Lack of information and security hampers relief operations

Humanitarian operations in southern Iraq remain hampered by lack of information and security. Gradually, small teams are crossing into Iraq from Kuwait, but the security situation is still so dangerous that, other than delivering water to the main southern city of Basra and visiting Umm Qasr, Zubayr and Safwan, aid workers had been precluded from reaching other areas in the south. Whereas the UN has repeatedly called on coalition forces to establish a safe environment to enable the resumption of aid operations, most of the south is still considered too dangerous to operate in. Marc Vergara, a communications officer with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN in Kuwait that with supplies piled high in Kuwait warehouses ready to go in, the wait was frustrating. At present, UNICEF is limited to sending in about 20 water tankers a day, because, as Vergara pointed out, trucks are hard to steal. But for other supplies the situation is still considered too unstable, given the widespread looting that has gone on in cities such as Basra. "I mean, we could have brought all this stuff across the border 10 days ago, but if we had, there would be nothing left. It all comes down to security." Vergara said UNICEF would hopefully begin moving relief supplies into the south soon. "You can keep most of your stock, but at some stage you have to take a chance, because there's a need." And that need is likely to be growing, according to Vergara. Indications from the southern port city of Umm Qasr, the first area considered safe to work in, are that there is an explosion of health problems. Vergara recently visited the hospital there and said that throughout April last year the six doctors present at the hospital had seen 30 cases of diarrhoea. The morning Vergara was at the hospital, one doctor alone saw 40 cases. There had also been a sharp rise in the number of cases of dysentery and viral hepatitis. The UNICEF official stressed that diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases were not just a cause for discomfort as they were in western countries. "They are a killer here." He said if Umm Qasr was anything to go by, then there could be major health problems about to surface elsewhere in southern Iraq. But the reality was that Umm Qasr was not representative: conditions there were likely to be much better than elsewhere. The port city had water supplied via a pipeline from Kuwait and had received medical and water supplies for its hospital. Vergara said that before the war, people in southern Iraq had been dying in their hundreds from health problems, and this would not have changed. "If these people are not treated, who knows what will happen?" But he pointed out that it was impossible to say exactly how bad the situation was in the south, because there were huge gaps in information due to the difficulties of reaching many places. The representative of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Kuwait, Marc Petzoldt, told IRIN that getting accurate information was still very difficult. While there were definitely internally displaced persons (IDPs) in southern Iraq, the situation was very complex and changing constantly, and it was even more unclear just what would happen in the coming weeks and months. Petzoldt said there were many factors that could influence whether or not the number of IDPs in the south grew. Much hinged on how the Iraqi people accepted coalition control, how the humanitarian and economic situation developed, how much resistance remained from supporters of the old regime, what influence neighbouring countries exerted, and if clan retribution surfaced. Petzoldt stressed that so much was unpredictable that it was wrong to suggest there would be no major problems, because the situation could change very rapidly. IOM had only been able to visit Zubayr and Umm Qasr in the south so far, and had been unable to reach Basra because of safety concerns and uncertainty about whether supplies would be looted. Save the Children also feels frustrated. Its spokeswoman in Kuwait, Nicole Amoroso, told IRIN that it had only been able to get as far as Umm Qasr, which was just one "small, small spot in such a big country". It could not reach Basra, where it wanted to set up a regional office, because security had not yet been sorted out. While still able to carry out valuable work in Umm Qasr, Amoroso said the situation in other parts of the south was unclear, because agencies simply had not been able to get there.