Word: basra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...final phase of the Phony War. The Iraqi military has begun highly visible preparations to shore up defenses along the vital Basra-Baghdad highway. The Army has started to move troops and materials into defensive positions along the road, which was heavily bombed by U.S.-led forces during the Gulf War while the Iraqis were withdrawing their troops from Kuwait. In the event of a new war, U.S. and British forces will need to seize and hold this crucial artery, which links the Iraqi heartland to the country's only significant port...
...clear signs of preparations in the scores of small mud-and-brick forts that line the strategically important road. Officials were not immediately available for comment, and there had been no announcement of any specific military build-up. But when I passed this way en route to Basra only three days ago, most of the forts were empty or thinly manned. Now they were abuzz with activity...
Zainab is 40 days old and has spent her entire life at the Basra hospital. After all this time, her doctors think she just might pull through because she now weighs four and a half pounds. But even if she survives, her future is bleak. Zainab was born with underdeveloped limbs. Her mother Nazad says she knew the reason as soon as her newborn daughter was shown to her. "It is because my womb is poisoned," she said, rocking the tightly wrapped bundle of her child. "The baby became sick and came out early...
...syndrome has been reported in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even among American soldiers on the ground. (Washington denies that the illnesses are caused by depleted uranium.) The Iraqi government has noted a remarkable increase in cancer, reduced fertility, miscarriages and children born with congenital defects. In the southern Basra province, multiple congenital malformation cases have shot up from 37 in 1990 to 301 in 2002. "We have a generation of children that are going to die too soon," says Dr. Jnana Ghalib Hassan, Zainab's pediatrician. "First the Americans poisoned our land, and now we are being denied medicines...
...Hassan stalks through the cancer ward of the Basra hospital where several children lie hooked up to intravenous drips. She shows hideous photographs of damaged children, many of them little more than lumps of meat. Those did not make it, but there are plenty that would survive if only they had some medication. But these are poor people and cannot afford medicines. Cancer drugs, for instance, fall under the dual use category and are listed under UN sanctions. So, although medical services are highly subsidized in Iraq, these children can have no treatment. Leukemia patients are given a blood transfusion...