| Clinton: The sanctions system allows Iraq to sell oil for food, for medicine, for other humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people - we have no quarrel with them. | 00:19 |
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| Clinton: But without the sanctions we would see the oil for food program become oil for tanks. Music | 00:36 |
Corcoran in car. View from vehicle of tankers |
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| Corcoran: The only way into sanctions-bound Baghdad is to drive. A thousand kilometres across the desert from Jordan | 00:46 |
| and here for anyone to see is the absurdity of sanctions. |
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| An endless procession of oil tankers heading out - container trucks coming back in. Some are on legitimate business - part of the oil for food program. But most are in the business of sanctions busting.
Music | 00:59 |
UN inspectors/ tankers | Corcoran: United Nations sanctions inspectors check only 1 truck in 20 at the Jordanian frontier. On the northern border with Turkey it's one in 200. | 01:17 |
Von Sponeck Super: Hans Von Sponeck UN Humanitarian Co-Ord. Iraq | VON SPONECK: All of this under the benevolent eye of the United Nations Security Council. We know it. We know the borders are porous, we know goods are entering the country over which we have no control, we don't know the content of the consignments that come in. This is really - I can use no other word - it's hypocrisy. | 01:30 |
Baghdad streets/posters of Saddam | Corcoran: Saddam Hussein openly defies the UN economic blockade. This year will smuggle an estimated one billion dollars worth of oil out of Iraq. A billion dollars he'll spend keeping his regime well fed, well equipped and most importantly - loyal. | 01:57 |
Von Sponeck interview | VON SPONECK: The regime is in power, there has been hardly any cabinet change over the years. It is the same team year after year that stays firmly in the saddle and 23 million people have fallen off that saddle. |
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Von Sponeck leaving office | Corcoran: Hans von Sponeck is the UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator - running the oil for food program. But the top UN official in Baghdad is now quitting his job - a bitter and angry man. | 02:20 |
Von Sponeck interview | VON SPONECK: If mortality trends for children under five of the 80's had continued into the 90's there would be 500,000 children still alive. I think that is a very powerful piece of evidence to show that sanctions have really damaged enormously a population. | 03:06 |
File footage: Saddam/missiles | Corcoran: The West's ultimatum to Saddam is clear - give up your missiles and chemicals - the so called weapons of mass destruction and sanctions will be lifted. Saddam refuses to comply - the US and Britain won't let the UN back down, and an estimated half a million young children have died from a lack of food and medicine. | 03:30 |
Von Sponeck interview | VON SPONECK: If sanctions are not lifted, I would say the international community becomes more and more liable to be co-accused in something that is no longer defendable. | 04:03 |
Inside hospital/sick children |
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| Corcoran: Nearly a decade of sanctions have reduced Iraq's first world health infrastructure to a third world shambles. Doctors are forced to watch increasing numbers of children die from chest infections and other simple, treatable illnesses. | 04:20 |
Dr. Shammari interview Super: Dr. Mazin Al Shammari Saddam Hospital for Paediatrics | DR. SHAMMARI: We used to have two or three deaths per week or ten days in the hospital prior to the embargo time - this figure is now two to three deaths every day in the hospital. This is a huge number - and every now and then you can hear some families that are crying, that have lost their children. |
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Mother with sick child in hospital | Corcoran: In theory medicine is exempt from the blockade, but the UN Sanctions Review Committee often deems medical supplies to be dual use - meaning they could be of benefit to Iraq's military. At various times syringes, even bed linen, has been banned. There's still no chlorine for the heavily polluted water supply - chlorine could be used in chemical weapons. And no spares for technical equipment - including incubators -- as the parts could be cannibalised for weapons research. | 05:01 |
Dr. Shammari interview | DR. SHAMMARI: The central oxygen sometimes in the hospital will be cut and it will not be present because it needs to be brought from a certain factory and sometimes it is not functioning - the factory - and they will not supply us with oxygen -- this will be a catastrophe. So that night, when the oxygen has been cut and 8 neonates have died in the same night because of the lack of oxygen in this ward - it was a very horrible night at that time - I think one month ago in March. | 05:37 |
Mother sits beside sick child | Corcoran: 1.7 billion dollars worth of goods paid for under the Oil for Food program are still on hold - awaiting approval by the Sanctions Committee. The UN recently promised to streamline the review process for medicine. But even if adequate medical supplies could get in, the civil distribution system has collapsed. Leukemia patients like Ali are beyond help. | 06:04 |
