Appendix 4 to the hearing of
the House International Relations Committee

February 25, 1998

Letter Dated 2-25-98
Submitted by Congressman Lee Hamilton, plus attachment

February 25, 1998

Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman, Chairman
Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Ranking Democratic Member,
Members,
Committee on International Relations
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Re: U.S. policy towards Iraq

Chairman Gilman, Mr. Hamilton, and Members of the Committee:

The undersigned represent a group of private individuals who are U.S. citizens and who are mostly of Iraqi extraction. We are academics, professionals, and businessmen. We are representative of all ethnic groups in Iraq. We also include all religious groups of Iraq's expatriate community -- Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Most of us are immigrants who came to the United States to find freedom and dignity.

For nearly a decade, the American public has been assured that our quarrel is not with the people of Iraq, but with their brutal leader, Saddam Hussein. Crippling sanctions over this period of time, however, have decimated the population of Iraq, leaving the regime not only intact, but virtually unaffected by sanctions. While Hussein builds palaces and plays games of brinkmanship with the international community, Iraqis -- children, the aged, the ill -- die in untold numbers. The simplest medications, which were ubiquitous in Iraq's sophisticated, western-style pre-war health care system, are simply unavailable now. Even in those instances where some medications can be found, their cost has become prohibitive to most Iraqis. Families once solidly in the middle class must now choose between putting food on the table or trying to obtain medicine for an ill family member.

Ordinary Iraqis, particularly children, die in the thousands every month as a proximate result of water-borne diseases brought about by the prohibition against Iraq's importation of chemicals necessary to purify drinking water. Anthony Benn, M.P., asked two weeks ago on the floor of the House of Commons if this conditions did not itself constitute an indirect use of chemical or biological warfare against the Iraqi civilian population.

The extent of the devastation inflicted upon innocent Iraqis as a direct result of sanctions is beyond comprehension. Illustrative statistics include:

*12% of children surveyed in Baghdad are malnourished, 28% have stunted growth, and 29% are underweight. — United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, December 1995

*As many as 4500 children are dying each month from problems related to malnutrition and a shortage of medical supplies. This is one child every ten minutes. -- United Nations International Children's Education Fund, 1995

*Dr. Leon Eisenberg of Harvard Medical School recently wrote that the sanctions against Iraq represent a "disastrous example of war against the public health . . . The destruction of the infrastructure resulted in devastating long-term effects on health." Water is contaminated and electricity has been limited in a society that had grown dependent on modern facilities. --New England Journal of Medicine, April 25, 1997.

* Since the onset of sanctions, there has been a six-fold increase in the mortality rate for children under the age of five and the majority of the population has been on a semi-starvation diet. -- World Health Organization, March 1996.

* Sanctions are inhibiting the importation of spare parts, chemicals, and the means of transportation required to provide water and sanitation services to the civilian population of Iraq. --UNICEF, 1995

* Wheat-flour prices have increased 11,667 times since 1990. -- Center for Economic and Social Rights

* 20% of the Iraqi population live in dire poverty and cannot afford astronomically rising prices. -- United Nations

Dissatisfied with this situation, the Chicago Tribune was the first major newspaper in the United States to call for a re-examination of the brutal effects of the sanctions on Iraq's population. The headline of its lead editorial dated September 1, 1997, summed up the situation succinctly: "Iraq's people have suffered enough," a theme to which it returned on November 28th in its lead editorial, "Ease the suffering of Iraq's people." The Washington Post's lead editorial of October 22, 1997 cited alarming figures of "an annual extra-death toll of perhaps a million people, 60 percent of them children" and deplored the "still unrepaired desolation of the public health infrastructure bombed out in the war."

Pope John Paul II has repeatedly asserted, in the strongest terms, the moral necessity of relieving the suffering of Iraq's innocents. We agree with Members of Congress from across the political spectrum, including members of this Committee, who have stated that ways of ameliorating the suffering of Iraq's innocents must be found.

Although it may be that the current crisis has, for the moment, been averted, we wish to state on the record that we categorically oppose any planned bombing of Iraq. We do so not only because innocents -- including our families -- are at far greater risk of harm than Iraq's ruling elite; we also believe that a bombing campaign would be harmful to the foreign-policy interests of the United States and its allies in the region. To begin with, it is too horrible to contemplate the possibility that our bombs will release into the atmosphere the very toxins we seek to destroy through the inspections regime. Can one imagine the horror of photographs of Baghdad such as those from Halabcha but multiplied by ten- or a hundred-fold? In the end, bombing might cripple Hussein's capacity to produce biological weapons for only a relatively short period of time, since it is technically quite feasible to hide, transport, and redevelop these weapons and their components. Thus we are faced with the specter of dead civilian bodies lining the streets of Baghdad, with no measurable impact on Hussein's outlawed weapons programs.

