Correspondent: The Mother of all Ironies Tx Date: 23rd June 2002 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Music 00.00.02 John Sweeney The children of Iraq are still dying because of western sanctions – so says Saddam and others. 00.00.10 George Galloway Every six minutes that your programme will be aired tonight an Iraqi child will have died under the embargo. 00.00.19 John Sweeney Mass funerals of dead babies in Baghdad. A terrible wrong blamed on sanctions. 00.00.25 Osama bin Laden speaking 00.00.27 John Sweeney Images like this have been seized upon by Osama bin Laden. Just after September the eleventh, he spoke about a million dead Iraqi children. 00.00.39 John Sweeney But how reliable is the word of a regime that shoots children? 00.00.44 Boy Voice over He said; ‘I have no strength left, leave me here’. And then he died. 00.00.51 John Sweeney And blocks life saving medicines for his own people while the United Nations helps him get away with it. 00.00.58 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed We are working here on behalf of the government of Iraq. 00.01.02 John Sweeney Saddam? 00.01.03 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Yes. 00.01.03 Correspondent Theme Music 00.01.12 Title Page MOTHER OF ALL IRONIES 00.01.18 Music 00.01.32 Aston JOHN SWEENEY There are lots of ways into Iraq but this is perhaps the most glamorous. It’s as if we’re yachting into the axis of evil. 00.01.40 Music 00.01.42 John Sweeney We’re here illegally - without Baghdad’s stamp in our passports. 00.01.46 Man Nice to meet you. Welcome to Kurdistan. 00.01.49 John Sweeney Thank you. 00.01.50 Music 00.01.52 John Sweeney The writ of President Saddam Hussein doesn’t run here in the far north of Iraq. That’s because when Saddam came gunning for the Kurds after their failed uprising in ‘91, the West created a safe haven policed by a no-fly zone. 00.02.08 John Sweeney Any Iraqi planes here will be shot down. 00.02.12 John Sweeney The mountains are the Kurds’ best weapon. Any attack by Saddam would require massive air support, so without it, the Kurds can flourish. 00.02.21 John Sweeney This is the only part of Iraq where people are free to speak. Not that Saddam isn’t breathing down their necks. This is where Kurdistan ends and Saddam-land begins. 00.02.31 Music 00.02.33 John Sweeney So the Iraqi positions are where? Where are the Iraqi’s? Where’s Saddam? 00.02.39 Soldier Voice over Saddam is over there. Right up to the last position there, that’s all his. 00.02.44 John Sweeney Iraqi soldiers command the ridge. Between them and us is an invisible red line. But Saddam’s troops don’t always stick to their side. 00.02.58 Soldier Voice over There was some shooting this morning. A schoolboy was tending some sheep and the Iraqi soldiers shot and killed him. 00.03.09 John Sweeney The Kurds know Saddam better than anyone else. His Anfal campaign against them in the eighties saw four thousand villages razed and a hundred thousand dead. 00.03.21 John Sweeney So the killing of a shepherd boy is not just one small tragedy. It’s a reminder of past mass murder and Saddam’s present hate. 00.03.30 John Sweeney We arrive just after the funeral. All the men of the village have come to pay their respects. The Imam too. And there is nothing small about his father’s grief. 00.03.42 John Sweeney The dead boy Mohammed was just fourteen. 00.03.49 John Sweeney Tell me what happened. 00.03.53 Boy Voice over Me and my friend were grazing the cows and playing. We could see the soldiers had come out of their bases. We were far away from the soldiers but they fired at us and hit my friend in the side. It went into his stomach but did not come out the other side. Then the soldiers came down from the hills towards us. I was terrified and ran away. Later, we got his body back from the fields. 00.04.25 Boy Voice over He was still alive. We carried him for a hundred metres or so and then he died. 00.04.31 John Sweeney Did he say anything before he died? 00.04.36 Boy Voice over He said; ‘I have no strength left, leave me here’. And then he died. 00.04.49 John Sweeney At the end of the road where the fields begin is no man’s land. 00.04.55 John Sweeney And this is evidence of what the government of Iraq thinks of the Kurdish safe haven – bullet holes in a wall. 00.05.07 John Sweeney The menace from the killers on the ridge was all too real. Although our guides were keen for us to get out of the firing line as quickly as possible, they wanted to show us the exact spot where the boy had been shot. 00.05.20 John Sweeney Where is the red line? 00.05.23 Man Voice over There’s no front line here. Sometimes we can’t go any further than here and sometimes we can go out into the field. It’s up to the soldiers in the hills. 