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 OBJECTS ATTACKED:THE NEED FOR FULL DISCLOSUREAND ACCOUNTABILITYIn the months prior to the war, the attention of the Bush Administration and the media was focused on Iraq's brutal occupation of Kuwait, the formidable power of the Iraqi military, and the regime's abysmal human rights record. The public learned practically nothing else about the Republic of Iraq, a highly urbanized and developed nation of 168,000 square miles, slightly larger than the state of California, and thus had little appreciation of the damage to be wrought. Iraq's population was estimated at almost 18.8 million as of July 1990.1 Over 46 percent of the population is under the age of 16; some 5 million Iraqi children are under five years old.2 Iraq's economy also absorbed over one million third-country nationals -- workers and their dependents -- prior to the outbreak of the Gulf crisis.3 By January 1991, approximately 750,000 foreigners remained, including 80,000 Palestinians. Three cities had a population of over a half-million by 1980: Baghdad, Basra and Mosul. By 1987, seventy percent of Iraq's residents lived in urban areas, compared to 64 percent in 1977 and 44 percent in1965.4 Even harsh critics of the Ba'athist regime acknowledge its accomplishments in transforming Iraq into a modern state: The Iraqi Baath not only built up the fifth largest army in the world and an enormous, pervasive secret police; it also transformed Iraq's physical infrastructure, its educational system, social relations, and its technology, industry, and science. The Baath regime provided free health and education for everyone, and it also revolutionized transport and electrified virtually every village in the country. Iraq has today a proportionately very large middle class; its intelligentsia is one of the best educated in the Arab world.5 The petroleum industry was the source of 95 percent of Iraq's export earnings. Oil fueled Iraq's economy, accounting for two-thirds of the gross domestic product prior to the disruptions of the Iran-Iraq war, which included the bombing of facilities in Basra in the south.6 The largest and richest oil fields are located in northern Iraq, near Mosul and Kirkuk; smaller fields are near Basra. Before the Gulf war, Iraq's refineries and petrochemical plants met the country's domestic needs for refined petroleum products.7 After the cessation of hostilties with Iran in 1988, Iraq mounted a major reconstruction program to rebuild and expand its petroleum industry. By the beginning of 1990, Iraq was pumping three million barrels of crude oil daily, making it the second-largest oil producer inOPEC, next to Saudi Arabia.8 Later that year, the London Financial Times noted Saudi nervousness at the post-war resurgence of Iraq's petroleum industry: "Saudi Arabia was almost bound to be irritated by the re-emergence of such a powerful rival. Riyadh well knows that Iraq --with oil reserves second only to its own -- could threaten its pre-eminence in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries."9 In the early months of 1990, Iraq supplied 675,000 barrels of oil to the U.S. daily.10 Its capacity to export was growing faster than any other oil-producing state -- former Iraqi oil minister Issam Abdul Raheem al-Chalabi said that $2 billion a year was being invested in the oil industry.11 Iraq's oil exporting depended primarily on pipelines across Saudi Arabia -- to the Red Sea port of Yanbu -- and Turkey. The pipelines carried over 90 percent of the country's crude oil to markets abroad. The 820-mile twin pipelines that run from Iraq across southern Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Yumurtalik -- bypassing Syrian territory -- carried 1.5 million barrels daily from the Kirkuk oilfields in northern Iraq.12 Half of Turkey's oil imports were from Iraq, and Turkey earned $300 million a year in pipeline transit fees.13 Iraq's pre-eminence as an oil producer earned it classification by the World Bank in 1990 as one of the world's 17 upper middle-incomeeconomies, based on gross national product per capita.14 Iraq ranked above the 37 lower-middle-income states, which include Egypt, Syria and Turkey.15 Compared to other countries in the region, Iraq's labor force includes a high proportion of skilled workers, administrators, scientists and technocrats.16 Educated women enjoyed high labor-force participation rates; prior to the Iran-Iraq war, for example, women comprised 46 percent of all teachers, 29 percent of all doctors, 46 percent of all dentists and 70 percent of all pharmacists.17
The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, butwith all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.19 Estimates about the extent of damage in Iraq vary wildly. Then-Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saadoun Hammadi in February put the cost of repairing the damage in Iraq from the air war -- to roads, bridges, electrical-generating plants, oil refineries and other facilities -- at $200 billion.20 One U.S. official interviewed by Reuters indicated that such a figure was not off the mark: The Iraqis spent at least $160 billion on infrastructure projects in the 1980s. Assuming that most of them have been damaged or destroyed, reconstruction would cost considerably more in 1991 dollars.21 Others say the cost of repairing the damage will be lower. Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate banker "familiar with internal Iraqi data" estimated that $60 billion worth of infrastructure was destroyed in the allied bombing campaign.22 And the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency believes that the cost of repairing the bomb damage could reach $30 billion.23 TARGET SELECTION: THE NEED FOR PUBLIC DISCLOSUREThe bombardment of Iraqi targets was reportedly based on an "intricately detailed air-war plan," drafted six weeks after the invasion of Kuwait by Brig. Gen. Buster C. Glosson -- commander of the 14th Air Division -- and his associates at U.S. Central Command.24 Gen. Schwarzkopf introduced Gen. Glosson at a briefing on January 30 as the "principal Air Force target planner." Lt. Gen. Charles A. Horner, the head of air operations for Central Command, had overall responsibility for the air-war campaign.25 A retired U.S. Air Force officer described the "massive surveillance" effort over Iraq during the five months leading up to the war: For a full five months before the Jan. 15 deadline, the U.S. focused its intelligence gathering capabilities on Iraq's 170,000 square miles. Using satellites, high-altitude aircraft, electronic eavesdropping equipment and state-of-the-art analysis techniques, the U.S. patiently examined nearly every square inch of Iraq and listened to the voice communications of its military and civilian leaders.26 Verification of objects as military targets apparently had to proceed without "human intelligence" on the ground in Iraq, a tightly controlled society, where the CIA reportedly lacked even one skilled agent: The wheels of power in Baghdad were controlled entirely by Saddam Hussein and members of his family, supported by an efficient and omnipresent secret police force. William Casey, director of the CIA under Reagan, had been forced to admit that the Agency did not have a single skilled agent in Iraq, and the situation had not changed since.27 During the war, the initial list of 400 strategic targets almost doubled to over 700, based on two factors: additional intelligence-gathering that identified targets, and an increased number of B-52 and F-117A bombers available in the military theater to attack targets.28 Information has not been disclosed by the Pentagon or the White House about the U.S. military and civilian officials involved in approving these target lists. The New York Times reported that target selection was the responsibility of Central Command headquarters, not the White House.29 Journalist Bob Woodward reported that President Bush, Secretary of Defense Cheney, Secretary of State Baker and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Powell all reviewed the target list, but "[t]o avoid a repeat of the military's Vietnam nightmare -- President Lyndon Johnson leaning over maps in the White House, circling specific targets -- Powell had kept as much air-targeting information as possible out of Washington."30 With the first strikes of the air war set to begin at
3 am Saudi time on January 17, Secretary Cheney went over the target list
with the President on the night of January 13. According to
Woodward: The next day, Secretary of State Baker reviewed the targets at the Pentagon. According to Woodward: "Cheney wanted Baker to apply his political eye to the air campaign, to see if he spotted any unforeseen consequences. No other changes were made in the target lists."32 Secretary Cheney told reporters in June that every target was "perfectly legitimate" and that "If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing."33 Gen. Horner, at a briefing on January 18 in Saudi Arabia, praised the independence given to the military in developing the air war plan. "If we have any success in this air campaign," he said, "I can attribute it in large measure to the freedom with which we've been allowed to plan the campaign."34 Gen. Schwarzkopf said that he was responsible for target selection and, according to The Wall Street Journal, "is overruled by civilians only if they think he is doing something particularly `dumb.'"35 However, after the bombing of the civilian air-raid shelter in Baghdad's al-Ameriyya neighborhood on February 13, described in Chapter Three of this report, U.S. Defense Secretary Cheney reportedlyordered that all targets in Baghdad be reviewed by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff prior to the execution of bombing raids.36 Target Verification:
