telegraph.co.uk

As Saddam builds his monuments, mothers abandon their babies By Hala Jaber (Filed: 04/11/2001)

In Basra, babies are being forsaken in the dusty streets by their impoverished mothers. They are, finds Hala Jaber, the victims of a regime more obsessed with building monuments than feeding its people

THEY look dead. The seven babies, little more than bundles of torn sheets, lie malnourished and motionless in a bare, filthy back room of Basra's main children's and maternity hospital.

The oppressive air, filled not with the usual antiseptic odour of medical facilities but the foul stench of human waste, is stirred only by the occasional entrance of the cleaner, who bustles in between mopping wards to quickly wash each infant in the basin. Otherwise, they are all but left alone. The doctors and nursing staff are already overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of seriously ill children in their care.

The hospital is doing all that it can, but it is neither equipped as a nursery nor an orphanage. "We do our best, but I believe they suffer more for the lack of their mother's care and love. Nothing can supplement that," one doctor, a consultant gynaecologist, said sadly.

The babies, the victims of a regime more obsessed with building monuments than feeding its people, were abandoned on the roadsides or at the entrances of mosques by poverty-stricken families who can no longer feed them even another mouthful. They had arrived with nothing, after being picked up from the streets by passers-by. A carton containing a few old pieces of cloth - which served as clothes - was on the floor near them.

They are, perhaps, the lucky ones. Many more don't make it this far. Doctors at the hospital, which The Telegraph has chosen not to identify to protect the staff, are horrified by the number of abandoned infants who die on the streets of Iraq's second biggest city before reaching their wards.

"Their mothers cannot take care of them," the doctor tells me. "They have no money and no means to feed them, so they are now dumping these children. Sometimes the babies are adopted, other times, like now, nothing happens and suddenly we have a roomful of them. It is heartbreaking and we really do our best for them, but we do not have full-time staff and the proper facilities to take care of them. I have seen good days and some beautiful days in this hospital, but these are really the bad days."

The hospital wrote to the Iraqi authorities several months ago, outlining the predicament of the infants and seeking help in having them placed in institutions. There has been no reply. The first baby to arrive, aged 12 weeks, was named Sarah by the nurses. She is six months old and recognises only the faces of the doctor, the cleaner and one of the nurses who struggles to find time for the babies.

"The nurse is torn between her duties for the patients of the hospital and the needs of the babies," said the doctor. "It is extremely tiring for a mother to look after one child under normal circumstances on any given day, so can you imagine what it is like in here when seven babies are all awake and crying at the same time seeking attention, food or merely a need to be cleaned, picked up or cuddled."

In common with the rest of the country, Basra's hospitals have suffered 10 years of shortages. Their wards are constantly filled with children dying of cancer, with little medicine and outdated equipment to meet the demands. The often repeated claim by Left-wing critics such as Tony Benn, the former Labour minister, that 500,000 children have died unnecesarily since United Nations sanctions were imposed after the Gulf war, is a matter of dispute.

It has been claimed by opponents of the war on terrorism - in this country and Iraq - that the sanctions, which ban any items that could be used for military purposes, are preventing the Iraqis from buying all the medicines and equipment needed by their hospitals. Even common vaccines used to innoculate children against polio are blocked because they contain tiny amounts of potassium, which can be used in explosives.

Those who argue against the claims of a 500,000 infant mortality figure point out that it is based on highly questionable statistics in a 1999 Unicef report. Whatever the true figure, there is no doubt that infant mortality rates have soared in the past decade, and the West is adamant that the Iraqi regime bears full responsibility. A Foreign Office aide said: "We don't deny that there is a great deal of human suffering in Iraq, but the direct cause of this is the regime not sanctions."

Last year, Saddam Hussein's revenue from the oil-for-food programme amounted to $11 billion - money earmarked by the UN for the relief of the human crisis. Since the beginning of the oil-for-food deal in December 1996, a total of $38.6 billion has been generated. Western governments are adamant that the oil revenue is more than sufficient to feed the population. They charge Saddam with causing the increasingly poverty-striken majority, many of whom are on the brink of starvation.

As supporting evidence, they cite the stark contrast between neglected cities such as Basra and parts of Baghdad, where Saddam is building monuments to his own glorification and the markets are overflowing with food.

Earlier this year, one of Saddam's personal projects, the Mother of all Mosques - a beautiful white, blue and gold mosque which sits on an enormous artificial water feature designed in the shape of the Arab world map - was completed. The mosque, in the centre of Baghdad, is estimated to have cost tens of millions of dollars and took three years to complete. Another ambitious mosque to be built on 200,000 square yards of land nearby has just begun.

The money poured into the capital is also evident in the abundance of new boutiques, electronic retailers and marketplaces, where only foreigners and rich Iraqis can afford the exotic wares on display. The majority of Baghdad's residents have to satisfy themselves with their monthly food rations, which consist of basic staples such as rice, sugar, tea, fat, grains, flour and soap.

Red meat and chicken have become luxury items, with many families going for weeks without either. The middle class has all but been wiped out and has become part of the underclass that forms the bulk of Iraqi society. Meanwhile, the rich frequent Baghdad's plentiful new restaurants and nightclubs. On the roads, the latest model BMWs and Mercedes of Saddam's new elite compete with battered and ancient Volkswagens.

The funfairs and zoos, too, are thriving - but a distant dream for the children of Basra. Instead, they play in the flooded streets and alleyways flooded with puddles of raw sewage. The city, which is 350 miles south of Baghdad, bore the brunt of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war on the shores of the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway, where the rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris meet before running to the Gulf.

Once, it was a regional trade centre and a magnet for rich Gulf Arabs drawn by its casinos, nightclubs, mild weather and palm-filled parks. Now its nightclubs have closed and its dusty roads are filled with beggars. Every afternoon, hundreds of people gather in the marketplace to sell what little belongings they still possess. Women offer their children's broken toys, bicycles and clothes, while men bring in their television sets, air conditioners, refrigerators and car parts.

Walid, a 14-year-old who was mending shoes in the market, said he had not been to school for five years because he had to earn money to support his family. He toils from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, earning the equivalent of 50p a day.

In what was once the third largest oil producer in the world, such is the poverty now that many families are selling the monthly food rations they receive from the government to buy shoes for their children and bus fares to find work.

Yet there is still so much oil under the city that it sometimes bubbles up out of the ground spontaneously. Recently, the marble flooring of Basra International airport had to be removed for cleaning because oil was seeping through and causing damage. Whereas most of Baghdad has regular access to electricity and parts of it shimmer like a Christmas tree, Basra languishes in darkness as a result of severe power cuts of up to 16 hours a day.

In the hospital, the protracted blackouts plunge the city's abandoned babies into darkness. It is a grim symbol of their fragile grip on life.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 2001

Answers

Yep. Ol' Saddam and his cronies can be real proud of themselves--- may their dying people haunt their dreams.

[Hi, Sorry for popping in uninvited--I know the notice says don't use a fake address but providing you check the "No" on notifications, it's okay. We encourage fake addresses because of stalking/harrassment incidents so I've changed yours. OG]

-- Anonymous, November 04, 2001

Saw the same things in Haiti while I was there. We put these assholes in power and then wonder why half the world hates us.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 2001

The alternatives are often worse. And even when the US hasn't had anything to do with supporting a country's leader, there's sometimes ill will--like in France, for instance.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 2001