00.05.32 John Sweeney And so there are still some kids out there. Why do the kids continue to go out there if somebody’s been shot? 00.05.41 Man Voice over We’ve got used to it. For so many years it’s been like this. Where can we go? Every one of us has cattle; we have nothing else. The cattle have to eat so we have to take them out into the field. We have no choice. 00.06.10 John Sweeney The Kurdish defence force is eager to show anyone from the West its willingness to fight if that means the end of Saddam once and for all. 00.06.20 John Sweeney This sniper bustling around in the shrubbery may seem a little obvious but to him so does the threat from Saddam. 00.06.29 Sniper Voice over He destroyed and burnt my village. There were many people killed and buried alive. 00.06.36 John Sweeney Are you scared of Saddam’s soldiers now? 00.06.43 Sniper Voice over No we’re not afraid, we’re defending our own soil. We won’t let anyone do an injustice to us. We want to be free. 00.06.53 Soldiers on parade 00.07.11 John Sweeney The only weapons the Kurds have they took from retreating Iraqi soldiers back in ’91. 00.07.17 John Sweeney Fearful of upsetting the Kurds’ neighbours, especially the Turks, the West has given them nothing to help defend themselves against Saddam. 00.07.28 John Sweeney Hence the absence of bangs. 00.07.34 John Sweeney I, I don’t want to be rude but compared to the strength of the Iraqi army, you’re almost nothing? 00.07.48 Soldier Voice over That’s true but our morale is much higher than theirs. In 1991 when the allied forces attacked Saddam they had a hundred and fifty thousand marines against a million Iraqi soldiers and they beat him. 00.08.03 John Sweeney How many of Saddam’s soldiers would actually fight for him, to save Saddam? 00.08.09 Soldier Voice over Only the republican guard would fight for him. The Iraqi people as a whole do not want Saddam. Don’t look at the fact that there are so many people under his control. These people have no choice. They’re not like us, we are free, they have to do what they’re told but none of them really wants to do anything for him. This has been proven in the past. 00.08.40 John Sweeney The Kurdish army also has a dedicated women’s unit. 00.08.44 John Sweeney Saddam’s secret police came for Captain Rezan in 1990. They wanted her brother who was on the run so they tortured her. 00.08.52 John Sweeney What scarred the captain most is not her own agony but the memory of a young boy screaming. It’s not hard in Kurdistan to find reasons why just about everyone would fight. 00.09.08 Captain Rezan Voice over We could hear the cries of children being tortured. One morning people were just waking up for their prayers and we could hear a boy being tortured. His screams were so terrible and then suddenly he fell silent. 00.09.23 Captain Rezan Voice over I could hear footsteps and I looked through the small hole that was in the door of my cell. I saw them dragging a bloodied body through the hallway. The boy was dead and I remember at that time thinking if there is a God then why doesn’t he come to our rescue? 00.09.41 John Sweeney And this is where the torture of children and adults was carried out, at Saddam’s pleasure. They called it the Red House, the most feared building in the north of Iraq, where Saddam’s secret police entertained the Kurdish underground. 00.09.57 John Sweeney These men were suspected of belonging to a Kurdish political party Saddam had outlawed. 00.10.09 Man 1 Voice over Every evening the guards would come. They had a huge metal key ring with about forty keys on it. Every time they came to take someone the keys would rattle and it would put the fear of God into us as we thought they were coming for us. 00.10.27 Man 2 Voice over They had a wind up electric generator on the desk. They connected the leads to my armpits and gave me electric shocks and asked me to confess. I told them I didn’t know anything. 00.10.46 Man 3 Voice over Under these electric shocks my body would cringe and the shock would throw me up into the air. They kept doing it until my shoulder became paralysed. 00.11.00 Man 1 Voice over They connected the leads to my little toes. Sometimes they connected them to other parts of my body. The electric shocks were so bad they curled me up. And I remember trying to kill myself by shaking my body vigorously but I couldn’t even manage that. 00.11.26 Man 3 Voice over The guards used to say; ‘we can even make the walls talk’. So some people made up false confessions just to get out of the situation. They thought they would either be shot or hanged or be freed. Anything would be better than this. 00.11.55 John Sweeney Torture is not ancient history in Iraq. It is present fact. We were taken to a Kurdish prison to meet a man, who until a few months ago, used to torture and spy and kill for the government of Iraq. 00.12.08 John Sweeney The Kurds caught him spying earlier this year. He was based in the south of Iraq where he tortured Muslim opponents of the regime and came north to operate against the Kurds. He’s asked us to hide his identity. 