Ravages of war: when the West intervened – Iraq

Image by openDemocracy via Flickr

It seems that no one paused to think about what would happen after the death of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was the United States’ initial reason for invading the country in 2003, and western media did much to emphasise his wicked reputation. But the void left after a government suffers a sudden death was never going to be resolved quietly. Violence and disorder following the intervention of the west comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with recent world history. Take Palestine, for example, whose troubles were escalated after British colonisation. Turn also to Syria, where the actions of the west against the government have caused horrific violence on both sides of the conflict. Can western countries make claim to peacemaking when their history of intervention is littered with violence? The events of Iraq since 2003 suggest not.

The United States’ reasons for invading Iraq were never selfless. Saddam Hussein was deemed an immediate threat to US security, and the validity of the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction is questionable. The invasion was fuelled by a hatred incited by the events of 9/11. One only has to look at the vast increase in Muslim hate crimes across the US to recognise that this was an issue not addressed by the American government before they attacked.

Unfortunately, the actions of an extremist minority, and the resulting intolerance by the west, took its toll on the people of Iraq. A website tracking the public record of violent deaths in the country since the 2003 invasion reasons the death toll to be at 224,000. Civilians died of bombing campaigns as much as militants did, and many more were permanently disabled or otherwise wounded. The bombs weren’t just from the west, either: the power vacuum left by the removal of Saddam Hussein’s government led to heavy sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis in a struggle for power that has lasted up to the present day. But civilians were also the target of other attacks, some direct and others incidental, that reached beyond the immediate impact of a bomb and continue to haunt Iraq today.

Western war crimes were made possible by the dehumanisation of Iraqi people. One such example of this is the gang-rape of fourteen year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her and her family in an Iraqi village to the west of Al-Mahmudiyah. One of the five US soldiers convicted of the crime later confessed that he ‘didn’t think of Iraqis as humans’. Britain, too, has been held to scrutiny after increasing accusations of war crimes in the country during the occupation. The men who raped, tortured and murdered Iraqi people are the same men who were celebrated at home for their heroism. Being a soldier does not make someone a hero, and nowhere is this clearer than in the ever-mounting evidence against western soldiers in Iraq. Nevertheless, the impact of the Iraq War on US and British soldiers is well-known. Recovery centres and dedicated charities provide help for those returning from Iraq and other countries with psychological and physical wounds. Awareness of ex-soldier suicide rates and the increase in violent behaviour amongst men who served in the war is on the increase. Help is available for those suffering from PTSD and physical disabilities.

But what of the people of Iraq? For the remaining family of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and others like them who suffered directly at the hands of western soldiers, the psychological scars left behind will not heal. But western intervention affected Iraq as a whole as well as those individuals. Since the 2003 invasion, more than four million Iraqis have been displaced, many of them families. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, around 4.5 million children have become orphans, 70% of them since western intervention started. Iraq’s healthcare structure has been torn apart, and half of Iraqi doctors have left the country. All of these factors have a serious impact on the mental as well as physical wellbeing of those affected. Combined, they create a health crisis that is being seriously under-reported – while the fate of western soldiers continues to take priority.

If people are not shocked by the plight of the Iraqi people as a whole, they must at least consider the west’s impact on the children of Iraq. A report by Joanne Baker in 2013 detailed the suffering of Iraq’s youngsters in statistics. Of the four million people displaced since 2003, for example, up to two million were children. Around 20% of these children were reported missing by their families since 2003, amounting to around 93,500 children. Moreover, many of those displaced are suffering further from malnutrition, lack of shelter, and lack of basic healthcare and education. Around 18% of people over the age of nine are illiterate. Because of poor nutrition and water quality, only one in five children will reach their fifth birthday. A report by the World Health Organisation found that 70% of Iraqi children were suffering from trauma-related symptoms. It is worth considering, too, that these figures are from two years ago, and one year before the re-entry of western forces into Iraq.

