Examination of Witness (Questions 440-459)
MR BALTHASAR
STAEHELIN
18 JUNE 2003
Q440 Mr Hancock: Air
Marshal Burridge, who is Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces
engaged in the coalition action and who gave evidence here, said
that he did not believe there was a humanitarian crisis in Iraq;
that it was a crisis of failure of the infrastructure, and that
was not primarily the responsibility of the current action but
more the regrettable lack of rebuilding which took place after
both the Iraq-Iran war and the first Gulf War. Do you share that
view?
Mr Staehelin: I
have not seen his testimony. What I would like to state is that,
in my view, the current authorities are the occupying powers.
In this sense they have a responsibility for the well-being of
the population. The failure of the infrastructure, regardless
of its source, is a real humanitarian problem for the population,
which needs to be addressed. So I am not sure that I would be
able to make a distinction between failure of the infrastructure
and humanitarian needs if the failure of the infrastructure is
such that it induces humanitarian needs.
Q441 Mr Hancock: But
you were there for most of that 10-year period, were you not?
Mr Staehelin: Yes.
Q442 Mr Hancock: Surely
your organisation was making reports about what was going on?
It was not uncommon for the water supply to Basra to fail, from
what I gather, and the infrastructure was shot. On many occasions
the water was imperfect: so much so that warnings were issued
to the population not to drink the water until plant had been
rectified or until something had been added to the water supply.
Surely you were very critical of the Iraqi regime for not dealing
with that—or were you not?
Mr Staehelin: What
we try to do is make a contribution to the improvement of this
water system. Indeed, prior to the last war there was already
a problem in terms of water. If you look at an infrastructure
which has difficulty in coping, you have a variety of impacts.
Let me take as an example the breakdown of public transport. Today
there is a difficulty with public transport and there is the difficulty
of salaries not being paid. Our delegates realised that this meant
the cleaning staff in hospitals could not come to work. It seems
trivial, but it is quite a delicate issue. If a hospital is not
cleaned constantly, you can quickly have a difficult humanitarian
situation. Some Iraqi staff have been so dedicated that they have
shown up without being paid for months; but if there is no public
transport they do not necessarily have the financial resources
to pay for a taxi to access the hospital, without being paid.
That would reduce the very little cash reserve, if any, they still
have. That is a new problem, because the public transport functioned
beforehand. So there is a problem linked to infrastructure problems,
and to a certain extent absence of local administration, which
goes beyond the problems which we saw beforehand.
Q443 Mr Hancock: Your
colleagues alleged that, in the early days of the British participation,
British soldiers were actually selling water to people. Have you
any proof to substantiate that claim?
Mr Staehelin: To
which statement do you refer?
Q444 Mr Hancock: One
of your colleagues representing your organisation made a public
statement to the effect that water was being sold by coalition
forces south of Basra in the early days.
Mr Staehelin: I
am not at all aware of the statement. I would be happy to check
it, if you wish, if you could give me the reference. I am not
aware of such a statement being made.
Q445 Mr Hancock: Your
colleagues, giving evidence at the Council of Europe on this,
made that statement again. I am interested to know where and how
you have attempted to substantiate that, because I thought that
it was a very poor slur.
Mr Staehelin: I
am not even aware of one of my colleagues having appeared, so
I wonder whether that was really a representative of the International
Committee of the Red Cross or another—
Q446 Mr Hancock: But
you are not aware of any such incidents happening?
Mr Staehelin: I
am not aware of water being sold to the population. Personally,
I am not aware of that and I am not aware of a statement made
to that effect by the ICRC.
Q447 Mr Hancock: Are
you satisfied that the right conditions are now prevailing to
ensure that the aid that is going into the country is being directed
to those who most need it? Is it being properly monitored by the
coalition forces there?
Mr Staehelin: I
do not think that I have the knowledge to answer this question.
Q448 Mr Hancock: You
do not have people on the ground who are reporting back to you
on these matters? You say that there is still a problem there.
I am interested to know how you can say that there is still a
problem, but you cannot tell us whether or not the aid that is
going there is being directed to the right people.
Mr Staehelin: It
is easier for us, by our observations which are on the humanitarian
needs of the population, to pronounce on the humanitarian needs
of the population. It is probably more difficult to pronounce
on whether or not the aid which is invested is used correctly.
I cannot pretend that the ICRC has the capacity or even the willingness
to monitor aid flows and has access to all the information to
form—
Q449 Mr Hancock: How
do you know if it is better or not then? How do you know that
it is not being sold on the black market?
