Hans von Sponeck, Former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, President of Geneva International Centre for Justice.
The new element that exists is the almost daily emotional trauma caused by the illegal war. Every fibre of society is bound to be affected by the chaos and turmoil in Iraq, to a lesser extent in rural areas, to a greater extent in Baghdad, Basra and other big cities. No one is spared.
There are islands of improvement, parts of Basra where water supply is better and parts of Baghdad where the electricity works better. There is some improvement in hospitals, but everything is affected by security considerations. Access to services assumes security. If that is not guaranteed, people don't have that access. In a mother and child hospital in Basra, for example, there is less access to medicines than under the sanctions.
As for the argument that the war was justified because life will improve for Iraqis, a year is a long time. During that period, life for the average Iraqi has been a rollercoaster. Some are employed, some have lost their jobs, for others it's the status quo. I would venture to say, based on phone conversations with Iraqis, that the overall picture is worse now despite what President Bush says about bringing freedom to Iraq. I'm sure it's not the freedom the Iraqi people had in mind.
Many people are dead who would have been alive, many are psychologically damaged, the UN has been weakened, when it was on the path for a peaceful solution. I can't agree with the reasoning that maybe in five years time, Iraq will be stable, that it will have a constitution and elections and that what happened will have justified that. I can't accept this at all, it runs counter to any legally-minded, human rights-minded person.
As for the argument that war was the only way to remove Saddam Hussein, no human being lasts for ever. Saddam was very weakened. I have spoken to officials from his former regime who said at the end other senior officials, including Tariq Aziz (Saddam's foreign minister) and General Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali), were running the country in the last 12 months. Saddam Hussein was not the Saddam Hussein described to us as a danger to the US and Europe. That was absolute nonsense.
Yes Iraqis suffered under this man, but people in Iraq are not suffering any less in their daily life now, what order there was - even under a dictator - is gone. Whatever we see now is no fundamental improvement.
Yes he was a dictator, but the US, the UK and the west contributed to creating this monster. We wanted him as a business partner, an ally against Iran. We condoned his use of weapons of mass destruction against Kurds in the interest of other objectives. If we preach democracy, yet cooperate with feudal dictatorships, we are contributing forcefully to the kind of situation we saw develop in Iraq.
Source: Interview by Mark Tran in the Guardian, Voices on Iraq: Hans Von sponeck, 18 March 2004
Justice, Human rights, Geneva, geneva4justice, GICJ, Geneva International Centre For Justice
Documenting and reporting human rights violations in Iraq
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