wfn.org | More sanctions mean suffering for Iragui people

[Mennonite Central Committee Communications]

TOPIC:  More sanctions mean more suffering for Iraqi people
DATE:   September 13, 1996
CONTACT:  Pearl Sensenig
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

MORE SANCTIONS MEAN MORE SUFFERING FOR IRAQI
PEOPLE

AKRON, Pa. --  The recent escalation of violence in Iraq will only
further deepen Iraqi people's suffering, say Mennonite Central
Committee (MCC) workers.

International sanctions, which are silently starving the Iraqi people,
were renewed on September 3 for another 60 days.  This happened as
Saddam Hussein's forces invaded a Kurdish-controlled city in northern
Iraq, and the United States retaliated with missile attacks on Iraq. 
Earlier the United Nations had been discussing permitting Iraq to sell
oil to buy much-needed food and medicine.   

"Even though Iraqi people may not have been hurt directly by the U.S.
missiles, they are suffering terribly under continuing international
sanctions," says Paul Pereverzoff.  The sanctions have not served to
softened Saddam Hussein's brutal reign.

Pereverzoff, co-director of MCC work in Jordan, visited Iraq in
February to help distribute MCC aid and to assess needs for the
agency.  He saw firsthand how ordinary Iraqis are being hurt by their
own government and by international sanctions imposed on Iraq after
it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"I saw people selling anything they have -- hearing aids, carpets,
child's toys -- to get money to buy food," says Pereverzoff.   One
family was dismantling a room of their house, selling off reinforced
steel from the columns and roof.  At a food distribution site, a riot
nearly broke out when the food ran out and hungry people had to be
turned away.  Pereverzoff of Rosthern, Sask., is a member of Pilgrims
Mennonite Church in Akron, Pa.

Iraq, an oil-rich country, had a fairly high standard of living before the
Persian Gulf War.  Recently researchers working for the Food and
Agriculture Organization found as many as a half million Iraqi
children may have died since 1991 because of the sanctions. 
Malnutrition, once rare, is now widespread among children.

Two years ago MCC beef was used in a school lunch program where
each child received a meat sandwich and a glass of milk.  Attendance
rose dramatically.  Those in charge of the program required the
children to eat the meal at school; children wanted to take the food
home to share with their families.  CARE International workers
estimated this small lunch comprised four-fifths of the children's daily
caloric intake.

In February, 400 cases of MCC canned beef went to the 1,000
residents of the Al-Rashad Mental Hospital in Baghdad.  This was the
first meat they had eaten in more than a year.

"These are the forgotten of the forgotten of the forgotten," says
Pereverzoff.  "In any culture people with mental illnesses are forgotten,
in times of crisis even more so, and Iraqis as a people have been
forgotten by the world."       Currently 13,600 MCC school kits are
being distributed to Iraqi children as the new school year begins.  It
took MCC more than a year to obtain U.S. Treasury Department
permission to send these school supplies.  An MCC shipment of 1,892
comforters is still being detained in Jordan as the U.N. sanctions
committee deliberates over whether it can be allowed into Iraq.  "I
guess they're trying to decide if blankets can be dangerous," remarks
Pereverzoff.

Ed Epp, who in 1991 visited the Kurdish area that the Iraqi military
recently attacked, says the Kurds are also among the world's forgotten
people.  

"The image of thousands of human beings coming over the mountain
passes, carrying what they could, wearing their best clothes, walking
through the mud and snow will haunt me forever," says Epp, who
directs MCC's Middle East program.  Some 1 million Kurds became
refugees because of the Persian Gulf War and its aftermath.  In 1991
MCC airlifted food, clothing and blankets to Kurds who had fled Iraq
into Iran.

Epp calls the safe haven established for the Kurds in northern Iraq
after the Persian Gulf War a "stop gap measure," not a solution to the
Kurdish aspiration for a homeland.  "I think we are now seeing what
happens when band-aids stay in place too long without any attempt at
curing the problem," he notes. 

"In Iraq a violent response will only make life more difficult for the
innocent.  It will sow the seeds of hatred and anger, not only in Iraq,
but also in other Arab countries," says Epp.  "This is a pragmatic
response, but theologically, too, we Mennonites cannot endorse
violence.  To follow Jesus is to follow peace."    
                                 -30-
Pearl Sensenig, MCC Communications
13september1996

MCC photo available:  This February 1996 photograph shows the chief
nun and Mike Nahal, of the Middle East Council of Churches,
unpacking cans of MCC beef in the Sisters of Charity storeroom in
Baghdad, Iraq.  The Sisters of Charity used the meat in their ministry
to orphaned and abandoned children.  In 1996 MCC sent 57,600 cans
of beef to Iraq, as well as school supplies.  (MCC photo by Paul
Pereverzoff)