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After the war
From Iraq: war and peace online
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 Welsh
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Family having their midday meal at Ali El
Hadi Mosque, Samarra
Photo: Geoff Hann/Hinterland Travel |
The humanitarian crisis
Iraq has been severely damaged by the war. Humanitarian assistance
will cost between one and ten billion dollars.
Reconstruction could be as much as $105 billion. But recent history
has shown that in general, more is spent on war than on reconstruction.
For example, in Afghanistan, in the year ending September 2002,
the USA spent $13 billion on the war effort and $10 million on civil
works and humanitarian aid.
The UK government has pledged £240 million in aid to Iraq,
but spent £3 billion on the war.
And there is very little time – many people have been without
water and electricity since the war began and are now running out
of food. With a malnourished population, the young and the old are
particularly vulnerable and cannot afford to wait.
The future
An interim US-led administration will be led by retired US General
Jay Garner and the Americans are looking at members of the Iraqi
opposition as possible new leaders. The most likely candidate seems
to be Ahmed Chalabi, US-backed leader of the Iraqi National Congress,
who has lived in the USA and London since 1956.
Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s Director, is among many who have
called for the UN to be in charge of Iraq: ‘The UN is the
only organisation with the international legitimacy to help Iraqis
build their own representative authority… It is time for the
international community to heed [Kofi] Annan’s call for the
UN ‘to rediscover its sense of purpose.’ (The Observer,
April 13 2003)
Whoever is in charge, a massive clean-up operation will be needed
to start with; not least the remains of the cluster bombs that have
been dropped that often remain 40 per cent unexploded, and the effects
of depleted uranium bombs which leave radioactivity and cause cancers
and environmental damage.
Tony Blair has linked the ousting of Saddam Hussein with a peace
settlement in the Middle East, which would include a resolution
to the Israel/Palestine conflict. But as yet no date has been set
to take this forward.
From Iraq: war and peace online
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