00.12.21 John Sweeney Saddam’s torturers know only too well what the regime is capable of. 00.12.38 Kamal Voice over In 1999 I came to Kurdistan to spy on the political parties and the Kurdish government there but I was arrested in January of this year. 00.12.54 Kamal Voice over After the Kurdish uprising in 1991, they brought thousands of people including children to us and we carried out executions without any legal process. I saw how we tortured them. It was atrocious. We would even burn the detainees. 00.13.13 John Sweeney Kamal tortured throughout the nineties, getting the enemies of Saddam to confess. If someone didn’t break, they’d bring in the family 00.13.23 Kamal Voice over They’d bring the son in front of his parents who were handcuffed or tied and they’d start off with simple tortures such as cigarette burns and then if his father didn’t confess they’d start using more serious methods. They’d tell the father that they’d slaughter his son. They’d bring a bayonet out and if he didn’t confess they’d kill the child. 00.13.42 John Sweeney The torturers worked with impunity. 00.13.47 Kamal Voice over The interrogator has the right to perform all kinds of atrocities such as cutting off a child’s ear or amputating limbs. You can even make a kebab out of the child’s body. 00.13.57 Music 00.14.04 John Sweeney Irritating journalists like me are banned but Saddam does let in the right kind of foreigner. Correspondent managed to get a cameraman to accompany a trip by the Great Britain-Iraq Society, there to campaign against sanctions and to show solidarity with the Iraqi people whilst war is threatened. 00.14.22 John Sweeney The delegation was led by Labour MP, George Galloway. He’s a familiar face in Baghdad. 00.14.28 Music 00.14.30 John Sweeney In the last two and a half years, Galloway’s been here nine times. 00.14.34 Music 00.14.37 George Galloway I have with me the biggest British delegation to visit Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. 00.14.49 John Sweeney It included Galloway, two other Labour MPs, a member of the House of Lords and a group of journalists. 00.14.56 George Galloway Twelve years is long enough for any war. A million dead Iraqi children is enough. The misery which all of us who have been here in Iraq can see and touch and smell is enough. It’s time to start talking. 00.15.16 John Sweeney Galloway’s been against sanctions from the start. In ’94 he came straight to Iraq from Palestine. 00.15.22 George Galloway Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. 00.15.23 Aston 18th January 1994 00.15.28 George Galloway I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself, who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt fraternal greetings and support. 00.15.43 Applause 00.15.46 John Sweeney And every trip Galloway condemns the Western sanctions that, Iraq says, are killing the children. 00.15.53 John Sweeney Since ’91 sanctions imposed on Iraq did cause real suffering for ordinary people, suffering Saddam was keen to highlight. 00.16.02 John Sweeney But why sanctions in the first place? 00.16.05 John Sweeney The answer lies directly with Saddam. 00.16.08 John Sweeney The world doesn’t trust him an inch. The West fears Saddam getting hold of anything, which might help him make weapons of mass destruction – again. 00.16.17 John Sweeney He’s used them before against his own people in a town called Halabja. 00.16.22 John Sweeney In 1988, near the end of the eight year war he started with Iran, the Kurdish town fell to the enemy. 00.16.30 John Sweeney One afternoon the Iraqi warplanes came. People ran to the shelters, simple basements under the bigger houses. 00.16.36 Music 00.16.49 Woman Voice over From noon until eight pm we were down here in this cellar. There were six hundred of us crammed in here. Everyone was gathered here in fear. We were praying for God to have mercy on us. Dear God, take us away from this. Everyone was in their own world of fear and pain, we were afraid for ourselves. 00.17.13 John Sweeney But they weren’t ordinary bombs that fell on Halabja that day. 00.17.16 Music 00.17.21 Woman Voice over We breathed like this… 00.17.23 Gasping 00.17.29 Woman Voice over We were having great difficulty gasping desperately for air because of the stench, which was very strong. So we would put damp towels on our mouths and noses because the holes in our lungs were getting closed. We could not breath at all because of the pain and the smell. Our eyes were streaming so much we couldn’t see. 00.17.56 Music 00.17.59 John Sweeney Halabja was bombed with a cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun and sarin. 00.18.05 Music 00.18.10 John Sweeney On that day, up to five thousand people were gassed and this was not a one off. Forty other villages across northern Iraq were poisoned. 