Unanswered Questions The actual bombing raids were planned several days in advance, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly, operations director for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.38 A few days prior to an attack, "strike packages" of aircraft and ordnance were prepared, and the targets were said to have been examined by photo-reconnaissance satellites.39 But military officials admitted that it was difficult to check recent aerial photographs in a timely fashion, prior to each attack. "We get a lot more intelligence data than we have time to look at and there are literally thousands of targets worth looking at," a senior U.S. official said.40 The apparent failure to carefully check intelligence data for the presence of civilians has been noted as one of the fatal flaws in the bombing of the Ameriyya shelter, which had long been on the allies' target list. Noting the overload of intelligence information, one senior U.S. official told The Washington Post: "It's not surprising that we didn't look at this the daybefore the [Ameriyya] raid," assuming that intelligence photographs were available. Witnesses interviewed by Middle East Watch, including witnesses from the neighborhood, stated that civilians consistently had been using the Ameriyya shelter since the first days of the air war (see Chapter Three), which suggests that the U.S. intelligence lapse was not merely of one day's duration. The tragedy at Ameriyya raised questions, first, about the criteria that were used to place objects on the target list and, second, about the procedures used to verify that these objects were indeed military objectives that could be attacked under the rules of war. These questions still remain unanswered. The Need for
Disclosure Allied military spokesmen have never publicly disclosed the specific criteria used to categorize Iraqi "strategic" targets as military objectives. Nor has a detailed list of targets -- over 700 by one report --been revealed. Only some of the targets attacked were mentioned by allied military briefers during the war, and most of these were indisputable military objectives such as Iraqi armed forces, military equipment, and military production facilities. In contrast, allied spokespersons were generally reluctant to provide information about other targets that were attacked. The Washington Post noted the refusal of the Pentagon to discuss this subject at a briefing on January 21: Nor has the military said how many hits were made on economic targets such as Iraqi oil refineries and manufacturing plants, or explained the rationale for striking targets that could play a key role in Iraq's recovery after the war. When asked if he would anwer some of these questions at the daily Pentagon briefing [on January 21], Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly, senior operations officer for the Joint Staff, said, "The short answer is no."42 This chapter contains information about attacks by coalition forces on targets that had civilian uses or supported Iraq's civilian population, including electricity-generating and water-treatment facilities, food-processing plants, food- and seed-storage warehouses, flour mills and a dairy-products plant. Allied damage to other objects with civilian uses is noted elsewhere in this report. Reports from northern Iraq during the war indicated that a sugar refinery, a textile factory and domestic heating-gas plant were bombed (see Chapter Five). A journalist who visited southern Iraq after the war saw a sugar factory and clay-baking kilns that had been bombed.43 Middle East Watch took testimony about the bombing of an underwear-manufacturing plant in southern Iraq (see Chapter Three). The Iraqi government also complained during the war that a number of non-military industrial and manufacturing facilities had been attacked by coalition forces. For example, in a January 24 letter to the United Nations Secretary General, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tarek Aziz listed, among other objects, the following as being attacked between January 17 and January 21: pasteboard, plastic foam and vegetable oil factories in Baghdad governorate; a poultry farm in al-Anbar governorate; a sugar factory in Maysan governorate; and a textile plant in Hilla in southern Iraq. Allied attacks on such targets generally were not mentioned by military briefers during the war. Since these factories do not appear to have been involved in military-related production, Middle East Watch believes that the burden is on the allies to explain why these facilities were attacked and how the attacks complied with the rules of war. · On what basis were Iraqi factories -- whose purpose was not essentially military -- included on the target list? · How did target planners verify that certain factories had a military purpose? What effective contribution were these factories thought to be making to Iraq's military action, and what definite military advantage, in the circumstances ruling at the time, was expected from a successful attack that resulted in their destruction? REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON FOOD, AGRICULTURAL AND WATER-TREATMENT FACILITIESMiddle East Watch collected eyewitness testimony and other information about allied attacks on food and grain warehouses, flour mills, a dairy factory and several water-treatment facilities in Basra. In light of any evidence that these objects were being used solely by or in direct support of Iraq's military forces, these attacks appear to violate the rules of war, particularly in the context of the severe deprivations of food faced by the Iraqi civilian population due to the United Nations embargo. U.N. Security Council Resolution 661 of August 6, 1990
imposed mandatory sanctions on Iraqi imports and exports. The embargo
greatly affected the food supply in the country, which had been dependent
on imports for about 70 percent of total consumption. The agricultural
sector accounted for less than 10 percent of Iraq's gross national
productbut employed a third of the country's labor force.44
About 20 percent of Iraq is cultivated agricultural land: half of it is
located in the northeastern part of the country, and the balance in the
valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, extending south to Basra
governorate.45 The government supported agricultural
development with investment in dam-building, irrigation, drainage and land
reclamation.46 Iraqi farms produced enough dates and
vegetables, including legumes, to make the country self-sufficient in
these items.47 But other major staples, notably wheat
and rice, were largely imported before the war, the United States being a
major supplier. Under the pressure of the embargo during the Gulf crisis, the Iraqi authorities took measures designed to increase domestic food production. The Ministry of Agriculture urged citizens in September 1990 to raise poultry and use their gardens to grow vegetables; it said that winter-vegetable seedlings would be made available at cost and that instructions would be provided about planting and care.51 Also in September, the price for crops purchased from farmers by the government was raised and prices of seeds and fertilizers reduced.52 Prior to the imposition of food rationing in September 1990, the Iraqi authorities had begun to limit the amount of food released to stores from government warehouses, according to U.S. government officials.53 The population's monthly allocation of staples -- such as flour, sugar, rice, tea, vegetable oil and powdered milk -- dropped from 343,000 tons in September 1990 to 135,000 tons in January 1991, or 39 percent of thepre-embargo level.54 To ensure the continuing availability of bread, on August 29 the Minister of Trade banned the closure of any bakery in Iraq for any reason, and said that any request to close a bakery would be denied.55 If a bakery stopped production for any reason, its allotment of flour would be transferred to another bakery in the neighborhood, and its license would be forfeited. Bakeries also were required to open to the public at 5:00 am each day and to maintain fixed prices. The Trade Minister also announced that equipment maintenance services would be available to bakery owners and that spare parts would be directly provided. In early September 1990, Iraqi authorities began to issue family ration cards for commodities such as rice, flour, cooking oil, tea, sugar, soap, detergent, milk for infants, potatoes and beans.56 It is within this context of growing scarcity that the allies' bombing of food and agricultural facilities must be viewed. Middle East Watch interviewed former residents of Iraq who provided accounts of allied bombing of, among other objects, government food-storage warehouses and a dairy products factory. Seed warehouses, flour mills and a veterinary-vaccine manufacturing facility also were reported to have been destroyed in allied attacks. Reports of Attacks on
Civilian Food Warehouses The Sudanese saw the warehouses three days after they were bombed. He said that two of the buildings had sustained direct hits, collapsing the walls and half of the roofs; bomb craters some 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter were inside each of the buildings, suggesting that the structures may have been hit with 2,000-pound bombs. He saw large quantities of sugar, rice, flour and milk in the rubble. Civilians were not killed or injured during this bombing, he said, but local food prices subsequently rose, presumably due to shortages. Iraq reported on February 19 that a flour mill had been attacked in what it described as the heaviest allied bombing raids to date.58 Journalists who visited Diwaniyya during the war were taken to a residential area of the city where "a large plant with a camouflaged roof had been reduced to wasted masonry and tangled steel."59 Local Iraqi officials said that the building was a flour mill and grain warehouse; large sacks of grain and rice were visible in the rubble, some of which were labeled "Product of the United States."60 (Across the street from the warehouse were craters where houses had been hit on the first day of the war, killing nine civilians.) Two Pakistani workers who lived in Najaf in southern Iraq and regularly traveled on Fridays to nearby Hilla, told Middle East Watch that they saw a food warehouse in Hilla that had been completely destroyed.61 They were traveling by bus with other Pakistanis on theroad to Baghdad, and stopped to look at the building. They saw rice and other foodstuffs inside the collapsed structure, but they did not know the date it was bombed. On the outskirts of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, a large zinc-roofed government food- storage warehouse, the General Establishment for Food, was bombed on or about February 6, according to a 26-year-old Yemeni student who had lived in Basra for 18 months while studying at the Academy of Marine Sciences.62 He said the building was located near Amar Mohatab Street and Amar Khattab Street, about four kilometers from the al-Moakal railroad station. He lived about four kilometers from the warehouse and visited it two days after it was bombed. He said the building had been completely burned; he saw charred food, cardboard food boxes and fork lifts inside the structure, which was surrounded by a fence. He said that Basra was usually bombed between 8 pm and 4 am and that the destruction was widespread. Rice and bread were scarce, food was rationed and there was little water in the city; he left for Baghdad on February 9. An Iraqi exile who arrived in Basra from Iran on March 1 told MEW that the tin-food (canned food) factory near the al-Ma'qil quarter had been bombed.63 Report of Attack on Dairy
