Iraqis are a people of ageless hospitality and rich cultures whose heritage includes some of the most important contributions to humankind. The lands that make up modern Iraq gave birth to one of the first civilizations, ancient Sumer of Mesopotamia, which brought us the first written language and the timeless "Epic of Gilgamesh." Centuries later, Baghdad became the intellectual center of the world, a thriving cosmopolitan city at the commercial crossroads of Europe, Byzantium, the Middle East, India and China. Philosophy, medicine, science, literature and the arts flourished in the universities and the court. Meanwhile, as Feudal Europe lost sight of its enlightened heritage during the "Dark Ages", Hellenistic and Roman knowledge was meticulously preserved and expanded upon in Baghdad, to be rediscovered in the West during the Renaissance.

In 1258, the high culture of Baghdad was brutally cut short by the Mongol attack of Haluga. The Mongolian invaders destroyed everything. The terraced gardens were smashed never to be recovered. Houses of worship and learning were smashed into rubble. The attackers ransacked the House of Wisdom, dumping invaluable scrolls and countless books into the Tigris until the river ran blue with ink, while ten thousand of Baghdad's inhabitants were massacred until the streets ran red with blood. The skulls of the dead were piled outside the gates of the city as a dark monument of Haluga's brutality. Coming across the ruined capitol, a Persian traveler wrote home: "You ask me about the sack of Baghdad ... It was so horrible there are no words to describe it. I wish I had died earlier and not seen how the butchers destroyed these treasures of knowledge and learning. I thought I knew the world, but this holocaust is so strange and pointless, that I'm struck dumb. The revolutions of time and its decisions have defeated reason and knowledge."

Within the Arab world, the sack of Baghdad has been widely viewed as the single greatest crime ever committed against their humanity. This is well evidenced in the prevailing use of Haluga as a symbol of barbarism throughout Iraqi literature. Today, 738 years later, according to the Iraqi-American intellectual Professor Altoma Salih, Iraqi and other Arab intellectuals are putting forth the argument that the U.S. economic war against Iraq surpasses even Hulagu, representing an even greater transgression against the Iraqi people. Certainly the numbers speak to this. According to the UN's own agencies, over 600,000 children under the age of five have died. Entering its ninth year, the economic sanctions against Iraq have caused a humanitarian crisis that demands immediate action.

Dedicated activists in the U.S. have continued to work on behalf of the people we are sanctioning to death. Recently, a coalition of NGOs brought Denis Halliday, the former U.N. Assistant Secretary General and coordinator for Iraq, to Washington to testify on the effects of sanctions on Iraqi civilians. The ad-hoc congressional hearing coincided with the official delivery of the Conyers letter, signed by 44 House members, calling on President Clinton to de-link the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq from the military sanctions against the Iraqi government. Making his first public appearance in the U.S. since he resigned in protest of the sanctions, Mr. Halliday testified, "The human cost and human rights violations continue to bring anxiety to many of us." According to Halliday, the incompatibility of the sanctions with the U.N. Charter "undermines the moral credibility of the United Nations". Reporting that 6,000-7,000 children die each month, he declared: "It is unnecessary and unacceptable to allow this human tragedy to continue."

This news was deemed not "fit to print" in the New York Times and other major newspapers. Instead they opted to report news that VX nerve gas was found on an Iraqi warhead---news which, as it ended up, was leaked prematurely by the State Dept. in the rush to get it out in time to eclipse the Congressional hearing. This tactic of using the fear of chemical weapons to overshadow any news of the sanctions (itself a weapon of mass destruction) is a common tactic of the U.S. State Dept. and its media allies. It's time the media stopped playing the pawn in this bloody cover-up. And it's time people of conscience and faith call the State Dept.'s bluff. The use of sanctions, which strategically kill children who know no politics, must end.

Erik Gustafson is the founder of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). To support EPIC, write 747 10th St. SE #2, Wash., D.C. 20003 or call 202-543-6176 or locally 206-956-8169.