IRAQ: Saddam Hussein's Iraq is a wreck of a country where Maura Quinn.discovered resigned and fatalistic people
In the past few weeks I find myself reading every line of news on Iraq, waiting anxiously for the latest breaking stories, trying to anticipate what will happen next. It has become a rollercoaster of emotions, relief tempered occasionally by incredulity, but always the all-pervasive anger. The anger comes from the possible consequences to the many Iraqis I call friends, the impact of a war for them and their children.
It's so different when you are there. Life is so normal, or at least that's the way it appears. Three weeks ago, while I was there, Baghdad seemed such a normal place. Street sellers selling a plentiful supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, people out walking in the evenings, the constant sound of the busy traffic in the city.
The people are such gracious hosts, welcoming, friendly and delighted to have people visit from beyond their own borders.
But the signs that all is not what it seems are also there. The border crossing at Al Quasiyah is overrun with visiting media trying to enter. Throughout the country I witnessed people queueing to buy kerosene, hoping to stockpile supplies for an uncertain future.
In the main paediatric hospital in Baghdad, I spoke to Dr Abdullah Nasser, the hospital's director, who explained that many people were not bringing their sick children to hospital for fear of air strikes.
The consequences, in a country which already has a mortality rate among under-fives 2½ times that recorded in 1990, we dare not anticipate. In Basra, the day long air-raid sirens were a constant reminder of an uncertain future, but went largely ignored.
Iraq has faced a continuing humanitarian crisis as a result of 12 years of sanctions preceded by two highly destructive wars. Over the past three years I have witnessed on each visit the continuing decline of this extraordinary country and the devastating impact on lives that have already endured so much.
It is hard to imagine what it was like in the 1970s and 1980s. People speak about the past as if even now they doubt that life could have been that good. Doctors tell me of having never seen malnutrition in children, only obesity. Now one in four of all Iraqi children is malnourished.
They catalogue the missing drugs they so desperately require, the lack of equipment that means they have to choose which infants might survive, because they have too few incubators.
I have visited hundreds of schools, crumbling as a result of lack of government expenditure since 1990. Education has always been a highly valued right in Iraq, and this decline hurts greatly. The water and sanitation situation is equally grim. Access to clean water is so poor that every child under five has up to 14 episodes of diarrhoea each year, accounting for 70 per cent of all child deaths.
Each visit I learn more of how the social infrastructure continues to unravel. Child labour is now a visible and real problem, with children as young as five working for the equivalent of $1 a week, eight hours a day, seven days a week, just to support their families.
Primary-school enrolment rates have continued to fall, with one in every four children now out of school.
UNICEF has rehabilitated 500 of the 8,000 primary schools, many with funding from Ireland, in an effort to reverse this trend. It has worked, though UNICEF is the only agency rehabilitating schools, so progress due to lack of funds is slow. In a country that had the highest enrolment rates in the Middle East, the collapse of the education system will have profound future consequences.
In a country which is largely secular, I have noted the move towards fundamentalism in very obvious ways. Boys and girls at primary school are increasingly being educated separately, a regressive trend which will be difficult to reverse.
More and more women wear the abiyah, the black floor-length cloak, and for the first time one sees many women covering their faces as well. Girls are being married off at 15 years of age as their families struggle to clothe and feed them.
The middle classes have now almost disappeared, many overseas, with those remaining eking out an existence selling their personal belongings in an effort to survive.
Seventy per cent of the population is dependent on the monthly food ration provided by the government under the UN Oil for Food Programme. With one-third of the population destitute, many trade this ration each month to buy medicines or clothes for their children.
And the future? People just wait for news from abroad, the latest developments in the international cat-and-mouse game. Their acceptance is hard to explain or indeed understand. It is born out of unimaginable suffering and, almost worse, a sense that life will continue to get worse. There is nothing they can do to change this. In Basra, I sat with a young mother and watched as her first-born seven-month-old son died in her arms as a result of complications from malnutrition. Afterwards one of the other women there asked me how many more of their children would have to die. I had no answer.
In Iraq, people talk about the possibility of war in a fatalistic way. It is a war that no one wants. They know their suffering will only increase. When we talk, they say "Inshallah", meaning in Arabic "if God wills".
Their faith is greater than mine.
Maura Quinn is executive director of UNICEF Ireland. The organisation provides assistance to and works for long-term improvement of the lives of children in the world's poorest countries.
UNICEF has been working in Iraq since 1983 and is the main humanitarian agency in the country.