Jan 16^th: The US attacks Iraq. Within two days not a single incubator was working in Iraq. Selective targeting systematically destroyed all means of civilian survival. Power stations, electrical grid, roads, railways, bridges, sewage and sanitation systems, food storage and production facilities, telecommunications, agricultural facilities, animal vaccine factories, places of industrial manufacture, water purification and desalination plants. On January 31^st British Defence Secretary Tom King announced that the first achievement of the air campaign had been "….the destruction of all nuclear reactor capability…"

(The conduct of the US led bombing campaign breached all international laws on the conduct of warfare, including the Geneva Conventions, the Tribunals of Nuremberg and The Hague, the UN General Assembly prohibition on attacking nuclear facilities, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Conventions on Genocide.

The attack method was described by Jack Geiger, President of the Physicians for Human Rights, as the ‘Bomb Now, Die Later’ approach.)

The US, having continually encouraged and voiced support if the Iraqi people rose up against Saddam Hussein, decides it can now not interfere with internal Iraqi affairs. The post war rebellion throughout March is brutally crushed by the remaining Iraqi forces loyal to Saddam. Reports emerge of ‘…concentration camps…’ as little as five miles from US occupied Iraqi territory. 30,000 refugees wander the desert.

February: A World Health Organisation/UNICEF mission to Baghdad estimates that the daily calorie intake of Iraqi civilian has fallen from 3340 kilo-calories to 1000, a figure that represents only one third of the WHO’s recommended daily intake.

1^st March: The Washington Post carries an article in which a US military source states: ‘At least 600 munitions dropped or fired every day of the war will have failed to explode and thus constitute a continuing hazard in the former combat zone.’ (The UK Medical Educational Trust later reported that as of November 1^st 1991, 6 people a day were being killed by unexploded ordnance.)

2^nd March: SCR 686 is passed by 11 votes; Cuba against, and abstentions by China, India and Yemen. Reaffirmed all previous resolutions and demanded that Iraq cease all hostilities, release all prisoners of war, Kuwaiti and third party nationals, accept liability for all losses incurred by such, return all seized equipment to Kuwait, meet with military representatives to discuss permanent cease fire arrangements, and provide all relevant information on the whereabouts and nature of mines, booby traps and any other weapons, conventional or otherwise located in Kuwait or areas in Iraq occupied by UN authorised forces.

Martti Ahtisaari, Under Secretary for Administration and Management, led the first UN mission into post war Iraq, March 10^th to 17^th. He reported on March 20th:

‘Nothing we had seen or read had quite prepared us for this particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The recent conflict has wrought near apocalyptic results….the flow of food through the private sector has been reduced to a trickle…..many food prices are already beyond the purchasing power of most Iraqi families. The mission recommends that sanctions in respect of food supplies should be immediately removed.’

(The electricity generation capability of Iraq was now 4% of pre-war level. What little medicines and vaccines in the country spoiled. Some hospital wards were in total darkness as doctors struggled to help the wounded and sick without the aid of anaesthetic or pain killers. Attacks on power stations were so similar that cannibalising parts from one to repair another proved extremely difficult. Without electricity it was difficult to pump petrol, thus even working generators were in short supply. The number of burn cases from use of kerosene lamps began to rise dramatically.)

The World Health Organisation estimates that Baghdad’s water supply is operating at 5% of pre-war level. People are forced to drink from heavily polluted rivers.

The Save The Children Fund’s ‘Iraq Situation Report’ stated: ‘This is a new kind of war which understands and takes advantage of technological advances. The situation is deteriorating rapidly and it will get worse in the months ahead.’ They also report that hospitals are operating at 20% of their pre-war level, and that public access is severely reduced by lack of fuel and destroyed roads and bridges.

The Iraqi government immunisation programme that had previously reached 95% of the country, and was regarded by WHO /UNICEF as the best in the Middle East, is completely halted. Many drugs required by the Iraqi Ministry of Health were previously imported from specialist companies in the US and Britain and these imports are now blocked. 90% of the Ministry’s transport system is immobilised. Iraq’s $2 million daily value of medical imports is reduced to $2 million a month. In the immediate post war period 100 children a day are dying of diseases that are treatable under normal conditions.

