A Remedy That Harms More Than It Heals

I believe Saddam Hussein is responsible for leading Iraq from a situation of great promise into one of unmitigated catastrophe. I believe he must be held to account for the country’s abject failure and for the crimes his regime committed against the Iraqi people, against Arabs and Kurds alike.

But I do not believe the U.S. and British-led war now being contemplated will benefit Iraq.

I say this as someone who knows firsthand how bad things are for Iraqis under Baath Party rule. In August 1971, when I was in my third year of pharmacy school at Baghdad University, Hussein had not yet come to power, but his party had. Its excesses were legion. I had taken the risk of joining a radical opposition party that advocated such things as developing the Iraqi national economy, granting popular freedoms, freeing all political prisoners and securing self-rule for Iraqi Kurdistan.

Inevitably, my political activities came to the attention of the regime, and one day I returned home to find security officers waiting for me. They arrested me and drove me to Qasir Al Nihaya, a political detention center, where I was forced to stand naked in the middle of a room in front of four men. A man sitting behind a desk was clearly in charge, although he did not say much. He was of medium height with dark skin and wore sunglasses with gold rims. He had a dark suit on and fingered a rosary, which held his attention when he wasn’t looking at me.

Another of the men circled me. Then he touched me. I could hear the laughter of the others. He began beating me and kicking me in the groin. Soon, I was wet with blood and urine. He kicked me again in the head and then stopped.

I was held in prison for months. Everything around me emphasized what seemed like inevitable death. They brought in my friends, one by one, and I saw their tortured bodies and the same strange emptiness in their eyes. In January 1972, three of my friends were executed.

Finally, I was released, in part, perhaps, because the Baath regime was trying to polish its image internationally, and executing a young women was unlikely to help. More important to my getting out, in all probability, was that I had an influential relative: Sabah Mirza, Hussein’s friend during his college years and later his most faithful bodyguard (although he is currently under house arrest).

After my release, I remained imprisoned by my memories. I could still hear human howling and see the bodies of the dead. Fearful of further violence, I fled Iraq on a false passport and settled in London where, 15 years later, I wrote an autobiographical novel, “Through Vast Halls of Memory.” Even today I am burdened--as are other friends who survived--with the guilt of being alive.

Now I watch as my adopted country prepares to join the United States in a war it says will liberate the Iraqi people from Hussein’s dictatorial regime, establish democracy and save the world from weapons of mass destruction. These are all things I believe in fervently, but I am horrified by the wrongheadedness of what I see unfolding.

The Iraqi people’s experience of U.S. interest in their country has not been positive. When 5,000 Kurds were massacred in Halabja in 1988, the U.S. did nothing--other than continue cozying up to Hussein, whom it viewed as an important counterweight to Iran. There was no war on Iraq to defend the Kurds. There was no U.N. resolution to condemn the atrocity.

A couple of years after Halabja, though, when the Iraqi regime occupied Kuwait--an important oil producer and former ally of Hussein in his war against Iran--the U.S. leapt into action. The trouble was, the 1991 war on Iraq was really a war on the Iraqi people, who were Hussein’s primary victims.

For 43 days, the attack was constant. Bombs rained down on water purification plants and pumping stations, on electrical power stations and oil refineries, on warehouses that stored seeds and animal vaccines. Three of Baghdad’s historic bridges were destroyed. On the road to Basra, thousands of retreating soldiers were killed, most of them conscripts.

The terror for average Iraqis didn’t stop with the cease-fire. Children who went through the siege continued to be terrified by loud noises. Newlywed women refused to have children for fear of giving birth to deformed babies resulting from the depleted uranium ammunition used by British and U.S. troops.

And there was great bitterness toward the U.S. A month into the war, on Feb. 15, 1991, the first President Bush called on the Iraqi people “to take matters into their own hands and force the dictator to step aside.” Many Iraqis answered the appeal, only to see the U.S. agree to a cease-fire that left Hussein in place.

Then came the sanctions, which have been catastrophic for ordinary people. Instead of the old way of buying and selling food in a free market, the Iraqi government has created a massive food-distribution program that makes citizens more dependent than ever on the regime. Most Iraqis are allocated a monthly ration, which includes basic food supplies like tea, sugar, cooking oil and rice. And it is never enough. A friend in Iraq, an accountant, recently wrote to me: “If you can put aside [$15] monthly and send me [$45] every three months, you’ll save my life.” Another friend wrote, “All we think about is food. Praise be to God for this miserable life which doesn’t give us enough to eat. And do we dare think about tomorrow? Will we be able to survive, or will we just continue to suffer the same humiliation?”

The all-encompassing sanctions included such things as medical journals, scientific research papers, books and, until 1996, erasers, sharpeners and pens. UNICEF reported that the child mortality rate more than doubled in the years after the war, which meant an additional half-million children dying. Letters coming out of Iraq often include some version of this question: Why are we punished for the crimes of our persecutor?

And it isn’t just the sanctions: The bombing of Iraq has never stopped and has killed hundreds of civilians. The Bush administration is adamant that war is the only way to change the “evil regime” in Iraq. But another war will crush a vulnerable society and increase the suffering of the Iraqis. A remedy is not a remedy if it causes greater damage to the innocent.

Change is certainly needed in Iraq, but it must be initiated from inside Iraq by its own people--not imposed by the U.S. or Britain. The best way to help the Iraqi people would be to lift the sanctions and end the paralyzing bombardment and daily threat of war. Once the people of Iraq have a chance to regain their strength and dignity, they will be quite capable of changing the oppressive regime--and they will do it in a way that serves the country better than if the U.S. is calling the shots about the next government.

Among the most disturbing aspects of the current crisis is that the U.S. seems to see the Iraqi National Congress as the future of democracy in Iraq. The group, set up in the early 1990s with CIA help and now funded by the State Department, does not have the support of most Iraqis, and its rhetoric is chilling. In an editorial published in the group’s mouthpiece, Al-Mutamar, last month, the editor in chief recounted an interview he gave recently to German TV. “I was asked about the [resistance] of some groups in the Iraqi opposition to the expected regime change,” he wrote. “I said: First of all, they are not groups, they are individuals. They know that they are only free and alive as long as Saddam is alive.... They are living an illusion. None of them will be able to go back to Iraq. [If] finally we do meet those scoundrels in Baghdad, we’ll ... [have them brought] back, hands and feet in chains, heads bowed, eyes downcast.”

If this is the vision the U.S. has for Iraq, then the future is bleak, indeed.