Products Plant Reports of Attacks on
Water-Treatment Facilities Agricultural Sector
Facilities: Reports of Attacks and Effects The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that flour milling facilities and grain storage warehouses were destroyed during the air war, and predicted that the 1991 grain harvest would suffer from the effects of the war: Even if the wheat yield is substantially increased, Iraq will have trouble harvesting and delivering it....[W]ith limited fuel available commercially, farmers will have difficulty operating the farm tractors, combines, and trucks to get the grain out of the fields and to the mills. Moreover, if Iraq does manage to harvest the crop, the country could face problems in milling and storing it because of the incidental bombings of flour milling facilities and grain storage warehouses.71 United Nations representatives who visited Iraq in March reached a similar conclusion: This year's grain harvest in June is seriously compromised for a number of reasons, including failure of irrigation/drainage (no power for pumps, lack of spare parts); lack of pesticides and fertilizers (previously imported); and lack of fuel and spare parts for the highly-mechanized and fuel-dependent harvesting machines.72 The team warned that if the 1991 grain harvest fails or falls short, "widespread starvation conditions become a real possibility." Iraq's agricultural sector relied on imported vegetable seeds. During the March visit, the U.N. representatives inspected seed warehouses that were destroyed during the air war,73 and Iraqi agricultural authorities told them that all stocks of potato and vegetable seeds in the country were depleted. The U.N. team also reported that Iraq's only laboratory that produced veterinary vaccines -- an FAO-funded facility -- was destroyed during the war. The team inspected the center and said that the bombing had destroyed all stocks of vaccines at the complex. By March 1991, Iraq was judged to be in urgent need of imported seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, veterinary drugs, and agricultural machinery, equipment and spare parts.74 The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported in July that Iraq required some $500 million to rebuild or replace damaged or destroyed agricultural sector facilities and supplies, including machinery, irrigation systems, fertilizers and animal feed.75 One physician who participated in the Arab American Medical Association delegation to Iraq in May recorded in her notes that there was "a shortage of essential food items throughout Iraq." The food thatwas available was high-priced and beyond the reach of the average family.76 Rationed food items, distributed by the government, "are not enough for the average family and are of inferior quality." In Saddam City, the densely packed Shiite quarter of Baghdad, "malnutrition is rampant," the doctor wrote.77 Legal Standards and
Unanswered Questions In the first instance, since these appear to have been civilian facilities, they were improper targets for attack. In addition, Article 54 of Protocol I states that attacks on such objects are prohibited if the purpose of the attacks is to deny the "sustenance value" of these objects "to the civilian population ...whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive." The ICRC Commentary states that the objects listed in Article 54 -- foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies --are illustrative and not exhaustive; the Commentary cautions that protected objects under Article 54 "should be interpreted in the widest sense, in order to cover the infinite variety of needs of populations in all geographic areas."78 The only exception to the rule set forth in Article 54 is if the objects are used "as sustenance solely for the members of [an adverse Party's] armed forces" or "in direct support of military action."79 Even if this is the case, attacks are prohibited if they "may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause its starvation or force its movement." Before the war, U.N. Security Council sanctions dramatically reduced the supply of imported food staples in Iraq and led to government-imposed rationing. There is a heavy burden on the allied military forces in respect to the bombing of food warehouses and other food- and agriculture-related facilities under these circumstances. In each case, the allies should demonstrate that these objects served exclusively the Iraqi military or, alternatively, that they directly supported military action. If this is claimed, what was the information supporting such conclusions, and what steps were taken, as required, to ensure the accuracy of the information? Moreover, even if true, the allies would need to demonstrate that the destruction of these facilities could not be expected to leave the civilian population with "such inadequate food...as to cause its starvation or force its movement." Did the allied military forces make such a determination? What information supported any conclusions reached? If allied planners knowingly targeted civilian food production, processing and supply facilities with the specific purpose of denying their use to the civilian population, such an attack would violate the specific protections accorded to such objects by customary law. Particularly in light of the humanitarian principles underlying this rule, Middle East Watch believes that the allied military forces should explain their attacks on these objects. Regarding reports of attacks on water-treatment facilities, the questions that must be answered by the allied forces are the following: · Were water-treatment plants in Basra or elsewhere in Iraq placed on the target list? If so, what informationwas available to allied planners that such facilities were serving a military purpose and that their destruction would yield a definite military advantage? More to the point, what information was available that these facilities were used either solely by the Iraqi armed forces or directly in support of Iraqi military action? · What assessments were made to determine that the destruction of water-treatment plants, even if they were used solely by or in direct support of Iraqi military forces, would not leave the civilian population with inadequate potable water? What alternative sources of potable drinking water were believed to be available to Iraqi civilians at the time? THE CRIPPLING OF THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEMThe targeting and destruction of Iraq's electricity-generating plants, including four of the country's five hydro-electric facilities, was little-discussed and never questioned during the war. To Middle East Watch's knowledge, Pentagon and Bush Administration officials never publicly offered a justification during the war for attacking and crippling most of Iraq's electrical power system -- destruction which continues to have devastating consequences for the civilian population. After the war, in its July 1991 report, the Pentagon states that attacks on "electricity production facilities that power military and military-related industrial systems" were related to the goal of isolating and incapacitating the Iraqi regime.80 The report's only mention of the impact of these attacks on the civilian population is as follows: It was recognized at the outset that this campaign would cause some unavoidable hardships for the Iraqi populace. It was impossible, for example, to destroy the electrical power supply for Iraqi command and control facilities or chemical weapons factories, yet leave untouched thatportion of the electricity supplied to the general populace.81 Still, the report asserts that the bombing campaign was intended to "leave most of the basic economic infrastructure of the country intact"82 and does not reveal beyond the above brief statement any weighing of the military advantage of these attacks against the cost to the Iraqi civilian population of the near-total crippling of the country's electrical power system. * * * As a modern, electricity-dependent country, Iraq was reliant on electrical power for essential services such as water purification and distribution, sewage removal and treatment, the operation of hospitals and medical laboratories, and agricultural production. Iraq's electricity consumption had quadrupled between 1968 and 1988, and rural electrification projects brought electricity to 7,000 villages throughout the country during this 20-year period.83 In 1981, Iraq contracted $2 billion worth of construction work to foreign companies to build hydroelectric and thermal electricity generating plants and transmission facilities.84 Some 30 percent of Iraq's electric power was generated by hydroelectric facilities.85 By 1983, Iraq produced more electricity than it consumed, and in December 1987 it became the first country in the region to export electric power.86 Newly constructed power lines to Turkey were expected to generate initial electricity sales of $15 millionannually; plans called for expanded transmission to Turkey and the eventual sale of electricity to Kuwait.87 The report of a U.N. mission to Iraq in March stated that the allied bombing "has paralysed oil and electricity sectors almost entirely. Power output and refineries' production is negligible".88 The Iraqi government acknowledged in April that the al-Shu'aybah and the al-Nujaybiyah power plants in Basra had been heavily damaged by allied bombing during the war.89 The thermal power-generating plant at Bayji, north of Baghdad, was reportedly