Shammari with sick child | Corcoran: Can you do anything for his pain? Dr. Shammari: No actually, even the sedatives including the morphine and others, these things are lacking and we can't afford giving them to all patients. This is one of the medications that we are lacking so that if the child is in agony and in pain and even dying we can't give him anything that can sedate him because we don't have it simply | 06:33 |
| We are not animals so that you can have sanctions and the embargo to kill the Iraqi population and destroy them. Why all these things? | 06:49 |
Lina with Corcoran and Dr. Shammari | Corcoran: A desperate woman interrupts the doctor, insisting that we follow her. LINA: He's in very danger - maybe he's die ...the fever...I can't... Corcoran: In Iraq this a dangerous move. Such unapproved contact with foreigners can draw suspicion and arrest. | 07:06 |
| LINA: He's a baby. She's the mother, I am auntie. Corcoran: Her name is Lina. 40 years old - never married. She lives for her 8 year old nephew Omar - another leukemia patient. LINA: He's not bleeding now.. but he's ah...fever. Corcoran: Where did you get the drugs from? LINA: From another patient. Corcoran: You bought that from them? You paid money. LINA: Yeah. | 07:45 |
Omar/Dr. Shammari | Corcoran: So these drugs have to be smuggled in and sold on ah I guess almost on a medical black market -- that's what happens? Doctor: Yes yes - something like that. He needs decent reliable antibiotics and these are not all the time and the family were obliged to bring certain medication from outside the hospital. Corcoran: Is it going to be enough? Doctor: I don't think so actually - it is not only the quantity of the drug that is lacking but the efficacy of the drug. These medications are coming from unreliable origins - one is from Malaysia and the chloroform is from Turkey. |
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| Corcoran: Omar's family has spent every cent they've got on ineffective black market medicine. | 08:34 |
Lina holds photos of Omar | LINA: Look at the picture - see he is nice ...now he's maybe die. What can I do for him? If anything I can buy to give, to help Omar. |
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Corcoran walks with Lina to home/meets family | Corcoran: Lina insists on taking us home to meet the rest of the family. Five brothers, their wives and children now forced to live under the one roof. | 09:09 |
| Omar's father Ali - too distraught to visit his son in hospital greets us at the gate. They were part of Iraq's large middle class - well educated, well paid, well travelled - now they're destitute. Ali survives on a near-worthless government pension. Lina still has a clerical job - her salary now worth only a dollar fifty a month. Not nearly enough for Omar's medication. | 09:19 |
Inside home | Corcoran: You're going to sell the lounge and chairs and tables? LINA: Yes because they give money, good money. Corcoran: How much do you think you'll get for all of this? LINA: Maybe 300... Corcoran: 300,000 dinar. For everything, dining room table. LINA: With the carpet. Corcoran: And the carpets. So there'll be nothing left in this room? LINA: Okay, that's life... Omar. | 09:50 |
Riyadh | Corcoran: Our unannounced visit attracts friends and neighbours - including Riyadh, a British trained engineer. | 10:16 |
| ENGINEER: They used to live a reasonable life. They could spend, they could change their car every 3 years or 2 years. They could go on holidays outside of Iraq. Now they are taking $3 a month or $2 a month - US dollars - what can they buy? A kilo of meat costs $1. |
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| Corcoran: Lina says sanctions claimed the life of her mother, who died in this very room because there was no medicine to treat her after a stroke. | 10:45 |
Lina | LINA : She died with my hand in here. Because I can't help her, because I don't have any money - and how - and she died - died - and then Omar his disease - what can I do? |
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Riyadh | RIYADH: He's a symbol for us in this district. He's a symbol - he's our son- he's not just Ahmed's nephew or his father's son - he's our son. This can happen to any of our children. | 11:25 |
Night shots Baghdad | Music Corcoran: But not everyone is doing it tough in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Under the glow of a nearby oil refinery Baghdad's nouveau rich come out to play. Saddam's favoured cronies, who take their cut from his lucrative smuggling operations. A meal here would cost an ordinary Iraqi a year's pay - little wonder that this elite community are contemptuously referred to as ‘the war rats'. |
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Baghdad nightlife/Riyadh interview | RIYADH: Their richness is beyond imagining - anything like that. They are under reasonable political and economic cover. You know, they are well established - but we are the ones who need help. | 12:10 |
