Washington Report, November 2005, pages 24-25

Special Report

Waiting for the Outside World

By Mike Ferner

	Hurricane Katrina evacuee Jai’Lynn Butler holds a stuffed animal as she sits on a cot on the floor of the Houston Astrodome Sept. 6 (AFP photo/Stan Honda).

IN THE “OLD DAYS ” of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on the threat of a global nuclear “exchange,” an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) postulated what would happen if a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb.

The doctors described utterly horrific scenarios extending far beyond the numbers of dead and severely wounded. In plain words they described what the few survivors would experience: a landscape that not only had sustained unimaginable casualties, but which had also suffered the destruction of its transportation and health care infrastructure. No ambulances would arrive with lights and sirens to whisk away the suffering. Doctors, nurses, blood plasma, painkillers, antibiotics, bandages—all would be destroyed along with the hospitals and highways.

As difficult as it was to picture such a reality, the hardest thing to imagine was that in a nuclear war there would be no “outside” from where help would come. When every major city suffers the same fate as yours, no one “out there” can help you. “Out there” is all gone. Instantly, in city after city, life becomes a contaminated, pre-industrial struggle for survival.

Fortunately for the human race, PSR’s scenarios have thus far remained a symbolic, educational exercise.

Listening to and watching the news coming out of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast towns of Mississippi, one can sense devastation on a scale rarely experienced in this country. New Orleans’ location below sea level and the deluge following the rupture of its levees makes Katrina’s blow even worse than when Hurricane Andrew flattened Miami.

Now we hold our collective breath to see if hospital patients can be rescued before emergency generators are swamped. Mile after mile of city streets are inundated. The public water supply is contaminated. Desperate people wait for helicopters to rescue them from rooftops broiling in the summer sun. My nephew, lucky enough to have transportation and smart enough to use it in time, got out. But how long will he be able to stay with friends in Lafayette? And what will a young man, living month to month on a waiter’s pay, do for work if the Hard Rock Café never reopens?

And yet, as frightening as the situation is for New Orleans and the surrounding area, there is still an “outside.” People are mobilizing assistance. It may be inadequate at first and ultimately too late for some, but people and institutions in 48 other states are doing their best to assist their fellow citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi.

What would it be like to endure suffering on a scale somewhere between a nuclear attack and Hurricane Katrina—with nobody “out there” to mobilize assistance for you? That is the case today in Iraq.

A displaced boy arrives at a camp near Tal Afar, 50 miles west of Iraq’s main northern city of Mosul, on Sept. 6. Backed by helicopters and fighter jets, U.S. and Iraqi troops attacked the town, an alleged center of resistance (AFP Photo/Mujahed Mohammed).

These comparisons started coming to mind last month, when an inversion trapped the people of Phoenix in a seemingly relentless heat wave. For weeks temperatures soared over 100 degrees and 2005 literally became a killer summer. Then I thought of what Phoenix would be like without electricity. And I thought of Baghdad.

In Baghdad, 115- and 120-degree weather is the norm all summer. But unless you are among the elite and have a private generator, you are lucky to get a few hours of unscheduled power a day, frequently in the middle of the night when demand is lowest. That is the reality for most of the four million people in Baghdad and some 20 million people in the rest of Iraq—this summer, last summer, and the one before that.

Water and sewer plants, thoroughly bombed by the Elder Bush in 1991, were repaired enough to limp along under a dozen years of sanctions. As a result, water-borne diseases became a significant health problem prior to the U.S. invasion of 2003, and have since gotten dramatically worse. What passes for hospital care would make even the poorest American’s blood run cold—and that’s when medical facilities are operating at their best, not overrun with massive numbers of wounded from a U.S. attack or a suicide bomber. In Fallujah and other cities besieged by American troops, ambulances with lights and sirens don’t whisk away the wounded; they are fired on by the U.S. military. Trucks taking painkillers, bandages and antibiotics to medical clinics are forcibly turned away. The already substandard water supplies are destroyed by the artillery and air strikes.