This report does not begin to cover the entirety of the west’s impact on Iraq. The long-term economic consequences of the war are still developing, and the growing crisis in Syria continues to worsen the situation of Iraqi people. With western intervention restarting in 2014, three years after the withdrawal of troops, the world is beginning to see other consequences that will engulf the Middle East before moving beyond its borders. One such consequence, of course, is ISIS, a product of American intervention that will further the destruction of Iraq and the Middle East for the foreseeable future. We cannot know the fate of Iraq if the west had not intervened, but it can be said with certainty that many of the country’s current problems may have been lessened, or might not have existed at all.

Originally published on The Global Panorama.

Hidden history: the plight of Palestine

Image by Wall in Palestine via Flickr

In the light of news stories and photographs from the Gaza Strip, the plight of Palestinians has been firmly catapulted back into the public eye. The country’s side of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been largely publicised, provoking sympathy and criticism in equal measures. Palestine’s history of suffering, however, remains obscure. Few who read the news stories and watch the television programmes realise that the plight of Palestine extends beyond the country itself, beyond Israel and beyond the Middle East, to British colonial rule and the failure of the United Nations to solve every crisis with which they were faced.

The Palestinian state had been in the control of the Ottoman Empire prior to the First World War, but following Turkey’s defeat, colonial Britain absorbed the region as the British Mandate of Palestine in 1917. Palestine soon became a forcibly-established ‘haven’ for Jewish people, with Britain and Europe as a whole ignoring the cries of protest from non-Jewish Palestinian inhabitants. Large numbers of Jewish people migrated to the region, peaking in the 1930s during the Nazi-era anti-Semitic movement. This influx led to a three-year national uprising in 1936 against British colonial rule. Although beginning as a largely political protest, a peasant-led resistance marked a more violent second phase in 1937. In British colonial fashion, the revolt was brutally suppressed. Statistics vary, but the death toll for Arabs was estimated at around 5,000, with a further 15,000 injured.

It is the United Nations’ response to this growing crisis of aggression that set the tone for their failures up to the present day. As Britain struggled to control the violence erupting in the region, the UN proposed to partition Palestine into two independent states, one Palestinian Arab and one Jewish, although the latter later proclaimed its independence as Israel. Ultimately, this decision allowed for the absorption of Palestinian land by Israel on one side, and other Middle Eastern countries on the other. The fracturing effect of the division was aptly demonstrated by the mass exodus of indigenous Palestinian people expelled from their homes into neighbouring countries in the late 1940s.

The further absorption of Palestinian territory by Israel in 1967 resulted in another exodus of around half a million people. The fight for Palestinian liberation and the retreat of Israel continued, politically and otherwise, throughout the 1970s. A UN decision to grant the Palestinian Liberation Organisation observer status led to hostility towards the Palestinians from other areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, in which a large number of Palestinian refugees had settled since the exoduses of the 1940s and 1960s. In 1982, a militia close to the right-wing Kataeb Party massacred Palestinians sheltering in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut under the eyes of Israel, despite the latter’s guarantee of Palestinian safety in the region in the same year. The number of deaths in this massacre is disputed: some reports claim around 460 died, but the reality could be anywhere up to 3,500.

The pattern of massacres and mass emigrations has continued into the last few decades of Palestinian history, and has been focused largely on the Israeli-Palestinian region. Attempted and successful Israeli occupations of Occupied Palestinian Territory in 1987 and 2000 led to further heavy losses of life amongst Palestinians as Israelis fighters used brutal force, not limited to extra-judicial killings, suicide attacks and mortar fire. The political and ethical complexities of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict means that it is difficult, if not impossible, to wholly support either side, but figures on the conflict since September 2000 show a huge difference in fatalities between the two: at least 1,198 Israelis have been killed since 2000, whereas in 2015 alone, more than 2,000 Palestinians have died, with overall numbers reaching 9,000 or more.