the largest in the Middle East; each of the plant's six units produced 220 megawatts.90 It was "heavily damaged" during the air war, according to the Iraqi authorities, who announced on April 18 that a team of 500 engineers and technicians had repaired four of the facility's six units.91 A Harvard University group that visited Iraq for nine days in April and May found that electricity was supplied at only 23 percent of the pre-war level, up from a mere 3 percent to 4 percent immediately after the war.92 By the end of June, the figure apparently had not changed; in an interview with The New York Times, Iraq's Minister of Industry, Amer Asadi, said that the level of electricity generated at that time was about 20 percent of the pre-war level, with repairs hampered by a lack of spare parts.93 One member of a delegation from the Arab American Medical Association who traveled to Iraq in May reported to Middle East Watch that while "electricity runs in most of the major cities for approximately 18-20 hours a day," the situation remained "dismal" in the provinces. The group traveled to southern Iraq on May 11 and found that in Karbala, electricity had been restored for only several hours daily; in Najaf, electricity also had not been restored and Saddam Hospital was operating with a generator that provided electricity for two hours in the morning and one hour in the evening, due to severe shortages of kerosene for the generator.94 Hydro-electric generating plants were attacked by the allies. Investigators from Harvard University reported that four of the country's five dams were attacked; two in the first days of the war and two others in early February, with the level of damage at each facility ranging from 75 to 100 percent.95 Middle East Watch interviewed a filmmaker who visited northern Iraq in March and saw bomb damage to the 400-megawatt Dukan Dam on the Zab River, north of Suleimaniyya and east of Arbil in northern Iraq, which was bombed in early February. Looking up at the dam from the south, he saw a three- to four-foot wide hole on the left part of the dam's main wall. Located beneath this section of the wall are the electricity-supplying generators.96 U.S. Public Statements
I think I should point out right here that we never had any intention of destroying all of Iraqi electrical power. Because of our interest in making sure that civilians did not suffer unduly, we felt we had to leave some of the electrical power in effect, and we've done that.99 When asked if the balance of Iraq's power stations would be attacked, Gen. Schwarzkopf replied: "That's a decision that lies in the hands of the President of the United States."100 But, contrary to Gen. Schwarzkopf's words, civilians did suffer unduly as electrical power to most of the country was severed during the early allied attacks. Middle East Watch interviewed former residents of Iraq who described the lack of electricity throughout Iraq, from north to south, soon after the war began: · Sudanese laborers who lived in al-Qayyara, an agricultural village 60 kilometers south of Mosul in northern Iraq, told Middle East Watch that the electricity and water supplies in their village were severed after the bombing started.101 They said that their village began to use diesel-powered back-up generators to pump water, but even then, water was available only every three days. · MEW interviewed a Mauritanian woman who left Baghdad with her family two days after the bombing started for the safety of Dawaya, a small village in southern Iraq, near Nasiriyya on the Euphrates River. The family stayed with the relatives of Iraqi neighbors in a small house in Dawaya. But, the woman reported, the villagers had no electricity because of the bombing and carried water from the river to their homes, boiling it before drinking it.102 · Kashmiri workers who lived in a compound in Kifl, a village near Najaf in southern Iraq, recounted that the electricity cut-off severed the village's water supply. Theysaid they helped bring water to civilians in the village from a water-purification plant they had built six months previously for their own use.103 · A resident of Najaf in southern Iraq told MEW that the city's power station was attacked in the early days of the war, severing the civilians' water supply and sewage-removal facilities as well as electricity.104 · In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, there was no electricity after the first two or three days of the air war, according to a former resident.105 He said that the government brought water trucks into neighborhoods, and women and children lined up with buckets. He also saw people collecting water from puddles in the roads, and others drawing water from the river running through the city. Effects of Allied Attacks on
the Electrical System Among its numerous conclusions, the Survey found that there was a "reliable and striking" correlation between the disruption of public utilities and the willingness of the German population to accept unconditional surrender.108 The allied bombing of Germany duringWorld War II deprived over one-third of the German pre-war population of utilities: 20 million of 69.8 million.109 Of this number, almost 5.8 million Germans were subjected to severe electricity deprivation, and 14.5 million to moderate deprivation.110 The Survey noted, for example, that damage to the environmental sanitation system in Germany created a situation that "was ripe for the development of disease into epidemic proportions....disease would have become rampant had not the Germans been forced to surrender when they did. In any event, the dread of diseaseand the hardships imposed by the lack of sanitary facilities were bound to have a demoralizing effect upon the civilian population."111 Similar effects have been documented following the allied bombardment of Iraq. The United Nations reported that with the destruction of electricity-generating facilities and oil refining and storage plants, "all electrically operated installations have ceased to function."112 Predictably, the effects of this massive destruction on Iraq's water supply, sewage-treatment system, agricultural production and food distribution systems, and public-health system were severe and continue to be felt. · water supply: All of Iraq's urban population had enjoyed access to safe water, although only 54 percent of the rural population was similarly served.113 All of Iraq's water treatment plants -- seven in Baghdad, another 238 central stations in other parts of the country, and some 1,134 smaller facilities -- operated on electricity.114 Some 75 percent had back-up diesel generators. The destruction of the electrical power generating plants rendered water treatment plants inoperable, except if diesel generators were available.115 Back-up generators had limited utility because of the lack of fuel, spare parts and maintenance workers able to travel to their jobs.116 The World Health Organizationestimated in March 1991 that Baghdad's water supply was at five percent of its pre-war level.117 A WHO/UNICEF team that visited Iraq from February 16 to 21 described the water and sanitation situation in Baghdad as "grim." Ninety-five percent of the city's daily water needs were supplied by Tigris River water. The water was first treated at seven plants operated by electricity, then each plant would pump water into a 6,000 kilometer system of pipes. The team noted that conditions in Baghdad were similar to those in other areas of the country, but that the worst conditions were in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. The impediments to water treatment created by the destruction of the electrical system were compounded by the destruction of the factories that had produced the chemicals used to purify water, including chlorine. The WHO/UNICEF team noted "detailed reports that the whole of the Iraqi drinking water system is in or near collapse" and that the chemical supplies needed to treat the water were dwindling: "The chemical plants which used to supply the main treatment elements, aluminum sulphate (alum) and chlorine, have been destroyed by bombing."118 Iraq's Ministry of Industry told The New York Times in an interview in June that six chlorine-manufacturing plants were damaged during the war.119 He said that one of the plants was under repair and expected to be operational in June but that it would meet only 20 percent of the 50 tons of chlorine Iraq needed daily. · sewage treatment: The lack of electricity also brought all sewage treatment and pumping stations "to a virtual standstill," the March U.N. mission found. The WHO/UNICEF team that had visited earlier described the sanitary system in Baghdad as "critically deteriorating" and "dangerous." The sewer system operated by the movement of waste to treatment plants by 252 electrically operated pumping stations, of which192 had stand-by generators. The lack of fuel and spare parts for the generators caused the pipes to back up, flooding houses with raw sewage; sewage also overflowed at the pumping stations in large pools. An Indian civil engineer who had been working in Basra on the construction of a new sewage treatment facility told Middle East Watch that the city's sewage system was not functioning because of the lack of electricity. He explained that sewage pipes in Basra are located 1.5 to seven meters below ground, and that they operated by the higher pipes draining to lower pipes, where pumping stations then moved the sewage to higher levels again, until the waste reached the treatment facility. The engineer, who was evacuated from Basra on February 4, said that sewage was seeping out of houses and accumulating in the streets.120 Noting that warm weather was approaching, the WHO/UNICEF team warned: "If nothing is done to remedy water supply and improve sanitation, a catastrophe could beset Iraq." On March 12 two mobile water purification and packaging units and equipment were brought to Baghdad by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).121 It said that the Iraqi civilian population's priority needs were sanitation and medical care. An ICRC team of medical and sanitation specialists visited the southern cities of Nasiriyah, Basra, Amarah, Karbala and Najaf beginning on March 21, as part of an assessment of humanitarian needs in Iraqi cities. The ICRC reported that the most urgent problem was