Filed for Evening News, 28 August 1991
The Gulf War is now beginning to fade from our memories. But before it passes gracefully into history as a successful foreign adventure against an evil aggressor, I must make one more effort to set the record straight.
In all that has been said about the conflict, there has been hardly any attempt to dispassionately examine the real gains and losses. It has been widely accepted that Britain, justice and “our boys” done good. Hardly anyone would challenge the idea that we won.
That is why I was relieved to read an article in the 3 August edition of the British Medical Journal. It was entitled ‘Health costs of the Gulf war’ and written by Ian Lee, a researcher with the Medical Educational Trust, and Professor Andy Haines, from Whittington Hospital, both based in London.
What the article and its accompanying report (‘Counting the Human Cost of the Gulf War’ available for £2 from the Medical Educational Trust, 601 Holloway Road, London N19 4DJ) try to do is to estimate the total deaths, illnesses, environmental damage, human rights abuses and economic costs attributable to the war. And then use the information to help answer the key question: was it worth it?
The report suggests that between 100,000 and 120,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, perhaps 25,000 of them retreating on the road to Basra. Another 5,000 to 15,000 Iraqi civilians are thought to have lost their lives in the thousand bombing missions a day flown by allied forces.
In comparison, the allies reported a total of 343 dead, at least 35 of whom were victims of “friendly fire”. In Israel 39 Iraqi Scud missiles caused 13 deaths. In Kuwait somewhere between 2,000-5,000 people were killed by the occupying Iraqi forces.
Of course the dying did not stop when the war was over. Amongst the 1.8 million Kurdish refugees who fled to the Iranian and Turkish borders and the 100,000 Shi’ite refugees who ran to the marshes of southern Iraq, death rates from disease, dehydration and starvation were high.
One estimate suggests between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths amongst the refugees. In addition perhaps 20,000 civilians perished in the unsuccessful Kurdish and Shi’ite uprisings against Saddam Hussein encouraged by allied leaders.
Allied bombing - more intensive than during either the Korean or Vietnam wars - has also wrecked Iraqi infrastructures, endangering the health of much of the population. A United Nations report has concluded that the results are close to an apocalypse.
“Most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology,” it said.
A study by the Harvard School of Public Health in the US has painted a desperate picture of Iraq’s “public health catastrophe”. Electricity supplies have been cut, sewage treatment has ceased and medical supplies have run out.
There are already epidemics of gastroenteritis, cholera and typhoid, with mass outbreaks of polio, meningitis and hepatitis threatening. Thousands of children are dying from malnutrition. The Harvard team conservatively estimated that child mortality has doubled with a further 80,000-200,000 under-fives likely to die over the next year.
Add to this the health damage caused by acid smoke from the burning oil wells, the total economic costs in excess of 100 billion dollars and the human rights abuses of which the Kuwaitis were guilty after the war, and you have a pretty impressive catalogue of disaster.
In sum, at least 150,000 people have already died and many more will die to restore feudal rule to Kuwait and protect a few thousand Kuwaitis from terrorism. Most of the victims are ordinary citizens of Iraq, who cannot be blamed for Saddam Hussein’s aggression and are still suffering from his cruelty.
This was not a war that we won. It was a war that humanity lost.