This will be the first time in modern history that a country is subjected to economic retrogression on such a tragic scale. Iraq which, in the late 1970s, had enjoyed incomes comparable with a middle-income developed country, which had made commendable progress in the provisioning of health and education services, and which has the potential to achieve much more because it is blessed with the world's second largest reserves of petroleum, is now being destroyed the fourth time over in two decades. The first phase of destruction was during the Iraq–Iran war of 1980–88, the second during the Gulf War of 1991, the third was caused by the United Nations sanctions from 1991, and the present one by the United States-led aggression. The world's richest and most powerful country, and the self-appointed protector of democracy, has had a hand in all the four phases of destruction.

In 1979, the per capita income of Iraq was $9,000 (2002 prices). By 2001, wars, invasions, UN sanctions and repressions had cut incomes—believe it or not—by 90 per cent, down to $1,000–2,000. The Yale University economist William Nordhaus, who has made these estimates, describes this as ‘one of the most catastrophic economic declines in modern history’. The tragedy is that the devastation is going to continue and the signs are there of the making of the biggest human and economic catastrophe in modern times. Where there is no hope for the Iraqis is that the war marks only the beginning, not the end, of the destruction of their economy and society. The hundreds of thousands of casualties during and immediately after the war will be followed by a ripping apart of the social fabric in the north (the Kurdish area which Turkey covets), the south (the Shiite area) and the west (adjoining Iran).

The subjugation of Iraq by the western forces and the subsequent control of its oil resources by US conglomerates will destroy the spirit of a nation that, in the past week, has shown it does not welcome the foreign military forces which profess they are ‘liberating’ it from Saddam Hussein. The welfare infrastructure that had been built up in Iraq and had kept the population going through extreme distress will be shattered, not the least because state welfare is not in keeping with the ideology of the occupying forces. Iraq, in short, has no future. And history will not forgive George Bush and Tony Blair for the suffering they have set out to unleash on this country of 25 million people.

The likely economic and social fall-out of the aggression against Iraq has already been studied by UN agencies. The contours of the unfolding human disaster are drawn in a number of draft studies prepared in late 2002 and early 2003 (which the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, drew on earlier this week in his appeal for assistance). First, it is estimated that food insecurity bordering on starvation will affect 10 million people (40 per cent of the population) because of the breakdown of the government rationing system. It is food rations, financed by the 1996 food-for-oil programme, that have literally kept the population alive. In anticipation of the US invasion, the government had distributed up to two months’ stocks of food to households. But the devastation caused by the war will make starvation a real possibility in the medium term.

Second, a draft UN report, ‘Likely Human Scenario’, estimates that the nutritional status of 3 million people will be ‘dire’ after the war. This includes 2 million malnourished children and 1 million lactating mothers. Third, it is predicted that more than 50 per cent of the Iraqi population will not have access to potable water, increasing the possibility of an outbreak of epidemics and diseases. Fourth, a complete breakdown of the health services network will see critical shortages in medical care and drugs precisely when there is greater need for these services. It is estimated that critical health supplies will be needed to care for an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis whose health will be made vulnerable by the invasion and those who have been injured during the war. This is in addition to the ongoing health needs of the 5.4 million people. Fifth, it is estimated that the US–UK invasion will result in the displacement of more than 1 million Iraqis, creating its own unique problems.

After the Iraqis pick up the pieces and learn to survive will come the mammoth task of reconstructing the economic infrastructure. Although Mr Bush and Mr Blair have made grand promises of ‘helping the Iraqi people’, their recent record suggests otherwise. In the biting words of Prof. Nordhaus, in the last four decades the US, in its wars on nations, ‘has followed a hit and run philosophy with bombing runs seldom followed by construction crews’. Afghanistan is the most recent example. Prof. Nordhaus notes that while the US spent $13 billion on the Afghan war in 2001–02, it committed only $10 million to civil construction and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan in the same year. The terrible future that awaits Iraq comes after a decade of rapidly falling living standards—the result of US-driven UN sanctions.

The story as told by UN documents and independent studies is well known, but bears repeating. In the first year after the Gulf War, as many as 1,10,000 Iraqis (including 70,000 children) died as a result of malnutrition, poor sanitation and a collapse of health services. All these were the result of U.N. sanctions. (For instance, water supply plants had been destroyed by precision bombs and then chlorine was put on the UN sanctions list.) There was a 150 per cent increase in mortality among Iraqi children under 5 between 1990 and 2000. Overall life expectancy fell from 68 years to 63 years. Average daily calorie intake in Iraq before the Gulf War of 1991 was 3,159 calories. By 2000 it had fallen to as little as 2,200 calories. (This is the intake that broadly defines the poverty line in India.).

There were two phases to the downward spiral in Iraq in the 1990s. A worsening on all counts between 1990 and 1996 was followed by an improvement between 1996 and 2000, following the introduction of the food-for-oil programme. This recovery will now be set back by years. The ravages of the US-led aggression will therefore affect an economy and a society that has already been debilitated by war and sanctions.

We know who bears the responsibility for the ongoing and future destruction of Iraq, but who was responsible for the economic setbacks since 1979? It is the same roster of culprits—the Governments and the arms merchants of the US and the UK and, of course, Mr Hussein. We would be blind to history if we forget that the US armed Iraq in the late 1970s and encouraged Mr Hussein to attack Iran in 1979—only because Iran then was enemy number one. We would be equally forgetful of history if we ignore the mixed messages that the US sent to Iraq, directly through its then Ambassador in Baghdad, April Gillespie, and indirectly through the State Department, when the country was sounded out by Mr Hussein regarding his dispute with Kuwait. Mr Hussein and his B'aath Party ran a non-democratic and repressive regime that brutally suppressed dissent and discriminated against minorities.

But Mr Hussein did not acquire this power all by himself. Among the western powers, the US in particular occupies a unique position in that it has been on both sides of Iraq's wars of the last two decades. It was an active supporter of Iraq in its war against Iran, its ambivalence created the conditions for the Gulf War, it used UN sanctions to cause immense suffering, and now it is the aggressor.

What is unfolding in Iraq and what awaits the Iraqi economy is a human tragedy on a epic scale: one that the world watches helplessly as the US and the U.K. armies go about destroying a country that was a cradle of human civilization.