Food Shortages Gnaw at Iraqis' Stomachs, Morale
Shrinking
subsidized rations are blamed on corruption, security problems or the
U.S. One struggling family finds 'hope is small.'
By Louise Roug
Times Staff Writer
June 16, 2005
BAGHDAD — After his American employers left, and monthly food rations
began to shrink, Hussein Hadi started selling his furniture. His bed
was the last thing to go.
Now Hadi, his wife, sister, mother, two brothers, three children and a
nephew sleep on his living room floor in Baghdad, their blankets sewn
from flour sacks.
Some nights, they fall asleep hungry. "Hope is small," said his wife,
Zainab.
Like many Iraqis, the Hadis depend on food rations distributed by the
government. Sometimes the sugar they receive has been hardened by
rainwater and the rice is crawling with maggots. The soap is so harsh
that it causes rashes. On the rare occasions when the Hadis received
all the items — sugar, rice, flour, baby milk, tea, vegetable oil and a
few other essentials — they considered themselves lucky.
The
U.N. World Food Program, which monitors the distribution of rations,
recently reported "significant countrywide shortfalls in rice, sugar,
milk and infant formula." Families in Baghdad haven't received sugar or
baby milk since January. Newspapers have also begun reporting that the
tea and flour handouts contain metal filings and that people have
fallen ill after consuming food rations.
Officials with the
Trade Ministry, which is in charge of distributing the rations, said
the media have created the crisis. But they have refused to release
results of the tests for contamination they said they are doing.
Retail agents who sell the food baskets say the ministry is corrupt, a
charge supported by Radhi Radhi, the government's anti-corruption
chief. Radhi said in a recent interview that Trade Ministry officials
had spread rumors about contaminated food to discredit the current
flour supplier and renegotiate the contract.
Frustration, Suspicion
Some
agents speculate that ministry employees have added metal filings to
cheat on the parcels' weight. The same employees also sell tea and
flour on the black market, agents say.
Like the Hadis, many
Iraqi families rely on the heavily subsidized rations, which were
previously distributed under the United Nations' oil-for-food program
to mitigate the effect of sanctions after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the program was handed over to the
Ministry of Trade.
More than half of Iraq's population lives
below the poverty line. The country's median income fell from $255 in
2003 to about $144 in 2004, according to a recent U.N. survey. Families
buy the food baskets for a few dollars at special state-licensed shops.
Ahmed Mukhtar, director general of the ministry, blamed the shortage of
rations on security threats that created bottlenecks at the borders
with Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
"We're attempting to make sure
the supplies are safely delivered," Mukhtar said. "Anything that
disturbs the food supplies is a critical situation."
Zainab
Hadi said she and other women have been forced to buy food at the
market, pushing prices up. The cost of tea and flour has almost
tripled. At local food markets, a 35-pound can of vegetable oil, which
just a few months ago cost $4 — a little more than an average day's
wage — now costs $12.
Over the doorway of the Hadis' tiny
cinderblock house, a small, blue ceramic plaque offers praise to God.
The 10 family members share two rooms. The upstairs living room doubles
as a bedroom.
In their kitchen, a poster of the Shiite Muslim
martyr Hussein shares pride of place with a world map. The fridge is
largely empty. Sprite and Coke bottles filled with tap water share
shelf space with medicine to relieve the aching joints of Hadi's
widowed mother.
Long before he went to work for the American
military as an electrical engineer, Hadi fought with the Iraqi army in
the war against Iran in the 1980s. A conscript, he and 15 comrades
refused to join a particularly bloody offensive, he said. After they
were brought from the front lines to Baghdad, nine were executed.
"We asked them, 'Show mercy,' " he said, lifting his camouflage
T-shirt, a gift from the Americans. Saddam Hussein's torturers struck
him with thick electrical cords, he said, leaving rope-like scars
across his chest.
When U.S. troops entered Baghdad, Hadi stood
in the streets, clapping. His daughter Mina came into the world a few
days later, when American promises of freedom and prosperity were still
fresh and Hadi's hopes were still high. Mina was born prematurely.
Hadi disappeared into the back of the house, then reemerged, beaming.
He clutched a neatly folded blue envelope and pulled out an
American-made Certificate of Appreciation thanking him for serving the
coalition forces. The envelope also contained a medal.
For a
year, Hadi and his brothers ran electrical wire and made friends with
Americans in the nearby Green Zone, which serves as the U.S.
headquarters in Iraq. One of his brothers present in the house pulled
out another treasure, a photocopied picture of him and other Iraqis
smiling as they stand beside Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the
spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq at the time.
Kimmitt and
other soldiers ended their deployment, and the Hadi brothers were
dismissed. They wanted to work for the arriving troops but were turned
away. The interpreters who control the hiring of other Iraqis behind
the scenes wanted bribes that the family couldn't afford, the brothers
said.
One brother applied to the Iraqi national guard. But they also wanted
money: $500 to consider taking him as a recruit.
Hopes Are Shrinking
Since
the Americans left, the brothers have worked sporadically as minibus
drivers. They are paid about $3 a day to ferry passengers around the
capital and brave suicide bombers. On the roads, such attacks are
indiscriminate and frequent. Getting behind the wheel means risking
one's life. Their 14-year-old nephew was killed last month, when a
suicide bomber detonated explosives near the car he was riding in.
A visiting teenage neighbor wore loose, dirty bandages around his head
and arms after a suicide bomber blew himself up near his van. He had
been driving female students to college.
In Sadr City, a Baghdad slum into which 2 million people are crammed,
the reduction in food rations also is taking a toll.
Intisan Karim, 26, lives with 24 family members in a small house. If
rations continue to shrink, she joked, laughing without mirth, "we'll
start eating each other."
Outside her house, water from a sewer
flowed along the dusty streets. Goats gnawed on trash. By roadside
shacks, boys sold dirty ice in buckets.
"The food basket is
shrinking, and the people's hopes are also shrinking," said Amir
Huseini, who dealt with social issues in an office affiliated with the
anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. "These one or two missing
items have become three, four and five, until this point when the
really vital item — the flour — is also missing."
He had
visited many families locally, trying to raise morale and hope, he
said, "although this does not fill the stomachs of the hungry."
Huseini blamed the Americans for the reduced rations. But no one in the
Hadi family shared that sentiment. The Americans were friends, after
all.
"I wouldn't sell the medal," said Hussein Hadi, holding the flimsy
medallion against his heart. "This is like a big prize."
*
Times staff writers Saif Rasheed and Suhail Ahmad
contributed to this report.
