UNICEF reports:
Despite the laudable efforts of the Public Distribution System (PDS) of food baskets, many of Iraq's poorer households are still food insecure, according to a Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis launched today, based on the most recent data from 2005. ...
Roger Wright, UNICEF's Special Representative for Iraq, lamented that children were confirmed as the major victims of food insecurity. "The chronic malnutrition rate of children in food insecure households was as high as 33 per cent, or one out of every three children malnourished," he stated. Chronic malnutrition affects the youngest and most vulnerable children, aged 12 months to 23 months, most severely. "This can irreversibly hamper the young child's optimal mental and cognitive development, not just their physical development," he said. Acute malnutrition was also of concern, with nine per cent of Iraqi children being acutely malnourished. The highest rates (12-13 per cent) were again found in children aged under 24 months.
I've collected some earlier data on malnutrition in the table below. Just before the war acute malnutrition (these are the children with a great risk of dying from disease) was 4%, in 2004 this was up to 8% and now its 9%. Thinks are almost as bad as in the worst days of the sanctions before the oil--for-food program saved so many lives.
| Acute Malnutrition Rate |
|---|
| 1991 3% (GOI-UNICEF 2000c) |
| 1996 11% (1996 MICS) |
| 2002 4% (Nutrition survey 2002) |
| 2004 8% (ILCS 2004) |
| 2004 9% (FSVA 2005) |
The Lancet estimate of roughly 100,000 excess deaths in the first 18 months after the war was made up of deaths from violence and increase in disease. In the 20 months since it was conducted the death rate from violence has gone up and deaths from disease have likely increased along with the malnutrition rate. The total is more likely than not over 200,000 now.
That's great. So what should be done?
We start by hanging the people who made a dog's meal out
of Iraq. Once they are unable to harm the country further, then we can see about cleaning up the mess.
We start by hanging the people who made a dog's meal out of Iraq. Once they are unable to harm the country further, then we can see about cleaning up the mess.
Ok, not gonna happen. So how about a usefull solution?
well the sad & depressing thing is that infant mortality & malnutrition in Iraq was already pretty damn pathetic after years of the embargo etc. So now after "liberation" things are even worse? What is it, the "price of liberty" or something? Can't Halliburton get a no-bid contract for better food distribution or something? Because you know that's the only way anything will get done!
Ben: Ok, not gonna happen. So how about a usefull solution?
Well, for starters, you, personally, could choose not to vote for them.
Then the US could reverse it's ideologically driven insistence on abolishing food subsidies and cutting rations and restore them to what they were in the bad old days of Saddam.
That'll cost money - and it will probably have to come from the US since the Iraqi government is essentially broke. But if it reduces soem of the hostiltiy towards the US, it should pay for itself down the track in reduced secuity costs.
Longer term, the most hopeful news about Iraq for a long time was the recent announcement that the Organisation of Islamic states was going to consider sending a peace-keeping force.
I support a continuing allied presence in Iraq becasue while I accept that their presence fuels soem of the violence, I think an immediate withdrawal would be even worse.
If they could be supplemented by and then gradually replaced by an arab/islamic force working in conjunction with Iraqi government forces it might still be possible to avoid the escalation of the current low-level civil war.
The other things that need to be done are:
1. to tell the Kurds forcibly and openly that unilateral indepndence (as opposed to negotiated independence after an extended period of autonomy) won't be supproted or tolerated and that a continuation of the ethnic cleansing of arabs, Turkmen and Chaldeans from the Kirkuk area won't be tolerated; and
2. a grass-roots large-scale public works employment program - even if you're paying people to paint rocks white it's better than Al Qaida paying them to attack government troops.
I suggested some time bakc a simple nonconditional one-off payment of US$500 or US$1,000 to every Iraqi household. That'd cost around US$3-6 billion which would go a long way to restarting private sector demand and employment.
christ, those por little kids. Acute malnutrition is often a result of severe diarrhoea, so priority one has to be the restoration of water and sewage services (we know that the Army is capable of doing this because they have had successes in Sadr City), because acute malnutrition is usually a more immediate problem than chronic. Chronic malnutrition is going to be very difficult to do anything about; it is almost time to get the UN WFP involved.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the US doesn't care because a sick populace is one that isn't going to run around as insurgents!
