Saddam´s parades of dead babies are exposed as a
cynical charade
(Filed: 25/05/2003)


UN sanctions did not kill the hundreds of infants
displayed over the years - it was neglect by the
former regime, Iraqi doctors in Baghdad tell
Charlotte Edwardes


The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam
Hussein´s propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys
of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants
strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by
United Nations sanctions - were driven through the
streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming
anti-Western slogans.

The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting
television crews and provided valuable ammunition
to anti-sanctions activists such as George
Galloway, the Labour MP, who blamed Western
governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi
children.

But The Telegraph can reveal that it was all a
cynical charade. Iraqi doctors say they were told
to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or
from natural causes and to store them in cardboard
boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks
- until they had sufficient corpses for a parade.

Many of the children died, they say, as a result
of the Iraqi government´s own neglect as it
lavished funds on military programmes and Saddam´s
palaces in the knowledge that it could blame
sanctions for the lack of medicines and equipment
in hospitals and clinics.

"We were not allowed to return the babies to their
mothers for immediate burial, as is the Muslim
tradition, but told they must be kept for what
became known as ´the taxi parade´," said Dr
Hussein al-Douri, the deputy director of the Ibn
al-Baladi hospital in Saddam City, a Shia district
in eastern Baghdad.

"The mothers would be hysterical and sometimes
threaten to kill us, but we knew that the real
threat was from the government."

Asked what would have happened if he had disobeyed
the orders, Dr al-Douri replied: "They would have
killed our families. This was an important event
for the propaganda campaign."

Dr al-Douri, who has worked for 10 years as a
paediatrician, said the parades were orchestrated
by officials from the ministries of health,
information and intelligence.

He said: "All 10 hospitals in Baghdad were
involved in this and the quota for the parade was
between 25 and 30 babies a month, which they would
say had died in one day.

"We had to tell the babies´ families that it was a
government order and that they would be paid to
keep quiet. The reward was sometimes in money, the
equivalent of $10 per baby, or in food: rice,
sugar and oil."

The government then ordered members of the Iraqi
Women´s Federation, an organisation funded by the
regime, to line the streets of Baghdad and wail
and beat themselves in mock grief.

"They portrayed an image of mothers in mourning
for their recently dead children," he said. "It
was too dangerous not to follow the orders. We
were very afraid. The families were afraid, too."

Dr al-Douri showed The Telegraph the morgue where
babies´ bodies would be stored in cardboard boxes
before being transferred to wooden coffins
carrying their names and sometimes photographs.

Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the
hospital, said: "Sanctions did not kill these
children - Saddam killed them. The internal
sanctions by the Saddam regime were very
effective. Those who died prematurely usually died
because their mothers lived in impoverished areas
neglected by the government.

"The mortality rate was higher in areas such as
Saddam City because there was no sewerage system.
Infectious diseases were rampant.

"Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq
poured money into the military and the
construction of palaces for Saddam to the
detriment of the health sector. Those babies or
small children who died because they could not
access the right drugs, died because Saddam´s
government failed to distribute the drugs. The
poorer areas were most vulnerable."

He added: "We feel terrible that this happened,
but we were living under a regime and we had to
keep silent. What could we do?"