The plight of Palestine has not lessened in the 21st century, but a large part of recent Palestinian suffering has been significantly neglected by world media. News organisations relish in the controversy of the Israel-Palestine narrative, but rarely jump on stories about internal Palestinian conflicts resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people. The struggles between Hamas and Fatah for control of the Gaza strip, unresolved despite international intervention, remain a key cause of internal tension in the region. The political discordance of Palestine has directly translated into violence and death, with over 600 fatalities since the conflict began in 2006.

It is largely Israeli violence against Palestinians that receives media attention, and indeed Israeli violence makes up a large part of Palestine’s recent history. The huge numbers of Palestinians living under Israeli military rule since the uprisings of 1987 and 2000 continue to suffer under the strict governance of a power bigger than themselves. But while the Israel versus Palestine narrative has dominated media coverage of the conflict, it is important to remember the history that led to this point. The conflict now might be focused inwardly, narrowed down to Israel and Palestine and the regions directly surrounding them, but European countries and international organisations had a significant role to play in the creation of the fragmented region. This history has largely been forgotten, or at least suppressed, and the conflict has been reduced to an ‘us-versus-them’ standpoint between the two countries directly suffering from it. Both are perpetrators and both are victims, and it is impossible to discuss the plight of one without mention of the other. Looking at the long and complex history of the region, though, the failed involvement of other countries and the United Nations should be just as integral to any discussion of the region’s suffering as the Israel-Palestine narrative itself.

Originally posted on The Global Panorama.

Child labor: Israel's farm settlements

Photograph by Wagner T. Cassimiro “Aranha" via Flickr

A report from the Human Rights Watch released in April has stated that Palestinian children working on Israeli farm settlements are subjected to dangerous working conditions that violate international standards.

Children from the age of 11 have reported being exposed to potentially harmful pesticides and, in some cases, have to pay for any medical treatment they need as a result of work-related illness or injury. The organisation interviewed children who have experienced nausea, dizziness, vomiting and breathing difficulties as a result of their working conditions. The issue has been described by Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch as a human rights abuse.

Many of the children exploited by Israeli farms have a common economic background. According to the report, they belong to communities that have suffered as a result of Israel’s settlement policies, and in many cases have left school to work on the farms in order to provide for their families. The children are paid low wages in return for their labor, and 21 of the 38 children interviewed by the organisation had not completed the 10 years of basic education compulsory under both Palestinian and Israeli laws.

Israel is not alone in exploiting children for cheap labour. Figures published by the International Labor Organisation show that 168 million children undertake exploitative work globally, with 85 million of them in conditions classified as hazardous. While 78 million of these incidences occur in Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest occurrence of child labor: 59 million children—which is more than 21% of their child population—undertake exploitative work.

Agriculture is the most prominent sector in employing child labour around the world. Competition between producers of global goods is so high that child labour is seen as an effective tool to lower costs and keep their prices competitive. This is certainly the case for the cocoa trade in Western Africa, where 60% of the Ivory Coast’s export revenue comes from cocoa, according to the Food Empowerment Project. Children on cocoa farms, like those working on Israeli settlements, are exposed to agricultural chemicals without protective clothing. The project also reports that the children use chainsaws and machetes as standard tools, which violate international labour laws and a UN convention on child labour.

Like the Palestinian children, too, some of the children working on the cocoa farms do so because they need work to help support their families. In some cases, they are sold to farm owners by their relatives. That families are willing to subject their children to child labour is reflective of the great financial need many face in some of the poorest countries in the world. Although in most cases, the children’s relatives are unaware of the dangers involved in farm work.

The Human Rights Watch report suggests that countries in Europe as well as the United States, should take responsibility in ensuring that they do not contribute to the human rights abuses against children by ending business relationships with settlements. Products produced under child labour are already monitored by the US in an attempt to address this issue, but they do not include Israeli settlement products among these. It is essential that countries around the world are aware of the extent of child labor and take action to ensure that they do not benefit from it: the Human Rights Watch report is a hopeful step towards this.

Originally published on The Global Panorama.