Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.02.2005, Side 14

only one problem: the nation itself
was never asked.
En route to Iraq
US military planes had been landing
in and flying over Iceland on their
way to Iraq as early as February 19,
2003 as part of a routine agreement
with the UN. But how Iceland
became a member of the “coalition
of the willing” is a matter still being
debated.
During meetings of the Foreign
Affairs committee in the winter
of 2002 to 2003, Iraq was only
mentioned twice. On neither of
these occasions was the possibility
of supporting any military action
against Iraq ever discussed. When
member of parliament Þórunn
Sveinbjarnardóttir asked Halldór
Ásgrímsson on March 21, 2003 how
Iceland ended up in the “coalition
of the willing,” he responded by
saying the decision was made after
a meeting between officials in the
Foreign Ministry and the Prime
Minister’s office three days previous.
In other words, the decision was
made without consulting parliament.
This should have been everyone’s
cue - the opposition in parliament,
the press, the people themselves
- to jump up and demand
answers. Instead, the issue was
quietly forgotten for over a year
and wouldn’t receive any serious
attention until January 5, 2005, when
the results of an IMG Gallup poll
conducted the previous December
revealed that 84% of those surveyed
did not want Iceland to be a part of
the coalition. Will the fervent, albeit
very late, reaction now surfacing in
parliament and in the media have
any effect, or is the point moot?
Morally supporting war
Ásgrímsson, among others, has said
that the Iraq question “was discussed
many times in the Foreign Affairs
committee and in parliament in
the winter of 2002 to 2003.” Ásta
Möller, vice MP for Davíð Oddsson,
reiterated this same position to
Grapevine:
“There had been discussion about
Iceland supporting the coalition
forces before the invasion. Our part
was political support, and to allow
military aircraft to land in and fly
over Iceland on their way to Iraq.
We are a part of NATO, but as we
don’t have any troops, ours was more
of a moral support.”
Iceland, although in the coalition,
does not have an army. With no
Icelander in danger of being killed
in combat, any sacrifice made in
supporting the war might not
have seemed so great. After all, all
we were doing was letting planes
land and take off here, as they do all
the time.
No smoking gun
President of the Journalist’s Union
Róbert Marshall adds that the media
bill brought before parliament in
May of 2004 was also a contributing
factor in keeping Iraq ignored:
“The decision was made shortly
before the elections in parliament.
Then came the elections, and all the
attention that the media bill received,
which might partly explain why no
one paid attention to the Iraq issue.
But there had always been rumours
going around. Things escalated when
[MP in Ásgrímsson’s Progressive
party] Kristinn Gunnarsson spoke
up, saying Iraq was never discussed
in parliament or in the Committee
of Foreign Affairs, then another
member spoke up, and the matter
began to rear its head.”
When asked why he felt the press
didn’t react sooner, he said, “There
were protests, statements made
in newspapers, but I don’t think
anyone realised the significance until
much later. Now, when there are no
weapons of mass destruction, it starts
to look like something that it wasn’t
necessary to get involved in. It was
something I’d been thinking about
for a long time, but we couldn’t see
how we would get into the story;
we didn’t know who would talk.
The Progressives started talking on
their own. If it wasn’t for them, we
probably wouldn’t be talking about
this now.”
Media bill or war
Hans Kristjánsson, chairman of the
Movement for Active Democracy
- an organization formed in response
to the media bill which bought a
full-page anti-war declaration in the
New York Times - agrees:
“When Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir
ran for Prime Minister in 2003,
she said the first thing she would
do would be to get Iceland out of
the coalition. But in a televised
roundtable discussion the night
before the elections, with members
of the press and leading politicians
all talking and debating various
matters, the subject of Iraq never
came up once. We began to focus
more on the Iraq issue after the
media bill controversy began to quiet
down in July. We had always been
discussing Iraq, but we didn’t want
to split up our energy.”
“Reactionary
commie losers”
On September 15, 2004, Oddsson
and Ásgrímsson changed places; the
former became Foreign Minister
and the latter Prime Minister.
Government policy remained
unchanged. Then came the news
on December 1, 2004 that the
Movement for Active Democracy
was raising money to buy a full page
in the New York Times for their
declaration entitled, “The invasion of
Iraq – not in our name.” Suddenly,
the issue reared its head again.
Davíð Oddsson, in an address to
parliament, showed uncharacteristic
emotion when he said that the only
people against Iceland’s support of
the US led invasion of Iraq were
“afturhaldskommatittir,” which
loosely translates as “reactionary
commie losers.”
In January of 2005, with the results
of the Gallup Poll made public,
the Movement’s ad appearing in
the New York Times that week,
and more members of parliament
- particularly from the Social
Democratic and Leftist-Green
parties - demanding answers.
3000 BCE: The city of
Babylon arises in the region
that is now Iraq.
August 1920: British forces,
having already taken over
much of Iraq, struggle to
seize control over Fallujah. In
the ensuing battle, over 1000
British and Indian troops and
around 10,000 Fallujans die.
October 1932: Iraq becomes
an independent state.
June 1979: Saddam Hussein
becomes Iraqi president
through a coup d’etat.
August 1990: Iraq invades
Kuwait. Saddam Hussein
would later say, in court,
that he did this to control the
price of oil.
January 1991: UN Security
Council passes Resolution
678, approving military
action against Iraq.
March 1991: Iraq accepts
UN terms for cease-fire and
UN sanctions are imposed.
Official reports of Iraqi
casualties are reported
between 20,000 and
35,000.
1991 – 2003: As a result of
sanctions and intermittent air
attacks, anywhere between
half a million and a million
Iraqis die.
September 2002: US
President George W Bush, in
an address to the UN, pushes
for military action against
Iraq.