Mr Staehelin: We
monitor the relief assistance which we bring in. So I can certainly
pronounce on what we do. I do not think that it is the task of
the ICRC, however, to monitor the overall aid effort provided
to Iraq. We can and do go to hospitals; we look at the situation;
we look to see if there is a functioning system. In the early
days we sometimes saw, within two or three days, three or four
different hospital directors—which makes it extremely difficult
to know who to talk to. We can see whether the water is functioning
in these hospitals; whether the patients are returning; whether
there is security provided, or whether local militias have taken
over the hospital. So I think that we can have observations on
those situations in humanitarian terms, but we cannot necessarily
have an overall idea of the—
Q450 Mr Hancock: Are
you in a position to make an observation to us, based on your
experience and that of your colleagues, that people who were in
need of humanitarian aid before the war started are now in receipt
of the humanitarian aid that they needed? Is their position effectively
better now than it was before the war?
Mr Staehelin: You
mean the overall Iraqi population, in all its different aspects?
Q451 Mr Hancock: I
imagine that a considerable number of Iraqis did not have a problem.
Those who were Ba'ath Party members and supporters of the regime
appeared not to have a problem; but a substantial number of Iraqis
had severe problems. I want to know whether or not the war has
made a significant change in their humanitarian needs. Are they
in fact better off now than they were before the war?
Mr Staehelin: I
do not think that, as of now, they are better off. I was recently
in Baghdad myself. What struck me was the number of people who
do not go to work because they feel that insecurity obliges them
to stay at home with a gun to protect their property. People feel
that the insecurity is so great that they do not dare to venture
out. I was sleeping in a residence where the neighbour is up all
night with a machine gun in his hands, in fear of being looted.
I think that the insecurity is not only a problem for the population,
in the sense that it is very unpleasant to experience it, but
it also has a negative impact on the possibility of the population
to conduct economic activities. In this sense the situation is
certainly not better right now than the situation before the war,
in terms of humanitarian needs.
Q452 Mr Hancock: Can
I take you back to something you said regarding the role you had,
where you crossed out of Iraq into Kuwait and then back from Kuwait
to go to Basra, to sort out the problem with the pumping station
and with water? That was under the control of the British forces
there?
Mr Staehelin: Yes.
Q453 Mr Hancock: What
was your role when you got to the plant? What was your organisation's
role? The British army were in control of that situation and presumably
aware of this. You are not suggesting that the British were deliberately
not allowing the water to flow to Basra, are you?
Mr Staehelin: No,
on the contrary. I wanted to mention it as a very positive example
of the dense interaction we have had with the British armed forces.
I feel that all parties to the conflict have accepted our role.
We have had a good access to the British forces, and there was
a willingness to have the ICRC, as a strictly independent organisation,
operate in a very difficult combat situation. I wanted to give
it as a positive example and certainly not as a negative example.
Q454 Mr Hancock: But
what was your role?
Mr Staehelin: The
problem was that you had, in the north of Basra, a raw water pumping
station, providing water to treatment stations for Basra and its
surroundings. We are talking of well over one and a half million
people. Due to electricity failure, the raw water pumping station
could not operate. Our role was basically to try to ensure that
the back-up generators to this raw water pumping station could
be hooked to the system. The problem is that these systems are
very complex. It needs local engineers of the local water boards
to perform these operations, because we are talking about huge
generators. If not properly switched on, they can actually destroy
the whole system. So there was an interest on the part of the
Iraqi water board and ICRC engineers—because we have our
own national staff engineers in the water and sanitation field
in Basra—to access this raw water pumping station and to
hook up generators. There were six generators.
Q455 Mr Hancock: So
they physically did the work?
Mr Staehelin: We
had the agreement of the Iraqi authorities inside Basra and of
the British forces—both having an interest that the water
came back to the town—to have a team composed of Iraqi technicians
from the water board, under the umbrella of ICRC technicians,
to go out and perform the work themselves, with the agreement
of the parties to the conflict. So the work in this instance was
indeed carried out by us.
Q456 Mr Hancock: Can
I ask you an unconnected question, about the role which kept you
in there? That is, the issue of the prisoners and the unaccounted-for
people, going right back to the Iran-Iraq war. When one of your
colleagues was giving evidence at a previous session, not of this
Committee but another organisation, they made the point that they
believed there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Iranian
prisoners of war in Iraq. Has that materialised since the regime
disappeared? Have those people shown up?
Mr Staehelin: No,
they have not. We have had one interesting operation, which I
would also mention as a positive example of co-operation between
the British forces and the ICRC. In Az-Zubayr, in the south of
the country, a warehouse was identified and found to contain a
few hundreds of mortal remains. We were approached by the Iranian
authorities, who were under the impression that Iranian mortal
remains were in this warehouse, and they asked us to intervene.