National Public Radio today featured interviews with people describing what life is like after the hurricane. A woman from Gulfport, Mississippi, trying unsuccessfully to hold back her tears, said that even though people were “...amazingly resilient, some are in shock...some are running out of clean water already...my husband has journaled every day of his life—every single day since he was a boy—and those journals are all gone now.”

After a couple more questions, the NPR reporter thanked her sincerely for talking with him. As her voice cracked she responded, “Thank you for giving me an opportunity to let the outside world know help is needed.”

That woman in Gulfport was not worrying about next year’s congressional elections, just as millions of her counterparts in Iraq are not worrying about their constitution. She, and they, are worried about having safe water to drink in the summer heat, wondering when the electricity will come back on, grieving journals lost forever in a flood or photo albums lost in a midnight house raid, anxious about ever seeing their home rebuilt, hoping somehow to find a job.

Rightly so, the massive news coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation is beginning to evoke Americans’ inherent compassion toward people who’ve been dealt an unfair blow. If the news media did a similar job describing the hell life has become for people in Iraq, Americans’ sense of outrage and compassion would be similarly stirred. And Iraqis could count on help instead of bombs coming from the outside world.

Mike Ferner is writing a book about his trips to Iraq, before and after the U.S. invasion. He served as a Navy corpsman during Vietnam and is a member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >. This article first appeared on Electronic Iraq, <www.electroniciraq.net>, Sept. 1, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

SIDEBAR

Hundreds of Civilians Are Forced to Flee as U.S./Iraqi Forces Attack Tal Afar in Northwestern Iraq. Doctors for Iraq Warns of Medical Humanitarian Crisis.

Doctors for Iraq is deeply concerned about the fate of hundreds of civilians trying to flee the sieged town of Tal Afar, 80 kilometers from Mosul city. Thousands of residents from the town have been told to leave the area by U.S. and Iraqi forces who have been attacking the area for the past three to four days.

Eyewitnesses report that heavy bombs were dropped on targets in the town a few days ago, and that on Monday, Sept. 5 the U.S. army fired missiles onto the town from aircraft. The entire town is under siege and is in preparation for a new military attack.

Doctors for Iraq has received reports that at least 20 civilians have been killed in the attack. It is impossible to check these reports for accuracy.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have forced frightened civilians to leave the besieged town, and women and children are making their way to a refugee camp set up outside the Tal Afar.

Civilians have told Doctors for Iraq that many young men aged between 20 and 35 are being stopped and detained at checkpoints and are being taken to a U.S. military building near an airport. It is not known how many men have been detained and why they are being held. It is impossible for Doctors for Iraq to check these reports, as media and health workers are being prevented from entering the area.

What is known is that during the military siege of Fallujah in 2004 young men were also prevented from leaving the city and were detained by the U.S. and Iraqi military.

Doctors inside the town are concerned about the lack of medicine and health care facilities for people who are being forced to flee their homes.

Tal Afar’s medical infrastructure has been badly damaged by the ongoing military attacks on the area over the past few weeks. Doctors and medical convoys are unable to enter the besieged town and assist the desperate civilians.

Doctors for Iraq is particularly concerned about the fate of the refugees. There is concern about the lack of clean drinking water for displaced civilians, and the threat of disease is very real, as hygiene conditions in the area are very poor.

Doctors for Iraq is calling for:

• A complete and immediate END to the military attack on the town so all civilians can be evacuated safely;
• For the U.S. and Iraqi military to uphold the Geneva Convention and allow doctors and medical supplies into the town;
• For international human rights organizations to carry out an immediate investigation into allegations that young men are being detained by the military and reports of civilian deaths during the attack.

For more information contact:

Dr. Salam Ismael, < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it _>, or Aisha Ismael, < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >

—Sept. 7, 2005