The Terrible Suffering of the Iraqi Population

An Exhibition of Photographs taken by Pablo Balbotin in 1999

In ‘La Fabrica’ (www.lafabbrica.ch), a ‘culture factory’ in Losone, southern Switzerland, there is currently an exhibition, until April 3rd, of the work by the Spanish photographer Pablo Balbotin. In 1999 he took deeply moving black-and-white pictures of the ‘quiet war’ against the Iraqi population, above all the poorest among them.

Balbotin shows us the children that have died from leukaemia, or the children that were born dead with their mothers bending over them in desperation. We witness schools in ruins, youngsters who are stubbornly searching for the tiniest spark of joie de vivre. According to UNICEF statistics, 50,000 children under the age of five died each year in the nineties from the consequences of defective and damaged water supplies, poor sanitary conditions, and deficient medical care. Shuddering at the sight of the pictures, one realises just how great the impact of that ‘quiet war’ was, of the UN food and medicine embargo that was added to the long years of dictatorship. The present abominable bombing campaign will immeasurably increase the inhumane suffering already endured by the people for many years. A sign of hope can be seen in the mounting wave of peace demonstrations that have involved the broadest cross-sections of European and American populations.

Balbotin’s pictures showing the austere and desperate daily life of the Iraqi people reveal the falseness and hypocrisy of the alleged desire to ‘liberate’ the Iraqi people from its dictator Saddam. What precious humanitarian construction work could have been carried out in the meantime with that money, squandered on horrific weapons instead?

Those who are able to take their time to look at these pictures, will no doubt begin to brood over the question of whether there is not some system behind the treatment of Iraq in the last ten years or more. First Bush senior destroyed 80% of this formerly flourishing country. Next, using the good name of the UN, it was condemned to languish half-alive for the next twelve years. The ‘quiet war’ was waged. Now the military-industrial cabal is being made the winner again by conquering the country once and for all. Is the civilian population acting as guinea-pigs for a future in which big capital will devise even more cruel ways of dealing with countries who resist globalisation?

The catalogue costs 50 Swiss francs and can be obtained at Edizioni Angolo Manzoni in Turin 2001.