• Greg Gardiner

21 November 2007
On the most fundamental moral question the country faces, almost nothing has been promised, writes GREG GARDINER

SINCE the coalition of the willing, including Australian forces, entered Iraq in 2003, the country and its people have been severely traumatised. In addition to the bombings, murders, kidnappings and violent mayhem occurring on a daily basis, there has been a complete breakdown in human and social services. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed, millions have fled into exile, infant mortality rates have risen dramatically, participation rates in schools have plummetted, and the country’s infrastructure, despite the significant efforts at rebuilding, remains in a state of collapse.

What moral obligations do we have to the Iraqi people for having involved ourselves in a venture that has led directly to such cruel afflictions being visited on their country? Does it matter that we did not intend for this havoc to occur, and that most of the contemporary violence in Iraq is the product of warring factions? And how is it that in this election campaign none of the major parties are seriously talking about Iraq and moral responsibility? What do we, as voters in this parliamentary democracy, have to say about it?

Let me remind you of what has occurred, and continues to occur, as the daily experience for the Iraqi people as a result of the 2003 invasion. The non-government organisation Save the Children estimates in a recent report that infant mortality in Iraq has increased by 37 per cent since 2003. One in eight Iraqi children die before their fifth birthday, a rate of approximately 120,000 child deaths per year. Half of these deaths are of babies in the first month of life. Back in 1990 Iraq had what was considered to be the one of the best health systems in the Middle East. Save the Children state that Iraq now has one of the worst child health records in the world, ranking in the bottom three countries. According to Save the Children, the living conditions for mothers and children have gravely worsened since 2003.

The Iraqi Medical Association estimates that three-quarters of all health professionals in Iraq - doctors, nurses and pharmacists - have left their jobs, and half of these of have fled abroad, mostly through a fear of murder. While some work has been done to restore patient care and facilities in hospitals, the system itself simply cannot cope with the demands made upon it and the shortages of trained staff. Thousands of people in the other professions, such as education, have also fled Iraq through fear of assassination.

According to reports from the Iraqi Ministry of Education over two-thirds of elementary school children no longer attend school due to the threat of violence. Just two years ago attendance rates were approximately 75 per cent. Scores, if not hundreds of teachers have been murdered and parents are reluctant to send their children to school through fear of terrorist attacks. University professors have also been killed in large numbers. At the same time, literacy levels appear to be falling across the country, according to UN agencies.

Iraq’s national infrastructure is a shambles. According to a BBC report, electricity generation meets only half of national demand, and fell below pre-war levels at the end of 2006. In Baghdad residents had access to between 16 and 24 hours of power a day before the war; now it has dropped to between four and eight hours per day. Hundreds of Baghdad households and businesses have installed their own generators. Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources estimates that only a third of the population has access to clean drinking water, and fewer than one in five has access to a decent sewerage system. Meanwhile, attacks on oil production and supply facilities have had a drastic effect on oil production, Iraq’s chief commodity. The BBC reports that oil production fell to 1.54 million barrels a day in February this year, well below the pre-war level of 2.5 million barrels per day in 2003.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees states that as of October 2007 2.3 million Iraqis were internally displaced - 1.2 million of them since 2003. Some 2.2 million Iraqis have fled to neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan. The total number of refugees internally and externally created since the 2003 invasion is thus 3.4 million, over 12 per cent of Iraq’s total population.

One of the more conservative estimates of the number of violent deaths in Iraq since 2003 is arrived at by the academic group known as Iraq Body Count (IBC). The IBC documents only non-combatant deaths via news reports and other corroborating sources, and estimates the total number of civilian deaths from violence at the end of October 2007 at between 75,971 and 82,776. The IBC states that none of their documented deaths has been disputed, and concedes that the current death toll could be as high as twice that number. In an early 2007 poll conducted by the American news services ABC and USA Today and the British BBC, 17 per cent of those surveyed claimed that a member of their household had been harmed in some way by violence since 2003.

These are just some of the indicators of the descent into hell that has befallen Iraq since 2003. To answer the question I posed at the outset: moral obligation is not superseded by our good intentions. We are obliged to make restitution, in one form or another, for having participated in a venture that was, from the outset, full of terrible and quantifiable risks for Iraq and its people. If we agree on this, the question becomes what should, or can, be done?

Australia’s current contribution to Iraq comes in two principal forms. The Australian Defence Force has 1575 personnel based in and around Iraq, with around 550 of these (the Overwatch Battle Group) serving in a security role in southern Iraq. It is this group that Labor has pledged to withdraw by mid-2008. The other Australian contribution to Iraq comes in the form of aid. According to AusAID, Australia has pledged nearly $22.5 million for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance to Iraq in 2007-08, and has already committed over $173 million in assistance since 2003. Australia has also provided Iraq with debt relief worth over $800 million. Lastly, the federal government recently announced that it would increase the humanitarian intake from Iraq, with 35 per cent of the 13,000 places under this refugee program to be filled from the Middle East.

This latter decision is particularly welcome, and will provide a secure future for hundreds of Iraqi refugee families next year, in addition to those who have already been resettled under this program. But does the sum total of these efforts to support Iraq represent a sufficient level of recompense to the Iraqi people for the havoc that we have, advertently or not, helped unleash upon them? I would say no.

In this election campaign, tens of billions of dollars have been promised to the Australian people in the form of tax cuts. Yet on this issue - the single most telling and fundamental moral question the country faces - almost nothing has been promised, other than the commitment to maintain combat troops in Iraq made by the government, and the commitment to their phased withdrawal made by the opposition. I suggest a bipartisan (and non-inflationary) approach to our responsibility would be to establish a one billion dollar Iraq Fund. The fund would not be available for military deployments, and the one billion would be over and above current commitments. The role of such a fund would be to provide long term support to Iraq and its people - funding available for resettlement both within and without Iraq, for the rebuilding of schools and hospitals and for other humanitarian programs. The Iraqi people are going to need our support long term, and such a fund would provide a visible and tangible way to go about it, and one commensurate with the role we have played since 2003.

We provided a billion dollars in aid to Indonesia after the terrible tsunami of 2004. It was the right thing to do for a neighbour. In this instance, where the disaster is all human made, there is an even greater moral imperative to act. I’m prepared to forego my tax cut for 12 months to make it possible. What about you? •

Greg Gardiner is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Political & Social Inquiry at Monash University and Parliamentary Researcher with the Parliamentary Library of Victoria

Photo: iStockphoto.com

References:

Andrews, K. (2007) ‘Priorities of Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Intake for 2007-08’, Media Release, 18 August 2007, viewed 8 November 2007.

AusAID (2007) Iraq: Approach to Humanitarian and Development Assistance 2007-2010, Australian Government, viewed 5 November 2007.

AusAID (2007) AusAID Annual Report 2006-2007, Australian Government, p.89, viewed 5 November 2007.

BBC (2007) ‘Life in Iraq: Living in Iraq’, BBC News Special Reports, viewed 1 November 2007.

Department of Defence (2007) ‘About Operation Catalyst’, Australian Government, viewed 2 November 2007.

IRIN (2007) ‘IRAQ: Hospitals under pressure as doctors move abroad’, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 6 September 2007, viewed 1 November 2007.

IRIN (2006) ‘IRAQ: School attendance rates drop drastically’, 18 October 2006, viewed 5 November 2007.

McClelland, R. (2007) Speech to Fairfax Community Forum, 3 October 2007, viewed 2 November 2007.

Nagorski, T. (2007) ‘Iraq: Where Things Stand’, ABC News, 19 March 2007, viewed 5 November 2007.

Prusher, I. R. & C. Levinson (2006) Iraqis cope with life without lights, The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com, 10 February 2006, viewed 1 November 2007.

Rudd, K. (2007) ‘Federal Labor Campaign Launch’, Official Website of the ALP, 14 November 2007, viewed 15 November 2007.

Rudd, K. (2007) ‘Labor's Defence Policy; Defence Land; Troops Out Of Iraq; Howard's Retirement; Work Choices; Health; Townsville Hospital; Defence Budget; National Security’, Official Website of the ALP, 12 November 2007, viewed 15 November 2007.

Save the Children (2007) State of the World’s Mothers: Saving the Lives of Children Under 5, May 2007, p.25, viewed 12 November 2007.

UNHCR (2007) ‘Iraq: Pressure on safe havens inside and outside fuels fears of increased internal displacement’, UNHCR Briefing Notes, 23 0ctober 2007, viewed 1 November 2007.