US, Israel, Britain in axis of evil: Aziz

Iraqi livelihoods were destroyed by the bombing that occurred during the Gulf War and by "the most severe sanctions in the history of civilization" imposed afterwards by the United Nations, anthropologist and journalist Barbara Aziz said.

Aziz, who spent 15 years interviewing Iraqi men and women about their lives for the book "Swimming Up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq," discussed the book yesterday in a lecture at the Friend Center.

She conducted interviews in Iraq from 1989 until the start of the current war there in 2003.

Decrying the economic collapse she said the sanctions caused, Aziz blamed the decision to implement them on "American policy linked to the Zionist agenda."

"I put the responsibility largely on this country [as part of] the western triangle of evil –– Israel, Britain and the United States," she said. "America was strong-arming countries, threatening [them] if they traded with Iraq."

During her trips to Iraq, Aziz said, she encountered three distinct periods. First, she described "a period of great optimism" following the end of the Iraq-Iran war in 1988.

Though most reporters had left the country at that point, Aziz decided to continue reporting on the lives of Iraqi citizens. Her decision paid off, she said, since it gave her a baseline with which to contrast the subsequent struggles that would convulse the country.

The second stage of work involved reporting in Iraq after the first Gulf War and focused on the U.N. response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

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Though then-President George H.W. Bush's decision to come to Kuwait's aid drew widespread American support, Aziz said the sanctions imposed on Iraq afterwards crippled the country. Since Iraq's economy depended heavily on imported goods like wheat, medicine and mechanical parts, the sanctions caused resources in Iraq to dry up quickly. Quality of life deteriorated, she said, adding that after about three years, a famine developed.

Through her reporting, Aziz hoped to publicize what she saw as the policy's negative effect on the Iraqi people and thereby convince world leaders to lift the trade restrictions.

Eventually, Aziz said, she "realized they won't ever be lifted," and the Iraqi people came to the same conclusion.

During her third stage of reporting, the Iraqi government worked to circumvent the sanctions. Officials allowed citizens to cross the border into neighboring countries and purchase goods that were not available domestically. Through such diplomatic and economic maneuvering, Iraq began to recover.

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Aziz cited as an example of this recovery a 2002 conference she witnessed in Baghdad where about 1,000 people from across the world had come to sell their products. "I came to admire these people very, very much for what they were able to do," she said, referring to the Iraqi people's ability to bounce back from an economic crisis and resurrect trade relations with other countries.

Aziz added that she hopes her new book will make readers feel similar admiration. Her book "is about people who love their country ... I want you to feel their love of their country."

The lecture was sponsored by Princeton Middle East Society, the Davis International Center and the Program in Near Eastern Studies.