Iraqi bureaucrats can be Roadblocks -- Even to those Bringing Aid

By Jon Sawyer, Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
 

May 28, 2002.

Hibhib, Iraq--It's not always easy helping Iraq, even for those willing to bend over backward to see the Iraqi point of view.

Consider a meeting earlier this month between the Veterans for Peace delegation and Abdullah Hassan Ali, Iraq's general manager of water services.

Ali's office is on the fourth floor of the Department of Public Works, a building that was bombed during the Gulf War and only recently reopened. At the time of the meeting, the air conditioning still didn't work and neither did the elevator.

Ali's patience appeared to be running short, too, as he sorted out the details on two water treatment plants the veterans group is raising nearly $60,000 to repair.

"But these projects are so small," Ali said, cutting the briefing short. "What about big projects?"

He cited two big plants, serving 150,000 people. They need at least $250,000 in repairs, now.

Ali's frustration is understandable. He's an engineer who has spent his entire career, 28 years, in the Iraqi water services sector. In the beginning, before the Gulf War, this country set the standard in the Middle East for producing drinkable water. Now this senior bureaucrat in a country that is unimaginably rich in oil finds himself begging for dollars -- courtesy of the havoc wreaked on Iraqi infrastructure by U.S. warplanes and by U.N. sanctions.

Throughout the meeting, a television set in the corner had been playing on mute; then it segued, as if on cue, to an Arab-language version of the show, "Who wants to be a millionaire?"

Tom Sager, co-leader of the Veterans for Peace delegation, explained to Ali that this was a small group, volunteers only. Their purpose was not just in raising funds for immediate repairs, he says, but in telling the story back home. The idea is to educate other Americans so that they'll demand a change in U.S. policy.

Ali wasn't biting.

"Over the past 10 or 11 years, many humanitarian groups from all over the world have come here, for the same purpose," he said, "to try and bring the true picture of Iraq back to their countries. The problem always remains -- that the media, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, tries to block completely the message from here."

This was a point that Sager and others had made themselves, in informal conversation with the Post-Dispatch reporter they had invited to tag along.

But then Ali shifted from the undeniable to the insupportable: from detailing the huge continuing costs to Iraq's infrastructure by past U.S. attacks to asserting, without substantiation, that the U.S. is continuing to target water treatment plants today.

U.S. warplanes enforcing the no-fly zone in Iraq, Ali insisted, were bombing such plants "daily -- daily! -- this year."

Since he had just been poring through a ledger listing every water treatment plant in the country, and the extent of damages at each, the reporter asked for a list of the times and places of attacks on water treatment plants this year.

"I wish we had known of your interest earlier," Ali replied, saying he did not have such a list ready at hand.

Would it be possible to put together a list before the group left Iraq, three days later? No again, he replied.

Was he absolutely sure that the United States was attacking water treatment plants on a "daily" basis? Ali, scanning the ledger again, said he could say with confidence that there had been "at least 10" attacks on "major" treatment plants in the past five months.

Would it be possible to get a list of just those 10? No, yet again.

"I think it's hopeless even if I get all the figures," Ali said, smoothly back on message. "Even if I do the media will block the information."

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Veterans for Peace

Veterans for Peace is based in St. Louis. More information is available at 324-725-6005 or on the group's Web site, www.veteransforpeace.org. Information on the group's Iraq project is available on the Web at www.iraqwaterproject.org.


INSIDE IRAQ - BATTLING FOR WATER

Reporter Jon Sawyer:

E-mail: jsawyer@post-dispatch.com

Phone: 202-298-6880