HAMDAN (Iraq): Surrounded by a graveyard of bombed-out trucks, stacks of rusted oil drums and broken industrial equipment, the fenced-off compound outside this village in Iraq’s scorching southern desert appears to be yet another junkyard for wartime detritus. Only an overpowering stench betrays the facility’s real purpose: to process raw sewage from nearby Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city.
But as the threat of a United States attack on Iraq mounts, many here fear the sewage plant may soon join the scrap heap that surrounds it.
United Nations sanctions have restricted the import of parts for the treatment center for the past 12 years, forcing technicians to rely on jury-rigged components and equipment cannibalized from local factories. With the facility limping along, the plant director, Nory Mustafa, worries that fixing damage from US bombs, should they fall again, would be even more laborious and complicated than it was after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
“We’re far more vulnerable now,” Mustafa said. “We don’t have any replacement parts like we did then. If we get hit, it could be impossible to make the repairs.”
UN officials and foreign aid workers say Iraq’s overall infrastructure, like the treatment center here, is near the point of collapse — because of lingering damage from the Gulf War, the far-reaching sanctions and the government’s decision to focus its limited financial resources on rebuilding the military.
“Another war would be a disaster for the Iraqi people,” said an aid official in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital 300 miles northwest of here. “They’re much weaker than they were 12 years ago. They no longer have the same resilience.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross and UN agencies operating in Iraq have started crafting plans to provide emergency services in the event of war. A Red Cross official said the organization has begun to stockpile modest amounts of medicine and water-filtration units in Iraq and in neighbouring Jordan and Iran.
But UN officials acknowledge that their preparations are inadequate to handle the conditions they expect if there is a war. “There could be a few million refugees heading to Iran. There could be six million people in Baghdad without access to clean water or electricity. There could be millions more waiting for someone to give them food because that’s what they’ve come to depend on,” a UN official said.
UN agencies — particularly those that deal with refugees, health and food — worry that requesting additional funds to stockpile goods in and around Iraq now would send a message that they believe a conflict is inevitable.
But because UN agencies and international organizations have played limited roles in Iraq, aid officials contend that any relief mission should be preceded by months of planning. “We are very concerned about the capacity and preparedness of the humanitarian community to respond quickly if the situation in Iraq is not resolved peacefully,” said Sandra Mitchell, vice president of the International Rescue Committee.
Aid workers are particularly incensed by what they say is the Pentagon’s refusal to work with humanitarian groups to draw up contingency plans. Instead, they say, Pentagon officials have delivered the message that aid organizations should not expect to operate in much of Iraq for several months after a start of hostilities.
Food is regarded as perhaps the most important part of the humanitarian equation. Unlike the days before the Gulf War, when many Iraqis were prosperous enough to buy food at private markets, more than 90 per cent of the population now depends on monthly rations of wheat flour, rice, tea, cooking oil, beans and other commodities provided by the government and distributed by neighbourhood merchants.
Aid workers fear that the handouts would be stopped during a war and that their resumption could be delayed if President Saddam Hussein’s government is replaced.
American organizations want to send scouting teams to Iraq and Iran, but they said they have been prevented by US sanctions laws, which require Treasury Department approval for visits. Even if they did receive permission, it is unclear whether the Iraqi government would allow them to enter.
US defence officials and military analysts have said it is unlikely that American commanders would target Iraq’s infrastructure as they did in 1991. Instead, the officials and analysts said, the Pentagon intends to focus more on military facilities and other centers of power.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.