Update on Iraq Water Project
By Art Dorland
Article originally published in the VFP Newsletter
Since 1999--eight long, painful years-- Veterans For Peace Iraq Water Project has tried to be a countervailing force to destructive American policy in Iraq. Until the invasion, Washington's goal was to make life in Iraq so miserable that the desperate people would overthrow their government or force it to sullenly submit to this country's domination. In 2003 of course that failing policy was altered to overt intervention. Few members of an organization like ours will miss the point that Iraq's people were left far behind in both of these approaches. Ordinary Americans must judge how they themselves were served. Prior to the military assault and in partnership with the Muslim-American NGO Life for Relief and Development, IWP rebuilt six municipal and rural water treatment plants in southern and central Iraq. Contaminated water afflicted 50% (now 70%) of Iraq's people at the time and tipped many a young child into his grave. Following the invasion--and after much conflicted discussion within our committee about how to proceed-- we financed a second set of repairs to two of these water plants: one at Falluja damaged in US military action in 2004, and the Hamden Jissr unit south of Basra, just recently completed. For reasons I do not have space to rehearse here, we have changed our approach. By a fortuitous circumstance, we have a very valuable contact in Amman, Jordan. Faiza al-Araji, an Iraqi water engineer who fled abroad after threats to her family, is using her exile in every way possible to help her fellow citizens, both in and out of Iraq. This is where we come in. IWP is presently sending small, eight gallon per minute water sterilization units to Iraqi hospitals. (Imagine your own hospital having no source of clean water.) The device we have chosen, on Faiza's recommendation, is called Sterilight, manufactured in Ontario and available in Amman. Faiza establishes contact with reliable Iraqi medical personnel, purchases the unit and arranges transportation.
A package of spare parts is dispatched in each shipment, which hopefully will give the unit a lifetime of some two years. Total cost, transport and all, for one of these combinations comes in at about $1500. So far, we have sent Sterilights to eleven hospitals, of which ten have arrived, with one still waiting in Baghdad. It's a complicated process, fraught with all manner of risk--to the shipment, to our investment, and especially to the drivers who make final over the road delivery. So far, so good, however. It must be clearly stated that this whole enterprise operates on personal trust, an element in diminishing supply as the security situation in Iraq continues
to deteriorate.
Faiza has also asked if we might help Iraqi schools by financing fiberglass water tanks, made in Syria, to replace the old, leaking metal ones. These are pretty cheap, and IWP has agreed to her proposal. Several VFP chapters have joined this effort by raising funds to finance the purchase of a Sterilight for Iraq. For me individually, participation in the Iraq Water Project constitutes a personal reparation to the people of Iraq for the overwhelming disaster visited upon them by my arrogant government. A government that will never acknowledge, much less pay for, that country's devastation.
Details to flesh out the previous information are available at www.iraqwaterproject.org. If you would like to contribute, you can donate on line or send a check (VFP-Iraq Water Project) to the national office, 216 South Meramec, St Louis MO 63105. We especially solicit the participation of vets from both the 1991 intervention and this one. Please contact me (artdorland@hotmail.com).