inadequate and unsafe water supplies.122 The ICRC said that the situation was especially critical in Basra and Nasiriyya, and that it planned to send water purification equipment there "to combat the risk of water-borne diseases -- a threat which will grow with the start of the warmer weather." · agricultural production and food distribution: The allied attacks on electricity-generating plants countrywide also inevitably disrupted Iraq's domestic food production and distribution systems, upon which the country increasingly relied since the international embargo imposed after the invasion of Kuwait (see previous section of this chapter for additional information). Iraq's agricultural sector, which was highly mechanized and relied on pumped-water irrigation, felt the impact of the lack of electricity and fuel. The attacks also disabled irrigation, as well as harvesting and food distribution systems. Food, grain and seed warehouses and flour mills were reportedly bombed by allied forces, creating additional disruptions. And, without electricity, food requiring refrigeration could no longer be stored. · health-care system: Hospitals and clinics in Iraq were gravely affected by the destruction of the electrical system. Two physicians from Doctors Without Borders, a private voluntary organization based in France, visited Iraq for six days in March and reported that the "lack of energy is paralyzing the whole health care system."123 They visited six hospitals in Baghdad, and one hospital and five clinics in Falluja, west of Baghdad. They found the facilities operating at 5 to 10 percent of capacity, treating only emergency case; vaccines had deteriorated from lack of refrigeration, medication and other supplies were scant, and medical laboratories could not function. The ICRC also identified the need to provide support and medical supplies for hospital and dispensaries in southern Iraq as another priority.124 A delegation of 15 physicians representing the Arab American Medical Association and International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany) traveled to Iraq for six days in May and found similar conditions in the hospitals they visited in nine cities throughout the country. The director of al-Qadisiyya Hospital in Baghdad, a 325-bed facility serving the low-income Saddam City suburb, reported that at the time of the group's visit an average of 20 children were dying a day fromsevere gastroenteritis.125 During the air war, premature infant mortality at the hospital was 100 percent because the pediatric intensive care unit could not function due to the lack of electricity. At al-Husseini Hospital in Karbala, in southern Iraq, the group saw many children with severe malnutrition; doctors at the hospital reported that the number of gastroenteritis cases "increased by three to four times the numbers usually encountered in the summer."126 The group found that the the effects of the war, exacerbated by shortages attributable to the U.N.-mandated embargo, "produced a signficantly deteriorated public health system in Iraq, characterized by unavailability or extreme shortages of medicines and medical supplies, absence of electricity, water supply, and sewage disposal in many regions of the country, prevalence of infections, particularly gastrointestinal, and extreme malnutrition."127 The delegation noted a marked increase in illness, particularly among children: Interviewed physicians in the various hospitals conveyed a clear impression of a significantly increased morbidity for their patients, both in terms of severity of illness and length of stay in the hospital. Further, there was a clear negative impact of malnutrition on the morbidity of children with gastroenteritis.128 Investigators from Harvard University visited hospitals and other health facilities in major cities throughout Iraq from April 28 to May 6. Based on their research, the group projected that a minimum of 170,000 children under the age of five would die in the coming year -- from gastroenteritis, cholera, typhoid and malnutrition -- as a result of thedelayed effects of the Gulf crisis and war.129 The figure represents a 100 percent increase in infant and child mortality since August 1990: These projections are conservative. In all probability, the actual number of deaths of children under five will be much higher. While children under five were the focus of this study, a large increase in deaths among the rest of the population is also likely. The immediate cause of death in most cases will be water-borne infectious disease in combination with severe malnutrition....The incidence of water-borne diseases increased suddenly and strikingly during the early months of 1991 as a result of the destruction of electrical generating plants in the Gulf War and the consequent failure of water purification and sewage treatment systems.130 The Harvard team found that the public-health crisis was exacerbated by the lack of public utilities and medical supplies at health facilities around the country: Hospitals and community health centers also lack reliable clean water, sewage disposal, and electrical power. Of the 16 functioning hospitals and community health centers that the study team surveyed, 69% have inadequate sanitation because of the damage to water purification and sewage treatment plants. There is not enough electricity for operating theaters, diagnostic facilities, sterile procedures, and laboratory equipment. Staff at every health facility visited reported severe shortages of anesthestic agents, antibiotics, intravenous fluids, infant formula, needles, syringes, and bandages. Existing stores of heat-sensitive vaccines and medicines have been depleted by the loss of electrical power for refrigeration.131 Legal Standards and
Unanswered Questions By the time the air war was over, Iraq was left with less than five percent of its pre-war electrical-generating capacity. This resulted in severe deprivation of clean water and sewage removal for the civilian population and paralyzed the country's entire health care system, exceeding the deprivations experienced by German civilians as a result of allied bombing during World War II. Middle East Watch recognizes that the injunction against starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare does not prohibit incidental distress to civilians as a result of attacks against legitimate military targets. Yet, it is difficult to reconcile the devastation of Iraq's electrical-generating facilities with the humanitarian concerns underlying this legal injunction. Insofar as the civilian population is concerned, it makes little or no difference whether a drinking water facility is attacked and destroyed, or is made inoperable by the destruction of the electrical plan supplying it power. In either case, civilians suffer the same effects -- they are denied the use of a public utility indispensable for their survival. This destruction is all the more problematic given the allied air forces' supremacy and control of the skies,134 which enabled them to attack with virtual impunity any production or communication facility supporting Iraq's military effort. The apparent justification for attacking almost the entire electrical system in Iraq was that the system functioned as an integrated grid, meaning that power could be shifted countrywide, including to military functions such as command-and-control centers and weapons-manufacturing facilities. But these key military targets were attacked in the opening days of the war. The direct attacks by the allies on these military targets should have obviated the need simultaneously to destroy the fixed power sources thought to have formerly supplied them. If these and other purely military targets could be attacked at will, then arguably the principle of humanity would make the wholesale destruction of Iraq's electrical-generating capability superfluous to the accomplishment of legitimate military purposes. There is also reason to question whether the attacks on the electrical system ever affected Iraq's key military command-and-control facilities. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Iraq's power stations were "a special target of the Iranian air force from the outset of the war, and severe shortages of electricity became common."135 To overcome such difficulties, Iraq developed military communications systems placed in secure bunker-like facilities or in mobile units,136 powered by stand-by diesel-supplied generators independent of the national electric grid. Long after electricity was no longer available in Baghdad, the location of the Iraqi military's functioning command-and-control facilities continued to elude the allies.137 One of the justifications offered for the bombing of the Ameriyya shelter on February 13, for example, was that the building served as a command-and-control center. As early as January 23, Gen. Colin Powell acknowledged that the Iraqi military was "very good" at command-and-control systems: They have redundant systems, resilient systems, they have work-arounds, they have alternatives, and they are still able to command their forces....they're doing it, for the most part, on generator power, because we have taken care of the central power system within the city. The Pentagon's July 1991 report provided additional information about the redundancy and dispersal of Iraq's military communications system: Iraq ... placed significant emphasis on developing a secure, redundant communications system. This multilayered system included many built-in backups. If one layer were disrupted, other layers would theoretically take up the slack. In addition to a "civil" telephone system which carried more than half of the military's telecommunications, there was a microwave system, and a high-capacity fiber-optics network. Much of this system was buried or dispersed.138 During the war, it was reported that the Pentagon had apparent knowledge that Iraq's military communications system relied on special underground cables or radio transmissions using sophisticated "spread spectrum" technology, making jamming and interception difficult.139 As the fifth week of the air war began, senior Pentagon officials conceded that Iraqi military commanders were able to maintain their operational security (and were not forced to give orders by radio) because of an underground fiber optic cable