79 / 92
THE HUMANITARIAN DISASTER IN IRAQ:
BEYOND THE ATROCITIES OF DAESH
Pedro Rojo Pérez
1
T
he human element in Iraq continues to be alienated by the circles of power that
have been involved in decision-making processes for over 30 years. Before the string
of conflicts began, with the 1980 Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was the envy of the region
and boasted financial and social indicators likening it to Western countries. However, its
geographical location, wealth of raw materials and the ambitions of regional powers and
their leaders have submerged its people into a seemingly never-ending spiral of suffering.
First the Iran-Iraq war and the loss of over a million human lives, followed by the invasion
of Kuwait and the Gulf War, the terrible humanitarian consequences of the international
embargo imposed after the war with Kuwait in 1991 that caused the death of half a million
children
2
and the lethal legacy of the depleted uranium bombs used in the war and again
in the 2003 invasion.
3
Finally the subsequent US occupation, which, instead of signalling
the start of the prosperity it promised, amounted to nothing more than a million deaths,
according to some reports.
4
The widely reported grave human consequences loom large over the Iraqi people,
generated by the latest factor of oppression: Daesh, or Islamic State. In this article our aim
1 Arabist and President of the Al Fanar Foundation for Arab Knowledge in Madrid
(www.fundacionalfanar.org).
2 UNICEF (1999).
Results of the 1999 Iraq Child and Maternal Mortality Surveys
.
3 “According to a UN report, the effect of projectiles launched in Iraq is six times greater than the effects of
the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II”. In: Al Yafal O (2012). Iraq, ten years
after 2003: human banquets of hellish substances.
Al Safir
, Beirut, 13/09/2012. Translated from Arabic at
www.boletin.org.
4
Major studies of war mortality
. MIT Center for International Studies, Cambridge [online]. Available in:
http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/.