THE International Red Cross and the Red Crescent are the only two nongovernmental organizations that have stayed on the ground from the beginning in Iraq, despite the murder of their people and the immense difficulties of operating in the chaos into which the country has been plunged. They are therefore uniquely positioned to give an authoritative and, most importantly, an independent view of life in Iraq.
Thus when the Red Cross reported yesterday that life for most Iraqis had become unbearable and was growing steadily worse, the words should be listened to with respect. The Geneva-based humanitarian organization’s terrible conclusions — which were published in a report yesterday — contradict the optimistic picture being painted by Washington. Bush and Co. would have us believe that the big military push to break the back of the Al-Qaeda terrorists, Baathist insurgents and the Shiite militias is succeeding.
The Red Cross reports that even a trip to the market to buy food and water has become a matter of life and death. The most common complaint, however, was from women who are trying to sustain their families; they found the carnage around them worse than anything and wanted help in collecting the bodies left lying on the streets.
It is clear from this document that both the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been doing heroic work under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances. The Red Cross claims to have brought sanitation and clean water to almost four million Iraqis last year. It has been involved in programs that provide drugs and urgently needed equipment to most of the country’s hospitals; it also runs health centers that have so far treated tens of thousands. With many hospitals in a state of collapse and lacking most after-care resources, it has been supplying artificial limbs.
Unfortunately its program has reached only 7,300 patients of the tens of thousands of those maimed and disfigured by the violence unleashed by Bush’s war of liberation. It has also been performing its other traditional role in conflict zones — that of visiting prisoners. In conjunction with the Red Crescent, it visited almost 40,000 detainees last year, seeing 9000 of them individually. What the prison visitors discovered in terms of conditions and treatment is not of course revealed. It is Red Cross policy to make no such findings public but rather to take up issues of concern directly with the prison authorities. Given the Abu Ghraib atrocities and subsequent evidence of torture by the Iraqi police, there is surely scope for the organization to be particularly vigilant in this.
To a large extent, the power of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent lies in what they do not say. They never want to jeopardize their ability to be admitted to any prison camp in any war zone because of a critical judgment. It is thus in that context that this brief but powerful report should be read. No one is blamed for what is happening in Iraq. However the appalling details of the devastating impact of the US intervention in the country speak for themselves. The report is testimony to the abject failure of that intervention and the Bush White House will be hard pressed to gloss over its conclusions.
