December 27, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 22, 1423

LONDON: Relief agencies fear that Iraq’s teetering infrastructure, in tatters after years of international sanctions and two decades of conflict, would suffer a fresh body blow from a US-led attack.

Relief officials with experience of the region say that how Iraqis would cope if supplies of water, food and electricity are cut is a matter of urgent concern.

Humanitarian agencies in the government-controlled centre of the country, the largely Shia south and the Kurdish north are planning for a new emergency.

“We’d like to think otherwise, but we’re preparing for the outbreak of war,” said Kathryn Wolford, president of the US-based agency Lutheran World Relief (LWR).

“As a humanitarian organization, we have a responsibility to save lives in the event that war breaks out. So we’re mapping material and human resources that can be mobilised.”

Brendan Paddy, emergencies press officer of Save the Children UK, said by satellite phone from northern Iraq: “From our point of view as humanitarians, the important thing is that people do not lightly dismiss the likely humanitarian consequences of any military action on a society where people are so vulnerable.

“For the people I’ve been speaking to (in northern Iraq), there’s a slightly different concern, and that’s that people not forget that they are more than just pawns in some larger game.

“The greatest concern expressed to me is that they must not be left unprotected.”

The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) said that estimates of civilian deaths in the event of a US-led attack ranged from 10,000 to 100,000.

In a report on its website, CAFOD says: “The casualties will mount very fast, especially when indirect deaths, from disease or as a result of the expected displacement of populations, are taken in to account.”

Paddy said his main fear in the event of an attack would be the deliberate or accidental destruction of infrastructure such as electricity, water, sewerage and hospitals, already creaking under the weight of 10 years of tough international trade sanctions since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The CAFOD report quoted George Gelber, the agency’s head of public policy, as saying about two-thirds of the country’s 23 million inhabitants were largely dependent on government rations and the oil-for-food programme administered by the United Nations since 1996 to compensate for the humanitarian consequences of sanctions.

“There are few if any coping mechanisms once the food distributions are disrupted and water and sanitation systems collapse,” said CAFOD’s Julian Filochowski in a statement.

Paddy said he asked a man how he would survive if food distributions stopped, and was told: “I would have to rely on God. There is no other way.”

Under the oil-for-food programme, food is distributed in the north by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and in the south as government rations with UN supervision.

CAFOD said that distribution could become paralysed if bridges, roads, warehouses and power plants were destroyed, and if the staff usually responsible for distribution were dispersed.

Paddy said: “Most of the food is stored in the south and centre of Iraq, so in the event of hostilities, the food supply (to the north) could be cut off very quickly. In the south and centre the food would probably no longer be supplied to the civilian population. It could take time to arrange an alternative supply.”

Robert Yallop, head of overseas operations and programmes for CARE Australia, told Reuters after a visit to Iraq that the country would probably be unable to extract oil and pump it into loading terminals during a conflict and food suppliers would be unlikely to meet the terms of their contracts.

Rations in the centre and south provide not only food, Yallop said, but for about 40 per cent of the population were also a primary source of income if sold or bartered.

Nada Doumani, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) media relations officer for the Middle East and North Africa, said that the ICRC was pre-positioning food in the region.

Paddy said: “All of the humanitarian agencies here have emergency preparations that they’re making. They’re very keen that those preparations are not seen to be explicitly linked just to the possibility of attack on Iraq.”

LWR’s Wolford said that, if an attack on Iraq was averted, supplies in the region could be well used elsewhere, not just in Iraq but also in the Palestinian territories.

Paddy said: “We already have existing supplies, mainly of non-food items. It’s very difficult to store appropriate amounts of food. In the past in conflicts here, there’s been significant displacement. If that happens in the winter, the most immediate needs will be tents and warm clothes, to make sure that people don’t die of cold.”—Reuters