It is universally conceded that bombing will not topple the current regime in Iraq; therefore, Saddam Hussein will become stronger as a political force in the region simply by surviving. Without question Iraq's a civilian population -- already barely able to survive -- will be hardest hit by renewed hostilities. It will appear to many in the region and throughout the world that the U.S. and Britain are aggressing upon these innocents, with a resultant effect of galvanizing support throughout the region for Iraq and its leader. In turn, pro-American regimes in the area, including those in Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States, could be substantially weakened. Bombing could also be the death-knell of an already anemic peace process.

It is unclear whether the current U.S. Administration has any long-term policy in mind for Iraq other than continuing the sanctions, coupled with reflex actions to Hussein's provocations. The lack of such long-term thinking is one of the major reasons that our policies are losing support in the region. We are also losing support around the world because no relief is in sight for Iraq's devastated population. Congressman Lee Hamilton has correctly noted that easing the plight of innocents in Iraq is a sine qua non of maintaining international support for our policy of isolating the Iraqi regime. We welcome the Security Council's recent action to increase the oil-for-food arrangement. But it is not enough. Hospitals must be allowed to be re-built. Water-purification, sewage-treatment, and electrical plants must be re-built. The food industry must be re-vitalized, including allowing the importation of agricultural machinery, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. We agree that the United Nations must assure itself that these materials are not used to re-arm this regime. But the wholesale blockade of these items is directly responsible for the needless death and malnutrition of, and disease in millions of innocent Iraqis, particularly children under the age of five. Had the Iraqi people been brought to this pitiable state through natural disaster, Americans would have been the first to find ways of relieving this human tragedy. We should do no less now. Whether Saddam Hussein could end the effect of sanctions by complying with his obligations is a moot point; he is not. But we ought not to stand idly by and allow a genocide of the Iraqi people to continue.

We urge Congress and the International Relations Committee to hold hearings on the plight of innocents in Iraq. Ways must be found to relieve their suffering, while maintaining such pressures as military sanctions on the Iraqi government. We would be pleased to co-operate with this Committee in any way to facilitate such hearings.

Respectfully,

FEISAL AMIN AL-ISTRABADI,
Attorney-at-law
3700 East U.S. Highway 30
Merrillville, IN 46410
(219) 947-7699

EMIL TOTONCHI, M.D., F.R.C.S., F.A.C.S.
860 North Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60610
(312) 944-2848

Attachments:

Washington Post lead editorial of 10/22/97
List of endorsers of above letter

Attachment 1

Iraq: Two Crises

Washington Post
October 22, 1997, pp. A20.

There are two crises in Iraq, and other nations of the world are responding in their fashion to only one. That one is urgent and familiar: the renewed confrontation Saddam Hussein has provoked by again resisting the U.N. arms inspections he agreed to after the gulf war. Last June Washington began pressing for new sanctions but, under Russian and French urging, put off the issue to October to allow Iraqi cooperation. Instead Iraq stonewalled, and now, with Russia and France still dragging, the United States suggests a further six-month wait and then, if Iraq is not in compliance, automatic new sanctions. If the United Nations is serious about its own credibility, this is a minimal plan.

The second quieter and barely noticed crisis in Iraq extends beyond the challenge of maintaining alliance fidelity in the face of an outlaw state's defiance. This one goes to the immense suffering of the Iraqi people as a result not simply of the war but of the international economic sanctions that have been in place against the regime in the nearly seven years since. The consequences are well attested to and include an annual extra-death toll of perhaps a million people, 60 percent of them children, and the still unrepaired desolation of the public health infrastructure bombed out in the war.

Americans are accustomed to treat this appalling situation for what it is -- the result of the overweening cynicism of a dictator exploiting the misery of his own people for political ends. Many figured that last year's opening of an oil-for-food humanitarian loophole in the sanctions would at one swoop ease both Iraqi misery and American discomfort. But little food and practically no medicine has passed through what is barely a billion-dollar loophole, and the public health infrastructure remains mostly debris.

The new sanctions Washington is cranking up would keep Iraqi military, intelligence, police and strategic industry officials from traveling abroad. The United States should be working hard to rally broad support for such a restriction. But this is not enough. Some new thinking is needed on how best to relieve innocent but hurt Iraqi civilians. A national or international awareness campaign? A larger humanitarian loophole? More focused attention to infrastructure repair? Something like this is essential to preserve what must be the two strands of American policy: tightening up on Iraq's arms violations, loosening up on the humanitarian needs of its people.

Attachment 2
List of Endorsers

The following endorse the contents of the letter attached hereto and wish to be associated with it: