Melbourne: (South News)-April 12: A former top UN official said yesterday that the West was destroying an entire society by retaining sanctions on Iraq. Mr Denis Halliday, a former assistant secretary general to the UN and the head of the UN oil-for-food programme until November 1998, said about 5,000 children were dying every month.
"We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as that," said Mr. Halliday at the start of a week-long tour of Australia to press for UN sanctions against Iraq to be lifted.
Supported by a coalition of church, ethnic and peace groups including the Australian Arabic Council, Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament, Islamic Council of Victoria, Medical Association for the Prevention of War, and the Uniting Church Mr. Halliday will speak at Melbourne University tomorrow night.
Melbourne: (South News)14 April: A former top UN official said yesterday, in a lecture at Melbourne University, that the Australian media was totally subservient to the dictates of US foreign policy in its silence over sanctions on Iraq.
Mr. Denis Halliday, former Assistant General-Secretary to the UN and Head of the UN Oil-for-Food said it was quite ironic that a leading Australian expatriate journalist John Pilger with his latest video "Paying the Price" screened on British television last month was turning around public opinion against sanctions in the UK and Ireland.
"The press has its priorities completely back to front: people die daily in massive numbers in Iraq, Chechnya, Ethiopia," Mr Halliday said. "The main stories in the 'Age' today are about an errant cricketer and whether or not Tony Blair should take paternal leave. Witness the publicity over Elian Gonzalez, one single politically important six-year-old, and the blind eye to the 150 under-fives who die daily in Iraq".
Mr. Halliday said the newspapers do not say anything about 250 of the 1400 Australian soldiers sent to the Gulf in 1991 that are now sick, with what is suspected to be cancer resulting from their exposure to the depleted uranium ordnance" used. But the tragedy is worse for Iraq where it is estimated that 40% of the population in the areas were DU shells were used will develop some form of cancer as a result of the radiation.
Mr Halliday who was concluding a week-long tour of Australia to press for UN sanctions against Iraq to be lifted has received little media coverage. He resigned in November 1998 in protest at the effect of the sanctions.
"The military-industrial-technology-media complex determine what Joe Public reads, knows, cares about", Mr. Halliday said. "Serious money is involved and funding an arm race in the Middle East- Look how Abu Dhabi just spent $6 billion on some F-16s."
Supported by a coalition of local religious, ethnic and peace groups including the Australian Arabic Council, Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament, Islamic Council of Victoria, Medical Association for the Prevention of War, and the Uniting Church, Mr Halliday said the UN Security Council is solely responsible for the entirely foreseeable consequences of its actions, i.e. the killing and maiming of thousands of Iraqi people every month for the past 9 years.
UNICEF estimates that the sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of well over a million people, over half of them children, since the sanctions began in 1990.
"Iraq's unwillingness to comply with the Security Council's demands (much in the same way that Israel refuses to comply) in no way justifies the violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the Security Council, or the Geneva Conventions in its use of depleted uranium ordnance in the Gulf War, or the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has recently had much publicity in the case of a single child, Elian Gonzalez", Mr. Halliday said.
Earlier in the week in Canberra Mr. Halliday expressed disappointment at the attitude of the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on the issue of the deadly impact of economic sanctions on the civilians of Iraq.
"The Minister did not treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves. On genocide in Iraq the Australian Government has lost the moral leadership by not acting. There was absolutely no indication that the Minister would contemplate an independent stance on the sanctions on Iraq, despite the clear and overwhelming evidence that the sanctions are killing innocent people and especially the children of Iraq," said Mr. Halliday.
Denis Halliday says that there are some simple things that Australia can do to meet both international security and humanitarian objectives. "Press Washington to lift sanctions while retaining military inspections", he said." Australia should re-open its diplomatic offices in Baghdad to re-establish dialogue and achieve a real assessment of the existing situation with regard to sanctions and international security".
Diplomat: Denis Halliday is among those who believe that U.S.
officials are willing to kill children and other innocent people, especially
nonwhites in the Third World, to extend U.S. power.
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By
Robert Jensen
The Baltimore Sun, August 13, 2000
DENIS HALLIDAY spent 34 years in the bureaucracy of the United Nations, rising to assistant secretary general as he ran development programs around the world and managed the human resources office.
Halliday's work gave him a behind-the-scenes look at the realities of world politics and the hidden agendas of the world powers. It's the kind of work that usually produces insiders -- not radicals. But seeing U.S. policy up close in Iraq changed that for Halliday.
In September 1997, he took over as humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, where he saw first-hand the results of a policy he now calls genocidal. The economic embargo, which is technically imposed by the United Nations but remains in place because the United States demands it, has killed at least 1 million innocent Iraqis, at least half younger than 5, according to U.N. studies.
