Rajpal's Column

19th April 1998

Iraq, the oil and the sick little girl

By Rajpal Abeynayake

The fact that a four year old girl has been brought to Britain for treatment for leukaemia by a Conservative MP has raised the hackles of the British establishment. Over fish and chips and a pint of bitter, grizzly bearded British men are seen frothing at the thought a four year old teddy bear hugging child being brought from Iraq for leukaemia treatment to a British hospital.

These British men argue that the Iraqi government is 'using'' the image of the little tyke to their advantage. The girl has been brought to England for treatment by the MP because there is a shortage of drugs in Iraq due to the internationally imposed sanctions.

So there. The big demon of the British political establishment now is a four year old sick girl. She looks anaemic but bright eyed, seen later hugging a doll given to her by crowds who have taken to her immensely. She is too weak to walk, and is quite dazed by the media attention which is foreign to her in every sense. Most of all she is sick.

But a good part of the whiskey drinking British political establishment wants to send her packing to Iraq, because they feel that behind the cute face and the cuddly teddy bear lies a force that can upset the resolve of the peace loving world. George Galloway, the MP who sponsored the mission to bring the girl to Britian for treatment, says that the sanctions which have spanned seven years have achieved nothing.

Galloway is wrong in this, however . The sanctions have achieved feats like the current plight of four year old Miriam Hamza. Not just that, the sanctions have achieved record numbers of deaths among the infant population in Iraq.

But the plight of Hamza and the British reaction caps it all. The British establishment is one of the most strident in matters of human rights , but then a four year old suffering from leukaemia doesn't come into that pacifist worldview. But the entire image of walrus moustached steak chomping Guinness guzzling men, wanting to send a four year old back home because they feel that she is a threat to international sanctions looks balmy, even by British standards.

Winston Churchill said he doesn't want to preside over the liquidation of the British empire because of "that half naked Fakir." Considering that he was referring to Mahatma Gandhi the man who was probably the hero of this century, he cannot be blamed for looking like an English boor when he made that statement. Churchill however was a romantic imperialist, who had just beaten the world's greatest megalomaniac, and was almost entitled to savour his victory with some braggadocio.

But what has Tony Blair have in comparison, when he, in cahoots with the pants-dropping President of the United States presides over, and defends, sanctions that leave four year girls like Hamza without basic medical facilities?

Just looking at Blair threaten Iraq with merciless bombing if weapons inspectors were not allowed, was enough to indicate that Britain had surely lost her greatness. Though Blair cannot be blamed for not looking imposing like Churchill, his gung-ho defence of sanctions and threats of aggression against the Iraqis indicated that British leadership is a long way off from the days in which eloquent Oxford union debaters graduated to the premiership. ( The Oxford union is incidentally celebrating 175 years of its existence this week, and Blair, an Oxonian may be there but is almost guaranteed not to say anything eminently commemorative.)

The long and the short of it is that it is an absolute farce for the British establishment to occupy the moral high ground regarding human rights violations worldwide, when the real horrendous nature of the character for the British leadership has been exposed by the reaction to the affair of the little girl brought for treatment by Galloway.

Though Blair and others have not censured Galloway on the Hamza affair, by their silence, the top British establishment is by default in complicity with the rabid political opposition to the MP's admirable effort to bring a dying girl to England for chemotherapy.

But if the affair of the little girl accomplishes one thing, that might be the damning of the image of Britain and its anti Iraqi allies as a sophisticated conscience to the world - and a defender of human rights. As for the Gulf war, for many people, it was more that clear that the US and the British were in it for the oil.

When all hell broke loose in Rwanda and Bosnia, the British and the US took their own cool time, and were not stricken with the same quick fire conscience.

Now, Clinton has visited Africa and announced that " never again'' will the kind of genocide that took place in Rwanda be repeated without the US getting involved in the nick of time. Maybe there is a oil slick somewhere in subterranean Africa.

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