May 15 , 2000 Collateral Damage BY JOHN PILGER Ten years of sanctions in Iraq Under Siege BY ANTHONY ARNOVE Hans von Sponeck steps down The IMF: Kill It or Fix It? BY G. PASCAL ZACHARY How to Fix the IMF BY DAVID MOBERG First, do no harm Water Fallout BY JIM SHULTZ Bolivians battle globalization ICANN: Secret government of the Internet? BY STEVEN HILL The fight over who will control the Web The Big Payback BY SALIM MUWAKKIL African-Americans renew the call for reparations News & Views Editorial BY JASON VEST Capital crimes Appall-O-Meter BY DAVID FUTRELLE A Terry Laban Cartoon No Justice for Janitors BY DAVID BACON L.A. workers take the first step toward a nationwide strike Wal-Martyrs BY KARI LYDERSEN Unionizing means job cuts at the world's largest retailer Fishy Business BY JEFF SHAW Washington State is failing to protect endangered salmon Wasted BY JEFF ST. CLAIR Russia moves ahead with shady nuclear scheme Profile BY DAVID MOBERG Luis Alfonso Velasquez: Wanted man Culture The Culture Vultures BY LAURA BRAHM BOOKS: Art as instrument of foreign policy Left in the Dust BY TED KLEINE BOOKS: A HIstory of the Small & the Invisible Queer Godfather BY DOUG IRELAND BOOKS: Martin Duberman, intellectual No Jacket Required BY JOSHUA ROTHKOPF FILM: American Psycho Rememberance of Things Trashed BY CALEB MASON

Collateral Damage 10 Years of Sanctions in Iraq   Credit: FK/STR Reuters By John Pilger The memories of my journey to Iraq last fall are almost surreal. Beside the road to Baghdad from Jordan lay two bodies: old men in suits, their arms stiffly beside them. A taxi rested upside-down beside them. The men had been walking along the road, each with his meager belongings, which were now scattered among the thornbushes. The taxi's brakes had apparently failed, and it had cut them down. Local people came out of the swirling dust and stood beside the bodies: for them, on this, the only road in and out of Iraq, it was a common event. The road on the Jordan side of the border is one of the most dangerous on earth. It was never meant as an artery, yet it now carries most of Iraq's permissible trade and traffic to the outside world. Two narrow single lanes are dominated by oil tankers, moving in an endless convoy; cars and overladen buses and vans dart in and out in a kind of danse macabre. The inevitable carnage provides a gruesome roadside tableau of burnt-out tankers, a bus crushed like a tin can, an official U.N. Mercedes on its side, its once-privileged occupants dead. Of course, brakes fail on rickety taxis everywhere, but the odds against survival here are shortened to zero. Parts for the older models are now nonexistent, and drivers go through the night and day with little sleep. With the Iraqi dinar worth virtually nothing, they must go back and forth, from Baghdad to Amman, Amman to Baghdad, as frequently and as quickly as possible, just to make enough to live. And when they and their passengers are killed or maimed, they, too, become victims of the most ruthless economic embargo of our time. John Pilger is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and author. A regular contributor to the Guardian and the New Statesman, he is the author of Hidden Agendas (New Press), A Secret Country (Knopf) and Distant Voices (Vintage). This article is taken from Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War (South End Press).   TOP HOME SUBSCRIBE MAIL   In These Times © 2000 Vol. 24, No. 12