00.18.20 John Sweeney Cancer and birth defects have shot up since the war crimes. And every home contains its own horror story. 00.18.27 John Sweeney Hi, hello. Hi. Hello. 00.18.42 John Sweeney So what happened to this poor lady? 00.18.47 Man Voice over She was hit by the chemicals and her face went red. It was itching so badly that she started scratching it and scratching it, which led to this. 00.18.58 Music 00.19.02 John Sweeney It’s because there were fears that Saddam will do this again that the United Nations imposed sanctions against Iraq. 00.19.09 Music 00.19.18 John Sweeney The Galloway delegation is on the road but not heading for Halabja. They’re off to see the effect of sanctions but not the cause. 00.19.26 John Sweeney This is a public hospital in Basra, in the south of Iraq. There are special hospitals, fully equipped for Saddam’s elite in the secret police but delegations never get shown round them. 00.19.38 John Sweeney This is the suffering you are allowed to see in Saddam’s Iraq. 00.19.43 John Sweeney There is no propaganda weapon more powerful than the image of a dying child. Dying, the doctors here say, because of the embargo. 00.19.52 Dr Abdul Kareem Seber For example in Basra now we don’t have radiotherapy machines. We used to have radiotherapy machines in the seventies and the eighties and they have stopped working since the beginning of the nineties and we are not allowed to bring any extra instruments to supply them or to let them work. 00.20.13 Aston Dr ABDUL KAREEM SEBER Basra Children’s Hospital These are radiation machines necessary to give radiation exposure for the cancer cases to the… 00.20.20 John Sweeney How can they be confused with weapons? 00.20.22 Dr Abdul Kareem Seber I don’t know. I don’t know. From a medical point of view I think about my patients. I think about the patients who are dying because of the shortage of a simple thing, which we can bring by ourselves and we are forbidden to bring it because of un-proper excuse, un-logical excuse. 00.20.42 Music 00.20.43 John Sweeney In the north the Kurds are also suffering from the dual use sanctions. Any equipment that Saddam could potentially strip down and use in a weapon of mass destruction is banned. 00.20.54 John Sweeney And because, under the UN agreement, everything has to go through Baghdad, even if it’s for the Kurds, here in the north they lack lifesaving equipment such as radiotherapy machines. 00.21.07 Doctor 2 I can tell you honestly that sometimes when these things are difficult or when a machine is very sophisticated, the United States will not allow us to get it. 00.21.17 John Sweeney Do the Americans, when they ban you from getting this kit, do they understand that it’s for northern Iraq, for the Kurds who are not actually fans of Saddam Hussein? 00.21.22 Doctor 2 Of course they do. Yes. I, I, this is a very strange question because who create all situations? They know that we are living in the north of Iraq and there’s no Saddam Hussein in the north of Iraq and they know there is the no-fly zone here and if United States doesn’t know this who knows this. What I, what we see from United States is only no, no, no, no. For example, we went to work, to United of Kingdom for the purpose of training, me and my colleague, they didn’t give us the visa because you said you have Iraqi passports. 00.21.57 John Sweeney For you to go to the United Kingdom? 00.21.58 Doctor 2 Yes, just for the purpose of training for one month, they didn’t allow us. So what we see from the United States and the United of Kingdom, United Kingdom are no, no, no, no. We never hear from them yes. 00.22.10 John Sweeney But the world had tried to say yes. 00.22.14 Aston BBC News 20th June 1996 00.22.14 News reporter After months of wrangling and delay the United Nations and Iraq have finally reached a deal that will allow Saddam Hussein to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine for his people. At meetings with the top Iraqi leadership over the weekend, Saddam at last agreed to the UN Oil for Food formula even though he believes it infringes Iraqi national sovereignty. 00.22.37 News reporter He claims UN sanctions have reduced many of his citizens to near starvation. Pictures like these have been a powerful propaganda weapon for Saddam, which he’ll now have to give up. 00.22.49 John Sweeney But he didn’t give it up. Despite the billions from Oil for Food, officially nothing improved. 00.22.52 Aston April 1998 00.22.56 John Sweeney The mass dead baby funerals continued. The small coffins on taxis, the wailing women. Officially children carried on dying in their thousands and all because of Western sanctions. 00.23.09 John Sweeney In Baghdad, Oil for Food appeared to have had no effect on the suffering of the people. 00.23.14 Woman crying 00.23.20 John Sweeney The Kurds find this surprising. 