What solidarity requires. (Cover Story).

A basic component of the movement in opposition to war in Iraq is a sense of solidarity with the beleaguered people of that country. This impulse toward solidarity--and the strong desire to prevent harm to Iraqis--is essential. But solidarity with the people of Iraq ought to be more complicated than simple opposition to war. The movement against the war must also express this solidarity by clearly opposing the rule of the present government in Baghdad, a government that continues to be responsible for systematic and brutal crimes against its citizens.

A U.S.-initiated war may not be the best way to accomplish the goal of ending the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's government or to produce a political authority that guarantees and promotes respect for basic human rights. But solidarity with Iraqis requires a commitment to support their struggles to achieve such rights, and that means taking seriously the need to protect vast numbers of Iraqis from the ongoing depradations of this government. Anything less betrays an opportunism on the part of opponents of the war that mimics the opportunistic invocation of human rights by the proponents of war.

Iraq's human rights record is, without question, among the very worst in the world. The current government, since it came to power in 1968, has relentlessly suppressed basic civil and political rights in the country and shares responsibility for the humanitarian disaster caused by more than a decade of sanctions. The wars caused by Iraqi aggression against Iran and then Kuwait, the U.N.-imposed sanctions, and the government's systematic political repression have caused massive suffering and dislocation among virtually all sectors of Iraq's population. As many as five million Iraqis--more than 20 percent of the country's population--now live abroad. The Norwegian Refugee Council recently estimated that there are 700,000 to one million internally displaced persons in Iraq.

In Iraq under Saddam Hussein, no one--Arab or Kurd, Sunni or Shi'a, man or woman--can exercise basic political rights, such as freedom of expression or freedom of association. Politics itself has been entirely criminalized. The government has imposed mandatory death sentences for nonviolent political "crimes" such as recruiting a current or former Ba'th Party member into any other political organization, or publicly insulting the president or the party. There are no due process protections, such as the right to a fair trial or to have access to family and legal counsel. All citizens are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, and mutilation. Dissident groups such as the Iraqi Communist Party produce credible reports that Saddam's regime executes hundreds--sometimes thousands--year after year. Since 1998, when a directive from the Office of the President authorized the creation of "supervisory committees" to "clean up Iraqi prisons," the government has conducted mass summary executions of political detainees.

This systematic repression has bred massive resistance and rebellion, which the government has met with large-scale killings and indiscriminate attacks against civilians, in some cases amounting to genocide and crimes against humanity. Between February and September 1988, Iraqi security forces were responsible for murdering at least 100,000 Kurds, by conservative estimate. After the Gulf War, the government violently suppressed popular uprisings in the north and the south. In August 1992, as many as 2,500 Arabs living in the southern marshes were killed. Thousands of villages were destroyed, and property systematically looted. In the north, international intervention bequeathed an autonomous zone in three Kurdish provinces under rival Kurdish administrations. In the south, low-level armed resistance continued while a southern U.S.-enforced no-fly zone provided precious little by way of protection. The government's counter-insurgency campaign in the south included systematic drainage of the marshes--the utter destruction in less than a decade of the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East. The U.N. Environmental Program called this "one of the world's greatest environmental disasters," and it led to the nearly complete displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents.

The fate of the Marsh Arabs points to a persistent feature of life under Saddam Hussein's rule--namely, extensive "ethnic cleansing" in the form of forced expulsions and internal displacement. Hundreds of thousands of Shi'a families--Arabs and Kurds--were forcibly exiled to Iran in the 1980s, typically with only the clothes on their backs. Since 1991, the government has enforced its "Arabization" policy around the oil-rich Kirkuk region by expelling more than 120,000 Kurds, Turkmans, and other minorities. And these are not solely crimes of the past. They continue today. Human Rights Watch was in northern Iraq in September and spoke with families who had been expelled from the oil-rich Kirkuk region just a few days earlier.

The economic and social rights of most Iraqis have fared no better than their civil and political rights. Most of the population has suffered greatly under the humanitarian crisis that pervades the country more than a decade after the 1991 Gulf War. The comprehensive sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council bear a large portion of the blame for this, perpetuating and exacerbating the public health emergency caused by allied destruction of electricity, water and sanitation, and other infrastructure essential to providing the basic necessities of life.

But the government of Iraq bears a good share of responsibility as well, thanks to its belated and partial cooperation with the so-called oil for food program and its persistent refusal to use the limited resources at its disposal to address the needs of the most vulnerable sectors of the population. The U.N. Security Council and the Iraqi government have, in effect, collaborated in policies that promoted deterioration of nutrition, health, and other essentials of life.

It is tempting, given the atrocious human rights legacy and continuing practices of Saddam Hussein's government, to think that any alternative regime would have to be an improvement. This may be risky assumption, and the human rights and the humanitarian consequences of any coming war will likely be significant.

First, there are the civilian casualties that may result from a U.S.-led air war and ground invasion, even if the assaulting forces take great care in targeting only military objectives and refrain from using weapons in an indiscriminate fashion. A U.S. reliance on high-altitude aerial bombardment to minimize U.S. military casualties may put more civilians at risk.

Second, there is the related and real danger that the Iraqi government will practice "human shielding"--that is, placing troops and high-value military targets amidst civilian populations. Such a step would be in direct violation of international humanitarian law--the Geneva Conventions--but it would not remove the obligation of attacking forces to discriminate between civilians and military objectives, and to take all possible steps to minimize harm to noncombatants.

Third, there is a danger from any chemical and/or biological weapons that the government of Iraq may possess--either from a Baghdad decision to deploy those weapons or from a Washington decision to target such sites for destruction.

Fourth, there are serious potential issues of vigilante attacks against persons associated with, or thought to be associated with, the government, as happened during the uprisings of March 1991. The behavior of U.S. warlord allies in Afghanistan this past year is hardly reassuring in this respect.

Finally, a war is likely to produce a vast humanitarian crisis involving massive internal displacement, as well as refugee flows to neighboring countries. Some refugee experts have estimated that a million and a half persons could be affected. Jordan and Turkey have already indicated they plan to prevent any large influx of Iraqi refugees.

Those contemplating war against that government bear a heavy burden to ensure that these potential humanitarian costs of armed conflict to the people of Iraq are kept to an absolute minimum. And they must give equivalent attention to planning and preparation for humanitarian relief as to the logistics of battle.

But those opposing the prospective U.S. war against Iraq also have to realize that this is a war many ordinary Iraqis have said they look forward to because they believe it promises the end of a reign of terror and destitution. The peace movement needs to expand its agenda to address the basic right of Iraqis to be rid of the brutal rule of their present government.

One step would be to call for the dispatch, under U.N. auspices, of international human rights monitors to Iraq to visit Iraqi prisons and interview thousands of families whose loved ones have "disappeared" over the past generation.

Another way is to press the demand that the Security Council set up a special international criminal tribunal, along the lines of those established for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to take up evidence of the top Iraqi leadership's well-documented responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as its ongoing crimes of torture.

The bottom line is that the anti-war movement needs to make clear that it is a movement that supports the Iraqi people, and that this support necessarily means explicitly opposing the Iraqi government and condemning its many crimes.

Joe Stork is Washington Director of the Middle East/North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.