BAGHDAD, Iraq - He didn't hear it coming, the one that hit him.
Nahmed Jabir Ali was too busy running to find his 2-year-old son,
Gaith, that day 11 years ago, the day the U.S. warplanes came.
Nahmed, 34 at the time, remembers nothing of the shrapnel slicing
through his left hip. He awoke in the hospital and learned his leg had
been amputated - and that Gaith himself had suffered severe brain
injuries.
To this day, the boy lives ''as a vegetable,'' his father said.
Gaith needs special treatment that Iraqi hospitals cannot provide and
his family cannot afford.
Nahmed's story illustrates how the prolonged showdown between the
United States and the United Nations on one side and the Iraqi
government on the other has hurt millions of Iraqis. Since the bombing
of Iraq in 1991, they have had to suffer the collapse of the country's
health system, once considered among the best in the Middle East.
Iraq's medical crisis has cost hundreds of thousands of lives,
according to U.N. reports, but no one knows for sure exactly how many.
The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 100,000
children were dying each year in Iraq because of poor health and
sanitation systems caused by medical and food sanctions placed on Iraq
after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
In 1996, international pressure to ease the sanctions led to a
food-for-oil program administered by the United Nations. The program,
in theory, lets Iraq sell a certain amount of oil on the world market,
much of which ends up in U.S. gas tanks. The government can use the
money to buy nonmilitary equipment such as hospital equipment, sewage
pumps and trucks.
But the transaction is not that simple.
A U.N. committee reviews Iraqi purchase requests to make sure any
equipment or medical supplies could not be used for military purposes.
The committee, known and hated here as ''661'' for the number of the
U.N. resolution establishing it, is seen as a way for the United
States to punish innocent Iraqis for not removing President Saddam
Hussein from power.
''If this thing had happened to Americans, I am sure they would
have a great deal of anger toward whomever caused it,'' Nahmed said.
''But I know the American people are good people. I would just ask
that they realize we need treatment.''
The answer to the medical crisis in Iraq is not as clear-cut as the
Iraqi regime would have outsiders believe. Many medical supplies have
dual purposes - besides healing people, they also can be used to make
biological weapons.
U.N. inspectors, before being kicked out in 1998, found examples of
the Iraqi regime ordering large amounts of material to grow viral
cultures, far more than was needed for hospitals. The United Nations
holds up many purchases because it does not trust Saddam's regime.
In addition, the regime has used much of its food-for-oil money to
go on a building spree, constructing opulent presidential palaces and
enormous mosques bearing Saddam's name. Money spent on these
ostentatious projects could have purchased medicine from neighboring
Jordan or Syria.
Yet even that would not solve Iraqi hospitals' desperate need for
equipment. Only easing or lifting the sanctions will let Iraqis buy
X-ray machines, heart monitors and other equipment in sufficient
numbers to improve their teetering health system.
With President Bush's declaration that Iraq, along with Iran and
North Korea, formed an axis of evil promoting world terrorism, any
possibility of lifting the sanctions ceased as long as Saddam is in
power.
Since the imposition of the United Nations sanctions right after
the Persian Gulf War, doctors with dwindling medical supplies have
scrambled to cope with dramatic increases in infectious diseases -
cholera, amoebic dysentery, whooping cough. Many victims of these
treatable diseases have died for lack of equipment.
Dr. Akhmed Sabar, 35, walking the ward at Saddam Children's
Hospital in west Baghdad, points to limp, emaciated bodies of young
women lying quietly in sagging, rusty beds. Many of them suffer from
treatable illnesses like severe anemia.
''I'm a doctor, but I don't have what I need to help my patients,''
he said. ''I am faced with shortages and difficulties every day.''
Asked what Saddam Children's Hospital needs the most, Sabar fumbles
to pick key items from a long list: defibrillators, electrocardiogram
monitors, incubators for premature babies, heart medication, test
tubes, surgical equipment, X-ray machines.
The hospital has some of this gear, but not enough to serve its
estimated 1,000 patients.The food-oil program helped, but many
diseases - including cancer - cannot be treated in Iraq. Efforts to
ship the ill to other nations for treatment have met with little
success, especially with the recent talk of a new war.
Iraq's health problems go far beyond extreme medical cases. While
medical care is free, patients and their families must pay for
medicines - when available.
All of which leaves Nahmed to watch his 13-year-old profoundly
disabled son die slowly in front of him, something many Iraqis have
had to do since the Persian Gulf War.
Now that the boy has grown, Nahmed can't carry him to the doctor.
His own prosthetic leg - never fitted properly - causes great pain
when he walks. He can't afford to have it modified or replaced.
In a rare moment in Iraq, the entire interview with Nahmed,
conducted in his neighborhood, contained no speech extolling Saddam or
obligatory condemnation of U.S. hegemony. He simply spoke about the
bomb that randomly struck him and his son, and then he started crying.
''I extend my hand to the people of the United States,'' he said,
sobbing and turning to look out a window. ''I just want to get help
for my son.''
Good. Why shouldn't we treat our enemies like they are enmeies!