Halliday's resignation-in-protest in October 1998 pushed him into public view, where for two years he has talked in increasingly more radical terms, going so far as to say that the past two U.S. presidents are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq.
I met Halliday a few months after he resigned, when he landed in Austin, Texas, on a national speaking tour. He wasn't hard to spot as he got off the plane; he looked, well, so diplomatic -- dressed similar to the businessmen getting off with him.
Halliday's message on that trip was clear -- lifting the sanctions to stop the death of innocents was a moral imperative --- but his rhetoric was cool, not inflammatory. His criticisms of U.S. policy were sharp, but expressed in measured, even polite, terms.
For two years, I have kept an eye on Halliday's activities, reading numerous interviews and speeches he has given while traveling the world to speak out against the sanctions. As time passed -- as more and more Iraqi children died from malnutrition and disease -- I noticed Halliday's criticism becoming sharper-edged.
Had this diplomat and bureaucrat turned into a radical?
Noting that the Financial Times had labeled him a "Quaker militant," Halliday said he had no problem being called a nonviolent radical.
"Yes, I am a radical on this genocidal embargo," he told me. "I have been radicalized by the policies of the USA."
Although Halliday is one of the most public people in the anti-sanctions movement, his experience mirrors that of many I've talked to. Americans who want to believe that their government takes seriously the ideals of peace and justice have had to face a painful reality: U.S. officials are willing to kill children and other innocent people, especially nonwhites in the Third World, to protect and extend U.S. power. That fact has turned many mainstream folks into radicals.
Last Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of the sanctions, which were imposed after the illegal Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. At the time, many in the peace movement supported temporary sanctions to force Iraq to withdraw, hoping to avoid the bloody war that eventually did take place at the behest of President George Bush.
Now, an international movement is working to lift the embargo so that Iraq can begin rebuilding a society devastated by the destruction of the Persian Gulf war, the strangulation of the sanctions, and the ongoing (and quite illegal) U.S./British bombing campaign in the so-called "no-fly zones."
U.S. officials say the sanctions are necessary to keep Iraq from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, though they also talk of using the sanctions to force the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
From the beginning of his activism, Halliday has made it clear that even if the sanctions had the effect of blocking Iraqi weapons plans, it is unacceptable to knowingly let innocents die to accomplish that.
He also has always pointed out that instead of helping the Iraqi people bring about a democratic government, the sanctions have strengthened Hussein's control over the country and left the Iraqi people isolated and alienated.
His assessment of the policies and the leaders of the United States and Britain has grown more blunt over time. In an interview last month with an Egyptian newspaper, Halliday said genocide was the appropriate term for "an intentional program to destroy a culture, a people, a country."
"The United States and the United Kingdom in particular have continued the economic embargo despite their knowledge of the death rate of Iraqi children," he said. "That is genocide."
In the interview, Halliday criticized what he called the U.S. corruption of the U.N. Security Council, suggesting that U.S. leaders are imposing neocolonialism "to dominate the Arab world in order to control the supply of oil, and destroy and suppress perhaps the strongest country within the Arab world, which in 1990 dared to challenge the West."
Halliday is no supporter of Hussein, nor does he apologize for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But he said Hussein's "grave mistake" provided an opening to crush the Iraqi people, which Bush seized.
In the course of the gulf war, the U.S. officials "broke international law and the Geneva Conventions. They deliberately targeted the civilian infrastructure -- committing crimes against humanity," Halliday said.
Desert Fox, the December 1998 bombing of Iraq that President Clinton ordered without U.N. Security Council approval, was also a crime, according to Halliday. So, should Clinton face a trial?
Absolutely, Halliday said. "There was no justification for this, no U.N. resolution. It is a breach of international law. It is outrageous, and it is, of course, a crime against humanity."
Halliday also has been blunt in analyzing U.S. motivations: "To control the financial and oil resources of the Arab world in order to provide opportunities to sell American weapons and the American Army."
"The Americans have got what they wanted," he said. "Who cares about 6,000 to 7,000 people dying every month?"
Halliday cares, which is why he resigned rather than stage-manage a humanitarian program that was by design inadequate to meet the needs of Iraqis.
After he realized how Washington was playing the game, he concluded that it was futile to continue working for the United Nations. He left the job, and his U.N. career, to be free to speak out. "There was no way I was going to be associated with this program and manage this ghastly thing in Iraq," he said.
In the past year Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned in protest, as did the director of the World Food Program in Iraq, Jutta Burghardt. Slowly, the anti-sanctions movement has gained strength. Last Sunday, about 1,000 activists protested in Washington, marking the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima 55 years ago and 10 years of sanctions against Iraq.
The anti-sanctions movement is made up of a wide variety of people, from religious pacifists to left/progressive activists. While Halliday does not have the stereotypical appearance of a radical, he's not afraid to be called one. A friend in the movement describes him as "our guy with banker's shoes."
