Iraqi blood is on Blair's hands

Dr Mohammed Al-Obaidi, an Iraqi exile long resident in Britain recounts the sufferings of his family in Iraq.

For almost eight years now, Britain and the US have been punishing the Iraqi people for the sins of Saddam Hussain. More than half a million Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, which have proved more destructive than Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The Gulf War of 1991 and eight years of sanctions have sent Iraq back to the pre-industrial era - fulfilling the promise made eight years ago by James Baker, then US Secretary of State.

Innocent Iraqis have died not only as result of sanctions, but also as a direct result of military action by British and US forces. During the Gulf War, more than 400 women, children and elderly people were incinerated when one of the US's most sophisticated weapons struck their bunker in Al-Ameriah. The world seems to have forgotten that tragedy. I hope it will not forget the following story of my family.

"Khensa". was an ordinary, 34 year old Iraqi woman. She lived peacefully with her husband, my brother "Ahmed", a mechanical engineer, their three children and her mother and father in law in a simple house in the northwest suburb of Baghdad.

The sufferings of my family began when Khensa lost her 22 year old brother during the Iraq-Iran War in 1989, a war in which the majority of Iraqi families experienced the loss of a family member. A year later in 1990, the Iraqi security police arrested Khensa's father in law.

The 82 year old man was suffering from hypertension, cataract and Parkinson's. The purpose of the arrest was to put pressure on me, his son. I was then studying for my PhD in Britain and actively involved in a movement opposed to the Iraqi regime. The security police hoped the arrest of my father would compel me to return home. When I refused to go back to Iraq, the old man was given a lethal injection by the security police.

After the Gulf War, Saddam Hussain wanted to show the world that he retained the capacity to rebuild the country's infrastructure. He set up a special committee to rebuild the country's bridges, which had been heavily targeted during the war. Ahmed went to work rebuilding one of the bridges in Baghdad. One day he simply vanished. Two days later, the security police brought him home dead; like his father before him, he had been given a lethal injection. The security police ordered the family not to show any sign of grief. The family later learned that my brother had criticised some of the technical work on the bridge.

After that incident, Khensa picked up the pieces of her life and continued to live peacefully with her three children and mother in law - until the night of the 17th of December, 1998 when their house suffered a direct hit from the US-British air bombardment.

Khensa, her three children (all under eleven years old), my mother and 22 other people in surrounding houses were killed. Thirty-seven others were wounded. It appears that rescue personnel were unable to collect all the pieces of their shattered remains.

During the first day of the bombardment Khensa had been asked by one of her brothers in law to leave the house and stay with him for a few days until the air strikes had passed. She refused to leave. She told her brother in law that the British Prime Minister and the US President had said they intended no harm to the Iraqi people, so she felt safe.

Khensa and her family had been brutally murdered by four countries, Iran, Iraq, Britain and the United States. Can anyone find a reason why these four countries should collaborate in exterminating an innocent family? If there is anyone left from this family, they are probably beyond shedding tears. That must be left to the rest of us, as is the task of ensuring that the same fate does not befall others.

We have often accused Saddam Hussein of lies and deceit but are the lies and deceit of our politicians, British or US, any better? Only recently, George Robertson, the Secretary of Defence, announced that there were no civilian casualties during the four days bombardment of Iraq. Pentagon sources admit that only 75% of the 425 cruise missiles launched at Iraq hit military sites. What targets did the remaining 25% hit?

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