Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq

John Pilger investigates the effects of economic sanctions on the Iraqi civilian population, revealing that a decade of extreme isolation—enforced by Britain and the United States and imposed by the United Nations—resulted in a death toll that exceeded that of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq highlights the suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people by both the sanctions regime and the illegal bombing campaigns carried out by the UK and US in Iraq’s northern and southern ‘no-fly zones’.

The consequences of these sanctions included widespread delays and denials of access to essential medicines, medical supplies, and equipment for Iraqi civilians. As a result, the nation’s health, education, and cultural life deteriorated severely, with children and the poor suffering most. Several United Nations officials resigned in protest, including Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Hans von Sponeck.

Paying the Price exposes the chilling justification behind these restrictions: the claim that medical equipment and medicines could be diverted by Saddam Hussein’s regime to produce ‘weapons of mass destruction’—an allegation later shown to be unfounded following the Second Gulf War. The same rationale was used to justify largely hidden bombing campaigns by the UK and US against Iraqi civilians, while Saddam Hussein and his inner circle continued to live in relative comfort. Pilger argues that Western governments tolerated his rule in order to safeguard strategic and oil-related interests.