Joost Hilterman, Middle East Organiser for Physicians for Human Rights observes that the bombing has "….taken the brain out of the country…"

German paediatrician Dr. Margit Fakhoury visits Iraqi hospitals and reports an unprecedented incidence of children with severe malnutrition, marasmus and kwashiorkor.

Relatively minor illnesses are now often fatal, and reports of babies dying in incubators after power failures, and others growing up with cerebral palsy due to lack of oxygen, are increasing.

3^rd April: SCR 687 is passed by 12 votes to 1, with Cuba voting against, and Yemen and Ecuador abstaining. Called for a delineation of the Iraq/Kuwait border, the specific conditions of permanent cease-fire, the payment of Iraqi reparations, and the deployment of a UN weapons inspection team to dismantle and destroy all chemical, biological, nuclear weapon programmes and ballistic missile delivery systems. The Security Council were also to review Iraqi compliance with this and all previous resolutions every sixty days, and called upon all states to continue to support the sanctions. The sale and supply of ‘…commodities and products…’ were still banned. Food imports ‘….notified to the sanctions committee…’ would be exempt.

(In response to Ahtisaari’s March report, paragraph F(20) of SCR 687 stated: ‘The prohibitions against the sale or supply to Iraq of commodities or products, other than medicine or health supplies, and prohibition against financial transactions related thereto, contained in SCR 661 shall not apply to foodstuffs…or …to materials and supplies for essential civilian needs.’

This concession on food imports was meaningless. Iraq, prohibited from exporting oil and with all foreign assets frozen, had no access to funds to pay for essential needs.

SCR 687 was a key precedent for sanctions policy in the coming years. Having driven Iraqi forces from Kuwait under the terms of SCR 678, there was now a complex series of new terms and conditions that required Iraqi compliance before sanctions would be lifted. The question of whether materials put forward for export could have ‘dual-use’ purpose also came to the fore. This condition went on to block a huge number of commercial and civilian items on the grounds that they might be used for military applications. Even standard graphite pencils were blocked as they fell under the category of ‘Chemical Weapons’. The weapons inspectors were seconded by the UN to carry out the mandate established by SCR 687, were supposed to act under UN jurisdiction only. The group was called The United Nations Special Commission: UNSCOM.)

The US, with no specific UN authority, but in reference to SCR 688, imposes ‘No-Fly’ zones over the Northern and Southern parts of the country.

(Washington continued to draw attention to Iraqi activities that had nothing whatsoever to do with UN resolutions as reasons to maintain the embargo, for example, Saddam’s alleged refurbishing of palaces. The disarmament issue was levelled solely at Iraq whilst neighbouring states like Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia continued to acquire high tech weapons and delivery systems. Syria in particular had attached chemical warheads to their Soviet built SS-21 missiles. Arms sales to Gulf states by the US during the two years after the war have been estimated at between $50 and $150 billion.)

March/April: Health experts from the Gulf Peace Team carry out detailed assessments of 14 Iraqi towns. They find that unavailability of clean water has led to gastro-enteritis epidemics with thousands of deaths. They also find 50 cases of cholera and estimate that due to bombing of laboratories, and lack of facilities for diagnoses, the figure might be 100 times higher. Children as young as two months are being admitted to hospitals whose windows were shattered by bombing, thus filled with flies, and who were without drugs and infant formula. The team describe such hospitals as ‘…mere reservoirs of infection…’

(Simons quotes a caption from a photograph taken by Middle East Action Network, formed by members of the Gulf Peace Team:

‘4 month old Ali Fadil from Najaf; so dehydrated by diarrhoea that he needs artificial tears to cry with. If he survives he’ll be blind, as well as otherwise physically and mentally disabled.’)

9^th April: SCR 689 is passed unanimously. Called for the establishment of a UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM) to monitor the border.

May: White House Press Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater states: ‘All possible sanctions will be maintained until Saddam Hussein is gone.’

This statement completely contradicted the terms of SCR 687, and had no authorisation in UN resolutions or statements by the UN Secretary General.