than ran from Baghdad to Basra and on to Kuwait.140 These officials indicated that microwave communications towers had been bombed, including some in remote villages, but that the fiber optic line continued to function. Gen. Powell's admission that Iraq's military command used redundant systems and alternative generators to supply power to these sophisticated command-and-control systems, coupled with the Pentagon's release of additional information after the war, gives less significance that would ordinarily be the case to the military advantages for destroying virtually the entire electrical system when weighed against the predictably severe consequences for Iraq's civilian population. The U.S. Air Force acknowledges that a legitimate military target may not be attacked if its destruction is expected to cause excessive injury or damage to civilians and civilian objects: Attacks are not prohibited against military objectives even though incidental injury or damage to civilians will occur, but such incidental injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects must not be excessive when compared to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Careful balancing of interests is required between the potential military advantage and the degree of incidental injury or damage in order to preclude situations raising issues of indiscriminate attacks violating general civilian protections.141 (Emphasis added) The term "concrete and direct military advantage" -- the measure of what should be weighed against civilian cost -- sets a high standard, higher than the term "definite military advantage" used to define a military objective.142 The Air Force Pamphlet specifically requires that, when "a choice is possible between several military objectives for obtaining a similar military advantage, the objective to be selected shall be that which may be expected to cause the least danger to civilian lives and to civilian objects."143 Middle East Watch believes the allies should explain, under the rule of proportionality and the principle of humanity, the continuing attacks on and near-destruction of Iraq's electric power system, particularly as attacks on the system grew increasingly redundant in light of the allies' targeting of indisputable military targets such as fixed command-and-control centers and weapons manufacturing and research facilities, in view of the crippling impact the destruction of the electricalpower system immediately had and continues to have on the health of Iraqi civilians. The allies also should offer a public explanation for certain attacks on hydroelectric facilities in Iraq. The U.S. does not consider the prohibition against attacks on dams, dykes and nuclear electric-generating stations contained in Article 56 of Protocol I to be customary law.144 Even accepting this, questions remain about the need for continuing attacks on Iraq's hydro-electric facilities as the war progressed. According to the Harvard University team that visited Iraq after the war, two hydro-electric facilities -- Saddam Dam and Haditha Dam --were attacked in the first days of the air war. But two other installations -- Samarra Dam (a small facility with only a 60 megawatt output) and Dokhan Dam -- were not attacked until early February. MEW believes that the allies should justify the attacks against the Samarra and Dokhan Dams in the circumstances that prevailed in early February, when 75 percent of Iraq's electrical-generating facilities had been degraded or destroyed. In particular, Middle East Watch calls on the allies to outline the concrete and direct military advantages expected from the destruction of these facilities, and how these advantages were deemed to outweigh the obvious cost to the civilian population. The burden on the allies to disclose additional information about the destruction of Iraq's electrical system is heightened by subsequent public statements from U.S. Air Force officers involved in planning the air war which indicate that the purpose of destroying the electrical system was to harm civilians and thus encourage them to overthrow Saddam Hussein. As we noted in the Introduction to Part II of this report, Air Force officers in June indicated that the targeting of Iraq's infrastructure was related to an effort "to accelerate the effect of the sanctions."145 Col. John A. Warden III, the deputy director of strategy, doctrine and plans for the Air Force, acknowledged that the crippling of Iraq'selectricity-generating system "gives us long-term leverage."146 He explained it this way: Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity. He needs help. If there are political objectives that the U.N. coalition has, it can say, "Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we will allow people to come in and fix your electricity." Another Air Force planner admitted that the attacks also were designed to put pressure on the Iraqi people to oust Saddam Hussein: Big picture, we wanted to let people know, "Get rid of this guy and we'll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we'll fix your electricity."147 Insofar as Iraq's electrical-generating facilities were targeted not because the electricity directly supported the military effort but for the purpose of harming the civilian population as part of a strategy for using this civilian suffering to further military or political goals, the attacks were in clear violation of the most basic principles of the laws of war designed to exempt the civilian population from military attack. Among the unanswered questions in regard to the allies' destruction of the electrical system are the following: · Gen. Schwarzkopf stated on January 30 that the U.S. "never had any intention of destroying all of Iraqi electrical power." He further stated that "some" of the electrical power would be left functional so that civilians would not suffer unduly. Who made the calculations about the level of destruction that was warranted, given the stated concern that Iraqi civilians not suffer unduly? On what basis were such calculations made? Who was charged with investigating the potential secondary effects on the civilian population of various levels of deprivation of the supply of electricity? Who reviewed such investigations? Who determined the threshold of civilian suffering that was considered appropriate? What indicators of suffering were used to calculate the harm caused by relative levels of deprivation? · Toward the end of the second week of the air war, the Pentagon disclosed that about 25 percent of Iraq's electrical-generating capacity was "completely inoperative" and that another 50 percent was "degraded." Who made the decision to continue with the attacks at this stage of the war? Was President Bush involved in this decisionmaking process, as Gen. Schwarzkopf implied he would be? What effective contribution to Iraqi military action were the remaining electricity-generating plants making at this time? Given the reported successful destruction by the allies at this stage of the war of Iraqi military production facilities -- coupled with the allies' total control of the skies over Iraq -- what concrete and direct military advantage was expected from the continued crippling of the country's remaining electrical-generating system? · To what extent did the goal of harming or demoralizing the civilian population, to prompt it to overthrow Saddam Hussein or for any other purpose, enter into the decision to destroy Iraq's electrical system? CIVILIAN VEHICLES ON HIGHWAYSMiddle East Watch obtained eyewitness testimony about
apparently indiscriminate attacks on civilian vehicles on highways in
Iraq. With the exception of one attack on a bus traveling from Kuwait to
Iraq, in which 31 civilians were killed, these accounts described
incidents that took place on the Baghdad-Amman international highway in
western Iraq, the area from which missiles were being launched into
Israel. Middle East Watch also interviewed three eyewitnesses to cluster-bomb150 attacks; in one case, a cluster bomb exploded three to sixmeters from the car in which a Jordanian doctor was traveling. The U.S. military publicly confirmed that cluster bombs were dropped on highways during the war. Gen. Buster Glosson was asked at a briefing in Riyadh on January 30 if cluster bombs were being dropped on the Baghdad-Amman highway, the major evacuation route for foreign-worker residents of Iraq fleeing the war to the safety of Jordan. He replied: "Yes, we use the cluster munition to cover a wider area when the military situation dictates that."151 However, Gen. Glosson did not reply to the second part of the reporter's question: "How do you reconcile that with your efforts to minimize civilian casualties along this...refugee route?" In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney dated February 1, Middle East Watch raised concerns about reports of the bombing of civilian cars and commercial transport vehicles on the Baghdad-Amman desert highway. MEW asked if cluster-bombs and delayed-action bombs were being used to attack major highways in Iraq, and urged that the U.S. military take all practical steps to ensure that civilians were not harmed by attacks on military targets. The Pentagon's reply to Middle East Watch's letter did not include an answer to this or other questions raised. U.S. Public
