Khadija Magardie Somewhere in an airport storage facility in South Africa a shiny container waits. Inside are six tons of medical supplies, cartons of milk powder and baby formula. Their destination: Iraq, where a humanitarian disaster of horrific proportions continues to spiral, following more than a decade of international sanctions. A recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) says sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of more than a million Iraqi children from anything from chronic exposure to malnutrition and possibly the effects of depleted uranium. But, as people die, the South African government has spent two months in a quandary over whether to be part of the mercy mission. The Department of Foreign Affairs has stated its commitment to assisting the Iraqi people by working with the Durban-based Iraq Action Committee to send a humanitarian flight to Baghdad. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad was scheduled to leave for Iraq in mid-February, but the flight was postponed for “logistical reasons”. After an apparent request from the government of Iraq, as well as the Iraq Action Committee, for a postponement, the flight was rescheduled for early March. Then, inexplicably, it was postponed, again “for logistical reasons”.
The government says it remains committed to the mercy mission, albeit at a later date. But the current status of the proposed trip is unclear. As the wheels of diplomacy turn, Iraq’s Deputy Minister of Health Zuhair Abdul Salaam, a doctor who worked in public hospitals before his appointment nine months ago, visited South Africa this month. Like most medical professionals, Abdul Salaam, a graduate from Baghdad University of Medicine, says he has seen many horrors, but that the worst possible feeling for a doctor comes with seeing a patient’s life slipping away and knowing you are powerless to prevent it. One case that stands out, he says, was a woman with leukaemia so severe that she literally shrank before his eyes. “As the cancer ate her, she looked to me for help but I did not even have a painkiller,” he says sadly. His eldest son, Muhammad, is nearing his final year of medical school. Abdul Salaam says he hopes that by the time his son qualifies, he will not have to see what his father has seen. The recent Non-Aligned Movement’s (NAM) health ministers’ summit provided a platform for Abdul Salaam to inform his peers of a humanitarian disaster that has spiralled since United States and British-led economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq in August 1990. Critics of the Iraqi regime say it has only itself to blame for the human catastrophe, because of its “roguish” behaviour and its opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process.
But Abdul Salaam believes his government is doing the best it can for its people.
He says even the most basic primary health care needs in Iraq are not being met and even basic medicines are unavailable. He says the government has several programmes to combat illnesses, especially communicable diseases. But without the much-needed drugs, especially vaccinations, from the outside world, Iraqis are dying from conditions that, anywhere else in the world, would be avoidable, like polio and rubella. He says the lack of essential medicines has resulted in new diseases and malignancies, including rare cancers. “I want the world to get the message that our people are still suffering, the ordinary people,” he says. One of the officials Abdul Salaam met was Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who promised to visit Iraq “soon”. But Abdul Salaam’s visit came amid rumours that the government was put under pressure by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, still smarting from the Gulf War, to abandon plans to fly supplies to Iraq. The Saudi Arabian ambassador, Saud Zedan, has repeatedly denied his country’s involvement in scuppering the plans to fly to Iraq, but has expressed concern that the flight could be used by the Iraqi government “for propaganda purposes”. Saudi Arabia hosted President Thabo Mbeki in February this year but the South African government has hotly denied rumours that it is bowing to Saudi pressure.
The Pretoria-based Media Review Network has described the alleged influence by the Gulf countries as “blackmail” and has urged the South African government not to allow itself to be complicit in “Machiavellian policies” on Iraq.