You can’t fly to Baghdad, I discovered. You have to go to Amman, capital of neighbouring Jordan, and then make a gruelling bus journey through the desert. It can take anything from 12 to 26 hours and you don’t know when you begin how long it will be. Young or old, sick or well, rich or poor, this is the only way in – and out.

The bus drivers joke about being pilots on Iraqi Airways; some were. Meanwhile the Iraqi aeroplanes have been sitting in the burning sun on the runways of the Middle East, gathering dust and slowly rotting away, for the nine years since the end of the Gulf War.

Just as nothing can prepare you for such a journey, so the land of Iraq itself is appalling and wonderful and amazing and heartbreaking beyond belief. The courage and ingenuity shown in the face of such hopelessness is harder to bear than in any place I have ever been. It is made especially terrible by the fact that this suffering is being caused by the United Nations, by my own government in Britain and by that other ‘herald of democracy’, the United States.

Not only that, but no-one reports on what is going on in Iraq any more. It seems as though the complete isolation into which the country has been cast also reflects an indifference on the part of the world’s media which I find hard to comprehend. The US and Britain have been bombing Iraq almost daily since December. Each day 250 people die because of sanctions. But who knows? Who cares?

I travelled to Baghdad with someone who cares very much indeed. Irish journalist Felicity Arbuthnot has been a tireless campaigner on behalf of the Iraqi people since the Gulf War in 1991. She has made the bus journey 36 times, and written more than ten times that number of articles on the subject. She lives, breathes, eats and sleeps Iraq. And she takes the flak in the form of both illness and death-threats. But she won’t give up.

This magazine came about through my conversations with Felicity, who had written for the NI in the issue I did on human rights in 1998. The more I talked to her about what was going on, the more I felt that here was a story that the NI must cover. A story not about Saddam Hussein, but about the people who live in the desert land that was once Mesopotamia. Stories like those of the children with cancer (see photo above). This was something that our readers would want to know – and they sure weren’t going to find out anywhere else.

So Felicity and I set off across the desert and over the river Tigris to Baghdad. We spent 16 gruelling days travelling around the country in the blistering heat, to hospitals, schools, churches, universities; meeting academics and government ministers, farmers, doctors and priests; seeing the pain of a people who have been vilified and then forgotten by the world; feeling their tears and their dignity.

This magazine is dedicated to them.

Click here to listen to an interview with Nikki van der Gaag about this magazine.

Click here to listen to an interview with Nikki van der Gaag about this magazine.

Iraq: the pride and the pain
Nikki van der Gaag examines what human rights mean in Iraq.

Arguments against the bombing
A poem by Lisa Suhair Majaj.

Poisoned legacy
Felicity Arbuthnot investigates the silent death that lingers after the shells have fallen.

By the rivers of Babylon
The abandoned palaces of the cradle of civilization.

Secrets and spies
Ian Williams interviews Scott Ritter, ex-United Nations arms inspector.

IRAQ: THE FACTS

Life in the danger zone
Their wages reduced to $2.00 a month by sanctions, how do people manage to survive? Nikki van der Gaag finds out.

Sinbad the artist
An encounter with Mohamed Ghani, one of Iraq's most famous sculptors.

Uncertain future
Sarah Graham-Brown explains the Kurds' complex relationship with the Iraqi Government.

Iraq: a history
of the land known as Mesopotamia.

Tales from the road
Travelling by bus through the desert is no joke, as Nikki van der Gaag discovers.

Voices in the wilderness
Speaking out against the sanctions.

Action/Reading

Letters
Letter from Lebanon
Update
The NI Interview with Natasha Shulepina
Reviews: plus Mother India classic
NI Crossword
Endpiece: by Eric Nagler
Country profile: Haiti

FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPH OF A MOTHER IN BAGDAD WITH MALNOURISHED TWINS BY
KAREN ROBINSON / FORMAT
MAGAZINE DESIGNED BY ANDREW KOKOTKA
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER