http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Middle_East/2000-06/raids230600.shtml
The West's Forgotten Conflict
By David Usborne,
The Independent, 23 June 2000
To us, it has become almost a forgotten war, but not so to Baghdad and
to the regime of Saddam Hussein. For 18 months now, British and
American jets have prowled the skies over the northern and southern
sections of Iraq every day and routinely let fly bombs and missiles on to
targets below.
This steady punishment of Iraq - calculated to amount roughly to one
attack every three days - has been going on since December 1998. That is
when Hussein decided to challenge the no-fly zones imposed nearly 10
years ago by the West, by firing at the allied planes that are dispatched to
patrol them.
Since December 1998, the air combat in the zones has become most
intense. According to the Iraqis, British and American planes have
penetrated their air space 21,600 times. On the ground, people can hear
their screeching, but cannot seem them. The pilots fly always at a safe
altitude of 20,000 feet.
Only rarely are the tragic human consequences reported. A correspondent
for The Washington Post wrote last week of the fate of Omran Harbi
Jawair, 13. He was watching his family's sheep on 17 May when a missile
landed within feet of him.
"Without warning, according to several youths standing nearby, the device
came crashing down in an open field," the reporter, Edward Cody, wrote.
"Four shepherds were wounded. And Omran, the others recalled, lay dead
in the dirt, most of his head torn off, the white of his robe stained red."
While the orders from London and Washington are to destroy those
weapons that threaten the planes, the toll in lost Iraqi lives continues to
climb. Iraq is, meanwhile, stepping up its rhetoric, decrying the attacks and
demanding that they be stopped.
Iraqi estimates, which have been partially confirmed by an independent UN
survey, suggest that some 300 Iraqis have been killed and another 800
injured in the 18 months of intense bombings. Iraq says that at least
two-thirds of those killed have been civilians.
Lieutenant-General Yassin Jasem, the Iraqi military spokesman, yesterday
ridiculed as false the claims by the US and Britain that their planes attack
only in response to threats against them. "American officials are nowadays
producing lies in order to cover their failure and daily crimes in the
so-called two no-fly zones," he declared at a news briefing in Baghdad.
The zones themselves were created in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War
to protect minority Shia Muslims in the south of Iraq and a Kurdish
enclave in northern Iraq from attack by Saddam's military forces.
The Pentagon says that nearly 280,000 sorties have been flown over the
areas by American and British planes in the almost decade-long period of
enforcing the no-fly order.