Food rationing | Corcoran: Before the Gulf War Iraq imported 70% of its food. After the economic blockade was imposed it took five long years of sanctions -induced near starvation before Saddam finally agreed to the UN Oil for Food program. There are now 49,000 of these ration points across the country. UN aid workers say it's a good idea that simply doesn't go far enough. A drip feed, that can't save everyone. | 12:44 |
Rao Singh interview Super: Anupama Rao Singh UNICEF, Iraq | RAO SINGH: These are half a million children whose right to survival was not protected. So it's just unacceptable - that's all I can say. | 13:18 |
Saddam City
School | Corcoran: Down in Saddam City, Baghdad's grandly named slum one and a half million people eke out a miserable existence. Here the collapse of infrastructure has been total. Iraq once boasted an education system second to none in the region, with free tuition to university level. These days, persisting with schooling can be fatal. | 13:51 |
Singh with Corcoran at school | RAO SINGH: These are the sort of toilet and sanitation. I mean you see this - a total clogging of the sewerage system - no facilities for children - no water, drinking water. Cholera has re-emerged as a problem. Last summer there was a major health crisis in terms of cholera. Polio has re-emerged in the country - last year there were 72 cases, confirmed cases of polio. | 14:32 |
Choppers/War file footage | Music |
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| Corcoran: Ordinary Iraqis also face the prospect of a very sudden death. US and British aircraft have been enforcing the blockade - patrolling Iraq skies - since the end of the Gulf war. But for the past 18 months they've been challenged by Saddam's anti aircraft defences. Clashes occur almost daily, often with tragic results. | 15:09 |
Injured child | This was the aftermath of the first case of what Americans would call "collateral damage". In January last year a misguided US missile hit a suburb in the southern city of Basra, killing six, wounding 60. The UN says 144 Iraqi civilians died in such attacks last year with another 450 injured. | 15:35 |
| Today, it's not hard to find survivors of the Basra bombing. | 16:06 |
Ali walks with Corcoran | Away from the crowd - a young boy named Ali, guides us through streets ...past the broken sewers and filth, to where his family was re-located after the attack. |
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| Three of his sisters died when their house took a direct hit from a US bomb. Ali's mother can barely bring herself to talk about it. | 16:30 |
Family show pictures of children | TRANSLATOR: This is the 2 and a half year old... This is another picture of the older one. The other one - they didn't have any pictures of her yet, the baby MOTHER: Since I lost my kids I have no hope. I just want to die...to go to sleep with them. |
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Mother shows Corcoran baby | Corcoran: But for this family there is one glimmer of hope. | 17:14 |
| Corcoran: What is her name? Translator: Zena. Corcoran: Zena, named after her sister. |
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| Corcoran: Zena will join Iraq's "Sanctions Generation" born or raised into a life of suffering and pain. Many young Iraqi's blame the west - not Saddam - who is increasingly viewed as a moderate - and not tough enough on Iraq's tormentors. |
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| VON SPONECK: If sanctions are not lifted, every day that passes enhances the chances that we are creating an anti-western group of people there who are tomorrow's political leaders, tomorrow's decision makers. Is that what we want? In a way Iraq has become a sanction testing laboratory - that is how I see it. |
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Von Sponeck at doorstop | Corcoran: Hans von Sponeck is just the latest in a line of senior UN officials to quit over the organisation's inability to fix this humanitarian disaster. Journalist: What advice would you give to the new coordinator coming to direct a program you yourself has said is not working? Von Sponeck: Honesty - be honest - learn quickly and then have the courage to advise the secretary general very, very straight forwardly. Corcoran: His message was simple: maintain a military embargo - but end economic sanctions: - a plea that's fallen on deaf ears. | 18:04 |
Omar in hospital | Singing |
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Omar's funeral | Corcoran: Omar has also departed. He died a week after we first encountered Lina at the hospital. | 19:06 |
| Born just after the Gulf War - his life ends just weeks short of his 9th birthday - truly a child of the "Sanctions Generation". Sent to his grave by the west's apparent willingness to be manipulated by Saddam Hussein. |
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| By chance we finally discover why the authorities were so nervous by our filming this family. Omar's father is a retired intelligence officer - abandoned in his hour of need by a regime he once staunchly defended. Those with a sense of retribution may see the sins of the father visited upon the son. In Iraq, the sins of a dictator have been inflicted upon an entire nation. | 19:46 |
ENDS |
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| IRAQ SANCTIONSReporter MARK CORCORAN Camera GEOFF CLEGG Sound KATE GRAHAM Research VIVIEN ALTMAN JANET SILVER
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