Volume 38, Number 9 · May 16, 1991
Iraq: The Road Not Taken
By Edward Mortimer
By mid-April, well over two million Iraqis, mainly Kurds, had fled their homes and were struggling to survive in freezing conditions on the high mountain range that forms the frontier with Iran and Turkey. A thousand a day, mainly babies and small children, were estimated to be dying either directly from cold and starvation or from diseases they could normally have resisted. Thousands, probably tens of thousands, Arabs and Kurds alike, have been killed or wounded by artillery or helicopter fire from Saddam Hussein's forces, thousands more rounded up and tortured or summarily executed, or both, in the aftermath of the fighting. All the cities of the south, including the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, which are centers of veneration and pilgrimage for Shi'ite Muslims all over the world, have been laid waste by a bombardment far more indiscriminate than that of the allied air forces which took part in Desert Storm. Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad, and has apparently regained control of most of the country.
Feature, 4803 words
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