00.23.23 Aston BARHAM SALAH Prime Minister Patriotic Union of Kurdistan The Oil for Food programme is a good programme, it must continue, it is the best that has happened to Iraq since the foundation of the Iraqi state. By the way not only for the Kurdish areas but also for the rest of Iraq because we never had it so good. All Iraqis, not just Kurds. 00.23.39 Barham Salah Never in our history we had our government obliged by international law, to spend the revenues of oil on the well- being of Iraqi people, civilian needs of Iraqi people. In the past all revenues were being squandered on weapons of mass destruction, on repression and on war. 00.24.00 John Sweeney Saddam isn’t just relying on Oil for Food revenue. This is a ten mile queue of lorries, talking Saddam’s oil out of Iraq to the black market in Turkey, part of sanctions busting on a grand scale. 00.24.13 John Sweeney Sitting on the world’s second biggest oil field, Saddam now makes an estimated two billion dollars a year from flouting international law. 00.24.22 Music 00.24.23 John Sweeney So, if billions of dollars are coming in from Oil for Food and sanctions busting, why are we still being told that thousand of babies are dying? 00.24.31 Aston GEORGE GALLOWAY MP Chairman, Great Britain-Iraq Society Every six minutes that your programme will be aired tonight, an Iraqi child will have died under the embargo. That’s every six minutes of every day, of every night, of every year for twelve years. 00.24.43 Music 00.24.46 John Sweeney Asked how many Iraqi children are dying a month, the delegation hears the same, no change, line. 00.24.53 Aston Dr UMED MEDHAT SALAH Iraqi Health Minister The average, the average for the last summer was not less than seven thousand. 00.25.00 Music 00.25.02 John Sweeney The strong man’s sums don’t add up. Billions from oil are going into the economy but the child mortality figures haven’t changed. 00.25.10 John Sweeney UNICEF projected five hundred thousand excess child deaths in the nineties. A figure the regime leapt on. 00.25.18 John Sweeney UNICEF has since pointed out that not just sanctions but the Gulf War and bad administration by Baghdad was to blame. And no one ever counted those notional babies. It was an estimate based on Iraqi data, now four years old. 00.25.34 John Sweeney So how can seven thousand children be dying a month in the midst of all this milk and honey? 00.25.42 John Sweeney In northern Iraq we met a man who might be able to solve the mystery. Ali used to work in Saddam’s inner circle. He claims that the mass baby funerals are faked. 00.25.53 John Sweeney When a baby dies its parents are prevented from burying it. The body is stored until the next procession. Ali says one of the funeral taxi drivers told him… 00.26.05 Ali Voice over He went to Najaf a couple of days ago. He brought back two bodies of children for one of the mass funerals. Their smell was incredibly strong. He didn’t know how long they’d been in storage, perhaps six or seven months. The drivers would collect them from the regions; they would be informed of when a mass funeral was arranged so they’d be ready. Certainly they would collect bodies that had died months before and had been held for the mass funeral processions. 00.26.46 John Sweeney Ali fled Baghdad, leaving his family behind. Saddam’s secret police wanted to get him back. They tortured his wife. She wouldn’t talk. So they tortured Anna. 00.26.58 John Sweeney So how old are you? You sit here. Smashing. How old are you? 00.27.08 John Sweeney You’re four. 00.27.09 John Sweeney They tortured her two years ago, when Anna was two. 00.27.14 Ali Voice over They had a wooden stick they would hit her with, they would also squeeze her like this and ask; ‘has Daddy called you, does Daddy contact you?’ She said they then hit her here. It caused a softness of her bones. The only cure is for her to keep wearing these medical shoes. They are helping to straighten her bones but she can’t walk without these shoes. 00.27.58 John Sweeney There’s no doubting that some children are dying in Iraq because of lack of medicines. Saddam blames Western sanctions. In northern Iraq the Kurds see things differently. 00.28.12 John Sweeney The Kurds should get thirteen percent of the Oil for Food money. But when the agreement was signed the UN allowed Baghdad control of the budget. The Kurds can only request medicines, leaving the Health Ministry in Baghdad to supply them – or not. 00.28.28 John Sweeney The Kurdish doctors are not impressed. 00.28.32 Doctor This is the biopsy. I am very pessimistic about this case. 00.28.42 John Sweeney You think he’s got cancer. 00.28.44 Doctor If this case now was in Baghdad people can help him but here we have nothing for him. 00.28.54 John Sweeney Why can’t, why don’t you have the equipment here? 00.28.59 Doctor I don’t know, you can ask that WHO or World Health Organisation. 