The
kill children too,
don't they?
By
Biljana
Vankovska
TFF
associate
Professor at the University of Skopje, Macedonia
February 7, 2005
On its resolute road towards NATO
membership, via Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the
blessing of its mighty 'ally' and 'lobbyist', the
Macedonian Government has frequently demonstrated its
cooperative spirit. One question remains surface: is
there any limit that should not and will
not be crossed on that road?
The small Macedonian contingent in
the Operation "Freedom for Iraq" is supposed by its
Government to be a bargaining card for entering NATO, on
top of the - rather cosmetic - security reforms. The new
Minister of Defence recently announced quite an original
way to support its 'Ally': in Skopje (and/or in
neighbouring states to Iraq) Iraqi citizens will be
trained for three months in rescue operations, medical
help and crisis management. That's something for a
country like Macedonia in which a mere 'crisis' would be
bliss!
These training periods are to be
given "as long as there is a need for them" - which
means, we can take it, for a very long time indeed. This
activity is also supposed to be a concrete expression of
support for the new Iraqi Government, which the recent
elections supposedly have made 'democratic' by
definition?
It would take vast efforts to
refrain from cynical remarks on what and how Itaqis can
learn from the Macedonian 'achievements' in these fields,
especially in crisis management. One can't escape the
feeling that Macedonia could learn far more from the
Iraqis who have been coping with hell for many years and
are most likely to continue doing so for many years. The
only exciting thing in this new idea stems from the fact
that the Macedonian instructors will be safe, being far
from the military operations, while those lucky Iraqis
will be able, at least for a short while, to feel like
human beings.
Many of us who opposed the war in
Iraq since its first forebodings in 2002 have repeatedly
warned the public about the coming humanitarian
catastrophe for the Iraqi people and the gross breaches
of international law. Some (but regrettably few) of us
dared also say publicly that Macedonia definitively does
not belong in the so-called Coalition of the Willing. It
is a weak and poor country, which suffered an internal
conflict of its own four years ago and needs to focus on
its own peace-building and democracy-building, rather
than spreading 'freedom' and 'democracy' elsewhere.
Today the arguments of the global
anti-war movement against the Iraqi war have proved to be
painfully true, although the death-toll and the level of
destruction indicate how 'optimistic' we were in our old
prognoses. Therefore, we need to brief the Macedonian
instructors and trainers a bit about the Iraqi reality to
give them an idea about what their Iraqi students may
need to know in the field of 'civil protection' - from
whom and what is another question...
The international economic
sanctions from 1991 to 2003 are estimated by UN organs to
have killed about one million Iraqi civilians, out of
which more than one-third were children; this is now
largely forgotten. The governments of the countries
involved in the present war try hard to avoid any
publicity on its death-toll, estimated at one hundred
thousand victims (by the respected British medical
journal The Lancet) in the first 18 months - again with
children, women and elderly people over-represented among
them. The mortality rate of children under five in
'liberated' Iraq is higher than during the dictatorship.
More than ten percent of medical facilities were
destroyed or heavily damaged. The air attack on the
Emergency hospital in Falluja on 9 November 2004 was
condemned as a crime against humanity by Amnesty
International, and one should certainly not forget the
shocking scenes of collecting dead bodies in the sport
stadium, before their mass burial. Falluja is already our
time's Guernica - a symbol of our shame and failure to
prevent human sufferings.
So is Macedonia now allowed and
able to wash its hands from these crimes, only because
its military participation is symbolic and 'innocent' -
its soldiers are situated in the military base Taji, near
Baghdad, not fully engaged in military operations? Should
Macedonia and its citizens feel any better because it is
now going to focus on humanitarian relief and protection
from fire and other disasters? Of course not!
Here's another piece of information
for the Macedonian instructors: they'd better keep in
mind that the causes of fires in Iraq are not to be found
in bad installations or accidents. Not even from
'ordinary' military weapons. According to the report of
the British charity organisation Medact, the "Freedom for
Iraq" Operation uses unlimited possibilities to
experiment with old weapons (napalm known from Vietnam
and depleted uranium from the Gulf War and the Balkans)
and new ones, such as phosphorus and even jet oil.
The use of these weapons develops
so high temperatures that human bodies simply evaporate.
What is going on in Iraq, dear trainers, has nothing to
do with the ridiculous "All and everybody in defence and
protection" campaigns that were run in former Yugoslavia!
It has no resemblance to the little Macedonian 'war
crisis' in 2001, with merely 200 people killed. The
Macedonian military presence in Iraq is indeed pathetic
(in terms of the number of soldiers deployed and their
ability to do anything of military importance); yet this
latest attempt to teach Iraqis how to rescue their
children, homes, hospitals and schools is even more
pathetic, indeed absurd.
Gen. Tommy Franks has already
publicly admitted that they have stopped counting dead
bodies (unless they are American or British). Bush's
America is obviously ready to fight for Iraq's freedom
until the last drop of Iraqi blood. Moreover, eventually
the death-toll may become so unbelievably high, an
abstract figure that no longer touches or horrifies
people, because one hundred thousand victims have no
single name, no face or scream! They become just a
number!
Truly, the number of deaths in the
Tsunami catastrophe can be compared with the Iraqi one,
but there is one little difference. Those people died our
of the nature's caprice (although they might have been
reduced a bit if there had not been snags and omissions
in the warning system). In Iraq, children and innocents
die because of men's inhumanity, greed and hypocrisy.
Yes, because of our cowardice and impotence
too...
And children die in Macedonia too,
don't they? Like the two-year old boy, who died of
bronchial obstruction a few days ago, while his mother
was trying to borrow some money from the neighbours in
order to take him to the hospital. They die silently, in
cold and misery, because of allegedly irresponsible
mothers who - imagine! - allow their children to live in
cold and without regular meals! These children in
Macedonia do have faces and names; yet, nothing will
change the fact that they leave this world as silently
and miserably as they came into it. Not a tear will drop,
not a memory will remain.
The government will keep talking
proudly about our participation in US-led 'peace'
missions which will eventually be rewarded by full
membership in NATO. Still, while ambitiously running the
NATO race and trying to please the Hegemon, UNICEF
reports show that Macedonia remains in the lower half of
the table on what countries spend for the needs of
children. Many children will never be born in Macedonia
because their would-be parents are too responsible to
give birth to something so precious as a child is in the
conditions of societal poverty, unemployment and social
injustice.
Strangely, all this human suffering
and deprivation is justified with reference to the quest
for democracy. Democracy has allegedly won even in the
Iraqi hell. Unfortunately, children will also keep dying
in those 'democracies' which seem to only exist in the
fantasies and fallacies fabricated in Washington and
Brussels.
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TFF & the author 2005
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