AMERICA AS THE DISEASE, NOT THE CURE:

The Fragility of Iraq (NY Times, April 5, 2003)

The good news about the looming humanitarian crisis in Iraq is that it is not yet a crisis. There are pockets of desperate need but no widespread suffering. If sufficient military power can be brought to bear quickly to guarantee the security of aid workers, it should be possible to supply all the food, water and medical supplies needed.

Allied officials and nongovernmental organizations have been surprised and relieved that no major humanitarian shortages have yet developed. There has been no mass movement of war refugees fleeing from desperate conditions in southern Iraq, and the exodus of thousands of residents from Baghdad is driven more by fear of being caught in the midst of a battle than by deprivation.

Supplies of food and water are clearly short in some areas. The first relief trucks into towns in southern Iraq triggered near-riots as residents scrambled to grab food rations and water bottles. But over all the food supplies in Iraq are mostly adequate. The Iraqi government distributed enough food before the conflict began to last the average family to the end of April, so it will be a few weeks before the situation becomes desperate.

Strenuous efforts by the allies to avoid bombing water pumps and treatment plants, and the electrical systems they rely on, have mostly succeeded, guaranteeing most Iraqis a clean supply of drinking water. The worst potential problem — a water crisis in Basra when a pumping station was knocked out by the loss of electricity — has been largely solved through the heroic efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose engineers put the plant back on line. A water crisis in Umm Qasr has been mitigated by opening a water pipeline from Kuwait, though distribution remains chaotic. There has been no major outbreak of disease in Iraq.

Still, the situation is extremely fragile.

Ever notice how 1.5 million deaths in ten years isn't a humanitarian crisis, when they're caused by UN sanctions and Saddam, but it suddenly becomes a looming crisis when the allies act to end the regime? Did those Iraqi's who starved or died from lack of medicine since 1991 not think it was a critical situation? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 5, 2003 9:01 AM