Sunday, September 17, 2000 in the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
The US-led allied forces deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply during the Gulf War - flagrantly breaking the Geneva Convention and causing thousands of civilian deaths. Since the war ended in 1991 the allied nations have made sure that any attempts to make contaminated water safe have been thwarted.
A respected American professor now intends to convene expert hearings in a bid to pursue criminal indictments under international law against those responsible.
Professor Thomas J Nagy, Professor of Expert Systems at George Washington University with a doctoral fellowship in public health, told the Sunday Herald: "Those who saw nothing wrong in producing [this plan], those who ordered its production and those who knew about it and have remained silent for 10 years would seem to be in violation of Federal Statute and perhaps have even conspired to commit genocide."
Professor Nagy obtained a minutely detailed seven-page document prepared by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, issued the day after the war started, entitled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities and circulated to all major allied Commands.
It states that Iraq had gone to considerable trouble to provide a supply of pure water to its population. It had to depend on importing specialised equipment and purification chemicals, since water is "heavily mineralised and frequently brackish".
The report stated: "Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidents, if not epidemics, of disease and certain pure-water dependent industries becoming incapacitated."
The report concludes: "Full degradation of the water treatment system probably will take at least another six months."
During allied bombing campaigns on Iraq the country's eight multi-purpose dams had been repeatedly hit, simultaneously wrecking flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities - 20 in Baghdad, resulting in sewage pouring into the Tigris. Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq.
Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" and includes foodstuffs, livestock and "drinking water supplies and irrigation works".
The results of the allied bombing campaign were obvious when Dr David Levenson visited Iraq immediately after the Gulf War, on behalf of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
He said: "For many weeks people in Baghdad - without television, radio, or newspapers to warn them - brought their drinking water from the Tigris, in buckets.
"Dehydrated from nausea and diarrhea, craving liquids, they drank more of the water that made them sick in the first place."
Water-borne diseases in Iraq today are both endemic and epidemic. They include typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio (which had previously been eradicated), along with a litany of others.
A child with dysentery in 1990 had a one in 600 chance of dying - in 1999 it was one in 50.
The then US Navy Secretary John Lehman estimated that 200,000 Iraqis died in the Gulf War. Dr. Levenson estimates many thousands died from polluted water.
Chlorine and essential equipment parts needed to repair and clear the water system have been banned from entering the country under the UN "hold" system.
Ohio Democrat Representative Tony Hall has written to American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, saying he shares concerns expressed by Unicef about the "profound effects the deterioration of Iraq's water supply and sanitation systems on children's health". Diarrhoeal diseases he says are of "epidemic proportions" and are "the prime killer of children under five".
"Holds on contracts for water and sanitation are a prime reason for the increase in sickness and death." Of 18 contracts, wrote Hall, all but one on hold were placed by the government in the US.
Contracts were for purification chemicals, chlorinators, chemical dosing pumps, water tankers and other water industry related items.
"If water remains undrinkable, diseases will continue and mortality rates will rise," said the Iraqi trade minister Muhammed Mahdi Salah. The country's health ministry said that more than 10,000 people died in July of embargo-related causes - 7457 were children, with diarrhoeal diseases one of the prime conditions.
In July 1989, the figure was 378. UNICEF does not dispute the figures.
The problem will not be helped by plans for the giant Ilisu Dam project (to which the British government is to give £200 million in export credit guarantees), which will give Turkey entire control of the water flow to Iraq and Syria.
Constructors Balfour Beatty write in their environmental impact report, that for the three years of construction, water flow to Iraq will be reduced by 40%. Iraq has also suffered a three year drought, with the Tigris the lowest in living memory.
Following is an extract from an article in The Toronto Star, January 15, 2001:
"...contrary the effusive claims 10 years ago that a new era of law and
order was upon us, the experience of US policy toward Iraq in the past decade
reveals a very different picture, one where the remaining
superpower
flaunts the UN, makes up rules on the fly and ignores laws and
conventions
that have been painstakingly constructed by the international
community over the past 50 years....
"UN agencies in Iraq now estimate that 1.5 million Iraqis have died from hunger, sickness and poverty that has stalked Iraq as direct result of the sanctions. More than half of the casualties are children.
"This suffering inflicted on civilians is strictly prohibited according to the 1977 Geneva Conventions which outlaw the 'starvation of civilians as method of warfare.' Those who ignore this fundamental rule of war can be prosecuted are war criminals...."
The article concludes:
"The contradictions of a decade of failures seem to matter not to the
chief architects of the war against Iraq. The new world order of the US can be
summed up four word, thundered by George Bush Sr. as missiles rained down on
Iraqi neighbourhoods 10 years ago: 'What we say goes!'"