00.29.05 John Sweeney Why don’t you have the medicines here? 00.29.09 Doctor We ask for that but we have no medicines. I don’t know why. Not even in Halabja, in all Kurdistan… 00.29.24 John Sweeney Cancers like leukaemia have shot up in northern Iraq, caused, they fear, by Saddam’s chemical weapons. According to UN figures around two hundred and fifty million dollars is earmarked for medicines for northern Iraq but unspent by Saddam. 00.29.40 John Sweeney The UN blames problems with delivery. So how does that leave the Kurds? To treat leukaemia you need a cocktail of drugs rather than just one. I went to the hospital pharmacy to track them down. 00.29.53 John Sweeney Have you got cyclo phospho…phosphophamide? 00.29.56 Pharmacist We’ve got cyclo phosphamide yes. 00.29.59 John Sweeney Ok. Have you got vinchristine? 00.30.02 Pharmacist Vinchristine, no. 00.30.04 John Sweeney Have you got Prednisollo? 00.30.06 Pharmacist Prednisollo, huh? Yes. 00.30.09 John Sweeney Have you Cytocine Arab… 00.30.13 Pharmacist Arabinacide. No. 00.30.16 John Sweeney Have you got Cysplatine? 00.30.17 Pharmacist No. 00.30.18 John Sweeney Have you got Downorubicine? 00.30.21 Pharmacist Downorubicine. Yes. 00.30.23 John Sweeney Have you got Elasparaginaze? 00.30.28 Pharmacist No. 00.30.29 John Sweeney No. How many beds are there in, that this pharmacy serves? Is it a four hundred bed hospital or a… 00.30.36 Pharmacist Yes, it’s a four hundred bed hospital. We have only this refridge for our patients. 00.30.42 John Sweeney For a four hundred bed hospital. 00.30.44 Pharmacist For all the hospitals in this area. These hospitals they are serving one million three thousand five hundred population. 00.30.54 John Sweeney One fridge… 00.30.55 Pharmacist One fridge for one million three thousand five hundred population. 00.31.00 John Sweeney Is that good enough? 00.31.02 Pharmacist They are not good enough; they are very deficient. 00.31.07 John Sweeney Whilst the Iraqi regime is keen to show how its children are suffering from sanctions, the irony is that Baghdad is the only place where cancer can be treated in Iraq – they’ve got the medicines. 00.31.20 John Sweeney If you’re a Kurd needing treatment you can go to Baghdad so long as you’re not on Saddam’s wanted list, so long as you’ve money for the trip. 00.31.29 John Sweeney Fatah’s son has leukaemia. He’s taken his son once to the capital. The boy needs to go back for treatment but his father daren’t go. 00.31.41 Fatah Voice over If there was proper treatment here why would I go all that way, suffer the worry of that unpleasant place? I would have liked the treatment to be available here. 00.31.54 Fatah Voice over You’re bound to be afraid. I was so nervous when I stayed in Baghdad I didn’t leave the hotel for three days. I left my son with a relative there as I felt I was being watched. It’s a dreadful thing. Why should the cure only be available in Baghdad? Here we have the same doctors. 00.32.17 Fatah Voice over There’s a government there that we don’t want but when we need treatment we have to go there and kiss their hands. We have to go and plead with them. 00.32.31 Aston BARHAM SALAH Prime Minister Patriotic Union of Kurdistan I know of people who are dying because of lack of some basic medical supplies and I know that with the amount of funding available in the year account we should have no health problem. Whether we call this, whether we want to be charitable and call it bureaucratic inefficiencies or become somewhat more aggressive and call it criminal negligence. Take you pick. The reality of the matter I think the UN could do a better job here and WHO as an implementing agency could do a better job. 00.33.08 John Sweeney So why is it there’s such a shocking lack of medicines in Kurdistan’s hospitals if the money from the Oil for Food programme is there? 00.33.16 John Sweeney We’ve come to the World Health Organisation here in Sulaymaniyah, to ask that simple question. 00.33.23 John Sweeney There’s one catch. Officially we’re in Iraq illegally because Saddam doesn’t recognise the Kurdish safe haven. We haven’t got an Iraqi visa in our passports. That might be a problem for the UN’s World Health Organisation. 00.33.37 John Sweeney Hello, hi, John Sweeney from the BBC. 00.33.43 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Yeah hello. Welcome. 00.33.44 John Sweeney Smashing ok. 00.33.46 Aston ABDUL-AZEAM AHMED WHO Finance Officer Sulaymaniyah region Unfortunately the right person is not available in the office now. And he is responsible of all medical side of our operation. If you kindly give me a chance, so that I can arrange an appointment for you tomorrow. 00.34.06 John Sweeney Right, can, just one simple thing I want to establish that we haven’t been through Baghdad. So, just on that point can you talk to us if we haven’t got an Iraqi visa in our passports? 00.34.20 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed You, you didn’t, you didn’t come through Baghdad? 