'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Anguish in ICRC over Iraq

The Swiss daily Le Temps yesterday (11/24) had an article (purchase reqd) about the dilemmas the International Committee of the Red Cross has been facing in Iraq. The piece is by Richard Werly, one of the few Swiss journos who have been able to work in Iraq in recent weeks.

Ominously, the piece is titled, "After two weeks of fighting, Falludjah is still closed to the ICRC convoys".

Alert JWN readers will of course be aware that the ICRC is not "just another" international humanitarian aid organization, but it's the international body that is charged by the world's governments with guarding the integrity of, and supervising the implementation of, nearly the whole body of the international "laws of war" -- Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, etc etc.

So when the ICRC gets systematically stymied in its work, this is a serious development in international affairs, and could mark a continuation of the desire of many in the Pentagon to "roll back" the entire structure of the laws of war.

(My big thanks to the JWN reader who supplied the translation here.)

Here's how Werly starts:

Can the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) still work in Iraq? The question comes back more bluntly after the bloody battle of Falludjah, the Sunni insurgents' stronghold retaken by the US Marines and their Iraqi allies. Two weeks after the assault was launched on the 8th of November and while sporadic fightings are still going on, neither a crew nor a humanitarian convoy of the ICRC have been able to enter in this city of about 200 000 inhabitants...

The last attempt of the organization to convey help supplies in the field goes back to Saturday 13th November. The ICRC delegation in Baghdad had loaded packages of food and drugs in a convoy of humanitarian trucks[organized by] the Iraqi Red Crescent which was never able to drive through the US military checkpoints... [T]he freight brought by the convoy was finally distributed [outside the city] to the families of the wounded who had been able to flee the fighting zone by their own means. And Falludjah since then remains out of reach.

Another convoy of the Red Crescent was turned back on Monday [Nov. 22?]. "We still haven't obtained the needed guarantees of security from the different parties in conflict and cannot get in under our usual conditions: without military escort and with the freedom to distribute aid to all the population", acknowledges Ahmed Rawi, the ICRC spokesman in Baghdad with whom we talked by phone. "We hope to be able to reach there in one or two days."

We should recall that the long-time modus operandi of the ICRC as it performs its work in conflict zones is one of extreme caution in public statements. ICRC envoys in various war zones-- called "Delegates"-- have anguished over this caution for many decades; but still, the organization as a whole prefers to say nothing in public that might give recalcitrant power-holders on the ground any pretext at all for blocking the organization's ability to deliver basic humaitarian services to people under the power-holders' control.

"Naming and shaming" power-holders for their rights abuses may be the main modus operandi of some of the human-rights monitoring groups. Personally, I don't have much faith in the idea of "shaming" people in public as being a good tool of persuasion; but self-appointed rights monitoring groups like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International are big on "naming & shaming"... But then, what they do is very different from what the ICRC does. They do not actually provide any direct services to beleaguered populations under stress. The ICRC, by contrast, has a responsibility, under a whole series of international treaties and agreements, to implement its mandate of winning humanitarian access to noncombatants in times of armed conflict and ensuring the delivery of the urgent humanitarian aid that they need.

Werly writes about the tough conditions in which the ICRC's remaining Delegates inside Iraq are forced to work, and the anguish this has caused them. He notes:

The continual degradation of [the organization's] working conditions in Iraq; the organization, shaken by the bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad on the 27th October 2003, is now restricted to the role of the alarmed and powerless spectator; it is caught between the insurgents and the US forces, like all the other humanitarian agencies, who, incidentally, are deserting the country one after the other.

The tone of the statement issued the 19th November by the Director of Operation, Pierre Kräehenbühl, shows how concerned the headquarters in Geneva are. "Every day passing in Iraq seems to bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect human life and dignity", he exclaimed. These words conceal a growing disheartening of the ICRC and of its delegates in the field, delegates who are constrained to live in quasi-secrecy (unmarked cars, secret quarters and restricted travelling) for security reasons. "Each day, the contempt for the international humanitarian law is increasing in Iraq. Remaining out of reach of the wounded and of the civilian victims becomes unbearable", confirms a well informed source in Baghdad.

The case of Fallujah is illustrative. Even if most of the population fled the city before the assault, the images prove the violence of the fights and imply a much heavier number of casulties than announced by the American forces.

Even worse: the first hand account of Kevin Sites, who filmed the execution of awounded Iraqi by a Marine, confirms that wounded Iraqi figthters were left to their fate. In his weblog, published on the internet (www.kevinsites.net), this experienced war reporter tells that the wounded present in the mosquee taken by the Marines were there since the day before, lying in their blood, having only received first aid. Yet, assistance to the victims is the fundamental mission of the ICRC, isn’t it? What then, of its attitude toward the American forces in charge of the city? Toward forces who have pompously announced the presence in the field of a battalion in charge of "reconstruction". Above all, what of the feelings of the Iraqis as they see the ICRC reduced to the role of spectator?

Werly notes that the other main problem confronting the ICRC in Iraq is that of all the many "security"-related prisoners and detainees in the country:

The main mission of the ICRC in Iraq today is to visit the prisoners held by the Iraqi authorities and by the multinational force, which the Interim Government of Baghdad authorized to continue to arrest suspects, after the official transfer of power on the 30th June. Approximately every six weeks, the ICRC delegates are visiting the main known jails in the country, like the infamous prison of Abu Graib, the incarceration center of Camp Bukka, or Camp Cropper near of the airport, where the dignitaries of the former regimes, and among them Saddam Hussein, are held.

But here again, too many shadow zones are darkening the picture. Lots of Iraqis have been arrested in Fallujah, but no information has emerged concerning their fate.

The existence of secret detention places, where the insurgents are herded and interrogated before transfer to bigger centers of internment is not much of a secret. Asked about it, the ICRC says that it is "limited by its human resources". "It goes without saying, that we are going to ask access to all the detained, next time we begin our visits, as we always do", adds Rana Sidani, one of the spokespersons in Geneva.

Talking of the prisoner-visiting program, here's news of one prisoner in Iraq who got his regular visit from the ICRC recently. You guessed. It was Saddam Hussein. According to the ICRC spokesman, this was the fifth visit they'd been able to make to him since his capture last December. "The ICRC discussed (Saddam’s) state of health with the detaining party while underlining the right of every prisoner to medical supervision in accordance with the Geneva conventions," spokesman Mwein Kais told AFP in Amman.

I am glad-- I really am-- that the deposed former dictator is thus far having most of his rights, including his right to regular ICRC visitation, adequately respected. But it strikes me as perverse in the extreme that the "detaining authorities"-- that is, I believe, the US forces-- would be so attentive to meeting its humanitarian obligations to that one individual while being quite shameless about refusing to allow any basic humanitarian access by the ICRC or the local Red Crescent Society in the case of the far needier and more numerous population of Fallujah.