9^th May: Quoted in the ‘Los Angeles Times’, US National Security Advisor Robert Gates states: ‘Iraqis will be made to pay the price while Saddam Hussein is in power. Any easing of sanctions will be considered only when there is a new government.’

(Once again it was clear that precise wordings and conditions of SCR’s were meaningless.)

10^th May: Despite reports from UNICEF and the WHO confirming cases of extreme nutritional disorders of marasmus and kwashiorkor, and their warnings of a potential disaster in Iraq, new Prime Minister John Major declares that Britain will veto any UN attempt to weaken sanctions "….for so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power."

(This blatant declaration is also not supported by any UN resolution.)

11^th May: Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who had travelled extensively through Iraq during the bombing campaign, hosts in New York the first in a series of independent inquiries into the conduct of the war. Over the course of the next nine months, 30 hearings are held in 16 countries.

20^th May: SCR 692 is passed by 14 votes to none, with Cuba abstaining. It established a war damage fund into which Iraqi revenues from any future oil exports would be paid. It also emphasised that only full Iraqi compliance with all previous resolutions would enable sanctions to be lifted.

The Harvard Medical team, led by Dr. Megan Massey, reports that 170,000 children under five will die by the end of 1991 due to the war and sanctions. One team member, Rob Moodie, states that the ration was half that required to maintain normal health. Passey states that many people are surviving on bread and tea, and that only two doctors are available in Basra to cope with 80,000 people during a typhoid outbreak.

June: The World Food Programme journal reports that the vast bulk of the population are suffering from the sewage, sanitation and water purification failure, and that even the requirement of feeding a baby is becoming ‘…a luxury that poor people simply cannot afford.’ UNICEF also reports ‘…an alarming and rising incidence of severe and moderate malnutrition among the population of children under 5.'

UNICEF also commissioned Dr. Robert Russell and Dr. John Osgood of the Tufts University School of Nutrition to assess the situation of children under 5. They found ‘…large numbers of children with acute and chronic malnutrition….epidemic levels of infectious diseases, market prices from 3 to 20 times the pre-war level, and a reported crisis in breast feeding ability…’

Their report concluded: ‘Continuation of the trade embargo and of UN mandated sanctions against Iraq for any significant length of time will place the health and the very lives of hundreds and thousands of children’s lives at risk. The Security Council will have to decide how to balance the political objectives of the embargo and sanctions against the humanitarian fallout that is virtually certain to follow in their wake.’

17^th June: SCR 699 is passed unanimously. Reaffirmed section C of SCR 678 in its’ demands that Iraq destroy weapons of mass destruction capability, and required the Secretary General to submit progress reports on this issue every six months.

SCR 700 is passed unanimously the same day. Reaffirmed SCR 661, 665, 670 and 678, and demanded all states comply with a full arms embargo on Iraq.

28^th June: Iraqi soldiers reportedly fire warning shots of live ammunition to prevent UNSCOM inspectors from following and videotaping an convoy of army trucks containing unspecified material. The next day UNSCOM team leader Rolf Ekeus, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Hans Blix, and UN Disarmament Chief Yasushi Akashi tell Baghdad that only total compliance with disarmament will lead to the lifting of sanctions. George Bush emphasises his belief that he has prior UN authority to launch fresh strikes against Iraq, despite no new enabling SCR. A UN deadline for weapons disclosure is set for July 25^th.

July: German doctor Margit Fakhoury returns to Iraq and reports that conditions have worsened. She particularly notes that nursing mothers, who are also malnourished, can no longer afford to buy infant formula, and they are feeding their babies water sweetened with sugar, contributing to the rapidly growing incidence of bloated ‘sugar baby’ syndrome. She also reports that doctors are being forced to use antibiotics in ever increasingly small doses, and via intramuscular rather than intravenous techniques. Ineffective treatment, and in some cases brain damage and death are resulting.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation warns that Iraq is ‘….approaching the threshold of extreme deprivation.’

15^th July: Britain declares it will not support lifting sanctions until Iraq releases Ian Richter, a businessman jailed in Iraq in 1986 on bribery charges. This has nothing to do with any UN resolution.