00.34.24 John Sweeney We didn’t come through Baghdad. 00.34.25 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Oh I see, I see. This is another issue here. This is another issue. I have to check it. I have to check it. 00.34.35 John Sweeney What’s, what’s the problem? 00.34.38 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed As you know all UN organisations here are working on behalf of Baghdad government. 00.34.47 John Sweeney The Baghdad government? 00.34.47 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed We are working here on behalf of the government of Iraq. 00.34.51 John Sweeney Saddam? 00.34.52 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Yes. So we are not really authorised to do things, which might really upset our counterbalance with the government since we are doing the work on their behalf. 00.35.07 John Sweeney I’ve got a simple question; why aren’t there enough medicines in the hospitals in Kurdistan because there is the money for them. So why haven’t the medicines arrived? 00.35.17 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Really, I cannot give any statement about medicines… 00.35.23 John Sweeney This is the World Health Organisation? 00.35.24 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed This is not my area. 00.35.25 John Sweeney You’re the Finance Officer? 00.35.26 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed I’m the Finance Officer, yes. 00.35.27 John Sweeney So the question is the money’s available for these medicines, for example cancer medicines for leukaemia patients… 00.35.33 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed That money’s available and medicines is all and all the stores are full of medicines and… 00.35.39 John Sweeney And the hospitals… 00.35.40 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed There is no problems at all. 00.35.41 John Sweeney There are no problems at all in Kurdistan? 00.35.43 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed To the best of my knowledge there is no problem regarding medicines. 00.35.46 John Sweeney Then you are horribly misinformed. The pharmacies, the hospitals… 00.35.51 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Maybe the right person is the person who is in charge of this… 00.35.55 John Sweeney Yes but… 00.35.56 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed …who is unfortunately unavailable now. 00.35.58 John Sweeney He’s unavailable but also there is a problem in that because I am from, I haven’t got an Iraqi stamp, yeah? 00.36.05 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed No, in that case really I am sorry to tell you that we will not be able to really to make any kind of investigation or statement of you because we are here, we are working on behalf of Iraqi government. 00.36.20 John Sweeney Saddam? You’re working for… 00.36.22 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed I’m talking about the Iraqi government. I am not concerned with this person. I am talking about the government. This is a letter of understanding between the Iraqi government and UN that the UN organisation in the north will work on behalf of Iraqi government. They didn’t mention Saddam or didn’t mention any person. Ok, Iraqi government. 00.36.45 John Sweeney Thank you very much. 00.36.46 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed So, leave me somewhere where I can tell you 00.36.49 John Sweeney Ok, thank you, I understand. 00.36.50 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Thank you. 00.36.51 John Sweeney Thanks very much for 00.36.54 Abdul-Azeam Ahmed Thank you. 00.36.59 John Sweeney We asked the WHO why their office in north Iraq wasn’t allowed to speak to reporters not cleared by Baghdad. They replied that the Food for Oil agreement required that; ‘all UN agencies fully respect Iraq’s sovereignty’. They also told us; ‘there are no shortages of medicines’. 00.37.17 Music 00.37.19 John Sweeney Saddam says to the UN don’t speak to journalists in the north of Iraq and they don’t. 00.37.25 John Sweeney Saddam says don’t speak to aid workers and they don’t. 00.37.29 John Sweeney The Mines Advisory Group is a British charity that has picked up ninety thousand land mines planted by Saddam during the Iran Iraq war. But they’re not Saddam approved so the UN won’t touch them with a barge pole. 00.37.42 Aston MIKE PARKER Mines Advisory Group Baghdad considers NGO’s such as Mines Advisory Group as spies or saboteurs, which means that the UN does not recognise us because Baghdad does not recognise us. 00.37.59 John Sweeney What is the practical effect of this UN embargo on you? 00.38.04 Mike Parker In effect what it means is that we’re duplicating efforts, we’re wasting money and we’re wasting time and in that effect we are probably contributing to potential fatalities here in this area. 00.38.18 John Sweeney How do you feel about that? 00.38.21 Mike Parker It’s, I can’t, I don’t have words for it, you know, essentially we came here to do a job and that job was to get mines out of the ground and I believe, you know, that there are many committed humanitarians within the UN and they also have the same problem in the sense that they would like to work with us but are stopped simply because of the relationship that the, the UN has developed in Baghdad. 