Statements Decoy Scud missile launchers, some incorporating heat producers to simulate active generators, complicated the Coalition effort to eradicate the Iraqi ballistic missile threat. Finding and destroying Iraq's mobile Scud launchers proved a difficult and vexing problem, diverting resources from other aspects of the air campaign and prolonging the threat to Israeli, Saudi and other civil and military targets throughout the region.155 The missile launchers were developed from Saab Scania tractors.156 These massive vehicles bear little resemblance to civilian buses or cars loaded with luggage on their roofs. The mobile missile units were organized in convoys of five or six vehicles using "one set of command and support vehicles, including equipment to test the missilesand a crane to place them on the truck launchers."157 Military experts told The Washington Post that "fueling and preparing a Scud missile for launch can take hours, but would still be difficult to detect if rudimentary efforts are made to keep the missile and launcher hidden."158 What could be observed was the safety precautions taken to handle the missile's fuel, a volatile liquid. After launching, the detection possibilities were not any easier. According to The Post: Once the Scuds are fired, the trucks move after the launcher cools. During launch preparations, the trucks and launchers emit few telltale electronic signals. It is often difficult to intercept launch orders, because they can be issued by telephone, rather than radio.159 The Pentagon notes that the task of destroying the mobile launchers was difficult because the missile units would "emerge from hiding places, fire, and hide again."160 Many aircraft, the equivalent of three squadrons, were employed in daytime and nighttime missions: F-16s in the west and A-10s in the east were placed on constant airborne alert during daylight hours, with F-15Es, F-16s and A-6Es on constant airborne alert at night. RF-4C and F-14A reconnaissance aircraft flew daily flights against suspected Scud sites. However, once a suspected Scud site was found through intelligence or following a launch, aircraft would proceed to the target area to search for and destroy the launch complex.161
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mc Peak said: "Mobile SCUD-launchers operated at night, drove into [launch locations] and launched, so we had to do a lot of road [reconnaissance], even with the A-10s. An old, slow aircraft was used to go out and run up and down the road and try to find these mobile launchers."164 Gen. Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, also stated that many of the attacks took place at night, suggesting that darkness could mar pilots' vision.165 In its July 1991 report, the Pentagon does not acknowledge that civilian buses and cars were attacked on highways -- only Jordanian oil tankers are mentioned: Some oil trucks were mistaken for Scud launchers and other military vehicles during night attacks; others were struck collaterally during daytime attacks on nearbymilitary targets. The destruction, which occurred despite extraordinary Coalition efforts to avoid collateral damage to civilian targets, was largely attributable to Jordan's failure to ensure adherence to [United Nations Security Council] sanctions and to warn its nationals of the combat zone's peril.166 The Pentagon also states that measures taken to minimize civilian casualties and damage affected the allies' ability to target military objects on the roads in western Iraq: Coalition forces took additional measures to avoid collateral damage to civilian vehicles and incidental injury to noncombatants. As a result, the ability to target Iraqi military vehicles and convoys, including mobile Scud missile launchers and support equipment, was affected.167 An Inquiry by Middle East
Watch · Is it technologically feasible to distinguish between civilian automobiles and buses, the roofs of which were often loaded with personal effects, and single and distinct military objectives, such as missile launchers or other military vehicles? · Were any Jordanian and other commercial vehicles considered military targets? · Did the rules of engagement regarding attacks on the Baghdad-Amman highway clearly specify that civilian objects were not to be attacked? · Were supplemental rules of engagement provided to military personnel involved in aerial bombardment of the Baghdad-Amman highway to take account of the fact that this route was used by fleeing civilians and commercial truckers? · Prior to each air attack on the highway, what was done to ascertain that the targets were military and not civilian objects? · Was it feasible to provide effective advance warning to civilians in vehicles prior to an attack on the highway when civilian objects were identified? Middle East Watch also requested the Defense Department to make available specific information about the nature and extent of the aerial bombardment of the Baghdad-Amman highway, and asked whether reports were available about civilian objects damaged in the raids. Gen. Kelly replied to Middle East Watch in a letter dated February 12. He stated that the U.S. forces "recognize our obligation to do everything feasible to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage to civilian property when we engage military targets." Gen. Kelly expressed confidence that civilian targets were not being intentionally attacked on the Baghdad-Amman highway: I am absolutely certain . . . that any coalition
forces capable of conducting air to ground missions in the vicinity of the
highway would not knowingly attack innocent civilians. Coalition forces
are doing everything within their capabilities to distinguish between
military targets and innocent civilians, and to attack only the military
targets. Eyewitness Accounts: Attacks
on Civilian Vehicles Carrying Evacuees to Jordan After the air war started, the highway continued to serve as the primary evacuation route from Iraq.170 From that date until February 27, some 37,970 persons entered Jordan through the borderpost at Ruwayshid, according to the Jordanian Ministry of Interior.171 Of this number, 22,008 were evacuees -- including 11,900 Egyptians, 4,400 Sudanese and over 1,100 Yemenis172 -- and the balance were Jordanians. In a letter dated February 7, Jordan's permanent ambassador to the United Nations informed the U.N. Secretary General that 14 civilians had been killed on the Baghdad-Amman international highway from January 29 through February 5, and an additional 26 injured.173 The letter stated that the casualties resulted from "the bombing by United States and allied aircraft of trucks and tankers belonging to Jordanian companies" and that 52 vehicles had been completely destroyed or damaged during the eight-day period. British journalist Patrick Cockburn, who traveled the Baghdad-Amman highway in February, told MEW that he counted 28 vehicles damaged by bombing on the road and that "at least" half of them were civilian.174 Middle East Watch interviewed evacuees and truckers for Jordanian companies who saw or were traveling in cars and buses that were attacked by allied aircraft on the highway. · two cars directly hit by diving aircraft in daytime
attack, killing two families: MEW interviewed a group of Yemeni students
who were eyewitnesses to attacks in broad daylight on two civilian cars
between Rutba and Trebil on the Baghdad-Ammanhighway. According to the
witnesses, it was unlikely that the occupants of the vehicles survived
these direct hits. The students saw a white sedan attacked at about 9:30 am that day, on or about February 8. They noticed a family in the car when it passed their bus. The sedan rode low from the suitcases piled on top. A few minutes later, when the white sedan was about 400 meters in front of them, they saw four planes, flying low and very fast, swoop down. One struck the sedan with a rocket, a direct hit. The other planes also fired rockets but they did not see where the rockets landed; as soon as this happened, the driver stopped the bus and the passengers ran into the desert, ducking for cover. The planes were small black planes -- "so close we could have thrown a stone at them." The planes dived to about 30 meters from the ground, the students said. There were other civilian cars on the road in front and in back of them when the attack occurred, but no military vehicles and no military emplacements were in sight. The only installation or structure they saw was a gas station that had been blown up. About an hour after the first attack, they saw, at a distance, two or three planes flying very low. The planes dove down in the same manner as before and hit a red Brazilian Volkswagen with a family inside and luggage on top. The bus driver did not stop to look at the remainsof either car out of fear, but the students said it appeared highly unlikely that there were any survivors.175 Three times during the trip from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, between Rutba and Trebil, the passengers had to jump out of the buses and run into the desert because of air strikes nearby. The students saw and heard several rocketing attacks; every time they heard planes, they heard rockets falling afterwards. They did not know where all the rockets hit: sometimes it was on the highway, sometimes not. They saw black smoke rising from areas on and off the road. In this stretch of the highway, the students said they saw many vehicles that had been destroyed. They told MEW that they were convinced that if the planes had wanted to target their bus "we would all be dead." At the time, they were not sure that they would survive the journey. · 30 killed in attack on bus: MEW interviewed Sudanese evacuees who told of three buses that loaded up with Sudanese evacuees and left Baghdad on February 13 at about noon. They said that each of the public carriers waited until it was filled before departing. The first bus reached the border crossing at Trebil that night. A second bus stayed the night in Rutba. The third bus was bombed on the road before reaching Rutba and reportedly there were no survivors. Some drivers arriving at Trebil told the Sudanese in the first two buses that the third bus was destroyed and all of the passengers, some 30 to 35 Sudanese, were killed.176 MEW separately interviewed another group of Sudanese workers who arrived in Jordan on two different buses a few days later, on February 18 and 19. They saw a destroyed Costa Nissan bus at km 160 between Rutba and Ramadi: the bus, they were told, had carried 30 Sudanese passengers. They heard that all the passengers were killedexcept one, who reportedly returned to Baghdad under severe mental stress.177 · cluster bomb falls meters from two cars in dawn attack: A Jordanian doctor interviewed by MEW was injured when a cluster bomb was dropped three to six feet from his car on the Baghdad-Amman highway. Dr. Samir A. Qawasmi, an ophthalmic surgeon, was part of a medical team of 13 doctors and nurses sent to Baghdad by the Arab Medical Committee for Emergencies. The team departed from Jordan in late January to provide emergency medical services in hospitals in Baghdad. After working around-the-clock treating civilian bombing casualties for four or five days, four members of the exhausted team set out for Jordan at 11pm on the night of January 27. They traveled in two cars: a white Mercedes sedan