Iraq: Four Years Later

The International Committee of the Red Cross released a report on the humanitarian disaster in Iraq that coincides with the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. As I went through it, I felt the need to pay a small tribute to the late Margaret Hassan, the incredibly courageous director of CARE International in Iraq until her kidnaping and killing by extremists in 2004.

I spent an evening with Margaret and some of her colleagues in Baghdad in November 2002, a few months before the U.S.-led invasion. She was a British woman who married an Iraqi and spent more than 30 years of her life devoted to improving the lives of people in her adoptive country. Her anguish about the coming humanitarian dangers was palpable; recalling her words now is heartbreaking.

Margaret spoke eloquently on a point that the Pentagon's war planners conspicuously failed to grasp: more than a decade of punishing economic sanctions had so torn the fabric of Iraqi society, that the looming war would leave the country in ruins, it's broken people unable to organize a better future for themselves. She noted how the combination of Saddam's dictatorship and the international embargo had made Iraq a nation dependent on a network of welfare handouts financed by the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. "Iraqis will have little to fall back on," she explained. "Once, people had cash and assets like gold, but they have used these to live under sanctions. If there is a crisis, what will people do? The vast majority of people have no cushion. The quality of life has been totally eroded.”

The plight of Iraqis pained Hassan deeply. Education now in Iraq, she said, was in a catastrophic state. “There are no new textbooks, or ideas being discussed,” she said. “What kind of teaching and learning is going on? This is a serious problem with long-term implications.” She said that schools were operating on three shifts due to overcrowding and that teachers were quitting over the measly pay. She rattled off U.N. stats showing that 16 percent of children in urban areas and 39 percent in rural areas were failing to attend school—and the rate for girls was double that for boys.

Hassan told me that Iraqis were so desperate for cash to feed their families that they would do anything for work. She pointed out the informal depot of job-seekers near her CARE office—a street corner where men looking for work would congregate before sunrise and wait for employers in search of day laborers for a few dinars a day. She bemoaned the fact that in Baghdad, some doctors were driving taxis because it paid better wages. The crime rate in Iraq, she complained, was soaring.

“The nuclear family and the extended family are being destroyed,” she said. “People are being dispossessed of hope and happiness, of everything that makes us human. What worries me is seeing a country of people affected by 12 years of sanctions—their lack of exposure to the outside world, which is moving on, not standing still like we are. Nobody is going to be able to give those 12 years back, even if sanctions are lifted tomorrow.”

She refrained from praising Saddam Hussein, but spoke of her pride in Iraqi achievements over the years that were now been destroyed. She cited the U.N. human development index, in which Iraq had experienced a steep downward slide. “Iraq was a country that was aspiring to move up, not down, and not down so rapidly,” she said. “Iraq was a leader in education. Iraq was a leader in fine arts. People looked up to Iraq. Iraqis have always been a well-educated population when other countries were still riding around on camels. Now we are being dispossessed and others are rising above us. That has dangerous implications for the psyche of the nation.”

Th ICRC's report catalogued some of the grim features of post-Saddam Iraq that are familiar to most newspaper readers--conflicts, murders, displaced people, poor medical care, malnutrition, unemployment. "The conflict in Iraq is inflicting immense suffering on the entire population," the report said, adding, "Civilians bear the brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor security conditions that are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions."

What caught my eye was the line about the infrastructure being in a poor state of repair. Sabotage and fuel shortages impeded maintenance on power stations, shutting down, among other things, water treatment plants that are vital to the public health. When I spoke to Margaret in 2002, I learned that she had spent the last decade working to rebuild Iraq's water treatment system. That was Margaret Hassan, one of Iraq's true heroes.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo