US Relief Group Calls for Iraq Withdrawal

by Jim Lobe

One of the oldest U.S. overseas relief organizations has called for the United States to immediately withdraw from Iraq in light of the continuing carnage and Washington's failure to restore basic services or revive the country's economy.

The statement by the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) came a day after U.S. forces suffered their worst losses from a single incident in Iraq when an apparent suicide bomber blew himself up at U.S. military base in Mosul, killing at least 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers and four U.S. contractors. The bombing brings to 1,034 the number of U.S. troops killed in hostile action since the March 2003 invasion.

It also came as two new polls showed that U.S. public opinion has become more pessimistic about the situation in Iraq and significantly more skeptical about the decision to go to war.

A majority of 56 percent of respondents in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday concluded that, given the cost in military casualties, the conflict "was not worth the fight." That marked an eight-point increase since last summer, and, as the Post pointed out, "the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion."

The decision by AFSC's board of directors may feed the sense that the war has been a serious mistake, even though the same poll found that 58 percent of respondents still believe that Washington should keep its military forces – now numbering over 140,000 – in Iraq until "civil order is restored."

A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that 56 percent of its respondents believed that U.S. troops should stay "until the situation has stabilized," against 40 percent who said they believe U.S. troops should be brought home now.

True to its Quaker roots, AFSC, which had an office in Baghdad coordinating relief efforts – from March, 2003 until last September when the agency relocated its two expatriate workers there to Amman, Jordan – originally opposed the decision to go to war as "unnecessary, immoral, and unwise." The agency was forced to relocate amid a wave of kidnappings carried out by insurgents.

But it subsequently expressed concern that an abrupt U.S. withdrawal after the ouster of the Ba'athist regime might further destabilize the country and increase the danger to its people. As the AFSC board made clear in its statement issued Wednesday, however, it has again reassessed its position.

"We are convinced that the presence of U.S. troops is a destabilizing force in the region and contributes to the increasing loss of life," the board stated. "We are anguished by the damage and lasting scars we are causing to another generation of American soldiers who have been asked to serve in another war in a distant place for questionable ends."

In addition to U.S. casualties, the board noted the recent study by U.S. and British researchers published last month by the British medical journal, The Lancet, that estimated that as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S. invasion.

"We believe it is now clear that the continuing U.S. Military presence in Iraq is counterproductive and wrong. The occupation has lost the trust of the Iraqi people. We abhor the violence – each day Iraq becomes less safe for the occupied, the occupiers, and those who seek to relieve the suffering," the board stated.

The board said that the violence has continued to escalate over the past year even as U.S. forces resumed offensive actions this fall that culminated in their November campaign against insurgents in Fallujah. About one-third of the city's homes and buildings were reported to have been destroyed in the campaign. At least three U.S. Marines were reported killed Thursday in continued fighting there, even as a few hundred of the more than 250,000 residents who fled the city before the offensive began trickling back through U.S. checkpoints this week.

Under international law, according to the board, the U.S. remains responsible for the success or failure of the ongoing occupation. This in turn will be measured by how well it establishes and maintains security for Iraqis; restores basic services, including utilities, health care, and education; and revives the local economy to meet day-to-day, as well as recovery, needs of Iraqis. The U.S. is obligated to effect rapid transition to a sovereign representative government; assure the active presence of the international community in Iraq's rehabilitation; and demonstrate responsibility in the allocation of Iraqi funds.

Washington's accounting for the expenditure of both its funds during the occupation and those held in a special Iraqi oil account since the invasion was strongly criticized in a high-level UN report earlier this month, while a new study by a Norwegian institute found that the percentage of Iraqi infants and young children suffering from malnutrition has nearly doubled – to 7.7 percent – since March 2003.

"On all these points, the U.S. has failed," according to the AFSC board, noting that the result was the loss of support for U.S. troop presence in Iraq from both the Iraqi people, and "by most accounts, the U.S. public." "All of these events confirm our long-held belief that violence can only beget further violence."

"The U.S. must give way," said the board, so that the United Nations and other agencies, working with the Iraqi interim government, can try to achieve peace and stability. Washington itself retains a moral responsibility to provide financial support to those efforts, AFSC said.

The relief group, which was founded during World War I to carry out humanitarian activities in Europe, is currently sponsoring "Eyes Wide Open," a multimedia exhibition on the human cost of the Iraq War in major cities of the United States.

December 27, 2004

Jim Lobe is Inter Press Service's correspondent in Washington, DC.

Copyright © 2004 Inter Press Service

Jim Lobe Archives