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the UN executive delegate for humanitarian aid to Iraq reports to Cuellar that Iraq will face ‘…massive starvation…’ unless Iraq can obtain $6.85 billion to repair it’s infrastructure and import food and medicine over a twelve month period.

The UN public appeal for humanitarian aid in the Gulf has raised $216 million.

(The division in the UN was now clear. One half struggled with absurdly inadequate resources to meet the humanitarian needs in Iraq. The other half, the UN Security Council and Sanctions Committee, saw to it that the situation would never change. One UN aid worker observed: "We first break their legs, and then we offer them a crutch.")

22^nd July: The results of a UN field study of water and sanitation, food, health, and energy are submitted by the Secretary General to the Sanctions Committee. The report emphasises four basic facts:

There is a clear and undeniable humanitarian need in Iraq.

It is absurd and indefensible for the UN to pay for these needs when numerous other urgent crises and disasters, from Bangladesh to the Horn of Africa, cry out for our attention.

Iraq has considerable oil reserves and should pay to meet these needs itself.

If this committee were to decide that Iraq should be allowed to use funds from oil sales or facilitate the use of blocked accounts to meet "essential civilian needs", a suitable control mechanism and monitoring system should be identified and put in place.

25^th July: The deadline for weapons disclosure is reached. Iraqi compliance remains patchy, but the US backs off from attacking due to lack of international support. Reports appear that describe Iraqi civilians eating grass and weeds, and that widespread famine is a very real possibility.

29^th July: Maurice Gourdault, a spokesman for the French government, urges the Security Council to ease the trade embargo.

August: Early in the month Iraq admits for the first time it had run a bio-warfare programme. It claims to have shut the facility down in late1990 due to fears it would be bombed by the allies.

13^th August: In testimony before the UN Organisation on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities’ 43^rd session, Warren J. Hamerman of the International Progress Organisation likens Iraq to that of a medieval city under siege: "….cut off from outside assistance; its’ population deprived of adequate food, water, medical care and the means to produce for its’ subsistence, is condemned to perish. It is only a matter of time."

15^th August: SCR 705 is passed unanimously. Reaffirmed Section E of SCR 687 and determined that Iraq shall pay 30% of any oil export revenues into a UN managed reparation fund.

SCR 706 is passed the same day by 13 votes; Cuba voted against and Yemen abstained. Established the limit of the amount of permissible oil revenue in meeting the humanitarian needs of Iraq not to exceed $1.6 billion, and of a UN administered Escrow account into which revenues would be paid for such items.

SCR 707 is also passed the same day by unanimous vote. Condemned Iraq’s ‘…serious violation…’ of a number of obligations extended to it under SCR 687 and required it to co-operate with the Special Commission (UNSCOM) and members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Later in the month Iraq claims that 14,000 children have now died as a direct result of the embargo. Many families have exhausted all their savings and reports emerge of people attempting to sell their furniture, even the doors of their houses.

(Iraq rejected SCR 706, and was widely criticised for doing so by the West. Simons points out that the exact terms of 706 were not the trumpeted ‘solution’ to Iraq’s humanitarian needs. Revenues from oil would also be used to make ‘…appropriate…’ and unspecified payments to the compensation fund, and pay for all the UN’s expenses (apart from 50% for border demarcation) in carrying out SCR 687. The entire scheme was also to be run by non-Iraqis, thus inflicting loss of sovereignty in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter. Given that the Aga Khan’s July report that Iraq was ‘…on the brink of calamity…’ and his recommendation that $6.8 billion was needed in the next 12 months, the $1.6 billion offered in SCR 706 held little appeal for the Iraqi authorities, especially when it was reliant on the Sanctions Committee to decide what its’ essential needs were. This same committee had spent the last twelve months systematically starving civilians and denying them medical care. A Bush administration official told ‘The New York Times’ that SCR 706 was: ‘…a good way to maintain the bulk of sanctions and not be on the wrong side of a potentially emotive issue.’

