Aid Workers Find Iraq Too Unsafe to Help
28 minutes ago
By MARK FRITZ, Associated Press Writer
Relief workers stepping gingerly into the postwar pieces of a police state are finding something akin to anarchy in Iraq (news - web sites): angry urban areas that need water and medicine but that are too unstable for somebody to safely deliver it.
AP Photo
The military push to Baghdad has left behind cities empty of police officers and filled with chaos, casualties and the rampant looting of everything from medicine to ceiling fans, humanitarian workers say. Baghdad itself has hospitals overflowing with so many dead and wounded that the Red Cross has lost count.
The U.S.-led military has restricted the access of most humanitarian groups to near the border with Kuwait, but one of the first experts to make an assessment as far as Basra said a breakdown of civil society there is a bad sign for the rest of the country.
Iraq's second-biggest city has an acute shortage of drinkable water and signs of dysentery in children, traditional precursors to such killers as cholera and typhoid, said Michael Kochler, deputy Middle East director for the nonprofit International Rescue Committee.
Widespread looting - people have even broken into the municipal water pipelines, ruining them in the process - and crowds of desperate people have left the town too unstable for relief groups to deliver aid, he said Tuesday by phone from Kuwait shortly after returning from Basra.
Reports of similar situations have been received about other cities. The main reason: The police who had to take loyalty oaths to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath Party have either fled or slipped into civilian clothing.
"A city of 1.5 million like Basra, that's serious," Kochler said. "Most people live in cities. When police forces collapse, you have a void. I would doubt seriously that Basra is an isolated case."
-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3504 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20030408/2f4d3e34/attachment.jpe>