with a Red Crescent on the hood and a four-wheel-drive gray vehicle with a Red Crescent on the front. Dr. Qawasmi told MEW that after driving through the night without incident, they pulled to the side of the road at a parking area at about 5:15 am for dawn prayers. They were about 400 km from Baghdad and had not yet reached Rutba. They prayed in the desert cold and then got back in their vehicles. At that moment, Dr. Qawasmi said he heard "a huge noise, with lightning," and they were tossed around inside the cars. They were totally startled, he said, because they did not hear or see planes. The windows of the car were closed because it was cold. Dr. Qawasmi, who was in the driver's seat of the white Mercedes sedan, was injured with lacerations on his face, nose, cheek, and hands. Tossed against the side of the car, he was still suffering pain in his left shoulder when he was interviewed by MEW. The driver of the other car suffered similar injuries but the two passengers were not physically injured. The bomb hit the side of the road, about three to six feet from the car, creating a crater about a half-meter deep and one and a half meters wide. It divided into two parts, apparently a cluster bomb. There were many small bombs inside the canister and other bomblets scattered outside. They left as quickly as they could, before any of the small bombs exploded. The badly damaged Mercedes was towed behind the four-wheel-drive vehicle which had a broken windshield and windows and damage to its left side. They passed many burned cars, and passenger vans of the type used by Kuwaiti families. About a half-hour later, before reaching Rutba, Dr. Qawasmi through the rear view mirror saw a 40-foot refrigerator truck with a 12-foot rig hit by a rocket, and turned around to get a better look. They heard the explosion but did not stop. They later learned that the driver of the truck had been killed.178 · strafing of buses on highways during daytime: MEW also took testimony about the strafing of buses on highways that left evacuees scared for their lives. Pakistani construction workers, evacuated by their company from Najaf in southern Iraq on three buses on February 15, told MEW of a strafing incident involving one of their buses. The last of the three buses was strafed 10 km west of Rutba on February 15 at about 4:10 pm. There were 36 Pakistani workers in the white bus, which had luggage piled on the top. According to several workers interviewed by MEW, there were four attacks on the bus at two- to three-minute intervals. They heard machine-gun fire and were quite sure that rockets or bombs had not been used. Bullets were fired close to the bus, but it was not hit. One Pakistani thought that there was one plane; another said he saw four planes. A third said he did not see a plane because he ducked down to avoid danger, but he heard bursts of machine-gun fire. A fourth said he saw four planes that were the color of smoke. The bullets hit the road near them, he said. The bus did not stop. It was the only vehicle on the road; there were trucks in the distance, they said. There was "only desert" aroundthem -- "no military trucks, no buildings, no gas station, no tents, nothing."179 Later in the air war, bus drivers seemed to believe that traveling the Baghdad-Amman highway at night afforded more protection. A young Egyptian furniture finisher told Middle East Watch that he left Baghdad on the evening of February 19 with a cousin and some friends. They were in a bus with 50 Egyptians and three Sudanese. The two buses drove together, his bus in front. It was night, and both buses had their headlights on. A few kilometers outside of Ramadi, a plane fired bullets at the bus, hitting to the right and left side. The driver kept going, but turned off the headlights. No one was hurt and the bus was not damaged.180 An Egyptian couple interviewed by MEW told of strafing of their bus, a white Coaster which left Baghdad on February 23 with luggage piled on top. There were 28 Egyptians on the bus: 22 adults and six babies. Theirs was the only bus, indeed the only vehicle, on the road. The journey was very difficult because the planes were shooting at the bus while it traveled the road: "It sounded like bombs were falling almost over our heads," the husband said. The strafing occurred after the bus left Rutba, between 7 and 10 pm. The bus stopped several times; the driver was travelling without lights for greater safety. The family said they were very afraid. The father told MEW how he dashed out of the bus several times carrying his daughter. The bus was not hit, and they arrived safely in Trebil at about 11 pm.181 Similar stories of strafed civilian vehicles appeared in the press. The New York Times reported that a Jordanian Red Crescent official hadseen a Jordanian family whose two infants were killed in a strafing attack.182 A group of evacuees told journalists that on February 3 an Egyptian worker running toward his bus was machine-gunned and killed instantly on the road to Trebil.183 · southern iraq: 31 dead in daytime attack on civilian vehicles: A Jordanian bus carrying civilians fleeing Kuwait was attacked by allied planes near the Kuwaiti border on February 9 at 2 pm, killing 27 in the bus and another four in two cars traveling with the bus. MEW interviewed the driver of the bus, Shawqi Naji, 32, a Palestinian who lives in Jordan. A bus driver for 10 years, he had made several round trips in his 1983 Mercedes model 303 luxury passenger bus from Jordan to Kuwait to pick up Palestinians, Jordanians and others evacuating Kuwait. He told MEW that his bus left Kuwait on February 9, at 1 pm. Orange in color, with a six-inch blue stripe around the side and Jordanian plates, the vehicle had capacity for 51 passengers but was carrying 61 because some of them were children. There was baggage underneath and on the roof of the bus. Two cars drove in front of the bus: a white Chevrolet and a dark blue Chevrolet. The passengers in the white car were newlyweds, and a family was riding in the blue car. The highway from Kuwait City to southern Iraq traverses desert terrain, the driver told MEW. "There is nothing else there, just a highway ... no bridges, river, military fortifications ... nothing." The attack took place when the bus was an hour outside of Kuwait City, some 20 km beyond al-Metla'. The driver said he did not hear any aircraft. He was confident that the bus was identifiable as civilian because of its size, color and the baggage piled on top. He said that he passed another bus parked on the side of the road. Some 500 meters beyond the parked bus, he heard a rocketexplode behind his bus, hitting it with shrapnel. He slammed on the brakes, quickly opened the two doors, and he and the passengers began to run off the bus. The rear of the bus was in flames. Before all of the passengers could get off, about two minutes after the first rocket, a second rocket struck, piercing the roof of the bus. The whole bus was engulfed in fire: 27 men, women and children were incinerated. As he ran out of the bus, the driver helped drag an acquaintance from the bus, holding her on one arm and her young daughter on the other. While the passengers were running away from the bus into the desert, a third rocket struck at the place where some of them had gathered about 200 meters off the road. It left a crater five meters in diameter and three meters deep. This rocket hit about two to three minutes after the second rocket. Because of the confusion, the driver did not know if any passengers in this location were injured or killed. When they were outside the bus, the woman he had helped was hit with shrapnel. Cut almost in two, she died immediately. Her daughter, injured with shrapnel in her heel, clung to the driver, crying, "Please, I don't want to die!" Of this family of six, three were dead: the mother, grandmother and a daughter, 9, who was hit by shrapnel in the chest. After the third rocket, Naji heard other explosions. He told MEW that he heard about six rockets in all during that short period of time but only saw where the first three had landed. The area was covered with smoke and debris. He believed a plane strafed them with machine-gun fire. He was hit with a bullet at about this time; he was numb and did not feel anything. He did not see any planes, but he heard their roar. Two pieces of shrapnel were lodged in his right side, which were removed at Sabah Hospital in Kuwait. He also sustained a bullet wound on his right thigh; the doctors told him it was a bullet after it was removed. The driver took the survivors to Sabah Hospital in Kuwait, using a car that was being driven by someone behind the bus but belonged to a family which had been riding in the bus because they thought it was safer. At the hospital, he met the man and woman who were riding in the blue Chevrolet. They said that their two daughters were killed in theattack but the rest of the family survived. They did not have much time to talk or exchange more information, the driver said. The next day, he returned with the Palestinian Red Crescent to assess the damage. They counted 25 charred bodies on the seats of the bus; another two bodies were partially burned. The bus had a large hole in the roof from the rocket and the interior of the vehicle had been badly burned. There were holes on the outside of the bus, like machine-gun fire, he thought. The Red Crescent took photos of the bus and the human remains.184 The newlywed passengers in the white car were dead. The driver saw their charred bodies, still inside the car, in front of the bus. A MEW fact-finding team that visited Kuwait in April was able independently to corroborate some aspects of the account provided by the bus driver. In interviews with the supervisor and two assistants at the Selaibekhat Cemetery, 15 km west of Kuwait City, MEW investigators learned that eight victims of the bus attack were buried at the cemetery on February 10. The cemetery supervisor, Abdel Razzaq al-Karraf, told MEW that the bodies of five Jordanian women, two Jordanian men and one Kuwaiti woman were brought in while he and his assistants were on duty on February 10. He said that they were told that the total number of fatalities from the rocket attack on a civilian bus traveling north totaled 18, but that 10 other victims were buried elsewhere. The cemetery workers told MEW that the |
