Their combined reports point to a generation of Iraqi children growing up with poor health care and little education. The sun is setting over the old city section of ancient Basra, and the tan brick of the buildings captures the changing hues of desert twilight-the rose and salmon reds melding into soft purple and finally charcoal. The heat of the day is gone. The intricate decorative carvings of Ottoman architecture strain above passages now filled with old tires and concrete debris. A stream of sewage runs by.
Old city contains mosques, a thriving Chaldean church, and a small Jewish quarter.
It is just above Basra that the two rivers that traverse Iraq, the Tigris and Euphrates, join as one waterway leading to the Persian Gulf. The goal of this delegation, AFSC's fifth within the last year, is to examine the UN's Oil for Food program. Oil for Food is touted as a humanitarian measure to ease the most severe malnutrition problems of Iraqis. The program's authors admit it was never meant to solve the impact of sanctions, which has left the majority of Iraqis living on the edge of starvation. This delegation is especially interested in the embargo's effect on medical education and training, and so we spend most of our time visiting hospitals and medical schools.