the job of distributing humanitarian supplies.
But he added that points of contact with responsible Iraqi officials had yet to be established. “What we intend to do, and we are not there yet, is to work with those Iraqis with whom we can work,” said Whitley. “It is quite clear that the Baath Party officials we have come across so far...they are not fit people to work with.”
He said that non-party officials such as local mayors could be persuaded to take part in the running of humanitarian schemes.