February 2003: US military
aircraft on their way to Iraq
stop in Iceland
Feb 15: Day of global protest
against war in Iraq, including
hundreds of Icelanders, who
march on parliament.
March 18 2003: A statement
of support for the US-lead
invasion of Iraq from then
Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson
appears on the White House
webpage.
March 20 2003: US-lead
military operations begin in
Iraq, with Iceland listed as a
member of “the coalition of
the willing.”
March 21 2003: Member
of parliament Þórunn
Sveinbjarnardóttir asks then-
Foreign Minister Halldór
Ásgrímsson how Iceland
ended up in the coalition
of the willing. His response
is that this happened in
a conversation between
officials in the Foreign
Ministry and officials of the
President three days earlier.
April 2003 – May 2004:
Apart from several opinion
pieces debating the pros and
cons of supporting the US-
lead war effort in Iraq, the
media is largely silent on the
Issue
January 2004: Discovery
of “mustard gas shells” by
joint Icelandic-Danish team
in southern Iraq turns out to
be erroneous.
June 2004: Movement for
Active Democracy formed
October 2004: Movement for
Active Democracy calls for
resignation of the ruling party
or vote of no confidence
January 5 2005: According
to a Gallup poll conducted
at the end of 2004, 84%
of Icelanders do not want
Iceland to be in the “coalition
of the willing.”
January 9 2005: Össur
Skarphéðinsson, chairman
of the Social Democratic
party, says that both Foreign
Minister Davíð Oddsson
and Prime Minister Halldor
Ásgrimmsson broke the law
by signing Iceland into the
coalition without bringing the
question before the public or
members of parliament.
January 11 2005: IMG Gallup
announces after a meeting
yesterday that they stand by
the results of the poll. Halldór
Ásgrímsson, Davíð Oddsson
and Minister of Justice Björn
Bjarnason each respond to
the poll by saying that it
was vague and the questions
unclear.
January 13 2005: Halldór
Ásgrímsson says on an
interview on RÚV, “I am quite
sure that Icelanders support
developing democracy in
Iraq, the elections there and
the reconstruction which lies
ahead.”
January 20 2005: It comes
to light that Iraq was only
mentioned twice during
meetings of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs in the winter
of 2002 to 2003. At neither
one of these meetings was
the possibility of Iceland´s
support for the war effort in
Iraq ever discussed.
January 21 2005: Pétur
Gunnarsson, the office
manager of the Progressive
Party, offers his own
explanation as to how Iceland
ended up as one of the nations
in the coalition that invaded
Iraq, saying that Iceland was
added by the US as a “public
relations move.”
January 22 2005: A full page
statement from the Movement
for Active Democracy appears
in the New York Times
yesterday entitled “The
Invasion of Iraq – not in our
name”.
January 23 2005: Reuters
erroneously reports that
Iceland is no longer on any list
of American allies of the war
in Iraq.
January 25 2005: Halldór
Ásgrímsson admits on
television station Stöð 2 that
he allowed military aircraft on
their way to Iraq to stopover in
Keflavík in February 2003.
January 26 2005: Jón Ásgeir
Sigurðsson of “Spegillinn”
confirms on radio station Rás
1 that after speaking with
officials for the US State
Department, the White House,
and the National Security
Advisor that Iceland is still
in fact a part of the coalition
of nations supporting the US-
lead war effort in Iraq. Iceland
is even still listed on the
White House´s own webpage
concerning the nations in this
coalition.
Today: Over 100,000 Iraqi
civilians, half of whom are
women and children, have
died as a result of the
invasion. Over 1600 coalition
forces have lost their lives.
Aid workers continue to be
kidnapped and/or executed
on a weekly basis.
Iraq: A Timeline:
“I don’t think anyone realised the significance until much later.”
- President of Journalist’s Union Róbert Marshall
Guðbjörg Sveinsdóttir, a psychiatric nurse,
was invited to Baghdad in May 2003 by the
International Red Cross (IRC) to evaluate the
condition of mental health care in Iraq. During her
time, she also visited Kurdistan and Basra. Ms.
Sveinsdóttir shares her experieces in Iraq with
Grapevine:
“Like everything else in the country, the state
of mental health servies in Iraq was chaotic.
Saddam Hussein had officially denied the
existence of mental health problems in Iraq,
so the level of care was not very developed, to
say the least. The IRC had one mental hospital
in Baghdad staffed by a few local doctors.
Resources were very limited and I don’t think
they’ve improved.
“The biggest mental health problems we were
facing were post traumatic stress disorder and
depression. The war, the sanctions, the looting,
the escalating violence – all these things
compounded made life pretty unbearable for many
people. Of course, it wasn’t as bad then as it is
now.
“There were so many things I saw and
experienced which impacted me deeply while
I was there, especially the children. When the
water system broke down in Baghdad, the streets
were flodded with dirty water. Children were
outside bathing in it. I saw people standing in
very long lines waiting all day for food and gas.
One thing I remember very clearly was when I
was in the city of Kerbala, a very beautiful city.
I talked to some of the American soldiers there.
They were very young, very inexperienced and
they didn’t have a clue about the culture. I spoke
to many, and they all seemed very unprepared to
be there.
“But I’ll also never forget the tremendous
strength a lot of Iraqi people showed. It was very
moving. While most thought things would not be
getting better any time soon, they did believe
things would get better some day. They were just
sick of being occupied, whether by Saddam or by
the Americans.
“If the IRC ever returns to Iraq, I think I would
probably go back. My experience there was very
tense, but it was also very remarkable.”
Making Sense of the Chaos
An Icelandic Nurse Recalls Her Time in Baghdad