00.38.49 John Sweeney Who’s running that relationship? Who’s in charge, is it the UN or is it Baghdad? 00.38.54 Mike Parker I’d say Baghdad right now. 00.38.58 John Sweeney Back in Baghdad George Galloway told us that he thinks Saddam is a brutal dictator. But he made no mention of that when he appeared on Iraqi satellite TV. You can watch it in Kurdistan. 00.39.12 George Galloway I have been fighting now for the cause of the Iraqi people, for almost twelve years. I was a young man when this began. 00.39.26 George Galloway And when I hear the word Iraq I feel someone is calling my name. 00.39.33 Ali Voice over Who defends Saddam abroad except George Galloway? Even if only ten thousand people pay attention to what George Galloway says then he’s doing a much better job than if Saddam sent a thousand secret agents abroad because those secret agents wouldn’t be able to influence nearly as many people. Therefore George Galloway is sending out a very powerful message. 00.40.01 John Sweeney There is no Points of View show on Iraqi TV. Pity. In northern Iraq there was at least one viewer unhappy with what he saw. 00.40.11 Aston BARHAM SALAH Prime Minister Patriotic Union of Kurdistan I am disappointed in George Galloway, I have to say because I watch him on the news every now and then and BBC apparently covers his trips quite extensively. He speaks eloquently about the tragedy of the people of Iraq. He has never visited our region for example, we are also part of Iraq, we are also suffering, he should come and visit Halabja, the site of the chemical attacks and for him to know what human misery, destitution and destruction means. 00.40.44 John Sweeney So who is killing the children of Iraq? The Kurds blame the man responsible for Halabja. They say Saddam’s sanctions against his own people; torture, killing, blocking medicines are to blame. 00.40.58 John Sweeney None of this helps Evie, four years old, a Kurd and just diagnosed as suffering from leukaemia. 00.41.06 John Sweeney There aren’t enough medicines here to treat her and no equipment to do any tests. 00.41.12 Doctor By simple blood tests we could understand that she’s suffering from leukaemia. The drugs which are six or seven; some of them are available, some of them are not. And all these have been asked for. Why things are not coming I am not sure. 00.41.33 John Sweeney The doctors can do nothing for Evie here. She needs to go to Baghdad to be properly diagnosed and then treated. It’s her only chance. 00.41.44 Doctor I’m sure this family cannot take her to Baghdad because either of political reasons or for economical factors. You see? And certainly this child will die within weeks. 00.41.59 John Sweeney Evie needs three thousand dollars worth of medicines to save her. There’s more than two hundred million dollars for the Kurds in a UN bank account, unspent by Saddam. 00.42.16 Barham Salah The irony is in the north the international community acknowledges the need for protection for the no-fly zone and for a security guarantee for the Kurdish people because we have suffered genocide and still the prospect of genocides stares us still in the face every waking moment of our lives. Another Halabja is around the corner if we are not careful. 00.42.38 Barham Salah So, that international protection is so critical to our survival and the very presence of it is an acknowledgement that we are still in danger. But the irony or the mother of all ironies, one may call it; the humanitarian relief, our food and our medicine have to be administered from Baghdad. How can you expect relief and humanitarian assistance come to my people through the tormentor of my people? 00.43.06 End Music 00.43.23 Voice over John Sweeney will be live on line tomorrow at 3pm. You can e-mail him your questions now at: www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent 00.43.21 Credits Reporter JOHN SWEENEY Baghdad Camera MIKE SPOONER Baghdad Producer MARK SEDDON Dubbing Mixer PHITZ HEARNE VT Editor JASPAL BANGA Graphic Design NICOLA OWEN Production Team ALEXANDRA CAMERON CHARLOTTE DAVIS SARAH EVA MARTHA O’SULLIVAN Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager SUSAN CRIGHTON Film Research NICK DODD Research DEBORAH DWEK Film Editor SIMON GREENWOOD Filmed & Produced by WILL DAWS Series Producer SIMON FINCH Deputy Editor FARAH DURRANI 00.43.45 Editor KAREN O’CONNOR BBC © BBC MMII 00.43.48 End BBC Correspondent 1 1