As diplomacy gives way to demonology, the children will suffer again, writesMichael D. Higgins of his trip to Baghdad
Outwardly everything appears normal. The traffic is busy, but the five million inhabitants of Baghdad are waiting for war. The oranges and other fruit are placed on the stalls at the crack of light.
It is as if everybody was trying desperately to avoid thinking the unthinkable: that they could be the target for a massive attack. An aerial bombardment of 200-300 missiles in the first stage has been talked about in US papers.
Despite the appearance of calm, if you ask the question about what they might do, they will simply say: "What can we do?"
The ordinary Iraqis, those who have already been punished by the UK and the US, who now may have to die, are unmoved by leaks, allegations and counter allegations. They are worn out from the task of survival.
When they do talk of the impact of a war, they recall 1991. One family of six - mother, father and four teenage children - tell of hiding in the bathroom, the room with the smallest window, because they were afraid of the gas.
Fifty to 70 per cent missed their stated target. The family I was visiting on the evening before I left Baghdad told me of how they left the bathroom for a bomb shelter. There were 34 bomb shelters in Baghdad, each capable of taking 1,500 people.
When news leaked out about what happened in the Al-Amiriyah shelter - 408 people were incinerated, 300 women, 100 children - people left the shelters and either went home or left their homes for relatives' farms. When they returned they found their houses intact.
If there is a strike now they will stay in their houses. After 12 years of sanctions there are only the house and a few intimate things left. The rest have been sold for survival. There could be trouble. So many people have been made desperate, and strangers might move into their house. So they will stay.
Dependent on the government food rations - maybe about 2,000 kilocalores per day - 16 million people will have to be fed if the oil that pays for the food is not pumped under the oil-for-food programme. (The food distribution programme has been described by one international agency after another as the most efficient in the world and totally free of corruption!) That so many are dependent on it, however, creates a massive vulnerability. Among the family I visited the discussion in the sitting room between a mother and her daughters is interesting. One daughter suggests that the relief agencies will have a contingency plan. Her sister disagrees. Those with the contingency plan will have gone, first relocated, then removed.
If a war happens 500,000 tons of food will have to be moved, five times the largest amount ever in human history. With the bridges broken, the road and rail network out of commission, how can it be done?
If a war happens there could be, according to a leaked UN document, 100,000 immediate casualties, 400,000 indirect. One million pregnant or lactating women will be at risk a well as two million children. In 1991, 50,000 children died of malnutrition and infectious diseases related to contaminated water. Half of Iraq's population is under the age of 15.
The older woman occasionally puts her head in her hands and repeats: "Will they hit us? We are as in a hole."
In the hospitals things have deteriorated since my last visit in 2001.
For the cocktail of drugs needed for treatment of a child's leukaemia, one drug may be missing. Black fever - 80 to 90 per cent fully curable with treatment - requires a 20-day treatment course. If the 20 day treatment is uncompleted, a 40-day treatment is needed. There is never enough for all the children. An Iraqi senior paediatrician who once worked in Crumlin Hospital in Dublin asks despairingly: "How can I choose who of the children are to live?"
A professor of ophthalmology from London on a recent visit has told how a scanner could identify risks of child blindness. The machine has been blocked as being capable of dual usage. As a result, 40 per cent of the child patients he saw will go needlessly blind.
The sanctions have done all of this in the name of the UN and in our name. The sanctions which have cost 1.7 million lives continue to kill children and have been described by Prof Joy Gordon of Fairfield University in Connecticutas constituting "weapons of mass destruction".
In Jordan I watched President Bush's State of the Union address with its invocation of a blessing from God on the coming war - a blasphemy delivered to a mass audience. I listened with incredulity to the suggestion that such a war would bring not only liberty but food and medical aid! This from the President of a country that had blocked precisely these things from the most vulnerable of people, and I thought of the writer who said "language is always the first casualty".
At home our Government maintains an appalling silence. Ignoring the long list of broken resolutions on the Middle East by Israel, it confines itself to demanding full compliance from Iraq on UN resolutions. How can our Government simply say "It's all up to Saddam Hussein"?
The children, the new poor of Iraq, have been ground down by the sanctions. Yet if the sanctions had been ended all the civil society options of Iraqi people would have been enhanced.
The Western world concluded until 1990 that it should work with Saddam. Donald Rumsfeld was happy to meet him after the use of mustard gas against the Kurds.
The materials were supplied by those now loudest in condemnation. The ordinary people of Iraq are to be punished for the actions of one whom the US and the UK once regarded as their friend.
Quietly asking the difficult questions about the future, one answer always comes: military intervention and occupation are the worst nightmare of all.
A paradox affects every level of society. The country with the richest resources of oil has not only the poorest but the most threatened people. Saudi Arabia and Iraq represent 40 per cent of the oil supply of the world. The US consumes 40 per cent of the oil supply of the world. Does this not tell us something of the politics of oil?
A doctor, an FRCP from London and an MRCP from the US, tells me his salary is $25 a month in the country with the second-richest oil deposit on the planet. A year's subscription to his medical journal would be more than a year's salary.
And there are, of course, major international conventions governing the protection of civilians and children in time of war. They require that children not be the object of attack; soldiers must distinguish between children and combatants; and facilities essential for the survival of children must not be the subject of attack. These principles were not observed on the last occasion. Within six weeks in 1991 most of the infrastructure of Iraq had been destroyed. The sanctions have kept it that way. Now as diplomacy gives way to demonology the children will suffer again.
On February 15th, all over Europe and around the world, people of different sources of ethics and politics will be saying No to war, No to sanctions that destroy the lives of children and civilians.
Is there any way we can avoid a catastrophe? Yes, there is. For the proposal that a group of eminent people take charge of the issue of Resolution 1441 there was a general welcome when it was made at meetings in Iraq and Jordan by the Irish delegation, among others.
The concept was accepted by Iraq's Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, and its execution was discussed at our meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz.
But time is running out. The issue is: who will take the first step? This is not only an opportunity, but a duty, for countries such as Ireland.
We have only about a week or 10 days to take action on a moral alternative to war. Let's use it.
Michael D. Higgins TD, Labour's spokesman on foreign affairs, was a member of a parliamentary delegation which has just returned from Iraq