Global Policy Forum

By Marc Santora

Despite President George W. Bush's assurance that "massive amounts" of humanitarian aid should soon begin flowing to areas of southern Iraq, relief workers and British military officials who will lead the effort said Monday that they could not meet any such timetable. The situation in southern Iraq, where sporadic fighting continued Monday, particularly in the port city of Umm Qasr, is so insecure that relief workers say it will take at least days and probably weeks before aid can start being delivered. The situation is direst in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, with over 1.5 million people, where electricity and water have been cut off for three days, according to the International Committee for the Red Cross. It is not clear whether allied bombing or the Iraqis are responsible for the power failure.

Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said Monday that it was critical for water and electricity to be restored in Basra. "I have heard reports that the people of Basra may be facing a humanitarian crisis," he said. Geoffrey Keele, a spokesmen for Unicef, the United Nations organization that will take a lead role in assuring that water continues to flow in Iraq, said, "Clean water is essential to the health and well-being of the people." He added, "There is a lot of concern that there could be a crisis there, and it could be soon."

Military planners had hoped to secure the port at Umm Qasr quickly and get aid moving north almost immediately. They have met stiffer resistance than they expected, however, and say it is still too unsafe for relief workers. General Tommy Franks said Monday that only half the mines had been cleared in the port, and soldiers continued to fight pockets of Iraqi irregulars. Still, he was confident aid would be only slightly delayed. "I think what you'll find is that the people of Basra will in the days ahead be able to have more access to food and more access to water than they have had in decades," he said, noting that relief may be weeks away in Basra and days away in Umm Qasr. The city of Umm Qasr, Iraq's only port on the Gulf, figures prominently in the allied effort to get aid to southern Iraq. British officials said they have a ship, the Sir Galahad, six hours from the port and ready to go. Once they can get it into port, they hope to open 12 aid distribution centers in Umm Qasr.

Before the fighting, the port received 60 percent of the supplies distributed in Iraq under the oil-for-food program. Since the start of UN-imposed sanctions after the first Gulf War, about 16 million people in Iraq have relied almost solely on the rations they receive from the program. Keeping the distribution centers running is critical to averting a crisis, relief workers say. While the war is in its early days and the people of Iraq are believed to have enough food to last for about a month, the situation in Basra presents a more immediate concern.

It is difficult to know exactly what the conditions are in Basra since Western journalists have not been able to work in the city, and British and American soldiers remain on the outskirts. It is clear, however, that there is a serious problem with the water supply. Red Cross observers in the city said the Wafa Al Qaed water treatment plant, which is run by electricity, has not been working because of a power failure. Although there are other treatment centers, they can supply only about 40 percent of ordinary needs.

"If we do not manage to re-establish the water system in Basra very rapidly to a sufficient level, we will have a major humanitarian crisis," said Balthasar Staehelin, the Red Cross's director-general of the Middle East and North Africa. The situation is also complicated by the poor conditions in Iraq.

"There are 500,000 tons of raw sewage dumped into fresh bodies of water every day, so you can imagine the level of contamination," said Keele, the Unicef spokesman, who worked in Baghdad until recently. After the first Gulf War, when electricity was knocked out all over the country for months, the lack of clean water led to a cholera outbreak. Keele said they had emergency plans for dealing with a possible crisis in Baghdad, installing 76 backup power generators, distributing millions of water purification tablets and filling tanks with thousands of liters of water, which could be distributed in an emergency. But because of a lack of funds, Keele said, they had not been able to put emergency provisions in Basra.

The Bush administration has repeatedly said that getting humanitarian aid to the people of Iraq is a priority. "In the south of Iraq, our coalition forces have worked hard to make the port area secure to make the transit of humanitarian aid as safe as possible," Bush said Sunday. "As I was told this morning in my briefing, that humanitarian aid should begin within 36 hours." But Geoff Hoon, the British defense minister, said today that the port may take days to be opened. Moving the aid north will be more difficult. It is impossible to know when the Basra area might be secure enough to begin moving in aid and getting the water running. Although military planners have said Basra is not strategically important, British and American soldiers have been engaged in heavy fighting around the area. The Iraqi Red Crescent told the Arab-language television station Al Jazeera that 77 people were killed in allied bombing over the weekend and that the Al Zubeir Bridge, a key entry into the city from the west, was bombed Monday.

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