The overall dilemma for Iraq now, and in the coming years, was whether to co-operate at all with the UN. It was, after all, the very same organisation that granted authority to the allies to almost completely destroy their civilian infrastructure, kill over a hundred thousand people, and reduce millions of its’ citizens to starvation. The temptation to ‘go it alone’ must have been overwhelming.)

September: A Medical Aid for Iraq team travels through the country delivering medical supplies and assessing health. Their findings more than confirm the Megan Passey’s Harvard Medical Team’s findings in May, and in fact the situation is much worse. They report pharmacies turning away 90-98% of all people due to lack of drugs, power failures during the middle of operations, dire shortage of equipment and spare parts, hypodermic needles used repeatedly. They report a ten fold increases in typhoid and hepatitis, and twenty fold increase of cholera. Their report concludes ‘The state of medical care is desperate and, unless conditions substantially change, will continue to deteriorate in every region at every provider level’

3^rd September: UN official Michael Priestly tells ‘The Independent’ newspaper that unless sanctions are eased quickly, Iraq will face malnutrition, disease and a food emergency unprecedented in modern times.

9^th September: Bush announces he is "…plenty fed up…" with the apparent lack of Iraqi compliance on weapons disclosure. The White House announces that Stealth bombers and F-17 jets will be dispatched to Saudi Arabia "….in the next day or so.."

19^th September: SCR 712 is passed by 13 votes; Cuba voted against, Yemen abstained. Confirmed a ceiling of $1.6 billion in a limited Iraqi oil sale as established in SCR 706, and called upon the Secretary General to release one third of that amount from the escrow account, subject to availability, to pay for humanitarian supplies. The rest of the revenue would be paid towards compensation.

(According to authors Lawrence Freedman and Ephraim Karsh in their book ‘The Gulf Conflict’, Saddam Hussein refused to accept the terms of SCR 712 also, on the grounds this would again concede too much control of Iraqi revenues and sovereignty to the UN. Western diplomats and media continued to cite it as an example of his brutality and lack of concern for his people. They, and the authors, do not mention that Iraq would not be in such a desperate position if the civilian infrastructure was intact, assets unfrozen, and normal trade possible.)

23^rd September: Iraqi soldiers eject a UN team from a building in which documents had been found that confirmed Iraq’s nuclear intentions. Washington issues a 48 hour ultimatum and declares that US aircraft will be sent to accompany UN helicopters on over-flights of Iraq.

25^th September: The Pentagon announces its’ 100 strong target list selected for possible punitive raids. 44 UN inspectors are still ‘under siege’ and the Iraqis show no signs of relenting. Baghdad issues a statement charging UN team leader David Kay of working undercover for US intelligence services.

August/September: The Centre for Crisis Psychology sends a team headed by Dr. Magne Raundelen and Dr. Atle Dyregov to conduct surveys in Iraq of the psychological impact of the war on Iraqi children. Their subsequent reports at the end of the year and at a conference held in June 1992 concluded that approx. two thirds of the children surveyed were experiencing problems sleeping, and half of them worried they would not live to adulthood. They concluded that for the traumatised children….’Time seemed to have stopped…..they seemed trapped within their trauma, surrounded by reminders of what had happened and unable to escape…….their minds seem to be a landscape of mental craters and destruction….there is no safe place, and they expect the worst to happen again.’

27^th September: Iraqi authorities finally grant permission for the UN team to carry out an inventory of crucial documents detailing Iraq’s nuclear plans and details of procurement agreements with western companies. David Kay and Robert Gallucci earn a rebuke from UN Secretary General Cuellar, as key sections of the 25,000 documents seized are transmitted directly to the US State Department without going through UN channels. It also emerges that American U-2 spy planes and spy satellites are collecting surveillance data. Kay’s activities begin to cause concern among UN officials.

11^th October: In light of the apparent failure of Iraqi weapons disclosure, SCR 715 (reinforcing SCR 707) is passed. It allowed UN inspectors to go anywhere, see anything, interview anyone, remove or photograph anything, intercept shipping, road vehicles and aircraft, install surveillance and long term monitoring equipment, check any permitted imports and exports, at any time they wished. With the local Dinar currency not recognised anywhere outside of the country, and all finances handled by the UN, Iraq’s sovereignty was essentially reduced to a ‘trusteeship’ status. Additionally all ‘dual-use’ machinery, and chemicals without any military uses, were banned from entering the country. This ensured that Iraq would be prevented from having any industrial base.