We approached the British authorities to secure this warehouse,
because we felt that it was very important that the mortal remains
were not disturbed—which was done and subsequently, on 18
May, we repatriated 45 mortal remains of Iranian soldiers. At
the same time, 84 mortal remains of Iraqi prisoners of war and
former soldiers were handed back. I think that is an example of
a successful operation where the ICRC, in its humanitarian role
according to the Geneva Convention, managed to facilitate the
repatriation of mortal remains between Iran and Iraq. It was no
longer the Iraqi authorities on the Iraq side but it was indeed
British officers signing the handover certificates.
Q457 Mr Hancock: Were
you surprised about the mass graves that were found around Basra,
containing people who had recently been killed? As you had people
on the ground in that area, was there no knowledge of this having
happened?
Mr Staehelin: I
think that the scope of it surprised everybody. It is one of the
most pressing humanitarian issues we face today. There are an
enormous number of Iraqi families who have suffered from a person
unaccounted for, due to three wars but also due to internal violence.
I think that it must be addressed. We have argued in favour of
securing these grave sites, so that they are not disturbed. We
argue very strongly in favour of an approach which is centred
on the family. We think that, when looking into the issue of persons
unaccounted for, we should put the families first, and we hope
that this will be the approach chosen by the authorities.
Q458 Jim Knight: I
want to return to the running order that we have agreed, but would
just comment in passing on that last point. Last night I saw a
film from a Member of Parliament who was in Iraq a week or so
ago, showing families digging through plastic sacks of remains,
with ID cards in them. They were completely insecure, and it was
very difficult to stop them because they were so keen to find
their families. Returning to our script, what operations were
your personnel able to carry out during the conflict and, on the
flip side of that, what operations were they not able to carry
out because of the conflict?
Mr Staehelin: When
we decided to remain operational in Iraq, we said that we only
wanted to do this if we could really make a difference in terms
of life-saving operations. In this sense, we built up an operational
capacity to act with a logistic system; but we also reinforced
the dialogue with all parties to the conflict, prior to the conflict,
in order to be sure that we had their support for our independent
humanitarian mission. We identified as priority areas the water
supply to towns; we identified the health system, emergency assistance
to hospitals; we identified prisoners of war who needed to be
visited. We also built the capacity to be able to assist up to
150,000 internally displaced persons. Luckily, there have been
far fewer cases. There have been massive movements in the north
of Iraq, but people have found shelter and have not needed humanitarian
assistance. Luckily, this last priority—for internal displacement—has
not materialised. However, revisiting the issue of the water repair
in Basra, if we had not been able, with the agreement of the parties
to the conflict, to be able to repair the water in Basra, we would
have seen hundreds of thousands of people looking for water and
we could have seen a problem on a major scale. Looking at the
issues, I think that we have been able successfully to visit the
prisoners of war held by the coalition forces. We have received
early access. As of 31 March we have been able to carry out those
visits, and we have since extended the operations, not only to
prisoners of war and civilian internees but also to recently arrested
persons accused of common-law crimes, and indeed protected by
the Fourth Geneva Convention which gives us the right to visit
them too. It has certainly been important to carry that out. Very
unfortunately, we have not been able to have access to the prisoners
of war held by the Iraqi authorities. This is extremely regrettable
and I can assure you that we have not spared any efforts to be
able to have this access. But the very speed of the operation
has meant that our initial confidence, based on the public and
bilateral affirmations of the Iraqi ministers at the time, has
not been borne out. This is something we regret very much and
where we feel that we have failed.
Q459 Jim Knight: Was
there anything else that you would have liked to have done?
Mr Staehelin: In
terms of water we have been able to make very important interventions,
in Basra and in Baghdad, namely in vital structures such as hospitals
but also water-trucking and repair. We have had mobile workshops
which were repairing all the back-up generators which would otherwise
have failed. So I think that we have had a major impact in terms
of water. The same goes for the health system. The health system
was well stocked. The Iraqi authorities had taken measures beforehand
to stock an enormous amount of drugs and medical equipment in
the hospitals. Where we have not been able to succeed is that
large parts of Iraq were not accessible to the ICRC. We have very
much concentrated on the northern government, where we could freely
move. We have been in Basra and the southern region; but, for
instance, only very latecould we access Nasiriyah, Karbala, and
all these towns. So there was, south of Baghdad, a part of Iraq
where our teams could not deploy their efforts. Luckily, when
we returned after the end of the active combat phase, we realised
that the humanitarian needs were perhaps less than feared.
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