Heck, the current DC incumbents are letting some of the social infrastructure in the US go down the tube; they aren't exactly investing much money in schools, healthcare, and other social programs at home that benefit the poorer sectors of society. How on Earth can we expect them to give a jot about other 'unpeoples' half a world away? The US planners always knew that flattening Iraq (after flattening what was left of Afghanistan) was likely to precipitate a human rights disaster. Nobody can say they weren't informed. But THEY DID NOT CARE. Just like they DID NOT CARE when they supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980's in full knowledge of is crimes. Examples are endless.
What we have to recognize is that the world is divided into what is of use to 'us' (meaning the elites) and what is of little or no use to 'us'. The state-corporate media apparatus generally fulfills its service function to the established order well, demonising official 'enemies' while bolstering offical 'friends' (client states), irrespective of their human rights records. This may explain why pronouncements of a belief in 'democracy' by Bush, Blair etc. were met with almost reverential awe by most US (and many UK) media pundits. Even those who were critical of Bush for the most part did not disagree with the argument that his intent was really to spread democracy; they just argued that, in spite of this noble intent, he may be going about doing it the wrong way, or else the people of the middle east just don't understand the 'nobility of our intentions' and won't ever be able to embrace democracy. That Bush and his civilian planners couldn't really give a damn about democracy enhancement (read the words of Thomas Carothers) and had an alterior agenda in the Middle East was just not widely disseminated by the mainstream media, in spite of the overwhelming evidence.
Jeff - What is really horiffic is actually the idea that Bush et. al. really didn't know anything about what they are doing. Even the 'realpolitic' goal - occupy Iraq as a base in the middle of the ME oil fields - has failed catastrophically.
Ian - If a policy had been made of setting aside 50% of all oil revenue to be given directly to the Iraqi people (shared equally between all over-16s), it may have done a lot more for the economy. I believe that it would come in at around $100-200/month per person. At least the oil infrastructure would have been left alone.. disbanding the army was also a disaster. Refusing to give the locals the rebuilding contracts continues to be a monumental disaster.
Ben - Those responsable for this fiasco should stand trial. Sheesh, they'd get on to me if I only killed a dozen or so people, especially if I spent a few million quid of someone else's money to do it. Harsh but true.
There's a table in the linked-to 2002 survey that says 4%, but the text says 7.7%. This is a fairly significant discrepancy that, as far as I can tell, goes unexplained in the document.
On seccond thought, this could be because your link actually points to a 2003 survey.
Yes, the link goes to a 2003 post-invasion survey that found 7.7%. They refer to a 4% number from a 2002 survey. As far as I know the document giving the results of that survey is not online.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the US doesn't care because a sick populace is one that isn't going to run around as insurgents!
This nightmare would sure get better quick if the "insurgents" would knock their crap off. But the well being of the people of Iraq is not their goal, is it? Can anyone here think of a plausible way to get the "insurgents" to stop, short of turning the country into a new Afghan Taliban state, or putting Saddam back where he can rape their children to keep them in line?
"This nightmare would sure get better quick if the "insurgents" would knock their crap off."
Yeah most wars would go better if the other side didn't insist on shooting back.
Jeez, Ben, I dunno, but maybe the moronic Republicans in the US should have thought things through before screaming "Yee-haw!" and sending other people's children off to die for their stupid wars?
The longterm nutrition of the Iraq people is in doubt because of the imposition of Order No. 84 by the US led transitional Government. This order bans farmers from saving their own seeds and hands a seed monopoly to the large multi-national chemical companies with their genetically modified seeds. It is very doubtful if any of these seeds will bring any advantage to Iraqi farmers over what they have developed themselves over the past 2000 years.
Many people think that the war was about oil but it also seems to be about biopiracy. The US Government was recently awarded a 2006 Captain Hook Biopiracy Award for the "Most Shameful Act of Biopiracy" for its imposition of Order No. 84 in Iraq.
Nto only are the inseurgents entirely ot blame for the watr - because, you know, they atatcked the US first.
But they're damned isnidious.
Just look at Haditha were they managed to disguise themselves as 76 year old wheelchair-bound amputees and one year old girls.
Plus they managed to ambush an American convoy while asleep in their beds.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR20060…