(Reports shortly after SCR 715 was passed revealed that over the previous six months compliance had been fairly extensive and nuclear capability greatly exaggerated. Inspectors had now unearthed most of Iraq’s weapons plans, destroyed the Al-Muthanna chemical weapons facility, compiled records of Iraq’s 46,000 missiles, bombs and munitions containing or ready to contain chemicals, destroyed two ‘Superguns’, and mostly determined the number of surviving Scud missiles. Much of the work set out in SCR 687 had been accomplished.)

In response to continued US threats of new attacks if Iraq fails to comply with weapons disclosure, Tariq Aziz makes a statement which is published in Baghdad newspapers: "The Security Council make no mention of what measures have been carried out concerning the scrapping of weapons of mass destruction. They only concentrate on claims that Iraq has not complied. In New York we will ask them: ‘Is it your aim to destroy Iraqi industry or implement resolution 687? If your aim is to carry out 687, then you have our approval. But if your objective is to annihilate Iraqi industry and deny Iraq the chance of becoming a prosperous industrial country, that would be a different matter.’"

25^th October: Journalist Edward Pearce publishes an article in ‘The Guardian’ entitled ‘Death and Indecency in a time of Cholera’: ‘We know about cholera, but we destroy power plants and electricity supply; we deny by embargo the means to repair. That is very different from seeding and spreading the cholera virus only in the most etiolated fashion. It is different in the way that manslaughter is different from murder….in the most lackadaisical and morally laid back way, we are killing people…..small, brown children beyond the reach of our shrivelled imaginations.’

November: Early in the month food riots erupt as Iraqis take to looting in order to stay alive. Hyper-inflation has put most commodities beyond the average civilian’s means. From August 1990 to August 1991 price increases ranged from 230% for meat to 4500% for flour.

(The Agricultural potential of the country had been targeted during the bombing, including farms, food stores and seed factories. Crops failed due to the inability to import fertilisers, pesticides and a prohibition on aerial spraying. Destroyed and damaged irrigation systems, coupled with lack of electricity to pump water, meant that vast areas of Iraqi agriculture simply died. The animal health of the country was also deteriorating with no feeds or vaccines available, and diseases began to spread. This compounded diet problems as the ration consisted primarily of carbohydrates, and proteins became extremely scarce.)

9^th November: In a letter to the medical journal ‘The Lancet’ three UNICEF nutrition experts working in Baghdad report: ‘…the gradual descent of the children of Iraq into malnutrition; severely malnourished children do not survive.’ The UN reports soon after that the period August 1990 to August 1991 had seen a four fold rise in mortality for children under 5, and a three fold rise in children over 5, as compared to the 1989/1990 equivalent.

20^th November: The Iraqi government issues a $1 billion list of urgently needed medical supplies. Lord Judd, director of OXFAM urges that ‘….far greater priority…’ be given to the immediate humanitarian needs of Iraq’s population.

"Millions of innocent people are suffering and that is intolerable. They are the last in the nutcracker. They have not been able to influence events, but my God they are being squeezed. While the aid agencies are working flat out, we feel like people trying to put a finger in the dyke….of sewage. There is no way the infrastructural problems can be solved by the agencies alone."

24^th November: UN official Aga Khan reports that there has been no progress in his talks with Iraq to persuade them to adopt SCR 706 (and by implication SCR 712). ‘The government of Iraq may be held responsible for failing to take advantage of the window of opportunity – narrow and constraining though it may be – afforded by the arrangements for oil exports and imports of essential needs.’

(Arguments later put forward by Iraq that it be allowed to administer the oil sales itself were repeatedly opposed by the US).

12^th December: The US representative in the Sanctions Committee blocks a request for paper for Iraqi doctors.

By the end of the year there had been 1,056,956 cases of malnutrition in children under 5, and according to Iraqi / UNICEF figures, the cumulative death toll for children under 12 had reached 118,406.